OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

HD-DVD, Blu-ray Will Not Operate on Some Vista PCs

Submitted by archiesteel 2007-01-09 Windows 71 Comments

Microsoft has been forced to acknowledge that a substantial number of PCs running the new version of its Windows operating system will not be able to play high-quality DVDs. The Vista system will be available to consumers at the end of the month. However, in an interview with The Times, one of its chief architects said that because of anti-piracy protection granted to the Hollywood studios, Vista would not play HD-DVD and Blu-ray Discs on certain PCs.

Gates Wants a Server in Every Home

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Windows 113 Comments

As part of his keynote address on Sunday at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, Gates showed off Windows Home Server (more info at Ars) - a consumer device to serve as a central storage place for digital photos, music and other media. The first products are due out later this year from HP and others. The goal is to get devices that can cost less than USD 500. In the first of a two-part interview, Microsoft's chairman talks about why the average person wants a server, why they won't need a degree in computer science to run it and what hurdles remain before consumers reach the true digital home.

Eve of Expo: MWSF Rumor recap

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Apple 24 Comments

With some 24 hours until Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to kick off Macworld Expo, Think Secret presents a compilation of information we have received and reported over the last number of months concerning Apple's anticipated announcements.

Review: HP TouchSmart IQ770

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Hardware 8 Comments

PCMag reviews the HP TouchSmart IQ770, an all-in-one computer with a touchscreen display, and conlcudes: "Is the HP TouchSmart IQ770 an iMac killer? In a word: maybe. In its current incarnation the IQ770 certainly outclasses the current Windows-based Editors' Choice the Sony Vaio VGC-LS1. I am going to hold my final judgement on the IQ770 until we put it up against other Vista-based PCs, but so far I like what I see."

Macworld Expo: the Mac Gets Back Into Business?

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Apple 8 Comments

The buzz is swelling in anticipation of consumer-side announcements from Steve Jobs' keynote address that will kick off the annual Macworld Expo here. Will it be the iPod phone or the iTV digital media server (name change is also expected)? Only Jobs and a select cadre of Apple execs know for sure. However, after the keynote hubbub settles and attendees wander onto the show floor, a revised sense of the Mac market may come into view. Among the booths filled with professional and consumer photo and video content creation tools and iPod gear - all expected and familiar Expo fare - will be an invasion of software and hardware solutions solidly in the small and midsize business camp.

Gates & Jobs: Substance vs. Style

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Rumors 21 Comments

"Two luminaries - chairmen of Apple and Microsoft - make keynotes this week, in a highly anticipated standoff between the Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld. While analysts, bloggers and reporters will debate different strategies in operating systems (Leopard vs. Vista), entertainment (iTV vs. Home Server, Media Center and Windows Live), digital media (iLife vs. Windows Ultimate Extras and Windows Live), music (iPod vs. Zune) or mobiles (iPhone vs. Windows Mobile), I will focus on the men's personalities and the companies' different approaches to the events. The contrasts in style and substance will be important in making sense out of the companies' announcements."

Submitted by elsewhere 2007-01-08 KDE 41 Comments

"In this weeks' edition of the Road to KDE 4, we'll take a look at the up and coming KWord 2.0 as part of the KOffice project. KWord 1.6.1 is already a powerful KDE-integrated word processor, but with KDE 4 technologies, KWord 2.0 promises to be among the most powerful free word processors available. Read on for more details."

Linux on the PlayStation 3

Submitted by anonymous 2007-01-08 Games 15 Comments

It is unusual for gaming consoles to allow foreign operating systems to be installed on them. Sony decided to open up the PS3 console and allow third-party operating systems to be installed. Learn how to get started developing for the Cell BE processor on the PS3. This article provides an overview, installation, and first programming steps. Its the easiest way for programmers to get their hands on the new Cell Broadband Engine processor and take it for a drive.

Gentoo/FreeBSD on Hold Due to Licensing Issues

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 BSD & Darwin 79 Comments

"Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected. The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good news is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed. At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."

New Official Ubuntu Metapackage for Non-Free Packages

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-08 Ubuntu 30 Comments

The first screenshots have emerged of the new official Ubuntu meta package 'ubuntu-restricted-extras'. This package enables the multiverse/universe repositories (after a warning), after which it installs various non-free packages such as Flash and various codecs. The package is for the upcoming Feisty Fawn release only. More information can be found in the Wiki. Thanks to Digg.com for pointing this out.

Sneak Preview of the Expected Features in KDE 4.0

Submitted by Ravi 2007-01-08 KDE 56 Comments

"Ever wonder what KDE 4.0 is going to look like when it is finally released some time this year ? As far as end users should be concerned, it is going to be much more beautiful, responsive and usable than KDE 3.5. Some of the features that it will have are as follows." Note: I thought the Kickoff menu was a SUSE thing, instead of being a KDE 4.0 thing?

New ReactOS Newsletter

Submitted by anonymous 2007-01-08 ReactOS 26 Comments

The new ReactOS newsletter has been published. "Currently the main development branch "trunk" even though it has many new features and bug fixes since 0.3.0, it currently has several issues that prevent it from being relatively useful. Furthermore functionality that once worked no longer does, this is called a regression. Until trunk has been reasonably fixed 0.3.1 will not be released. Be assured that the developers are working hard on fixing the current issues and bringing forth a good public release as soon as humanly possible."

Submitted by MaxxTotal 2007-01-08 Microsoft 11 Comments

Microsoft has pulled four bulletins from its announced list of Patch Tuesday fixes, but did not specify why it was backpedaling on the security releases. It now plans to issue four security bulletins on Tuesday, rather than the eight originally announced, the software giant said last week in an updated notice on its Web site.

Linux KVM Virtualization Performance

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-01-08 Linux 6 Comments

"For only being a release candidate the Linux 2.6.20 kernel has already generated quite a bit of attention. On top of adding asynchronous SCSI scanning, multi-threaded USB probing, and many driver updates, the Linux 2.6.20 kernel will include a full virtualization (not para-virtualization) solution. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (or KVM for short) is a GPL software project that has been developed and sponsored by Qumranet. In this article we are offering a brief overview of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux as well as offering up in-house performance numbers as we compare KVM to other virtualization solutions such as QEMU Accelerator and Xen."

pkgsrc-2006Q4 Branched

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2007-01-08 NetBSD 3 Comments

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the new pkgsrc-2006Q4 branch. At the same time, the pkgsrc-2006Q3 branch has been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2006Q4 branch. The NetBSD Packages Collection is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems, currently containing over 6400 packages. It is used to enable freely available software to be configured and built easily on supported platforms. Please see the detailed pkgsrc-2006Q4 announcement in Alistair Crooks's email to the pkgsrc-users m-l for more information.

Submitted by arooaroo 2007-01-07 Linux 23 Comments

Long standing user of Arch Linux side-steps the typical OS-review template and takes a fresh look at several features of Arch Linux that make it an interesting and exciting distribution. Update: A recent interview with Judd Vinet, Arch's founder.

Submitted by falko 2007-01-07 Ubuntu 38 Comments

Normally Linux systems can only read from Windows NTFS partitions, but not write to them which can be very annoying if you have to work with Linux and Windows systems. This is where ntfs-3g comes into play. ntfs-3g is an open source, freely available NTFS driver for Linux with read and write support. This tutorial shows how to install and use ntfs-3g on a Ubuntu Edgy Eft desktop to read from and write to Windows NTFS drives and partitions. It covers the usage of internal NTFS partitions (e.g. in a dual-boot environment) and of external USB NTFS drives. Additionally, one more FS-related article (How To Resize ext3 Partitions Without Losing Data), and one Ubuntu (Why Ubuntu Is Number One).

‘Mac OS X Shines in Comparison with Windows Vista’

Submitted by Berney Bradley 2007-01-07 Rumors 131 Comments

Amid the hype surrounding the release of Windows Vista, Mac users are taking solace from the fact that Mac OS X is still a champ on many fronts. Here are some reasons why reviewer John C. Welch opts for Apple.

New Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Available Now

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-06 Wireless 35 Comments

Nokia has quietly begun delivering an upgrade to its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet. The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is available now from at least two retail stores in the U.S., priced at $399.99, CompUSA's Chicago "superstore" has confirmed. The device features GTalk and a VGA video-call camera via WiFi.

Thurrott Completes Vista Review

Submitted by anonymous 2007-01-06 Windows 153 Comments

Right before the end of 2006, Paul Thurrott completed his 8-part review of Windows Vista. His final conclusion: "Vista is a better operating system than the competition, for reasons that are both technical and practical. But for the hundreds of millions of people who will move to Vista in the coming years, all that will really matter is that it's a major improvement over XP. And it most certainly is that as well."