OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

KXDocker: More Than a Task Manager

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-04 KDE 59 Comments

"The basic idea behind Mac OS X's Dock is that when you need an application, you click on its icon on an on-screen bar, and the application is launched (if it has not been yet) or switched to (if it has). Stefano Zingarini has borrowed this concept for KXDocker, a KDE variation of OS X's Dock (which is also usable with GNOME and other desktop environments)."

Behind Closed Doors: Jobs on a Mac Tablet, Apple Cell phone

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-04 Apple 9 Comments

Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs has never been keen on the concept of a tablet-based Mac but an Apple cell phone may be a completely different story, according to personal accounts from one of the company's former higher-ups published by the UK's Guardian on Thursday. In the meantime, some took matters into their own hands.

Submitted by elsewhere 2007-01-04 Databases 58 Comments

Open-source database company MySQL has decided to stick to the current General Public License rather than move to an upcoming revision, pending broader industry acceptance. MySQL, one of the most successful commercial ventures to use the GPL, has modified its license terms from 'version 2 or later' to 'version 2' only, according to Kaj Arno, the company's vice president of community.

Novell: We’re a ‘Mixed-Source’ Company

Submitted by Tata Oranta 2007-01-04 Novell and Ximian 57 Comments

Novell's controversial pact with Microsoft reflects the desire of the number two Linux seller to position itself as a mixed-source company. Speaking to ZDNet Asia last week, Maarten Koster, the newly-appointed president of Novell Asia-Pacific, noted that the company positions itself in the market differently from its rivals. "You've got Red Hat as a pure open source company, and you've got Microsoft as a license-based company," Koster said. "The reality is, most Novell customers run a mixed-source IT environment."

Review: OpenSUSE 10.2

Submitted by Ursus 2007-01-04 SuSE, openSUSE 15 Comments

InformationWeek reviews OpenSUSE 10.2, and concludes: "All told, I consider openSUSE 10.2 to be a real winner for server duties in my labs. Given the number of pre-release packages that are included, this probably isn't a particularly good choice as a server platform for business-grade networks, but Novell doesn't position it as such, either (that's what their 'enterprise' products are for). I don't think it's as good of a desktop release as SUSE 10.1, either, and there are better distributions for that anyway, but other people are likely to disagree with me here."

What Draw Can Do for RISC OS

Submitted by David Derby 2007-01-04 RISC OS 5 Comments

"In my opinion, the Draw module is one of the most significant and useful components of RISC OS. For the uninitiated, it provides a set of routines for calculating, transforming and rendering lines, polygons, bezier curves, sprites, and text. The Draw application has been bundled with every version of RISC OS and the draw file format is a defacto standard for almost every RISC OS application that incorporates graphics, and then some. In this article I hope to demonstrate some of the flexibility that Draw and the RISC OS desktop can provide."

Top Four Reasons Windows Wins and Linux Loses

Submitted by anonymous 2007-01-04 Linux 125 Comments

"Today, you can do everything you want with a Linux desktop, except play the latest games. Even there, Linux is catching up. So, why do only a handful of people run Linux instead of Windows? Here are my top-four reasons why Windows wins and Linux loses."

Submitted by falko 2007-01-04 Debian 7 Comments

"This tutorial shows how to create a Debian/Ubuntu mirror for your local network with the tool apt-mirror. Having a local Debian/Ubuntu mirror is good if you have to install multiple systems in your local network because then all needed packages can be downloaded over the fast LAN connection, thus saving your internet bandwidth."

Apple Guru Combats Month of Bugs

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-03 macOS 32 Comments

An attempt is being made to quickly patch flaws in Apple software that are announced by vulnerability researchers Kevin Finisterre and LMH this month. The researchers' 'Month of Apple Bugs' project, launched on Monday, promises to feature a new Apple software bug for each day in January. However, a senior open-source developer with extensive experience working for Apple says he is attempting to offer fixes for each flaw found.

Submitted by Saad 2007-01-03 Apple 37 Comments

"In the street's imagination, Apple is Jobs. Or perhaps the other way around: Jobs is Apple. Whatever. This theory is still all about Jobs cracking the whip in Cupertino and speaking the Mac gospel to the public at the annual Macworld Expo and Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynotes. But is that right? Is this personal identification necessary for the continued success of Apple?" Elsewhere, Apple's top five business decisions.

Groovy 1.0 Released

Submitted by Tom Nichols 2007-01-03 Java 10 Comments

Groovy 1.0 has been released and is available for download from the project homepage. "Groovy is a dynamic language for the JVM that integrates seamlessly with the Java platform. It offers a Java-like syntax, with language features inspired by Smalltalk, Python or Ruby, and lets your reuse all your Java libraries and protect the investment you made in Java skills, tools or application servers. Groovy can be used for various purposes, from ad-hoc shell scripting leveraging Java APIs, to full-blown web applications built on Spring and Hibernate through the Grails web framework. It can also be integrated very easily in your applications to externalize business logic, create Domain-Specific Languages, or to provide templating capabilities, and much more."

Submitted by ronaldst 2007-01-03 KDE 94 Comments

"Since KDE 4 development is in full swing with plans for a KDE 4.0 release sometime later this year, I thought I'd put together a weekly piece entitled The Road to KDE 4. The idea is to have a short overview of one or two of the features that show progress in KDE 4. For my first issue, the goal is to show off some of the great SVG work that has taken place so far."

Submitted by netpython 2007-01-03 Privacy, Security 32 Comments

A US computer scientist and a Microsoft researcher have devised a program that drastically reduces application crashes and can prevent some types attack by altering the way applications use memory. The program, called DieHard, officially launched over the holidays, following development that was funded by large grants from Microsoft, Intel and the US' National Science Foundation.

Risk Mitigation for Legacy Windows NT 4.0 Systems

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-03 Windows 23 Comments

"Arguably one of today's biggest risks for network security and compliance are lingering systems that are no longer supported by their vendors. The security flaws in these systems may have been widely known for years, as is the case with Windows NT 4.0. In this article, we'll examine the risks associated with continuing to run these systems as well as provide some countermeasures that can be used to mitigate these risks."

Long-Term Fedora Linux Support Ending

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-02 Fedora Core 28 Comments

Volunteers are calling it quits on a project called Fedora Legacy to provide long-term support for Red Hat's hobbyist-oriented Fedora version of Linux. "The Fedora Legacy project is in the process of shutting down," said project organizers Jesse Keating and David Eisenstein in a Fedora Legacy mailing list posting Friday. The organizers didn't provide a specific reason for the decision, but a lack of contributions from outside programmers contributed, Keating said in a separate mailing list posting.

The D Programming Language

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-02 General Development 75 Comments

"D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python. Special attention is given to the needs of quality assurance, documentation, management, portability and reliability. D is statically typed, and compiles direct to native code. It's multiparadigm: supporting imperative, object oriented, and template metaprogramming styles. It's a member of the C syntax family, and its look and feel is very close to C++'s. See this comparison of D with C, C++, C#, and Java."

Submitted by odnomzagi 2007-01-02 macOS 70 Comments

The first Apple bug (Apple Quicktime rtsp URL Handler Stack-based Buffer Overflow) of Month Of Apple Bugs has been unveiled - as promised - by LMH and Kevin Finisterre. This bug is the first in a month long series.

XGI Technology Drivers Revisited

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-01-02 3D 14 Comments

"It has been one year to the day since XGI Technology had last released a Volari Linux display driver and about 14 months since we had first delivered word of XGI considering open-source 3D display drivers. Where do things now stand for XGI Technology? We will tell you all of the details today where things are for this Taiwan graphics company."

MobileBurn Reviews the Linux-based Rokr E2

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-02 Linux 8 Comments

Our friends over at MobileBurn posted an in-depth review of the Linux-based Rokr E2. This is the first phone Motorola released that doesn't use their touchscreen-based EZX Linux platform, but a very modified softkey version of it instead. A few months ago we also reviewed the Rokr E2. In related news, a few weeks ago Motorola also released in Asia the new, Linux-based Rokr E6, based on the touchscreen-based EZX version of their Linux platform. Native SDKs are not available.

SkyOS Team Promises 2007 Release

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-01 SkyOS 81 Comments

Hell was already frozen anyway, but apparantly, the SkyOS team is trying to bring hell's temperature to absolute zero, since they are saying 2007 might see a release of SkyOS 5. "After what seems about 30 years worth of work (I'm sure even more to Robert), SkyOS will finally be released to the public. Lots of details are still being worked out on this one (as well as the obvious issues still present in the system), but we're really shooting to make it happen."