Mac Performance: From G3 to Xeon

"Since we released Geekbench 2006 on July 10th, we've received over 4800 Geekbench results; over half of those results are from computers running Mac OS X. I took a look at the results, and found that we've received results for almost every computer model Apple's shipped in the past six years, from the iMac G3 to the Mac Pro. Since we love us some benchmarks here at Geek Patrol, I thought it'd be interesting to put together an overview of Mac performance over the past six years."

Microsoft Allows Free Redistribution of Virtual Server, PC

"With an unexpected move Microsoft changed agreement terms of its virtualization products and allows anybody to freely redistribute them within proprietary applications. In particular Virtual Server 2005 R2 (both x86 and x64 editions) requires to sign a Redistrbution Rights licensing agreement, while Virtual PC 2004 automatically grants this right in the EULA. The upcoming Virtual PC 2007 will be redistributable as well."

Mono 1.1.17 Released

A new version of Mono has been released, and it contains many significant updates and bug fixes. " The Mono Basic compiler and the Basic runtime have been removed from the Mono distribution. A new compiler that is compatible with Visual Basic 2005 and a matching runtime are now part of a separate distribution. On this particular release, we are offering the basic runtime, but the compiler is not able to run completely on Mono yet."

Google Open Sources Tesseract

Google has announced the release of the source of an old OCR software called Tesseract in source. "In a nutshell, we are all about making information available to users, and when this information is in a paper document, OCR is the process by which we can convert the pages of this document into text that can then be used for indexing."

Trolltech Releases Second Preview of Qt for Java

Trolltech has released a second preview of Qt Jambi - a prototype version of Qt that allows Java programmers to use the popular cross-platform development framework. This second release incorporates the feedback of over 1700 beta testers, and features new additions like Web Start functionality, improved integration with Eclipse and single JAR file deployment for Qt Jambi-based applications. More information is available in the Qt Jambi product alert with tech details in the Qt Jambi Whitepaper. To try it out, sign up for the preview license and download.

The Future of NetBSD

Charles Hannum, co-founder of NetBSD posted to 3 major BSD lists saying that "The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. It has gotten to the point that being associated with the project is often more of a liability than an asset. I will attempt to explain how this happened, what the current state of affairs is, and what needs to be done to attempt to fix the situation."

Gentoo Linux 2006.1 Released

Linuxlookup.com is reporting on the release of Gentoo Linux 2006.1. Building on the strengths of previous releases and featuring all of Gentoo's well-documented flexibility, performance and portability, this release is now available on all supported architectures. The most popular architectures now use GCC 4.1, glibc 2.4 and baselayout 1.12.1, as well as including a new profile layout, with seperate desktop and server profiles.

Helpful Hints for Porting Fortran Applications

This article addresses the most commonly encountered scenarios and errors while porting Fortran or any UNIX or Linux-based applications on different systems. Discover how to port Fortran-based High Performance Computing applications, such as computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling, weather modeling, and linear algebra packages, using IBM XL compilers and gnu compilers on large clusters.

Google CEO Schmidt Joins Apple’s Board of Directors

"Apple today announced that Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, was elected to Apple's board of directors at their meeting today. Eric also sits on Google's board of directors and Princeton University's board of trustees. "Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of Apple's board of directors," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric's insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead."

A Quickie: ReactOS on VMWare Player

In the past, I've installed ReactOS to show my students a Microsoft alternative. The performance was slow and there was not much to do. This latest revision offers more! For my review, I used the freeware VMWare Player since I was using the company server. I'm the only one who knows how to use it.

Linspire Does Away with Annual Fee for CNR

Starting today, Linspire does not only offer a free OS, but also its CNR Basic service. " Linspire, Inc., developer of the commercial desktop Linux operating system of the same name and Freespire, the free community desktop Linux operating system, announced the immediate change in pricing for its popular CNR Service from an annual subscription fee based offering to a completely free service." CEO Carmony said: "We're thrilled to now be in a position to offer this excellent service to desktop Linux users absolutely free. CNR really makes using desktop Linux easy, and we want everyone to have access to this quality service."

GPL: 10 Common Misunderstandings

"The GNU General Public License is one of the most widely used software licenses - and, undoubtedly, the most misunderstood. Some of this misunderstanding comes from hostile propaganda, but some also comes from a lack of experience in licensing issues on the part of both lawyers and lay users, and the use of standard language in conventional end-user license agreements that are unthinkingly coupled with the GPL. In all cases, the confusion is frequently based on misreadings, rumors, secondhand accounts, and what is convenient to believe."

Get to Know NetBSD

"NetBSD runs on more hardware platforms than any other UNIX derivative due to smart design decisions and a commitment to portable code. Whether you're porting an operating system to a proprietary embedded system or looking for stability and compatibility across hardware platforms in the lab, NetBSD and its open license is a compelling alternative to Linux and the GNU Public License."

NX Server, Client Released Under GPL

"2X today announced the release of 2X TerminalServer for Linux, an open source terminal server for Linux, which enables users to run a Linux desktop and Linux / Windows applications over any type of connection. "If Linux is going to happen on the desktop, it will require a terminal server approach such as that of 2X Terminal Server for Linux. Only with the more advanced thin client approach, will Linux be able to outdo Windows fat clients in a company's network. 2X is proud to contribute to this by opening the source code of its terminal server software for Linux."

First Builds of Mac OS X 10.4.8 Released to Developers

Apple Computer on Monday released to developers the first pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.8, a maintenance and bug fix update for its Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system that is currently under development. In addition to improving the stability and performance of Tiger, sources say Apple will target specific enhancements towards AFP, DVD Player, iCal, iPhoto, Mail and Safari.

New GNUstep release — InterfaceBuilder compatibility

The GNUstep project released new versions of its frameworks: Base 1.13, GUI 0.11, along with a new version of the Graphical Interface Builder for GNUstep, Gorm (1.1). The new version of Base adds new classes for NSPredicate, better url management, as well as improving support on Windows. On the GUI side, among the noteworthy changes since the previous release (0.10.3, march 2006) is the new support for key encoding in all gui classes - which means you can now load and save OS X nib files.