OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Castle Considering Open Sourcing RISC OS

Submitted by flypig 2006-08-15 RISC OS 28 Comments

The developers of RISC OS 5 are prepared to open source 'elements' of the operating system, acccording to a report in Archive magazine today. Castle boss Jack Lillingston reportedly told Archive editor Paul Beverley on-the-record that the company is "very seriously considering making RISC OS open source".

Submitted by andymc 2006-08-15 OS News 5 Comments

Version 0.63 of Visopsys was released today. It's a maintenance release with bugfixes and loads of small tweaks throughout the system, but also a few new little features, including the ability to format and resize Linux swap partitions, more reliable OS loading, better CPU detection, and a simple text editor. Detailed change log and downloads.

Submitted by sogabe 2006-08-15 Haiku 19 Comments

A discussion on the Haiku mailing list about the recently announced icon contest has set off a somewhat controversial debate about communication in the project. The Haiku leadership seems to be of the idea that it is not yet a good time to the start PR machine, while the member of the community who initiated the discussion argues that, if done right, communication can be beneficial for the project at any point in time, and that it may actually help find the developers that the project so badly needs. Quite coincidentally, this article related to the topic of marketing open source projects.

Trolltech to Offer “Open” Linux Mobile Phone

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-15 Qt 25 Comments

Trolltech will ship an "open" Linux-based phone in September. The "Greenphone" features a user-modifiable Linux OS, and is meant to jumpstart a third-party native application ecosystem for Linux-based mobile phones.

Slackware Linux 11.0 RC1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-15 Slackware, Slax 23 Comments

The long development process of Slackware Linux 11.0 is about to conclude - that's according to Patrick Volkerding who has declared the "current" tree as RC1: "There are still a few changes yet to happen, but let's call this Slackware 11.0 release candidate 1." Other recent changes include upgrade to stable kernel 2.4.33; upgrade to udev 097, and rebuild of glibc 2.3.6 for both 2.4.33 and 2.6.16.27 kernels. Update: Screenshots.

Mac OS X Leopard Mash-Up Articles

Submitted by HHA 2006-08-15 macOS 19 Comments

Here are few articles posted today about Mac OS X: " OS X Mobile and Automotive Editions: Is It Possible?", Leopard Core Animation", "64-bit Leopard knocks off Vista", "First boot with Leopard" and "Multi-Threaded OpenGL On The Way".

Exploring .NET’s Isolated Storage

Submitted by Esther Schindler 2006-08-14 .NET 27 Comments

Windows INI files and its registry have both advantages and limitations, particularly from a developer's viewpoint. In this DevSource article, Peter Aitken explains what they are, and explains how .NET's isolated storage works: it provides a location on your drive that only a specific application can find and use. He explains when isolated storage is a developer's best friend, and when you shouldn't bother.

Microsoft Windows Dominates the OS Market on the Web

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-14 OS News 134 Comments

OneStat today reported that Microsoft's Windows dominates the operating system market with a global usage share of 96.97 percent. The Mac appears to be at around 2.47% and Linux at 0.36%. Please note that OneStat bases its numbers on a large number of internet site hits and extraction from user agents.

Xandros Home Edition Premium Review; Interview with Engineers

Submitted by MHM 2006-08-14 Oracle and SUN 9 Comments

Xandros, originally a revamped Corel Linux OS, provides a very stable, rock solid Linux distribution for the typical Linux newbie. Read the review at OSWeekly. TheJemReport also features an interview with some of the Xandros developer managers.

ReactOS v0.3.0 RC2 Released

Submitted by Martin Wolper 2006-08-14 ReactOS 14 Comments

ReactOS has just released version 0.3.0 RC2 of their open source Microsoft Windows-compatible operating system. They are also now 94% finished with the code audit.

Give your Fingers a Break with Unix Shell Shortcuts

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-14 Unix 37 Comments

Every skilled trade has its secrets -- those little tricks, techniques, and tools that make light of even the most complex task. Programmers, system administrators, and other UNIX computer professionals have their own kind of specialized tools. Learn how to leverage the many shortcuts that the UNIX shell provides. With a little practice, you'll work smarter, not harder.

Extending the GPL for Application Service Providers

Submitted by lh8 2006-08-14 Open Source 11 Comments

Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco is scheduled to announce a draft version of a modified GPL today that would add a provision requiring service providers to distribute changes to code, even if they don't "distribute" the code beyond their own servers. Capobianco calls this the Honest Public License (HPL), and the additional provision could add an entirely new wrinkle to free software.

Submitted by Flatline 2006-08-14 Debian 17 Comments

Debian is a steadfastly noncommercial version of Linux. But Hewlett-Packard will give it a big corporate hug Monday with the announcement of a plan to provide support for the open-source operating system.

Microsoft Gives XBOX 360’s SDK to the World

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-14 Games 61 Comments

Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express targetting the XBOX 360 will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.

Linux Powers Unusual 16-Core Processor

Submitted by Shean Terry 2006-08-14 Hardware 43 Comments

A start-up called Movidis believes a 16-core chip originally designed for networking gear will be a ticket to success in the Linux server market. The Revolution x16 models from Movidis each use a single 500MHz or 600MHz Cavium Networks Octeon CN3860 chip.

Beyond DirectX 10 – A Glance at DirectX 10.1

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-14 3D 17 Comments

"DirectX 10 is likely to see a number of point revisions during its lifespan and the first of these, imaginatively titled DirectX 10.1, will be the first of these. It may surprise some of you reading this, but the features which will be added by DirectX 10.1 have already been decided upon and information made available about them, so in this article we'll be taking a look through what we can expect to see in DirectX 10.1 compliant hardware."

Hardware Virtualization Slower Than Software?

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-13 OS News 28 Comments

" a new white paper by VMWare that comes to the surprising conclusion that hardware-assisted x86 virtualization oftentimes fails to outperform software-assisted virtualization. My reading of the paper says that this counterintuitive result is often due to the fact that hardware-assisted virtualization relies on expensive traps to catch privileged instructions while software-assisted virtualization uses inexpensive software substitutions." Read more at Slashdot.

Inside Mac OS X v10.5, a Visual Preview

Submitted by Mark White 2006-08-13 macOS 48 Comments

Here are just a couple of screenshots from Leopard and explanation of some of the new features.

Advanced Installation Tasks in FreeBSD 6

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-13 FreeBSD 19 Comments

This chapter explains the ins and outs of non-standard FreeBSD installations. If you are installing FreeBSD on a system with another operating system previously installed, or if you aren't using a CD or DVD to install FreeBSD, you'll want to read this chapter before performing the installation.

Editing and Refactoring Code in NetBeans

Eugenia Loli 2006-08-13 Java 4 Comments

NetBeans IDE provides a wide variety of tools to support Java application development, but it is the Source Editor where you will spend most of your time. Given that fact, a lot of attention has been put into features and subtle touches to make coding faster and more pleasurable. This chapter covers the ins and outs of the Source Editor.