It was actually quite a relaxing week on OSNews, with few big news stories going on. We talked about Psystar, the need (or not?) for ZFS to have an fsck tool, the end of the FatELF project, and the release of Mandriva 2010.0, among other things.
Should ZFS Have a fsck Tool? – One of the advantages of ZFS is that it doesn’t need a fsck. Replication, self-healing and scrubbing are a much better alternative. After a few years of ZFS life, can we say it was the correct decision? The reports in the mailing list are a good indicator of what happens in the real world, and it appears that once again, reality beats theory. The author of the article analyzes the implications of not having a fsck tool and tries to explain why he thinks Sun will add one at some point.
Psystar Asks Judge to Rule Its Business Is Legitimate – While the Apple v. Psystar case is currently on hold until the hearing regarding the motions for a summary judgement takes place (November 12) the Psystar v. Apple case (still with me?) is only just beginning. Psystar has amended its original complaint in this second lawsuit, asking the judge to order Apple to cease calling Psystar’s business “illegal”, claiming it hurts the clone maker financially.
Linux Skype Client To Go Open Source – We waited a little while with this news, because we wanted official confirmation from Skype before jumping on the internet bandwagon. It’s official now, so here we go: Skype has announced that it will release its Linux client as open source. A little late, but welcome nonetheless.
Has Palm Missed the Boat? – Most of us here like gadgets. Things with displays, LEDs, or stuff that otherwise lights up in the dark and makes cool noises. There is this one gadget I had been waiting for to come out in The Netherlands for quite a while now, but at some point a limit was reached, and today I decided to do a complete 180 and buy a competing product.
Mandriva 2010.0 Released – The boys and girls in the Mandriva team have released Mandriva Linux 2010.0. This new Mandriva release obviously brings the latest and greatest from the open source and Linux communities, including the latest KDE and GNOME releases. Among other things, boot time has been a priority.
OSNews Asks: What Would Make Your Perfect OS? – There’s no right way to do it, only ideas that are better than others in certain situations. But if you had the opportunity to head up the design of a new OS, one to Put Things Right, one that could be radical enough to varnish out those UI/X bumps that have clung on for years, but practical enough to be used every day, what would you design? How would you handle application management? What about file types and compatibility? Where would you cherry pick the best bits from other OSes and where would you throw away tradition? I’ve tackled this challenge for myself and present (an unfinished idea): KrocOS (warning: HTML5 site, will display without CSS in IE/older browsers). OSnews Asks: What would make your perfect OS?
Ryan Gordon Halts FatELF Project – As we all know, Mac OS X has support for what is called ‘fat binaries’. These are binaries that can carry code for for instance multiple architectures – in the case of the Mac, PowerPC and x86. Ryan Gordon was working on an implementation of fat binaries for Linux – but due to the conduct of the Linux maintainers, Gordon has halted the effort.
Judge: Norwegian ISP Does Not Have to Block The Pirate Bay – Every now and then you come across these news items that make just too much sense to be true. Earlier this year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry threatened Norway’s largest ISP, Telenor: block access to The Pirate Bay within 14 days, or face legal action. Telenor refused to comply – so it went to court. In what can only be seen as a major victory, the judge sided with Telenor.
I am seeing this “week in review” spreading like a virus in all tech sites. Considering most of OS News readers (and those other websites) visit the site on a regular basis, what is the point (besides cluttering the view with redundant content)? Do people actually find these summaries useful/interesting (instead of annoying)?
Edited 2009-11-09 01:55 UTC
I guess it might be good for anyone who doesn’t read the sites every day, all week…
Then again, if I missed out on a full week of news, I’d rather just middle-click each interesting article one-by-one (to open in new tabs) and close them when done.
Maybe for people on mobile devices having all the summaries in one page could be good, but is that not what the main page pretty much is?
Edited 2009-11-09 03:29 UTC
But I mean, there you have all the past one-line headlines waiting for you to click on the ones that make you tick. I see no point whatsoever.
They might be less irritating if they were marked with a different color or something to make them stand apart. That way I would not even lay my eyes on them. But I keep falling into reading the summary, and then noticing it is yet again one of those digests.
Edited 2009-11-09 04:03 UTC
I don’t mind them at all. Handy if you miss a week or whatever, and if you haven’t, feel free to ignore it ;^)
Also it gives some people the chance to comment on an item they may have missed out on the first time around.
Maybe this could be separated somehow from the rest.
Maybe Page One, Page Two, Both and Summaries.
I would vote for it, because I personally also don’t see a meaning in this story.
It kind of reminds me of the empty episodes most TV Series have when they cannot came up with new stuff. There is always this type of episode where the characters remember their moments on the story so far.
I saw on another site where someone had a number of VMs on a drive that got damaged. The Windows drive file checks seemed to repair the systems where the Mandriva fschk failed. when run manually it asked that the partitions be unmounted then scanned them and found no problems yet the system is still chewed.
I haven’t seen a driver rot slowly in years and lost the last few drives pretty instantly so I’ve not been in the same situation. Anyone else have issue with file system related distro repair in the last few Mandriva releases?
I find it rather odd that all the Windows VMs would repair without issue where the Mandriva now boots to a half displayed graphic login (shows white box instead of entry form).