Archive

The Turrican game series were among the best selling game titles released for the C64 and Amiga 500 little over a decade ago. Now Pekaro Software finished their Turrican recreation using Direct X (version 7 or newer) for Windows. More info about other Turrican games and inspired projects can be found at the Turrican SETA Project homepage.

This article looks at two behaviors of the scheduler. The first behavior is the reaction to adding more choices to the scheduler's switching decision. The second demonstrates fairness by performing a uniform workload in multiple threads. Source code is provided so you can experiment. Last month's column looked at bare context switch times by using the best primitives on both Windows and Linux. According to those results, context switch time under Windows takes only half as long as under Linux.

According to this table on the Microsoft website MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95 and NT 3.5x reached their end of life on December 31,2002 and will no longer be supported by Microsoft.

Here's some recent news from the BeOS world. The OpenBeOS MIDI Kit team has reached Milestone 1! They now have their own now have their own midi_server and libmidi2.so.Work on the BeOS-native video editor, PostMagic, is moving along well. A new screenshot was posted on the 1st. PostMagic version 1.0 is expected to be released around mid July. LeBuzz reports that Marcus Overhagen is writing a new Audio Card Driver API. The new API will get rid of some of the multi-source, multi-channel limitations inherent in older BeOS APIs.

"Michael C. Barnes takes an in-depth look at desktop operating system options available on the market today in this exclusive article at DesktopLinux.com. Evaluating over 30 desktop options for this article, Barnes dissects Microsoft Windows XP, offers a perspective on the evolution of the desktop, and reviews popular Desktop Linux options including Red Hat, ELX, Debian, Slackware, Lycoris and more." Read the article over at DesktopLinux.com.

"The good news for Linux as an operating system for the desktop--as opposed to the server--is that it is set to become No. 2 after Windows in the next year or so. The bad news is that its growth does not look to be as explosive as some advocates might have hoped." Read more at ZDNews.

Timothy R. Butler writes: "In this second part of the OfB Distribution Shootout, Eduardo Sánchez considers the distribution who nabbed our first annual Open Choice award last July -- Mandrake Linux. After finding Mandrake Linux 8.2 quite possibly the best GNU/Linux distribution ever released, Sánchez probes deep into its successor to see if it is a worthy replacement." Read the full review.

Why do it? I am asked this question more often than I expected, even by existing Linux users who I expected to know as well as I the reasons for building a next-generation desktop Linux for the home user. So here are some of my reasons for thinking that we must spend the effort to create a better desktop on Linux than any existing version now has. Editor's Note: Due to a technical glitch, the first segment of this article was ommitted for some readers. If you missed the "why" section, before, you can read it now.

"Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other. " You can get the full article over at Sudhian Media.

"The future of the Linux desktop? At least, I hope the new unified look and feel of Red Hat 8.0 is a hint at the future that the Linux desktop is moving to. There has been some adverse reaction from the Linux community toward the new interface. I am not one of the detractors. I appreciate that Red Hat is making a contribution to Linux and I also believe that it is the direction that the Linux desktop should be taking." This is a look at Red Hat 8.0 that focuses on the direction it sets for the future of the Linux desktop. Read the full article at Librenix.

"Reid Ellison is a 15-year-old high school hacker who, for a time, had complete control over his school's computer system. A hack attack from a smart kid is just about any school's worst nightmare. But Ellison got a pat on the back for his exploits, rather than a slap on the wrist. This is actually a good news story about a kid who used his hacking talents for good rather than evil." Read the full story at ABC News.

Pahtz writes: "A very alpha release of The Humane Environment (THE) for MacOS was made on Christmas Eve. Jef Raskin, creator Apple's Macintosh, and author of the book "The Humane Interface", is the leader of the open-source THE Development Team."

CNET News.com reports: "Mobile phone maker Sendo has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging the attempted theft of technical expertise and proprietary technology, adding to the intrigue surrounding its recently terminated relationship with the software giant." Last month Sendo announced that the company decided to license Nokia's Symbian based Series 60 Platform for future Sendo smartphones instead of Microsoft's software. Update: Reuters.co.uk has some more information.

Have you ever been in situations which made you think "I wish I had Linux running right now", or are you a person who just would like to try Linux quickly? Knoppix Linux might just be your thing!