Adam Scheinberg Archive

ACPI Attohackathon: Developer Interview

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is the de facto standard to replace APM. As such, it's becoming increasingly important for full support on newer machines, as legacy support for APM is waning and ACPI-only machines become more common. Recently there was a flurry of commits related to ACPI, which got the attention of some people running -current with ACPI enabled kernels. In this interview we get a peek at what's been happening with ACPI and where it's headed.

Camino 1.5 Released

"After fifteen months of hard work, the Camino Project is pleased to announce the release of Camino 1.5, a substantial update to the popular Camino 1.0 web browser. Based on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, Camino 1.5 includes some brand-new, exciting features to make surfing the web even easier." New features include inline spell-checking, feed detection, session saving, and tabbed browsing improvements. Camino is a fantastic OS X native browser that is generally more compatible than Safari. The Camino Project also launched a new website to coincide with their browser milestone.

Review: Darter Ultra Notebook

If online articles and blogs are any indication of things, the number of Linux users migrating to, and satisfied with, Ubuntu GNU/Linux seems to be staggering. Given that, it was only a matter of time before a capable company had the resources to offer accessible, affordable Linux desktops and notebooks that delivered the way that Apple's products have. Colorado-based System76 sent us their Darter Ultra for review, and proved that there is an OEM hardware/software combination capable of being the primary PC for the general public.

Microsoft Upgrades Hotmail

Microsoft today announced the release of Windows Live Hotmail, the much anticipated upgrade to their widely deployed Hotmail web-based email platform. Windows Live Hotmail launches in 36 languages and is one of the first large-scale Microsoft applications to fully support a non-Microsoft browser. In addition, Microsoft has announced the release of a free Microsoft Outlook connector application, which allows management via MS Outlook, and a long awaited mobile version of Windows Live Hotmail.

Ask OSNews: What’s Your Favorite Movie?

From time to time, we like take a break from technology news to query our readers to find out details about our community. Previously, we asked you to show us your desktop. This time, we ask "What's your favorite movie?" Is it sci-fi or comedy? Action or maybe drama? Share your favorites so we can check them out! I'll start: while I'm tempted to say The Red Violin, I'm not sure there's a better screenplay than The Usual Suspects.

Oracle Linux Gets Backing From EMC, Others

It was another small step forward for Oracle Enterprise Linux this week as a handful of ISVs pledged support, but it's still a long road ahead for the Red Hat clone. Says searchenterpriselinux, "The news came a day after Oracle announced that a handful of other hardware ISVs had also pledged to support its brand of Linux. For Tony Iams, a senior analyst with Rye Brooke, N.Y.-based Ideas International Ltd., the news was indicative of an upward trend for the company's Linux distribution, which was launched in October."

Future of Reiser4?

According to kerneltrap: "The future of Reiser4 was raised on the lkml, with the filesystem's creator, Hans Reiser, awaiting his May 7th trial. Concerns that the filesystem wasn't being maintained were laid to rest when Andrew Morton stated, 'the namesys engineers continue to maintain reiser4 and I continue to receive patches for it.'"

VLC: Beyond the Basics

Linux.com takes a look at one of our favorite media players, VLC. They write "VideoLAN's VLC is a cross-platform media player with a simple interface that doesn't require a degree in rocket science to operate. That doesn't mean, however, that VLC is a simplistic application: it has a few tricks up its sleeve that can significantly extend its functionality and enhance your user experience. Here are a couple of VLC's nifty features you might want to try."

Help Us Beta Test OSNews Version 4

After a long development period, we're ready to introduce the first "release candidate" of OSNews version 4. OSN4 is a very big change for us - for years, we've worked with the mantra "We render everywhere." We are still using MySQL and PHP, like in Eugenia's OSNews v2, but with the sudden prevalence of newer web technologies, we've decided that in order to really offer the best platform for our readers, it was time to enter a brave new world. Read on for details and the link. Updated: ("read more" to see update)

Show Us Your Desktop!

Since it's year end, I thought I'd post one more "fun piece" for everybody. After Thom posted an article on his customized KDE desktop, I thought it might be interesting to compare desktop screengrabs and see what other OSNews'ers desktops look like. Are you cluttered or clean? Are you minialist? What's your wallpaper? Upload a picture to an online service or your own website and show off your desktop. I'll start: Adam's desktop (312kb).

Who Dictates The Future of XML?

We are on the brink of a very exciting time. The buzzword-friendly "Web 2.0" is here, and it's most punctuated by three terms: social networking, AJAX, and RSS. Nothing about these things is inherently new - AJAX existed as an ActiveX control present in Microsoft's Outlook Web Access long ago, social networking has existed for some time via sites like Friendster, and RSS is just a style of XML, which has been floating around in mainstream tech circles for about 10 years. But Web 2.0 is here, like it or not. The question is, as use of these technologies begins to become more widespread, how are we going to shape these technologies, and who is going to make those decisions?