David Adams Archive

DesktopOS published a Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1 review. The author describes the installation, configuration and community of Libranet, and gives some good tips as well.

Longhorn's woes may open a door for Linux—a very tiny door—but Linux just isn't a good choice for desktops. Instead, desktop Linux proponents should wake up and switch to the Mac OS.

Togaware has published an extensive online book to help aspiring Debian users find their way around setting up a Linux desktop workstation.

Wireless PCs and wireless laptops are being increasingly used in both business and the home. . . Unfortunately, in the enthusiasm with which people have adopted wireless, the question of security has been seriously overlooked.

When the UK's defense contractor for the Navy decided to standardize on Windows, it "prompted strong internal opposition from some , who had a sound background in Unix and who had, despite resource starvation and a companywide policy to standardise on Windows, been investigating open source alternatives as a foundation for future combat systems. They lost."

Ask some end users what Linux Standard Base (LSB) is and most likely they either won't know anything about it, or know a little bit but not enough to qualify as understanding what all the buzz around LSB is about. Ask three ISVs and only one will likely understand the implications of LSB for their business. And only a very, very few will say that they have started the process of making some of their applications LSB-compliant. Read More.

FreeBSD has released a new Beta of 5.3. Release notes can be viewed at here.

I read something in one of the comments for an OSNews posting a couple weeks ago that sent me thinking. It wasn't an original or profound thought. In fact, it's a rather commonly-held opinion that happens to be quite misguided. It's an opinion summed up by the "open source = communist" meme that gets thrown around in thousands of flamewars all over the internet. In this essay, I will explore why this idea is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.

ComputerWeekly takes a look at OpenVMS, one of the most stable OSes ever placed in production. Originally known as VMS, it's probably the best designed and most robust general purpose operating system in existence. It's also one of the least-known and appreciated, simply because it works quietly in the background without drama, unlike its noisier and more fussy siblings and offspring.

John Gruber has written an in-depth look at Apple's filesystem work and Tiger's new Spotlight search technology by John Gruber. Since the introduction of OS X, Apple's HFS+ filesystem has taken a lot of abuse "from the peanut gallery," but it has seen steady improvements, and Dominic Giampaolo (of BeFS fame) has extended it further to support Spotlight.

Fedora Core 3 Test 1 has been released for download. See the announcement here.

Onebase Linux Project has created a special flavor of itsOnebaseGo Live CD that comes with a complete KDE 3.3 Beta desktop and Koffice 1.3.2. It is intended for reporting bugs in KDE and as a Technology preview. It can be installed to hard-disk to have a fully functional Onebase Linux OS. However it is not meant for production use and only users who prefer using the unstable repository are recommended to perform an HD-installation.

Well, Apple's done it again. They've seen a really cool (but simple) idea implemented in a third party shareware app and they've *ahem* been inspired by it to create some new functionality in the new version of Mac OS. This year's victim: Konfabulator. A short article at Mac Critic outlines the other "inspiration."

Microsoft has opened public betas for the upcoming Express edition of its Visual Studio product line as well as SQL Server. The products include "Visual Basic 2005 Express", "Visual C# 2005 Express", "Visual C++ 2005 Express", "Visual J# 2005 Express", "SQL Server 2005 Express" and an interesting "Visual Web Dev 2005 Express" for developing ASP.NET content in Visual Basic, C# or J#. The expected retail pricing for these products is $49-$99.