David Adams Archive

Linux Servers Up, Unix Down: Survey

  Submitted by Tudy Parghel In the News 38 Comments
A new survey of server unit growth and revenue shows that last quarter 1.6 million new servers were put into action, demonstrating that the server sector of the IT economy is growing strong. Linux servers showed the most growth, while Windows servers generated the most revenue. Unix servers showed a decline. Mainframe installations also grew. Our Take: As always these numbers are based on documented sales sales of commercial products, so they should be taken with a grain of salt, as they exclude FreeBSD and Linux servers based on freely-distributed software. Nevertheless, it looks like commercial Unix is in decline, while Linux and Windows move up.
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New SkyOS Beta 6 Video

  Submitted by Kelly Rush SkyOS 50 Comments
Another video of SkyOS 5.0 beta 6 has been released. Due to popular demand, this one is a bit higher quality, and also smaller in size (25MB). A lower-quality version of the same video is also available, weighing in at 8MB. The video shows SkyOS being loaded from Grub, booting up, and being put through general use. It is roughly 6 minutes long.
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Return to Hell: Inferno 4 Available for Download

  Submitted by Timur Baysitov OS News 22 Comments
Inferno is a compact operating system designed for building distributed and networked systems on a wide variety of devices and platforms. With many advanced and unique features, Inferno puts an unrivalled set of tools into your hands. It runs in hosted mode for: Windows (Nt, 2000, XP), FreeBSD (x86), Irix (mips), Linux (x86), MacOSX (PPC), Solaris (sparc), and Plan 9.
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Richard Stallman talks about software patents

  Submitted by Timothy Legal 54 Comments
Speaking in London last week, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, argued passionately against the legalisation of what he calls "software idea patents". The core of Stallman's argument is that if companies are allowed to patent software ideas, big business will ride roughshod over the smaller players, and the free software movement will be effectively strangled.
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Oracle to switch its programmers to Linux

  Submitted by Dave Linux 35 Comments
Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday. In October, the company finished the Linux transition for the 5,000 programmers of its Oracle Applications software. Now the transformation has begun for those who work on the database product, said Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux engineering, in an interview at the CeBit trade show in New York.
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EIOffice 2004 Vs MS Office 2003

  Submitted by Gsurface Office 36 Comments
Designed to compete against MS Office, EIOffice 2004 is coded in Java therefore able to run on both Windows and Linux. EIOffice 2004 offers features which should get a few users' attention, but does it have enough to have people switching from MS Office? Flexbeta has the review.
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ROCK Linux v2.0.1 released

  Submitted by Valentin Ziegler Linux 3 Comments
ROCK Linux 2.0.1 has been released. 2.0.1 is a maintenance release from the 2.0 stable tree updating security and many packages (KDE, GNOME, Linux, dietlibc and many more). It is now easier to compile ROCK on other distributions like SuSE or Red Hat, the tools ROCK Net and ROCK Plug have been improved and there are fixes for various architectures. For details, read the release notes.
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FreeBSD 4.10 Released

  Submitted by Matthew Baulch FreeBSD 59 Comments
FreeBSD 4.10 has been released and is now available on the master ftp. It should be showing up on mirrors shortly. Changes include the addition of USB2 support, a "dumb console" driver, a host of security fixes and many other tweaks. Userland utilities such as ifconfig, killall and rtld have also been updated. This release is very much an incremental one and contains no major new features. The current plans are for one more FreeBSD 4.X release which will be FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE. After that, it's expected that FreeBSD 5.3 release will have reached the maturity level necessary for most users to be able to migrate to 5.X.
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Mac OS X 10.3.4 Update Released

  Submitted by Jason Reid macOS 42 Comments
The 10.3.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" and is recommended for all users. Key enhancements include: improved file sharing and directory services for Mac (AFP), UNIX (NFS), PPTP, and wireless networks, improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, improved disc burning and recording functionality iPods connected via USB 2.0 are now recognized by iTunes and iSync, additional FireWire audio and USB device compatibility updated Address Book, Mail, Safari, Stickies, and QuickTime applications, improved compatibility for third party applications previous standalone security updates
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Little Hoopla Over New Java Spec

Java 13 Comments
J2EE 1.4, Sun's new Java Specification, will undoubtedly be widely adopted by the makers of Java-based software, but though Sun's attempts to hype it have not been as successful as in the past. Aside from the fact that the software industry just isn't as exuberant as it once was, many vendors are already "ahead of the spec" and have implemented functionality that customers demanded without waiting for Sun and Java to blaze the trail.
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TiVo’s New Product, New Challenges

Hardware 23 Comments
TiVo finally launched its High Definition-capable unit. Designed by TiVo for DirecTV, it sports a 250 GB Hard drive and four tuners for $999. But neat new products aside, TiVo faces some daunting challenges. It has not made inroads with cable companies, many of whom have commissioned cheap TiVo knock-offs from companies like Scientific Atlanta. Many owner of these off-brand DVRs don't even know that they aren't TiVos, and, having never used the real thing, don't know the difference.
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Windows XP Box Made From a Windows XP Box

Humor 23 Comments
One of the more whimsical case mods I've seen: A mini ITX-based PC carefully constructed inside a retail box for Windows XP. And at the end, the creator decides that he'd like to run Red Hat Linux on this machine too, so he tries to find a Linux box that fits over his new case. Unfortunately, Windows XP and Linux are not very compatible. The Red Hat Linux boxes he found were either a little smaller or a bit larger than his WinXP wonder.
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Ten Years Old: Apple’s Power Mac Line

  Submitted by C/C Apple 50 Comments
The Register takes a look back at that day a decade ago when Apple's announcement of a RISC-based Macintosh, the "Power Mac" really shook things up. The PowerPC was going to trounce the aging X86 architecture, and herald in a new era of fast computing. Problem is, Intel had a few tricks up its sleeve too. Apple's real achievement, though, was making the transition to a new architecture relatively painless.
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The World’s Safest Operating System

  Submitted by Gsurface Privacy, Security 106 Comments
UK based security firm mi2g has analyzed 17,074 successful digital attacks against servers and networks. The results are a bit surprising. The BSD OSes (including FreeBSD and Mac OS X) proved to be the systems least likely to be successfully cracked, while Linux servers were the most vulnerable. Linux machines suffered 13,654 successful attacks, or 80% of the survey total. Windows based servers enjoyed a sharp decline in successful breaches, with only 2,005 attacks. "Read more" for our take.
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Apple Now Debt-free with $4.8B in Bank

  Submitted by Charlie Apple 57 Comments
An internal Apple memo has been posted that states that Apple has just paid off its remaining $300 million in debt and is now debt-free. This concludes an amazing journey that has taken the company from a debt of $1 billion in Apple's darkest days to the current cash reserves of $4.8 billion.
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Sun’s Network Computing 04-Q1

Oracle and SUN No Comments
Sun Microsystems' quarterly online conference is this week, February 10th and 11th. It's a series of live videocasts and live chats to discuss Sun's latest technology initiatives. If you "attend," you'll get a Sun Java Desktop System evaluation CD, downloadable Sun BluePrints book and articles, and free Ringtones for your phone. The topic this quarter is 20 new innovations designed to cut cost and complexity. Sign up here.
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