Eugenia Loli Archive

The NetBSD Foundation published its first quarterly status report in 2005, covering the months January through March of 2005. Among many other things, this status report covers the addition of TCP/SACK and PAM support, the opening of the Foundations Online Store, the new stable pkgsrc branch and various port-specific items.

The GPE project updated their web site with brand new screenshots of their X-based PDA interface. Elsewhere, GTK+ 2.6.5 was released with bug fixes.

In the last few weeks, the tech industry has been buzzing with speculation that Microsoft's next OS release, Longhorn, will not be ready for its planned 2006 unveiling. If the OS is put off until 2007, some competitors could win more profits, but many analysts say that software and hardware partners will face the most serious challenges and could end up losing more than they anticipated.

The Open Source Initiative has published a statement about license proliferation. According to the statement OSI introduces three new criteria that approved open source licenses must meet: They must be (a) non-duplicative, (b) clear and understandable and (c) reusable. Read more in the statement.

Debian just added the kernel of FreeBSD to the unstable branch of its GNU/Linux distribution. The package contains pristine 5.3 kernel source together with patchset for conformance to Debian's requirements. This is a first step towards inclussion of the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port as a candidate for future Debian releases.

Microsoft will provide a variety of patches; some of which are described as critical. The patches are part of Microsoft’s monthly security updates. Read more.

Microsoft Research scientists, in cooperation with University of Maryland researchers, have designed two interfaces to support easier use of PDAs and cellphones. Although existing stylus-based gesture systems do not preclude the use of the thumb, no systems have been specifically designed to be operated using the thumb, according to the researchers.

Indigo is the managed communication stack that will ship with WinFX. It is the "V.Next" for ASP.NET Web Methods, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, and WSE. Steve Swartz provides a conceptual overview of Indigo, walks through some code, and introduces you to his jackalope.

Linuxlookup.com is reporting after spending weeks balancing pros and cons, Mandrakesoft has decided to change its name. The name change will apply worldwide to both the company and its products. Reasoning behind the name change, along with details are available.

Software engineers who attend Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference later this month could get their first taste of a new Windows user permissions model that could change the way thousands of programs are developed and run. But as the company prepares for the final Longhorn development push, questions remain about its plans for a new user privileges model called Least-Privilege User Account, or LUA.

This document describes how System.Transactions can be used for transactional applications in the .NET Framework version 2.0.

The Linux Box has interviewed Aaron Seigo on their latest episode of The Linux Box Show. He discusses Appeal and the plans for making KDE 4 the leader for usability, development and cool eye candy. Specific topics he covers include KControl, package management, KOffice and using high level programming languages. Start 5 minutes in for a brief history of KDE and 10 minutes in for the interview, or read the transcript.

BitMover ceases development of the free (as in beer) version of their BitKeeper version control system. Linus Torvalds decided in 2002 that BitKeeper was "the best tool for the job", namely to manage the Linux kernel, a decision which received a lot of crisicism. Various open source programmers worked on reverse engineering the BitKeeper protocol, and BitMover decided to discontinue the gratis version.

In the past two years, Wind River Systems got over its scorn for Linux. Now it's up to Ken Klein, chief executive for 15 months, to do more than embrace the open-source operating system: He's got to find a way to profit from it.