Eugenia Loli Archive

Magnussoft Announces Next Level of ZETA

Submitted by sogabe 2006-11-08 Zeta 28 Comments

Only a few weeks after the first release of ZETA 1.21, Magnussoft has just announced some details of what can be expected from the next version of ZETA. According to the announcement, the central piece of ZETA 1.5 will be what magnussoft calls project MediaFire, a completely new application for CD and DVD burning, the long awaited multi-user capability and an upgraded SAMBA implementation.

Slam Dunk for Linux – a Review of Fedora Core 6

Submitted by Brad Laue 2006-11-07 Fedora Core 23 Comments

A review of Fedora Core 6 from 3 perspectives - the end user, the developer and the power user. Also explores the implications of the release as an indicator that the Linux platform is coming together to form a significant competitor to proprietary products.

Submitted by kickasso 2006-11-06 Morphos 32 Comments

On BBRV's blog: "The PegasosPPC will be on sale this week for $399. Neither the board nor an upgrade card will be produced again by Genesi or bplan. It is the end of an era for us. It has been a great experience."

Submitted by raoulduke 2006-11-06 General Development 4 Comments

In this article there is an introductionary look into the vDSP and vecLib libraries which are part of the Accelerate framework on Mac OS X. By using properly aligned arrays and manually vectorized code you can increase the performance (5-10 times) of your hot loops by large amounts.

Inside Solaris File Systems

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-05 Solaris 1 Comment

Get inside the Solaris FS by looking at physical I/O, latency, top end activity, caches, and statistics.

Behind the Scenes of Objective-C 2.0

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-05 General Development 33 Comments

David Chisnall takes a look behind the scenes at Apple's upcoming revamp of the Objective-C language. As with any new language, some things are good, some are ugly, and some are both.

Submitted by ghen 2006-11-04 NetBSD 3 Comments

NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.1 have been released simultaneously. NetBSD 3.0.2 is a critical/security-only update for NetBSD 3.0, while NetBSD 3.1 brings much broader fixes and improvements, including: Xen3 domU support, LFS stability improvements, Postfix 2.2.11, BIND 9.3.2, msdosfs write optimization, addition of scan_ffs/scan_lfs tools, driver updates, and many, many other bug fixes and enhancements. Binaries and ISO's for both releases are available via FTP and BitTorrent.

FSF Recruiting ‘Freedom Verifiers’ for Free Ubuntu Derivative

Submitted by anonymous 2006-11-04 Linux 67 Comments

The FSF recently announced the release of gNewSense 1.0 in a press release. gNewSense is a free software GNU/Linux distribution created by two Irish free software advocates, Brian Brazil and Paul O'Malley, and is based on the Ubuntu and Debian distributions.

Review: ADS MXL-581 Media-Link Entertainment Receiver

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-04 Multimedia, AV 12 Comments

Apple is working furiously to get their ITV product into market early next year. However, this type of product is not a new idea. There have been a number of similar remote multimedia products since 2003, most based off the Syabas software stack. Geeks.com were very generous sending us over ADS' MXL-581 Media-Link Entertainment Receiver for a review, a Syabas-based device that's using the uCOS-II real-time kernel (introduction ). Check inside for our review and many screenshots of the system.

Are You Ready For Vista Graphics?

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-03 Windows 55 Comments

Windows Vista will offer varying levels of functionality depending on what kind of video card you have. When you upgrade, will your PC be up to the challenge?

Why Software Sucks

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-03 General Development 53 Comments

"Software sucks, 80% of projects fail, and most developers are unhappy individuals. Why is this? My answer; complexity. Complexity is the single factor I would attribute poor software to. The more you have to do, the harder you make it on yourself, the way requirements seem to change, the worse the final result is; right? Software needs to be simple", says Chris Stewart.

Google Drives Mobility

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-02 Google 13 Comments

Google released today a Java client for their Gmail service which works on all Java-enabled cellphones (mobile web-based client also available). Click through to see many screenshots from the app. Having used it for a few hours we conclude that it's very usable, very fast and it can even read and display images and MS/OOo attachments. More reviews on this app here and here. Additionally, now the Google-owned YouTube is preparing for a mobile launch within 2007, while Google is a major partner in the Opera Mini project. Version 3.0-beta was released yesterday. It now supports SSL, RSS feeds and content folding (which unfortunately does not play nice with OSNews' mobile page). Screenshots inside.

FreeBSD 6.2 Beta 3 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-01 FreeBSD 46 Comments

BETA3 for the FreeBSD 6.2 release is now available on most of the FTP mirror sites. There have been a lot of fixes to many things since BETA2. The most important of the things that have been worked on is the driver for em(4). More info here.

Submitted by iangibson 2006-11-01 OpenBSD 27 Comments

"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.0. This is our 20th release on CD-ROM (and 21st via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of ten years with only a single remote hole in the default install. As in our previous releases, 4.0 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system." More here. Update: First review here.

Writing A Lisp Interpreter In Haskell

Eugenia Loli 2006-11-01 General Development 34 Comments

"The article is about my experience with Haskell and the process of working with it. I will describe which features of Haskell I used to implement particular aspects of my interpreter, how they're different from the object oriented world, why they helped me get things done faster, and how I had to change my program whenever my initial efforts took me to a dead end. While the jury's still out how well Haskell performs in other domains (I'm just starting my web application project) I hope this article sparks your interest in this beautiful language and explains some things programmers new to Haskell often find confusing." More here.

Submitted by nstanosheck 2006-10-31 Linux 66 Comments

"With our operating system, the Playstation could very easily be your home CD player, DVD player, MP3 player and home computer, as well as a great game box,” said Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats of the PS3, “This is not an application-limited appliance, this is a full-blown computer. There is no issue of ‘can it do this or that?’ It can do everything." More here.

DirectX 10 Preview

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-29 3D 53 Comments

"Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface (API) was first introduced in 1995. DirectX was designed to make life easier for software developers by providing a standard platform developers could use to easily make multimedia software and game programming for the Windows Platform." More here.

Fedora Core 6 (Zod) in Parallels

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-29 Fedora Core 2 Comments

"I got to install Fedora Core 6 twice yesterday, in very different contexts, and I'm so far rather pleased with the outcome of my stay in Zod-land. This, despite minor setbacks which were very much due to my requirements, and some not truly Fedora related." More here.

The Solaris UFS File System

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-29 Solaris 1 Comment

The UFS file system is the general-purpose, disk-based file system that is shipped with Solaris today and has been the default file system since early versions of SunOS 4.x. This sample chapter covers its history, architecture, and some basic administrative concepts.

The Future of CPUs: What’s After Multi-Core?

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-29 Hardware 18 Comments

As Moore's Law continues to hold, IC designers are finding that they have more and more silicon real estate to play with. David Chisnall hazards some guesses as to what they might do with it.