Eugenia Loli Archive

SCO's lawsuit filed in Utah last week claims that IBM integrated computer code belonging to another company into the Linux operating system, touching off speculation that the lawsuit could hurt other Linux companies, including Red Hat, the country's largest distributor of the software. Red Hat isn't involved in the dispute, but some analysts say that the Raleigh-based company won't be able to escape the fallout. "It's kind of irrelevant who wins the lawsuit," said Victor Raisys, analyst with Soundview Technology Group in San Francisco. "You can't take back the fact that someone has tried to claim intellectual property on Linux. The genie is out of the bottle."

To play a bigger role in the development of computers — as well as software — Microsoft has formed a major new division to produce specialized versions of Windows and build prototypes of computers of the future. Called the Extended Platforms Division, the group has 900 employees assembled from the Windows, research and business-productivity divisions. It also includes industrial designers and evangelists who will pitch the concept computers to manufacturers.

Top Linux seller Red Hat will unveil today a new phase in its plan to profit from a premium product, introducing a new lower-priced version of its Advanced Server software, along with a new brand name.

From Ars Technica: "The present article outlines what AMD hopes is the next step in x86's evolution: x86-64. As we'll see, x86-64 is more than just a 64-bit extension to the 32-bit x86 ISA; it adds some new features, as well, while getting rid of some obsolete ones."

The industry gorilla seeks to replace widespread opinion that it is arrogant, unaccountable and monopolistic with a new perception as a softer, gentler giant following a subtle shift in the way it deals with clients and competitors. Additionally, the software giant has renamed its division responsible for software used to manage Windows servers, as the company prepares to update management tools at a conference next week.

"When considering emulation, should companies count on a product like CodeWeavers to serve a limited number of applications, or should they choose software that requires them to buy licenses for Windows but can run more applications?" Read Zonker's article at NewsFactor.

eWeek reviews the Gnome 2.2 release and rates it as "good" overall.

Most of the savings from Linux desktops come from reduced administration costs--like rolling a custom RPM-based load that installs itself. Read the article online at LinuxJournal. On the printed version of the new issue of the LinuxJournal magazine, you will find "The Grand Unified Desktop" by Marco Fioretti: "Applications written for a variety of toolkits are coming together in a free best-of-breed desktop. To work together seamlessly, though, they need to follow important new standards."

Mike Janger writes: "What is Open Croquet? Alan Kay (one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI, etc.) is working on it. But what IS it? Have you guys looked into it?" I downloaded its 90 MB late last night. It's an 'academic' project featuring a futuristic OS 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on Windows or Mac. It requires a supported 3D accelerator (however, it didn't work with my Voodoo5 in hardware mode so it was painfully slow).

BeOSJournal features a short article about the presentation of YellowTAB's Zeta (BeOS-based Dano/R6) operating system at CeBIT. Also, click to view three shots from their new window manager design.

This article we host here today is a must read for all Gnome and KDE users. We are happy to feature an exclusive interview with Waldo Bastian and Aaron J. Seigo from the KDE project and Havoc Pennington from the Gnome project. Waldo and Havoc are developers working on many "under the hood" places of their respective DEs, but they are also "sensitive" at UI and usability issues, so we could also call them "usability engineers". Aaron is the head of usability in the KDE project. All three of them were... brave enough to answer twelve hard questions about interoperability, standards, UI etc. between the two leading Unix DEs. Note that this is not a Gnome Vs KDE article, it is in fact exactly the opposite: 'KDE for Gnome' and 'Gnome for KDE'. The begining of a deeper collaboration and sharing that will bring the Unix desktop into a new era.

OSNews reader Jess Tipton was very kind to design really nice OSNews background images for various resolutions. Please download only the file that corresponds to your monitor's resolution (so we can save some bandwidth) from here. Also, please note that users who use older versions of Windows, will need to save these images as .bmp files before they can use them. Additionally, let's not forget that OSNews always is in search of people who would like to publish their articles on this site.

MozillaQuest has an exclusive mini-interview with Linus Torvalds regarding the SCO-IBM law suit.

"Xandros Desktop is a Linux distribution aimed squarely at the desktop user. It is based on Corel Linux which itself was based on Debian. Corel sold its Linux distribution to Xandros when it decided to stop marketing it. Xandros has delivered a pleasing experience for the newcomer, both in terms of performance and visual appeal." Sam Varghese reviews Xandros Desktop.