Eugenia Loli Archive

Fred Langa contends that some Linux proponents harm their cause by hiding from the facts--it's just as buggy as Windows XP: "As much as the partisans wish it were so, open sourcing isn't a magic solution to the problems of bugs and security issues. As Linux and other open-source software grow in popularity and extend into a fragmented, uncontrolled mass marketplace, they will inevitably have their own full share of bugs and security problems, same as with any other software. Anyone who tells you differently, or tries to convince you that their favorite operating system is somehow immune to market forces, human error, and plain malice, is doing both you and the operating system they espouse a disservice."

"One of the things that's probably going to start happening this year - or start happening in a much bigger way - is Linux on the desktop. I use Linux for the desktop, I never use it for big server stuff." Torvalds on AustraliaIT.

KDE 3.1 is out, announcement here, the source packages are linked on the 3.1 info page, and are also available in stable/3.1 directory on the KDE FTP site.

Microsoft comes under regular fire for its apparent eagerness to end-of-life its products, making them more difficult and expensive to support, and hence forcing users to upgrade to the next version. But without fanfare Red Hat has quietly introduced its own approach to end-of-life, and compared to this, Microsoft's idea of an upgrade cycle looks pretty sedate. As of the release of Red Hat 8.0, the company is only guaranteeing errata maintenance for the 12 months following a product's release.

"After long weeks of impatient waiting, it has finally arrived. NVIDIA has distributed the first GeForceFX cards to the press. Now, NVIDIA has to prove that it really has what it takes to topple ATI and its successful Radeon 9700 PRO from the throne." Benchmarks on TomsHardware, ExtremeTech, AnandTech and Hard|OCP.

Windows NT 4.0 Server, still the weapon of choice for quantities of the more truculent IT manager, has been given another 12 months to live. Microsoft today intends to announce that paid incident and security hotfix support for the product, previously scheduled to cease at the end of this year, will now run up until 31st December 2004.

"So here we are, more than a year and a half later , and only a handful of audio applications have placed both feet firmly on the good ship OS X. Hardware drivers and plug-ins also remain a crapshoot. While the rest of the Mac world has been moving to OS X with only minor hiccups, most audio-related companies have lagged far behind. What's the holdup? The answer, as you might expect, depends on whom you ask." This is an interesting article over at 'Electronic Musician' regarding MacOSX from the pro-audio point of view, and its audio application base status today.

From BSDForums: "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long presents the FreeBSD November-December 2002 status report. Key highlights of the report include the anticipated FreeBSD 5.0 Release Bluetooth stack development, busdma driver conversion project, DEVD, C99 & POSIX Conformance Project, FreeBSD Package Cluster work and much more!"

"The Unix98 standard requires largefile support, and many of the latest operating systems provide it. However, some systems still chose not to make it the default, resulting in two models: Some parts of the system use the traditional 32bit off_t, while others are compiled with a largefile 64bit off_t. Mixing libraries and plugins is not a good idea." Read the article at Freshmeat. On another interesting technical reading, you will find "Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager" and "Code Commentary on the Linux Virtual Memory Manager".

In their on-going GNU/Linux review series, most OfB have received much criticism from loyal users of the various distributions we have covered. Timothy R. Butler notes that many of the issued raised by those who commented on the series were cases of "knee-jerk" reaction and ponders how such reactions impact the community at large and its appearance to outsiders.

The bug fix version Bochs 2.0.2 has been released. This release is the last planned bugfix release for the 2.0.x series. On other dev news, multiplatform GUI toolkit wxWindows 2.4.0 was recently released.

It's been a week since FreeBSD 5.0 got released. Many argue that this release is the most important and most technically advanced, ever, for FreeBSD. I am truly disapointed though on the way the media have responded to this release.

Jamie Zawinski wrote an editorial regarding the status of video playback under Linux (note: strong language is used). My take: The guy is my hero (he could use better language though). This is exactly the status of usability on Linux, and not just with video players...

HelloWorld is a software application with a visual approach to connecting people, online messaging, search and transfer operations, and personal publishing, in a decentralized network environment that is owned and operated by the network community. The application (soon to be released for Windows, Linux and Mac) is literally an alternative user interface for our online needs.