Eugenia Loli Archive

Pepper is a great text editor for programmers whose main principle is to help its user be as productive as possible. A typical example of Pepper's innovations is the invention of the "Accelerator". The Accelerator allows you to enter text or code quickly with a simple keystroke. Hekkelman Programmatuur, the company behind Pepper, will give away for free a copy of Pepper 4 to a lucky OSNews reader. Pepper currently runs on MacOS/X, Windows2k/XP, while a release for Linux and FreeBSD (and possibly IRIX and Solaris) will be ready in the next few months. The winner will receive a "keycode" unlocking the software for all platforms. Read more to see how you can enter the competition. Update: Competition is now closed! Thanks everyone who participated!

"As Mandrake never ported version 8.1 of their Linux distribution to the PPC platform, the latest available version till now was Mandrake PPC 8.0. While the latter certainly was a nice distribution, yet it started being really outdated and even had trouble installing on recent Apple hardware. So many people certainly wonder now whether Mandrake PPC 8.2 has been worth waiting for so long. Well, without giving anything away yet, it WAS worth waiting." Read the rest of the review at iMacLinux. Update: TheRegister also has a review, but they do not seem very happy about Mandrake 8.2 for x86.

"Solaris 8 is getting a little long in the tooth. It has been out and stable for more than a year. Most applications are certified and supported on it by the vendors. And yet many sites are still running Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, and 2.7. There are many reasons to move, and many reasons not to upgrade. A major hurdle to performing the upgrade is the sheer complexity (and risk) of system upgrades. This month, the Solaris Companion explores the reasons to stay put and the reasons to upgrade, and provides detailed how-to-upgrade instructions." Read the article at UnixReview, while OnLamp features another Solaris-related article, titled "Optimizing Disk Subsystems for Random I/O".

From DaemonNews.org: "The goal of the OpenDarwin project is to provide a binary compatible development environment for Mac OS X. The OpenDarwin project is based on the latest sources available from the Darwin project at Apple Computer. One of the key aspects of the project is to enable interested Mac OS X and Darwin developers to be able to retrieve, modify, build, and distribute operating system changes. It also seems Jordan Hubbard is a member of the OpenDarwin Core Team, recently resigning from the FreeBSD Core Team."

Porting Windows applications to Linux doesn't have to involve a retraining nightmare. Markus Neifer shows how to port MFC using wxWindows, giving a user's guide to this open source GUI toolkit and providing a complete, step-by-step porting example.

"Microsoft's new C# programming language is gaining in popularity, with usage nearly doubling in the last six months, a new study shows. C# is Microsoft's new Java-like language and a crucial piece in the software company's .Net Web services strategy, in which software is made available over the Net to be accessed by multiple devices, such as PCs, cell phones and handhelds. Twelve percent of all North American software developers have begun using C#, up from 7 percent six months ago, according to a new survey by market research firm Evans Data. The firm also predicts that the number of programmers using C# will double to 24 percent in the next year." Read the rest of the report at News.com.

This article at LinuxGazette is a hands-on tutorial for building a small boot sector. The first section provides the theory behind what happens at the time the computer is switched on. It also explains our plan. The second section tells all the things you should have on hand before proceeding further, and the third section deals with the programs. The little startup program won't actually boot Linux, but it will display something on the screen.

"In the vast world of GUI Development Libraries there stands apart a Library, known as 'Qt' for C++ developed by Trolltech AS. 'Qt' was commercially introduced in 1996 and since then many of the sophisticated user interfaces have been developed using this Library for varied applications." Read the Qt programming tutorial at LinuxGazette. Also, OSNews recently published a book review of the O'Reilly Qt programming book. Update: Maintenance release Qt 3.04 released just yesterday for various platforms.

"Microsoft wants us to believe that Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are tied so deeply in the OS that they cannot be removed. As middleware they are good things, but so is DirectX, and Microsoft doesn't say that can't be removed from the operating system. Windows is far more modular than Microsoft wants to admit to the court. Microsoft has grown to the point that they no longer need to compete, and the only way for them to survive as a company is to stop competing and start sharing. If something doesn't happen to change Microsoft's behavior, the backlash against them and other corporate giants will send proprietary software and countless tech jobs into obsolescence." Read the editorial at Kuro5hin.

"Sun Microsystems Inc.'s decision to start charging users for its upcoming StarOffice 6.0 desktop office productivity suite is coming at a price: Linux sales and service company Red Hat Inc. has decided not to use StarOffice 6.0 in any of its distributions going forward. Red Hat is a leading distributor of Linux desktop and server software, and its rejection of StarOffice 6.0 cuts out a major Linux distribution channel for Sun and comes just as the company prepares to release the Office product later this month." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech.

Want to integrate your Microsoft client machines with a Linux or Unix server? Open-source Samba turns a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Roll up your sleeves, take this tutorial, and learn how, to configure Samba as a primary domain controller.

OSNews reader Paul Cardwell writes: "Jarno van der Linden, one of the brilliant minds behind Amiga DE, has taken time to be interviewed by the GetBoinged! crew." Update: You can also read a new interview (includes AmigaDE/SDK screenshots) of the CTO of Amiga, Fleecy Moss, at TempleOfTech.

"XP Embedded is designed to identify dependencies, not remove them. What if a binary you remove is depended upon by other parts of the system? During Bill Gates' recent testimony in the antitrust lawsuit being pursued by nine U.S. states, he insisted that Windows could not be easily split into modular pieces. On the other hand, during cross-examination government lawyers pointed out that Windows XP Embedded seems to consist precisely of Windows split into modular pieces. So, who is right?" Read the editorial at OSOpinion. Update: ZDNews also features an editorial on the subject.

In this paper, the IBM authors discuss various migration scenarios and focus on the instances that require changes to the application source or to the way the application is built for an easy move from Sun Solaris to IBM's AIX.