Eugenia Loli Archive

Public Domain Software – Better Than Open Source?

Descriptive Quote from the OSOpinion editorial: "Open source and free software were founded on the idea that all information and knowledge should be made freely available for the benefit of all, and what is software but the embodiment of knowledge? Unfortunately, much of today's open software is not free in one important respect. The use of copyright and the General Public License (GPL) restricts its commercial exploitation."

Microsoft Names Linux as their Long Term Threat

"Linux is the long-term threat against our core business. Never forget that!" Microsoft Windows Division Veep Brian Valentine exclaims in a confidential memo to his Sales Brownshirts obtained by TheRegister. Microsoft was winning ground against Unix the last few years and they were converting companies to x86 (intead of expensive SPARCs etc), but many companies were just converting to x86 Unices (and especially, Linux) instead of Windows. And Microsoft does not seem too happy about that.

KernelTrap Interviews Neal Walfield

This week, KernelTrap spoke with Neal Walfield of the GNU/Hurd development team. From their project FAQ, "'Hurd', as an acronym, stands for `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons'. Hird, in turn, stands for `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth'. The Hurd is a radical departure from UNIX. A unique and interesting approach to solving many of the problems found in current operating systems. While it's not yet production grade, it's evolved enough to be quite usable.

Alan Cox on the DMCA, his Future, and the Future of Linux

"Alan Cox is not only a long-time Linux kernel contributor and maintainer, he also isn't afraid to make waves once in awhile. While Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds usually stays above the fray of the politics of Open Source and related topics, the U.K.-based Cox, sometimes referred to as Torvalds' second in command, isn't afraid to weigh in on several topics, including his opposition to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Read the interesting interview at NewsForge.

ext3 fs Makes it to the Kernel Source Tree

The journaling file system ext3 made it to the test version of 2.4.15 Linux kernel and it seems that it will be as standard of the final version of the kernel. ext3 has pretty much the same design and capabilities of ext2, but it adds journaling. Our Take: Can't wait for the day that SGI's next generation, truly advanced file system, XFS, will make it to the main source tree. Update: In a related note, the NTFS driver for Linux was updated today with support for WindowsXP's NTFS 5 among other new features.

Xbox vs. GameCube – Get Ready to Rumble

"Microsoft will make its first move into the cutthroat business with the Xbox on Nov. 15. Three days later, Nintendo plans to start U.S. sales of the GameCube, its first new console since the 1996 launch of the Nintendo 64. Meanwhile, market leader Sony has built a strong bunker against the interlopers, having shipped more than 20 million PlayStation 2 machines since its debut last year." Never in the history of the $20 billion video-game industry have two home consoles made their debuts in the same week. It's shaping up to be a battle royal between Microsoft and Nintendo.

The Full AMD Roadmap

AMD will drive its Hammer family of 64-bit processors into the mobile market in the second half of 2003, a year or so after it makes its debut in servers, the company revealed at its analysts confab yesterday. However, the company also revealed their full roadmap with details about their desktop add the ClawHammer CPUs.

Palm Moving Ahead with Spinoff

After earlier announcing plans to create a subsidiary for its operating system, Palm on Thursday said it is looking to divide itself into separate, publicly traded companies. "We are looking to move into external separation next year," acting CEO Eric Benhamou told CNET News.com on Thursday, shortly after the company announced that Carl Yankowski was resigning as Palm's chief executive. The company is also looking into asking David Nagel to become the Palm CEO, while he was originally hired to be the CEO of the new Palm subsidiary -- the OS division -- where the Be engineers and Be's COO Steve Sakoman would be employeed, after the buyout of Be's IP would complete. There is a fair amount of uncertainty in the Palm land, as revenue fell a lot recently and the new PocketPC is a rival that the aged PalmOS can't compete with anymore.

Web Services: The Next Big Thing or the Next Big Hype?

"Just about every software maker has embraced "Web services" as its new mantra in the past year, claiming that the trend will revolutionize business and the use of the Internet. Although it was initially met with skepticism, the idea has gained credibility with the support of such industry leaders as Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems. The stakes are particularly high for the software industry, which is trying to revitalize sales in a punishing economy. But before the concept can take off, companies face an uphill battle in convincing customers that they need Web services--and in explaining what they are." Read the rest of the 4-part feature article at News.com.

The Race for a New Internet

"There is another internet - already operational - where users are receiving connections up to 100 times faster than people at home. It is a network so swift and so powerful its advocates are claiming it has already changed the way we will interact with the internet in the future. This new internet is being developed in universities and research laboratories across the globe. And although its usage might be confined to academics, its benefits could spill over into the mainstream in only a few years. Until now, the race to build the next generation of the internet has been dominated by the US, and by one project. Internet2 is a consortium of 180 universities backed by the National Science Foundation and the US Federal government." Read the rest of the interesting article at the Guardian.

PetrOS to Add BeOS Compatibility Layer

Peter Tattam from Trumpet Software and also the creator of PetrOS wrote in to tell us that " we are exploring the possibility of providing a BeOS layer to PetrOS. This is consistent with our philosophy of providing multiple API support in the OS. I am in discussions with the OpenBeOS group to determine the feasibility of getting OpenBeOS to run in PetrOS. This would involve us writing a BeOS compatible kernel driver, and supporting ELF format executables in addition to the current PE format executables.We will continue our development on the Win32 layer at the same time with a goal of being able to seamlessly run BeOS and Win32 applications on the same desktop." OSNews recently hosted an interview with Peter regarding PetrOS.

The Dollars and Sense of MacOSX

"My fellow cheapskates, I feel for you. Really, I do. I know you want to upgrade to OS X but are racked with doubt. Is Apple's stunning new operating system really worth its $130 price tag? After all, that's enough to buy more than 10 different shareware versions of solitaire or keep yourself in beer and pizza for month." Read the rest of the editorial at BusinessWeek.

Turbolinux 7 Server to Hit the Market

Based on Linux Kernel 2.4, Turbolinux 7 Server supports 64 GB of memory, a journal file system, a 128-bit SSL library, and 32 SMP support. It is scheduled to begin shipping on December 7. Turbolinux is focusing on enterprise business needs with this release, as it tried to design this version of the server with extreme flexibility and functionality in mind. "Turbolinux 7 Server offers businesses a highly secure, high-performance operating system," Pete Beckman, vice president of engineering for Turbolinux said in a prepared statement.

Radeon 8500 vs. Ti500 – Overclocked Graphics

Tom's Hardware has setuped a match between the two most powerful 3D graphics card models, the ATi Radeon 8500 and the nVidia GeForce3 Ti500. To cut the (long) story short, ATi shows that it has a much more impressive hardware than nVidia has, but also much (also impressively) worse drivers. So, while it takes a small lead to only some tests under Win98, under WindowsXP, the ATi card completely fails to perform adequately, plus the drivers are unstable and even exiting or crashing randomly some of Tom's tests.