Eugenia Loli Archive

The latest stable version of XFree86, 4.1.0, was ported to QNX RtP by a small team of developers. The team also ported other tools as well, like a VNC server, Nedit and the LessTiff Gui Toolkit. Get the archives from SourceForge.

SkyOS is a home brewed operating system, created by Robert Szeleney in the last few years as a hobby project. As SkyOS gets bigger and more advanced, its popularity and importance are also growing, driving the 3-member team to add more and more functionality. Latest in their efforts is the -- already working according to the SkyOS web site-- Linux emulation layer which runs Linux binaries natively, without recompiling. Among their future plans is also a Windows emulation layer. But SkyOS is much more than emulation layers, it has a personality and functionality of its own. Read more for what Robert has to say about SkyOS and its future.

From Wired: "It started as a crusade for free source code. Linux zealots turned it into a full-frontal assault on Microsoft. Now the battle for the desktop could snatch defeat from the jaws of moral victory." This is the teaser of a four page interesting editorial from Russ Mitchell found on Wired. The author recognises that "Linux has a real shot in the enterprise business", but he believes that Linux is never going to get a respectful share of the desktop market, and he presents a number arguments for it. He also includes statements from many people like Rob Malda and Red Hat employees who, surprisingly, state that the real enemy for their business today is not Microsoft (where most of their joe-user customers are far reached from Linux's "nerd" market), but companies like Sun and the "traditional" Unices like Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX and Tru64.

Jeffy124 reports on Slashdot: "C|net News.com is embarking on a seven day comprehensive report on how Microsoft is moving themselves into position to be The 'Gatekeeper Of The Internet' through WindowsXP. The first installment explains the basics of how this is going to happen: Reminders that last for days encouraging users to sign up for Passport, and how Windows will evenutally resemble services like AOL." The second installment explains the whole masterplan behind .NET and how it is going to position Microsoft as a kind of a... global monopoly.

ReactOS is an effort to re-create the WindowsNT platform, in an open source sense (GPL). The team works towards source compatibility with NT's applications and drivers by re-creating the Microsoft APIs. More developers are always welcomed in the project, but there is already a number of them working for the last 3 years, splitted into several teams. Jason Filby, head developer of ReactOS, answers to a series of questions regarding the project.

Apple will probably be satisfied this month, seen Motorola completing the G5, the next generation of PPC CPUs, which it will be 64-bit, but it will also run 32-bit code in almost full speed. Apple is preparing a 64-bit version of MacOSX and they insist that porting the OSX apps over to the new CPU, it will be as easy as recompiling the app for the new CPU. The CPU will clock from 1 GHz to 1.6 GHz for its first generation. For now, Apple has released a long awaited dual 800 G4 machine, while it upgrades the iBook and PowerBook series of laptops with more RAM, speed and features. In the meantime, Transmeta announced yesterday their new Crusoe CPU which it will clock 1 Ghz and it will be available sometime next year. Intel is getting ready to release the first mobile Pentium4, which it will start clocking at 1.5 Ghz, while AMD strugles to produce new products that can compete with Intel directly and finds refuge in marketing tricks, renaming their line of CPUs as Athlon XP or Athlon 1800+. Same tricks Cyrix was doing 3-4 years ago when they could not produce CPUs with faster clock speed than the competition.

After 5 months in public beta testing, QT 3.0, the next incarnation of the popular multi-platform GUI Toolkit from TrollTech has been released. Qt 3.0 introduces a large number of new and powerful features: The ability to build platform- and database independent database applications, greatly improved internationalisation and font handling, rich text engine that also supports richtext input/editing in addition to rendering, Qt Designer, a full-fledged GUI builder that now supports main window development, and includes an integrated C++ editor, Qt Linguist provides easy translation of Qt GUIs to different languages, Qt Assistant eases browsing and finding information in the Qt Documentation. In addition there are numerous other improvements such as Multiple Monitor Support, HTTP network protocol support, Support for latest evolutions in GUIs, Accessibility support and 64-bit Safety. Qt 3.0 also features a new and powerful Regular Expression Engine, which greatly simplifies complex text-manipulation operations. The syntax is compatible to, and as powerful as, Perl regular expressions, while at the same time including full support for Unicode. QT 3.0 is the basis for the next KDE and while it breaks binary compatibility, it keeps source compatibility with QT 2.x.

From the article at Kerneltrap: "This week's profile interview is with Robert Love who currently maintains the preemptible kernel patches, among other things. He's been using Linux now for about 7 years, with numerous contributions in the current kernel. All of this is best described in his own words."

Wouter van Oortmerssen is a living legend in the Amiga community. Mostly known about his ability to design and code a whole bunch of programming languages throughout the years, interpreted or compiled (counted 38 so far). Today we host a mini-interview with Wouter regarding the SHEEP programming language. SHEEP is a new scripting/querying/ipc/programming language he is doing for Amiga Inc. "Expect familiar beginner friendly syntax and semantics coupled with multimethods, automatic memory management without garbage collection (linearity), powerful datatypes, pattern matching, strong and dynamic typing living together in harmony, integrated access to all the new Amiga OS features, and optional compiled output comparable to C in speed and size."

Avault.com reports: Owners of NVIDIA 3D graphics accelerators now have new drivers available to download. TNT, TNT2, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce 3, Quadro, and Quadro2 owners who have Windows 95, 98, and ME can download Detonator XP version 21.83 drivers here. Windows 2000 users with the same cards can download their version 21.83 drivers here, while this page hosts new version 22.20 drivers for Windows XP 64-bit users.

Linus Torvalds in the Linux kernel mailing list: "2.4.11 had a fix for a symlink DoS attack, but sadly that fix broke the creation of files through a dangling symlink rather badly (it caused the inode to be created in the very same inode as the symlink, with unhappy end results). Happily nobody uses that particular horror - or _almost_ nobody does. It looks like at least the SuSE installer (yast2) does, which causes a nasty unkillable inode as /dev/mouse if you use yast2 on 2.4.11." So, 2.4.12 was born, changelog here.

Editorial at BusinessWeek: "The new OS X operating system is a triumph, but Jobs & Co. need to keep its predecessor on life support until Mac heads get the message Has the Mac's classic operating system become like Ole Betsy, a beloved but aging workhorse that must now be put out to pasture? If you ask me, this Ole Betsy has stayed around way past her prime. Still, she ain't a-going out to graze on the lower 40 acres any time soon."

ZDNews reports that ATI Technology has slashed the price and increased the core clock speed just before it releases the high-end Radeon 8500 graphics board. When ATI introduced the board in mid-August, it announced the price as $399 and the core clock speed as 250MHz. But this week, the company dropped the price to $299 and increased the speed to 275MHz. The graphics board, which will be released Oct. 25, is used to enhance visual effects and 3D images, particularly for video games. The graphics board is also optimized to take advantage of WindowsXP. The card competes head to head with the new nVidia GeForce3 model, Ti 500.

Today we have a special guest in the series of interviews we conducting here at OSNews. Linus Torvalds, the well known Linux founder, is with us to discuss everything about the kernel, Microsoft, the naming of GNU/Linux and the future. Read on!