Eugenia Loli Archive

"MandrakeLinux always had a reputation as an ideal distribution for beginners. Now that the renamed Mandriva has included technologies from Conectiva and Lycoris into Mandriva Linux 2006, this reputation seems more justified than ever. From its installation program to its selection of software and desktop design to its package design and security options, Mandriva is one of the easiest to use distributions available today." Read more here.

"Yesterday OpenBSD, the proactively secure Unix-like operating system, released version 3.8, featuring several improvements to networking, RAID management tools, and increased security. At openbsd.org you can download installation files or order the official three-disc CD set, which supports 16 processor architectures out of the box. I took this new release as an opportunity to perform my first ever OpenBSD install." Read more here.

After a month of news largely dominated by pro-ODF announcements, such as the release of ODF-compliant office suites, patent non-assertion pledges and the like, the opposition has just lowered the boom. And if they are successful, it's a big one.

Nokia released today a number of updated development PDFs on their 'S60 3rd Edition' platform on top of Symbian OS v9.1: "S60 2nd/3rd Edition: Differences In Features", "Introduction To The S60 Scalable UI", "S60 Platform: Scalable UI Support", "S60 Platform: Source And Binary Compatibility", "S60 Platform: Avkon UI Resources". Nokia also released a new web browser based on KHTML. Except the innovative zoomable interface, the browser also supports pop-up blocking, visual history, find-as-you-type, integrated RSS support, DHTML with AJAX support and Netscape-style plug-ins for Flash Lite, SVG-tiny and audio. The new web browser (check the flash demo) is available to all new Nokia phones using the 'S60 3rd Edition', like the impressive and newly announced N80.

Nokia rebranded its 'Series 60' platform as simply S60. They also released an overview of the 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 of the Nokia UI for the Symbian-based S60, with a new security framework and built-in content protection improve developer investment protection, while still enabling freeware applications. FOTA enables software upgrades to be performed over the air, initiated by either the user or operator. POC brings "walkie-talkie" functionality to mobile devices without the limitation of distance. There are also enhancements to the XHTML browser, a flexible XML based framework for UI customization, stronger multimedia features and improvements in performance. Elsewhere, Palm's CEO says that Palm won't use Symbian because "Nokia owns Symbian", while he claimed that the Palmsource spin off from Palm was a mistake.

It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux.

According to recent news, global shipments of smartphones are up 75% in Q3 2005, with PDA-only handheld shipments falling 18% and converged devices more than doubled in volume. So, what are the tech-inclined OSNews readers are opting for? Come in and vote.

ReactOS is an open-source Operating System designed to be compatible with Windows NT. Version 0.2.8 sees the culmination of months of work since 0.2.7, and sees the project coming closer to the long-awaited 0.3.0 release.

Rony Flatscher introduces the open source and free Bean Scripting Framework (BSF), which allows any Java application to deploy scripts in other languages. Any Java application developer can use BSF to supply scriptability in a user-friendly scripting language such as Rexx.

BentUser has Part II of an in depth preview of Windows Vista, which includes a look at some more Vista features as well as some analysis of overall performance, including a numerical comparison with Windows XP. Also takes a look at the new error reporting/self healing features and the cross-computer syncing features.

The Free Software Foundation is just weeks away from announcing the roadmap and process that will govern the release of the first draft of the rewritten GNU General Public License.

Gregory John Casamento just announced the release of Gorm 1.0 on the gnustep mailing lists. Gorm is the GNUstep graphical interface builder which let you easily create GUI applications.

Oracle has just released the beta version of its free Express Edition database. This Oracle 10g Express Edition features a small download size, Windows and Linux native installers, and easy-to-use HTML DB interface to the database.

Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system (named Singularity), with the aim of producing a more robust and dependable software platform.