Eugenia Loli Archive

Symbian & Protothreads

Symbian's introductory training covers Active Objects. Active Objects are a Symbian specific method of providing co-operative multitasking. During the introduction to Active Objects we are all told about how inefficient and bloated multi threaded applications can be. Each thread requires heap and stack space, it requires kernel resources to provide for the context switching, and time slicing. All of this is an overhead on a device with limited resources. Instead Symbian provide Active Objects. We can have many Active Objects within a single process all waiting on different events. This means that we do not need as many threads, and hence we consume less resources. More here.

MikeOS 1.1 Released

Written entirely in x86 assembly language, MikeOS is designed as a learning tool for assembler and basic OS design. New features in 1.1 include a Mac OS X build script and various improvements to the Handbook, which explains how it works and how to make your own first OS.

Using a Bluetooth Phone with Linux

"My old mobile phone, which was held together with duct tape for the last few months of its sad existence, has finally been replaced with something more modern. I wanted to pick up a programmable, Linux-based phone like the RAZR2V8 or the FIC Neo1973, but I'm unfortunately a Verizon customer, which means that my options are currently very, very limited—at least until Verizon follows through with its open network plans." More here.

Theora vs. h.264

A lot was said lately about the Vorbis/Theora vs h.264/AAC situation on the draft of the HTML5. As some of you know, video is my main hobby these days (I care not about operating systems anymore), so I have gain some experience on the field lately, and at the same time this has made me more demanding about video quality. Read on for a head to head test: OGG Theora/Vorbis vs MP4 h.264/AAC. Yup, with videos. And pictures.

Dethroning Ubuntu: What Would It Take?

"Many people are looking to Ubuntu to be something that it is not: A mass market ready operating system designed to work with the same level of compatibility as Microsoft Windows. Where people get confused is in believing that if Ubuntu, king of the Linux distros, is not able to take the marketplace by storm, then something must be broken with desktop Linux. In this article, I’ll explain what it will take to dethrone the mighty Ubuntu and gain a market share so large that it will eclipse anything seen by Ubuntu to date." More here.

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Development Update

An update on the status of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring development, including the publication of the release schedule and the technical specifications for this release. Highlights include PulseAudio, a switch to the fork of RPM that SUSE and Fedora are using, a parental control tool, mail import support for the Windows migration tool introduced in 2008, and automatic repository configuration via geoip.

Trolltech Pours on the Java Dev Goodness

Jambi ships as a single Java library, or JAR (Java Archive) file, plus a handful of tools, including an interface layout and design tool, and an Eclipse plug-in. Trolltech uses its vaunted Qt C++ library as the GUI engine and puts Java wrappers around it. This approach uses the JNI (Java Native Interface) to call the necessary functions from Java. More here.

Development Release: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0

Stephan Kulow has announced the availability of the first development release of openSUSE 11.0: "We'd like to kick start the development of openSUSE 11.0 with releasing the current state of Factory as Alpha0 release. Since the release of 10.3, we checked in 2,187 packages including such fundamental package updates as GCC 4.3.0, Linux kernel 2.6.24-rc4, X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8 and 4.0 RC1, CUPS 1.3.4, ALSA 1.0.15, GIMP 2.4 and YaST 2.16. The change between 10.3 and Alpha0 is big, but it still works pretty nicely." More here.