Archive
When I first got in touch with the Linux world - it was back in 1998 -, I started with an old
Slackware distribution. Of course I cannot say it was a wise choice for a beginner, and I soon moved to
Red Hat, and then tried various
SuSE,
Mandrake and
Debian flavours; now I am using this good Slackware 8.1. Everyone can see the Linux world has been making giant steps towards usability during the last five years. Applications have dramatically improved, too, both in quality and quantity: OpenOffice, AbiWord, Mozilla, Evolution, Gimp are examples of packages allowing Linux to be used for everyday work. So, is Linus Torvalds' creature now ready to conquer the desktop?
Guest post by Anonymous
2003-02-17
OS News
We've received an anonymous report from Trumpet Software that they have a 64 bit (x86-64) version of their operating system
PetrOS running in their lab. This kernel (which is fully 64 bit) can run 32 bit and 64 bit userland programs which conform the PetrOS ABI. The development team used the latest version of Bochs 2.0 which has recently been enhanced to emulate x86-64 architecture. The anonymous source hinted that a beta version of 64 bit PetrOS would be released some time in March 2003.
"The largest flaw with Linux is not in its ease of use or installation. There's no crisis with lack of software. The hardware support is solid. Actually, I feel Linux is very much ready for the masses. The greatest flaw with Linux is that nobody knows what it is." Read the full commentary at
NewsForge.
"According to testers for America Online, the company is moving forward with improving its client software for Mac OS X. The upgrade is called "AOL for Mac OS X Plus," and build 200 B is available under the beta section at AOL. This past summer, America Online publicly released AOL for OS X." Read more at
ThinkSecret.
"Andrew Zamler-Carhart of KavaSoft, maker of iConquer, was kind enough to answer our questions this week, and here on a Friday morning, we're posting them for our inquisitive readers. He talks about the upcoming version 2 of iConquer, Rendezvous technology in MacOS X and the perils of being a game programmer." Read the
full interview at MacSlash.
"Sun Microsystems' Java software and Solaris operating system haven't always gotten along, an internal memo indicates, but Sun says it has fixed the problems in the two years since the memo was written. The version of Java for Solaris is a poor choice for many types of programs, is slow to load, isn't well-supported within Sun and requires too much memory to run, several Sun engineers said in the memo." Read the rest at ZDNet.
LIUtilities's
WinBackup is a backup program for Windows 98/NT/ME/2000 and XP. Despite it's low cost ($50 boxed, $30 for a downloadable version) and small size (under 2 Mb) WinBackup has a ton of features including built in CD/DVD burning support and 256-bit encryption.
Now that the usual round of end of year regurgitations of the past years IT events has ended we may further indulge ourselves by examining the pundits procastinations for their worthiness, or lack thereof. As ever, we were dished up a list of happenings which the IT scribes believed warranted our special attention. What our computers feel about such matters remains to be seen but some brave souls did manage to come up with various musings on what the future may hold for us, and them, (our computers that is) in this age of technical speculation. Whilst these ritualistic utterings have become a feature of the holiday silly season, why not build on this truly great and ancient tradition and comment on the level of veracity of the scribes from our much beloved land of nerds? They got it all wrong.
The South Wales Amiga User Group has
reviewed the latest version of IBrowse, one of the three main Amiga webbrowsers and the default browser for the soon to be released version 4.0 of the Amiga Desktop Operating System. I have uploaded some additional screenshots
here, but note that the browser can be configured to look prettier. Also IBrowse is compact and will function on 14 Mhz (or better) classic Amiga systems. Regarding the new PPC Amiga platform, Soft3 recently posted some
pictures of the AmigaOne-XE motherboard in combination with a Dual 7410 cpu module.
Antrix Angler has written an
editorial for tuxreports.com in which he takes a look at some of Linux' shortcomings for desktop usage: "
What I intend to highlight in this piece are some of the major shortfalls (in my opinion) in the current state of Desktop Linux. The intent is not to belittle or ridicule the efforts that have been made to get Linux on the desktop. Rather, it is in the hope that it will spur development to overcome these shortcomings; because this is the way Linux has developed."
File systems need to change. Current file systems are horribly out-of-touch with the realities of what users need to effectively find, organize, and modify their vast quantities of files. Unfortunately, no major consumer OS vendor (Microsoft, Apple, various Linux distos, etc.) has had the foresight, the will, and most of all, the cajones to implement anything more elaborate than a small departure from the standard hierarchical name-space which we all grew up on and should rightfully deplore. Worst of all, the best suggestions for changing the current entrenched standard are incredibly toothless, incredibly feeble.
I have been a big fan of BeOS since the Creative Labs OS Championship Team dumped it on me in 1999. At the time I was working technical support in Dublin and they had some guy looking after support for
BeOS who really could not care less. He had never even installed it! I was deputy Linux champion and generally considered interested in OSes so they said "
Hey, Stevo! Wanna be a champ? All you need to do is get this OS installed and play with it a bit." So, needless to say, I did and I was hooked.
"Microsoft nearly doubled its losses from the Xbox video game console in the December quarter, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, the unit that makes Microsoft's Office software closed in on Windows as being the company's most profitable." Read more at
News.com.
Jason Filby wrote to tell us:
"ReactOS 0.1.0 has been released! ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Windows NT applications and drivers. In this release, among other new features and fixes, especially worth mentioning are the ability to boot from CD and self-hosting capabilities." For more infomation, go to the
ReactOS website.
"When 802.11b first burst on the scene, offering a quick and workable wireless home-networking platform, some manufacturers jumped into the market with components and products long before industry standards groups tested and approved the specification. The result was headaches for some as interoperability issues emerged." Read more at ZDNet.
James Maguire has written an
article for osOpinion.com regarding the continuous industry move from Unix towards Linux based solutions: "As tech buying cycles progress, year by year, Linux will eat away at more of Unix' mission-critical work. That's because, at each new upgrade point, servers running Linux will grow ever more capable." As
reported earlier IBM's top software executive recently stated that Linux is the 'Logical Successor' to IBM's Unix solutions.
Following in the footsteps of Hewlett Packard and DesktopLinux.com, Lycoris also
announced that the company will withdraw itself from this LindowsOS.com, Inc. controlled event: "Lycoris originally joined the conference after assurances of balanced control and changes to the conference schedule including the addition of keynote speaker Bruce Perens and vendors like Hewlett Packard. The recent changes to the conference schedule, the withdraw of Hewlett Packard, and conference management have given a single-vendor too much focus which is no longer in the interest of Lycoris." In response LinuxToday.com has published an
Open Letter directed towards the Lindows Corporation.
Why, you might ask, would anyone want to build their own operating system? It's really about being in control and knowing what's going on.In the next few paragraphs I'll explain what motivated me to take on this project, the recipe I used, and what I like about it.
Some of you might be thinking, why? Well, I think it's about time. MCSE's, VB Programmers, and techies have been using Windows for years, and I think it's about time Windows moves to the desktop for ordinary people.
In late November of 2002, OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt announced on the project's mailing lists that after over a year of attempting to obtain useful UltraSparc III documentation, they had still not made much headway. In the email he rallied the OpenBSD community to help out, asking them to contact the people within Sun responsible for providing such information. C/Net reported on this in their story titled, Open-source clan in spat with Sun. The UltraSparc III is Sun's third generation 64-bit RISC architecture based processor.