Thom Holwerda Archive

A review of PC-BSD: "Now and then a new wind comes along in the ebb and flow of Linux distributions. OK, so I know PC-BSD is not Linux, but it's close enough. It's fair to say without going into technicalities and politics that BSD and Linux are cousins in the operating system world."

In last week's article, we discussed virtualization and its role in reducing server sprawl. We included VMware server as one of the products used to virtualize a data center. VMware also sells a workstation with a well-established reputation. This week we take a look at VMware Workstation 5.0.

With just two days to go before the expiration of mainstream support for Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, the software giant has provided an update rollup with more than 50 security patches and system reliability fixes. The Microsoft knowledgebase article provides more info.

Apple has refreshed it's line of iPods today. All iPods now boast a color screen similar to the iPod Photo. Also, iTunes 4.9 has been released with support for podcasting. Mac users can use Software Update, Windows users can download it here. And the new iTunes release is riddled with references to the iTunes phone, says AppleInsider.

Eclipse version 3.1 is now available. New features added in this release: full support for Java 5.0 and improved support for developing rich client applications.

Qt 4.0 release is on the wire. Among other things, that means the long awaited GPL-licensed Windows version is now available for download, and Qt4 is officially dual-licensed across the board. Also of note in Trolltech's announcement: integration with Visual Studio .NET; great strides in graphics, threading, footprint, and performance; and separation into Desktop, Desktop Light, and (non-GUI) Console versions.

In a long-awaited decision that could have stark repercussions for P2P networks, the United States Supreme Court on Monday gave record labels and movie studios a green light to sue file-sharing services such as Grokster and Morpheus, which maintained they were not responsible for the actions of their users.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has confessed the software giant's .Net strategy has come to a standstill, says he's accepted SQL Server's shortcomings and vowed to keep fighting search giant Google.

Mesa3D has been imported into the Haiku sourcetree: "A first draft of Haiku's OpenGL kit started his life yesterday when I've imported large portions of Mesa3D's BeOS port into our source tree."

In a joint press conference with Toshiba today, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has again pledged his support for the Tablet PC. It's a pet project of his and despite lacklustre sales so far - it might break through a million sales in this, its third year - he's keen to see it succeed.

Many times, you need to know how a certain filesystem looked like at some point in time, and you want to be able to roll back changes that happened to it after that point. While there are multiple solutions to achieve this goal, certainly one of them is to use filesystem snapshots. One of the capabilities of unionfs is to offer the possibility of consistently freezing the status of the filesystem at any given point in time (snapshot). Read more...

AMD has filed an antitrust complaint against Intel. On a 48-page complaint AMD explains how the company thinks Intel has maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel. AMD claims that Intel's share of this critical market currently counts for about 80 percent of worldwide sales by unit volume and 90 percent by revenue, giving it entrenched monopoly ownership and super-dominant market power.

Recent technology moves toward virtualization have led some industry insiders to question Sun's commitment to letting users run Linux applications under Solaris. However, executives say the company isn't backing off its home-grown efforts.

Now that there are a number of independent projects seeking to create BeOS compatible systems, BeUnited has launched an effort to share and promote the open standards for these Open Standards BeOS-compatible Operating System (OSBOS). Read about it at BeUnited.org