Thom Holwerda Archive

With the SIGGRAPH OpenGL BOF now past, Nick Haemel from AMD has written a blog post about OpenGL 3 and the reasoning behind the choices made. "After testing an approach that would have a drastic effect on the API, requiring complete OpenGL application rewrites and not introducing any of the long awaited features modern GPUs are capable of GL 3.0 takes two important steps to moving open standard graphics forward in a major way. The first is to provide core and ARB extension access to the new capabilities of hardware. The second is to create a roadmap that allows developers to see what parts of core specifications will be going away in the future, also providing the OpenGL ARB with a way to introduce new features faster."

This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms . On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.

An interesting article has been making its way around the internet the past few days, titled "Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS". Mac OS X indeed does some things very, very right, just like many other operating systems and graphical environments do some things very, very right. The issue with the list of the article in question is that many of the items on the list are not exactly examples of "Usability Highs" at all.

As we all know by now, netbooks are the latest craze in the computing world. Small notebooks, perfect for on the go, and relatively cheap. The interesting thing is that these netbooks are often offered with Linux pre-installed instead of Windows, and this prompts many to believe that it is the netbook niche where Linux will gain its first solid foothold among the general populace. "It does a lot to level the playing field. In fact, Linux looks to be quick out of the gate," said Jay Lyman, analyst with the 451 Group. However - is that really happening?

The dot reports on the new version of Qt, as discussed by Qt developers Simon Hausmann and Andreas Aardal Hanssen. Much optimizations have already gone in the 4.5 development tree, and more is to come. You can also expect many functional improvements to the WebKit webbrowser engine, graphical effects and a new animations API.

It's been a couple of days since Akademy 2008 started, and a steady stream of news is coming through the KDE.news site. The general day 1 article described the atmosphere and two Keynotes. The first keynote was about increasing community involvement, and the refreshing ideas in there really set the tone for Akademy: innovation and integration. The second keynote was about Nokia, who discussed their long-term commitment to Qt and KDE. Tuesday, Nokia gave away 100 N810 internet devices to KDE developers to prove their point, and there is also an article about Nokia and Mozilla doing a Firefox port to Qt. Finally, there is the Embedded and Mobile day going on right now, with very interesting talks. Separate news articles started to appear, covering the many improvements in Qt 4.5, work by the KDE-PIM hackers, JOLIE bringing service-oriented computing to the Free Desktop, and an overview of what was discussed and decided upon during the meeting of the legal organizaton behind KDE, the e.V. During that meeting, the e.V. quarterly report was released, and it was decided to endorse the new Community Working Group, and a Code of Conduct.

Here is an interesting discussion of the changes KDE 4.x (via Mandriva Linux 2009 pre-releases) brings to desktop interaction. The article argues that KDE 4 might very well be the next big thing in computing, as it finally tries to steer away from the Xerox desktop metaphor we've all been using since the glory days of disco. While I personally don't really believe KDE 4.x to be revolutionary (I see it more as evolution with pepper in its butt), the article details many of the new things in KDE 4.x, and might make the lives of those first confronted with the new desktop just that little bit easier.

There's a new hype going on in the world of computing. I used to call them 'tiny laptops', but somewhere along the way, Intel's marketing got at me and now I call them netbooks. Every self-respecting manufacturer has a netbook product line, or is about to introduce one (Apple?), so I figured I would take a look at what all the fuss is about: I bought a netbook.

The Genode OS framework, the reference implementation of the Genode operating system architecture, has seen its first release. "Genode is a novel operating-system architecture that enables dynamic workload while retaining security and robustness. The fundamental difference of Genode compared to other OS architectures is its strict organizational structure, which allows the execution of sensitive applications with a trusted computing base of a few thousand lines of code beside high-complexity workload. With its organizational approach, the architecture facilitates a clean separation of policies and mechanisms, and enables the definition and application of system policies in a natural and distributed fashion." The Genode OS Framework runs on Linux via libSDL, or on real hardware on top of the L4/Fiasco microkernel.

The JNode team has released the latest version of their operating system written in Java (it does have a small assembler nano kernel). "This release features the integration of the OpenJDK implementation of Swing and AWT, and significant improvements to the overall JNode GUI including improved painting and font rendering, generic VESA support and graphical console. The release also includes a new command argument framework for the shell, reworked shell commands, a configure tool for the JNode build environment, Samba file system with read/write support and many stability and bug fixes across the whole system." They have screenshots, a changelog, and (surprise!) a download page.

Kristian Van Der Vliet tracked down and fixed the bug that prevented Syllable from booting off a USB device. The project published a new development build that will boot from a USB CD player. This means Syllable can now be installed in a regular way on machines that don't have an IDE CD player, such as the Asus Eee PC and other small laptops. Installing to a USB device, such as a memory stick, is not possible yet, due to further USB bugs that lock up the installation process. These are being investigated. The new development build also has the new Webster browser included.

The SkyOS team has released SkyOS Build 6947. This release comes with the new email client as well as the new integrated development environment which we reported about earlier. The SkyOS API has been extended with new classes, and of course a lot of bugs have been squashed.

There are probably lots and lots of lawsuits going on every day in the technology world, and generally, they are quite uninteresting to all of us. Exceptions exist, of course, and the case of Apple and PsyStar is definitely one of them. It's a lawsuit that could test one of the most debated issues in the world of software: the EULA issue. To refresh your memory: PsyStar started offering Macintosh clones earlier this year, which caused quite the uproar in the Mac community. Apple was silent on the issue at first, but a few weeks ago the company decided to take legal action against PsyStar, claiming PsyStar violated Apple's copyright and license agreements (EULAs), and motivated others to do the same. While several legal experts agree that Apple's EULA will stand the test of court in The Netherlands, the situation in the US might be completely different. PsyStar seems prepared for the worst, as they have hired lawyers from Carr & Ferrell LLP, a firm who successfully fought Apple in court over IP issues before. I'm breaking out the popcorn, because this is hopefully going to be a big one.

After fixing a few specific bugs, Haiku now runs on the Asus EeePC - the 701 model, that is. "It is with great pleasure that I'm able to announce that Haiku (rev26666) runs on the Asus EeePC! I own a 701 model, and have sporadically been testing out Haiku revisions on the machine. For months I've been unable to boot Haiku, but somewhere along the line, the bug I filed got squashed, and Haiku will boot off the machine's internal 4gb fixed disk!" Wireless, LAN, and the APM do not work, but sound does thanks to the OSS driver. Installation is a tad bit complicated (it involves booting Haiku in a VM in Windows XP and copying the contents of a nightly build over to a real hardware BFS partition, and adding Haiku to the ntldr), but at least it works.