Thom Holwerda Archive

"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the Minix OS - a cousin of Linux - running on his homebrew minicomputer, today at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. Magic-1, built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA."

"Earlier this week Everex launched the gPC TC2502, which is a sub-USD 200 PC sold at a major US retailer, but what makes this unique is that it runs the gOS. The gOS (GreenOS) is designed to be a conceptual Google Operating System that is based upon Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. Though this is not the conventional GNOME desktop environment but an Enlightenment E17 desktop is used that is heavily modified and reflects a green Google theme. The gOS provides easy access to Google services such as YouTube, Google Product Search, Google Calendar, and Google Maps. Also a click away are other web services such as Wikipedia and Facebook. This isn't a pure Internet desktop but Xine, Skype, OpenOffice.org, and other applications are available for this Linux LiveCD. We've been trying the gOS out for a while and it's a rather nice slim desktop Linux distribution that would be perfect for Internet cafes and other public places." More screenshots.

Mozilla and Microsoft are in the midst of a squabble over the future of JavaScript, with each side accusing the other of actions which could end up 'breaking the Web'. The two companies each have their own respective versions of the common programming language that is used across the web: Mozilla backs ECMAScript, while Microsoft pushes its own JScript.

Fedora 8 Release Candidate 3 has been released. "Fedora 8 Release Candidate 3 has been released on the torrent site. Both DVD and Live images have been provided. Unless something goes terribly wrong, these will be the same bits (modulo gpg signed SHA1SUM files) that will go to the mirrors for the final Fedora 8 release." Update: There is an interview up about CodecBuddy's inclusion in Fedora 8 with the two developers behind this feature.

"With much anticipation by the OpenSolaris community, last night Sun had released their first developer preview for the binary desktop distribution that we have known over the past couple of months as Project Indiana. Ian Murdock and company are optimistic for this project that will address some of the existing Solaris adoption barriers when it comes to the installation, package management, and familiarization along with revitalizing the user experience. How does this first milestone of Project Indiana, which in fact will be named OpenSolaris, rank when it comes to meeting their objectives? In this review, we have a lot of information and screenshots on this long-awaited OpenSolaris binary distribution."

"These days, almost everyone has a cell phone; cell phones keep getting faster, smarter, and more capable, yet relatively few applications exist for them. The Hecl programming language makes it easy to script applications for your cell phone - with just a few lines of code, you can create applications that you can carry with you, everywhere."

"Colin Walters of Red Hat chaired a FOSSCamp session about Hotwire, a unique and innovative graphical shell environment designed to improve the command-line user experience. I've been testing Hotwire releases for some time now, so the opportunity to see Walters present his invention in person seemed too good to pass up."

"A new trojan horse designed specifically for Mac OS X systems has been discovered on several pornography websites that can hijack Web traffic, according to security firm Intego. Affected systems are used to hijack some Web requests that lead users to other phishing sites, or simply display ads for other pornographic websites to generate ad revenue. Phishing attacks may lead users to believe they are surfing to eBay, Paypal, or various banks when in fact they are accessing specially-crafted mockups designed to retrieve usernames and passwords for those sites. The trojan, titled OSX.RSPlug.A, is rated as a critical risk by Intego, and is known to affect Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger as well as Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Intego is testing prior versions of Mac OS X, but believes them to be vulnerable as well."

"The Hardy Heron Roadmap has over 130 new ideas that have been proposed thus far. I've examined each one of these ideas in detail, threw out the ones that weren't interesting to me, wrote an explanation for each, and sorted the list into three categories: user experience; networking and security; support."

"A FOSSCamp session led by Red Hat developers presented the GNOME Online Desktop project, the nexus of GNOME's efforts to integrate support for modern web services into the open source desktop environment. As social networking web sites and other Web 2.0 technologies become more pervasive, some believe that desktop computers will increasingly be seen primarily as vehicles for accessing content that resides in the cloud. This shift away from conventional desktop applications will give open source software a bit of an advantage, since web applications are largely platform-neutral. Providing improved web services integration in the desktop environment could theoretically make GNOME a more appealing choice for a growing number of users who depend primarily on web applications."

"Best known for a recent series of posts on Sun's ZFS filesystems, Drew Thaler has worked on many projects at Infinite Loop in the last decade. One of his areas of expertise is filesystems and optical discs, on which he is working right now at Sony but which also is the underlying theme on his blog, aptly titled 'Recording artist'. We contacted him to ask some questions and he very generously answered providing a lot of interesting and background info and tidbits on Apple and its technologies and inner workings." And another Leopard review.

Intel announced today its line of Itanium products for high-end computing servers. Codename Montvale, the chip is an update to Montecito, the Dual-Core Itanium 2 chip which was launched in July last year, Eddie Toh, regional platform marketing manager of Server Platforms Group for Asia-Pacific at Intel, told ZDNet Asia in an interview on Monday.

"Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls - like back and forward buttons and a location bar - that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself. Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur."

"Ars was at FOSSCamp this weekend. Think of FOSSCamp as an 'un-conference' without a set agenda where the minds behind open source projects get together and plot world domination (and, err, ways to improve their code). One fascinating session (and one that shows how FOSSCamp works and why it's so productive) was given by Mirco Muller, who discussed using OpenGL in GTK applications. Muller - the developer behind Cairo-Clock and the LowFat image viewer - talked about the state of OpenGL support in desktop applications and described various techniques that developers can use to make OpenGL content integrate better with conventional GTK user interfaces."