Thom Holwerda Archive

Linux.com reviews Xandros Server 1.0, and concludes: "Xandros Server does have a lot to offer, though, particularly for organisations that have standardised on Windows servers in the past. I like the Xandros management tools, and it seems like a good solution for small and medium-sized businesses."

Some interesting tidbits on MINIX3 the last week. First, the MINIX3 team has set up a publicly accessible CVS server, running on a MINIX3 server (what else). You can access it via the ordinary CLI way, or via cvsweb. Secondly, the X11R6 release for MINIX3 has been updated and posted online. And lastly, MINIX3 now has a port of fltk, the fast light toolkit.

"Not long ago, choosing Linux in the data center meant a tradeoff. You had to give up some capabilities in exchange for freedom from Microsoft lock-in. But that has changed. These days the features of Windows and Linux stack up against each other very competitively. For the most part, administrators can choose Linux or Windows today without losing out. Some differences, however, must be considered. In this article, I look at several of those differences."

As rumoured about for weeks now, with the strongest rumours appearing a few days ago, AMD has bought ATI. "AMD, the world's second-biggest semiconductor maker, agreed to buy ATI for USD 5.4 billion, adding computer-graphics chips to its product lineup. ATI shares surged. AMD Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz is making the biggest purchase in the company's history to help escalate his challenge to Intel, which dominates the market for semiconductors. "

Vista's installation process is dramatically different to any previous version of Windows: rather than being an 'installer', the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC. It is hardware agnostic so it can adjust to different systems, and you can also install your own apps into it so that your Vista install becomes a full system image install. There's an interview with a Microsoft Australia tech specialist as well as a story that looks at some of the pros and cons of image-based installs.

Merom, a notebook processor and the third leg of Intel's Core architecture triumvirate, will also get a thorough airing at a launch party planned at the chipmaker's headquarters this Thursday. Merom will represent additional improvements in performance and power consumption. Like Conroe, it also will use the Core 2 Duo brand, with model numbers in the 5000 and 7000 range that will indicate performance.

Politicians. They are a certain type of people. I do not like them. Many do not like them. I think if there's one thing all of man has in common, whether he be Christian or Muslim, black or white, young or old, American or European, is a dislike of politicians. But then-- why on earth do we allow politics to complicate software? Note: Sunday Eve Column.

AMD, the No. 2 supplier of computer processors, is close to a deal to buy graphics chip maker ATI for USD 5.5 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday. Any such deal would shake up the processor industry, which is witnessing a battle over market share between AMD and rival Intel.

The 8th annual Ottawa Linux Symposium kicked off Wednesday in Ottawa, Canada at the Ottawa Congress Centre. Jonathan Corbet, co-founder of Linux Weekly News, opened the symposium with The Kernel Report, an update on the state of the kernel since last year.

"There is a great howto about installing Xen on Debian Unstable. It is really easy to do and it runs fine. Nevertheless, on production servers, that's not an optimal solution. Debian Unstable has too many updates and things change too often. On production machines, a Xen host system should be stable, secure and should not need much attention. That is where Sarge comes in. If you pull the Xen packages from backports and install them on Debian stable you've got the best of both worlds."

Dell grappled with apparently severe overheating problems in scores of notebooks for at least two years before it announced a recall of 22000 notebooks last year, according to a source close to the company. The source allowed CRN to review documentation of investigations into the notebook problems, and the source said that documentation was supplied to Dell executives. The evidence, which included photographs of damaged notebooks, came to light in the wake of reports of one Dell notebook exploding in front of cameras during a conference in Japan.

The Linux world's very own version of Paul Thurrot, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, lists 5 things Linux can learn from... Microsoft. "Linux does a lot of things right - open-source, security, reliability - but it's far from perfect. In fact, Linux and its vendors could stand to learn a few things from Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft. Like what? Here's my list of the top five things that Linux could learn from Microsoft." Next thing you'll know we'll have Apple switching to Intel and... Oh, wait.

Dell on July 21 issued a de facto earnings warning, citing an aggressive PC pricing environment in a slowing commercial market worldwide. The PC maker said that its second-quarter fiscal year 2007 results would yield about USD 14 billion in revenue and earnings per share in the range of 21 cents to 23 cents, lower than its first-fiscal-quarter results, reported in May.

IBM has just released two value-added Eclipse 3.2 bundles that include key projects in the Callisto release: Web Tools Platform and the Callisto Graphical Modeling Framework. In addition to the new Callisto releases, you can also download the IBM Rational Software Development Platform tools for Linux that are built on the Eclipse 3.0 platform.