Thom Holwerda Archive

"This article explains how a Solaris OS application with large memory requirements can effectively create a subprocess without unduly running out of memory or creating a deadlock. It also explores a related issue of how application memory is committed in the Solaris OS as opposed to other operating systems such as Linux." Here's a related article on ZFS and Solaris Containers

When it comes to Windows Vista, there are bugs - and then there are bugs. There is no doubt that people will find glitches in Beta 2 of the oft-delayed operating system. The question is whether there are any show-stoppers. Microsoft has time to squish some bugs, but it needs to avoid any significant headaches, if it is to make its revised goal of finishing the code by November and launching the product in January. In the meantime, ExtremeTech tests Vista's gaming performance.

"It's a sight that will stun many users. To run RISC OS on a PDA is something we've been crying out for. Here, RISC OS can be seen running on a PocketPC PDA, with no Microsoft software in sight. The Pocket Loox computer even uses a 520MHz ARM-compatible XScale processor. However, the break through came about after Jan Rinze Peterzon ported the open source RiscPC emulator RPCemu to Windows CE. The screenshots show the standard RISC OS 3.7 desktop running in a 480x640 in 32,000 colour screen mode. Draw can be seen in action, drawing lines in a new document, on the Fujitsu Siemens hand-held device."

"Flow control is usually straightforward: sequence, selection, iteration. And many programmers, having been raised on these primary control structures, have a difficult time seeing what other kinds of flow control might be necessary. This article introduces continuations and teaches you to think about flow control in radically new ways."

The Spoon microkernel has as one of its goals: "A stable and efficient microkernel with clearly defined interfaces which provide all the necessary functions needed to build a modern and complete operating system on top." The project's progress page lists the latest achievements, and there's even a screenshot page.

"Linux is at risk of suffering a similar fate to that suffered by Unix. That risk is the danger of splintering into multiple distributions, each of which is sufficiently dissimilar to the others that applications must be ported to each distribution. The bad news is that the rapid proliferation of Linux distributions makes this a real possibility. The good news is that it doesn't have to, because a layer of standards called the Linux Standard Base has already been created, through an organization called the Free Standards Group, that allows ISVs to build to a single standard, and know that their applications will run across all compliant distributions. And happily, all of the major distributions have agreed to comply with LSB 3.1."

At the end of February 2006, the Open Graphics Project team released schematics for their development board, OGD1. An article on KernelTrap was written about this, explaining the release under GPL and the nature of PCB schematics (logical connections between chips) and artwork (physical component placement and circuit trace routing). Just last Friday, was announced the first draft of the artwork. For the most indepth information, check out the OGD1 page on the OGP Wiki, which links to PDFs for each of the routing layers and a composite image of all of the layers.

Open source is hot these days, and Oracle knows it. The company is facing challenges from open source competitors by embracing open source technology in its own right - acquiring and developing key companies and products in this area - as well as fighting to show its merits over other open source choices. How does Oracle stack up against PostgreSQL? How do Oracle and Linux work together? What's next for Oracle on the open source front?

"PC-BSD 1.1 was released today, along with a PBI update file for users running 1.0, who wish to update to 1.1. This release brings the core operating system up to the latest version of FreeBSD 6.1, adds better driver support to the kernel, and improves the speed on many systems." Update: Screenshots.

Microsoft has said that the version of IE7 for Vista will differ slightly from the one for XP and down. "I want to announce that we will be naming the version of IE7 in Windows Vista 'Internet Explorer 7+'. While all versions of IE7 are built from the same code base, there are some important differences in IE7+, most significantly the addition of Windows Vista-only features like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics. These features take advantage of big changes in Windows Vista and weren’t practical to bring downlevel."

The developers of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution plan to make a new landmark version of the software widely available this week. Ubuntu's public schedule for releasing the software lists 1 June as the date for the new version, code-named 'Dapper Drake', to be made public. The milestone release will be officially supported by the project for a longer period than previous versions, and will be billed as suitable for enterprise use.

The spirit of the RISC OS desktop can now be easily be installed on Debian GNU/Linux systems, after the ROX desktop collection was released in a Debian package. The package came about after Dennis Tomas decided pull the suite into one place for users to download and install. The ROX desktop takes familiar user interface components from the RISC OS desktop, such as drag'n'drop and the filer, to create a more friendlier desktop for users of Unix-like operating systems. User Dan Macdonald told us: "It is now incredibly easy for people to install a full ROX (RISC OS on X) desktop, complete with auto-mounting of removeable discs, under Debian Linux."

Micheal Phipps addresses the Haiku Bounties website: I have received some questions about the 'Haiku Bounties' website and I wanted to answer them here. It is run by a gentleman who has been a good friend to Haiku for a long time now. I have every confidence that he is trying to do the right thing for the Haiku community and that he will be upfront and honest with the money and that you can trust his word." Haiku has also hired its 2nd employee.

Jeremie Le Hen has created some ProPolice patches for FreeBSD 6.x and 7-CURRENT. ProPolice is a gcc extension written by Hiroaki Etoh for IBM that tries to prevent stack-smashing attacks. You can find the announcement of the patches here, more info about ProPolice on the IBM ProPolice page, and you can download the FreeBSD patches from here.