Thom Holwerda Archive

The NeXT Information Archive is back. "NIA has evolved from being an information place to being the actual place for ALL NeXT related material; We provide you with information, guides, articles - yes, all the classic stuff, that you know us for - but we've also started to bring you software directly on our site. Help you on your way with learning programming and in general just bring resources to you – everything needed for being able to use NeXT as your daily operating system and of course thereby using NeXT software."

A company that began trading in secondhand licenses for Microsoft software last autumn has been attracting business from within the UK and internationally selling more than 2500 secondhand software licenses from insolvent or downsizing companies to other businesses through discount-licensing.com. "As long as we stick to Microsoft terms and conditions, we can pretty much do what we want," Disclic director Noel Unwin told ZDNet UK. "We've had interest from America, Australia, India - which is quite surprising as we've specifically focused our marketing in the UK."

I'm from the Netherlands. That may sound like a weird statement to start a column with-- don't worry, at the end of this week's Sunday Eve Column you'll understand why I put my nationality so bluntly up front.

Troubles for the Kubuntu project: a number of Kubuntu developers are complaining that Canonical is not answering their requests. They state: "We all from the kubuntu.de-team have pursued this aim together, but most of the work has been done by Andreas Mueller (amu). He is not only co-founder and unpayed developer of the Kubuntu-project, but he's also hosting this website and he's taking over all the arising expenses. During our endeavours for Kubuntu, there were made several requests to Canonical. All those requests are unanswered 'till today! Up to now, there is only one payed developer. Since Canonical ignores all our personal and partly financial engagement until now we have to assume that Canonical is not willing to make Kubuntu a '1st class distribution'."

"Nobody can write perfect code, since errors can creep in from anywhere. Hence we need some way to debug the programs. One such way is to use ptrace() system call. Debugging programs like gdb are dependent on this system call. This call gives one process control over another process. The process under control can be run step-by-step and its contents can be read and modified, i.e. you can change the core image of it."

"Linux system administrators should learn traditional DNS. Front-ends and quick templates to setup domain records have a place in managing sites. When confronted with DNS configurations already in existence, nothing can substitute for knowing and using the fundamentals. The vast majority of users on the Internet have no clue about DNS. They may have seen the term when they set up their ISP connection, but they do not realize its connection to their lives. Simply put, DNS servers allow you to use friendly names in your browser, email or other Internet applications to perform tasks which require IP addresses."

"A computer process is a running instance of a program, including all variables and other states, or simply it’s defined as a program in execution. Now we will see how this task or process is implemented in Linux kernel. The description of the characteristics of a process is given in the structure task_struct."

As expected processor licensor ARM Holdings and Handshake Solutions NV, a Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary, have developed an asynchronous processor based on the ARM9 core. The ARM996HS is thought to be the first commercial clockless processor and is being described as particular suited to use as an automotive microcontroller. Because clockless processors consume zero dynamic power when there is no activity, they can significantly extend battery life compared with clocked equivalents.

"It's the year 2006, and installing applications in GNU/Linux can still be a nightmare (especially if they are not available in your distribution's repository). Simon Peter is the developer of Klik, a piece of software that tries to resolve this problem. Simon kindly accepted to answer a few questions for FSM."

"Chances are that you think Linspire lets you run Windows applications, that you have to run it as root, and that it's really not quite a proper Linux. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. At LinuxWorld in Boston this week, CEO Kevin Carmony explained what Linspire Linux is, and isn't, all about."

"This article is about the 'Hits Per Day' score on Distrowatch, what it can be used for and how you can read a lot of different information out of it. On Distrowatch you can follow the 'popularity' of almost any distro of your choice. I put quotes around the popularity because you can question what the score actually means."

"If it's the number of cores that gets computers excited these days, then IBM may have its hands on the ultimate processor. Together with Rapport, a Silicon Valley startup, the company previewed the Kilocore1025, a processor with a total of 1025 cores that promises not only to boost processing speed but also to operate at low power levels."

For the first time this year, NVIDIA has officially published new Linux and Solaris display drivers for their GeForce and Quadro products. These drivers, versioned 1.0-8756, bring a couple new features such as GeForce 7600/7900 support as well as a new nvidia-auto-select program. This does mark their first alternative OS official release in nearly four months. No FreeBSD equivalent of these 1.0-8756 drivers are currently available. Phoronix takes a look at these new drivers.

Microsoft's Windows Vista will run on just about any PC available today, but it will only show its true colors on about half of them, according to a new report from Gartner. While Microsoft is currently suggesting a minimum of 512MB, the new OS will require at least 1GB of dual-channel memory to provide its full capabilities, Gartner said in the report. However, all recent discrete solutions from major graphics makers such as ATI and Nvidia, for both desktops and notebooks, are expected to be able to support Aero, Gartner said in the report. My take: After toying with Vista myself, it becomes quite clear what you need to run Aero glass: 512 MB of fast RAM, and a DirectX9 compatible videocard with 128MB RAM. I also found that even non-DirectX9 videocards can run Aero Glass comfortably.