Thom Holwerda Archive

"Fans of open source software have been buzzing since Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux operating system, indicated he wouldn't adopt a new version of the license under which Linux is distributed. Torvalds' opinion matters because his program is by far the most popular open source program in the world. In an interview via e-mail with Forbes, Torvalds discusses GPLv3, digital rights management and sharks with laser beams. "From where I'm standing, says that you suddenly can't use the software in certain 'evil ways' (where evil is defined by the FSF--it doesn't actually cover the James Bond kind of evil, but if you can see Richard Stallman as a less dashing James Bond, it would be that kind of evil)."

At CeBIT today, Microsoft unveiled an updated version of their 'ribbon' user interface, used in Office 2007. They even set up a special page for it. Jensen Harris of Microsoft explains more about it on his blog. On a related note, this article goes a little deeper into the OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office debate.

"Real Interfaces Visualizer technology is an easy-to-use GUI multi-platform system for Java programmers to assemble and manage complex, interaction-enabled, three-dimensional user interfaces. Version 1.1 includes addition of support for nested matrices along with the capability of cell spanning in all three directions."

Samsung will enter the US computer market in April as the launch partner for Microsoft's new UltraMobile PC or 'Origami' platform. Launched this morning at the CeBit technology show in Hannover Germany, this smaller tablet PC fits between hand-held Portable Media Centers and more traditional tablet/notebook computers. Samsung's unit, scheduled to go on sale in April, is expected to cost under $1000 . There's a batch of photos of the devices too. In addition, the 3rd video on the Origami website is also up.

Yellow Dog Linux version 4.1, which has been available directly from Terrasoft Solutions since early January, is now available for free download from their various mirrors. This is essentially a recompile of Fedora Core 4 specifically for PowerPC's, with extra polished support for Apple's Macs.

"OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 is available today. This release is recommended for everyone. It contains some new features, fixes many small bugs, and resolves numerous issues. The community have further added import filters for Quattro Pro 6 and Microsoft Word 2. As well, other import filters have been improved and it is now easier to use mail merge. Integration with the KDE address book is now possible. The appearance has also been enhanced, and for Linux users, there are new icon sets for KDE and GNOME."

"Hard disks tend to be one of the weakest points in today's machines. If you can afford it, RAID setups will address the problem. And if you cannot afford it, you probably cannot afford a NAS or a SAN either. The poor man's solution is to regularly back up the information from one disk to another. Of course if your disk dies between two backups, you lose. der Mouse is a Canadian open source developer who produced a bunch of valuable software ranging from anti-spam tools to a PPPoE implementation. At the BSDCan 2005 conference, he presented an innovative solution to hard disk replication. In this interview, der Mouse explains his idea and how he implemented it to us."

"We recently received an email asking for a 'What Is Java' entry on the O'Reilly Network What Is site. Who could possibly not know what Java is in 2006? After ten years of books, websites, and conferences, doesn't everyone know what Java is? Apparently not. After all, things have changed. For every dusty definition that speaks of applets and Just-In-Time compilers, there are new directions and new realities that have settled in, understood by many, yet not always completely documented."

"Technology professionals have loosely used the term 'UNIX' since the first person had to explain the difference between the Berkeley and AT&T flavors, so it's not surprising to find as many UNIX standards as there are versions of the operating system. Peter Seebach wades through the wellspring of UNIX standards and sorts them out for you, concluding that the rumors of the death of UNIX are (as usual) greatly exaggerated."

Even a small operating system can have big disputes within its community. The lead developer of MenuetOS, an OS written in assembly, has decided to drop all support for the 32bit version of Menuet, focusing development on the 64bit version. However, disgruntled users of the open source operating system are trying to keep the 32bit version alive by starting a special forum for it.

The team behind Kororaa, a Gentoo-based live CD, have released a live CD showcasing Xgl. "Today I am happy to release a Kororaa Live CD showcasing Xgl technology. If you would like to find out what it's all about, then download the CD and boot up your pc! The Live CD comes with Xorg 7, Gnome 2.12.2, 3D support, and of course Xgl." Download locations.

"Red Hat is peased to announce the availability of Update 3 for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 family of products. This update includes the following enhancements: hardware support enhancements; technology preview for support of very large system configurations on IA64 (up to 256 logical CPUs) and PPC (up to 128 logical CPUs); security enhancements; and much more."

From this year's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, CNET's Justin Jaffe gives a first look at the new Ultra Mobile PC and ConsumerLaptop Concept. Intel's Director of Marketing, Brad Graff, also shows off new software from StreetDeck that turns the PC into an interactive media center. More about this at CNet and CoolTechZone.

The ultimate accessory for 8 bit Acorn users, an ARM7 co-processor, is now available to order. Robert Sprowson's ingenious project to produce a second processor sees a 64MHz ARM7TDMI from OKI running alongside a BBC Master's dinosaur 6502 CPU. The box of tricks uses an Altera FPGA as digital glue to bind together the second processor, 16M of RAM, 512K of Flash ROM, and optional serial port and EEPROM chip. The ARM7 chip includes a 8K cache, and the kit took over six months to develop.