Thom Holwerda Archive

A free application environment for Linux-based handheld and mobile devices may support lots more devices in the future, including Linux mobile phones. The GPE (GPE palmtop environment) project is planning a "device abstraction" layer aimed at simplying new device ports, according to maintainer Florian Boor.

Potix has released ZK 1.0, the XUL-Java-Ajax-Beanshell based web application framework. The framework aims to simplify developing Ajax based web development by minimizing configuration and lowering developer skill requirements. A live demo is available.

"There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog. Yeah, it's got some fancy 3D effects in the interface, but OS X has been doing that for years now, and it's still Windows underneath, right? The sentiment seems to be that Vista is another Windows ME. Perhaps part of the problem is that people just don't know what Vista has in store for them."

"Sun has purportedly gone out of its way to draw Linux developers to its hardware platform. Analysts even say that Sun has finally made peace with Linux. But if you look at their web site they appear to have a different story to tell as they attempt to build community support for Solaris10. Frankly, we believe Linux beats Sun in so many categories that we don't even have a race. While Sun wants you to 'get the facts' we notice that they persist in comparing Solaris10 to Red Hat's enterprise model. But that's not the only Linux out there."

"There are key utilities, command line chains, and scripts that are used to simplify different processes. Some of these tools come with the operating system, but a majority of the Unix tricks come through years of experience and a desire to ease the system administrator's life. The focus of this article is on getting the most from the available tools and insight across a range of different UNIX environments."

"With Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE), you can develop a user space filesystem framework without understanding filesystem internals or learning kernel module programming. Follow this simple, step-by-step guide to install, customize, and enable FUSE and AFS, so you can create your own fully functional filesystem in user space in Linux."

"The AJAX Toolkit Framework is a J2EE based technology that assists in constructing Eclipse framework support for AJAX toolkits on Linux and provides enhanced DHTML/Javascript IDE features for AJAX developers. This enables support of DOM browsing and JavaScript debugging by using Mozilla XULrunner to embed the Mozilla browser component (Gecko) in the Eclipse framework."

This whitepaper from a RIP vendor summarizes the technology behind Vista's XPS document format and its implementation as a print engine as compared to the current GDI in Windows XP. Will it suffer on non-Microsoft platforms, even if its specifications will be open, and how does it compare in methods and goals to Apple's PDF-based Quartz rendering engine?

Deskbar is an applet which sits in the GNOME panel and which integrates quite seamlessly with different search tools like Beagle and the Google search API to bring the same functionality of OSX's Spotlight to Linux/GNOME. This article explains how one can set up this applet to among other things, provide Google web search on the Linux/GNOME desktop. In related news, this article takes a look at the major new features of... Gedit 2.14. No kidding.

Last weekend, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting took place in Brussels. KDE was present there with a lot of developers, a devroom and several interesting talks. Among the speakers were Jonathan Riddell from the Kubuntu distribution, Sebastian Kuegler from KDE's Marketing Working Group, Bart Coppens from the Krita development team, and Raphael Langerhorst and Sander Koning from the KOffice teams.

At first blush, the past two weeks have not been good for the image of Apple's Mac OS X: Public descriptions of two worms and a trivial exploit for a serious software issue in the operating system appeared on the internet. However, the three programs are hardly a threat to systems running Mac OS X, according to security professionals. CNet covers the same topic.

Microsoft's so-called Origami Project, due to be launched on Thursday, appears to be its early version of the ultra-mobile PC concept Intel has been touting of late, if an allegedly leaked Flash version of a promo video of the product is anything to go by. Quite apart from being a potential iPod competitor, the device could well prompt some interesting techology ownership questions.

"Since its ISSCC talk early this month, IBM POWER6 did capture the imagination of quite a few processor buffs around there - not me, yet, as I'm used to see great CPUs failing since the Moto 68K and Alpha days - and also raise debates on several tech forums. While IBM still keeps most of the official POWER6 data closely guarded - I'd expect more during Hot Chips or Fall Processor Forum some six months from now - there is enough right now to assemble a rough picture of what may be in for the users of the new chip."

"For the past few months, little noticed by the outside world, a team on Microsoft's campus has been running tests with one of the swankiest machines ever to use the company's software. Rather than sitting on a desk, this piece of hardware gets parked in a garage. It's a 2006 Alfa 159, and it represents a new step in Microsoft's effort to spread its technology beyond personal computers." My take: Any petrol-head knows that this is like a match made in heaven-- taking Alfa Romeo's notorious track record concerning reliability into account. Note that this is a joke, so easy on the flames, please. I happen to be a great fan of Alfa Romeo (which self-respecting petrol-head isn't).