Thom Holwerda Archive

The 4th beta of OpenSUSE 10.1 has been released. This beta has quite a significant amount of bugs (especially in the installer) so be aware. The OpenSUSE developers somehow refuse to post any release notes, so I cannot tell you whether or not Novell's Xgl and Compiz are included. Update: In the meantime, check this page on how to get Xgl/Compiz running on OpenSUSE. RPMs available, so no compiling required. Happy experimenting.

"A quiet revolution is taking place on a young mailing list, one that overturns years of false enmity and makes perfect sense to most free software users. Having competed for the free desktop crown since 1997, collaborating on code but never on promotion, KDE and GNOME have launched an initiative to market and promote the free desktop together."

"Mac OS X is a secure operating system in that it's multi-user and has limits on what some user accounts can do. If an account is setup as a basic user, that user can only hurt himself, not the whole system or other users. However, in the interest of being 'friendly' to new users, Apple leaves of a lot of the secure bits off for the first user created and this means that trojans like this week's can cause some pretty nasty problems on your system. Yet, all of this is easy to correct. Just run over the following and you should be well on your way to a protected computer."

A second strain of malware targeting Mac OS X has been discovered days after a Mac OS X Trojan appeared on the scene. The latest malware, Inqtana-A, is a proof-of-concept worm that attempts to spread using a Bluetooth vulnerability. The worm is not spreading in the wild and uses an internal counter that means it will expire on February 24, so it's unlikely to ever be much of a problem. Nonetheless, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) users are still advised to make sure they're patched up in order to guard against attack from any future worm that uses the same exploit. In related OSX news, there's more fuel for the tablet-Mac fire.

Developers on the projects expected to make up the next major version of the K Desktop Environment want KDE 4 to offer features and software interaction beyond what is available now, and better, easier access for users to their files and information. Among the ideas are universally available personal information and a desktop that is tailored for and responds to the things users do most. Ian Geiser, a KDE developer and official US representative for the KDE project, says KDE 4 will most likely be released in late 2006, though internal debate could push the release back to early 2007.

"I've been looking at the 'My desktop OS'-articles, and found that I'll have to be the one writing one for Windows XP. To be honest, Windowx XP is very close to being usable on the desktop. I say very close, because it's not so out of the box. There is a few issues, however and many of them arises when you need to reinstall. You do need to reinstall Windows from time to time - it's just a fact of life!"

As was to be expected, Apple's legal team got busy concerning the OSx86 Project. Just days after OSX 10.4.4 for Intel got cracked, the project closed down its forum with the following notice: "We're sorry to report that despite our best efforts, the OSx86 Project has been served with a DMCA violation notice. The forum will be unavailable while we evaluate its contents to remove any violations present. We thank you for your patience in this matter."

On popular demand, here is Davyd Madeley's preview of GNOME 2.14. "Built on the shoulders of giants, GNOME 2.14 hits the shelves on the 15th of March. As well as new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. This is a review of some of the most shiny work that has gone into the upcoming GNOME release."

Just a few days after Mono got ported to SkyOS, SkyOS now has support for System.Windows.Forms. A screenshot of the first C# application using System.Windows.Forms developed in and for SkyOS is available at the SkyOS website. Support is not complete yet, obviously.

"Microsoft recently made a change to the licence agreement saying that a new motherboard is equal to a new computer, hence you need to purchase a new Windows licence. Here is what Microsoft has to say: "An upgrade of the motherboard is considered to result in a 'new personal computer' to which Microsoft OEM operating system software cannot be transferred from another computer. If the motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required." Please note that this does not go for retail copies of Windows, but only for OEM versions.

The latest issue of the GNOME Journal has just been published. It features a look at the 0.10 GStreamer release from a user's point of view by Christian Schaller, a short introduction into (de-) forming 3D models with SharpConstruct by Claus Schwarm, an interview with Jeff Waugh in the new 'Behind the Scenes' series by Lucas Rocha, part two of the tutorial on writing a clock using GTK+ and Cairo by Davyd Madeley, and also part two about marketing GNOME by John Williams.

The Linux kernel is now up and running on an Intel iMac, and as such the Linux guys have beaten the windows guys. "Using elilo and a modified Linux kernel, we can boot from a USB hard disk on the 17" iMac Core Duo. We are using the hacked vesafb driver to inherit the bootloader's framebuffer, keyboard and a USB network card work. Gentoo runs and can compile the Linux kernel." Note that you can't really do much more than stare at the shell prompt, as no graphical environment boots yet.

"After a decade of neglect and increasingly reluctant support from IBM, the manufacturer, the OS/2 community persists. Where users of GNU/Linux or FreeBSD have turned to free and open source software for political and philosophical freedom and software quality, the surviving OS/2 community has been turning to FOSS as a means of defending members' right to use the operating system of their choice. The result is a small but surprisingly diverse collection of projects that, to a GNU/Linux user, is a mixture of the familiar and exotic."

"Tundra Semiconductor Corporation today announced the Tundra Tsi109 Host Bridge, the industry's highest performing host bridge for PowerPC, will be integrated into the Genesi High Density Blade Server, demonstrating the Company's rapidly strengthened position as the industry's leading supplier of host bridges for PowerPC." A lot of chit-chat press-release nonsense, but the bottom line might be that Genesi is trying to fill the PowerPC void left by Apple's move to Intel.