Thom Holwerda Archive

Interview: Martin F. Krafft, Author of The Debian System

Debian 14 Comments
"This interview was conducted with Martin F. Krafft, the author of 'The Debian System'. Despite Debian GNU/Linux's important role in today's computing environment, it is largely misunderstood and oftentimes even discounted as being an operating system which is exclusively for professionals and elite users. In this book Krafft, explains his concept of Debian, which includes not only the operating system but also its underpinnings."
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Firefox ‘Passes 20 Percent Market Share’ in Europe

Mozilla, Gecko 35 Comments
Mozilla Firefox has achieved a market share of over 20 percent in Europe, according to the latest figures released by French Web metrics firm XiTi. XiTi, which based its figures on a sample of 32.5 million Web site visits that took place on Sunday 8 January, said that Finland has the highest proportion of Firefox users, followed by Slovenia and Germany. It found that the open source browser is used by 38, 36 and 30 percent of users in these countries respectively.
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Companies Push Linux Partitioning Effort

Linux 8 Comments
A push is under way to endow Linux with a virtual partitioning technology used by rival operating systems to make servers more efficient. SWsoft is trying to get OpenVZ made part of the mainstream Linux kernel - the software at the heart of the operating system - and a part of the major commercial Linux versions, said Kirill Korotaev, a project manager at the company. In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts.
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Perpendicular Storage Coming in 2006

Hardware 19 Comments
"Your friend the traditional hard drive may be undergoing changes soon. No, we're not talking about the threat that flash storage poses to the dominant storage medium, though that's an emerging player on the scene. No, our favorite plattered friend may be reorienting itself in a literal sense. Perpendicular storage is coming to a computer near you, perhaps sooner than you think. What is it? We'll break it down for you as Seagate comes to market with the first fruits of a promising technology." Update: People, you just got to watch the flash animation... It's... Really, just go see it.
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What Is Perl 6?

General Development 14 Comments
"Perl 6 is the long-awaited redesign and reimplementation of the popular and venerable Perl programming language. It's not out yet - nor is there an official release date - but the design and implementations make continual progress. Innumerable programmers, hackers, system administrators, hobbyists, and dabblers write Perl 5 quite successfully. The language doesn't have the marketing budget of large consulting companies, hardware manufacturers, or tool vendors pushing it, yet people still use it to get their jobs done. Why argue with that success? Why redesign a language that's working for so many people and in so many domains? Sure, Perl 5 has some warts, but it does a lot of things very well."
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Anonymity on a Disk: Anonym.OS

  Submitted by tup OpenBSD 7 Comments
To many privacy geeks, it's the holy grail - a totally anonymous and secure computer so easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks. Titled Anonym.OS, the system is a type of disk called a 'live CD' - meaning it's a complete solution for using a computer without touching the hard drive. Developers say Anonym.OS is likely the first live CD based on the security-heavy OpenBSD operating system.
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UK Judge Frowns on Software Patents

  Submitted by John Mills Legal 10 Comments
A UK judge has questioned whether software patents should be granted, and has criticized the U.S. for allowing "anything under the sun" to be patented. Sir Robin Jacob, a judge at the UK's Court of Appeal who specializes in intellectual-property law, spoke about the potential problems surrounding software patents at a seminar for the Society for Computers and Law on Thursday evening in London. "Do we need patents for computer programs? Where is the evidence for it?" Jacob asked.
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Guide for New Notebook Technologies in 2006

  Submitted by adkilla Hardware 1 Comment
"In this article, I'm going to be dealing in hard facts, coupled with a little bit of conjecture and speculation as to the future of mobile computing in 2006. When we look back on 2005 we can see it as primarily a year of transition. Since the debut of Intel's Centrino platform, coupled with ATI's release of the Mobility Radeon 9600, notebooks have been maturing as a competitive computing platform at an alarming rate. While I don't really think 2005 will be remembered necessarily as a banner year in new technologies, I think it was a strong transitional period. Mobile technology is maturing at an alarming rate; in 2006, we're going to see some major milestones."
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Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight CD3 Released

  Submitted by Peter Leese Ubuntu 80 Comments
Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight CD3 has been released. I haven't received the email on ubuntu-devel yet, but the .iso files appear to be up (Ubuntu | Kubuntu). Improvements in this release include an updated installer CD boot splash, X11R7, GNOME 2.13.4, improved and simplified menus, new default desktop panel configuration, some new applications such as XChat-GNOME, a faster live CD, live CD persistence, and more. In addition to software improvements, Launchpad is now officially open for business for all bug tracking.
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GPL 3: First Draft Available

  Submitted by anonymous Open Source 76 Comments
The Free Software Foundation has published the first draft of the GPL v3, the successor to the most popular open source license. The rationale behind some of the changes are here, while comments are here. Danese Cooper of OSI has posted her comments too. Update: Stallman: "We've partly removed the inconveniences of preventing a user from combining code from various free software packages." More here.
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UWIN – Unix for Windows

  Submitted by anonymous Unix 28 Comments
"UWIN or Unix for WINdows, is developed and released by AT&T Laboratories and David Korn - the creator of Korn shell. UWin basically consists of a set of tools and libraries which helps application developers compile and run Unix applications natively on windows. The tools include a complete shell (Korn Shell) for Windows which is bundled with all the command line tools you find in Linux/Unix."
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Patch for WMF Flaw in Vista Released

  Submitted by glarepate Windows 25 Comments
Microsoft has shipped the first critical security update for Windows Vista, the next version of its flagship operating system. Over the weekend, the company released patches for beta testers running the Windows Vista December CTP and Windows Vista Beta 1, and warned that the new operating system was vulnerable to a remote code execution flaw in the Graphics Rendering Engine.
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Interview: Mark Spencer of Asterisk

  Submitted by Steve Internet 4 Comments
"Six years ago, Mark Spencer started his own Linux technical support business. Unlike other tech startups at the time, he spent his money frugally. Spencer had to; he didn't even have enough to pay for an office PBX system, which can cost up to several thousands of dollars. 'I had about $4000 to start it out with, and I wasn't about to buy a phone system, so I figured I'd just make one,' he says."
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Quantities/Units Support for Java (JSR-275)

  Submitted by Jean-Marie Dautelle Java 1 Comment
The latest units/quantities packages (for the upcoming JScience 3.0) has been submitted to the JSR-275 expert group for review. It provides compile time check of quantities consistency through class parameterization. You can browse the proposed API here (two new packages javax.quantities and javax.units). The JScience pre-release implementation is available here: sources, binaries.
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Taiwanese Parliament Votes Against Microsoft

  Submitted by glarepate Microsoft 28 Comments
Taiwan's parliament has voted to end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year. The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island's law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said.
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Jobs Suggests Dell Should Eat His Words

Humor 82 Comments
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Micheal Dell was asked what he would do to fix Apple. Dell replied: "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." Following Friday's news that Apple had surpassed Dell's value of $71.97 billion, Jobs wrote an email to his staff: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today." Who said capitalism is humourless?
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MS Working With Apple on Future of VPC

Apple 14 Comments
Following this week's five-year commitment to the Mac platform, Microsoft said it is working with Apple to bring Virtual PC to the new Intel-architecture, although it didn't provide details about the release date. The company, however, said that it would not run under Rosetta, Apple's emulation environment that allows older PowerPC programs to run on Intel-based Macs. The company said that it would wait on receipt of the new shipping machines to better evaluate Virtual PC for Intel-Macs as well the final release date of Mac Office and Messenger for Intel-Macs; however, the company this week said it has dropped all development of Windows Media Player for the Mac.
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