Thom Holwerda Archive

eWeek takes a look at Sony's Vaio SZ160, and concludes: "Sony's Vaio SZ160 is the type of laptop that executives ask for - and with good reason. With a 13.3-inch widescreen format and an Intel Core Duo dual-core processor, this 3.8-pound laptop offers business users exactly what they're looking for. It has great features, including a Web cam and an integrated microphone for videoconferencing, and the Vaio SZ160's bright screen is one of the best eWeek Labs has seen among the current crop of systems."

"CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge." Microsoft goes open source, and it also launches pay-as-you-go computers.

Mad Penguin has published a review of SUSE 10.1, including info on multimedia, XGL/Compiz, and a flash movie of the installation. They conclude: "The desktop itself is one to be reckoned with. I was able to be instantly productive with this release of SUSE. I didn't need to “fiddle” with anything outside of getting multimedia support back in place, but that's another argument for another day isn't it? The bottom line is that I was able to install the OS and apps, sit down, and go right to work."

After Kororaa announced its GPL problems and me writing a column about it, the people behind Kororaa have now posted an in-depth follow-up: "I have been receiving lots of information which I have been sorting through, thank you to everyone who has emailed me (although I would have also thanked you personally via email). I contacted both ATI and nVidia for some clarification on particular issues, however neither have answered my questions. Nevertheless, this is what I have found so far."

"If you are developing EFI applications or drivers for Intel-based Macintosh systems, it is likely that you will prefer to develop on Mac OS X rather than on Windows, Linux, or any other system. The rest of this document will help you jumpstart EFI development on Mac OS X. In fact, you can use either the PowerPC or x86 version of Mac OS X for hosting an EFI build environment."

"The problem of unsolicited e-mail has been increasing for years, but help has arrived. In this article, David discusses and compares several broad approaches to the automatic elimination of unwanted e-mail while introducing and testing some popular tools that follow these approaches."

"The developer of the ArcEm port to Amiga OS 4 has sent in a video of RISC OS 3 running on his 800MHz Amiga computer. He described the RISC OS 3 desktop as slightly sluggish, although games fare much better in the Archimedes emulator. The video shows Chris briefly using the desktop, fiddling with the Filer and Task Manager, before loading up the familiar Lander demo - including the inevitable crash landing that shortly follows."

Lately, OSX, or more specifically its kernel, has had a lot of attention. Benchmarks made by AnandTech have shown that OSX' kernel has some serious performance issues. As a result, some have uttered the idea Apple might replace the kernel of the MacOS with another kernel-- Linux seems, to them, the most viable option. Secondly, there have been speculations that Apple is closing the x86 version of its kernel. Note: Sunday Eve Column.

The Syllable team has released Syllable 0.6.1. New in this release: initial ACPI support and better PCI resource management, new application events API, lots of driver updates and additions, new versions of Syllable's browser and mail client, ports of CUPS and Samba3, and support for the REBOL language.

In the Fed-Talk mailing list, Ernest Prabhakar (Apple's product manager for Open Source & Open Standards) denies that Apple is going to close the Darwin kernel for x86: "Just to be clear, Tom Yager was speculating about why we have - so far - not released the source code of the kernel for Intel-based Macintoshes. We continue to release all the Darwin sources for our PowerPC systems, and so far have released all the non-kernel Darwin sources for Intel. Nothing has been announced, so he (and everyone else) certainly has the right to speculate. But please don't confuse 'speculation' with 'fact'."

"In the hubbub over the ODF and competing 'what you see is what you get' word processors, a long-standing alternative model of word processing systems has been mostly overlooked. The author of LyX, Matthias Ettrich, calls this approach 'what you see is what you mean'. However, it's a philosophy that you will find in many 'native' free software text-processing systems everywhere, from online 'content management systems' to book publishing. You write what you mean, then you use some type of formatter to create presentation layouts. LyX, with its integrated graphical environment, may be the friendliest place to learn it."

"In order to broaden Linux hardware support and simplify the process of acquiring, installing, and updating device drivers, Novell has created a new driver system that will enable vendors to supply drivers to users directly. Linux drivers are traditionally maintained in the kernel itself, and third-party drivers that aren't available in the kernel often have to be installed manually, a process that generally involves compilation. In many cases, users have to wait for the next kernel release cycle before they can get software support for the latest hardware. Novell's new Partner Linux Driver Process could potentially resolve some of those problems by providing a simple and consistent process for deploying drivers independently."

"When you're done installing SUSE Linux 10.1 OSS, your desktop system is not complete. You might still need support for Java programs, MP3 audio files, and browser plugins for Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Video. You may also want to add support for playing DVD videos on your computer, and to try out the new XGL graphical toys. Here's how to effectively make SUSE Linux 10.1 into the perfect desktop OS."

The schedule for Xorg 7.2 has been posted to the Xorg announce mailing list; Xorg 7.2 is planned for 17th November 2006. The mail also says xorg 7.1 is planned to be released on 22nd May. "7.1 is basically done at this point. The release won't actually go out until probably Monday, due to press release timing and (hopefully) doc updates, but excluding the server and the badged tarballs, everything else is pretty much in place. So, woo."