Thom Holwerda Archive

Xen 3.0 has been released. "We've been seeing good stability on the XenRT regression tests for the last couple of weeks, and the number of bug reports submitted to bugzilla have dropped right down." Get it here. "Along with the usual binary install tarball, we've created a new live-iso demo CD, and some RPM packages for common linux distros."

"Over two years ago a group was founded to reverse engineer the Broadcom Wireless LAN chipsets to provide Linux drivers. This chipset is used by many OEMs, for example in Apple’s AirPort Extreme in Power- and iBooks, Linksys’ WAP and WRT series of consumer grade wireless routers, various laptops from Acer, Dell, Gateway, HP and others and many more external and internal devices, including CardBus cards. That work has now come (.pdf) to a first milestone as there now is a free (GPL2 or later) Linux driver for a variety of these chipsets."

"Intel was surprisingly talkative when it came to future technologies and products this year. As a result, most of the technical audience is up to date regarding the upcoming micro architecture based on the 65 nm Merom design. We discovered that all of these announcements are the top of a hot iceberg only, because the chip firm intends to deliver almost 20 new processor designs within the next eight quarters; all for the sole purpose of dominating the desktop, mobile and enterprise segments."

"We are pleased to announce the availability of the third full Release Candidate for the upcoming X.Org Foundation release of X11R6.9 and X11R7. RC3 includes many bug fixes and updates. We have tagged both the monolithic and modular trees and have prepared tarballs for you to test."

"The Enomalism Virtualized Management Console is a powerful web-based systems administrator and management tool for XEN hypervisor. Servers with hundreds of multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers can be managed like a standalone server with Enomalism tools which include a VPS creation wizard and templates which facilitate VPS configuration, loading applications and centralized software management and deployment." It's completely open-source, they say, yet I can't find any info on what license they're using (but I suspect the GPL).

"A couple of months back, Cale Lewis and I (Andrew Lampert) put our heads together and came up with some burning questions about the development of the BeBox and various BeBox prototypes that were built along the way. Given the nature of our questions, we headed straight to the source - Mr BeBox himself, Joseph Palmer - to seek some answers."

Here's an interview with Debian's Branden Robinson. From the interview: "I think Debian's success stems from its dual commitments to userempowerment through free licensing of the works we distribute, and to high quality through careful design and integration decisions. Not everyone is a software freedom fighter, nor is everyone a software perfectionist – but we can accommodate both of those passions pretty well. Debian is an exciting and rewarding place to be if you want to help shape the future of the Free Software landscape."

On behalf of the NetBSD Release Engineering team, Matthias Scheler announced the availability of NetBSD 3.0 RC5 for testing. NetBSD 3.0 RC5 is available in the "daily builds" section of your local FTP mirror, and users are encouraged to test it out and report any bugs using send-pr(1). A brief summary of changes from NetBSD 3.0_RC1 to 3.0_RC5 is available in Matthias's announcement (a list of changes from NetBSD 2.0 to NetBSD 3.0 can be found here).

"Welcome to Issue 7 of the ReactOS Weekly Newsletter, as persistant as a Jehovah's Witness. This week, I'll be taking a look at the NDK used by the ReactOS developers, covering WINE 0.9.2, and detailing the latest SVN activity."

An observing poster at the Ubuntu forums unearthed what he says are screenshots of the upcoming Novell Linux Desktop 10. "I was snooping around for details about Novell Linux Desktop 10 and stumbled upon an internal Novell Desktop Design wiki. Most of the pages were unavailable without logging in but I found a few pics by going through their 'Recent Changes' page." So, are they for real? My take: Whether these are real shots of NLD 10, or just 'mere' mockups, they in any case show that Novell is willing to differentiate itself from its competitors. Which is a good thing.

"All in all, SUSE Linux 10.0 OSS is the best Linux system I've used. It's easy to install and has a large selection of both desktop and server software. It has been extremely stable during my use. It is clearly an excellent choice for Linux beginners, with its fine documentation, easy installation, and comprehensive graphical configuration tools, while also offering software selection and powerful tools for the experienced user."

As if his promotion to chief technology officer weren't demanding enough, Red Hat's Brian Stevens must also lead a revolution of sorts. After all, open source is changing government, and Red Hat shoulders a good deal of that direction. Stevens sat down with GovernmentVAR senior editor Jill Aitoro to discuss what's next for open source in government including Red Hat's work on SELinux in partnership with NSA and open standards.

Microsoft is working on a significant new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which is designed to update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine. "If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot." And here & here are some more shots of Vista build 5259.

Improvements to Spotlight searches, AirPort, Bluetooth, and RAW camera support are a few enhancements Apple reportedly has planned for an early winter release of Mac OS X 10.4.4 Update, a routine maintenance update to the Mac OS X Tiger operating system.