Thom Holwerda Archive

"This is a brief tutorial on how to sync websites to your Palm for offline reading. The websites are stored in Plucker format. You will need to install the Plucker viewer for palm which can be found at the Plucker website. The software you will use to grab the websites and convert them into Plucker format is called Sunrise. To transfer the Plucker files to a Palm you will need pilot-link."

Sun Microsystems announced Monday that its longtime chief executive Scott McNealy is stepping down from the helm and will be succeeded by the struggling computer and software company's No. 2 executive, Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy, 51, a Silicon Valley luminary for years, will continue as chairman of the company he co-founded in 1982. Schwartz, 40, will keep the title of president.

Microsoft on Monday detailed innovations coming in Windows Vista that the company believes makes the operating system superior in the delivery of multimedia. This would include several enhancements to Windows Media itself as well as expanded functionality within Windows Media Center, now standard in Vista. The company is promoting the new features of its upcoming operating system at the National Association of Broadcasters convention being held this week in Las Vegas. With online multimedia becoming more prevalent, traditional broadcasters are increasingly interesting in utilizing the Internet as a method for delivery.

The ECB_AT91 is a new Colombian SBC with a 180 MHz ARM9 processor that runs Linux. It supports up to 64MBytes of SDRAM, has a SD/MMC slot, a 10/100 Ethernet port and an USB 2.0 interface. It was inspired by Darrell Harmon's and Flavio Ribeiro's SBCs. Debian runs on this board without problems. More information and pictures can be found at the ECB_AT91 website.

The 17" MacBook Pro has just been released. The 17" model has Firewire 800 and 8x dual layer Superdrive, both of which the 15.4" version lacks. The new MacBook Pro was presented during the NAB2006. The machine will cost $2799,- in the US, or round and about EUR 2879,- (differs per country) in the EU, or GBP 1999,- if you live in the UK.

x64bit.net reviews Xubuntu Dapper Drake Beta, and concludes: "If your system runs slowly using Gnome or KDE then try out Xfce. On the other hand if you think Gnome or KDE is bloated and you wish you could have a desktop that was like either Gnome or KDE. Then Xfce is for you. Xubuntu is a welcomed member of the Ubuntu family. I look forward to Xubuntu 6.06 final." Rejoice over the multitude of screenshots, boys and girls.

"These days, the 'revolution' is all about Linux. The word alone has become a catchcry for everything anti-establishment, anti-Bill, and anti-licensing fees. If you listen to the hype, it's being used everywhere, in businesses of all sizes, to do everything but make the coffee. Just because everybody's using Linux, however, doesn't mean everybody's happy for that fact to be known, as I found recently while looking for potential candidates for this special report about companies that had made the switch from Windows and Linux, and vice versa."

Blogbeebe tests a new software update for the Nokia 770. "Do I still feel the same way now as I did in this post? That is hard to say. There's more that needs to be tested, such as video playback. And I started over clean with this install; I did not save any settings, preferring to go and see how the 770 behaves as a 'new' device. I won't know how to judge it until later. Another change besides the software is the use of a 1GB Adata MMC mobile card in place of the 64MB that came with the unit. Performance still needs greater enhancement, and multimedia support needs further enhancements."

Vista is all the rage at the moment (and now even the Sunday Eve Column is about it). I don't think there's a single piece of beta software that has ever been discussed as much as Windows Vista. Obviously this makes sense, since Windows powers roughly 95% of the world's desktop computers; hence an update to that system will surely spark some heavy debates. Personally, I'm indifferent towards Vista. Read on for why.

x64bit.net has a review of the (K)Ubuntu Dapper Drake beta. "Please note Ubuntu/Kubuntu 'Dapper Drake' is not yet a final product and the available previews do not reflect the quality of the final product. This quick review is not meant to divide Ubuntu and Kubuntu into separate distros. They are almost identical to each other, except the default desktop for Ubuntu is Gnome, whereas KDE is Kubuntu's default desktop." Lots of screenshots, boys and girls.

Linspire has announced an update to their 5.0 release. According to the release notes v2 includes OpenOffice.org 2.0 as well as numerous bug fixes and new drivers; however, no new features have been introduced. Existing 5.0 customers can download the ISO here (no additional purchase required).

"This tutorial shows how to configure a MySQL 5 cluster with three nodes: two storage nodes and one management node. This cluster is load-balanced by a high-availability load balancer that in fact has two nodes that use the Ultra Monkey package which provides heartbeat (for checking if the other node is still alive) and ldirectord (to split up the requests to the nodes of the MySQL cluster)."

The latest release candidate for SUSE Linux OSS 10.1, RC2, has been released. "I'm glad to announce SUSE Linux 10.1 Codename 'Agama Lizard' RC2. We have fixed the majority of bugs from RC1 and will release an RC3 next week. During the RC phase, we only provide delta ISOs of the media and update the factory tree as well."

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, the Linux world's very own Thurrot-before-he-lost-his-faith, writes: "People tell me I bash Microsoft too much; that Microsoft's products really are great. OK, so I won't bash Microsoft this time around. I'll let Microsoft's own friends do it."