Thom Holwerda Archive

"At next week's Intel developer forum, the firm is due to announce a next generation x86 processor core. The current speculation is this new core is going too be based on one of the existing Pentium M cores. I think it's going to be something completely different."

Cloudscape and Derby are relational database managers implemented in Java. Tomcat is the reference servlet container implemented in Java. This article is a cookbook, providing step-by-step recipes for integrating them in three common scenarios: the prototype integration, the casual integration, and the enterprise integration.

"We are continually working on ZETA and many improvements and bug fixes are ready before we are ready to release a ServicePack or update. As we don't wish our customers to wait, we have decided to publish a selection of these on our website. This will give customers early access to updated drivers and applications." You can access the download section here.

Intel, which next week is expected to announce plans to move to a new processor architecture, is switching to a new yardstick to measure processor performance: performance per watt. Intel's announcement will publicly signal an internal shift that's already taken place. After years of promoting clock speed, it's now emphasizing overall performance and power-efficiency.

Geronimo is one of the more complex projects undertaken by the open source community, comparable to Linux in its intricacy. One of Geronimo's principal goals is J2EE 1.4 certification - a time-consuming effort. Nevertheless, Geronimo has already issued several milestone releases and is moving steadily toward the magical 1.0 release. Peek behind the curtain and see how the Geronimo deployment model brings a number of different open source projects under one umbrella.

Solaris Express Community Release build 20 is out. You can download it here. It should be available on the OpenSolaris page soon. In addition, Sun Cluster 3.1 8/05 has been released. More info here.

MadPenguin interviews Bruce Perens about the new Debian Common Core Alliance. "As former Debian lead Bruce Perens discusses in this article, Debian has long played a central role in helping people all over the world share the fun, frivolity, fascination, and occasional frustration that is the world of free Open Source software."

This bootable ISO image contains NetBSD 3.99.7 and allows you to boot NetBSD/i386 -current without having to install to a hard disk. The LiveCD was initially intended to be a rescue cdrom, but is now capable of much more. KDE-3.4.2 and all kde3-i18n packages were included.

The Java NetBeans IDE has plenty of support for troubleshooting and optimizing applications. Its built-in debugging support allows you to step through your code incrementally and monitor aspects of the running application, such as values of variables, the current sequence of method calls, the status of different threads, and the creation of objects. In this sample book chapter, you'll learn about NetBeans debugging features, so you can get your code working right as fast as possible.

"OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt has bumped the version identifier from 3.7-current to 3.8-beta in CVS HEAD. Now is an especially good time to test snapshots."

A British executive for Sun said on Friday that the release date for the company's StarOffice 8 suite would now be September 12, almost two months later than originally anticipated. The office productivity software sees wide use in the Linux community, and includes word processing and spreadsheet applications.

Graphics hardware has grown from a simple display controller to a full fledged specialized processing unit, in the last 10 years. The amount of included memory has increased from a mere few Kilobytes to hundreds of Megabytes. But what other uses can be found for your videocard when you’re not playing a game or using the latest CAD package?

After a few months of quiet activity, the Appeal desktop project has rolled out a new project website that documents what everyone has been up to and discussing. Since the the last public announcement many things have occurred, including another Appeal meeting being held in Germany. The project is looking forward to sharing its experiences and gathering input from the general KDE developer community at aKademy 2005 later this month.

Microsoft's Linux and Open Source Software Lab serves as both a place to examine the threat posed to Microsoft products by open-source offerings and a venue for testing software from Microsoft and others that's designed to span that divide. The lab is home to hundreds of servers and desktops that run dozens of different types of Linux and Unix. Here are photos of the lab.