Monthly Archive:: December 2001

Last week RedHat entered into the PowerPC market, leaving Yellow Dog Linux, the distribution that is a port of RedHat to the PowerPC, in a precarious position. When SuSE and Mandrake also entered the PPC market, LinuxPPC was the first of the PPC-only Linux companies that put a break into their further development. As PPC-only Linux company, where is YDL will be standing in the near future? Read the editorial at TuxPPC.

In the latest NetCraft survey, the Queen of England has switched from Linux to IIS. Two years ago the Queen of England became an unlikely icon for the Linux revolution when her webmaster replaced Solaris as the platform for the Royal Family's site, with the Dell/Linux platform when the previous incumbent, Sun/Solaris, had reached the end of their life cycle. The open source community celebrated and speculated on when the Apache web server might receive the "By Royal Appointment" moniker. This week the site has changed platforms again, this time to Microsoft-IIS.

Hyperion Entertainment announced it has finalised an initial AmigaDE version of its 'Warp3D' technology. At only 56 KB it is well suited for low-end devices like PDA’s, web-tablets and 3G phones. Apex Designs is the first to announce the porting of a popular 3D Amiga game Payback to the AmigaDE. The initial AmigaDE version will not use Warp3D technology however. Have a look at these these screenshots for some of the PDA/cellphone targetted AmigaDE software currently available from the AmigaDE shop. More information and screenshots inside.

"Xbox and GameCube both have gamers slathering, and for the same basic three reasons: games, games, and yes, games. Content is what decides which console succeeds and which one augers in, and both Xbox and GameCube look strong out of the gate. So the game-based buying decision will come down to a matter of game preferences, and how addicted you are to Miyamoto-designed games, which can only be had on the GameCube. But let's look past the games for a bit. Who's got the better hardware design? Whose is more forward-looking? Which is more likely to run out of gas first? For the answers to these and other vexing techie questions, read on." Second part of the very interesting three-part article over at ExtremeTech. First part of the article can be found here.

Microsoft recently announced at the launch of the WindowsXP Embedded operating system that more than 15 industry-leading companies have committed to shipping their next-generation devices based on Windows XP Embedded within the first half of 2002. WindowsXP Embedded, the componentized version of the WindowsXP operating system, enables rapid development of the most reliable and full-featured connected devices including retail point-of-sale devices, thin clients, gaming systems, self-service kiosks, industrial automation, residential gateways, and advanced set-top boxes. In addition, Microsoft announced a free evaluation kit, as well as a 90-day promotional price of $995 USD (estimated retail price) for the WindowsXP Embedded tool suite.

AmigaExpo is a new show growing out of the Amiga's growing inclusion of other alternative platforms. From the Unix-based Universal Amiga Emulator (UAE), Linux based Amithlon, and QNX-based AmigaXL packages - the Amiga scene is becoming more and more platform agnostic and this is reflected in this show. While the usual Amiga celebrities and exhibitors are confirmed, QNX has also signed up to exhibit and many others including Robot builders, Retro gamers, Palm developers and more will be there as well.

A thread on the Linux Kernel mailing list started innocently enough about proper spacing in source code, then grew and grew into a somewhat philosophical debate about evolution and code design. The subject of the thread was "Coding style - a non-issue". However, before long a debate was sparked, leading to some interesting comments by Linus and some others, perhaps best summarized by Alan Cox's comment: "Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works." and Linus Torvalds: "And I know better than most that what I envisioned 10 years ago has _nothing_ in common with what Linux is today. There was certainly no premeditated design there."