Monthly Archive:: April 2002

From ZDNews: "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 was the most popular browser on the Web last month, with a total global usage share of 44.7 percent, according to Net analysis company OneStat.com. Microsoft IE 5.5 took the second spot with 26 percent of the global usage share, followed by IE 5.0 with 25 percent, AOL Time Warner's Netscape Navigator 4.x with 1.6 percent, Netscape Navigator 3.x with 0.5 percent and Opera 6.x with 0.4 percent. The numbers show that 'Microsoft dominates the browser market with a total global usage share of 97% on the Web,' said Niels Brinkman, one of the founders of OneStat.com." Let's wait and see if the release of Mozilla next month will at least overthrown Netscape 4.x which currently holds 1.6%. Konqueror and OmniWeb can only deliver better scores if their perspective operating systems they run on gain more popularity (Linux ~1%, MacOS <3%).

The good people over at Addison-Wesley sent us this book, "Understanding Open Source Software Development" written by Joseph Feller & Brian Fitzgerald. It is an analysis of the history of the open source, its goals, where it is now and where it is expected to be in the near future. The ultimate goal and target of the book, apart from the knowledge feed about open source in general, seems to be the effort to convince project managers why they should adopt Open Source. Does the book succeed? Read on.

"Those of you who have read my posts at the DesktopLinux.com discussion forum may have noticed I'm a fan of SuSE's distribution. You might even be shocked by the title of this article. But don't get me wrong, I love SuSE Linux 8.0, even though I've been disappointed by some elements of it. But let's start at the beginning..." Read the review of SuSE 8.0 at DesktopLinux. In other SuSE-related news, ZDNews had two articles "SuSE 8.0 arrives without StarOffice" and "SuSE looks to stabilize Linux".

"AMD signed an agreement with MIPS Technologies Inc. for 64-bit technology, complementing the Alchemy design team already in place at AMD. AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif. said it will license the MIPS64 architecture for an undisclosed period of time, allowing the processor company a growth path for embedded devices. AMD already owns a 32-bit MIPS license through the Alchemy Semiconductor design group AMD acquired in February." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech.

Apple today introduced the eMac, a new desktop computer targeted specifically for education that mimics the all-in-one design of the original iMac. The eMac features a 17-inch CRT display (1280x960 maximum resolution at 72 Hz), 700MHz G4 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce2MX graphics, 128MB RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. The US$999 model features a CD-ROM drive while the $1,119 model includes a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Apple also unveiled a new PowerBook G4 running at speeds of 667MHz and 800MHz and featuring higher-resolution 1280x854 15.2-inch display. The new PowerBook G4 also features a new 4x AGP ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics processor with DVI output.

Katsushi Kobayashi has recently been added to the FreeBSD team so that he can add IEEE 1394 support to FreeBSD 5.0. Get more information here and here.

The large team known as the OpenBeOS Team, who their goal is to recreate a new operating system that it is largely compatible (source and if possible, binary too) with the abandoned BeOS has made another release. Codenamed Proto5, it is the fifth release of the app_server BeOS replacement (for BeOS agnostics, the app_server is a major part of the BeOS graphics subsystem that does not live in the applicastion address space and it also deals with the graphics driver). In related news, the OpenBFS team have also created a BFS filesystem driver and they are looking for testers.

Almost seven months have been past since Kurt Skauen, author of the Athe(na) Operating System released version 0.3.7. As Kurt have already publicly said, some personal outstanding issues, plus because he needed some time off his project, he did not touch the AtheOS codebase since then. However, some third party AtheOS developers lately have been working on producing alternatives or improved versions of some AtheOS parts, namely, replacements for the login screen, desktop etc. We tried to contact Kurt regarding the fate of AtheOS (which seems to be facing possible forks from many fronts), but we received no reply.

According to a leaked video, two documents and a PowerPoint presentation at MsBetas.com, the next generation of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, scheduled to be released sometime in 2005, is introducing a number of new features. Most notably, as seen in the video is the "task shelf" concept and the replication of a window. In the documents you will also find information about the 3D-based technology to render the desktop (please do not confuse the 3D composition rendering technique with a "3D desktop/interface" - different things) and its formula. According to the bandwidth formula including in the docs, for 1024x768x32bpp (refreshing at 60Hz and composing at 30Hz), the required bandwidth is, 0.93Gb per second in the local graphics card memory. Please note that this information has not been officially confirmed by Microsoft, and until then should be treated as you would any other rumour. Notice: This happened to be our 1000th news story at OSNews! Thank you for all your support during this second "birth" of OSNews since August 2001. We started serving less than 700 pages per day back then. Six months later, we were already serving more than 30,000 page views per day, with an average of 15,5 comments per story! Thank you everyone!

"If anything is creating a stir in the world of computing these days, it's definitely Linux. You may have heard a lot of things about Linux, or not much at all, depending on what you read and who you talk to. Comments range from how incredible Linux is and how it will be a serious threat to Microsoft, to how difficult it is to use, and how there's no software support. Well, every tidbit you hear gained life from some sort of truth, but it's hard to put all the facts together when they're being fired at you from all over the place. With this article I hope to tell a prospective Linux user what he or she needs to know to make the decision to switch. I'm not talking enterprise server stuff here, you can find information on that all over the place. I'm talking about the OS on your home PC that you're probably using right now." Read the article at LinuxOrbit. Also check the guide for new Linux users at ExtremeTech.

"We've waited more than four years for Mozilla, the Netscape-backed open-source browser--and we're still waiting for the completed version. But Mozilla has finally posted its official Release Candidate 1 (RC 1) and plans to release the final soon." Read the review at ZDNews. NewsForge also runs an editorial for Mozilla: "Three reasons to fall in love with Mozilla". Tabbed browsing is one of the reasons, and indeed a very handy feature.

The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 4 release, "Thank You", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure. It is available for immediate download. The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's user interface.

ClosedBSD is a firewall and network address translation utility which boots off of a single floppy disk or CD-Rom, and requires no hard drive. ClosedBSD is based off of the FreeBSD kernel, and uses ipfw as its native ruleset management system, and natd as it's network address translation utility. The CD-Rom version has full DHCP client support. The floppy version (1.0B) is still without it for now.

"Web Services signal a new era of lightweight distributed application development. While Web Services are not intended nor do they have the power to solve every distributed application problem, they are an easy way to create and consume services over the Internet. One of the design goals for Web Services is to allow companies and developers to share services with other companies in a simple way over the Internet." Read the lengthy and informative article at ExtremeTech. Another Web Services article, an editorial this time, is hosted at the Open Standards web site. The author has concluded pretty much the same as we did in our .NET editorial, that "Web services is at least a solid beginning to a new era of distributed computing that is as inevitable as paved roads. If web services is not hype, what remains to be questioned are the tools and services the hype masters themselves know you do not have to choose. Will .NET be the answer for everyone? Will Java take the lead through its community involvement and open source support? Will supply and demand for web services skyrocket in the next few months? These are things to be hyped. Will web services and distributed computing change our lives? Now I hear a ring of truth."