November – 2003

SuSE 9.0 Personal: One hour to a slick Linux desktop

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-30 SuSE, openSUSE 57 Comments

It takes less than one hour to install SuSE 9.0 Personal edition on a slow system. For that one hour investment, you'll get a slick, well-organized Linux desktop that you should be able to live with, says Librenix.

Mac OS X 10.3 Server Review

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-30 macOS 30 Comments

"OS X 10.3 Server is not an essential purchase for every Mac user. It is essentially Mac OS X with additional network muscle, so network administrators and Web developers alike will find it more accessible and flexible than ever." Read the review here.

Mozilla.org Releases Mozilla 1.5.1 Browser for Mac

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-30 Mozilla, Gecko 34 Comments

MacNN reports that Mozilla.org has released Mozilla 1.5.1 for Macs, an update to the open-source browser. New features include a spellchecker for MailNews and Composer, additional MailNews improvements, improvements to Mozilla Composer, an overhaul of the ChatZilla IRC client, improvements to tabbed browsing, and other enhancements. Anyone knows the status of the Mozilla Calendar development, as last big update was last May? (screenshot)

WinBeta: Longhorn 64-bit Shots

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-29 Windows 50 Comments

WinBeta has a few screenshots of Longhorn for 64-bit CPUs.

GNOME Development Release 2.5.0 is Out

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-29 Gnome 114 Comments

The GNOME Development Release 2.5.0 which will lead to 2.6 is ready for testing. It is available from ftp.gnome.org and mirrors. This version includes the new spatial Nautilus, the new GTK+ fileselector (however applications don't use it yet) and among the proposed new apps for inclusion are Ximian Evolution and RhythmBox. A stable Quick Lounge and gThumb would be great to be included too.

New Versions for SmoothWall, ClarkConnect

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-29 Linux 23 Comments

ClarkConnect transforms standard PC hardware into a dedicated broadband gateway and easy-to-use server. It includes firewall and security tools, along with file, print, web, e-mail, proxy, and VPN servers. Version HomeEdition 2.1 was just released (iso here), while a few days ago the similar product SmoothWall released version Express 2.0-RC1. These are excellent choices if you have an old PC sitting unused in a closet and if you need a gateway/firewall/etc to serve all your machines at home.

SciTech SNAP Graphics for OS/2 v2.2.4 and OpenWatcom Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-29 OS/2 19 Comments

OS/2-BBS reports that "SciTech SNAP Graphics for OS/2 version 2.2.4 has been released (11/6/2003). This is a replacement product for SciTech Display Doctor, which has some new features, like zooming and multihead. There is a changelog, as well as a list of chipsets supporting the various features. There is a user mailing list, a trouble ticket HelpDesk for registered users, and an official newsgroup." Elsewhere, SciTechSoft also released the 1.2 beta of the OpenWatcom dev suite.

Stable 2.4.23 Linux Kernel Released

Submitted by Jeremy Andrews 2003-11-28 Linux 16 Comments

Marcelo Tosatti has released the final 2.4.23 stable Linux kernel, three months after 2.4.22. This latest kernel includes a number of changes, including the removal of the OOM (out of memory) killer among other significant VM updates. Laptop users will appreciate Jens Axboe's "laptop mode" which can extend battery life, also merged in 2.4.23. Find this latest stable kernel at a kernel.org mirror.

yellowTAB and beunited.org co-operate on Java Port

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-28 Zeta 35 Comments

Today yellowTAB and BeUnited announce a milestone in the post Be world: they will be co-operating on porting Sun's Java J2SE version 1.4 to Zeta and OSBOS.

Iyonix’ First Birthday

Submitted by Peter Naulls 2003-11-28 RISC OS 19 Comments

Castle today celebrated the first birthday of their 600MHz XScale, RISC OS machine, the IYONIX pc. Castle announced the machine 17th of October last year, and placed it on sale on the 28th of Novemeber 2002. Since then, it has gained a Linux port, and revitalised the RISC OS platform. More information in this drobe.co.uk article.

Phoenix Sounds Death Knell for BIOS

Submitted by Gil Bates 2003-11-28 Hardware 86 Comments

Phoenix Technologies is sounding the death knell for BIOS - the bread and butter of its current operations. While Phoenix is comparatively the "Microsoft" of the BIOS world, it has spent years endeavoring to modernize the aging standard. If all goes according to plan, a new product the company dubs Core System Software (CSS) will serve as the foundation of PC architecture.

SuSE Linux 9.0 Review at Ars

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 SuSE, openSUSE 36 Comments

"This week's big feature is the long-promised SUSE 9 review, courtesy of Paul "madmanx" Ehrenreich and Charles "ctkrohn" Krohn. Stephan "windi" Windischmann discusses less, the replacement for the standard more pager. We also demonstrate Linux's pluggable authentication module system. Finally, Anders "w.anders" Widebrant introduces you to the awesome desktop animation tool vnc2swf." Read the review at ArsTechnica.

RISCOS Ltd. “Adapting to Change”

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 OS News 17 Comments

RISCOS Ltd.'s managing director Paul Middleton has this month told Foundation readers that his company will continue by "adapting to change and seizing new opportunities as quickly as possible". As well as sketching out a RISC OS 4 road map, Paul also revealed some surprisingly unreported facts.

How it works: Inductive User Interfaces

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 Graphics 65 Comments

"An inductive, or task-based, user interface is one that is based on "tasks" rather than applications (as in OS X) or documents (as in Windows 95/Office 95, sort of; Microsoft backed off of this concept pretty quickly as the benefits of a task-oriented UI became more obvious). Here's an example. Let's say you want to print a digital photo." Read the article at WinSuperSite.

Storm OS – A Hobby GUI OS

Submitted by Thunder 2003-11-27 OS News 23 Comments

The Storm Operating System is based on x86 family architecture with paged, protected memory, heavy proccess software multitasking and GUI. Storm OS is being created with asembly (NASM compiler) and General C (GNU GCC compiler) language.

Book Review — Code Reading: An Open Source Perspective

Guest post by Owen Anderson 2003-11-27 Office 15 Comments

"Code Reading: An Open Source Perspective", by Diomidis Spinellis, is a new kind of book. It's a foray into a domain normally left untouched by Computer Science texts and exemplifies yet another positive contribution from the Open Source movement. Simply put, Code Reading is a detailed discussion of the techniques required to read and maintain both good and bad code. As an interesting twist, the author draws on projects from the Open Source world to provide examples, both good and bad.

FreeBSD 5.2-beta1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 FreeBSD 26 Comments

FreeBSD's Scott Long announced the availability of 5.2-BETA ISO images and ftp install sets for i386 and alpha. Amd64, sparc64, ia64, and pc98 sets will be available shortly.

Panther Server: Is it Ready for the Enterprise?

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 macOS 34 Comments

This week MacWorld is going to show the Panther Server operating system in general, identifying the new tools and structures and offering a closer look at the evolution of the user and share-management tool called Workgroup Manager.

VMWare Graphics Driver for QNX4

Eugenia Loli 2003-11-27 QNX 1 Comment

The QNX4 driver for VMWare is now available. The package includes a graphics driver for Photon and a vmtool for accessing VMWare information (date, clipboard, etc.).

Linux 2.6.0-test11 “Beaver In Detox” Kernel

Submitted by Jeremy Andrews 2003-11-27 Linux 50 Comments

Linus Torvalds has released his final 2.6.0-test kernel, calling it the "Beaver In Detox". Following this release Linus says that 2.6 development will be lead by Andrew Morton. The kernel's name refers in jest to the previous release, which Linus had named "Stoned Beaver". It contains a fix for the aic7xxx driver, proper error handling in do_fork(), some firewire fixes, and correction of a few skbuff leakage points. Download it from a kernel.org mirror.

Monthly Archive:: November 2003