Monthly Archive:: May 2004

The SoftPear Project aims to create compatibility software between the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh architecture. This is not an emulator for PowerPC Macintosh machines (like "PearPC", "Basilisk" or "UAE"), the project has more similarities to Digital's "FX!32", FreeBSD's "Linux Binary Compatbility" and "WINE" instead. Darwin/x86 or GNU/Linux will run on the PC, and the Mac OS X user interface, its libraries and all applications running on top of it will run on Darwin or GNU/Linux, using SoftPear's compatibility layer. Since today, the PowerPC to i386 recompiler works with many small test programs. The code is in the CVS.

Here are some updated notes and walkthroughs on how to update, configure and install the soon to be released AmigaOS 4.

Here's another Fedora Core 2 review (with screenshots), this time from Mad Penguin.

Among the major Linux distros, Slackware was the only one using XFree86 4.4.0 (in its -Current tree). On Sunday, Patrick Volkerding dropped XFree86 and moved to XOrg too after receiving input from his users. This change leaves XFree86 without any major distro using it.

Microsoft released the second build of Windows Longhorn at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in early May. This latest build is much more stable than the one distributed at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in 2003, and includes more features as well. In this article, you will get walked through some of the features in the most recent build of Longhorn. Update: Here is another review with many screenshots.

Robert Simmons continues his efforts to clarify confusion over the use of nested classes in Java in this week's installment, excerpted from Chapter 6 ("Nested Classes") of Hardcore Java. Robert discusses the somewhat troublesome limited-scope inner classes; one specific type within this category, known as anonymous classes; and the various problems programmers can encounter with limited-scope classes.

After complaints about the previous videos being released a video recorded from VMWare. "This is VMWare and everything runs 3-5 times slower in it than normally" Rush warns.

Gentoo announced beta level live cds and stages for ppc64. The hardware supported by gentoo-ppc64 is PowerMacintosh G5, IBM pSeries, older IBM 64 bit RS/6000s (such as the model 260, 270, F80, H80, see linuxppc64.org for a complete list) and soon IBM iSeries hardware.

Fedora Core has been out for almost 2 weeks and the first reviews, both good and bad, start trickling in.

Software development is an iterative process that benefits from coordination between developers and with historical archives. To facilitate such practices, developers can turn to special versioning software. In this article we will explore Subversion, one of the most recently released version control suites. Read the article at DevChannel.

The Mac's commitment to standardization doesn't just have the effect of knowing what the main controls do in a rental car. It removes the need to focus on the interface from the process of learning to use the application. In other words, that Windows interface barrier is completely missing in the Apple world because the Mac OS transparently hosts the applications without imposing itself on the user's attention. Read the article here.

Following recent discussions about tuning swapiness and dynamically allocating swap as needed, a new discussion ensued on the lkml questioning the need for swap altogether when a system has "sufficient" ram.

Many enterprise Java technology developers build their own object management infrastructures to improve application performance. However, traditional object pools encounter problems in applications that run across distributed JVMs on multiple physical machines. This article presents an object management framework that uses the concept of scopes to handle distributed systems with ease.

OrangeCrate has an interview with Matt Asay, Director of Novell's Linux Business Office. He talks about Linux strategy, the GPL, partnerships, and Linux on the desktop.