Monthly Archive:: October 2005

Review: BeOS Rises From the Grave, Takes the Name ZETA

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 Zeta 52 Comments

"The BeOS obsession is still an unsolved mystery to me. I threw open the crypt and ventured inside, but I left without revelation. Once I got ZETA to boot, yes, it ran reasonably fast, but whatever bug infects people with love for this OS didn't bite."

Mac OS 10.4.3 Released

Submitted by Ralf. 2005-10-31 macOS 80 Comments

Apple has released Mac OS 10.4.3. This update weighs around 100MB and includes fixes for AFP/SMB/CIFS/FTP, AirPort/BlueTooth, Core Graphics/Audio/Image, Spotlight, Address Book, AppleScript, Automator, Safari (it now passes the Acid2 test), and much, much more. The update is available via Software Update, or as stand-alone packages (delta|combo).

Vista To Support Symbolic Links, Office 12 Supports XPS

Submitted by CPUGuy 2005-10-31 Windows 90 Comments

"In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link)." More news out of Redmond: "Microsoft will add a 'Save As' function in its upcoming Microsoft Office 12 for publishing the developer's own electronic document format, XPS, another move in a competitive campaign against Adobe."

Best Practices for Embedded Applications with eSWT

Submitted by anonymous 2005-10-31 Java No Comments

"Because of the limits of embedded devices (for example, memory and screen size), there are some differences between the SWT widgets and eSWT widgets that greatly influence how you use them. This article shows you how the embedded Standard Widget Toolkit differs from the usual SWT Toolkit and provides best tips and practices for using it as you develop your own eSWT application based on the Model-View-Controller framework."

NetBSD 2.0.3 Security/Critical Update Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 NetBSD 9 Comments

NetBSD 2.0.3 is the third security/critical update of the NetBSD 2.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons. All fixes in security/critical updates (ie., NetBSD 2.0.2, 2.0.3, etc.) are cumulative, so this latest update contains all such fixes since the NetBSD 2.0 release. These fixes will also appear in future releases (NetBSD 2.1, 2.2, etc.), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements. Download locations are here.

Google Throws Bodies at OpenOffice

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 Google 54 Comments

Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense. "We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better."

CLI Magic: GNU find

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 Linux 30 Comments

"Don't you just hate it when you can't find a file you need, but you know it's on your computer? Wouldn't you like an easy way to track down files anywhere on your computer? If so, I have good news for you, a command available to you at the friendly Linux CLI called find."

Red Hat Wants Xen in Linux Kernel

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 Red Hat 12 Comments

Linux vendor Red Hat is aggressively pushing to get Xen virtualization technology included in the Linux kernel as quickly as possible. Brian Stevens, the newly appointed chief technology officer of the company, said that previous efforts to merge Xen into the kernel ran out of steam when nobody stepped forward to drive them. Red Hat is now stepping forward, Stevens said.

Using Plan 9’s Distributed Resource Protocol Under Linux

Submitted by glory 2005-10-31 Linux 7 Comments

"This paper describes the implementation and use of the Plan 9 distributed resource protocol 9P under the Linux 2.6 operating system. The use of the 9P protocol along with the recent addition of private name spaces to the 2.6 kernel creates a foundation for seamless distributed computing using Linux. We review the design principles and benefits of Plan 9 distributed systems, go over the basics of the 9P protocol, describe 9P extensions to better support UNIX file systems, and show some example Linux distributed applications using 9P to provide system and application services."

V2_OS Project Restarted

Submitted by jmony 2005-10-31 OS News 20 Comments

For the past few years, the V2_OS project was nearly dead. Things are about to change as the project is getting reorganized. The new website is nearly ready and the source code was moved from Sourceforge, back to the real server. Development of the complete rewrite (version 0.70) is expected to restart in the following days. For those who do not remember V2_OS, this is one of the first operating systems written in pure assembly language.

Hardware Emulation With QEMU

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-31 OS News 8 Comments

"QEMU is an open source cross-platform emulator for Linux hosts. It allows you to emulate a number of hardware architectures (x86, x86-64, and PowerPC are currently known to work, with others, including SPARC and MIPS, in development). QEMU thereby lets you run another operating system on top of your existing OS. Going through the process of installing and configuring QEMU not only gave me a worthwhile new software tool, but also helped me learn a few things about Linux."

Poll: What Your Next Cellphone Will Be?

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-31 Wireless 68 Comments

According to recent news, global shipments of smartphones are up 75% in Q3 2005, with PDA-only handheld shipments falling 18% and converged devices more than doubled in volume. So, what are the tech-inclined OSNews readers are opting for? Come in and vote.

ReactOS 0.2.8 Released

Submitted by TwoTailedFox 2005-10-31 ReactOS 42 Comments

ReactOS is an open-source Operating System designed to be compatible with Windows NT. Version 0.2.8 sees the culmination of months of work since 0.2.7, and sees the project coming closer to the long-awaited 0.3.0 release.

Announcing BeleniX LiveCD

Adam Scheinberg 2005-10-30 Solaris 25 Comments

From Distrowatch.com: "BeleniX is the first live CD based on the OpenSolaris source base that boots into a full graphical desktop (with XFce). Developed at the India Engineering Centre of Sun Microsystems in Bangalore, BeleniX is trying to popularise OpenSolaris in the growing open source user and developer community in India and abroad." OSDir provides the screenshots, as usual.

Anonymous Methods in C# 2.0

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-30 .NET 38 Comments

While demonstrating the rudiments of anonymous methods, Paul Kimmel answers the question "Are anonymous methods just someone being a bit too clever?"

Employing Rexx as a Scripting Language for Java

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-30 Java 8 Comments

Rony Flatscher introduces the open source and free Bean Scripting Framework (BSF), which allows any Java application to deploy scripts in other languages. Any Java application developer can use BSF to supply scriptability in a user-friendly scripting language such as Rexx.

Review: Arch Linux – Easy, Simple and Clean

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-30 Linux 42 Comments

"The philosophy of Arch is simply simplicity. The user is in total control of the system. There are no flashy GUI installers - only a simple ncurses based installer that is easy to use and does its job well. No services ae started by default and their rc.conf is a thing of beauty - very simple to understand and maintain."

Genesi Unveils First Specs of Its PPC G5 Motherboard

Submitted by Raffaele 2005-10-30 Morphos 32 Comments

PPCNux (German) as well as Pegasos-Forum (German) report about new information about Genesi's new G5 based mainboard. The mainboard which will feature the PowerPC 970MP CPU will have the new microBTX format (26.4x26.7cm/10.4"x10.5"). As system controller IBM's 945 northbridge was chosen which is the corresponding version of the current PowerMac's system controller. ATI will provide the graphics chipset for the new mainboard. It is currently not known which product name the mainboard will have. In addition, Mupper 1.0 has been released.

Red Hat Readies for Government Scrutiny

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-30 Red Hat 33 Comments

"There have been a couple of runs at trusted operating systems in the past, but the difference between what's out there now and what we're announcing is that, in the Linux world, we'll have trusted capabilities in a standard distribution," said Paul Smith of Red Hat.

Monad Beta 2 (for .NET Framework 2.0 RC/RTM) Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-30 Windows 14 Comments

The 2nd beta of Windows' new shell (Monad) has been released for use with the just released .NET 2.0. "The Windows 'Monad' Shell is a new interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology in Windows that enables administrators to more efficiently and securely automate and control system management tasks on both desktops and servers." Download for x64 and x86.