Monthly Archive:: January 2006

Firefox Myths

Submitted by Varg Vikernes 2006-01-25 Mozilla, Gecko 121 Comments

Here is a page discussing various myths surrounding Firefox. "We have all seen these banners before or heard people say 'Firefox is faster, Firefox has lower requirements, Firefox is secure, Firefox defends me from all spyware, etc.' How misleading is it? Read on." Flame away. And be gentle. That's an order. And here's a rebuttal.

Apple Set to Begin Testing Mac OS X 10.4.5 Update

Submitted by bababooie 2006-01-25 macOS 32 Comments

Okay, Mac users like myself just barely finished rebooting after the 10.4.4 update, and here comes the first information on 10.4.5: "Apple Computer this week is expected to begin widespread testing of Mac OS X 10.4.5 Update, the next in a series of maintenance updates to its Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system and the first update to address bugs lingering the company's initial release of Mac OS X 10.4.4 for Intel-based Macs."

Submitted by Nehemoth 2006-01-25 Rumors 22 Comments

"Customers demanded it and now it's here. Sun is challenging Dell to a Benchmark Brawl. Up for contention are the titles for the server side Java benchmark. Floating point intensive calculation. Power consumption. And the jewel in the crown, price-performance. If Dell accepts, benchmarks will be conducted by a neutral, third-party lab running agreed upon industry-standard benchmarks. Dell has until January 31, 2006 to accept the challenge. Testing to be done using Sun Fire x4100 and X4200 servers and the corresponding Dell Xeon servers that are commercially shipping in volume."

Submitted by beandog 2006-01-25 Novell and Ximian 37 Comments

Novell is running a survey on which applications people are most interested in getting ported to Linux. With enough votes, they'll take the highest ranked ones and present the results to the companies, hopefully in persuading them to consider that there is a market. You can read a preliminary report, or take the survey yourself.

Google Kowtows to China

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Google 29 Comments

Google has been basking in good publicity from refusing US government demands to hand over search results but in China it is happy to create a search engine based on government specifications. Google will offer a censored version of its search engine running on servers in China. It will remove results on 'sensitive' topics like human rights and Tibet. The decision would not seem so bad coming from another company but Google used to pride itself on the morality of its business strategy and devotion to free speech.

Debian Scrutinizes GPL3

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Debian No Comments

At last week's launch of the first draft for the revised GNU General Public Licence, the Debian project was out in force. Besides Branden Robinson, the Debian Project Leader, Debian members at the meeting included Don Armstrong, Benjamin Mako Hill, Bruce Perens, and several Debian members from the Boston area. In the aftermath of the meeting, a consensus is still emerging, but Debian members seem to regard GPL3 generally favorably, although some have concerns about exact wording and the implications of some parts of the draft.

GNU Is Developing an Open Source Flash Implementation

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Open Source 37 Comments

GNU is actively developing Gnash, an open source Flash movie player distributed under the GPL license. Based on GameSWF, Gnash will eventually provide complete support for SWF version 7 compliant Flash movies. Implemented with OpenGL and libxml2, Gnash will be avilable as a standalone Flash player, and as a Firefox plug-in. In order to avoid any potential intellectual property conflicts, the Gnash developers are not using any Macromedia tools to facilitate faster development. Instead of reverse engineering Macromedia technologies, the Gnash developers are basing their implementation on the SWF specification.

Dell Gets Serious About Mobile

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Hardware 1 Comment

Laptops with fully integrated mobile phone connectivity will soon take off in the UK, a senior Dell executive said on Wednesday. According to Eric Greffier, director of client marketing for Dell in Europe, Dell has ambitious plans for mobile phone-enabled laptops. "The difference is that these will be fully integrated within the laptop and they will support all the standards for mobile communications," he told ZDNet UK.

Genesi: Order Period Open for HDB Evaluation Systems

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Morphos 5 Comments

Genesi is pleased to announce the order period for evaluation systems for the High Density Blade and HDB Chassis is now open. The HDB can be deployed in a variety of configurations. The HDB features one or paired Freescale MPC7447, MPC7447A or MPC7448 PowerPC processor(s) and the Tundra Tsi109 host bridge.

Review: Microsoft Windows Vista Build 5270

Submitted by Shah Jahan 2006-01-25 Windows 32 Comments

"A while back, when Microsoft announced its decision to no longer release a monthly CTP for Vista, we were a bit worried, since we wanted to follow-up on the latest developments of Microsoft's next-generation operating system (though Microsoft promised to update current versions via critical updates). To Microsoft's credit, it has kept its word and has released an update sooner than we had anticipated, and needless to say, the changes in this release are substantial."

Intel Shows Test Chips Made on Future Processes

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Intel 3 Comments

The 45-nanometer process is right on time, according to Intel. The chip giant has created test chips made on the 45-nanometer process and will likely begin shipping processors, flash, and other chips based on that process in the second half of 2007, according to Mark Bohr, director of process architecture and integration at Intel.

Microsoft Opens Windows for EC Compliance

Submitted by James Ralston 2006-01-25 Windows 8 Comments

Microsoft is to open up the source code behind its server communication protocols, in an attempt to get the European Commission off its back. The announcement covers the source code behind the communication protocols for Windows Workgroup Server and Windows Desktop. Microsoft already offers 12000 pages of technical documents and 500 hours of free technical support to anyone applying for a license. Companies making software which interacts with Microsoft servers use those licences to make their products work properly with Microsoft ones. Such license-holders will now also get to look at the source code, but will not have the right to publish the code or include it in their own products.

Choosing a Desktop Linux Distribution

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-25 Linux 21 Comments

"Probably everyone who reads DesktopLinux.com encounters the same question over and over again: "What's the best Linux desktop distribution?" Now, while some people will swear up and down that Slackware or Fedora or even Puppy, for that matter, is the best Linux desktop, I think the answer is more complicated. In fact, I don't think there is a single answer."

Submitted by AdamW 2006-01-25 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 3 Comments

Mandriva is now testing a new hardware compatibility list system based on feedback from ordinary Mandriva users. The 'harddrake' Mandriva hardware utility can upload a list of your system's components to the Mandriva database, and you can then use the simple web front end to let others know how well each piece of hardware works with Mandriva. The system and the interface have already been in testing by Mandriva Club members and other enthusiasts. You can join in and help test it further by posting in the Mandriva forums (you can post in the community chat forum if you are not a member).

File System Design Part I: XFS

Submitted by rchapman 2006-01-25 General Development 5 Comments

"Generally, file systems are not considered 'sexy'. When a young programmer wants to do something really cool, his or her first thought is generally not 'dude, two words... File system'. However, I am what is politely termed 'different'. I find file systems very interesting and they have seldom been more so than they are right now. Hans Reiser is working on getting Reiser4 integrated into the Linux kernel, the BSDs are working on getting a journaled file system together, and Sun Microsystems just recently released a beta of ZFS into OpenSolaris. This is an excellent time to be me. This article will be on file system design and specifically the new file systems that are just appearing. We will start with the basics, UFS/FFS, and then proceed to our first modern file system, XFS.

eyeOS Miniserver: Virtual Web Desktop System for Windows

Submitted by eporue 2006-01-25 OS News 4 Comments

Today the eyeOS Project Team has officially released the first version of a MiniServer application that allows the eyeOS Web Desktop Environment 0.8.8 to be installed locally on an MS Windows machine with a very simple installation process. This will later help to expand the efforts in making eyeOS a complete intranet solution.

Explore the Linux Memory Model

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-25 Linux 17 Comments

Memory management is a large, complex, and time-consuming set of tasks, one that is difficult to achieve because crafting a model how systems behave in real-world, multi-programmed environments is a tough job. Components like scheduling, paging behavior, and multiple-process interactions presents a considerable challenge. This article will help you decipher the basic knowledge required to engage the challenge of Linux memory management, providing you with a start.

Submitted by Valour 2006-01-24 Linspire 70 Comments

"I first demoed Versora Progression Desktop at LinuxWorld Boston in February of 2005, and was impressed by what it could do. Basically it takes all of your essential data and program settings (and even some decidedly nonessential settings) and transfers them to GNU/Linux. I hadn't heard much from the company since then - until Linspire announced a partnership with them recently. The deal is, Progression Desktop will move you from Windows to Linspire without any hassle."

Marketing RISC OS

Submitted by Peter Naulls 2006-01-24 RISC OS 11 Comments

"Selling RISC OS to the general public is always going to be difficult; despite some software developements in the last few years, it still lacks features which have long since been ubiquitous on other platforms - especially what might be termed the big three - Windows (more relevantly, WinXP), Mac OS X and Linux. clearly has many problems to overcome before it can really gain any wider appeal. But instead of mentioning those in further detail once again, I'd like to cover a topic I hinted at in a earlier article - a ready to go RISC OS demo."

Opera Mini 1.2-Final Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-24 Opera 23 Comments

Opera Software today announced the release of Opera Mini, the full Web browser that runs on almost every mobile Java phone, including low- and mid-end handsets. Opera Mini compresses Web pages by up to 80% and reformats them using Small-Screen Rendering for easy and fast browsing on small, mobile screens. For the end-user, this means faster browsing and dramatically reduced phone bills for those who pay per KB in data traffic. Screenshots rendering OSNews and our sister-site GnomeFiles.