Monthly Archive:: April 2006

The community effort hosted by the Apache Software Foundation to create an open source, J2SE 5.0 compatible Java runtime/virtual machine is progressing slowly but steadily. Despite some indifference and prejudice by some OSS pundits, the project has been recently moving along nicely with key players like Intel and IBM contributing their own programmers and source code to the effort.

"This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on a Debian Sarge system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems, so called 'virtual machines' or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other."

Folks, as the webmaster of OSNews, I'm sorry to report that the OSNews server was hacked early this morning by a l33t haxx0r known only as "osV_rul3z." Although our database server does not appear to have been comprimised, all of the advertising code was deleted and our code was slightly modified to make everyone a premium level subscriber. Rest assured, we are working on the problem and hope to have OSNews restored to its original state as quickly as possible. UPDATE: As everyone suspected, April Fools!

Today, 1st April 30 years ago, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, one of the most influential (whether you like it or not) and recognizable (oh yes) companies in the tech industry. Various websites have articles in celebration of this landmark, here, here, here, and here. Happy 30th birthday, Apple. Now, chop chop, get us that Intel iBook.

"The Ubuntu team is proud to present the 6th Alpha test, called Flight 6 of our next release, Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake). With Flight 6 comes additional Look-and-Feel improvements, Live-CD installer enhancements, GNOME 2.14 final, and much more." Download the regular Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu. As usual, PowerPC, x86, and x86-64 are supported with both live CDs and install CDs.

"The L4/Darwin project is an experimental port of Darwin to the L4 microkernel to study the characteristics of a large-scale microkernel-based system. It includes a port of IOKit to L4, a modified libc to communicate with the Darbat Server, and of course XNU with many of the machine-dependent parts heavily modified (pmap, thread/task creation, etc.) but much left unchanged (most of BSD, and large parts of OSFMK work without modification)."

"Over all, Fedora Core 5 seems to be alot more of a solid distribution than the last time I ran it (FC3), they finally got rid of that nasty up2date that seemed to hang at the worst possibly opportunities - when you're 98% of the way there. The applications also seemed to be tested alot more than previous releases, and the speed as improved substantially, especially with GTK; whether its due to the compile, cairo or some other mystical voodoo I don't understand, what ever the case, the improvement is great. Over all, this is probably the best distribution I've tried; if you're looking for an easy to use, no fuss UNIX-like desktop, look no further than Fedora Core 5."

LinxForums gives short overviews of the ten major distributions, and concludes: "People often ask 'so which distribution is right for me?' The answer is very simple: 'It depends!' It depends on your needs, it depends on your experience, on your philosophy or your tastes. It depends on a lot of things, and even if you found the one you preferred among these 10 majors distributions, don't forget that there are about 340 other distributions available, which could potentially suit your needs. If you're ready for the adventure, go and explore."

"The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the release of the first release candidate of Firebird 2.0, for final testing. Download kits are available for Windows and Linux, including x64 Linux. However, due to hardware failure on the Windows build system, there will be initial delays in accessing the Win32 kits. Patience please!"