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Monthly Archive:: May 2006

Elive 0.5 Beta Released

The Elive project has released the first beta build of the upcoming Elive 0.5 Enlightenment live CD. "New live CD system - Elive has moved from Morphix to DSS; new kernel 2.6.15 with a lot more hardware support, also for wireless networking, take a look to the list of new drivers added; new installer features; Elive has new system of elive-skel, you can select 'night look' or 'elive look' in the boot of the live CD system; introductory tutorial to Enlightenment hot keys on E16; Unionfs version 1.1.4; Evidence doesn't crash any more; email client integrated with the system." There's a screenshot tour.

Squaring the Open Source/Open Standards Circle

"Linux is at risk of suffering a similar fate to that suffered by Unix. That risk is the danger of splintering into multiple distributions, each of which is sufficiently dissimilar to the others that applications must be ported to each distribution. The bad news is that the rapid proliferation of Linux distributions makes this a real possibility. The good news is that it doesn't have to, because a layer of standards called the Linux Standard Base has already been created, through an organization called the Free Standards Group, that allows ISVs to build to a single standard, and know that their applications will run across all compliant distributions. And happily, all of the major distributions have agreed to comply with LSB 3.1."

Open Graphics Project Releases OGD1 Artwork

At the end of February 2006, the Open Graphics Project team released schematics for their development board, OGD1. An article on KernelTrap was written about this, explaining the release under GPL and the nature of PCB schematics (logical connections between chips) and artwork (physical component placement and circuit trace routing). Just last Friday, was announced the first draft of the artwork. For the most indepth information, check out the OGD1 page on the OGP Wiki, which links to PDFs for each of the routing layers and a composite image of all of the layers.

Oracle and Open Source

Open source is hot these days, and Oracle knows it. The company is facing challenges from open source competitors by embracing open source technology in its own right - acquiring and developing key companies and products in this area - as well as fighting to show its merits over other open source choices. How does Oracle stack up against PostgreSQL? How do Oracle and Linux work together? What's next for Oracle on the open source front?

Microsoft Announces Internet Explorer 7+

Microsoft has said that the version of IE7 for Vista will differ slightly from the one for XP and down. "I want to announce that we will be naming the version of IE7 in Windows Vista 'Internet Explorer 7+'. While all versions of IE7 are built from the same code base, there are some important differences in IE7+, most significantly the addition of Windows Vista-only features like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics. These features take advantage of big changes in Windows Vista and weren’t practical to bring downlevel."

Enterprise-Level Ubuntu Linux Due This Week

The developers of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution plan to make a new landmark version of the software widely available this week. Ubuntu's public schedule for releasing the software lists 1 June as the date for the new version, code-named 'Dapper Drake', to be made public. The milestone release will be officially supported by the project for a longer period than previous versions, and will be billed as suitable for enterprise use.

ROX Desktop in New Debian Package

The spirit of the RISC OS desktop can now be easily be installed on Debian GNU/Linux systems, after the ROX desktop collection was released in a Debian package. The package came about after Dennis Tomas decided pull the suite into one place for users to download and install. The ROX desktop takes familiar user interface components from the RISC OS desktop, such as drag'n'drop and the filer, to create a more friendlier desktop for users of Unix-like operating systems. User Dan Macdonald told us: "It is now incredibly easy for people to install a full ROX (RISC OS on X) desktop, complete with auto-mounting of removeable discs, under Debian Linux."

Google File System Exposed

"I had a course on distributed system in my Engineering curriculum, and I was really fascinated with the way people use this technology for work. As my interest grew in this field, I started to read a lot on this. As a result, while browsing a few pages, I found a link to Google File System. Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me. Where would Google deploy this proprietary file system? Or is Google planning to have an operating system? I decided to have a look at it nonetheless and here’s a quick overview of my findings."

Phipps Discusses Haiku Bounties

Micheal Phipps addresses the Haiku Bounties website: I have received some questions about the 'Haiku Bounties' website and I wanted to answer them here. It is run by a gentleman who has been a good friend to Haiku for a long time now. I have every confidence that he is trying to do the right thing for the Haiku community and that he will be upfront and honest with the money and that you can trust his word." Haiku has also hired its 2nd employee.

Who’s Who at the 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon, Part I

The 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon, c2k6, is well underway in a conference room at a hotel in downtown Calgary, Canada. The event started yesterday, May 27th, attended by nearly 50 OpenBSD developers from all over the globe. OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt is thrilled by what is already proving to be another successful event. "I don't think anybody else does this, developers suspend their lives for a week to focus entirely on just development."

A C++ Flyweight Pattern for IT Management

Mother Nature likes object-oriented development! C++ programmers often can't afford the luxury of creating a universe of objects; our platforms are intrinsically limited. However, the flyweight design pattern provides an elegant means of sharing objects, with a small price in terms of storage and retrieval. Stephen Morris describes C++ code that uses the flyweight design pattern to solve a knotty problem in networking. Also on the same web site, "Mastering the Requirements Process".

The Evolution of Business Models in the PC Market, 1980-2010

In this, the 60th anniversary year of the computer, it may be interesting to look back at a couple of key events in the evolution of this very important market. This is a market now amounting to extraordinary numbers of machines. In 2010, the last year for which we have numbers, there were no less than 10 million machines shipped! This growth and penetration is unparalled in the history of industrial products in the last 100 years, and is an amazing success. However, to get to this stage, the industry had to make its way through some issues and decision points. There are generally agreed to have been key turning points. What would have happened if they had gone differently?