Monthly Archive:: November 2006

The Rising Tide of Vista; Vista: ‘Polished, Speedy’

"Security is the lens through which I always view products like Windows Vista, and in that view it looks good. But there is a bigger picture with Vista for the industry: It's really, really different from previous versions. At many levels it requires a different approach." The Inq took a look at Vista RTM, and they find: "Suffice to say we're impressed. Vista has come a significantly long way since the RC2 build. It's polished, speedy, and looks good on the eye."

Five Reasons for Fedora Core 6 Linux

"As a network professional, I have used various Linux-based systems for many years in troubleshooting and monitoring networks. However, Linux has never been my operating system of choice for my office desktop. Its limitations in other areas and often cumbersome installation and configuration, simply put, left it as a specialized operating system for specific needs. That is, until now. Red Hat recently released its latest free distribution of Linux, Fedora Core 6. I was so impressed with this release that I have replaced one of my two desktop machines operating systems with it. Here's why you, as a networker, need to seriously look at Fedora Core 6."

Give the Gift of Pre-Installed Linux this Year

"A few months back, LXer reader, cyber_rigger, began compiling a list of vendors who offer GNU/Linux pre-installed. The list quickly grew, even drawing attention from other news outlets. Meanwhile, the LXer team went to work to produce a usable database that anyone can browse and search. We still have one or two features to implement, but users can quickly and easily browse the Pre-Installed Linux Vendor Database of 106 vendors. All vendors in the list offer reasonably-priced desktops and/or notebooks for home and office users, and either offer Linux only, or as an installation option on the system configuration page of their sites."

Developing with Apache Derby – Hitting the Trifecta

This article reviews how to modify an SQL query to group related rows together to provide summary statistics database information and introduces the concept of a view, which can be used to simplify database application development by creating a virtual table that represents the results of an SQL query. Also learn about database indexes, which you can use to locate specific table rows. After you've mastered these advanced database concepts, you'll be well positioned to begin developing Java database applications with Apache Derby.

First Superficial Look: Windows Vista RTM

Last week, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista went gold, and was released to manufacturing. The release has been long coming (five years of work) and was surrounded by controversies, rumours of rewrites, and legal threats by Microsoft's competitors. We got our hands on the RTM build (Microsoft Windows 6.0 (Build 6000)), so read on for the first superficial look at Windows Vista Ultimate.

Sun GPLs Java

The cat is out of the bag: Java will be released under the GPL. Joshua Marinacci writes: "I think it makes a lot of sense because it protects Sun's interest in preventing forks and also the community's interest in knowing that Java will forever be available in the public sphere. The GPL has always provided an option to fork just in case someone takes the code in a bad direction. Historically having this option available ensures that it never needs to actually be used, letting the community grow and thrive."

Firebird 2.0 Goes Gold

After 2 years in development, the Firebird Project today officially releases the much-anticipated version 2.0 of its open source Firebird relational database software during the opening session of the fourth international Firebird Conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

Samba: ‘Disapproves Strongly’ Novell-MS Patent Agreement

"The Samba Team disapproves strongly of the actions taken by Novell on November 2nd. One of the fundamental differences between the proprietary software world and the free software world is that the proprietary software world divides users by forcing them to agree to coercive licensing agreements which restrict their rights to share with each other, whereas the free software world encourages users to unite and share the benefits of the software. The patent agreement struck between Novell and Microsoft is a divisive agreement. It deals with users and creators of free software differently depending on their 'commercial' versus 'non-commercial' status, and deals with them differently depending on whether they obtained their free software directly from Novell or from someone else. The goals of the Free Software community and the GNU GPL allow for no such distinctions."

Report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit

Ubuntu developers and other interested parties from all over the world have swarmed to Google's offices in Mountain View this week for the Ubuntu Developer Summit to plan out the next release of Ubuntu. In total, about 140 people have registered for the summit. According to Jane Silber, Canonical's COO, only 30 of the attendees are actually employed by Canonical, the company that sponsors Ubuntu. The remainder of the participants include members of the Ubuntu community, representatives of upstream projects, and other parties who have an interest in how Ubuntu is developed.

Michael Wallent on the Windows Vista User Experience

Michael Wallent, General Manager for Windows Client, was interviewed by the Windows Vista Blog about the user experience in Vista. "We sat down with Michael to learn more about what's changed for the better from a quality perspective. In the video below, Michael speaks in particular to changes made in building in hardware driver support and adds that updates will continue to be made available via download via Windows Update. This advance in driver distribution avoids the 'step-function' improvement that users had experienced in the past; now, via network-available updates, the experience of using Windows Vista continually improves over time."

ROL Calls for Select Coders and Testers

RISCOS Ltd have called for coders and beta testers to step forward and contribute to the company's flavour of RISC OS. Users were also welcomed to pitch ideas and feature suggestions - provided they weren't web browser-related. The company said this weekend it was 'looking at ways of increasing the involvement of users in the future development of RISC OS Select'. While it's not quite the same as Castle's plans with RISC OS Open, ROL have previously drawn upon a close circle of third party programmers to top up its features list, rewarding them with beta and alpha test builds of RISC OS and free Select subscriptions.

RHEL 5: What’s Coming

"I was fortunate to do a Q&A session today with Scott Crenshaw, Senior Director of Product Management and Marketing for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product. We talked about a range of things related to the early 2007 release of RHEL 5: product features, competition with Oracle and Novell, and other things. We spent the most time, however, talking about Red Hat's views on and plans for virtualization and how Red Hat gets product to market."

Opera Everywhere

"Opera Software chief Jon S. von Tetzchner's Web browser, popular with many hardcore computer users, hasn't taken over the industry. The Norwegian company's browser has been around for 12 years but has just 1.5% of the market. Compared to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or even Mozilla's Firefox, it barely qualifies as an also-ran. But unlike its competitors Microsoft and Mozilla, Opera is focusing a lot of attention on noncomputer devices: mobile phones, videogame consoles or just about anything else you can stick a screen on."