Monthly Archive:: March 2007

"The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. This is the Ubuntu 7.04 Beta and it comes packed with a whole host of excellent new features including the released GNOME 2.18, the 2.6.20 kernel and much more. Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support."

In a recent interview with the online edition of the Austrian daily Newspaper Der Standard, Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza pleads for a cooperation between Mono and Microsoft's .Net: "I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration."

"Freespire version 2.0 Alpha2U (1.2.49) is now available for download. This is the second alpha build based on Ubuntu that might not be good for the health of a production machine. Expect improvements as future builds are released. Some of the release notes: automatic boot menu management does not always work, do not install if you are not experienced at repairing GRUB configurations and MBRs; no upgrade path available from Freespire 1.0 or previous versions of Freespire 2.0 alphas; NVIDIA and ATI drivers are not automatically installed; Jack has been removed - any applications which do not use ALSA may not work properly."

"The Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit Update for Windows Vista provides documentation, samples, header files, libraries, and tools you need to develop applications that run on Windows. This release of the SDK supplies updated compilers and documentation. The updated compilers are the same ones that recently shipped in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. This SDK also includes the samples, tools, headers, and libraries that shipped in the Windows SDK for Vista in November, 2006."

"The Compiz and Beryl teams are discussing a merger. Posts on the Compiz forum and Beryl mailing list indicate that the projects are discussing how to execute a merger and work together to deliver a single compositing window manager to give 'bling' to the Linux desktop."

"There have been a lot of rumors lately from 'unconfirmed' sources about Leopard's expected ship date. For a while, everyone was sure it was going to ship mid-to-late March. Then mysteriously, the ship date (according to these anonymous sources) got shifted to mid-April - perhaps because we are already in late March. Oops. Developers who work closely with Apple have been dying to tell the world how very, very wrong we all are. We have always maintained an air of skepticism regarding the early release speculations, but confirmation of these suspicions have been bombarding us lately. Our sources have told Ars that there is very little chance ('and that would be pushing it') for Leopard to ship in late April - that is, if Apple wants to ship with a halfway stable operating system."

"The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. This is the Ubuntu 7.04 Beta and it comes packed with a whole host of excellent new features including the released GNOME 2.18, the 2.6.20 kernel and much more."

Bernd Korz has announced that the Zeta development team and Magnussoft are parting ways . The team and Bernd will continue to develop Zeta, and the service pack (Zeta v1.51) will still be released in the coming weeks.

Bruce Perens writes: "There's been a lot of talk about GPL version 3: whether it goes too far to be acceptable to business, whether the Linux kernel developers will ever switch to it, whether our community will fork or undergo unrest over it. Much of that talk is based on a poor understanding of the GPL3 terms, and with release of the new license imminent, it's time to clear that up."

Techgage has reviewed SabayonLinux 3.3 and concludes: "Fans of Sabayon will be pleased. Things just keep getting better. For those who have never touched SL, you should give it a try and see what you are missing. Even if you don't plan on changing desktops (like myself), it's one of the best distros to play with, or use as a Live DVD if you are on the road a lot. I had a few people test it out on Apple computers, and it works great there as well. No one is left excluded! Kudos to Fabio and his team for the great work on this latest release."

"Linux system calls - we use them every day. But do you know how a system call is performed from user-space to the kernel? Explore the Linux system call interface, learn how to add new system calls (and alternatives for doing so), and discover utilities related to the SCI."

After a long development period, we're ready to introduce the first "release candidate" of OSNews version 4. OSN4 is a very big change for us - for years, we've worked with the mantra "We render everywhere." We are still using MySQL and PHP, like in Eugenia's OSNews v2, but with the sudden prevalence of newer web technologies, we've decided that in order to really offer the best platform for our readers, it was time to enter a brave new world. Read on for details and the link. Updated: ("read more" to see update)

The AROS Show has interviewed AROS and MorphOS developer Pavel 'Sonic' Fedin. He talks about his work on VESA, parallel.device API and more. When asked about AmigaOS 4, he replies: "Don't know what to tell here, my opinion is split up. At the one hand it's nice to see that someone develops something, and it's just interesting by itself. At the other hand their politics seems very aggressive to me, they tend to 'close up' their community and ditch everyone else."

"Nearly thirty years of growth haven't exhausted the potential of the REstructured eXtended eXecutor language. The first of the widely used 'scripting' languages continues to expand its capabilities and platform range, and it makes for a particularly good match with AIX."