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Monthly Archive:: June 2007

The GNOME Journal, June Edition

The latest issue of the GNOME Journal has just been published. It features an article about GStreamer audio effects, an interview with Ken VanDine about GNOME 2.18 Live Media releases, an introduction to Accerciser, and a summary of GNOME.conf.au 2007. Writers in this edition are Stefan Kost, Paul Cutler, Eitan Isaacson, and Davyd Madeley, respectively.

Another 64-bit Carbon Summary

"One of the salient points repeated at the WWDC keynote was Leopard's support for '64 bits top to bottom'. However, a close peek at the slide shown this year showed a subtle difference to last year's - the word 'Carbon' was missing. Of course a storm of confusion soon ensued, with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from some quarters and polite shrugging from others. Apple stock fell and rose again, some developers professed bliss while others threatened to leave the platform, non-developers wrote learned analyses about obscure technical points, not to speak of reports of raining frogs or even an unconfirmed Elvis sighting in a Moscone restroom. Allow me to try to explain all (well, Elvis excepted)."

There Is No Grand Theory of Usability

Federkiel writes: "People working with Apple computers are used to a very consistent user experience. For a large part this stems from the fact that the Lisa type of GUI does not have the fight between MDI and SDI. The question simply never arises, because the Lisa type of GUI does not offer the choice to create either of both; it's something different all along. I usually think of it as 'MDI on steroids unified with a window manager'. It virtually includes all benefits of a SDI and and the benefits of an MDI." Read on for how I feel about this age-old discussion.

NVIDIA Graphics: Linux vs. Solaris

"At Phoronix we are constantly exploring the different display drivers under Linux, and while we have reviewed Sun's Check Tool and test motherboards with Solaris in addition to covering a few other areas, we have yet to perform a graphics driver comparison between Linux and Solaris. That is until today. With interest in Solaris on the rise thanks to Project Indiana, we have decided to finally offer our first quantitative graphics comparison between Linux and Solaris with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers."

Haiku in OS X, Opera 3.62 Runs on Haiku

There have been some interesting developments in the Haiku/BeOS world the past few weeks. Firstly, SkyOS developer Peter "Darkness" Speybrouck has been working on accessing SkyFS/BeFS partitions from Windows. Secondly, Opera 3.62 runs on Haiku. Lastly, if you have an Intel Mac, you can use VMware Fusion to run Haiku in Mac OS X; Haiku does not support EFI, so this is your only chance of running Haiku if you own an Intel Mac.

Apple Releases Safari Beta 3.0.2, Security Update

Apple's first Windows beta release of Safari had some nasty bugs, most importantly one where bold text wouldn't render on non-English versions of Windows. Since the 3.0.2 release has 'fixes for text display, non-English systems', this bug might by fixed. In addition, Security Update 2007-006 for Mac OS 10.3.9 and Mac OS 10.4.9 and later has been released. The update addresses two vulnerabilities in WebKit, one of which could lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

Vista SP1 Beta Expected This Year

According to a notation tucked into the DOJ's joint statement with Microsoft regarding continued compliance with various agreed-upon standards and remedies, Microsoft expects Service Pack 1 for Vista to be in beta by the end of the year. In addition, a Microsoft security executive released data Thursday showing that, six months after shipping Windows Vista, his company has left more publicly disclosed Vista bugs unpatched than it did with Windows XP.

Mandriva Corporate Desktop 4.0 Released

Mandriva has released Corporate Desktop 4.0 "Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Corporate Desktop 4.0, the brand new version of its enterprise-dedicated work station. Ergonomically designed, secure, comprehensive, easy to use and to administer: by consulting its corporate clients and building on its own expertise in the desktop area, Mandriva developed Corporate Desktop 4.0, a distro that can be installed in less than 15 minutes and extensively customized thanks to a new post-installation tool."

SkyOS Beta Build-6753 Available

SkyOS Beta build 6753 has been released. The installation procedure is now provided through a Live CD session thanks to BranchFS. This build includes the new C++ API, which makes development much easier. It also comes with three new services (PowerMonitor, SpellChecker and Registrar) and support for 45 more ATA/SATA chipsets. It also offers initial support for GNU classpath, Kaffe and Wine.

Introducing Compiz Fusion

The merger between compiz and Beryl now has a name: Compiz Fusion. "Our previous attempts to select a project name have not gone well. We tried a poll but the names in the poll were not pre-qualified to determine if they were usable and the 'winning' name was also a strongly disliked name. Kristian and I each proposed a plan to select a name, but that effort got sidetracked by a massive flame war on the mailing list. While our community has some democratic features, ultimately it is a meritocracy and the people who contribute the most value have the most say. So in the end a decision was made by the majority of the people who have contributed the most."

Size Isn’t Everything for the Modest Creator of SQLite

"In a world of people obsessed by turning the tiniest idea into something profitable, Dr Richard Hipp's best-known software stands out for two reasons - he actively disclaims copyright in it; and at a time when multi-megabyte installations are booming, he has a self-imposed limit on the size of his product: 250KB. And he's stuck to both aims. 'I think we've got 15 kilobytes of spare space,' he says of the headroom left in the code."