Monthly Archive:: June 2007

The Internet opens new doors to artists, there is no question about that. And between geeks like us here at OSNews, we should be supporting the independent artists. The most well-known online Indie short film competition, DVXFest, finished last week and the results are in. The latest theme was "make a spy movie", and one of our favorites, "Imprint" by Van Blumreich was awarded second place (a production that cost just $500). The story is set in a somewhat-futuristic time that's been plagued by the deadly Long Virus. Rob Cardine is dying of it and in order to keep himself alive, he carries out ethically questionable assignments in order to receive treatments for his disease. But when an assignment goes wrong, Rob is confronted with his own questions of ethics and humanity. How far is too far? Click here to download and view the short movie for free (48 MB), and read more for our interview with Van Blumreich.

Development plans for Ubuntu 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon) were announced last night on the Ubuntu development mailing list. Scheduled for official release in late October, Gutsy Gibbon will include version 2.6.22 of the Linux kernel, GNOME 2.20, and Xorg 7.3. Kubuntu 7.10 will feature KDE 3.5.7 and offer optional packages for KDE 4.0 RC2. Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition will feature some nice additions, including support for Novell's AppArmor security framework.

Apple on Wednesday afternoon released Mac OS X 10.4.10, a free maintenance update recommended for all PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers running versions of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The update includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific enhancements to RAW camera support and third-party application support. Additionally, Apple said the update bundles security improvements and fixes for mounting and unmounting external USB devices.

"If you're a software enthusiast who has never used OpenBSD before, you might enjoy installing it by yourself and figuring it out as you go. If, however, you're looking for a more practical approach to using OpenBSD 4.1 on a desktop or server machine, here's a quick guide to get you started in this spectacular operating system."

Microsoft agreed Tuesday to make changes to the desktop search feature in Windows Vista in an effort to assuage Google and head off a further antitrust battle with U.S. regulators. Under the agreement, Microsoft will create a mechanism whereby both computer makers and individuals will be able to choose a default desktop search program, much as they can choose a rival browser or media player, even though those technologies are built into Windows.

"Apple’s Safari is making its way to the Windows platform with the serious intention of making a dent in the market. As brilliant as the people are at Apple, I can’t help but laugh at their, to put it politely, delusion. Before I ramble on too much, here are my five reasons why Safari will fail on the Windows platform." My take: Safari on Windows isn't here to take over the Windows browsing market. It's here for the iPhone.

Opera Mini 4.0-beta was released today and this seems to be one of the best surprises of the year. It has Javascript, CSS support and zoom-in support similar to the iPhone's, but with all the processing happening to another server instead of your cellphone. Read more for screenshots and info!

Mandriva has made a formal statement of its position regarding the recent Microsoft deals by other Linux vendors. "Up to now, there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents. So we think that, as in any democracy, people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith. So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from MS to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone."

"Last week the first open-source ATI R500 driver had entered the world. This new driver (named the xf86-video-avivo) is very early into development, but a small set of developers have been working on reverse engineering this GPU class for the past couple of months. This driver does not yet contain any 3D functionality or support for features that most end-users expect. At this point, the driver just contains very basic initialization and set video mode support for a portion of the Radeon X1000 family. Even with this very basic R500 driver, we couldn't help but to explore the Avivo driver for the past few days."

Novell has shipped the first service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10. "Novell today announced that the first service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is now available to customers worldwide. Featuring significant enhancements in virtualization, high-performance computing, security, interoperability and system management, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 from Novell lets organizations take advantage of the latest technical advances in the best-engineered, lowest-cost and most-interoperable platform for mission-critical computing."

"Serenity Systems International and Mensys BV are pleased to announce the immediate availability of eComStation 2.0 RC1. This release is available to customers with an active Software Subscriptions Services subcription." There are a lot of changes and new features; you can find them in the announcement and changelog.

A team comprised of members from Bell-Labs, IBM Research, Sandia National Labs, and Vita Nuova has completed a port of Plan 9 to the Blue Gene supercomputer. Plan 9 kernels are running on both the compute nodes and the I/O nodes and the Ethernet, Torus, Collective Network, Barrier Network, and Management network are all supported. Screenshots are available on the development blog, and a live-demo will be attempted during the USENIX poster session.

"Although USB connectors in monitors appeared many years ago, they have performed only secondary functions all this time. However, now Samsung offers an LCD monitor that is connected to the PC via the USB bus and can work without a graphics card."

"For the purpose of this article, just like the first one, a WebOS is defined as virtual operating system that runs in a web browser environement. Don’t like WebOS? Well, call it OnlineOS, or WebTop if you like. So, here is a review of another 10 functional WebOS', as well as some additional similar services which show promise but aren't launched or fully realized yet." More here.