Monthly Archive:: June 2007

"Imagine a customized GNU/Linux distribution, built to your specifications with a minimal amount of effort on your part. If you are running Fedora 7, that dream is now a reality, thanks to Revisor, a graphical interface for building custom install images for Fedora. Taking the shape of a GNOME wizard, Revisor comes close to being an ideal desktop tool. Inexperienced users can use its default settings without much knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes, while more expert users can customize each aspect of producing an .ISO."

"The Linux kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers. In this article, you explore the general structure of the Linux kernel and get to know its major subsystems and core interfaces."

In its second such agreement this week, Microsoft has struck a deal under which it will extend amnesty to a company that's using what the software maker claims is patented Microsoft intellectual property embedded in the open source Linux computer operating system. Under a deal with LG Electronics, disclosed late Wednesday, Microsoft will forgo any Linux-related patent claims against the South Korean electronics manufacturer. In return, Microsoft will gain access to certain intellectual property produced by LG.

The KOffice team has released KOffice 1.6.3. "This is the last maintenance release of the 1.6 series, containing mainly bug fixes. There are bug fixes for almost all of the components. See the complete changelog for the complete information."

Parallels 3.0 has just been released. Parallels is about to get more competition, however. Virtualization specialist VMWare, which has been testing its own Fusion product for the Mac, plans to release a fourth beta on Friday, with a goal of releasing the product later this summer. Video of Fusion here.

Kolibri 0.7.0.0 has been released. "Less than 4 months since our previous release and we are glad to give you a new one, Kolibri 0.7.0.0. There are quite a lot of changes for such a small amount of time. The kernel was modified to use a flat memory model and to support fast system calls (sysenter, syscall). There are also many other changes such as kernel configuration using external ini-file, special /sys directory, system boot screen improvements, and much more." The web operating system EyeOS 1.0 (and 1.0.1 shortly after) has also been released.

"Alex Ionescu, the ReactOS kernel coordinator, has resigned. Alex first joined the project in 2004, around the 0.2.2 release. Since then, he's been at the center of quite a few squabbles about how to code the kernel. However, Alex has also been responsible for completely rewriting the kernel almost from the ground up. Today, about 60% of the kernel code is probably his. The reason for Alex's departure is because of his joining David Solomon's Expert Seminars as an instructor. Because this job would place him in close contact with many Microsoft programmers and also give him access to other Microsoft properties, continuing with the project would have resulted in possible conflicts of interest."

"Tired of all the ads on AIM? Want access to more services than just Yahoo!? There are lots of IM client choices besides the big three - AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger). The software we examine here lets you hook into any of these three services, and usually more besides, like Jabber. Not all of these applications will offer all of the features you'll find on the big guys - video and voice chat come to mind - but most of them do a good job of unobtrusively keeping you in contact with your comrades."

"What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better. As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals award, which it says it gives to 'exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others'. However, his cherished status did not last."

From information posed on the OpenSolaris discussion boards 4Front Technologies plan to offer the source code of OSS v4 under both the CDDL and GPLv2 licenses. "The rumors are true, we're planning on open sourcing Open Sound (on June 14th). We will be offering the source code under CDDL to Solaris and GPLv2 for Linux BSD, OpenServer etc."

"The Symphony OS Project is pleased to announce the release of Symphony OS 2007.06. This is our first release based fully on Ubuntu and even though many improvements have not yet made it into this release, we hope to speed up the release schedule over the next couple months to help us settle into our new Ubuntu base system."

Perhaps overcome with excitement (and forgetting that Apple doesn't like such pre-emptive disclosures), Sun's Jonathan Schwartz announced today at Sun event in D.C. that Apple would be making ZFS 'the file system' in OSX 10.5 Leopard. "In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS X."

The European Union's second highest court is expected to rule on Sept. 17 whether the European Commission was right in 2004 to find that Microsoft violated antitrust laws, sources familiar with the matter said. Sept. 17 is the final working day before the retirement of Court of First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf, who is presiding over the landmark case. The ruling is expected to clarify whether the European Commission can continue to pursue the case, or whether it must pull back and permit Microsoft to continue its business practices.

"I remember the day I was interviewed at VMware. I was asked what I would do to improve Workstation, and one of the things I said was that it would be nice to make a VM go rootless. That is, pull application windows out of the VM and make them integrate well with the operating system. I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people wanted this type of feature. It’s been discussed for years, but it’s always been hard to find the manpower to do it. But competition is good, and we finally got some people on this feature. And it turned out spectacularly."