Monthly Archive:: July 2007

"The latest release candidate for eComStation has been released and it has some new interesting features as well. We wanted to take a look at it to see how easy it is to install. Why? Well, for many users the installation procedure has been and still is a painfull chapter when it comes to OS2 and eComStation. So in this article we will primarily focus on how easy this RC1 release installs on various pieces of hardware."

The ReactOS project has released a new newsletter. "The past few weeks have seen quite a lot of activity. At least six major blocker bugs were dealt with, ranging from the network issue to various bugs in the command line console." On top of that: "Some people aren't aware that ReactOS was one of several projects that received hardware to test on from One Laptop Per Child. Aleksey has been playing around with it, slowly coaxing ReactOS to boot."

Today, we bring you the first installment in a series of short interviews with lead/prominent developers of many "smaller" operating systems. In this new series, dubbed "Five Questions", every interviewee will answer the same five questions about the project they are part of. The series will be kicked off by Axel Dorfler, the prominent Haiku developer.

"Sometimes, a service pack comes along that really makes a big difference. Take NT. Before SP3, it was garbage; afterwards Microsoft had its first server operating system that was worth anything. XP before SP2 was so-so, but after SP2, it became Microsoft's best desktop operating system ever (sorry, Vista). And, now, with its SP1 for SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), Novell has given an already excellent business desktop a real kick in the pants."

Even though patent talks between Microsoft and Red Hat broke down last year before Microsoft went on to sign a technical collaboration and patent indemnity deal with Novell, Red Hat is still willing to work with the Redmond software maker on the interoperability front. But the Linux vendor wants to limit those talks to pure interoperability between Windows and Red Hat Linux, with the goal of solving real customer problems, Paul Cormier, Red Hat's executive vice president of engineering, told eWEEK.

You might have noticed some user icons next to some comments today, this is because we enabled Gravatar support. Gravatar acts as a centralized identity pool where blogs, news sites (and recently Revver.com) can use their service and offer a universal icon for each unique email address. As long as you register on Gravatar with the same email address registered on OSNews, your personalized icon will be shown on OSNews (and on all other sites that support Gravatar) automatically. This is a testing period for Gravatar here at OSNews, and there are no guarantees whatsoever that the v4 version of OSNews will use that icon system or its own. It all depends on the kind of quality, stability and responsiveness we get from Gravatar's servers. So, upload your own icon at Gravatar.com and test away! Ability to turn off user icons will be built-in on v4.

"Talking with quite a few people at OLS last week, it seems there are still quite a few misconceptions about just how patched various kernels were throughout the history of Red Hat. One particularly egregious statement I heard was 'Early Red Hat kernels had ~2000 patches'. Here's some hard facts on exactly how many patches were in each release."

As the number of Linux kernel contributors continues to grow, core developers are finding themselves mostly managing and checking, not coding, said Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of USB and PCI support in Linux and co-author of Linux Device Drivers, in a talk at the Linux Symposium in Ottawa Thursday. In the latest kernel release, the most active 30 developers authored only 30% of the changes, while two years ago, the top 20 developers did 80% of the changes, he said.

"The more I think about Microsoft, the more I realise that they are, possibly for the first time, seriously cornered (or surrounded, depending on how you want to see it). A little history will clarify why I think so - and why I think that this might really be the beginning of the end for Microsoft."

"When we launched Windows Vista in January 2007, we identified Windows Ultimate Extras as a unique series of add-ons that would be available to Windows Vista Ultimate customers. To date, we have released four sets of Extras - Windows Hold'Em, 16 Language Packs for the Windows multi-language user interface, Secure Online Key Backup, and Windows BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool. We want to let our Windows Vista Ultimate customers know that we are actively working to deliver the remaining Extras that we identified in January."

"Late this spring, Palm, Inc. took the wraps off the Foleo, the first device in its new third product category. When it debuts in the next few months, this won't be a handheld or smartphone, instead it will something Palm is calling a mobile companion. I recently spent some time with a prototype unit, and I'd like to share my first impressions." More here.

The issue between WINE and Parallels has been solved. "On July 2nd, Parallels sent the modified sources to me (Stefan Dosinger). I looked at them, and they are functionally mostly unmodified, except of some changes to get wined3d to compile on Windows(nameless unions, and similar things). What is yet to be verified is if these are the sources used to build the libs shipped in Parallels Desktop for Mac."

The Syllable team has released a development build which includes the new ABrowse. "This week's development build is now available and includes the new version of ABrowse. It will only run on 0.6.4, so if you've been waiting to try it, now is your chance! Note that there is no way to upgrade from a previous release of Syllable using a development build, so unless you're happy to replace your existing installation, wait for the official release of 0.6.4 or use a virtual machine i.e. VMware or Qemu."

Apple has released two updates, Audio Update 2007-001 and Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update v1.1 (Intel). "The Audio Update 2007-001 addresses an issue with version 1.0 of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update in which a 'popping' sound might be heard with some external speakers on Intel-based Mac. This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.10."