Monthly Archive:: February 2008

"FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance and now can take advantage of multi-core/CPUs systems very well... So well that some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD systems showed release 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostreSQL or MySQL. Federico Biancuzzi interviewed two dozen developers to discuss all the cool details of FreeBSD 7.0: networking and SMP performance, SCTP support, the new IPSEC stack, virtualization, monitoring frameworks, ports, storage limits and a new journaling facility, what changed in the accounting file format, jemalloc(), ULE, and more."

Comic: "Gnome".

As predicted by many, Apple today announced upgrades to their Macbook and Macbook Pro line of computers. Both feature the new 45nm Intel Penryn processors, larger hard drives, 802.11n wifi, and for the Macbook Pro, a multi-touch trackpad. Both are "available immediately, shipping immediately." No word on the iPhone SDK.

Microsoft has sent an e-mail to a select number of its previous beta testers regarding the upcoming release of IE8 beta 1. "We are nearing the launch of Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and we will be making it available for the general public to download and test. IE8 Beta 1 is focused on the developer community, with the goal of gaining valuable feedback to improve Internet Explorer 8 during the development process."

"The Ubuntu development community has announced that the fifth Ubuntu 8.04 prerelease is now available for testing. Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 5 adds additional polish and reliability as well as a few intriguing new features. The official release of Ubuntu 8.04, codenamed Hardy Heron, is scheduled for late April and feature freeze is already in effect. One of the most significant new features added in alpha 5 is support for Wubi, a new installation mechanism that makes it easier for Ubuntu and Windows to coexist on the same computer. Wubi provides a complete Ubuntu installer that can be run in Windows from the Ubuntu Live CD. It installs Ubuntu into a folder on the Windows file system and sets up a boot menu so that users can choose between Windows and Ubuntu when the computer starts." My take: The Linux world is playing catch-up to the BeOS world, I see?

"The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software."

Comic: "Sigh".

"KDE 4.1 will be what everyone expected 4.0 to be - a fully functional revolutionary Linux desktop. I took a look at the revision 777000 of this desktop environment and what you get is a visual changelog describing the current progress in terms of look and feel and the features." It has Bejeweled KDiamond? I'm sold.

"For the past several weeks we have been referencing AMD's 'tcore' in several of our articles, which is a user-space software suite that has been developed and used internally at ATI by engineers to work on various aspects of their binary drivers. Tcore is primarily used for testing prior to the availability of the actual silicon for their forthcoming graphics processors. John Bridgman and Alex Deucher have been working tediously to get this tcore source-code sanitized and cleared for public release, and finally they have reached this milestone. AMD has just published the first bits of open-source 3D programming documentation for ATI GPUs. This 3D programming documentation covers the R500 series and even goes back with information on the R300/400 series as well. The R600 3D programming guide will also be out soon. This information available today is what will foster the growth of open-source R500/600 3D support for the Radeon and RadeonHD drivers as well as R600 2D acceleration."

The time may come where you will have to burn both a Blu-Ray disc for your family, and an HD-DVD disc for your boss who got hurried out and bought that HD-DVD player just so he can show off to all of you who waited for the format war outcome. Besides, while the HD format war is over, there are still over 1.3 million HD-DVD devices out there. I have modified some HD authoring methods found on the net in a way that 80% of the work to be done is the same for both formats, and with the rest 20% of the work only taking an additional 10 minutes for each format to be muxed and burned. Blu-Ray method is here, and the HD-DVD method is here (methods are identical up to step #7). Not only that, but you won't even need an HD burner, as these methods exercise plain DVD-R discs and they are using freeware tools.

"A little over a year after the first appearance of Vista, Service Pack 1 is nearly ready for download. SP1 is a useful but not crucial update to the OS, and one that won't greatly affect your computing day, at least not outwardly. The bulk of the development effort has gone toward upgrading security subsystems - elements that enterprise clients find appealing but consumers and small-business users won't really notice (although they'll feel better knowing about them). The bottom line is that there's absolutely no reason not to download SP1 (which you'll receive automatically if you have AutoUpdate turned on), so it's almost a given that it will become the standard in the very near future."

JNode 0.2.6 has been released. "JNode is a free, open source Java technology based OS written fully in Java language (with a very small assembler nano-kernel). This release features over 99 percent java 6 api compatibility, hotswapping, nfs, hfs+, even more openJDK integration, jetty6 and of course bug fixes and improvements."

Microsoft rolled out its big guns, including CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, to underscore its commitment to the set of new interoperability principles announced Feb. 21 that are designed to increase the openness of its high-volume products and drive greater interoperability. In fact, Microsoft's long-term success depends on its ability to deliver a software and services platform that is open and flexible and provides customers and developers with choice, Ballmer said during a media teleconference. The EU is skeptical on Microsoft's pledges, according to Ars.

A few days ago the AROS team published quite an extensive update on AROS' status. Progress has been made on porting AROS to the sam440 board, Traveller (Webkit-based browser for AROS) has made some strides, and work has begun on a load of manuals for AROS, among other things.