Monthly Archive:: February 2008

Despite expectations for a March 18 release, reports all over the Internet have surfaced that Vista SP1 x64 RTM has been released via Windows Update. Not everyone seems to have access to it (yet, keep hitting that 'Check for Updates' button): it has only appeared for certain individuals at the moment. The update is of course optional; users need to manually choose to download it even if they have their Windows Update set to retrieve updates automatically.

"Leopard started out with a generous share of first-version glitches, but almost all of them have now been resolved by the second of two automated updates, which brings Leopard up to version 10.5.2. Finally, Leopard is extravagantly overdressed for the jobs that it's designed to do, and its pervasive eye-candy starts out looking dazzling but soon becomes distracting. Fortunately, from the beginning, the OS started out with options that let you put it on a low-eye-sugar diet, and the latest update has even more."

Comic: "Menubar".

Ars has reviewed the new Mac Pro. "The performance of Harpertown and Stoakley is more evidence that Intel is doing right by Apple, and this eight-core monster is a worthy successor to the Mac Pro name. At USD 3599, it's expensive; the USD 800 cheaper 2.8GHz model will likely be adequate for the majority of users. But if you want maximum performance and a machine that's unlikely to show its age anytime soon, the Mac Pro is a good buy."

Today, after much feedback and evaluation, we implemented some changes to the way OSNews "moderation" works. Previously, we had a dual-purposed feedback system - an "up" vote was based on agreement, but a "down" vote was based on specific rules. We've changed the way things work around here, read more for the details.

"Although I have some doubts that XFCE is 'so very much lighter' than GNOME (GNOME 2.20 doesn't take too much memory if you don't start all kind of crap), it is still lighter, and in a few years there will be less and less antiquated computers who require extra-light window managers (Fluxbox, Openbox, Blackbox, WindowMaker, IceWM). XFCE is reasonably mature, and constantly improving, so it has all the chances to become the mid-weighted Desktop Environment of choice pretty soon! What is XFCE needing to reach the Nirvana? Here's the way I see things."

Google is funding work to ensure the Windows version of Adobe Systems' Photoshop and other Creative Suite software can run on Linux computers. "We hired CodeWeavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine," Dan Kegel, of Google's software engineering team and the Wine 1.0 release manager, said on Google's open-source blog. "Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now... We look forward to further improvements in this area."

Comic: "Because I can".

"This report covers FreeBSD related projects between October and December 2007. AsiaBSDCon 2008 is approaching and will be held at the Tokyo University of Science in Tokyo, Japan on the 27th - 30th of March 2008. The FreeBSD Foundation has released a Newsletter detailing their activities over the past few months. FreeBSD 7.0 is nearing release and the 2nd Release Canidate is ready for testing and is available for download now."

Role-based access control is a general security model that simplifies administration by assigning roles to users and then assigning permissions to those roles. Learn how RBAC in SELinux acts as a layer of abstraction between the user and the underlying TE model, and how the three pieces of an SELinux context (policy, kernel, and userspace) work together to enforce the RBAC and tie Linux users into the TE policy.

E16 version 0.16.8.12 has been released. "Fix showing tiled external background pixmap in pager; fix edge flip brokenness (causing random mouse jumps when flipping); new window placement algorithm. Should be better at handling crowded desktops and windows with never_use_area attribute; add configuration of default opacities; various minor bug fixes and enhancements."

"KDE 4 is seen by many to be the next big step on the free software desktop, while others think releasing 4.0 in its current condition was misleading and a mistake. Either way, it's an innovative release and inline with Fedora's goal of providing the latest and greatest free software it is set to be the default KDE environment in the next major release of Fedora. We caught up with two members of the KDE SIG to talk about the work they're doing to get it ready for release, their own opinions on the software and what they think about the progress made by Fedora in getting over its GNOME centric reputation."

"By popular demand, I decided to push the limits of Xfce's customisability even further. This time, I would make it look like Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. This task proved more difficult than trying to make it look like Windows Vista. Though I haven't achieved the same degree of perfection as I did when replicating Vista, I still think I came pretty close."

Jorge G. Mare (Koki) has written down his thoughts on Haiku's presence at SCaLE 6x. "This past weekend Bruno G. Albuquerque, Joe Bushong and myself represented Haiku at the sixth Southern California Linux Expo conference, best known as SCaLE 6x, held on February 9 and 10 in the city of Los Angeles. This was the second year in a row that we organized a presence for Haiku at this event, and since we had so much fun last year, we were all looking forward to doing it again this time around."