Monthly Archive:: May 2008

Fedora 9: an OS that Even the Linux Challenged Can Love

Submitted by Rahul 2008-05-17 Red Hat 43 Comments

The Fedora team has clearly spent a lot of time trying to refine some of the smaller, but perhaps more common user interface elements in some thoughtful ways. Take, for instance, the new setting that allows you to manage power settings from the login screen. It's a small tweak but it makes shutting down simple. There's no need to login when you wake from hibernate - just shut down straight from the login screen. Similar attention to these basics can be found throughout the new release.

Microsoft Demonstrates Windows XP on the XO

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-16 Windows 87 Comments

Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child project have announced an agreement to work together on getting Windows XP available on the XO laptop, with trials starting in June 2008, and the RTM date set for August or September. Microsoft also demonstrated Windows XP Professional and Office 2003 running on the XO laptop - fully featured.

Guest post by JoanneRodgers 2008-05-15 Office 63 Comments

In a June 2003 Wired Magazine interview, Martha Stewart said, "Bill Gates' house, for example, is totally out of date now. He built it right before wireless happened. The big tunnels for all his wires - he doesn't need any of that stuff anymore." The article wasn't about networking, or even technology, but I was struck by that statement because it was echoed by several people when I was explaining that I was running many thousands of feet of cable in OSNews' "house of the future." "Is all that cable really necessary now that there's wireless everything?" people said. As much as I respect Martha Stewart's business and design acumen, neither she, nor those people who talked to me, know what they're talking about. When it comes to networking, there's no substitute for a wire, when a wire's available. -- This is the latest entry in our 2008 Article Contest.

Submitted by Eugenia Loli 2008-05-15 Graphics 12 Comments

Read Write Web has an interesting article on the concept of the contextual user interface. A contextual user interface - as the name implies - is an interface which adapts to the current wishes of its users, the context. The interface will change according to the actions the user takes; present a set of minimal options, and show other options as the user goes along. While the article makes some good points, it also contains some generalisations that I find rather debatable.

Submitted by TLZ_ 2008-05-15 Qt 24 Comments

There is a group of consistency freaks out there (like myself) who are not very fond of mixing Gtk+ with Qt applications. The reasons for this are not just graphical, but also behavioural; Gtk+ applications behave differently than Qt applications (menus are different, layout is different, etc.). Trolltech obviously can't tackle the behavioural side of this issue, but they can tackle the graphical one. This is exactly where QGtkStyle comes into play.

OpenSolaris: Shows Promise, Needs Work

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-15 Solaris 35 Comments

Last week, on my country's Liberation Day, Sun released OpenSolaris 2008.05, the much awaited first official fruit of Project Indiana. It delivers many of OpenSolaris' major features, such as DTrace, ZFS, containers, and more, in a Linux distribution-like package. The goal is to allow more people to experience Solaris. A few reviews have since hit the web.

Submitted by gonzo 2008-05-15 Mono 118 Comments

On his blog, Miguel de Icaza announced the first public releases of Moonlight. Moonlight is the open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight, the company's Flash competitor. Moonlight is not yet free of bugs, though.

‘OLPC Could Be the IBM Global Services of Laptop Programs’

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-14 Hardware 84 Comments

Back in November of 2006, I wrote a piece about the One Laptop Per Child Project. I was afraid that the project's focus on creating a whole new paradigm (the Sugar UI) would ultimately intervene with the actual goal of the project: teaching stuff to kids. Ivan Krstic, former director of security architecture at OLPC, wrote an essay in which he heavily criticises the OLPC project.

Opera Mini 4.1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2008-05-14 Opera 9 Comments

Opera Software announced the availability of Opera Mini 4.1 for cellphones, which introduces the following new features: Opera Mini 4.1 is up to 50% faster than Opera Mini 4.0. The new Opera Mini will automatically suggest URL completions, making address input easy and intuitive. Web pages can be saved for later off-line viewing (newer Java implementation required). Opera Mini 4.1 gives you quick access to the word or phrase you want in Web pages. Images, ringtones and other content can be downloaded without leaving Opera Mini. You can test Opera Mini 4.1 from within your browser too (if you scroll all the way down on the mobile page of OSNews you can select between our desktop and mobile version).

Office 2008 SP1 Released, VBA Support To Return

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Office 42 Comments

Microsoft has released the first service pack to Microsoft Office:Mac 2008. The company also said that sales of Office:Mac 2008 have "soared", and that it is "selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years". Microsoft also had a surprise announcement about Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support.

Grape: a New Desktop

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Graphics 60 Comments

Rethinking the desktop metaphor, or even improving it in any significant way, is a daunting task, and few dare to take the risk. The end result is that the desktop metaphor that we use today barely changed over the years - which is quite unique for the computing industry, as normally, things change very rapidly.

Fedora 9 Released

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Fedora Core 69 Comments

The Fedora Project has pushed out its 9th release. The release announcement is one of those fancy story ones, without much actual information, but an earlier email by Fedora project leader Paul Frields had some more interesting things to say.

Windows XP SP3: Problems, Performance Gains

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Windows 43 Comments

Windows XP SP3, the final service pack for Windows XP, was released to manufacturing a few weeks ago, and popped up on Windows Update about a week later. Even though the service pack is rather light on actual new features, it still caused a few problems for some users. Despite these problems, some benchmarks show that while SP3 delivers better performance compared to XP SP2, Microsoft seems to have solved many performance issues with Vista, turning the company's latest OS offering into the better choice for gaming - according to ExtremeTech.

A History of the Amiga, Part 7: Game on!

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-13 Amiga & AROS 24 Comments

Ars Technica's Jeremy Reimer has published the 7th instalment in their series on the history of the Amiga platform. Part 7 deals solely with gaming on the Amiga, detailing various classic Amiga games that in one way or the other pushed the envelope. "The Amiga started out its life as a dedicated games machine, and even though it grew into a full computer very quickly, it never lost its gaming side. The machine's 4096-color palette, stereo sampled sound, and graphics acceleration chips made it a perfect gaming platform, and it didn't take long for game companies to start taking advantage of this power."

Submitted by diegocg 2008-05-12 Wayland 27 Comments

The X Windowing System is the graphical backbone of most UNIX-like operating systems (and OpenVMS) - despite lots and lots of criticism, the system has withstood the test of time. Despite its age, development on X has not slowed down - in fact, it only seems to have picked up. A few weeks ago, we had kernel-based mode setting, and today we have the X server running as user instead of root.

Microsoft To Discount Windows XP for ULPCs

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-12 Windows 70 Comments

Last week, we reported on a peculiar price difference in Australia between the Linux and Windows versions of the Asus Eee PC 900, the new model in the Eee line. The Windows model was 50 USD cheaper than the Linux model - the Linux model did have a bigger hard drive, but interestingly, the version with the smaller hard drive was not available as a Linux machine. This gave rise to speculation that Microsoft had been putting pressure on Asus to favour Windows XP over Linux. It appears Microsoft's assault in this segment of the market goes deeper than just Asus and the Eee alone.

Anatomy of Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux)

Eugenia Loli 2008-05-11 Linux 21 Comments

Linux has been described as one of the most secure operating systems available, but the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken Linux to the next level with the introduction of Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). SELinux takes the existing GNU/Linux operating system and extends it with kernel and user-space modifications to make it bullet-proof. If you're running a 2.6 kernel today, you might be surprised to know that you're using SELinux right now! This article explores the ideas behind SELinux and how it's implemented.

The Popup Scrollbar Concept

Submitted by Thorsten Wilms 2008-05-10 Graphics 37 Comments

As you may remember from our series on common usability terms, I have a lot of interest in graphical user interface concepts. In addition, I applaud anyone trying to improve existing concepts, people that try to think beyond set conventions to come up with an improved version of that concept, or a new concept altogether. Thorsten Wilms took on the well-established concept of the scrollbar, and came up with a few interesting tweaks.

Submitted by rosebug 2008-05-10 Bugs & Viruses 52 Comments

1983. The year of the IBM PC XT, the Apple Lisa, Pioneer 10 leaving the solar system, and Hooters opening up shop in Florida. It's also the birthyear of a 25 year old BSD bug, squashed only a few days ago.

Perceptive Pixel’s ‘Magic Wall’ Finds New Niche

Thom Holwerda 2008-05-09 In the News 10 Comments

Multitouch has more or less turned into a buzzword these days - sometimes, its implementation makes sense and comes out as pretty useful (see the iPhone and Microsoft's Surface), however, other implementations turn out be debatable. There is another implementation out there, one that received a lot less attention from the press than the aforementioned cases: Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel.