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Monthly Archive:: April 2009

Palm Demoes Pre Third Party Apps, Says SDK Ready for Release

After a bit of a long pause, Palm has fed the media with some more details on its upcoming lifesaver, the Palm Pre smartphone with its webOS. Even though Palm didn't give a launch date or pricing information, it did show us a number of third party applications. And there was also something for those of you who still swear by PalmOS Garnet: a fully functional PalmOS emulator for the Pre. There's also some news on the Mojo SDK.

KDE 4.2.2 Released

We're really in a KDE/GNOME mood today, it would seem. The KDE team has released the second maintenance release for the KDE 4.2 series, KDE 4.2.2. The three biggest improvements in this release are stability fixes in KRunner, performance enhancements in KMail, and bugfixes, performance improvements and optimization in KHTML. As always, this release will find it way to your distributor of choice soon enough, but if you're impatient, you can always build it yourself.

Retro Linux News: KDE 2.2 Live CD Available

My first thought was that this was an April Fool's joke, but as it turns out, this is real (I actually downloaded and tested it). The openSUSE KDE team has created a KDE 2.2.2 live CD using openSUSE 11.1 as a base. It boots like any other live CD, but instead of the latest and greatest KDE 3.x or 4.x desktop, you're presented with a fully functional KDE 2.2.2 desktop. That sure brought back some memories!

OSNews Goes Open Source

We here at OSNews take open source software seriously. That's why, today, we're making our site's source code available to the public. While some sites have inline SQL statements, embedded passwords, afterthought modules, and sensitive data embedded into their pages, at OSNews, we have a strict system that employs no hacks whatsoever to extend functionality. This is why our site rarely changes look-and-feel and rolls out new features slowly, only after they've been rigorously tested. This code is offered under the BSD license: feel free to use it as you wish! So, today, we're proud to offer you the code that powers OSNews.com. Be sure to start with the README file to get started! Enjoy responsibly.

Rackable Systems Buys Bankrupt SGI

Silicon Graphics Inc., the perma-struggling workstation-turned-server-maker, filed for bankruptcy protection today, and was immediately bought by Rackable Systems. Rackable has signed to take on all of SGI's liabilities. The deal is expected to complete in 60 days. The combined company will target the hyper-competitive market for x86 boxes for cluster and high performance computing, internet and cloud services. "This combination gives us the potential for significant operational synergies, a strong balance sheet, and positions the combined company for long-term growth and profitability," said Rackable CEO Mark Barrenechea.

Collecting Underpants in the Cloud

The technology world is all aflame about "cloud computing", and how businesses are supposed to move all of their stuff into the cloud, or die. Or something. In my eyes, "cloud" is simply a different name for the internet, and cloud computing is simply a different and fancier name for what most internet users have been doing for ages.