Monthly Archive:: June 2009

"CRUX PPC 2.5 is now available. Supports Apple 32bit "NewWorld" G3/G4 and Apple 64bit G5, Genesi PegasosII and Efika, Acube Sam440ep, IBM RS/6000 CHRP32 (604e), YDL Powerstation, IBM Intellistation POWER, and IBM pSeries RS64/POWERn. CRUX PPC 2.5 is released as two different installation ISO: 32bit and 64bit. The 32bit version is based on a single lib toolchain instead the 64bit one comes with a multilib toolchain. These two versions share the same ports tree. To increase CRUX PPC usability on pSeries, starting from 2.5 we do provide ports for some IBM utils."

It seems like the DesktopBSD project's future is at stake due to a lack developers and time. "Hello everyone, sorry for not keeping in touch with you guys for quite a while," main developer Peter Hofer writes, "Truth is, I find myself having less and less time for DesktopBSD these days. In addition, my interests have shifted quite a bit since I started working on it in 2004 (thinking of it, that's almost 5 years ago now...). As a result, I don't really feel that I can make DesktopBSD progress steadily and significantly on my own. Unfortunately, there are no other active developers nor does it seem like there are any who would be interested in contributing." While the project is not dead yet, there will be no major changes or bugfixes for the upcoming 1.7 release, and it could very well be the project's last release.

And we have another Ask OSNews item! This one has to do with the recent article we ran on how I built my own Macintosh and installed a vanilla, unaltered copy of Mac OS X on it using the boot-132 method. One of our readers asked us: what is the best hardware to build a Mac out of?

ReactOS, the project to create a Windows NT-compatible operating system, has published another news update with some interesting news items. The legal position of the ReactOS Foundation has been strengthened, and now has a VeriSign certificate that might help other open source projects as well, the new ATA driver is more or less complete, and there's some progress in the area of video drivers.

The latest entry-level MacBook rolled out by Apple a week ago offers more than just an improvement on the white laptop it replaces in Apple's notebook line. According to Macworld Lab tests, this new system outperforms the 2GHz aluminum unibody MacBook that costs US$300 more.

Five Four years ago today, OSNews published some interesting articles. Apple announced it was dropping PPC for x86 (that one was a bombshell). That news was met with fear, excitement, and a fair bit of skepticism. Five Four years later, that decision has gone down as one of the smartest, gutsiest moves in computing business history. Congratulations to Apple's engineers for making it go so smoothly. We also examined whether "soon" personal computers will have the ability to respond to stimuli from the outside world, by seeing and interpreting video or other signals. We're still waiting on that one. (And the project we linked to is now a dead link). Note: due to a back-end Snafu, this one didn't post until the fifth, but it's still an interesting date in OSNews history, so enjoy.

Oracle was the first top-tier IT vendor to announce it was putting its key product - the database - on Linux. The logic was simple: Linux freed Oracle from depending on a single company for operating system - that company was Microsoft. Taking the baton from Sun Microsystems' co-founder and chairman Scott McNealy at JavaOne this week, Oracle's chief executive Larry Ellison has seen his opportunity for independence again. This time, however, he may struggle to get his way, and - in trying - actually hurt one of Sun's most prized and widely adopted open-source projects.

We all know Apple's App Store policies are a bit willy-nilly, inconsistent, and completely unreliable. This issue has been going on for a while now, and it doesn't see like anything has changed. The latest interesting App Store rejection is especially interesting, as it involves Apple rejecting an application related to one of its detractors: the EFF.

Late last night, The Windows Mobile team made the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit available, which is not a standalone Software Development Kit, but an add-on component for the Windows Mobile 6 SDK. The Toolkit includes emulator images, new touch and gesture APIs, and code samples for developing software for Windows Mobile 6.5.

Gary Anthes offers an overview history of Unix forty years since Ken Thompson banged out the first version in assembly language for a wimpy DEC PDP-7 minicomputer, spending one week each on the operating system, a shell, an editor, and an assembler. Also included in the package are a year-by-year time line of its evolution, and profiles of Unix giants David Korn, Rick Rashid, and Gordon Bell.

The Palm Pre will hit the stores on Saturday, June 6, and it has a very important task to fulfil. Contrary to what the sensationlist media want you to believe, that task is not to dethrone the iPhone, but to save a flailing company. Palm requires for its very survival that the Pre and its brand-new operating system webOS is a success. CNet has taken the Palm Pre through its paces, and despite some flaws, they were quite pleased, especially on the software front. Update: Another review, from Engadget: "To put it simply, the Pre is a great phone, and we don't feel any hesitation saying that."

"We take a close look at some of the most influential personal computers of the past 40 years. From pre-microprocessor machines to the venerated IBM PC, each of these systems contributed in some way to the modern personal computing era." Some very pretty machines in there.

Opera have announced the general availability of Opera 10 beta. Opera 10 includes an improved rendering engine Presto v2.2. The beta adds a new default skin and a couple of new features, notably "Turbo", a proxy compressor for dial-up users, and tab previews. The result? Complete fail. Read More for why and a quick screenshot tour. addendum: As an apology to the community for the reckless and inadequate review I will be doing it again, properly, taking into consideration your fine comments.