Monthly Archive:: September 2009

Apart from Linux and the various BSD operating systems, there's another open source UNIX-like operating system (actually, it's a certified UNIX): OpenSolaris. There are a few key differences between Linux and OpenSolaris, and TuxRadar lists some of them so that Linux users can dive right into Solaris.

Novell has announced MonoTouch 1.0, a commercial SDK kit that allows developers to build iPhone apps using Microsoft's .Net Framework instead of the Apple-designated C or Objective-C languages. The SDK leverages Novell's Mono runtime for running Windows apps on non-Windows systems, allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for .Net and programming languages like C#.

"WebGL is basically an initiative to bring 3D graphics into web browsers natively, without having to download any plugins. This is achieved by adding a few things to HTML5, namely, defining a JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0 and letting you draw things into a 3D context of the canvas element." Also see the press release for more details.

After eight years of hard work, the day has finally arrived. Today, September 14, the Haiku project has released its very first alpha release. With the goal of recreating one of the most beloved operating systems in history, the BeOS, they took on no small task, but it seems as if everything is finally starting to come together. Let's talk about the history of the BeOS, where Haiku comes from, and what the Alpha is like.

And yet another Week in Review, number 42 to be exact, so I guess this week is pretty important, you know, with life, the universe, and everything and all that stuff. It wasn't a particularly strong week or anything, but we still got some interesting stuff to look back upon.

"For the last 12 months, I have used Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04 as my primary OSes. I remain a very happy Linux convert, but I worry that Ubuntu is being unevenly developed. Certain areas have seen great improvements over the last 12 months, while other areas have languished or been largely ignored. The purpose of this article is not to whine or rant, but to bring some perspective to the evolution (or lack thereof) that Ubuntu has experienced between versions 8.04 and 9.04."

The British government has issued an official apology for the treatment Alan Turing received after WWII. "The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the 'appalling' way he was treated for being gay. Alan Turing, a mathematician most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes, was convicted of 'gross indecency' in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration. Gordon Brown's statement came in response to a petition posted on the Number 10 website which has received thousands of signatures in recent months."

One of the main new features in Apple's new Snow Leopard operating system has been released as open source. Apple has released the code of the userland portion of its Grand Central Dispatch technology under the Apache License, version 2. Mac OS X also has kernel support for Grand Central Dispatch, which is also released as open source via the XNU project. While we're at it, let's take this opportunity to look into exactly what Grand Central Dispatch is.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is barely out the door, and Apple has already released the first update, Mac OS X 10.6.1, which includes, among other things, the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player. "This update is recommended for Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard users and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac."

In an attempt to show just how slow South Africa's Telkom broadband is, a frustrated IT company had a race to see which would be faster: transferring 4GB by sending a USB drive via pigeon 60 miles away, or transferring the files via the broadband connection. There were even rules in place so as to not have any unfair advantage over the broadband such as "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within." It was faster to send the data by pigeon than by broadband. It took the bird about an hour to reach the recipient station, and it took another hour to transfer the data to the other computer. The file being transferred via the broadband connection was still at 4%. Telkom said that it is not responsible for the firm's slow Internet speed. Winston, the bird, is safely back in the IT office, probably enjoying birdseed without any performance-enhancing caplets mixed in.

There we are! It took them a while, but Oracle has finally said a few things about the future of Sun's SPARC and Solaris products. Oracle placed an ad in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal listing four plans the company has with SPARC and Solaris.

"Though the open source FreeBSD operating system has changed in many aspects over the last 16 years of its life, one item that has remained relatively static is its underlying network routing architecture. No more: It's getting an overhaul with the upcoming FreeBSD 8.0 release. FreeBSD 8.0, due out next month, will include a new routing architecture that takes advantage of parallel processing capabilities. According to its developers, the update will provide FreeBSD 8.0 with a faster more advanced routing architecture than the legacy architecture."

Performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software has released an array of real-world Windows use data as compiled by its exo.performance.network, a community-based monitoring tool that receives real-time data from about 10,000 PCs throughout the world. Tracking users specific configurations, as well as the applications they actually use, the tool provides insights into real-world Windows use, including browser share, multicore adoption, service pack adoption, and which anti-virus, productivity, and media software users are most prevalent among Windows users. Of note is the fact that, two years after Vista's release, not even 30 percent of PCs actually run it, that OpenOffice.org is making inroads into the Microsoft Office user base, and that, despite the rise of Firefox, Internet Explorer remains the standard option for inside-the-firewall apps.

Probably the most often requested feature for Google's Chrome web browser was an extensions framework so that users can expand the functionality of Chrome in the same way people currently do for Firefox. Chrome has had an extensions framework for a while now, but it was turned off by default. They've now turned it on by default on the dev channel.