Monthly Archive:: December 2009

The time of Christmas is obviously upon us. Programmers and bloggers all over the world are putting down their text editors, meaning there's no news for us to report on (unless you want to talk about yet another set of rumours about the Apple tablet). Still, I couldn't let this day go by without a story.

"Google's Chrome OS does not run local applications or store local data. Everything is handled inside the browser. But when the much-hyped operating system debuts on netbooks at the end of next year, you can bet it will execute native code on behalf of online Google applications such as Gmail or Docs and Spreadsheets. In other words, Google apps will tap directly into the netbook's processor in an effort to close the performance gap that separates them from the local software offered by its bete noire, Steve Ballmer's Microsoft. And this being Google, they won't use Java, Flash, or Silverlight."

After two long years since the last release, Cygwin 1.7 (a Linux-like environment that runs on Windows systems) has been released. Among many other improvement, this release adds support for Windows 7 and Server 2008R2.

The past few weeks the entire internet has been going bonkers over the Google phone, yet another in a long line of Android phones that has everyone's knickers in twists. Up until now we had to go by small photos and Twitter messages from Google employees, but now we have full specifications, a hands-on, and video.

Good news for those interested in continuing use of the OpenStep operating system: Atomic Object has posted a new version of the community VMware driver for OpenStep on github. You can read more about it in the blog post or the forum announcement over at nextcomputers.org. The update includes support for high-resolution video modes.

This is old news, but only just crossed my radar! Opera have made available a pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. There's a massive amount of change under the hood, and I caught wind via taranfx.com.

One of the many issues plaguing the App Store for Apple's iPhone platform is that of 'app spam'. Now that Palm is busy dotting the i's of its own offering, the App Catalog, discussions have erupted about how Palm should combat this problem - if at all.

OpenVMS Software Roadmap December 2009
Significant changes:

• OpenVMS V8.4 will be followed by a patch to support the next generation HP Integrity systems after they are available
• OpenVMS V8.4 to be supported on HP VM V4.2
• Storage Futures shows D2D, VLS De-Duplication, SVSP
• TCP/IP V5.7 (due in 2010) will not include IPSEC (it's not ready) but IPSEC will appear later (it's in the E8.4 Field test kit if you want to try it)
• CIFS V1.2 due in 2010
• Insight DynamicsVSE Suite of Products-Integrated solution to manage, analyze and optimize physical, virtual resources on Integrity & Blades - 2010
• Availability Manager v3.1-1 on OpenVMS (Alpha and Integrity) - 2010
• RTR 5.2 is available.
• Future releases planned for the compilers
• The OpenVMS Service Support Roadmap shows the versions on long term support (Alpha V6.2, V7.3-2 etc) supported at least through 2012

Wired has a very interesting article detailing the demise of 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever, the iconic game that never was. "It was never completed. Screenshots and video snippets would leak out every few years, each time whipping fans into a lather - and each time, the game would recede from view. Normally, videogames take two to four years to build; five years is considered worryingly long. But the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie - Toy Story - and Xbox did not yet exist."

"Today's video-rich Internet wouldn't be possible without highly efficient compression. Ars rewinds the history of digital video compression to help understand how we arrived at the land of YouTube and Hulu."

"Intel has revealed the launch specs for the first-ever line of x86 products that contain both a GPU and CPU on the same die. Pine Trail, the next-generation Atom platform, will pave the way for future integrated CPU/GPU parts from both Intel and AMD."

Today there are many operating systems available. Every vendor or community round it tries to make it as good as possible. Having different goals, different legacy and different cultures, they succeed in it more or less. We (end users) end up with big selection of operating systems, but for us the operating systems are usually compromise of the features that we would like to have. So is there an operating system that would fit all the needs of the end user? Is is the BeOS clone Haiku?

Early this year, we reported that the alpha versions of REBOL 3 ran on Syllable Server, based on the unmodified Linux version. Now we have followup news. R3 has been split into its planned core interpreter library and an open source host environment for integration with as many systems as possible. Kaj de Vos has got this version to work on Syllable Desktop (screenshot). This is the first time that a version of REBOL can run there (besides emulating a complete other operating system on Syllable Desktop), so this is a major step towards the project's REBOL cross-platform strategy.

I just stumbled upon an interesting forum thread over at AmigaWorld.net. The thread details whether or not AmigaOS and MorphOS should be called "hobby operating systems", and what kind of criteria should be applied. This sounded like an interesting point of discussion for OSNews.