July – 2010 – OSnews

New GNOME Shell Mockup Looks Good – But Is It Better?

David Adams 2010-07-31 Gnome 50 Comments

Yesterday it was announced that GNOME 3.0 is delayed till next year. The extra time has given the Shell Developers some more time to play around with new concepts and they have come up a new mockup. Here are the new mockups.

Register: Microsoft Should Make a Bold Open Source Move

David Adams 2010-07-31 Microsoft 19 Comments

A provocative editorial at The Register makes this suggestion: "Microsoft should consider acquiring Novell's SUSE Linux business and focusing it completely on mobile. Novell has a seat at the Linux Foundation's MeeGo table, and Microsoft should embrace that operating system rather than its myriad (but universally unsuccessful) mobile variants of Windows."

AMD Set to Beat Intel in USB 3 Race

David Adams 2010-07-31 Hardware 20 Comments

AMD plans to start shipping the USB 3-equipped chipset in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating Intel to the post. Intel hasn't announced its official plans for integrated USB 3 support yet, but various sources say it's not expected until we're well into 2011.

Millions Download Suspicious Android Wallpaper

David Adams 2010-07-31 Privacy, Security 1 Comment

Up to 4.6 million users of the Android smartphone operating system have downloaded a suspicious wallpaper app that collects and transmits user data to a site in China, mobile security firm Lookout has warned.

Microsoft Releases Free Security Tool for Older Platforms

David Adams 2010-07-31 Privacy, Security 2 Comments

Microsoft has released a free tool to bring newer security protections to older platforms and applications. The enhanced mitigation experience tookit (EMET) was announced at the BlackHat USA 2010 security conference in Las Vegas. EMET will be available from August and is designed to help block targeted attacks against unpatched vulnerabilities in platforms such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Graphics Chip Market Seeing Big Changes

Submitted by fran 2010-07-31 Graphics 7 Comments

As Nvidia falters, Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit is on the rise, spurred by "radical" shifts in the market, according to Mercury Research, which tracks the market for GPUs or graphics processing units.

Microsoft’s Tablet Self-Deception

Submitted by fran 2010-07-31 Wireless 73 Comments

Microsoft had its annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday, and Steve Ballmer answered questions about what the company's answer to the iPad was going to be, and whether Windows Phone 7 was going to be a part of that product strategy. He said, "We're coming . . . We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows." Ballmer and Microsoft so don't get it. I can't believe Steve Ballmer is making me feel sorry for Microsoft.

Tools That Find Serious Bugs Automatically Could Lead to Safer, More Stable Software.

Submitted by fran 2010-07-31 Bugs & Viruses No Comments

Several talks at the Black Hat security conference this week in Las Vegas will focus on tools that could make software safer by automatically searching for bugs--and pinpointing the ones that could be most dangerous.

RMS Answers 25 Questions

Submitted by waid0004 2010-07-31 Open Source 12 Comments

Richard Stallman, who's still taking on the role of the extremist who says extreme things so other Free Software advocates can look moderate in comparison, answers Reddit readers' questions. But there's some good stuff in there, and it seems he's dialed back the nutty a bit.

Dell, HP to Resell Oracle’S Operating Systems

David Adams 2010-07-31 Solaris 4 Comments

Oracle has announced that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers. The announcement "demonstrates Oracle's commitment to openness," company co-president Charles Phillips said in a statement.

KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing

Submitted by Debjit 2010-07-29 Graphics 29 Comments

KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers. Read more here

Details of 100m Facebook Users Collected and Published

Submitted by Adurbe 2010-07-29 Privacy, Security 14 Comments

Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. BBC News

New BlackBerry OS Expected August 3

Submitted by Al Sacco 2010-07-29 Wireless 1 Comment

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has distributed invites to an exclusive media event in New York, where it's expected to show off the first device to run the brand new BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 6. CIO.com offers predictions for how the event will unfold.

LiMo + GNOME: crickets

Submitted by Panajev 2010-07-29 Wireless 36 Comments

The GNOME foundation and the LiMo group announced a partnership to help push Linux forward in the consumer field. The only notice that anyone has seem to have taken is mockery. So why can someone announce some dedication to promoting open source software in the mobile space and generate no enthusiasm in the mobile space? Android.

GNOME Census

Submitted by root 2010-07-29 Gnome 26 Comments

GNOME developer Dave Neary has posted the highlights of his work to determine where contributions to GNOME come from. This "Census" is a combination of data mining and surveys that gives a snapshot of gnome activity and the profile of a GNOME contributor. This project's aims were to answer three questions in particular: What does the developer community look like? What companies are investing in GNOME, and how? What does the commercial ecosystem around the GNOME project look like?

GNOME 3.0 Delayed to March 2011

Submitted by suka 2010-07-29 Gnome 24 Comments

During the currently ongoing GUADEC conference in Den Haag the GNOME release team announced that GNOME 3.0 would be delayed for another six months and is now scheduled for March 2011. "We could release in September and have something working that is okayish, but it's not up to the standards we have" release team member Vincent Untz explains the reasoning. There's coverage of this issue at derStandard.at and an official GNOME press release.

Dell expands Ubuntu Linux desktop offerings

Submitted by sjvn 2010-07-29 Linux 10 Comments

The latest panic in desktop Linux lad was that Dell would no longer be selling Ubuntu pre-installed on laptops and netbooks. Alas, for those who love drama, it wasn't true. In fact, Dell is expanding its Ubuntu desktop Linux offerings.

Apple and Intel: Destined to Clash

David Adams 2010-07-27 Intel 68 Comments

An interesting article at Ars Technica takes a look at some compelling data (the longer-than-normal processor update cycles in Apple's personal computer lineup) and speculates that Apple's enthusiasm for its partnership with Intel might be cooling. Like Apple's soured relationship with once-BFF Google, this may be the result of Intel's increasing activities in the mobile computing space.

Touch-Free Gesture-Control for Multiple Users

Submitted by fran 2010-07-27 Graphics 14 Comments

Fraunhofer's FIT . . . has recently appeared on the YouTubes, where we must say it looks pretty darn good. Not only does it not require special gloves or markers, this thing also works in real time and can support multiple users (and multiple fingers).

Desktop Linux: When and how to add proprietary software

Submitted by sjvn 2010-07-27 Linux 46 Comments

Some people hate the idea of adding proprietary software to their desktop Linux. For these people, there are Linux distributions such as gNewSense that use only free software. For the rest of us, who use distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu, there are times we either want to, or feel forced to, add proprietary programs such as Adobe Flash or Skype or the ability to play proprietary audio and video formats such as MP3 or commercial DVDs to your Linux desktop. Here's how to do it.

Monthly Archive:: July 2010