Monthly Archive:: February 2011

"We are pleased to announce that the full SDK for Android 3.0 is now available to developers. The APIs are final, and you can now develop apps targeting this new platform and publish them to Android Market. The new API level is 11. For an overview of the new user and developer features, see the Android 3.0 Platform Highlights. Together with the new platform, we are releasing updates to our SDK Tools (r10) and ADT Plugin for Eclipse (10.0.0)."

A first alpha version of a Qt implementation for the Android mobile operating system has been announced by Romanian software developer Bogdan Vatra. Since Nokia in co-operation with Microsoft have announced that it does not intend to develop a Windows Phone variant of the GUI framework, Qt for Android represents the only remaining route/platfrom to providing mobile phone apps developed using Qt.

Microsoft has announced that the first service pack release for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 will hit the download servers starting today. The company had already released the final code to OEM partners earlier on February 9, followed by MSDN customers, TechNet subscribers and volume licensing customers on February 16, but now anyone will be able to get it either via Microsoft's Download Center website or through Windows Update.

Your company is ready to upgrade its custom applications from 32-bit to 64-bit. (Finally.) Here's 10 tips to help you make the transition as painless as possible.

Late last year Australia's biggest telco Telstra was sharply criticised for using GPL'd code in several of its new products - but not publicly distributing changes it made to the code when doing so. However, it looks as though the company has now come clean, publishing a source code CD of the files changed in its development effort and acknowledging the GPL and Lesser GPL. It's good to see companies responding to the open source community this way and engaging - makes a change from the past!

George Hotz is in the middle of what could be a long, punishing legal battle with Sony, and his money is running out. "Media, I need your help. This is the first time I have ever asked. Please, if you support this cause, help me out and spread the word," he wrote on his newest blog entry. "I want, by the time this goes to trial, to have Sony facing some of the hardest hitting lawyers in the business. Together, we can help fix the system." Ars Technica contacted Hotz's lawyer to make sure this plea for cash was legitimate, and attorney Stewart Kellar confirmed that yes, the money raised goes to Hotz's legal fund to fight Sony. It also appears Hotz has friends with deep pockets; the first round of fundraising is already over, and more lawyers will be hired for Hotz's defense."

Now that you have an idea of where your OS project is heading as a whole, it's time to go into specifics. The first component of your OS which you'll have to design, if you're building it from the ground up, is its kernel, so this article aims at being a quick guide to kernel design, describing the major areas which you'll have to think about and guiding you to places where you can find more information on the subject.

The 0.7 version of the Visopsys desktop operating system has been released. "More than four years in the making, this is a major new release offering an updated look and a number of new features, including JPEG image support, image resizing, 64-bit disk support, UDF (DVD) filesystem support, and GPT partition table support, as well as lots of new icons, wallpaper images, and file browsing functionality. New administrative applications and functionality have been added, and the ATA/IDE driver has been enhanced, including the ability to better support backwards-compatible SATA controllers. FPU context saving has been improved, and a number of tweaks and bug fixes are also included."

"At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, chip manufacturer Marvell has announced the free Kinoma development platform . This will reportedly enable developers to write applications for a range of mobile devices with various different operating systems. The platform will be offered under an open source licence in the future to "encourage broad industry adoption" says Marvell."

Okay, source material is more than 10 years old so this is not exactly news, but I think it's interesting anyway. This BeOS promotional video is a good reminder of how powerful modern hardware truly is, what hardware should be needed for light computer use, and how laughable modern desktop&mobile OSs are as far as performance is concerned. Here are part 1 and part 2 on YouTube.

"A lot of modern Linux distributions created with desktop users in mind go out of their way to be user friendly. Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Fedora - and many more. It is a sign of how desktop Linux has matured that even non-techy types can get a fully featured and easy-to-use open source operating system up and running in not much time at all. The creators of CrunchBang Linux, however, haven't quite gone in the same direction."

"AT&T chief Randall Stephenson in an event at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday called for a system that let users keep app ownership across platforms . He argued it was frustrating that buying an app on one platform didn't give you the rights to the app on another. He saw solutions such as the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) or HTML5 as being better models, although few phones actually support WAC or use HTML5 in a major way for apps."

In the description of this session of SXSW 2011: Voices From The HTML5 Trenches: Browser Wars IV, it says: "Every major browser vendor -- Apple, Opera, IE, Chrome, and Firefox -- will have a significant browser release by SxSW 2011." IE team has confirmed it by an annouchment, now we can wait and see if IE9, Firefox 4, Chrome 10, Opera Mini 6 for Tablets and Safari (???) will be released all together.

"PCLinuxOS is a great distro for individuals who favor rolling updates, performance, and a dedicated community. If you're a first-time Linux user or if you favor aesthetics over technological prowess, better choices are available."