OS News Archive

InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.

"An increasing number of machines are equipped with hardware that can be used to support trustworthy computing. Trustworthy computing enables applications to make strong assurances about their behavior. Existing operating systems do not provide the right execution environment for trustworthy computing, and so are unable to fully exploit this emerging opportunity. The Nexus is a new operating system for trustworthy computing. Its microkernel architecture greatly reduces the size of the trusted computing base (TCB) by moving functionality out of the kernel."

The Codezero team has released version 0.2 of their L4 microkernel. In this release, the microkernel is fully capability checked, and they introduced the notion of containers to provide isolated execution environments.

This holiday season it seems that everyone has forgotten the recession and has just decided to pretend to not be broke. In the US, somehow the retail industry has hoodwinked everyone into celebrating a shopping holiday the weekend after Thanksgiving, with the recent addition of "cyber monday" to encourage both irresponsible spending and doing personal shopping on company time while at work. Far be it from us to stand in the way of this Juggernaut. I personally do most of my shopping online, and much of it at Amazon.com, who over the years have proven a dedication to low prices and excellent service. Cyber Monday or not, if you're planning on shopping online this holiday season (or anytime), please consider using OSNews' shopping page, which gives you a good launching point to browse for products and compare prices, and supports OSNews by kicking back a small percentage of your purchase price. It doesn't cost you anything, but makes a big difference for us. So bookmark the page, and show the love all year round. We'd like to make some improvements to the OSNews Shopping launchpad. Please include your recommendations and suggestions in the comments.

"HP is pleased to announce the availability of OpenVMS Version 8.4 Field Test. OpenVMS Version 8.4 will be a generally available release for the Integrity servers and Alpha platforms. This release builds upon the capabilities provided by OpenVMS Version 8.3 for Alpha and Version 8.3-1H1 for Integrity server systems."

A new version of the learning tool OS MikeOS is available, sporting a new BASIC interpreter with 24 instructions. You can run BASIC code from inside the text editor by pressing F8. See the App Developer Handbook for a guide to the BASIC dialect (somewhat similar to old 8-bit BASICs, nostalgia fans), and the User Handbook for info on running MikeOS from a USB key, floppy or CD.

It was actually quite a relaxing week on OSNews, with few big news stories going on. We talked about Psystar, the need (or not?) for ZFS to have an fsck tool, the end of the FatELF project, and the release of Mandriva 2010.0, among other things.

"I have been asked 'Why choose OpenVMS?' It is a question worth asking. While the precise answer depends upon the context, the overall answer is: 'OpenVMS provides a robust platform and framework for constructing and operating software.' The benefits of OpenVMS accrue throughout the system lifecycle; not merely during development. Testing, production, enhancement, and other phases of the system lifecycle all benefit. Costs and risks are reduced over the system lifetime."

Another week has passed us by, so it's time for another Week in Review. This week was obviously dominated by the release of Windows 7, but Apple was also in the news often, reporting yet another stellar quarter, and of course updating its entire line of consumer Macs.

"BeRTOS version 2.3 is available. This version is backward compatible with the current version, so you can safely update your installation. We are currently implementing an aerospace device for research purposes thus we need to drive many different sensor types. These drivers are now available to all BeRTOS users."

Another Week in Review, that's how fast the week went by. It's really been mostly about MorphOS this week, but we also talked about how software licenses used to and should look. My item of the week is certainly the one about the end of the legal tousles in the Amiga world.

For a very long time now, OSNews' comment sections were governed by a set of rules that dated back to the very early days of OSNews. This set of rules has been amended a number of times over the years, but we were never really comfortable with such a dry, silly list of arbitrary rules that nobody read anyway. They were too much like an... EULA. So, we decided a change was in order, and I started work on a completely new approach.

We missed this one when it was announced, but since there's not much VMS news these days, I thought "better late than never." Dying to get your hands on the upcoming OpenVMS 8.4? HP is inviting participants for the field test of the next version of OpenVMS. As a field test site, you have the opportunity of trying the latest version of OpenVMS early.

And another week passed by, another Week in Review. Lots of different stuff this past week, there's no theme or recurring subject, though. My item of the week is Palm's announcements regarding freeing up webOS development. What's yours?