OS News Archive

Recoll: a Search Engine for the Linux Desktop

Submitted by FreeRhino 2007-04-25 OS News 29 Comments

"Desktop search engines are all the rage these days. While Beagle may be the most popular desktop search engine for Linux, there are alternatives. If you are looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use yet powerful desktop search engine, you might want to try Recoll. Unlike Beagle, Recoll doesn't require Mono, it's fast, and it's highly configurable. Recoll is based on Xapian, a mature open source search engine library that supports advanced features such as phrase and proximity search, relevance feedback, document categorization, boolean queries, and wildcard search."

MINIX 3.1.3 Released, Weekly Snapshots Available

Thom Holwerda 2007-04-18 OS News 13 Comments

"An early preview of the next version has been released under version number 3.1.3, an interim release intended for developers who want to see the bleeding edge of MINIX and perhaps then track the current source. For more information, see the 3.1.3 release notes and the download page." MINIX3 will now also release weekly snapshots.

Prex 0.4.3 Released

Thom Holwerda 2007-04-13 OS News 16 Comments

Prex 0.4.3 has been released. "Prex is a portable real-time operating system for embedded systems. The small, reliable, and low power kernel is written in the C language based on microkernel design. The file system, Unix process, and networking features are provided by user mode tasks."

Submitted by andymc 2007-04-03 OS News 11 Comments

Version 0.67 of Visopsys was released today, with all the usual bug fixes and tweaks plus two focus areas of improvement: the IDE/ATA disk driver has been 'modernized' with PCI, DMA, and 48-bit addressing support, resulting in a raw I/O performance increase of up to 700%; additionally the Disk Manager (Partition Logic) has been re-engineered and modularized to support the later addition of new disk label types, as well as improved support for MS-DOS logical partitions (moving, creating out-of-order, etc.). Downloads are here, and the change log is here.

Contiki 2.0 Released

Submitted by Adam Dunkels 2007-04-03 OS News 1 Comment

Contiki is an open source operating system for memory-constrained networked embedded systems. Version 2.0 of Contiki has just been released. The 2.0 release is the first release from the 2.x series, which brings many new features: dynamic run-time loading and linking of standard ELF object code files; Rime, a protocol stack designed for low-power radio communication; Cooja, a Java-based network simulator for Contiki; and an updated build system that makes cross-compiling for many platforms easy. See the Contiki website for details and downloads.

OSNews Version 4, Take 2

Adam Scheinberg 2007-04-02 OS News 150 Comments

After several modifications, feature tweaks, and revisions, please feel free to beta test our revision of OSNews.com version 4. Recently introduced to the site? Amongst many other things: Themes! Read on for a more complete changelog!

Submitted by WillM 2007-04-01 OS News 19 Comments

"The server operating system wars never seem to slow down. Last week it was Red Hat's turn with the announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which incorporates the Xen open source hypervisor. Naturally there's also the endless market speculation about the final feature set and likely arrival date of Windows Server 2007. And then there's Solaris, which with its nice value-add features like DTrace and its new status as open source software is making something of a comeback, it seems."

Help Us Beta Test OSNews Version 4

Adam Scheinberg 2007-03-22 OS News 245 Comments

After a long development period, we're ready to introduce the first "release candidate" of OSNews version 4. OSN4 is a very big change for us - for years, we've worked with the mantra "We render everywhere." We are still using MySQL and PHP, like in Eugenia's OSNews v2, but with the sudden prevalence of newer web technologies, we've decided that in order to really offer the best platform for our readers, it was time to enter a brave new world. Read on for details and the link. Updated: ("read more" to see update)

Kernel Designs Explained

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-21 OS News 53 Comments

I wrote the following article for university. It tries to explain the difference between three kernel types in such a way that less-computer savvy people should understand it. I had a 1500 word limitation, so detailed elaborations were out of the question. "In this article, I will try to make the 'microkernel vs. monolithic kernel' debate more accessible and understandable for laymen. I will explain the purpose of a kernel, after which I will detail the differences between the two competing designs. Finally, I will introduce the hybrid design, which aims to combine the two. In the conclusion, I will argue that this hybrid design is the most common kernel type in the world of personal computers today." Because of the limitations, this article contains little news for most of you. Still, I thought I'd share.

MINIX3 Gets Links, Links-2

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-08 OS News 25 Comments

MINIX3 has received some new interesting ports. "Links, an advanced text-based www browser, and also Links-2, a version of links that displays webpages in an X window." Screenshots included.

Submitted by _DoubleThink_ 2007-03-01 OS News 59 Comments

"MINIX is an operating system designed for 'resource limited' or embedded computer systems. Versions 1 and 2 were teaching operating systems upon which the famous book, Operating Systems Design and Implementation, by Andrew S Tanenbaum and Albert S Woodhull, is based and also was the inspiration for Linux. With this latest release, version 3, MINIX aims to be a complete, stable, secure desktop operating system for everyday use. Does it live up to those claims? Read on to find out."

New Database Categories

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-01 OS News 29 Comments

Today, we did a fairly major restructuring of our database categories. Before, we only added one or, in rare cases, two; this time, however, we have added three new categories, and also split one up. Read one for the how and why, and also how you can help in finding misplaced stories.

Windows-on-Mac Software Gets Virtualisation Update

Thom Holwerda 2007-02-27 OS News 10 Comments

Parallels has released an update to its Parallels Desktop software. The biggest update to the new version is Coherence, a feature that enables Mac users running Parallels to run and access Windows applications from their Mac desktops via virtualization rather than switching between operating systems.

What’s a Multi-OS Platform and How to Deal with Such a Beast?

Guest post by Anton Klotz 2007-02-19 OS News 78 Comments

After MacOSX and Linux start to become viable alternatives to Windows on the desktop, more and more applications are developed to be cross- platform; all potential users can run them on their platform of choice. In the following article I will discuss different ways of creating a cross-platform application and their (dis)advantages for the user.

KolibriOS 0.6.5 Released

Submitted by Rostislav 2007-02-15 OS News 20 Comments

KolibriOS is an operating system for the PC, written in assembly, which is based on the source code of MenuetOS. It fits on a single floppy. Some of the features are: NTFS read support, AC'97 player, drivers for Fat12/16/32/ISO9660, tcp/ip stack, network applications include ftp/http/mp3 servers, GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours, over 150 programs (text editor, paint editor, file managers, games, etc.), and much more.

Review: InnoTek’s VirtualBox

Submitted by liquidat 2007-02-13 OS News 17 Comments

"Almost a month ago InnoTek, the co-developer of VirtualPC, released their Virtual Machine as Open Source. The software was formerly not targetted at desktop users, but that changed when it was released under the GPL. This review tries to shed some light on the question if VirtualBox can get some market share between Vmware and Qemu."

The OSNews Style Guide v1.0

Thom Holwerda 2007-02-12 OS News 117 Comments

After weeks of hard work, I would like to introduce you to version 1.0 of the "OSNews Style Guide: Rules and Guidelines for Publishing and Participating on OSNews" . Read on for some small notes on what this actually means.

Submitted by maverick 2007-02-10 OS News 30 Comments

"Lines that once seemed clear are being smudged. Perhaps we delude ourselves to think that we once knew the difference between a 'big' operating system and a 'little' one, but today the biggest operating system ever written runs on desktop personal computers, not mainframes, and desktop operating systems are migrating to telephones and other consumer devices, while there is a trend for the "little" operating systems developed specifically for those devices to take on many of the capabilities of desktop operating systems as those devices themselves become more like computers. And, as further evidence that the apocalypse is upon us, you can, with Apple's blessing, run Windows Vista natively on your Macintosh. What are operating systems coming to?"

Submitted by andrei 2007-02-08 OS News 19 Comments

YouTube has cool video showing Windows games using DirectX running inside VMware Fusion for Mac OS X. This is demonstrating full DirectX 8.1 support inside Windows XP virtual machines.

Submitted by Valour 2007-02-07 OS News 7 Comments

"For several years, Win4Lin has offered a virtual operating environment whereby you can run Microsoft Windows inside of GNU/Linux. The first several generations of Win4Lin were limited to Windows 98, difficult to install, and had requirements that were difficult to satisfy, such as a proprietary kernel module and various acts of command line kung fu. Version 3.5 still has some of these problems, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be."