OS News Archive

"What is the world's most widely used operating system?" The answer is in an interesting Linux Insider piece about ITRON, 'a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems' that runs on a lot of "mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and other electronic devices."

Ars reviews Parallels Desktop for MacOS X, and concludes: "People pondering the switch to a MacBook can rest assured that with the exception of USB device support and hardware accelerated 3-D applications, their needs will be well met by this little workhorse of a program. Between the networking that just works, the impressive speed and the inability of the client operating systems to know they are running within a 'virtual machine', I think you'll be hard-pressed to find software for any x86 OS that doesn't work within a Parallels VM."

A new version of Plan 9 has been released. "Major changes were made to /sys/src/fs, removing some dead code. Some major bugs were fixed. New features were added and the memory limit was increased." More information can be found in the mailing list message. For those that don't know: "Plan 9 was born in the same lab where Unix began. Underneath, though, lies a new kind of system, organized around communication and naming rather than files and processes. In Plan 9, distributed computing is a central premise, not an evolutionary add-on."

In reponse to several inquiries, we are extending the deadline of our Alternative OS Contest. The original deadline for entries was this Thursday, however, to allow more time for experimentation and writing, we are extending the deadline to Friday, July 14th. So fire up those download managers, grab yourself an ISO, and join the action!

"Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, SUSE, and Linspire are making headway in the desktop market, but if you want to try something really different, you can find other, less-well-known alternative operating systems. While these OSes may not be the most stable, or have the greatest hardware support, they offer some unique ideas." SkyOS, Haiku, Syllable and Visopsys are reviewed.

"Currently there are 2 solutions for Mac owners with an Intel chip for running Windows XP on their machine. First up is the solution from Apple called Boot Camp and secondly is the Virtual Machine (with Virtualization) from Parallels. So what's the difference? With Boot Camp Windows will be running 'natively', this means it will be running on the machine as if it was running on any regular PC from any manufacturer. This means full access to the CPU, Graphics and all other aspects. With Parallels Windows XP will be running on a 'Virtual Machine', this means that OS X will be running like normal with WinXP running inside a separate application, in effect two operating systems running at once."