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OS News Archive
Athene Desktop Edition 4.0 Released
Athene is a Windows/Linux desktop system. On v4, VESA graphics drivers were added, and the security model for direct graphics access was improved. The File Manager has been enhanced, and there have been a number of bugfixes.
PearPC Gets Altivec Support
Yesterday, on pearpc.net, it was anounced that PearPC has experimental altivec support. Among other things Altivec theoretically improves OS and application speed due to the ability to handle floating point math operations. The builds can be downloaded here.
MenuetOS 0.77 Released
The 0.77 final is out for MenuetOS with the following features: Dosbox, ScummVM and Doom I ports; 3Com and Sis900 ethernet drivers; Improved protection, hd and floppy support.
Whitepaper: “New Directions in RTOS Kernels”
This technical overview by veteran real-time lecturer David Kalinsky examines a number of directions in which RTOSs continue to change and mature. Two main directions are alternative task scheduling algorithms, and intertask communication via asynchronous direct message passing. In order to keep at a practical level, the focus is on trends and features that can be expected to appear in RTOSs soon.
VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 Review
VMWare makes it very easy to run Linux right on your Windows desktop (and the other way around). And, if you're feeling adventurous, you can even try running the beta versions of the next version of Windows called "Longhorn" or even Sun's Solaris operating system. Read the review at ExtremeTech.
OpenVMS: An Old Dog Still Doing New Tricks
Datamation takes a look at OpenVMS. Thought by many to be long since dead and buried, the OpenVMS operating system persists inside many enterprises.
The OS World’s Best-kept Secret?
ComputerWeekly takes a look at OpenVMS, one of the most stable OSes ever placed in production. Originally known as VMS, it's probably the best designed and most robust general purpose operating system in existence. It's also one of the least-known and appreciated, simply because it works quietly in the background without drama, unlike its noisier and more fussy siblings and offspring.
VAX Users See the Writing on the Wall
The VAX system at Triumph Components has been in use since about 1996, and information systems manager Dan Blackshear couldn't be happier with it. There's just one problem: He's got to scrap it. The system is fast, works well with Windows and "fits into the modern environment very cleanly" at the El Cajon, aerospace parts maker, said Blackshear. "But it's a dinosaur, and eventually it has to go".
QEMU Ported to Mac OS X
QEMU is now working on Mac OS X. Download ready-to-run images of QEMU virtual computers, pre-installed with a Free Operating System and a set of popular free software.
In the chair: VMware’s Ed Bugnion
This is an interview with Ed Bugnion, CTO and Co-founder of VMware, conducted by IT-Director.com. It offers an insight into VMware past, present and future.
FreeDOS Turns 10
The FreeDOS Project turns 10 years old today! PD-DOS was announced to the world on June 28, 1994. The PD-DOS project was later renamed to the FreeDOS Project. More here.
VMware Announces Support for 64-Bit Computing
VMware today announced support for 64-bit extended x86 platforms, including AMD64 and the Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T). VMware software will support systems with terabytes of physical and virtual memory, enabling the virtualization of the next-generation memory-intensive applications such as data-mining and managing large databases.
Introducing the THEOS Operating System
For the developers and end-users using THEOS based applications the system benefits are readily apparent. But let's take a look under the hood and see what makes THEOS operating system and development language so unique and long-lived.
PearPC 0.2.0 released
From the PearPC site: "The most important change of this release is certainly that network now also works with Windows as host. Since we now have conditional redraw code, you can take a smaller redraw interval without dramatic speed decrease. With this release, you can switch the screen resolution (i.e. the size of the window) at runtime via the video.x driver. Note that there are some small config file changes, so please update your config file from the shipped ppccfg.example."
ChoX11 and Porting
"Ever seen some Linux application and thought: "the source is available, why can't we have that on RISC OS?" And indeed, because of the efforts that have been made on the GCC port for RISC OS and its C library, Unixlib, this is possible for a large number of Unix applications." Read the article at Drobe.
Virtually Minix: A Tutorial & Intro to Minix on XP via Bochs
This tutorial will walk the reader through setting up Minix 2.0.4 on Windows XP via Bochs 2.1.1. These are the latest versions of Minix, Bochs and Windows XP as of May of 2004. In this era of Linux and Windows domination of the OS scene, it is important to remember that there are alternatives. Hence, this article will also serve as an introduction to one such alternative, Minix, which has a very rich heritage, indeed.
Serenity Systems Announces Beta of VM Application
Serenity Systems International (SSI) has announced an open (public) beta program for its Serenity Virtual Station (SVISTA) product, a virtual machine application for Intel based PCs. The software being tested runs on Linux, MS Windows, and IBM's OS/2. A FreeBSD version is planned for later this year.
VMWare Workstation 4.5 Review
A review of VMWare 4.5 appeared at Hernan Di Pietro's HDP Tools Site including a test of VMWare 4.5 running Windows Server 2003.
SoftPear’s PowerPC to i386 Recompiler Now Works
The SoftPear Project aims to create compatibility software between the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh architecture. This is not an emulator for PowerPC Macintosh machines (like "PearPC", "Basilisk" or "UAE"), the project has more similarities to Digital's "FX!32", FreeBSD's "Linux Binary Compatbility" and "WINE" instead. Darwin/x86 or GNU/Linux will run on the PC, and the Mac OS X user interface, its libraries and all applications running on top of it will run on Darwin or GNU/Linux, using SoftPear's compatibility layer. Since today, the PowerPC to i386 recompiler works with many small test programs. The code is in the CVS.