OS News Archive

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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."

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 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.

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.

We've made some updates to the Pricegrabber menu (at the lower left hand side of the site). For your convenience, we've updated some of the products there, and added some new gadgets. It's a great way to compare prices, and if you use osnews.pricegrabber.com when you buy (or even just research), you support OSNews. Bookmark it! If anyone has any ideas for products or categories that should be added to the list, let us know.