OS News Archive

OSNews T-shirts, Hats, Mugs

Show your co-workers, friends, and family that you're a member of the Geek Elite. Buy an OSNews Shirt, Hat, or Mug! Each one will be lovingly hand-crafted just for you by busy robots. In the comments below, let us know if you'd be interested in OSNews shirts with cheeky captions like "I Knew Linux Before Linux was Cool." Suggest some cheeky captions. And let us know if you'd be interested in other OSNews merchandise like bags, other clothing, mouse pads, etc.

A Quick Poll on Linux and X11 Environments

OSNews receives a lot of visitors every day, and while we try to equally report on all operating systems, including the commercial ones, most of our readership remains focused on open source. We have put together two polls for you, one to vote for your favorite Linux distribution and one of for your favorite X11 window manager or desktop environment. Read more and vote!

Just Some OSNews Reminders

This is just a reminder about some OSNews-related stuff. First off, by reading the survey results, we saw that a lot of people were complaining about the popup ads, while these have completely stopped as of 2 weeks ago. Also, other people complained that OSNews does not look good on Lynx. OSNews looks pretty good on Lynx and w3m and Links and even AvantGo, while we even have WAP support (check screenshot on the above link). But you will need to read here first how to have these services working for you. Also, we are always looking for people to write articles for OSNews. These days we generally serve more than 40,000 page views per day, so this could be a good way to have your voice heard on OS and other technology-related matters.

Fill Out the OS News Survey

We've prepared a short survey to collect some basic demographic information about OS News readers and collect your opinions about what we can do to make OS News better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Link to Survey. If you'd like to share your thoughts about OS News, its present and future, with everyone, please comment on this posting below.

Discussion Regarding SEAL 3.x Rewrite

iWindoze writes: "I was just over at the SEAL homepage and noted a thread where the possibility of a brand new rewrite was being kicked around. It looks like SEAL 3.x will be completely rewritten from scratch... Here's the link to the discussion. Also worthy of note, the Hybrid OS web site just went up, and a new release of their version of SEAL is expected soon."

The m-o-o-t Secure Operating System Project

"A group of self-proclaimed civil libertarians have launched an effort to create an OS and a set of applications that prevent computer eavesdropping and data collection, even by government agencies. The new open-source OS, dubbed "M-o-o-t," will ship in the form of a single CD_ROM that you can boot on popular PC hardware platforms. The CD-ROM will contain the OS and a set of applications that includes an email client, word processor, spreadsheet program, graphics program, and other unspecified software." Read the news at WinInformant.

Hurd: GNU Mach 1.3

KernelTrap reports: "Roland McGrath recently announced version 1.3 of the GNU Mach kernel, offering several bug fixes. He also noted, "We are no longer actively developing version 1.x of GNU Mach. We plan to make only necessary bug fixes or trivial enhancements in the 1.x line, and make further 1.x releases only as necessary for those purposes." A new 2.x version of GNU Mach is under development, utilizing the University of Utah's OSKit."

Review of Win4Lin 4.0

Some days ago we hosted a head to head review of Bochs, VMWare Workstation and VirtualPC. I received a number of emails asking why I haven't included Netraverse's Win4Lin in the article. The main reason was because Win4Lin is not an emulator in the "traditional" sense of the word; neither it runs under Windows XP, where our previous test were conducted. In fact, Win4Lin can only run Dos and Win9x/ME, under Linux. We got hold of the brand new version of Win4Lin, version 4.0, and here is our review accompanied by some screenshots we grabbed for you.

New Realtime Microkernel Sphere SP 2.0

"Today miray Software introduced a new realtime microkernel, named Sphere SP 2.0. Compared to its successor, it has been completely redesigned and delivers high realtime performance for 32-bit processors. At a size of only 21 KB, Sphere SP 2.0 is especially suitable for embedded systems. But due to its extreme scalability it's also well prepared for large systems." Read the rest of the press release over at Miray.

Introducing the TriangleOS and Sartoris

OSNews reader and OS developer Wim Cools writes: "I'm writing a hobby OS (TriangleOS) and I've just released the second version of it. The OS isn't very big yet, but I've managed to begin with a GUI and have applications running inside the windows. Anyway, here's my site. There are a few screenshots of the GUI in an early stage but I haven't been able to create any up to date screenshots yet, with the shell and applications running but there's a floppy image available for everyone to check it out."
Another interesting new OS is Sartoris. Santiago Bazerque is part of the Sartoris team and he writes: "Me and my friends from the Univeridad de Buenos Aires are working on an experimental microkernel. We are now finishing our second release. We are not OS gurus, just a few students (our Computer Organization professor looked at us in a quite funny way when we told her we wanted to build an operative system, but hey, we did it!). The webpage is here, in case you feel like taking a look."
Note: Before everyone starts again "what does that OS do and why do we need it?" please let me clarify that these hobby/small OSes are built with the purpose of gaining knowledge. They were never meant to create userbases or user communities or markets. They are solely of developer-only interest, users can try them, but they won't directly benefit.

GeOS Lives through Breadbox Ensemble

"Breadbox Computer Company LLC has completed and released to company distributors, its new flagship desktop software suite, Breadbox Ensemble. Ensemble offers a full productivity and internet suite, including Web Browser and Email. Other essential programs such as word processing, spreadsheet, flat file database and graphics applications are integrated into this easy-to-use package". Read the rest of the news over at BreadBox.

Review: VMWare Workstation 3.1 vs Virtual PC 4.3.2 vs Bochs 1.4

The open source Bochs, VMware Workstation by VMware, Inc. and VirtualPC from Connectix are applications that virtualize or emulate the x86 hardware, allowing you to run multiple operating systems on top of a "host" operating system that these three applications run upon. This means that you will be able to run Linux or FreeBSD or other supported "guest" OSes under Windows, Linux (or Macintosh), inside a window or fullscreen. But which one delivers the best performance for the money? And what about the free Bochs?

Bell Labs Releases New Version of Plan 9

The fourth release of the Plan 9 operating system from Bell Labs packages a major overhaul of the system at every level. From the underlying file system protocol, 9P, through the kernel, libraries, and applications, almost everything has been modified and, in many cases, redesigned or rewritten. The most significant change is that 9P has been redesigned to address a number of shortcomings, most important, its previous inability to handle long file names.

News from Around the Web

We will first start with the 1.0 release of the free word processor, AbiWord, for many different platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Win32, MacOS and QNX. Mozilla RC-1 was released also a few days ago and its developers appreciate any bugs people can submit before the final 1.0 release. OSNews reader "Number9" submitted the news about the world's fastest computer, at NYTimes (free registration required). The computer is about 5 times faster than IBMs (previous world fastest) computer at a national lab. Another very interesting article can be found at PCMag. Given the hullabaloo around the Tablet PC, PC Magazine roundups six new tablet PCs from ACer, Fujitsu, HP, and others while it also investigates the past of such devices. The Menuet OS project released a new version and a new screenshot. Also, KlipFolio 1.0 for Windows is now released (more platforms are coming soon) and the OSNews news klip is installed by default! Thank you Serence!

Seal DOS GUI Version 2.00.11 Released

Everyone's favourite opensource DOS GUI is back and better than ever in the new release, skinning support has been improved to allow better themeing, rather than just buttons skins, the Multimedia API(SFA) has been expanded to support more Audio Formats, the Disk Imager has been ported and many other improvements have been made, and still in just a 1.39MB download. Get your copy or take a look at a couple of screenshots: shot1 & shot2. Bad Desktop is also available as a separate download here.