Slashdot Mirror
Domain: osnews.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to osnews.com.
Stories · 369
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C, Objective-C, C++... D! Future Or failure?
TDRighteo writes "OSNews is carrying a quick introduction to a programming language under development - D. Features include garbage collection, overrideable operators, full C compatibility, native compilation, inline assembler, and in-built support for unit testing and "Design by Contract". With all the discussion about the future of GNOME with Java/Mono, does D offer hope of a middle-road? Check out the comparison sheet." -
C, Objective-C, C++... D! Future Or failure?
TDRighteo writes "OSNews is carrying a quick introduction to a programming language under development - D. Features include garbage collection, overrideable operators, full C compatibility, native compilation, inline assembler, and in-built support for unit testing and "Design by Contract". With all the discussion about the future of GNOME with Java/Mono, does D offer hope of a middle-road? Check out the comparison sheet." -
Conectiva Linux 9 Review
JigSaw writes "Here's an english review of a popular Linux distro in the Latin American countries: Conectiva Linux 9. Jason Prince investigates its installation, the desktop usage, the package manager (synaptic) and some of the problems he met on the way." -
Review Of Serenity Virtual Station
JigSaw writes "Here's some serious competition for VMWare and Virtual PC: OSNews reviews a new OS emulator, the Serenity Virtual Station, which can run as a host on FreeBSD, Linux and OS/2 and supports as guests a slew of OSes. It is based on the twoOStwo virtual operating engine (which additonally runs on top of Windows as well)." -
Element Computer: ION Linux on Linux Hardware
JigSaw writes "Well known Lycoris person Jason Spisak left the company to join Element Computer, a new hardware company which now strives to offer the Apple experience on PCs: they sell Linux-certified modern hardware with their own flavor of Debian, ION Linux. ION is a desktop distro and it is developed specifically to work perfectly with the accompanied hardware. Other highlights include usage support (as opposed to installation-only support other distros provide) and system upgrades specific to the exact hardware the user runs. The KDE-based distro will only sell with their hardware as Mike Hjorleifsson says in his interview." (The company was previously mentioned on Slashdot.) -
Still More on Open Source Usability
Theo Kolokotronis writes "Many people replied to the controversial article by John Gruber about UI/Usability in the FOSS developments. Among these replies you will find OSNews' (which had spurred some interesting discussion too), Brad Griffith's about the niceties of GNOME and its future (mirror), Havoc Pennington's promise of a new UI era via Red Hat's newly assembled desktop team in Boston and even Microsoft's Don Box." The previous story was Making Things Easy Is Hard. -
Still More on Open Source Usability
Theo Kolokotronis writes "Many people replied to the controversial article by John Gruber about UI/Usability in the FOSS developments. Among these replies you will find OSNews' (which had spurred some interesting discussion too), Brad Griffith's about the niceties of GNOME and its future (mirror), Havoc Pennington's promise of a new UI era via Red Hat's newly assembled desktop team in Boston and even Microsoft's Don Box." The previous story was Making Things Easy Is Hard. -
FreeBSD 5.2.1 On SPARC64
JigSaw writes "FreeBSD has a solid reputation in terms of features and performance on x86, powering sites from Hotmail to Yahoo, yet it doesn't tend to be the first (or even second) OS that comes to mind with many people when thinking of Solaris alternatives for the SPARC platform. Tony Bourke tests FreeBSD 5.2.1 on his SPARC machine." -
SVG And The Free Desktop(s)
unmadindu writes "Christian Schaller has written an interesting article on SVG's current and possible uses on the GNU/Linux desktop. Though the article concentrates mostly on GNOME, it does mention the excellent work the KDE developers have been doing with KSVG, and refers to the upcoming SVG support in Mozilla too." -
OS Review: NetBSD 1.6.2 on SPARC64
JigSaw writes "NetBSD is the king of operating system portability, running on 40+ different hardware platforms, including x86, MIPS, and even the Sega Dreamcast. So it comes as no surprise that among the supported platforms, NetBSD runs on Tony Bourke's Sun Ultra 5. Here is his review." -
Amiga Sells AmigaOS
rocketjam writes "Amiga, Inc. announced today that it has sold the Amiga Operating System to KMOS, Inc., a corporation which 'develops and distributes enabling technology.' The deal included 'all of Amiga's right, title, source code, and all versions, from the "Classic Amiga Operating System" through AmigaOS 4.0 and all subsequent versions.' A spokesman said the sale would have no adverse affect on the release of a consumer version of AmigaOS 4.0 later this year. Amiga said it made the move in order to focus on the growing mobile market. The long saga of AmigaOS 4.0 continues." Reader Da writes "there're always other options should the Amiga curse continue. Also mentioned on OSNews." -
Interview with Matthew Dillon of DragonFly BSD
JigSaw writes "Well-known FreeBSD/DragonFly/Linux/Amiga system hacker Matthew Dillon discusses a number of interesting points regarding where the BSDs are going, the status and goals of his latest project DragonFly BSD, the status of his innovative Backplane distributed database, his exciting plans to develop DragonFly into a transparently cluster-capable system implementing native SSI (Single System Image) which is something that no other operating system can do today, and more." -
The Command Line - Best Newbie Interface?
An anonymous reader writes "This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them." -
Learning CVS Using KDE's Cervisia
JigSaw writes "Carlos Leonhard Woelz put together a detailed guide on how to use CVS using KDE's Cervicia application. It is an article useful to newbies and well-described to experience users too." -
IBM Wants to Port Office to Linux
shfted! writes "OSNews reports: As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation." -
Qt 3.3 Released; OSNews Talks With TrollTech's CEO
JigSaw writes "The new version of Qt (to be released Wednesday) features .NET support, full 64-bit support, IPv6 and backend support for two more databases. In light of the release, OSNews features an article with TrollTech's CEO, Haavard Nord. Nord says that he sees Linux strengthen its position in both business computing and embedded systems, while he forsees Qtopia and Linux taking over PDAs and Smartphones in the next few years." It's Wednesday, and Qt 3.3 has been officially released -- read on below for some more info.Cronopios writes "The Norwegian company TrollTech has just released version 3.3 of their excellent cross-platform Qt toolkit, which is the foundation of KDE. This version adds support for .NET framework, 64-bit processing, IPv6 and gcc on MS Windows. The announcement and the complete list of new features and improvements are available at their website. As usual, the Qt libraries are released under several licenses, including the GNU GPL :-)"
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Mono 0.30 Released
Blair16 writes "From OSNews -- Mono 0.30 has been released. This release includes four components at once: the Runtime and Software Development Kit, the Documentation browser, and the ASP.NET server with its Apache module. Packages for various distributions are also available from our download page. This is mostly a fine-tuning release: bug fixing and performance improvements are the major benefits, but new classes and new features are also included. See the rest of the notes for details." -
Open Source OS Benchmarking Competition
BenchmarkingFreak writes "OSnews is running a story about a new benchmarking competition: OSU Open Source Lab wanted to take the concept of benchmarking a little bit further with the Beaver Challenge 2004. In this competition they will be allowing a community of experts in each OS to tweak their configurations to ensure maximum performance. And they are running it all on wicked machines, just imagine... well you know." -
GNU GCC Vs Sun's Compiler on a SPARC
JigSaw writes "When doing research for his evaluation of Solaris 9 on his Ultra 5, Tony Bourke kept running into the same comment online over and over again: Sun's C compiler produces much faster code than GCC does. However, he couldn't find one set of benchmarks to back this up and so he did his own." -
GNU GCC Vs Sun's Compiler on a SPARC
JigSaw writes "When doing research for his evaluation of Solaris 9 on his Ultra 5, Tony Bourke kept running into the same comment online over and over again: Sun's C compiler produces much faster code than GCC does. However, he couldn't find one set of benchmarks to back this up and so he did his own." -
FreeBSD 5.2 Review
JigSaw writes "OSNews published a review of FreeBSD 5.2. They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop. The author finds FreeBSD very fast overall, easy to configure and that it feels integrated and mature. On the other hand, it has limited modern hardware support, small annoyances at places and that not many binary packages are available and so compilations from ports may take long time." -
Open Source Operating System For Smart Cards
Scott writes "The OSNews site refers to a new open source operating system for smart cards, and more specifically adapted for contactless and dual-interface chips. This operating system named jayaCard ('success card' in malaysian ?) is compatible with ISO 7816 and ISO 14443. It is currently ported to freely available microprocessor like the ATmega161/162 from Atmel. A simulator version for Windows and Linux is already available and the full cleanroom source code can be inspected at Sourceforge. It should be noted also that although still in alpha version, this software is more complete, more standard, more complex but as more ambitious as SOSSE, the first available OS of this type." -
Are 64-bit Binaries Slower than 32-bit Binaries?
JigSaw writes "The modern dogma is that 32-bit applications are faster, and that 64-bit imposes a performance penalty. Tony Bourke decided to run a few of tests on his SPARC to see if indeed 64-bit binaries ran slower than 32-bit binaries, and what the actual performance disparity would ultimately be." -
Sun Sparc 5 Nostalgia
barl0w writes with what he calls "an awesome on-going story over at OS News about a Sun Sparc 5 coming alive again." Like the article's author points out, if you really want 64-bit computing, it's available cheaply on eBay. -
The Full Story on GStreamer
JigSaw writes "Gnome's Christian Schaller has written an intro/status document on GStreamer, the next generation multimedia development framework for Unix. Christian explains what it is, why it is important, its use in both the desktop and server side, its use on embedded Linux, Gnome and even KDE. He also discusses its current competition and the plans for the future." -
Performance Benchmarks of Nine Languages
ikewillis writes "OSnews compares the relative performance of nine languages and variants on Windows: Java 1.3.1, Java 1.4.2, C compiled with gcc 3.3.1, Python 2.3.2, Python compiled with Psyco 1.1.1, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and Visual J#. His conclusion was that Visual C++ was the winner, but in most of the benchmarks Java 1.4 performed on par with native code, even surpassing gcc 3.3.1's performance. I conducted my own tests pitting Java 1.4 against gcc 3.3 and icc 8.0 using his benchmark code, and found Java to perform significantly worse than C on Linux/Athlon." -
Performance Benchmarks of Nine Languages
ikewillis writes "OSnews compares the relative performance of nine languages and variants on Windows: Java 1.3.1, Java 1.4.2, C compiled with gcc 3.3.1, Python 2.3.2, Python compiled with Psyco 1.1.1, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and Visual J#. His conclusion was that Visual C++ was the winner, but in most of the benchmarks Java 1.4 performed on par with native code, even surpassing gcc 3.3.1's performance. I conducted my own tests pitting Java 1.4 against gcc 3.3 and icc 8.0 using his benchmark code, and found Java to perform significantly worse than C on Linux/Athlon." -
The State Of The GTK+ File Selector
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "The next stable release of GTK+ (from the 2.4x series) will have a new file selector, and of recent, a lot of activity has been going on around that. One of the GNOME artmasters, Tigert, has released a mockup of the new file selector and the GTK developers are busy working towards that. Meanwhile the people from OSNews have some other ideas, while an OSNews reader has made even better mockups." -
The State Of The GTK+ File Selector
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "The next stable release of GTK+ (from the 2.4x series) will have a new file selector, and of recent, a lot of activity has been going on around that. One of the GNOME artmasters, Tigert, has released a mockup of the new file selector and the GTK developers are busy working towards that. Meanwhile the people from OSNews have some other ideas, while an OSNews reader has made even better mockups." -
Extensive Xandros 2.0 Deluxe Review
Ms Pacman writes "This article is the fifth and final installment of Barry Smith's series on Debian-based commercial distros in a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environment. In this in-depth article, the newly released Xandros Deluxe 2.0 is being reviewed and compared to all previous distros Barry Smith used and reviewed the past 2-3 months. Of special interest is the blurb about Xandros' customer support." -
Interview with OpenBeOS Leader Michael Phipps
Gentu writes "Koki from the japanese site jpbe recently interviewed Michael Phipps, the project leader of OpenBeOS, the open source re-implementation of the BeOS. Read here for the english version of the interview where Michael is discussing the roots of the project, the current status, the roadmap, the choice of the MIT license, its relationship to YellowTAB's Zeta and the other efforts to resurrect BeOS, BeUnited and the Sun Java port and more." -
Hackers on Linux's Exciting Desktop Future
Gentu writes "OSNews features two interviews with prominent open source developers: Robert Love started working at Ximian this week and he will be leading the 'effort to improve the Linux desktop experience via kernel development'. In this Q&A, he explains what he will be working on hardware integration, freedesktop.org's D-BUS & HAL, low latency optimizations, power management, X & 3D and a 'Linux answer to WinFS'. The second interview is with Red Hat's Owen Taylor. Owen speaks of GTK+ development and where he sees the project going in the Gnome 3 timeframe: freedesktop.org's new X server, Cairo support, GTK#, OpenGL & other widgets and more." -
Hackers on Linux's Exciting Desktop Future
Gentu writes "OSNews features two interviews with prominent open source developers: Robert Love started working at Ximian this week and he will be leading the 'effort to improve the Linux desktop experience via kernel development'. In this Q&A, he explains what he will be working on hardware integration, freedesktop.org's D-BUS & HAL, low latency optimizations, power management, X & 3D and a 'Linux answer to WinFS'. The second interview is with Red Hat's Owen Taylor. Owen speaks of GTK+ development and where he sees the project going in the Gnome 3 timeframe: freedesktop.org's new X server, Cairo support, GTK#, OpenGL & other widgets and more." -
64-bit Linux On The Opteron
JigSaw writes "A few moths ago Robert Minvielle put to test AMD's Opteron regarding its 64-bit Linux compatibility. The results back then were not very positive but he is now back testing more 64-bit updated distros: Gentoo, SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat and Fedora. And this time the results are more positive with Linux offering good Opteron support where Windows-64 doesn't seem to. FreeBSD also lists the AMD64 platform as a tier-1 architecture." -
64-bit Linux On The Opteron
JigSaw writes "A few moths ago Robert Minvielle put to test AMD's Opteron regarding its 64-bit Linux compatibility. The results back then were not very positive but he is now back testing more 64-bit updated distros: Gentoo, SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat and Fedora. And this time the results are more positive with Linux offering good Opteron support where Windows-64 doesn't seem to. FreeBSD also lists the AMD64 platform as a tier-1 architecture." -
SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 Review
JigSaw writes "Despite news about SCO being all about the lawsuit, they still sell OS products and they have a presence in the server market. UnixWare is one of these OS products. Tony Bourke reviewed its latest version, 7.1.3, and even includes benchmarks among other tests. Tony concludes that 'the lack of commercial applications and user community, the difficulty with open source applications, the SCO litigation, and the high price are all marks against UnixWare. There are just very few reasons to adopt UnixWare as your platform, and plenty of reasons to adopt (or migrate to) other platforms.'" -
KDE 3.2-beta2 - Towards a Better KDE?
JigSaw writes "KDE 3.2-beta2 was released last week for general testing and OSNews offers a preview of what's expected from the 'popular X11 desktop environment' early next year upon its release. The article mentions KDE's new features (faster loading times, Konqueror's Service Menus, Kontact, KPDF, Plastik theme etc), the problems that still plague it (cluttered Kmenu and Konqueror menus, too many disorganized kontrol center modules) and some constructive suggestions on how to get over the bloat without losing the functionality." -
Java Desktop System Review
Reader writes "OSNews has the first in-depth review of Sun's Java Desktop System based on the final code. The article discusses the good (stability, Star Office 7, good Java integration) and the bad (no KDE, buggy RealTek driver, shaky Samba) and it includes a number of screenshots. It seems that Sun has put all its attention on Gnome and while this is good for cosistency across their desktop (some of their Java apps use the native GTK+ themeing), it also limits its users from an out-of-the-box KDE and its thousands of apps choice." -
Get to Know GnomeMeeting
JigSaw writes "OSNews has a nice review/introduction to GnomeMeeting discussing its setup, usage and features. Some screenshots are included." -
10 Years of FreeBSD: Anniversary Party
FreeBSD FOREVER writes "OSNews has a quick write-up from FreeBSD's 10th Anniversary Party, which they call a success for the project and the attendees." -
Freedesktop.org on KDE/Gnome, New Goals
fdo writes "OSNews has a long and juicy interview with the freedesktop.org developers regarding many aspects of their project, including interoperability between GNOME/KDE, the new X Server, the new Hardware Abstraction Layer library, accessibility, package management and in general, all things desktop." -
theKompany.com's Data Architect Reviewed
JigSaw writes "Clinton De Young reviews for OSNews the premier theKompany product, Data Architect. The product allows you to design ODBC and other databases under Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, utilizing the Qt toolkit." -
OSNews Rates Fedora Core 1 Mild Disappointment
JigSaw writes "OSNews has reviewed the Fedora Core 1 Linux distro, but the author personally found lots of usability problems and bugs with the distro, making Fedora Core a trying experience. The writer puts the blame on poor QA of Fedora Core 1 done by its community, since Red Hat has shifted focus to Enterprise, with Fedora serving merely as a testbed for them." -
GNU-Darwin: Three Years of Free Software Activism
JigSaw writes "The GNU-Darwin Distribution is a free BSD operating system and a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86 users, but it is also a platform for digital activism. Founder Michael L. Love wrote an editorial speaking about the roots, goals, problems and just about everything about GNU-Darwin. Free Software is at the core of GNU-Darwin and also anything political that has an impact on digital and even rights. Is this the first truly politically oriented BSD OS?" Nope. -
Sun Solaris Vs Linux: The x86 Smack-down
JigSaw writes "Tony Bourke put together a long article, benchmarking File System, System, Compilation, OpenSSL and Web Performance for both Linux and Solaris on x86 hardware. While SPARC's Solaris is said to be more optimized than its x86 counterpart on the other hand so is Linux 2.6 compared to 2.4. Solaris-x86 performed well in the tests, but Linux 2.4 seems to win most of the tests and the overall impressions." -
Mac OS X Panther 10.3 Reviewed
JigSaw writes "OSNews posted a (constructively) critical, but also favorable review of Mac OS X Panther 10.3. The article discusses the new features, what works great and what's still sour, and it also includes a plethora of screenshots." The review's conclusion suggests Panther is "...a worthy operating system, easy to use, easy to set up, easy to get pleased by it. It just works." -
Mac OS X Panther 10.3 Reviewed
JigSaw writes "OSNews posted a (constructively) critical, but also favorable review of Mac OS X Panther 10.3. The article discusses the new features, what works great and what's still sour, and it also includes a plethora of screenshots." The review's conclusion suggests Panther is "...a worthy operating system, easy to use, easy to set up, easy to get pleased by it. It just works." -
Axentra Rumba Server - Home Do-It-All Box
JigSaw writes "OSNews has an exclusive article on a new Linux-based server appliance product -- the first in the family -- the Axentra Rumba Server. The product is to be launched soon, but details of it have being leaked out already: The device has a mini ITX mobo, VIA C3 800 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hdd, USB 1.1, 2 LAN ports and in 1 WAN port (extra Wi-Fi USB device required). The device is useful as an Internet Gateway (DNS, IP filtering, Port forwarding, NAT firewall), as a network service (web server, file server, WebDAV, IMAP/SMTP, Samba, Content/Spam Filtering, photo album). It has an embedded web server so you can administer it via your web browser. It is compatible with Linux, Macs and Windows." -
Replacing the Aging Init Procedure on Linux
SmellsLikeTeenGarlic writes "Seth Nickell (of Storage and Gnome HIG fame) has started a new project which aims to replace the aging Init system on Linux. OSNews has more details on the project, directly from Seth. The new Python-based approach will make booting faster and it will talk to the D-BUS daemon, freedesktop.org's leading project. And speaking of freedesktop.org, it is important to mention the release of HAL 0.1, an implementation of a hardware abstraction layer for KDE, XFce and Gnome, based on a proposal by freedesktop.org's founder Havoc Pennington and being implemented by David Zeuthen. It is innovative projects like Storage, SystemServices and HAL that can bring the kind of integration to the underlying system that current X11 desktop environments lack." -
TRON Enters Alliance With Microsoft
David writes "As widely reported on OSNews.com, Forbes, IDG, CNet, AustralianIT, and Ashi Shimbun - Microsoft Corp. has entered into an alliance with the T-engine Forum, the consortium behind the free software TRON operating system. As TRON runs billions of devices worldwide, this will help Microsoft's goal of cementing WinCE / .NET in places as diverse as your toaster and cell phone, perhaps in a setup similar to how X-Windows is in relation to the Linux kernel." (Continued below.)David continues: "This arrangement is ironic, as Microsoft is part of the reason why the U.S. in the 1980s prevented Japan from putting TRON into schools on the desktop by account of trade rules, which would've meant Linux may've never gone beyond being a footnote in the comp.os.minix archives. No doubt Microsoft is aiming to keep Linux out of the embedded space, and may in the long-term foster an environment where using anything other than industry-licenced OS software on the desktop becomes unviable for everyday tasks because all the infratructurial systems we take for granted today like radio, television, phones, IM, require Palladium-style walled gardens."
