OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Red Hat “Null” Beta Includes Many UI Changes

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-22 Red Hat 108 Comments

The latest beta of Red Hat 8, named "null", released a couple of days ago, includes some UI changes, mostly new icons, showing the clear wish of Red Hat to enter the corporate desktop market. Texstar from PCLinuxOnline posted some screenshots of his Null beta, so you can see the UI changes for yourself. I took the time this afternoon to try and suggest ways to clean up the new Red Hat UI even more (particularly, the menu). See the original shot, and the modified one. Our previous article, based on a random shot of Red Hat's older UI can be found here.

It’s Reality Check Time for Lindows

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Linspire 28 Comments

Bash time on the web again for Lindows (unfortunately). ZDNews has an article about Lindows and their strategy. We sincerly hope that the company survive the bad press and all the Linux users who dislike Lindows mostly for political reasons (while Lindows does not target Linux users as customers). In related news, Lindows.com announced on Tuesday that it will host a Desktop Linux Summit, aimed at rallying interest in consumer Linux distributions.

Why Is The Eclipse IDE Important

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 General Development 36 Comments

"Almost a year after it donated some $40 million worth of code and tools, IBM is on the warpath once again, drumming up support for the open-source Eclipse project. Eclipse may not be as well known as some other open-source projects, such as Linux, Mozilla, or Apache. It's certainly not as sexy. At its core, Eclipse provides a common platform, user interface, and plug-in framework for integrating development tools." Read the rest of the story at InternetWeek. We should add that if the Eclipse web site add some easy to find screenshots and become a bit more straightforward of what it is and what it does, instead of corporate blah-blah, surely more people would get interested in. Expect a review of the QNX version of Eclipse, dubbed 'Momentics', in the near future.

Linux Users – Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Linux 18 Comments

DesktopLinux.com reader John Murray contributes this call to action to support Linux companies and open source projects. Murray offers a simple user plan to help contribute to the efforts of developers - put your money where your mouth is...

Pouring Over the Facts: Andreas Pour on KDE

Submitted by Timothy R. Butler 2002-08-21 KDE 11 Comments

Andreas Pour is well known to most everyone in the KDE community. Considering that KDE is the leading desktop for Linux, if you are investigating GNU/Linux workstations, you are sure to run into Pour's work. He graciously agreed to participate in a series of exclusive interviews with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler. In other KDE news, the KDE Project opens the doors to 3rd party developers with the "Extra Gear" initiative.

GNOME Human Interface Guidelines Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Gnome 14 Comments

The GNOME Usability Project is proud to announce the release of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (v1.0), the product of usability engineers, designers, hackers, and Irish wine. The guidelines deliver both specific advice on making effective use of interface elements, as well as the philosophy and general principles behind the guidelines. Read the release announcement (including a plea for interface unity between free software projects), or jump straight to the meat.

New DDR 1GHz MP Power Mac versus the Older SDRAM Model

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Benchmarks 17 Comments

We reported on this a few days ago, but now the article is updated 8/17/02 with 'streamlined' graphs, tweaked verbiage, and addition of a very interesting Memory Speed Graph. Page Two added on 8/20/02 with additional tests. Updated 8/21/02 with another bottleneck theory and Memory Speed Graph interpretation. Read the updated benchmarks here and here. What will it take to fix the bottleneck, the conclusion asks? The author replies: A CPU than can handle the full speed of DDR memory (like the fabled PPC 7470) and a redesigned motherboard with separate bus for each CPU.

Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 2.6

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Windows No Comments

The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 2.6 for WindowsXP & .NET Server contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms. Tools include the latest versions of the Windows Application Verifier that assists developers and testers in locating common compatibility issues during the development cycle, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows.

VectorLinux 2.5 SOHO-1.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Linux 13 Comments

VectorLinux, a lightweight distribution of GNU/Linux was just released. The new version is called SOHO 1.0, and while it is based on the previous version, VectorLinux v2.5, it still has many enhancements. Features the KDE 3.x desktop including Koffice and the KDE development suite. OpenOffice, AbiWord, the Gimp, Realplayer, Xmms, Mozilla-1.0, Opera 6.x, Cups printing system, scanner support, java runtime, kernel 2.4.18 and several entertaining games are all included. The founder, Robert Lange, is looking for more developers to join him, a new web master and people to try the free download of SOHO or to buy the CD in order to fund the project.

AMD Breaks 2 GHz Barrier

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 AMD 43 Comments

AMD tried to re-claim the performance leadership with the release of the 2600+ and 2400+ versions of its AthlonXP CPU. While AMD officials claimed that the new chips outperform other PC processors, ExtremeTech testing doesn't give the AthlonXP a definitive edge. AMD also reworked its "model number" performance ratings to better represent performance, executives said. In other hardware news, Sun released a new, budget-minded Unix workstation on Tuesday, mamed Sun Blade 150. But as its influence grows in the Unix market, the market itself is dwindling, C|Net says.

Opera Casts Off Legacy Code for Speed

Submitted by dave_sn 2002-08-21 Opera 56 Comments

Opera, the self-described "fastest browser on earth," has decided to jettison its legacy code in favor of something a little faster. The Oslo, Norway-based company is on the verge of releasing a trial, or beta, version of Opera 7, which will resemble its predecessor only in superficial ways. The rendering engine--the heart of the browser, which interprets code pulled down from Web servers--has been rewritten from the ground up over the past 18 months.

Editorial Time – Opinions on the Web

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Editorial 5 Comments

The first editorial is an interesting take from ExtremeTech about Red Hat's "dual play" in the Linux business, called "RedHat's Astroturfing". The second one, called "Creativity, reliability to drive telematics" is written by Paul Leroux, from QNX Software. Last by not least, David Berlind analyzes the pros and cons of binary compatibility between versions: Is it the holy grail or the red herring?

Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Office 6 Comments

From ActiveWin: "Microsoft Corp. has released the second service pack for Office XP, which will combine previously released and new updates into a single, integrated package that will be available as a Web download or on CD. Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP-2) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP-2 contains significant security enhancements as well as stability and performance improvements. SP-2 updates the following Office applications: Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Access 2002, FrontPage 2002, Publisher 2002, and Office XP Web Components."

Can Microsoft Take the Lead in Security?

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-21 Privacy, Security 18 Comments

Microsoft is undergoing a major cultural shift in the way it deals with security, but it has come much later than it should have, is the consensus at the TechEd conference in Brisbane. In the meantime, web servers and corporate PCs are at risk from vulnerabilities in the popular Apache server software and in a component of Microsoft's Windows 2000.

Lycoris Beta 48 Released

Submitted by Matthias Toth 2002-08-20 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 12 Comments

Get the new Lycoris beta 48 from an FTP mirror near you. No announcement was published yet for it.

IBM’s JFS Merged into 2.4.x Linux

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-20 General Development 20 Comments

Marcelo Tosatti released 2.4.20-pre4 today. Included in the bug fixes and driver updates was the merge of JFS. JFS is IBM's journaled filesystem port from OS/2. JFS had previously been merged into the -ac tree (2.4.18pre9-ac4) and was merged into the 2.5 tree early on (2.5.6). JFS joins ext3 and reiserfs in the 2.4 tree. SGI's XFS is still awaiting inclusion into the stable tree. Read more at KernelTrap.

Intel Cools with Multi-Core Chips

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-20 Intel 8 Comments

Intel scientists are putting two chip cores into the same piece of silicon--with promises to improve performance by 'core hopping' and keeping the transistors cooler. Read the report at ZDNews.com. Update: In the meantime, OSNews reader Kelvin Tong tells us that HWExtreme has exclusive pictures and a preview of the AMD "Hammer" Opteron processor.

TrollTech Previews Qt 3.1

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-20 Qt 9 Comments

The new Qt 3.1 upgrade features hundreds of enhancements, TrollTech claims. Among the features are better ActiveX support, Motif integration, while for MacOSX you will find integration with the Appearance Manager, anti-aliased text drawing, and user settings. The Qt OpenGL support for OSX is also greatly improved, and uses the hardware-accelerated drivers. Also, Qt 3.1 offers more classes available for multi-threading, thereby optimizing performance. Elsewhere, GTKmm 1.3.21 for GTK+ 2 was released.

Rational Rethinks Modeling Tool for .Net

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-20 General Development 5 Comments

Rational on Monday spruced up its XDE Professional tool with support for Microsoft's Visual Basic.Net language and ASP.Net class library technology, which makes it easier to build complex Web-based business systems by handling much of the underlying plumbing. In the meantime, Microsoft is shipping to testers a new Visual Studio .NET, codenamed Everett Beta 1.

Open-Source Databases Hike Enterprise Appeal

Eugenia Loli 2002-08-20 Databases 13 Comments

"The creators of the open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL are trying to push them further into the enterprise with new features aimed at better support for transactions, database recovery and replication." Read the news at eWeek. On the other hand, VA-Software said that they had to switch SourceForge to IBM's DB2, because their database grows very fast (70 new projects and 700 new users daily) and while they did a move from mySQL to PostgreSQL a year ago (mySQL is faster for smaller dbs, while PostgreSQL scales better), now they have to move again to an even more powerful database, which happens to be proprierty.