LindowsOS Sneak Preview 2: Some Good stuff, but I’m Still Root

Linspire 14 Comments
"On April 9, Michael Robertson announced the release of LindowsOS sneak preview 2. "Lindows.com is not about selling an operating system," the Lindows CEO says in the press release. "It's not too different from needing a car. Nobody says, 'I need an engine,' they say, 'I need a car,' and most times, what they really mean is that they need transportation. It's the same with a computer." I think I know what he's getting at." Read the rest of the mini-review at NewsForge.
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Real-Time and Linux, Part II: the Preemptible Kernel

Linux 7 Comments
"In the January/February 2002 issue of Embedded Linux Journal, we examined the fundamental issues of real time with Linux. In this article we examine efforts to bring real-time capabilities to applications by making improvements to the Linux kernel. To date, the majority of this work has been to make the kernel more responsive--to reduce latency by reducing the preemption latency, which can be quite long in Linux." Kevin Dankwardt continues his real-time series by examining efforts to bring real-time capabilities to applications by improving the Linux kernel. Part I can be found here.
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The x86 OS X Success Strategy

macOS 55 Comments
"For those of you who have been wishing for a copy of Apple's Mac OS X to run on your x86 PC, your wish may soon be granted if recent reports regarding graphics accelerator companies ATI and Nvidia are to be believed. It has been rumored that an x86 version of OS X exists somewhere deep within the confines of Apple Computer's software laboratories, although none of us mere mortals living outside the Cupertino campus truly know for sure." Read the rest of the editorial at OSOpinion.
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The State of the Linux Kernel

Linux 8 Comments
Every January, "Linux Magazine" surveys the state of the Linux kernel, bringing their readers up to date on what new kernel features and improvements to expect in the year ahead. "For 2002, the crystal ball is cloudier than usual because at press time, work on Linux 2.5 has not yet begun. Nevertheless, some definite and tentative plans had come to light" the editor writes. The magazine spoke with several key kernel developers to learn more about their plans and hopes for Linux 2.5. This article was first appeared in the printed version of the magazine in December, and it is now online, free for everyone to access it.
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Microsoft Office NGO Information Leaked

Office 10 Comments
While the information is still unconfirmed, the talk is that the leaked slides from a Microsoft presentation regarding the next Office version, are authentic. WindowsSuperSite features two articles, the first talks about the new Office version, codenamed NGO, but the second set of slides, is the truly interesting part, explaining how the subscription/renting .NET model will work with Microsoft's upcoming Web Services. In fact, it seems that Office will be the leading application in this new sales model, which will help promote the subscription model in general, however a "traditional" licensing method will also be available. Update: Some analysis of the NGO presentation can be found at ExtremeTech.
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Create Virus-Resistant Applications with .NET

.NET 11 Comments
"To help stop the spread of worms, viruses, and other hostile activity, it is important to track down and report the servers used in these attacks along with those used to send spam. Many Web admins, however, don't take the time to track them because the manual process can be quite cumbersome. The Microsoft .NET Framework comes to the rescue with several networking classes, including the Dns class and the TcpClient class, that abstract away the complexity of performing DNS and WHOIS lookups. These classes make it easy to create a simple, straightforward ASP.NET-based utility for performing these lookups and automating this very important task." Read the article at MSDN.
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The AltiVec Difference

Apple 12 Comments
"Apple first introduced PowerMac G4 computer systems using AltiVec -- a high performance vector processing expansion to the PowerPC architecture -- in the fall of 1999. Architecturally, AltiVec adds 128-bit-wide vector execution units to the PowerPC architecture. Early versions of the G4 processor had a single AltiVec unit, while more recent versions have up to four units (simple, complex, floating, and permute). These vector units operate independently from the traditional integer and floating-point units". Read the interesting article at O'ReillyNet.
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Gentoo Linux 1.1a Has Been Released

Gentoo 10 Comments
Improvements include important pam/shadow/util-linux security fixes, new KDE3 ebuilds, many important improvements to Portage, new NVIDIA drivers and seamless OpenGL configuration, and more. Existing Gentoo Linux users can upgrade in-place by following the instructions included in the release announcement. New users can find install instructions and ISOs and build tarballs. Also be sure to read our new Portage Manual to get up to speed with the new Gentoo Linux 1.0+ features.
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IEEE 1394 vs USB 2.0

Hardware 32 Comments
"The latest rivalry to erupt is between the IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 high-speed serial bus specifications. In addition to 400Mbps-class bandwidths (400Mbps for 1394 and 480Mbps for USB 2.0), hot-plug connectivity, and auto-configuration capabilities, both can support either asynchronous or isochronous operation, theoretically making them suitable for both computer peripherals and digital A/V equipment. Not surprisingly, many users have no idea why they should choose one over the other." Read the interesting benchmarking article at ExtremeTech and witness FireWire beating USB 2.0 on all tests.
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Apache ‘General Availability’ 2.0.35 Released

Internet 12 Comments
Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition is the ability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both threads and processes. This has shown to improve the scalability of the Apache HTTP Server significantly in our testing. Apache 2.0 also includes support for filtered I/O. This allows modules to modify the output of other modules before it is sent to the client. There is also support for IPv6 on any platform that supports IPv6. This version of Apache is known to work on many versions of Unix, BeOS, OS/2, Windows, and Netware.
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Gentoo Linux Installation Review

Gentoo 17 Comments
"Gentoo solved many problems for me. Some distros install everything, whether you really need it or not. Not Gentoo; other than the base packages required for Linux to run, the only software installed on the system is the software you put there. Gentoo resolves dependancies automatically, eliminating RPM prerequisite hell. As an added bonus I got something I wasn't even expecting. Speed. Blinding, blazing, incredible speed." Read the rest of the interesting installation review for Gentoo Linux at Kuro5hin.
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Develop PDA Apps for the .NET Compact Framework with VS.NET

.NET 2 Comments
"Smart Device Extensions (SDE) for Visual Studio .NET allow programmers to develop applications for the .NET Compact Framework, a new platform that maintains many of the features of the .NET Framework in a version optimized for handheld devices. This article shows how SDE provides access through Visual Studio .NET to a variety of .NET classes for devices running Windows CE, including classes for creating user interfaces. Data access classes and Web Services for the .NET Compact Framework are also explained. Following that overview, a sample Web Service called XMLList is built. Then the UI—the XMLList client-side application—is created." Read the rest of the article at MSDN.
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Using the /dev and /proc File Systems

Linux 5 Comments
"There are two Linux file systems that continually prove to be confusing stumbling blocks to new Linux users. These two directories, /proc and /dev have no Windows counterpart, and are not at first glance easily understandable. They are, however, powerful tools for understanding and using Linux. This article is a walk-through of the device (/dev) and process (/proc) file systems. It will explain what they are, how they work, and how they are used in practice." Read the rest of the article at NewsForge.
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