OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

A Developer’s Perspective on Direct3D vs. OpenGL

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 3D 8 Comments

"For many years now, the question "Which should I use: Direct3D or OpenGL?" has elicited heated arguments. Most of the things said do very little to help you decide which API you should use. There are fanatics on both sides; some people will tell you that OpenGL is the only way to go, and others will swear by Direct3D. Others will talk about how they have used both, and that you should do the same and decide which you like better, but for someone starting out, that's not much help either. The point is, it can be a tough decision to make, and I am writing this article to help you do it. My specialty is primarily in Win32 programming, so that will be my focus. No need to fear though, I discuss other platforms as well." Read the rest of the article at GameDev.

STMicro, Philips to Develop Set-Top OS

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 OS News 3 Comments

"Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics and Philips Electronics agreed on Tuesday to jointly develop and promote a software system for the next generation of interactive set-top boxes and television sets. Philips said STMicro would back the Multimedia Home Platform software in the emerging fight for the supremacy over the next operating system used by cable operators as they unveil new interactive TV services." Read the rest of the report at ZDNews. Update: Ken writes: "The Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) software is not really an OS, but a set of middleware services that provide basic STB functions. It can sit on top of any OS (like pSoS that Philips currently uses)."

Opera Launches Opera 6.0 for Linux Beta 1

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 Opera 10 Comments

Opera today released Opera 6.0 for Linux Beta 1 with a wide range of speed-boosting functions and exclusive features only available to Linux users. Opera for the first time displays non-Roman alphabets for Linux users, opening up the local markets in the Asia/Pacific and Eastern European region to true browser competition. In a related note, the OffByOne original browser for Windows (only 400 KB) now supports SSL and the full spectrum of HTML 3.2.

KernelTrap Interviews Rik Van Riel

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 Linux No Comments

KernelTrap has posted an interview with Rik Van Riel. Rik is most recognized for his impressive rmap VM efforts. He's also the founder of kernelnewbies. Living in Brazil, he works for Conectiva Linux.

New Version of NetOptimist Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 Internet 15 Comments

Macintosh has iCab, Windows has OffByOne, Linux has Dillo and BeOS has NetOptimist. These are home brewed, coded-from-scratch web browsers. NetOptimist was created to replace NetPositive (a Netscape 2+ compliant browser which is still the default BeOS web browser) and add more capabilities like Javascript and CSS. There is still lots of work to be done, so the main developer, Stephane Fritsch, asks for more developers to join him. Stephane has also made a preliminary port of the browser to Solaris/X11. Check out the screenshots at the SourceForge NetOptimist web site and download version Preview 14 from BeBits.

Lycoris Linux Review

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 16 Comments

ExtremeTech features a review (screenshots included) of the desktop-targetted "Lycoris Linux", also used to be known as "Redmond Linux". The author examines the user friendly distribution and its installation procedure, the environment used and more. However, the review is a bit single-sided, as it does not list any problems or disantvantages found on the distribution. In other Linux news, kernel 2.4.18 was released today, but almost everyone from the Linux kernel team advises that after untaring the new kernel, you should immediately patch the source for the 2.4.19-pre1 kernel, as it includes more bug fixes, especially for the SPARC users. Linux kernel compilation tutorial here.

Intel Unleashes Speedy Xeon, Server Chip Set

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 Intel 4 Comments

The new Xeons server-oriented CPUs, known by the code name Prestonia, will be offered at 2.2GHz for $615, 2GHz for $417 and 1.8GHz for $251. The Xeons, based on the Pentium 4 architecture, are also the first to incorporate a performance-enhancing technology called hyperthreading. The new feature essentially enables a single Xeon to act like virtual dual processors. When used in conjunction with software designed for multi-CPU systems, hyperthreading can provide up to a 40 percent boost in performance compared with a same-speed Xeon with hyperthreading disabled, Intel officials said. In other hardware news, Seagate demonstrated a Serial ATA-enabled hard drive at the Intel Developer Forum today in San Francisco.

Interview with Mandrake’s & KDE’s David Faure

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 Original OSNews Interviews 27 Comments

David Faure is a well known developer in the KDE & Linux community. His work can be found in KFM, Konqueror source code and he recently also picked up KOffice's KWord development. David is also one of the people who have commited in bug squashing under KDE, especially after he got hired by Mandrake Software. Read more for our interview with David regarding Konqueror, KDE object prelinking, Gnome and much more.

Peer-2-Peer Survival-of-the-Fittest Computing Game Attracts Developers

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 .NET 8 Comments

Microsoft Corp. today announced that its .NET-based "Terrarium" game has been downloaded by more than 9,000 developers just one week after its launch. "Terrarium" is a peer-to-peer distributed computing game written using the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft's new programming model for developing and running applications and XML Web services. In "Terrarium," developers use code to design herbivores, carnivores or plants and then introduce their creations into a peer-to-peer, networked ecosystem where they compete for survival.

Windows-Based Servers and Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 Windows 3 Comments

Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology allows a single physical processor to execute multiple threads (instruction streams) simultaneously, potentially providing greater throughput and improved performance. Intel will introduce Hyper-Threading Technology in their Intel Xeon processor family for servers in the first quarter of 2002. This article provides an overview of how the Windows Server operating system works with Intel Hyper-Threading technology. It explains the implications for performance, compatibility, and licensing.

NewOS Now Includes a Network Stack

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 OS News 26 Comments

Travis Geiselbrecht, the developer of NewOS, writes in his web site: "Haven't updated this list in a while, but there's a lot of progress being made. Over the last couple of months we've implemented a rudimentary network stack, full dynamic lib support, and work has been started on a real native filesystem. Also a full-fledged IDE driver is in the work. Thanks to all the people that have helped me out." Download the latest version of this young operating system, in a source form here.

Sun to Charge for Star Office but Increases Commitment to GNOME

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 Oracle and SUN 16 Comments

According to a heise article, free versions of Star Office will now only be available to Solaris users. Free versions for Linux and Windows users will no longer be offered. However, Mark McLoughlin of Sun mailed the gnome-hackers mailing-list announcing the deal between Sun, Ximian and Wipro. The deal means that Wipro will assign up to 50 people to work on GNOME including hackers, QA people, documenters and more.

Increase Windows XP Performance & Power Management in OSes

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 OS News 25 Comments

InformIT features two interesting articles (free registration required), excerpts from the two books: Modern Operating Systems (again) & WindowsXP Unleashed. "The first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, had 18,000 vacuum tubes and consumed 140,000 watts of power. As a result, it ran up a nontrivial electricity bill. After the invention of the transistor, power usage dropped dramatically and the computer industry lost interest in power requirements. However, nowadays power management is back in the spotlight for several reasons, and the operating system is playing a role here." Read the rest of the excerpt article from Tanenbaum's book. "Microsoft’s Windows XP Professional and Home Editions can be made to perform faster than their default installed configurations by making a few modifications at the user level. Louis Columbus shows you the steps you need to take to increase Windows XP’s overall performance." Read the first out of ten articles regarding the optimization of WindowsXP.

MacSlash Interviews David Pogue

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-24 macOS 2 Comments

MacSlash features an interesting interview with David Pogue, a Macintosh icon and author of "MacOSX: The Missing Manual" and "Piloting Palm, The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry" books. David talks all about MacOSX and what's still needed by the popular OS, he talks NeXT, UNIX and more.

Full (Unofficial) Support for OpenSTEP under VMWare

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-24 OpenStep, GNUstep 22 Comments

When NeXT, Inc. sold its business to Apple, the NeXT/OpenSTEP operating systems went unsupported. New hardware emerged in the x86 market, and NeXT was not able to boot successfully anymore (among others, problems with the CD-rom drivers, while the last CPU it supported was the Pentium Pro). However, a few NeXT "die hards" have managed to boot OpenSTEP under VMWare, the x86 runtime application. You can find instructions here and here on how to run OpenSTEP under Linux and Windows' VMWare respectively (screenshots included). Moreover, Atomic Object, Inc. released a SVGA OpenSTEP display driver for VMWare (although the graphics VMWare specs are not publicly available), so now the OS is almost fully supported by VMWare, even so unofficially. On a related note, the GnuSTEP project moves in a faster pace lately, trying to implement the OpenSTEP and MacOSX's Cocoa APIs.

Adobe Unveils Photoshop 7.0 for MacOSX

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-24 Graphics 10 Comments

"Adobe Systems Inc. today will unveil one of the most important applications for Apple's MacOSX. The business world was able to hop on board the OSX bandwagon last November when Microsoft released Office v.X, but now the creative community can soon join the converts with the announcement of Photoshop 7.0. Photoshop 7.0 adds new features (the "Healing Brush" is one of them) and, of course, a new Aqua interface, but it's still the same familiar application that the creative professionals know and rely on to make a living." Despite the problems of the port, Photoshop 7 for OSX is here. Read the exclusive report and screenshots at MacCentral.

Solaris Server Ported of the BeOS-based BeServed Network Filesystem

Submitted by Kevin Musick 2002-02-24 Internet 6 Comments

BeServed is a native network file system for BeOS. It allows you to share files between computers running BeOS. You can connect to (i.e., mount) folders from remote computers and access files just as if those files were local to your computer. Unlike NFS and CIFS, BeServed supports all the unique benefits of the Be File System (BFS), such as attributes, MIME-based typing, indexes, querying etc. (BFS features are only available on the BeOS platform; foreign versions of the file server do no yet support attributes, indexing, etc.) BeServed includes a network browsing application called 'My Network', which lists the available computers on your network in much the same way as Microsoft's Network Neighborhood. The company now ported their product to Solaris, following releases of Linux & Windows.

Amiga Works with Nokia on New STB

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-02-23 Amiga & AROS 8 Comments

Amiga Inc has announced that it is working with Nokia to integrate AmigaDE technology into Nokia`s new Mediaterminal. The AmigaDE will offer users the ability to download and use AmigaDE applications, MP3, MPEG4, Universal Chat and streaming video, turning the family TV into a multifunctional infotainment center. AmigaDE technology will also be used in a whole scala of upcoming handheld devices and will become fully integrated in a future releases of the Amiga operating system. To get an idea of what future cellphones will look like, take a look these concept pictures of future Nokia phones. Also should be noted that PDA/cellphone targetted AmigaDE 3D games are under development. For instance an AmigaDE version of Hyperion Entertainment`s Warp3D technology was recently demonstrated to me at the Amiga 2001 fair in Cologne. Here`s a Status Report with screenshots of Payback for the AmigaDE, a GTA-clone and this year`s most popular classic 68k AmigaOS game title. If you want to speak to AmigaDE or AmigaOS designers and developers for yourself then be sure to attend the upcoming AmigaExpo show to be held in the US.

Interview with EFF’s John Perry Barlow

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-23 Editorial 14 Comments

Totalitarianism. Urban pathology. The death of creativity. These are the fears that keep John Perry Barlow awake at night. The co-founder of the 12-year-old Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tries not to be bleak. But he sincerely worries that Microsoft will usurp e-commerce and AOL Time Warner will seize media, and the two forces will extinguish dissenting voices in a "diabolical" plot to own the economy and the human mind. "I worry that the Net is closing. I would say that (Microsoft e-commerce initiatives) .Net and HailStorm are huge threats and really diabolical. The problem is that hardly anybody recognizes it because they don't know what .Net is or how it works. They don't know that Microsoft is trying to own all of your transactions, literally."

Understanding & Coding the KParts Component Architecture

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-23 KDE No Comments

The IBM developerWorks article by David Faure discusses KParts, an architecture for graphical components, found in KDE, the KDE. KParts allows applications requiring the same functionality to share a component by embedding the graphical component into the application's window. The article also compares KParts with other component models, such as CORBA, and describes the main concepts used in KParts, including actions, plug-ins, part managers, and GUI merging.