Monthly Archive:: December 2003

Here is an excellent OS-related case mod. Ingeniously simple and practical.

Captive is a project to create a wrapper around Microsoft's ntfs.sys driver that allows linux users to get read-write access to their NTFS partitions. They are using WINE and ReactOS code to emulate parts of Windows environment needed to make the driver work.

This article kicks off a six-part series that focuses on important data structures and their use in application development. We'll examine both built-in data structures present in the .NET Framework, as well as essential data structures we'll have to build ourselves. This first installment focuses on defining what data structures are, how the efficiency of data structures is analyzed, and why this analysis is important. In this article, we'll also examine the Array and ArrayList, two of the most commonly used data structures present in the .NET Framework.

Sun's Schwartz says his company's partnership with EDS and its deal with the Chinese government establish Sun as a leading desktop provider and competitor to Microsoft.

OReilly's OnLamp site has two articles, Part I and Part II titled "Real Desktop Linux". Elsewhere, Bruce Perens posted a white paper of his UserLinux initiative titled "UserLinux: Repairing the Economic Paradigm of Enterprise Linux".

They say that "diversity is the key of survival and evolution in any domain. In software world though, variations are so big that they have started to prevent cooperation between software users and developers." Diversity is the key of survival and evolution in any domain. Because of variation, individuals from same species will react differently in the same environment, some surviving and becoming stronger, others disappearing. In software world though, variations are so big that they have started to prevent cooperation between software users and developers.

The Mono folks released new Mono, Monodoc, mod_mono versions. This release includes the PPC JIT engine running 'Hello World' and ASP.NET is considered feature-complete.

What follows is a tutorial aimed specifically at the ordinary desktop user interested in getting started with FreeBSD. Ed provides an easy to understand guide through FreeBSD's Sysinstall installer in part one of this series. Read the full story at OfB.biz.

This article intends to clear up some misconceptions about open source software development practices. It can help developers, IT and business managers transition from a closed development environment to an open one characterized by shorter time-to-market and lower costs. The author, Tom Adelstein -- an experienced CPA, code developer, project manager and consultant -- makes clear the notion that Open Source Software bears a mark of professionalism. Full Story

In this article, Mac user Paul Bissex decides to put an old computer to good use after his Powerbook crashed, and installs FreeBSD and KDE. He discovers that there's a lot to like about KDE, particularly network transparency in Konqueror and other applications, virtual desktops, the Quanta Plus web development tool and the KDE PIM suite. He also identifies some drawbacks to his KDE desktop, and compares it to Mac OS X.

"What I wanted was very simple and very routine—so routine and simple that it's enabled with a single checkbox in Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3. But I wasn't working with the client versions of Mac OS X. No, I was in server land. And I wanted Panther Server (Mac OS X Server 10.3) to hand out private Network Address Translation (NAT) managed addresses over DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)." Read the tutorial at OReillyNet.

One of the features appearing in the upcoming GCC-3.4 release is so-called precompiled headers, which potentially enable you to build applications at a faster pace. Read the article at DevChannel.

"Discussions about code as poetry and how code and art differ from each other are not new, but the growing popularity of free software among both developers and users may make software developers more like artists than they have been in the past in one very important respect: A majority of programmers may end up writing code without getting paid directly for their work. Perhaps, before long, "starving programmer" will be as familiar a phrase as "starving artist" is today." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

Just as, in the Java world, there are many competing MVC frameworks for JSP development, so many Open Source developers - says LinuxWorld senior editor James Turner - "scratch the same itch." In this week's installment of LinuxWorld's "Point-Counterpoint" series, LinuxWorld editors James Turner and Steve Suehring slug it out over that most contentious of issues: does the Open Source community on occasion shoot itself in the foot? James says it does, constantly; Steve disagrees.