Monthly Archive:: January 2004

This article is the fifth and final installment of my series on Debian-based commercial distros in a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environment. It has been a wild ride (see OSNews' archives under the "Features" menu for the previous articles of the series), and I would rather eat my weight in jelly beans than go through that again. But I think it was worth it. We will see in this article Xandros being reviewed and compared to all previous distros I used and reviewed the past 2-3 months.

AlwaysOn sits down with Ximian founders Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza, now respectively VP of research and development and CTO for Novell, and Chris Stone, Novell vice chairman, for an update on Novell's open-source strategy.

Here is a great new, innovative product: a very intelligent 800-pound robot to help you at home, named NS-5. At least this is what the firm "3 Laws Safe" is promising for July 16th this year. The OS used in the humanoid robot is named "Teresa" and the version shipped "will be the 2.1.2. Future OS updates will be available for wireless download 24/7. All NS-5 owners shall receive free OS updates for the lifetime of their personal domestic assistant" their site claims.

For Windows codenamed "Longhorn," Microsoft is investing in the development infrastructure for industry partners, as well as investing in technologies and innovations that continue to expand the PC capabilities and experiences for end-users—including support for advancing technologies such as PCI Express, new storage technologies, and robust advances for both wired and wireless networking. This site provides pointers to technical information for hardware, driver, and firmware engineers who are planning and creating new products that will run Windows "Longhorn."

Read the Fedora review article at LinuxBeginner.org.

NetBSD's Christopher Sekiya announced on New Year's Eve that he committed the final bits for Indigo (IP20) support to the NetBSD/sgimips Port. Both NFS root and local root now boot multi-user. Please see his message to the port-sgimips MailingList for details.

When your computer resides on another planet, service calls aren't an option. So when BAE Systems North America Inc. needed an extremely reliable operating system for the computational subsystem it was supplying for NASA's Mars rovers, it chose an industrial-strength, real-time operating system from Wind River Systems Inc., Alameda, Calif, VXWorks.

Usman Latif writes: "Linux has made few inroads on the desktop. Linux enthusiasts have plenty of excuses but do not seem to understand where they need to focus in order to make Linux a success on the desktop. My article 'The Future of Linux on the Desktop' is an attempt to point out markets where Linux can really make a difference."

We've all heard about the iPod lawsuits and the recent 15" Powerbook issue, but it's not the only apple related lawsuit brewing. Apple's iBook appears to have a little issue.

Linus Torvalds announced the release of 2.6.1-rc1, the first prepatch for the 2.6 series. He announced that 2.6.1-rc1 includes many patches that have been in the -mm patchset for a long time.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to install SuSE Linux 9.0 from FTP without buying the retail CDs.

Preview sports new file system, gee-whiz graphics, and some security fixes. The next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, is still in the early stages of its journey to the retail corral, but PCWorld's hands-on look at a preview reveals features we'd love to have now--while raising some intriguing questions.

This post focus around new security features in Windows XP Service Pack 2. With screenshots.

MandrakeSoft released a test version of its Cooker tree in the form of 2 ISOs available now for testing. Includes XFree86 4.4.0-RC2, KDE 3.1.94, kernel 2.6.0.