Monthly Archive:: August 2005

When Microsoft announced a year ago that it had decided to rip the next-generation Windows File System from Longhorn, many company watchers wrote off the feature as little more than vaporware. But it seems Microsoft didn't simply shelve WinFS. According to sources close to the company, Microsoft just last week put the finishing touches on the first beta release of WinFS. And the company is moving ahead with plans to back-port the WinFS technology to Windows XP.

A week ago the news got out that Microsoft had approached OSDL for a comperative study between Linux and Windows. OSDL confirmed this, however, they did not provide an answer to Microsoft's request. On Friday, Joe Brockmeier had a chance to have a short talk with Cohen , and got a definitive answer. Cohen said that "there is no way we would do a joint research project with Microsoft."

Partition Logic is a graphical, easy-to-use partitioning and hard disk management tool for PCs, based on the alternative Visopsys OS. It can create, delete, reorder and move partitions, and modify their attributes, as well as doing things like copying entire hard disks. It boots from a single floppy or CD image. Version 0.57 (freshmeat announcement) has a number of tweaks and some important bug fixes. A change log is here, and downloads are here.

If you learn Rexx, you'll know a scripting language that runs everywhere from mainframes to handhelds - and everything in between. This article shows you why the Rexx scripting language is faster than developing code in traditional languages like C++, Java, or COBOL. If you want to learn a quick way to develop database scripts, start here.

Secure Startup is primarily designed to prevent laptop thieves and other unauthorized users with physical access to a computer from getting access to the data on the system. Secure Startup uses a chip called the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which offers protected storage of encryption keys, passwords and digital certificates. Vista uses this capability to verify that a PC has not been tampered with when it starts up and to protect data through encryption.

"In this interview, Warren explains the secret to his distro's rapid and widespread proliferation. Give desktop customers what they want: a simple, reliable set of applications that are easy to acquire, install, and use. Give it away for free. Always."

In this short interview, Ubuntu Linux founder and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth discusses the intended users of Ubuntu, why he chose to base it on Debian, and what the future holds for Linux on the desktop. Ubuntu is growing rapidly - and Shuttleworth is the man at the controls.

Linus has released 2.6.13 after a longer testing period and committed to improving the release cycle by merging in the major changes within the first two weeks for 2.6.14 and above as discussed before in kernel summit recently.

Syllable 0.5.7 has been released. You can read the changelog here, and the download locations are here. "The biggest change in this release: everything has been recompiled against the new libc, and we have broken binary compatability through the removal of all the old libgui/libatheos/libsyllable versions. There are also some new drivers, new GUI classes, new bug fixes, and no doubt, new bugs."

This seems to be a sensitive question for some people, particularly at Sun Microsystems. While IBM stated this week they had increased their market share over last year's, Sun also had its own press release this week claiming that it is the number one Unix platform server vendor in the world, in both revenue and unit shipments. It turns out they are both right.

Trying to locate an unresolved plug-in dependency can be strenuous and time-consuming. Almost every plug-in depends on a bunch of other plug-ins, and those plug-ins, in turn, may depend on many more. This article shows you how to resolve plug-in dependencies more quickly by automating their discovery.

The Debian administration website has a nice introduction to using CFEngine for managing a whole LAN in three parts. The first part introduces the engine, the second part explains what you can do using CFEngine, and the final part describes how to setup a client-server setup to allow a whole LAN to be managed centrally.

The first Live-CD based on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has appeared. Its name is Ging (for Ging Is Not Ging) and it includes a GNOME 2.10 desktop, Abiword, and a complete toolchain with gcc 4.0.

After two years of active development, we are proud to announce the immediate availability of the free MorphOS 3D Update pack. This pack brings Warp3D and OpenGL(R) API compatibility to a whole new range of hardware including 3dfx Voodoo and ATI Radeon.