Monthly Archive:: September 2006

12 years after the project was conceived, and after a long period in which it was useable though incomplete, FreeDOS has reached version 1.0. The ISO is downloadable at SourceForge. Versions with more extras should be available soon, as should a mail-order option.

Time is up for the Haiku Icon Contest submissions, and it is now everybody's chance to make their voice heard. Please vote for the theme that is more usable, clean, recognizable and less tiring.

The Xfce development team is pleased to announce that the first release candiate of Xfce 4.4 is now available for download. A lot of bugs were fixed during the last two months and several new features were added. For example the brand new Xarchiver 0.4.0 is included, trash support was added to Thunar and xfdesktop, and the overall memory usage was reduced. See the ChangeLog for a complete list.

Speech-enabling your software is easy, says Stephen Morris. If speech is added in a sympathetic fashion, it can raise the standard of your user interface in subtle but powerful ways. This approach potentially opens up new markets to your software products; for example, reaching visually impaired users. Developments in web standards are also dictating that speech-enabled software is essentially a commodity item. Read on to find out more.

Patrick Volkerding has just released Slackware 11 RC4. Take a look at the changelog for more info.

Here are some screenshots of the new test version of Ubuntu, and a video showing no slowdown after loading over 40 applications on a 1 GB RAM, P4 desktop.

What is the future of programming? I retain a romantic belief in the potential of scientific revolution. To recite one example, the invention of Calculus provided a revolutionary language for the development of Physics. I believe that there is a “Calculus of programming” waiting to be discovered, which will analogously revolutionize the way we program. Notation does matter." More here.

After a year from last 1.0.4 version, new one brings a lot of changes, new features and bugfixes. Details about changes and download links can be found here.

Simon and Tim (and team) are working on a programming technology called Software Transactional Memory (STM) which provides an elegant, easy to use language-level abstraction for writing concurrent applications that is based on widely-understood conceptual constructs like Atomic operations (and, well, Transactions...). Simon, Tim and team do all the nasty locking work for you. With STM-enabled languages, you can just concentrate on the algorithms at hand and leave the low-level heavy lifting to the sub-system.

The Amiga changed the computer industry. It was based on a multitasking operating system, rivaled the graphics power of some workstations and was affordable enough for home users. Unfortunately, Commodore struggled to maintain Amiga's lead, and through a number of bizarre business decisions (refusing to license the Amiga design to Sun), went bankrupt. Read about the history of the Commodore Amiga at Low End Mac.

The resignation of Matthew Garrett, one of the most active developers in Debian, has drawn attention to some ongoing issues about how the project operates. Specifically, Garrett's announcement on his blog cites a lack of civility and a slowness in decision-making, and compares Debian unfavorably to Ubuntu, the Debian-derived distribution which is increasingly attracting the efforts of many Debian maintainers.

Microsoft's Windows Vista RC 1 is done. Now it's up to the estimated 6 million testers to which the company is planning to release the code to determine if it really is ready for prime time. Microsoft has posted the RC 1 build, Number 5600, on its TechBeta Web sites for select technical beta testers, including TAP partners, on September 1. Microsoft is planning to broaden the beta to include up to six million participants, total, some time next week, according to industry sources. Cnet has a video introduction to Vista RC1. Elsewhere, people are going bonkers over Vista's... Start up sound. Major Tom to ground control?

Apple on Thursday evening offered developers testing its next-generation Leopard operating system the first update to the software since it was released privately last month. "This Software Update delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X Leopard Developer Preview and is recommended for all users," Apple said of the update, distributed over Leopard's Mac OS X Software Update mechanism.

"The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (codename sarge). This update mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update."