Monthly Archive:: January 2007

"In this interview, Jens talks about how he got interested in Linux, how he became the maintainer of the block layer and other block devices, and what's involved in being a maintainer. He describes his work on IO schedulers, offering an indepth look at the design and current status of the CFQ scheduler, including a peek at what's in store for the future. He conveys his excitement about the new splice IO model, explaining how it came about and how it works. And he discusses the current 2.6 kernel development process, the impact of git, and why the GPL is important to him."

Today, 00:00 CET, Vista will be on sale here in The Netherlands; some computer shops will even be open tonight to cater to the early adopters. In all honesty, I do not think we will see Windows 95-like craziness, but still, I think a simple poll is in order. What is the feature in Windows Vista you have been looking forward to the most? Read more to pass your vote.

"The introduction of Microsoft Windows Vista and its' many confusing and progressively expensive flavors has opened up a er, period of opportunity for Apple (formerly Apple Computer). Will Steve Jobs take a really bold chance to increase his market share or just play it safe with his little fiefdom of iPods, iTunes and forthcoming iTV?"

"It seems Microsoft is putting IE8 development into gear. Participants of the Windows Server 'Longhorn' beta program on Microsoft Connect have just received an email notifying them that a new survey for Internet Explorer 8 has been published on the program site. The survey contains a few questions on the current usability of IE7 and asks the users what new features they would like to see in IE8. The survey also asks users to rank the importance of several planned features. The email mentions that the survey should be completed before Thursday, March 1st, 2007; giving us a vague peak at the timeline for IE8."

Linux distributor Terra Soft, makers of the Fedora-based Yellow Dog Linux distribution for the PPC platform, recently announced plans to provide a complete Linux distribution for the TPPC64, a single-board computer developed by Themis. Terra Soft, which once specialized in Linux support for Apple computers, has found several new PPC Linux niches since Apple's unexpected transition to Intel processors.

A Microsoft representative confirmed that users may buy an OEM copy of Windows Vista at a substantial discount, provided they adhere to the terms of the license - which, incidentally, may mean providing support for family members. In addition, users should still be subject to the same familiar re-activation restrictions as users of a retail Vista license and Windows XP, a spokeswoman said. Users can alter the PC's hardware substantially, but they will be forced to reactivate - not repurchase the OEM software - if they do, she said. Elsewhere, AppScout wonders, is Vista relevant?

Create a working Linux cluster from many separate pieces of hardware and software. Part 1 of the series provides detailed instructions on setting up the hardware for the cluster. Part 2 describes configuring the management server and installing the nodes in the cluster. This provides an easy way to get started with large Linux clusters.

"Windows Vista is finally here for everyone and is soon to be made available on store shelves and pre-loaded on new PC's. Windows Vista has been five years in the making; throughout that time we have witnessed Microsoft reschedule the release of this 'major upgrade' over and over and over again. Microsoft, however, throughout that tumultuous time did manage to pick up the pieces and move forward." Read more of the multi-page review at ActiveWin.

Tomorrow, Microsoft will release all 6 versions of Windows Vista; some of us will rush out to buy themselves a copy, some of us will, like, not do that. OSNews will be bombarded with Vista related articles until old CRT monitors will have faint imprints of the word 'Vista' scattered across their tubes. So, to start the whole barrage of Vista articles off, here is a promotional video of Windows 386, released in the late 80s. This video is nothing short of brilliant. I suggest you make yourself a nice, warm tea (or coffee, if it's morning) and sit back to enjoy the wonders of multitasking, the 'just like OS/2' interface, the 80s music, and, lest I forget, the fashion in spectacles. Update: I am currently watching the 1982 classic The Thing, and there's a character in there named 'Windows'. Coincidence? I think not!

"The last piece of the openSUSE 10.2 distribution got released today. The Live DVD image has a size of 1.7 GB and can be used on every x86 compatible system with at least 512 MB of memory. It contains a base desktop system (KDE and Gnome) with applications for office, multimedia and internet usage."

"The original Nokia tablet, the N770, was something of a departure for the Finnish phone maker: here was a device without cellular connectivity, running a Linux-based OS, and generally unlike anything Nokia had produced before. So here we have an updated version, the N800. But is it a phone or not, that is the question?"

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs. There is an impressive list of additional features including improved Qt 4 support, new debugging abilities, more attractive default user interface layout, and improvements for C++, Ruby, and PHP support. The developers have put together a slideshow to showcase the new features.

It's been about ten months since the first S60 3rd Edition SymbianOS smartphone hit the market. Nokia made a lot of changes to the underlying OS and broke compatibility with the ~1800 S60 2nd Ed. applications that were already available. Ten months later, there are about 220 applications for the new version of S60. This is a small list of the Top-10 freeware applications for your new S60 phone.

The Yarra engine was designed to be a cross platform C++ gaming engine, using OpenGL for 3D graphics and OpenAL for positional sound. Unlike existing engines, Yarra was primarily designed to allow dynamic adding of programmable objects to a scene graph with handlers to control game flow. This design doesn't suite a majority of software out there, but works great for games. But the article isn't about Yarra, it's about the developers personal experiences working with Windows, MacOSX and BeOS. The article discusses the pro's and con's of each environment, and give sa very subjective opinion about the merits of each.