Monthly Archive:: May 2007

"If you use a traditional desktop like GNOME or KDE, a keyboard-controlled desktop with a minimum of utilities may seem like stepping back 10 or 15 years in the history of interface design. Why bother, when traditional desktops are easy to use and RAM and disk space are so cheap nowadays?" On a related note, there is a new release of xmonad, a tiling window manager for X, written in Haskell. It now has full Xinerama and XRandR support, so you can add, remove, or rotate monitors on the fly.

"Learn the intricacies of the AIX file system framework. Every operating system provides a native kernel framework that kernel developers have to understand and adhere to when developing a piece of a kernel component for that operating system. This article sheds some light on the AIX file system framework. You need to understand the framework in order to develop a new file system, or to port an existing file system to the AIX operating system."

"Nepomuk-KDE is the basis for the semantic technologies we will see in KDE 4. Sebastian Trug, the main developer behind Nepomuk-KDE, provided me with some up to date information about the current state and future plans. The Semantic Desktop describes the idea where users will not only be able to search existing information, but also to search for the meaning and relation of these information. The Nepomuk project creates open standards and APIs around this idea. Nepomuk-KDE is the implementation of these standards for KDE."

Google announced today the availability of a new open-source browser plug-in, Google Gears, that promises developers the ability to create applications that work within a browser - even without Internet connectivity.

"Mark Shuttleworth has flown into space on a Soyuz TM-34 and founded Thawte Consulting that later sold to Verisign for over USD 500 million, but he is now known most for being the founder and leader of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. In addition to Ubuntu he also established HBD Venture Capital and is involved with several other free software projects. Earlier today we had spoke with Mark Shuttleworth to discuss the latest happenings in the Ubuntu world including Dell shipping Ubuntu PCs, getting open-source drivers from hardware vendors, and what is coming down the road for Ubuntu 7.10."

A new release of dwn is available. "dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. It is the little brother of wmii."

"KWin, KDE's window manager, has been around since KDE 2.0 (replacing KWM in KDE 1.x) and has grown to be a mature and stable window manager over the years. For KDE 4, however, there were a few people rumbling about visual effects, and perhaps KWin was feeling a little envious of its younger cousins Compiz and Beryl. While these new effects have created a lot of buzz around Linux and UNIX, long-term KDE users have wished they can enjoy the effects of Compiz/Beryl while still having the tried and tested window manager that is KWin. As a result, for KDE 4, KWin has received a huge graphical upgrade, with composite and GL support."

Trolltech has released version 4.3.0 of its cross-platform development toolkit Qt, and the embedded platform Qtopia, with the same API. New features include enhanced Windows Vista support, a new ECMAscript-standard scripting module (QtScript), SSL support, improved OpenGL support, a more flexible main window architecture, SVG generation and rendering, and (in Qtopia) a new font system and OpenGL ES support. More on the new features, and a full changelog. Open-source downloads of Qt (including Windows binary) here and Qtopia here.

"Recently I wrote about locking down the GNOME desktop environment with Pessulus. In this article, I'll show you how to do the same for KDE, using Kiosktool, a front end for changing the KDE configuration files in users' home folders and the /etc/kde* folders."

Microsoft executive Ty Carlson spoke about the future of Windows recently during a panel discussion at the Future in Review 2007 conference held in San Diego, California. Carlson said that future versions of Windows would have to be 'fundamentally different' in order to take full advantage of future CPUs that will contain many processing cores. "You're going to see in excess of eight, 16, 64 and beyond processors on your client computer," said Carlson, whose job title is director of technical strategy at Microsoft. Windows Vista, he said, was "designed to run on one, two, maybe four processors."

OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 is now available for eComStation and OS/2 users. "Effective immediately, Serenity Systems International will be distributing a GA version of OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 to all users who ordered the Support Agreement for OpenOffice.org product. This version has been compiled to run on IBM OS/2 and eComStation as a native application. OpenOffice.org version 1.1.5 will no longer be distributed."

At its 10th anniversary and after a period of uncertainty for the RPM community, together with a new roadmap towards version 5.0 the project environment of the popular Unix software packaging tool RPM Package Manager was relaunched under the domain rpm5.org by the newly formed RPM project team, further on lead by RPM's primary developer Jeff Johnson. The primary goals of RPM 5.0 are the additional support for the XML based archiving format XAR, an integrated package dependency resolver, further improved portability and extended cross-platform support. Note: Please note that rpm5 is a fork of the 'real' rpm project.

"One of the highlights of my visit to San Diego for the Red Hat Summit was the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with Professor Eben Moglen. From that interview, we have selected six segments on various topics for your viewing pleasure, and will be publishing one each day this week. First up, an explanation of all the things that GPLv3 is about other than the MS/Novell deal."

"Recently I had a chance to spend some time with Fujitsu's P7230 ultraportable notebook. With a 10.6" LED-backlit LCD and a weight of less than 3lbs the system is just what many mobile fanatics are looking for, but such portability comes at a price. The P7230 is powered but a 1.2GHz Intel Core Solo U1400 processor, something that is great for the battery life, but does not have the power of its Core 2 Duo brethren. The single-core, low-voltage processor works well much of the time but chokes under the load brought on by intensive programs as well as multi-tasking. In attempt to get the most possible from the P7230 I decided to completely remove Vista in favor of Ubuntu 7.04."