Monthly Archive:: September 2007

The news already got out yesterday, but now it's official: AMD will open the specifications to its graphics chips. "AMD announced on Sept. 7 a major strategic change in open-source graphic processors support. The company announced it would provide open-source information and a development package supporting the ATI RadeonHD 2000 series ATI Radeon X1000 series of graphics processing units on Linux desktops." The new information is that AMD will partner with Novell's SUSE team.

Haiku developer Stephan Assmus (Stippi) has posted the first in a series of articles on the topics of multithreaded applications. Stephan writes: "Though I am programming on BeOS since 1999, only in recent years I have slowly become more comfortable with various multithreading related issues in my programs. So I thought I'd like to share some of my experiences here for beginning programmers or programmers skeptical about multithreading. I hope to be extending this as a series of articles to help learn the benefits and pitfalls of multithreading. All with an emphasis on programming for Haiku's API."

The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic. The agency said it was opposed to 'network neutrality', the idea that all data on the net is treated equally. The comments put the agency at odds with companies such as Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to guarantee equal access to the net.

"Lua is a powerful, light-weight programming language designed for extending applications. Coupled with it being relatively fast and having a very lenient license, it has gained a following among game developers for providing a viable scripting interface. It has been used in games such as World of Warcraft and Far Cry, and in applications such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Snort."

"In horror honor of yesterday's announcement of the newly-designed third-generation iPod nano, we here at Infinite Loop have taken some time to look back at the last 10 years of Apple product design in order to get some perspective on just how hideous the new Apple audio player is (to some of us). This list isn't to say that some of these Apple monstrosities don't have a special place in our heart, though."

"The KDE Community proudly presents the second Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the feature freeze and the stabilization of the current codebase. Simultaneously the KOffice developers have released their third Alpha release, marking significant improvements in this innovative office suite. Both KDE and KOffice have benefited from the Google Summer of Code, as most resulting code has now been merged."

Christoph Thiel annouced the release of openSUSE 10.3 Beta 3. "It's my pleasure to announce the availability of openSUSE 10.3 Beta3. This is the last beta release before entering RC phase in two weeks. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release of openSUSE! Important changes since Beta2: Linux kernel 2.6.22.5, libzypp 3.22.1; improved package lists of the 1-CD GNOME and KDE editions; countless bug fixes in every component; reworked concept of language bundles."

EasyBCD, the freeware tool used for dual-booting Windows Vista with Linux, BSD, OS X, and Unix (using Vista's own bootloader), has been updated to version 1.7. This new release of EasyBCD features a rewritten NeoGrub for installing and managing GRUB from within Windows and a new feature dubbed 'GRUB-less Linux' which searches the drive for Linux and boots into it, regardless of whether or not GRUB is installed. My take: A great tool for Vista users. I use it to manage various installations on my laptop, and it has never let me down.

The first release candidate of Mandriva Linux 2008, codenamed Copernic, is now available. The release notes are available here. A guide to major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate) is available here, and the detailed technical specifications are available here. This release candidate is available as a three CD or one DVD Free edition (containing no non-free software or drivers) for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, with a traditional installer, and as a mini-CD edition for both x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. A One combined live/install CD edition will be released in the near future (problems with unionfs prevented the One edition from being release at the same time as the other editions).

LWN.net writes: "A quick report from the kernel summit: AMD's representative at the summit has announced that the company has made a decision to enable the development of open source drivers for all of its (ATI) graphics processors from the R500 going forward. There will be specifications available and a skeleton driver as well; a free 2D driver is anticipated by the end of the year. The rest will have to be written; freeing of the existing binary-only driver is not in the cards, and 'that is better for everybody'. Things are looking good on this front. More in the kernel summit report to come."

Intel has launched its new line of quad-core Xeon products for the multi-processor server market. Its much-awaited Xeon MP 7300 server platform comprises the new 'Tigerton' quad-core Xeon 7300 series chip, as well as the 'Clarksboro' 7300 chipset.

"Linux has an abundance of excellent terminal applications. Interestingly, I could not find any decent comparison of their text display performance. Since I use the command line a lot, I want text output that is as fast as possible. When you compile a large project, you don’t want the console output to be the limiting factor. I took the burden on me to do a comprehensive comparison of the text through of all possible terminals."

Palm CEO Ed Colligan has posted a letter to Palm Customers, Partners and Developers on the official Palm blog. In the post, he states Palm will cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration, and will undertake efforts to focus entirely on Palm's next-generation (Linux-based too) smartphone platform. My Take: A right move for Palm, the market is not ready for this sort of device.

Microsoft has failed in its attempt to have its Office Open XML document format fast-tracked straight to the status of an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization. The proposal must now be revised to take into account the negative comments made during the voting process. Microsoft expects that a second vote early next year will result in approval, it said Tuesday. That is by no means certain, however, given the objections raised by some national standards bodies.