Monthly Archive:: October 2007

Developers have received from Apple a 'ZFS on Mac OS X Preview 1.1' package, which offers preliminary support for the ZFS file system, originally developed by Sun Microsystems for their Solaris OS. Currently, the Mac OS is based on the HFS+ file system, but leaked screenshots of earlier versions of Leopard showed options for formatting hard drives for ZFS. Reportedly, this preview allows full read and write capabilities with the latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple's upcoming version of its OS X operating system.

E16 version 0.16.8.10 is now available for download. Changes: "Fix infinite loop when regenerating menus; fix potential incorrect termination of IPC connection which could cause segv.; eesh: fix bad event loop causing hangs in certain situations; fix xinerama head selection in certain situations; fix menu placement on xinerama screens; various minor bug fixes and enhancements."

The first officially-released build of Windows XP SP3 has surfaced, with 1073 patches/hotfixes and several new features. This build has been made available to testers as a part of the Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 beta program and is available in English, German, and Japanese.

The first development release of Syllable Server is available. It provides a text mode Linux environment, but also contains a preliminary graphical environment built on the framebuffer device, with DirectFB and SDL on top. The planned graphical environment from Syllable Desktop is not included yet. The installation procedure is short, but is still manual - and resembles the installation procedure for the old AtheOS. Included are tools such as a graphical web browser, a file manager and an editor. One thing Syllable Server is designed for is to function as a light-weight virtualisation platform for running other operating systems (or multiple instances of itself). The QEmu virtualisor/emulator is included, and the KQEmu Accelerator kernel module is integrated into the system. There's a screenshot of Syllable Server running on Syllable Desktop, installation and usage instructions, a torrent (preferred), and an installation package .

"A lot of bandwidth has been wasted arguing over the lack of usability in open-source software/free software. Some people say that bad usability is endemic to the entire OSS world, while others say that OSS usability is great but that the real problem is the closed-minded users who expect every program to clone Microsoft. Some people contend that UI problems are temporary growing pains, while others say that the OSS development model systematically produces bad UI. In an effort to understand usability in the OSS world, I've researched the stories behind my favorite - and least favorite - OSS programs. I've found a fascinating variety of personalities, design philosophies, and project organizations. Although I've only scratched the surface, there are already themes that come up again and again."

Jan Stedehouder has used PC-BSD for thirty days to see what living with it is like. On day thirty, he concludes: "Does PC-BSD have the potential to be a serious contender for the open source desktop? I answered that question with a yes, because the potential is there. The solid FreeBSD roots, the very strong and very accessible information, the friendly and mature community and the PBI system provide the foundations for that potential. I don't think it is ready now and I couldn't recommend it yet to someone in the early stages of moving away from Windows to an open source desktop. But I do think that the PC-BSD team has the right target audience in mind and is building an system and a support system that addresses it's needs."

This is a series of five articles treating about GNU/Linux command line interface as a great way of both exploring and simply using this operating system. It covers basics features of the CLI including file management, pipes, streams, redirections, regular expressions, system variables and more.

A new snapshot of wmii has been released. "wmii is a dynamic window manager for X11. It supports classic and dynamic window management with extended keyboard, mouse, and filesystem based remote control. It replaces the workspace paradigm with a new tagging approach. Its minimalist philosophy attempts not to exceed 10.000 lines of code (including all shipped utilities and libraries), to enforce simplicity and clarity."

"In November, you'll be able to buy a new laptop that's spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It's fanless, it's silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration. And this laptop will cost USD 200."

OpenSUSE 10.3 has been released today. "This version contains new beautiful green artwork, KDE 3.5.7 and parts of KDE 4, SUSE-polished GNOME 2.20, a GTK version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, MP3 support out-of-the-box, new and redesigned YaST modules, compiz and compiz fusion advances, virtualisation improvements, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Xfce 4.4.1, and much more!"

"Ulrich Drepper recently approached us asking if we would be interested in publishing a lengthy document he had written on how memory and software interact. Memory usage is often the determining factor in how software performs, but good information on how to avoid memory bottlenecks is hard to find. This article is the first in a serie of articles (the original has over 100 pages) that will get published on LWN weekly. Once the entire series is out, Ulrich will be releasing the full text."

Palm CEO Ed Colligan has confirmed the new Palm OS won't be finished until the end of 2008. Originally scheduled for release by the end of this year, the operating system's launch date has continued to be pushed back, despite the added attention of the engineers freed up by the scrapping of Foleo last month. The new OS will allow Palm to release a whole range of products, including something similar to the ill-fated Foleo. Development is, apparently, progressing 'as well as possibly could be expected'.

"One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them. Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year. We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, ADO.NET, XML, and WPF. We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License."

"Some time ago, I switched to Google's Picasa Web Albums online photo management software. Although it's simple to use, Picasa Web has been missing too many features for too long, and after Google locked me out of their software for a few days due to a bug of some sort, and their iPhoto plug-in stopped working, I decided it was time to start checking out the alternatives. I have played with a few services, and judged them based on a number of criteria. I've tested the following services: Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Zoto, Zooomr, SmugMug, Photobucket, Facebook, and MySpace. Read on for my initial results."