Monthly Archive:: November 2007

Scott Guthrie has announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are now available for download and provides a tour of some of the new features. "Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 contain a ton of new functionality and improvements. Below are links to blog posts I've done myself as well as links to videos you can watch to learn more about it."

Geeks.com sent us in one of their consumer electronics, the Linux-based Archos 604 PMP for a whirl, and we surely gave it one. This 30 GB PMP is the fourth generation video product from Archos, one of the biggest names in that market.

Some testing by the exo.performance.network research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.

The Ubuntu team is happy to announce the first release of Ubuntu JeOS, Ubuntu JeOS 7.10. Pronounced "juice", Ubuntu JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) is an efficient variant of Ubuntu configured specifically for virtual appliances.

Linux.com takes a look at gOS. They conclude: "I really liked gOS. It's a cute little system with lots of functionality and great looks. It works well and is fast and stable on my laptop. It should work on any computer that any other Linux supports. Enlightenment is an impressive desktop environment, and the iBar is a low-overhead way to blend cool effects with needed functionality. I think users will like it."

PC-BSD 1.4.1 has been released. "A update to PC-BSD has been released today, version 1.4.1. This new version may be obtained from our download page, additionally users who are running version 1.4 may download a patch to upgrade." It's mostly a bugfix release.

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is the de facto standard to replace APM. As such, it's becoming increasingly important for full support on newer machines, as legacy support for APM is waning and ACPI-only machines become more common. Recently there was a flurry of commits related to ACPI, which got the attention of some people running -current with ACPI enabled kernels. In this interview we get a peek at what's been happening with ACPI and where it's headed.

"The leading question most of you are likely wondering is why there hasn't been anymore ATI GPU specifications released in over two months. Well, as we have shared in earlier articles, AMD has had limited staff devoted to sanitizing the documentation and getting it cleared by their legal department for release. However, that is about to change. AMD's John Bridgman has confirmed that they are in the process of hiring new people to do all of the planned documentation and support work that will help the open-source community. Within a couple weeks, these new AMD employees will begin this crusade."

EDE 1.2 is a new version of EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) which brings mostly bugfixes. Also it comes with full German and French localization. The Equinox Desktop Environment is a small desktop environment, built to be simple, to have a familiar look and feel and to be reasonably fast.

"This in-depth, hands-on article introduces Android, Google's Linux/Java mobile phone SDK. After a tour of Android's tools, documentation, and code samples, it suggests a path for further exploration and concludes with a simple applet showing the power and simplicity of the Android environment."

"Apple on Thursday released Mac OS X 10.5.1 Update, its first maintenance and security update to the new Leopard operating system which is recommended for all users. Mac OS X 10.5.1 is available as a 110MB download and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac, Apple says."

"iXsystems announced today a distribution agreement with Fry's Electronics whereby all Fry's stores nationwide will carry PC-BSD Version 1.4, Da Vinci Edition. The agreement marks the first time that the PC-BSD operating system is made available for purchase at Fry's Electronics. PC-BSD is a fully functional desktop operating system based on FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE. FreeBSD is one of the most used UNIX-like operating systems in the world. It is widely renowned as the most stable and secure server operating system."

"'What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away'. Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007 which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just 7 short years ago (Office 2000). But despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call 'The Great Moore's Law Compensator'. In fact, the hard numbers below represent what is perhaps the first ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption."

"Lately we've been talking about a lot of great new features in the latest development trunk of WebKit - features like web fonts, client-side database storage, CSS transforms and CSS animation. These features will likely make it to an official release someday. But I'd like to take a step back and talk about some older features, namely all the great stuff in our recent stable release. Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, including Safari 3. The latest Safari is also included in Mac OS X 10.4.11, the latest update to Tiger. A corresponding version is available as the latest Safari for Windows Beta, including the new features and lots of stability and usability improvements. Apple's site can tell you a lot about the new end-user features of Safari 3. But a lot of the goodness is on the inside, in the WebKit engine that powers Safari. Here's a list of ten of the most exciting engine enhancements since the Safari 2 version of WebKit, with lots of details and demos. These features are all included in the WebKit that comes with Safari 3 - you don't have to download nightlies or anything else to get them."