Keep OSNews alive by becoming a Patreon, by donating through Ko-Fi, or by buying merch!

Monthly Archive:: February 2009

Second ‘Google Phone’ Unveiled

  Submitted by Adurbe Wireless 3 Comments
A new phone based on Google's operating system Android has been unveiled by Vodafone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The touchscreen HTC Magic will feature a 3.2 Megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but no slide-out keyboard. The first "Google phone", called the G1, was launched in September by HTC and is exclusive to T-mobile. The Magic will feature new Android firmware, known as "Cupcake", with changes based on G1 user suggestions.
Read More

Microsoft Shows Off Windows Mobile 6.5

Windows 23 Comments
Windows Mobile is a relic of the past. Especially compared to Apple's iPhone operating system, it becomes painfully obvious just how outdated, clunky, and unfriendly Windows Mobile has become. Today, Mictosoft has taken its first step in modernising the platform by releasing a sort of alpha release of Windows Mobile 6.5, with a completely revamped interface.
Read More

NetBSD Starts Desktop Project

  Submitted by Peter Bui NetBSD 35 Comments
Andrew Doran and Jared D. McNeill have announced in a mailing list post that they are starting a NetBSD Desktop Project with the goal of: "Given a NetBSD CD and a reasonably modern x86 computer, make it possible to install a useful desktop system in under 15 minutes, responding to only a few prompts in the process." Initial plans are being formulated on the project wiki page.
Read More

Microsoft, Red Hat Team up on Patent-Free Interoperability

  Submitted by Rahul Red Hat 40 Comments
For years, Microsoft has insisted that open-source vendors acknowledge that its patent portfolio is a precursor to interoperability discussions. Monday, Microsoft shed that charade and announced an interoperability alliance with Red Hat for virtualization. Red Hat has long argued that patent discussions only cloud true interoperability, which is best managed through open source and open standards. Now it has got what it wanted; unlike the Novell-Microsoft agreements, there is no exclusionary patent deals or cross payments.
Read More

Consistency Isn’t Skin Deep

Editorial 93 Comments
Late last week we ran a story on how the Google Chrome team had decided to use Gtk+ as the graphical toolkit for the Linux version of the Chrome web browser. It was a story that caused some serious debate on a variety of aspects, but in this short editorial, I want to focus on one aspect that came forward: the longing for consistency. Several people in the thread stated they were happy with Google's choice for purely selfish reasons: they use only Gtk+ applications on their GNOME desktops. Several people chimed in to say that Qt integrates nicely in a Gtk+ environment. While that may be true from a graphical point of view, that really isn't my problem with mixing toolkits. The issue goes a lot deeper than that.
Read More

Pirate Bay Trial To Start Today

Legal 35 Comments
In a textbook example of "dweilen met de kraan open", the landmark trial against Torrent website The Pirate Bay will take off today in Sweden. The founders of the torrent website are charged with aiding millions of internet users gain access to illegal content. Basically the entire entertainment industry is amassing against The Pirate Bay, making this one of the biggest trials against internet file sharing in history.
Read More

Improving Linux GPU Power Management

Wayland 4 Comments
Red Hat's Matthew Garrett has actively been working on improving power management with graphics processors via the various open-source X.Org drivers. There is quite a lot of work involved, but at the FOSDEM x.org meeting he shared an update on his progress. In particular, Matthew is trying to conserve power with the GPU, memory, outputs, and displays. Read on to understand Red Hat's work on power management.
Read More

Debian 5 ‘Lenny’ Released

Debian 44 Comments
A few months later than expected, Debian 5 has finally arrived with a bundle of new goodies: Java is finally in the Debian repositories thanks to IcedTea and OpenJDK; Firefox (rebranded as Iceweasel) is now at 3.0; and official live images are ready for our downloading pleasure. TuxRadar has a detailed look at Lenny along with an explanation from Steve McIntyre, the Debian Project Leader, on why it was delayed. Earlier this week, we already detailed the new features in Lenny.
Read More

Gtk+, Cuba, Haiku, and Panic!

OS News 40 Comments
It was a fun week for OSNews, with many interesting debates on polarising subjects such as the global menubar in GNOME, Chrome using Gtk+ on Linux, and Cuba moving to Linux. We also took a look at Haiku, talked to Nicki Clyne and the CEO of Lunascape, and reported on a few releases of small operating systems. This week's My Take is about the economic crisis.
Read More

HelenOS 0.4.0 Released

  Submitted by Jakub Jermar OS News 5 Comments
A new version of the experimental HelenOS operating system has been released. Version 0.4.0 features a simple user command line interface, FAT file system support, application loader and tracer, improved hardware support for ia64, ppc32 and sparc64, and many other improvements over the previous release. Get it from their download page.
Read More

Linux Version of Chrome To Use Gtk+

Google 190 Comments
A major complaint about Google's Chrome web browser has been that so far, it is still not available on anything other than Windows. Google promised to deliver Chrome to Mac OS X and Linux as well, but as it turns out, this is a little harder than they anticipated, Ben Goodger, Google's Chrome interface lead, has explained in an email. It has also been revealed what toolkit the Linux version of Chrome will use: Gtk+.
Read More

Red Hat Enlists Community in Fight Against Patent Trolls

  Submitted by stickster Legal 34 Comments
Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them -- they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA, meaning they produce nothing of value other than money from those whom they sue (or threaten to sue) over patent issues. They're alleging infringement of patents on a user interface that has multiple workspaces. Hard to say just what they mean (which is often a problem in software patents), but it sounds a lot like functionality that pretty much all programmers and consumers use.
Read More

Programming a 64-bit Operating System

OS News 11 Comments
IanOS is an experimental 64-bit operating system written from scratch as a learning experience. The source code is available online and the creator of the OS has made some detailed documentation available to go with the source code. This is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to venture into writing a 64-bit OS. The author makes his intention about this OS clear "I never had any intention of producing a true OS. There are plenty of those about and it would be a very foolish, or vain, person who thought that they could compete with the likes of FreeBSD and Linux. But my interest in computers isn't practical; I just find programming them, particularly at this level, to be a supremely satisfying intellectual pursuit".
Read More

The State of the Global Menubar in GNOME

Gnome 50 Comments
A very, very long time ago I personally advocated the inclusion of a certain feature into GNOME. We set up a poll at OSNews, which resulted in a very, very resounding "yes!" from the OSNews community - many of which are GNOME users. The feature in question was the global application menubar, which allowed the GNOME desktop to have a menu bar atop the screen similar to that of Mac OS X. The poll is long gone, the debate thread in the Bugzilla has died out, and no decision has yet been made. I wanted to know where this feature stands, and how much the developers have improved it, and I was in for a surprise.
Read More