Monthly Archive:: October 2009

Not too long ago we published a review of AmigaOS 4.1, which made some readers argue we should take a look at MorphOS as well. However, nobody currently makes any MorphOS compatible hardware, so I had nowhere to go and beg. Luckily, OSNews reader AmigaRobbo generously offered to loan me his EFIKA machine, with MorphOS installed. I took a look at MorphOS, and found a very quick and efficient operating system - which was sadly held back by the limitations of the EFIKA.

The future of integrated graphics processors lies somewhere on the dies of future processors, that much is a certainty. However, this creates a big problem for NVIDIA, whose chipset business will be out, of well, business. Beating everybody to the punch, the company announced yesterday that it is ceasing all development on future chipsets, citing unfair business practices from Intel.

Remember those nearly pointless USB 3.0 cables one could buy way back in the golden days of April? If you were one of those who bought one by mistake or merely wanted to use its USB 2.0 speed until you had an actual 3.0 device and controller, now is your chance. Buffalo is offering what they claim to be the "world's first!!" shipping USB 3.0 hard drive in delicious 1TB and 1.5TB flavors come late this month, and a 2TB model is in the works. Since one would obviously need a controller as they don't come standard on motherboards just yet, the company is also offering one of NEC's world-firsts: the handy dandy USB 3.0 controller. Together these'll cost you over US$285 at the very least, but sometimes you just have to have shiny pieces of the world's first before anyone else.

"Speaking at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment in San Diego today, FCC head Julius Genachowski has said that he wants to 'close the spectrum gap' -- the difference between the spectrum it's making available for wireless data versus enormous usage projections (400 petabytes a month by 2013, he says) that'll be brought about by smarter, easier-to-use devices and ubiquitous high-speed data through a handful of initiatives including the promotion of the smart use of existing spectrum through the use of femotcells, WiFi, and smart antennas, and -- more importantly -- reallocation of existing spectrum. Genachowski says there are 'no easy pickings' for reallocation, but the Commission is aggressively pursuing additional airspace that can help keep 4G rollouts on track. He's gone on to say that they'll be adopting the widely-discussed 'shot clock' policy for placement of new towers, giving locales a limited window to protest placement of cell sites that'll help spread 4G services over wider footprints. The guy seems genuinely concerned about keeping 4G rollouts rolling, so let's see just how far the guys in Washington are willing to go to do that."

Lennart Poettering, creator of open source sound server PulseAudio, was recently interviewed at this year's Linux Plumbers Conference. In this Q&A he details the latest PulseAudio developments and addresses some of PA's critics. Thanks to PulseAudio, the Linux audio experience is becoming more context-aware. For example, if a video is running in one application the system should now automatically reduce the volume of everything else and increase it when the video is finished.

EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) is a desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. Main features of EDE are speed and responsiveness, low resource usage and a familiar look and feel. This is the second test release for the upcoming major 2.0 version. Notable changes are a new panel and XDG Desktop Menu support, a new bug report tool, and improved existing code. Release notes, download link and installation instructions can be found on the EDE homepage.

It's hard to turn a news item like this into a front page item, but I'm going to try anyway, because I think it's pretty cool news. As we all know, Debian supports a number of architectures as 'release architectures', but what some of you may not be aware of is that Debian also supports a number of kernels other than Linux. One of those, the FreeBSD kernel, has been promoted to release status, putting it on equal footing with the Linux variant.

Here on OSNews I've already talked about various copyright related issues here in The Netherlands - obviously because I'm Dutch and live there. As a small nation, the copyright issues we face here serve as nice, comprehensible discussion starters that we can all grok. Well, we've got another one. Our own RIAA equivalent has caused quite the stir by announcing that they will start charging bloggers and social website users for embedding YouTube videos with copyrighted content. Say what?

"AMD's fab spinoff, GlobalFoundries, has announced a deal with ARM to make the latter's Cortex A9 parts available on the former's 28nm half-node process. This makes GlobalFoundries the first company to work with ARM on a 28nm A9 implementation, and it's a win for ARM because it makes any GlobalFoundries customers into potential ARM customers."

"Was it really only a little over three years ago that the formerly fanciful notion of being able to run Windows apps within OS X without major limitations became reality? Today, archrivals Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion continue to undergo aggressive upgrades aimed at making the virtualization of Windows on Macs even more powerful, seamless, and simple. And today, VMware is announcing that it's taking preorders for VMware Fusion 3, which will ship on October 27th."

After long negotiations and back and forths between the EU, Microsoft, and other browser makers, Microsoft's browser ballot proposal has been amended and offered up for debate yet again by the EU; this time around, it will actually be tested out by consumers. A number of changes have been made since the first proposal, so let's take a look.

The European Union has begun an investigation to determine whether Microsoft is upholding pledges to curb anti-competitive practices. It is consulting PC makers, software firms and consumers on Microsoft's offer to allow users to pick different browsers when they install Windows.

The KDE team has released version 4.3.2 of their Free software desktop environment. It's a minor release which comes with a number bugfixes and enhancements, with the focus being KMail and KWin. It'll find its way to your distribution soon enough.

Late June 2009 I bought a 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 GHz, 4 GB RAM). I suppose that after just three months, the blinding "first joys" over getting a laptop have worn off. By now, I deem my thoughts about this device to be realistic and of an appropriate level. The past few weeks I attained mastery over the Mac OS through personal discovery, accompanied by a very insightful book; I bought additional software and hacked the Dock to suit my preferences.