fidzu : Operating Systems

Yesterday it was announced that GNOME 3.0 is delayed till next year. The extra time has given the Shell Developers some more time to play around with new concepts and they have come up a new mockup. Here are the new mockups.

31 Jul 2010 6:38am GMT

A provocative editorial at The Register makes this suggestion: "Microsoft should consider acquiring Novell's SUSE Linux business and focusing it completely on mobile. Novell has a seat at the Linux Foundation's MeeGo table, and Microsoft should embrace that operating system rather than its myriad (but universally unsuccessful) mobile variants of Windows."

31 Jul 2010 6:35am GMT

AMD plans to start shipping the USB 3-equipped chipset in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating Intel to the post. Intel hasn't announced its official plans for integrated USB 3 support yet, but various sources say it's not expected until we're well into 2011.

31 Jul 2010 6:31am GMT

As Nvidia falters, Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit is on the rise, spurred by "radical" shifts in the market, according to Mercury Research, which tracks the market for GPUs or graphics processing units.

31 Jul 2010 6:26am GMT

Microsoft had its annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday, and Steve Ballmer answered questions about what the company's answer to the iPad was going to be, and whether Windows Phone 7 was going to be a part of that product strategy. He said, "We're coming . . . We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows." Ballmer and Microsoft so don't get it. I can't believe Steve Ballmer is making me feel sorry for Microsoft.

31 Jul 2010 6:05am GMT

Several talks at the Black Hat security conference this week in Las Vegas will focus on tools that could make software safer by automatically searching for bugs--and pinpointing the ones that could be most dangerous.

31 Jul 2010 6:03am GMT

Richard Stallman, who's still taking on the role of the extremist who says extreme things so other Free Software advocates can look moderate in comparison, answers Reddit readers' questions. But there's some good stuff in there, and it seems he's dialed back the nutty a bit.

31 Jul 2010 5:58am GMT

Oracle has announced that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers. The announcement "demonstrates Oracle's commitment to openness," company co-president Charles Phillips said in a statement.

31 Jul 2010 5:51am GMT

Capitalism and open source

Open...and Shut When the mouthpiece of American capitalism calls a company a dog, it's time to re-evaluate that company's chances.…

30 Jul 2010 2:28pm GMT

KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers. Read more here

29 Jul 2010 5:44pm GMT

Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. BBC News

29 Jul 2010 5:43pm GMT

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has distributed invites to an exclusive media event in New York, where it's expected to show off the first device to run the brand new BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 6. CIO.com offers predictions for how the event will unfold.

29 Jul 2010 5:42pm GMT

The GNOME foundation and the LiMo group announced a partnership to help push Linux forward in the consumer field. The only notice that anyone has seem to have taken is mockery. So why can someone announce some dedication to promoting open source software in the mobile space and generate no enthusiasm in the mobile space? Android.

29 Jul 2010 5:15pm GMT

GNOME developer Dave Neary has posted the highlights of his work to determine where contributions to GNOME come from. This "Census" is a combination of data mining and surveys that gives a snapshot of gnome activity and the profile of a GNOME contributor. This project's aims were to answer three questions in particular: What does the developer community look like? What companies are investing in GNOME, and how? What does the commercial ecosystem around the GNOME project look like?

29 Jul 2010 4:59pm GMT

During the currently ongoing GUADEC conference in Den Haag the GNOME release team announced that GNOME 3.0 would be delayed for another six months and is now scheduled for March 2011. "We could release in September and have something working that is okayish, but it's not up to the standards we have" release team member Vincent Untz explains the reasoning. There's coverage of this issue at derStandard.at and an official GNOME press release.

29 Jul 2010 4:47pm GMT

The latest panic in desktop Linux lad was that Dell would no longer be selling Ubuntu pre-installed on laptops and netbooks. Alas, for those who love drama, it wasn't true. In fact, Dell is expanding its Ubuntu desktop Linux offerings.

29 Jul 2010 4:44pm GMT

iPhone shrinkage, RIM on the up

Sales of Android-based phones more than quadrupled in the UK during the most-recent quarter.…

27 Jul 2010 5:02am GMT

(Marginally) less draconian

Steve Jobs & Co have renewed their interest in developing an operating system that can disable "one or more functions" of your Mac while an ad is being played.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

22 Jul 2010 6:37pm GMT

Poll finds for Android, Chrome OS, MeeGo

Microsoft might be "all in" on tablets (here and here), but it's Linux that will dominate this new category of device, according to latest research.…

16 Jul 2010 8:59pm GMT

Dead man walking in Memphis

Windows NT 4.0 made Microsoft an operating system player for file servers and crushed NetWare, but it was Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server that stormed the walls of the glasshouse and smashed enough windows to actually get inside and start taking over the joint. And now, it is dead.…

15 Jul 2010 7:21pm GMT

'I'm OK with that'

Microsoft really, really hates its dud Vista operating system - so much so that it can now openly badmouth its own product while taking a bitchy stab at Apple and its current iPhone 4 antenna woes.…

15 Jul 2010 11:09am GMT

OpenSolaris board threatens ritual suicide

Greg Lavender, the lead developer in charge of the Solaris operating system at Oracle, has left the company. And the OpenSolaris Governing Board, which is supposed to steer the open source version of Solaris, is thinking about disbanding because Oracle has not had any contact with the board for the past six months.…

14 Jul 2010 7:27pm GMT

Pushing Power7 chips to the limits

For only the second time since Big Blue entered the Unix market for real in February 1990 with the launch of the RS/6000 line of workstations and servers, the company is letting customers who use its Power-based servers take a future AIX release for a test drive in an open beta program.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

14 Jul 2010 5:07pm GMT

Expect attackable vulns to accumulate, warn security watchers

Analysis It's been months coming but many organisations are ill-prepared for the end of security support for Windows XP SP2, potentially leaving a huge population of vulnerable machines for hackers to exploit.…

14 Jul 2010 12:07pm GMT

Hasta la vista

Microsoft released the expected four security advisories on Tuesday, three of which earn the dread rating of critical. They collectively address five security vulnerabilities.…

14 Jul 2010 10:02am GMT

Thumbs nose at 'tech enthusiasts'

Microsoft released its first Service Pack 1 public betas for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 yesterday at its annual partner shindig.…

13 Jul 2010 11:18am GMT

Downgrade now, upgrade whenever

Microsoft is giving users of Windows Vista and Windows XP Professional software extra time to put off their migration to Windows 7.…

13 Jul 2010 4:45am GMT

Rolling lucky sevens for phones and tablets

Steve Ballmer has delivered a mea culpa to Microsoft's partners for its slip-ups against Apple and Google on tablets and smart phones.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

12 Jul 2010 2:41pm GMT

Do you work here? And other important questions

Workshop Identity management in the corporate environment is complex - not to mention, at the coalface, a pain in the backside.…

12 Jul 2010 12:14pm GMT

And nobody notices

Microsoft has cast itself as one of the Good Guys in the battle over intellectual property, unlike those scofflaws over at Google. Which makes one recent Windows bugfix more than a little ironic: it patches a bug that makes Windows 7 the file-sharing gift that never stops giving.…

06 Jul 2010 4:04pm GMT

One step closer to prime time

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat said today that it has kicked out the second beta of its Enterprise Linux 6, moving the operating system one step closer to production.…

30 Jun 2010 8:45pm GMT