Category Archives: Software

Windows 95 Turns 15

Posted by on 20/10/2010 No comments

An anonymous reader writes “15 years ago on this day, Microsoft’s then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today’s ‘social desktop,’ I’d much rather have the simpler and more sparse (pre-Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you’ve probably seen the commercials.” I fondly recall downloading build after build and installing them. But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux.

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Making Ubuntu Look Like Windows 7

Posted by on 20/10/2010 No comments

DeviceGuru writes “Although it won’t help Linux run Windows-specific software applications, this easy hack produces an Ubuntu desktop that looks and feels a lot like Windows 7. It’s particularly suitable for reviving older PCs or laptops on which the main activities will be web-browsing, email, document writing, and streaming music and videos from from the web. The process installs a Windows 7-like GNOME theme on an otherwise standard Ubuntu 10.04 installation, although it might work on other Linux distros with GNOME and appropriate other packages installed. Naturally all this begs the question: why would anybody want to do this? Why indeed!” People have been doing this sort of look-and-feel swap-out for years; it seems best to me as a practical joke.

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Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Released

Posted by on 15/09/2010 No comments

RandyDownes sends word that Canonical has released the beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). The release announcement boasts faster boot times, GNOME 2.31, and a speedier version of Evolution. In addition, “The Ubuntu Software Center has an updated look and feel, including the new ‘Featured’ and ‘What’s New’ views for showcasing applications, and an improved package description view. You can now easily access your package installation history too.” The release notes and download page are both available.

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MorphOS 2.5 Released, Adds eMac Support

Posted by on 13/08/2010 No comments

And the MorphOS team continues to expand their hardware support. They released MorphOS version 2.5 today, which adds support for Apple’s eMac computers (the 1.25Ghz models, the 1.42 models have not yet been tested). Of course, there’s also a whole load of fixes and improvements, too.

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Native ZFS Port for Linux

Posted by on 13/08/2010 No comments

Employees of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have ported Sun’s/Oracle’s ZFS natively to Linux. Linux already had a ZFS port in userspace via FUSE, since license incompatibilities between the CDDL and GPL prevent ZFS from becoming part of the Linux kernel. This project solves the licensing issue by distributing ZFS as a separate kernel module users will have to download and build for themselves.

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NetBSD 5.1 RC2 Released

Posted by on 13/08/2010 No comments

NetBSD 5.1 RC2 has been announced. A complete list of changes between 5.0 and 5.1 is available in diff format here for the more technical individuals. Fire up those VMs and give it a test run.

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Ubuntu: We Have No Plans to Fork GNOME

Posted by on 13/08/2010 No comments

Ubuntu’s community manager Jono Bacon talks in an interview with derStandard.at about the relationship between Ubuntu and GNOME, GNOME Shell, Unity and why the netbook market is that important to Canonical.

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Oracle Details Solaris 11, OpenSolaris’ Future Shaky

Posted by on 13/08/2010 No comments

Due to me not working for OSNews these past eight weeks, I’ve been a bit out of the loop, as I didn’t really follow technology news. I did notice that a lot is going on in OpenSolaris land, and today, Oracle has outlined what it has planned for Solaris 11 – and according to some, the fears about OpenSolaris’ future were justified.

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Google’s Chrome OS to Launch In Fall

Posted by on 05/08/2010 No comments

Kidfork writes “On Wednesday Google’s vice president of product management said that this fall Google will launch Chrome OS to compete with Microsoft Windows. More than 70 million users already use the Chrome Browser, and Google expects at least 1 million users of the OS by day one of release.”

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What’S New in Linux 2.6.35

Posted by on 05/08/2010 No comments

Measures to support the power saving mechanisms of AMD graphics chips, network code optimizations for multi-core processors, features for de-fragmenting the working memory and an improved support of the power management and turbo features offered by modern processors are among the highlights of the new kernel version. After a development time of almost two-and-a-half months, Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.35 of the Linux kernel.

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