MorphOS 2.7 has been released, and it’s mostly a bug-fix release. The one thing that stood out to me is that some work has gone into fixing bugs for several PowerPC G4 chips – more specifically, models used in PowerBook G4s. MorphOS has been demonstrated on the PowerBook G4, but official support for it has not been released yet.
Category Archives: Software
Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Makes a First Appearance
Posted by js
on 13/12/2010
No comments
srimadman writes “The Alpha 1 Release of Ubuntu 11.04, often known as ‘Natty Narwhal,’ is intended as a developer snapshot of the next major Ubuntu version, which is due in April.” So, if you want to try Unity and Wayland before your neighbors do, this is the time.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Verve: A Type Safe Operating System
Posted by js
on 13/12/2010
No comments
“The Singularity project (an OS written in managed code used for research purposes) has provided several very useful research results and opened new avenues for exploration in operating system design. Recently, MSR released a paper covering an operating system research project that takes a new approach to building an OS stack with verifiable and type safe managed code. This project employs a novel use of Typed Assembly Language, which is what you think it is: Assembly with types (implemented as annotations and verified statically using the verification technology Boogie and the theorem prover Z3 (Boogie generates verification conditions that are then statically proven by Z3. Boogie is also a language used to build program verifiers for other languages)). As with Singularity, the C# Bartok compiler is used, but this time it generates TAL. The entire OS stack is verifiably type safe (the Nucleus is essentially the Verve HAL) and all objects are garbage collected. It does not employ the SIP model of process isolation (like Singularity). In this case, again, the entire operating system is type safe and statically proven as such using world-class theorem provers.” Channel9 has an interview on video with one of the developers behind this MSR project. Source code to Verve is available.
USB3 Arrives for Mac OS X Thanks to LaCie
Posted by js
on 07/11/2010
No comments
Steve Jobs recently told a Mac user, enquiring about the probability of USB3 on Macs in the near feature, that the technology is not ready because Intel has yet to adopt the platform. A recent rumour slated Intel to integrate USB3 it into its chipsets by no earlier than 2012.
LaCie electronics, however, is not prepared to wait around until 2012, and has just released an USB3.0 driver for Mac OS X. Just one catch: it only works with LaCie’s hardware.
5 Years of Linux Kernel Releases Benchmarked
Posted by js
on 07/11/2010
No comments
An anonymous reader writes “Phoronix has published benchmarks of the past five years worth of Linux kernel releases, from the Linux 2.6.12 through Linux 2.6.37 (dev) releases. The results from these benchmarks of 26 versions show that, for the most part, new features haven’t affected performance.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DragonFly BSD 2.8.2 Released
Posted by js
on 03/11/2010
No comments
The 2.8.2 release of DragonFly BSD is now available, featuring significant advances in multi-processor performance based on DragonFly’s signature soft token locks. It also includes many feature advancements including: pf from OpenBSD 4.2, the Wifi stack from FreeBSD and DataMapper from NetBSD (with significant enhancements). This release also marks the return of the GUI image. See the release notes for full details.
OpenBSD 4.8 Released
Posted by js
on 03/11/2010
No comments
OpenBSD 4.8 Released
Posted by js
on 03/11/2010
No comments
Mortimer.CA writes “The release of OpenBSD 4.8 has been announced. Highlights include ACPI suspend/resume, better hardware support, OpenBGPD/OpenOSPFD/routing daemon improvements, inclusion of OpenSSH 5.5, etc. Nothing revolutionary, just the usual steady improving of the system. A detailed ChangeLog is available, as usual. Work, of course, has already started on the next release, which should be ready in May, according to the steady six-month release cycle.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ReactOS 0.3.12 Released
Posted by js
on 22/10/2010
No comments
“This is a huge release for the team, not just with regards to the number of improvements which this release holds but in terms of the leap forward architecturally, stability wise and in bringing some of the more modern aspects of the NT kernel into ReactOS. It’s been almost a year since the last release and whilst this is understandably excessive, it was required to stabilize the OS due to the nature of the work which was undertaken.”
Linux 2.6.36 Released
Posted by js
on 22/10/2010
No comments
diegocg writes “Version 2.6.36 of the Linux kernel has been released. This version includes support for the Tilera architecture, a new filesystem notification interface called fanotify, CIFS local caching, support for Intel Intelligent Power Sharing in i3/5 systems, integration of the kernel debugger and KMS, inclusion of the AppArmor security system, a redesign of workqueues optimized for concurrency, and several new drivers and small improvements. See the full changelog here for more details.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.