Operating Systems News and Articles

Just in time for the launch of openSUSE 11.1, Novell developers have completed the new Contrib-Repository. The Contrib will act as a bridge between factory (packages officially supported by Novell) and third party packages.

Free Linux distro Debian has been working steadily on its next version 5.0 of the OS, known as Lenny. Now developers have been called in for a vote to determine the course of its general release.

Sun Microsystems have announced a Reference Design Kit for the Ultrasparc T2 with an E-ATX board and processor that works with Linux.

With the “Implementation Notes”, Microsoft has published documents recording the integration of Open Document Format (ODF) 1.1 into its Office 2007 package.

Maker of embedded software Sierra Wireless has released a Linux software development kit (SDK) for its 3G wireless modules.

An unpatched security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser has triggered an advisory that is now recorded with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT).

It's been a good week for 64Bit. Following high Bit releases from Wine and Flash, Sun is now offering a Java Plug-In for 64Bit browsers.

Chipmaker Intel is currently working on Linux support for its next generation of USB, version 3.0. The new bus specification promises a 5 Gbit per second transfer speed, ten times faster than USB 2.0.

The nonprofit LinuxFund.org is providing financial support for Gnash, the Flash alternative, to accelerate development of the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).

This year's release of version 1.0 of the free runtime environment Wine is a milestone in itself. Developer Maarten Lankhorst has set another (experimental) stepping stone by getting the first 64Bit Windows program to run.