While GNOME 3.0 has been delayed to next March, the development releases towards version 3.0 of the GTK+ tool-kit continues in a steadfast manner. After the last GTK+ 3.0 snapshot a few weeks back that ported most of the GTK+ drawing to use Cairo, GTK+ 2.90.7 has been released...

The number of subscribers to mobile WiMAX services will approach 59 million by 2015, an ABI Research report projects. However, growth has been impeded by a combination of economic and psychological features, the firm adds....

Qnap Systems announced four new Business Series Turbo NAS (network attached storage) servers for SMB and corporate users, built around Intel's dual-core, 1.8GHz Atom D525 processor. The two-drive TS-259 Pro+ (4TB), four-drive TS-459 Pro+ (8TB), five-drive TS-559 Pro+ (10TB), and six-drive TS-659 Pro+ (12TB) all ship with 1GB RAM, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, iSCSI support, and newly updated Linux-based firmware....

Yesterday's back-pedaling from Apple has been very well received in the industry. Two companies who were bitten pretty hard by Apple's policies - Google (through AdMob) and Adobe - have both responded to yesterday's changes, and as you can expect, they're both pretty happy.

"Mozilla has published the first Firefox build that integrates a new JavaScript engine that aims to match the performance in IE9 and reduces the gap to Safari, Opera and Chrome. The JavaScript performance is pretty dramatic and, at least on our test system, Firefox 4 is now faster than IE9 PP4."

Python programmers shouldn't get too smug. While many people agree that Python is designed in a way that makes it a highly readable language, there can still be problems with legacy, untested Python code too. Porting legacy Perl to Python can be a daunting task. In this article, learn some of the theory behind dealing with legacy code, including what not to do.

This one doesn't come as a total surprise: Nokia has replaced its CEO. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is on his way out, and he's being replaced by Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's Business division. This will be the first time someone from Foreign (from Nokia's persepctive) will lead the company, but some fresh, outside blood may be just what the doctor ordered.

While Oracle killed off OpenSolaris and the OpenSolaris Governing Board dissolved itself, the community of OpenSolaris developers have not given up but instead have begun working on their own community OpenSolaris-based operating systems to provide the world with choices beyond the upcoming Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris Express 11. There is already the Illumos Project, which is a fork of OpenSolaris with a fully open-source code-base, that is now being used within the Nexenta and SchilliX operating systems, among others. We have just been tipped off as well that next week another new OpenSolaris derivative is being announced and it's to be called OpenIndiana...

Yesterday on the mailing list for GCC is was brought up if Apple's Objective-C 2.0 patches for the GNU Compiler Collection could be merged back into the upstream GCC code-base as maintained by the Free Software Foundation. Even though Apple's modified GCC sources still reflect the FSF as the copyright holder and are licensed under the GNU GPLv2+, it doesn't look like Apple wants their compiler work going back upstream any longer...

Since last year we have been talking about Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, one of the official ports for Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" that will bring a 32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD kernel as an option to using the Linux kernel. Debain GNU/kFreeBSD still has the Debian user-land complete with its massive package repository and apt-get support, but the FreeBSD kernel is running underneath instead of Linux. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has matured a lot over the past year and most recently it has switched to using the FreeBSD 8.1 kernel by default and also now supports ZFS file-systems...

Back in April we reviewed the SilverStone HDDBOOST, which was an innovative product from this manufacturer known for their computer cases that allows you to pair a solid-state drive and a hard drive in an attempt to experience the best of both worlds when it comes to storage performance. The purpose of the HDDBOOST is to increase the disk performance by enabling SSD speeds on the host hard drive while reducing write times to the SSD. From our Linux tests in that article we had a hard time getting this small device to provide any measurable performance gains, but in fact it caused some performance losses. In June, we then had results from SilverStone when they tested it under Ubuntu Linux with the Phoronix Test Suite. Since then we have been trying out a new HDDBOOST unit and it now seems to be working right.

The Linux community is still in awe from today's announcement that Broadcom has released an open-source WiFi driver for their newest 802.11n chipsets after not backing any Linux support for their wireless hardware in years past. In the Phoronix IRC channel the question was jokingly begged if hell has frozen over, but now we have another announcement to share today, which makes us wonder if hell has really frozen over. No, we aren't sharing more news right now on Valve's Steam/Source Linux client that's still coming, but that there is now Gallium3D support for the ATI Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" series!..

TechCrunch held a little in-promptu poll a few days ago, asking its readers why they chose to go with Android instead of something else. Most people stated they choose Android because of "openness". The author of the article calls this "a load of crap", arguing that because carriers can do with Android as they so desire, the reality now is that Android isn't open. Clearly, the author doesn't get openness.

While we are always getting excited for the next Linux 2.6 kernel release (heck, we are barely halfway through the Linux 2.6.36 kernel development and we are already getting excited for Linux 2.6.37 with its driver improvements), but sometimes it can be easy to forget that there is still a maintained Linux 2.4 kernel. The Linux 2.6 kernel has been around for nearly seven years and is used by all new Linux distribution updates, but there's lots of enterprise and embedded devices running off this old kernel. The Linux 2.4 kernel though may have just reached an end-of-life state with the just-released Linux 2.4.37.10 kernel...

Broadcom wireless network adapters have long been notorious with Linux users since this hardware vendor has not provided any open-source Linux drivers or specifications for their chipsets, even though Broadcom ASICs are dominantly used within today's wireless adapters. There's long been community projects like bcm43xx and b43 to create Linux drivers and use extracted Windows firmware and such to make the 802.11 adapters work, but for Broadcom's new 802.11n chipsets they have made a radical turn and are releasing a fully open-source Linux driver!..

Ars Technica: "Today 377 members of the European Parliament adopted a written declaration on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in which they demand greater transparency, assert that ISPs should not up end being liable for data sent through their networks, and say that ACTA 'should not force limitations upon judicial due process or weaken fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy'."

While Unigine Corp has been busy finishing up their first in-house game, OilRush, they haven't stopped work on further refining their upstream game engine. Unigine Corp has just reported on some of the most recent advancements to the Unigine Engine, which includes many enhancements and an updated terrain system...

There's this hole here at OSNews, a hole left when Psystar was dealt a devastating blow by Apple's legal team. That whole saga provided a nice steady stream of news articles that's been dried up for a while. However, Psystar was not the only clone maker out there - what happened to Quo Computer, that clone maker with an actual real-world store front? They're still here, and just launched a new product.

"Linux Mint Debian Edition comes with a Debian base, which we transformed into a live media and on top of which we added a new installer. It's rougher and in some aspects not as user-friendly as our other editions, it's very young but it will improve continuously and rapidly, and it brings us one step closer to a situation where we're fully in control of the system without being impacted by upstream decisions." It's a rolling release, so expect continuous updates. Not a new concept by a long shot, but it's interesting to see a distribution like Mint try this out.

Recently when benchmarking the Btrfs and EXT4 file-systems we were left surprised that the performance of the next-generation Btrfs file-system had regressed against EXT4 to the point where the evolutionary file-system is measurably faster in a greater number of disk benchmarks. In fact, even with solid-state drives and Btrfs offering an SSD optimized mode, it still conceded to EXT4. It turns out that in the Linux 2.6.35 kernel, Btrfs regressed. This regression should have been fixed with the Linux 2.6.36 kernel, but recently when benchmarking EXT4/Btrfs against ZFS-FUSE on a 2.6.36 development snapshot we found its performance to still be poor for Btrfs compared to EXT4. To confirm where these two most prominent Linux file-systems are at right now, we have new EXT4 and Btrfs performance results from the Linux 2.6.34, 2.6.35, and 2.6.36-rc3 kernels.

Since I started publishing my Learning to Program with Haiku lesson series back in January, I have, on many occasions, seen comments asking for lessons aimed at current codemonkeys who want to break into development for Haiku. Here begins a new series of programming lessons aimed at people who already have a basic grasp on C++: Programming with Haiku.

The direction of the series is pretty straightforward. First, we'll be spending some time (i.e. the first unit) delving into some less-commonly-used features of C++ which show up in Haiku from time to time. This is partly to bring up to speed those who are picking up the series after finishing the first one, but also to examine ways that features like containers from the Standard Template Library can be effectively used in combination with the Haiku API. There's even a quick primer on source control thrown in for good measure -- something which any developer should at least understand, if not use religiously. Following the first unit we will dig into the API. Depending on how things work out, there may or may not also be a crash course on GUI programming in there before diving into the kits themselves. Some of the lessons will deal directly with getting to know a particular kit. Others will examine important topics or the "Haiku way" of getting a task done. They should provide a good working knowledge of Haiku development methods that can easily be expanded into more advanced usage.

While I have a basic outline for the series, it's very general and I'm not exactly sure how long the series will run. It certainly will be quite a while, though. A word of warning: my school schedule is completely insane from the start and I will not be publishing largely on a weekly basis like the first series. Instead, I'll be posting them when I am able. I really like writing these things, so they'll happen, but it may take some time. Now, without further adieu, Lesson 1, which starts by looking at templates and some of the containers in the Standard Template Library.

Programming with Haiku, Lesson 1

It was just one week ago that NVIDIA released a stable Linux driver update, but today for those wishing to live on the bleeding edge of NVIDIA's proprietary Linux driver development, the first beta release in the 260.xx series is now available for testing. The NVIDIA 260.19.04 Linux driver brings a lot to the table...

Google's music service plans are crystallizing in talks with music labels on plans for a download store and a digital song locker to challenge Apple iTunes in the digital music market. Google is moving forward with plans to release an Android-based Google Music site by the end of the year to compete with iTunes, say reports....

Finally Bricsys has released the official version of Bricscad V10 for Linux. Linux users now have very capable desktop CAD software able to handle the DWG file format. From Bricscad website: "Bricsys is the first to release a .dwg based CAD software for Linux users. Bricsys NV, the developer of Bricscad, announced today that Bricscad V10 for Linux is now available. Bricscad V10 is the first .dwg based CAD platform available for the Linux Operating System. Bricscad V10, the leading alternative CAD platform for the .dwg file format, continues to offer freedom of choice to the CAD and Engineering community."

Back in July we reported on a GEM-free UMS Intel driver coming about that was targeted for owners of vintage Intel 8xx series hardware to circumvent the stability issues and other problems they commonly have encountered since switching to Intel's newer driver stack with kernel mode-setting and the Graphics Execution Manager. Canonical hoped to ship this UMS code-path in Ubuntu 10.10 that would then be enabled for those with these older Intel integrated graphics processors...

Axiomtek announced a fanless, industrial & shoebox& PC with four expansion slots and support for processors as fast as 2.53GHz. The IPC914-211-FL supports Intel Core 2 Duo and Celeron M CPUs, with up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, and a 2.5-inch drive bay, says the company....

Every so often we publish here at OSNews articles about copyright, about the war of the "old media" establishment against everyone else. Many, myself included, have argued that the way to get out of this mess -- short of changing the law -- is to have more artists release their work under a Creative Commons license. However, after a few years it became obvious to me that CC would never be able to change the industry all by itself. Offering a Free license, and having 30,000 albums released under it, was still not enough. Until the Summer of 2009, that is. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

Brisbane, Australia - The lca2011 organisers are delighted to announce the successful miniconfs for linux.conf.au 2011 to be held in Brisbane.

lca2011 Miniconf convenor Sarah Smith commented "We've been amazed with the quality and quantity of the miniconf proposals. Selection was not easy, however lca2011 would have to boast the most exciting and substantial array of lca miniconfs to date!"

Debut miniconfs Southern Plumbers and Rocketry are accompanied with old favourites like Haecksen, Libre Graphics Day & Systems Administration. "We have 15 miniconfs in our program this year. We were spoilt for choice with the excellent miniconf proposals submitted" says Ms Smith.

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"lca2011 organisers welcome the successful 2011 linux.conf.au miniconf organisers to the lca2011 team. Keep watching our website for details as their miniconfs take shape", she said.

Arduino	Jonathan Oxer
Business of Open Source	Martin Michlmayr
Data Storage	Stewart Smith
Freedom in the cloud	Francois Marier
Haecksen	Lana Brindley
Libre Graphics Day	Ryan Lerch
Mobile FOSS	James Purser
Multicore and Parallel Computing	Nicolás Erdödy
Multimedia + Music	Jonathan Woithe
Open in the public sector	Daniel Spector
Open Programming	Christopher Neugebauer
Research + Education	Peter Lyle
Rocketry	Bdale Garbee
Southern Plumbers	David Airlie
System Administration	Ewen McNeill

More information about lca2011 Miniconfs is available here.

In previous OS News articles, I've claimed that mature computers up to ten years old can be refurbished and made useful. My last article identified and evaluated different ways to refurbish these computers. One approach is to keep the existing Windows install and clean it up. This has the advantage of retaining the Windows license and software, the installed applications, and the existing drivers. But it takes some work. In this article we'll see what this entails. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...