Archive September 2007
Delay of EeePc shipment by Asustek
We announced already the imminent availability of one of the worlds smallest notebooks, which was due at the end of September, beginning of October. Now we learn that changes are made to the time line of the release. According to DigiTimes Asustek Computer is expected to delay shipments of its Eee PCs to the end of October.
Asustek’s Eee PC was originally expected to hit the market in the third week of September, noted the channel distributors. However, as the company expects to gain more power in the market and to expand its software applications, Asustek decided to postpone its schedule, said the distributors.
Asustek noted that after testing the company gained many comments. Thus, it decided to add Linux-based software applications to the Eee PCs. This is the major reason the company is pushing back the launch of the products, said the company. Asustek indicated that it expects to ship Eee PCs soon, adding the launch should be no later than that of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC)’s latest plan in November.
Despite the plans to add additional software to the Eee PCs, Asustek stated the cost will remain the same.
Earlier this month, Asustek said it plans to ship 200,000-300,000 Eee PCs by the end of this year and annual shipments for next year will grow to more than three million units at least.
Collateral iPhone Damage
Apparently Apple has issued a patch that was initially intended to block the iPhones unlocked to use any network, but not only those. The patch, available only via iTunes, apparently breaks the devices permanently and affects legitimately used ones as well. Read more here.
Novell puts kernel developer Greg KH full time on Linux Driver Project
The Linux Driver Project was announced, by Greg KH, last January as a program to write Linux drivers for companies for free. The response was encouraging from both those who wanted to help write drivers and from the companies who wanted drivers for Linux. Unfortunately, Greg was not able to handle all of these different developers and company requests on his own. He had a full-time job, and a full part-time hobby doing Linux kernel development. So the requests ended up going unanswered
Now Novell have assigned him full time to re-ignite the project.
Greg says on his blog, “My employer, Novell, has modified my position to now allow me to work full time on this project. Namely getting more new Linux kernel drivers written, for free, for any company that so desires. And to help manage all of the developers and project managers who want to help out.”
They have kicked off the project again with this announcement on the mailing list set up for the developers wishing to help out. If you want to find out more go to http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/
Only 1 bug left in OS X 10.5
Mac Rumors has posted an article which reveals that Mac OS X Leopard seed (9A559) has two remaining “issues” of which one was simply a test case for a new feature.
The actual bug is about “Archive installs” from Tiger to Leopard on PowerPC machines, and appears to be a true outstanding issue.
This means that it looks like OS X 10.5 is getting very close to release. It is meant to be released in October (which of course is only a few days away). Like all major software releases it needs to be shipped to manufacturing for mass production. This normally means the software frozen a few weeks before the software hits the shelfs.
Of course, there isn’t only 1 bug left in OS X 10.5, there are thousands but that is true of all software including Windows, Linux and OS X. That is why there will be OS X 10.5.1 and we are all waiting for Vista SP1.
France: € 311,85 Remboursement For MS-Tax
A French court decided yesterday that Acer had to pay back € 311,85 for unused and unwanted pre-installed operating system + software to a guy who bought an € 599,– notebook.
Additionaly they had to pay € 650,– for the time lost in court plus all court related costs.
Full article here: http://perso.libre-zone.net/article-125 … -ro-4.html (French only at the moment)
thanks slam for the info!
Apple announces system requirements for OS X Leopard 10.5
It looks like OS X 10.5 will need a fast-ish CPU to run. It has been reported at Apple Insider that OS X 10.5 will require “an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor.” Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space.
This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock as the minimum requirements for Windows Vista are a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of system memory and a 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
Apparently what happened is that Apple engineers have recently decided that Leopard ran too slow on 800MHz PowerPC G4 systems. Support for those systems was subsequently pulled from the most recent pre-release copies of Leopard, which inform testers that the software “cannot be installed” on those computers.
The next PowerPC chip is the 867Mhz version which means a handful of Mac systems will be excluded from running Leopard including the 800MHz PowerBook G4 (Titanium), 800MHz PowerMac G4 (Quicksilver), 800MHz iMac G4, 800MHz iBook G4, and 800MHz eMac.
Id’s Rage coming to Linux after all (and the Hi-Tech Squad were right about D3D)
Following an interview published on a German website, which we reported here, where it was revealed that John Carmack is no longer as committed to Linux as he has been, John himself posted on Slashdot saying “There is certainly no plans for a commercially supported linux version of Rage, but there will very likely be a linux executable made available. It isn’t running at the moment, but we have had it compiled in the past. Running on additional platforms usually provides some code quality advantages, and it really only takes one interested programmer to make it happen.”
This of course is very much in line with other Id games. If you are Linux fan, you buy the game, download the binary from their website, combine the two and bang it works.
There were lots of rumours on the Internet that Rage would be a DirectX only game (which the Hi-Tech Squad didn’t report BTW), but John has confirmed that the PC version is still OpenGL and not DirectX (although that could change).
As a side issue, why didn’t the Hi-Tech Squad add fuel to the fire over DirectX, well mainly because there will be a commerical version of Rage on Mac OS X and OS X doesn’t have DirectX only OpenGL, so there will be an OpenGL version.
Id’s new game Rage not coming to Linux
A german web site has published an interview with Todd Hollenshead, id Software’s CEO, that reveals that id Software and John Carmack are no longer as committed to Linux as they have been.
In the interview Todd Hollenshead discusses the upcoming id title Rage and the engine it runs on, codenamed ‘id Tech 5′. When asked about Linux, CEO Todd Hollenshead said that “John Carmack is no longer as interested in Linux as before.”
You can read more here.
Compiz Fusion composite window manager now on the web
I already mentioned a very cool way to make your Linux desktop show off using Compiz Fusion, the result of a merge between the well-known Beryl composite window manager and Compiz Extras, a community set of improvements to the Compiz composite window manager.
Now Compiz Fusion has web presence! There you can find a homepage, wiki, planet (where all the blogs are syndicated to – giving you a mass perspective on everything compiz fusion), forum, gitweb and status.
Status is a user-friendly way of notifying the user whether it is safe to compile from git without major breakage. Status simple has a green, yellow and red light next to each component indicating whether there will be breakage or not.
thanks to smspillaz for infos.
Layered Tech hosted sites at risk
Everyone hosted on Layered Tech’s network, you better rush to your site / server and change your root password! According to this post by LayeredTech president, Todd Abrams, “the support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients.”
I am not sure all clients hosted on their network are following their blog, where they post every downtime, maintenance, news, etc. I have received the information from my reseller only after I asked them if we were at risk. Lucky I was subscribed to their blog.
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