fidzu : Operating Systems

Is it an upgrade problem, or a user problem?

Recent data has shown that iOS apps crash more often than apps running on the Android platform.…

06 Feb 2012 11:32am GMT

For all intents and purposes, this is only a minor change, and were this any other operating system or graphical environment, it would never warrant an entire news item. However, we're talking Windows, the most popular desktop operating system of all time, here. After 17 years of trusty service, Microsoft has removed the Start button from the taskbar in the upcoming Consumer Preview release of Windows 8.

05 Feb 2012 7:15pm GMT

"Among the treasure troves of recently released WikiLeaks cables, we find one whose significance has bypassed Swedish media. In short: every law proposal, every ordinance, and every governmental report hostile to the net, youth, and civil liberties here in Sweden in recent years have been commissioned by the US government and industry interests." How such prestigious nations with such long and proud histories, like Sweden, The Netherlands, and so on, can succumb to pressure from a former colony is beyond me. We should know better.

05 Feb 2012 12:26pm GMT

"A group of European regulators has written to Google calling on it to halt the introduction of its new privacy policy, saying it needs to investigate whether the proposals sufficiently protect users' personal data." I'd rather regulators are on top of this now than when it's too late and we're all plugged into the Google Hivemind Overlord.

04 Feb 2012 2:53pm GMT

"Samsung, in its first acknowledgment of the European Commission's antitrust investigation of its patent licensing practices, Friday said it believed the commission would ultimately conclude the company complies with the rules. The investigation arose out of Samsung's dispute with Apple over trademarks and patents that cover smartphones and tablet computers."

04 Feb 2012 2:37pm GMT

There's an article making the rounds right now about how applications on iOS crash more often than applications on Android. I'm not going to detail the entire methodology - the article itself does so - but it does raise an interesting talking point about how both mobile operating systems handle application crashes and updates.

03 Feb 2012 11:43pm GMT

Apple takes down 4 and 3G models - for now

Apple has removed the iPhone 4 and 3Gs from its stores in Germany, almost certainly in response to Motorola's December action rather than today's patent win.…

03 Feb 2012 2:37pm GMT

Passware scratches Lion's belly, penetrates fruity disk

Apple's FileVault disk encryption can be circumvented in less than an hour, according to a computer forensics firm.…

03 Feb 2012 2:02pm GMT

Rips up roadmap, axes development

Exclusive Nokia is said to be hastening the demise of its legacy Symbian platform, cancelling the development of all but one new Symbian-based device. Although Nokia Belle updates will continue to ship to existing customers, only one new model - a successor to the N8 high-end camera phone - will reach the market, the Register understands.…

03 Feb 2012 1:38pm GMT

Apple-flavoured future features leaked

Windows 8 and Microsoft's next major phone operating system will merge, if reports are correct.…

03 Feb 2012 11:01am GMT

Set-top box software to be torn out and replaced over the net

UK hybrid TV service BT Vision plans to be the first customer to discard Microsoft's Mediaroom software, almost imminently, after at least a year-long effort to put in completely new software building blocks to rejuvenate the service.…

03 Feb 2012 8:04am GMT

There are different reasons people use Unix-like operating systems, including configurable, availability free of charge, powerful command line interface an many more. Some people are motivated by the moral issue: they reject non-free software. Specifically for such users Free Software Foundation developed Guidelines for Free System Distributions and created the list of absolutely free ("as in freedom") distributions. In this article we are going to look at the most recent entry on the list - Parabola GNU/Linux. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

02 Feb 2012 11:22pm GMT

"Google has added an automated scanning process that is designed to keep malicious apps out of the Android Market , the company announced today. The new service, code-named 'Bouncer', scans apps for known malware, spyware, and Trojans, and looks for suspicious behaviors and compares them against previously analyzed apps. Every app is then run on Google's cloud infrastructure to simulate how the software would operate on an Android device, he said. Existing apps are continuously analyzed, too."

02 Feb 2012 11:11pm GMT

This is the kind of news just tailor-made for OSNews. After 16 years of trusty service, the venerable Windows CE will be history as far as Microsoft's mobile operating system offering goes - the next major version of Windows Phone will use the NT kernel from Windows 8. As a heavy former Windows PocketPC Mobile CE Ultimate SP2 Edition user, this makes me sad. As a fan of the NT kernel, this makes me happy.

02 Feb 2012 11:07pm GMT

Apple has released Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (by far Apple's most inelegant product name). It's a whole bunch of under-the-hood stuff, mostly bug fixes. It adds support for Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian. It's all in Software Update.

02 Feb 2012 11:26am GMT

So, this is apparently a big thing, but because of my perpetual state of total boredom with regards to social networking, I really don't have the will to turn this into a proper item. So, here you go: Facebook is doing its IPO thing. Eh. In any case, lots of new rich people. Maybe the wealth will trickle down this time.

01 Feb 2012 10:29pm GMT

How many N9's did Nokia sell, and how many Lumias did Nokia sell? It's an interesting thing to ponder, because estimates by Tomi T. Ahonen seem to indicate that, despite decidedly undermarketing the thing, the N9 faired considerably better in the marketplace than the Lumia did.

01 Feb 2012 10:24pm GMT

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation, supported by Carpathia Hosting, today announced its plans to assess the scope of the issue facing Megaupload users who are at risk of losing their data. Carpathia has created this website to assist users in contacting EFF. EFF will review the factual situations shared by users and, if possible, try to resolve their issues." I

01 Feb 2012 9:46pm GMT

"The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules. The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the case as a matter of priority. It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation." Maybe Samsung should've added '...with rounded corners' to their patent applications.

01 Feb 2012 9:39pm GMT

InfoWorld's Rick Grehan takes an in-depth look at Opa, MLstate's attempt to provide a single language for Web app development, and one of 10 cutting-edge programming languages that could shake up the future of IT. "With Opa, you write your Web application as though it were a single-tier program, and the compiler handles the knotty details of partitioning your program and deploying the resulting components to their proper domains. The compiler also builds the communication infrastructure among application components, and that infrastructure is invisibly managed by the runtime. The security weaknesses inherent in today's Web applications are virtually eliminated."

01 Feb 2012 9:36pm GMT

Firefox 10 Arrives Today with Extended Support for Businesses. Though the software does bring an array of tweaks and enhancements for both users and developers, it's perhaps most notable for the fact that it marks the debut of the business-oriented Extended Support Release (ESR) program. One can check out what’s new and known issues for this version of Firefox by reading Mozilla's release notes. Perhaps the most important change from a user's perspective is that add-ons and themes are assumed to function, rather than not function as assumed by previous Firefox versions, meaning that the update process won't leave a user with familiar extensions disabled and needing updates.

01 Feb 2012 9:36pm GMT

Ten's Complement for Mac OS X

An ex-Apple engineer's startup has produced Zevo: ZFS for Mac OS.…

01 Feb 2012 5:43pm GMT

Unity rival isn't a monster frankengnome

If the jump from the GNOME 2 desktop to the new GNOME Shell or Unity desktop in Ubuntu has left you feeling dissatisfied, one increasingly popular distribution just might offer something that turns out to be the best of both worlds - Linux Mint.…

30 Jan 2012 2:32pm GMT

For why does weatherman hate penguins? Something in the AIR

Linux users face increased inconvenience getting a weather forecast from March onwards when the Met Office will withdraw its web-based weather gadgets and replace them with desktop widgets - for Windows and Mac only.…

30 Jan 2012 8:02am GMT

Shadowman gets the message

Red Hat updated its core Enterprise Linux operating system stack to 6.2 in December and its Enterprise Virtualization commercial-grade KVM server hypervisor to 3.0 last week. Now Shadowman has polished up a new release of a special stack of Linux and systems software called MRG aimed at hard-core messaging, real-time, and high performance computing workloads where generic Linux just don't cut it.…

26 Jan 2012 1:05am GMT

Fingers Thai flood whipping boy and netbook decline

Microsoft has released its quarterly results, and reports that Windows revenues are down 6 per cent when compared with the previous quarter.…

20 Jan 2012 1:11am GMT

Installing OS will be a pain for newbies, says Red Hat bloke

The question of whether Secure Boot technology in UEFI firmware could exclude Linux from PCs running Windows 8 has taken a fresh twist.…

18 Jan 2012 12:46pm GMT

Compute and storage honey for .NET bees

Amazon is giving Windows shops a taste of Microsoft's Windows server for free in the cloud.…

16 Jan 2012 2:32pm GMT

Hundreds of jobs at stake in cultural revolution, say sources

Another year and another shake-up is coming to Microsoft. A restructuring of the team responsible for how Redmond is perceived and sells itself will be announced in the next 30 days, Bloomberg reports.…

12 Jan 2012 2:32pm GMT

Flying assassins upgraded after Windows virus outbreak

The control of US military spy drones appears to have shifted from Windows to Linux following an embarrassing malware infection.…

12 Jan 2012 11:42am GMT

Smartphone, TV, web code-jockey play

AT&T - one of America's largest internet, phone and TV service providers - is throwing up an open-source cloud running OpenStack to court application developers.…

10 Jan 2012 5:44pm GMT