Notorious WebOS Internals Team has managed to compile and run an X-Server on our beloved latest gadget Palm Pre, thus allowing to run Open Office. As Rod Whitby states:
Just a note to say that we do have a roadmap of being able to install native Debian X11 GUI applications (like OpenOffice) via Preware. But don’t hold your breath, cause it looks like we need to write a whole new FUSE filesystem driver to be able to do it. Think weeks to months, rather than days.
Via PreCentral.net…
According to Sony’s Blog, the upcoming Playstation 3 firmware update 3.21 will cease to support the “Other OS” option. It will be released on April 1st, 2010.
Sony says disabling Linux comes from security concerns. This is an immediate result from the efforts of GeoHot’s attack on Sony’s hypervisor protection and the release of XorLoser’s PS3 Exploit Toolkit.
Consumers and organizations that currently use the “Other OS” feature can choose not to upgrade their PS3 systems, although the following features will no longer be available;
- Ability to sign in to PlayStation Network and use network features that require signing in to PlayStation Network, such as online features of PS3 games and chat
- Playback of PS3 software titles or Blu-ray Disc videos that require PS3 system software version 3.21 or later
- Playback of copyright-protected videos that are stored on a media server (when DTCP-IP is enabled under Settings)
- Use of new features and improvements that are available on PS3 system software 3.21 or later
For those PS3 users who are currently using the “Other OS” feature but choose to install the system software update, to avoid data loss they first need to back-up any data stored within the hard drive partition used by the “Other OS,” as they will not be able to access that data following the update.
Find Sony’s blog entry here…
Forum reports seem to be growing about this issue. A certain amount of first generation Palm Pre’s being sold all over the world seem to have slider issues. “It just wobbles too much, thus making it feel like a 500€ plastic toy.”, said a customer in a local O2 store.
Our testing device received from a local O2 store in November, 2009 here in Berlin suffers the same slider issue.
When talking to O2’s customer support, he by the way confirmed: “my Pre had the same issue. It is being repaired currently.”
Fortunately the repairing procedure with O2 is quite painless. If a customer realizes a defect within the first seven days of purchase, the local O2 store offers direct exchange of the device (this not only applies to Palm’s devices but to any cell phone O2 offers here in Germany). If defects are reported after seven days, they will be repaired within two weeks. Business customers are offered exchange devices at any time within 48hours.
If Palm Pre’s having the orea offect can be repaired at all, is still not really proven. According to a report on PreThinking, U.S. american devices are getting exchanged. Repair centers are not allowed to repair them.
When asking O2’s customer service, if the slider issue has been reported often, he answered: “No, this is a very rare issue, and we also asked Palm about this, and they also said, there is no slider issue.”
This might be the case for Germany, but in the meantime Palm in the U.S.A. seem to have implicitly confirmed the slider issues. In a PreCentral.net review article of the second generation Palm Pre (called Palm Pre Plus for the Verizon network), Dieter Bohn mentioned that “Palm says that they’ve fixed up the slider action (..)”.
In the meantime we’ve received our exchange device, and guess what? Although it still is a first generation Palm Pre, this slider has no orea effect.
It feels a lot more stable, making it eventually a serious tool for all the people who don’t want to follow the iPhone hype.
Picture is courtesy of PreThinking.com…
Enabling the Developer Mode gives access to a thousand of homebrew apps and apps which are currently under beta testing.
There are now two ways known to enable the Pre’s dev mode.
1. Simply enter the Konami cheat code:
upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart
2. or enter this:
webos20090606
in either way, you’ll see a “secret” menu switch that allows you to enable the developer mode. After that reboot the device.
There have been rumors in the last weeks which carrier which offer the Palm Pre in European countries. As of today we know the rumors were true. In Germany, Great Britain, Ireland O2 will be the exclusive distributor of Palm’s new flagship, in Spain the iPhone competitor will be offered by Movistar.
As of now other European carriers seem to be in negotiations with Palm for exclusive distribution. There are no information yet about subscription prices. According to the O2’s german Preregistration site introduction to the german market is planned for october 2009.
Crossover allows installing Microsoft Windows based software on MacOS X or on Linux. In contrast to virtualization techniques like VMWare or Parallels, Crossover hooks API calls and redirects them to their MacOS or Linux equipollent.
As of version 8.0 these new applications are supported:
Crossover also improved Copy and Paste functionality to and from the host operating system and improved integration with the upcoming Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
» Find Crossover’s complete change log here…
Many Windows users say this is the best editor in the world. Mac Switchers always said they were desperately searching for something like it, but we did not find it. As we are long time UltraEdit users this is good news, as we will not need to run UltraEdit in Codeweaver’s Crossover anymore. Anyway there is no information about the release date for Linux or MacOS. Only the Windows version 15 will be released April 15th, 2009.
As you can see from the screenshot, it looks like UltraEdit for windows, but it is the Windows version. We expect this to be a commercial Crossover/Wine porting. Rewriting of the whole code would simply be too expensive.
The picture is courtesy of IDM Computer Solutions. Find more pictures on their site…
Mac OS has the wonderful feature that it’s got a BSD compatible Unix enviroment called Darwin as the basis. You can get to it by simply starting the terminal. Once getting used to it you even install Cygwin to your Microsoft Windows installation because it simply is a powerful way of controlling your computer.
Anyway typos and forgotten parameters is pita once you entered some longer commands. Going back to the beginning of the line is real pain, using the right/left cursor arrows takes forever. But there are workarounds…
The following list shows some of the most common commands that help to use the terminal more effectively – derived from the old unix days btw.
| Key |
Function |
| Ctrl-A | jump to beginning of the line |
| Ctrl-E | jump to end of the line |
| Esc-F | jump forward word by word (requires to hit Esc every time again!) |
| Esc-B | jump backword word by word (requires to hit Esc every time again!) |
| Tab | completes the names of folders and files |
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The open source encryption program TrueCrypt 6.1 has been released. It now features:
After Psystar countersued Apple a month ago for anticompetitetive business practices (read here). Apple’s attorneys now respond on 23 pages. Apple’s argumentation in short: Psystar violates Apple’s license agreement when putting Mac OS X on Psystar’s OEM computers.
In the paper Apple tries to circumvent the whole monopoly issue by argueing that there is no specific Mac OS X market, but an Apple Computer market. And since there is no specific market for the sole operating system, Apple is no monopolist. Rather than having a Mac OS X operating system market, there is a market for computers and in this market Apple Computers compete with other computers. Apple sums up that Psystars charges need to be rejected, because Apple as a company cannot be forced to help their competitors and thus weakening their own market position.
You may read the whole argumentation here at ZDNET. They released the whole 23 pages as a PDF.
Our comment:
This whole topic remains fascinating. From a technical point of view we would not follow Apple’s argumentation here, because of a simple fact. Mac OS X is heavily based on lots of open source parts from the Linux and GNU worlds. And the Mac OS X’s kernel Darwin was and still is available for x86 based PCs aswell. This might mean by releasing the kernel as a stand alone version, they implicitly admit that the operating system is only artificially bound to the hardware. You may find more some technical notes in our recent article here (see VII. Modify startup script) and on the wiki of the Chaos Communication Congress 2007.