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A new fast-booting, cloud-oriented, “Peppermint OS” Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features such as improved KVM virtualization and expanded WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.
HTC announced a budget-minded Android 2.1 phone for European and Asian markets. Available in the third quarter, the HTC Wildfire will offer a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen, a five-megapixel camera, a 3.5mm audio jack, a microSD card slot, and a new app-sharing feature, says the company.
Portwell announced a COM Express module that offers Intel's recently introduced “Arrandale” Core i7/i5/i3 processors or the even newer Celeron P4505 CPU. The PCOM-B216VG-VI includes up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, supports up to four SATA devices, and drives three DisplayPort displays, the company says.
Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 2.6.34, which is notable for adding two filesystems: Ceph for distributed and cloud-based applications, and LogFS, which is optimized for flash-memory based devices. Other new features include a faster KVM virtualization driver based on Vhost.net technology, says LinuxPlanet.com.
Intel will launch its first dual-core Atom processor for netbooks and other mobile devices during the third quarter, Fudzilla claims. The N550 will be clocked at 1.5GHz, have 512KB of second-level cache per core, and offer an 8.5 Watt TDP, Fuad Abazovic writes.
Texas Instruments (TI) announced a DaVinci video processor with “smart analytics,” claimed to offer three times the video performance of its predecessor. Designed for video surveillance and security applications, the DMVA2 supports 720P video at 30fps and 1080p at 15fps, and is offered with an IP camera reference design from Appro.
South Africa-based mobile provider Vodacom has begun selling an Ubuntu Linux based netbook. The Linkbook, which was developed by a South African company of the same name, is equipped with 16GB of flash storage, HSDPA, WiFi, two USB ports, and an 8.9-inch display, says Vodacom.
Appro announced a pair of 1U servers aimed at small- and medium-sized HPC (high performance computing) deployments. The Tetra 1326G4 and 1426G4 combine Intel or AMD processors with Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPU (graphics processing unit) cards, offering up to 24 CPU cores and 1,792 GPU cores plus as much as 3TB of storage, the company says.
Sony's removal of the Playstation 3's “Other OS” option will cause higher support costs for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and other research institutes using arrays of PS3s for high-performance computing, says ArsTechnica. Meanwhile, three lawsuits have been brought against Sony over the offending PS3 update, says IGN.
Arbor Technology announced a seven-inch tablet PC that offers a 1.1GHz Intel Atom processor and 4GB of flash storage. The ruggedized Gladius G0710S has a touchscreen display, gigabit Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n networking, dual cameras, a RFID reader, and the ability to survive four-foot drops, according to the company.
AndroidPolice claims to have tested a pre-release version of Android 2.2 (“Froyo”), and says it's up to 450 percent faster than Android 2.1, thanks largely to the addition of a JIT (just in time) compiler. The operating system upgrade will also offer USB tethering and WiFi hotspot support, says TechCrunch.
VXL announced more than a dozen new “Itona” thin clients with Via processors, including seven models that run Linux. The mid-range Itona TC1536 runs on a 1GHz C7-M CPU, the C32 and C35 run on a 1GHz C7, and the C35S, D35S, D51S, and E35 run on a 1.6GHz C7, the company says.
Aaeon announced a COM Express module featuring Intel's “Pineview” Atoms and NM10 I/O controller. The COM-LN supports up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, includes gigabit Ethernet, has eight USB ports and three SATA channels, and provides both PCI and PCI Express expansion.
Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that it is working with Google on the latter's widely rumored Android based tablet computer. Meanwhile, an “HP insider” is said to have told Examiner.com that HP will release a WebOS-based tablet computer in the third quarter, code-named the HP Hurricane.
McObject has released version 4.1 of its Linux-ready, in-memory database for embedded and real-time transaction processing applications. ExtremeDB 4.1 is touted for improvements including the addition of CRC and RC4 encryption, faster on-disk storage and retrieval, a binary scheme option, support for custom collations, and improved transaction logging, says the company.