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If you've got a bit of Linux experience under your belt, it's pretty simple to add some programs, enable an advanced desktop, and tweak the Eee PC to your heart's content. But it turns out that even if you're a Linux noob, the learning curve isn't that steep. Here are some of the most useful Eee hacks/tweaks we've discovered in our first half week of playing with it. Thanks to the Eee User community for helping inspire our hacking.

Document design is all about space -- the space allotted to an element, and the space between and around elements. This concern is especially obvious when you are setting up paragraphs and page spacing.read more

The slow, toe-in-the-water approach by PC makers to the Linux desktop continued on Wednesday, with Dell (NSDQ:Dell) and Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) formalizing a deal to ship Dell OptiPlex 330 and 755 desktops preloaded with Novell's SLED 10, to commercial accounts in China. The move in the Chinese market also expands Novell's footprint for SLED 10 among Tier 1 vendors; earlier this year Lenovo said it would pre-load some models of ThinkPads with SLED 10.

The first international workshop of Open Document Format (ODF) public sector users took place in Berlin on 29-30 October 2007, hosted by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany. The position of the German Foreign Office, as host of the event, was made very clear. The Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in his opening word, called ODF "a completely open and ISO-standardized format", considering it an "excellent basis" for "a free exchange of knowledge and information in a time of globalization". The Foreign Office has already linked its foreign missions in a network using open-source programs and shifted to OpenOffice and Linux operation systems on their laptops and has in view to extend this program to all diplomatic workstations by the middle of 2008.

Sixth Floor Labs LLC, a Linux game development company, has launched their business today. Founded by Ethan Glasser-Camp and Carl Li, the company aims to improve Linux's desktop feasibility through the creation of high-quality games. Games are "sold" to the Internet community through the "ransom model" -- for one large payment, the product is released under the GPL and freed forever.

Looking for a cool, green, Linux distro but still not ready to format you hard drive? OpenSuse has released a 10.3 "live" version of the community-driven Linux OS. Nice things in this release include a install-to-disk option for the first time and a choice of KDE or Gnome interface.

All Linux distributions have things in common, but many differ in software installation and updating. Gentoo Linux is based on Portage, SUSE uses YaST, Red Hat and Fedora opt for yum, Linspire prefers CNR.... Oh, and don't forget the different package options: RPM, Debian, source, and more esoteric options. Smart Package Manager works with all major distributions, replacing native tools and installing different types of packages. As an openSUSE user, I've tried YaST, Zen, zypper, apt-get, and Synaptic, but I finally settled down with Smart. My first step after every installation and update is to install it and getting rid of all alternatives. Smart is currently at version 0.52 and is available under the General Public License (GPL).

Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of “three stories and an argument.” The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.

South African Linux and open source specialist Synaq has been contracted to manage and maintain the Linux-based network infrastructure for The Pro Shop, a national supplier of golfing product and services. The Pro Shop is one of several divisions of MoreGolf. Each division of MoreGolf runs off a Linux-based infrastructure and connects with head office in Woodmead through ADSL VPN. There are ten sites that form part of this VPN and each site runs a Linux firewall.

I’ve always wanted to try and take panoramic photographs using my dad’s Nikon Coolpix 5200. That day finally arrived when I finally have the free time to do so last week when I’ve to accompany my dad traveling to the countryside of my hometown. I was excited and about to use a Windows computer to stitch those photograph using software supplied with the camera when suddenly I thought of searching for a panorama maker software on my trusty Ubuntu box. To my delight I found Hugin! An open source panorama maker software which I use without hesitation to create a my first ever panoramic photos.

GE Fanuc has introduced two versions of a Gigabit Ethernet card in the AMC (advanced mezzanine card) form-factor. The Telum GE-QLX and GE-QSX deliver up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports and offer fiber optic transceivers, and support Carrier Grade Linux, according to the company. Designed for AdvancedTCA or MicroTCA platforms, such as GE Fanuc's MP-2000 and MP-3000 MicroTCA platforms, the Telum-series AMC boards are said to boost performance via TCP CRC checksum calculations and segmentation offloading.

The BBC has backtracked on claims that it has only hundreds of Linux users accessing its website. Last month, the BBC's director of BBC Future Media and Technology, Ashley Highfield, told a magazine that just 400-600 Linux users visited the BBC sites every week. Now, Highfield claims on his blog that the figure could be as high as 97,600.

The bash shell maintains a history of the commands you entered. You can re-execute a command by recalling it from the history, without having to re-type it. Life is simple if we operate on a single shell session at any given time. If you have 2 simultaneous sessions, you may be surprised that the history does not have the commands you expect.

Ever thought podcasting was difficult? Too much code to handle? And a bit too complicated to implement? Gurudutt Talgery explains in his podcasting-made-easy article some quick turnaround techniques with Linux command line tools and optionally, Audacity, to create a quick, no-frills podcast with a background music track.

Chumby is shipping its Linux-powered device designed for the bedside, desktop, and kitchen counter. The alarm-clock sized "Chumby" has hackable hardware, software, and outerware, connects via WiFi, and can be programmed to display everything from clock faces to stock quotes, says the company. A few new details have emerged since the original announcement in June. Measuring only 5.5 x 4.25 x 3.25 (base) and 2.25 (top) inches, the Chumby lacks a keyboard or other standard interfaces. There is a touchscreen, plus an accelerometer and bend sensor that detect when the device is moved or squeezed.

With its new affiliate, the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) intends to promote the certification of Linux professionals across Europe. LPI-Central Europe will be responsible for Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as for the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong, recently released its article on China's Linux market, which grew by 29.2% and has great prospects for its new Linux Desktop. CCID Consulting's analysis of their most recent data has shown that the sales revenue of China's Linux market has reached 40.3 million Yuan in 2007Q3, up by 29.2% over 2006Q1. Linux maintained solid growth, showing the prosperity of China's Linux market.

Sun Microsystems' move to make its core Java software a true open-source project may still be a project in its early stages, but on Monday the effort produced some concrete results: a partnership with long-time holdout Red Hat. The top Linux seller announced Monday that it's signed an OpenJDK Community agreement, a move that gives it access to the Sun compatibility kit that can be used to ensure a Java software foundation meets requirements to properly run Java software.

Sure, the Asus Eee PC comes with a cool new user interface that makes the tiny laptop with the 7 inch screen easy to use even if you know nothing about Linux. But can you play Doom on it? Well yes, we're pretty sure you can, but we didn't try. What we did try was adding unsupported Debian Linux repositories that let you install a whole slew of applications beside the 40 or so that the Eee PC ships with. In part one of our series we looked at the "easy mode" interface. Now let's take a look at some of the hidden goodies Asus packed into this little box.

Google and 33 other companies have announced an ambitious industry alliance that will maintain a completely open source mobile phone stack. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) says. The Android stack is based on "open Linux kernel," the group says. It also includes a full set of mobile phone application software, in order to "significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services," OHA said. phones based on its Linux-based "Android" stack will reach market in as soon as eight months.