Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

On March 28, Dell quietly announced that it would start offering a variety of laptops and desktops with pre-installed Linux. Now, Dell has started advertising its Linux desktops on Google ads. While working on my personal blog site, which happens to have Google Adsense ads running on it, I was surprised to find Google ads for Linux-powered Dell desktops showing up. Here's what I saw:

Gumstix has launched the third generation of its gumstick-shaped SBC (single-board computer) line. The tiny, Linux-friendly, PXA270-powered "Verdex" SBC offers 50 percent more processor speed and twice the memory of earlier models, and features an enhanced expansion bus, according to the company.

The OpenOffice.org Community on March 29 announced the release of a major upgrade to OpenOffice: version 2.2. The group claims that with upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software, the free office suite provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product.

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we travel to Spain to meet a focused developer who does not go off at a tangent. Someone with flashes of brilliance you may miss if you Blinken. With plans in abundance, tonight's star of People Behind KDE is KPDF maintainer Albert Astals Cid.

Dell received more than 100,000 responses in its recent survey, and more than 70 percent of the respondents said they would want a Dell PC with Linux for both home and office use. The Dell announcement of plans to pre-install and support Linux could encourage more widespread use of Linux PCs by small businesses as well as consumers.

Red Hat's revenue continued its steady increase for the Linux seller's most recent quarter, but the company's net income dropped 25 percent.

On the one hand, it's a bummer that the new per-song/per-listener royalty rates threaten to put Internet radio out of business. On the other hand, I don't mind paying Radio Paradise $.0019 (that's under 2/10ths of one cent) to hear Joseph Arthur singing "In the Sun" or to pay the same to RadioKAOS for Jo Jo Gunne singing "Run Run Run". (To name two songs I like that are being played right now.) I can afford that. I also like the idea of paying artists and their friends for their work. But not on coercive terms over which I have no control.

The Open Font Library (OFL) is an offshoot of the Open Clip Art Library (OCAL) and Inkscape. Just beginning to get underway, its creation reflects the growing demand for fonts released under a free license, as well as the emergence of a free font community of designers in the last year and a half.

Would you like to get your hands on"Linux System Administration" and have Bill Lubanovic or me show up to your local LUG or UNIX User group meeting? Then you should contact Marsee Henon at O'Reilly - marsee@oreilly.com. Of course, if you would rather have another author and another book she can handle that too. Marsee works with various groups around the country to make sure they have books and speakers.

Mandriva, the France-based Linux distributor, will have a version of its Mandriva Linux 2007 pre-installed on Intel's new low-end laptop for students, the Classmate PC. According to Intel, the ClassMatePC is a rugged laptop with a water-resistant keyboard and a theft-control feature based on a network-issued digital certificate. The laptop is based on an Intel Mobile 900MHz Celeron Processor ULV.

Using a bootable Linux CD will give you an accurate preview of what Linux will be like on your computer. Another option is a downloadable program that you install just like any other Windows software. Once installed, it runs a Linux emulator within Windows. I like the Live CD better because it will require less thinking on your behalf.

While users are pleading with Dell to sell systems with Linux pre-installed, smaller vendors have been offering Linux on OEM hardware for some time. One of the more recent arrivals in the OEM Linux market is System 76, which sells a decent selection of desktop, workstation, and notebook systems with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. I test-drove the company's Ubuntu-certified Darter laptop recently, and found that it has a few flaws, but overall provides a decent system for Linux users clamoring for a Linux-friendly vendor.

HP, Duke University, The University of Minnesota, and Qwaq, Inc. have jointly announced the formation of The Croquet Consortium, Inc., a 501(3)c non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting the continued development and widespread adoption of open source Croquet technologies for use in education, research, and industry. The launch of The Croquet Consortium coincides with the Consortium’s release the open source Croquet Software Developer’s Kit 1.0 -- as free software under the Croquet Open Source License.

Comments about the third draft of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3), which was released yesterday, are still coming in. So far, we've spoken with Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and Bruce Lowry, director of global public relations for Novell. Their reactions offer some new perspectives and at least one possible sign of movement toward consensus. Together, they also highlight the issues that are likely to dominate discussion of the draft in the days to come.

Distributed computing, volounteer computing, call it what you will but it has huge potential to improve the resources available to African researchers. For this purpose applications have opened for a free (and paid for!) workshop near Cape Town in July.

The OpenOffice.org team today released version 2.2 of the popular office suite which is intended to make it easier for Microsoft users to migrate away from Office. Security, Vista integration and good looks are top of the agenda this time around.

A list of things to do before connecting your Linux computer to the Internet.

[Not exactly what I would do but its not bad advice. - Scott]

Linux supercomputer maker plans to use funding to improve cluster management software.

The original plans had called for the third draft of the GNU General Public License update to come out late last year. Needless to say, things didn't happen that way. Between trying to address concerns raised from various directions and responding to the Microsoft/Novell deal, the Free Software Foundation ended up having to slip its schedule; as a result, eight months have passed since the second draft was released. One could well argue that a major license update should not be made in a hurry, and thus the delays are not problematic. In any case, the wait is over: the new GPLv3 draft is available. In many ways, the draft resembles its predecessors; in others, it has changed significantly. This article will focus on the differences.

We are here today to talk about the developers of the KDE-Edu Project. The purpose of this interview is to feature and present their work and motivation, which is often not as well-known or regarded as other, more prominent work within the KDE project. The KDE-Edu developers are developing high-quality educational software for the K Desktop Environment. Their primary focus is on school children aged 3 to 18, and the specialised user interface needs of young users. However, they are also have programs to aid teachers in planning lessons, and others that are of interest to university students and anyone else with a desire to learn!