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The new version Puppy Linux is released. Puppy is a distribution for low end PCs, designed to run from media like usb sticks. It's size is less than 100 MB. This Puppy is a massive upgrade from the previous (v2.17.1). It has close binary compatibility with Slackware 12, with the objective of being able to install Slackware packages and have all or most of the required dependencies already in place.

As some of you may remember, 2 distros signed pacts with Microsoft in a short time. Those were Linspire and Xandros. Since 2004 I have been a Linspire Insider. I was as upset about this deal as many others were. I even had a phone call with Kevin Carmony regarding the matter. Well, at one point on the forums, Kevin Carmony told some upset members that if they did not like the way things were, they can start their own distro and see how it goes. So, former Freespire Leadership Board member Chris Medico assembled a team, of which I was honored to be asked to be a part of, which he lovingly calls Freedom Force. Within weeks, this new project, based on Kubuntu, had an Alpha. The project is called KlikIt Linux.

Last month, just one week after IBM announced it would help with OpenOffice.org's development, the company released Lotus Symphony, an office suite based on OpenOffice.org code. I found a lot of slick features in Lotus Symphony, but I worry that Symphony could affect the OpenOffice.org community adversely. Lotus Symphony includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation tool. You'll have to register with IBM to download Symphony. Installing the office suite is a no-brainer, and requires 490.5MB of disk space.

LINUX runs the Google servers that manage billions of searches each day. It also runs the TiVo digital video recorder, the Motorola Razr cellphone and countless other electronic devices. But why would anyone want to use Linux, an open-source operating system, to run a PC? “For a lot of people,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, “Linux is a political idea — an idea of freedom. They don’t want to be tied to Microsoft or Apple. They want choice. To them it’s a greater cause.”

Got a very nice letter from the EFF and am trying to put together an appointment to discuss options. The dtsc situation is under control for the moment, May light up again later next month when they look over our proposed solutions. In addition the next waste board stakeholders meeting has re-use on the agenda.

The Linux Foundation has announced a new collaborative agreement with Japan's Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), a government research institute that promotes information technology development and broadly supports the use of open standards and open-source software. The collaborative agreement is part of a plan to mutually assist in promoting open standards and the acceleration of open-source software adoption in Asia. The Linux Foundation will be participating in the upcoming IPA Forum 2007 User Conference in Tokyo.

For years, violations of the General Public License, or GPL, have been met with quiet discussions to resolve compliance problems that can result when open-source software is used improperly. Now, however, the Software Freedom Law Center is taking a hard-line approach, filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for allegedly failing to abide by requirements of the GPL. "Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into compliance," said Dan Ravicher, SFLC's attorney on the case.

Desktop performance on Linux computers has been a hot-button issue of late, and a source of longstanding fights among the Linux developers. Today, I want to show you how I boosted (and you can boost) desktop performance dramatically.

Last month at the X Developer Summit in Cambridge, Eric Anholt, Adam Jackson, and Daniel Stone had talked about the future of X.Org releases for the next year. Over the weekend, Daniel Stone had updated the XDS 2007 Notes at X.org with the latest plans for X.Org 7.5. The current schedule for X.Org include the X server 1.4.1 release coming out on the first of November followed by X server 1.5.0 in March of 2008. Planned for X.Org 7.4 and X server 1.5 is XGE, XACE, RandR 1.3, PCI rework, XKB 2, _X_EXPORT, DRI memory manager, GLX 1.4, and Glucose.

Despite all the obstacles and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop that’s tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles. It’s a technological breakthrough, for sure.

Virtual hosts are used to run more than one web site on a single machine. Virtual hosts can be "IP-based", meaning that you have a different IP address for every web site, or "name-based", meaning that you have multiple names running on each IP address. You can also run your web pages on different ports like 8080 or 8090. The fact that they are running on the same physical server is not apparent to the end user. This workshop describes the different setups based on an OpenSuse 10.2 server.

After being disappointed by Puppy 2.16 and Damn Small Linux 3.3's lack of ability to run on the $0 Laptop -- a Gateway Solo 1450 -- and then being able to run Zenwalk 4.6.1 but neither Vector 5.8 nor Slackware 12, I didn't hold out much hope that the new Puppy 3.00 -- said to be compatible with the current release of Slackware -- would run at all.

ARM today flexed its mobile muscle by revealing a fairly broad coalition focused on developing a version of Linux well-suited for future smart phones.

As there's been a RadeonHD article at least once a week (from the Ubuntu installation to the Conntest utility) on Phoronix since the RadeonHD driver was introduced, it's almost becoming a weekly progress report here for this official AMD open-source R500 and R600 driver.

After more than 20 players already signed up to participate, we are issuing the final call for players on all platforms, be it Windows, GNU/Linux or Mac OS, to join us as we commence with the first Freedomware Gaming Festival!

UMPC has hardly set the world on fire as gadgets go, can Linux fan the flames?

"I'm a bit behind after investigating the TCP performance issues that turned out to be HW specific problems. It's a bit of a disappointment, I thought maybe there was a cool bug to fix in TCP :-)" explained David Miller, posting hisnetworking merge plans for the upcoming 2.6.24 kernel. He noted,"I merged in Jeff Garzik's and John Linville's latest and I'm running the current tree on my workstation most of today with good results so far." David added,"I plan to commit my Neptune driver in it's current state, and that's the last new feature going in."

After futzing around with the $0 Laptop for the past week or two, I'm tired. So I left the damn thing in the car (it's running Xubuntu 7.04 after display issues made me give up on Slackware 12). I don't quite know what to run on it. I'll probably put Ubuntu 7.04 on it in anticipation of 7.10. So I fired up the converted thin client -- the Maxspeed Maxterm with VIA C3 1 GHz and 256 MB RAM -- and ran Debian Etch. It's like a comfortable, old shoe.

Taking frequent computer breaks can save you from a debilitating repetitive strain injury (RSI). However, if you're like most people, you probably get caught up in your work and forget to take breaks as often as you should. The Workrave desktop applet can keep you on track.

In a continuing discussion about the difference between pluggable security and pluggable schedulers,Linus Torvalds added "the arguments that 'servers' have a different profile than 'desktop' is pure and utter garbage, and is perpetuated by people who don't know what they are talking about." Regarding the comparison between pluggable schedulers and pluggable security, Linus stated: "Really - not only is the whole 'desktop scheduler' argument totally bogus to begin with, quite frankly, when you say that it's the 'same issue' as with security models, you're simply FULL OF SH*T."