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The company is trying new tactics in its efforts to scare businesses away from open-source products.

[If he hadn't referred to these old claims (at least as far back as 2004, if not earlier) as 'new' tactics, I wouldn't think he was new to the field. But you still might enjoy reading what he has to say about 'little brother's' tantrums. - dcparris]

Analysis -- Long expected, Dell finally officially released its first line of consumer PCs with pre-installed Linux, Ubuntu 7.04, on May 24. Here's a closer look at exactly what's what in Dell's initial line of Ubuntu-powered desktops and laptops.

Disagreements between developers from the G Palmtop Environment (GPE) project and the administrators of the mobile Linux portal Handhelds.org now include a trademark dispute. Handhelds.org claims trademark ownership of the name GPE, and has demanded control over the GPE IRC channel.

One of my users complained today that automount for USB devices wasn’t working on his machine (running Debian etch). I did a little light Googling, & came across this article on the subject. Which seemed horrendously complicated for something that (surely?) should Just Work out-of-the-box. Hmm. Messed around a bit with the suggestions there, but to no avail. Further googling produced this blog post which suggested a much more simple solution - add the user to the plugdev group. This worked like a charm. My thanks to Matt! I note in passing that this is one of the downsides of central auth - the “emergency” local user is automatically added to this group (& also part of the audio group), but Kerberos/LDAP users unsurprisingly aren’t.

Semaphores are one of those things that most programmers have heard of, but may not have ever used. But if you're using threads under Linux, it's one of the best ways to keep everyone in sync. Vikram Shukla provides a code-rich tutorial on semaphores, including the differences between the System V and POSIX styles.

I bought the domain name HeyMicrosoftSueMe.org at the suggestion of Marcel Gagné after posting a blog entry on the topic. The idea was to ask Linux users to join me in calling Microsoft's bluff. Let's get the patent infringement claims tried in court and get this over with. Several people talked me out of it. Fortunately, a lawyer named Christian Einfeldt had the same idea and followed through. Here's a copy ofMarcel's entry on the topic from his own blog, with a link to the"Sue me first Microsoft list" in case you want to add your own name. Christof, if you're reading this, you're welcome to the domain name HeyMicrosoftSueMe.org.

Country had planned to require bloggers to use their real names when they register blogs but will instead back a "self-discipline code."

[Not FOSS, but involves freedom - dcparris]

The Fedora Project website has gotten a face lift: fedoraproject.org. Prior to today that site went straight to the wiki, which is largely developer content with good (but somewhat hard to find) docs. Now we're expanding on fedoraproject.org and adding some more user-centric content like that found at docs.fedoraproject.org. The websites team has been hard at work at this for a while and we're all excited to release it today.

As of May 2007 the Mozilla Foundation is looking for an executive director to continue and expand upon the Foundation's activities to date.

My task today was a simple one: Pull four Quicktime videos from an SD card and burn them on a CD. I booted Xubuntu Feisty, and after a few minutes found xfburn, which came standard with 7.10. I had a couple of Thunar windows open, that was it, but xfburn pretty much crashed on launch. I went into the process manager, killed it, then closed my Thunar windows and restarted xfburn.

Learn how to build a simple dynamic Web site using Rational Business Developer Extension and Enterprise Generation Language (EGL).

Today's debut of Dell PCs with Linux preinstalled threatened to be eclipsed by another Dell bombshell -- the Round Rock, Texas, PC giant will supplement it's direct-to-you sales method with a heaping helping of Middle American retail through Wal-Mart.

The KDE project this week released KDE 3.5.7, a maintenance release of the popular free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. This version brings a renewed focus to KDE-PIM (personal information management) applications.

Refactoring Java code is far simpler than refactoring a relational database, but fortunately that isn't so much the case with object databases. Learn another advantage to this favorite object database.

CentOS 5.0 and VMWare Server 1.0.3 have been installed on the box been assembled utilizing following hardware :- CPU Core2Duo E6600 2.40GHz/1066MHz/4Mb, board ASUS P5B Deluxe, 2GB RAM (2xDDR2 1GB PC 5300 Kingston),2x160 GB SATA HDDs Seagate Barracuda 160 GB. Host Controllers Intel ICH8R and Jmicron JMB 363 both running in AHCI mode, what prevents from straightforward installation Solaris 10 on mentioned box. Solaris 10 (11/06) has been installed as VMWare Server Virtual Macine configured as ..

Blender gets the lion's share of press among free 3-D modeling applications, but it is not the only player in the field. Art of Illusion (AOI) is a mature, GPL-licensed 3-D modeler with robust editing, animation, and rendering features, and it's a lot easier to use than Blender. If you haven't tried it, it's time you took a look at this recent SourceForge.net Product of the Month.

KDE will be exhibiting at LUGRadio Live 2007 which is back in Wolverhampton, England on July 7th and 8th. The event, now in its third year, is the largest gathering of Free Software projects in the UK. LUGRadio Live overlaps with the end of Akademy in Glasgow so you may want to stop by on your way home.

Some say the Classmate PC is Intel's answer to (or competition with) the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) effort. Intel is hawking the lilliputian laptop in "emerging markets" like Nigeria, India, and Mexico as a solution for worldwide education of primary and secondary students. It's to be officially released and shipped en masse to schools in Africa and South and Central America by the end of June. Recently my children and I borrowed a Classmate PC loaded with a custom version of Mandriva Linux. Most of us had fun.

How would you like an easy way to set up a point-and-click Linux image backup that always makes perfect copies if the physical system is OK? That will point and click to a mirror drive or a multiple DVD backup set as you wish? New LinuxPlanet contributor A. Lizard details how to get this done.

The Linksys NSLU2 is a cheap and compact Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with an Ethernet connection and two USB ports for connecting hard drives and/or USB flash disks to a LAN. It sports a simple web-based interface that is used to configure the device, format any attached disks, set up disk shares and so on.