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I reported about James Burgett and his non-profit organization ACCRC already - so why am I repeating it? Simple answer: first, it is a really outstanding thing he’s doing, and second, because of personal ideas and involvement. It should be done everywhere, including here. And I’m willing to do it.

Promises made are promises kept. Novell announced at August's LinuxWorld in San Francisco that it would be bringing SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Service Pack 1 to Chinese users, and that day is almost here. In a blog posting, Kevan Carmony, a Novell spokesperson, announced that SLED systems preinstalled on Dell OptiPlex 330 and 755 commercial desktop PCs will be available later this year.

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on a Mandriva 2008.0 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

I have been experimenting with many different Linux distributions over the last month as I posted here and here. In my review of the various distributions, I was looking for ease of install and ease of use as the most important factors in my personal ranking system. I believe for Linux to win the desktop war over the next few years they have to appeal to more then just the technical folks who can install distros in their sleep and are wizards at the command line. With that said, here are the distributions I tested:

The name of the software product is an introducing element, the best way to make your business appear in the SERPs and the differentiating element from competitors. An article regarding the steps that any software producer has to take in order to choose the most suitable name for his product.

Firefox includes an option for bookmarking all open tabs, but heavy users of tabs will find that this option is hardly enough. When you are researching a subject, the particular combination of tabs matters as much as the individual ones -- and, besides, selecting the tabs to open individually can be tedious if you are dealing with several dozen. And what happens if your session crashes before you have a chance to bookmark? You can address such concerns by installing Session Manager, a highly customizable add-on for preserving the state of the window after you close the browser.

Fedora 8 has just been released, but of course plans for the next version are already under way: a Fedora 9 Feature List has been created in the Wiki, just like the one for Fedora 8, and people and groups now add their plans and aims. Two outstanding aims are the inclusion of KDE 4 as the default KDE version and the usage of PackageKit as an alternative package management frontend. Since the Fedora 9 release schedule aims at May 2008 both aims should be realistic and possible: KDE 4 is supposed to be released in a working state around christmas, and PackageKit already works pretty well now.

Low-cost computers meant to usher poor children worldwide into the digital age are being mass produced in China as US nonprofit One Laptop Per Child strives to deliver on its promise. The first of the XO laptops being built at a Quanta Computer facility in Changshu are destined for Uruguay, marking a milestone for the charity group founded by Nicholas Negroponte in Massachusetts two years ago. "Against all the naysayers ... we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children," Negroponte said.

Welcome to this year's 46th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The Fedora project has once again risen the bar of desktop usability, especially in the area of hardware support, but what do the users think? Find out in our exclusive review of Fedora 8 by Simon Hildenbrand. In the news section, openSUSE announces the creation of openSUSE Board, Mandriva continues to fight the Nigerian Classmate PC deal, Fedora unveils the feature list for version 9, and LinuxTitans.com interviews creator of paldo GNU/Linux Jürg Billeter. Also in this issue, two sets of statistical analyses in the never-ending quest to find out which is the most popular distribution. Happy reading!

Fabian pointed to an interesting article from a Red Hat engineer about CentOS and Red Hat's position. An interesting question popped up that I asked myself before: "Why is there no SLES alternative distribution ?". Given all the benefits a free Enterprise Linux brings to Red Hat, Novell must be eager to want to tap into this resource, right ? One comment suggested that Novell did not release SRPMs and therefor it was impossible to create a free SLES clone. Reality seems a bit different: Novell does release SRPMs. There are a few reasons why there is no Open Source SLES alternative.

Fedora Games spin is a custom variant of Fedora targeted at Linux gamers. This is to demonstrate the gaming potential of Fedora without altering user's existing configuration. The Live DVD also allows installation to hard disk or USB flash.

As of Wine 0.9.49 Safedisc (copy protection) has had many fixes and most safedisc 2/3/4 games should now work with this and later Wine releases. Another major change is that Wine now enables GLSL (shader model 2.0/3.0) by default when your video drivers support it.

A while back the good folks behind Freespire, the free version of Linspire, sent me a CD with version 2.0 for me to review. I was very happy to look at it as Linspire has been a leader in getting preloaded Linux systems into retail and online outlets, something I believe is critical for mainstream Linux adoption.

This is a detailed description about how to set up a Fedora 8 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of Fedora 8, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

Blue Gnu Media & Technology announced today that its flagship service, Blue GNU, has seen strong, steady growth in readership for the first quarter, a positive impact on various Free Software projects, as well as new clients for its advertising and marketing services.

Mandriva 2008 Powerpack is a commercial Linux product built by Mandriva. They provide the Linux Community with a free version but today I will take a look at Powerpack. Mandriva 2008 Powerpack is easy to install and configure and I hope you enjoy this quick look at this excellent Linux OS.

Missing Manual guru David Pogue himself wrote this sleek, informative book on Apple's latest technology for the masses, making me wonder if he's an avid iPhone user and fan rather than just writing this "manual" to satisfy the demands of the public. Actually, despite the fact that only Pogue is given cover credit as the author, I discovered in the "Missing Credits" that J.D. Biersdorfer (I thought the days of female author's needing to disguise their gender by using initials for their first and middle names were long gone) wrote the iTunes, syncing, and accessories chapters. I've said in the past that no one person writes a book and in fact, it takes a talented and dedicated team to see a book from conception to book store shelf (or Amazon.com) and this credits section supports that statement completely.

Got a Linux Gadget Geek on your shopping list? You can't fail with a gift from this guide to the ten hottest Linux-powered devices gleaned from LinuxDevices.com's news throughout 2007. There's something for everyone, at prices from $150 to $1,000, organized from least to most expensive. Enjoy!

With the first anniversary of open-source Java coming up November 13, a Sun official believes the project could bear a sought-after fruit in the Java community: The porting of Java to the Apple iPhone. Apple has not made Java capable of running on the popular device. But Sun's Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for the Java mobile and embedded community, believes Apple's plans to release an SDK for iPhone in early-2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME winding up on iPhone.

LXer Feature: 11-Nov-2007

Some of the big stories this week include the Open Document Foundation, a call for papers for SCaLE 6x, four ways to extract the current directory name, the BBC admits a massive underestimate of its Linux users, Linux Backups For Real People, Part 2, a Linux game company opens its doors, Vista vs. desktop Linux: One year in and never use Babel Fish to talk to a foreign minister.