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Most often we are faced with testing out the latest motherboards, processors, and graphics cards to see how well they work with Linux under different conditions and a variety of tests. While those are obviously the components that most Linux users are concerned with when it comes to Linux compatibility and performance, plenty of peripherals to this day don't work under Linux or will only do so to a limited extent or after jumping through various hurdles to get a half-working device. With mice for instance, they generally will work fine when plugged into any modern desktop Linux distribution, but with some of the gaming and high-end input devices not all of the buttons will be detected or other features will not work. When a company came along that we never heard of, Mionix, claiming to offer some of the best gaming products, curiosity got the best of us and we decided to see how well the Saiph 3200 from this unheard of company would work on the Linux desktop.

This has been of particular help to the 30 or so children with severe learning difficulties, says Elias Portugal, a special-needs teacher at the school. Before, he struggled to give them individual attention. Now, the laptops are helping them with basic language skills. "The machines capture the kids' attention. They can type a word and the computer pronounces it," he says.Nearly all of Uruguay's 380,000 primary-school pupils have now received a simple and cheap XO laptop, a model developed by One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The government hopes this will help poorer and disadvantaged children do better in school while also improving the overall standard of education. These ambitions will be tested for the first time later this month when every Uruguayan seven-year-old will take online exams in a range of academic subjects.

Rory Cellan-Jones visits a school in Kigali where children are using computers supplied by the One Laptop Per Child project.... They are loaded with software designed to limit energy use so that they can be used for many hours without requiring their batteries to be recharged. They can also link to one another via wi-fi to form a network that connects to a distant internet link. This video was filmed on a mobile phone.

At the end of her term, competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is wrapping up two open cases against Microsoft... FSFE is involved in both. We are concerned that the Commission may end up reversing years of successful antitrust work if Neelie Kroes settles for far too little in order to close a deal, any deal... So far, Microsoft is only offering the interoperability information on what is falsely labeled as "reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) terms. From our perspective, such terms are both unreasonable and discriminatory, because they make it impossible to use the interoperability information in Free Software.

Sdenka Salas, a teacher who is working with Andean children from Aymara and Quechua communities, wrote a book in April about using Sugar in the classroom. She recently completed the English-language version. She has kindly made it available for download.

I'm a big proponent of the long-term-release concept in operating systems because I think both the enterprise and the home user doesn't want things breaking and should have the option of sticking with a particular distribution longer than 6 or 12 months. And I stuck with the current long-term release of Ubuntu — 8.04 — for well over a year because it worked fairly well with the particular hardware I'm using. But often a new release can clear up problems and be more stable than the perceived "stable" release.

The Amarok team is excited to announce the release of Amarok 2.2. In three and a half months, Amarok has made a huge leap forward, gaining many new features and a lot of old features from 1.4 have returned. Amarok 2.2 brings back support for sorting and shuffling the playlist, for an external MySQL database as well as for playing audio CDs to name a few. It brings a new video and photo applet to show media related to the current song. The layout can be modified to suit your needs thanks to dock widgets and the sidebar has been changed to be easier to navigate with bread crumbs.

T-DOSE is a free and yearly event held in The Netherlands to promote use and development of Open Source Software. During this event Open Source projects, developers and visitors can exchange ideas and knowledge. This years event will be held on 3 and 4 October 2009 at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven.

Canonical is preparing to raise the storage limit on Ubuntu One, based on beta tester feedback from those who are using the online storage system. Longer term, Canonical also is listening closely to user feedback requesting Ubuntu One support for Windows, Mac OS X and Apple iPhones. Here’s the update.

There has been some discussion recently about Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote at LinuxCon, in particular a comment he made in passing about the need to explain to “girls” about free software. I haven’t had much time for writing since then, but a few people have asked me what I thought about it, so I thought I should say something.

There's a weird consistency with which the most publicly vocal partisans of the position that Microsoft is an wholly owned subsidiary of Hell also seem to regularly express the opinion that there's really no problem, or at least no problem worth talking about, with women in the open source software community.

Mark Shuttleworth delivered the closing keynote at this year's inaugural Linuxcon. He delivered an enticing vision of the future of Linux and Free software, with a catch-- it means breaking drastically from the old ways. Carla Schroder reports on the highlights of his keynote, and readers can view the keynote as well.

This two-day introduction to Linux broadens attendees horizons with a detailed overview of the operating system. Attendees learn how to effectively use a Linux system as a valuable tool. They get familiar with the architecture and various components of the operating system, learn both graphical and command line tools, and learn to do basic networking. This class is scheduled for October 15th - October 16th, 2009.

A simple menu that sits in the system notification area, providing you a quick way to unmount external peripherals such as usb pendrives, cd/dvd, external hard disks and so.

The OpenSUSE Project has released the last milestone of OpenSUSE Linux before an anticipated final release in November. OpenSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 (M8) features numerous bug fixes, Linux kernel 2.6.31, improved partioning, social networking clients, and new versions of packages including GNOME 2.28, says the project.

Like other word processes, OpenOffice.org Writer makes creating tables of contents (ToCs) quick and easy. Unfortunately, it also works with unaesthetic defaults and allows you to make choices that complicate your work flow rather than improving it.

We’ve turned off comments on the original post; there were about 200 already and there’s only so much that can be said before people stop adding anything new. I wanted to let you know that I received a private response from Mark Shuttleworth, in which he says that he has no intention of apologising for his comment. I know that a number of other people have approached him in person and by email, both before and after I posted my open letter, to ask him to consider the effects of what he said, and I’m still hoping that he will come around. (Despite numerous assertions to the contrary, I do prefer to see the glass as half full when it comes to these issues.)

This tutorial shows how you can boot Linux over HTTP with netboot.me. All that users need is Internet connectivity and a small program (gpxe) to boot the machine. This gpxe program provides network booting facility. netboot.me allows you to boot into the following distributions: Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. netboot.me provides gpxe images for USB sticks, CDs, and also for floppies, i.e., you can boot from a USB sticks, a CD, or a floppy.

OpenStreetMap Founder Steve Coast has announced that the main OpenStreetMap (OSM) website is now available in 26 additional languages, bringing the current language choice to 51 in total. OpenStreetMap is an open source project run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data. While the project was started in August of 2004 it has become increasingly popular in recent months.

It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went on the business of my daily life, which tends not to include re-compiling plug-ins. But now, the folks of JUCETICE have been busy doing just that, serving up delicious instrument and effect goodness, running native on Linux. Translation: fire up that netbook and make some music.