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Want to combine your love for robots and strange mini-ITX systems with your interest in furthering educational opportunities for U.S. schoolchildren? You, too, can bid on this strange, one-of-a-kind Linux system available only through a charity auction on eBay.

This is one of those heroic days where I keep my nose to the grindstone even though my life is falling apart and I do not want to work-- my dog went missing this morning. Naturally she is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill mutt. Layla is the smartest, prettiest, best dog on the planet, and I say this with a complete lack of bias. See for yourself in this charming photo of Firecracker and Layla taken on our last hike. How can you not love dogs who swim across rivers whether you want them to or not? And then pose for photos on picnic tables?

Canonical has finally freed the Ibex. The first release candidate for Ubuntu 8.10 ("Intrepid Ibex") is available for download or in-place upgrade by 8.04 ("Hardy Heron") users, according to a post to the Ubuntu Announce mailing list by Steve Langasek, release manager. In addition to regular old Ubuntu, release-candidate versions of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu are also available, according to Langasek's post.

With two weeks having passed since the Linux 2.6.27 kernel release, Linus Torvalds has closed the merge window for the next kernel (Linux 2.6.28) and he has pushed out the first release candidate in this next series.

I have my Self-Reliant Thin Client running Debian Etch turned on all of the time. I haven't been able to find power-usage specs for the Maxspeed Maxterm (it could be a 5300, but there are no model numbers on the box), but with no moving parts, a Mini-ITX-size motherboard, Mini-ITX-type fanless power supply and fanless VIA C3 Samuel CPU, as well as non-working case fan (except when tilting said case at a 45-degree angle) and a Compact Flash chip instead of a spinning hard drive and no optical drive, the thing is totally silent and must be fairly sparing on electricity use. I don't think I even moved the mouse yesterday, but today when I brought it out of screen-saver mode, there were three updates to Debian Etch.

This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Friday, October 24, 2008, with your host, Marcel Gagné. Today's stories include a nod from those great people at CommandN, open source DRM, how to get VC funding for your open source project, FOSS in Russian schools, and the cost of creating Linux.

Amazon announced Thursday general availability of its Elastic Compute Cloud, part of the Internet retailer's Web service offerings. Launched in beta 26 months ago, the service provides a resizable compute capacity to businesses with varying server needs."The appealing thing about EC2 is that instead of buying a server, you pay for it by the hour," said Frank Gillett, a Forrester Research analyst.

The essence of the FreeNAS server is to provide storage that is easily accessible from the network. To this end, it is important to understand how FreeNAS handles hard disks and how they can be configured and used to provide the best and most reliable storage for your network.

Ubuntu 8.10 is shipping next week with a horde of updated packages including the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, X.Org 7.4, Pidgin 2.5, GIMP 2.6, and many other packages that have experienced significant milestones since the April release of Ubuntu 8.04. On top of these updated packages from the community, Canonical has been working on a few desktop Linux innovations of their own. For instance, arriving late into the Intrepid Ibex release cycle is a USB start-up disk creator. In this article we are providing a quick look at this utility to easily spin your own USB disk images.

In its latest financial results, Microsoft concedes that the shift to Netbooks -- those low-cost subnotebooks -- is impacting the company's Windows business. The company face's a tough challenge: Low-ball Windows prices on Netbooks or more defections to Linux networks. Details from The VAR Guy.

Andy Bechtolsheim, a revered technologist who cofounded Sun Microsystems and has been instrumental in designing the company's servers, is stepping down from his day-to-day role to help build a new networking startup. Sun, which makes servers and software widely used in corporate computing centers, said Bechtolsheim's transition to part-time work status was effective immediately.

GSmartControl presents your hard drive SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) health information in a graphical display. With GSmartControl you no longer have to fish around in /dev/disk/by-id to find the drive you're interested in and then inspect the output of smartctl trying to figure out which SMART attributes have values that you should care about.

You should try out these 3 Linux Desktops. Ease of installation, ease of use, and great performance--what else do you want?

One of the most often heard complaints from users looking to migrate to Linux is that there are no good accounting applications. To be fair, there is a degree of truth in that concern. At least there was, until now.

BIOSLEVEL.com takes a trip to this year's Ohio LinuxFest. We share our thoughts and experiences of the event with our readers, and look forward to future conventions.

On the outside, the Windows version of the XO laptop looks just like the Linux model. But simply booting up the device shows that the Windows version bears little resemblance to the original One Laptop Per Child device. With the Microsoft version, you get Windows, for all the good and bad that entails. It's full-on Windows--XP Professional, in fact--and can run basically any software that can adjust itself to the mini-laptop's diminutive screen and modest processor.

My oldest son, creator of flame wars, finally discovered that you can only surf to the nether regions of the Internet so many times before even Vista business succumbs to malware. His computer an unusable mass of pop-ups, spewing traffic over our network actually asked me tonight to reinstall Linux for him.

As for my opinion on DreamLinux 3.1... I thought it was very nice on they eyes, Based off of Debian, its own Control Panel, and I must say I do love the Icons.. Also my opinion is so that "Whatever Linux Distro I use for my desktop...... I should NOT have to spend HOURS tailor fitting it to my needs." As I am beyond that stage. That is not to say that you are beyond that stage, you might still be in love with finding packages and doing the "configure/make/make install" and finding all of its dependencies...

Kyocera Wireless Corporation (KWC) uses Android software for its own mobile platform. The embedded Linux firm Wind River has engaged itself as an integrator. Wind River will be adapting Android for KWC, above all in terms of middleware and user interface.

More Windows Mayhem. They could just replace the virus riddled piece of puss with Linux, but no, they continue to fiddle while their OS burns.