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On Thursday Intel announced it was dropping out of the non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization, which was set up to develop and market a low-cost - ideally $100 or less - education-focused laptop for the poorest children in the world. The device, called XO, is now in production in Taiwan and in use in a number of countries. Fortune's David Kirkpatrick spoke Friday with Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of OLPC. A transcript is below.

One of the most often missed tools in Linux based operating systems today is a Grub configuration tool. In this review I’ll have a look at Startup Manager, a nice GTK+ tool to configure grub and usplash. If you’ve ever configured grub or usplash by hand, you know there are a lot of options. Luckily, Startup Manager does a great job at keeping it’s GUI nice and clean, fitting plenty of options in it’s 4 tab interface.

“HACKERS, welcome! Here are detailed circuit diagrams of our products — modify them as you wish.” That’s not an announcement you’ll find on the Web sites of most consumer electronics manufacturers, who tend to keep information on the innards of their machines as private as possible. But Neuros Technology International, creator of a new video recorder, has decided to go in a different direction.

One of the potentially biggest announcements at CES will probably go unnoticed by most, a Linux box from Shuttle. Get ready for a low priced machine from a big name, a first that I am aware of.

In the chill morning dark, quiet except for the sounds of wind and rain outside, it seemed only fitting to happen upon the news of yet more FUD manure thrown at open source software by a vassal of the Volish empire, against its own interests. In its annual report, Windows security software vendor McAfee told its investors that open source software licence terms it vaguely characterised as " ambiguous" might "result in unanticipated obligations regarding our products." That statement says several things.

At the onset of this new year - 2008 - I would like to share some Linux tips with you. It won’t matter which version are you using because I’ll talk mostly about the Linux Console. Most common windows user will probably feel the console in Linux to be a little intimidating, nevertheless when the time comes, you’ll notice that it is the best way to be highly productive. Read, practice the following instructions to get yourself comfortable with Linux;

Apparently, the only thing that stopped developers from creating useful OpenOffice.org extensions was the lack of a place to publish them. With the launch of the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository, the number of extensions listed there has shot up, and there are no signs of a slowdown. Although quantity doesn't always mean quality, the repository already offers a few nifty extensions that can expand the functionality of OpenOffice.org and make your work more efficient.

Last time we looked almost 60 percent of Tectonic readers were using Firefox as their preferred web browser. Tell us what you’re using right now. Vote here.

"It's been two weeks since rc6, but let's face it, with xmas and new years (and birthdays) in between, there hasn't actually been a lot of working days, and the incremental patch from -rc6 is about half the size of the one from rc5->rc6," began Linus Torvalds, announcing the release of the 2.6.24-rc7 Linux kernel. He then quipped, "and I'll be charitable and claim it's because it's all stabilizing, and not because we've all been in a drunken stupor over the holidays."

Prelude: “A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me... It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this...” --Andrew S Tanenbaum, father on MINIX

Many of those who utilize free and open source software read related news sites and blogs pertaining to events, news, opinions, and more. As of late, I have become slightly disappointed to say the least.

LXer Feature: 6-Jan-2008

Happy New Year and Welcome to the first LXer Weekly Roundup of 2008. This week we have a petition for the free use of codecs, our own Carla Schroder talks about how some people should not use computers, the Top 10 Open Source applications on the desktop, 355.6 million reasons the Novell-Microsoft deal is working, Hans Kwint tells us why Open Source is the way to go, who is the most hated company in the PC industry and how to destroy the GPL from the inside.

To be able to install a GNU/Linux distribution you need to burn a downloaded ISO image on a CD/DVD disc. At least this is the simplest way to achieve this goal. In this tutorial I am going to describe an easy way to do this under Windows and Linux operating systems and how to prepare your PC for a Linux OS.

Apple and open source fanatics are about to engage in a group hug, The VAR Guy has learned. It will soon be easier to run Mac OS X and Linux side-by-side on Apple servers. How will this magic occur? The answer will surface at Macworld Expo January 14 in San Francisco. Here's what to expect.

The day after Intel announced that it would leave the One Laptop Per Child board, the nonprofit organization shot back that the chip giant had contributed little to help the project during its six months with the group. In a statement Jan. 4, the OLPC project claimed that Intel violated written agreements with the board of directors, did not help in developing software with the project and "disparaged" the OLPC's XO laptop.

I expect people of the free press to defend the right of free speech, not to call for its restriction or abolishment. If free speech disappears, what does free software mean? "Free" like in "free beer"? If you express an opinion there will always be someone who doesn't agree with you. That comes with the trade. That is professionalism. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Open source companies often lose their way when they try to build channel and partner programs. One rare exception is Untangle, an open source security firm that has lined up 60 partners since September. You can find some quick details about the company and its momentum over at MSPmentor.net, a fast-growing editorial site for managed service providers (MSPs)

Ultimix Ultimate Edition is the Ultimate Linux Distribution and it's not bloated. It still runs at top speed as long as you have enough free hard drive space for it. To install Ultumix Ultimate Edition you will need to read the ReadMe file included in this torrent first and you will need to make 2 DVDs because this distribution contains the top 21 Games of 2007 and yes they all work as long as you install your 3D drivers. There is even a tool to do that too.

There are numerous news reports covering Intel’s withdrawal from the One Laptop Per Child project. The company says it decided to leave the OLPC board because the One Laptop organisation had demanded it stop supporting other efforts in emerging markets. Of course what the OLPC board was specifically referring to was Intel’s Classmate, a laptop for developing markets launched in 2006.

This document is a step by step guide for configuring Ubuntu 7.10 as a Samba Domain Controller with an LDAP backend (OpenLDAP). The point is to configure a server that can be comparable, from a central authentication point of view, to a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller. The end result will be a server with an LDAP directory for storing user, group, and computer accounts. A Windows XP Professional SP2 workstation will be able to join the domain once properly configured.