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Although the orange and black color scheme is a wee bit passé, we do have to give props to Grundig Mobile for their new Linux-based phone, the U900. It features a single-chip architecture, which has long been considered to be the "holy grail" of modern mobile phone technology.

Articles like this just kill me. Granted, this piece was written a while back, and even considering the date in which the piece was first put together, it remains the single biggest mess that I have ever laid eyes on. Linux and wireless is a mess, period.

Everyone knows the famous PHP phpinfo(), which provide the programmer with invaluable information about his server configuration and set up. This is a useful tool as soon as one get a new server, and it is also a tool to talk with any administrator.

Linuxchix NZ are booking a venue for the linux installfest, so i need a rough idea how many people are interested. It'll be on 31st March 2007, which is a Saturday, and in Wellington central. An install fest means you bring your OWN computer (we can try and provide SOME monitors and peripherals), and we help you get set up with linux.

Matt Dillon posted the design synopsis of a new highly available clustered filesystem he will soon begin writing forDragonFlyBSD. The feature summary at the beginning of his document included,"on-demand filesystem check and recovery; infinite snapshots; multi-master operation, including the ability to self-heal a corrupted filesystem by accessing replicated data; infinite logless replication, meaning that replication targets can be offline for'days' without effecting performance or operation; 64 bit file space, 64 bit filesystem space, no space restrictions whatsoever; reliably handles data storage for huge multi-hundred-terrabyte filesystems without fear of unrecoverable corruption; cluster operation, provides the ability to commit data to locally replicated store independantly of other replication nodes, with access governed by cache coherency protocols; independant index, data is laid out in a highly recoverable fashion, independant of index generation, and indexes can be regenerated from scratch and thus indexes can be updated asynchronously." He then goes into detail on each of these points and many more, explaining how he intends to implement the new filesystem.

This first article of a three-part series introduces PHP5's XML implementation and help those relatively new to using XML with PHP to read, parse, and manipulate, and write a short and uncomplicated XML file using the DOM and SimpleXML in a PHP environment.

Adrian Bunk posted a couple lists of known regressions that found their way into the 2.6.21-rc1 kernel [story] since the release of the 2.6.20 kernel [story]. Adrian notes that his lists only include bugs that are not yet fixed in Linus' -git tree. In an updated version of his lists he included 19 known regressions, including links to bugzilla or the appropriate mailing list discussion thread. The lists track who submitted the bug, who is currently handling it, who caused it if known, a link to a patch that fixes the problem if any, and the current status.read more

Trolltech, the Norwegian company behind the Qt toolkit has become the second Patron of KDE. Trolltech itself should not need an introduction, since they have worked together with the KDE project since its inception ten years ago. Knut Irvin, the community manager for Trolltech points out that "KDE does an excellent job of making UNIX-based desktops easy to use. Trolltech gains from feedback, bug reports and the spread of Qt through the success of KDE".

This plug-in adds new project types to the Eclipse C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT), providing a convenient way of setting PowerPC-specific switches to the GNU C and C++ compilers, linker, and assembler.

"One of your developers wants to extend an open-source application to solve a company problem, then contribute the code back to the community. That's fine. But making that process work in enterprise terms involves more than getting the legal department to recover from its fainting fit.:

[Our very own Sander is profiled, and one of my fellow Linuxchix, Penny Leach- TC]

Nat Torkington raised this week the very real question of whether the term "open source" is now completely meaningless, in the sense that its meaning has now been sucked out of it by companies that purport to be open source yet don't allow users to feely download, compile, and use the software in question. One example Torkington cites is SugarCRM, whose license he describes as "a questionably modified OSI-approved license.

Tehran, Iran - Manager of Linux Persian Project spoke here Monday of putting to use 34 plans of that project that were commissioned to firms through tender on an approximately ten billion rial ($900k) budget.

Commercially supported open source software may not be prevalent, but it is not alien in data centers any more and it is certainly getting to be more normal. But if a somewhat self-serving survey of open source projects done by OpenLogic is any indication, many popular open source packages are still lacking enterprise-class support, and this is an issue that has an adverse affect on the adoption of open source products among enterprises.

The Zenwalk project has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 4.4. The "mini" Linux distribution utilizes a 2.6.20 kernel, and is one of the first distros to incorporate the new Xfce 4.4 desktop, which came out on Feb. 7, according to project team manager Jean-Philippe Guillemin.

LXer Feature: 28-Feb-2007

Linux on OEM desk/laptops is a hot item these days. Dell started to ship corporate desk/laptops without Windows pre-installed lately.

Nonetheless, this is too little and too late, costumers should be able to buy any lap/desktop without Windows pre-installed. Furthermore, the secret trade deals Microsoft made with the OEM's, which effectively make it impossible for / forbids OEMS to ship desk/laptops without Windows - are forbidden.

Therefore, a new pan-European Windows refund action should be started. In this article, I will share my new insights on the legal aspect of this action, since there are a lot of new things I found out after the last article I wrote on the subject. After that, I'll show my plan to do something about it. In short, it reads: Call aunty Neelie and try to get rid of our almost criminal uncles Bill and Steve.

Edubuntu is the Ubuntu distribution's educational variant. It provides a software platform that allows educators to spend more time teaching with computers and less time managing them. In addition to Linux and the typical productivity software, Edubuntu provides the organisational package SchoolTool and educational programs for children between preschool and high school, with three age groups within this demographic, each with their own relevant settings.

If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right now being souped up by an anxious group of gearheads. When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

It is my privilege to announce on behalf of the team members of the PCLinuxOS Magazine Project sponsored by MyPCLinuxOS.com, the March 2007 issue (#7)  is available for download!  Our previous issues can also be downloaded.

We are simultaneously publishing the HTML Version of the Magazine as well for our low bandwidth users.  The HTML Site is W3C standards compliant for easy browsing.

Some highlights include:

1. Application Changes from PCLinuxOS .93 to 2007
2. Playing with Beryl
   
3. Recording Audio with PCLinuxOS
   
4. PCLinuxOS DualView and TwinView Tutorial
5. How to Multi-Boot Linux
6. Working in Gnome in PCLinuxOS
   
7. As always, plenty more is packed inside 

Bill Gates once called the open source community a bunch of communists, thinking the open source ideal was against anyone owning the fruits of their programming labors. However, he has missed the real point of choosing open source. It's about not being held to ransom and having the freedom to switch suppliers with impunity -- freedom to modify, extend and supplement your technology as you see fit.

Samba. To most people with a technical background, the word immediately invokes an image of Linux and Windows machines working and playing well together, however it is so much more (and for those of you who clicked on the link to this review thinking it was about the popular Brazilian music form, try Wikipedia instead). Even samba.org uses the line in its header "Opening Windows to a Wider World". However, just how far does that world extend?