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MIT's Media Lab has recommended Brazil install open-source software instead of proprietary software offered by Microsoft on thousands of computers that will be sold to the poor, according to a letter obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

After failed experiments with Slackware, a few years of SUSE, and a brief flirtation with Debian, I've been working and playing on Gentoo. I don't care for endless optimisations, and I'm not especially bothered about the bloat of a few unnecessary extra features, nor do I enjoy waiting days to update KDE -- so why do I like Gentoo? Simple: Portage package management, the hands-off approach to configuration, the excellent documentation, and the unsurpassed community support forum.

With the advent of 64bit CPUs becoming more affordable and widely used, several Linux vendors now offer 64bit versions of their distributions. But among all the amd64, 64bit, and x86_64 platforms, is it worth choosing 64bit over established 32bit distributions? Read the article and join the discussion here.

Asa Dotzler has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.1 has been cancelled and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2 and Thunderbird 1.0.2 releases are on the way. Asa explains, "We shipped the security update for Firefox 1.0 three weeks ago with the intention of shipping the Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite upates soon after. Well, just as we were getting ready to push out Thunderbird 1.0.1 and Mozilla 1.7.6 releases we came across a couple more issues that needed fixing in all three of our products."

Linspire Five-0 is so simple even a top managment can use it, according to chief executive Michael Robertson.

Some Irish open-source advocates are lobbying their Parliament members to fight software patents in the European Union.

An improved colour scheme and a tool that reads out text should make KDE Linux desktop more usable for those whose vision is impaired.

Linspire Five-0 boasts nearly 1,200 enhancements; a professional version is due later this year.

Linux kernel developer Harald Welte talks about the challenges of single-handedly tackling companies that violate the GPL.

Has Ireland's close relationship with IT giants such as Microsoft influenced its approach to software patents?

Created a forum for GoblinX's users. GoblinX is a bootable live CD distribution based on Slackware Linux.

His company is now called Digium. It provides Asterisk-based PBXes and telephone hardware, and sponsors the Asterisk open source project. He is competing in a world of office telephone hardware dominated by the big telephone equipment players, such as Nortel, Alcatel and Siemens.

Installing and using the Hauppauge WinTV Radio card to watch television, listen to the radio and more.

Smart handheld devices or personal digital assistants (PDA) extend our access to the information on our desktops, from addresses to telephone numbers. Unfortunately, when it comes to vendor support for synchronizing this information with a *nix operating system, the options are limited. In this article, we'll review the various GPL-based suites available for synchronizing PalmOS-based devices with Linux.

A new Linux version of Adobe Systems' Reader software for viewing Portable Document Format, or PDF, files is available on the company's FTP download site--but it's not the final product,

ZDNet Australia is reporting that Yahoo! plans to make all its features accessible to Mozilla Firefox users. In the future, all new services will be tested for compatibility with both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox before they are launched. The portal giant also plans to make sure all its existing products work with Firefox, though they won't give an exact time scale for this.

KDE (Ireland), the Irish Linux Users' Group and the Irish Free Software Organisation sent a briefing document to all Irish MEPs to explain the issues surrounding Software Patentability & EU Directive COD/2002/0047 as we see them and to impress upon them the importance of voting against this directive in its current form.

An open-source programmer stopped by the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, this week to tell Motorola and 12 other companies he believes they're using Linux in violation of the license that governs the software.

Just an FYI for your group. If anyone in this community is interested, Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA 15) will be holding a town hall on electronic voting April 4th at Santa Clara University from 7-9pm. If people are interested and want more details please have them call 408-558-8085. The panel on 6 will include experts from the IEEE. Also if anyone is interested, we are supporting H.R. 550 To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent paper record or hard copy under title III of such Act, and for other purposes. Among other things it calls for the opening of source code used in DRE's (electronic voting machines).

The PGA Tour, a membership group of professional golfers that is not affiliated with the Professional Golfer's Association, is making extensive use of Linux in its interactive Web site PGAtour.com and its real-time game tracking program, TOURcast. Because Linux has worked so well for them, they have had no qualms about migrating to Red Hat for their internal mail systems and intranet.