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Drop your bags, grab a drink, and grab the XP CD—it's time for the holiday ritual of fixing up your relatives' computer. Here are some tips and downloads to keep handy while you're cursing all the auto-starting cr@pware. For this guide, we're going to do a bit of assuming. We're assuming the relative with the busted computer is running a Windows system, and has an internet connection that works when the computer does. We're assuming all the physical pieces of the computer work—hard drive, memory, disc drives, and anything else that's crucial. We'll also assume the computer's in one of two states: Failing to boot and needing an OS re-installation, laden with unnecessary system tray/startup applications and/or spy/mal/ad-ware, or just needing a little optimization.

Ever since the Ubuntu One cloud service played an important role in Ubuntu 10.04, a new prototype of a KDE client has become available. A port to Fedora is also in the works.

If you just can't get away from email over the holidays, you can at least help test the release candidate for Thunderbird 3.0. The Mozilla folks released Thunderbird 3.0 RC 1 on Tuesday with more than 100 changes in the release. It's been a long time in coming, the first release in the 2.0 series was back in 2007. But Thunderbird 3.0 looks like it might be worth the wait when the final is released.

Wind River and Kontron announced a global, multi-year agreement under which the embedded system manufacturer will distribute Wind River's VxWorks and Wind River Linux distributions. The agreement is expected to extend software and service offerings across a range of industries, says Wind River.

Even though Ubuntu Netbook Remix is already somewhat optimized, I don't like how some things work and also there is room for a lot more optimizations. I would like to share with you these optimizations, all with screen real estate and low power consumption in mind. A part of this article is for EeePC only, but most work on any netbook!

n this tutorial by Jonathan Williamson, we are going to examine the process behind creating a text-based logo in Blender. We will be looking at some modeling techniques mixed with several modifiers to create a background for the logo, and then we will move on to creating the actual text. Following that we will set up the lighting and render settings to produce our final image.

I won't go into every detail and feature because those have been covered ad nauseum already, including the fact that it has by far the best web browser(s) and the best multi-tasking experience of any comparable device out there right now. I will only focus on some of the features that are unique to the N900 and make it a real standout, and which, if any, could be considered the N900's “ killer feature”.

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on an Ubuntu 9.10 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

Chrome OS is Google's a direct attack against bitter rival Microsoft, but this time it may have bitten off more than it can chew.

OOo4Kids is a fork of OpenOffice that can run in much less RAM and has a much simpler user interface. This is an interview to one of the developers

Google's Android operating system is on track to slay all other mobile operating system, with one possible exception.

Computing’s greatest accomplishment of this decade will likely go unremarked in the popular press. I call it the “death of the black box EULA.” (Picture from the blog Fortunes Pawn Luncheonette, December 2007.) Free software wounded it in the early 1990s. The Internet stabbed it again. But it was open source, in this decade, that struck the fatal blow.

One early spring day as we were walking home from the bakery on the corner, we passed by a neighbor and struck up a conversation. He complained about his desktop being constantly attacked by viruses. We suggested Ubuntu. A professional man in his 50s, he said he wanted to try installing a Linux distribution on his desktop but that, “it looks too complicated. I probably couldn’t install Ubuntu. I don’t want the hassle.” My little five year old daughter had been snuggled in my arms while I was talking to this neighbor. She had been listening closely. When we got home, she said, “Mom, I can install Ubuntu. I bet I can. Can I try? Can I try?”

[A few weeks old, but waaay too good not to post -- Sander]

There's a provocatively titled article by Robert Strohmeyer over at PC World that professes "The Future of Linux is Google". But let's be honest though. Without Linux, Google might not have grown into the powerhouse you see today. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been a successful company, just not as successful. Let me explain.

The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle has become an ongoing saga, one that is reportedly seeing Sun hemorrhage cash at an alarming rate. The company's troubles have now found their way to the hallowed halls of Congress, where a majority of the U.S. Senate has entered the fray.

Can you believe that there's only ten? It's hard for me to admit it but there are things, ten things to be exact, that I really hate about Linux. Sometimes I think it's just me but I do see other people stating a few of these in the forums so I'm at least not alone with some of these issues. These are in no particular order and they aren't just rants; they're legitimate problems and issues that I find annoying, destroying or cloying. Feel free to add your own to the list.

[I just couldn't stop myself from posting this..enjoy. ;-) - Scott]

Hello, my name is Jacob Lludkrab, I am an advocate for Free Software. I am writing to you in hopes that this email might reach the Combat Arms developers, or those in charge of the licensing of Combat Arms. Will you please forward it to the appropriate recipients? Nexon having developed in part “Counter-Strike: Online”, have knowledge of the GoldSrc engine, which is based on id Software’s Quake engine. With this recent history of gaming engines, the developers must be aware of the decision by id Software" ...

The KDE community has modified its product branding and expanded its focus beyond the KDE Linux desktop to support a wider range of open source projects, says eWEEK.. Meanwhile, the community has released Version 2.1 of KDE's KOffice suite, featuring improved OpenDocument support and KWord enhancements.

There’s blogging nowadays and everyone has to be writing stuff on the web all the time about what they have been doing. Sometimes even to the cost of not actually doing it properly. There is a whole bunch of newbies out there writing poor howtos, pretending to save the day of a fellow GNU/Linux user, but not teaching him any real knowledge. I want to share a couple of examples of this behaviour I have seen in the last days and a real suggestion for you, fellow user.

Handbrake 0.9.4 is released. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.