pdawerks writes "The Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L handheld, which runs Linux in the Trolltech's Qtopia environment, has finally made it to the U.S. at a pricepoint of $699, according to a PDALive.com article. It has a 4-inch 480 x 640 CG Silicon reflective screen that is much larger than the one in the 5x00 models, and the screen supports rotation on the fly (portrait and landscape modes). Sharp has also incorporated a sliding thumb keyboard into this model."

badboy3062 writes "Wal-Mart this week started selling Microtel PCs preloaded with Sun's Java Desktop System. Prices start at under $300 for a system without a floppy drive or monitor. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, says this move is just another step in its plan to gain new audiences for its technologies."

yBshy4 writes "This article may interest the Slashdot folk. LinuxWorld Australia is reporting on Australia's largest satellite network, covering some 800,000 square kilometres, or most of the state of New South Wales, has gone live. The network consists of 75 Linux-based satellite routers that provide Wi-Fi (802.11b) connectivity to country towns that are unable to get DSL. The routers are engineered by Ursys and run Debian providing gateway services such as DNS and mail. According to the article, Ursys chose Debian 'because of its packaging support, which facilitates the ability to push updates to the routers remotely.' Ursys tried to use Windows but it was 'too unstable.' Hopefully this is an important step to providing better Internet access to regional areas across Australia. Anyone know of similar Internet access projects around the world?"

kryonD writes "According to this Computer Weekly article, SCO is no longer allowed to spread their FUD in Germany. This wasn't even a court or government order, but an out of court settlement with a small company. They even get 'fined' EU10,000 by the company for every breach of the settlement. Although, it appears from the article that SCO is side-stepping the agreement by commissioning 3rd party firms to spread their FUD for them. The settlement happened last month, but this is the first I have heard of it. I wonder what made them back down so quickly." We mentioned the settlement earlier this month (including prohibitions on making certain claims); the news is the attempt to circumvent it.

zmcnulty writes "I've translated today's PC Watch article (Japanese) about a new tablet/PDA device from NEC - it has an 8.4" (640x480) touchscreen LCD, and a CD-ROM drive. It's also suprisingly affordable; about $645 USD. However, don't expect to be able to buy one soon, as production is limited to only 4,000 units for the first year. Still, this is an interesting prospect, and it's good to see major Japanese corporations interested in Linux."

joestar writes "It's official now: the Court has approved Mandrakesoft's exit plan from the Chapter 11-like protection status. This seems to be the result of the recently announced profitability of the company, and means that Mandrakesoft is now fully back to normal activities. Great news for the Open Source community and Mandrake Linux users! All details are available in an online PR."

mod_critical asks: "I am a student at the University of Minnesota and I work with a professor performing research and managing more than ten Linux based servers. When it comes to installing services on these machines I am a die-hard build-from-source fanatic, while the professor I work with prefers to install and maintain everything from packages. I want to know what Slashdot readers tend to think is the best way to do things. How you feel about the ease and simplicity of installing and maintaining packaged programs versus the optimization and control that can be achieved by building from source? What are your experiences?"

Josh MacLean writes "I noticed a link to an interesting article over at OSNews comparing performance of Linux kernels 2.4.25 and 2.6.4. While the workstation benchmarks are rather mundane, the server benchmarks (including Apache and MySQL) proved to be quite interesting. The rest of the Linux geeks might appreciate this. The comment thread that's linked on the last page is turning out to be relatively amusing as well."

inphinity writes "The fine folks over at Tom's Hardware have posted an interesting guide titled Migrating from Windows to Linux. In the first of what will hopefully be several parts, they describe what steps to take to back up critical data and move to open-source apps. All in all, a fairly in-depth and comprehensive step-by-step guide. As a nice touch, they've even included a downloadable checklist for confused people."

Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"

An anonymous reader writes "Cobind Desktop takes a remarkable turn from other Linux distributions by being one of the first to include Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla Thunderbird in their first release. Though Cobind Desktop only uses XFce and not the more popular KDE, its entire design is based on a clutter-free workspace. Flexbeta.net took the time to write up a review and conduct an interview with David Watson, Co-Founder and President of Cobind Desktop. He mentions how the entire design concept of Cobind Desktop is based on a book called the Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz, who is a professor at Swarthmore. David Watson believes that this concept can be applied to software design, and produce more usable products as a result." (We mentioned Schwartz's book earlier today.)

Kalak writes "Fedora Core 2 Test 2, part of the project's goal to 'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software', has just been released - this test release 'is specifically designed for SELinux testing, as well as testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2.1.' Get a copy from one of the mirrors or grab a copy via BitTorrent. You probably want the binary only Torrent."

Balinares writes "NewsForge reports that Novell has settled for Qt as its Linux desktop development environment, casting more light on their strategy to unify KDE and GNOME. This ought to be interesting. The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance. Maybe programming will suck no longer!" Update: 03/30 00:01 GMT by T : Sounds like that story doesn't quite hold water; Nat Friedman writes in this Slashdot comment that "We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. ... We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application."

Kethinov writes "I just read this article reviewing GNOME 2.6 via the 2.5 development version. Many screenshots, plus extensive discussion on the new direction Nautilus is taking among other things. Worth a read. (A mirror would be nice ;)" Sorry - I duped this. Mea culpa.

petrus4 writes "IBM have put together a nine-part series on upgrading from various incarnations of Windows (NT in particular) to Linux. Although it's mainly aimed at corporate customers, it's a good read, and could help the Linux advocacy effort in general."

dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."

DrSkwid writes "With PhoenixBIOS reading your email because of such inordinate boot up times for Windows and other OSs, it was remarked in #plan9 about our 5s boot times using LinuxBIOS. My friend f2f pasted an article from Linux Journal which looks at the basic structure of LinuxBIOS, the origins of LinuxBIOS and how it evolved to its current state. It also covers the platforms supported and the lessons they have learned about trying to marry a GPL project to some of the lowest-level, most heavily guarded secrets that vendors possess."

Rade T. writes "Reuters UK reports that HP, the No. 1 personal computer and computer printer maker, said on Wednesday that its putting its weight behind personal computers that run the Linux operating system. I guess this is the first serious step towards solving the problems that Linux faces on the Desktop/Laptop."

WildCode writes "SCO is now targeting Aussies in its continuing Linux licence saga. According to the story, one Aussie organization has already signed up for the licence. The ACCC has no comment at this time but this certainly puts a twist on things as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the U.S. before making any judgement. Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'" An anonymous reader points to another story at internetnews.com.

HangingChad writes "eWeek is reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started. Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader."