Ars is reporting that Quanta, the company manufacturing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project’s XO laptops, plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC’s XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.

OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte says that OLPC has no plans to make XO laptops, which are “designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world,” available to ordinary consumers in developed countries. OLPC plans to sell the laptops in bulk to governments, which will then distribute the hardware to school children.

Quanta’s announcement will be welcomed by the throngs of technology enthusiasts in the US and elsewhere who have expressed interest in acquiring one of the OLPC’s budget-friendly laptops for personal use.

Mandriva, the France-based Linux distributor, will have a version of its Mandriva Linux 2007 pre-installed on Intel’s new low-end laptop for students, the Classmate PC. The ClassMatePC is a rugged laptop with a water-resistant keyboard and a theft-control feature based on a network-issued digital certificate. Its processor is an Intel Mobile 900MHz Celeron ULV chip.

This new laptop for students in developing countries weighs in at 2.9 lbs and includes a 7-inch LCD display. It comes equipped with 256MB of RAM, up to 2GB of flash memory-based local storage, both 802.11b/g WiFi interface and a 10/100Mbps Ethernet networking, and two USB ports for connection of external peripherals.

This article explains how to connect your laptop or desktop to the Internet using your (Nokia) mobile phone GPRS connection while running Ubuntu as the operating system. You may ask yourself, ‘Why on earth would I want to use the phone’s measly connection when I have a broadband line at home?”. Well, it’s quite obvious: you can’t use the broadband line unless you’re at home. When you’re on the road and need an Internet connection, you’ll be able to use the one provided by the mobile phone.

Looks like Dell is actually going to pre-install Linux on their systems. “Dell has heard you and we will expand our Linux support beyond our existing servers and Precision workstation line. Our first step in this effort is offering Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems.”

Dell will provide an update in the coming weeks that includes detailed information on which systems we will offer, our testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available.

via Digg

darkonc points us to a writeup on linux.com about a very Linux-unfriendly policy at HP. A woman bought a Compaq laptop and loaded Ubuntu on it. Some time later, still well inside the 1-year hardware warranty, the keyboard started acting up. An HP support rep told her, “Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux.” Gateway and Dell refused to comment to the reporter on what they would do in a similar situation. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft — all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

Link via NewsForge

ACCESS today announced that 10 companies have joined its recently launched ACCESS Connect Ecosystem (ACE) Partner Program, a global initiative that brings together companies in the telecommunication, consumer electronics and media industries to drive market leadership of converged solutions developed by ACCESS and its partners. The program, which kicked off last month with over 45 charter members, now has over 55 member companies.

“Helping to build a global ecosystem for the mobile and converged device markets is something we feel very strongly about,” said Toru Arakawa, ACCESS CEO and co-founder. “ACCESS is committed to the growth and success of the mobile Linux market. We believe a key to success is a strong and vibrant ecosystem that includes the operators, device manufacturers, infrastructure providers, software developers, semiconductor companies and content providers. We are honored that industry leading companies share our view and have joined the ACE program.”

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RealNetworks today announced that U.S. consumers can now enjoy mobile access to the Rhapsody digital music service through the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. This innovative collaboration gives Nokia N800 Internet Tablet users rapid access to Rhapsody’s three million songs anywhere they have a Wi-Fi connection.

The Rhapsody features require the new N800 firmware released last week. In addition to playback from Rhapsody’s robust music catalog, this update will enable Nokia N800 Internet Tablet users to listen to customized Rhapsody playlists, stream hundreds of professionally programmed Internet radio channels and browse Rhapsody’s critically acclaimed music editorial and album reviews.

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Linux laptops users have a wide variety of performance needs. If one is running basic productivity apps like e-mail, OpenOffice.org and Web browsing, one doesn’t need a rip-roaring processor with 2 GB of memory. Predictably, hardware requirements — while generally less than what is needed for Microsoft Vista — are entirely dependent on the kind of use expected out of a Linux-based laptop.

Link via LXer Linux News

In this software cold war, there are two sides. One represents entrepreneurship, cooperation, and the free exchange of ideas and resources. The other is a totalitarian monoculture that does everything in its power to keep customers under its control. This, too, resembles the real Cold War — and we know how that conflict ended.

Link via LXer Linux News