Earlier this week, Dell announced it was releasing a new desktop computer "to meet growing customer demand for open-source ready systems". The Dell Dimension E510n base installation offers a Pentium 4 630 processor, 512MB of DDR2 memory, a 128MB ATI RADEON video card and an 80GB SATA hard drive. The E510n doesn't ship with Linux installed, but it does have a blank hard drive, so purchasers can install Linux or other operating systems at their will. The new Dimension desktop is available now for purchase from the Dell on-line store.

One of the new in the game Linux distributions is Kubuntu, the KDE-based version of Ubuntu which is also new in the game. I feel Kubuntu is very useful for the typical TUX reader.

I need to offer a bit of background before I can get into the details. Don't panic--we will get to the real info soon.

In the early days of Linux it was difficult to install new software because Linux was changing rapidly and the supporting software needed might not be available on your system. Package managers were developed to do the checking to make sure you had all the pieces needed before installing the new software. The two systems that have survived are the Debian Package Manager and the Red Hat Package Manager.

What’s bigger and more capable than a PDA but smaller than a desktop computer? Meet the Pepper Pad 2.

This article was originally featured in TUX issue number 1. For more articles like this, make sure to subscribe to TUX today! TUX issue number 2 will be released May 1, 2005.

So you’ve finished dinner and the family is enjoying a rare moment of downtime in the living room, and then it happens: “Does anyone know the weather for Saturday?

by Lew Pitcher

Editor's note : Following Jon Biddell's praise for Libranet, two more people immediately came forward to champion their distro of choice, both carrying the Slackware banner and both for somewhat different reasons. Let's start with Lew Pitcher's answer to the call.

Well, Marcel, that's some gauntlet you threw down, asking for people to champion their distribution of choice. I'm no Lancelot, but I'll certainly carry the banner for Slackware. So let's get to it....

A week before Christmas, in a fit of panic, I decided to buy a DVD writer so that I could transfer the movies I made, of my now five month old son, onto DVDs to give to our parents and other family members. Yeah, I know . . . but new parents are like that. Anyhow, I headed out to the local Future Shop more or less blindly trusting that whatever I bought would just work on my Linux system. After a few minutes of hemming and hawing, I settled on a BenQ model DW1620. Here's how it went.

Story by Jon Biddell

Editor's Note : Somewhere in an alternate universe, there's a Linux user group called the WFTL-LUG. As with many such groups, we occasionally get into discussions about which Linux distribution is your favorite, much like car buffs discussing whether an Acura trumps a Mercedes. You might also recall that we ran a very spirited poll on this website a little while ago on that very subject. So I put out a challenge. I asked if people loved their distro of choice enough to champion it in a series of documents that cover an intro to that distribution, installation tips, and package installation help. Jon Biddell was first off the mark with his introduction to Libranet. -- Marcel Gagné

Many many moons ago I was, sadly, a Windows user. And I was miserable. The servers I managed were running NT4 and had to be rebooted once a month, my personal workstation needed reboots daily, and more often than not several times a day.