Tiny $57 PC is like the Raspberry Pi, but faster and fully open

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

It would be difficult to overstate the popularity of the tiny Raspberry Pi computer that launched earlier this year, but it's just one example of a rapidly growing class of small, inexpensive, Linux-powered devices, as I've already noted on several occasions before.

The Cubieboard and the UG802 are two of the more recent examples to appear, even as the Raspberry Pi itself has been continually improved, but since then another came to light: the A13-OLinuXino.

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HP bets big on Linux

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

HP has long been a contributor to Linux and open source software, but on Monday it ratcheted up its support another notch.

Specifically, the company announced at the LinuxCon Europe event going on this week in Barcelona that it has made the $500,000 investment necessary to become a platinum member of the Linux Foundation, upgrading from the gold membership it held previously.

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Calling all Linux Mint fans: There's a new online store to check out

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

The month of October may have been more or less dominated by Ubuntu Linux for those of us anticipating its recent “Quantal Quetzal” release, but this week the Linux Mint project made an intriguing announcement of its own.

Specifically, the Linux Mint project on Tuesday announced that it now has an online store complete with several PCs offering Linux Mint preloaded.

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A Halloween treat for Linux and Mac users: CrossOver is free today

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

Whatever your take on the relative proportions of the desktop market accounted for by Mac and Linux users, the fact remains that there are still an awful lot of applications out there that target Windows.

One solution for getting Windows software to run on these other platforms is the free and open source Wine compatibility layer, as I noted when Wine 1.4 was released earlier this year.

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Ubuntu Linux's Amazon integration gets a thumbs-down from the EFF

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

There's been a considerable bit of feather-ruffling caused lately by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux.

Most recently, of course, was Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth's controversial announcement about the development strategy for the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 “Raring Ringtail."

Electronic Frontier Foundation
There are many reasons why users might want to keep their searches private, the EFF notes (Click image to enlarge.)
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Goodbye and farewell to Ubuntu Linux 11.04 'Natty Narwhal'

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

For longtime users of Ubuntu Linux, it may feel like just yesterday that Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” first came out.

It's a particularly memorable release, of course, because it was the first desktop version of Canonical's popular Linux distribution to use the controversial Unity desktop by default.

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For a beginner-friendly distro, try Linux Lite 1.0.0

Katherine Noyes, PCWorld Follow me on Google+

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
More by Katherine Noyes

For all the media attention that goes to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, and the other leading Linux distributions, casual observers would have to be forgiven if they have no idea that hundreds of other distributions are out there as well, each with a particular purpose and target audience in mind.

New ones pop up regularly, too, offering yet another fresh twist on the desktop Linux theme.

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