Manjaro Linux report.

After about 6 months of testing and shortly after upgrading my system to version 17.0.2 codename 'Gellivara' I thought it was time to post my experience with this distro.

For those who don't know or are not yet familiar with Manjaro Linux, this is an user-friendly operating system based on the Arch Linux distro, targeted to the less tech-savvy user, for more information, distro download and more visit the oficial Manjaro Linux site here.

Being Arch based, Manjaro is a rolling release, which means no big updates every year or so like other big distros, a rolling distro updates more often (automagically!) so you always have the latest version of the operating system and software under the hood.

After downloading and booting the live distro, you're greeted by 'Manjaro Hello' with links to the homepage, documentation, forums and chat room as well as a guide to help the user find his way around and provides very good information about the installation process.

Manjaro with the official XFCE desktop enviroment.

Installing is a straight forward process with Calamares, the graphical installer, the official Manjaro release brings the choice of a pre-configured XFCE, Plasma or Gnome desktop. In my case, I'm using the gorgeous looking Deepin graphical environment. 

Arch Linux is not a distro for beginners, installing and configuring Arch means a lot of coding and command line work, which is the main reason why many users don't dare trying Arch Linux in my opinion. Calamares is a great tool and a big help for those wanting to try an Arch Linux based distro without having to code and build the operating system from the ground up, kudos Manjaro team : )

While XFCE is Manjaro's 'Flagship' desktop environment, you can pretty much install any desktop environment available out there, the Manjaro community offers their own versions with the likes of Cinnamon, Lxde and more.

What are the advantages of Manjaro? Contrary to Arch Linux, once the user boots the live environment, it can be used right away, and installing is a breeze through the graphical installer, another user-friendly feature is the pre installation of popular software and good hardware recognizance which gives the user a great out of the box experience.

Elementary OS Loki, my experience.

Elementary OS, codename Loki, is a light weight distro with a simple but beautiful OS X like interface, it's based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it's packed with lightweight applications for most tasks, aditional software can be installed with a few mouseclicks from the easy to use Software Center.

So what's new?

Check the official developer's blog to read what's new on the new release.

Elementary would be the first choice for users looking for a minimalistic but good looking distribution. The system is based on Ubuntu LTS but uses it's own desktop interface called Pantheon.

I installed an early release on my notebook a while ago, just because i didn't (couldn't?) wait for the official release scheduled for Sep 2016, my first test drive wasn't very positive, many bugs, things missing and a frozen screen didn't make me a good impresion.

But hey, don't forget this was an early test release and not the official one, so bugs belong to the daily agenda, so I went back to pure Ubuntu and (un)patiently waited for the official release.

Was it worth the wait? Hell yeah!!

Same as Freya, Loki follows the minimalistic one-app-per-task approach. It's not a surprice anymore that the developers inspiration comes from Mac OS, basically they take what they consider to be the positive qualities of Cupertino's OS and build it on Elementary, the result is a gorgeous looking, clean and easy to use operating system.

A clean, good looking desktop comes out of the box.

Thanks to this keep-it-simple-stupid (no ofense!) philosophy, it takes very little to no time for the average user to get used to the enviroment, there are no multiple menus or complicated settings.

Being Ubuntu based, installing is a breeze with Ubiquity which was taken over without a lot of modifications, updates and third party software can be installed during the installation, the partitioner offers the option to encrypt the hard drive or use LVM and the whole process is fully automated.

In a nutshell, Elementary Loki is easy to use, good looking and being Ubuntu based you can install additional software to suit your needs, the new Epiphany browser is lightweight and should be enough for the average user but power users should go ahead and install their favorite browser.

Cinnamon a GNOME 2.x style desktop

This afternoon while searching for more information about this ACTA mess i came to a site featuring Linux Mint's new desktop interface codename 'Cinnamon', a Gnome 2 looking desktop built on top of Gnome 3.

Is this a step backwards? Cinnamon interface looks and works a lot like the popular Gnome 2.x interface, but it’s built on top of the Gnome 3.x interface. 

How is that going to work? Time to ask mighty Google for enlightenment, the first images weren't that impressing but being a geek i couldn't say no to try a new window manager so i installed it on my Ubuntu 11.10 using this instructions.

After a couple of commands on the terminal and a few minutes i was ready to go, the first thing you notice is the clean desktop featuring only the bar on the bottom as you see in the picture.

Standard Cinnamon desktop.

Not impressed? well, neither was i to be honest, but as i started to poke around i quickly realized that it's actually pretty nice, fast, and well organised, the menu window is big and is neatly arranged, on the far left you have your favorite applications, in the middle the different software categories and by hovering the mouse over any of those categories you have on the far right the applications corresponding to that category.

Menu window

AND here's this particular thing that i love on G3: when you move the cursor to the top left corner you have an overview of all the open windows :-)

Overview of all open windows

This combination of old school G2 interface on top of the actual G3 is well made, practical, productive and very nice to work with. Clement Lefebvre, lead developer of Linux Mint and his team created Cinnamon because many people, including Linux’s father Linus Torvalds don't like the new Gnome 3.x interface.

Among the new features that the now official stable Cinnamon 1.2 includes are desktop effects, desktop layouts, a new configuration tool, and applets as well as a variety of bug fixes and other improvements.

Overall, many of the changes aim to reintroduce a level of customisability that numerous desktops have lost in recent years, Lefebvre said.

Cinnamon is available as a download for the mayor Linux distributions on their website.

Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' on HP nc4200

It's been a couple of years already since i posted my notebook's hardware specifications and my experience installing Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy', since then i have loyally upgraded to every new Ubuntu release, Ubuntu has been my distro of choice because HP's original concept was to actually market the nc4200 with Ubuntu so they made sure that all the hardware was 100% Linux compatible  (and believe me, it still is!!)

A few months ago i upgraded the ram to 2 Gb and got a 100 Gb hard drive before upgrading to 10.10 'Maverick' and just a couple of weeks ago i upgraded the same notebook to Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' which is running perfect.

One thing i don't like from the latest Ubuntu releases is the Unity interface, it feels like a huge smart phone and i just couldn't work comfortably with it, so i kept using Gnome 2 and waited (un)patiently for Gnome 3 to be released.

When i upgraded to 11.04 i read with great pleasure that Gnome 3 was released so i happily made the necessary arrangements to upgrade to this long awaited release.
Gnome 3 is great, it's interface is a bit like Unity but you find your way around much faster... at least i do.  Coming to think of it, if Gnome 3 looks and works as good or even better than Unity, why didn't Canonical stick with Gnome and saved themselves the whole work of developing Unity? 

Well, there are a lot of happy Unity users too so kudos Canonical for developing another way to customize our desktop :-)

While running on 11.04 Gnome 3 was lacking a bit of performance but after upgrading to 11.10 it's performance improved a lot and G3's interface is very pleasant and user friendly, if you still want to customize Gnome 3 beyond what configuration editor allows you'll need the Gnome Tweak Tool to do so.
To sum it all up, the Oneiric Ocelot / Gnome 3 combo is great, and my notebook is a perfect example that you don't need the latest, most expensive and fastest hardware to run the latest Linux releases efficiently, so you can keep your hard-earned cash for more important things :-)

To swap or not to swap?

Today as i switched my notebook on and logged into Ubuntu i was welcome with the message 'your system has only 348Mb of free space' wtf? was my first impression, i have a 40 Gb HD and i dual boot win7 and Ubuntu Natty Narwahl, but i was sure to have a few Gb of space left, so i started Gparted and took a look...
WTF??? I discovered 3 swap partitions totaling a bit over 6 Gb, something went terribly wrong while installing, there is my missing space!!!
So i happily deleted 2 of those partitions and then i started to wonder, i recently upgraded my RAM to 2 Gb, so what would happen if i delete the third swap partition and run Linux totally without swap? I considered worth a try, so first thing to do was ask mighty Google for enlightenment.
Swap vs. no swap - Alex on Linux  gave me quite a bit to read and a lot of useful info, for instance one thing that made me think twice about running without swap is the fact that without swap there's no possibility of hibernation, one of the reasons why recommended swap space size is twice the size of the RAM that is in the computer is to allow the operating system to accommodate all your RAM in swap partition – to allow hibernation. I do hibernate my system often so i don't have to sometimes close running programs... i know it's a commodity but once you're used to that is difficult not to do it. 
Has swap still a use with 4 GB of memory? | KernelTrap has also a good discussion about swap, some people do, some don't, i guess it depends what programs you work with and how much memory they use. 
sourcefrog : Is swap space obsolete? this particular article gives a deeper explanation why swap is still important even if you have a few Gb of RAM.

Bottom line is, without swap you won't be able to hibernate your system (not to be confused with sleeping, in sleep mode the system still works and consumes power while in hibernate mode it comes to complete stop) without swap your system may loose stability and disk speed access will be slower compared to a system with swap, so I'll keep for sure that last swap partition.

Maverick Meerkat upgrade.

Ubuntu 10.10 codename 'Maverick' is finally being given to us, among other goodies is the new KDE 4.5 release on board, there are by the way no packages planned for Kubuntu 10.04 LTS, so is recommended to upgrade to 10.10 (normal release) if you want to try the newest KDE release software.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 10.10 on a desktop system couldn't be any easier, first press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '10.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

As i'm writing this, the upgrade process is happening, will let you know more when i do :-) 

Change buttons from left to right in Ubuntu 10.04

When I first ran Ubuntu 'Lucid Linx 10.04' inside Virtual Box, i was really surprised of all the new features and look of the newest OS from Canonical... but hey, wait a minute, where the heck did my window buttons go? Why in the world did they move them to the left on this release? Probably a lot of you asked the same question, is this some kind of Mac-feeling-joke? I want to use Linux, not Mac, and for Google's sake i sure want my window buttons ON THE RIGHT SIDE AGAIN!!!!!

So here comes the solution, please notice that i'm a Kubuntu user and i ran the Ubuntu release inside a virtual machine, so there may be differences or this may not work at all for you, use at your own risk!!

First thing to do is open a terminal, either though your start menu or with Alt+F2 and execute this command (without the '<>' of course, you can also copy and paste it if you're too lazy to type)

< gconftool -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout -t string menu:minimize,maximize,close >

After this your buttons should automagically be back on the right side of the screen.

50 Places Running Linux That You Might Not Expect

Focus has posted a really interesting list of 50 places running Linux. Some of the companies and places on the list are obvious (although there are quite a few missing) but others just may surprise you. 

Linux is hovering just beneath 1% of the overall market share in operating systems. And although that might sound like a small number, Linux is far more than just a fringe OS. In fact, it's running in quite a few more places than you probably suspect. Here are fifty places Linux is running today in place of other OS's.

Lunix??

This one i just had to post, made me ROFL.


Is your son obsessed with "Lunix"?

BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.

Your son may try to install "lunix" on your hard drive. If he is careful, you may not notice its presence, however, lunix is a capricious beast, and if handled incorrectly, your son may damage your computer, and even break it completely by deleting Windows, at which point you will have to have your computer repaired by a professional.

If you see the word "LILO" during your windows startup (just after you turn the machine on), your son has installed lunix. In order to get rid of it, you will have to send your computer back to the manufacturer, and have them fit a new hard drive. Lunix is extremely dangerous software, and cannot be removed without destroying part of your hard disk surface

University Professor puts Linux and Open Source down.

While looking around in the Ubuntu forum i found this now quite old thread about a very narrow-minded 'professor' trying to explain his students the 'disadvantages' of Linux and Open Source, it's quite long and old already but worth the reading.
Quote of the original post by Almumin:

While I was in class, a professor tried to hammer Ubuntu and Open Source with comments that I have added below. Anyone want to help me with some ammo to put a foot in his proprietary mouth?

The disadvantages of open source are:

• Restricted choice - In virtually every area of software there are dozens if not hundreds choices for different commercial packages, but rarely are there more than one or two, if any, open source options.
• Poor integration with Microsoft - Open source products tend to be created by people who do not want to work with other platforms like dot net, so as a result their products are poorly integrated with Microsoft products such as Windows, do not use Microsoft features well, and fail to take maximum advantage of the Windows environment.
• Poor vertical integration - Open source products tend to be written by people who buy into the "software tools" idea of UNIX whereby one puts together an ultimate application by stringing together smaller applications like pearls on a string.
• Poor interactive capabilities – there aren’t any or few open source packages with an interactive user interface as good as "average good" interactive packages in Windows. Packages like Adobe PhotoShop, Visual Studio, Microsoft Word and others have GUIs of extraordinary breadth and depth, all accomplished with care and attention to hundreds of thousands of details of the user interaction.
• Difficult to use - Open source packages tend to be written by engineers for other engineers and for many of them it is accepted that ordinary function will involve creation of configuration files, writing scripts, or actually editing the source code and recompiling.
• Higher cost of installation - Commercial vendors are forced by intense competition to configure their products for easy installation. Open source tends to have much higher installation costs because a much greater degree of expertise usually is required for installation.
• Higher cost of operation - Open source products tend to require a much higher degree of technical expertise to operate and maintain, so they end up costing more.
• Higher cost of technical support - Open source costs more to support because the software is typically self-supporting.
• Lack of capabilities / features - Open software packages tend to have far fewer features and capabilities than commercial equivalents.
• Poor customer response - A well-run commercial software company will immediately turn around customer requests for enhancements. With open source, if you don't do it yourself you are at the mercy of a disjoint community of developers.
• Lack of innovation / codification of obsolete architectures - The glacially slow pace of development within open source movements and the design by committee, consensus process tends to assure that obsolete architectures get implemented within open source.
• Exposure to Intellectual Property theft issues - If you buy an open source product you have no assurance whatsoever that you are not buying intellectual property that has been stolen from its rightful owners, or has been created illegally by people who are violating a nondisclosure contract.
• Greater exposure to security problems - If your adversary knows your source code and your mechanism they have a big leg up on compromising your system.
• No warranty - If you use open source you are on your own. There is no single company backing the product.
• Fraudulent status as 'open' source - If one actually looks at where some of the 'free' open source was developed, one finds that it is not really open source but is the result of an enormous investment of funds, quite often by a poorly-managed public agency. The GIS example would be GRASS, which was developed at immense cost by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Read the rest of this hilarious thread here.

Network manager issue on Kubuntu 10.04

Today i'll show you how to re-enable the network manager on Kubuntu 'Lucid' 

After upgrading to Kubuntu 10.04 a couple of weeks ago, everything worked just perfect, but today, as i switched on my notebook i couldn't get online, neither by wlan nor by cable, a situation i just couldn't understand because it was working just a few hours ago.

After a few minutes of Google search i found out that this issue is known as bug #524454 and thank the Ubuntu community there's a simple solution to it:

Open up a terminal and start dolphin as root 'sudo dolphin' then navigate to /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state, this is a text file that you can open in your favorite text editor, if you were victim of this bug your network setting should be NetworkingEnable=false, just change 'false' to 'true', save the file and then let the command 'sudo restart network-manager' work it's magic... voila!

MS offers free MS office.

This free edition of its Office software -- which will not include PowerPoint but will have crippled versions of Excel and Word -- will be given away with consumer machines in an effort to poison the well for competing open source productivity suites like OpenOffice (which includes a PowerPoint-compatible presentation application and full-featured spreadsheet and word processing programs.)

"Microsoft appears to have woken up to the fact that free open-source Office clones like OpenOffice may prove to be the thin end of a very slippery wedge, and if users discover they can get by with it instead of paying for a full version of Microsoft's Office, then the next step will be to switch to Ubuntu (or some other Linux) instead of paying for Windows."

Read the complete article by Paul Rubens here.

Ubuntu down(up)grade.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty' and working with it for a couple of months, i took the next step and upgraded to 9.10 'Karmic Koala' to see what was new on this release, upgrade was like always a breeze (typical Ubuntu :-)) and there were quite a few features and apps that caught my attention, like the 'Ubuntu Software Center' replacing 'Add/Remove' in the Applications menu  ,a program similar to Freespire's CNR where you can easily and painlessly download and install hundreds of applications, very nice indeed :-)

But i, being a LTS user did long for my Hardy so it was time to down-up-grade my box again, not without taking some notes and installing some of the new tools found in 9.10 ;-)

Ubuntu 9.04- the Jaunty Jackalope, report.

It's been more than 2 months since i upgraded my laptop to 9.04 'Jaunty Jackalope', and about time to share the results with the rest of the world, the whole upgrading process took about 2 hours (8.04 LTS to 8.10 and then 8.10 to 9.04) but it was completelly painless and there wasn't much i had to do, i even went to the gym for the last hour of the process and when i came back the whole process was almost finished, hurray!!

Warning!! don't hold me responsible if after following my notes your system is messed up, my laptop is 100% Linux compatible and your hardware may not be, do this at your own risk.

First thing i did was update my 8.04 LTS, once my system was up to date i started the upgrading process to 8.10 (you can only upgrade to 9.04 from 8.10). Note that upgrades from 8.04 LTS to 8.10 are not enable by default because 8.04 is a long-term-support release and 8.10 is a regular release, but upgrade is 100% supported and easy to enable, if you are not sure which version you are currently running type on a terminal 'lsb_release -a' to find out.

Now go to System/Administration/Software Sources, then click on the "Updates" tab and change "Show new distribution release" to "Normal releases", now get outta there.

Again start System/Administration/Update Manager, click the Check button to check for new updates. If there are any updates to install, use the Install Updates button to install them, and press Check again after that is complete, make sure you have all the updates for your current version installed before upgrading, a message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release, click upgrade and follow the instructions on screen, the upgrade manager will then start downloading the necesary packages.

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection this can take just a few minutes to a few hours, once the necesary files are fetched you can sit back and watch it work, this may take a while too depending on your hardware speed.

Once this is done and you have restarted your system you can check again with 'sudo lbs_release-a' if the upgrade was succesful, then you should see the following on your terminal:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu

Description: Ubuntu intrepid

Release 8.10

Codename Intrepid

Not as colorful as 'The most incredible and really unbelievable dream has become true: You compiled e17 successfully!' (Enlightenment fan here) but if you see this then you have succesfully upgraded to 8.10.

To upgrade to 9.04 the steps are pretty much the same, update your 8.10 and then proceed with the upgrade, it should be as easy (or even easier) than the previous upgrade.

Was it worth the upgrade? Hell yeah!! For example hibernating did't work that good with 8.04, now it works without a problem, from switching on until login screen takes about 20 sec, the overall impresion is very good and the new release works faster and efficient.

Before you attemp to do an upgrade, don't forget to backup your system and get as much information and feedback about other people's experiences about upgrading their systems, best place for this is of course the Ubuntu Forum, good luck!! :-)

Ubuntu on HP nc 4200

Well, finally i got around to publish this, the HP nc4200 is the nicest piece of Linux compatible hardware that i ever laid hands on, don't look no more!

Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy' on HP nc4200

Intel Pentium M processor 740* (1.73-GHz, 533-MHz FSB, 2-MB L2 cache)
Works / no special procedure required during installation.

12.1-inch TFT XGA (1024 x 768 resolution and 16 M colors)
Works / Select Generic LCD Display in Installer

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
Works / no special procedure required during installation

1024-MB 400-MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Works / No special procedure required during installation

40 GB 5400 rpm SMART
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Integrated 10Base-T/100Base-T/1000Base T Ethernet local area network (LAN) network interface card (NIC) with RJ-45 jack
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Internal 56k Modem No idea Not tested

External DVD-ROM MultiBay II Drive
Works / No special procedure required during installation

TouchPad, pointing stick pointing devices and a dedicated vertical scroll region Works / No special procedure required during installation

One integrated Secure Digital slot
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Sound ADI AC '97 CODEC Integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro compatible audio
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Integrated wireless Mini PCI IEEE 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g WLAN device
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Bluetooth
Works / No special procedure required during installation

Basic Installation of Ubuntu 7.10 'gutsy':

* Why Ubuntu? HP originally planned to release this notebook with Ubuntu so it was the obvious choice :-)
* Obtaining Ubuntu: do i really have to tell you how to obtain Ubuntu?
* Installing: pretty straight forward: put cd in drive, answer a few questions, partition if wished and let the installer do the rest :-D
* Post-Install modifications/tweaks: just customizing options (desktop, starup programs/daemons, etc), everything tested worked out of the box.

Setting up additional features for Ubuntu: nothing i can think of.

Unresolved issues: none!!

Links:

* The Ubuntu forum offers excellent support and almost any question will be answered to satisfaction.
* HP has tons of information on the website about this notebook.
* Laptop was recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with Kernel 2.6.24-23 without any problems, now running compiz and desktop effects.

I originally wanted to get a IBM because of the famous Linux compatibility but after doing a lot of research and reading i ended up buying this notebook. Linux often requires several kernel patches, or even windows drivers to work properly on a portable computer. HP originally intended to market their NC4200 notebook with Ubuntu, so they went the extra mile to get the system working and they did a great job :-)

Note: On November 2011 this notebook was upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot'. Check here for the full report.

Upgrade.

After a few months running Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon' on my laptop without any big issues i decided to take the next step and upgrade to 8.04 LTS, the process took a good hour and went completely smooth, after upgrade was complete i made a full reboot and the results are simply wonderful, now i'm running compiz and all the effects work just fine, all my hardware was again recognized and everything is up to date, excelent work Ubuntu team!!

Linux for everyone?

Can Linux really be for everybody? I read not long ago about a family father who wanted to make all his family windows free and use only Linux... whether they wanted it or not.
Should everyone become a Linux-only user, should we, the Linux community talk everyone we know into using Linux instead of windows?
My answer is: NO! Linux is much more than an operating system, and free software is not only a bunch of programs you can download on the Internet for free, both have a strong non-technical or economical context: they show us what an individual without being controled or monitored can achieve and show that not only commercial software works or can get things done.
For these reasons (and many more) i'm simply fascinated about Linux -and i would use it even if it was the world's technically worst operating system.- Which is of course not, but it isn't either a replacement to windows, but an alternative: it does the job in a different way -and many times better- although different. Linux gives the user total control over his system, which is a Pandora's Box effect, in the hands of an unexperienced user this can have catastrophic effects on the health of the operating system, this i think is one of the main reasons that makes the transition to Linux difficult for many people.
Some people even think of Linux as a windows-wannabe with less functionality, integration and much more complex.
So how do you talk these people into trying Linux?
First by waking up their curiosity, by showing them under windows what many free alternatives to commercial software exist: The Gimp, the Mozilla Suite, Open Office, etc.
Explain them what free software is, that is free as in freedom and not free as in beer (sorry couldn't help myself:) )
By showing them what a Linux OS looks like, by explaining how things work and most important by supporting them and answering their questions.
I used these steps to talk a few people into trying Linux, many of them stuck with it, others got back to their safe point-and-click windows enviroment, that's just the way it is, after all, they have the freedom to decide.

Linux powered subnotebook.

Asus presented in the Computex in Taipei a project they've been working on together with Intel, the EeePC is powered by a Intel mobile processor, has 512 MB of DDR2-400 memory and comes with a choice of between 4 and 16 Gb flash drives.
Although the EeePC is windows-compatible, Asus has decided for a self-developed Linux operating system (Hooray!) The EeePC's main target will be the comunication market (web-browsing, e-mail, office work and digital communications) in order to achieve this, is equipped with a fast-ethernet port, 802.11b/g WLAN and a 56k-modem, in the multimedia department has a 3 megapixel webcam, hi-fi audio and microphone, the smaller model with a 7" screen will cost around 199$, while the 'big brother' with 10" screen will start at 299$ (hardware specifications and prices are from press releases)
Asus plans to start producing the EeePC in August (and so do i), will be looking forward getting my hands on one.

Microsoft will help making a better Linux. (????)

Well, it's finally happening, ms realizes that Linux is a real competition and a possible threat to them on the desktop and is now throwing it's tentacles around and trying to get a hold on it... just shortly after saying that Linux was violating some of their patents, now they're willing to happily "work" together with some of those companies? Funny i'd say, i used to be a SuSE user, but after novell threw herself to ms feet they lost my respect, i can do on Linux everything i can do on windows (and sometimes even better) and i'm no Linux guru... heck i can barely write a shell script!! if something doesn't work "out of the box" i still make it work, even if it takes sometime reading in a forum or asking Google.
Fact is that most PC users just want things to work, and ms does a great job at that (which to me translates into treating you like a braindead moron), insert the cd and watch the light blink.
I won't say that novell/xandros/linspire and whoever else is throwing himself to ms feet is doing a bad move, i just truly hope that in a future our Linux stays pure, open and free.
I wonder what does Linus think of all this mess...

Good new for web designers.

Now you don't have to mess around with virtual machines, emulators, etc in order to run internet explorer under Linux, the IEs4Linux script makes it possible to install almost automagically the popular MS browser.

IEs 4 Linux needs two packages: cabextract and Wine. You can install them using your Linux package manager (synaptic, apt-get, yum, emerge etc) or go to their sites.

Download and more information here.