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> you are absolutely free for example to make a Linux distribution named "Knoppix"

Unless you happen to name your linux "Mobilix"

> german (food) companies are somewhat known to defend their trademarks.

It works the other way around, too. A French publishing company (Les éditions Albert René, sorry no link as they doesn't seem to have a Website. editions-albert-rene.com is ironically enough owned by a cybersquatter) sued a German about the domain mobilix.org (you see, they publish the Asterix [fr] comic books, and they thought the name Mobilix was too close to the Obelix character). Despite there being huge piles of names ending in -ix (does Unix rings a bell ?), the German courts sided with the publisher, forcing the site to relocate. You can find more about this fiasco at its new address.

So, does this mean French or German courts are full of slimy judges who do not understand a thing to technology (or like big business) ? I do not think so. For instance, recently, a German court upheld the GPL against a WiFi router manufacturer, and at least one French court confirmed it was legal to download files from P2P networks (as long as there was no sharing, which kills a bit the point of P2P, but they couldn't go against the written copyright law). The problem is that trademark laws seem stronger in Europe, and the judges are simply doing their job. And sometimes, businesses are on the losing end : five years ago, Vivendi was forced to pay [fr] a huge sum to an individual who had previously registered a mark similar to their own, Vizzavi...

A month or so. The Astercon name in any publicity should attract those vermin. There's probably been a convention somewhere of Asterix fans and L.E.A.R. will probably feel enough propriety, as stupidly irrelevent as it is to compare cartoons to computer software/hardware, unless some dork hangs a banner somewhere with the Asterix or Obelix characters holding a box, which would imply L.E.A.R. and their fictional characters endorsement.

After the Mobilix debacle I would think naming would have taken a bit more care.

Well, this decision could finally destroy the system of DNS. We have seen so many attempts from virii^wadware to abuse it. And - this might be far fetched - the http://www.ebay.com@www.evilcrackerdomain.com could also be seen as one trial.

What would the result be? Some IT people coming from a university would make the existing approaches to freenet perfect. At least, I find this outcome most likely.

Please don't misinterpret this as some kind of rant/flamebait:
Go ahead an destroy this DNS system, which has become more and more unusable (thanks to lawyers and to ICANN)..

You might want to take a look at the Tricks for Internal Modems in Linux Laptops at Mobilix if you haven't done so already.

You might want to take a look at the Tricks for Internal Modems in Linux Laptops at Mobilix if you haven't done so already.

Well, at least if their site logo is any indication.

Ooouuuuucccchhhhh, my eyes!

Mobilix.de: A german website about Unix operating systems on laptops, PDAs, smartphones etc...
Obelix: A french comic character (ironically, one of the brave Gauls defending themselves against the mighty Romans :-)
But -zilla is less common as a name suffix than -ix...

Werner is the maintainer of several Laptop related link lists, How-Tos, etc.

Check out the homepage of mobilix.org. It contains a bunch of very useful links. If you ask me, mobilix.org is THE place to go when searching for infos on Linux on Laptops.

I'm very astonished that his work is seen as an advertisment plug.

IMHO it's not the slashdot stories that get weaker, it's the comments from some posters. OK, we always had these comments, but somehow more BS postings get modded up to +5.

Bye

egghat.

Imagine if Tom's Harware bought up new laptops, got Linux running on them, and documented what it took to fix some of the basic problems that came up.

A site like that 6 months ago (when I tried to install it on my laptop...) would have meant I'd be a Linux user today.

Well, Tom's Hardware sure didn't (because all they test linux-wise is NVIDIA driver performance, and this only because Q3 is cool.), but others did.

If the system is called "Asterisk", I hope that they are prepared to be sued by overzealous, dyslexic Frenchmen!

At the end of the day, many of us would like to check the laptop for "linux compliance" before actually purchasing the machine.

I found these 2 site quite useful:
Linux on a laptop
UniX with Mobile Computers

I'm in the market as well and I found this article pretty helpful. To summarize, unless all you do is hack audio/video, it's a waste of money to get a P4-M w/ DDR memory, despite the faster bus, etc. Photoshop and AutoCAD tests were actually faster on the PIII-M.

I was leaning toward the Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 until I read this. Running linux is a must, so now I'm considering a Dell Inspiron 8100.

Both of the above have UXGA (1600x1200) displays. I originally tought I wanted a Powerbook G4, but am not convinced that I can be productive on a 1152x768 display. My development environment looks like this: Left 1/3 of the screen is an Eterm running screen. Right 2/3 is XEmacs. A higher resolution means more code visible at a time and/or a more readable font.

Not so standard is an RF modem that enables you to connect to the Internet through a data cable and operate as you would from a PC.

I just recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite 5005-s504 and this does not have a bios. Everything is controlled by ACPI and the OS. Works fine in M$ Windoze but, Linux has had a little bit of trouble, nothing crazy, but sound, modem, easy stuff like that, that should work doesnt. This is just an informational post to let yous guys know that this is happening.

http://mobilix.org/toshiba_s5005_s504.html
Document on installing Linux on the 5005-s504 http://www.topica.com/lists/5005-linux/?cid=2823
An email list set up to get everything working.

... and a lawsuit from a certain Freiherr von Gravenreuth.

With a name like that, she could even get distro named after her

Or, perhaps, get sued for being possibly confused with a certain fat cartoon character...

The CAC Bullet II driver hasn't been updated for any kernel version over 2.0.x (according to Mobilix.org), and was never shipped with the official kernel.

Check out the Mobile Linux User's Guide and Linux for Laptops.

There are others, too.

Werner Heuser, the author of the Linux Laptop Howto and several other helpful Lapop-related documents about Linux, runs a little business in Germany for Linux-Laptops. You can have a look at www.xtops.de if you're interested.

(I'm not affiliated with Werner, I just contributed parts of the Howto and wrote the old Battery Powered Linux Howto that he took over and rewrote.)

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Well, Mobile Linux will only be useful if it is done right... so that it is actually stable, usable, and as "idiot-proof"/easy to use as WinCE and PalmOS... Palmtops are a user-driven market, and most of the users are not engineers... While Linux gives access to cheaper, more familiar development environments (Gnu compilers, etc.) for OpenSource engineers, there needs to be more than just that...

Some more Linux Handheld links, including the actual specs of Pengachu, which reveal that 900mhz is the RF band (in case you thought it was the clockspeed), etc...

The Project Pengachu home page (specs, etc.)

MobiliX has various Mobile linux links / resources.

Gmate, the Korean company producing a (somewhat expensive) Linux PDA that looks rather a lot like the one from Samsung

Compaq Itsy