I enjoy reading books when ever I can and like many others, I had begun to bring them along with me in electronic form on my PDA so that I always had something to read.

My eBook reader for the past year or more has been my trusty Palm IIIxe which was given a new lease on life thanks to great eBook reading software like Plucker and Weasel Reader.

However, There are obvious down-sides to reading eBooks on the IIIxe's small display and I decided that it was time to look around for a dedicated eBook reader. I wanted something that was not loaded with DRM, had support for a wide variety of formats, and looked reasonably decent.

It has been a few months since I last talked about SliTaz and I figured it was time to post a quick public service announcement to drive a little more traffic their way.

If you are looking for a light-weight GNU/Linux distribution to help rejuvenate some of the aging hardware that you have laying around then SliTaz is for you.

I have it installed on my old 500MHz Compaq Presario 1200-XL111 with 128 megs of RAM and suffice to say it just plain works. It boots up and displays the Simple Login Manager's (SLiM) login screen within a few seconds, it has a decent selection of software in its repository, and all the apps that I have installed load quickly.

If you are in need of something, the community is friendly and the developers are normally relatively fast at responding to feedback, fixing issues, and adding new features.

The only slight problem that I have had as of late is that the zd1211rw driver that I require for my wireless adapter is currently not available in the latest cooking version (with all of the wifi packages installed) so I currently have to use an Ethernet cable to get my laptop online. It is something that is to be expected when you don't use the stable release so I don't mind.

In conclusion, I highly recommend that you give SliTaz a try.. you won't regret it.

I was browsing Slashdot earlier today and came across an article regarding Mozilla's forced acceptance of a non-free EULA via a dialog box that restricts you from using the software until you agree to their terms.

I started complaining about this a few months ago when it initially happened to me after compiling the first release candidate of Firefox 3 and unfortunately only a few people seemed to care.

It is sort of a shame that more people are only starting to complain now that they have discovered that Ubuntu will be forcing the EULA on their copies in order to continue to use the Firefox name as per Mozilla's demands.

I would personally recommend that people remove Firefox and move over to a truly free web browser such as GNU IceCat 3.

I first found out about Laconica, the AGPL micro-blogging system created by Evan Prodromou, when I discovered identi.ca about a day or so after it was opened to the public.

I considered installing it, but I held off for a bit until I learned more about it and its development.

In the end, the federated nature of Laconica which allows users to send notices across the various installations on the Internet was the deciding factor for me to install it because I have a preference for running things from my own site instead of relying on a third party site when possible in order to minimize the need to register and share my information with them (e.g., OpenID, etc.)

The installation and configuration was fairly easy and I haven't had any issues aside from having to modify the rewrite rules in the .htaccess file slightly to get the "fancy" URLs to work correctly on this server.

I have to do a little extra work since I pull the latest patches through darcs about once a day or so which sometimes requires changes to the database. Luckily, Evan posted a useful script to use for when this need arises.

I don't plan on using the XMPP or SMS features that Laconica provides so the only thing left on my current agenda is to create a new theme for it sometime in the near future.

I was initially just going to use it for myself, but I figured that given the nature of the software others within the community might be interested in using it as well.

If you want to use it you can find it at http://laconica.linuxinfusion.com

What GNU/Linux / FLOSS podcasts does everyone recommend listening too?

I currently listen to FLOSS Weekly, Linux Basement, Linux Outlaws, The Linux Action Show, and The Linux Linux Tech Show right now and I was interested in picking up a few more decent ones if possible.

I had been listening to LUG Radio as well but unfortunately they are no longer making new podcasts.

Anyway, Definitely feel free to plug your own related podcast if you want and I'll give it a try.