The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its 2013 Giving Guide, a resource for conscientious shoppers looking for geeky gifts that respect users' freedom. Many holiday shoppers will be turning to gadgets and online services as gifts for friends and family, but these gifts are often rife with proprietary software, anti-features, or Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), all of which restrict how the gift can be used.

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Russian robot developer R.bot will soon launch a pair of low-cost telepresence robots in North America. The Synergy Mime and larger Synergy Swan use an attached BYOD Android smartphone or tablet for display, camera, microphone, and wireless communications and control functions, and are being offered for a limited time to Android developers for $250 and $500, respectively.

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When the Raspberry Pi was developed, founder Eben Upton envisioned that the low-cost computer would do its finest work in the classroom, teaching kids about computing. But as more units sold, Raspberry Pi developed a strong, distinctive niche among adult makers, a fruitful group that nonetheless doesn’t really have much in common with a younger age bracket that can be hard to reach.

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Jolla's first smartphone officially goes on sale today! The device, of course, is running the MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS with Wayland and there's Android app compatibility.

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Acer's C720 Chromebook is basically everything you could want from a $249 laptop, but apparently the company thinks it can still bring that price down a bit further. Today it's introducing the Chromebook C720-2848, a $199.99 "entry-level" model that's nearly identical to the already-cheap C720. They differ in one key area, though: the C720-2848 includes 2GB of RAM, whereas the $249 model offers twice that amount. That memory reduction seems to account for the $50 difference in price, as they appear to match up on all other specifications.

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• irefox OS gets performance boost, wider distribution
• Chromium OS Vanilla Is a Plain-Jane Browser-Based Distro
• The Utilite Linux Mini PC
• 3 Embedded Linux Projects Built With the Yocto Project

• RIP Ubuntu Edge, but Ubuntu is still coming to smartphones in 2014
• Ubuntu Edge smartphone misses crowdfunding goal by $19 million
• With $12.8M raised, Ubuntu Edge campaign fails, but it’s not all in vain
• Ubuntu Edge Campaign Admits $32 Million Goal Was 'Crazy'
• LG signs up for a Firefox phone - Anything to get away from Android

pcworld.com: The glorious era of PC stardom is over. Once the belle of the technology ball, desktops and laptops now share the spotlight with smartphones and tablets, and the embrace of mobile devices by consumers has provoked deep changes in the computing landscape.

phoronix.com: There's only two and a half days left to Canonical's Ubuntu Edge crowd-funding campaign for building a high-end smart-phone running Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the campaign is still about twenty million dollars short of its $32M goal.

trustedreviews.com: Initial stock of the Firefox OS ZTE Open smartphone has sold out on eBay in the UK and US.

• Is the Ubuntu Edge phone doomed?
• The Ubuntu Edge campaign is in trouble, and here’s why
• Ubuntu Edge Smartphone Funding Tapers Off

zdnet.com: Telstra has said that it is looking beyond iOS, Android, Windows, and BlackBerry to Firefox and Ubuntu for future phones.

muktware.com: Aaron Seigo, a KDE developer, says that the ambitious KDE tablet Vivaldi are shipping to the team for quality testing.

• Raspberry Pi Camera Module Review – Eye Pi
• Home automation kit includes Arduino, RasPi dev boards
• Install FreeBasic For Beaglebone Black in Ubuntu and Debian

zdnet.com: Yes, the PC market is going to hell in a hand-basket -- except for the sub-$300 market where the Linux-based Chromebook is leading the way to growth.