I’m not an expert on this subject matter, nor a Debian developer, but I do love Debian. I couldn’t help but be disheartened by the results of the vote on firmware in Lenny.
Assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise.
BAH! Seriously, what the hell are you guys thinking? If I wanted this sort of crap I’d use Ubuntu! Sure it’s just firmware, but why not distribute the NVIDIA driver too? Afterall it hasn’t be proven in court as to whether it complies with the GPL or not.
How hard is it to just release Lenny with the current GPL-compliant open source firmware and let end users install other binary blobs at their own discretion? I just don’t understand how you can distribute that which you have no idea what it does. Maybe I’m missing something, but this just seems so wrong.
Well this week I created my very first DistroWatch Weekly as the new editor of the popular newsletter.
While some readers complained that Ubuntu is getting too much coverage, I think that overall most enjoyed the newsletter.
I’m looking forward to compiling the DWW for next week’s release!
-c
I don’t have much call to view flash content, but thought I’d test out this new fancy (alpha) 64 bit flash plugin from Adobe.
The tarball contains only one file, libflashplayer.so. Extract this to ~/.mozilla/plugins and restart firefox.
NOTE: You must remove any previous versions of flash before doing this. I didn’t have to cause I didn’t already have it installed.
After this it was listed in about:plugins and it was time to test youtube. Surprise, surprise, it just worked. It’s almost wrong.
If only they had open sourced the damn thing, we would have had 64 bit years ago.
-c
First we needed a phone line to dial the Internet, but we couldn’t use the phone. Then we got ADSL which let us log on and use the phone, now we have VOIP so we don’t even need the phone!
Problem is, it has always been too expensive. Every now and then I do the maths compared to a regular Telstra line and Internet connection and it would always come in higher (by around $10 per month).
But now Internode (my favourite ISP) has dropped the price of their Naked ADSL2+ plans, so that now it is actually worthwhile dropping that line rental tax.
$49 a month gets you 5GB download at ADSL2+ speeds (or $59 for 10GB) plus VOIP with all the fancy features like dial-in and $10 worth of included calls.
Can I get an Amen!?
I repeat, for a measly $49 a month you can have awesome Internet and cheap calls with VOIP. Hello?
Unfortunately, my phone line is connected to a sub-exchange and I cannot get ADSL2. Dammit. So for now I must continue forking over $74 a month to have ADSL1 and VOIP (including the Telstra line rental).
So please, for me, go and switch to Internode’s Naked Extreme ADSL2+ with their Nodephone2-Special service. Get on the VOIP bandwagon and ditch Telstra for good, you’ll be glad you did!
-c
P.S. If you can’t get Naked where you are, then honestly, go get a freakin’ room.
P.P.S. Seriously though, if you can’t get Naked where you are, then I recommend going with regular Internode ADSL and Nodephone. It’s still worth it and the quality is brilliant.
Wine’s pretty good these days. On its own it can install and run programs like Microsoft Office under Linux. This is thanks, in part, to contributions made to the Wine project from the Codeweavers gang.
Their flagship product, Crossover, is a commercial product based on Wine which lets you install many products from the Microsoft platform.
Mike sent me an email that for the next 24 hours or so, Codeweavers are offering Crossover Professional and Crossover Games for FREE.
Update: You don’t need to register your email, just download the version that you want.
Oh, and there’s an OS X version too.
-c
Prior to the purchase of brand new workstations at work, Justin and Andy were working from Macbook Pro laptops. We had these Matrox DualHead2Go boxes which took a video signal and split it in two, for the purposes of connecting two monitors to a non-dualhead video card. I cannot tell you how much of a pain it was getting not only DVI output working under Linux through the proprietary ATI driver (although now that I know how, it’s pretty easy), but also getting it to talk to these Matrox boxes.. modelines.. resolutions.. triple displays.. gahh..
Never-the-less, I did get it to work. The final setup consisted of the laptop screen being enabled as the primary desktop, then the secondary desktop through the DVI output connecting to the Matrox box at a resolution of 2560×1024, which the box then split across two LCD screens. One of the problems was that the DPI resolution for the dualscreen setup was very wrong and as a result the fonts on the monitors were TINY.
So, the next trick was to tell the secondary monitor (the dualview box) what DPI it should run at (in this case, 96×96).
Even on my main box at work using the NVIDIA driver on a dualscreen setup, the DPI is wrong.
chris@gentoo ~ $ xdpyinfo |grep -A1 dimensions
dimensions: 3360×1050 pixels (948×303 millimeters)
resolution: 90×88 dots per inch
Should you need to specify your DPI too, here’s how you can!
Continue reading ‘Putting DPI into perspective’
The NSW Government is considering putting Linux on the laptops for students as a part of the Rudd Government’s “Education Revolution” plan. Good idea!
But you know what will happen, Microsoft will step in and offer XP and Office for cheap (or perhaps even FREE), in order to stop Linux from gaining any momentum in the market. They will also offer discounts to NSW Government Departments on their Microsoft products, if they don’t adopt Linux on these notebooks.
The Victorian Government struck such a deal and as a result, laptops with Windows are cheaper than the Linux version - which comes with a free operating system!
How do you complete with that?
Ever since I heard about the Openmoko, a completely open mobile phone, I was really interested. Open hardware, open software, Linux, handy little device that might be useful? Awesome.
The latest developer model, the Neo Freerunner GTA02, has been available for a few months now and Jason bought one (which means I get to play with it). Originally the moko was developed using GTK, but now there are lots of different images for it.
Recently, Qt Extended (formally Qt Embedded pre Nokia purchase of Trolltech) released an image for the moko based on their 4.4.1 codebase. I thought I’d check it out and I was pretty impressed!
Note, that if you’re following this, make sure you get the correct version for your moko. The Freerunner is GTA02, while the original Neo1973 is GTA01.
First I had to download the kernel image and the root image (for the GTA02, of course).
Continue reading ‘The openmoko is sooo Qt’
New kernel is out, yay!
Of particular interest to me is using kexec as a way to suspend the machine, although it is only 32bit at the moment 
There are plenty of other neat new features.
This morning I turned on my openSUSE work machine and was greeted (as I often am) with a message to update the system.
Today’s message was special however, and perhaps one for The Daily WTF.
I wonder whether “Do not warn me again” means
Don’t tell me when there’s a non-existent update again
Still, it seemed pretty important so I did it straight away!
It’s good to know that I’m protected from security threats so real, they cannot be named 
P.S. If you’re wondering what awesome icon set I’m using, it’s Oxy-GNOME.