Nolan's Corner - Linux

What did they add?

sneakin — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 06:50:57 -0800

I was thinking about upgrading to OpenOffice 2.0 until I saw this:

*  app-office/openoffice-bin
      Latest version available: 2.0.0
      Latest version installed: 1.1.2
      Size of downloaded files: 775,559 kB
      Homepage:    http://www.openoffice.org/
      Description: OpenOffice productivity suite
      License:     LGPL-2

What the hell did they add to make a binary installation not even fit on a CD?

Nvidia GLX and Composite

sneakin — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:29:21 -0700

I just upgraded my NVidia drivers only to find that GLX didn't work. After some fiddling I thought I'd take a gander at the new docs for the GLX driver. Near the bottom it mentions that GLX won't work if the composite extension is loaded too. It recommended that the AllowGLXWithComposite option be set to True. That got GLX working making me happy.

The Windows Key

sneakin — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 06:49:48 -0700

I did a switch back to WindowMaker, and after having a useless window key for so long, I finally figured a decent use of the window key. It does nothing but window management functions when chorded with another key. I setup the following bindings:

I changed what was Alt+Tab to Window+Tab.
Window+number switchs to a numbered window.
Ctrl+Window+number switches workspaces.
Window+F4 closes the window.
Window+F11 and Window+F12 call up WindowMaker's desktop menus
Window+H hides the window and Window+M minimizes
etc.

If you've caught the gist of this rebinding, anything window manager related got a window key chord. I think this is an extremely proper use of this key. If only Microsoft would expand its use to more than just popping up the start menu.

Linux's Greatest Feature

sneakin — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 00:21:10 -0700

I want to bring more attention to this feature. As you may know I'm stuck on lowly dialup that only costs me $6.95/month. One of the great benefits of dialup is that I get disconnected periodically. This wouldn't be worth blogging about if there wasn't something bugging me. What's bothering me is that Linux DOES NOT disconnect those sockets, while Windows does.

Since Windows is the pearl here, I'll describe what it does. Say I have Psi and Thunderbird open, and I get disconnected. Windows immediately tells them that their sockets are toast, and the application will try to reconnect since it lost the connection.

Under Linux this doesn't happen. I get disconnected, and I have to wait for the sockets to TIMEOUT. So I end up with Psi spewing things into a blackhole, and Thunderbird flat out screws up and can barely function.

A long while back I made a post about this to the Linux PPP mailing list. The reason that was laid out is that sockets and the devices are in seperate layers so a socket doesn't know what device it is on. That's nice if you have an ethernet cable powering a static IP, and you like to unplug it just for shits. It's not so nice when you're on a dynamic IP and well, those connections just don't make any sense anymore.

To fix this Linux needs to tell the socket layer "Hey, this IP we just had for this device is toast. Close on up." Is this so hard to ask before I turn into a kernel hacker which I don't want to make my cup of tea at the moment?

JabIt

sneakin — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:38:05 -0700

I'm sure most of you have heard about the Aeronix ZipIt instant messaging appliance. It's a $99 embedded Linux handheld with Wifi that comes with software for IM. Out of the box it supports up to 99 concurrent AOL, Yahoo, and MSN IM accounts. So it's currently lacking any kind of Jabber support. Other than the enjoyment of tearing this thing apart and loading it up with my own software, this would make a nice device to carry around:

The Zipit is marketed under brandnames that include ZipitWireless and K-Byte, and is currently available at Target and TigerDirect, priced at $99, in colors that include white, silver, blue, red, and pink. It includes an 802.11b WiFi radio, 16-color greyscale LCD with QVGA (320x240) resolution, and a thumb keyboard with rubber buttons. Also included is a stereo DAC (digital audio converter) connected to a speaker and headphone jack. [LinuxDevices.com]

Not stated in that description is the 2 Mb of flash and 16 Mb of RAM that's available. So if anyone wants to take a jab to JabIt then the space is pretty tight. Besides basic IM, being able to use data forms with it would be interesting.

Damn, This Sucks

sneakin — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 18:46:12 -0700

I got a request about a good micro Linux distro to use that could meet these requirements:

free - $100
for a p3 866
basically a gateway/firewall
highly configurable rules
good traffic views (real and historic)
vpn support
web interface
ids would be nice, but not necessary

The Linux Router Project immediately came to mind. So I dashed off to Google to find its page. I found that it is a dead project and a rant by the author. Here's the part describing the injustice:

My many contributions to the computing community has reaped very little personal benefit for myself. As I now struggle to pay the bills I can not help but feel quite pissed off at the state of affairs, for myself and the other authors who contributed massive amounts of time and quality work, only to have it whored by companies not willing to give back dime one to the people that actually created what it is they sell. Acknowledgement and referral would have at least been acceptable. Few companies do even that.

Care to tell me what Embeddix (for one) is based off of? Ever offer me work Caldera? Even when I asked?

Well actually I'm glad they didn't as I would hate to think I could have benefited those scumbags any further...but I think you, the reader, gets the point I'm making.

A big shame needs to be done to those companies. I can only shake my head at the wrong that occured.

I do hope Dave Cinege has been doing alright these past two years.

Sony Beware

sneakin — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 01:59:25 -0700

After playing with a Sony Playstation Portable I thought I could duplicate the background used in the media player (OS?). Here's a screenshot of what I have so far overlayed on top of KDE's default background:

Now all that's needed is some code cleanup and a plugin architecture for KDE's kdesktop and this can be my wallpaper.

A Time To Checkout

sneakin — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 07:11:39 -0700

Update: Justin Kirby had a link to FUSE up on his blog. FUSE is a user-space file system module for Linux and has had a couple of modules developed that implement the functionality described below. It may not be exactly the same though. The two modules are:

The Original...

So the word on the street is that Linus Torvalds is giving up BitKeeper. I hope he does his research well and decides that it's time for version control to make it into the kernel. It would be hella convienent if every file on a file system maintained its history. So for example:

# ls -l /etc/passwd/*
/etc/passwd:
   passwd.20021022-0000
   passwd.20030430-0000
   passwd.20030430-0001      ->   /etc/passwd
# cp /etc/passwd/passwd.20030430-0000 /etc/passwd
# ls -l /etc/passwd/*
/etc/passwd:
   passwd.20021022-0000
   passwd.20030430-0000      ->   /etc/passwd
   passwd.20030430-0001
   passwd.20050411-0000      -> passwd.20030430-0000

That seems like it would be pretty easy to use and not loose stuff—ever. Retrieving an older revision would only be a copy or move, maintaining history as appropriate. So Linus, here's your chance. Make a version control system to kill version control systems.

Do use a better name scheme though.