Showing headlines posted by Steven_Rosenber

Me and Xorg. It's a long, dramatic tale. OK, it's not so much me and Xorg as it is my Intel 830m graphics chip and Xorg, or more specifically my Intel 82830 CGC and Xorg. In Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Alpha 2, which I've been testing with a live DVD, there are two ways to boot the disc and get actual video on systems with this graphics chip.

Firefox too mainstream for ya? Bored with Chrome or Opera? Linux users with a wandering eye can find plenty of browser alternatives, from the super-useful to niche browsers that offer moderate improvements on existing browsers like Firefox. We look at some of the “alternative” browsers on Linux that we’ve found interesting and useful over the years.

The hiring of Linux-savvy and revenue-minded exec-slash-blogger Matt Asay as the new chief operating officer of Canonical looks like a very good — and telling — move for the Isle of Man- (really London-but-don't-tell-anyone) based company that oversees the growing-by-leaps-bounds-and-all-other-ways Ubuntu Linux distribution and surrounding universe.

When Debian issues a point release, as it just did with the current Stable distribution Lenny going from 5.0.3 to 5.0.4, it's no big deal. They happen. But you don't need to throw out your Lenny install CDs or do any kind of reinstallation. The updates have been flowing to your Debian-running machine (assuming you have one) all along if you've been using the Update Manager that ships in the standard desktop, or regularly checking for updates with Aptitude or apt.

During much of the time I was running Ubuntu, I told myself that I'd be running Debian instead, if only I could get everything working. I have tried the Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 2 build, and I still appreciate so many things working out of the box on my 2002-03-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop. Even the USB Headphone Set sound module I've been using was able to play system sounds and Flash audio in Ubuntu. However, I recently was able to get that sound module to work in Debian Lenny. All I had to do was plug it into a different USB port on the Toshiba, and now it's working fine.

I ran my first Linux live CD in January 2007. I've been using free, open-source operating systems on my personal machines for much of my work for the past two years, more intensively in the last year. And right here, right now, with a collection of old and dying hardware, my main laptop being a 2002/03-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, I've moved from OpenBSD 4.4 to Ubuntus 8.04-9.10 and now to Debian Lenny, and things are going better now than I ever thought they would.

My feelings for Ubuntu have run hot and cold since I first discovered the "Linux for human beings"-nicknamed reimagination of Debian during the Dapper (6.06) era. I've had Ubuntu be the best distro on a given computer, sometimes it won't even boot, I've had terrible trouble with Intel video, and upgrade-delivered changes have forced me to rewrite scripts on the fly. OK, it's mostly Intel video, which for any user of Xorg over the past 2+ years has been an absolute nightmare.

I just saw the news that Debian Etch will no longer receive updates from the Debian Security Team as of Feb. 15, 2010. As you may or may not know, the current Stable version of Debian is Lenny, which received that "Stable" designation on Feb. 15, 2009. See the pattern? In the world of Debian, once a release is declared Stable, the previous release moves from Stable to what the project calls Old Stable, at which time it receives security patches for an additional year. That gives users a full year during which to upgrade to the current Stable distribution, which in case you haven't been reading closely is Lenny.

I'll get to Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 later, but the "safe graphics mode" boot option in that very Ubuntu live DVD helped me figure out how to get Sidux 2009-04 to boot on my Intel 82830 CGC (aka Intel 830m) graphics-running Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101. Over the course of two computing sessions I experienced both the Alpha 2 of the upcoming Ubuntu LTS release as well as the Sidux take on Debian Sid, circa early last year, both of which I've wanted to try in order to "plan" this laptop's future when I decide to leave Debian Lenny behind.

I've been approaching the point over the past year where I'm becoming much less a free, open-source software-using hobbyist, trying out the various Linux distributions and BSD projects to see how they run, and am now pretty much a regular user of one open-source operating environment, with productivity and stability being the only thing that matters.

I have a portable USB drive that has an ext3 Linux partition and a FAT Windows partition. The drive is a bit flaky due, I'm pretty sure, inadequate power from the USB connection. My solution in the next few paragraphs is less than ideal, and I've since found a better way to make my drive work.

I've been using Parted Magic to work on my disks, and after recently replacing my old 1.x live Parted Magic CD with 4.6, I'm enjoying the little things that PM brings to the project.

I was all chuffed with myself for participating in the Ubuntu process through commenting on bugs in Launchpad. Then the e-mail started to annoy me. I unsubscribed to the bugs. The mail kept coming.

Everybody's heard about the One Laptop Per Child concept, and the ups and downs of that project, its wavering connection to free, open-source software and the fact that it still hasn't reached the $100/unit price it set out to meet. But what if I were to tell you that another company not only is committed to offering a $99 laptop to the world but is already doing it. (Or so the story goes; there are problems, principally with a crucial part of this whole feel-good enterprise - actually getting the machines delivered to those who order them.)

The $20 Centon Craze 4 GB "MP3 player" I picked up a month or so ago is billed as only playing MP3 and WMA files. Well, I neither have any WMAs nor want to have them, but I decided to test which other audio formats, freedom-loving and otherwise, this cheap little device can handle.

Some people think the iPod and iTunes are podcasting and portable, digital music. Others chafe at the restrictions placed upon the user by Apple. Count me among the latter.

I've once again had issues with expired Debian keys and remedied the situation by following the instructions on the Debian Wiki.

Ever since Fab of the Linux Outlaws podcast has been gushing over his recently acquired Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, and before that really, I've been at times on the hunt for used ThinkPad laptops, never seeming to be able to "win" them on eBay.

The NTP service that uses network-time servers to keep your computer's clock from drifting is another thing that Ubuntu includes by default but must be added to Debian if you want to use it.

I do tend to go on. But here's the short version of why I'm running Debian instead of Ubuntu.