Dork talk...

Configuring Thinkpad X300 internal mic on Ubuntu 9.10

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:45:00 GMT

Long time no speak... Glad to be back : )
Unfortunately, it's to share some of my findings with configuring Ubuntu on a Thinkpad X300, which means I had to spend some time figuring out the correct settings... But let's cut down to the chase: configuring the X300 internal mic to work with your favorite "sound capturing" program, in our case, let's say skype.

First, you'd need to have the "backports-alsa-karmic" for your version of Ubuntu, whichever it is: linux-backports-alsa-karmic-generic or linux-backports-alsa-karmic-generic-pae
Also make sure you have the package "gnome-alsamixer" installed, as this will play a crucial part in the config...

Then, it's a 2-part operation:

1. Manually loading ALSA
This means editing the /etc/pulse/default.pa to add a line similar to:
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0
Upon restart, you will see notice a new entry in the "Input" tab of the "Sound preferences", named "Internal Audio", as opposed to the "Internal Audio Analog Stereo" that existed before. See the screenshot below, where you'll notice that the input level gauge recognizes I'm currently speaking to my laptop)))

2. Configure ALSA
This is done via the GUI you start with Applications > Sound & Video > GNOME ALSA Mixer. The important part is to have the Rec checkbox ticked under "Capture". Once again, screenshot below...

After that, your application should be able to capture sound from the internal mic...

Upgrading to Fedora 11

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:26:00 +0100

Fedora 11 has been released for a while now. The upgrade from my Fedora 10 installation was relatively pain-free and Fedora 11 runs happily on my system. Upgrading did not bring any stunning revolutions and, as I'm not using ext4 yet, the most noticeable change from my point of view is certainly the 20 seconds start-up.

Now, some forewords of wisdom...
WARNING1: It is not possible to upgrade directly from Fedora 9 to Fedora 11. You must upgrade to Fedora 10 first. Do not attempt an upgrade from Fedora 9 to Fedora 11!
WARNING2: Make sure you backup important data before you upgrade. It does have to be complicated: use rsync or tar to do this.
WARNING3: The yum update step should NOT run inside a graphical session (Gnome or KDE or whatever you favorite GDM is). This could result in a unusable install. Updates should be run in a vty, runlevel 3, or a screen session.
That being said, let's get into the details!

1. Prepare for the upgrade
First we need to upgrade the RPM package via yum update rpm. During this step, I encountered the error:

[nicolas@munin /TEMP]# yum update rpm
(...)
rpmdb: Program version 4.7 doesn't match environment version 4.5
error: db4 error(-30971) from dbenv->open: DB_VERSION_MISMATCH:
Database environment version mismatch
(...)

The solution was to clean up the install *manually* prior to updating RPM:

yum clean all
rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm --rebuilddb
yum -y update
yum update rpm

If you notice that a new kernel got installed during yum -y update, you have to reboot the system. After the reboot, log in as root again either directly or via sudo.
Finally, we need to clean the yum cache:

yum clean all

2. Upgrade
Here is the upgrade process itself. We can do this with preupgrade, which will also take care of your RPMFusion packages and start a nice handy GUI. Install preupgrade, then start the utility:

yum install preupgrade
preupgrade

The preupgrade wizard will then start... Just follow the indications of the screen and you'll be off with a flashy new Fedora 11 installation!

SSD Optimization on Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:11:00 +0100

For a while now, I've been searching documentation about Solid State Drives (SSD). They are still quite expensive when compared to traditional SATA drives - 40 times more expensive in fact :), but they offer good performances and as their prices will keep falling down, they will make a better alternative. Among other advantages, they are shock-resistant, consume less resources than traditional HD and have very fast access times.
My X300 is currently fitted with a 64GB Samsung SSD that works fine with either Fedora or Ubuntu. That said, the performance and life expectency of an SSD drive can be significantly improved by a few tweaks.

1. Mount volumes using the noatime option
By default on Linux, the last accessed time of files will be logged. All these additional write operations can reduce the life of the disk. The noatime mount option will turn this off. Most Linux distros use the relatime option by default. For your SSD partitions (presumably formatted as ext3), replace relatime with noatime in /etc/fstab.
PS: you need a reboot for these changes to take effect.

2. Change the I/O scheduler
The default I/O scheduler in Linux is cfq, which stands for "completely fair queuing". It works quite well with standard HD but since SSDs are a different sort of beast, noop or deadline are probably more suited to them.
Personally, I've opted for noop. Simply added “elevator=noop” to the kernel parameters in my boot loader’s config file - typically /boot/grub/menu.lst. Here is the Fedora section on my laptop:

title Fedora Core 10
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.x86_64 ro rhgb quiet elevator=noop
initrd /initrd-2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.x86_64.img
quiet

Once again, this type of change need a restart to be fully effective.

3. Prefer ramdisk for temporary filesystems
This is something I've been using for a while, even with standard HD, for machines where the amount of available RAM is important. For standard HD, the reasoning was that reading the RAM was faster than reading the disk. With SSD, this performance argument can be discussed, but still, you will increase your disk's life expectancy by moving temporary filesystems that are frequently read to the RAM. Another advantage is that these filesystems are removed then re-mounted at every reboot, meaning that you are less likely to have to clean them up manually.
Again, the changes are to be made in /etc/fstab. Here is a sample from my Ubuntu fstab:

$ grep tmpfs /etc/fstab
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777,size=1024M 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777,size=512M 0 0

Limiting the size of these tmpfs directly in /etc/fstab is likely a bit of an overkill, but these temporary filesystems (especially /tmp) can be filled up pretty quickly (by an application core dump for instance) and you surely don't want to see all your RAM eaten up in such case...

Configuring Thinkpad X300 internal mic on Ubuntu 9.04

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:28:00 +0100

I have to admit it took me several tries to have the internal microphone working on my Thinkpad X300. In case you're looking for some working settings gnome-volume-control, here are the one that work on my Jaunty config:

NB: the Skype options that do work with the above settings are:

Display system resources with conky

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 3 May 2009 19:51:00 +0100

To keep on with the applications/tools I could not live without (see below for bootchart), here comes a quick post on conky.
Coming from a sysadmin background, I appreciate having a constant view on the OS metrics like CPU and memory usage, disk space left, etc... There are plenty of tools available out there to do that, but none as simple and as flexible as conky. I like it so much that it actually runs in the background of all my Linuxes (desktops as well as servers). My main usage is sysadmin-oriented, but there are plenty of other functionalities available, like displaying the weather forecasts, or interfacing with Amarok or Rhythmbox to show the details of the song currently playing, etc... the possibilities are infinite.

All you have have to do is create a ~/.conkry file in the user's home directory and have your your session manager start the conky deamon automatically. Below is a an exemple how of to do that for the Ubuntu Gnome desktop, with the resulting little panel on the bottom left of the destop:

Analyzing the boot sequence with bootchart

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 3 May 2009 16:51:00 +0100

Boot times have become quite a hot topic, especially since the release of Ubuntu 9.04, which emphasised on shorter boot times - "some as short as 25 seconds" as per the official announcement.
The easiest tool to profile and analyse a machine's boot sequence is probably bootchart. It will run on all Unix distros and will generate easy-to-read graphs.

Basics on using bootchart on Ubuntu
The bootchart package is available in the Ubuntu repositories, so it can be installed either through apt-get or Synaptic. After you install it, all you have to do to generate your first bootchart is restart (dead easy, eh?!). The graph is stored in /var/log/bootchart as a PNG file. Each bootchart is listed with the hostname, date and a number sorting charts generated on the same day. An example bootchart will look like this:

This graphically shows you what your computer is doing in terms of CPU, IO, and processes during the boot procedure. The chart itself contains 4 sections:
-description of the system
-CPU graph
-I/O graph
-a Gantt-like chart showing the details and sequence of the running processes

By default, bootchart stops recording when it has detected gdm has started, so be aware that the resulting charts are unlikely to include the extra time gdm takes to start up and show you a usable desktop. But usually by that point the init is done and the remaining optimizations need to be done in the window manager (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc...) rather than in the system init scripts. The most immediately useful purpose of bootchart is to objectively discover the boot time, and where the bottlenecks are. For example, the boot chart below, captured on the same machine with the same OS and parameters shows a total boot time of 14 seconds, which isn't bad, but still almost double than above!!

Ideally, you'd want your init to max out the CPU at 100% as much as possible. If the CPU is not pegged at 100% and there is a high I/O wait, that usually means your CPU is idling while it is waiting for the disk to return data. But if your CPU is idle and the I/O are limited, you'd want to investigate... Basically, in the case above, you'll quickly notice a 5 seconds "dead zone", with 2 suspicious processes named "resume" and "sleep". In fact, this 5 seconds delay makes up for most of the difference between the two boot sequences.
So where can they come from and what should be done to optimize the boot time? Well, first you'll notice the 5 seconds sleep occurs before the rc scripts, so no need to fiddle with your startup scripts. Then you'll notice they come in sequence after the console_setup, which points you to the initramfs scripts. Once that is said, the solution is obvious: the "sleep 5" comes from the initramfs script trying to mount the RAM. Having a look at the logs will confirm this and give some indications as to what is failing. This behavior could typically be caused by the fact that you have somehow modified your swap partition (new kernel setup? swap partition resize?) and thus initramfs-tools cannot find the partition through the old UUID...

PS: Once you are done playing with bootchart and with your optimizations, you'll probably want to un-install the package so you don't keep writing PNG files on every boot...

Thinkpad Trackpoint middle button - edit for Ubuntu 9.04

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:14:00 +0100

After yesterday's update on evdev on Fedora 10, I starting wondering if this could be portable on Ubuntu to configure the old EmulateWheel functionalities. evdev was indeed ported to Ubuntu, so, provided the version was compatible (>2.1) then there was no reason why this would not be valid... And indeed it is! It also offers the huge advantage ofnot having to play with the xorg.conf file, which is always a risk given it impacts the behaviour of the whole X server.
So here is an example of how this can be done:
1. create a file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi with a content like:2. restart HAL, check the config is taken into account then restart your X server

Thinkpad Trackpoint middle button - edit for F10

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:34:00 +0100

It's a sort of edit to my previous post - see just below for the original story ;)
But it's probably worth another separate post...

It still evolves around the topic of configuring the "how wonderful!" middle button horizontal scrolling. I was not so sure how I had worked it out on Fedora 10, so I just rebooted to this OS and confirmed that the tweak with the "mouse" driver does not work on this distro. As said below, it *does* work with Fedora 9 though. What happens is that this button is "emulated" via HAL. No point looking for the xorg.conf file as there should not be any such file...

To configure the TrackPoint scroll, you have to:
1. Edit the config file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi
Basically, just add lines similar to the following in the relevant part of the file:
... by relevant, I mean you'll have to make sure you're in the correct section of the file as markup languages are sensitive to that... If you don't see what this means, have a look at the markup language article on Wikipedia.
2. Then restart HAL and check the modifications appear among the
device options that you can check via the output of lshal. Typically:
[nicolas@munin ~]$ lshal | grep TrackPoint
info.product = 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' (string)
input.product = 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' (string)
3. Finally restart the X server and enjoy some nice and smooth vertical scrolling!

NDLR: once again, from the above extract you'll notice the FDI file does not enable horizontal scrolling... same reason as below: Firefox would understand it has a backward/forward instruction...
For reference, here is the original article on Thinkwiki.
I am also aware that it used to *not* work on earlier versions of evdev, so you'll have to make you run at least version 2.1.

Thinkpad Trackpoint middle button scrolling

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:22:00 +0100

I've been asked recently my prefered settings for the pointing devices on Thinkpads... I'm addicted to the Trackpoint (the little red strawberry encrusted between the G, H and B keys) and the Trackpad (the flat sensitive surface also referred to as touchpad) generally disrupts me as I tend to accidentally touch it with the palm of my hand, so I generally disable it from the BIOS.
Also, I find the middle button quite practical for scrolling. This can be configured via the xorg mouse input driver. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible with recent Linux distros (typically Fedora starting from version 9 or also Ubuntu from 8.10), the evdev driver is taking precedence, even though another driver is explicitly configured in xorg.conf (explanations from Red Hat developers can be found in this bug opened against Fedora 9). The correct solution is to disable this auto-detection by turning the "AutoAddDevices" server flag to "false".

Here are the relevant sections in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Trackpoint"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "off"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Please note from the above that the middle button is only enabled for vertical scrolling. I'm barely using horizontal scrolling and it gets interpreted in Firefox as backwards/forwards which can get quickly annoying : ) Hence its being commented.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace disabled

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:13:00 +0100

Yes, apparently, they have done it, despite all the Linux fanatics shouting this would be a regression just to please newbies that are not familiar with it...
The relevant extract from the Release Notes reads:

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is now disabled, to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo. Users who do want this function can enable it in their xorg.conf, or via the command dontzap –disable.

Well, at least there's a positive since you can install an additional package that will re-enable this powerful key combination to restart the X server when needed.
Just to make it completely clear: the dontzap package is NOT installed by default, which means you will have to install it from the depots before enabling it!

Poor Intel graphic cards performance with Jaunty?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:35:00 +0100

Apparently, some users have reported poor performance from the latest Ubuntu distribution with Intel graphics cards. This was not the case on my x300 equiped with an Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller: with the distro's default xserver-xorg-video-intel glxgears had results around 750 FPS, (re)installing the oldest version 2.4 caused the glxgears scores to fall to approximately 230 FPS per sample interval...
Also the tweak around EXA/UXA had no effect on my config.

For reference:
Troubleshooting Intel graphics performance issues
Reverting the Jaunty Xorg intel driver to 2.4
Glxgears is not a Benchmark

Ubuntu 9.04 upgrade on Thinkpad X300

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:24:00 +0100

The new release of Unbuntu - 9.04, has been released thursday. Having used their version 8.10 for a while now, I could not resist to download the alternate ISO installer yesterday and proceed with the upgrade. Here are the different steps...

First, copy the installer to the directory of your choice, mount the ISO image and start the upgrade:

After that, it's all graphic...

A little reminder that some of the 3rd party sources have been disabled during the upgrade:

... before the upgrade resumes:

Almost finished as it will clean up the installation from obsolete packages:

Confirm the packages you want to un-install:

And that's done!
Edit your boot menu manually if like me you're using a dual boot system, then reboot.

After the reboot, confirm the kernel/release you're running:

A simple upgrade with a happy ending...

Thinkpad keys on Fedora 10

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:40:00 +0100

Quick update on the last post: the Thinkpad special keys are not all working. Basically, the ones that do work are the ones the are *directly* connected to the hardware: the Thinklight key, the volume keys, etc... The Fn+Fxx keys that are emulated via the X server have no effect, for instance the ones related to the screen brightness or the Fn+F2 to lock the session.

Taking the example of the brightness control keys, they appear configured in the X server mapping:
[nicolas@munin ~]$ xmodmap -pk|grep XF86MonBrightness
232 0x1008ff03 (XF86MonBrightnessDown) (...)
233 0x1008ff02 (XF86MonBrightnessUp) (...)
Experimenting with xev, it appears that the signals sent via the keys are indeed captured, i.e. the X server is aware that the special keys have been pressed and that the laptop should adjust the screen brightness accordingly... but still, nothing happens.

At the end of the day, the problem appears related to the way KDE interfaces with HAL (modern distros like Fedora 10 rely on it to configure the kernel input devices. Xorg in turn gets these key events through the evdev driver and will no longer try to take control of the input devices away from the kernel - NDLR).

Googling around, several bugs exists on various conbinations of KDE/kernel... but the good news is that the issue does not occur with GNOME. I've tested it with a Live Fedora distro, just to be sure, then opted to un-install KDE / install GNOME.

Install guide: Fedora 10 on a Thinkpad X300

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:13:00 GMT

I've been the lucky owner of a Thinkpad x300 for a couple of weeks now... Brilliant ultra-portable laptop!! Just trying to summarize some of the installation/configuration steps I went through to get the machine working with my favourite softwares.

Almost everything worked out-of-the-box:
Hard disk password protection
Fingerprint reader
Wifi
Bluetooth
Webcam
Trackpoint/Touchpad
USB & USB mouse
Integrated keyboard light
DVD burner
Suspend/Hibernate

Then came configuration time...

1. Install Firefox
Then added my usual plugins: Adblock Plus, Foxmarks, LastPass

2. Configure SUDO so that my user is granted "superuser" authorizations and does not have to type in the root password each time
This was done via:
[nicolas@hector ~]$ su
Password:
[root@hector nicolas]# echo 'nicolas ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

3. Setup YUM
For applications that are against Fedora licensing guidelines (typically MP3 and DVD players that will rely on proprietary formats), a 3rd party repository will have to be configured. For Fedora 10 this will be RPMFusion.
To set up the RPMFusion repositories:
[nicolas@hector ~]$ sudo rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
[nicolas@hector ~]$ sudo rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
[nicolas@hector ~]$ sudo rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-*

4. Media players
For the installation of MPLAYER through yum (RPMFusion enabled!):
[nicolas@hector TEMP]$ sudo yum install mplayer mplayer-gui gecko-mediaplayer mencoder
For VLC:
[nicolas@hector TEMP]$ sudo yum install vlc

5. Fonts
The "official" source for the Microsoft's TrueType fonts for Linuxes can be found here. Apparently, there's been a request for RPMFusion to include this package. But for the moment, you have to build your own RPM package using the msttcorefonts SPEC file provided by the above web site.
[nicolas@hector TEMP]$ sudo rpmbuild -bb msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec
[nicolas@hector TEMP]$ sudo rpm -ivh $HOME/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm

That said, Fedora encourages the use of the Liberation Fonts. They should get installed by default, but in case they're not, yum can install them:
[nicolas@hector TEMP]$ sudo yum install liberation-fonts

6. Adobe Flash
There's an option here. In short, the traditionnal way is to install the plugin nspluginwrapper as explained in the Fedora Wiki. That said, Adobe also offer an alpha version of a 64-bit plugin. Since it has been released a couple of months ago without any major issues being reported so far, I've opted for the latter. Full details can be found on the Adobe Labs web site.

Both installation methods gave good results on my machine. I've decided to stick with the alpha 64-bit package and installed the extracted libflashplayer.so to the system-wide /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ rather than my user's ~/.mozilla/plugins/:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ ll libfl*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nicolas nicolas 3729613 2009-03-27 08:28 libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nicolas nicolas 9543400 2009-02-03 04:03 libflashplayer.so
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo cp ./libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
[nicolas@hector Download]$ ll /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libfl*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9543400 2009-03-27 08:39 /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

NB: T&C's from Adobe read as follows:
Important: Installing the Flash Player prerelease means you have accepted the terms of the Adobe Software License Agreement. This is prerelease software, not a final release.

Here's how the alpha 64-bit plugin displayed in Firefox:
File name: libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22

7. Adobe Acrobat
To view PDF files, Fedora includes evince, however you may prefer to install the Adobe plugin.
This can be done via YUM after setting up the Adobe repository:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo rpm -ivh
http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo yum install AdobeReader_enu

NB: Above steps are valid for the English version (the enu suffix). To list the different languages supported in Adobe's YUM repository, run the following command:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ yum list AdobeReader*
Other languages can be installed as above, just change the suffix of the AdobeReader package accordingly.

8. Sun Java
Once again, Fedora comes with a default OpenJDK, but you can download the Sun Java.
To do so, get the Java package from:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
Select Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 13 (or the full JDK). Then pick the "Linux x64" version. After that, select your language and view/accept the license agreement. On the next page, select the RPM option:
Java SE Runtime Environment 6u13
jre-6u13-linux-x64-rpm.bin 18.20 MB (64-bit users)

To install:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo sh jre-6u13-linux-x64-rpm.bin

Finally, to setup the Sun JRE:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/default/bin/java 20000

The Mozilla browser plugin for 64-bit users:
[nicolas@hector Download]$ sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 /usr/java/jre1.6.0_13/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so 20000

NB: When updating the JRE package, simply download the newest RPM package and install as above. There will be no need to reset alternatives, as those settings should remain intact.

9. Virtual memory (VM) filesystems
There many good reasons to use tmpfs, Daniel Robbins summarized them brilliantly (and much better than I would...) on developerworks.

Additionally, for my personal use, I like the possibility to:
-clean up the content of tempfs filesystems at each reboot
-store sensible data (typically encryption keys) on such a transient media
-preserve my SSD life expectancy

By default with Fedora 10, /dev/shm is already a tmpfs. So I just add the following 2 lines to my /etc/fstab to make /tmp and /var/tmp two other ramdisk-like filesystems:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,nodev,nosuid,mode=1777,size=1024M 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777,size=512M 0 0

On my other laptop (with a traditional HD), the use of ramdisks FS increased the global performances of the machine. This is not guaranteed on an x300 with an SSD, but would have to be checked/confirmed.

8 millions downloads for Firefox 3

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 08:59:00 +0100

Looks like they've done it.
Mozilla announced that they now hold the Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Their web site also shows that the total number of downloads of nearly 30 millions.

Well done Mozilla!

Synchronize Firefox bookmarks across different computers?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:01:00 +0100

If you use Firefox on more than one computer, Foxmarks may become your preferred Firefox extension. Install it on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized.
I've been using it for quite a while to sync my bookmarks between my office Windows workstation and my personal machines and it is just works a treat! You can synchronize across platforms (Windows and Linux in my case) and across Firefox versions - provided you have the correct version of Foxmarks.

Faster GNOME menus

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:38:00 +0100

If like me you appreciate fast menus, with no delay at the opening, then here is a little tip you may find useful. By default, GNOME menus appear with a short delay. To get rid of this, add the parameter in your .gtkrc-2.0 file.
For instance, from a terminal:

cd
touch .gtkrc-2.0
echo "gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0"| tee -a .gtkrc-2.0

Finally, restart your session (typically CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE). You should notice a nice speed boost when browsing any GNOME menu.

Mozilla to set new downloads record?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:47:00 +0100

"With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before", at least according to the Mozilla Foundation. They are so confident about it that they are aiming to set a Guinness World Record for software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3 - the rub being that there is still no such record officially set.
And today is the big day!

You can take part in the operation and follow it here. If they get anywhere close to their target, this could probably get really busy. But the download sites are still running - see Mozilla Europe or Mozilla.org for instance.

Ubuntu goes mobile?

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:07:00 +0100

Canonical, the editor of Ubuntu, seem ready to launch a version of their Linux OS for mobile platforms (called Netbook Remix). Mark Shuttleworth (Chief executive of Canonical Ltd, founder of the Ubuntu project) told the Guardian recently: "We're working with Intel, which produces chips custom-made for this sector".

It seems that Canonical has been working on this project for months and made it a priority. That said, the new version of Ubuntu is barely mentioned in this interview, but it's a tantalizing prospect: SUSE looks really nice on the HP Mininotes and I'm eager to see Ubuntu running on a mobile platform.

PS: nice view on the London Eye from your desk, Mark!

OoXML interoperability under scrutiny

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:01:00 +0100

Becta, the British Government's lead agency for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in education, has recently complained to the European Commission about the interoperability of Microsoft OoXML standards.

The two main concerns regard the lack of interoperability of the Office 2007 products, and the anti-competitive licenses adopted by Microsoft for the Government and Education markets.

Becta's notes that Microsoft's format is not fully compatible with the competitive open standards (such as ODF aka Open Document format) and their complaint also argued that "even if the user succeeded in installing the ODF converters necessary to facilitate interoperability with competitor products, the resulting solution would nevertheless represent an unsatisfactory outcome for users and would act as a further barrier to competition and choice"

By default, Microsoft provides a plug-in that allow ODF documents to be opened with Word.
But for Becta as for OpenForum.org, a not-for-profit, independent European organisation launched to promote, broaden and strengthen the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in business and government, Microsoft decision is just not enough. According to Graham Taylor (Chairman of OpenForum Europe): "the ODF and Open Standards communities need to strengthen this support across the world to encourage Microsoft to fulfill their promise to implement ODF in native mode and as a genuine default option for users".

The growing business of free Wi-Fi

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:25:00 +0100

Do you remember the time when one had to pay to get a connection to Internet from their hotel while on a business trip? Looks like the golden days of this system are gone...
Free-hotspot, a society that claims being the world’s largest provider of free Wi-Fi HotSpots, announced that their network quadrupled in size during 2007, from 600 to 2400 HotSpots located in 18 countries across Europe. They also extend their network in hotels, claining more than 1200 hotels equiped across Europe. According to their forecasts, they should double the size of their network this year. And the hotel industry seems to have indentified this trend - see this post on 4hoteliers.com.

So, will this be the end of the dodgy, expensive and terribly slow connection that we were used to when on a business trip?

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is available for download

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:01:00 +0100

As explained by Percy Cabello on Mozilla Links, "Release Candidate 1" means that this will be elect as the final Firefox 3 unless "some major bug [is] reported".

For a full review see this post from the same author.

I've had version 3.0b05 running on my Linux laptop since the end of April, and do not have to complain about stability, nor speed. Particularly worthy of interest is Places - an integrated history and bookmarks interface. Regarding the look and feel of the new version, I'm genuinely impressed by the autocomplete list in the location bar and the smooth tab scrolling.

Application updates made easy

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:21:00 +0100

A quick one today...
Just to show how simple is software management under Linux. This morning, during the first login on my Unbuntu 7.10 Desktop, it appeared that I had to update one of the installed software packages.
This was indeed the updated DST (BTW, we moved the clock forward this morning), as confirmed when I opened the notification:

After that, you just have to click "Install updates" and Synaptic will do the rest:

Close the window once finished...
Job done!
Did I mention you do not have to reboot? ; )

Is that not as easy as it can get?

PS: there will probably be more of this sort of Ubuntu-related topics since I'm very happy with my T43 Ubuntu Desktop... so if you're interested in Linux, open-source or just curious of how Ubuntu can run on an IBM Thinkpad, then watch this space...

Toulouse vs Biarritz - French TOP 14

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:14:00 GMT

Well, the link above will give you the summary as Eurosport saw it and reported it on yahoo.co.uk

Canal+ having decided to broadcast the match on their web site, I was ready for a good evening of French rugby yesterday. Unfortunately, the match was really, really tight - probably much more than Eurosport or l'Equipe put it. It was in fact seriously boring to say the least...
The opposition between the two back row Serge Betsen (Biarritz) and Thierry Dusautoir (Toulouse) was not really worth all the fuzz that Canal+ made to promote the event. It was so boring in fact, that one of the highlights of the 2nd half was the beginning of a brawl that saw William Servat (a big hefty baby as you know) being knocked out by a Biarritz player. Nice job though...

Well it seems anyway that Toulouse recovered from their humiliating 29-0 loss away to Stade Francais last week. You'll have, once again, to count on them this season for the Bremus trophy.

By the way, Brive plays Montauban this afternoon... Come on, lads!

Let's get started!

noreply@blogger.com (Nicolas) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:54:00 GMT

First words of a book are arguably described as the most difficult to find...

Let's get started with a brief summary of this blog's aims:
-an open forum for many topics
-mainly focusing on IT though
-a place to share experiences and opinions

So, when do we start?