Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Hey, what do you know. Linux might gain another filesystem, this time from Tru64 (called AdvFS). HP just released the source code under the GPL2 license, specificly to allow integration with the Linux kernel. Chances are big it will be merged. When that happens Linux must be the OS which supports the most filesystems, and including some high-end solutions from previous Unix's like JFS and XFS.
I never had any experience with this filesystem, but from reading the short description on Wikipedia it has some resemblance with ZFS. It's nice to see HP do something like this, it's been a while since the last time they did something big for Linux or Open Source in general.

Somewhat related, The Linux Foundation released an official statement today against closed-source drivers being released for the Linux kernel. I couldn't agree more with this, ofcourse sometimes as a user there is no other choice (which I regret). For example, at work we use Cisco-vpn and it requires a kernel module to allow connections when using Linux. Same for the wireless, where some brain dead Odyssey client is used, although a Linux version is available (closed source) I refuse to install it and just make sure a cable connection is available when I need network connectivity.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

I've got an Asus eee-pc, it's great. You can't argue much for that price and the functionality that it offers. Anyway, there are a lot of comments on the net about the eee already, a lot of them claiming that it's nothing new, that is has been done before and that there are almost as small, but more powerful models from various brands out there. And it's all true, but none of those beat the eee on price (also for us, linux geeks, it's about the visible first mass product).

It doesn't matter if the eee is slow and doesn't have a lot of standard storage. Everything it needs to do, it does just fine. Use it as a uber-functional pda and internet tool and nothing comes even close.

What I do start to notice however is that the umpc model is already killing itself. New models get released by almost each vendor, and they become bigger, faster, stronger, more capable and more expensive. That's not right, if you want all of that, you just buy a laptop. To all manufacturers, keep it simple, small and cheap. That's the magic combination that made the eee a success.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Getting tired of those space pictures from Mark Shuttleworth when your screensaver starts in Ubuntu. Long ago, the screensaver preference pane was different and functional although ugly. It's now much prettier, but most of the options are gone.

Ofcourse, they can still be changed by editing a simple text file. In this case, just do the following;

echo "imageDirectory: " > .xscreensaver


where is the directory containing your pictures the screensaver should use.