Computers

Kubuntu 10.10 Slow Wifi Connection

I was recently experiencing very slow wifi connections in Kubuntu 10.10 on my HP Pavilion dm4 with an intel wireless card. I was getting intermittent speeds from 0.3 to 1 Mps. Needless to say this was driving me nuts. After hitting the forums and verifying that this is a documented problem and reading the various solutions I installed
linux-backports-modules-compat-wireless-2.6.38-2.6.35-28-generic
and linux-firmware version 1.38.6
Note: if linux-backports-modules-compat-wireless-2.6.38-generic is available install that instead.

help John Graham-Cumming build Charles Babbage 's analytical engine

I just pledged $10 to help John Graham-Cumming build Charles Babbage 's analytical engine.
Babbage designed the analytical engine, a Turing complete computer in 1833, a 100 years before Alan Turing published his paper on the Turing machine. If you want to see this steam powered brass mechanical computer get built, pleas...e pledge and be a part of history!

pledge page http://www.pledgebank.com/babbage

More about Charles Babbage http://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/babbages-heart-warming-message-for.html

How to move Windows to VirtualBox

So you finally got fed up with M$ and decided to try Linux. You set up a dual boot so you could run Windows and Linux and are finding that you like Linux better, and now after discovering VirtualBox you find that Windows runs great under Linux and want to convert you existing Windoze partition to a VDI. Note: If you want to create a VDI from a drive that only has windows on it you can pop the drive into a linux machine as a second hard drive.

AT&T doesn't support the iPhone

I recently called AT&T support for help setting up my new iPhone 3G.
The AT&T menu system wouldn't recognize numbers entered via my iPhone dialer.
Initially the menu recited my mobile number and asked me to press 1 to verify it was correct. I pressed one and was then asked to enter my mobile number. After entering my mobile number I was asked to enter it again in an endless loop.

Google gets search wrong in Chrome

Does anyone else think that is funny that Firefox has way better search capabilities than that of Search engine giant Google's Chrome?

I am sure this will get fixed. Google does have some really nifty search features like hashmarks along the scrollbar allowing you to see all matches at a glance. This is similar to most diff and merge applications, but Chrome doesn't seem to be able to search in form fields. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

Google's New Custom Search Beta Tool

The new Custom Search tool from Google is Awesome. Now you can put a custom search on your site and not only have it search your own site, but as many other sites as you want. There are fine customization controls, and the possibillities are endless. For example, check out the custom L.A.M.P. search block in the top right. This custom search block took seconds to create and searches perls.org, search.cpan.org, php.net, mysql.com, drupal.org and api.drupal.org. I will add more to it in the future, but I am really impressed with the usefullness of this tool.

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Kubuntu 8.04 Rocks

Kubuntu 8.04 Completely Rocks!!!

On my T60, it is almost like having a completely new laptop. Everything is so much faster, almost twice as fast. My wireless networks seems to be to be faster. All desktop actions, quanta, kontact, everything. I am also very impressed with all of the application updates. Kontact now allows placing the sig before the quoted message. The digiKam Gallery2 sync allows setting the caption to be the title or description now, and allows uploading by album or tag. Everything just seems to be working faster / better.

Boycott Apple

I am a BSD fan, although I primarily run Linux for my desktop. I have been considering moving to Mac because well, their hardware is sexy! I do resent their marketing, mostly because everything they do is a new idea even though it is usually 10 years old. Well, I could give many legitimate mostly geeky reasons why I dislike Apple, but I have really been considering getting a macbook pro. Well, not any more. Not ever.

Read this post to learn why
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/05/2123207

I hope it changes your mind too.
Be Free, Install Linux or FreeBSD

Kubununtu 8.04 Beta

Yesterday I thought I would try the latest Kubuntu beta.
I installed the Beta on an older HP R3000. I downloaded the 64 bit version in hopes that 64 bit support had gotten better for things like Skype. Initially I was not that impressed.

I had troubles getting the Broadcom wireless card working and had a couple of other issues as well. The Broadcom thing has always been a problem in Ubuntu, usually requiring blacklisting drivers and installing ndiswrapper. I am sure I could have gotten this working with some more effort, but that isn't the point. PCLinuxOS 2007 walks you through loading ndiswrapper litterally making this process a breeze.

What A difference a day makes in open source.
Today I reinstalled, and did a full update. This time everything worked flawlessly. I think the problem previously might have been that I clicked through the hardware settings manager too fast. After clicking on an item you have to wait for the driver to download and install, but the checkbox you are clicking just says enable leading you to think it is just disabled. Clicking multiple items opens up multiple versions of adept and causes bad things to happen. A simple GUI fix could have prevented my user error. Anyway, everything installed perfectly and worked without any configuration. I am no longer using ndiswrapper for my broadcom wireless adapter. Nvidia-glx drivers installed for me, as did compiz. Compiz is now somewhat integrated into the desktop which is wonderful. No compiz icon or configuring a custom session needed.

This is wonderfull!