Posted by mike on October 23, 2009 – 7:00 pm
As mentioned previously my main laptop died. I’m currently writing this on my MacBook runing Arch Linux x86_64. I mainly used this machine for watching movies and websurfing with it running OSX. Installing Arch Linux went surprisingly well. Most hardware worked out of the box and unlike my HP this machine has Intel graphics. I’m glad to leave ATI behind. Intel and KMS are much more fun to play with.
Have been too busy to post much. Too many uni assignments to do. One due at midnight tonight. Better go and make sure it builds cleanly on uni’s server.
Posted by mike on September 20, 2009 – 8:50 pm
I have been using xmonad as my window manager for quite a while now. I use it on a dual screen workstation, my laptop and a netbook and in each case it does the job flawlessly. It is insanely stable and for this reason I am still using it though I do struggle with Haskell and would like to try stumpwm one day as I would be more at home with Lisp.
My configuration hasn’t changed much for the last 6 months or so, not because my current setup is perfect, but because it does everything I need. Having said that I’m sure there are a few productivity boosting modules available in xmonad-contrib that I would find useful. As a first step today I switched to XMonad from Darcs instead of the Arch Linux packages. There are packages for xmonad-darcs and xmonad-contrib-darcs in the AUR however installing pre release applications from SCMs via ABS feels a little weird to me. I find it easier to keep a copy of the repository in my home directory and re-sync and build as needed. While I wanted to install xmonad-darcs manually I also didn’t want to have files installed into my root file system that were not managed by pacman. Thankfully the xmonad README file contains instructions for installing xmonad into your home directory. This is a as simple as:
runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --user --prefix=$HOME
runhaskell Setup.lhs build
runhaskell Setup.lhs install --user
xmonad-contrib can be installed in a similar way. Add ~/bin to the end of your PATH or the configure, compile, restart command normally bound to mod-q will not work. Now that I am running xmonad-darcs I am free to have a play with some of the modules that are only available in the current darcs version. Modules that I am currently configuring or wanting to look at include:
- XMonad.Actions.GridSelect
- XMonad.Actions.Submap
- XMonad.Actions.Search
- XMonad.Layout.HintedGrid
- XMonad.Layout.IM
- XMonad.Layout.LayoutHints
- XMonad.Layout.PerWorkspace
- XMonad.Util.NamedScratchpad
- XMonad.Layout.Tabbed
- XMonad.Prompt.Man
So far I have only looked at XMonad.Actions.GridSelect, XMonad.Layout.HintedGrid and XMonad.Actions.Search. Next up will be XMonad.Util.NamedScratchpad.
Last post I mentioned a pdf viewer called apvlv. Recently another post sprung up about yet another minimalist pdf viewer called zathura. It looks interesting as well and worth checking out.
Posted by mike on September 16, 2009 – 9:25 pm
In a move reminiscent of the break up of AT&T in the 80s the Australian government has legislated to separate Telstra’s retail and infrastructure divisions. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on Telstra but it should be interesting.
I have been playing a fair bit of Quake Live (1833 frags) which has made me miss the old days of Quake 3. The id software supplied binaries are 32 bit and the sound doesn’t work any more at least on my system. Fortunately I found an open source based Quake 3 distribution called ioquake based on the id software GPL source code release. ioquake3 compiles cleanly in a x86_64 environment and there is a package available for it in the AUR. It is interesting to compare the old levels to the new Quake Live versions. Quite a few had changed but it was difficult to say exactly how.
Lastly in a thread on the Arch Linux forums discussing lightweight pdf viewers bernarcher mentioned apvlv which I hadn’t heard of before. It is lightweight and uses vim like keyboard commands. Definitely worth looking into and I intend to check it out fully myself.
PS: RIP Patrick Swayze and Kanye West is a jackass.
Posted by mike on August 1, 2009 – 5:47 am
My main mouse died a while ago and in the meantime I have been using an old notebook mouse I had lying around. It doesn’t have forward and back buttons which I find useful in Firefox. I decided to replace it today and am now using a Logitech MX1100. This is another great mouse by Logitech. Some of its features are:
- 8 buttons (including a stealth button) which all work in Arch Linux out of the box. No configuration required.
- Adjustable sensitivity from 400-1600 dpi via buttons on mouse.
- Uses two AA batteries though they are connected in parallel so if you can only find one battery it still works.
- Indent or non indent scroll wheel modes activated by a button in front of the scroll wheel.
- It’s freaking huge! Having used notebook mice for so long I had gotten used to the small size of them but this is a well sized mouse for desktop use.
All in all I am very happy adding this mouse to my Logitech collection. I use a Logitech VX Nano on my laptop and a Logitech VX Revolution at work.
Posted by mike on July 18, 2009 – 11:28 am
Recieved my results for this semester and scored two HDs. Both units were enjoyable and I put a fair amount of work into them so it was good to see it pay off.
Today I enabled the Arch Linux testing repo on my laptop. At the moment testing is fairly empty and the only packages that were upgraded as a result of enabling testing were licenses, vim, vi and ruby 1.9. It will be interesting to see how it goes and I will enjoy getting some of the X – ATI related packages early.
Posted by mike on July 8, 2009 – 10:29 pm
It’s been a busy week in the open source world.
Currently running the new Firefox 3.5. It is hard to be objective but it does seem to be faster than the 3.0.x versions. Unfortunately my current theme, Full Flat 3.0, is not compatible with Firefox 3.5 so I have had to find another theme. At the moment I am using Chromifox Basic and am pretty happy with it. I have also been using the Hide Menubar add-on. It is a great way to gain a little bit more screen real estate and works well with a minimal tiling window manager.
Google has finally taken the beta status from gmail and announced their own operating system called Google Chrome OS.
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
From the brief information available at this stage it doesn’t sound like something I would run however it will be interesting to follow its progress. I’m sure that the folks from Redmond will be doing exactly that.
At the moment I am waiting for 100+ GB of data to copy off my file server so that I can reformat it with Open Solaris and start playing around with ZFS. This is the second time I have tried to copy my data off as the first time I tried, rsync gave an error message on completion that turned out to be caused by missing execute permissions on a couple of directories. Hopefully it will complete without errors this time.
My new Debian 5.0 router is performing well. I’m currently in the middle of configuring Postfix and then want to setup traffic shaping using tc and htb. Apart from that it is just about complete.
As I have a short break from study at the moment I am catching up on some reading. I have just finished:
- Rapscallion – The third novel in the Hawkwood series by James McGee. Fantastic read just like the previous novels.
- Terminator Dreams – The first Terminator 3 spin off novel by Aaron Allston. I’m a fan of all things Terminator related and enjoyed this book though not as much as his later novel, Terminator Hunt.
- Digital Apollo – An examination of the man – machine relationship present in the Apollo space program to land man on the moon. Lots of information on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) and a fascinating read.
Posted by mike on June 25, 2009 – 5:34 pm
Sat my final exam for this semester. No surprises, think I did ok.
My main workstation pulled in 2.6.30 and the new nVidia driver yesterday but I held off on rebooting until today, after my exam. There seemed to be a few issues on the forums concerning 2.6.30 and/or the 185.18.14 nVidia driver. Didn’t want to have to troubleshoot in the middle of cramming for exams.
Looks like I was being over cautious. Reboot was uneventful. It was also the first reboot since the new nfs-utils and rpcbind were installed. Graphics seem fine and my file server is accessible. Will see how 2.6.30 goes. Happy days! 
Posted by mike on June 21, 2009 – 2:40 am
Cool, my very own Arch Linux blog courtesy of crouse. Much appreciated. It has been a while since I have used WordPress. It looks quite different, very impressive. I like the simplicity of the theme being used.
Don’t plan on having much here that would be of interest to anyone but me but you never know. Have my final Uni exam for this semester coming up on Thursday. Should be able to have a play with WordPress after that.
