A “Green” OS?

How environmentally friendly can an operating system be ?

I wondered about that when i saw on Distrowatch that a new beta of VLOS is out.
Vlos and Sabayon are based on Gentoo,
Gentoo is a source based distro, meaning you have to compile apps and updates yourself.
Is it good to compile or is it better to use packages ready to install?
Environmentalists would say packages.
And honestly I have to agree with them.
Compiling is a waste of energy if you can get ready compiled packages instead.
So if you compile just for the sake of “look at me compiling!” think again.
RPM’s, DEB’s , PKG’s and other package formats help to keep the energy usage low.

Gentoo is still a great distro though.

Tuxicity

Xorg.conf Removed – Part 2

Everything works fine ? ,  yes, except for xrandr unfortunately.

I had to re-add xorg.conf to get my TV-out to work.

This  morning I read a “First Look” story on the recently released 2.6.28 kernel, from ars technica. Specially the the “Graphics Execution Manager” (GEM) interested me; it is one of the additions and GEM was said to boost framerates by between 50 and 60 percent for Intel 915 graphics hardware.

The 2.6.28 kernel is available in the abs of Arch Linux, so I decided to build it from abs and install it to see if it would improve the functionality of my Intel graphics controller, especially xrander (you never know…).

After install of the fresh kernel I removed xorg.conf (again).
Rebooted, to initiate the new kernel, hooked up my TV, ran xrander – -auto on it and…. It worked!

I can watch videos on my TV now, without needing a  xorg.conf.

Tuxicity

Latest Nvidia Driver 173.14.05 Works on 2.6.25xx Kernels.

A new NVIDIA driver is out.

It resolves the 2.6.25xx kernel issues and some more bugs.

Works fine without patches.

Tuxicity.

My Teacher is Making a Switch

Yesterday I visited an old friend of mine, hadn’t seen him in years.

He (R) tought me the basics of computing back in the 90ties on a PC running MS-DOS, and later Windows 3.11 and Windows 95.

R actually inspired me to buy a PC and and, with his guidance, I learned how to use it.

Until 2001 I used Microsoft software, the last OS I used was Win2k , in my opinion, relatively, the best product they ever made.

In 2001 I switched to RedHat 7.1 and, after some distrohopping, now I use Debian, dual booting with Windows XP. (XP is mostly for my son who likes to play games)

My old friend stuck to Microsoft.

Yesterday he told me he was switching to Ubuntu, I responded how much I liked Debian and stopped using Ubuntu a while ago.

He asked if Ubuntu was a good Distribution for beginners, and suddenly I realized he was the beginner now, planning a switch I made 7 years ago, and told him it is a good distro for beginners indeed.

Its good to visit an old friend off an on :-).

Tuxicity.

Proprietary NVIDIA Driver Fails to Install on Linux 2.6.25 Kernels

I Decided to compile a 2.6.25 kernel form source to use on my Debian Box.
Why? Because I can.

Interestingly the installation of the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver Failed!

After some Research I found some information on nvnews.net.

So if you do a manual install of a  proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver on a Linux 2.6.25 kernel, make sure to read it!

The patch worked Flawlessly

Tuxicity.

Media collection managers for Linux

There comes a time, right after you burn your 137th MP3 CD, when you start feeling the need to establish a system for finding all the songs you treasure so much. Here’s a selection of Linux applications you can use to ease your work.

read more | digg story

Get rid of stowaway packages with GNU Stow

If you decide a package sucks, how do you get rid of it? If a package rocks, how do you upgrade it? GNU Stow, a package manager for packages you compile and install yourself, provides an easy answer to both questions.

read more | digg story

Howto : Make Flash Player 9 work in full screen mode

To get Flash Player 9 to work in full screen mod mode you need Flash, build 9.0.64.0 , a prerelease of the next version of Flash

On most distros the Stable version of Flash: 9.0.48.0 is available

To get the prerelease of Flash you need to go to adobe.labs.com
The release notes of this prerelease version can be read here
And as you can read there in the fixed Issues :

In full-screen mode on Linux, playing odd-width movies (with screen widths not divisible by 16) may cause a crash.

Is fixed 🙂
It basically means ‘full screen Flash works now in Linux’ yaaay!!

Rpm based distros are lucky, they can upgrade with download Plugin for Linux x86 (RPM, 2.88 MB)
Other distros need to uninstall their original plugin and Download Plugin for Linux x86 (TAR.GZ, 2.88 MB)

Extract the TAR.GZ (usually a rightclick and a extract here will do) , then continue on your terminal:

cd /path/to/install_flash_player_9_linux/

If you use firefox or mozilla run the installer:

./flashplayer-installer

It will ask some questions and install flash locally
You can also run it as root (sudo) if you wish, but usually this is not needed.
You can also copy the plugin into the pluginfolder of your preferred browser:
as root (sudo)

cp libflashplayer.so /path/to/your/preferred/browser/plugins/

If all this sounds alien/confusing to you, just be patient for your next update of flash in your distro, which will probably solve the full screen issue.

Tuxicity.

Resources: labs.adobe.com , labs.abobe.com releasenotes

GPLv3 to drive users from Linux to FreeBSD?

GPLv3 will help FreeBSD take some users away from Linux, according to the founder and vice president of The FreeBSD Foundation.

read more | digg story

Nouveau Driver Developers Answer Questions

A Q&A with the developers of the Nouveau project. For those out of the loop or new to Linux, the Nouveau project aims to provide an open-source 2D/3D graphics driver for NVIDIA hardware. After collecting a number of questions from our readers, KoalaBR and Marcheu have answered these questions. The questions range from whether there will be open-source SLI support to asking if NVIDIA has ever contacted the Nouveau developers.

read more | digg story