Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category
Foxconn deliberately sabotaging their BIOS to destroy Linux ACPI
Straight from the Ubuntu Forums, and posted by TheAlmightyCthulhu: “I disassembled my BIOS to have a look around, and while I won’t post the results here,I’ll tell you what I did find.
They have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX.
The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board’s ACPI implementation, causing weird kernel errors, strange system freezing, no suspend or hibernate, and other problems, using my modifications below, I’ve gotten it down to just crashing on the next reboot after having suspended, the horrible thing about disassembling any program is that you have no commenting, so it’s hard to tell which does what, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy a copy of Vista just to get the crashing caused by Foxconn’s BIOS to stop, I am not going to be terrorized.”
Beating Comcast’s Sandvine On Linux With Iptables
Straight from Slashdot: “Multiple sites reported a while ago that Comcast was using Sandvine to do TCP packet resets to throttle BitTorrent connections of their users. This practice may be a thing of the past as it’s been found a simple rule in the Linux firewall, iptables, can simply just block their reset packets, returning your BitTorrent back to normal speeds and allowing you to once again connect to all your seeds and peer. If blocking the TCP packet resets becomes a common practice, on and off of Linux, it’ll be interesting to see the next move in the cat-and-mouse game between customers and service providers, and who controls that bandwidth.”
Be Linux
Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses?
Straight from Slashdot: “Is Linux ready for the masses? Is Linux really being targeted towards the ‘casual computer user’? Computerworld thinks we’re getting there, talking of Linux ‘going mainstream ‘with Ubuntu. ‘If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it’s that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can’t ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue. Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.’”
Linux Last Man Standing In PWN 2 OWN Thunderdome
Straight from Gizmodo: “The dust has settled on PWN 2 OWN and Linux FTW! The Ubuntu-equipped Sony VAIO was the only computer to get through the tournament unscathed, managing to elude the assembled hackers. On Thursday the MacBook Air was the first to go, followed the next day by the Vista-running Fujitsu, conquered by Shane Macaulay. No one, but no one, however, was able to bring down the penguin. [ PWN 2 OWN via PC World ]“
Linus Torvalds calls Apple’s file system “utter crap”
Straight from Engadget: “Linus Torvalds may have dabbled in Apple territory in the past, but he’s definitely not mincing any words about competing operating systems now. In a recent interview, Linus says that OS X is a “much better system” than Windows Vista overall, but that “in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for.” Apparently these problems are rooted firmly in OS X’s file system (HFS and HFS+), which he describes as “complete and utter crap,” and even “scary.” Of course, Torvalds also took the opportunity to tout the many virtues of Linux, which he says is an “obvious choice for anything from full-blown PCs to phones or video players.” Damn straight it is.”
Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation
Straight from Tux Deluxe: “December 20th 2007. Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF), a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software projects such as Samba.Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against that decision on September 17th 2007.”
Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon is a new breed of ape
Straight from Ars Technica: “Ubuntu 7.10, codenamed Gutsy Gibbon, emerged from the jungles last month and has been beating its chest ever since. Touted as the easiest-to-use desktop Linux distro yet, 7.10 hopes to bring the power of Linux to the masses. Linux has traditionally been used by software developers and hardcore tech enthusiasts, of course, but the operating system is increasingly being adopted by a more mainstream audience. Ubuntu is already the most popular desktop Linux distribution because it offers impressive ease of use, and it’s quickly approaching feature parity with other platforms (it also offers a few unique advantages of its own).
Ars tested Ubuntu 7.10 and its new features extensively on several different computers, including the Dell Inspiron 1420n that we recently reviewed with Ubuntu 7.04. The verdict: it’s impressive. How impressive? Read on for our take on installation and new features like the graphics configuration tool and Ubuntu’s Firefox improvements.”
Microsoft’s XO Laptop Strategy
Straight from Slashdot: “Microsoft is spending a ‘non-trivial’ amount of money to get Windows XP working on the OLPC project’s XO laptop. But why? Despite the conjecture that the Linux-based XO could convince millions of people in the developing world that they don’t need Windows and build a huge base of developers for Linux, there still remains the question of how Microsoft would convince owners of XO laptops to buy and install Windows XP over the functional Linux-based OS already on it. It’s doubtful that Microsoft could encourage or coerce Negroponte to put XP on the machine, so whose arms will they twist?”
Run the Gutsy Gibbon from your key
Run the latest Ubuntu Linux distro (7.10, the Gutsy Gibbon) from a USB key.
Straight from Pendrive Linux: “This tutorial enables you to install, boot and run Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) from USB. In addition to installing Ubuntu to a USB device and then booting Ubuntu from USB, this tutorial will enable you to automatically save your changes and settings back to the stick and further restore them on each boot using a second “casper-rw” persistent partition. The tutorial was written for those already familiar with working from Ubuntu or another Linux desktop environment. If you do not have access to or prefer not to use a Windows computer, this Ubuntu Linux on a stick tutorial is for you.
Ubuntu 7.10 takes slightly longer to boot than previous releases. However, once it’s up and running, it performs much better than running from the Live CD.”
SCO files for Chapter 11
Straight from Ars Technica: “No business strategy is more time-honored than using a sleepy Friday afternoon to drop some seriously bad news on investors, and SCO has followed the old playbook to the letter. At 3:21pm this afternoon, SCO sent a press release across the wire announcing that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That sound you hear is the giddy chuckling of Linux devotees across the globe. The move comes one month after a judge ruled that SCO did not possess any of the UNIX copyrights it claimed to have received in a deal with Novell, a move that dealt a death blow to most of its Linux-related litigation. Despite putting a brave face on the matter, it was clear that SCO was running out of cash, and observers wondered just how long they could keep going without the hope of a win in court to sustain them.
SCO still tries to spin the bankruptcy as positive news, of course, arguing that it is “in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its customers, shareholders, and employees,” and will enable the business to keep running.”
No Samba for Microsoft and Its Linux ‘Partners’
Straight from Usenix.org.uk: “The Samba team will continue to provide security fixes to the GPLv2 versions, but new features will be added only to the GPLv3 versions, the team said. The Free Software Foundation has already released a number of elements of its Gnu’s Not Unix (GNU) project under GPLv3, including the widely used “tar” command for compressing and decompressing files.”
Awesome Ubuntu/Linux Apps you might not know about
Straight from Little Ubuntu: “After spending some time on the offical Ubuntu Forums I came across this awesome thread which let users post applications they thought were noteable but were rarley mentioned. The only problem was it was 40+ pages of content. So in turn i decided to make a post with these applications that anyone can read in just one page or post. Enjoy”
Do more with Nautilus
Straight from Lifehacker: “Linux users: Ramp up the Nautilus file manager menu with three simple packages which add several features. Resize and rotate images, run apps as administrator, and jump to locations in the terminal — all from the Nautilus right-click menu. The OS Novice weblog runs through the whole process. These packages complement the previously mentioned Nautilus Scripts quite nicely. Ubuntu users can get grab these packages with the following installation command:
sudo apt-get install nautilus-gksu nautilus-image-converter nautilus-open-terminal
Using VirtualBox to run Ubuntu and any other operating system
Straight from Free Software Magazine: “GNU/Linux can be scary to a new user. After all, what if you mess up? What if you end up corrupting your hard drive so badly that you need to format it to get rid of GNU/Linux? The solution is to use virtualization technology. A virtual machine creates a virtual hard drive as well as a virtual computer, so you can install and run it from within another operating system. If you want to get rid of the virtualized (also known as the guest) operating system, just delete the virtual hard disk from the real (host) computer’s hard drive.”
For those of you running Ubuntu as your OS of choice, you can seamlessly integrate a virtual Windows XP installation into your Ubuntu desktop with VirtualBox. Follow these step by step instructions.
Ubuntu Linux Validates As Genuine Windows
Straight from Slashdot: “Another crack in the Windows Genuine Advantage wall. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate an Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. (Here is an OGG video of the process.) Along with the advancement of LiveCD technology, this could spell the end of Microsoft’s control over who gets their updates.”
Mount and Unmount ISO,MDF,NRG Images in one click on Ubuntu
Straight from Only Ubuntu Linux: “AcetoneISO is CD/DVD image manipulator for Linux.Using this tool it is very easy to Mount and Unmount ISO,MDF,NRG Images”
After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad
Straight from Slashdot: “Sys-Con has a look at some advantages of using Ubuntu over Windows. ‘My recent switch to a single-boot Ubuntu setup on my Thinkpad T60 simply floors me on a regular basis. Most recently it’s had to do with the experience of maintaining the software. Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure. Well, Ubuntu takes Linux where I’ve long hoped it would go — easy to use, reliable, dependable, great applications too but more on that later. It has some elegance to it — bet you never heard that about a Linux desktop before.’”
How to get a Refund on Your Unwanted Windows
Straight from Slashdot: “Serge Wroclawski recently contacted Dell to request a refund on the unwanted copy of Windows XP that came pre-installed on his computer. Somewhat surprisingly, Dell complied. Wroclawski admits that the $52.50 refund was more of a victory in principle than anything else, but it was a success nonetheless. Using his tips and techniques readers can try their hand at getting a refund of their own. Wroclawski cautions that you should be prepared for a long haul: the process could take hours.”
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal
Straight from Groklaw: “Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing,” Allison wrote. “Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs….Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed …has passed, and so I must say goodbye.”
