As a regular contributor to Katherine Noyes' Linux Blog Safari on Linux Insider, I was recently asked to comment on the NSA recommending Vista for best security. For those who don't already know, Vista is a train wreck, but the situation is at least slightly more insidious than simple stupidity.
Ubuntu has set the system clock to UTC since the Intrepid Ibex (8.10.) I didn't notice because I had upgraded through several other versions. Using UTC for the system clock is cool if you don't dual-boot, but I do. The functionality exists in at least Vista and later to use UTC for the system clock, but I'm using XP and don't trust it to work even if it appears to.
I decided to revisit Startopia, a nifty Windows XP game. I had trouble because they don't use Direct3D correctly; they make assumptions about your card. I had to teach it about mine to prevent a bluescreen every time I ran the game.
For some time now I have been using PS3 Media Server to stream video to my Xbox 360. Since solutions for playing various video streams on various devices have become more convenient of late I've become less picky about what I transcode to, except that I like to achieve fairly high quality. ogmrip has become less useful of late, failing on most source video on which I try to use it, so I've gone back to Handbrake, the most competent and arrogant of DVD transcoders.
Half-life 2 gave me a black screen on Maverick until I upgraded to latest nVidia from ubuntu-x-swat x-updates PPA, and wine1.3 from ubuntu wine team PPA. Before the update from wine 1.2 (from the regular Maverick repos) I also installed directx9 with winetricks (from the repos also.) Presumably those files are still in my wine setup.
After a couple hours of searching I finally found a tool capable of unpacking umod files on Linux today. I can't get umodpack to build so I gave up and downloaded a Windows tool written in Delphi and ran it in Wine, which works great. Looks like someone boned something somewhere and broke backwards compatibility that affects my ability to build umodpack, it happens while Perl tries to generate documentation and a quick search suggests that it's an endemic problem. Thanks, whoever you are! Download Unreal Tournament UMOD Extractor to successfully unpack umod files on Windows or Linux+Wine.
Today I reinstalled Debian Lenny on my Dockstar. I thought it was bricked, but it isn't. I never did manage to get the CA-42 serial cable working, though, so now it has a useless tail. If I ever do brick it I guess I'll revisit the issue.
Welp, my G.Skill DDR3 seems to have failed. Two days later, no RMA number yet. Never buying from G.Skill again. Suggest you do the same. A real company would have given me RMA details already. My machine is down due to these jerkoffs.
I tried to install the Userful 4.0 beta for Ubuntu Maverick and got the following error:
Userful MultiSeat(tm) requires a specific version of the following system package
Version requirement: linux-generic >= 2.6.32.25.27
This is unfortunate because I am >=, as you can see:
Via VT6656 USB WiFi has been out-of-tree because of non-GPLness. The new driver is a candidate for inclusion supposedly but for now you need to build your own driver in most cases. I want it for Debian 5 on my DT360.