The Hyperlogos

If you're a Ubuntu user who would like to try out the Oneiric Ocelot, but would like to not get cut by the bleeding edge, this might be a good time to give it a go. For me, anyway, it's just begun to work correctly including the nvidia driver, proper shutdown, and so on.

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.

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.

I tried to install the Userful 4.0 beta for Ubuntu Maverick and got the following error:

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.

A long-awaited project (awaited by me, that is) has finally come to pass with my successful installation of debian woody on my WebDT 360 (Geode LX800 model.) This machine has a low-power 500MHz x86 processor with a tightly integrated architecture, a penmount resistive touch panel, and mediocre I/O. Luckily it does have USB2 and good bluetooth, but the WiFi is in most cases a VIA vt6656 which until recently did not have a GPL-safe driver, meaning you have to build your own.

After installing plugbox linux on my Dockstar I found that new users' passwords expired on login and forced a logout forever. To fix this for a single user use this script:

Call it with the username you want to fix. It sets the last change date to a day after the epoch but it works.

Filled with dissatisfaction with windows, I set off on a quest to find a suitable Linux distribution for the Acer Aspire D250-1165. It came with Windows XP, but the performance was always less than impressive and Windows is a magnet for spyware and botnet clients. The machine is theoretically highly compatible and thus support should be simple, right?

We have often heard from a broad variety of pundits about how Linux is not a mature, enterprise-class Unix. All discussion over how "Linux is a kernel" aside, today I have encountered the first piece of evidence that suggests to me that this is true. It seems that no Linux distribution has a simple "repair permissions" tool. This was a standard feature of package managers of UNIX systems before Linux was even dreamt of, for example in Solaris.

This article details the process of building the stock firmware for the SMCWAPS-G from the sources on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04.1.) The SMC SMCWAPS-G is on one hand an 802.11g access point with two USB2 ports and a 2.5" form factor ATA/IDE connector, and on the other a small and extremely low power consumption x86-compatible linux-based server with the same. While the included GPL compliance CD is relatively worthless to the casual user, the company does make the same content available in a more useful form for free download via their web site. This article explains how I built the sources; Read my review of the SMCWAPS-G for more information on the device in general.