Found a solution for the Xgl problem where pressing Shift-Backspace caused the X server to kill itself!

Run the following from a terminal:

xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = BackSpace"

That should fix it. Thanks to the Quick and Dirty Hacks blog for pointing this out.

UPDATE: From what I can tell, looks like this is required to be entered everytime X is restarted (when you logout/login or restart the machine), so best to put the command in a startup script for your desktop so you don’t have to worry about entering it manually each time.

I’ve subscribed to some more podcasts recently, and I thought I’d share them.

Novell Open Audio

This is a fairly Linux-centric podcasts, hosted by Ted Haeger of Novell. Novell are doing some crazy and cool things for the Linux desktop, with their flagship Linux desktop OS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, shipping soon. I have actually moved from SUSE 10.1 to Fedora Core 5 on my main machine now (still running KDE though) I still have a lot of respect for what Novell do. And it’s a good job too.

In Novell Open Audio, Ted catches up with a load of really interesting people in the free software world (usually it has some Novell connection, though) and interviews them.

Check out Novell Open Audio here.

FLOSS Weekly

This hasn’t been updated in a while (I do hope it hasn’t been given up on), but this is a podcast hosted by Leo Laporte (I can’t count how many shows he hosts now) and Chris DiBona. It’s a good listen for people interested in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (that’s where FLOSS comes from).

Check out FLOSS Weekly; the latest episode is here.

Finally cracked this age-old problem I’ve been having. I now have the Nvidia 3D drivers installed (working at a fairly decent resolution and refresh rate)! Doesn’t sound like much, well this problem has been bugging me for ever now (almost since I started using Linux). With the 3D driver installed, I can finally enjoy the wonder that is Xgl.

So here’s how I managed it…

» Read the rest of this post…

Yesterday I decided to install SUSE 10.1 (again), but this time on my server/development computer to use as a Linux software development installation. Now I’ve done bits and pieces of Visual Basic.NET on Windows, but I never really quite got into it like PHP.

So I installed SUSE alongside Kdevelop and I’ve started messing about with C++. C++ is probably not the best language to jump right into, but considering I basically know the syntax from PHP … well, we’ll see.

So I’m trying to build a few graphical KDE applications as examples, using cplusplus.com as my guide to the basics. Wish me luck, because the C++ jungle is big. If I do successfully get a grasp, however, I’m sure knowing C++ will come in handy for whatever platform. And cross-platform is king.

Anyone know any more good C++ resources?

Find this tutorial useful?

I thought this might be worth doing: a short tutorial for Linux newbies on how to compile programs by source. Talk about jumping in at the deep end. I’ll do some easier ones as well, don’t worry. Anyway…
Generally, on non-open platforms, you never see the source code of anything (think of the source code as the ‘recipe’ for the program). Even on Linux you generally get new software packaged as shiny binary .rpm (or .deb) files.

However, on occasions you might want/need to compile a piece of software from source; sometimes your distro won’t have packaged that particular piece of software, or you need to install a new version that hasn’t been packaged yet. In this tutorial, I’m going to look at how you can compile stuff yourself (so click Read On if you’re on the front page).

» Read the rest of this post…

Just seen a pretty amazing thing at the LXF Team Blog. It seems you can watch the World Cup on your PC. No, no, in pure text mode. It only seems to work when there’s a match on, so I haven’t had a chance to look yet, but I’m sure I will before the tournament is up.

If you’ve got a Unix-based system (Linux, Mac OS X etc), run telnet ascii-wm.net 2006 from a terminal, but do it when there’s a match on. Quality’s not quite as good as HDTV, no doubt.

In fact, Windows users should be able to watch as well, run a telnet program (HyperTerminal on XP??, or try PuTTY) and connect to ascii-wm.net, port 2006.

And here’s to my first real post on my blog in WordPress!

Just found a great page which clears up a lot of myths and untrue allegations made about Linux and the open source software movement in general. If you’re unsure about Linux for whatever reason, then read it.

I’m not trying to say ‘Linux is for everybody and does everything’ here. It’s not and it doesn’t. However, for a basic web/email/office suite workstation, Linux will suffice. And servers… don’t get me started. Linux (or in fact any Unix-based platform) is awesome for servers, in my opinion. But that is only my opinion. Draw your own conclusions.

I’ve been doing yet more blogging about Vista. I’m going absolutely mad about writing reviews of each and every bit of Vista, and this time I’ve looked at some of the bundled applications included with the OS. Have a look, you know you want to.

Exams are finally beginning to come towards the end, just three more to go and I’ll be able to get on with a bigger project that should contribute significantly to my MacBook. More on that story as it happens…

And finally, to GRUB. So I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 over XP on my main system. You know that much. Well, as I said, Vista very diligently destroyed my previous dual-boot configuration when it installed.

So I needed to run Fedora again so I could reinstall the bootloader and get dual-boot wonderness back and running. So I tried booting from the Fedora disc. It detected the installation, but wouldn’t let me boot into it, only upgrade or reinstall.

I tried the SUSE 9.0 disc, which I know lets you boot an existing Linux system, to no avail. I was just left with a blank screen. So I gave up on that and decided I would need to run GRUB manually to kick Fedora into action. I found this tutorial about putting GRUB on a USB stick, but unfortunately it was written for Solaris and I’m not quite geeky enough yet to be bothered to modify it to my needs.

Then I found the official page on how to put GRUB on a CD-R. So I booted a Live Linux distro, followed the instructions and made an .iso, which I saved to a FAT partition. But, being in a Live distro, I couldn’t burn the disc, because obviously the OS had to be run from there. And I only have one optical drive…

So I rebooted into Vista. Vista didn’t have a built-in option for burning CDs, so I tried the freeware CDBurnerXP (that’s free not Free), which didn’t like Vista and couldn’t detect my DVD-+RW drive.

So eventually, I used another computer to burn the disc. I booted and entered the commands GRUB needed to boot Fedora, and found it wouldn’t work. It had some problem and then the kernel refused to continue.

Finally, after some Googling I found that you needed to use a Fedora-specific kernel argument to kick the kernel into action, and I booted in. After which, I had an exam to go to…

And if you’re interested, I needed to use:

root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

Don’t be fooled – I symlinked vmlinuz and initrd so you’ll probably need to press tab to see the list of possibilities and choose the appropriate and matching kernel and initrd. And don’t forget to substitute (hd0,6) with your disk and partition number.

Phew.

Yes, this is the extension I have been waiting for. Using Firefox on both Windows and Linux daily means I have two sets of bookmarks. Now that is a pain. Of course, I could try and synchronise them manually.

But Google have gone and made a really nice extension called Google Browser Sync. It does exactly what it says on the tin; that is it synchronises your settings between different installations of Firefox.

Admittedly, at the moment it does take a bit longer to load up Firefox, because it has to check for changes to your profile, but Google say it will get better.

[via] [via]

Corrected first link 15/06/2006.

OK, I’ve finally lost all patience with SUSE Linux, after the fourth time it’s attempted to corrupt my partition table. OK, I don’t know it was SUSE, it could well be a hardware issue, but I think it’s about time I switched. For my main desktop, I need a stable Linux distribution that doesn’t delete everything on the hard drive.

So yesterday, I backed up everything on SUSE and installed Fedora. First impressions were good. Now I’ve used Fedora before on a server machine, but this time I wanted it in a desktop configuration. So I picked KDE (my favourite desktop environment) and after a bit of modification, I’ve got a nice-looking, stable system.

Of course, Fedora is renowned for cutting-edge technology, so I’m still downloading the 600 MB of updates that have been released. That does seem a bit of a large number of updates, but it does keep me using the latest open source stuff.

I’ve also got to install Flash Player, Java, RealPlayer, some decent fonts and some of my favourite KDE applications. Wish me luck in Fedora not breaking everything again.