I got a new printer today. Actually, it’s a printer and scanner and copier, All-in-One sort of device. It is the HP DeskJet F2180, found for £30.

It’s replacing my ageing and rather incompatible Lexmark Z45. The Z45 was bought a very long time ago, back even before I started using Linux. Back then, compatibility with alternative operating systems wasn’t a priority and ever since I have been dogged with issues printing from my own machine.

» Read the rest of this post…

Just a quick post to cross-post the fact that I’ve just put out a new printable guide, designed for Linux beginners which details installing software on Ubuntu.

It’s posted at FOSSwire – here’s where you’ll find it.

The idea is to bridge the knowledge gap for the person literally just starting out with Linux. Installing software is one of the big areas where there are differences, so this double sided guide covers that.

The one time I actually go for installing a distro on a physical, real computer, rather than in my MacBook-powered Parallels virtual machine environment, it won’t work.

In attempting to install Fedora 9, Sulphur, on standard PC hardware (than runs Fedora 8 just nicely), I’m getting this after choosing to install from the DVD as the package source:

Admittedly, I haven’t yet checked the image checksum (I usually do before burning), so I’ll do that when I get back tonight and see if I can get to the bottom of the problem.

Ultimately, I’ll have to fall back to Parallels.

OK, so cross-linking is bad and stuff, but it’s been a long time since I last did it, so it’s OK, right? 😛

Just finished a review of PC-BSD, a BSD distribution based on FreeBSD for desktop system.

I was really impressed at how easy it was when compared to the big bad FreeBSD install, which I seem to always mess up right at the last moment thanks to the far from intuitive menu system.

But I digress. PC-BSD is as slick as any desktop Linux, and I think it makes a fine general purpose desktop OS, as you can read more about in the full review.

And yes, I’m trying to post a bit more regularly here too. It’s working, so far. 😉

Out of curiosity, I wanted to know exactly how hot the Geforce 6600 GT in my desktop PC here was. Turns out, it idles about 52 Celsius (125 F).

Then, again, out of curiosity, I put it under some load, by running glxgears at full screen – 1600×1200. Turns out the GPU positively roasts at such a temperature.

83 C ~= 181 F.

Pretty hot.

I downloaded it when I came in this evening and I’m just finishing prepping to clean install it over Feisty (7.04), which is currently my primary operating system on my desktop PC.

I’m choosing to do a clean install because it’s about time my KDE preferences and everything else for that matter were cleaned out and I started afresh.

October really is turning out to be operating system month – less than 8 days now until I’ll be upgrading myself to Leopard on the MacBook; provided everything ships in time.

So – here goes Gutsy!

Thanks to Preferences dialogue regression in Firefox 2.0, the option to force all links that would open in a new window to open in tabs instead disappeared. Which is pretty stupid.

Just wiped out my old, bloated Firefox profile on my Kubuntu desktop here and suddenly, horror of horrors, it starts opening new windows instead of new tabs. I can’t use the Preferences dialogue, so…

browser.link.open_newwindow in about:config needs to be set to 3. Someone should make an extension which can change all these preferences that didn’t make the cut to 2.x from the GUI.

All fixed now.

Not again.

Intellectual Property Assurance
Through the agreement, Microsoft and Linspire have developed a framework to provide patent covenants for Linspire customers. The patent covenants provide customers with confidence that the Linspire technologies they use come with rights to relevant Microsoft patents. As well, Linspire now joins a growing group of open source software (OSS) distributors collaborating with Microsoft on efforts to establish rich interoperability, deliver IP assurance to customers and build the bridge between open source and proprietary software.

For Microsoft, the agreement is the latest in a series of collaborations with Linux platform and OSS providers. This list of collaborators includes JBoss, LG Electronics, Novell, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Xandros Inc., XenSource Inc. and Zend Technologies Inc.

I now refuse to run Linspire as well. I feel really strong about this – I refuse to let Microsoft have any influence over my Linux system. They have plenty of industry influence already and every deal like this just makes me more livid.

The strangest thing about this deal?

Linspire will select the Live Search service of Windows Live as the Linspire 5.0 default Web search engine, allowing Microsoft to bring Live Search to a broader set of users and providing leading search capabilities to Linspire customers.

Seems a bit ironic they’re setting a search engine which on the UK version can’t find the FSF on a query for ‘free software’ as the default. On what is supposed to be a free software operating system (but arguably isn’t anymore).

Add LG Electronics to the list of companies that have sold out and are playing the game.

At this rate, there won’t be many companies left.

Please boycott Xandros. Giving in to the game is stupid.

Novell, Xandros, who is going to give in next? Isn’t this a fun game…

Roll on GPLv3 as quickly as possible. Please. Before we lose anyone else.