Tag Archives: linux

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Professor Farnesworth: “He’s good alright, but he’s no Clem Johnson! And Johnson played back in the days before steroid injections were mandatory!”

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So I was curious about RAM upgrades for my machine… I figured I’d hit up Crucial Memory to check my specifications and ran into a deal that I simply could not say no to. They had two sticks of DDR2 PC2-42oo 1GB RAM for $39.99. I figured “Let’s not get too excited… check Newegg” and no surprise they had the same deal but with better shipping options. For me, I am not going to lie… I love instant gratification when it comes to tech toys or upgrades. I tried ShopLocal to try to bargain hunt… but the local retailers were asking ridiculous $60.99 prices for just one stick of 1GB of RAM! The rational part of me said “Why the hell not go with Newegg? With their great shipping, it could be here as soon as Tuesday!” I am no brand whore, but to have Crucial Memory in my system will be hot. I got into playing with VirtualBox last night, so the RAM should help me test distributions within the comfort of Ubuntu.

The new RAM should be like injecting steroids into my laptop… I can’t even begin to tell you the excitement. I do plan to document my exploits though. Keep a watch for an image post soon!

Reviews, Technology

Internet Sharing Evolved: Tomato Router v1.15, Powered by OpenDNS

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So I decided to potentially put a bullet into my router in an attempt to “roid up” my router. Why? The poor thing is almost 5 years old and it lacks a lot of things that are great to have when you live in a home where sharing the web and trying to function without killing another person for bandwidth. That and I didn’t want to make an expenditure that would be taken for granted.

My buddy Maczimus would tell me about how his newly upgraded Tomato router has been just awesome to him. On reading their compatible routers, I found that my Buffalo WBR2-G54 is compatible for the upgrade! So Maczimus had challenged me to upgrade the router to enjoy the web again and have less bandwidth showdowns with my sister and her YouTube addictions.

First off, for the Buffalo routers, there’s a bit of trickery involved… Buffalo encrypts their firmware to prevent unauthorized firmwares being installed to the router. The upgrade cannot be done wirelessly, it must be done while you’re hardwired to the router. I highly advise downloading the Wikibooks Manual to the Tomato router as it details the EXACT procedure to fool the router and inject Tomato into it if you’re using a Mac or Unix/Linux machine. Windows folks have it easy with running a .bat file, so no funny messes for you all. After the router does its thing and processes the upgrade… It will kick you out and then ask you to reauthenticate the session.

After providing the user name and password, you’re welcomed into a web interface that’s powered by SVG images. The interface is simple and to the point. The fun part is being able to tweak and tune values. From your basic settings like security settings to even things like the amplitude of the wireless antenna! The amplitude is far from “just a number” as with tweaking it, I have found that I am able to make it so there is no dead spots in my family’s home. That’s a seriously cool feature!

The bandwidth monitoring features are almost something that you would overlook, but to see where the bandwidth is going and from what computer or internet device is amazing! The ability to do a Quality of Service (QoS) lockdown is very nice as it can solve some of the more severe arguments because it effectively balances out the bandwidth in a fair manner. This is something that any bandwidth heavy families or small businesses should have, because it is simply that good!

I will make one caveat aware. Make sure you know the default MAC addresses of your router’s interfaces. On upgrading to Tomato, the firmware changed one hex digit of the last pair and Verizon had a panic attack. They wouldn’t let me on until I changed the address to the proper one.

The next step to perfecting my newly created Tomato router was to change the default Verizon powered DNS addresses to the OpenDNS addresses. The OpenDNS configuration is easy and free to anyone, although signing up for an ID allows you remote control of your network. Control being things like the ability to filter out sites of your choosing or even blocking out sites that are potentially dummy sites set-up by phishers. The benefits of using the OpenDNS addresses rather than your internet service providers are that they can resolve mistyped web addresses much quicker and even suggest similar sites more efficiently. The change of the DNS address is such a small thing, but it is seriously worth it for the light boost in speed. Combined with the Tomato router, it’s a combination that has made broadband sharing at home a much more pleasant experience.

The only thing left to make browsing even better is to get my family to consider upgrading to FiOS by Verizon… The speeds below with the Tomato router and OpenDNS have opened up the gateway. Hell, I wish they’d consider my offer to pay for the upgrade myself…

Reviews, Technology

Injecting New Life into KDE with Oxygen and Plasma, KDE 4 Quick Review

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I have been a silent fan of KDE though I use Gnome on a daily basis for my laptop, Suzaku. I love great KDE set-ups on desktops, though for some reason I can’t like it for laptops. Though after today… I will definitely keep my eyes out on KDE 4’s development. The trial didn’t last too long, due to somethings needing a refined polish, but my impressions on it were great.

Disclaimer: Due to the nature of me just installing the KDE 4 core, rather than using the Kubuntu Desktop install and then stacking the KDE 4 install, I didn’t get to experience all the new items of KDE 4 on a completely integrated scale. The openSUSE KDE 4 Live CD didn’t quite play too nice with me either… Keep in mind I was playing with the CORE technologies of KDE 4. I will leave my Gnome bias at the door and focus on the mindset of a KDE 3.5.7 user.

KDE has come a long way since I even remembered my first experience with it when I had tried out SUSE 9.0 Professional back in 2001 or 2002. Back then, it just seemed so coarse and uncut rather than the ignorance I had from Windows XP. I had not used Gnome yet and I didn’t delve much into Linux until much later in 2007. When I just jumped over to Linux back in February, I remembered missing the comfort of the Windows XP Start Menu configuration. I installed Kubuntu on top of Ubuntu on my desktop and the experience just didn’t do it for me. The eye candy just didn’t work well as it did in Gnome… But when I had set up a full Kubuntu set-up for my family, I rather liked the simplistic experience.

KDE 4 was touted as a complete revamp from under the hood for the KDE experience. I can still remember the baren placeholder pages for the Oxygen art team and the Plasma interface. It looked really promising. There was speculation on the next Kubuntu release (Gutsy) sporting KDE 4 by this past October, but the KDE team had pushed back the release date to make sure that the 4.0 release would be truly ready. So it was a push to late December, around Christmas and many people were once again met with disappointment to see it being pushed back to January of this year. It wouldn’t be until last night at 12am that a news bulletin hit Digg basically saying “KDE 4.0 is LIVE! Get the Live CD NOW!”

On booting into KDE, you’re taken to a wonderful black backdrop and a set of icons on a small window showing all the procedure calls being started for things like network initialization, hard drives, etc. From there, a tranquil chime lets you know you have entered KDE. The desktop is just dead on pretty. It’s a lot better than the bland entrance from KDE 3.5 and just has a great wow factor. I like the bottom panel bar being a nice black as it just seems to polish up the theme that much more.

KDE 4 Desktop

A new thing is the fact that KDE can do on-board compositing, with no need for things like Compiz Fusion. This is good as the common user is not going to want to muck about with something that could break their workspace. If anyone remembers my rant about how Compiz Fusion shattered on me, then they know what I mean. The compositing is all from KWin powering it all and most of the “eye candy” is more on the side of refining the experience and to increase productivity, rather than trying to do pretty things. The compositing also allows for widgets to be used in conjunction to the desktop. In the above screen shot, you’ll see that there’s a computer icon with a box above for “recently connected devices”. That’s for any hot-swapping USB items and it will associate them with their appropriate programs. For those who want to know more about the eye candy, KDE 4 does do the “widget space” like how the OS X folks have theirs for Mac. Definitely something for the silent productivity fan.

The improvements for the experience are finally showing. The KRunner app is very nice and can definitely help narrow things down if you’re trying to run a command for a program that you can’t quite remember. While you type, KRunner index searches the system for any matching commands and has them in a list below the search. You can see what the command does in addition to that. The geek factor is that you can also use KRunner as a quick calculator should that need arise.

The Kicker Panel is like the K Menu on steroids, with regards to finding app launchers faster. The novice is able to search for programs by using the search function, while the system indexes all the programs to facilitate an expedited process. In addition, the large icons make it easy to narrow down what you want to do. This makes for a much pleasant experience, nothing like the confusing muck-about seen in most Windows machines. The favorites tab is nice as you can add programs that you use all the time there and just make it a one stop shop for any programs you wish to use.

The Dolphin File Manager really impressed me. I never personally liked using Konqueror for file management and felt it just did a sloppy job. I liked how clean and simple it was able to display files with options to change how you wanted to display them. I loved the split view to be able to view 2 directories at the same time. That could easily be something useful for things like doing redundant memory card back-ups or anything that is similar. Dolphin is just balls out simple, functional, and quick. The traits that a good graphical file manager should have, no exceptions.

Here’s a screen with the split-view mode

Konqueror, I can’t really say too much as I use Firefox for my day to day uses. They have picked up on making the experience much more polished and I can say that there is much more improvement than how I have seen it running on KDE 3.5. Konqueror seems to run much faster now… I don’t know if that is due to some new changes in Konqueror or if it’s from the zippy performance of KDE 4 and KWin. It’s definitely something I could be happy with as a casual user. In the Oxygen skinning theme, it does make Konqueror look almost like Apple’s Safari browser.

My only gripe with KDE 4 is the lack of ability to change the size of the bottom panel. In KDE 3.5, you can change it to a single line set-up rather than a double in the KSysGuard menus… but in KDE 4, there’s no option for that. I am sure that when the final touches are done, the experience should be much cleaner and this minor issue would be fixed. Other than that minor gripe… I am definitely in love with KDE 4. It’s great and I am looking forward to the changes due to come for the future versions of KDE. I just wish Canonical would give the Kubuntu 8.04 release the LTS status with KDE 4 on it, instead of giving it second class priority.

Site News, Technology

Another Angle to my KDE 4 Test: Installing KDE 4 Core to Suzaku

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I decided I gotta be a little nutty just to have some fun… So I was curious if there was a way to install the KDE 4 core packages to get an internet experience with KDE 4 on my laptop, Suzaku. Sure enough, the process to install it for Gutsy was detailed here: Kubuntu.org – Be Free with KDE 4.0. Unfortunately with my family’s ADSL connection, it may take me a while to install the packages. The boredom of slow downloads is pretty painful or in Bender’s words from the movie “Bender’s Big Score”:

Suicide Booth, Gimme your best shot! Electrocution please, a side order of poison! Helloooo… Kill me, you stupid machine!!! What the..? Local calls 50 cents?! It’s a street corner telephone parlor!

Though I imagine that when the downloads finish installing and provided everything functions… I will probably feel like saying another one of Bender’s great quotes from the same movie:

People will call me a failure! Others however will call me the world’s sexiest killing machine, who’s fun at parties!

Welp, time to wait for the download or even possibly prep for the gym.

Update: 11:20am – Seems it finished… Time to reboot my X session and kick into KDE 4

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Midnight Excitement had a Wrench in the Works

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Well, in child-like excitement, I decided to spin a copy of the KDE 4 Live CD on Suzaku to play before buckling down for a full review… but there was a bit of a problem. I was hoping to directly play with things that involved internet connectivity, but the CD did not bundle in any wireless network apps. From first impression, it’s a clean looking environment. I am really looking forward to seeing it in real action on a production level operating suite such as Kubuntu, openSUSE, PClinuxOS, etc. Maybe tomorrow when I am more awake, I can sit down and play with what all I can that doesn’t require an internet connection… Unless anyone doesn’t mind me coming over to jack into a LAN port to play around with some serious eye candy. Hell, the Live CD recognized my native resolution to boot!

I will leave a bit of humor to close this short post… Nothing more embarrassing than having the KDE 4 log-in and log out sounds just blasting out of your laptop speakers at 2am in the morning and completely waking your family, all because openSUSE doesn’t recognize my onboard volume controls and refused to mute.

Personal, Rant, Technology

Mobile Phone Crossroads, We Meet Again.

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Call me odd or a phone maniac… but I love mobile phones. Ever since engineers found ways to pack a wallop of technologies into a small shell, it’s no wonder why people are almost replacing their laptops with these devices. Though I will admit that in the early days, the devices were not the prettiest looking shells or operating systems.

I had my taste of smart phone ownership with a Motorola MPx220 and I can say it was quite possibly one of the most horrid examples of a “smart phone” ever to be experienced. The lack of being able to free up RAM from killing applications and Motorola’s poor expertise back then with Windows Mobile were the things that just made for a poor quality device. At the time, Windows Mobile 2003 was just terribly limited with growth and freedom. It had me desiring more out of a more “intelligent” phone.

I would eventually step into a T-Mobile MDA (Windows Mobile 2005) which I would unlock myself to use on Cingular/AT&T. Windows Mobile 5 was leaps and bounds ahead of the game, but there were “limitations” with this device as well. By default, the device is alright though it could use significantly better things to improve its usefulness. The only problem to increase the device’s productivity? Well, two issues:

  1. Productivity suites cost money. The best of the suites that I got to try on my friend’s device were the SPB Software programs. These programs re-skin the Today screen of a Pocket PC device to display information in a more intuitive manner. But to get a good suite for a Windows Mobile 6 device that does not have HTC’s touchFLO interface on it, you’d have to spend almost $100 for a great set-up of the SPB Mobile Shell ($29.99), Pocket Plus ($29.99), Diary ($19.99), and Phone Suite ($19.99). Granted, this argument can be nulled out with any HTC device that has the HTC touchFLO interface which does the same as those programs, but is built into the phone at no cost to the end user.
  2. Additional RAM is required from running these instances of productivity suites. Back when I had my MDA and had a “tricked out” Today screen, my phone was not running at its best… So I had to remedy that with overclocking the processor from its stock speed of 195 mHz to a 220 mHz. The only thing was the crippling the device was the limited amount of RAM. I dare to say that on devices like the T-Mobile Wing or HTC Herald, running productivity suites would just diminish the device from being a “great” Pocket PC. For devices like the AT&T 8525/HTC TyTN, AT&T Tilt/HTC Kaiser (or TyTN2), or the HTC Athena, this may have minimal impact and nulls that argument. (Any owners of these devices, feel free to correct me.)

Why did I give up the MDA? A vital function for any phone I own is that is must be able to be a reliable alarm clock for me. After a few occasions where the MDA would lock up from RAM issues, I had let it go. I would try Nokia’s Symbian S60 smartphone interface and lack of touch made the experience feel so disconnected, though the phone features were dead on reliable. Palm’s tired out Garnet OS would make for a great experience, but with limitations on using the phone properly with T-Mobile would have me seeking to trade out the phone for something more along the lines of a Sony Ericsson device.

I love my P990i, don’t get me wrong. Quite possibly one of the best phones I have EVER owned and I do stand by that statement. It’s a dead reliable phone and even has a touch screen interface with a keyboard. Sony Ericsson has made me a fan for life and I will continue to recommend their devices to people seeking a fun alternative to bland domestic phones while trying to avoid high prices world phone imports. I have played with the P1i and it just feels like it has lost its sense of identity from the lack of a keypad flip. The failing of the P-series currently is the devices have a memory leak after awhile and reclaiming the RAM can only do so much before the phone needs a reboot. Something that reminded me of my old MDA when the memory leak was so bad that the device needed a reboot. It was a shame that Sony Ericsson’s delay of the P990i’s release only made it a device that was just too late to make a big splash in the ocean of smart phones and PDA phones.

This leads me to a debate of what I should consider stepping into later on. With my site up and having my own mail server, getting push e-mail will be a service that I will definitely be considering. Web use is more an optional thing, but would not hurt which makes wi-fi a great option to look for. GPS is a nice thing to have as I have had moments where I thought to myself “Why don’t I have GPS?” Productivity is a big thing as it would make a “smart phone” pointless if it is not productive. So what options does that leave me?

I know some of my open source friends would say “Why not Open Moko?” My response is just I don’t have much time to be mucking with my phone’s innards. With the eve of Google’s Android and the Open Moko team not making a fast enough push to make it a viable platform, it has left me a bit sour on considering it. I don’t much like Android either as it seems to push a guise of “open source” but with an influence of “Google is your new god” somewhat makes me a little uneasy like it is a false sense of freedom. (My buddy JJNova has shown me some things that even make me a bit distrustful of Google as well.)

BlackBerry devices currently are a bit limited on features depending on which path you follow. T-Mobile USA is getting a BlackBerry Pearl update with wi-fi in February after their Suncom merger, but it will lack GPS. Then there’s the case of the Blackberry Curves for T-Mobile and AT&T. T-Mobile’s version has wi-fi, but lacks GPS. AT&T’s is the opposite with having GPS and lacking wi-fi. While Research in Motion (RiM) has said the FCC is limiting what they can and cannot put into their devices… They supposedly have a new device in the works. If the new device can combine wi-fi and GPS, RiM may just win me over. Now, if they can make their net browsing just as good as their mail system… it may be serious heat for the Windows Mobile crowd.

Windows Mobile would return me to a device I am “familiar” with. The only issue is that syncing in Linux with Windows Mobile is a rather difficult matter to resolve. To be with a device of this caliber, I’d have to muck about just to make a back-up of my contacts on a Windows XP machine. So a sacrifice of freedom all in the name of smartly backing up my phone book… An odd sacrifice if anything. Going BlackBerry still runs into this issue as well, so it is “lose-lose” to a sense.

If anyone wants to throw some insight to help me with my future decision, it would be much appreciated.