Alright, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this picture that is brag-worthy. The most notable changes are gKrellm, which is an awesome system status monitor that tracks processor, memory, disk, and network interface usage as well as checking POP3 mail addresses. That’s running in the bottom left. Note also in the bottom right the download status bar. This is from a BitTorrent client (and server, no less) called Azureus, which is really awesome.
The background was designed by yours truly in the Gimp (using the Flame rendering filter, primarily).
I just saw a commercial featuring Shaq in which biting into a Nestle Crunch candy bar causes California to separate along its eastern border and float out to sea, thus fulfilling one of my most prominent high school-era prophesies. I have always envisioned California becoming an Australia-like colony for lunatics rather than convicts, with several miles of ocean protecting against direct contact with the outside world.
Justice and fairness would require, naturally, that we export all the sane people back to the Mainland in the post-rupture time.
Such a coincidence provides a nearly-sufficient prompting to start a cult. J. R. “Bob” Dobbs told me about the Big Split!
‘fo sheezy. what the fuck does that mean in english? you should understand that having a day job precludes me from ‘keeping it real’ and as such, I lack a certain familiarity with the language of the ‘streets’ as it were.
Alright, so things don’t always go the way you planned them. But, everything’s looking better and better.
It turns out that the USB functionality I was noticing with my USB mouse under Kernel 2.4 was an illusion. There must be some core mouse compatibility built into Linux that functions outside of the actual USB Bus Controller system. In fact, I think I remember that from when I was compiling kernels. I wasn’t even seeing my controllers in the /proc/bus/usb directory under 2.4.
The Kernel 2.6 upgrade went smoothly, as I did not choose to build my own. Pat’s (the guy behind Slackware) build of the new kernel worked absolutely wonderfully, especially given that I had already fixed the module-loading snafu before upgrading. I set up LILO to retain the Kernel 2.4 booting options if I ever want them, but I doubt I ever will.
ALSA (the new Linux sound driver system) has been installed for 2.6 compatibility, and I’m anticipating upgrading to the 2.6 wireless drivers so I can actually try out my USB wireless NIC, which never worked on the old build (I don’t think I knew to install the drivers package at that point). I might bring up the GCC compiler to 2.6 status, but I’m nervous about this. I haven’t even installed the 2.6 headers, because I’m nervous about compiling anything under 2.6. This reluctance shouldn’t be a problem. And, the GCC for 2.4 should work for most things anyway. This is just a problem inherent to using a non-standard kernel in a distribution.
The machine is running great, and I’m especially pleased that I can get an SVGA console (which was impossible for some reason on my own kernels (dang you Pat and your mad skills!).
I think I’ll fix the blackbox bug and maybe get wireless working tonight. I’m back at work now (hence the long blog), so it’ll have to wait a little while. It’ll be nice when I have a (graphical) web browser.
Q: What do you do with a perfectly functional Linux box? A: Format the hard drive and start over.
Well, late (I mean late) last night, I dropped the Slackware CD back in the drive and started over. I’m planning on keeping a running log here (as my profile on gaim isn’t exactly available yet). :) Good stuff is happening.
After a silly fight with forgetting how to create a user and then “unlock” the user account so it can be used in a log in, I started going through the startup logs. The hotplug service is still locking up the startup (as was the case on the previous install), but USB is actually working under Kernel 2.4.26, which is amazing. As soon as I get home from (ahem) work, I will be getting my USB drive to work. Previously, I was thinking the USB controller was locking up hotplug. Now I’m thinking it’s the SCSI modules or APM (details below). This is good news.
eth0 (the primary NIC) is not working, which is 99.9% surely the fault of hotplug being disabled. The current working theory is cleaning up the modprobe errors in the kernel startup will allow hotplug to work, which will in turn allow eth0 to be loaded as a valid interface. If not, I’ll just modify modules.conf to load the proper driver for eth0 manually. This will at least get me on the web, just in case I need to download the Kernel 2.6 sources. :)
Modules that have been giving the kernel grief are: char-major-10-134 scsi_hostadapter block-major-8
Major 8 is the SCSI disk device. I’m just going to alias that to usb-storage since it’s the only SCSI functionality I have. SCSI is a major hassle, but it’s also the method Linux uses to talk to USB flash drives. scsi_hostadapter has already been silenced by my mighty hand by aliasing it in the same fashion. Major 10 is, as I’m learning, a major thorn in the side of many non-laptop Linux boxes, as Major 10 handles APM (laptop power management: suspend, hibernate) and other functions. “Other functions” is the only reason I’m not just really excited to put in
alias char-major-10-134 off
which, of course, is the kernel module loading equivalent of a middle finger to the driver. “Other functions” apparently has something to do with expanded features of the real time clock, but further reading has convinced me that the overall importance of the module is somewhere on the order of “Meh” level.
X worked great under default configuration. One font directory is missing (which I will hopefully just install from a tarball soon, otherwise I’ll just knock that line out of the X config file), and that annoying “missing catalog” error still shows up this time, which is something that I will figure out sometime very soon. It has to do with language support in blackbox, and it’s definitely high up on my problems hit list. I moved from fluxbox to blackbox on the basis of simplicity and stability. After browsing the BlackBox CVS source tree I think I know what to download (when eth0 or my USB drive go up) to fix that language catalog bug. With no floppy drive, I’m a bit marooned until one or the other file transfer methods starts working.
The system feels fast, and I think sticking with Kernel 2.4 will allow me to hold on to the stability and cohesiveness of Slackware in a better way. agpgart and all that other wonderful 3D acceleration support is working, which is really more than I could say about my Kernel 2.6 custom build. I think I’ll leave that stuff to the experts (especially when dealing with a brand-new Shuttle mainboard that has onboard video, audio, and LAN on a proprietary ATI chipset).
Well, it’s good to see that while our enemy is ruthless, amoral, and vicious, at least they’re stupid:
The last time [Steve Harrigan’s hotel was bombed], the terrorists used a donkey cart to fire at our hotel. The first rocket burned the donkey’s ass. He took off, and the rest fired wildly. This time, the bus was not strong enough to support the rocket launcher, so it collapsed in flames. So while they have made progress since the donkey attempt, they still have a ways to go.[Source]
This data looks like a Jackson Pollack painting. Did we not stress the instructions enough?
During each of three test sessions, you will perform a total of 12 targeted movement tasks. Each is a 1-D tasks in which you will move the end effector (EE) along a single axis (X or Y). These tasks will help us evaluate your ability to command smooth hand controller inputs and simultaneously control motion along multiple axes. You will be assessed on:
smoothness of commanded inputs
speed
And since the maximum velocity is 30 cm/s, this person wasn’t even moving fast!
Well, I just tried my first cup of chamomile tea. I have resolved to never again draw hot water to drink steeped lawn clippings.
When the thought struck me to try herb tea as an alternative to the tasty flavored tea assortment in the office, I should have pictured fat women sunning nude on a beach. That way, at least, I might have shoved a mechanical pencil through my skull and quieted my exploratory urge.
