JDPFu.com 2025

Many of you know that I’ve had stability issues with the proprietary nVidia video drivers for a few years. Lockups after just a few days, but especially when running any video applications like mplayer or VLC. This was new with Ubuntu and dual monitors. Previously I used the nVidia drivers on the same single monitor without any issues. Stability was good.

Failure – jump to the bottom to see why I undid use of the Nouveaux driver

A few months ago, I removed the X/Windows server from my main desktop and had it running only as a server – accessing it from remote systems or purely with the text/console interface.
I attempted to load the Nouveaux driver a few months ago, but never figured it out and life got in the way. Since removing X/Windows, the system stability has been impressive. ZERO lockups with Ubuntu Server x64 v10.04 LTS during that time, as you would expect.

This morning, I really needed the screen real estate that dual 24" monitors provide, so I started googling again and trying to get the Nouveaux driver installed so stability could be experienced/tested with it.

Sometimes we all need enter non-ASCII characters for some reason. In Linux, it is fairly easy, provided you have access to a unicode table . There is nothing special about that unicode link – any of them should work.

The trick is to press “cntl+shift+u” as a cord followed by unicode keys for the specific character. For example, “00f1” will enter an “ñ” character. “ooe1” does “é”. Sometimes you don’t need to enter any leading zeros.

The main characters that I need are:

• 00e1 – á
• 00e9 – é
• 00ed – í
• 00f3 – ó
• 00fa – ú
• 00f1 – ñ

My needs are simple.

On UNIX/Linux operating systems, you can easily schedule jobs to be performed later with at. At is like cron, but more flexible for 1-time tasks to be run later.

echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at now + 1 day

This command will take whatever the current time is and add 24 hours to it, then it will run the wget command provided. Time specifications are pretty easy to use. A few more examples:

echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at now + 2 months
echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at now + 1 year
echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at Friday
echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at Tuesday
echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at 6/1/11
echo "wget download-some-file-later" | at 5 pm 3/1/11

A nice article on Lubuntu_ … Lubuntu is my current desktop and has been for a few years.

Not Just for Old Hardware

The article implies that Lubntu is only for old hardware. It isn’t, though it does work well on P4 systems with 1GB of RAM (my Mom’s). It is worth checking out, even on current, modern hardware like mine, a Core i5 with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. My daily laptop runs Lubuntu in a virtual machine with 1.5GB of RAM and 10GB of disk. It runs nicely on all these systems.

Other Options Besides Lubuntu

If you really want a small, light weight Linux, check out TinyCore. Sure Puppy and DSL are options too, but with TinyCore, you get to load the apps that you want and completely control the amount of excess storage and RAM required.

I’ve been playing with XBMC on an Asus Eee 1008H for a few months, but never bothered to set it up as the main player in the house. This weekend, I attended a demonstration of XBMC at a local computer security meeting and was impressed. Very Impressed. Below are some tips that I learned setting up XBMC on my home network.

Oct 2013 Update

Sometimes companies do slimy things. It is usually because they didn’t think through the decision and I suspect Canonical simply didn’t think thru this decision before doing it.

Think again, Canonical.

BTW, Canonical puts together and markets the Ubuntu distribution of the Linux operating system. I have 15+ Ubuntu systems running here – most are servers. Ubuntu is based on FLOSS superheros Debian and Gnome and thousands of other FLOSS project teams, like Banshee. I don’t want to downplay what Canonical has done for Linux and usability, but the Debian guys do a tremendous amount of completely free work that is the base of Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions.

Amazon Affiliate

Banshee is a popular audio player on Linux. Banshee has an Amazon MP3 Music affiliate key embedded in their program so MP3 purchases made by users through that interface give them a little finders’ fee. This is common practice in open source software. Firefox earned millions of dollars last year from Google doing this.

Think again, Canonical.

Big Money

Banshee earned less than $3100 last year from this affiliate program. Further, the Banshee developers give all that money to the Gnome foundation – another critical FLOSS software project that almost every Linux distribution makes use of. Canonical decided to change that affiliate code in the Banshee version released with Ubuntu so that Canonical keeps 75% of the money and passes on 25% to Banshee. Uh … sorry … Canonical. Didn’t your mother teach you that stealing is wrong?

Think again, Canonical.

Ask and Negotiate First

Canonical, if you had contacted the Banshee guys and worked out an agreement, I bet that some win-win solution could be found. Sure, your distribution of Banshee as the default music player will certainly increase the number of users and probably increase the amount of cash the affiliate program makes.

Canonical. You are acting like Facebook and Apple and Microsoft. Stop it.

With the new Debian Squeeze release and Mint-Linux, Ubuntu users have viable alternatives. I hope that Canonical/Ubuntu rethinks this stealing and comes up with a published revenue sharing model that works for all FLOSS projects they distribute. Hummmmm. That has me thinking …

Sometimes you don’t need the best quality or performance from a device, you just need it to work good enough for a purpose. I wanted a cheap NAS for my home network that supported 2 USB connected storage devices. No high performance needed, just easy access to disks over the network. No RAID.

Usually that would mean going online and looking for a PogoPlug or some other cheap device. Then I realized that I already had the device I needed. Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player

Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player as a NAS

Network Attached Storage is NAS.

Most people buy a WD HD TV Live (or the newer Netflix enabled “plus” version) to playback media to an HDTV. It does that fairly well over HDMI at 1080p. Not bad for $50 (or $90 for the plus version). Because it runs Linux inside, it probably does other things well too. It is completely silent, so having this device connected to the bedroom TV is acceptable. Having it in your living room also works.

Sometimes having some information is good. Sometimes it is frustrating. For me, the Certified Ubuntu Hardware Catalog is the later. None of the video cards I own is on this list. Zero. It isn’t like I’ve purchases non-mainstream cards. I guess they don’t want to bother with official support for cards costing less than $100?

What are these cards that aren’t worth support?

• nVidia 220
• nVidia GeForce 7300 SE
• nVidia GeForce 7600 GS

I retired the Diamond 128MB adapters and the nVidia Ti4400s a few years ago.
Also the VirtualBox Graphics adapter isn’t listed either, but since it is a virtual graphics adapter, I suppose that is to be expected.

At least this list of supported hardware isn’t as short as the list from VMware for their ESX and ESXi product lines. Also known as the HCL – Hardware Compatibility List

An article on Microsoft Trained Brain Syndrome that spells out some interesting points.

Still Need MS-Windows – Probably

Sadly, even if you do change to Linux for your daily use system, you’ll still probably need a Windows machine to run some software like TurboTax or the latest games. That’s just fine. If you don’t game, run Windows inside a virtual machine. If you do game, partition your drive with 60GB for Windows games – buy you’ll want to plan on 15 minutes and a reboot before playing so you can patch the system.

You’ll Prefer Linux

More and more you’ll find yourself in Linux and being happy about it. Trust me.

• You’ll be happy with the central OS and Application patching that Linux distros manage for you.
• You’ll like the added security because malware and spyware isn’t written for Linux.
• You’ll love all the free software that just works – 30K titles the last time I looked.
• You’ll love the really easy backup software that just works for either local or remote backups. Taking hourly snapshots is extremely easy.

Came across this article form 2004 about a small business that dumped Microsoft after the BSA showed up and discovered 8 installed, but not used, pieces of software on their systems. Keeping up with software licenses is tough. The software marshals arrived, closed his business for the audit and found about 8 pieces of unlicensed software. $65K in fines and $35K in legal fees forced him to settle rather than fight.

The CEO got mad and told his IT guys to dump Microsoft. This was back in 2004. Back then, things were harder than today. That company doesn’t use any Microsoft products anymore, but they do use proprietary tools. Redhat Linux was their choice back then. I’d be curious to find out whether they’ve changed to CentOS on their servers or a different desktop.

Key Takeaways