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Tomorrow I will be giving a talk in Maastricht about Ubuntu

ubuntudemon — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:43:26 +0000

I will be giving a talk at the university of Maastricht :

Incognito presents Ubuntu/GNU Linux
When : Tuesday 30-09-08 15:30
Where : Bouillonstraat 8-10 : room 0.015

Everyone who lives in Maastricht is welcome to attend for free. 
Download the flyer

What is Ubuntu ?

An operating system
GNU/Linux for human beings
Humanity towards others
Free as in Freedom (Free Software)
Free as in no-cost (gratis)
Community
Every 6 months a new release

Roald Hopman, Ubuntu Member, will give a presentation about Ubuntu
starting at 15:30. Topics will include but will not be limited to :

What is Ubuntu ? (introduction to Ubuntu)
Advantages, Disadvantages
Ease of use
Suitability
Free Software
practical stuff (including tools for students)
more advanced topics such as reporting bugs, contributing to Ubuntu,security, protecting your privacy,….

Feel free to bring your laptop. After the talk there will be an install
party where you can get your laptop installed with Ubuntu, can get help,
ask questions or talk to other people who are using Ubuntu.

If you are new to Ubuntu this meeting is suitable for you :

You are encouraged to ask everything you want to know related to Ubuntu.
You can get help installing Ubuntu (make backups first)
You can get help connecting to the wireless network of the university(MAASnet)

If you are an experienced Ubuntu user this meeting is also suitable for
you :

You will get to talk to other people who are using Ubuntu
You might learn something new (contributing to Ubuntu, reporting bugs,tools you didn’t know about,…..)
You can help asking relevant questions during the presentation.
You can help new Ubuntu users at the install party.

If you need help connecting to the wireless network of the university of
Maastricht (MAASnet) try to do the following before the meeting :

make sure your system is fully updated

download your windows wireless driver from your manufacturer

read : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessNetworkOfUniversityOfMaastricht

type the following in the terminal to install a few packages :

sudo aptitude install linux-generic wpasupplicant ndisgtk

Relevant information :
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessNetworkOfUniversityOfMaastricht

We got assigned an apartment!

ubuntudemon — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:12:45 +0000

I recently blogged about my new job as Open Source Consultant. Now there’s more great news for me and my girlfriend! We got assigned a nice apartment in Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht which means that no one else can get this apartment (for now). But we still have to sign a contract to make it official (and we do need to pay a fine if we don’t sign). If there’s no strange stuff in the contract we don’t agree with then we’ll probably sign the contract. We are going to live together somewhere halfway between our current homes (Schagen and Maastricht). This means a step forward in our relationship.

There’s still some important stuff left which needs to be taken care of :

We need to find a nice job for my girlfriend around Nieuwegein/Utrecht
We need to find a temporary living solution. Our new apartment will be finished somewhere between the end of the last quarter of 2008 and the beginning of the first quarter of 2009 (but no guarantees) while my job starts in November 2008.

New job as Open Source Consultant!

ubuntudemon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:19:16 +0000

I’ve been hired by Industrial TSI as open source consultant starting at November 3rd for three days a week. I’m looking forward to it! When my thesis is finished I will start working five days a week.

Industrial TSI is bringing Free Software to businesses. Industrial TSI’s lines of business are : Software Development lifecycle support, Desktop and Office, Server and databases. I will do a bit of everything: software development,support,consultancy,……

If you have any recommendations regarding a place to live around Nieuwegein/Utrecht feel free to contact me. I’m searching for a nice place with a seperate bedroom for less than 750 euro a month in the so-called “free sector”.

Laconica / identi.ca seems to become very popular within the Free Software community. I started my own identi.ca account so feel free to subscribe to it.

Does anyone have the Zalman ZM-NC2000 laptop cooler ?

ubuntudemon — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:31:11 +0000

I’m potentially interested in buying the Zalman ZM-NC2000 to cool my laptop. Does anyone have this laptop cooler ? If so could you please do me a big favor and do some measurements for me ?

I would like to know the two distances which I illustrated in the picture (the red distance and the yellow distance). The red distance is important because I want to know whether the air can blow directly into the air intake for my cpu. I need an exact measurement for this because the ZM-NC1000 was too small for this.The yellow distance is important because I don’t want too much air to escape at the sides. Exact measurements are also important because I need to convert it to the metric system.

Thank you very much in advance!

Hardy Heron is about to be released (within 24 hours)

ubuntudemon — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:52:51 +0000

Hardy Heron is about to be released (within 24 hours).

I’ve tested Hardy Heron’s release candidate. Some nice and new features :

it’s a LTS release which means 3 years of updates on the desktop (5 for the server) which makes it very suitable for schools and some companies
smarter and faster copying of files in nautilus
the newest kernel (2.6.24)
PulseAudio
Xorg 7.3
Firefox 3.0 b5 as default webbrowser
improved memory protection
and more

Some bugs :

Of these bugs bug #220640 has the most severe impact on me. If I upgrade my laptop to Hardy I won’t be able to connect to the wireless network of my university. I have always been able to connect to this network using wpasupplicant and ipw3945. But ipw3945 has been replaced by iwl3945 which is not yet as mature as ipw3945 and apparently does not support this particular network. I’m happy to do more testing using the Hardy live cd if people have suggestions.

All software always contains some bugs. One of the nice things about the free software community is that everybody can be open en honest about bugs and that everyone can help each other. Hardy is really looking nice and I’m sure it will be a great release!

The Dutch government committed to use Open Standards

ubuntudemon — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:10:28 +0000

Great news! The Dutch government committed to use Open Standards. With equal suitability Free Software (as in FLOSS) is to be preferred above Non-Free Software.

From Dutch Government and Parliament: Open standards in 2008 :

It took a few years, but the Dutch government and parliament agreed yesterday to implement open standards in 2008 according to the “comply or explain” principle. This means that all central government institutions should use open standards from April 2008 onward, unless they have a very good explanation. The new policy isn’t just about open standards. When implementing ICT projects open source software should be taken into account as well and should be chosen when at least equal to that of proprietary software.

I also blogged about this in Dutch :

Overheid moet aan Open Standaarden en Vrije Software

I’m very sorry!

ubuntudemon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:53:26 +0000

I’m very sorry! I don’t want to spam planet.ubuntu.com

I just discovered this : if I edit an old post the timestamp in the rss feed gets updated and bumps my post to the top of planet.ubuntu.com. I use wordpress.com so I can’t edit the source code. I thought this just happened with my latest post but apparently it happens with al my posts. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this ? In the meantime I won’t be editting posts.

The last post I made regarding the harddrive problem is : Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults. I won’t blog again about this problem until new information arises.

Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management

ubuntudemon — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:16:14 +0000

Ubuntu is NOT causing aggressive power management settings!

The following things might instead cause aggressive power management settings :

your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management

Read here what Matthew Garret an experienced and well known Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem.

I’m afraid that quite some people are getting a high Load_Cycle_Count because their laptop (BIOS or harddrive firmware) uses too aggressive powermanagement. That’s why I think “wishlist” status for this bug is too low. IMHO Ubuntu should correct mistakes made by BIOS or harddrive firmware.

These aggressive power management settings are set by your BIOS or harddrive firmware. Windows and/or Mac OS X might be overriding these settings which might make Ubuntu look bad if Ubuntu doesn’t override these settings. I won’t blog again about this problem until new information arises. I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I don’t want to see Ubuntu hurt because it’s not Ubuntu who is setting these aggressive power management defaults.

People with laptops who haven’t enabled laptop-mode and think they are suffering from this problem might consider adding the following information to the bug report :

the output of $sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
the age of your disk
an estimate of the total hours your disk has been running since you started using it (to compare to Power_on_Hours because that value might be off)
an estimate of the average increase of Load_Cycle_Count during one hour on AC (before applying any “ugly” fixes)

I blogged earlier about this problem :

Laptop Hardrive Killer Bug – should get critical status

ubuntudemon — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:21:24 +0000

People on the ubuntuforums are worrying about this problem because quite some people seem to be suffering from it. Just do a search for Load_Cycle_Count on the ubuntuforums. Here are some threads as an example :

IMHO this bug should get critical status because it’s killing people’s harddrives.

The following things might cause aggressive power management :

your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management

People with laptops who haven’t enabled laptop-mode and think they are suffering from this problem might consider adding the following information to the bug report :

the output of $sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
the age of your disk
an estimate of the total hours your disk has been running since you started using it (to compare to Power_on_Hours because that value might be off)
an estimate of the average increase of Load_Cycle_Count during one hour on AC (before applying any “ugly” fixes)

I blogged earlier about this problem :

Read here what Matthew Garret an Ubuntu Developer has said about this problem.

Laptop Hardrive Killer Bug – How to discover whether you are affected

ubuntudemon — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:45:26 +0000

Your harddisk shouldn’t spin-down/spin-up and/or park/unpark too much causing the mechanics of the harddrive to slowly detiorate. If this is happening you should see your Load_Cycle_Count increasing too fast.

The following things might cause aggressive power management :

your (laptop) harddrive firmware might have aggressive power management defaults (operating system independent)
your (laptop) BIOS might set your harddrive to use aggressive power management (operating system independent)
you might have enabled laptop-mode in /etc/default/acpi-support (disabled by default) which will set your harddrive to use aggressive power management

There’s another part of this problem (one of the following might be true) :

something wakes up the harddrive right after spinning down.
something unparks the head right after your harddisk head is parked.

To discover whether you suffer from this problem :

First install smartmontools to be able to query your harddrive :
$ sudo aptitude install smartmontools

To find your Load_Cycle_Count do this (the last number is the number we are interested in) :
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count

If this number is growing rapidly (on average more than 90 per day) then you might suffer from this problem.

The reason I’m saying to look for an average of more than 90 per day is because it will guarantee that your Load_Cycle_Count is less than 100.000 in three years : 90 * 365 * 3 = 98.550. As you can see I chose this number of 90 quite arbitrarily but it should almost guarantee that your harddrive won’t die during the first three years due to a high Load_Cycle_Count. It’s possible that a value below 180 per day is still okay (180 * 365 * 3 = 197.100).

Harddrive manufacturers seem to claim most harddrives can handle at least 600.000 Load_Cycles but this is probably an average under ideal circumstances. My harddrive started to slowly die when at a Load_Cycle_Count of 200.000 after 10 months of use (Feisty and a little bit of Gutsy).
IMHO this bug should get critical status because it’s killing people’s harddrives.

More information about this bug :