Monday, February 26, 2007

Aaachoo!

Tech Warning: The next few paragraphs are technical. Linux related stuff. I do recommend watching the movie at the end of the posts.

Allergies have got me, something fierce this week. Really bad tonight. I'm getting that left-side of the body aching and swelling too. At least the right side of me is fine. It's a really weird effect. Even the left side of my face is tense and painful. No, that's not the technical part of this post.

I redid my Laptop. I had it as a dual boot, but Windows XP Home Edition was useless on that machine. I used Boot and Nuke to clean the hard drive, then installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. It's now an Ubuntu only machine. No dual boot. I used the alternate install cd. I've read a few reports on Ubuntu Forums that installing that way seems to make the machine run faster. I'm not sure if 6.10 is just better, but it is running faster. Programs open faster, the machine boots and shuts down faster too. Not sure why that is, but it really is.

The only problem I'm having is with the CPU frequency scaling. My laptop is a 2.8 GHZ machine. On battery power, it will run for about 15 minutes, 30 on a brand new battery. The CPU has the capability to 'throttle down'. I did it on the Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake installation. It took me almost a week to figure it out, but I did get it working. It might take a week again, but so far, I've not got the frequency scaling to work in 6.10. I don't yet know if I should be disappointed in 6.10, or myself. Either way, I'll still upgrade to 7.04 - Feisty Fawn. Some really interesting things are happening with it. Vista just can't match up.

I'm still listening to last weeks podcast of The Linux Link Tech Show. They had J.T.S. Moore on. He did a documentary film on Linux and Open Source software called, Revolution OS. It's actually a really good film, and I might actually buy it someday. When I can afford it. Maybe, that will be when I have a real job. One where I crawl under desks, and say, "It's wasn't plugged in." If you want to purchase it:




Anyway, just in case you're interested, here the entire movie, courtesy of Google Video. Enjoy:

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