Terenzio Berni's fantasies

Something to think on...

2010-08-13T12:59:00.000+01:00

"I'm always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler."

Richard Gabriel

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx Review

2010-05-15T13:44:00.002+01:00

On April 24 Ubuntu released its 10.04 release, I was currently using 9.10 (32 bit) and because 10.04 is an LTS and even because I wanted to switch from 32 bit to 64 and from ext3 to ext4 I've decided to do a fresh install on my HP DV3650.
The HP DV3650 has this spec:

Intel Core 2 Duo P8600@2.4Ghz
4GB DDR2 Ram
320 Gb HD
Nvidia 9300M with 256Mb dedicated Ram
13.3" LED Display
Main Ports: 3 USB, 1 HDMI, Ethernet

I also use an external Philips 19" Monitor via HDMI to DVI connector.

Installation process
The graphic install it's almost identical to the on in Karmic Koala expect from the fact tath by default it doesn't show any option after the boot. If you want to change language or keyboard you need to push any key.
I think that in the mind of the developers this choice should give to the install procedure a much cleaner feeling but as I need an italian keyboard and prefer an English OS it doesn't feel good for me (and probably for anyone who prefers an English OS but lives outside the USA).
By the way if you don't change the keyboard before installing Lucid you can select it during the graphical install.

First Boot
Even the boot time feels about the same as Karmic (maybe Lucid Lynx is slightly faster).
I didn't elapse it because I think the correct unit for measuring the total boot time its the human feeling and not seconds. Why should I care if the total boot time its 15 or 16 seconds?
I don't know if it feels faster because of minor improvements, the switch to 64 bit or to ext4 or only for the exicetment of trying the new Ubuntu.
The only things that counts is that it is fast.
The boot up speed it's comparable to the one of my personal MacBook Pro (se previous posts) and much faster of a tipical Windows XP or Vista (at present I didn't try Windows 7 for real work).

User Experience
The user experience it's wonderful. The system feels really responsive wich is much more important that the boot time.
The new dark theme without all that brown it's a lot better even if the icons still are to orange for my taste. As a mac user I did appreciate that they put the window buttons on the left style instead of the right like Windows. Obvously if you don't like this choice you can always change theme.
One thing to note it that when I tried Karmic Koala on day 0 I've had a lot of crashes (where a lot means for me a crash every 2/3 days) for the first moth. I think that the main problem where the nvidia drivers as the crashed significantly decreased when I switched to the nvidia official launchpad repository.
Lucid instead it's been rock solid from the first day even if (as usual) a lot of updates appeared on the official repositories especially in the first week (after only five days a new kernel was also available).

I'm having a little experience issue with Nautilus. In the previous version I could configure it to show the location in the address bar instead the bread crumbs path. I didn't find how to do it in this release...
I can edit it with +L but I can't keep the address visible; Nautilus will switch to the bread crumbs by default.

Hardware and Drivers
First I have to say that Ubuntu recognized and configured correctly almost all my hardware. The only thing that still isn't working correctly is the volume slide on the laptop. It did't work well on Karmic and it still doesn't work well on Lucid. Not a big problem for me as I prefer to use shotcut keys anyway.
Before Lucid was released I've heard a lot of the new nvidia nouveau drivers which are the default on Lucid.
They work; they recognized and configured both the 13.3" monitor of the laptop and the 19" external monitor. You can correctly use the laptop monitor and the external one together or just one at a time.
On the other side the nouveau drivers don't support 3D acceleration and they don't let you run all the effects of Compiz too.
The most notable thing is that they are a lot slower than the nvidia closed source conunterpart. If you are a purist (or a fanatic) you can stay with the nouveau but I warmly suggest you to use the closed ones. The system will be faster and more responsive which is more important than an open vs source flame for me.
I strongly believe in open source but I feel that the difference of the two drivers is too evident not to be pragmatic choosing the more convenient way to work.

Obviously even using the closed source drivers I can use both my monitor without problems.
Developing software I prefer to use only the 19" external monitor and switch the desktops instead of turning my head left and right trying to find wath I'm looking for but maybe the double monitor solution could be userful to you.

Software
Speaking of software I've installed some extra repositories (mainly medibuntu) so I could have all the closed source codecs and google-earth (which I love).
I've installed both google-chrome and chromium (the non branded version of chrome) and they work beautifully. By the way: they are a lot faster than firefox!
I've also downloaded virtualbox from www.virtualbox.org. I didn't install the ose version (available from repository) because with that version I could not connect USB devices to the virtual machine. I've downloaded the 3.1.6 64 bit release for Karmic as the Lucid version wasn't available till a few days ago. Now you can find the 3.1.8 specifically packaged for Lucid or you can add the virtualbox repository to your synaptic manager.
Skype has been removed from the medibuntu repo so I've downloaded it directly from skype website. It works perfectly and I can use the integrated 1.3mpx webcam installed on my laptop without problems even if the version was designed for ubuntu 8.10.
Flash
I've also installed flash plugin. First I've tried the plugin available from the repository but on youtube sometimes I could not click on the player buttons (if you do a search on google you can find other people having the same problem).
looking in the filesystem I found out that the repository installed the flash 10.1 32 bit version and firefox was using this plugin through the 32 to 64 bit wrapper.
The solution for me was to download the 64 bit native plugin directly from adobe. Uninstall the plugin from the repository and update the symbolic links.
Here are detailed all the (simple) operations needed and you can even find a script which does all the work for you.

The end
In this short review I've used Karmic (9.10) as a meter to evaluate how good Lucid Lynx is. I should say that I'm an Ubuntu user from the beginning and its almost 3 years now that I'm using it intensively. I've tried Ubuntu on a lot of notebooks and even on some "servers" (actually desktops used as servers) and virtual machines. After all
I've to say that after a series of release in descendant quality this it the best release Ubuntu ever had!
Rock solid, fast, an almost perfect hardware detection and a lot of software all up to date immediately available. I don't know what else I should ask for.

Why I should or shouldn't buy a Mac - part 2

2010-02-13T21:58:00.006+01:00

The Big Day Has Come

On August, 27 a friend of mine during a trip in California brought for me a wonderful Mac Book Pro Unibody 13.3" 2.53GHz, 4GB Ram, 250GB HD.

I've never used a Mac before so I was very curious to see if a Mac and his operating system could do the job for me.

Bringing the Mac on the road

The first thing I've done was switching for only 8€ to Snow Leopard (which came out on the 28th so my Mac came with Leopard on it) and obviously before buying it I knew it could be used to develop in java (which is my main activity); Snow Leopard comes with the jdk 1.6.x. 64 bit on it, you don't need to download or configure anything.

I've paid only 8€ because I brought the Mac just before Snow Leopard came out. You could buy your upgrade directly on apple's site just inserting the serial of the Mac and the place where you brought it. The DVD arrived via Mail just a week after even if I made my order on the 28th of August and there was a note that due to a lot of orders there might be a slight delay. Microsoft has done the same thing with Windows 7 saying that the upgrade came free but all of my friend who brought a PC with the "free" Windows 7 upgrade option included had to pay an extra 25-30€ to receive the upgrade. at home.

That doesn't sound a lot free to me. So Apple wins for me on this side.

User Experience

Using a Mac is absolutely fantastic! The backlight keyboard is truly amazing and when you open an application it pops up really fast... much faster than Windows and Linux too.

The Unibody enclosure is a piece of art but the glass on the display it's a bit too glossy. For fairness I have to say that the one on the 13.3" HP DV 3650 in my office it's even worse.

My wife has a truly amazing Sony Vaio VGN-Z650N/B and the display of the Vaio if a lot better than the one on the Mac.

You can view images or pdf using Preview. With Preview even a complex pdf can be open in just second, you don't need adobe reader 9 like on Windows.

Mail and Contacts even if really simple applications are perfectly synchronized with my iPhone and finding. I didn't configure anything and when you use Mail and see all of your contacts the same way you see them on your iPhone you have the feeling that that's the way it should be done.

The overall feeling of the system is really polished and spotlight is always there to find out whatever you need (in just a second).

OSX seems really focused on your documents and your work not in managing your PC because you are stupid and you could damage it.

I think Microsoft did a really good job with Windows 7; when you use it you immediately have the feeling that is much faster then Vista and much clean and organized than XP but it remains slower then OSX and the search options (even if improved) it's far behind spotlight.

The only thing I was a bit perplexed is that OSX doesn't have the "cut" option in finder (which is the OSX explorer for the file system).

Maybe Steve Jobs doesn't like the "cut" function but to me it's absence sounds really stupid. CUT is useful!

After all finder is a really good file browser but using Linux Ubuntu for work I have to say that Nautilus beats them all! Nautilus lets you browse you file system, sftp, samba, nfs connected file systems using tabs inside the same Nautilus window and in my opinion this is the same revolution you had when switching from Internet Explorer 6 to Firefox!

Applications availability

I am not used to buy applications. I usually search (and find) an application that fits my needs in the open source and freeware market.

This on Windows and obviously Linux. I don't need a lot of applications but some of them are a bit tricky.

On mac I failed to find all of this application. Obviously I installed mac ports to get DIA and easytag but when it came to add subtitles to a TV series in a format usable on my PS3 I had to use aviaddsubx via wine because the only application I found on mac that did the same thing wasn't free.

So I had on Mac the same problems I have on Linux.

In terms of availability of software Windows beats them all. This is a very important point. If you absolutely need and application that is not available on Mac think of it.

Obviously you can use Windows in a virtual machine (virtual box is free and it is a good product even if not as fast as Parallels or Fusion) but if you find yourself using the virtual machine 8 hours a day maybe OSX isn't just right for you.. and don't forget that you need an extra Windows license too!

Last thing I wan't to say as a software engineer is that Mac has a BSD kernel which means a truly UNIX system under the hood and when you open the terminal you have a lot of power under your finger not like the dumb MS-DOS windows. This Is a thing you don't get on Windows but not all of you maybe interessed.

Speed

This is a tricky point. As I sad applications on Mac open really fast, but speaking of java development I've done the build of a big application I work on on a Mac (not mine) and on Windows Vista (with no antivirus) and Linux Ubuntu (on the same PC). The build process creates, compiles an moves a lot of files ( 5K to 10K i think) and it took 138 seconds on Windows 40 on the Mac and only 20 on Linux!

Ok: Mac behaves 3 times better than Windows but Linux does 7 times better!

Perhaps on 3D tests Windows is the winner as the graphic drivers are really optimized on Windows, maybe on Mac on just a little on Linux - sometimes it's a good result just if they don't crash ;) -.

Maybe in a future post I'll report this experience.

And The Winner Is...

That's all for now (it's late and I'm getting tired). After all of this months the question is: has Mac and OSX been a good choice for me or I should have stayed with Windows (Linux in my case)?

I think that the overall result is YES!

The system works perfectly out of the box, it's very stable and fast. A responsive system it's very important to me and a the fact that doesn't get slower after using it like windows and it's registry hell it's a plus.

The superb integration of all the applications preinstalled (Mail, Preview, iTunes, iPhoto etc..) can manage all of your documents in a wonderful way.

The integration with my iPhone is a plus.

If you wan't a fast system that works out of the box, you don't play games and you are not afraid to learn something new you should evaluate a Mac carefully.

Mac cost's more than PC but with the PC you'll need an antivirus which will slow down your PC for all of it's life, at some point you probably want to format everything because the system it is getting to slow or because a virus damaged it. In short words your PC has a greater chance to need some extra maintenance and will always result slower.

If you use a lot your computer all of this means time and stress.. this for me means valuable money.

The only thing I have to repeat is: carefully evaluate the software available on mac, what you really need what you will get and what you can afford (if you wan't to buy some software).

The third choice is Linux but in this case you should carefully choose your system hardware and probably you'll need to have the patience to configure something and look on the internet for some help to make it work properly.

I don't think that this post is the right place to discuss this kind of issues as the majority of the users aren't able to do this.

Why I should or shouldn't by a Mac Book

2009-01-04T10:02:00.006+01:00

This Christmas a friend of mine received from Santa Claus or his wife, actually I'm not sure of this, a 2.0GHZ Unibody Mac Book.
As I'm really curious to try it out this fact gave me the idea for this post: point out all the reasons I have to buy a Mac Book or not and shift from my Ubuntu box (an Asus f3jr) to a shiny OSX.
You can read this post even if you are a WIndows user as most of the points I've found are still valid.
In this article I'll only examine the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro as the new Macs are being presented only now and I'm not really interested in buying one of them either as I need a laptop.
So lets go ahead.

The Pros

Wonderful design and manufacturing. If you're reading this post you know what I mean. In a word a Mac it's really cool!
Weight. The aluminium body makes them weight less than the pc counterparts
backlit keyboard (starting from the 2.4ghz Mac Book) it's a real pro for me and you can't actually find a PC with this feature
Possibility to order it with a US International keyboard: if you are a programmer you'll understand the utility to have "{} ~" easily available.
led-backlit display: thinner, less power consumption and weight are three good reason to have this display on a notebook
DDR3: I don't understand why they haven't mounted it yet on the PCs.
Hardware support out of the box: you haven't to tweak with kernel drivers or strange setup procedures as on linux (to be honest starting from ubuntu 7.04 this it's almost true even on my PC)
Mac OSX: actually a *BSD kernel (which means UNIX) with a wonderful interface and usability (I haven't played a lot with it but as a linux user
In a few month Snow Leopard will be out and for the firts time in OSX history it will be a truly 64 bit OS
Support for all the software I need to carry out my jobs.

The Cons

It cost too much for what it offers: you can buy a much powerfull pc for a lot less money (1000€ compared to 1500€ of the 2.4 Mac Book or 1300€ compared to the over 2000€ of the Pro series) Obviously they're not the same thing but a 50% extra sounds to me to much either.
Many problems with the nvidia chipset (you can find a good article on appleinsider)
The glass display it's really a to glary for my taste.
I need to expand to 4gb of RAM for an extra 140€: as the Mac Books come out of the box only with 2gb while all the good PCs now have 4gbs on board. For what I do I often use virtual machines and they use a lot of ram. My asus has 2gb of ram and I bought it two years ago!
If I buy OSX Leopard (10.5.x) now I'll need to spend an extra 100€ in a few month if I want to switch to Snow Leopard (10.6.x).
Why do I actually need a 64 bit OS if I don't have more than 4gb of ram?
Oracle DB It's not supported and I some times work on it.
Sun doesn't release an official jvm and java compiler you have to rely on the OSX one (which to be honest it's certified and I don't know at present of any inconvenience with it)
You can't play games: I have a small Vista partition (my notebook obviously came with it preinstalled) on my laptop from which I can play all the games I buy. On OSX there are only a few games and they cost much more than the PC ones which you can buy at the newstand for less than 8€ (with a magazine included). You can install Vista on your Mac with bootcamp or in a virtual box but you need an extra license already present on a PC.

Final Verdict
The final verdict to me is that there isn't a final verdict: it's up to you to choose which of this points are the most important.

Election Day -5

2008-10-31T22:41:00.003+01:00

Please vote Obama!

A lesson for Italy

2008-08-14T15:12:00.002+01:00

Zapping on TV last night I switched on MTV and Fabio Volo in his program "Italo Americano" was visiting Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
Wow: I was truly amazed how fantastic Google is!
I searched on youtube "work google" and found a lot of videos about how is working in Google (best company to work for in the U.S.A.... and probably in the world).
Here's just an example:

No need to say that in Italy we are very far from this mentality (which is typically American) but I think THIS is a lesson we should start to learn if we want things to change.

Facendo zapping l'altra sera sono capitato su MTV dove stavano trasmettendo il programma di Fabio Volo "Italo Americano". Fabio stava facendo visita al quartier generale di Google in Mountain View, CA.
Caspita: sono veramente rimasto colpito di quanto è stupendo lavorare per Google!
Ho cercato su youtube "work google" e ovviamente ho trovato un sacco di video su com'è lavorare in Google (la miglior compagni per cui lavorare negli U.S.A.... e probabilmente nel mondo).

Non c'è bisogno di dire che in italia siamo molto lontani da questa mentalità (tipicamente Americana) ma credo che QUESTA sia una lezione che dovremmo imparare se vogliamo che qualcosa cambi.

Boycott Beijing 2008 Olympic

2008-08-04T19:14:00.007+01:00

In a few days the 2008 Olympic games will start. Sadly to say for this edition it has been chosen China as hosting county.
As we all know China does not respect human rights and human freedom on which the Olympic games should be founded.
It has been chosen only for an economic reason.
All our world leaders will be present at the opening ceremony closing their eyes in front of this.
The only way we can say our opinion is avoiding to read, watch, listen to anything related to the Olympic games.
So please during the Olympic games:

don't watch on television the trials
during the news change your channel when sports news are on-air
don't buy sport magazines or sport newspapers
throw away the sport page of regular newspapers (obviously recycling it)
don't ear at the radio news related to the Olympics

Only in this way with poor audience during the games (especially during the commercials) the voice of normal people can be heard.

Tra pochi giorni avranno inizio le Olimpiadi 2008. Triste a dirsi per questa edizione è stata scelta la Cina come stato ospite.
Come tutti sappiamo la Cina non rispetta né i diritti umani né la libertà della persona valori su cui i giochi olimpici dovrebbero avere fondamento.
La Cina è stata scelta per soli motivi economici.
Tutti i leader del mondo saranno presenti alla cerimonia di apertura chiudendo gli occhi davanti a questo fatto.
L'unico modo con cui noi possiamo esprimere la nostra opinione è evitando di leggere, guardare o ascoltare qualsiasi cosa legata ai giochi olimpici.
Per cui per favore durante le olimpiadi:

non guardate le gare in TV
durante i telegiornali cambiate canale quando trasmettono le notizie sportive
non comprate riviste sportive o giornali sportivi
gettate la pagina sportiva dei quotidiani evitando di leggerla (ovviamente riciclandola)
non ascoltate notizie legate alle olimpiadi durante i giornali radio

Solo così, con scarso audience durante i giochi olimpici (specialmente durante gli spot pubblicitari) la voce delle persone comuni può essere sentita.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on Asus Z53Jr

2008-05-04T18:49:00.002+01:00

On April the 24th the final version of Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" was released.
In this post I'll evaluate how well it fits on my Asus Z53Jr Laptop.

My notebook (which is now a years old but still amazingly fast) specs are:

Intel Core2duo T7200 2GHz 4Mb cache
2Gb RAM DDR2
160Gb HD
15" 1280x800 TFT screen
ATI X2300 Video Card with 128Mb RAM up to 898Mb shared memory
SD Card Reader
1.3 MPx Camera
Network: Ethernet + Intel i3945 802.11 a/b/g Wireless
Ports: 4 USB 2.0, 1 FireWire, VGA out DVI out

One year ago I've installed Ubuntu 7.04 wich I've later upgraded to 7.10.
This time I wanted to see all the improvements of a "fresh" distro so I backup-ed all my data and I went for a fresh install.

I've downloaded the standard cd, burnt it and rebooted the system. The I selected my keyboard ad proceeded with the live distro so I could access the graphic installer from it.
The live cd worked fine recognizing the correct screen resolution (1280x800) and the intel wireless also.

I clicked on the install and a wonderful installation process reduced to 7 easy steps let me tell Ubuntu all It needs for the installation BEFORE it started leaving me free to play with my baby or watch tv while the installation procedure took care of everything!

At the end of the process the only thing I've had to do was to reboot my system which was perfectly usable (see previous post for the problems on 7.04 if interesed).

The wireless card was recognized without any problems, and the only thing I've had to do was to insert my WPA key to enable the network.
I don't have an ethernet plug near my notebook so wifi is the only chance to have an internet access for me.

The repositories (just a suggestion)

Having my internet access out of the book before trying everything else I've enabled all the official repositories and added the medibuntu repositories. If you want to add this repository too please refer to the howto on medibuntu's website.
In medibuntu you can find acrobat reader, google-earth, skype all packaged and ready to be downloaded.

ATI Card (Restricted Modules)
The default driver used by Ubuntu is the free ati one. If you want the ati proprietary driver (fglrx), and I suggest this if you want applications like google-earth to work open a prompt and type in


sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

after this select the restricted driver from System -> Administation -> Hardware Drivers and reboot.

Composite and OpenGL Support

The fglrx driver developed by amd-ati is now at a decent level of development which means that you can use composite without problems.
You can even use openGL without any major problems.
The point is: you can use them individually but not together!
If you try to do so (try to open google-earth with composite enable) the 3D rendering will flicker resulting in an unasable application.
This is not Ubuntu's fault but a problem related with the fglrx driver itself.
The truth is that I don't really care much of all the fancy composite stuff so this is not a big problem to me.

Suspend & Hibernate
In ubuntu 8.04 they work PERFECTLY out of the box! This is fantastic considering that we are talking about a notebook. Really a great improvement compared to the previous versions of Ubuntu.

Function Keys and Extra Keys
The notebook has 5 keys near the power button. None of them is working. They work in Vista, which came preinstalled on the notebook, using a special application made by Asus running in background.
If you know hot to make them work fell free to contact me.
There is another series of special keys (Fn keys):

Fn+F1 (suspend) works
Fn+F2 (enable disable wireless) not working
Fn+F3 (opens the mail client, or anything you prefer) works
Fn+F4 (opens the browser) not working
Fn+F5-F6 (display brightness up/down) working
Fn+F7 (toggles the display lamp on/off) woks
Fn+F8 (external display) not tried yet
Fn+F9 (enables/disables touchpad) not working
Fn+F10-F11-F12 (audio on/off, down, up) working

1.3 Mpixel Camera & Microphone
The 1.3 Mpixel camera & the integrated microphone are working perfectly out of the box. I've tested them using skype 2.x. & the sound recorder tool.
The only thing I've had to do was to enable Capture in the sound volume panel and try out some setting of Front Mic & Front Mic Boost to adjust the recording level.

Firefox 3 (beta 5)???
The only thing in which I have some doubts at the moment is the presence (by default) of firefox 3 beta 5 and not the old (but stable) firefox 2.
From this beta you can see that the new firefox will be an absolutely good browser but at present there are some little things that do not convince me:

the "page loading" rolling icon on the tab never stops even when the page is fully loaded
google browser sync plug-in at present isn't compatible with the new firefox... is you are used to google browser sync as I am this is really annoying.

I'll try it out for for another week but I'll probably switch back to firefox 2 (which is donwloadable from the official repositories of course).

Final Thoughts
In my opinion Ubuntu 8.04 it's a great improvement compared to 7.04 (and 7.10 of course).
This distro resolves a lot of problems present in previous releases.

No need for the alternate cd anymore. You can do the live install procedure without problems.
Improvement in hardware management: wireless card, web camera, function keys
Better fglrx driver "out of the box" (after enabling the restricted modules of course)
Great suspend and hibernate (a must for a notebook)

I think that if you have a notebook you should give it a try... expecially with hardware similar to mine.

As usual feel free to contact me if you have any doubts. I'm not a linux geek of fanatic but a java programmer but if I can give you some help you're welcome.

Italian Taxes on-line (Redditi on-line)

2008-05-02T18:38:00.002+01:00

Our finance minister Visco a few days ago released on line all the 2005 returns of the italians.
Is this correct?
I think that in a country like Italy where tax evasion is out of control this is a good measure to prevent people evading taxes and honest people should not worry at all.
All the data where put off-line just a few hours later. Fortunately internet is the land of freedom so a lot of this data are now available on eMule (and maybe other sharing systems).

ATI Catalist 7.12 on Ubuntu 7.10

2008-01-13T11:16:00.000+01:00

Recently I've tried this drivers and compiz started working on my Mobility Radeon X2300.
Here's how I've got the drivers to work.
1 remove old drivers
first you need to remove the drivers downloaded from the ubuntu repository.

$ sudo apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx

2 Install the new driver
follow the procedure as described on point 2 at http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Gutsy_Installation_Guide

3 bugs
With this lease you can enable compiz but video playback, google-earth and all the applications which require an overlay start flickering and are unusable.
The system works perfectly with compiz disables :(

4 power management
With this release ati (amd) claims that the problems related to suspend and hibernate are solved.
I haven't tried it yet as I've managed to disable this features time ago (when the system tried to suspend hanged-up) and I don't want to retry right know to figure out if now is working (maybe on a fresh install of 8.04). If you think you can have an easy configuration guide (packages needed, and manual editing to /etc/... files feel free to contact me. If it works on my Asus notebook I'll add it on my blog.

Kimi Raikkonen F1 World Champion 2007

2007-10-22T11:48:00.000+01:00

With a wonderful race Kimi finally made it! Cheers to Ferrari, Kimi and Felipe which gave to McLaren what it deserved: NOTHING! After a lot of years ending up with nothing Kimi finally made it out and now he is the new World Champion! Simply Fantastic!

Without any touch of style and fairness Ron Dennis ended the season with an official protest to FIA for not punishing BMW & Williams... maybe he doesn't remember what happened during the whole year?

Ubuntu 7.10 gusty gibbon on Asus Z53Jr F3Jr

2007-10-20T14:00:00.000+01:00

I've upgraded my notebook from Feisty to Gusty. So this isn't a "fresh install experience". I've published the Asus Z53Jr specs before but here they are (again)

Notebook Specs

Model: Asus Z53Jr / F3Jr
core2duo T7200 2GHz 4Mb cache
2Gb RAM DDR2
160Gb HD
ATI X2300 Video Card with 128Mb RAM up to 898Mb shared mem
SD Card Reader
1.3 MPx Camera
Ethernet + Intel i3945 802.11 a/b/g Wireless
Ports 4 USB 2.0, 1 FireWire, VGA out DVI out

Upgrade Procedure
When I logged in Feisty and opened the update manager feisty suggested the distribution upgrade, and so I did.
The all process was smooth and clean and took less than 2 hours (most of which were spent downloading the software from the internet).
The upgrade procedure told me that support for some software ended... not a real problem for me (I've never used gcj, I usually download the official jdk directly from sun).
Here are some screenshots:

Fisrt Look
The first impression is that Ubuntu improved it's general usability.
I usually work connected to my network via WPA wireless. Using the restcricted modules as in feisty I managed to use the intel wireless card and ati x2300 gpu without any problems (except for the suspend issue, see below).
The drivers where already installed before in feisty, gusty simply upgraded them to a newer version.
Two major usability improvements on the network configuration are that without any manual configuration now you can automatically activate the wireless connection without unlocking the keyring when you login. This could have been done in feisty with some configuration now there is a checkbox directly on the unlock keyring dialog.
Another improvement is the support of wpa connectivity when you manual configure your network: now if you want to manage your network manually you can do it really easily!

Almost everything it's working without problems
As in Feisty this things are working without any issues

display driver at correct resolution (1280x800)
touchpad
usb ports
integrated sd card reader
Fn buttons

Fn+F1 (suspend) is recognized but I thing that the ati driver has major issues while suspending the notebook
Fn+F2 (enable/disable wireless)
Fn+F4 opens the browser
Fn+F5,F6,F7 panel light controls
Fn+F10,F11,F2 sound controls
Fn+Arrows the sound controls (tested in Banshee)

Not Tested
I've not tested the external display and the Fn+F8 button as I don't have an external display available right now.

The Bad Part: Things that don't work
Suspend and Hibernate
Suspend and Hibernate still doesn't work :(!!
I suspect an issue with the ati fglrx driver. I've tested the 8.42.3 driver downloaded directly from ati without any success too.
The only thing I've managed to do on my system was to stop the system from suspending and hibernating installing this packages on the system:

apmd
hibernate
uswsusp

Composite
Composite is disable and doesn't work with the fglrx driver. With the new 8.42.3 driver it is theoretically supported via AIXGL but the only thing I've got was a white screen (an internet search told me that I'm not the only one).

1.3mpx camera
The integrated 1.3mpx webcam isn't recognized as in feisty. In the next days just for curiosity I'll try to recompile the syntek driver http://syntekdriver.sourceforge.net/ (se previous posts).

If you find any workaround for this problems (suspend and hibernate in particular) or if they are working for you on the same notebook (or very similar one) via a fresh install please feel free to contact me.

Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon

2007-10-19T08:03:00.001+01:00

Last night I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gusty Gibbonon my Asus notebook (please see previous posts for the details on the notebook). Actually it wasn't a fresh install but an upgrade from Feisty (7.04).
The upgrade process proceeded without any problem (maybe the servers where a bit slow but this is normal on day 0) and Gusty seems to work without any problems. This week end I'll try it a bit more in depth if Michele (again see previous posts) will leave me enough time to experiment the new distro.

Cheers to the ubuntu team,
Terenzio

Ubuntu -1

2007-10-17T19:18:00.000+01:00

tomorrow Gusty Gibbon will be available for download.
I hope that in the next few days I manage to backup all my data and try the update from my Feisty.
This time it won't be a fresh install but an upgrade... I'll try to report out the "Gibbon experience" in the next days.

Regards, Terenzio

1974 Turing Award to Donald Knuth

2007-08-13T15:18:00.000+01:00

In 1974 the Alan Touring Award was given to Donald Knuth for "a number of major
contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages".
I recently found on the net the original ACM Article.
Obviously Knuth is a real genius and his article is still off interest even after 33 years.

Michele

2007-07-24T10:59:00.000+01:00

Just a few photos so everybody can see my beautiful baby.

Cheers Terenzio

Michele has arrived!

2007-07-13T15:06:00.000+01:00

On wednesday July the 11th 2007 at 11:48 Michele was born in Ravenna, Italy!
My beatiful son was 51.5cm and weighed 3.3kg at birth... and he's a wonderful baby.
Not hard to say that when I saw him for the first time it was the best moment of my life.

Maybe in the next day I'll add some photos. of Michele.

Bye for now, Terenzio, Barbara & Michele

Asus Z53Jr, F3Jr Webcam

2007-06-14T18:46:00.000+01:00

The notebook comes with a 1.3mpx webcam
I've tried the syntek driver http://syntekdriver.sourceforge.net/ as suggested.
The driver works but with some problems.
first of all after

make

you end up with the following error:

make: ctags: Command not found
make: *** [driver] Error 127

Actually the

stk11xx.ko

has been build but you need to move it manually in your

/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers

then type in

sudo depmod -a
modprobe stk11xx

(the cam will light up the green light for a few seconds).
to test it download canorama

sudo apt-get install canorama

The colours are all on yellow. If you know how to correct this issue please feel free to contact me. You can find the results of the test here.

asus z53jr f3jr ubuntu 7.04

Ubuntu 7.04 on Asus Z53Jr F3Jr

2007-06-07T22:46:00.000+01:00

This is how I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my new notebook Asus Z53Jr (or F3Jr).

Disclaimer: Actually this page is a work in progress... I know it needs some formatting and I want to add more contents in the future so be patient please :)

The notebook specs are:

core2duo T7200 2GHz 4Mb cache
2Gb RAM DDR2
160Gb HD
ATI X2300 Video Card with 128Mb RAM up to 898Mb shared mem
SD Card Reader
1.3 MPx Camera
Ethernet + Intel i3945 802.11 a/b/g Wireless
Ports 4 USB 2.0, 1 FireWire, VGA out DVI out

this is the lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 718a
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
06:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
06:01.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
06:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
06:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)

Due to the ATI Card issue with Xorg you should intall feisty in textual mode via atlernate CD or DVD.
The system will install without problems. When prompted for the video resolution remember to select 1280x800!
On the first reboot you won't be able to login graphic mode. Login in text mode with your notebook connected to internet via ethernet card and type (look here for a more detailed explanation):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a

and yes, before you ask it: I'm using the restricted modules.
next configure the video card:

sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

and reboot

sudo shutdown -r now

at the reboot the system will login via gdm. Now lets take a look to what is working and what not.

Working

video card at correct resolution
sound (even Fn + F10, F11, F12 keys )
sd adapter
usb & firewire ports
display lamp (even Fn + F5, F6, F7 on/off)
other shortcuts Fn + F1, F2 are recognized)
the shotcut keys on the top left of the notebook works
the microphone (* see note)
hibernation

*I've tested the microphone mainly using skype 1.3.0.53 and sometimes worked sometimes not. When it did not work I simply restarted skype and this resolved any issue.

NOT Working

the on off pad switch Fn + F9
the sleep mode Fn + F1 (the system doesn't wake up correctly, if you can help feel free to contact me)
the 1.3MPx camera

Another thing that doesn't work out of the box is the cpu frequency scaling but this issue it's easy to fix:
Edit the /etc/modules file (sudo gedit /etc/modules) and add this line:

acpi-cpufreq

Next: I like to manage the cpu speed via the cpu frequency monitor applet and if you want to do the same you should set the sticky bit to the /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector executable.

sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector

You will need two applets (one per core) as the F3Jr is a Core2Duo processor.
That's all for now. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
bye

Updated: 1.3mpx webcam

"Finally" Out!

2007-06-07T20:54:00.000+01:00

In Italy we say "tutto il mondo è paese" but the news that only after three days of jail Paris Hilton is actually free (she as to stay in on of her luxury houses of course).
Usually things like this (take in example the Callisto Tanzi trial for the Parmalat failure) happen in Italy but not in U.S.A.

-30

2007-06-04T10:42:00.000+01:00

Today for my wife is the first day of maternity.
From now there is only one month to the date of birth of our first child.
Maybe no one cares but we do!

Microsoft Vista security advisor

2007-05-15T18:29:00.000+01:00

Oh my god!
After 5 years Vista is out!
Recently I bought a new notebook which came with Vista Home Premium preinstalled. I'm a Ubuntu fan but I was really courious finding out how Vista was.
The new security advisor is a total nonsense! A real pain in the ass. I can't believe that this is the best solution Microsoft found in 5 years for all the security issues of its OS.
Look at this Apple ad, I think it really points out the thing:

Maserati MC12

2007-04-19T19:46:00.000+01:00

This afternoon on A14 returning to Ravenna from Bologna I was so lucky to see the wonderful Maserati MC12. O my! There are only 25 cars like this on road and this one was from the Principality of Monaco.

Terenzio

2 years ago...

2007-04-02T19:15:00.000+01:00

...on April, 2nd 2005 Pope Giovanni Paolo II died. Today the only thing I can remember is that our state televion RAI didn't show the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix. In Italy we don't have a state religion... should we beleive it?

il 2 aprile 2005 morì Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Oggi l'unica cosa che mi ricordo è che la RAI, la nostra televisione di stato, non mandò in onda il gran premio di Formula 1 del Bahrain. In Italia non abbiamo una religione di stato... dovremmo veramente crederci?

Welcome

2007-01-16T16:49:00.000+01:00

Just saying welcome to everybody... I hope to add more content in next days.
cheers Terenzio

Un saluto a tutti... la speranza è che possa aggiungere qualche contenuto nei prossimi giorni.
ciao Terenzio