Mind Download

Favorite F1 Wallpaper Ever

2010-03-03T21:12:00.002-05:00

Favorite F1 Wallpaper Ever
Originally uploaded by afsilva

I am so not a Renault fan, but man, this Formula 1 wallpaper is possibly the coolest I've ever seen. (source)

Running Quake 3 and 4 on Fedora 12 (64-bit)

2010-03-02T10:51:00.000-05:00

My latest article for the Linux Gazette is out: http://linuxgazette.net/172/silva.html

February Snow at Lake Raleigh II

2010-02-26T15:52:00.001-05:00

February Snow at Lake Raleigh II
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Beautiful snow this morning around Raleigh.

From above

2010-02-25T14:33:00.001-05:00

From above
Originally uploaded by afsilva

A swamp reflection photo at Lake Raleigh, NC.

Lake Raleigh Pier

2010-02-22T13:44:00.002-05:00

Lake Raleigh Pier
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Took this one last week in Raleigh, NC. I forgot to post it to the blog.

Sun

2010-02-11T19:30:00.002-05:00

Sun
Originally uploaded by afsilva

I've decided to start posting my photos in this blog as well. Virtually all photos are entirely managed/edited/uploaded on Fedora Linux.

Sharing a keyboard and mouse with Synergy (Second Edition)

2010-02-01T19:01:00.002-05:00

An article I co-wrote with @ashcrow a couple of years ago has been revised & republished on Linux Gazette: http://linuxgazette.net/171/silva.html

Forgot to use screen or nohup on a command?

2010-01-27T21:37:00.003-05:00

Let's say you run a command that is taking much longer to finish executing than you thought it would, and you have to go home. Here's what you do:

1. Press ctrl + z on the terminal to suspend the command.
2. Run: bg to move the last suspended program in the background
3. Run: jobs to list programs running on background
4. disown %1 to pick job #1, %2 if it's the second job on the list. This will mark the job so that SIGHUP is not sent to it if the shell receives a SIGHUP.

Note: Thanks to my buddy John Eckersberg for showing me this today :-)

rpmrebuild-2.4-2.fc12 is out!

2010-01-22T23:54:00.003-05:00

The newest update to rpmrebuild has hit the Fedora 12 repo tonight. The new features are:

add -l / --list-plugin option
add -5 / --md5-compat-digest option
Requires rpm-build

Enjoy!

AS

Firefox 3.6 on Fedora 12 (remi repo)

2010-01-22T10:08:00.005-05:00

Remi has published a Firefox 3.6 RPM for Fedora 12.

In this screenshot, I'm using one of the new features of FF 3.6, personas. Learn more about it.

I've also installed a couple of new plugins:

Flagfox, displays the flag of the country in which the server you are hitting is located.

Weave Sync, synchs bookmark, history, tabs and passwords of your Firefox... I don't recommend synching passwords personally.

A feature that I personally enjoyed is the 'built-in' extension recommendations for Firefox. It's a nice quick way of playing around with new extensions to expands the browser's capabilities.

fedora wallpaper w/ gimp

2010-01-09T11:24:00.002-05:00

fedora wallpaper w/ gimp
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Just playing around with Gimp and the Fedora logo. Feel free to download it.

The things I do with digital photography on Linux

2010-01-01T17:17:00.000-05:00

My latest article for the Linux Gazette is out: http://linuxgazette.net/170/silva.html

Rescuing my 'wasted' time

2009-12-28T09:41:00.002-05:00

I spend a lot of time online everyday, and when I am not working, most of my time is 'wasted' particularly in about 6 or 7 sites. It has gotten to a point where I bounce back among those sites without even thinking about it, specially using Firefox's Fast Dial add-on, which lets me add keyboard shortcuts to each one of those sites.

This morning I decided to look around for something to combat this 'addiction' of mine. I still want to go to these sites, but I want the browser to tell me when it's time to move on. I found LeechBlock for Firefox. It lets me open an window of time when I can use whatever sites I tell it to, I can lock my access after X number of minutes or just plain block them...

I'm interested to see if it will work for me...

Speed Dial plugin for Chrome/Chromium is here, but...

2009-12-24T23:01:00.002-05:00

There is no Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 for shortcuts yet :-(

Install Now.

Fedora 12 & Simpsons 20

2009-12-17T22:57:00.002-05:00

Fedora 12 & Simpsons 20
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/photos/stylus/118631-wholesimpsons.jpg

My computers over the years

2009-12-05T21:54:00.022-05:00

I started talking to a couple of friends tonight about the "old days" of computing, and I got this crazy idea to try to map out every computer I've ever owned. Now, the list isn't 100% accurate because there were probably 2 or 3 computers that I bought from 'mom & pops' shops to be used as servers, but were not my main work computers.

1980s

TK 85: I was probably around 8 or 9 years old when I got this computer from my grandfather. As far as I remember, the computer didn't even work anymore, so it was more like a toy than an actual machine.

DGT-100 (aka TRS-80): I started taking an after school course in BASIC programming language when I was around 10 years old. My grandfather gave me this computer when he realized I could write some code. He bought this computer in the late 70s with US$5,000 that he was given as a bonus from work to buy a car instead he bought a computer. This particular setup was hooked up to a black and white tv, and a cassette tape recorder as the storage device.

MSX Expert 1.1: This computer was again a loving 'hand-me-down' from my grandfather, and it was great, it had cartridges with games, a color display, sound and a drawing program as well. Even my brother used this computer. The MSX Expert was built on the 8-bit Z80 processor.

1990s
IBM PC XT: My dad's company were getting rid of their outdated PCs and he was able to bring one home for me. Now, this computer had an amazing 10 MB hard drive, and I used to run DR-DOS 6 on it.

486DX2 66 MHz PC: This computer was bought by my father to me as a Christmas present, and built by my uncle's side business (back on those days). If I remember correctly the computer had 8 MB of RAM, and it started with DR DOS and Windows 3.11.

1994 - I went to US, and left my 486 back in Brazil. When I got back in 1995, I remember getting an AMD 586, but it was mostly my family's computer by now, so I am not including it on this list.

1996 - Back in the US

Packard Bell 133 Mhz, 32 MB of RAM: I remember the price, it was around $1,300. This was my first computer in College and it was the first and last computer I bought at Sears... and now that I think about it, it was the first and last Packard Bell I bought as well. I remember having an issue and being on hold with them for over 2 hours! This was also the first computer I've ever installed Linux on as well. Red Hat Linux 3.0.3
HP Pavillion 800Mhz w/ 64-128MB: I bought this computer in 1998 right after I got married. It was the first computer I bought with my very own money. Pretty sure, I bought this one on Circuit City. Eventually, I ended up 'blowing up' the BIOS of the desktop by accident, and having to sell parts and trash the board.

My first laptop, I don't remember the specs, but it was an HP Pavillion, and I did run Linux on it, although there were plenty of hardware compatibility issues :-)

2000s

After 'destroying' my HP Pavilion desktop and having some issues with HP customer service, I decided to get a new PC from ebay, I don't remember the specs but when it arrived at my house it wasn't working, I sent it back got a replacement and the replacement wasn't working either. That's when I decided to for something new. Around that time a 'new' OS was starting to get a reputation of being Unix-like, Mac OS X. I had never been an Mac OS (8/9) fan, honestly, I couldn't stand them, but because of the Unix-like features, and being annoyed by the issues I'd had with PCs, I decided to give Apple computers a try... and for many years to come I was hooked!

iBook PowerPC G3 600 Mhz: I know plenty of people who hates them, but IMHO, Mac OS X is possibly Apple's greatest 'invention,' I know they like to see themselves as a hardware shop, but the idea of putting a great looking-easy to use Graphical Interface on top of a Unix-like OS was great, specially back on those days. Although, I did use Linux at work constantly, since part of my job was being a System Administrator, for the next few years, I did not use Linux as my main OS because of OS X.

I don't remember the specs, but because I jumped trains to Apple computers, I did keep a PC-server-like around the house running Linux for various tasks.

iMac G3 Snow: I ended up getting a second Mac right after the iBook, and eventually my 4 year old son taught himself how to read by playing online educational games on this machine.

Powerbook G4 667Mhz: Within a few months, I sold my iBook and got a Powerbook G4, during that time I started enjoy photography quite a bit as well, and an application like iPhoto really helped contribute my new hobby. It was also around this time that I got my first iPod, which since then I've owned at least 10 different versions/incarnations of the product...

Powerbook G4 1 Ghz w/ Firewire 800Mhz: By now, one could say I had become an Apple fanboy, and I just 'needed' to upgrade to the shiniest and greatest models.

Dell Inspiron 5100: I think this laptop was a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4, and I had upgraded it to 1 Gb of RAM. I changed jobs somewhere around this time, and decided to dive in back into Linux. I ran the very first versions of Fedora Core on this laptop.

Dell e1750: This laptop was the first and only 17" display laptop I've ever owned. It was a beast, heavy, too heavy, but what really disappointed me on this laptop (which the price was comparable to an Apple Powerbook [now being called Macbook Pro]) was the fact that for that price I didn't get a webcam nor a built-in microphone. I sold this machine within a couple of months of buying it, and never bought a Dell computer for myself ever again.

Black Macbook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz: This was my first mac with the Intel processor. My biggest problem with this laptop was this 'bug' on the lid which given enough time of opening and closing the lid, it would start making these horrible suspense-movie like squeaky door noise. It was unbearable, and even though sending it to Apple to get it fixed temporarily, it was annoying... but as far as the looks, it was possibly my favorite Macbook to date.

Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz: After getting very annoyed by the squeaky sound of the Black Macbook, I upgraded to a Macbook Pro with some help from my employer at the time.

MSI 1.8 Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop: In 2007, I got a new job at the company I'm currently employed. I decided to go 100% Linux. I still own this computer, my wife uses it now, and still running great. I wrote a review about this laptop a few years ago.
Eee PC 700: Fun gadget, but it was too slow, and the keyboard too small. I did write an article about how to get a spin of Fedora running on it.
Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz: The last model before they released the unibody versions. It was a great laptop, and I actually dual booted OS X and Fedora Linux on it. It worked great.

Eee PC 900: Much better than then 700, but the keyboard was still tough to use. It worked really well with Fedora, the Xandros distro that came with it wasn't very good.

Eee PC 1000: Greatest Eee PC (IMHO), I never sold it, my kids use it now, I did upgraded the SSD to a RunCore, which made write speed 2.5x faster.
HP Pavilion a6700y AMD Phenom 9150e Quad Core 1.8 Ghz w/ 4 Gb of RAM: The first desktop I've owned in almost 10 years... pretty crazy!
Lenovo Thinkpad T500 w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2) and 4 Gb of RAM: My current personal laptop, running Fedora 12.

Like I said in the beginning, I think this list is at least 90% accurate, and it has been fun to research the information online, and try to correlate the years of my life and the different stages I've been through with what computer I was using at the time. If I remember of more details, I will make sure to update this post.

Goodbye VMware Workstation

2009-12-05T16:34:00.002-05:00

Today I converted my last VMware disk image to Sun's Virtualbox on my Fedora 12 install. I converted a CentOS 5 image that I use as a sandbox for installs and upgrades of Koha, an Integrated Library System.

On my Windows XP image, I installed Boxee using Virtualbox's 3D hardware acceleration, and it work pretty well. I also watched a Netflix movie via Silverlight on the virtual machine and worked great!

I've been able to match every functionality I needed from VMware Workstation with Sun's Virtualbox with the same (or less) amount of hassle.

Linux Gazette needs contributors...

2009-12-05T16:32:00.001-05:00

Read letter from LG's Editor, Ben Okopnik.

Tip for downloading Opera 10.10 for Fedora 12 x86_64

2009-11-24T21:57:00.004-05:00

When going to http://www.opera.com and choosing your Linux Distribution, pick "Suse" -> OpenSuse 11.2, that will give you an 64 bit RPM of Opera with qt4, and it runs much better on Fedora 12 than picking "Fedora" -> Fedora 10,11,12 which will give you a shared qt3 RPM. (at least for me)

Virtualbox 3 on Fedora 12

2009-11-24T18:20:00.002-05:00

Read article. I was able to sync my iPhone 3G on a Windows XP guest running on Virtualbox w/o any hassle whatsoever. It just worked.

VNC through SSH tunnel

2009-11-23T10:44:00.006-05:00

At work, I often use two computers, and to avoid moving back and forth with the keyboard and the mouse, I have both computers sharing one keyboard and mouse via synergy. I've even written a short article on how to get it working.

But even that has become a bit annoying because I still have to move my head between the display of one computer, and another. So, I decided to share my X session with VNC and just use my secondary machine on a VNC session.

To try to improve security a bit, I decided to tunnel my VNC connection via ssh using this article. The only thing about the article that I would point out is when starting the ssh tunnel, use the -X (or -Y) option so the vnc client can use the X display.

Linux VNC server setup

Log into your Linux host box.
[bar]$ ssh foo
[foo]$ vncpasswd
Only set this vnc password once. You'll need it to connect from any remote or local client
[foo]$ vncserver -localhost
Do not omit the -localhost argument, this stops VNC from listening on the external interface. IMPORTANT Note the server number returned by vncserver after you launch it. You will need this number to kill the server and to configure the SSH client.
[foo]$ exit
Linux client

From your local linux desktop open an ssh session
[bar]$ ssh -X -L 5901:localhost:590n foo
Note that n is your server number. Above command connects you to foo with a tunneled port as well.
[foo]$ vncviewer localhost:n

I guess it never hurts to remind fedora users, that the VNC packages are called: tigervnc and
tigervnc-server.

fedora 12 is here!

2009-11-17T19:10:00.001-05:00

fedora 12 is here!
Originally uploaded by afsilva

I created this wallpaper based on this one to celebrate the release of Fedora 12.

Grab Fedora 12 now!

Grab the wallpaper:

Quake 4 on Fedora 12 (x86_64)

2009-11-15T19:01:00.008-05:00

A few hours ago, I got Quake 3 Arena working on Fedora 12. So, I decided to also try to install Quake 4, which didn't work out of the box. It actually took me longer to figure out the solution for the problem for Quake4 than it took for Quake 3. Here's what I did.

1. Grab the latest Quake 4 binaries from ID Software. quake4-linux-1.4.2.x86.run.
2. Install, and copy the the baseq4 files from your original Windows CDs (or DVD) to /usr/local/games/quake4/base4q
3. When I tried to execute the binary like:
linux32 /usr/local/games/quake4/quake4-smp, I would get an error like this:

X..GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc not found

To fix this problem, the following was needed:

yum install driconf

Then, as the user who will be running the game, run:

driconf

and under Image Quality, enable S3TC textures. That did it for me.

4. My game still didn't have sound, so I had to edit ~/.quake4/q4base/Quake4Config.cfg and the the option from:

seta s_driver "best"

to

seta s_driver "oss"

And that worked.

5. As root, /sbin/modprobe snd_pcm_oss; chmod 777 /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

6. echo "quake4-smp.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake4/quake4-smp

Quake 3 Arena on Fedora 12 (x86_64)

2009-11-15T17:25:00.008-05:00

I like OpenArena. It's a pretty fun game, but I still prefer the good old Quake 3. Taking in consideration that the game is 10 years old, and I haven't tried to play it in years, I took some time this afternoon to see if I could get the old original Loki Game/ID Software version working on the newest Linux distro possible: Fedora 12 (which comes out this week).

At first, I got all sorts of errors, I couldn't install it from the original CD, nor by downloading the most recent binaries from ID Software, which believe it or not, is already 6 years old.

Anyway, I was able to get Quake 3 running on my Lenovo Thinkpad T500 (Intel Graphics Card) running Fedora 12, and here's what I had to do:

Installation:

1. Grab the two latest updates from ID Software's FTP: Q3A Point Release 1.32b and Q3A Point Release 1.32c
2. Make 1.32b executable, run it, follow the directions, and you might have to set a couple of /usr/local/ directories to 777, if you want to run the game as a non-root user and install it on its default location. Also, on a 64-bit machine precede the executable with 'linux32' otherwise it will say it doesn't support 64-bit arch.
3. Unzip 1.32c, and copy over the binaries under the 'linux' directory to: /usr/local/games/quake3
4. Grab your Windows or Linux Quake3 CD, and copy over the base3q files to /usr/local/games/quake3/base3q/

Fixing Sound:

Before, you even try to start up the game, I can tell you right now the sound will be broken, so, here's how to fix it:

1. As root: /sbin/modprobe snd_pcm_oss # this is non-persistent, through this module /dev/dsp is created
2. chmod 777 /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

Starting the game:

We need to do 2 things before executing the binary. The first is set some parameters for sound to work, and the second is tell quake3* binaries to run under a 32-bit arch.

echo "quake3-smp.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3-smp

Note, that I am running the SMP binary, since my laptop has 2 cores. If you run on a single processor, you will need to run:

echo "quake3.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss && linux32 /usr/local/games/quake3/quake3

Note: If your game freezes seconds after starting a match, use '+set s_musicvolume -1' when starting the game.

Note 2: If the sound still not working open your 'Sound Preferences' and under the Hardware tab, change the profile from Analog to Digital... it did the trick for me.

Fedora 12 beta KDM thru Xephyr

2009-11-03T10:45:00.007-05:00

Fedora 12 beta KDM thru Xephyr
Originally uploaded by afsilva

Last night, I was playing around with Fedora 12 Beta some more, and decided to switch Display Managers from GDM to KDM. I was delighted to see how nice the KDM theme looks on Fedora 12 Beta.

A friend of mine asked me for a screenshot, and then I realized I didn't know how to take screenshots outside being logged in on KDE or GNOME. I did some googling around, and saw that 'Xnest' was the better way to getting screenshots of Display Managers.

I did have to turn off IPv6 to get Xnest working, but the fonts didn't look so good, that's when I found out about Xephyr, which supports modern X extensions.

First switch from GDM to KDM.

Then, install Xephyr.
yum install Xephyr
And then:
Xephyr :1 -query localhost -screen 1024x76
PS: If you use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost, Xephyr should work with IPv6 enabled.