Check out this live video comparison at TuxRadar:
Kubuntu 9.10 is a Beauty
It works nicely on intel graphics (except GMA500!), installs fine and seems much snappier than the 8.10 I was still using. It's a definite upgrade recommendation, as well for your friends who are thinking about Windows 7. ;)
I'll let you know if I'll have any worries. But so far, everything has been wonderful. KMS works great, suspend-resume is fine, KDE 4.3 is lovely... :)
Good work guys!
I'll let you know if I'll have any worries. But so far, everything has been wonderful. KMS works great, suspend-resume is fine, KDE 4.3 is lovely... :)
Good work guys!
More News on Intel and its GMA 500 under Linux
The LinuxJournal wrote two articles about the horrible Linux support for Intel's GMA 500 graphics chipset.
How to kick your friends in the face - GMA500
More on Poulsbo GMA 500 - Intel and the Community
Also see the Intel defending response.
How to kick your friends in the face - GMA500
More on Poulsbo GMA 500 - Intel and the Community
Also see the Intel defending response.
Convert 1080i AVCHD directly to 720p avi with ffmpeg 0.5
With the realease off ffmpeg 0.5 there is much better AVCHD support in my experience, so you can use it for perfect conversions. You can download ffmpeg from ffmpeg.org and then use this script:
#!/bin/sh
# ffmpeg-avchd script by linux-tipps.blogspot.com# to encode a directory use this command:# for i in *.m2ts; do ffmpeg-avchd $i; doneIN="$1"; shiftOUT=$(echo $IN | sed 's/.m2ts//')-720p.aviecho Encoding $IN to $OUT.ff="ffmpeg -deinterlace -i "$IN" -acodec copy -vcodec libx264 -vpre normal -crf 25 -sws_flags lanczos -s hd720 -r 25"echo $ff $OUTnice $ff "$OUT"The only thing I'm not really happy with yet is the deinterlacing and deshaking. I would like to use a sharper deinterlacer, but I guess I'd need mencoder for that. The Lanczos software scaler does make steady images pretty sharp already, though.
Why you're screwed with the Intel Poulsbo Chipset
Let me tell you why you're not only screwed when you want to run Poulsbo systems on Linux:
see http://supportmail.intel.com/scripts-emf/defaultlanding.aspx?productid=3180&srchidstr=39,1101,3180 and it seems does no longer supply driver downloads: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/NotFound.aspx?ProductID=3180&lang=eng. Ok, the last is wrong: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProductID=3001&DwnldID=17992&strOSs=45&OSFullName=Windows%20XP%20Home%20Edition*&lang=eng
Now what other support options are there from Intel? Contacting your manufacturer often does not prove helpful either. MSI's support even seem aware that the Poulsbo chipset is supposed to have active video decoding acceleration. They inform that the Poulsbo chipset is not a high end chipset and you shall just disable video decoding acceleration in case it crashes your Windows system.
Considering the overal bad support for the Poulsbo chipset I can not recommend using it: No good Linux driver, no good Windows driver, DXVA announced but not working(not even in Windows), no email support, no Windows driver downloads, etc.
So I think: don't buy Poulsbo systems.
Intel advertises features it can't deliver and doesn't support the chipset. And it's really sad to bring out a chipset that won't be supported well until maybe 2010.
MSI Wind U110 Linux Review
The MSI Wind U110 netbook has an excellent basic design: The new generation Intel hardware is made for long battery life and the MSI can really make it over 9 hours under Windows. The MSI's are one of the few netbooks of this generation which include a nice and bright non-glossy display.
The keyboard is excellent and can from my experience be used immediately without any issues. I actually like it better than my external keyboard. The only problem here was the tiny "'" key. But that's only important for English text and I'm sure in the version they sell in English speaking countries the keyboard doesn't have that flaw.
So they only thing that might be seen as negative is the lower display resolution compared to some other new netbooks that have an 11.6" display. But their display is usually glossy and thus disqualified for really using it anywhere outside and also of course costs battery time.
But for Linux it looks much worse. While the Poulsbo chipset was already roughly supported in Ubuntu 8.04, which was released over a year ago, the support for Poulsbo is still at least flaky. It needs binary blobs to work anywhere near well as far as I have read.
And unfortunately it's not yet working on the MSI Wind U110 or U115 netbooks. You can normally get the chipset to work pretty well - with the appropriate resolution and at least some 2D acceleration, but no hardware video acceleration (aka VDPAU or VA-API).
But on the MSI's the support isn't working yet. You get the message that the there was a null pointer dereference when trying to load the psb kernel modules that is "necessary for the driver to work" as the Xorg driver tells you. Though I've read it might actually work on a certain SuSe distribution.
That unfortunately means that the netbook can not currently be used for Linux. A small display combined with a bad resolution will definitely lead to headaches. Linux users will either have to use Windows until sometime - hopefully - Intel fixes it's drivers (and maybe even includes a working VA-API support!).
What else I've checked worked fine: Sound, USB, Brightness Adjustments. I haven't tested standby enough yet, but I think there were still problems. But that may very well also be related to the graphics chipset. And as far as I've read the standby to ram works fine at least with certain BIOS versions.
The MSI U110 comes with one RAM slot, which held 1 GB ram in this case and is extensible to 2 GB. There is of course an internal card reader included. A microphone and a headset jack and a USB port, a VGA and a 100 Mbit LAN port are on the right side, two more USB ports, the energy plug, a kensington lock connection and a fan on the left side.
Summary: For now only for Linux experts who are either willing to debug and fix the kernel module or figure out how to get SuSe running on it or people who are willing to use Windows until the problems are fixed (supposedly that might happen by the end of this year). But it's a great netbook with lots of battery time, a nice display and a great keyboard. Perfect for writing blog entries or a large word document.
What works&What doesn't
The keyboard is excellent and can from my experience be used immediately without any issues. I actually like it better than my external keyboard. The only problem here was the tiny "'" key. But that's only important for English text and I'm sure in the version they sell in English speaking countries the keyboard doesn't have that flaw.
So they only thing that might be seen as negative is the lower display resolution compared to some other new netbooks that have an 11.6" display. But their display is usually glossy and thus disqualified for really using it anywhere outside and also of course costs battery time.
But for Linux it looks much worse. While the Poulsbo chipset was already roughly supported in Ubuntu 8.04, which was released over a year ago, the support for Poulsbo is still at least flaky. It needs binary blobs to work anywhere near well as far as I have read.
And unfortunately it's not yet working on the MSI Wind U110 or U115 netbooks. You can normally get the chipset to work pretty well - with the appropriate resolution and at least some 2D acceleration, but no hardware video acceleration (aka VDPAU or VA-API).
But on the MSI's the support isn't working yet. You get the message that the there was a null pointer dereference when trying to load the psb kernel modules that is "necessary for the driver to work" as the Xorg driver tells you. Though I've read it might actually work on a certain SuSe distribution.
That unfortunately means that the netbook can not currently be used for Linux. A small display combined with a bad resolution will definitely lead to headaches. Linux users will either have to use Windows until sometime - hopefully - Intel fixes it's drivers (and maybe even includes a working VA-API support!).
What else I've checked worked fine: Sound, USB, Brightness Adjustments. I haven't tested standby enough yet, but I think there were still problems. But that may very well also be related to the graphics chipset. And as far as I've read the standby to ram works fine at least with certain BIOS versions.
The MSI U110 comes with one RAM slot, which held 1 GB ram in this case and is extensible to 2 GB. There is of course an internal card reader included. A microphone and a headset jack and a USB port, a VGA and a 100 Mbit LAN port are on the right side, two more USB ports, the energy plug, a kensington lock connection and a fan on the left side.
Summary: For now only for Linux experts who are either willing to debug and fix the kernel module or figure out how to get SuSe running on it or people who are willing to use Windows until the problems are fixed (supposedly that might happen by the end of this year). But it's a great netbook with lots of battery time, a nice display and a great keyboard. Perfect for writing blog entries or a large word document.
Once the graphics work, I'll try installing and running Linux from an SDHC card to see it that saves even more power. But right now with the vesa driver the power savings aren't that good. I wonder if they are better with the real driver.
What works&What doesn't
- Grafics (works, but only in VESA mode)
- Sounds works
- SD-Card Adapter works
- Standby (reportedly works in some configurations)
- CPU low power mode (reportedly doesn't work in certain configurations)
- Grafics low power mode (?)
- Sound low power mode (probably works)
If there are any questions feel free to ask.
A Netbook for Linux
While most netbooks use common intel chips, some use the GMA500, which is yet badly supported for linux. An open source driver "may" be there in Q4 2009. But as the video decoding acceleration benchmarks show, it might be worth waiting for it. It's not only good, but also energy-efficient at decoding even HD material. The bad thing is though - there's at the moment no yet any well working Linux driver available. And you can't even know for sure it will ever come. If you're still interested, check out the MSI Wind U110.
Adjust Linux Network Receive Window for Fast Networks
Simply execute the following command in your shell to increase the receive window buffers. That should improve the performance, especially from servers with a high latency.
sudo sysctl -w \
net.core.wmem_max=1075200 \
net.core.rmem_max=1075200 \
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem="4096 87380 8388608" \
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem="4096 87380 8388608" \
net.core.rmem_default=1075200 \
net.core.wmem_default=1075200
Refreshing Linux Group Rights
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think there is no other way to let your system know that you e.g. are now member of another group than logging out and back in. And I'm wondering - why? Can it be so complicated? We can reload, refresh everything, but for that you'd have to log out, which is especially annoying in X...
But that' wrong! You can work around the problem with newgrp. The program updates the environment variables so you can immediately use the group, at least in the shell started via newgrp.
But that' wrong! You can work around the problem with newgrp. The program updates the environment variables so you can immediately use the group, at least in the shell started via newgrp.
The Essence of Open Source
Imagine your computer breaks down. It doesn't power on anymore. Now imagine you're not allowed to open it and the only person who may fix it would be the producer. It would probably take weeks for you to send it in, get the machine fixed. That's if the error was found and it got fixed. And then it might end up being pretty expensive. Because there's a monopoly on the repairs.
That's exactly how closed source software works. And that's exactly why you should prefer open source software. The more important the software, the more important that it's open source.
That's exactly how closed source software works. And that's exactly why you should prefer open source software. The more important the software, the more important that it's open source.
Pretending a Package is Installed by Creating an Empty Package with Checkinstall (for Debian-based Distributions)
After installing ffmpeg from svn with checkinstall, I had the problem that the also installed library libavcodec51 is not compatible with the one delivered with Ubuntu. But I could not simply uninstall it so that the manually installed version was used because that caused problems with libxine1-ffmpeg, which stopped kaffeine, amarok and other software from running properly.
Unfortunately, checkinstall's --provides option did not work as expected. So I had to find a way to have them use the manually installed version I compiled from svn and hiding that fact that my package manager. I had to let the package management system know the package was already installed.
So I ended up creating an artificial package that only has the same name and a similar package version, but no actual contents. Create an empty directory, place the following Makefile into it and execute the following checkinstall command. You may need to adjust the parameters for different packages, refer to the output of apt-cache policy somepackage for an appropriate version number)
This elegantly fixed the error "ffplay: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_gcd" and "ffmpeg: error while loading shared libraries: libavformat.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" for me.
Unfortunately, checkinstall's --provides option did not work as expected. So I had to find a way to have them use the manually installed version I compiled from svn and hiding that fact that my package manager. I had to let the package management system know the package was already installed.
So I ended up creating an artificial package that only has the same name and a similar package version, but no actual contents. Create an empty directory, place the following Makefile into it and execute the following checkinstall command. You may need to adjust the parameters for different packages, refer to the output of apt-cache policy somepackage for an appropriate version number)
Makefile:
install:
install -d /usr/local/bin
checkinstall commands:
checkinstall --nodoc --install=no --pkgname=libavcodec51 --pkgversion=3:0.svn$(date +%Y%m%d)-12ubuntu5
checkinstall --nodoc --install=no --pkgname=libavutil49 --pkgversion=3:0.svn$(date +%Y%m%d)-12ubuntu5
checkinstall --install=no --nodoc --pkgname=libavformat52 --pkgversion=3:0.svn$(date +%Y%m%d)-12ubuntu5
sudo dpkg --install ./*.deb
sudo ldconfig
This elegantly fixed the error "ffplay: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libavcodec.so.52: undefined symbol: av_gcd" and "ffmpeg: error while loading shared libraries: libavformat.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" for me.
Circumventing Censorship - Evading the "20th Century's Berlin Wall"
The New York Times presents the status quo in censorship evasion with examples of Iran and China. A quite interesting read. Don't expect a how to, though.
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