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The Linux Kernel Reaches Milestone Version 3.0

Ryan — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:36:47 +0000

Since 2004 and for what seems like forever in the technology world, the Linux kernel version has been holding steady at version 2.6.x. The first two numbers were unchanged for nearly 7 years and became largely irrelevant. The third number is the actual version of the kernel. The fourth number accounts for bug and security fixes. But this is all about to change as Linus Torvalds announced the first Release Candidate of the 3.0 code in one of his recent emails.

What will be the shiny new feature in this monumental version? Torvalds announced that the big change was, “NOTHING. Absolutely nothing.”

"The point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one ('20 years'*) instead,"

And he went on to say:
"But let's face it – what's the point of being in charge if you can't pick the bike shed colour without holding a referendum on it? So I'm just going all alpha-male, and just renumbering it. You'll like it,"

The official release is due out in about six or seven weeks and will be released near the 20th anniversary of Linux.

Microsoft buys Skype, is the Linux client doomed?

Ryan — Sat, 21 May 2011 17:44:33 +0000

In an unforeseen move Microsoft announced that it will officially buy Skype for $8.5 billion in cash. Skype will now form the new “Skype Microsoft Division”, with Skype CEO as its as president. As the dust settles from this announcement many questions remain unanswered. What are their intentions? What is their business plan? And most importantly for us, what does this mean for Linux and Android support?

Steve Ballmer seemed to address this in the press conference:
“Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms”

“We will continue to support non-Microsoft platforms, because it’s fundamental to the value proposition of communications.

…fundamental to the value proposition of communications is being able to reach everybody, whether they happen to be on your device or not. And I think that, in fact, will be one of our competitive advantages, both for the Skype communications services, and in fact, for the devices as we move forward.”

This makes sense as Skype brings in millions of paying customers from platforms outside of Windows, so it is reasonable that they will continue to support these platforms.

A big factor for Skype’s success was that they were a neutral company and worked worked across multiple platforms. With Skype now aligned with Microsoft and their interests those advantages are now gone, and customers might decide to look elsewhere. Possible solutions include that Google Voice, Google Talk, or Open Source Asterisk. Unfortunately these services lack to total feature set the Skype customers have come to expect and depend on.

Build the perfect HTPC with Boxee and the Dell Zino HD

Ryan — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:12:28 +0000

If you are looking for a great HTPC then you should look no further than Boxee on the Dell Zino HD. For those of you that don’t know, Boxee is a free software program that you install on your computer that allows users to watch internet movies and TV shows, listen to online radio and music, play your local digital music and movies. The Boxee software turns your HTPC into a social media and home theater media center.

Boxee allows users to watch and listen to their local media, as well all access movies on Netflix, internet radio on LastFM and Pandora, and TV shows through NBC, FOX, ABC, and HULU. Boxee is diverse in its functionality and continues to evolve quickly.

Once installed boxee will start scanning your local Movies, Music and Pictures folders automatically. Boxee will attempt to bring artwork, reviews, cast, etc. for your media, so browsing your library becomes more useful and fun than looking at a list of files. Boxee is based on the XMBC media center.

You can buy a specific Boxee “Box” or build your own by downloading the free software .deb package and installing it on your own Ubuntu (or Windows/Mac) based Linux PC. Sorry but there is no love for Fedora or other RedHat distributions at the moment.

Here is a view of the Boxee home screen.

As far as hardware goes you can’t go wrong with the Dell Inspiron Zino HD. This little PC is powerful and keeps a very low profile in your home theater.

The Zino HD starts at $299 and you get is a CD/DVD combo drive, integrated graphics, integrated 2.1 Hi-def audio, and a dual core AMD processor. All models come packed with multiple USB ports, eSATA, HDMI, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, analog audio in/out, SPDIF, and a 4-in-1 media card reader, so connectivity is covered. With an HDMI cable and an HDTV, you could have your Boxee HTPC up in no time.

Optionally you can upgrade to THX 7.1 audio, integrated WiFi, discrete graphics cards, Blu-Ray drive, or a quad core Phenom processor.

The Zino HD packs quite an affordable punch. Installing Linux was hassle free as all devices were correctly detected and the proper drivers were installed.

You could control this HTPC with a full sized wireless keyboard but this guide wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Logitech diNovo Mini. This little remote device has the perfect blend of portability, functionality, and ease of use. It is a handheld wireless bluetooth keyboard with an integrated trackpad that’s designed to perform all of the functions necessary to effectively control an HTPC from the comfort of your couch.

The diNovo Mini has full functioning keyboard and trackpad but also comes with media keys to control playback and the backlight which is invaluable at night. One of my other favorite things is that it comes with an integrated USB bluetooth dongle that can plug into any PC that doesn’t natively support bluetooth.

You can usually find this for under $100 USD online.

How to release the Linux disk cache

Ryan — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:12:45 +0000

For whatever reason you may need to free the disk cache at some point. Since Linux 2.6.16 the interface /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches has been available to simplify this process.

First we run the sync command before dropping the cache. Doing this will ensure that all memory in the cache is updated and all dirty pages are synchronized before dropping the cache. You can safely skip this step but if you have any dirty pages in your disk cache the system will refuse to release them.
# sync

The next step is echoing “3″ to the /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches file which will signal the OS to release the pagecache, dentries and inodes.
# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Setup SSH access between VirtualBox Host and Guest VMs

Ryan — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:50:39 +0000

It is often necessary to have the ability to SSH between your Linux Host and your Guest virtual machines. In VirtualBox you can do this by simply configuring a second network interface on the Guest. This type of setup will not only allow SSH sessions between Host and Guest, but also between separate Guests themselves.

First off shutdown your Guest VM so that you can add a second network interface. By default you should have one interface already which is using NAT. Leave this alone as it provides access to the internet. Select the tab “Adapter 2″ and change “attached to” to “Host-only Adapter”.

Now boot up your Guest and pull up a terminal. Run ifconfig to see what base address eth1 has been assigned. You can use this address as a base to assign static IP addresses for each Guest VM. In this case inet addr:192.168.56.101 is the base IP address.
$ sudo ifconfig eth1
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX inet addr:192.168.56.101 Bcast:192.168.56.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: XXXX::XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:296 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:237 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:32116 (31.3 KiB) TX bytes:37642 (36.7 KiB)

If you rely on DHCP you might get a different IP address each time your Guest VM reboots. If this is a problem, you need to setup a static IP address instead.

On a Debian based system edit /etc/network/interfaces to add the following lines. Change the address to your base IP address.
auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.56.101 netmask 255.255.255.0

On a redhat based system edit this file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 and add the following lines. Change the IPADDR to your base IP address.
DEVICE=eth1 BOOTPROTO=static IPADDR=192.168.56.101 NETMASK=255.255.255.0

On your Linux Host you can now open a terminal add ssh to the Guest VM:
$ ssh ryan@192.168.56.101

If you are having problems connecting, make sure that sshd in installed and running, and that the firewall on the is not blocking the SSH service on the VM.

You can create an entry in /etc/hosts so you don’t have to remember the IP address.
192.168.56.101 virtualhost1

This allows you to use the virtual hostname instead.
$ ssh ryan@virtualhost1

Setup the PS3 Bluetooth Controller on Ubuntu

Ryan — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:25:49 +0000

The PS3 Sixaxis and DualShock3 bluetooth controllers are a great for gaming on your PS3 but will work just as well under Linux. With this guide you will be able to configure them to work on your Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) PC in USB as well as wireless bluetooth mode.

There are a variety of solutions out there but they are either overly complex, or because of the ever changing state of Linux bluetooth support, they are somewhat outdated. The advantage of this solution is that it is simple, and requires only slight modification to the default versions of the bluez-utils packages (bluez-4.12). This minimizes possible conflicts and eliminates unneeded configuration.

This guide specifically covers Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) but I’m sure similar steps can be taken for other distributions.