I got a new laptop a few hours ago, for free again, thanks to LUGOS. It’s a HP Compaq nx6325 and it is a very similar model to my current nx6125. It has some more hard disk space (80 GiB instead of 60 GiB) and instead of single core AMD Turion 64 it has a dual core AMD Turion 64 X2, still 1800 MHz. Being similar to nx6125 laptop also means that it has the crappy Broadcom wireless network adapter which doesn’t even have any open source drivers from Broadcom. So I’ll still have to use NDISwrapper with Windows drivers or the reverse engineered bcm43xx drivers which are open source but don’t work as good. The laptop also has the integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 graphics card, which has some problems with closed source drivers and no good open source drivers when it comes to 3D support. At least ATI/AMD have started to provide specifications for their graphic chips so there is hope. In addition, their latest closed source drivers, starting from version 8.41.7 are much improved. No such hope for Broadcom yet. Another thing I hope is that HP did their job right this time and that nx6325 doesn’t have as broken ACPI as nx6125 has. Anyways, double processor power will sure come in handy for compiling Gentoo Linux and KDE 4. Temporally the new laptop is running the new Mandriva Linux 2008. When I get back home I’ll install Gentoo Linux on it and give the nx6125 to my cousin Matej.

Tags: hardware, computers, laptops, notebooks, hp, nx6325, broadcom, ati, lugos

I just got an e-mail with some great news. It looks like I am among the lucky ones who are selected to receive a grant under the Qtopia Greenphone Innovation Grant program. This means that I will soon get a full Greenphone mobile phone SDK, with the phone itself, connector cables and development tools. Greenphone is one of those mobile phones of the new generation which are based on an open platform. Another well known example from the new generation is OpenMoko. Apple iPhone on the other hand still belongs to the old closed platform generation.

And why will I get Greenphone? Well it looks like judges from Trolltech found my proposal for a new mobile phone application interesting. In this rather short time (submission deadline is October 31) I will try to create a free and open source mobile phone client for playing turn-based 4X space strategy games which are based on servers and the protocol of Thousand Parsec project. A C++ library for the protocol is already available and I hope I’ll be able to reuse it as much as possible. If all goes well most of the work will involve the user interface and use of the C++ protocol library. The work will also be of use with my other project, which is to create a game client for KDE 4 desktop, which heavily uses Qt toolkit and framework, which is very similar to Qtopia used on the mobile phone and other mobile devices.

Can’t wait until postman brings me the package. In the meantime I should start reading more about Qtopia development. I also need to come up with a name for the game and the way a user would interact with it. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tags: greenphone, qtopia, trolltech, mobiles, mobile phones, gsm, mobile devices, programming, linux, 4x, games

PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a very nice gaming console. Actually it is much more than just a console. It is also the cheapest way to get some of the new technologies like Blu-ray Disc player and the Cell microprocessor. Another great thing about PS3 is that it is a very open console, which is also using a lot of open standards (like OpenGL for graphics) for game development. Sony even officialy allows you to install Linux on PS3 and the company is directly helping with development of support for PS3 in the Linux kernel. This openness has already enabled some of the very interesting uses of PS3. For example it is used to build an academic computing cluster (a cheap way to build super-computers), performs calculations to help with cancer/Alzheimer’s research and it is also used for some real-time ray-tracing.

But there is one important piece of hardware in PS3 that Sony (or nVidia) is still blocking direct access to: the RSX ‘Reality Synthesizer’ graphics processing unit (GPU). If full access to RSX was allowed to programmers people could create even more amazing and creative new stuff with PlayStation 3. In a hope to persuade Sony to open-up the full access to RSX a petition has been started. So if you are a PS3 owner or will become one in the future be sure to sign this petition. Hack, even if you are not interested into PS3 right now, consider signing the petition. Help bring more freedom and openness into game consoles.

Tags: playstation, playstation 3, ps3, sony, hardware, rsx, reality synthesizer, graphics, petitions, petition, linux

Today I just replaced the old graphics card Leadtek WinFast A400 TDH (nVidia GeForce 6800 chip, NV40) with the new one, Club 3D 7600GS (nVidia GeForce 7600 chip, G73). The main reason (or excuse :)) was that the the fan on the old graphics card was extremely noisy and irritating. And it doesn’t hurt to have a more powerful graphics card so that Beryl, also known as the Windows Vista Aero killer, runs faster and smoother.

When looking for a new video card I decided it should not be too expensive, I expected it to fall into the range of 100€ to 150€. Another limitation was that I needed an AGP card, and not PCI Express, since AGP is what the motherboard supports. So in the end I was comparing nVidia 7600 GS cards to ATI/AMD Radeon X1650 Pro cards. After looking at some comparisons (here, here and here) I could see that they are very close, but on average nVidia 7600 GS has a slight advantage and nVidia was also cheaper. Another reason I liked nVidia 7600 GS more is that I’m quite disappointed with current ATI/AMD drivers for Linux. Never had any problems with nVidia drivers, which I can’t say for ATI/AMD drivers. So nVidia 7600 GS it was. More specifically, a Club 3D 7600GS.

The Club 3D 7600GS card, which costed 130€ (including shipping), came in a very nice black box. In the box you can find video converter cable, a quick installation guide and a CD with manuals and drivers. No Linux or BSD drivers are included. Come on, Club 3D, there is plenty of space left on the CD to include them. The card itself is a lot lighter than the heavy Leadtek WinFast A400 (which has a huge heat sink). Installation was easy. I just had to pull out the old card, insert the new one and it was all working just fine, since the nVidia Linux drivers (1.0-8774) were already installed on Mandriva Linux 2007.

I’m happy so far. The installation was very easy, the card works and the computer is quiet again. Now I’ll upgrade the drivers, do some more testing and maybe write something more about that later. As for the old card, which is still fast enough, I’ll try to replace the fan on it and put it back into good use. My cousin has an even older and slower graphics card (ATI Radeon 9000) and he is looking for an upgrade.

Tags: hardware, graphics, video, graphics card, video card, nvidia, geforce, ati, amd, radeon, linux

After a couple of weeks of travelling across the Atlantic ocean the book C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 was finally delivered into my hands this morning. Quite a nice timing actually. Today the first development snapshot of KDE4 was released. KDE 4 will be based on Qt 4.2, so this book will also be of great benefit for learning programming for KDE 4. Another nice thing is that authors of the book have added a short chapter about embedded programming with Qtopia (a special version of Qt for embedded devices). This is nice because more and more mobile phones and devices are nowadays running on Linux. A couple of days ago Trolltech introduced the world’s first fully open and programmable mobile development device Qtopia Greenphone. It attracted a lot of interest from developers all over the world. So I guess it will only be beneficial in the future to also have some knowledge about programming in Qtopia. Now I only have to read and learn. When I finish (won’t be that soon) I will write a review of the book.

Tags: book, books, c++, programming, development, gui, trolltech, qt, kde, qtopia, greenphone

This morning I finally got all the components I ordered to repair and upgrade my sister’s computer. It didn’t go without problems though. For starters, I had to wait a week longer until all the components got to the store. It looks like the demand for AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processors is very high. Especially because they now have highly reduced prices. And even when the delivery man was finally at the door step, the problems were not over. When I wanted to pay him for the package, he told me that I have two packages. As it turned out they were identical. I had to call the computer store mimovrste.com and ask them what is going on. They simply made a mistake and instead of sending me only one package they sent two of them. When all was cleared up and I had all the needed components in my hand, I could start to assemble the computer. It took me about three hours to set everything up. And this part did go without any problem. My sister took some photos of the process, so I guess they will soon end up on her Flickr account. All I had to do after starting up Linux (she uses Mandriva 2006) is to install the kernel with SMP support enabled (kernel-smp-2.6.12.24mdk in this case) and reinstall nVidia driver afterwards. The speed-up compared to the old AMD Athlon 1200MHz and 512 MiB of memory (now 1 GiB) is quite big. Especially noticeable when working and rendering in Blender.

Tags: hardware, processor, processors, cpus, cpu, amd, athlon 64 x2, dual core

Although VIA was the first company (as far as I know) to claim that their drivers for graphic cards are open source, these claims were questioned several times and many still believe that they are far from open source. Anyway, today we were blessed with news that could indicate things in the graphic drivers world are finally moving into the right direction that will benefit people. Intel has just announced they are releasing free and open source drivers for their 965 Express Chipset family graphics controller. The drivers support 2D and 3D and are only the beginning. All future development of the drivers will be done openly and in close cooperation with X.org and Mesa communities. To read more about this visit the newly created website Linux Graphics Drivers from Intel. Now we can only hope that AMD (which is the new owner of ATI), nVidia and other companies follow this noble example. There are already some rumors (read the last paragraph) that AMD will follow a similar path with ATI drivers.

Tags: hardware, graphics, drivers, driver, graphic cards, open source, free software, linux, intel, via, amd, ati

This is the question I’ve been pondering for the last couple of hours after my sister’s computer broke down and we decided to buy some upgrades. I’ve concentrated on the comparison of AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. In almost every test I’ve seen Intel is faster. In some tests the gap between them is quite wide. So, if I would be buying a new computer instead of upgrading and if the budget was not so limited, Intel Core 2 Duo would be a clear choice. But unfortunately, I still have some components, like the AGP graphics card, which wouldn’t fit into motherboards for the Core 2 Duo processor. While the new motherboards for AMD with AM2 socket also don’t seem to support AGP, Athlon 64 X2 is also available for Socket 939 and a lot of the motherboards with S939 do support AGP graphic cards and DDR1 memory. In addition to my compatibility requirements the Core 2 Duo E6300 is quite a bit more expensive then Athlon 64 X2 4200+ here in Slovenia and there are also problems with availability of Core 2 Duo CPUs. Motherboards for Intel are also more expensive. So in my case I had to choose AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. I’ve already ordered it from mimovrste.com and it will cost me 183 €.

Tags: hardware, cpu, cpus, processor, processors, amd, intel, core 2 duo, athlon 64 x2

When my sister tried to turn on her computer, named Tsiolkovsky, the day before yesterday, it beeped like crazy, indicating that there is something wrong with the graphics card. Later it turned out that the graphics card was perfectly OK. It was the motherboard, the Abit KT7A. After about five and a half years of service some of the capacitors on it blew up and started leaking. We could try to find out some used replacement motherboard, but we decided that this would be just the right excuse to buy some new components to upgrade my computer called Enterprise and move the existing components from Enterprise to Tsiokovsky. Since the old SDR memory modules would only collect dust, I donated them to my cousin Matej. After the upgrade from 256 MiB of memory to 768 his SUSE Linux feels a lot faster.

Now I have to decide which processor to buy. Intel Core 2 Duo just came out and it looks like they have finally managed to create an architecture that outperforms AMD Athlon 64 (quite a bit actually) and doesn’t suck as much electrical power as the Pentium 4 does. AMD is also reacting to all this by reducing prices of their processors. I only have to wait until Intel Core 2 Duo comes to Slovenia and prices for AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core CPUs drop. Maybe it will be worth to buy Intel again. My last CPU from them was the 450 MHz Pentium II.

Tags: hardware, motherboard, cpu, processor, amd, intel

Again I’ve been given the task of building a new computer. And, again, not for me. It is for my dad’s co-worker this time. His budget is about 1000 € and this should include an LCD monitor. He also wishes to try out Linux so all components should have good enough support for Linux. This is what I currently have in mind:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NF-9
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, socket 939, Venice core
• Memory: 512 MiB GeiL PC3200 Value
• Graphics card: Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D GeForce 6600GT 128MiB DDR3 PCI-E x16
• Hard drive: 160GiB Hitachi GST T7K250 7200rpm 8MiB cache Serial ATA2/300
• DVD drive: NEC ND-4551A 16X with LabelFlash
• Case: GMC H60
• Power supply: LC 550W LC6550G
• LCD display: Samsung 730BF
• Mouse: Logitech B85 UltraX
• Keyboard: Logitech UltraX

What do you think? What concerns me the most is the motherboard. How well is nVidia nForce 4 chipset supported in Linux? I’ll have to check this out before settling down on the final configuration. If anyone has any experiences I’d be more than glad to hear about them.

During the presentation of their upcoming Linux Desktop 10 at Solutions Linux conference in Paris, Novell showed some very interesting and good looking visual effects that Xgl brings to the Linux desktop. I especially like the visual task switcher which displays the actual contents of windows. You can even see the video actually playing in the thumbnail of the window. 3D cube for switching among virtual desktops is also very nice. You can get the videos from Linux Edge.

Update: For some more information you can also see the official Novell page:
Novell Raises the Bar for the Linux Desktop

Update 2: Another movie of Xgl / Compiz in action (11m 43s, 58 MiB)

Tags: novell, desktop, x.org, xgl, opengl, graphics

I’m a regular reader of two free electronic magazines: TUX Magazine (perfect for new Linux users) and Free Software Magazine (all about free and open source software). They both come in PDF and are made professionally. I’ve already talked about them here on this blog: TUX and FSM. A couple of days ago I found another high quality free magazine: O3 Magazine. This is how publishers describe it:

The focus of O3 is on the use of Free and Open Source (FOSS) software in Enterprise Data Networking environments. Some articles in O3 will introduce open source solutions, while some are designed to demonstrate how to integrate open source solutions with leading Enterprise Data Networking hardware from a wide variety of vendors.

After reading the first two issues I added it to the list of regularly read magazines right away.

In February 2006 issue of TUX you can read about: getting Linux onto desktops and everywhere else, Hydrogen, OpenOffice.org 2.0 Impress, KDE Instant Messaging, OpenOffice.org 2.0 Base, Neverball, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0 Math.

In January, February 2006 issue of Free Software Magazine: what’s free about free software, X Window System, browsers for Mac OS X, GRUB, Debian GNU/Linux, convincing management to approve free software, political campaigning using the Internet, 64 Studo, free matter economy and how free software liberated Venezuela.

And in January 2006 issue of O3: Linux and the IBM zSeries mainframes, networking the IBM zSeries, Grsecurity, Real time streaming protocol (RTSP), Load Balancing IDS, Deploying Localized Web Services and dNMS.

You can download these magazines from here:
TUX Magazine | ED2K
Free Software Magazine | ED2K
O3 Magazine | ED2K

Tags: magazines, free software, open source, administration, enterprise, networking

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted anything to my blog ever since August. This is over 3 months without any post! Some of regular readers of my blog have sent me an e-mail asking what is going on. A lot of people also wanted to know where is the next, third, part of my KDE 3.5 Previews. So I hope this entry will answer all your questions. I’ll also try to tell you about important things that happened in my life during the long absence.

KDE 3.5 Previews: After publishing the second part I was ill for a couple of weeks and I was unable to work on the third part. After getting well again I had to study for my final maths exams a lot and I also wasn’t in the mood for writing anything. In addition, KDE 3.5 release was approaching very fast and I had (and still have) a lot of translation work to do. Even more then for version of 3.4 as other Slovenian translators didn’t have time and I was basically left alone to do the work. So I have to apologise to everyone waiting for more KDE 3.5 previews. If there is enough interest I can still try my best to write the third part. But no promises.

Laptop: Thanks to the people at Linux Users Group of Slovenia (LUGOS) I now have a new (and my first) notebook. It’s a very nice HP Compaq nx6125 with AMD Turion 64 processor, 512 MiB of memory, 60 GiB hard drive and 15 inch 1024×768 LCD panel. It is already running Gentoo Linux and I have dedicated one partition for testing purposes. Currently this partition is occupied by a beta version of Pingo Linux 4.2 (a Slovenian Linux distribution). It’s great to have a laptop like this. Now I will be able to translate more and it also proves extremely useful for university work and learning C++/Qt/KDE programming. I plan to write an article about running Linux on this laptop. When I have more time off course.

Blog comments: Some time ago I had to disable comments on this blog because of blog spam. It looks like that people here at Blogger.com have finally come to their senses and added an image test verification before anyone can post a comment. So I have enabled this test and re-enabled the comments. Now you can start commenting again and let’s hope that spam doesn’t come back any more.

Apartment: If you remember I was looking for a new apartment in Ljubljana back in July. I was lucky to find a very cheap place that is only about 5 minutes away from my faculty (if you walk). So I can sleep longer in the morning and I can go back to the apartment when we have free hours during lectures. Another bonus is that I don’t have to buy monthly tickets for the city bus. The only thing I really miss here is the internet connection.

Health: During the time since my last post to the blog I also got one of my wisdom teeth pulled out. The operation itself was quite long but painless. But after anaesthetics stopped working it was very painful for a couple of days.

That’s about it. I hope I don’t die on you again like this and that I will be able to post to the blog at least once a week. In the meantime be sure to get Firefox 1.5 and KDE 3.5 that were released about a week ago. Take care and thanks to all of you for reading my blog.

Tags: personal, blog, blogging, notebook, laptop