There are a lot of problems with aRTS, which is basically unmaintained code and doesn’t evolve like other parts of KDE do. And one problem was bothering me for quite some time. It happened quite frequently that artsd started to use 100% of CPU. Today I finally found a patch that fixes my problem. The patch was made by Michal Schmidt and this is what he says about the problem:

I have discovered that the problem is caused by an XRUN, which is not handled correctly in arts. arts uses snd_pcm_avail_update to ask ALSA how many frames it can write. However, when an XRUN occurs, snd_pcm_avail_update will return -EPIPE. This condition is not handled in arts.

The patch has already been committed to KDE SVN, so this bug will be fixed in next version of KDE.

Update: The patch will also get applied if you emerge arts-3.4.1-r2 ebuild for Gentoo Linux.

You probably didn’t know yet that Playboy doesn’t only help spreading legs but they are also helping to spread open source software. They have a mirror set up where you can download apps like Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, Apache web server and Fedora Linux distribution. This is their way of saying thank you to the open source community which helped them save a lot of money by using open source products.

Source:
Playboy is official mirror site for Firefox and Thunderbird

I’ve finaly decided to give it a try in setting up a blog on my own Gentoo Linux based server. Well it turns out it was extremely simple. I have Apache web server and MySQL database runing for a long time here. So all I had to do to set up this blog was to download WordPress, a free and open source blogging system, extract it into a folder that is served by the web server, create a database for the blog, change a couple of settings and here it is.

Včeraj sem končno zaključil prevod programa Autopackage, katerega cilj je poenotiti in poenostaviti nameščanje in odstranjevanje programov na operacijskem sistemu GNU/Linux in njemu podobnih. V slovenščini ga boste lahko uporabljali od naslednje različice dalje. Pripombe in pohvale glede prevoda so vedno dobrodošle.

Captain’s Log - Stardate 20050528.8: While on an important scientific mission the computer core on the starship Enterprise D suddenly experienced an emergency shutdown. After conducting a thorough investigation it became clear that the well known life-form called Dust Puppy caused overheating of the central processing unit. The shutdown temperature threshold of 75°C was reached while running the intensive computing algorithms for Einstein@Home project. Using the standard Starfleet issue vacuum cleaner the intruder has been removed and NCC-1701-D is again operating within normal parameters (45°C - 50°C under full load). Let us hope that the next encounter with Dust Puppy is far away in the future.

Yesterday Intel have officially launched the new i945 chipset and new dual-core Pentium D CPUs. But they have a little dirty secret that Intel would like to hide from us. The new chipset and processors come with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology enabled. What this means is that greedy people like RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft now have the ability to control what music we can listen, what movies we can watch and, in the extreme case, what software can we use. I don’t know about you, but I most certainly wouldn’t buy hardware or software that takes away my right and freedom to use my computer in the way I want to use it. So all I can say is: “Stay as far away as possible from Intel Pentium D processors and Intel i945 chipsets!”

News source:
Digit Online News - Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips
More on DRM:
Why DRM is bad for all

Na tem blogu sem že večkrat pisal o programskih patentih. To pa zato, ker je to izredno pomembna tema za vse nas. Verjetno si ne želite manjše izbire pri programski opremi, trga brez konkurence in posledično višjih cen (pogosto že sedaj astronomsko dragih) programov. Evropski parlament bo 5. in 6. julija glasoval o zloglasni direktivi o programskih patentih. Če bo direktiva sprejeta, potem lahko pričakujemo, da bo izginil marsikateri projekt proste programske opreme. Mogoče tudi pisanje blogov ne bo več brezplačno in ne bo več take izbire ponudnikov prostora in programja za bloge. Ne pustimo jim, da nam vzamejo besedo in svobodo izbire!

Preden pa stopite v akcijo, bi morda o nevarnosti programskih patentov radi izvedeli več. Odlična priložnost za to se vam ponuja 25. maja ob 15:00 na prireditvi Hevreka! (Gospodarsko razstavišče). Tam bo potekala mednarodna okrogla miza z naslovom Patenti za programsko opremo - da ali ne? Zanimivo je, da za okroglo mizo iščejo tudi slovensko podjetje, ki bi direktivo zagovarjalo, a ga nikakor ne uspejo najti. Nič čudnega, kdo pa bi bil toliko neumen, da bi podpiral tako nevarno in škodljivo direktivo.

Več o tem si preberite na tej strani:
Patenti.si

About four months ago I have put up a counter on my blog (thanks to a free service at StatCounter.com). Sometime in the middle of the night the counter has passed the 5000 mark. In the last couple of days there are around 90 visits per day. I have never expected to see so many visitors.

Most visitors use Firefox browser (66%). Internet Explorer follows with 21% and its share is falling steadily every month. The top three operating systems used are: Windows XP (79%), Linux (13%) and Mac OS X (4%). Most of you come from USA (38%), Germany (10%) and Slovenia (7%).

Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you can find something interesting and useful here. If you have any suggestion (or maybe a compliment) about the looks or the content you are more than welcome to write it into a comment.

It is a couple of days late but the third issue of Free Software Magazine is finally available as a free download (you can also get it with eMule/aMule). Articles in the April 2005 issue are:

• EDITORIAL

• Thank you!

• Book review: Knoppix Hacks by Kyle Rankin

• Promoting free software on non-free platforms
• The risk of mixing free and non-free
• When free meets proprietary

• A laptop, a coffee, and disaster recovery
• The importance of LDAP
• Running BSD on PowerPC/PPC

• Guerrilla marketing part two
• Open source is a market force
• Free software gets small
• Free as in “free speech” or free as in “free labour”?
• Richard Stallman’s blog

During the past week several critical security bugs were found in Firefox web browser. And before you know it they already release a new version 1.0.4 that fixes them all. This is one reason why Firefox is the best browser. It is one of the safest and when they find some problem it is fixed in a couple of days or even hours. In version 1.0.4 they have also fixed a DHTML/DOM related bug. So upgrade to the new version as soon as possible.

There is also a new 64-bit binary build of Firefox available for 64-bit Windows XP x64. It now comes with support for scalable vector graphics (SVG) enabled. You can get more than 3400 SVG images at Open Clip Art Library. They are completely free. Oh and by the way, SVG is also enabled in normal Firefox nightlies. So you can expect to see it when Firefox 1.1 comes out.

Even though it is one month late, the second issue of TUX Magazine is now available for a free download. In May 2005 issue you can read all about playing movies with Xine and Totem, listening to the music with Rhythmbox and instant messaging with Gaim. You will see how to add more PDF power to OpenOffice.org and how to use copy&paste with it. There is also a review of AbiWord and an article about screensavers in Linux. Using file managers is explained and there are some tips and tricks for The GIMP.

A free subscription and download is available on the official web page. You can also get the new issue with eMule/aMule and BitTorrent (only for newer clients with support for magnet links, like Azureus 2.3.0.0). From now on we can expect the new issues to be published monthly.

Because of higher security, more modern functions and speed more users are switching from the obsolete internet Explorer to alternative browsers every day. The most popular alternative browser is Mozilla Firefox. Version 1.0 was released on 9th November 2004 and at this moment this free and opensource browser has been downloaded 50 million times. This huge number doesn’t even include downloads from non-official web sites, downloads using filesharing apps or installations from CDs that you can get with many magazines.

Here are some Firefox download milestones:

• 1 million - in first 24 hours
• 2.5 million - in first two days
• 10 millions - in first month
• 25 millions - in less than 100 days

What are you waiting for? Download and install Firefox and rediscover the web!

More:
Firefox: Blazing a Trail to 50,000,000

Linux users are able to run their operating system and almost all of the apps (including Firefox and Thunderbird) in 64-bit mode on AMD64 compatible processors (like AMD Athlon 64) for more then a year now. A couple of days ago Microsoft has also finally released their 64-bit version of their OS and they call it Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Many of us now wonder when will we be able to get 64-bit Firefox for 64-bit Windows. There are still some bugs that need to be fixed before we will be able to download official release from Mozilla. But if you can’t wait you can get third party binaries on this page.

Before using 64-bit Firefox you have to know that you will also need 64-bit plugins. 32-bit ones will not work. Unless Firefox developers come up with some solution similar to the one in Konqueror from KDE, where 32-bit plugins work just fine inside a 64-bit browser (or so I heard). The good thing is that extensions should work without a problem as they don’t need to be compiled.

More info:

• New binary will work on XP x64 release
• Is Windows XP x64’s IE relatively secure (for now)?

This Thursday, at the second anniversary celebration of Opteron, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) started selling world’s first 64-bit multi-core processors. At first they are only available for servers and workstations as dual-core AMD Opteron CPUs. AMD also announced the new brand name for desktop dual-core processors: AMD Athlon 64 X2. We will be able to buy these in June.

Besides improved performance and true multi-tasking another great thing about dual-core AMD processors is that you will not have to replace your motherboard (if it has socket 939 or 940). You only need to upgrade the BIOS and replace single-core CPU with dual-core one and you are ready to rock.

Visit this web page to read more:
AMD Announces World’s First 64-Bit, x86 Multi-Core Processors For Servers And Workstations At Second-Anniversary Celebration Of AMD Opteron™ Processor

Version 4.0.0 of GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has just been released. GCC is by far the most widely used compiler (its job is to transform source code into program you can use) for Linux and other open source software. In this major version there are many new features and a new optimization infrastructure. All this means we get faster compiles and quite a bit faster running apps. BTW, Gentoo users, GCC 4.0.0 is already in portage. But I would wait a bit before using it because the new version is also more strict about the code syntax and many apps don’t even compile with it.