Fedora 16

Posted on by
Reply

Fedora 16 has been released for quite a while but I just now decided to make use of my old Acer Aspire 5572 notebook again and install the latest Fedora release. As always, Fedora is more or less equipped with “bleeding edge” software releases – which I appreciate a lot. (By the time of writing: once installed and completely updated you will be running kernel 3.1.7.) I’ve downloaded the default Gnome Live desktop installation media. Once burnt to CD and booted you’ll be a running a Fedora Live system with Gnome desktop. Yes, I like the new Gome 3 desktop!

Continue reading →

Debian Squeeze & bluetooth audio

Posted on by
1

As I just got my hands on a new bluetooth headset – a Sennheiser MM100 – I wanted to make it work with Debian Squeeze (worked like charm with my Android phone out of the box). My notebook Samsung R780 does not come with bluetooth equipped so I use my old Belkin mini bluetooth adapter F8T016 to connect and I guess it should work with any more or less current bluetooth adapter (of course it has to support A2DP).

Continue reading →

Conky with Debian Squeeze & Samsung R780

Posted on by
Reply

I wasn’t aware of this nice little tool called “Conky” until I stumbled upon the Pinguy OS website and saw the screenshot of it’s default desktop. To make Conky (and the sensor readings) work with Debian Squeeze on my Samsung R780 notebook there was some work to do. Once done, it’ll look like this:

Continue reading →

VMware with kernel 2.6.38 [updated for kernel 2.6.39]

Posted on by
Reply

Running Debian Squeeze with the latest kernel 2.6.38 from Debian Backports I had some trouble getting VMware Player to work. Once started it complained about not being able to compile the “vmnet” kernel module. I found the solution here and this is how you can make it work:

Continue reading →

Debian is back…

Posted on by
Reply

…on my computer!
What is (in my opinion) the greatest of all operating systems is back: Debian 6.0 aka “squeeze” was released last weekend. Of course as always with new Debian releases – compared to other recently released Linux distributions – the software which comes with squeeze is rather “old”, i.e.: Linux kernel 2.6.32, Gnome 2.30, KDE 4.5, OpenOffice 2.3. That’s the price you have to pay for a very stable operating system. For the first time the default installation media has no “non-free” software on board. This might be tricky for those who depend on non-free firmware to get W-LAN running! (In this case see the Debian documentation here.)

I really love Debian and in fact prefer it over Ubuntu. Though I tend to run the latter as it comes with more recent software. ;-) But now I couldn’t resist and as I was just recovering from a nasty flu I had some spare time… I was running squeeze (with KDE as desktop) on my old Acer laptop for quite a while before it’s stable release and it worked pretty good. I was a bit worried though if all hardware of my new Samsung R780 laptop would work with squeeze – but hey: what the heck, let’s try!

Continue reading →

HTC Desire

Posted on by
Reply

Since about 3/4 of a year now I’m the proud owner of an Android powered smartphone: I decided to go with HTC’s Desire which is kind of a rebuilt of Google’s Nexus One (which was also manufactured by HTC). It’s been a while since it’s first appearance so naturally there are already newer phones available succeeding the “original” Desire. And of course there are already plenty of reviews available on the net – but however, those are my two cents! ;-)

Continue reading →

Samsung R780 with Ubuntu 10.10

Posted on by
6

I wanted to replace my desktop computer by a laptop for quite a while now and as it started to randomly freeze – no matter which OS it ran – I decided the right time has come now. I did some online research and then picked a Samsung R780 Helix (link in German). The bare technical facts:

  • Intel Core i5 430M CPU
  • 4 GB RAM
  • Nvidia GeForce GT M330
  • 17,3″ display with 1600×900 resolution
  • Blueray drive
  • 640 GB harddisk
  • integrated webcam
  • unfortunately no bluetooth

The R780 is available in several flavors which differ in harddisk space and CPU type. Helix comes with an Intel Core i5 430M and a 640GB harrdisk. So far I don’t regret my choice! It’s very quiet (no noisy fans), good keyboard and a nice display. Of course it comes preinstalled with Windows 7 (64bit). I didn’t remove Windows but I wanted Linux installed as well. (By the way, the hardware seems pretty compatible with current Linux distrubutions.) So, this is how I got along…

Continue reading →