Practical Technology

for practical people.

October 7, 2008
by sjvn01
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Going to a Linux or Open-Source Show?

The Linux Foundation recently announced that they’d be holding a new get-together, LinuxCon and a few days later IDG announced that they were transforming LinuxWorld into OpenSource World. My question: Will you be going to either one? Or, to any of the other major open-source shows like OSCon?

Before saying more, let me say that I’m friends with everyone at the Linux Foundation and I’m on the LinuxWorld, now OpenSource World, Program Committee. I’m also a technology journalist who specializes in Linux, so I’ll be at many of the Linux and open-source shows.

The two moves were not, to the best of my knowledge connected. LinuxCon isn’t a trade show. It’s meant to be more of a technical conference. OpenSource World has been transforming into a business trade show for years now. This name change was no surprise. Businesses’ interest in open source has expanded well beyond Linux so the new name makes perfect sense.

I’m not at all sure though I’ll see many of you at these shows. While I hate, and I mean hate, travel, I travel to shows anyway because nothing can replace face-to-face meetings. Social networks, e-mail, IM, they’re all great. They all help us share ideas and work together, but they can’t replace the decisive decision making that can happen at real meetings.

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October 7, 2008
by sjvn01
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New Linux Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers arrive

One of the most annoying experiences for any desktop Linux user is installing a Linux on a laptop, switching it on, and… discovering that the Wi-Fi chipset doesn’t support Linux. That used to be a commonplace experience, but over the years it’s gotten much better. Unless, of course, you were using a laptop with a Broadcom chipset; then, chances were, you were in for some trouble.

Other Wi-Fi chipset companies like Intel and Atheros have gotten with the program and do a reasonable job of supporting Linux. Atheros even recently went the extra mile and released the Atheros HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for its 802.11abg chipsets under the ISC license. In July, Atheros had open-sourced its 802.11n driver under the same liberal license.

Broadcom, on the other hand, well Broadcom continues to be a pain. In all fairness, Broadcom has made some progress. In February 2007, Broadcom engineers showed up at the Linux Wireless Summit. Then, in the summer of 2007, Broadcom finally gave Linux some driver support for its NetXtreme, NetXtreme II, NetLink and 4401 product lines. In July of this year, Broadcom engineers at the Linux Foundation Summit told me that they’d be giving Linux more support.

Well, I’m still waiting for more direct support from Broadcom. In the meantime, though, some championship reverse-engineering has given us support for the Broadcom B43 chipsets starting in the Linux 2.6.24 kernel.

Now Dell, with some help from Broadcom and Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has just released a Linux friendly Broadcom Wi-Fi driver for both 32 and 64-bit Linuxes. According to John Hull, Dell’s Manager of Linux OS Engineering, "updated Linux wireless drivers that support cards based on the Broadcom 4311, 4312, 4321, and 4322 chipsets" are now available.

For Dell users, this means that they now have Wi-Fi support for the Dell 1490, 1395, 1397, 1505, and 1510 Wireless cards. Specifically, Hull wrote that, "We’re currently offering the Dell 1397 card with the Studio 15 system with Ubuntu 8.04 and the 1395 card is supported on our new Inspiron Mini 9." But, this isn’t a Dell or Ubuntu only deal. The drivers should work with any Broadcom card using one of the supported chipsets on any modern Linux.

Now, the drivers aren’t, as Hull points out, completely open source. "It is currently only partially open-source, similar to ATI or NVIDIA video drivers, so keep this in mind when deciding if you want to use it." In other words, you’ll still need the proprietary Broadcom firmware. If you’re not a free-software absolutist though, you’ll be able to use these drivers.

Hull went on to say that "This driver is included in the Ubuntu 8.10 release," which is due out at the end of October, "and should be added to Ubuntu 8.04." If you can’t wait, you can download the driver, the Broadcom Linux STA driver today from a Broadcom site. The link in the Dell blog is broken, but this link, as of October 7th, was working. Enjoy!

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

October 6, 2008
by sjvn01
3 Comments

Vista R.I.P.

Vista is awful. Everyone knows it, including Microsoft, and now Microsoft’s actions have made it clear that Vista is on its way to the Microsoft junkyard with such similar failures as Windows ME and Microsoft Bob.

You don’t have to believe me. Just look at what Microsoft has been doing. First, Microsoft started fast-tracking Vista’s successor, Windows 7. Recently, we discovered that Windows 7 alpha will be coming to developers this October.

Still, you might think, “So what, Microsoft is still giving us a choice between Vista and Vista for the next year or two.” Wrong. The rumors were true. Microsoft is extending XP’s sales life again.

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October 3, 2008
by sjvn01
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Thunderbird continues to idle rather than drive

A few years back, when Mozilla spun Firefox out from the Mozilla Internet Suite, Thunderbird, its e-mail client got almost as much press and attention as the Web browser. Now, Thunderbird appears to be a neglected stepchild.

While Firefox is the most important open-source Web browser and is now at version 3.0.3, Thunderbird is still at version 2.0.0.17 and now its first 3.0 upgrade has been delayed. Rather than release the Thunderbird 3.0 Beta, as had been the plan, Mozilla Messaging, the division of Mozilla developing Thunderbird, has decided instead to release it as Alpha 3.

Mozilla Messaging is doing this because, Dan Mosedale a Thunderbird developer, said in his blog, “Calling something a beta is likely to trigger a bunch of extra press attention that we’re not yet in a position to deal with. Some number [of] reviews will be inappropriately pre-judging [Thunderbird 3.0] based on its current state. In the best case, this would be a distraction.”

In other words, it’s not close to being ready. Mosedale went on, “While we’ve been pretty clear for a while that calling something a beta doesn’t mean that we’re feature complete, what we’ve got now feels like it’s pretty far from being representative (from a user-experience and user-visible-change point of view) of what Thunderbird 3 is going to feel like.” In other words, really, really not close to being ready.

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October 2, 2008
by sjvn01
5 Comments

Ubuntu 8.10 Beta Released

Get your Internet connections warmed up Ubuntu fans, Canonical has just released the beta for the next version of Ubuntu 8.10.

This is the first real look at what will be a major Ubuntu upgrade. There’s a whole laundry list of new features, but I see four major improvements for most users.

The first are the combination of the new GNOME 2.24 desktop interface and X.org 7.4 windows system. This pairing should give users a faster graphical interface. It certainly, in the updated archive manager, File Roller, now has more support for other compressed formats such as ALZ, RZIP, CAB, and the TAR.7Z file types. Nautilus, the GNOME file manager, also now has tabs and I, for one, find that a very useful feature.

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October 2, 2008
by sjvn01
1 Comment

When Linux does well: the e1000e Ethernet bug fixed

One reason I love Linux is that when they’re a problem, it gets fixed. Usually, it gets fixed in a hurry and that’s exactly what happened with the e1000e Ethernet bug.

To bring you up to speed, a pre-release version of the 2.6.27 Linux kernel, which was being used in several beta Linux distributions, was sometimes frying the Ethernet firmware in systems equipped with the Intel ICH8 and ICH9 chipset and their 82566 and 82567 Ethernet chipsets. The major distributions to worry about were the Mandriva Linux 2009 pre-releases; Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11 Beta 1; Fedora 10 release candidates 1 and 2; Gentoo Linux; and Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

OK, so most people were unlikely to ever see this bug, but, on the other hand, a lot of people play with beta Linux distributions. In particular, Fedora was very close to shipping so it’s reasonable to assume that quite a few Linux users were putting it through its paces.

Now, thanks to Intel, and a nudge from Linus Torvalds, there’s now code that will fix the problem. This fix will be in the next pre-release version of the 2.6.27 kernel — Linux 2.6.27-rc9 – on October 5th.

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