Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Using suspend to disk with eeeXubuntu on a eeePC
I got a eeePC almost two months ago and I really enjoy using that tiny little thing. It's small enough to fit into the front pocket in my photo bag and at less than 1 kg it's barely noticeable. The default OS is not that good however, it's decent for a basic use of internet applications but otherwise it feels somehow antiquated and for someone used to Ubuntu it's just not very comfortable.That's why I installed eeeXubuntu, a custom Xubuntu made specially for the eee.
But I had an issue with the eeePC, the battery life during standby is atrocious: compared to the laptops I used before, putting the eeePC in standby will drain the battery in less than 24h. It's not a software issue but an hardware one (that may be corrected in the future with a bios update). As I have a very on and off utilization of the eeePC, it wasn't very practical to either shut it down if I didn't plan on using it in the next few hours or letting the battery drain in my bag. There is a simple way to correct that: using suspend to disk (also called hibernate).
Under hibernation, the content of the RAM will be written to disk and restored upon wake up. The issue is that the default system for hibernation for the 2.6 linux kernel needs to have a swap partition that is bigger than the total RAM installed.On a system with a 4GB SSD, with the default install of eeeXubuntu already taking more than 2GB, I had some reticences repartitioning the SSD just for hibernation purposes.
As the swap space would not be used for swap anyways as it seems that using swap on a SSD is apparently not a good idea (there is an ongoing debate on whether modern SSD like the one used in the eee can take the abuse).Anyway that's enough introduction, here is a simple way to use hibernation on the eee without having to create a swap partition. The only thing you need is to create a swap file that's half the size of the installed RAM in the eeePC. It actually works better for me compared to suspend to ram as I had some issues with the graphic controller not waking up sometimes. Click below for the howto.
UPDATE: a similar but more clever way of achieving the same goal: Hibernate fix on the eee-ubuntu wiki.
Ubuntu Linux and Symfony on a PlayStation 3
As said previously on this blog, I now work at Splitgames.com, a company based in Paris, France providing services to gamers where I manage the development of our web projects. We use Symfony as a framework on which to base our projects. Of course, we play quite a bit of video games, have a few console systems laying around and I was wondering about how to bridge this two interests. By the way, if you like video games and Symfony we do have a few openings in our office in Paris. Email me if you are interessed at jobs@splitgames.com.
On my right I had a Playstation 3, on my left I had Symfony, the missing link would prove to be Ubuntu Linux.
Note: Running linux on a playstation 3 is not a hack, it doesn't require any hardware modification, won't disable any feature on your Playstation 3 and is not difficult to do.
Macirssi 0.8.0 for intel
UPDATE: there is a new version of Macirssi, 0.8.1 that is now an universal binary, you can donwload it here. The below unofficial port should not be used anymore.
On a side note, I recommend using Colloquy instead of MacIrssi as it is a more mature client. Don't be fooled by the graphic intensive themes, I can be coerced in looking and feeling like a text client.
I've been looking for a long time for a native intel version of Macirssi 0.8.0, as the author didn't update the software in now more than a year, I only managed to find the PPC version of 0.8.0 and an unofficial 0.7.0 intel build.
So after wrestling in the dark with Xcode, I managed to build an intel-only version of 0.8.0.
You can download it here: Unofficial MacIrssi 0.8.0 Intel only
Disclaimer: this is not an official build of MacIrssi, there is no warranty whatsoever and I'm not the author of MacIrssi.
On that note, I'm currently trying to make it works better with light backgrounds. Some of the text color preferences works strangely, the foreground color of the nick and channel list seems to be reset to white at each startup despite the color preferences being set differently. I'm trying to figure out where some of the colors are set between the irssi themes, the preferences and the source code, I already found out that the url color is hardcoded.
