LeeNukes
Linux
Installing Skype on Fedora 17
Well, Skype, although it provides and RPM for Fedora 13+, it doesn’t really handle the dependencies very well.
I found I had to install these items seperatly:
yum install -y libXScrnSaver.i686 qt.i686 qt-x11.i686
you might find others though. To find it, do the following:
in terminal as your account, type skype and press enter. If it doesn’t load it will tell you something is missing.
In this example what’s missing is libXss.so.1
To find what has that you run this command:
yum whatprovides */libXss.so.1
It will tell you all the packages which include that file, however as Skype is 32bit, its looking for that library.
So, you tack on .i686 at the end, as above and it should deal with that minor issue.
Fedora Firefox Start page Updated
The Fedora project has recently revamped its default startpage for Firefox ( http://start.fedoraproject.org/ )
This is how it used to look:
and this is how it looks now:
Screenshot of Fedora Firefox new startup page
This is a massive improvement over the old style. Good work Fedora Project.
HP ProLiant MicroServer Benchmarks
OK, as with my last server I used the nbench CPU benchmark which is pretty long in the tooth now, but as a comparison I ran it again:
BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
: : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT : 764.32 : 19.60 : 6.44
STRING SORT : 118 : 52.73 : 8.16
BITFIELD : 1.8813e+08 : 32.27 : 6.74
FP EMULATION : 186.16 : 89.33 : 20.61
FOURIER : 11665 : 13.27 : 7.45
ASSIGNMENT : 14.577 : 55.47 : 14.39
IDEA : 3321.4 : 50.80 : 15.08
HUFFMAN : 1184.8 : 32.86 : 10.49
NEURAL NET : 21.828 : 35.06 : 14.75
LU DECOMPOSITION : 726.08 : 37.61 : 27.16
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 43.090
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 25.960
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU : Dual AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L
Dual-Core Processor 1298MHz
L2 Cache : 1024 KB
OS : Linux 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5
C compiler : gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48)
libc : libc-2.5.so
MEMORY INDEX : 9.250
INTEGER INDEX : 12.038
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 14.398
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.
I also re-ran the test on my other server:
BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
: : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT : 1046.6 : 26.84 : 8.81
STRING SORT : 100.64 : 44.97 : 6.96
BITFIELD : 5.0524e+08 : 86.67 : 18.10
FP EMULATION : 165.2 : 79.27 : 18.29
FOURIER : 18467 : 21.00 : 11.80
ASSIGNMENT : 35.808 : 136.26 : 35.34
IDEA : 3620 : 55.37 : 16.44
HUFFMAN : 1636.1 : 45.37 : 14.49
NEURAL NET : 28.048 : 45.06 : 18.95
LU DECOMPOSITION : 1243.5 : 64.42 : 46.52
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 60.118
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 39.355
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU : 4 CPU GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.06GHz 3066MHz
L2 Cache : 512 KB
OS : Linux 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5
C compiler : gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)
libc : libc-2.5.so
MEMORY INDEX : 16.452
INTEGER INDEX : 13.998
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 21.828
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.
As you can see, its about a third slower but it uses about 3 5ths the power of my last server, and is almost silent.
Wayland
Not long until Fedora and Ubuntu release their distress with Wayland instead of X.
I’m looking forward to it but my worry is with drivers. I like to use the proprietary drivers for the performance gains as I sometimes play 3D games and use 3D effects on the desktop.
Anyone else interested in Wayland and what it will bring?
Fedora 14
I recently installed Fedora 14 Beta Release 2 on my desktop PC at home and I’m going to go so far as to say its the best Fedora release I’ve used.
It was an upgrade of the existing Fedora 13 installation which in my opinion seemed pretty buggy, no specifics, it just didn’t feel very polished.
Totally the opposite for this release, just a couple of issues at present which are no problem really. The flash player is having some issue with creating crackling electronic noises when playing videos online such as YouTube etc but I’m hoping this resolves itself. I’ve tried reinstalling the plugin from Adobe but had the same issue. Same issue in Chrome as well as Firefox also.
It’s due out in a few days now. I also updated my netbook to Ubuntu 10.10, I’m not that impressed with this release though. Not a fan of the new Unity interface. Never really been a fan of sidebars. There is probably a way of getting the windows to overlap it, but for now I’m not impressed. They’re always breaking things those Ubuntu people. Grrr.
CentOS 5.5 Released
Just ran a yum update on my server and found that CentOS 5.5 is out, the giveaway was the 110 packages I all of a sudden needed to update.
It seems to have gone well, I’ve not tested everything but I assume its all working.
Something I’m hoping is now fixed is VMWare Server 2.0.2 as the web interface (vmware-mgmt) crashes frequently with the old glibc file.
This is all documented here: http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3884
The work around just didn’t work for me. So here’s hoping the upgrade is the fix. I’ve got two servers to test it on, and this came just in time if it does work.
Release announcement here: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2010-May/016638.html
Ubuntu changes theme and design, close but no cigar
Ubuntu have decided that after 6 years, its time to freshen up their image and try to shake off that Brown slur that has followed them for the past several years.
Here is a link to the page going through it: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand
Overall, it appears to be a good move, however, why move the buttons!? They were perfectly fine in the location they were. Just one step too far Ubuntu. Doh!
Sweet Home 3D
I’ve just discovered Sweet Home 3D. So far, I have to say its one of the best applications I’ve used on Linux.
It’s Java powered and you just download the tar.gz file and unpack it. Once unpacked, run the SweetHome3D file and that’s it. You’re presented with a pretty straight forward interface if you’re used to 3D modelling.
Its logical though as opposed to some 3D modelling apps, right click, choose your tool then left click.
To add one of the many models available, simply drag and drop.
To change the properties of an item, double click on it and modify its properties.
Once you’ve happy you’ve put things where you want them, you can render a photo of the image:
You can download it from here: http://www.sweethome3d.eu/index.jsp
It’s cross platform too as it’s Java. Try it out.
Free online backup with Virgin Media and Linux
My ISP Virgin Media offers online backup packages as part of their internet bundles.
The bundle that I am currently on offers 10GB of online backup space FREE as part of the account. Well, obviously its not really free as I’m paying for the internet connection.
The partner that Virgin Media use to offer this online backup service is provided by a company called steek who are based in Belgium. The software that they provide is Windows only, but you can make it work with Wine to a satisfactory degree.
Here is how I set mine up:
1) Download the Software from Virgin Media My Stuff Page: https://my.virginmedia.com/dashboard/start
2) Using winecfg I setup a Z: drive which points to my root /
3) In the Virgin Media V STuff Backup Software I turned off all the auto backup email items as they just look for Hotmail and My Documents etc and I choose “Backup All Files/Folders”
4) Now simply choose the files you want from this screen:
I am backing up my .evolution, Documents, and Pictures. That way at least I have these backed up. The software works ok, although it doesn’t seem very good at only uploading the changes, if the file changes it seems to need to upload the whole file again.
There are many more options in the software that can be configured but what I have setup is enough to get you going with it.
You may want to setup this software to autostart with your PC, to do this I added a script:
#!/bin/bash
sleep 480
env WINEPREFIX=”/home/lee/.wine” wine “C:\Program Files\VirginMedia\V Stuff Backup\v_stuff_backup.exe”
exit
to my scripts directory and then I setup Sessions in Gnome (System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Sessions) of this:/home/lee/Scripts/startvbackup.sh
This starts it 8 minutes after login enough time to warrant a connection from it :)
© 2013 LeeNukes. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by Wordpress. Designed by 