Known Element Enterprises Corporate Blog

So I will not be speaking at SCALE this year. I am not sure of the reason. So I will be assisting the SFVLUG booth. We plan to do a presentation on bluetooth.

1) Using it at a basic level. Discovering devices/basic connections etc.
2) Using it to connect with various perhipherals.
Phone (Blackberry Pearl)
Headset

3) Using it to sync with a phone. I plan to use the KDE suite for this. Perhaps also with jpilot.

4) Securing bluetooth.

I will be working with livindead (from SFVLUG) at the booth. He and I have given presentations on bluetooth at SFVLUG.

I will be writing more about bluetooth and SCALE over the next week. I have written a scriptto do bluetooth discovery and enumeration.

I think that is enough of a project scope that can be reasonably accomplished by SCALE and demoed in the typical booth visit time.

So I have got my desktop setup quite nicely. I am running the stock Ubuntu Dapper Drake kernel (

Linux charles-laptop-personal 2.6.15-26-amd64-generic #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Sep 8 19:55:50 UTC 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux


I am running the NVIDIA driver which enables 3d accelleration and 1280×800 resolution. Also using the ndiswrapper module to support the onboard wireless card. I would like to use the bcm43xx driver but have never had much success with it. On my last laptop (which I gave to Mike [who has become quite the prolific blogger]), it would work for a while and then I would have to restart networking. Quite annoying. wget -c is quite the lifesaver.

I am running IceWM as my desktop environment. I tried using Gnome for about 2 months). I have also used Xfce (for about 2 weeks) and KDE. I kept coming back to IceWM. It is lightweight. Stays out of the way. Incredibly simple text based configuration files and some simple and functional GUI configuration tools. Uses miniscule amounts of memory etc etc. A friend of mine suggested Fluxbox or OpenBox. I have used those for small amounts of time (a day or two) in the past. I installed them and will give them a spin when I get some spare time.

So how do I have my environment setup? Well

1) Plain color background and autohide start bar (callable by using the Windows key).
2) Key bindings for frequently accessed applications. For example Ctrl+Alt+F calls up epiphany and Ctrl+Alt+T calls up a highly customized multi-aterm (a shell with tabs).
3) A highly customized Start menu. I have various categorys setup with apps that I use on a semi regular basis. I have things like Eclipse and various security tools or shortcuts to remote systems. Several menu items point at shell scripts which invoke apps with options that I want.
4) Epiphany. I use this for my browser. It is light weight and very fast. The launch time is pretty much instant and it uses a very small amount of memory.
5) Mail client. I don’t actually use a mail client. I have my blackberry and that takes care of all my e-mail and communication needs. If I need to compose a paticularly long narrative I will use webmail. That will go away once I have a stowable bluetooth keyboard.
6) A MACOSX theme for buttons.

Networking is automatically configured on bootup via /etc/network/interfaces. I seldom use the laptop outside of the appartment. When I do I just do a iwconfig wlan0 essid “xxx” && dhclient wlan0 and that sets me up on whatever network I need to get on. I don’t have a PCMCIA slot so I can’t do any war driving.

In terms of accessories/peripherials I use:

1) Bluetooth adaptor with a 300 Meter range. I can pick up devices all over the place. Its great! I am currently trying to get my bluetooth headset to work as an ALSA device so I can control my computer by voice.

2) Remote Control. A remote control came with the laptop and works great for advancing slides and so forth. I haven’t figured out how to configure it yet. The previous/next functionality works but that is about it. In GNOME various buttons launched apps (DVD or Music player).

3) USB Drive. I have a couple UDEV scripts which backup the drive upon insert and mount it at a certain place with appropriate options. Still have a couple bugs to work out with that. I know gnome does this, but HAL is a fairly complex system for what I need.

4) MP3 Player. I haven’t used this for a while. Not much time for listening to podcasts and
such.

That’s about it.

If any of my readers would like to learn more about my desktop environment or the scripts I use etc feel free to post a comment. I will probably post my config files and scripts online at my website in the near future. Maybe do a presentation at SFVLUG and make it part of the presentation.

So I have finished rebuilding my server. In all its RAID+LVM and VmWare goodness. I have setup a DMZ host and deployed Windows and RHEL. So one major project more or less done. I still have a little bit more software to install and configure (exchange and sync4j for info management).

So what to do during Feburary? Well I have a few projects lined up.

1) I am going to be taking another crack at XEN for a presentation to UUASC in March. I plan to deploy it on my laptop. However with the amount of pain I have had trying to get it working thus far, I may just talk about how bad it is

2) I will be starting college. I will be taking a Java and .NET/SQL class. Figure I might as well learn more about the Java language then the week long Introduction and Java Web Apps courses I took at
Learning Tree. (which my Parents paid for as a very nice surprise). The .NET/SQL course is just to keep me well rounded. I have no expertise in the area and figure this is a cheap and safe way to develop some.

3) Desktop stuff. I have been writing a lot of shell scripts and configuration files to make my everyday Linux use easier. I have long been fascinated by
desktop voice control. I could see tying in my various scripts and shortcuts with a voice control system. The missing piece that is giving me the most trouble is setting up my bluetooth headset as a ALSA source. Once I do that all of the apps I use which support the ALSA interface should be good to go.

I think that is enough to keep me out of trouble.

I am back to Dapper Drake (otherwise known as the Long Term Support version). I experienced a number of stability issues with Edgy. So have a host of other people from what I have heard.

If I wanted issues like that I would have installed fedora.

I am also going to try and run the stock kernel. Unfortunately the Nvidia drivers won’t compile against it. So I am on vesa now I am in the process of doing some fine tuning/tweaking of the stock 2.6.15 kernel. It has quite a bit of patches and extra functionality that is very useful.