Category Archives: Free Software/Open Source

About all things Free Software and Open Source. Mostly good news :)

Dell 1420N, preloaded with Ubuntu

Posted on August 21, 2007 by ward

My laptop died a couple weeks ago – an almost 4 years old Inspiron 5150 which despite all its overheating problems was quite reliable. Of course it came with Windows XP, but I only ever ran Debian and Ubuntu on … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

more GPL’d chip designs from Sun

Posted on August 8, 2007 by ward

After the T1, Sun has now also pledged to release the core design files and test suites for the UltraSPARC T2 chip under the GPL. Way to go Sun! The T2 specs are quite impressive – 8 cores with 8 … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source, Open Standards | Leave a comment

flashing a soekris 4801 – or how yet another proprietary BIOS sucks

Posted on June 9, 2007 by ward

I got a Soekris 4801-60 for use as a firewall/gateway at one of my (very) remote setups. These things are reliable, very low power, and they have no moving parts if you boot off compact flash. They are Geode-based, so … Continue reading →

Posted in coreboot, Free Software/Open Source | 3 Comments

I am…

Posted on May 21, 2007 by ward

Anders F Björklund‘s “I am…” mashup is hilarious:

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

analyzing power usage

Posted on May 17, 2007 by ward

Intel has released powerTOP, a tool to help analyze which applications are using (too much) power. Particularly helpful if you have a laptop and want to extend battery life. Very nice.

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

clarification of the OLPC and Microsoft situation

Posted on May 3, 2007 by ward

Ars technica published a story that exposes the reports by Reuters and AP earlier in the week about OLPC ‘supporting’ Microsoft Windows as, well, a load of nonsense. Says Walter Bender of OLPC: “We are a free and open-source shop. … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

Dell machines pre-loaded with Ubuntu 7.04

Posted on May 1, 2007 by ward

So it’s official, Dell is going to start shipping machines with Ubuntu Feisty preloaded by the end of May. This is great news. Check out the vlog by Mark Shuttleworth (in Ogg Theora format!) for more background information. The most … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

Massachusetts should use free software

Posted on April 21, 2007 by ward

The Myissue.devalpatrick.com website has a new issue listed about the use of free software in Massachusetts government. If you are a resident of the Bay State, please support this issue!

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment

a new record

Posted on April 19, 2007 by ward

This morning, a user on one of our machines (inadvertently) created a mail loop with a bad procmail script: 09:42:05 up 120 days, 9:23, 20 users, load average: 3367.40, 3265.08, 2751.75 I had seen machines go up to about 200 … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source, Sysadmin, Xen | Leave a comment

m0n0wall

Posted on March 24, 2007 by ward

I purchased a Soekris 4801-60 with a LAN1641 plugin board for my parents’ home, to replace a Debian-based internet gateway on an old pc that I set up way back in 1999. The idea was to replace the old, coax-based … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment