excess.org

Ian Ward

Consulting
Generic Consulting Inc.
Software
Urwid 2010-01-25 (0.9.9.1)
Speedometer 2008-05-29 (2.6)
Templayer 2009-03-08 (1.5.1)
mkzip.py 2003-09-15 (1.2)
File Tosser 2001 (0.1e-6)
Writing
Tags

Home

Ian Ward's email:
first name at this domain

IRC: wardi on OFTC

Facebook profile

Locations of visitors to this page

Articles Tagged “Hardware” rss icon

Crystalfontz preview
Posted on 2010-03-14.

The development version of Urwid now has support for display and input on a Crystalfontz 635 LCD panel. These are small LCD screens that fit in a PC's 5ΒΌ" drive bay. They have six buttons, four red/green LEDs and a 20x4 character display with an adjustable backlight.

Read More …

Tags: Urwid Hardware Software Linux Python


Ubuntu NBR on an EEE 900
Posted on 2009-01-26.

I picked up an Asus EEE PC 900 a couple months ago, and it quickly became the most heavily used computer in my household. I have been running the included Xandros Linux OS and Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype (Beta for video conferencing) and Picasa (Linux Beta). Xandros makes a nice OS, and the EEE works very well in its default configuration. My only complaint is it that seems Xandros has abandoned the OS in favour of versions for the latest EEE models: there are few additional packages to install and fewer updates to the packages that are available.

The EEE community site has recommendations for adding external repositories, but that doesn't seem like a sustainable choice, with the steadily aging base Xandros packages. One of the biggest strength of Linux distributions is the constant improvements available and new software available from all over the world, something Xandros just wasn't going to provide. I use Ubuntu primarily on my other machines, so I gave Ubuntu Netbook Remix (NBR) a try.

Read More …

Tags: Hardware Linux


LWN article on Audio Streaming over Bluetooth link
Posted on 2008-08-15.

I have written a second article for LWN.net: "Audio Streaming over Bluetooth". If you don't already subscribe, go sign up now — excluding my writing their articles are great.

Tags: Hardware Linux LWN.net


LWN article on MARS and Cell processor link
Posted on 2008-07-31.

For the LWN subscribers reading: I have written an article for LWN.net titled "MARS and The Cell Broadband Architecture". It will be available to non-subscribers in a couple weeks.

Tags: Hardware Linux LWN.net


Don't buy anything from Samsung link
Posted on 2008-07-25.

I just came from a presentation purported to be about a stackable filesystem from Samsung called SynergyFS. The talk was more of a hardware sales pitch with no technical details, and technology that "can't be released under the GPL because if we give it to you you can give it to anyone else."

Samsung definitely doesn't get Linux and Open Source and deserves to remain on the "to avoid" list when purchasing new hardware.

Tags: OLS Hardware


Posted on 2008-01-01, last modified 2008-05-14.

I recently purchased a new Lenovo X61 laptop to run Linux for work. This article covers my experiences with three different distributions.

Executive Summary:

Lenovo customer support is excellent. Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 work very well, Centos 5.1 (and presumably RHEL 5.1) are not recommended.

Read More …

Tags: Hardware Linux