2010-01-25 (0.9.9.1)
2008-05-29 (2.6)
2009-03-08 (1.5.1)
2003-09-15 (1.2)
2001 (0.1e-6)
Ian Ward's email:
first name at this domain
IRC: wardi on OFTC
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.
Tags: Urwid Hardware Software Linux Python
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.
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.
I recently purchased a new Lenovo X61 laptop to run Linux for work. This article covers my experiences with three different distributions.
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.