Yesterday a friend of mine was selling a barely used Thinkpad X61:

Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, SATA 160 GB, 12.1" 1024x768 screen, Intel GM965 graphics, iwl4965 wireless, fingerprint reader, SD/MMC reader, 3 USB 2.0, Firewire, Bluetooth 2.0, gigabit ethernet, PCMCIA, modem. Weight 1.4 kg

Since the price was at least 30% lower than in a shop and the comp was barely used ( bag still unpacked ) , I swallowed the hook :)

Of course, the first thing I did was install Debian testing. The little laptop has no CD/DVD, so I used Unetbootin . After a standard installation ( with one twist: why doesn't the installer ask whether or not to set system clock to UTC anymore? ) and before doing any hacks, I checked the system for hardware / features working out of the box:

- SMP kernel saw both processors
- all 3GB RAM seen
- no problems with SATA disk
- Intel GM965 was running with correct resolution, but without 3D acceleration
- wireless was not working
- fingerprint reader was not working
- sound was working
- SD/MMC reader was working
- suspend-to-ram was working
- suspend-to-disk was working
- USB ports were working
- Firewire - I didn't test, but looks like the kernel recognizes it correctly. Should be working.
- Bluetooth (including audio) was working
- ethernet connection was working
- PCMCIA was working
- modem - didn't check
- extra keyboard buttons that were working: volume up, volume down, ThinkVantage, lock, battery info, suspend-to-ram, switch bluetooth on/off, switch wireless on/off, suspend-to-disk, up/down backlight, switch thinklight on/off
- extra keyboard buttons that were not working: mute
- buttons untested: dock station, external display

1) to correct the issue with no 3D acceleration, I went to /var/log/xorg.log and saw errors trying to open some DRI file. Installed libgl1-mesa-dri ( why wasn't that package installed automatically? ) and that made 3D work.

2) to make wireless work, I had to download 4965 microcode. Then rmmoding the iwl4965 module and modprobing it back made wireless work ( including WPA2! ) The only glitch is that the LED does not light up when wireless is being used. Patch for this has already been commited to kernel's git tree, though.

3) to make fingerprint reader work, I had to download thinkfinger from experimental. Followed its documentation and after 10 minutes I had it working.

4) to make the 'mute' button work, it turns out one has to boot kernel with parameter 'acpi_osi=Linux'

5) I also installed compiz, flashplugin and java plugin.

6) Then I got bitten by bug 469396 : on Intel 965 when using compiz one cannot play videos to XV output. I saw it was fixed in unstable so I just decided to upgrade.

Voilla! Except for the little problem with wireless LED (which, I hope, will be solved in the next Debian kernel ) I have a perfectly working laptop.

It was relatively painless, especially compared to my experience (year 2000) with Debian Potato on a Toshiba Satellite 4940 CDS , where it took me 3 months to make sound work.

PS. On www.thinkpads.com people seem to be saying that their X61 draw as low as 7 W of power.

I find that hard to believe - with everything on, mine is drawing about 16.5 W, and with display dimmed, wireless & bluetooth off, PCMCIA & firewire rmmoded, all partitions mounted noatime & nodiratime, compiz switched off - the lowest I have ever seen in Powertop is 10.5 W

Take a look at Amazon's list of 25 best-selling laptops.

At the time of this writing,

- 9 of them run Mac OS X
- 8 of them run Vista
- 8 of them run ... Linux: all 6 different models of the EeePC + Nokia N800 and Nokia N810.

Excellent piece of advice from Russell Coker.

RFE 4802695 (Support Java Plug-in on 64-bit AMD and Intel) is the top 'Request For Enhancement' in Sun's Bug Database. As of now, it has received 680 votes.

The RFE was submitted on Jan the 14th, 2003. Thus, I am happy to announce that last month we had a chance to celebrate its 5th anniversary.

Champagne and cake anyone?

Thanks to project UNetbootin one can install several Linux distributions, including Debian, without the need to burn a CD.

UNetbootin works using an installer program to add an entry to the bootloader in use (either GRUB or Windows' bootmgr, bcdedit or boot.ini) that boots a netboot kernel, which then downloads and installs your distribution of choice through your Internet connection.

Keep that in mind next time you're converting your Windows-using friend to Debian :)

I have several cronjobs running every 5 minutes. Each cronjob pollutes auth.log with the following spam:

Dec 17 19:00:04 tajwan CRON[29249]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user munin
Dec 17 19:05:01 tajwan CRON[29412]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user munin by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:05:04 tajwan CRON[29412]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user munin
Dec 17 19:08:36 tajwan sshd[29580]: Accepted password for leszek from CE.N.SO.RED port 9883 ssh2
Dec 17 19:08:36 tajwan sshd[29584]: pam_unix(ssh:session): session opened for user leszek by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:09:01 tajwan CRON[29622]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:09:01 tajwan CRON[29622]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Dec 17 19:09:03 tajwan su[29630]: Successful su for root by leszek
Dec 17 19:09:03 tajwan su[29630]: + pts/0 leszek:root
Dec 17 19:09:03 tajwan su[29630]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user root by leszek(uid=1000)
Dec 17 19:10:01 tajwan CRON[29638]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user www-data by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:10:01 tajwan CRON[29640]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user munin by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:10:03 tajwan CRON[29638]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user www-data
Dec 17 19:10:04 tajwan CRON[29640]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user munin
Dec 17 19:15:01 tajwan CRON[29813]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user munin by (uid=0)
Dec 17 19:15:05 tajwan CRON[29813]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user munin

Here's relevant line from /etc/syslog.conf:

auth,authpriv.*         /var/log/auth.log

I would like to adjust my syslog.conf and move the lines sent by CRON from auth.log to cron.log. How can I do it?

Last week Quanta Computers began mass production of the XO laptops by the OLPC project. Today a representative from Quanta appeared in our LUG here in Taipei. He gave a presentation on the laptop and left one for us. I played with it for about 30 minutes.

I have to say I left disappointed, mostly because the laptop is dog slow.

From hitting the power button till the moment when 'init' starts (at this moment one can actually see the message 'booting Fedora') : 27 seconds
from there till the moment when 'X' starts it takes another 25 seconds.
from X till apperance of the Sugar environment: another circa 30 seconds.

So, the whole booting sequence takes about 82 seconds. Launching a simple calculator takes at least 5 seconds. The 'Paint' application - 10 seconds or more.

At one point moving a window around with the mouse (a crude touchpad, actually) made this little thing come to a grinding halt. I thought it froze. It didn't even refresh the screen so for about 2-3 seconds I could see two mouse pointers. Finally after long 10 seconds it stopped thrashing and refreshed the screen. All that when I had only two applications open! Calculator and Paint, two simplest ones!

Moreover, Sugar is mighty weird. I dont know, maybe a child can make sense of it, but I couldn't. Applications pop up fullscreen and sometimes there's no apparent way to close them. Whole environment seems clumsy and unpolished.

The keyboard simply sucks. Feels like a cheap toy.

Overall, big disappointment. If you're thinking about the 'Get 1, Give 1' initiative then do it for the 'Give' part, and forget about the 'Get'.

Does anybody know of a webpage where I could buy Debian tshirts, mugs, stickers & the like and support the project this way?

I've got a question on the inner structure of the Debian Project.

Suppose there's a situation when some package needs an urgent bugfix or a newer version of it needs to be packaged and the maintainers are unresponsive. How can a user escalate this situation within Debian?

To give a concrete example, I filed Bug 440692 ( request to package a newer version of 'bluez-utils' ) almost two months ago. Several users supported me, including one who offered to package the newer version. 'pkg-bluetooth-maintainers@alioth.debian.org' are however completely unresponsive. The package is still stuck at 3.13 ( I am talking Sid!), even though 3.16 has introduced several very handy features (mainly A2DP - high quality audio streaming to bluetooth headsets and a much easier setup and pairing) and that 3.22 is the current upstream version.

What can I , as a lowly user, do to prod those guys in the butt? Do package maintainers have some 'boss' within the Debian project who can at least ask them what's going on?

Here's the original announcement as written by Ian Murdock on August 16th, 1993:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6?output=gplain

Cheers!