Lynn Verse Computer

Dual display under Ubuntu

2008-08-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I have finally obtained a goal I've waited impatiently for over five years to surmount - I'm writing this blog entry on a Linux system with two wonderful displays running as an extended desktop. Windows has done this for me for years, yet Linux has resisted. Ubuntu 8.04 was 'better', yet still created some weird scrolling modes until this morning.

My setup:
1) self-built PC with Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2GB DDR2-800, Asus P5K
2) EVGA 8800GT Superclocked with 512MB GDDR3
3) Ubuntu 8.04 which dual-boots with Windows-XP SP3
4) Primary Display via DVI - Samsung 730B (1280x1024)
5) Secondary Display via DVI - ViewSonic Q20wb (1680x1050)

Of course this triumph isn't really mine - I just found the correct pieces to make it work. The process is almost painless, and I think the Xorg folks (or team porting to Ubuntu) have finally got it right. Read any xorg.conf file from last year and it had a hundred lines of bizarre text which didn't belong there ... I mean, why should I include a line saying in an old 2-bit, 4-color video mode circa 1985 I want to support 1280x1024 and so on? The xorg.conf file is now nice and clean, letting the software assume such things.

Step 1) Backup the Working XORG.CONF file
Ubuntu 8.04 installed with basic support for the primary "generic display", which was the 1280x1024 Samsung. Gone are even the struggle to avoid the 800x600 "low-res" mode when displays don't have hardware sync info in the xorg.conf file. So start by saving the known-good file - this is something you should always do as it allows recovery should your x-server crash upon reboot:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig

Step 2) Use Synaptic Package Manager to install EnvyNG
I installed both the envng-core and envyng-gtk - not sure if both required, but I have the disk space. This adds the menu Applications | System Tools | EnvyNG. Running this asks for admin password and installs enough packages to rebuild various NVIDA resources.

Step 3) Run nvidia_settings
Well, here is where the magic starts to fall down. After installing those files you will find the option NVIDIA X Server Settings under your System | Administration menu. Run it and you see this magically enticing popup:

Ahh, almost like Windows-XP now, yes? Catch is this method of launching the tool won't have permission to modify your xorg.conf files or even save to /etc/X11. Thus anything you change now will fail to be saved. I can imagine many a frustrated person seeing the error message and just assuming the drivers won't work.

So you need to run this command in a terminal window instead:

sudo nvidia-settings

Which launches the same tool with the correct permissions to update your configuration. I chose not to save the changes to xorg.conf, but to xorg.conf.dual. Regardless, the settings won't take effect right away anyway.

Step 4) Organize /etc/X11
Perhaps this isn't required, but it is my habit learned over the years; I used a terminal window to insure I had four versions of xorg.conf:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig is a copy of the 'natural' file created during install which I never change
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.single is a copy of the xorg.conf active before I ran nvidia_settings with only my single primary display (it might equal xorg.conf.orig - I don't really care)
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.dual is the output of nvidia_settings, which at this point might work ... or might not.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf, which I manually overwrite at this time by copying xorg.conf.dual over it.

These simple to comprehend names often in the past saved my bacon when fiddling with my xorg.conf created an unusable configuration. A simple file copy from a recovery root login can over-write the bad xorg.conf with a know good one, allowing me to restart the GUI.

Step 5) restart X-server
Log yourself out, then back in to see if your wonderful new dual-display desktop works.

Results:

With my 8800GT, results were superb with a nice extended desktop 3000 by 1000 pixels across my two displays (1620+1280 by 1050 & 1024 to be exact)
However, I tried a second time with an old gForce 5500 and ended up with a config which never worked quite right. I would set up the two old CRT for a dual x-server side-by-side, try to force both to a modest 1024 x768 and somehow the result is always two x-servers in twin-view mode piled on top of each other at two different resolutions. The side-by-side extended desktop works fine under Windows XP.

HP LaserJet P2015 Extra RAM

2008-05-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

I bought myself a nice Hp LaserJet P2015DN, which can print duplex or both side of the paper. It's a pretty sweet printer - $399 total (from newegg.com) and it has some nice economy modes which print the text in screened gray tones to save toner. It also has direct Ethernet, which is super nice since I have 5 computers at home (3 actively used).

However, there is one 'interesting' thing which occurred during this purchase.

The printer comes with 32MB of RAM and a number of people who reviewed the printer at newegg said this wasn't enough for full graphic pages or complex fonts. So I purchased an extra 256MB of the DDR-66 RAM from kingston.com for $15 with free shipping (part number: KTH-LJ2015/256)

The reason this is 'interesting' is HP part number CB423A for my printer was priced at

... wait for it

... wait for it

... us$599.00 for the same thing! $15 vs $599 ... hmmm, let me think, which should I chose? The Kingston part even had the HP number printed as a cross reference ON THE PACKAGE!

Well, to be honest HP offered me an instant rebate/discount of $300 if I bought it online, so it would have been only $299. Those HP dudes are nice dudes (or dudettes) to offer me such a discount! Would save me $300 bucks even.

I am still here

2008-03-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

I am still battling computers, but have found Wiki formats more satisfying than a blog - so you can find me at lynnlinse.wikispaces.com

I have five quad-cores and three dual-cores (plus other misc systems) all slaving away for me, all running in fairly low-cost setups. Ubuntu's up to 7.10 and has literally evolved to the point where anyone satisfied with OpenOffice and internet access will be happy with it. I use OpenOffice all the time - am writing odd fiction (which I'll soon start putting up at my Wiki site).

Two months ago I finally upgraded my "fun system" away from an AMD A64 solo-core to a Intel Q6600 quad-core. I also abandoned the old XP-OEM license I technically lost the right to use years ago. Instead last year I bought (horded) two legal OEM Windows XP Pro licenses which came with a free VISTA Business upgrade. Cost was $108 each, which isn't bad considering the cost of a "real" VISTA license. Just remember that such cheap OEM licenses don't allow changing motherboards ... which is why I waited until my Q6600 to install & activate.

I did try VISTA again in Jan 2008 when I swapped in the new hardware, but couldn't even last the week as one doesn't expect a quad-core to run slower than a Celeron - plus my backup app hosed the VISTA filesystem - odd, it created a 20GB backup in a portion of the filesystem with PATH NAMES TOO LONG FOR VISTA TO HANDLE! Shocking, I have no clue why an operating system - especially one as over-bearing as VISTA - would allow this. But using VISTA's explorer or even CHKDSK, VISTA just couldn't show, delete or trash the directory created. So I reformatted the VISTA away and went back to Windows XP Pro.

Since all the reviews still say WinXP is 30-40% faster for games anyway, this seems the best answer. I occasionally play Morrowind or Oblivion and see a huge difference in graphics refresh (aka - detect none) compared to my old A64 at 2GHz plus ATIX1600. But, now that graphics are blinding I detect the hiccups where the hard-disk (a Raptor pinging away) needs to thrash in a new game map. Maybe I'll look into RAID 0 some day.

If you're curious, my home play-system now includes (prices as-of Dec-2007):

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz ($274)
Asus P5K with Intel P35 chipset ($126)
EVGA/NVidia 8800GT factory over-clocked ($290)
2x1GB Curcial DDR2-1066 RAM ($114)
Windows OEM XP plus free Vista Business upgrade ($108)

The case is my old (but beautiful) Coolmaster Wave, and I reused all the drives, fans, power supply etc.

In theory both the CPU and MoBo support DDR3 and faster than DDR2-1066, but the cost of anything above DDR2-1066 was too crazy to consider. As I'm just running Windows XP
Pro (with legal option to run it or VISTA) I've not seen the value in more than 2GB RAM yet either.

Also, this Asus includes some nice auto-over/under clock features ... which is nice since my machine tends to spend more time editing OpenOffice documents than gaming. Thus my Q6600 generally is running down at the 1.4Ghz range and the system chews up about 120-watts idling, whereas the old A64+X1600GPU system idled at 95-watts.

Secret of Intel Core Duo CPU

2007-07-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

I have 2 systems running with Q6600 Intel Core Duo Quad cores. They can crunch a lot of numbers and last price I saw for them online for only $290-310 each. Both these systems use a Asus P5B-VM uATX motherboard, 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, Enermax Liberty 400w modular power supply, 80GB SATA drive and Ubuntu Linux 7.04.

The Sneaky Secret of the Core Duo
I have since discovered the secret of the Core Duo - it is a rather smart (but sneaky) marketing move by Intel. My first Core Duo was a E6300 running at 1.8Ghz. I remember reading all the magazine reviews that showed the 1.8 kicking the butt of AMD's running at 2+Ghz. It was like Intel had found a new secret sauce for making processors. The magazines played along and all bemoaned how AMD was doomed unless they could counter this brilliant new secret sauce.

But I now know the secret. At work I happen to have a few Pentium D Dual-Core running at 3.6GHz - a nice number; just happens to be twice the rated speed of the E6300. However, if you run some old-fashioned MIPS/FLOPS hardware benchmarks - the kind magazines NEVER run anymore - you will find the Core Duo at 1.8Ghz pretty much matches the Dual-Core PD at 3.6Ghz at basic integer tests, and does only 50-60% as well at the floating point tests. So clearly, the Core Duo E6300 has portions of the chip running at 1.8GHz and portions running at 3.6Ghz (double-clocked). Such technology is easy these days - 10/100Mhz Ethernet hardware runs with a 25Mhz crystal and uses a clock multiplier to gain the 100Mhz cycles. Intel must be using a 1.8Ghz crystal and clock multiplier to run portions of the chip at 3.6Ghz. This also makes sense given the Core Duo concept came out of Intel's "mobile" design team - people who realized that running different portions of the chip at different speeds helps cut power usage and heat generation.

The really brilliant (& somewhat risky) marketing move was to call a chip like the E6300 a "1.8GHz chip" even though it ran at 3.6Ghz ... this is what caused the big media back-lash against AMD. Had the magazines tested the E6300 as a 3.6Ghz chip ... the test results would have been disappointing compared to a true 3.6Ghz Pentium D dual-core. It would have shown the Core Duo as a chip which sacrificed performance for lower power.

However, since it was called a 1.8Ghz chip, all the tests were showing up as 30 to 70% "better than expected". Magzines had no problems with the apples-to-oranges comparison of a 1.8Ghz Intel out running a 2+Ghz AMD since the AMD had (on paper) a higher clock rate. But what they didn't understand was that they were actually comparing a slightly crippled 3.6Ghz Intel against the 2+Ghz AMD; of course the crippled 3.6Ghz chip would beat out the 2+Ghz AMD

Faster RAM helped Vista rating

2007-05-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

In a previous posting, I mentioned how my daughter's new PC came with DDR2-533 SDRAM. Well, http://newegg.com had a sale on DDR2-800 SDRAM; Patriot 2GB (2x1GB 1.8v) was selling for $94 a set, so I bought 2 sets.

It turns out the new HP test systems my employer buys have DDR2-533 RAM, so I donated the old 1GB from home to one of my test systems to bump it up from 1GB to 2GB. I put the second 2GB DDR2-800 into another of my AMD X2 systems which had only DDR2-667 before, moving the DDR2-667 also to work.

The Acer PC now has a Vista Windows Experience Rating of 5.0 limited by CPU. Before it was 4.5 limited by memory - for some reason the CPU's rating bumped up to 5.0 from 4.9 with the RAM update. So my estimated cost of $740 went up to $850 after the RAM and shipping.

As another side note, I ran a boinc client on this Acer for a few weeks and with its dual CPU running at 100% load 24 hours a day, the CPU temperature hovered around 125 degree F. All of my other dual-core systems can run at 100% load being only 100-105 degree F, but they all have better copper coolers. So I'm assuming the noisy, 70mm stock CPU cooler in the Acer 380 isn't the best. However, if you don't plan to run the dual cores flat out (and my familt will NEVER do so - I'm the odd-ball doing things like that), then Acer's stock CPU cooler is fine. If you plan to do a lot of Video encoding or game playing, you may want to consider a new cooler with at least a larger fan to get better air flow with less noise.

New PC for Daughter

2007-04-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I was planning to upgrade the internals of my Daughter's 5-year old Dell 500SC (with 1.2GHz Celeron) ... but she beat me to the punch and literally let the "magic smoke" out. The room smelled for a bit and the system was completely dead - the power supply died. So desiring a solution to last the family for another 4 to 5 years, and given the cost of buying Windows Vista as an "upgrade" I decided to just find a good, low-cost stock system which came prelicensed. Plus my wife likes to touch-n-feel things before buying.

Acer Aspire E380
We found a nice "open-box" Acer Aspire E380 for $590 plus we received a free $50 free gift card. It has a nice "stainless-steel" looking case with black trim - very sharp & wife-approved. Although just manufactured in Jan 2007, I guess this particular model is being axed so BestBuy was selling off the floor model. I've had several Acer notebooks in the past and consider Acer quality acceptable - but their web site and documentation has gone very badly downhill. Off the shelf, the E380's specs were:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.20GHz)
Acer EM61SM/EM61PM Motherboard, based on NVidia 6100V chipset
Hitachi 320GB SATA 7400RPM Hard Drive
2x512KB DDR2 PC2-4300 (533) RAM
Windows Home Premium (Experience Rating 2.9 limited by graphics)

Home Tweaks:
My first step was to add a PCI-Express-based NVidia 7600GT graphics card with 12 hardware pixel shaders and 256MB DDR3 RAM (worth about $99 online). This boosted the Windows rating from 2.9 up to 4.5, with the rating now being limited by the rather pathetic system RAM. The 7600 is rated at 5.9; the X2 processor is rated 4.9 and even the stock SATA hard drive is rated a 5.6. Not bad for a computer costing less than $600.

But NVidia suggests a minimum 350-watt power supply with 18A of 12vdc power for the 7600GT, while the E380 came with only a 300-watt supply split between 10Amp and 13Amp 12vdc rails. Given the old PC died from power supply failure and the E380's stock power supply was blowing some pretty hot air out the back as-is, I upgraded to an EnerMax 400-watt ELT400AWT ($75 online). This is the 5th system I've used this supply in and I have been pleased with the results. The ELT400AWT has modular cables for the drive power, a large 120mm fan, and after installation is blowing nice, cool air out of the Acer E380. It is rated for a total 12vdc of 30A being split with up to 20A on either of two 12vdc rails. That should satisfy both the NVidia 7600 and the DVR card I may add later. Since my daughter doesn't play PC games I don't foresee ever needing to add higher graphics power to this PC. Actually, I was a bit surprised at the temperature difference between the stock and EnerMax supply - since both were running the same load I can only assume the stock supply had a super low efficiency.

I added a quiet 120mm door fan with external filter. I like the Antec Tri-Cool fans, as they include a small switch to select 1 of 3 speeds (and therefore 1 of 3 sound levels). As much as I hate the fan cable linking the door to the case, blowing air directly onto the top of the PCI cards and the various chip sets has such a noticeable impact on lowering temperatures that I feel obligated to do this. Luckily the Acer has a perforated door grill which allowed the fan to be attached via 1.25-inch machine screws without cutting a 120mm hole in the metal door.

The only tweak remaining is the slow RAM. While the Acer EM61SM Mother board has no real manual (even online), from everything I can find it should support DDR2-800. But I'm in no hurry ... as soon as I find a use for the old DDR2-533 RAM I'll buy 1 or 2GB of DDR2-800 to swap into this system. Until then it runs pretty well.

Issues to watch for in buying "off-the-shelf" systems
With margins being squeezed, builders like Dell, HP or Acer tend to skimp on the specs that normal people don't look at. The difference between a $600 and $1200 system is rarely enough to justify spending the extra $600. In my case, I prefer to buy the $600 system and spend another $200-300 to make a system better than the $1200 one would have been.

Things I have found "lacking" in stock systems:

Slow hard drives - I've had a few stock systems come with 5400RPM instead of 7400RPM. When was the last time you saw a Dell or HP add mention the RPM of the drive? They don't - just the drive size. Even launching the "Device Manager" won't show you the drive speed; you need to find the model number and search the web (I did this for the E380 and was happy to see the drive was SATA and 7400RPM.) Would swapping drives void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
Slow system RAM - to be honest, this Acer E380 is the first system I seen that came with such under-powered RAM. But again I guess it is to be expected since all the big-box shops just list the RAM size and maybe the DIMM's used. Launching the "Device Manager" also won't show you the drive speed; I guess the only thing you could do in the store is reboot to the system BIOS and see what it says - but I wager it just says "auto" for speed. Would swapping memory sticks void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
On-Board graphics - of course this is a rather common and easily detectable issue. These days one should assume the built-in graphics are useful only for normal office applications and watching videos. In truth, this is best since the extra graphics power needed for gaming literally puts a "power tax" on all usage - adding to people's electric bills whether they need that GPU power or not. Would adding a plug-in graphics card void your stock warranty? No - I assume ... unless it overloads the stock power supply.
Power supplies - while I always assumed the "stock" supplies would be less-than ideal, until I discovered the extreme "hot-exhaust-air" difference between the Acer E380's stock power supply and the rather modest-cost ($75) after-market power supply I did not think the gap was so great. But clearly the stock supply was creating a good deal more heat, which ultimately means it is running at LESS efficiency. To bad my AV power meter is back in Minnesota so I couldn't compare the actual watts-consumption difference. Would swapping in a good power supply void your stock warranty? I'm sure it WILL, which creates a sad irony ... if your good graphic card fries the stock power supply (and you remove the card BEFORE getting the system serviced) then the maker would need to fix the "bad" power supply. Yet if you put in a good supply which won't burn or cause such warranty repairs, you void the warranty.
Microsoft License - a little known issue is that buying a "stock PC" purchased with an OEM Windows license does NOT give you the right to change motherboards or "upgrade" the computer. This is something I learned the hard way - with calls to Microsoft to overcome authentication issues with Windows XP on another old OEM system. In effect, the low-cost "royalty license" included with your stock system is tied to that motherboard - a new motherboard requires a new license ... although with my phone call and excuse that the old motherboard had burned out, the fine folks in the South Asian call center gave me codes to reauthenticate the old XP license on the new motherboard, but I should not assume that will happen a second time!

End Result: so by spending $540 (PC minus gift card value) + 75 (power supply) + 100 (NVidia 7600GT) + 15 (door fan) for a total of $730 I obtained a working family computer with Microsoft Vista Home Premium and an experience rating of 4.5. If and when I update to DDR2-800 RAM the experience rating will be 5+. Given the license limitations of the OEM Vista license I was careful to buy a motherboard which should still be effective 4 years from now. With 2 PCI-express slots, 2 PCI slots, 4 DDR2 slots, 8 onboard USB ports and an AMD AM2 socket, the E380's motherboard will surely be obsolete even 2 years from now, but it should still be serviceable and effective for many years.

I doubt even spending $1100 for a "fancier" stock system from Acer or HP or Dell would have given a better result. I can still put together faster Ubuntu Linux systems from scratch for $350-450, but they don't require Windows license fees nor fancy GPU power.

Linksys Switch Quality Lately

2007-04-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I've just had 2 of the small LinkSys 5-port 10/100MHz hub go bad within a month of purchase. Guess their quality is going downhill lately - time to stop buying LinkSys. To bad as they look pretty sweet and I like the look and feel.

One unit - right in front on me is EZXS55W "EtherFast 10/100 5-port Workgroup Switch". It worked a few weeks, then just stopped working Sunday. All the lights blink when my machines talk (when there is network traffic), but none of my computers can see each other. Tried many different Ethernet cables & moving cables around - no good. Temporarily swapped in an old Netgear hub and all can talk fine.

The other unit is at work - just bought it a few weeks ago and port 3 just didn't work straight out of the box. Putting only 3 devices plus uplink on it is workable, but sad to pay for 5 ports and only get 4!

I am sure there is some way to contact LinkSys and get them replaced under warranty ... but it will cost me too much (considering the original purchase price) to send this bricks back ... not including my time to do it. No, I just won't be buying anymore LinkSys products for a year or two. I figure by 2008 they'll have gotten their act back together. Such quality problems have a way of forcing big companies to reform. Maybe Cisco has just started milking LinkSys as a cash cow - cutting costs to increase profits - who knows.

Ubuntu Disti is Amazing

2007-04-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

Summary; a lot of water (or bits) have flowed under the bridge since my last post. Since I've started to find my blog in Ubuntu searches on Google, I guess I better keep it up; eh? I now have 10 "working girls" churning billions of floating points ops per seconds and teaching me VPN things.

It is actually ironic - my "fun game computer" is now one of my weakest systems. I now have 3 'servers' for my fun and self-learning which are 2 or 3 time more powerful. Since one can make a nice dual-core Linux system for just $400, why not? I save my money and every few months add a new system. But that will change - my "fun game" system is just waiting for summer 2007 ... I want to see what AMD releases to counter the Intel Core 2 Duo advantage, plus the whole NVidia 8xxx + DirectX10 graphics market should reach a more realistic price point.

So far I have to say the Ubuntu Disti is pretty amazing just because I have YET to find a system I could not boot the Live-CD or install the desktop on. I did find 2 old 1997-circa APGx1 cards it didn't like, but we have a pile of old APG cards at work to chose from. There have been some problems when I change plug-n-play displays with X11 defaulting to ridiculously low-resolutions; I had to learn to go edit /etc/X11 files under recovery mode. Plus I should say I still use Windows XP for my games and media systems so I am not bothering to try & squeeze 3D graphics or even audio out of the Linux boxes. However, the Ubuntu just seems to install and boot ... no hacking required.

Ubuntu Nodes under my command:

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) Beta:

"Tara" is AMD A64 X2 3600+ (~1.9Ghz), 2GB DDR2-800, SATA 150GB drive on a ECS RS485M-M Socket AM2 ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard. Only problem so far is the K8 power/freq control doesn't work under Linux kernel 2.6.19 but since she runs at 100% CPU load on both cores all the time ... I don't really care.
"Bela" is a sweet AMD A64 3000+ (~2.oGHz) with 1GB DDR400 on an unusual JetWay 754 NVidia Motherboard. Bela's just a temp Ubuntu worker since soon I'll take her out to California to swap out my daughter's old 1.2GHz Celeron DELL. She has an NVidia 7600 card and Windows Vista upgrade waiting for her in the role of family PC.
"Yuna" is an old PIII Coopermine 1Ghz with 512MB PC133
"Zefa" is an old PIII Coopermine 650Mhz with 384MB PC100
"Saly" is an old PIII Katmai 450Mhz with 512MB PC100

Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10):

"Nana" is AMD A64 X2 3600+ (~1.9Ghz - twin of Tara), 1GB DDR2-667, SATA 150GB drive on a ECS RS485M-M Socket AM2 ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
"Amie" is AMD XP 2400+ (~2.0GHz) with 1GB PC3200 RAM on an ABit KW7 Motherboard
"Xena" is a Dell 8200 with a P4-M 1.6Ghz and 512MB
"Cali" is an old yet feisty (hot-running) Celeron 2.5Ghz with 512MB PC3200.
I should mention I loaded 6.10 or 6.04 on several other old PIII and dual-KII systems just to see, but I didn't keep them running. In fact, I'll retire Saly as soon as I get my daughter's old 1.2GHz Celeron since Saly's PIII probably doesn't justify the power she consumes every day.

Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog (5.04):

"Dora" is HP nc6120 nootebook. She's a bit of an orphan because I use her for GNU cross-compiling for embedded processors at work, so there is strong incentive for me to NOT break what ain't broke and NOT to try to upgrade her - especially since some of our tools like OLD versions of Python and every new upgrade involves pain-to-port. But one of these days soon (once Ubuntu 7.x is fully released) I'll swap in an old spare notebook drive and see if 7.10 installs and how much of the old development system she runs.

To Be Complete: pure WinXP-Pro SP2:

"Luci" is AMD A64 3000+ (twin of Bela), 1GB DDR-400, 150GB Raptor, ATI X1600 graphics - handle Oblivion pretty well. Luci can dual-boot to Ubuntu (now 7.04 beta), but she rarely does.
"Joey" is Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (~1.9GHz) with 1GB DDR2-800 on a GigaByte 945P-S3 Motherboard with NVidia 7100GS and Hauppauge PVR-350 video/TV card. I have to say she seems to leave the A64 X2's a bit behind ... but she cost more ...
"Feba" is an old broken WinBook C200 notebook which shares a KVM with 3 Linux systems in a DMZ lab and runs some commercial Windows software when required.
"????" is HP nc6120 notebook (Twin of Dora) and basically my work computer for MS Office and Outlook, etc. She's the only unnamed computer I have and I fell a bit guilty about that :-). But our IT department gave her a wonderful fixed name - something like mkt-cms1-3029 or so ... I forget. I haven't had the heart to confuse "her" with a 2nd name.

Why do I have so many computers? I guess I'm a quantity not quality folk - haha.

No, really. I work with industrial networking and so have (as an excuse) the need to study and experiment with VPN, complex routing, firewalls and network latency in distributed networks. So much for my pretext ... I also enjoy seeing the little ladies sweat it out running BOINCs jobs in their spare time. Even poor little Saly with less than 10% the horse-power of Nana, Tara or Joey does a surprising amount of work.

Nana, Tara, Amie and Yuna form a 4-node distributed OpenVPN system based on PKI security certificates - pretty amazing and presenting lots of routing and firewall challenges since each node ends up with multiple IP addresses based on interface used. I'm constantly learning and refining how they work.

Joey, Luci, Tara and Xena are my home systems; although I only pay to run 3 of them 24/7 ... Luci normally gets to "sleep" when idle since she lights up like a Christmas tree and the Raptor drive makes a distinct "ping" whenever it seeks. Tara used to be my router/gateway at home until I started playing with XEN virtualization and that pretty much hosed up my firewall until I can better understand how IPTABLES works, so Xena has taken over the gateway role.

The other "working girls" are all at work and doing various other industrial-protocol simulation roles used for testing. In their spare time they churn BOINC projects (Rosetta, Malariacontrol, & Boincsimap) and all told, BOINC claims I have 12 billion floating point ops per second and 25 billion integer ops per second at my command. I probably won't add any more computers to my harem, but by end of the summer I'll probably upgrade at least 3 or 4 of them to dual-cores and retire the 3-4 slowest workers. Specifically, Saly, Yuna, Zefa and perhaps Cali could be replaced.

The Cost of Power

2007-03-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

Summary: Some musings comparing work accomplished by my computer to my personal out-of-pocket costs for the electricity to feed it 24-hours a day - something I dare say very few home computer users look at.

Last month I upgraded a Celeron D 2.53GHz media server to a Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz. When not using the server for "media" (watching DVD or recording broadcast TV), I run BOINC/Rosetta distributed science jobs on it. Since the Celeron D was functional, I moved it to an old chassis & updated the power supply - both have efficient, after-market power supplies.

As a hobby (and part of what my Mother would call our inherited Scot's blood) I enjoy using an AC power meter to evaluate the cost of running appliances. My meter is from http://www.brandelectronics.com/ and it shows some interesting facts, such as that my Cox digital cable box consumes 24-watts when powered "ON" ... and 23-watts when turned "OFF" :-)

Obviously, the Core 2 Duo - running 2 jobs at once - contributes more credits to BONIC projects than the Celeron D. But I was interested in comparing what I gain given the monthly costs to run my now unnecessary Celeron D.

Computer Summary:

Core 2 Duo: 1.8GHz, 1GB DDR2-800 RAM, 320GB SATA drive, nVidia 7100 (fanless) 400w power supply

Rosetta Benchmarks; fp=1744 int=3656 (since dual, means maybe fp=3488 int=7312)
When Idle: CPU temp = 70 DegF, AC power usage = 105 watts
When both cores at 100%: CPU temp = 100 DegF, AC power usage = 129 watts

Celeron D: 2.5GHz, 512KB PC2100 RAM, 30GB PATA drive, nVidia 6300 (fanless) 350w power supply (it had 1GB RAM, but 1-of-2 sticks went bad)

Rosetta Benchmarks; fp=764 int=1677
When Idle: CPU temp = 100 DegF, AC power usage = 98 watts
When sole CPU at 100%: CPU temp = 125 DegF, AC power usage = 134 watts

I was at first pretty shocked that the Core 2 Duo - even with both CPU at 100% - used less total wattage than the Celeron D. Especially since every time you pick up a computer magazine there are dire warnings about needing a 600w, 800w, or even 1000w supply in a "modern" computer. By the way, a good AC power meter also tracks maximum power - which turns out in my case to be from 140 to 150 watts max when either the Core 2 Duo or Celeron systems first boot up.

Sonce both systems eat about the same power, just rounding the wattage to 130 watts burned 24-hours per day amounts to from $7.50 to $13.00 per month. This ranges includes my Minnesota kwh charges of about $0.08 per KWH and also my California charge of about $0.14 respectively. I wonder how many people understand they pay that much per month to run their computer 24-hours a day? Over a year that totals from $90 to $160 per computer - and this is JUST the computer. I'm not including the wattage used by monitors, printers, Ethernet switches or the DSL/cable router hardware. Plus with the computers running in a cool Minnesota basement, I don't have to include the extra air conditioning load they'd create in a hot climate like my Southern California home.

So now for the true "musing" - if I average the last 10 Rosetta jobs handled for each computer:

Core 2 Duo: average 10594 seconds and 36.87 credits granted per job
Celeron D: average 10406 seconds and 22.75 credits granted per job

However, since I'm looking where my $7.50 (or $13.00) per month goes I have to remember the Core 2 Duo runs 2 jobs at once for this same wattage so really one could say I am "paid" an average of 73.74 BOINC credits for each pair of 10600 second jobs that the Core 2 Duo runs. So the Core 2 Duo gives me almost 4 times the BOINC credits for the $100 spent a year on electricty to feed my hungry computer with both cores at 100% load 24-hours a day. Of course, even if the CPU throttled back to idle I'd still be paying about $80 per year to run the computer 24-hours per day.

So should I still run the Celeron D? Should I upgrade it to something closer to the Core 2 Duo? The upgrade cost me close to $450 once one considers the cost of the CPU, the new motherboard, and the new DDR2 RAM. This is an interesting question without a simple answer ... yes, running the old Celeron D doesn't cost me any more from a hardware stand-point ... but I am paying good money out of my pocket for the power.

So what is the real cost of power?

Win XP Authenticated

2007-02-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

I broke down and telephoned to reauthenticate my Win XP license for Joey. After it was authenticated, I see part of the problem was the various motherboard drivers (like Ethernet) were not installed yet so WIN XP was NOT able to authenticate via the Internet. Hmm, I wonder if everyone who installs a new MoBo on a system protected by the "Genuine MS Advantage" tool now has to telephone a Microsoft tool-free number .. boy, that will cost Microsoft an arm and a leg. The last time I hit this under XP i was given 30 days to authenticate - a shame XP didn't atleast give me 24-hours ... but it just won't allow me to log in or run in safe mode even so I had no way to finish installing motherboard drivers.

In fairness, I talked to a pleasant guy named Ahmed with a strong but understandable south-asian accent. It took me perhaps 5 minutes in total - but I did it at 10pm on a Saturday night. I read him my 36-digit magic code and he gave me another 36-digit magic code to enter. Of course his first question is "Have you installed this software on more than one computer?" I said no, but that I had just installed a new motherboard & CPU and he pretended to gracely understand that situation. Of course, I know that I am careful about owning correct licenses, after all I am a programmer who expects to be paid for my work ... how can I pretend Microsoft programmers should be forced to work for free? But sadly this is the kicker - I know I am "good", but what did Ahmed-of-Microsoft think? What FBI-ish reports are now in my computer file? It reminds me of the memorable 1970's experience of being a 17-year old virgin and buying your first pack of condoms from the 60+ year old lady at the drug store ... that disapproving look you feel she gives you but she says nothing. (By the way, being the serious nerd I am I really didn't need such things until I was 23 ... but then teenage males are not known for being overly realitic, are they! :-)

What pushed me to reauthenticate was, 1) well I owned the license, and 2) my other XP and 2K systems saw the 250GB SATA drive with unauthenticated XP on as being unformated. There was no valuable data on there - other than a nicely tuned & working system. I seriously just considered reformating and moving ahead. I am still a bit shocked the Windows XP would or could do this. Keep in mind this 250GB driver has (or was supposed to have) two distinct partitions: a 60GB for a boot drive and the rest as extra space. I do this since it is a WHOLE lot easier to find 60GB of free space for an emergecy backup than to find 250GB of space just laying around unused! I won't have been so surprised if just the boot drive was hidden ... but for the entire drive to appear to be a single unformated partition? Why couldn't another XP system at least tell me I had 2 partitions? Looks like I'll be using Ubuntu Linux to create my Windows partitions from now on - i really do want them distinct and not "virtual".

I need to look into this further - is a very worrying "trick" by Microsoft if true! The moral equivalant of a copy-protection worm to destroy your hard disk if copy-protection tampering is detected. Several copy-protection companies have been bankrupted after the slightest rumor of such irreversable slaughter got out. I remember the Lotus 1-2-3 scandel - way back before Windows existed. An executive of the company (was it called ProLok maybe?) that made the Lotus 123 5.25 inch copy-protected diskette mentioned causually in an interview that they were researching the idea of adding a worm to the diskette that would destroy the hard disk data if it detected that the diskette was an almost (but not quite) perfect illegal copy. Man, the crap hit the fan fast. Everyone was saying, "Well what if a legal diskette makes a mistake and thinks it is a copy?" Literally, ever major Lotus 123 customer demanded either confirmation that such a worm didn't already exist in the Lotus 123 diskette or they demended some OTHER brand of diskette be exchanged for existing ones. Lotus123 dropped this supplier and moved to another.

So if Microsoft is really putting such a "worm" (not really a worm, but effect is the same) into Win XP (or Vista) such that an authentication failure makes the hard disk appear unformatted, what is the risk of false positives? Suppose today at work you come in, try to log in and get the "unable to authenticate" error. Moving your hard drive to a new system isn't going to work, since the Vista authenticates to the motherboard details. But should the drive mounted as a slave also be unusable?

This inability for one XP computer to read the SATA drive from another is indeed very worrying. I'd understand if I had asked XP to encrypt the drive ... but I didn't. I have too little faith in computers to trust an encryption scheme wholesale like that.

By the way - take a look at this article in PC-Mag. It covers 78 free software tools:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2090951,00.asp

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and wattage

2007-02-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

Well, joey-lyn (my home server) is happily running with her new Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and GigaByte GA-945P-S3 motherboard. Kind of an amazing new thing ... with Windows running but no real activity and the case open, she idles at 67 degrees F (room temperature in my Minnesota basement) and the stock Intel fan even stops turning. First time I saw this I panicked thinking I must have gotten something caught in the fan blades & my new CPU was toast! But I guess the mobo's auto-temp control thinks 67 is cold enough not to need fan RPMs.

Of course she rarely is idle - when not busy for me she runs four BOINC projects ( http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) ; folding proteins, indexing new proteins for patterns, predicting malaria outbreaks, and of course some SETI at home. Yet at 100% load on both CPU she runs between at between 100 to 104 degree F. This is with a stock Intel cooler and a media-player style case. That's a far cry from her first CPU - a 2.53Ghz Celeron D which easily hit 150 degree F at full load ... in the media-player style case with the TOP OPEN. I didn't dare close the case.

I am actually amazed at the power this CPU has - last night I was 15 minutes into viewing a AVI video file with VideoLAN before I realized I hadn't suspended the BOINCs jobs. With the old Celeron or even the A64 processor used last month, I would have KNOWN instantly that I forgot this because the video would run jerky and haltingly. But the Intel Core 2 Duo - even with both processors pegged at 100% by two (2) BOINC jobs - had no trouble running the video as well.

Server's current configuration:

LIAN LI PC-V800B black anodized alum case - really sweet case, but hard to install CD drives (need to remove power supply!) and you'll want an ATX mobo narrower than 8 inches or you end up with IDE or RAM sockets UNDER the back end of your CD drives!
ENERMAX Liberty ELT400AWT (400W) Power Supply - I have 3 of these now, wonderful semi-modular design allows removing unused drive cables
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz 2M shared L2 Cache Processor
GIGABYTE GA-945P-S3 LGA 775 ATX Motherboard - even with the stock heatsink, the chipset runs too hot to touch. Oddly, this mobo offers ONLY a CPU temperature sensor so I cannot even see what temperature the core Intel chipset is running at.
EVGA/NVidia 7100GS with 512MB GDDR2 PCI-Express - I wanted something with modest power for video and yet is FANLESS. (I prefer large 120mm case fans to the little jet turbines used by onboard video boards)
CORSAIR 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
My case has 3 low-RPM 120mm fans with filters - I mounted 2 of the fans by cutting holes in the top plate to blow down on the PCI cards and mobo chips. As much as I hate "door mounted fans", in all of my case mods I've found these can reduce chipset and video temperatures by 5 to 20 degress F. Overall she makes a satisfying, yet quiet purr.
250GB SATA 3G WD drive - not big for a "server", but although I call Joey my "home server" I moved my file storage to a DNS323 NAS ("Network Appliance Server") running RAID 1 on dual SATA drives. This gives me more flexibility using Joey as a DVR or DVD/CD burner without risk of conflict between safe RAID files, network access, and the demands of video and DVD/CD burning.
HP Lightscribe DVD/CD burner (every modern format)

Power usage:
I encourage every computer or multi-media freak who runs systems 24 hours a day to obtain a good quality AC power monitor - I use one from http://www.brandelectronics.com/. You really need to know what that new qizmo is costing you. For example, I cringe every time someone suggest using an old 386 PC running Linux as a "cheap" alternative to a $39 LinkSys/DLink style router. An old PC like this running 24/7 likely drinks $5-6 of power PER MONTH, while the commercial box draws perhaps $0.50. I suppose that makes your PC a "cheap router" if you Mom and Dad pay the electric bills only! It also points out some odd realities - in California my Cox digital cable box consumes 24-watts when "ON" ... and 23-watts when "OFF"! So I guess turning it off just reduces the LED power usage :-)

Measured as AC input to just the computer case (no display etc), Joey the server uses:

draws 100-110 watts during boot up
idles down to 95 watts with no CPU load
running BOTH core at 100% pushes power usage to 125 watts or about 3.0kwh per day. I pay about 7 cents per kwh, so Joey costs me $6.30 per month to run full-time, with about $1.25 of that being the extra juice used to donate CPU cycles running BOINC jobs.

My DLink DNS-323 NAS has just dual 150GB Samsung SATA drives. They run pretty hot, and at present mainly function as backup for boot drives, My Doc-style files, and a collection of software tools. I may upgrade them to a pair of 500GB drives, or maybe not. Most of my multi-media goes onto drives in USB enclosures and burned to DVD/CD as "backup". The power the DNS-323 uses:

9 watts when no files are being accessed and the 2 drives are power down - since it spends most of its time idle the NAS costs me about $0.50 per month to run.
25 watts when fully active, such as during a file backup or copy

Fedora Core 6 was a bust

2007-02-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

Well, my Fedora Core 6 experiment was a bust and waste of 5 hours of my life - my system is back running Ubuntu 6.10. Had I know how rapidly and utterly the Fedora experiment would fail I just would have used a second hard-drive. I downloaded the DVD and had Fedora over-write the functional Ubuntu 6.10 I had on my new Intel Core 2 Duo system. Seemed to install fine - graphics and display was working fine. I had solid hope for some new experiences.

But then when I rebooted, after the initial low-level text messages my 15 inch 1024x768 LCD displayed the "Out-of-Range" warning and blanks itself. This is not me editing xorg.conf. This is the Fedora installer making some mistaken assumption. Yes, I have a simple NVidia 7100GS card and a low-end 15 inch 1024x768 LCD, but Ubuntu-flavor Linux had ZERO problem setting it up in all supported modes so I didn't expect Fedora-flavor Linux to fall down so completely.

Hmm, well I did the typical bunch of web searching one does to solve Linux problems and read a dozen forums threads on fixing Fedora resolution problems during first install. Some of the advice was wrong (ie: people using an older Fedora versions saying how they'd solve it), but nothing suggest worked.

Finally, to paraphrase the threads I read ... the Fedora people blame the X people ... it's not "our" problem, go post bugs in "their" forums. The X people blame "3rd party proprietary drivers" ... it's not "our problem, go bug ATI or NVidia to support Linux better."

But come on - first, Ubuntu (which has a reputation as being less hardware-savvy than Fedora) handled my display fine. Second, which serious Windows PC user doesn't have an ATI or NVidia card? It's not like I'm asking for driver support for some coconut husker & cleaner made in Guam! I never asked for 3D acceleration or video overlays even - just simple 16-bit 1024 x 768 Gnome desktop graphics.

After none of the "edit /etc/X11/whatever" suggestions worked and none of the "use system-config-display" suggestions worked even after hours of goofing around ... I just reinstalled Ubuntu 6.10 and clobbered the Fedora Core 6. I never even got to see the basic Fedora desktop even. I even tried the "system-config-display" command while in single-user mode to force resolution and depth to a low level. Nothing seemed to work.

I have to say - as someone who's been reading Ubuntu forum & help sites for the last 9 months, the attitude and tone of Ubuntu forums is so much different than Fedora. Ubuntu systems tend to be helpful and actually (but not always) helpful. The Fedora forums tended to be terse and rapidly blame someone else. Well, to each their own; so ends my revisit to RedHat technology after being gone for 9 months.

Microsoft pulling an IBM with Vista?

2007-02-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

(Summary: what I mean by "pulling an IBM" is for a seemingly unstoppable market dominater to so misjudge the market that the market move out from under them and they are left standing on ... well you get the picture)

Another new CPU+MoBo Combo
Well, I did it again ... my fairly newly upgraded A64 server is now an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. My pretext was "I can use the A64 for my daughter's old Dell!" Last week I was home in Orange County CA and I realized the old Dell is just a 1200Mhz Celeron and just too slow for me. There is surprisingly little difference for 2 year old and 6 months technology. A new A64 with mobo and RAM is about $250-300, the E6300 with mobo and RAM is about $450.

But, wouldn't ya know - Murphy's Law. Windows XP Pro refused to reauthorize. Since I was moving from an AMD to Intel I needed to fix the OS on my hard drive. Perhaps I should have just reformatted instead of "repairing". Anyway, I got that dialog saying to telephone a Microsoft telephone number, wait umteen hours in queue, and talk to a friendly call-center person in a foreign country to obtain new authorization codes. Perhaps this was because this system just moved motherboards a few months ago, or perhaps it is part of a nudge towards Vista ... maybe if I call this number Microsoft will try to entice me with a low-cost Vista-Home CD (wink) knowing I'll later have to upgrade to a more expensive license. It would make perfect business sense.

I am still deciding what to do - for now I put Windows 2K back on one partition and am downloading a DVD.iso for Fedora Core 6 Linux. This gives me a good incentive to re-eval RedHat's branch of Linux. At work I started using RedHat 6.x back in 2002 on a second-hand IBM T20 notebook and finally moved to Ubuntu 5.x the summer of 2006 when the T20 died. Work gave me an HP NC6120 notebook; neither my old faithful Red Hat nor the new Fedora at that time could handle the LCD display. So I picked Ubuntu 5.04 because someone was offering a CD image preconfigured for the NC6120 notebook. It loaded sweetly and worked fine.

Does 1 Human need 11 Microsoft Licenses?
But back to Microsoft, lets see ... the licenses I own (or cause to be owned):
1 = Windows XP Pro OEM for my home "fun PC" - it came installed and "COA'd" on a used system I bought. It is now on it's 2nd CPU and 4th motherboard. Was an AMD XP but I upgraded to an A64 since I could reuse the DDR400 RAM and ATI AGP video card. I am waiting to see what AMD's next gen dual-core is like
2 = Windows XP Pro upgrade for my daughter's computer - a Dell which came with Win2000 Home license in 2001 or so. It's still on 1st CPU and motherboard, I'll be trying to move it to an A64.
3 = Windows 2000 Pro OEM on an old Dell 8200 notebook (of course 1st CPu and mobo)
4 = Windows XP Pro OEM on my "server PC" - also a 2nd hand unit which is the one that which won't reload. It's on it's 3rd CPU and 4th mobo (sweet, eh?)
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are at work ... I have 3 notebooks with Windows XP and 2 desktops with Windows XP. Sadly, 1 notebook and 1 desktop just run Linux so those 2 Windows XP Pro licenses are wasted, but it's not worth buying a small-business package without a Windows license since you don't really save any meaningful money.
Forget all of the old Windows 95 or 98 licenses which I scrapped along with the PC they ran on.

So in total, I have subsidized the Gates family charitable trusts for 9 copies of Windows XP and 2 copies of Windows 2000 (I have one XP upgrade). This isn't 10 computers for a small company of a dozen people ... this is 10 computers that basically "work for me". Some do testing; some development (cross-compiling), some live in various labs and on isolated networks. What more does Microsoft want from me? Well, more money each new year I guess. But the point is (as Sony and other DRM sellers are finding out), there is a fine line between correctly stopping piracy by people who MAY NOT buy your stuff anyway and chasing the people who DO buy your stuff away because they keep "losing" money by having to repay for what they already paid for. In other words, blocking "pirates" doesn't promise to increase your revenue as much as hosing your paying customers may decrease it.

I already STOPPED using Norton Anti-Virus on 3 of 4 computers because I had to telephone some support line in India every time I changed a motherboard. Now only my daughter's Dell has Norton Internet Security - that's the computer I upgraded to XP to gain "Limited Accounts". She is a bit too much like "Hello Kitty in Cyber-Space", if allowed she would go happily skipping along, downloading every flashy piece of spyware offered to her (by the way, she is in college!)

Does New MotherBoard+CPU mean New Computer?
I realize I am a member of a minority here. Most people buy a computer, use it for 3-5 years, and then buy a new computer complete with a new Windows license. I assume they think of the computer as a machine-thingy like a TV or toaster. To them, the idea that one buys a new computer and an new Windows licence makes sense. Come to think of it, I suspect most people don't even realize they paid a percentage of the new computer price for a new Windows license.

But I am one of those crazy fools who think of my computers as "services" or "helpers" independent of the hardware within. In fact they all have cute names (like amie, joey and cali) and cute little logo images cut from computer game screen shots. At home I have 3 systems or little electronic "helpers". I have my higher-wattage "fun PC" for gaming; my lower-wattage "worker PC" or server which runs 24/7; and my broken "portable PC" (a Dell notebook with broken internal fans so I have it strapped to a home-made "notebook cooler" with external fans). I feel that as long as all of my 3 "helpers" is happy with their existing licenses, I should be able to modify the hardware at will and NOT have the licenses stop working.

I've already stopped paying for yearly Norton subscriptions on 3 of my 4 personal computers, havinf switched to 3 different "free home versions". I've also had to find alternatives for 2 shareware packages I loved due to their need to telephone or exchange support email ad-nauseum every time I changed the hardware. Will I stop buying Windows ... err, not likely? With the state of Linux (even in 2007) this would be hard; I need to use too many tools which either don't work in any Linux or only work on "another" distro than the one I am using. But it certainly is giving me a reason to think harder about Linux.

At least I hear Microsoft was wise enough to abandon their first plans for Vista licensing - in which Vista would lock itself to one computer (ie: one Motherboard and CPU) and never be able to "move" to a new or upgraded computer. Sounds like a plan borrowed from Sony music lawyers and managers. Now the rumor is there exists a method to "uninstall" Vista from one computer (or motherboard+CPU combo) and "move" it to another. I haven't seen the details of this, but I wager the process will retain many hurdles and confusing details.

The Microsoft doing an IBM Scenario
I don't think Vista will fall flat on its face and bankrupt Microsoft - even IBM is not bankrupt today. As many columnists and writers suggest, Microsoft will force most new computer buyers to "select" Vista. Like Henry Ford's quip about color, new computer buyers at big-box stores can buy any OS they want - as long as it's Microsoft Vista. So a year from now Microsoft will happily announce how many hundred million people have 'switched' to Vista. Microsoft likely doesn't make that much cash from these OEM sales. Microsoft is betting that average-joes & mollies will use their credit cards to UPGRADE their Vista license online, which likely will give them far more cash than these low-cost OEM licenses.

But as many columnists/writers also suggest, most organizations with more than 100 (or perhaps more than a dozen?) computers will just "ghost" any new Vista-licensed computers back to Windows XP (or even 2000) for at least a year. These big organizations is where Microsoft really makes their cash. My employer pays for a Windows (& Office) license every year for nearly every computer in the building (even many running only Linux!) These licenses "cost" Microsoft only a few pennies each in administer, so is like 99.9% profit/margin. My employer does this just as a cover-thy-butt legal move to prevent a disgruntled employee from sending a letter to Microsoft saying "I know where an illegal copy of Windows is ..."

Future of Vista in hands of MSOffice?
So a year ... or two ... from now when big companies and universities start to take stock of the move from WinXp to Vista, the truth of the matter is that the OS-truths have little to do with the decision. As time goes on, Microsoft will subtly try to nudge organizations to cross the line and start paying for Vista. But how to entice? Security? All big organizations use 3rd party tools. Mouth-watering graphics? All big organizations invest in basic hardware incapable of the fancier Vista interface. The only way Microsoft can "nudge" these groups is with new applications and cost-savings. Microsoft will need to make Vista cheaper than WinXP ... or WinXP more expensive than Vista ... or release critical new applications & services (Office 2009? Windows Server 2010?) that don't work well with WinXP.

So here is the risk ... will alternative applications and services exist that offer an OS alternative to Vista? It is not the operating system enabling this - not XP vs Vista nor Windows vs Linux. It is the question - which OS runs the tools we need to be productive?

Will Apple step in to take this business? Not unless all of their top management retire or die in the next few months. Apple is geared to be a niche-player and profits by being a niche-player targeting just some segments of the computer market. Maybe I show my age, but I remember the whole 1987 Jobs vs Sculley thing when Jobs left Apple to form Next and Sculley promised to help Apple stop thinking like a niche-player and start thinking like a market-dominant player. Well, that didn't happen ... Apple is still a niche player (what is their market share? like 5% even?) The only way for Apple to step into ex-Windows accounts is to STOP making money on hardware and giving the OS away for free. They need to start selling the OS and helping competitors create hardware; shift their profit center away from hardware to software. Do you see this happening in our life-time? Not.

So any person or company which feels threatened by the move to Vista ... or just dislikes Microsoft ... or who wants to see history change should be investing in one of two things:

Invest in making OpenOffice better (and mainly faster to use). I think it is safe to say 95% of computer users ONLY use tools which can be classified: a) an office suite, b) a tool largely OS-independent like a web browser, and c) some semi-custom business application for their boss. So the ONLY real road block to the average corporation moving to Linux is the quality of "office suite" available - we assume programs in class b & c will happen if the OS justifies it. Now, I use OpenOffice ... sometimes ... I am not saying it is bad. I am just saying that the Symantec's and Alex St. John's of the world should be actively polishing and grooming OpenOffice today so that a year or two from now all the big organizations who are pondering the "to Vista, or not to Vista" question will like what they see.
Invest in making the major Linux distributions share a common application "package management" system. That is really the MAIN thing hampering wide spread adoption of Linux. Yes, there are converters (like "alien" to convert RedHat RPM into Debian DEB), but they only work for trivial applications. I know - I've been using Ubuntu (in theory Debian-based) for almost a year and so far the ONLY applications I have been successful in installing come via the buildin Ubuntu Synaptic Package Manager. I'm not saying that artificially limiting of my choices to the 18000+ applications Ubuntu offers is the problem. The problem is that the big specialty tool makers - the Adobe's and Rockwell Automation's and Honeywell's and even computer hardware makers of the world - avoid general Linux support because - well - there is no such this as "Linux" as a market. Linux is a kernel. Instead, to be fool-proof software vendors need to create 40-50 separate & tested application downloads for a dozen different Linux distributions on various generations of kernels. My employer (http://www.digi.com/) has to do that - our list of Linux packages dwarfs our list of Windows packages and it is largely incomplete. We don't even support Ubuntu and the "Debian" packages we off don't install under Ubuntu - I have tried. No company manager with any sanity will commit to doing this. If the "Linux world" can reduce this need for downloads to say 4 or 5 (like Windows), then Linux has a better chance to gain the diverse, specialty tools corporations need to use Linux instead of Windows.

Linux is actually pretty easy to install and use these days ... as long as all of your hardware and desired applications have "native" support within your distribution. Heaven help the average computer-savvy user (forget the novice) if they need to go actually try to recompile some source code to gain a pure "Linux application".

I believe the Linux community has about a year to pull together and clean up this huge waste of duplicated effort related to application package management if they want to offer an irresistible alternative to large organizations to Windows Vista. So I don't think Vista will fail out-right - it will succeed. Early market signs are that Microsoft Office 2007 is doing well compared to Office 2003. However, it is still possible that Vista is part of "the hump" in market dominance; that a larger percentage than normal of big institutions will start to defect rather than move to Vista.

Installing MediaWiki under Ubuntu

2007-02-13T18:11:00.000-08:00

File this report under "amazing" - I got MediaWiki installed and working in less than an hour on an old AMD XP 2400+ running Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) & slaving through industrial protocol tests for me. I was really shocked - flabbergasted that this worked since this included installing MySql, Apache, and MediaWiki.

It was amazingly easy - any fool with little or no Linux knowledge could have done this.

Step #1 - Install MySQL Server; open the Synaptic Package Manager and select to install the latest MySQL server and any dependencies it suggests. See UbuntuGuide for a few tweaks to set the SQL root password and so on.

Step #2 - Install MediaWiki; open the Synaptic Package Manager and select to install the latest MediaWiki and any dependencies it suggests. This pulls in Apache and a bunch of libraries as well.

Step #3 - web browse to "http://{your-ip}/" - this basically pulls up Apache's default page and confirms your apache is running - it should be. The home page resides in /var/www if you want to change the default home page. Lots of stuff you could tweak here ... but none you need to tweak now.

Step #4 - web browse to "http://{your-ip}/mediawiki/index.php" - pulls up an "Oops - MediaWiki not setup yet" wizard that walks you through setting up the basic accounts and pointing to your MySQL server.

That's it - at this point you'll have a public-editable Wiki ready to edit as you wish. Since my Wiki sits isolated on a corporate intranet for my own notes and TODO tasks I am not concerned about hackers. Of course, just like Apache there are lots of options to tweak - logos, skins, and so on.

Vista expired - no more craplets testable

2007-02-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

Well, work sent me off to San Diego for a week plus - given the degrees-below-zero in Minnesota I missed ... sweet. But I didn't have the opportunity to try more open source with Vista. I was looking forward to Vista's reaction to Open Office etc, but I guess to paraphrase the words of Microsoft executives ... all open source tools which (of course) won't/can't pay Microsoft thousands of $$$ to certify their code is Vista-compatible are just "Craplets" that should NOT be allowed to run on Vista. So OpenOffice and FireFox are Craplets. The Craplet term was repeated by one of the Computer Power User columnists. I'd like to his column, but their site is having major web problems. Maybe their Windows Server 2005 is rebelling :-)

Anyway, my plan is still to update my "fun PC" to a next gen dual or quad core next summer. Hopefully by then AMD has had time to make a good, low-power counter to Intel's current family. Since Vista Home Premium costs like $200 just for an upgrade, I may try to find a commercial PC with suitable parts that I can scrap & "Frankenstein" for my home-brewed fun system.

Since Vista is tied closely to one's motherboard, I doubt I'll become dependent on it for more than a year. A year is about how long one of my mobo lasts before I change it. Since I've been changing my motherboard at least once a year, I stopped using Norton and a few other shareware tools with similar weaknesses. Every time I changed my mobo, after a month or two Norton would stop updating and I'd have to call some friendly help-desk person in India and explain that "No, I didn't install my Norton on 2 systems - I changed the motherboard on 1 system".

I also had a few shareware tools pull a worse stunt. Since the "software key" embeds some info about the motherboard, the tool would continue to work fine after the mobo swap since it was registered already. But after I reformatted my hard drive (swapped out a slow PATA 5400 rpm for a SATA 10000 rpm) I could not reinstall the tools again and I was told that I was out of the warrentee/update period so I'd have to pay for a new key. Luckily the 2 shareware tools I "lost" this way all had other newer open source tools alternatives I could switch to.

But I wonder how this "weakness" will impact Microsoft Vista - I suppose I am really part of a small minority. I suppose 98% of Vista users will obtain it as part of a new PC they will use for 3 to 5 years - without changing motherboards or processors.

Vista Premium and loading open-source public tools

2007-01-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

So Vista Home Premium installed Ok last night.

Score so far is 2 Ok of 3:
- Vista Home Premium: success - is happy with my old Motherboard
- Kaspersky Anti-Virus v6: failed to install
- Creative Audigy 4 driver: success - Windows Media Player works

Reminder: I am NOT trying to find new things that work - only if the tools I am comfortable with work. For example no doubt Vista comes with a snazy media player, but I want to use VLC from http://www.videolan.org/ - so if no VLC, then no Vista for me (yet).

U3 on my portable drive:
Beep - big not-o. I have a 2GB USB drive which contains FireFox, OpenOffice and all of my normal tools and settings. I use this daily on 4 to 5 computers at work. My ScanDisk u3 Cruzor USB device shows up as broken under Device manager and no virtual CD shows up under Windows Explorer. The "data" section of the drive shows up, but since it is encrypted it cannot be accessed without the "LaunchPad" working. Having Windows search for an updated driver gets the nice message "It is up to date" but it doesn't work. www.u3.com is pretty useless (as of today) since it just says click your U3 task bar icon to update ... but of course I have no U3 task bar icon since LaunchPad doesn't work.

Score so far is 2 of 4 Ok:
- U3 USB sticks: failed - they don't mount

FireFox 2.0.0.1
So, no USB stick with FireFox so lets see how official non-portable FireFox works from http://www.mozilla.com. Oops - I get the error "FireFox Setup 2.0.0.1.exe" is not a valid Win32 application.

Score so far is 2 of 5 Ok:
- FireFox 2.0.0.1: failed: isn't even recognized as valid Win32 app

Aarg! I just noticed Vista Windows Explorer STILL starts up in my "Start menu" directory. Holy cow - such an idiotic thing; of all the things they change mindlessly, they don't change the one dumbest decision Microsoft ever made! Why don't they start Windows explorer in my home directory or some other SANE place!

I look at my download directory and see that FireFox never downloaded - it is an empty file. Guess that explains why Vista complained. So I try to download again, and just to be safe don't agree with Vista that this is an application. Now it installs fine. Mozilla Corp did a nice job of signing and all of the Vista admin popups have nice, clean messages!

Score so far is 3 of 5 Ok:
- FireFox 2.0.0.1: sucess, but first download failed for some reason

Mounting my DLink DNS-323 raid file server:
I have a NAS or network disk array with dual SATA 150GB drives. I use it to backup my files and share downloads between systems. That way none of my home systems share their own files. Windows Explorer lost the old menus - so no Map to Nework Drive anymore. Hitting the help button is useless as a search for "mount network drive" pulls up 30 items unrelated to mounting a network drive. One of the first items suggests I go to Windows online help for IT professionals!

Ok, use your head Lynn. Under the Start Menu is a Networks selection - this opens up my network and shows all of my homes systems, my NAS, and even my DSL router. Must be a UPnP thing since my Digi network devices don't show up. But alas, I cannot log into my DLink NAS using my name and password; Vista must have changed the way passwords are handled. DLink has no support info related to Vista and DNS-323. So another task for another day!

Score so far is 3 of 6 Ok:
- DLink DNS-323 NAS: failure: won't allow Vista to connect to drives

How about Java Runtime:
I go to www.runescape.com - a massive online game that just costs $5 per month and is pretty sane for me. I don't get off on killing fellow players and have many Singapore friends. FireFox sends me off to find the Java plugin, which is unavailable. Before I try manual install, lets try Microsoft iExplorer - it happily to download plugin J2SE Runtime 5.0 update 10. My player LinseLA happily can head off to the fourth level of the security dungeon by Edgeville to stock up on blood mage runes. The game seems a bit laggy - but then with 120,000 players online it could just be the server system. Better still, this also setup java for FireFox so that works as well.

Score so far is 4 of 7 Ok:
- Java Runtime: success: but had to install under iE ... FireFox couldn't find the plugin

VideoLAN 0.8.6a - VLC media player:
I like the VLC player at www.videolan.org. It offers DVD support without asking for money like most of the "free" OEM players included with systems. Plus it includes many codecs common online. One gets so SICK of needing 4 or 5 "main-stream" media players. For example Windows Media Player handles a few Windows forms, but no DVDs. WinDVD plays DVD, but one also needs QuickTime and RealPlayer and yuk. VLC just plays them all without all the popups and reminders to upgrade for $$$ etc.

Oops - it installs, but isn't self-signed so the install is ugly. Plus it plays a high-definition video Ok with beautiful audio - but there is no video overlay image from my ATI X1600. This could be an ATI issue, not one with VLC.

Score so far is 4 of 8 Ok:
- VideoLAN 0.8.6a: fails: audio is wonderful 5.1, but no video overlay (may be ATI issue)

Recheck ATI Radeon X1600 video driver:
Since VLC cannot reach the video overlay, I need to double check my ATI driver. My Radeon X1600 driver is dated September 2006, which is probably too old for Vista's newness. http://ati.amd.com shows a newer Vista 64-bit driver dated 29-Jan-2007 ... hot off the press. The ATI Catalyst system is bit top-heavy and bloated, but no point under-enabling my modestly nice graphics hardware. Need to reboot

Score so far is 5 of 9 Ok:
- latst ATI video drivers: success

Yah know, as Vista starts up I hear quite a bit of chatter in my Raptor - the downside to its speed is its chatter. I certainly hope Vista is meddling with XP in ways it should not be - probably is Ok. Vista mounts the old Samsung drive as C: and the Raptor as E: Guess I won't be opposed to Vista using the Raptor as swap space, but heaven knows where Microsoft moved such a setting in Vista. :-)

Recheck VideoLAN 0.8.6a - VLC media player:
Nope - still no video overlay.

So today's score is 5 success and 4 failures:
- Vista Home Premium: success - is happy with my old Motherboard
- Kaspersky Anti-Virus v6: failed to install
- Creative Audigy 4 driver: success - Windows Media Player works
- U3 USB sticks: failure - they don't mount
- FireFox 2.0.0.1: sucess, but first download failed for some reason
- DLink DNS-323 NAS: failure: won't allow Vista to connect to drives
- Java Runtime: success: but had to install under iE ... FireFox couldn't find the plugin
- VideoLAN 0.8.6a: failure: audio is wonderful 5.1, but no video overlay (not an ATI issue)
- Latst ATI video drivers: success