The other day I wondered how I could potentially upgrade my motherboard’s firmware. It’s an old GA-8IRX and works quite well. Though I did come across some strange system freezes on rare occasions. Now I looked up the firmware for the board and this (or something similar) is fixed in the newest release and I wondered how I could possibly update my firmware directly from Linux with only a .exe file given.
I send an email to the Gigabyte support and apart from the whole sucking of their oh so great support process, they simply don’t care about me:
My Email
I’m a Linux user and wonder what your proposed way to upgrade my motherboard bios / firmware is.
Can I use something like FreeDos? Or is Windows (which I do not have!) necessary?
It’s a shame that you neglect Linux here. Also it’s very bad that there is nothing to be read about this issue on your website.
Their Answer (English translation, they answered in German)
Dear Mr Wolff,
thank you for your request We appreciate your interest in GIGABYTE products.
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A very interesting interview with kernel developer Con Kolivas, who decided to quit hacking: http://apcmag.com/6735/interview_con_kolivas
I have to say that most of his points concerning the lack of desktop-user centric kernel development are very insightful and understandable. Yet it’s kind of a no-brainer that those things get updated and developed which give Linux some money or whatever. Thus the server focused features are more important and have a higher preference.
But let’s see how this might eventually change with deals like Dell has with Ubuntu spreading out.
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Woha, I’d never imagined it to be so easy to create a customized Linux Live CD. Just grab the scripts from linux-live.org and follow their instructions. That way you can bind your current system on a dvd (or usb stick or whatever) and run it from everywhere!
I’ve done it with a CentOS 5 installation which was setup in a vmware. A simple scp to a real linux installation and burning the created iso to a DVD RW (via K3B) and now I got my own little live cd.
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I was recently annoyed by how URLs were started in KDE: I used an antiquated firefox command to run an URL in a new tab (firefox-remote "OpenURL(%u, new-window)") which does the job quite well. But: If you have no running firefox instance this command will simply do nothing. Right - nothing! You’ll have to start firefox manually and click once again on the link (in konversation, kopete or wherever).
But the newer firefox versions (I don’t know when this feature was added) support the firefox -newtab %u command. This is all you need if you only use firefox. Configure KDE via kcontrol to use this command as a standard webbrowser.
This was still not enough for me though, as I regularly switch to konqueror or opera, because firefox is sometimes to slow for a quick browse. This is what I came up with:
open_url script
what it does
Via open_url it is possible to use one of the currently open browsers. If you for example have a running konqueror instance but no firefox it is more likely (in my point of view) to open a new URL in konqueror instead of launching a new firefox instance (which would take a long time).
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I was recently annoyed by how URLs were started in KDE: I used an antiquated firefox command to run an URL in a new tab (firefox-remote "OpenURL(%u, new-window)") which does the job quite well. But: If you have no running firefox instance this command will simply do nothing. Right - nothing! You’ll have to start firefox manually and click once again on the link (in konversation, kopete or wherever).
But the newer firefox versions (I don’t know when this feature was added) support the firefox -newtab %u command. This is all you need if you only use firefox. Configure KDE via kcontrol to use this command as a standard webbrowser.
This was still not enough for me though, as I regularly switch to konqueror or opera, because firefox is sometimes to slow for a quick browse. This is what I came up with:
open_url script
what it does
Via open_url it is possible to use one of the currently open browsers. If you for example have a running konqueror instance but no firefox it is more likely (in my point of view) to open a new URL in konqueror instead of launching a new firefox instance (which would take a long time).
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Oh no, it’s over! No more LinuxTag for at least a year. It was such a good event, I can’t tell you!
I’ve been standing at the Kubuntu-De.org booth with czessi, \sh, serenity, coastgnu, emonkey and monika and it was a pleasure working with them! It’s great to get to know all those people from irc in real life! Additionally we had support by the Amarok team (gnux, sven423 and nightrose) and especially apachelogger - a loud howl goes out to you guys (and gal nightrose)!
But I must not forget our booth neighbours: Ubuntu, linux4africa / Edubuntu and OpenOffice - thank you so much, I looking forward to share a booth place with you again sometime! A thanks in particular goes out to linux4africa for sharing their coffee machine with us - I fear I would have fallen asleep otherwise ;-) And thanks to O’Reilly for giving away free beer, there is nothing better when you have a hangover…
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Today started the LinuxTag for me with some construction work on the Kubuntu Community booth. It’s interesting to see how such a conference is being set up.
If you come to visit the LinuxTag drop by for a talk about Kubuntu! We are at booth 12/36.
In other news I was looking for a job and just today got a confirmation of Systematrix. I’ll start next week and the working conditions are great. Seems like my RealLife (TM) is working pretty good now, lets see how it evolves with becoming a student later this year.
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And here another syntax file for Nano. This time it highlights the /etc/apt/sources.list:
## syntax highlighting for /etc/apt/sources.list
syntax "apt/sources.list" "sources\.list(\.old|~)?$"
# component
color brightmagenta "^deb(-src)? ((http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+|cdrom:\[[^\]]+\]/|cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/) [^ ]+ .+$"
# distribution
color brightred "^deb(-src)? ((http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+|cdrom:\[[^\]]+\]/|cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/) [^ ]+"
# URI
color brightgreen "(http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+"
# cdroms
# [^\]] does not work…
color brightgreen "cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/"
# deb / deb-src
color cyan "^deb"
color brightblue "^deb-src"
# comments
color brightyellow "#.*"
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Microsoft has created some new fonts for their Office 2007 suite and Vista: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel. Read this article for more infos and some pictures.
They look pretty good I have to admit but nevertheless they are tainted by evil ;-). Nevertheless they might become quite common in the next months. So how does one acquire these fonts (besides spending a fortune on their software)?
Windows ships them with their free PowerPoint Viewer. All you have to do is extract the *.exe and the containing *.cab. Than you’ll be able to install the TrueType Fonts like others.
I didn’t find this out, I read it in the German Blog http://praegnanz.de or rather this blog entry
HowTo install on Linux
Run cabextract on the *.exe and the ppviewer.cab once. You’ll have the TTF files in your current directory, install them (e.g. via KControl).
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