This is in my opinion the coolest project I have ever come across for the Raspberry Pi. You have to check this out if you are true geek. Also they include some of the best most detailed instructions on how to repeat this project. This is a must see and there is a video too.
Raspberry Pi at Southampton
Well I finally took the plunge and purchased a new laptop. I got myself a Lenovo G580 with a B980 PDC CPU sporting 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive and more goodies. For the longest time, 10 years, I have either used a build it yourself desktop or a second hand laptop. It has been a long time since last buying new. While I did not go all out and get the latest i7 or i anything, the B980 compared rather well on Intel’s site with their newer and last years models. And as a bonus it sits atop the Sandy bridge giving it an extra punch in the graphics arena. All said and done I am happy with the purchase so far.
As you might be guessing from the post’s title, Windows 8 did not last very long on this machine. 
First priority was to disable the secure boot in the BIOS. And I do not give Lenovo much credit in making this intuitive. Perhaps there is industry pressure not to? We’ll never know for sure. Once in the BIOS you have to enable the legacy boot option and other OS options. This disables the secure boot but does not tell you it does. But upon checking you will find it is disabled after doing this. Save the settings and boot normally. At this point you can boot Windows 8 or your favorite OS. I booted the former. I wanted to see it first hand and I knew there would be an app to register the computer.
After a rather lengthy install process and a video or slide to show you Windows 8, one slide and not helpful at all, you are finally logged in to the desktop. What surprised me right off was I was wired to the network and it would only choose wireless as an option. My second thoughts were how clunky the interface was. Once in an application, which was not an issue, getting out was. No instructions, no pop ups, nothing. I managed to get out eventually and did indeed register the laptop with Lenovo. That is as far as I wanted to go with Windows 8. I have had my experience now.
I replaced the 500GB hard drive with mine, Linux already installed, faster spindle speed (7200rpm) and booted. Linux roared to life as expected. But that is not to say there was not any issues to deal with. Apparently this laptop comes with a newer network chip that does not have a module in the kernel yet. My first thoughts were that I was running the Debian edition of Mint and that the drivers were in the non-free category. I had been planning on installing Mint 14 Nadia since its debut but had not yet given in to the task.
But the wired network was not working nor was it detected. The command lspci did indeed show the chip set, Ather03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8162 Fast Ethernet (rev 10), but nothing was happening network wise on it. Enter the best Linux trouble shooter Google and I found the answer here in the Ubuntu forums. There were other posts from Google but this one had the crucial step of installing build-essentials. Without it the fix does not work. I had Ethernet in short order once again. Wireless was functioning but where I live there are so many signals that it is degraded all the time for serious connections. So I prefer wired over wireless right now. It should also be mentioned that the wireless is the famous B43cutter and worked right off the bat. The non-free driver was also available if desired.
So far this setup is doing great and there are not any issues that are deal breakers. My only complaint and I do not yet know if it is the OS or the hardware, is when I go the click something the mouse pointer hides itself. Annoying to say the least. Oh well if that is the worst thing then I have done pretty well.
I should also mention that after setup sound was working, video was set to a good resolution and everything just worked as it should. Nice work to the Ubuntu teams and to Clem and the Mint team for putting this together.
Update: I noticed when changing themes the disappearing cursor is gone. I will have to pay attention to which one it was since I had been switching around on them. This is good to know and I will update again if I notice it.
One developer in the Linux community, Matthew Garrett, has released a bootloader as reported by the H here, that will allow any Linux or BSD distribution to use secure boot . I was very happy to read he had been in development for over a year on this project. This news is very welcome indeed to the Linux community. I am sure it is widely reported but I am not in tune with the developer news so seeing this was a welcome sight. The H also reported on this on November 1st but I must have missed that one. Read it here or follow the first link in the more recent posting.
Linux and secure boot now have a future thanks to Matthew Garrett’s work. This is one project we should all get behind and support one way or another.
Well I am certainly not the only one out there that thinks Ubuntu is starting to take advantage of its user base. Ubuntu announced in beta 12.10 the now famous Amazon Search feature. I had a bad reaction in the gut when I read about this move. Apparently I am not the only one. I think this is tied together with Zeitgeist and the local search indexing. I am not a developer nor do I have inside information so take this as my 2 cents in this ever inflationary times. In other words it doesn’t mean a whole lot.
But whatever your opinion if you are using or considering Ubuntu, you owe it to yourself to investigate and be more informed and form your own opinion. Personally I don’t like the feature and have no plans on running Ubuntu. Were it ever to come to my distribution of choice, LMDE, I might leave that one too.
I can understand the need for revenue from any distribution but I think this method has been handled in a manner not conducive to the communities needs. My biggest gripe that I read about is that it was just inserted without regard and without the concern of the users. But like I said, it is just my opinion and apparently others too.
What do you think?
There is growing trepidation in the Linux community when the phrase secure boot is mentioned as it applies to Linux or other open source operating systems. Are you ready for Secure Boot? I personally can see the good that can come from it giving a more secure environment but on the other hand I also see the potential for locking consumers into only certain product lines whether they are open or not. This to me is clearly not in the best interest of open source operating systems or consumers.
There are several Linux distributions that are openly working to be able to implement a secure boot version. A few that I know of are Red Hat with Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu. There may well be more I simply have not read about so feel free to add to the list in the comments. But on the other hand again, not every camp is very happy with secure boot. Especially when the emphasis is being reported from a Microsoft standard point of view. Last February Distrowatch’s Jesse Smith reported how OpenBSD’s founder was particularly unhappy with Red Hat and Canonical embracing secure boot. I did a quick search and have come up empty with regards to BSD embracing secure boot. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
Linus Torvalds, as reported in Wired, told ZDNet that although not a fan of UEFI, he could not see what the big deal is. Citing the $99 purchase of the right to distribute keys Fedora has purchased. Linus mentions here that the real issue is how the implementation could be vulnerable to hacking and thus not so secure after all.
So now we have major vendors embracing the concept, Microsoft pushing the standard and setting the bar for manufacturers, will you as a consumer have a voice? That is the million dollar question that only time will answer. I think in the end consumers will get the short end of the stick even if open source distributions survive these changes. The number of choices will ultimately drop on new hardware with the current specifications of UEFI unless changes are made in the direction reported by the Linux Foundation.
I am open to suggestions beyond the scope of the poll. Feel free to comment.
Well it appears that my last post did exactly that. At least from the views of post(s) on OMG Ubuntu. I have read all the comments at the time of this writing and I really think they all miss the point. I do mention in the original post, that I think the devs do not have intent for evil or wrong doing. But it appears that this is all anyone is talking about.
Perhaps I chose too harsh of a word, Spying, in the title or maybe I didn’t explain my position very well. I all in when it comes to FOSS or any public open source applications and OS. But I do not code and have tried in the past but I can’t ever get my brain wrapped in it to produce anything more than the tutorials. So how would I and others like me ever know what was in the code or not?
This is the very reason I was attempting to open the question up for dissection and discussion. I place trust in the developers and the OS I run. I have to if I want to use their software. Sure I have a choice and Linux is the choice I am making. Make no mistake that I don’t pretend to know everything about it and I am on a continual path to learn more all the time. I enjoy it and it is my lifestyle as well as my hobby.
What I do find interesting is I posted comments on both blogs. Linuxaria where I read about it first, a positive comment and OMG Ubuntu, a counter comment and a statement for why I posted and a positive reply from another commenter. All have been removed.
Am I classified as spam? Did I insult someone? IMHO, I can’t see why I was removed other than they believe I am totally off base or spam. I think, at least for OMG Ubuntu, that opinions other than theirs are simply not promoted. It would have been an easy task to edit the link out if that was what they wanted. I am a hobbyist blogger and certainly no threat to their sites when it comes to hits etc.
Final thoughts: I don’t think many, if any, even read my full post. From the comments I read at the time this is posted, I can’t see any viewpoint other than theirs and nothing else. I have a hard time believing I am the only one who thinks this way. Lastly I apologize to the developers at Ubuntu and Gnome since this post seems to have been construed as malice towards them. Nothing is further from the truth. I wanted discussion and openness on what is installed and what it does and the choice to use it. I trust the developers to give me software I can run safely but I think any software no matter the source, that tracks any activity should have checks and balances. The community is the best place for this check. Hopefully this clears the air on why I posted and maybe next time I will try the thesaurus features a bit more and come up with a better title.
Is your OS spying on your computer habits? Daily tasks? Music you listen too? Videos you watch? How about the websites you visit? We all know Google and just about every other search engine does the latter and the last two if done online but why does your OS need to keep a record? Well if it has the latest Gnome version installed it probably is. I just learned of it today, yes I’m a bit behind, but I am shocked to say the least.
I learned of this behavior through another blog, Linuxaria. A well written post I originally was just curious as to what Zeitgeist was and what it did and now my eyes are wide open. Yes I think the devs at Gnome mean no harm but who is to say who might want to use this type of data for evil purposes or the very least to leverage for their own gain. Employers? Scorned spouse or significant other? Criminals? Our Government? I think you get the idea.
Well I for one like to know what is going on under the hood and what I do is my business. I know I can’t stop the calls for information completely lest I not use the web at all but I have knowledge of what information is being taken from my computer and what is not. I control the cookies and the sites I visit but it is getting increasingly harder not to visit any site that is not advertising merchandise of some sort that I have already purchased, from the Internet of course.
So the bottom line is if you do not know what this is I am encouraging you to at least read the Wiki post and make an educated decision about it. If you are running any of the Ubuntu versions using Gnome 3 I am encouraging you to read the Wiki and if you want to remove it, follow the steps on Linuxaria’s post. I am running LMDE at this time and Zeitgeist is not installed at this time. You can bet the house I am going to be checking again in the future as I install a lot of different programs and I like to test different desktop scenarios quite a bit and I do not like something tracking every non-system related event I happen to run. In addition it surely must use resources to keep a database on everything so in removing it you will surely increase performance a bit.
The choice is yours.
