406 Not Acceptable

Actually make that I hate both Solaris 9 and Oracle 9. If you ever get asked to set these buggers up on a machine just say no. It probably is a whole lot easier using the current versions! (Or get Oracle to do it for you!)

I had to get this working environment up on an old system at work (programmers get to do hardware, yay!) Running on some old SPARC boxes with not-so-healthy drives and broken backups. Sat back and watched Solaris 9 take about half a day to install! Then the nightmare began…

Next you run into issues with your standard Solaris SPARC machine being headless and Oracle deciding to require a GUI and X windows when all you would do is click ‘ok’ four or five times. So off you go setting up the server to allow remote X connections, only Solaris is bolted down in a number of places to stop this happening (think security.) SSH -x may do some things but not all you need on Solaris!

In case your getting the handy “timeout locking .Xauthority” message, as root you need to copy the /.Xauthority file into the users home directory. Then give ownership using chown to the user. You may need to set up the user’s home directory, have a look at the contents of /etc/passwd to see where the user’s home directory is located. This should reside in /export/home/username/

Then when you actually get xclock and friends running you hit another wall. Oracle needs to link a bunch of files, but Solaris 9 does not come with the required tools! Being an old system you do not get a nice apitude style installer for simple dependencies; you have to go dig around for them yourselves. In case you’re wondering where to go, they’ve been hidden on the second of three install CDs.. Then Oracle will probably crash out for another reason and you’ll be left wanting to grab the nearest gun/axe/chainsaw and finish off the decrepid system yourself.

For sometime N900 users have been wondering whether we would get Maemo 6 (Harmatten.) Whilst everyone wants the latest update on their device, and feels let down when it doesn’t happen; Nokia’s transparency with regards to bug fixes exacerbated the desire for the update. Nokia have labeled many bugs with a ‘To be fixed in Harmatten’, basically saying “live with it” — unless the N900 can be upgraded. So if Nokia do leave the N90 behind it could be a damning blow to many fans.

Earlier this month at MWC Nokia and Intel announced the merger between their two opensource Linux based operating systems. I can only assume this is an attempt to cement the operating system alongside iPhone OS and Android as one of the mainstream smartphone operating systems of the future. Whilst Nokia’s Symbian is still the top selling mobile phone operating system, its days look to be numbered with Apple and Google making a big impact in the market.

Still, I am not sure what position there is in the market for Meego. It is highly likely that we will eventually see just a handfull of sucessful operating systems for smartphones. For example, manufacturers like LG, have noticed that using their own custom systems was detrimental to their phone’s sales. Sure the hardware was good, but what use is it if no-one is making software for it? So Meego will have to fight with Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and eventually Bada for these manufacturers support.

The issue here is Android already has a number of devices from different manufacturers in the market and it looks like support for Android will steadily grow after a difficult first year (when only HTC offered devices.) It would be a difficult choice manufacturers to switch allegiance, but I would expect a few devices to appear (to test the waters so to speak.) Whilst Windows Mobile seems to have a strong grasp of the business market (alongside the Blackberrys.)

It’s such a shame that Nokia have decided to drop Debian as the upstream for their system with this merge. Whilst I’d like to see an updated system, I can’t say I am happy at losing the ability to install Debian packages without any worries.

So I struggle to see where the system will fit in the market; unless Nokia and Intel go for tablets…

After waiting for what seemed like an eternaty, I recieved by Nokia N900 in the post on tuesday. I was using a G1 beforehand, and the N900 does a good job of killing my interest in Android!

First, let me start with something that has been worrying many people eyeing the N900: the size. From previews, the size and weight were frowned apon. To be honest, neither is an issue. The N900 is pretty much the same size as the G1. In fact I use my G1’s carry case for my N900! Whilst a collegue noticed the weight of the device when looking at it, I don’t really notice any difference in comarison to my G1.

Next up is the touchscreen, it’s resistive, but a very good one. I would say the N900 sets the benchmark for all other resistive screens to be measured against. Coming from a G1 I did notice you either have to push a little more or tilt your finger to use the tip or the edge — rather than the pad. Once you have the technique down it becomes second nature and is just as good as a capactive screen. To be honest, i used the same technique when trying to select small links on my G1. The resistive screen demonstrates superior prescision and is far better at dealing with small links/menus. Another, although rarely used in my case, benefit is the stylus; which helps when using debian applications.

I don’t think the keyboard is an improvement on the G1’s. The keys feel too close and the lack of rows does slow me down; although, the predictive text implementation is outstanding.

Maemo itself, feels much more like a real linux distro than android ever did. That’s probably because it is one! Already real linux applications are being ported, many of which will never see light on Android unless there are substantial changes to the platform.

This post is already getting wordy! I’ll post some more impressions later.

Wine may be a very handy application on Linux, but it does make your Windows programs look really (really, really, really!) bad. The default Wine theme is somewhat like Windows 95 and is a boring beige, which is a major eyesore next to the orange of Ubuntu’s Human theme.

Whilst you may simply change some of the colours Wine uses, the programs still look odd alongside native applications. Yet Wine has supported msthemes for a long time; although, they do put a slight damper on performance. You won’t really notice this if you have a nice dual core processor, but I can see a Eee struggling with a theme.

As you can see Photoshop CS2 looks much better:You can download the theme from here. Just unpack the archive somewhere and open winecfg (Applications -> Wine -> Configure Wine; or just type winecfg in the terminal.) Choose the Desktop Integration tab and choose Install Theme. Navigate to the themes fodler and choose the .msstyles file. Now you can simply choose which theme you want

To remove it just switch the theme back.

This is rather strange. Recently I’ve noticed the BBC will not let me watch any video content site with Firefox 3 beta 5 on Ubuntu. Now I know this is not a country based issue, I live in the UK. Secondly, I know it is not an issue with my ISP that makes me look like I am accessing the content from abroad. How do I know this? Simple, by switching user agents.

First I clear my cookies and try to watch a video, say one of Fabio Capello’s crazy interviews in English, the site greets me with the following message:
“Sorry this content is not available at the moment”

Now, if you’ve had ISP issues before with the BBC’s site you will know that if your ISP has acrazy routing scheme up the BBC site will give you the following message:
“Sorry this content is not available in your country”

Notice the difference?

Now all I have to do to watch the video is clear my cookies once more and use the User Agent Switcher plug-in for Firefox to gain access. Simply switch the agent to crappy old Internet Explorer on Windows Vista and enjoy the videos…

Update:

I thought the flickering problem was fixed, but there is a caveat. With Compiz watching videos under VLC and Xine the video flickers, but under SMPlayer, using X11 output the flicker is gone. The X11 output is the same quality as the XVideo or OpenGL output of other players; although, I would presume it takes more resources.

After upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy Xine crashed with two nasty errors: X Error of failed request… and option glx-shm does not exist. In addition to this, VLC output was blocky and I could not force VLC to work correctly with OpenGL simply changing the output method to OpenGL would crash VLC on startup. This is probably an issue users of modern ATi graphics cards will have, as the drivers aren’t really all that.

So here’s how to get Ubuntu Hardy video output sorted and have Compiz running too; as unlike Gutsy, Hardy does not fall foul of the ‘flickering video’ in Compiz. I know many people have issues with video under Compiz when using Fglrx, so this may help those people.

First, you should install Envy-Ng — you will need to configure Synaptic to use the Multiverse repository to install Envy-Ng– and let it sort out your graphics cards drivers. This program will keep your drivers uptodate and sort out your xorg.config for you. Use Envy-Ng to install the latest drivers for your card (at current Envy will install version 8-3.)You should then restart the X-Server (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.)

Next up you will need to sort out your Xorg to run XVideo, without it being so blocky. This is due to Envy not setting the options for XVideo correctly. Open up xorg.conf with the following command in the terminal: sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now change the section “Device” to have TexturedVideoSync, TexturedVideo, and VideoOverlay on and have OpenGLOverlay off. The section should look as follows:

Section “Device”
Identifier  “aticonfig-Device[0]”
Driver “fglrx”
Option “TexturedVideoSync”  “on”
Option “TexturedVideo” “on”
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option  “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection

You may want to check the following sections, with the following setting I get Compiz effects with no flickering video.

Section “ServerFlags”
Option  “AIGLX”  “true”
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Group  “video”
Mode  0666
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option “RENDER”  “Enable”
Option  “DAMAGE”  “Enable”
Option “XVideo”  “Enable”
Option  “Composite”  “Enable”
EndSection

Getting Diablo 2 mods working in Linux can be a pain (especially when you try running them from an Asus eee pc,) although Diablo runs perfectly in Wine, mods can be somewhat more tricky. I do know that any mod that uses Nefarius’s NefEx system will run perfectly, as I created and tested the Ragnarok mod using this system (on my eee too!) However, some mods can be more tricky to run and TFW: The Awakening is a special case as it utilises a vbs script to run under Windows. This is the only mod I know of that uses such a system.

One user on the Keep, AGUtilities, has created a nice bash script, which simulates the effects of the vbs script under Linux. All the calls to Wine are inserted in the script so all you have to do is put the script into your TFW folder and run it. Make sure you have Wine installed before running the script, otherwise you’ll just get a bunch of error messages.

I’ve checked the script and it does nothing malicious,  it’s pretty easy to understand what it is doing.

You can get the script from here.

I’ve provided a download mirror here.