The eve of Gutsy’s birthday I started the upgrade at work and then later on that night the upgrade on my System 76. Long story short, on the work computer, the upgrade was smooth as butter. After the reboot I was up and running in all of Gutsy’s glory. There was one caveat though, and that was compiz-fusion. I had the packages from a third party repository for Fiesty and it did not seem to like that. I simply removed those packages and installed those from the gutsy repository and all was good to go! Fantastic.

My System76 was not as smooth but there is a silver lining. The whole upgrade took almost 24 hours but we must understand that at the start of the package install it asks you if it is ok to restart some services. Thus, figure a good amount of hours went by before I was able to get back to handle this request. There were about 4 more like this two-thirds of the way through the install (same with work). Weird thing was, every time I got up to go do something I would come back and find that I had to respond to a query. Wouldn’t happen while I was there, no.

The reboot revealed no more sound or wireless capability. So I followed the System76 forum instructions to re-install their package and then re-install the driver. I also noticed that the restricted modules manager came up indicating the wireless card, modem and nvidia modules could taint my system because they were not completely free and verified that I wanted to use them. It indicated that the modem and wireless drivers were not in use.

After the system76 driver re-install I rebooted, still nothing. So I did their restore and nothing. I removed their driver and deleted the packages from the apt cache and performed the installation steps again. Nothing.

Now I could have given up and I did post about this in their forums but I have been using Linux for almost 10 years now so I’ll be damned if I cannot get this going.

Lo and behold after some digging I find that the restricted modules are installed in the /lib/modules/2.4.22-14-generic directory and I am using the kernel 2.4.22-14-i386. Why this is, I do not know. What the complete difference is, I do not know. I wonder if the system76 driver drops the modules into the generic directory.

A reboot later and a choice in grub and all is well. Smooth as butter. Since compiz-fusion is in the gutsy repositories by default I dropped that on my laptop too. Good stuff.

All-in-all I think Gutsy is a big step up for Ubuntu. So far my experience has been outstanding, no complaints. I was so stoked, I eagerly set about upgrading my wife’s laptop.

The wife had a Gateway Solo 1450. I was a bit nervous about upgrading it not because I think Gutsy would not work on here, but there was the possibility both the hard drive and the cdrom were going. Sure enough, right before the upgrade the system gave up the ghost.

Now note, I thought it was that the hard drive and cdrom drive were going; but figure if both of those are having issues it’s probably more the ide controller; which was the case. It would not recognize neither the cdrom nor the hard drive. I pulled out an old Dell Inspiron 5000 with a faulty lcd (the dell post image shows fine but then it goes dark) and hooked that up to an external monitor. I then pulled the hard drive from the Gateway and put it in the Dell. Sure enough the hard drive worked.

I disassembled the Gateway and did what I could to see if this was a loose connection or something but no go. About an hour later and tiny screws everywhere I gave up and set to using the Dell.

I was almost settled on the point of having to move a monitor over to where my wife works and using that for the display. But alas, I did not want that, too bulky! So I figured I would see what is going on under the lcd hood. Another hour later and screws everywhere the lcd is working perfectly. Bonus points for returning all the screws I removed from the laptop back to their proper locations.

I pulled memory out of a Inspiron 7500 (that thing is a friggin brick!) giving the Inspiron a whopping 128 mb of ram. That’s when I noticed that neither of these laptops had integrated network cards. AAAAARRRGH. The Inspiron had a pcmcia network card but it required a dongle. I knew I saw a dongle the other day but I might have thrown it away. Regardless, I could not find it now. But then I recalled that a few years back I realized this problem and bought a usb nic. I slapped that on the 5000 and off we went.

The system is a bit sluggish compared to the Solo, but it’s working; and that is what is important. I attempted to install Gutsy on there but I was having problems with booting the live cd. It just hung there after the kernel loaded. I’m torn between attempting an install or just letting it go as it is and getting the wife a new laptop down the line. Why chance it?

Although, I may try a text install on the original hard drive that was in the 5000. Who knows; if that works I could try an upgrade on her system.

I have to say, the flexibility of Linux to be pulled from one system into another and boot without a hiccup is beautiful, damn beautiful. Try that with windows!

On October 9th, 2007 IP Innovation LLC filed a patent suit against Red Hat and Novell. Supposedly, IP Innovation holds a patent against virtual desktops. Yes, folks, that’s innovation there. Virtual Desktops. You can read more about the patent and further inquiries regarding prior art in this great Groklaw article. I also recommend you check out Don Paris’s thoughts on the subject of software patent – When Bullies Rule.

I guess it was inevitable that this was going to happen. I mean come on, Microsoft and Apple are always getting targeted by patent trolls. While I hold no love for those companies, it stinks that they have been old hats in this war. But, old hats that have really done nothing to rectify the problem.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this problem and now that it has attack Linux; the whole patent issue has been brought home even harder. I got to explore my thoughts further in an IM session with Troels today; thanks Troels. You see, unlike Microsoft and Apple, when the patent trolls attack Red Hat and Novell they are not just attacking companies, they are attacking and entire community – All Linux Users. This is unlike Microsoft or Apple users because; face it; unlike the Linux and BSD communities; MS and Apple users have very little stake in the software. On the other hand; Linux and the BSD’s are not the creation of a single company; but a global community of dedicated software engineers, artists, users and more. Each one of us has just as much stake in Linux and BSD as an entire company. The playing field is level. And it is with that concept that this patent attack is not just a blow to Red Hat and Novell; but a blow to the entire Linux and BSD communities.

You notice I keep adding BSD in there. Yes, this “patented innovation” effects BSD too. A few months back IP Innovation sued Apple for violating this same patent. Apple settled out of court. This settlement did nothing to benefit the BSD community, from which Apple draws so heavily for OS X. Thus, they place the core of the OS in jeopardy. When they could have fought to invalidate this patent, they chose instead to pay there way out, regardless of whether they infringed or not. Now the burden to rectify this falls squarely on the FOSS community.

I will be very interested to see who comes to the aid of Red Hat and Novell business wise. I have no doubt the resource and talents of the FOSS community (i.e.; Groklaw) will bear rich fruit to assist in this case; but what about IBM, Linspire, Xandros and other Linux companies? They are just as much at risk should Red Hat and Novell fail.

I’d hate to see either company settle out of court. Even more, is that possible? Would a settlement violate the GPL? That would mean Novell and/or Red Hat would have paid a license to distribute IP Infringing code. I doubt this “license” could be passed on as per GPL’d software.

Perhaps fighting this will help to set precedent in these patent wars and initiate a change in the system? Doubtful overall, but who knows.

There is a very dark side to all this, though. Should Novell and Red Hat choose to fight this and lose, does that not put every other US Linux company automatically in violation? Would that not validate IP Innovation’s claims and automatically open the door for them to collect “damages” from Linspire, Xandros and Slackware? I’m not a patent lawyer, but if this is the case, there is so much to lose here and possibly so much to gain. These will be exciting times.

Well, here they are, the 2007 OLF pictures I took with my manly camera. It’s a pink little cheap-ie that cost us all of $50.00. Some of the pictures are crap though. One day I need to get a better camera. It’s embarrassing.

I’ve been using F-spot to manage my photos and up until now I’ve been very impressed. I love the speed and ease of labelling my photos. It’s been great. But imagine my surprise when I go to export to a standalone photo album and I upload to my server only to find out that the styles do not apply! You have to set the style at first and then for some reason it is not carrying over. I don’t like that behavior. It should just let you pick the style want to use instead of leaving it up to the viewer. Anyway, I hacked the script and forced it to the dark style. Enjoy.