Pre-built packages not releasing 64 bit versions? No Problem.
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29
Sep 11
Force 32 bit installs on 64 bit systems (Deb/RPM)
15
Sep 11
PhD Diary: An Introduction and A Little Light Reading
Sometimes I worry about the accuracy of webcomics...
So today is the start of the rest of your life. Seems kind of appropriate today. Had a meeting with my PhD Supervisor to start to develop my project. Of course at this point it would help to explain what the project is, but I can’t right now, so shush. Continue reading →
28
Jul 11
The Road to Coreboot, Part the First: Introduction
So as part of my IAESTE placement with PC Engines, I’m investigating the possibility of them making a new board based around the AMD Fusion series of APU’s (CPU+(something else, usually GPU) on single die) and for that board to work with the Open Source Coreboot BIOS. This is my story.
Disclaimer
I am not a hardware guy, and have never done any pre-OS x86 hardware programming. This will bore
the pants of anyone who is an x86 expert, but hopefully some will find it useful and will contribute to the Coreboot project. Continue reading →
19
Jul 11
GalepX Language settings in Linux
As part of my placement in Zurich, I’ve been doing some BIOS level development around the Coreboot project, working with Flashrom and other tools, but with a particular AMD Fusion (MSI E350IA-E45) Mobo, there was no sensible way to flash the BIOS or to add a ‘vestigial’ BIOS.
So, the solution arrived at was to ‘acquire’ a Galep-5 Universal Programmer (Not a cheap piece of kit, but apparently that’s the kind of stuff they have lying around in Zurich). Anyway, long story short, went to the Galep website, downloaded the .run file, installed, all perfect and happy days. Except it was in German. (Even though it says its ‘English only’)
My German is only slightly better than my Martian, so I had no idea what was going on, but a quick look in the /opt/galepx directory showed a mdma.settings file. In there there’s an XML section like this
Simple enough, change the de to en and welcome back to the anglophile world!
28
Jun 11
Replace Unity with AWN and Gnome-Do
Unity Sucks, and I don’t like it. I prefer a combination of Avant Window Navigator, tilda, and Gnome-Do, to go from this
Unity, kinda, screen shots don't really work for launchers
to this
My Avant Setup
Now, I haven’t kept track of all of the changes I’ve made to my configuration files, so YMMV, but gnome-do and Avant have remarkably good GUI configuration tools, so customise to your hearts content!
Get rid of Unity
sudo apt-get remove unity unity-asset-pool unity-place-applications unity-place-applications
Install the fun-stuff
sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins avant-window-navigator awn-settings tilda
(I personally prefer to get all the plugins aswell, but thats personal choice; just add in awn-applets-all to the above command)
At this point, it’ll look like nothing has changed; just log out or log back in (Or reboot), and then unity will be gone (Woohoo!). The Gnome-Do Launcher should have come up, and if you’ve clicked out of it, it will come back to the foreground with a [windows\command]+Space press.
If everything has gone well, you can type ‘Avant’ in this launcher, and boom, there should be a window at the bottom. This is the avant launcher.
Default Avant Window Navigator
Now for some fun stuff.
Use gnome-do to start tilda. This is a quake-style terminal that pops down from the top of the screen with a quick [F1] click. Much better than the standard [alt+F2] command launcher.
As for the preferences, hack away at the Avant settings until you’re happy. The screenshot above is how I like it (this time).
25
Jun 11
Removing BIOS RAID Metadata
Had an issue with Fedora 15 not liking my harddrives that used to be RAIDed. Noting for future reference.
“Disk contains BIOS metadata, but is not part of any recognized BIOS RAID sets.”
Solution:
dmraid -r -E /dev/????
Stolen from Kezhong
4
Aug 11
Best Description of Northern Ireland I’ve heard yet