funzt.one

Setting up Matrix Synapse + Element Call from scratch with podman

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 13:52:59 +0200

It’s been a while since I first setup a Matrix Synapse server. A few things changed since then: installing via container is now the way to go and also Matrix/Element introduced a new way to make audio and video calls not relying on Jitsi anymore. Making all of this work is a little tricky and most of the instructions I found were related to Docker - but I wanted to install via Podman, which I think is the better choice nowadays. Of course, there a similarities but the little differences do count… So, in case you’d like to set up your own Matrix based chat server, I hope the following will be of help.

New Raspberry Pi setup - Part III (DAV)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:26:19 +0100

CardDAV, CalDAV and WebDAV

In part III of this series (s. part I and part II) I’m going to highlight how I installed a Cal-/CardDAV and WebDAV server on my Pi. This will require valid certificates again (s. here for help).

Please note: this setup is for internal use only - do not expose it to the internet!

Arch Linux + systemd-boot + LUKS + btrfs

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:34:14 +0100

After switching from Windows to CachyOS on my gaming laptop and seeing how easy it would be to activate secure boot with systemd-boot as boot manager, I decided to re-install Arch Linux on my main computer and give it a new disk layout.

Switched to Hugo

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:53:23 +0100

New theme, new site generator: I switched from Jekyll to Hugo. There is still some stuff I need to figure out, but overall the transfer was not very complicated. Jekyll worked fine, but I found it always a little difficult to handle all those ruby dependencies, whereas Hugo is just a binary and installed quite easily. Also, finding a theme which does not load tons of stuff from CDNs was easier with Hugo. Anyway, there are still some parts I’d like to tweak, but for now it seems fine. 😃

New Raspberry Pi setup - Part II (Pi-hole)

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:29:53 +0100

Install Pi-hole

In part I of this series I described how I installed Raspberry Pi OS. Now that we got the basics configured, let’s start installing Pi-Hole. I basically followed Mike Kutz’ blog, see here and here.

New Raspberry Pi setup - Part I (OS installation)

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 15:32:08 +0200

When trying to avoid “big tech” self hosting is a great way to achieve this. Since I first started out with my Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole I’ve added quite a lot of services - and it still performs very well. So I thought I’d write an updated series of how the Pi is set up, starting with the new OS. I’ll then add one post for each service I’ve got running. I’ll reference my old posts in case there are any.

New TLD

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:08:00 +0200

Just FYI: So I moved this blog to a new TLD. Formerly funzt.info, now: https://funzt.one (this TLD is just less expensive…). Also, this blog is now hosted via GitLab pages, which makes updating easier.

Arch Linux with LUKS + LVM

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:41:17 +0100

When I saw that Arch Linux was actually providing a guided installer again, I was up for the challenge. Having used Arch Linux a couple of years ago very happily I wanted to give it a try again. I would have done earlier, but the manual installation process is quite time consuming and I was too lazy to go through with it. As it turned out, the installer failed on me and my setup, so I did go through installing Arch Linux the “hard way” ;-)

Add DAV server to Raspberry Pi

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 13:21:01 +0200

After installing Pi-hole and Vaultwarden (and even a MiniDLNA server) on my Raspberry Pi there were still plenty of resources left. So I decided to add a DAV server to the setup. Until then I was syncing my addressbook and calendar with my email account on Posteo, which I only kept for the DAV capabilities.

Add Vaultwarden to Pi-hole

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 17:06:49 +0200

If followed my last post about setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi, you will probably have a Raspberry Pi running all the time leaving still some resources unused. Why not add something useful? Like a password manager?

Setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi

Mon, 20 May 2024 09:36:48 +0200

As ads and tracking can be considered a huge privacy and security concern I finally decided to setup a Pi-hole in my private network. So far, I was relying on browser add-ons (like uBlock Origin, NoScript) and Mullvad DNS, but that of course did not cover all my network devices.

Debian 12 and HiRes audio

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 18:30:27 +0100

Besides the small file size I never was a fan of MP3 audio files. MP3s are fine when listening to them via bluetooth earphones on your phone, but even tracks encoded with maximal quality sound bad when listening to them via a good headphone. So, I started very early ditching MP3s in favour of flac to archive my CDs in order to maintain the original CD quality (HiFi). Today you can even have “better-than-CD” sound quality, usually referred to as “HiRes”. Let me state that I don’t know if my hardware equipment or my old ears are capable of getting the difference between “CD quality” and “HiRes”. Nevertheless, I’d like to think so and give it a try anyway. :-)

New phone - new OS

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 16:41:43 +0200

Google’s support for my current Pixel phone will end in a couple of weeks and though CalyxOS will probably still release updates for quite a while, it will not receive full security updates anymore. Thus I opted for a new Pixel 7a. It’s a nice phone, not too expensive, about the size of my old Pixel 4a(5G) and will be supported by Google until May 2028. Of course, I wanted to replace Google’s version of Android with a privacy respecting custom ROM again.

LUKS2 + YubiKey Bio

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 08:17:49 +0200

UPDATED Oct. 2024: added extra instructions for Debian

Recently I got myself a YubiKey Bio which I wanted to replace the YubiKey 5 with in terms of unlocking my LUKS2 encrypted drive(s). In this setup you can then simply use your fingerprint to unlock the drive, which I consider more secure than entering a PIN. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to add multiple FIDO2 keys to systemd’s cryptsetup - I read about some issues - so I removed the YubiKey 5 first.

Installing Nextcloud All-in-One docker image in rootless mode

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 19:26:17 +0200

Running your own instance of Nextcloud is probably one of the best solutions for reclaiming some privacy and avoiding services hosted by Google, Apple or Microsoft. I tried to cover the task of installing Nextcloud on a Synology NAS here by using the archive file provided by Nextcloud. However, they also offer some very handy “AIO - all-in-one docker image” which will pretty much take care of everything.

Fedora 38

Sat, 06 May 2023 18:49:26 +0200

With version 38 just being released I decided to give Fedora a try again. From time to time I’d like to check out how things are going with other distributions. And sometimes it’s nice to have really current versions of your favorite applications. ;-) So I replaced my beloved Debian 11 with Fedora 38.

Creating your own custom CA

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 18:12:26 +0100

UPDATED Oct. 2024: added info about ECDSA keys

As the constant security warnings displayed by my browser when accessing my local infrastructure annoyed me already for a long time I decided to look into the task of creating my own custom CA (“certificate authority”). There is not a lot of “local infrastructure” to be honest, basically my router and NAS drive. Anyway, I tend to access those via https and thus generating a warning by my browser telling me this site has no valid certificate. Of course, devices like this run with self-signed certificates, unknown to any browser.

Keyoxide

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 14:48:50 +0100

Recently this post about Keyoxide came up in my Mastodon timeline and of course made me curious. Turns out Keyoxide is a little like Keybase: based on GPG you can claim an identitiy and have to add a prove then. At first it might be a little confusing because in Keyoxide you cannot just sign up for profile but in fact it’s pretty straight forward and simple - I really like this approach!

Snowflake

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 14:38:25 +0200

Countries which heavily censor internet access usually have a non-democratic and oppressive government - and thus very likely no free press (s. currently Iran or Russia for example). Sometimes the only way to receive or post information about what is actually happening in those countries is by circumventing the censorship by using VPNs or tools like “Snowflake”.

UnifiedPush and ntfy

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 19:09:06 +0200

Running an Android phone without Google’s proprietary Play Services - which drain your phone’s battery like mad - comes with the downside of not being able to receive push notifications. As I’m running CalyxOS with microG enabled basically all apps from Play Store (via Aurora Store) still will receive push notifications. However, if I have the choice I always opt for installing apps via F-Droid and those apps have all proprietary code removed and thus the dependency on Play Services.

Installation of Prosody XMPP server

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 19:22:39 +0200

Choosing “the” right messenger is not an easy task as you (or at least I do) want to pick one with a good balance of usability on the one side and security/privacy on the other. And of course your friends and family need to agree on it as well - otherwise it’s a pretty lonesome experience… ;-)

Installation of Jitsi Meet

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 08:57:54 +0100

Once I took care of my [Matrix-Synapse server]({% link _posts/2022-02-27-re-installing-matrix-synapse-server-and-migrating-data.markdown %}) I also wanted to upgrade the OS of my Jitsi Meet server - which of course would force me to re-install everything. Getting a basic Jitsi setup running is quite easy. However, each time I install it I’m struggling with the right sequence of steps and I’m trying to remember what I’m usually customizing. So I’m putting it down here now.

Re-installing Matrix-Synapse server and migrating data

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 15:42:09 +0100

I was running a Matrix-Synapse server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and recently noticed that it did not receive any updates anymore. It would not have come as a surprise to me if I had read the release notes. ;-) Unfortunately I could not simply upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS but had to reinstall the operating system - thus losing all data. Of course I’m running backups but I never actually tried to recover from them… It turned out to be quite easy.

Migrating from Wordpress to Jekyll

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 17:31:00 +0000

This blog has seen a couple of Wordpress releases and for a short period was even hosted on Blogger. Since comments are disabled it’s a pretty static website and I found that Wordpress is kind of an overkill. It’s still a great CMS, but really more than I currently require. Also - as it’s very wide spread - security issues are exploited quite often. When I came across Jekyll I wasn’t really intrigued at first, but after a while I thought I’d give it try…

Installing Nextcloud on a Synology NAS system

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 15:41:30 +0000

Since my Android of choice “CalyxOS” comes with a neat little backup utility called “Seedvault” which will create encrypted backups to Nextcloud I of course wanted to check this out. As I’m already using Déjà-Dup to store backups of my Linux workstation to a Synology NAS drive I looked into the procedure of installing Nextcloud. Fortunately I found some great howtos which I heavily relied on. So thanks to https://strobelstefan.org/2021/03/19/nextcloud-auf-einem-synology-nas-installieren/ and https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-nextcloud-on-your-synology-nas/ for writing those guides and what you find here will basically repeat their descriptions - maybe with a few alterations.

Replacing the “Steuerpimpel” of a Dual 626 record player

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 18:44:25 +0000

My very first (music) record was played on my father’s Dual 626 record player some 35 years ago. This record player is part of my HiFi equipment since a couple of years now. Though I tend to listen to music via streaming services or my own collection of flac files stored on my Synology NAS I still like to play records. And if I do, I really just listen to the music, it will not just run in the background while I’m doing something else. I like the sound and I’m kind of emotionally attached to most of my records. The Dual 626 to my knowledge was built between 1979 and 1981 so my device probably is around 40 years old. It was and still is a very good record player. Some two years ago I got a new needle and everything worked until last year the tonearm would not automatically move to the start position anymore when trying to play a record - and it would not move back once the record ended. Some googling and the issue was found: the “Steuerpimpel” is likely to have vanished after 40 years…

Using a Yubikey to unlock LUKS encrypted disks (with Debian)

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 17:14:07 +0000

In probably most cases encrypting the local filesystem might not really be required. However once you tend to take your notebook with you to all kinds of places - i.e. on vacations - it might be good idea to do that. You’ll gain quite some security. But as always you will trade in some convenience - especially if you take it seriously and use a really long password (which you should!). To avoid typing that really long password (and remembering it) at each boot you can simply add 2FA by using a Yubikey.

Adding a Yubikey as second factor is not really complicated but every time I’ve set this up I had to search for suitable instructions again. So I will just sum up how it works - at least for Debian 10 and 11 - here. I will also link to the original instructions I found.

Android without Google (Part 2: Moving to CalyxOS)

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 18:16:40 +0000

Once you’ve installed CalyxOS on your (Pixel) phone you’re ready to play with settings and preinstalled apps. If you’d like to give it a clean start you can simply reset to factory settings as you would with stock ROM (Settings -> System -> Advanced -> Reset Options -> Delete all data). Make sure not to delete your eSIM if you’re using one. After the phone restarts you need to go through the initial setup again (language, time zone, WiFi, etc…)

Android without Google (Part 1: Installing CalyxOS)

Mon, 31 May 2021 18:35:29 +0000

For a couple of years already I like to get rid of Google on my Android powered smartphone. Though I think that technically Google’s services cannot be outmatched: they just work, are easy to use and from what I understand pretty secure, they’re not really coming for “free”: you will “pay” with your data. Unfortunately there is no real good alternative when it comes to smartphones. You could go with Apple if you don’t mind being locked into Apple’s ecosystem (besides I’m not sure if you’re better off with Apple in terms of privacy). So far I never called a smartphone my own which was actually well supported by alternative Android ROMs like LineageOS for example. The phones which are best supported by custom ROMs are part of Google’s own Pixel lineup. It’s kind of funny when you think of it: if you want to remove Google from your phone, get a phone by Google… Anyway, I really wanted to check this out now so I got myself a second hand Google Pixel 3a for testing purposes.

Music streaming services and sound quality

Sat, 10 Mar 2018 20:52:00 +0000

Back when I was a teenager I spent a lot of time listening to music. I mean really listening to it - not just keeping it running in the background while doing other stuff. First I had a radio alarm clock with (cassette-)tape recorder. So I mostly listened to tapes which where recorded from radio. Of course the quality of those recordings and of the tape player itself would not stand any quality standards ;-) A little later I got my hands on my father’s stereo equipment (SABA receiver and tape deck with a DUAL turntable and some nice Canton speakers). This caused my standards to rise. I began buying records and copied them to tape. If I really liked the record it went on a “metal” tape, but usually I spent my money on “CrO2” tapes. But why buy a record and then copy it to tape? Why not buy the tape in the first place?

Mobile messenger apps

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 14:56:00 +0000

The thing about trust is it’s a very individual matter. For example I do trust Google (to a certain degree), however I do not trust WhatsApp or even less Facebook. There might be no logic in this, but fact is I always disliked that the latter had a copy of my address book whereas I didn’t hesitate storing it with the former. Also, I personally don’t trust Apple software due to the fact that their security bugs are not being fixed in a timely manner or their way of pre-configuring their OS’s in an insecure way (i.e. at least with MacOSX 10.x the firewall is still disabled as default). As company storing my data I’d probably trust them. That of course is my personal opinion.

Manjaro Linux

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 18:17:00 +0000

Since I last posted about a Linux distribution it’s been a while and it was all about Arch Linux. Well, four years later it’s again about Arch - more or less: Manjaro Linux. This distribution is based on Arch Linux, is completely binary compatible with it’s ancestor but maintains it’s own repositories. During the last couple of years I mostly kept Debian based distros running on my laptop (it’s still [this one]({% link posts/2010-11-01-samsung-r780-with-ubuntu-10-10.markdown %}) :-) ), sometimes Debian itself and sometimes Ubuntu. I did not have the time to go through the Arch Linux installation routine which - by my [last post]({% link posts/2010-11-01-samsung-r780-with-ubuntu-10-10.markdown %}) you might have guessed - can be a little daunting. However, I do think that Arch’s “pacman” package manager and their build system is one of the finest out there. This is where Manjaro comes in handy: it provides a live system with a GUI installer which doesn’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes and it’s all done.

10 years...

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 17:36:00 +0000

…well, kind of. I’ve started this blog 10 years ago but I did not contribute a word during the last 4 years. Beginning last year I moved from Wordpress to Blogger but I completed the transfer just recently. Don’t get me wrong: I think Wordpress is a very nice peace of software but I just didn’t have the time anymore to maintain my own Wordpress installation, keeping everything updated and configured neatly. So I’ve exported the MySQL DB and somehow managed to import it’s content to Blogger. To be honest, I don’t really remember how… I think I found some kind of Wordpress-to-Blogger converter. However, it took some time until I got all files and images back right - hopefully I did not forget anything. Anyway, I don’t want to abandon this blog and maybe I’ll add some stuff in the future again :-)

Arch Linux

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Though I was tempted to switch to Ubuntu’s latest release on my “main” computer I decided to give Arch Linux the promotion. Not that there’s anything wrong with “Quantal” aka “Ubuntu 12.10” - with the exception of the newly introduced shopping lens - but I wanted something different again. I ran Arch Linux some time ago and liked it a lot. It then came to my attention that it was missing one (at least for me) essential feature: package signing. There has been quite some discussion about this matter and I think it was this August when package signing became default for Arch’s package manager. Of course you can argue about the importance but I like to know that packages are as the package maintainer wanted them to be and that nobody messed with them while stored on all the different mirrors. However, I wanted to give it shot.

Debian Wheezy

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:10:00 +0000

Recently the Debian project released the first beta of it’s to be Debian 7.0 aka “Wheezy” installer. Reason for me - of course - to check it out! So I grabbed the Beta 1 net-installer image and said goodbye to Fedora 16 on my Acer Aspire 5570Z. Fedora served very well but as soon as something works it starts boring me… ;-)

GTK G-Rays2: Debian/Ubuntu packages

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:45:00 +0000

Still I like to make use of my WBT-201 GPS logging device by Wintec. (I might have mentioned this before ;-) ). Wintec does not provide software for Linux and the latest version for Windows is from 2008. However, there still is this nice peace of software by Jonathan Hudson called “GTK G-Rays2”. He recently released a 2.x version as source, now supporting GTK3 but doesn’t provide packages for Ubuntu anymore. So based on his former 1.x packages I did my worst and built them for Ubuntu 12.04. I also built Debian packages for Debian Squeeze, but of course they are still version 1.x based.

Pimping Unity's indicator panel

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 14:44:00 +0000

With Unity becoming Ubuntu’s default desktop we had to say goodbye to all those nice applets we got used to (or at least I did) while running Gnome 2.x. I’m especially thinking about sensor-, CPU- and system-monitor-applets. Those applets are not available anymore for Unity. Instead it’s making use of indicators. So I just fired up synaptic (still don’t like Ubuntu Software Center) and searched for “indicator” - and I pretty much found what I was looking for. :-)

EncFS & Dropbox for Linux/Android/Windows/MacOSX

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Nowadays there are a lot of possibilities of storing documents online - which is quite handy if you need to have stuff available on different devices or share it with others. I think one of the first who managed to make this quite easy and even supported all major OS’s was Dropbox. So I take Dropbox as example but this should work with Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Google Drive as well. You have to put a certain amount of trust in these companies and when it comes to data a little more sensitive it’s advisable to encrypt it before uploading. My first approach was a TrueCrypt container and this of course works very well but since I came across EncFS I second TrueCrypt. The combination of Dropbox and EncFS works on all my OS’s: Linux, Windows, MacOSX and Android - isn’t that great? :-) Let me state this right at the beginning: I gathered almost everything in this post from others and I will indicate the original sources. I just wanted to put it all together - next time I need it I know where to look.

Kernel-remover for Fedora

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Once you have Fedora running for while you’ll gather a bunch of kernel updates on your harddrive - and it’s likely you’ll need none of the old ones anymore. So from time to time I tend to clean up and remove old kernel packages keeping only the two latest updates. This procedure involves checking for installed kernel packages and possible related packages and then removing them - but keep the current and running kernel (of course! ;-) ). Inspired by aptosid’s and siduction’s kernel-remover package I wanted an automated process. This resulted in a little script which until now seems to work fine. Don’t get me wrong, this is no big deal and it’s definitively not as sophisticated as the one from aptosid/siduction, but I don’t have to think anymore when trying to remove old kernel packages! ;-)

Fedora 16

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:32:00 +0000

Fedora 16 has been released for quite a while but I just now decided to make use of my old Acer Aspire 5572 notebook again and install the latest Fedora release. As always, Fedora is more or less equipped with “bleeding edge” software releases - which I appreciate a lot. (By the time of writing: once installed and completely updated you will be running kernel 3.1.7.) I’ve downloaded the default Gnome Live desktop installation media. Once burnt to CD and booted you’ll be a running a Fedora Live system with Gnome desktop. Yes, I like the new Gome 3 desktop!

Debian Squeeze & bluetooth audio

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:14:00 +0000

As I just got my hands on a new bluetooth headset - a Sennheiser MM100 - I wanted to make it work with Debian Squeeze (worked like charm with my Android phone out of the box). My notebook Samsung R780 does not come with bluetooth equipped so I use my old Belkin mini bluetooth adapter F8T016 to connect and I guess it should work with any more or less current bluetooth adapter (of course it has to support A2DP).

Conky with Debian Squeeze & Samsung R780

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:06:00 +0000

I wasn’t aware of this nice little tool called “Conky” until I stumbled upon the Pinguy OS website and saw the screenshot of it’s default desktop. To make Conky (and the sensor readings) work with Debian Squeeze on my Samsung R780 notebook there was some work to do. Once done, it’ll look like this:

VMware with kernel 2.6.38 [updated for kernel 2.6.39]

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:43:00 +0000

Running Debian Squeeze with the latest kernel 2.6.38 from Debian Backports I had some trouble getting VMware Player to work. Once started it complained about not being able to compile the “vmnet” kernel module. I found the solution here and this is how you can make it work.

Debian is back...

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Updated Nvidia installation howto on May, 22nd 2012

…on my computer! What is (in my opinion) the greatest of all operating systems is back: Debian 6.0 aka “squeeze” was released last weekend. Of course as always with new Debian releases - compared to other recently released Linux distributions - the software which comes with squeeze is rather “old”, i.e.: Linux kernel 2.6.32, Gnome 2.30, KDE 4.5, OpenOffice 2.3. That’s the price you have to pay for a very stable operating system. For the first time the default installation media has no “non-free” software on board. This might be tricky for those who depend on non-free firmware to get W-LAN running! (In this case see the Debian documentation here.)

HTC Desire

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:18:00 +0000

Since about 3/4 of a year now I’m the proud owner of an Android powered smartphone: I decided to go with HTC’s Desire which is kind of a rebuilt of Google’s Nexus One (which was also manufactured by HTC). It’s been a while since it’s first appearance so naturally there are already newer phones available succeeding the “original” Desire. And of course there are already plenty of reviews available on the net - but however, those are my two cents. ;-)

Samsung R780 with Ubuntu 10.10

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:22:00 +0000

I wanted to replace my desktop computer by a laptop for quite a while now and as it started to randomly freeze - no matter which OS it ran - I decided the right time has come now. I did some online research and then picked a Samsung R780 Helix (link in German). The bare technical facts:

"googlecl" RPM for Fedora

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:04:00 +0000

Recently Google released a command line tool to manage it’s many different services: googlecl. This might be handy for those who want to script some operations.

Lucid desktop install with lvm2

Mon, 24 May 2010 18:52:00 +0000

As I recently “reorganized” the partitioning scheme on my desktop system to gain some space for my flac music files I also changed the linux partitions to further run from logical volumes. To install Ubuntu on logical volumes you need to run the alternate installer - which in my case pretty much failed. I don’t know why, but half the way of copying the new system the installer insisted on putting in the CD medium (which of course was still in the drive) and no matter what option I chose - “Continue” or “Cancel” - the request wouldn’t go away. This was the first time an Ubuntu installer didn’t work out for me. Still wanting to install Ubuntu’s latest release I came across a post in Linux Mint’s (another Ubuntu offspring) forum, describing how to install Linux Mint with lvm2. See the original post by piratesmack (thanks!) here. I more or less followed this howto.

WLAN with Asus Eeepc 1000H and Lucid Lynx

Sun, 16 May 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Ubuntu’s latest release “Lucid Lynx” is out for a while now so I decided that this would be the right choice for my netbook “Asus Eeepc 1000H”. I went for the default i386 desktop release as I don’t like the netbook editions. With the help of “UNetbootin” it’s quite easy to create a bootable USB stick from the downloaded iso file. The installation was a peace of cake and if you previously installed Ubuntu somewhere (and even if you didn’t) it should not be a problem. I recommend keeping a wired network connection during installation (and as it shows, you will need it).

Ubuntu's Ambiance/Radiance gtk themes for Debian

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:18:00 +0000

(EDIT Sep, 2010: now with updated packages, see below!)

Running Debian Lenny on my Acer Aspire 5572 notebook I wanted a more “up-to-date” look for it’s Gnome desktop. As I recently came across some screenshots of Ubuntu’s upcoming release “Lucid Lynx” with it’s new GTK theme I decided to give it a try (you have to get used to the buttons being on the left side of the windows, though - see screenshot below). Of course, the new Ubuntu Mono iconset goes very well with this theme, so I needed that, too.

Me and a Mac...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:04:00 +0000

I finally did it and got myself a MacBook. Gone those years I made fun of Mac users? Well no, I guess not… ;-) The main reason why I bought the MacBook was curiosity. As I got quite acquainted with Windows over the years, followed by Linux and Solaris, I wanted to know how MacOSX would “feel” like. So I got this MacBook equipped with 2,4 MHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, Intel GMA X3100 integrated video controller and 160GB hard disk. Though Apple hardware is of good quality, I still think it’s way to expensive - but of course nobody forced me to buy it… ;-)

Grub2

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:10:00 +0000

The grand unified bootloader (grub) not being updated since 2006 Canonical announced to release the next Ubuntu version 9.10 - also known as “Karmic Koala” - with grub2 as the default boot manager. Of course I got curious and as I read an article in c’t about this topic I had to see what grub2 was about!

sidux 2009.2

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:21:00 +0000

On July 15th sidux 2009.2 was released. I was looking forward to this release because it’s the first one with KDE4 and I didn’t wanted to go through the hassle of updating from KDE3… For those who haven’t heard of sidux: it’s a Debian sid (the unstable branch of Debian) based distro and 100% compatible with Debian sid. In fact it uses sid’s repositories together with sidux’ own repositories. The latter provide bugfixes to some broken packages in sid, sidux artwork, some tools unique to sidux and of course the sidux kernel (which might update quite frequently). sidux has a rolling release cycle which means, you may update to each next “release” by just updating through Debian’s apt-get. As the homepage says: sidux is “Debian hot and spicy!”. But most of all it makes running the unstable Debian sid quite stable.

Vanilla kernel for Debian Lenny

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:01:00 +0000

The default Linux kernel of Debian Lenny is of course very stable - but a little outdated. If you’re the more adventurous type (or just need support for newer devices) you might like the idea of installing a more recent vanilla kernel? Debian makes this task quite easy and you’ll end up with real Debian kernel deb-packages! I’ll provide a small HOWTO here which you might follow and a small script which will automate everything. I gathered most of the information given here from the official Debian documentation (have a look at this and this).

Lenny: VirtualBox 1.6.6 & current kernel 2.6.29

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Debian is one of the best Linux distros out there (if not the best). The latest stable version called Lenny was released about a month ago, but as always, Debian never ships the latest software or kernel versions. So I decided to install the latest vanilla kernel (2.6.29) from kernel.org (I might provide a howto for this task later… ;-) ). This work’s really great - most of the time… I ran into one problem installing Debians (rather old) VirtualBox OSE 1.6.6 though. As I don’t run Debians kernel I needed to compile a suitable kernel module for my kernel 2.6.29 using Debians module-assistant. But compiling the module bailed out with errors: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘euid’. Luckily I found a solution for VirtualBox 2.10 on VirtualBox Forums. Of course the provided patch didn’t work for VirtualBox 1.6.6 but from there on it was easy to build one. If you run into the same problem, well, this is how it worked for me.

Fedora desktop with Dust theme and Murrine svn gtk engine

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Running Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop I enjoyed it’s Dust theme a lot - not officially part of Ubuntu 8.10, but you can get it here. So I wanted to install it on my desktop machine running Fedora 10.

Switching from mp3 to ogg

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:15:00 +0000

When it comes to multimedia software most Linux distributions have one thing in common: no proprietary codecs - and this might include MP3 playback. I have no deeper insights in the license terms of the MP3 codec, but there is a whole website about it by THOMPSON, the company claiming to control MP3 licensing: mp3licensing.com. There are other proprietary codecs as well, i.e. “aac” which I think is the default file format for Apple’s iTunes and devices by Nokia and Sony. Wouldn’t it be nice to not care about this crap? The open source alternative is “ogg vorbis”, providing great quality audio files and high compression at the same time. So, how can you switch from mp3 to ogg?

WBT-201 & Fedora 10 (building RPMs)

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Of course I wanted my Wintec WBT-201 gps logging device to work with Fedora as it did with Debian/Ubuntu (see [this]({% link _posts/2008-02-20-wbt-201-debian-ubuntu.markdown %}) post). And after playing around a little it finally did.

Installing and configuring Fedora 10

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:33:00 +0000

I still like Debian and Debian based distros like sidux or Ubuntu most, but - as always, if something works too well - I want something new… As I recently joined a training course at Red Hat and a new release of Fedora just hit the ftp servers, I went for Fedora 10.

Debian with lame, mencoder, transcode, xvid & dvd::rip

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Debian has one of the largest software repositories around but also has a very strict policy (which I respect) when it comes to legal stuff concerning free software or copyrights. I guess this is the reason why some multimedia software packages are missing. If you stick with Debian you have to install them manually, or - if you want the easy way - you could of course add some third party respositories or change for example to Ubuntu which doesn’t seem to share Debian’s concerns. As I’m running sidux (which is based on Debian Sid) I wanted to go for the manual installation (I don’t like to add repositories other than Debian’s). Debian comes with an MPlayer package but it lacks menconder. If you need menconder you’ll have to install from sources. lame, transcode, xvid and dvd::rip are not part of Debian repositories at all, so we’ll have to install them from sources, too. In this HOWTO I’ll explain how this worked for me (running sidux on amd64). I guess it should be similar to Debian testing or even stable.

Fedora 9 & Acer Aspire 5572 ZWXMi with encrypted file systems

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:30:00 +0000

This HOWTO is listed at TuxMobil - Linux on Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs and Mobile Phones

A year has passed since installing Ubuntu Feisty on my Acer Aspire 5572 notebook and it was about time to try something new. With recent Linux distributions a lot of manual configuration tasks are not necessary anymore and things became easier. There is no big difference between installing Ubuntu Feisty or a current Hardy on this laptop, except with Hardy almost everything works out of the box. But I wanted to try something different and I wanted encrypted file systems which are easy to set up. Fedora 9 has those features so I gave it a try. (Of course this would be possible, too with Ubuntu, but Fedora comes with an installer which handles file system encryption very nicely.) So here’s my HOWTO on installing Fedora 9 with encrypted file systems on an Acer Aspire 5572 ZWXMi notebook.

sidux 2008.02 "erebos" released!

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:12:00 +0000

Since yesterday the new sidux release “erebos” is available! As sidux follows a rolling release cycle you can always update your running sidux to the latest release via regular dist-upgrades. erebos comes with kernel 2.6.25.9 and KDE 3.5.9, all software is up to date as of Debian sid on June 25th. You can read the full release notes here.

"gpsbabel 1.3.5" for Ubuntu Hardy

Thu, 22 May 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Ubuntu Hardy Heron is out but sadly it comes with a rather old version of gpsbabel: 1.3.3. To read data from my Wintec WBT-201 I need at least gpsbabel version 1.3.4. With 1.3.5 already released I wanted the latest version - of course.

Ubuntu 8.04 aka Hardy Heron (beta)

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:25:00 +0000

It isn’t for long, until the new Ubuntu Linux “Hardy Heron” will be released. Time for me to have at least a short look at it and provide some screenshots. So I installed both Ubuntu and Kubuntu as virtual machines using VirtualBox. Kubuntu will come with two flavors: one with KDE3 and long term support (LTS) like the Ubuntu version and one with KDE4 and I guess without LTS. KDE4 is still missing some apps and sometimes has some minor issues with stability. Anyway, of course I chose Kubuntu with KDE4.

libmtp7 for Ubuntu Gutsy (Creative Zen & Ubuntu Gutsy)

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:46:00 +0000

As already mentioned in my last post, Ubuntu Gutsy does not come with a current version of libmtp which is required if you want to get your Creative Zen running with Linux. Luckily, it’s very easy to build new packages: just download the latest source from here and follow my [HOWTO]({% link _posts/2008-02-20-wbt-201-debian-ubuntu.markdown %}) on building new packages for gpsbabel - it works just the same. You’ll end up with four packages (libraries, development, documentation and tools). You’ll have to install at least libmtp6_0.2.6.1-1_<arch>.deb. Once your new package(s) is/are installed, you need to do one more thing though: when building the new package, we were updating from Ubuntus libmtp6, so the package is named “libmtp6…”, but what we actually have inside the package is libmtp7. Amarok expects /usr/lib/libmtp.so.6, but we now have /usr/lib/libmtp.so.7 (which is a symlink to libmtp.so.7.1.0). We do overcome this small issue very easily:

Creative Zen & Debian

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Since I recently became the proud owner of Creative’s Zen (8GB) mp3 player I wanted to make it work with Linux. So I prepared myself for some hours of google-ing and configuring and trying… But, I was sooo wrong! It’s (almost) as easy as plug and play! ;-) (=> Thanks to energiequant.de!)

Creative Zen (& Explorer problems...)

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:28:00 +0000

My Creative Zen Xtra (30GB) is a little big so I was up for a new and smaller MP3 player. I decided to buy Creative’s Zen (8GB). It’s a quite handy device and so far it works good. First thing you should do though is updating the firmware. Download it from Creative’s Support website and execute the downloaded file (Windows only…).

WBT-201 & Debian/Ubuntu

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:03:00 +0000

As I liked the idea of geo tagging my pictures I decided to buy Wintec’s WBT-201 GPS logger. It’s a neat little device and fits into every pocket - so no problem carrying it with you all the time. Of course it comes with some software to export the geo data and tagging your pictures with it. And of course it’s Windows only (and maybe MacOS, but not sure about this). The good news is, the WBT-201 works with Linux, too. By the time of writing I’m running sidux for amd64, which is kind of Debian Sid, and Ubuntu Gutsy for i386 on my laptop.

Linux Documentation: Management Style ;-)

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:57:00 +0000

Recently my attention was brought to a small snippet of the kernel documentation which was really funny. It was about “taking the blame”. I then installed the kernel docs of my Linux distro (Ubuntu Gutsy: apt-get install linux-doc) and found the whole document here: /usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.22/Documentation/ManagementStyle.gz

Updating phpBB2 forum to phpBB3 via local installation

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:52:00 +0000

Recently I upgraded a phpBB2 powered forum to the new phpBB3. I theory, this shouldn’t be a problem as the new version provides a script which transfers the old database tables to the new ones. In my case, the conversion stopped somewhere when importing the old database tables. It gave me an error with something like "…end of script…" - that was it. I guess this was due to some PHP/Apache settings and as my forum is hosted by a simple webhoster, I had no chance of dealing with the settings (no root access). If you run into the same problems maybe the following can be of help.

(K)Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:03:00 +0000

About two months ago Ubuntu 7.10 aka “Gutsy Gibbon” was released and I couldn’t resist… So I first gave the KDE flavored amd64 version of Kubuntu a chance which worked very good. Out of curiosity I recently changed to Ubuntu with Gnome desktop.

Etch & Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:03:00 +0000

As Linux is my main OS I always wanted to make my USB DVB-T stick work with it. Luckily this worked and thanks to some very good HOWTOs (look here and here) I managed to watch TV with Etch. First of all you should have a look at the Em2880 wiki and see if your USB device is supported. Then make sure those packages are installed on your system:

WP Theme "MDAGM" released

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:53:00 +0000

This is the release of my first Wordpress theme: “Modernpaper Dark And Green Mod”. As already mentioned, it’s based on “Modernpaper 1.0” by Performancing, so most of the credit goes to them.

A new theme - again

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:06:00 +0000

I was still looking around for a new Wordpress theme and finally found one which I liked: “Modernpaper” by Performancing. The layout is simple and clean and the only thing I didn’t like was the color scheme. I wanted something darker with some green in it. So I started changing Modernpaper’s css file here and there and did some minor modifications to the top navbar and a few other elements: when reading a post in single view it’s tags are now listed at the bottom. What came out at the end was “Modernpaper-dark-and-green-mod” theme. You may download it soon!

Installing sidux

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:06:00 +0000

As already mentioned, sidux is a pretty nice Linux distro and I’m beginning to like it a lot! I’m running sidux for quite a while now and thought I’d share some of my experiences. So, this is how I installed sidux on my 64bit AMD box and how it worked for me.

As always, download the image (if you do a fresh install, always get the latest image!), check it’s md5 sum and burn it. The sidux manual says it’s very important to burn the image in DAO mode and not faster than 8x. Yes, they really stress on that!

Back online!

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:17:00 +0000

Shortly after funzt.info was being hacked I had some trouble with my webhoster, so I decided to change. Due to this, funzt.info was down for a while.
This was my first time moving a domain to another hoster, but everything went very well and now this site should be back online again!

And again, a new design. This one was also made by headsetoptions (like the former orange/dark one), I’ve just added some minor color modifications.
And stay tuned, the promised “Installing-Sidux-HOWTO” will follow!

funzt.info been hacked

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:54:00 +0000

Two weeks ago funzt.info was hacked. Some guy called “geek hacker” managed to replace index.php with his own and this is what showed up in your browser:

sidux - the "easier" sid

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:57:00 +0000

I was playing a little distro-hopping lately and - having a big favor for Debian - came across “sidux”. This distro is released by former “Kanotix” developers and is based on Debian sid. Sid being the “unstable” branch of Debian is a bit of a risk when used as main OS. Though it may be more stable than some other released distro you’re still having chances it’ll break after one update or the other - and if you don’t know how to fix it you may run into trouble. This is where sidux comes in. sidux includes a script called “smxi” which handles most of the system’s maintenance. Agreed, you’ll have to use the command line, but it has never been easier! This script get’s you through system updates, installs proprietary Nvidia/Ati drivers and other third party software if desired. If some very new software releases come to sid repositories and are causing major trouble, smxi puts this software “on hold” which means that it’s not going to be installed. For example: Xorg 7.3 just hit Debian unstable and users are having a lot of problems with it. When updating sidux via smxi, you’ll receive a warning and Xorg will not be updated. You should not do a “usual” Debian dist-upgrade, because then you won’t benefit of the advanced features of sidux’ smxi script.

BIOS "F8" for GA-M55S-S3 :-(

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:51:00 +0000

Gigabyte released a new BIOS for their GA-M55S3 motherboard and I couldn’t resist updating. To make it short: if you’re running Linux, don’t… After updating Linux will boot only with “noapic” as kernel option - again. I guess only BIOS version “F6” doesn’t have this error (see [this post]({% link _posts/2007-05-15-bios-f6-for-ga-m55s-s3.markdown %}). I skipped version “F7” so I can’t say anything about this version, but all versions prior to “F6” had the same issue. If you don’t have any real needs for updating your BIOS you shouldn’t consider an update anyway.

Installing Nvidia driver in Debian Lenny

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:29:00 +0000

If you’re running Debian testing (aka “Lenny”) which brings no Nvidia driver packages - only the legacy ones - or like to install the latest drivers by Nvidia for Etch, you’ll be running into a problem: the Nvdia installer won’t find everything necessary for compiling the kernel module. So, here’s a small HOWTO:

Remember "The King"

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 21:35:00 +0000

Now it’s been 30 years and two days since Elvis Presley died (OK, there’s going to be nothing “nerd-like” in this post ;-) ) and RCA hit the stores with another “Best Of” CD. There’s still a lot of money to make with Elvis and his record company doesn’t bother. I have to admit that some of those new compilations are worth a look, especially if you’re starting out listening to Elvis, but sometimes they loose focus on what is so special about Elvis. He’s called “The King of Rock ’n’ Roll” - but why? If you’ve watched some of his movies this questions is eligible.

Beryl with Feisty & Nvidia

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:47:00 +0000

I’d like to start by pointing out that there’s no logical reason to use Beryl as your default window manager - except for fun and eye candy! As Ubuntu Feisty makes the task of installing Beryl very easy, I’d wanted to give it a try. So, what do we need to do?

The following is intended for Nvidia based graphic boards with GeForce XXXX chip. If you have a different graphic chip you need to install the specific drivers for your video device. It is important that those drivers support 3D acceleration.

Pidgin for Ubuntu Feisty

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:04:00 +0000

Ubuntu Feisty comes with a beta of Gaim 2 and I as tried to compile “MusicTracker” plugin for Pidgin (formerly Gaim) I ran into errors complaining that Pidgin was not installed. I don’t know if there would have been a way of forcing the plugin to compile with Gaim sources, so I went for installing Pidgin.

Microsoft's "intellectual properties"...

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:48:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting interview by Duncan McLeod (Financial Mail, 8 June 2007) with Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder, (not exclusively) about the recent deal by Microsoft and Linspire. It seams to be basically the same kind of “not-suing-each-other-for-infringement-of-unspecified-patents”-deal Microsoft made with Novell and Xandros. I can’t think of a good reason why any Linux distributor should agree to a deal like this…? Anyway, I’d like to quote a short part of this interview:

Qemu with Debian Etch

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:00:00 +0000

Recently, I wrote something about installing [VMware server on Ubuntu Edgy]({% link _posts/2007-02-10-installing-vmware-server-on-edgy.markdown %}), which should basically work with Debian’s Etch, too. There is an alternative to VMware: Qemu. This peace of software also emulates a complete PC hardware and is opensource. To make Qemu faster it comes with a kernel module called “kqemu” which is free but distributed under a proprietary license until version 1.3.0pre9 - and this is the version Etch ships with. You may download the latest software from here, but I installed the default Debian packages and therefor I’ll write about this kind of installation.

My Vista Experience, Pt. 3

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:19:00 +0000

Lately, I had some trouble installing a new Nvidia display driver: During installation of this driver Vista told me that “Age of Empires II Update 2” was not compatible with Vista… Er…? OK…..? The Nvidia installer ended without actually installing the driver and Vista then asked if it should try installing the program with recommended settings? Well, go ahead I thought… Now the Nvidia installer was sure it wasn’t running on Vista and quit. I rebooted and tried my luck again - no success. Still the installer quit because it could “run on Vista only” - though I was quite sure I was actually running Vista at this time! I guess the “recommended” settings emulate some kind of Windows XP environment - but I couldn’t turn this off again for this Nvidia installer. Well, I’m sure there would have been a solution to this but I wasn’t in the mood searching for it.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn & Acer Aspire 5572 ZWXMi

Wed, 23 May 2007 21:15:00 +0000

This HOWTO was listed at
TuxMobil - Linux on Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs and Mobile Phones (Now replaced by: Fedora 9.)

I recently couldn’t resist in buying a notebook… To be precise, it’s an “Acer Aspire 5572 ZWXMi”. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled. I played a bit with Vista and then decided to install Windows XP. That was easy and no fun at all. So I went for Linux and installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.
But first things first.

BIOS "F6" for GA-M55S-S3

Tue, 15 May 2007 20:57:00 +0000

Already available since March 20th, I just recently decided to update my Gigabyte motherboard “GA-M55S-S3 (rev 1.0)” with the latest BIOS, which is by the time of writing version “F6”. And - HURRAY, HURRAY - I don’t need to boot Linux with the “noapic” kernel option anymore!! The guys from Gigabyte finally fixed it! So, to everybody who owns the same motherboard I’d recommend updating your BIOS to the latest version. Get the BIOS files from here and follow the instructions from this Gigabyte help page. Good luck!

Upgrading to "Lenny"

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:25:00 +0000

With “Etch” being released as new Debian stable I decided to upgrade to “Lenny”, Debian’s new testing branch. By the time of writing the difference between stable and testing isn’t very big - Etch was released about three weeks ago. So I didn’t expect any difficulties in upgrading and with one little exception I was right.

As always, updating Debian is very easy. You need to edit “/etc/apt/sources.list” and replace etch or stable with lenny or testing. I prefer the names, because this way you would automatically use the stable branch once lenny becomes stable - which will be in the far, far future. ;-) So, your “sources.list” should look something like this:

Etch amd64: installing 32bit apps

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:04:00 +0000

If you’re running Debian Etch for amd64 you might want to install some 32bit applications, too. As some browser plugins (like Adobe’s Flash oder Sun’s Java) are available as 32bit binaries only, you may need a 32bit browser. In Ubuntu that was done very easily whereas in Debian this task needs a bit of extra work. So, here we go. (The original post can be found in German on debianforum.de. Thanks to “Linuxpeter”!)

Configuring Debian Etch

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:17:00 +0000

Grub

As mentioned in my last post, installing Etch was very quick and easy. If you need to boot the installation CD/DVD with special kernel options, they will be added automatically to grub’s menu.lst and will be there after each kernel update when the menu.lst file is regenerated. Responsible for this is a part of /boot/grub/menu.lst which looks like this:

Back to the roots!

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:22:00 +0000

Installing Vista did of course (and not surprisingly) overwrite the MBR so I couldn’t boot into Ubuntu anymore. I took this as an excuse for doing a clean Linux install and decided to go for Debian Etch. I downloaded a weekly snapshot from here, to be precise “debian-testing-amd64-kde-CD-1.iso”. You don’t need to download more than the first CD iso depending on your preferred desktop. Choosing the default “CD-1.iso” will leave you with Gnome as desktop. But you may change your mind later on and install one or the other desktop environment. OK, so download one of the “CD-1”.iso’s, burn it to CD and boot it.

My Vista Experience, Pt. 2

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:50:00 +0000

Vista and current hardware should be no problem. But what about some more ancient piece of hardware?

Before installing Vista I upgraded my motherboard’s BIOS to the latest version (which by the time of writing was “F5” for my Gigabyte “GA-M55S-S3”). I think that wouldn’t have been absolutely necessary but I also hoped getting rid of my Linux “noapic-problem” - which I sadly didn’t… As already mentioned, installation of Vista was peace of cake and video, sound and ethernet worked right away. As I like to play “World of Warcraft” I did install the original vendors drivers for video, sound and chipset for better performance. No problems so far. Same goes for my Terratec Cinergy DVB-T USB stick and my HP Photosmart printer.

My Vista Experience, Pt. 1 ½

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Today only two screenshots made with Vista’s “Snipping Tool” (by the way, very cool)…
This is the new Windows Control Panel with all new icons and the new “Windows Update”:

My Vista Experience, Pt. 1

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:12:00 +0000

I finally did it… The voices in my head told me to… I couldn’t resist any longer… So I ordered “Windows Vista Home Premium” at Amazon and installed it. In the following I’d like to share my first steps in this shiny new “World of Vista”.

First a little more detailed view on my hardware:

Installing Feisty in VMware

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:31:00 +0000

The main goal of installing VMware of course is installing Feisty in VMware. Installing other operating systems in VMware doesn’t differ from the method described below, so go ahead and try! There’s also help available here.

Installing VMware Server on Edgy

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:10:00 +0000

With VMware Server being free now, there’s a great tool available for testing different operating systems, which is very good if you like to have a sneak at coming versions of Ubuntu without “damaging” your main system. The installation of VMware under Ubuntu is straight forward and I never had problems with it, but here’s a little HOWTO:

Edgy: recent kernel update & nvidia driver

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:46:00 +0000

The recent security fixes for Edgy included a kernel update to version 2.6.17-11, which left me with a non starting X server. However, I booted the old kernel and everything was fine. So I had a look at the problem.

I’m using the default Ubuntu nVidia drivers (nvidia-glx package) but the kernel update did not automatically update the linux-restricted-modules package, so the nVidia kernel module was missing for the new kernel 2.6.17-11. Installing this package manually resolved the problem and now I’m running the new kernel. I think, it should be added automatically when updating… (Kind of déjà vu from Dapper?)

New design

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:19:00 +0000

After upgrading to the latest WordPress release I felt for change in my blog’s layout. The upgrade itself was painless as ever following these instructions. During previous updates I chose to overwrite existing WordPress files only but this time I decided to follow the detailed instructions by deleting everything with the exception of wp-config.php and the wp-content folder. Then I uploaded the new WP files - et voilà!

Jabber IM

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:56:00 +0000

There are a lot of instant messengers out there but most of them are sponsored by big companies like Microsoft (MSN/Live Messenger), AOL (AIM, ICQ) or Yahoo (Yahoo Messenger). There’s nothing wrong with that if you don’t mind some advertising… As I’m a fan of OpenSource software I’d like to mention Jabber (protocol is called XMPP) here. The server as well as the client software is open source and as far as I know the only limitation compared to other proprietary messenger protocols is the missing support of video chats. GMX and web.de released there own messengers based on XMPP, which means you can use any Jabber client to contact their chat network.

Exaile! media player

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 21:33:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I stumbled over Exaile!, an excellent media player for Linux which aims to be the GTK pendant to KDE’s Amarok and it fit’s great into Ubuntu’s default Gnome desktop. If you have Edgy 32bit installed just grab the deb package. Compiling for Edgy 64bit is very easy and quick, so don’t hesitate to download the sources. Either way you need to make sure to have some packages pre-installed:

BadVista.org

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:29:00 +0000

A big grin rushed over my face when I saw BadVista.org. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Windows, in fact I like it and use it myself. Windows made it possible for thousands of people to use a computer, including me. Well, not because it’s easy to use, safe or secure (or cheap) but just because of the fact that it’s pre-installed on almost every new computer and it’s the first thing the majority of computer users are seeing when booting a computer for the first time. But: Windows is not “easier” to use than any other (Desktop-)OS. But as it’s the first OS most users get to know, they might think that the way Windows makes things work is THE way. If you’re not interested any further you’d stay with what you know.

Casino Royal

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:41:00 +0000

Though a little off-topic again (be sure I’ll write something real nerd-like about a new Star Trek movie if ever released!!), I’d like to comment on the new James Bond movie. I think it’s a real good and entertaining action movie and despite any comment to follow below I do like it! But… THIS IS NOT JAMES BOND!

Customizing "Edgy" HOWTO

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:16:00 +0000

Ubuntu Edgy is installed - but that’s only half the way! Here are some tips and tricks on how to customize your installation of Edgy. As I’m using a rather common system I hope this HOWTO may be helpful for some of you (though I’ll be listing nothing here you wouldn’t find in the official Ubuntu Howto/Wiki as well).

Installing "Edgy" HOWTO

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:02:00 +0000

Ubuntu is a fine and easy to install Linux distro but of course it doesn’t lack some small bugs or other little issues, but they are easy to overcome - if you know how… I thought I’d sum it all up in one little install HOWTO. (Please keep in mind: this is the way I got it working for my amd64 system…) Here we go!

Ubuntu it is - again

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:13:00 +0000

So, I went for Ubuntu Edgy. Fedora Core 6 gave me some hard times updating because yum couldn’t resolve some dependencies - I never had this kind of trouble with Debian’s apt.

My former experience with Kubuntu Edgy taught me to download the “alternate” install-CD right away. The installation is pretty much the same as with the “desktop” install-CD, but you have the choice to install “grub” not only to the MBR. As I mentioned, my motherboard (and I found some clues that there are a lot of boards with nForce5/AM2 chip set with similar problems) has some issues with Linux. To be precise, without additional kernel options almost no distro would boot. There are two options which made the kernel boot correctly:

Back again!

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 11:29:00 +0000

I’m back - finally! I got a new computer (no, not for Christmas, bought the parts myself a few weeks ago and assembled it myself) and until now it works great. Hopefully it stays that way…

My computer died...

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:59:00 +0000

Last week my computer died… I’m writing this using one of my old boxes. I don’t know what happened, it just left me with a small bang and died. I think there’s something wrong with power switch witch might have caused a short circuit.

I’m now looking for a new computer. Just don’t know if I buy one from Dell or Fujitsu-Siemens or something like this or if I assemble one myself again… Well, I’ll see… It’s going to be a pretty hard time not being able to play “World of Warcraft”!

DVD playback with SUSE 10.1

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:31:00 +0000

As already mentioned, getting Linux to playback DVDs is a little tricky, because in some countries (including Germany) it’s illegal to use the needed library. It’s OK if you use Windows as your OS and have a commercial software like WinDVD or PowerDVD, but it’s considered to be illegal if you have open source software to playback css-encoded DVDs??? I cannot see the sense in paying for a DVD and than have to pay again for a (Windows-)software to play it.

Multimedia in SUSE 10.1

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:54:00 +0000

As for all major Linux distributions SUSE comes with almost no support for multimedia. At least mp3 playback is possible via Real Player or amaroK if you install “amarok-helix” and choose it as playback engine for amaroK. If mp3 support is all you want, you’re set! But I like to go a little further here.

Compiling Gaim2 on SUSE 10.1

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:59:00 +0000

Recently I couldn’t resist installing Gaim2. As there are no rpm’s for SUSE 10.1 (you could take a look at Guru’s repository, but that would be the easy way!) I had to compile from source. And by the way: it worked! ;-) So, here’s a little HOWTO.

"Zune" Theme for Windows

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 22:48:00 +0000

Due to the upcoming release of Microsoft’s Zune-Player they released a new theme for Windows XP. Looks nice if you like black and it kind of fits to the new Windows Media Player 11 which is also mainly colored in black.

A short glimpse at "Edgy"

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:37:00 +0000

Recently I couldn’t resist (those voices in my head told me to…) and give Kubuntu’s Edgy a try. I downloaded the “desktop install” iso for amd64 ignoring the known bug which said that the desktop installer “ubiquity” cannot reuse an existing root partition. I couldn’t believe such thing because in Dapper it worked well. OK, this annoying bug does exist… Very disappointing! So, I downloaded the “alternate install” iso and gave it another try. Installation went smoothly but then another bug: logging in and out of KDE makes all mounted partitions under /media disappear. You have to sudo mount -a to get them back mounted.

Using "smart" with SUSE 10.1

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:33:00 +0000

As already mentioned SUSE’s ZENworks package management doesn’t do it’s job and YOU (Yast Online Update) isn’t really better. The alternative is smart. If you followed my instructions from “Installing SUSE Linux 10.1” you skipped both registration and update configuration. You may do so now either via Yast or by opening a console, becoming root and typing suse_register -n - maybe it works, maybe not… But you don’t need it. Anyway, I’d recommend getting smart from here (there’ a link to rpm’s for SUSE 10.1) and installing all three packages from console by changing to the download directory and typing

"Martyr"

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 20:05:00 +0000

A little “nerd-off-topic”, but as I’m a big fan of Depeche Mode since the days of “Master and Servant” and “People are People” back in 1984, I’d like to mention that they recently released a new single called “Martyr” which is not featured on their last album “Playing the Angel”. The song sounds a little more electronic than most of the songs on “Playing the Angel” (except for “Precious”) but would have easily fitted on it as well. Though I think (after listening to it a few times) they had better songs, it’s good DM stuff and if you like Depeche Mode, you’ll certainly like “Martyr”!

New Mozilla Firefox 2.0

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:20:00 +0000

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 has just been officially released! I’m using Firefox since the days of version 0.4 where it was still called “Phoenix” and I like where it’s going to. So, I just installed the Windows version and my first impression: doing great as always!

Installing SuSE Linux 10.1

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:16:00 +0000

I’d like to write a short HOWTO on installing SuSE Linux 10.1 for amd64. It’s how it worked for me and my computer and doesn’t mean to be THE way.

So first of all grab the DVD image from here, which also includes the non-opensource software like Adobe Reader, Real Player and Flash-Plugin. SUSE just released an updated version called “remastered” which comes with all updates since the initial release. Don’t forget to compare MD5 sums (for Windows: use MD5summer) and then burn the iso to DVD with your preferred software. Once you’ve set your BIOS to boot from DVD-drive, insert DVD and up we go!

My computer

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:01:00 +0000

I got my computer about a year ago and assembled it myself. Though I like playing around with hardware from time to time, I’m always really glad when it’s all done - and working! So here’s what I have (only main specs):

Ubuntu and SUSE

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:17:00 +0000

As I already mentioned I recently changed from Ubuntu to SUSE. Why? To sum it up: I was up for a change! :-) And I liked the way SUSE integrated 32bit Software into their 64bit OS.

Linux and me

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 11:07:00 +0000

With “SuSE Linux 5.3” I gave Linux the first try. I just got quite familiar with Windows 95 and was up for something new. I didn’t really know what I was doing but the installation went pretty well - but no X-Server was working with my system… OK, that was it! …until “SuSE Linux 6.3”. I actually got X working and even my soundblaster. For the latter I had to “recompile” the kernel. Again, I had no clue what I was doing, I just followed some instructions I came across via Google. I still preferred using Windows for every day work. This changed a bit when I bought “SuSE Linux 7.2”, which worked out of the box! The follow-up version 7.3 was a disappointment, I had a lot of trouble with it and the same goes for 8.x, so I switchd to “Mandrake 8.2” (which is Mandriva today) and that did hit the spot!

Getting started...

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 21:49:00 +0000

So, now I started this blog. Let’s just wait and see what kind of wisdom it’ll bring to the world. To be honest, I already know: it’ll be mostly about computers and stuff! ;-)

This is my coffee mug, very helpful if I need to use vi…

About

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I just like working with computers, playing around with different software and learning how things work. I try to gather useful information here in one place for me - maybe it can even be helpful for others.

The content is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), except parts which are clearly not written by me, like quotes, links to other websites etc. If content was not originally created by me, I always try to give credit to the original author by linking to her/his site.

GPG Key

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Find my current gpg key at keys.openpgp.org here.

Fingerprint: DFD1 A36B 61BF 2EEE 180F 65D0 312A 7553 5883 2215

Privacy

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Who?

My website’s URL: https://funzt.one

This is a private blog just for the fun of it. No commercial use.

What personal data is being collected and why

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