Monthly Archives: December 2007

>Memory Usage in Gnome

Posted by on December 31, 2007 No comments

>I have reduced my bootup memory usage from the default in Ubuntu of about 130/150 mb to a nice 80 or so megs used. Which isn’t as good as Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu, but it is closer.

How’d I do it?

  1. No more extra terminals
    This saved a nice amount of memory
  1. Edit /etc/default/console-setup
  2. Make it look like this
    # Setup these consoles. Most people do not need to change this.
    #ACTIVE_CONSOLES=”/dev/tty[1-6]“
    ACTIVE_CONSOLES=”/dev/tty[1-1]“
  3. Reboot to take effect
  • Remove applets you don’t use
    1. Fast User Switcher and Desktop Search take up a good amount
    2. I deleted one entire panel and consolidated on one
    3. I also moved workrave from a panel to run at startup
  • Removed the ability to print (cupsys and foomatic)
    • I used Synaptic and removed everything that had cupsys or foomatic in it
    • Making sure not to remove anything important at the same time
    • Clearly if you want printing.. don’t do this!’
  • Remove evolution and a lot of it’s services
  • ( I also remove Mono but I don’t think that has an effect)

    • This makes me wonder how much of the memory requirement on the Ubuntu Desktop CD could be tweaked.

    >Installing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

    Posted by on December 26, 2007 No comments

    >About ET / id
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein:_Enemy_Territory
    id is really amazing in their Linux support and they usually GPL old game engines so that the community benefits. In fact, many of the free games we play use a modified version of their quake3 engine. And Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is released free (as in beer) from them. Overall, id rocks!

    There is also the Ubuntu Community Documentation which I plan on updating. If you have trouble with my guide try the more complete one.
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnemyTerritory

    Get ET
    Direct Link To Torrent

    If that doesn’t work go to this page:
    http://zerowing.idsoftware.com:6969/
    This is a list of torrents from id including patches for many of their games on Windows, Mac, and Linux as well as many demos. We are looking for et-linux-2.6.0.x86.run.

    Install ET
    sudo et-linux-2.6.0.x86.run
    Install using sudo (I use the defaults), but whatever you do DO NOT RUN when you finish the install. Exit the installer and then type et. If sound doesn’t work, continue on.

    Make Sound Work
    There are apparently several ways to get this to work (look at community docs). Only one has ever worked for me.
    Run this line as root: echo “et.x86 0 0 direct” > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss
    No really, you might have to run “sudo su” and really be root to have this work. Just running sudo doesn’t seem to work for me after the first time.

    If that was the solution for you, let’s add this so it gets run at start-up.
    Create File
    sudo nano /etc/init.d/makeETwork.sh

    Add This to File
    #!/bin/sh
    echo “et.x86 0 0 direct” > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

    Exit nano and make it executable
    sudo chmod uog+x makeETwork.sh

    Make it run at bootup
    sudo update-rc.d makeETwork.sh defaults

    Reboot and try to play

    Want ET in Games instead of Other?
    Go To System-Preferences-Main Menu and drag and drop it.

    >Merry Christmas

    Posted by on December 25, 2007 No comments

    >or am I supposed to say “Season’s Greetings”? Nah, I’m gonna go with Merry Christmas.
    Hoping you have a wonderful day.

    On another note, missing from the LAN party description was the 10 minutes or so installing Nouveau to increase Dave’s FPS by 1.

    >Rocking the boat..

    Posted by on December 20, 2007 No comments

    >I AM AN ATHEIST.

    I just watched this video called, “An Athists call to arms” (31 mins)
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8774524780829936898

    And this local article about the “tree of knowledge”
    http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/16080

    I encourage all other atheists to “come out of the closet” because we are according to some polls the biggest “religious” minority in the country. We are also by other polls are one of the least trusted. I have been discouraged by recent comments by political candidates and believe it is time to rock the boat.

    >Crazy Freed Media Take 2

    Posted by on December 18, 2007 1 comment

    >or… why content-sensitive sharing is important.

    It’s all about how you use your computer and more importantly how the other’s around you use the same computer (or other ones on the network). I’m going to show some scenarios.

    Scenario 1
    Person A wants to share movie with person B
    Person B isn’t home right now and uses a different computer
    S stands for system

    Regular File Sharing
    A Stop playing movie
    A Move file to shared device
    B when told about it and where it is navigates to persons A computer
    B downloads codecs required to play movie
    B watches movie

    Content-Sensitive Sharing
    A clicks Share
    B told to watch shared movie
    S automatically transcodes it so B can watch
    B watches movie
    B comments on movie
    S adds metadata that A can read in future

    Scenario 2
    Person A wants to import photos from a device (out of scope)
    Person B isn’t home right now, and uses a different user account, and wants to access photos to add them to a digital picture frame as a present for A
    S stands for system

    What A+B did previously
    Set up their photo management software to share photos locally

    What A Does
    A imports photos onto the computer in her Pictures folder

    What B Does
    Chooses photos to publish to device
    S takes care of changing the photos from the default high resolution to the limited display size of the picture frame

    The big important part of content-sensitive sharing is the fact that so much is abstracted away from the user that they don’t have to do themselves. The entire point of operating systems is to abstract away details that the user shouldn’t have to deal with.