LXF Team Blog

How long did it take to fly to San Francisco from the UK? Around the same length of time it took to play six showings of the Iron Man movie, one after the other. Everyone else in the cabin seemed to be asleep, and I was left alone and awake in the dark watching the flicker from a dozen different screens silently playing Iron Man. I never want to see Robert Downey Jr’s stupid beard ever again.

But it was worth the effort. San Francisco is a wonderful place, and we’ve had a couple of days to acclimatise to the size of the food portions and the strength of the beer. There seems to be a local tradition for brewing IPA, all of which is over 6%. Combine a pint or two of that with some jet-lag, and I lose the ability to string a sentence together - I know, what ability…

Anyway, we’re here for Linux World, which starts tomorrow. As we arrived on Saturday, we were able to do the tourist thing yesterday, walking from our hotel, through Union Square and across China Town before climbing the hill up to the Coit Tower monument (thanks Mike!). This gave us some exceptional views out over the bay and back towards the city. From there we headed down to Pier 39 before getting the cable car back up and over Nob Hill. The whole place has a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, and feels quite unlike most US cities I’ve been to.

If you’re headed over this way for Linux World tomorrow, look out for us and say ‘Hi’. I’ll try to post an update on any cool stuff we discover. IPA permitting.

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wind u100

Originally uploaded by evilnick

So, I was testing the MSI Wind 100u, and I thought I would try installing OpenSuSE (sorry, OpenSUSE) on it, just for kicks. as you would obviously.

It wasn’t bad actually. I was rather expecting to have loads of problems, but the only things that didn’t work were the Wifi card and the screen. Yes, that sounds bad, but really, the screen was easy to fix by hacking the xorg.conf file for the unusual 1024×600 widescreen mode (SAX2 doesn’t like the physical dimensions of the screen).

Wifi is more of a problem. There IS a driver, developed for Linux, apparently by MSI, but you really have to hunt around for it. Links I found by googling seemed to disappear after a few days of being posted. I eventually snatched it from some debian site. However, it does work, and is being actively developed it seems. The only letdown is that it doesn’t yet support WPA2, so if you like your access point secure you may have to wait a while. The lesson for MSI here is that, yes, it is good you are helping write the driver, but for goodness sake, try to get some community involvement so it can actually be useful…
The Linux version of the Wind will cost about £50 less apparently, but it isn’t clear whether it will be available in Europe.

I actually like the wind. 3 hours of battery, a NICE screen, 80GB hard drive, up to 2GB ram. It is a lot pricier than the Eee, but it packs the power of a real laptop, and the keyboard is nicer. so

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Every single person in the world knows that I’m a big fan of the Asus Eee PC. Well, at least the 4G 701 model that I bought late last year. But as I alluded to in the Acer Aspire One blog post, further down the page, it’s becoming increasingly hard to understand Asus’s product strategy. Life was great when we had the 70x and 900/1 models — the former was cheap, the latter a tad more expensive but with the larger screen that some demanded. Now we have the 904, the 1000, the 1000H, and the 1000HD. This excellent snippet from an Engadget news story sums it up perfectly:

So now not only are there an endless variety of Eee models, the model numbers themselves don’t indicate anything logical: the Eee 901 is faster than the 904, which uses the basic case of the 1000 but shares a processor with the 900 and 1000HD — but not the 1000 or 1000H, which are Atom-based like the 901.

What you say? My confusionometer just exploded. I’d love to hear from readers who’ve been tempted by the Eee, but have also been put off by the ever-growing range of almost-the-same-but-not-quite models. Do you think this actually makes sense for Asus in the long run, or is it just flooding the market? Are you holding out for the Dell E?

(Note: click here for the Engadget article, and be aware of the usual profanity and flame wars in the comment section!)

UPDATE: In another Engadget story, we see a leaked Eee PC roadmap with 23 models listed. I can’t even count that far.

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I’ve just compiled and installed the latest git version of Compiz. Now, I love eye candy. But I do wonder where those Compiz developers are getting their tea!

Edit: Just found a bug! I thought it would be cool to try the 3D window rotate thing on the desktop background. It doesn’t work. In fact, after you hold down that particular kung fu keyboard combo, nothing works!

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I’ve just spent ten minutes with the Acer Aspire One, a Linux-powered subnotebook with these specs: 9″ screen, 512MB RAM, 8GB flash storage, 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, three USB ports, 2 SD card slots and an Ethernet port. It’s running Linpus Linux 9.4 Lite — based on Fedora — with an Xfce desktop for added snappiness.

Following Asus’s lead with the Eee, the Aspire One’s interface features big, colourful buttons on the desktop to launch the included software, most of which is geared towards internet and office jobs (Firefox, OpenOffice.org etc.) Physically, the machine feels robust and well constructed, with a small but usable keyboard and a trackpad that has mouse buttons on each side, which takes some getting used to.

Is it an Eee PC killer? I’m in no rush to ditch my Eee, but Asus certainly has some competition on its hands, especially with the Aspire One’s £230-ish price tag. Also, Asus really needs to trim down the range of Eee models on offer — just look at this buyer-bewildering pile-on.

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…the mice go to Argos.

Here’s something ker-azy: Argos has a special offer for My Word Coach DS, a vocabulary trainer for Nintendo’s handheld console. If you buy it, you can also obtain an ‘Action Replay Cheat System’ for 1/3rd the price. (Click here and then ‘Special offers’.)

OK — that may not be so odd. Presumably Argos is offering the cut-price Action Replay with loads of games, right?

Not so. Look at this list. You can’t get it with Impossible Mission, or Pirates of the Caribbean, or any other action game in which you might consider cheating if you get totally stuck. You get it with My Word Coach DS.

Who on Earth would want to cheat at a vocab trainer?! It makes no sense.

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Tomorrow is the last day at Linux Format before I leave. No, I’m not resigning or moving magazines (sorry!), but I am going on sabbatical, and that means 64 days away from the office. I’ve spent the last few months doing all the work I would normally have done during that time - staff appraisals, budgeting, flatplanning and, yes, even a little bit of writing, so I’m sure LXF will be all smooth sailing while I’m away.

Some people use their sabbatical to sit at home thinking they really ought to write a novel. Me, I’m flying off to China this Monday, because I’ve volunteered to help teach at a Christian summer camp in Fujian province in the south of China. Fujian is famous for its tea, but during summer I expect I’ll be more worried about the typhoons and the floods.

If you were interested, wo hui shuo yidianr putonghua, ke shi wo shuo de bu hao. I’ve even managed to learn to write my name (”Da Bao”, or “Big Paul”) in Chinese characters, which I think is about as far as I shall go with the writing! So, I’ll be teaching in English, which is probably for the best. It’ll be quite clear to the locals that I’m a “lao wai”, so I expect any attempts by me to speak Chinese will result in laughter followed by them speaking English.

While I’m away, Simon Pickstock of PC Answers fame will be taking over at the helm of LXF. He’s a closet Linux fanboy, so the magazine is in safe hands. He may even blog here once or twice, which would make him a more frequent blogger than Graham!

If you want to get in touch with someone from the magazine while I’m away, I suggest you email Graham or Mike - there’s no internet access in the village I’m going to, which, again, is probably for the best. Future’s official sabbatical policy is that I’m guaranteed a job at the same level when I return, so perhaps I’ll follow the trend and move to PC Answers. Speaking of which, Nick has just finished the PC Answers redesign, and it looks awesome - pick up a copy at your local store and I think you’ll be surprised!

Wo bu shi bao bei de bao; shi bao hu de bao.

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