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T520

Posted on: Thu 18 August 2011

Estimated read time: 3 minutes

So I’m testing a ThinkPad T520 for about 3 weeks now.

My motivations were:

  • so far I was using a netbook as my primary desktop, but recently did too much hacking on it, so I needed something more powerful

  • it’s interesting how many people I respect is a happy ThinkPad user, so I wanted to join the fun

  • I got fed up with not having any 3D acceleration on the netbook, I wanted back the sane Intel VGA that requires no blob drivers and still satisfies a non-gamer, like me

  • sometimes I did miss a larger screen, while 12" is handy, hacking in Eclipse (when I have to), watching a movie with family, etc is not really optimal

The official homepage is here, the exact model I got has the following spec:

  • display: 15.6" WUXGA FULL HD (1920x1080), AntiGlare

  • cpu: Intel Core i7-2630QM 2,0

  • memory: 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3, 1333MHz

  • hdd: 500GB, 7200rpm, SATA

  • dvd writer

  • vga: Nvidia Quadro NVS 4200M, 1024MB + Optimus

  • wireless: 802.11a/g/n

  • bluetooth: 2.1 + EDR

  • card reader: 4 in 1 (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC)

  • interfaces: 3xUSB2.0, 1xeSATA/USB2.0 combo, fingerprint reader, 1xRJ45, 1xExpressCard/34, 1xDisplay port, 1xVGA, 1xmic, 1xheadphone

  • webcam: 1 Mpixel

  • battery: 9 cells, 94Whr, marketing says 14h

  • warranty: 36 months

What I did not test:

  • Nvidia

  • fingerprint reader

  • RJ45, eSATA, ExpressCard

Driver support: every portion works with Linux 2.6.39 without installing any external drivers, except the out-of-core vga.

Notes:

  • the cpu is an x86_64 4-core 2GHz (in case the above link would became 404), so far it seems that enabling hyper-threading just causes trouble, once I turned that off, I no longer got random failures when doing multithread builds

  • I considered SSD but so far I think it’s too new technology for me, probably I’ll consider for the next machine

  • luckily the Nvidia card in it did not cost too much, since it would just eat my battery, one of the first things I did was to enable the in-core intel vga

  • the external vga port is nice, when I plug the external monitor in, a KDE gui pops up and manually typing xrandr commands seems to be unnecessary

  • the wireless works fine with the iwlagn Linux kernel module, but so far I was unable to connect to hidden access points (need to debug later, I only use advertised ESSID + wpa2 on a daily basis)

  • the fingerprint reader is a joke, I did not try this one, but with a similar model it seemed to work 9 times from 10 cases, but in case it did not, repeating the read did not help and finally you just had to type in your password

  • battery: with my usecase, it’s around 8h when I do nothing cpu-intensive, otherwise around 3h

  • my mini benchmark: build of LibreOffice master took more than 24h on my netbook, now it’s under an hour, an in case there were minimal changes only (so ccache has many hits), it’s around 20 minutes — and that includes installing the product and running the testsuite as well. ;)

bitlbee-skype is now merged

Posted on: Sun 24 July 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

http://bitlbee.org/style/logo.png

Back in April I had the idea to merge my bitlbee-skype plugin to the main BitlBee project. The reason is simple: BitlBee does not really have plugins (basically my Skype plugin was the only one) and because of this, ABI compatibility was not guaranteed, so I usually had to rebuild or even fix it after each BitlBee release (though Wilmer was helpful in case I was in doubt). Today this is all past, the plugin is part of the main BitlBee repo I won’t make separate bitlbee-skype releases anymore. (Latest version of the code is here, bzr info here.)

I’m quite happy this little piece of software did not get lost, but now is in the hands of an active maintainer again. :) If you need help with BitlBee, ask on #bitlbee, at irc.oftc.net.

Adria

Posted on: Sat 23 July 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

A heten bringazni voltunk az Adrian. Roviden erre jartunk:

  • Porec: le kocsival Bp-rol, helyben bringaval, 14.95km

  • Rovinj: vegig bringaval, 106.21km

  • Pula, Premantura: kocsival, csak helyben Pulaban bringaval, 22.90km

  • Krk sziget: a szigetig kocsival, szigeten bringaval, 102.57km (itt voltak szep emelkedok is lejtok, max: 62.2 km/h)

  • Portoroz, Piran, Trieszt: vegig kocsival

  • Moscenicka Draga, Lovran: Moscenicka Draga-ig kocsival, majd tengerszinttol fel 1020m-re (gps szerint: 1107m-re) bringaval, vegul nyilvan vissza a kocsihoz, 52.25km

Kepeket erre tessek.

Pelso 2011

Posted on: Sun 05 June 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

Iden is voltunk a Tour de Pelso rendezvenyen, melynek potencialis celja megkerulni a Balatont, esetunkben szintido (10 ora) alatt.

Hivatalos eredmenyekrol egyelore nem tudok, addig is:

  • gps log itt

  • kmora ezt merte: ido 8h48m16s, tav 214.56km, atlag 24.3 km/h (ez gyakorlatilag megegyezik a tavalyi ertekkel), max 47.2 km/h

  • LGee kepei erre

Mennyibe kerul 2011-ben egy jogsi?

Posted on: Fri 27 May 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

Azt tudjuk, hogy a reklam szerint csak 49.000 Ft. A kerdes inkabb az, hogy ez a valosagban hogy alakul.

Remelhetoleg a sajat peldam eleg atlagosnak mondhato: volt jopar potoram, viszont a vizsgakon elsore atmentem. Van akinek mondjuk a forgalmi csak masodszorra sikerul, de ott meg lehet nincs ennyi potora, es akkor ugyanott tartunk.

Lenyeg, hogy irogattam, hogy a Taltosban (fo kivalasztasi szempont: ma este hol indul KRESZ tanfolyam :) ) nalunk miert mennyit kellett fizetni, ime hat a lista, amibol tenyleg nem hianyzik semmi:

Szakasz Mire Mennyit

139 300,00 Ft

KRESZ:

Oktatas I.

12 000,00 Ft

Vizsgadij

4 600,00 Ft

Orvos

4 000,00 Ft

Oktatas II.

12 000,00 Ft

Rutin:

Normal ora

12 000,00 Ft

Vizsgadij

4 700,00 Ft

Tankonyv

1 500,00 Ft

Potora I.

4 000,00 Ft

Potora II.

4 000,00 Ft

Potora III.

4 000,00 Ft

Forgalmi:

Normal ora I.

12 000,00 Ft

Normal ora II.

12 000,00 Ft

Vizsgadij

11 000,00 Ft

Potora I.

12 000,00 Ft

Potora II.

12 000,00 Ft

Eu.:

Oktatas

8 000,00 Ft

Vizsgadij

5 500,00 Ft

Okmanyiroda

4 000,00 Ft

Nagy-Kevely

Posted on: Sat 07 May 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

Szerda este erre jartunk. Ez egyreszt kivalo alkalom volt kiprobalni a bakancsnak beharaongozott, de inkabb edzocipo objektumot amire nemreg tettem szert, masreszt pedig hamar multhet csutortokon meglett a forgalmi vizsga (igy mar csak az EU vizsga van hatra a jogsihoz), ideje volt megnezni ezt a tankolas dolgot, amit sose probaltam elotte — barmennyire is trivialis ha egyszer megvolt.

LibreOffice 3.4 Packaging

Posted on: Wed 04 May 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

The next major LibreOffice version, 3.4, means some work for (Linux distribution, and other) packagers, as the build repo is now deprecated and packagers are suggested to use the bootstrap repo directly, which is a different build system.

On one hand, this is a nice cleanup - there is now a single configure script. OTOH this needs major rework of distro build scripts.

The interesting part here is that the official binary installers are not using the make DESTDIR=/some/path install method to install the compiled binaries, so it was discovered quite late that it wasn’t working properly. First Hanno and Petr worked on this, then I fixed a minor, but blocking glitch.

As a result 3.4 beta4 will be something packagers (even the ones not using the split build) can offer to distro users for testing without patching. Binaries for Frugalware users here (i686-only at the moment).

GSoC 2011 - Accepted

Posted on: Mon 25 April 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

http://code.google.com/images/GSoC2011_300x200.png

I just got the mail about my LibreOffice proposal got accepted to Google Summer of Code 2011. I’m looking forward to an exciting summer. :)

KVM vs Windows 2003

Posted on: Fri 01 April 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

A few days ago I wanted to try out Windows 2003 (to be used for a task at the university) in KVM, to be exact using libvirt. First I didn’t do any non-intuitive trick, but later it turned out what virtio should be enabled for the block devices or the whole machine will be slow as hell. For the records, here is what worked for me:

wget http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd
virt-install --name=vmiklos-w2003 --arch=x86_64 --vcpus=1 --ram=2048 \
        --os-type=windows --os-variant=win2k3 --connect=qemu:///system \
        --network network=default \
        --cdrom=/virt/vmiklos-w2003/en_windows_server_2003_with_sp1_enterprise.iso \
        --disk path=/virt/vmiklos-w2003/vmiklos-w2003.img,size=24,bus=virtio \
        --disk path=/virt/vmiklos-w2003/virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd,device=floppy \
        --accelerate --vnc --noautoconsole --keymap=us

When the installer asks if you have a special SCSI driver floppy, ask for it, then you can select the virtio driver.

Apply button to style edit dialog in Writer

Posted on: Mon 28 March 2011

Estimated read time: 1 minutes

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D-pV0cucPL0/UYduyolR-AI/AAAAAAAACso/zL9Vd2IQgY0/s400/fdo32413.png

LibreOffice 3.4 will have a new feature, if you edit styles in Writer, then you can test your style changes without manually closing and opening the style edit dialog again.

Do you like this feature? There are still similar remaining dialogs to improve like this, send in a patch!

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