InstaLinux is a new website developed by open source enthusiasts based on code released by Hewlett Packard allows users to point and click through a few simple screens to generate a small (less than 30 MB) installation image. When booted, it will install an operating system via the network according to the user's specifications. Debian, Ubuntu and KUbuntu are all supported on x86 and x86_64 platforms, as well as several other distributions.

Jon Smirl has put up a nice overview of the current (pre-X11R7) state of Linux graphics. If you wanna read more about XGL, XAA and DRI, check it out.


Speaking of which, I got a problem on my SparcDebian where the upgrade to X11R7 refuses to start, and causes a machine hang. Seems that on Sparc I'm not the only one...

Nobody ever reads the EULA (End User License Agreement) that comes with most software. It's long, written in incomprehensible law jargon, and you're too eager to try the software out, so begone with this boring stuff !
But what does a regular EULA actually contains ? The folks at Linuxadvocacy.org have translated the MS Windows XP EULA into plain English.

NASA has build a video of the Huygens probe's descent into Titan's murky atmosphere. The movie was built with data collected during the 147-minute plunge through Titan's thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy riverbed on Jan. 14, 2005. In 4 minutes and 40 seconds, the movie shows what the probe saw within the few hours of the descent and the landing.

I just installed the latest Xephem-3.7.1 onto my debian amd64. The problem with the default deb package in the Debian repository is that the version is quite old, at 3.4.5. Unfortunately, building Xephem-3.7.1 isn't quite straightforward; here's a small howto to craft the binaries (no package, unfortunately) :


* download the source from the Xephem site
* unpack the tgz tarball
* create and run this script in the ./xephem-3.7.1 directory :

#!/bin/bash

# Fix gcc flags

for i in libastro/Makefile libip/Makefile  

 libjpegd/Makefile liblilxml/Makefile GUI/xephem/Makefile ; 

do

  echo "Fixing CFLAGS in ${i}"

  sed -e "s~^CFLAGS[ ]*=(.*)-O2(.*)~CFLAGS= 1 2  

  ${CFLAGS}~" -i ${i} 
done

sed -e 's~^CFLAGS[ ]*=(.*)$(CLDFLAGS)(.*)~CFLAGS=1 2~'  

  -i GUI/xephem/Makefile

* Remove the ./xephem-3.7.1/libXm/linux86 directory, as it contains 32bit libraries
* Create a symlink ./xephem-3.7.1/libXm/linux86 towards /usr/lib
* Install the lesstif2 and lesstif2-dev packages
* Build as described in the INSTALL file


That's it ! Copy your binary to /usr/bin, and you're ready to rumble.

There's lot of rumours about Apple incorporating ZFS in Mac OSX. Yet there are many people that say ZFS is great for servers but people don't need it at home. Unix Admin Corner tries to explain why ZFS is possibly more needed at home.

Solaris Express 4/06 has been released, based on the Nevada build 36. The OpenSolaris community is already counting at Nevada build 39, but the real interesting part of build 36 is that it allows you to hand-assemble a system which boots from ZFS. The procedure is not for the faint at heart, but it clearly indicates that a ZFS root filesystem is getting real close.


OTOH, people are porting ZFS to Mac OSX.

Dropped out of university too early ? Allways wanted a published scientific report with your name on it ? 'Controlling Digital-to-Analog Converters Using Amphibious Theory', 'Studying Forward-Error Correction and Model Checking with BUN' or 'A Case for Wider-Area Networks' are only some of the sounding titles of scientific reports the SCIgen robot can generate for you.


You're a science teacher, and hate the internet for it's ready to pick scientific papers ? You want to know in advance which students are going to deliver impressive reports, generated in a few seconds ? Fear no longer : here's the Inauthentic Paper Detector.


Note : I submitted one of my blog posts to this baby, and it rated my text as being classified as INAUTHENTIC with a 20.5% chance of being authentic text. I've allways known I was a lousy scientist :)

Mayix.net has an interesting picture showing a family tree of different Linux distributions.

Is it me or is every 'dist-upgrade' of unstable giving back dreadfull results ? There was a time I upgraded my Debian sid almost every week, while now I tend to wait 6 to 8 weeks to upgrade. Yesterday evening, I dist-upgraded with lots of trouble, and found myself without an X-server suddenly. The 'startx' command didn't reported an error, but didn't started an X session either. When looking at the process list, I found the X server process being replaced with the 'true' command, typical when you don't have an X server installed.


Luckily, there's the Debian Wiki page StatusOfUnstable which told me several people had problems with this. The fact that the amd64 repositories were outdated, and that they were integrated in the default repo was also an interesting read.


In the end, everything was sorted out, but it took me one hour and a half to straighten things up, not counting the dist-upgrade process.
So, it seems I have a dilemma :


* Debian sid has really become unstable, since sarge has been released, up to the fact that dist-upgrading is breaking things every time.
* I have become an other computer user, where I don't have the time and energy to dig into problems. And problems allways arise when you have something urgent to do. I just want a stable desktop, though I really like the quick update cycle of sid.


So, my decision has been made : once Ubuntu Dapper will be released, I will make the switch.