Wengo – I can’t hear you!

This doesn’t seem to be my day. I tried to use Wengo as an alternative to Skype, however I failed miserably. As soon as I start it I get an audio error. Appearantly it doesn’t open /dev/dsp, while other applications don’t seem to have that problem. At least I’m not alone.

WordPress in a loop

I wonder if I am the only one having trouble with the WordPress backend recently. In two thirds of all cases, whenever I press just about any button, I end up getting a “Are you sure you want to do this?” dialogue. When I click yes, the dialogue re-appears. Either my Firefox is going awry or it’s in fact a bug in WordPress. Any feedback would be welcome.

Update: I was able to rule out Firefox as a potential cause.

Tomorrow’s World – Quo vadis?

Computers are not just changing our classroom. The entire society is affected. However, not all the innovations are a cause for celebrations. In Berlin people expressed their concern about this brave new world today.

Heise.de has this article.

Und nu? Qunu! :-)

Marvin told me about a new concept causing a stir in the open source community: Qunu!

So what is it all about? Geeks can sign up and offer to answer computer-related questions anybody might have. So if you need help, connect to Qunu and get a real-time chat with somebody who will try to help you.

This is a great concept. It reflects the mentality of the open source community. Nobody is supposed to be left alone with technical difficulties. This will definitely set us apart from the gimme-gimme mentality of the closed source world.

Could this be relevant in the context of a classroom? Indeed, it could. On one hand our students can use this platform to get help for their Linux-related problems at any time. And on the other hand it illustrates so very well the kind of mentaliy that we are trying to achieve. An atmosphere of sharing and giving has always been beneficial to any community. If we succeed in relating this to our students, their personal gain will be a huge accomplishment, I believe.

Quoth the raven, “never more!”

After having read a short report at Moosy Blog on how to install some cool eye candy for SuSE Linux that have been hearing so much about, I went ahead this afternoon to give it a try. I thought the students might like that on their laptops.

My computer has an ATI Radeon X850 PRO graphics adaptor, so I downloaded the closed source driver from ATI. They offer a method to convert their package into an RPM, which I thought was a neat idea – seamless integration, certainly the right way for me. I installed that package, issued an aticontrol –inital –input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf, restarted X and the screen turned into a work of modern art. There was absolutely no way to work with that screen. Switching to text consoles didn’t work. I had to ssh myself into that machine to start SaX2. And even when I had vision restored under X there was absolutely no way of switching back to the text console as that, too, turned into a slightly different work of modern art. After some frustration I have decided to live my life without that fancy Xgl eye candy. I don’t really need 3D support otherwise. Why do these things happen? I blame it on the closed source strategy of some companies like ATI. Well, it taught me a lesson for sure: I will no longer waste money on fancy 3D hardware that’s only supported by closed source drivers. Personally I think the Kernel gurus should go right ahead and close Linux to that kind of software. Quoth the raven penguin, “never more!”

I remember something similar happening before, so I really felt the need to rant about this here. Let’s see if I’m the only one who failed fglrx.

[Update] From the comments at the Linux blog on WordPress.com I could gather that I am not the only one facing the “switching to text console problem”.

It looks like an ATI BUG (a known issue according to release note) :
“Toggling between console mode and X Server graphical mode may result in a system hang. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22058″

Seems like we are news after all

The Wolfsburger Nachrichten newspaper finally published an article about our project. Even though I regret that not all sponsors were named it is a first step towards public recognition. Why is that necessary? Well, we need to spread the word around that there will be 30 well-educated students who will be looking for jobs in a couple of years. After all finding work is getting really difficult around here. And I for one would like to see these 30 students given a fair chance. Anyway, here is the online version of the article.

Ubuntu Links

Jeremiah of Par!x compiled a list of useful Ubuntu guides here. Guess I’ll need those soon enough.

Ubuntu sounding a bell

We have been talking about getting our school bell replaced by a more modern system. There already is a PA loudspeaker in every classroom. We could use this as a bell to signal when it’s time for a break. However we’d require a computer dedicated to this in the teachers’ lounge. There still is lots of hardware junk in our basement, so I thought it should be possible to revive some 75 MHz Pentium I computer to do this. Probably Ubuntu Linux might be a good choice for an OS that’s not going to waste resources too much. Anyway, I found some instructions on installing it here, if you care to take a look yourself.

OpenSuSE now popular with former students

The Eichendorffschule sure inspired some former students to use OpenSuSE Linux as their desktop OS. After all, we’ve been running Linux on our schools’ computers ever since 1998. I guess it was just a matter of time until the spark finally ignited with some of our students. But read all about it for yourself. You cannot imagine how proud I feel right now.

Need to fix it?

When I just received my confirmation that this site had been linked to Tuxmobil I found that Werner Heuser also has another site dedicated to do-it-yourself repairs on notebook computers here. I can just hope that many people will find and support it. After all, if you’ve ever faced repairing an old laptop yourself, you know how tedious this gets. For now, our Acer Travelmates are still on the safe side having their warranty and everything. But time passes quickly, and I wouldn’t want to dispose of my notebook computer just because of a loose contact. So, please spread the word around – even old laptops can be repaired and the information can be gathered at repair4laptop.org.