normally i don’t care much if people use windows or Linux or mac, i just try to show people some new site when they never heard about Linux and help them with some install stuff if they want, so i am not a big fan of flame wars and fanboy-bashing.

But this morning i needed to work shortly on an windows machine, my windows optinion changed from “i don’t care” to “wtf” … The System was an WinXP on dual core with 4G ram, i was asked to help with some updates.

I started updating, everything went quite well, but then acrobat reader hit me straight in my Balls …

I never understood why document viewing application need a 70Mb download and about 150MB space to install, but this time i was really surprised, acrobat (only the reader) started downloading and unpacking and checking and installing, and checking again, and cleaning up and seriously ask me to reboot the windows system (that took 19min on a dual core system) … i was quite speechless already, but after the reboot he started again cleaning up registering components ands so on …

As he finished, i checked all the functions i could find in that app to figure out what that is all about, but it is basically the same simple PDF reader it was many years ago, i don’t get the point.

I checked out of curiosity some other components as well, i found a HP driver that uses 110MB of memory (some wired management stuff that can’t be separated from the driver). I thought gnome was already getting to heavy (using awesome now) but well, memory and new CPU’s are cheap these days ….

Cheers
xuedi

Cheers
xuedi

P.S.
Love this one: http://z0r.de/2029

The command line control is rhythmbox-client, unluckly its an GUI app that gets a bit confused if the right environment variables are not set, so that how i make it run easily for me.

First:

Make sure you can access the machine that runs rhythmbox easily, my laptop runs a SSH server, so first i created a certificate on my N900, this is not nessesary if you have there alreada a xxx.pub file:

cd /home/<yourUser>/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

Second:

You need to make your machine that runs the music play to know that this created certificate is accepted, therefor you need to register it, the first variable here is the key file its called something xxx.pub depending if you use rsa or another algorithm. You also need to copy that key over via SSH so you need to enter the name and ip or your machine that runs rhythbox:

ssh-copy-id -i /home/<yourUser>/ssh/id_rsa.pub <user>@<hostname_or_ip_address>

Third:

Make it more easy to access your remote music machine, if you use it only in a home wifi you can create a SSH config file and if you gave your machine that runs ryhthmbox a name lets say ‘myLaptop’ then this command will connect you via SSH: ‘ssh myLaptop’ but you can choose freely run ‘vim /home/<yourUser>/.ssh/config’ and enter this config option:

Host myLaptop
User yourUser       #or whatever you like
Port 22
Hostname <MusicPlayersIP>
IdentityFile /home/<yourUser>/.ssh/id_rsa
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

Forth:

The command to change your rythmbox need some variables set as well, that makes it quite long, so i suggest you create an alias for that, normally you do that in ~/.bashrc (for your user only) /etc/bash.bashec (for systemwide) but if your machine like mine N900 just using shell not bash you need to use ~/.profile . Add  now the alias command to our file of choice:

alias rc='ssh yourUser@myLaptop env DISPLAY=:0.0 rhythmbox-client --no-start'

Usage:

You can use that new command now for:

• rc –help                    # get all options
• rc –next                    # next song
• rc –previous            # next song
• rc –volume-up        # louder
• rc –volume-down  # more quite
• rc –pause                 # pause the music
• rc –play                    # start playing music

Some tip, the volume up and down command just change the internal rhythmbox level, so before you go with some beers, sandwiches, to bed an plan to stay there all sunday long, set the rhythmbox level to middle and ajust your system sound level to normal room sound, now you have room for more lous and more quite, and no reason to get up at all … well, get some empty plastic bottle and you even can save the way to your washroom

N900, N810, N800 Users

You can also create a desktop icon for ever singe command and create your own remote control looking desktop, but don’t be inpatient, command via SSH take a second to work, so don’t press 10 time more loud, that will be still executed just a second later and you neighbors might not like it…

Cheers
xuedi

I think this time i got for no vfat and sawp at all, just create a single ext3 over the 32G (minus the 256) and do the sawp as well as the vfat (needed for the camera) in the file system via loop device. So then i will be able to resize them dynamicly in care i need more space for photos or bigger swap if i like to run apache ^^

Filesystem: 32G ext3
- 1,5G /swap
- 1,5G /vfat

I am btw extremely surprised by the speed of the 900 compare to the 800 series, the only sad point is a little offset in the map software.

xuedi

[..] long chat [..]
he: You are the one who is confusing.
me: Really?
he: Yes, really.
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he: Shen me ?

This bot really understand girlish Chinese slang!

Have fun chatting: http://international.jabberwacky.com/

Cheers
xuedi