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You know my P4 is broken. So now, I'm using the AMD64 notebook from my parents. I allready had Ubuntu running on that, but without WLAN support. I installed vpnc for AMD64 (downloaded the .deb and used dpkg) and attached my computer to the router with a cable connection. Everything was fine, I could use it the way I wanted, no problems, seemed nice. But some things are missing: first of all, I want to use the wireless connection. ndiswrapper isn't an option, because there aren't any 64bit drivers for my WLAN device. It seems that the vendor is waiting for WinXP64bit to release them. Any other bad things: some other software isn't ported to the 64bit platform allready. I don't want to compile all stuff manually, I want to use my computer as soon as possible. So I decided to re-install Ubuntu with the fresh release of Ubuntu Hoary (i386) and give it a try.

The results are pretty good! The installer is very simple, quite fast and after that, you have a complete running system. I needed to install vpnc to access the internet at our student home, but that was no problem. Everything went just fine. The ubuntu website and wiki also provide lots of good information about restricted formats and so on. I really love it. I even love it so much, that I'm thinking about using it on my new laptop instead of Gentoo. The great advantage is that I have a running system with all features in about one hour, vpnc and restricted formats and so on included. With Gentoo, this can take a lot longer. If I need new software: apt-get or synaptic, wait ten seconds, OK. With Gentoo, again, this can take some time. I don't already know what it'll be. Off course, ikke is lobbying for Gentoo ;-)

Even my girlfriend likes Ubuntu! Till now on, she was using SuSE, but she had a few problems with it. She couldn't play DVD's, but now it seems that her hardware (the DVD drive) is broken. There were also some other problems making her think about using another distro. Now, with her final year thesis, she needs to use Corel Draw, and so Windows. So she had to repartition her harddisk and re-install linux (and windows). Because her DVD-drive didn't read the SuSE DVD, she tried Kubuntu. Yeah, she's a real KDE-lover. She loves fisherprice-looking buttons ;-) Kubuntu set up quite quickly, some problems with the wlan (using ndiswrapper instead of the native prism54 driver wich should be working normally), but now everything's fine. She loves it. Now her laptop is making a sound like a cow when starting up. Yes, she's a little bit crazy and I love it! ;-)

With WVS, we gave a LiveCD lesson last week. Not so much people, but others told me they didn't now it on time. The ten persons who were there were quite enthousiast. They loved ubuntu and most of them should try to install it on their computer. I'm sure Ubuntu has a great momentum now and has a great chance to become one of the most popular distro's in the world!

...since my last post on this blog. Lot's happened in meantime: a few parties, LANwars, we've choosen the new boss of our university, I'm selected for an internship developing an L3 multicast switch at Barco. I was quite busy, so I didn't have much time to write some stuff here.

Some bad (or maybe even good) news: my computer is broken. The IDE-connector (or controller) on the mobo doesn't work anymore. It's a quite old Pentium 4 system, one of the first types of Pentium 4, with an Intel D850GB motherboard and 512 MB RD-Ram (Rambus, Rimm,...). So a change would be a new mobo and new Ram. Maybe my parents'll do that to use my computer at home. It was a very good system, running still very good. I'll miss it, and the good configured Gentoo where I had put lots of time in.

But with that sad news, there's also very good news! My parents decided to give me a new system! As mobility is getting more and more important, they bought me a notebook. Now I can use it here in Ghent, at home, and at all other places I'll hang around. For the interested ones: it's a Dell Latitude D810 bought at VTK. Here are some specs:

• Latitude D810, 15.4" WSXGA LCD (1680 X 1050) Screen
• Pentium M 730 (1.6Ghz, 533Mhz, 2MB L2 Cache)
• 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM Memory (2X512MB)
• 80GB IDE (5400rpm) Hard Drive
• 8X DVD+RW Drive
• ATI X600 videocard with 128MB dedicated ram
• Networkcard and 56k modem
• Intel PRO Wireless 2200 802.11b/g mini PCI card
• Belgisch AZERTY keyboard
• 9 Cell 80WHr LI-ION Primary Battery
• Delux Nylon Carry Case
• System Documentation, Resource CD, adapter
• 3 year "Next Business Day On-site" warranty + Completecare Accidental damage Cover
• home delivery

Just take a look at the price at VTK and compare with the official prices from Dell ;-) It's a huge difference! I like the VTK services!

The Dell Latitude D810
While waiting for my own notebook, I can use another one. It's the Acer AMD64 I allready talked about. Installing vpnc for use at the student home was very simple. But I've added some other, I think bad, repo's and now the whole system is broken. So now, I'm running windows (that other would-be OS in dual boot on this machine). I think I'll study somewhat the next days, so I won't have time to install Gentoo or another Linux distro. I want WLAN working on this machine to use it at home, but there aren't any AMD64 drivers for the IPN2220 card inside. I'll wait, maybe they release them with the release of windows 64bit. My new computer will be, just like my old one, running Gentoo Linux in single boot.

Very busy week -> zero lessons followed... :-/

Monday wasn't that hard, just the usually stuff at VTK. In the evening, we had a fire drill: very good one, everyone was out of the building in a new time record. It was the last one this year, so the next time the alarm goes of, it's real.

Tuesday we had an information evening about VTK and being a board member of VTK. I'm going for "external relations", but I heard somebody else'll do it too. So it'll be a very hard time to get enough votes.

After that, we went with a few people of the student representation to a very good restaurant, Caf

Again, I can say it was a very busy week, last one. But I enjoyed it very much! Movie week was good, the party was great. Many good-looking girls at the party, more than normal on engineers-parties ;-) You can see some pictures here and here. I helped cleaning up in the morning, saw my bed only between 8h30 and 13h XX(

That evening, after the party, I went to Brussels, for a meeting with the "workgroup international" of the VVS, the Union of Students in Flanders. There were some political points to discuss. Points I earlier thought of "far away from my bed", but now I've a better sight at the possible impact of them. Very, very important. We discussed about GATS, an agreement between the EU and the USA to let the European insurance companies operate at the american market. No problem with that, but as a return, the Americans want the EU to open our "education market" so they could start private high schools in Europe, privately funded, to fight at our public founded schools, delivering a quality of the best ones in Europe and the rest of the world. With that agreement, students should be seen as a consumer, where you get more if you pay more, instead of as an equal civilian, where everybody has the same rights. Very dangerous situation, I think.

Ex-commissioner Frits Bolkestein
wiki-page: English - Dutch
Another thing we discussed is the Bolkestein-directive (Dutch - English) wich is almost equally, but only about the circulation of services (including education!) in the European Union. You can say "why not? It's good that I can go to an Irish school here in Flanders for example", but then you're falling under the Irish law. For example in Poland you don't have that much privacy-protection and social-protection as you have here, you don't have that good environment-protection as you have here and you also don't have that good educational quality as you have here because our final terms (directed by the Flemish Government) would be appropriate anymore. It can have a very big impact here and can reduce our very good social and environmental protection systems. So, please, sign the petition against that directive. A few days ago, I also red an article in the newspaper about a change of the Bolkestein directive: the "county of origin" part should be modified so that if they start here a Polish school/company, they're falling under our laws instead of the Polish ones. Seems a good evolution then.
International student representation/politics, I like it more and more. It gets more interesting every day.

At VTK, I think our firewall is ready. Now I just need to find out how to configure the DNS-server and then we can give it a test. Tomorrow we'll decide how many people our praesidium will count next year. We also have to vote if "computer" will remain with two people or not. Let's see...

My girlfriend is sick, she has the flu. Seems very hard for her. She's got tears in her eyes from her sore throat and has to throw up. Let's hope I don't get it from her.

Influenza Virus photo

Some good news about the Workgroup Free Software! With the very busy first semester and the exams, it has been very quite around it. But now, I think it's time for a revival. Pieter has sent an e-mail about a linux-lesson with a liveCD to let the people meet linux in a safe environment without any risk. Seems a very good plan to demonstrate the power of linux, liveCD's and free software. A lesson about image manipulation with The Gimp is also in the running. Now, a meeting should be planned quite fast to organise those things. Normally, the meeting'll be on wednesday, 17h15 @ VTK. Feel free to join us! Let's hope it's a big succes and that it can open the eyes of lots of people for the power of free software!

Wilber, The GIMP mascotte

While searching for the nice image above, I also found these interesting links: Linux and Scooby-Doo, GIMP's Film Version and The CinePaint Project.