Latest news from Darkbyte Software http://darkbyte.com/ (c)2002-2005 Darkbyte Software. All Rights Reserved. I've just finished installing Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) on my Acer 9303WSMi and first impressions are "WOW", which is what Vista was meant to do but didn't! I have to agree with K.Mandla it's so easy. Before I started I had a couple of requirements which I wanted Hardy to meet, mostly getting my hardware to work. Hardware results :- nVidia Geforce Go 7300 - Works perfectly with 'nv' and 'nvidia' drivers. Full 3D and Compiz Fusion. Realtak HD AC97 Audio - Works perfectly. nVidia 10/100/1000 LAN - Works perfectly. Atheros AR5005g with WPA - Works perfectly. Acer Orbicam (Bison USB 2.0) - Works perfectly. Texas Instruments SD Card Reader - Works perfectly. Suspend and Resume - Works perfectly. After installation I only needed to do 2 things in order to complete the installation. Go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers to enable the full 3D driver for the nVidia card. Go to Applications -> Add/Remove and Show "All available applications" and search for "Ubuntu restricted extras". After installing this Flash, Java, MP3, DivX and WMV (amongst others) support was complete. Compared to Vista this laptop is a speed-demon now. Everything is so responsive. Over the next few days I'll be really hammering this laptop to see how well Hardy stands up. In the meantime I've added an entry for the Acer Aspire 9303WSMi on the Ubuntu Wiki to keep a record of what works and what needs testing. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/18 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:28 EST Woohoo. Congrats to everyone at Canonical and the Ubuntu Development Teams. Ubuntu 8.04 is out. I'm currently downloading both the 64-bit desktop and 32-bit server disks so I can install them tonight. Happy days. Update: I've successfully upgraded my server from 7.10 to 8.04. Hardy rocks. It was the most painless upgrade I've ever done. I'm loving Ubuntu more and more. Next up wipe Vista from my laptop and upgrade it to Ubuntu 8.04 too. I don't think I'll be needing Windows any more. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/17 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:28 EST I have to say I've been looking forward to this for a while now. I'm absolutely sick of Windows Vista SP1 on my laptop (an Acer Aspire 9303) (Camaxtli). I've already ranted about Vista on many, many, many occasions and as of tomorrow I can kiss goodbye to Windows forever. I plan on running Ubuntu 8.04 as my primary OS from here on in. I've been playing with the Alphas, Betas and RC releases and all I can say is "I love it". I'll be posting a full howto on installing and running Ubuntu 8.04 on my Acer Aspire 9303 laptop soon. On another similar note my home server (Nyx) recently died. Its 10 year old CPU (Pentium III 450 Slot 1) burnt out so I've comissioned my Toshiba Portege 4000 laptop (Pentium III 750) to run as my new home server (Njord). It's currently running Ubuntu Server 7.10 from a 4Gb Compact Flash, and 44pin CFIDE adapter, brilliantly and, more importantly, silently. The only thing I needed to change was to specify a different network card to use ( from a Realtek 8139 to an Intel E100 ) and everything else in Ubuntu just worked, couldn't do that with Windows without a BSOD - INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE or some such nonsense. I'll be upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 Server tomorrow. Funny thing is I was never "Anti-Microsoft" until they released Vista. I always said "If it works don't knock it". In fact I still run a Windows XP Media Center 2005 box under my TV beacuse it just works, maybe MythTV is better under Ubuntu 8.04 so I'll give it another go. But for me Vista is broken. So before you all flame me I've never subscribed to the "Down with Microsoft, Up with Linux". Each side has its own positive and negative points. I just try to keep a balance and for me that balance means ditching Vista in favour of Ubuntu in order to get the best out of my laptop and help me remain productive in 2008. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/16 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:28 EST Well I've finally finished modifying the Wordpress template and launched the new Osmium Consortium website. One down and two to go. Here goes to completing them before the year is out. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/15 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:28 EST Today is a new day, a new year in fact, I don't normally do "New Years Resolutions" and I've just realised that I've been working on new versions of my 3 websites ( Darkbyte, Osmium Consortium and My DVD Collection ) for over 2 years and still haven't put anything on-line. I've reckon I've rewritten them 4 times during that time and still the old versions are on-line. So I've decided, seeing as its a new year and all, to complete each one this year, in fact I plan on taking my finger out and getting each one online over the next 12 months. 2008 is going to be the year I finally complete each project I've started. So what gave me the motivation to do all this? Guilt? Partially. I've come to notice that over the past year or so I've become very lazy. My home server is currently lying in pieces under my desk waiting for me to rebuild it, it used to host My DVD Collection Website, hence it's off-line, I've also got a couple of other Toshiba laptops, ( a Satellite Pro 4600 and a Portege 4000 ) still leaning up against the wall in need of a good re-prep *** SIGH *** But to be honest it was much, much simpler than that. It was Windows Vista. Yep. I've been running Windows Vista on my laptop, an Acer Aspire 9303 since I bought it and I've been trying to like it but I can't. I've used every other Microsoft operating system since Windows 3.11 and had been kind of happy with them, even though I thought WGA was a bit Orwellian. I had experimented with Ubuntu on my old Toshiba Satellite A30 and was able to get Beryl to run sweetly on the 32Mb (Shared Memory) Intel 852 graphics card, so I dual booted my Acer with Ubuntu but some software I needed to run at the time only ran well on Windows, unfortunately Wine couldn't run it and I didn't have time to work out why so I was stuck. Past tense. Now with the new year I no longer need to use any Windows software so I'll be wiping Windows Vista from my laptop and installing a variation of Ubuntu, probably Xubuntu instead. I honestly tried to like Windows Vista but it was incredibly slow, given it was running on an AMD x2 1.6 GHz Dual Core CPU with 2Gb of RAM, and Internet Explore constantly hung. It got to the point where I couldn't work on it for more than a couple of hours before it hung and needed to be rebooted. So fair well Microsoft I'd like to say it was fun but it wasn't. Roll on the open Source experience. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/14 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:28 EST For some unexplainable reason all entries from October 2006 to present are missing from the database and the site has reverted to it's old layout! Currently trying to restore from backups all missing content. "Who ordered the bamboo shoots to go with their fingernails?" Thanks, Alan. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/13 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:27 EST Right-click your mouse button on the Quicktime icon in your system tray, then click on Quicktime preferences in the popup menu that shows up,...then click on the Audio tab(it'll be on the top next to the other ones)....then change the sound out rates to the following: rate:48kHz or less size: 16 bit then click the Apply button on the bottom. then restart your iTunes. A rather simple fix but it's surprising Apple didn't come up with it on their own. Hopefully someone in charge of coding Quicktime will eventually fix the problem so it supports 24-bit sound. Found this on the Apple Support Forums. Kudos to NOWOOL for the solution. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/12 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST Well I've gotten Windows Vista RC1 and well it fared no better than Pre-RC1. Am I dissapointed? ... Yes Am I surprised? ... No. To be fair to Microsoft the problem is partly Toshibas fault but I can't help but remember that I was at least able to install Windows Vista Beta 2 when it was released, so perhaps they both need to take their fingers out. Needless to say I'm no longer interested in Windows Vista and won't be upgrading any of my systems to Vista for at least another year or two. Hopefully they'll have sorted out their act or gone bust! http://darkbyte.com/news.php/11 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST Well today I've downloaded Vista Pre RC1 DVD ISO and tried to install it on my Toshiba Satellite A30-104. Upon inserting the DVD and pressing a key at the prompt I got the standard black and white progress bar, however when it reached 100% and attempted to switch into the GUI installer I got a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!! which said ... A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps: "The BIOS in this system is not fully ACPI compliant. Please contact your system vendor for an updated BIOS." Technical Information *** STOP : 0x000000A5 ( 0x00000011, 0x00000007, 0xFFD0D010, 0x0100000E ) What the hell !!!! Even Beta 2 installed, wasn't perfect but installed, see my first Vista entry. Things seem to be getting worse. I checked with Toshiba and I'm running the latest BIOS. Ack! Being a paranoid kind of individual I tried the pre RC1 DVD on a Dell Optiplex GX240 and it booted into the GUI installer fine so I knew the DVD was OK. I must backup all the stuff on the GX240 and try Vista on it until Microsoft or Toshiba sort out this BIOS STOP. Maybe I'll be lucky. For the moment the bottom line is I'm seriously unimpressed with Vista and shan't be wasting my money buying a copy when it hits the shelves whenever. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/10 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST Well I finally got to try out Beta 2 of Vista last weekend, which I had managed to download from the Microsoft site before they closed its doors on the Beta test. I was looking forward to it because I'd heard a lot of mixed press about Vista and wanted to make up my own mind. My main system, a Toshiba Satellite A30-104 dualboots XP Home and Ubuntu perfectly, and I regularly switch between the two, however I do tend to do most of my day to day stuff in Ubuntu, e.g email, webbrowsing etc, and just run Windows XP when I need to do work on my Windows software. Visual Studio 2005 .NET Express Editions are really good, if Linux had IDE's like these... That said I'm not a Linux zealot and believe there is a place in this world for Windows and Linux equally on the desktop as well as the server, along with Mac OS X which is a sweet gem in itself. The system I chose as a guinea pig was my trusty Toshiba Satellite A30-104 notebook, it needed a reprep because I also wanted to do a fresh install of Ubuntu 6.06 now that my CDs arrived, so I thought why not dualboot Vista and Dapper. It's a pretty reasonable system with average specs, i.e. no funky hardware, but above all it's very stable and has NEVER crashed in XP or Ubuntu. FYI. Toshiba A30-104 Specs Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz 768 Mb DDR333 RAM 30 Gb ATA5 Harddrive DVD/CDRW Combo drive Intel integrated 852GM Graphics ( 32 - 64 Mb ) Realtek AC97 Audio Realtek 8139 10/100 NIC v.91 winmodem Ralink RT2500 PCMCIA 54Mbps Wireless card 2x USB2 ports 1 x Firewire 400 port External 320Gb USB Harddrive Nothing particularily spectacular I know, I didn't expect Vista Aero to work but thats OK because I've got a Dell desktop with a 128Mb nVidia to test Aero on. Being a big Linux fan, I'd run Ubuntu 5.10 ( Breezy Badger ) on this notebook which installs all the drivers out of the box, with the exception of the modem because it has a proprietry binary driver which when I manually installed it worked fine, by comparison I need to install every driver manually for Windows XP but thats OK Ubuntu came out in 2005 while XP came out in 2002 so it's to be expected. To set up my wireless in Ubuntu I just need to enter my SSID and WEP key et voila I'm surfing the 'net through my 4Mb cable connection. I've even created an unattended version of XP Home, using info from Microsofts website which can preinstall all my drivers. And this was my biggest issue with Vista. Drivers. The Saga The installation routine was slightly reminiscent of Linux installers. It booted up into a "live" Vista and asked for only a couple of details efore proceeding. I won't bore you with installation details as it was very simple and went smoothly. My problems began when I tried to use Vista. After booting into Vista for the first time I have to say it looked really pretty, even it's "Basic" theme was good looking but underneath it hid a nasty secret. First thing I did was to open Task Manager and check the Performance tab to see how big a hit it was on the system when idle ... 417Mb in use!!! That's more than half of the available memory. When XP and Ubuntu are running they use about 120 - 140 Mb ( depending on whether AntiVirus is running ). Whew, glad I can upgrade my laptop to 2Gb of RAM, looks like I'm gonna need it. Next I found Device Manager to see the state of my hardware and what a state it was. Both the Firewire and Realtek 8139 NIC had exclamation marks and there was an "Unknown Network Controller", my Ralink RT2500 wireless card ! Upon investigating the exclamation marks in Device Manager informed me that it was "unable to allocated enough resources to the device. Please disable some hardware ..." or words to that effect. So I disabled the Parallel Port, Firewire Port, Modem Port and PCMCIA Port and rebooted. No dice. No matter what I tried I couldn't get enough resources to enable the onboard Realtek 8139 NIC nor could I get my Ralink RT2500 to work so after wasting 3 days trying desperately to connect to my LAN and the internet I gave up. I don't think it's really worth the effort to continue trying to get a bog standard NIC up and running in Vista just so I could continue testing it. To me the problems with such a simple piece of kit has disheartened me. For now I'll stick with XP and Ubuntu on my notebook. Who knows when my new DVD Writer arrives next week I may try my luck with Vista on my Dell Optiplex GX240. In conclusion, this has been the most disappointing release from Microsoft to date. Previous companies I've worked for were involved with beta testing Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. In all cases their beta releases at least worked on Realtek 8139 NICs. I know this because I generally use only Realtek 8139, 3Com 3c905 or Intel 82559 NICs in my systems because they "just work", haven't managed to go gigabit yet. I even used an 8139 in an old PowerPC Mac running OS 8! Come on Microsoft surely you can do better than this! http://darkbyte.com/news.php/9 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST Great news has arrived for anyone who, like me, programs with Microsoft tools and a Microsoft language: the MSDN is now free to download. Sure, the whole thing is available online and searchable, but I've always enjoyed having my local copy. It's much faster than going out to the web, plus the search isn't nearly as bad. If you decide to download the MSDN, make sure that you have a relatively decent size chunk of hard drive space. It requires a minimum of 900 MB, and a full installation needs 1.9 GB. The download itself comes in three ISO images totaling about 1.6 GB. If you have an old version of the MSDN installed, this new edition will update it.  Microsoft's Rob Caron said that, including the May 2006 release, all future versions of the MSDN will be freely available. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/8 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST The stripped-down version of Microsoft's development tool will be available at no cost indefinitely.Microsoft has decided to continue indefinitely a free development tool offer it launched last year to better attract non-professional coders to Microsoft's software.The company said today that Visual Studio 2005 Express will be free permanently. When it was released for the first time, last November, Microsoft had said it would be free for a year.The software giant also detailed a number of partnerships to provide informational resources, including snippets of source code, to Express users.For example, Microsoft has created an application with Lego to program the company's Mindstorm buildable robots. Microsoft is also providing tips to part-time developers to do things such as programming digital cameras, said Dan Fernandez, lead product manager for Visual Studio Express."There is a resurgence in hobbyist and do-it-yourself developers," Fernandez said. "We want to enable the next generation of developers."Microsoft estimates that there are about 18m non-professional programmers. Fernandez said Visual Studio 2005 Express has been downloaded 5m times since last November.Providing software at no cost, particularly development tools, has become more commonplace with the swell in open source software offerings. Companies that cater to professional programmers, such as Sun and Microsoft, are eager to get their software into potential customers' hands.Microsoft also added more features to its free database, SQL Server 2005 Express.Visual Studio 2005 Express comes in different editions, including those for Visual Basic, C#, J#, C++ and a Web development version. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/7 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:26 EST Added a class to the PHP Library which can be used to Gzip webpages for reduced bandwidth usage, it will also set the mime type to "application/xhtml+xml" for browsers which support it, e.g Mozilla Firefox. This is useful if your webpages are XHTML compliant, however this Mime detection can be overridden to "text/html" if you are not serving XHTML pages. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/5 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 EST Added a snippet to the PHP Library to display the latest number of downloads of Firefox. A very simple PHP script to show how many times Firefox has been downloaded since v1.0 was launched on Nov 9th 2004. Update : 3rd August 2005 Added support for Thunderbird download count. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/4 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 EST Added a snippet to the PHP Library to support the no-www.org philosophy. Darkbyte Software is a Class B, which is currently the optimal no-www compliance level. To quote no-www.org No-www.org strives to make the Internet and communications about it as fruitful as possible. To that end, we make the modest proposal that website makers configure their main sites to be accessible by domain.com as well as www.domain.com. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/3 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 EST A simple Win32 function which calls the COM IShellLink interface. Written in C, allows an application to create a shortcut. Since I could only find MFC, .NET, VB or C++ code samples to create shortcuts I decided to write a pure C version for Win32 API programmers. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/2 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 EST Launched the new website today.  Hope you like the new layout.   The site is now split into several main sections. News · Contains all the news items, as the home page will only include the last 5 items. Products · Contains all the software written for Windows and/or Linux. Utilities · Contains some small useful utilities written for Windows and/or Linux. Library · Contains a lot of useful little snippets of C, PHP, VB and Win32 API for everyone to use. Your Computer - Shows how much information your computer "leaks" as you browse the internet. http://darkbyte.com/news.php/1 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 EST