Alphatek - Steven’s Tech Blog

I didn’t see it until now, but VirtualBox version 1.6 was released a couple of days ago. You can get it on Sun’s website. Interestingly, there is already a binary for Fedora 9 but I think there is a typo in the drop box…”Fedora 9 AMD” is probably the 64-Bit version.

Changelog:

• The new Sun livery
• Solaris and Mac versions no longer in beta
• Guest Additions for Solaris
• Seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests
• SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM (first product in the industry to do SATA!)
• PAE support for guests (memory model required by some server OSes)
• Web Services API for remote management
• Significant improvements to scalability

I’m using wireless home routers and Access Points since a very long time, I remember when I paid up to 200€ for an early Linksys 802.11b Access Point. The only problem I have with them, is that they always die horribly after a while. Let’s go back in my router-love history…I had the following products:

• 2x Linksys WAP11: the power supply died and burned the whole PCB. They both lasted 1 year.
• Linksys WAP54G: the power supply also died after a long agony during which the wireless connection was less and less reliable. It lasted 2 years.
• D-Link DI-824VUP+: the wireless connection was never reliable and the supposed PPTP VPN-server function never worked. They stopped to support the product roughly 6 months after it was released. The biggest piece of shit I ever had. It’s still in operation as a purely Ethernet router.
• D-Link DI-524: the wireless part of the router died today. It lasted 2 years. It had a very short signal range too.

Today, I replaced the DI-524 with a brand new ZyXEL NBG334W and god is it better! Simply by looking at the Web interface and the manual, you can tell that this product is in an other class. It’s a real configuration interface, with options you need and you can also access it via Telnet. Forget Linksys’ or D-Link’s Playmobile interface. The signal strength and range are good too.

ZyXEL always had a good reputation, we used a lot of their products at work but I never tried their home products. At around 30€, it’s not that expensive. Note the nice “Guest WLAN” function.

Sometimes, you may wonder why you should buy “expensive” hardware instead of el-cheapo-made-in-China stuff. Well, here is an example why the certifications and safety norms are important, and why you should pay a couple of € more to get a better quality:

This is what happens to a Heden PSX-A830 power supply under normal load. 2 of these PSU’s were tested with the same result. It is simply DANGEROUS, it should die by itself and not plunge your whole house in the dark. You should know that Heden is a purely commercial brand designed by Chinese manufacturers to sell cheap power supplies in Europe under a single name.

This is part of a french article from a friend (Doc Teraboule) at Canard PC.

Nah, this isn’t true, but it’s a catchy title don’t you think? There is just a fun phrase from Linus - I created Linux - Torvalds on RedHat’s Bugzilla page, precisely in the following post regarding a flash issue with YouTube: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858

The quote is at the end:

Additional info: This is “high” priority because the wife will kill me if she doesn’t have her videos. And the adobe player won’t install on current rawhide due to some library issues.

Note: his wife is a six-time Finnish national Karate champion:)

A friend told me to look at the “Why do people laugh at creationists?” videos on YouTube. It’s amazing how these creationists (aka Intelligent Design) can be stupid by mixing religion and science. The scary thing about these people, is that they use pseudo-scientific explanations that uneducated people could easily believe, everyone with a little knowledge should fight them.

Ok, here is one video of the series…it’s depressing. Why is the media covering these people in the first place?

A guy pointed out a very funny and geeky website on the fedora-fr forum today: xkcd: a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.

Prepare yourself to lose the next 2h of your life on this website

Hi all,

After a few months, I finally decided to convert the old alphatek.info (which was in French) to a more personal blog about Linux. I often come across interesting articles and howtos when I have to solve problems for my work, and some of these tricks are worth sharing.

So this blog will act as my very own personal shoutbox when it comes to Linux related things. I’m personally using Fedora as the main OS on my laptop, and CentOS on the servers I manage, so I will be focusing on the RedHat world a bit more than on the rest.