Bits By The Pound

It looks like, contrary to what Dell says, the Inspiron 1720 will
support 6Gb of RAM (4+2).  The chipset actually supports 8Gb but a bug
in BIOS prevents it from being loaded up with 8Gb.

LCD panel failed and keyboard is flakey. Debugging over the phone with Dell tech support, opened up the laptop and reseated the LCD and keyboard panels but this did no good. Returned laptop to Dell and it came back with everything working fine.

If you are gaming, it requires Compiz disabled most of the time. I tried turning off compiz through the menu and setting special effects to off, but this ends up losing all compiz preferences that were set. To prevent it from losing your preferences, try the following from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=858569. Works great and a lot faster.

Turning it off:

Press Alt+F2. In the dialog box type:

metacity --replace

Turning it on:

Press Alt+F2. In the dialog box type:

compiz --replace

2Gb is not really enough memory if you are doing any sort of Java development and you tend to open multiple copies of Eclipse.

4Gb is better, but unless you are running a 64bit OS, there is a significant amount of the address space that is eaten up my memory mapped IO, resulting in only effectively 3.2Gb or so.

If a file named /fastboot exists, fsck will not be run on the next boot; useful when you’re going to give a presentation.

If a file named /forcefsck exists, the file system will be checked at the next boot, resetting the 30-mount count.

To create one of these files, you will need root permission: run

$ sudo touch /fastboot

or

$ sudo touch /forcefsck

After some pretty disappointing experiences with VMWare on Ubuntu, I tried out VirtualBox.

WinXP runs very fast in VirtualBox.

Use the non-open source version of VirtualBox. Do not install the virtualbox-ose version from the Gutsy repos or else you do not get USB support.

Add following line /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian gutsy non-free

The innotek public key for apt-secure can be downloaded here. You can add this key with

apt-key add innotek.asc

You may need to install some additional libraries on your Linux system in order to run VirtualBox (I didn’t)- in particular, you will need libxalan-c, libxerces-c and version 5 of libstdc++.

Now install VirtualBox from synaptic.

The following is required to get USB support working.

Edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/40-

#
    # Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
    #
    #mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs

    #domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
    #ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
    #mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

#
     # Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
     #
     mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs

     domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
     ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
     mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

From the FAQ at http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ

Q: How can I export data?

A: There’s an XSLT at http://xslfactory.free.fr/ which can transform a gnucash XML file to a big gnumeric spreadsheet. The Workbook will contain several sheets; One with all the accounts, a diary with all the transactions, and on sheet by account with all the transactions. Prior to running the transform, you’ll need to edit the gnucash XML file (preferably a copy of it) to include xmlns data. (Note however that as at 24th Apr ’04 it doesn’t include support for business objects, eg: invoices.)

There is also http://gnucashtoqif.sourceforge.net/ which is a Java program that can transform a gnucash XML file to a QIF file.

As of the 2.0 release series, the GnuCash data file may be compressed. Just gunzip the data file to see the raw XML. Alternatively you can change the saving state of the GnuCash data file by going to the General tabbed page in GnuCash Preferences dialog box (Edit->Preferences->General) and toggle the compression feature.

There exist some scripts to move gnucash data into a mysql database

Backup your xorg.conf file first. Really. You have been warned.

• Plug in the svideo cable to your TV
• Optional: Turn off extra effects (compiz) to gain more screen area if you are running AWN
• Reboot Linux
• Will boot on laptop LCD but once it gets to GDM will put output on both laptop and TV. Screen resolution will be automatically reduced.
• When done, remove svideo cable and reboot laptop to get to original configuration.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

Excess drive activity is causing drive wear.

Fixed in Jaunty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_accounting_software

The demo for tiny-erp is quite impressive.