SwitchBL8’s gebazel – Page 30 – Whatever keeps me busy, annoys me, what I like and love or just find interesting, but often a place to put my mind at rest.

Scala on Ubuntu

Sep 232007

As I am experimenting (not more than that) with the Scala language, I needed to reinstall that in my Ubuntu 64-bits. The repositories only have version 2.3, whereas version 2.6 is already the final (as in: non-beta) version. Ubuntu is a fine OS, but it’s repositories are far from up-to-date (you need to modify your repositories-list to get Thunderbird 2, the regular repositories only have 1.5!).
So I uninstalled the 2.3 version and downloaded the sources. The Scala wiki has excellent instructions on how to build the binaries, so I decided to give it a go. I tried with Java 5 and with Java 6, and to no surprise the Java 6 version was built faster and ran the tests faster. Considerably faster: the Java 5 version ran all tests in 29 minutes, the Java 6 version in 23 minutes, about 20% faster.

As I just installed Oracle 10g (64 bits Linux version) I will try to do some Scala-Oracle tests. We’ll see.

I was thinking the same thing

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Sep 202007

I like this post. A lot. Thanks Paul.

Changing the AMD64-X2 cpu speed

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Sep 202007

Funny. I thought my system was fast since I had installed the AMD 64 X2 6000+. This thing has a dual-core at 3GHz (hence the 6000+). And indeed the system was a lot faster than my “old” Pentium4 2.66GHz. I just installed the cpufrequtils package. It turns out that cpufreq-info reveals that both CPU’s ran at 1GHz. So I changed that to 3GHz. Guess what I think of the system performance now?! 🙂

switchbl8@rrs01:~$ cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 002: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2006
Report errors and bugs to linux@brodo.de, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: powernow-k8
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0 1
  hardware limits: 1000 MHz - 3.00 GHz
  available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.80 GHz, 2.60 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.20 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.80 GHz, 1000 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: ondemand, powersave, userspace, conservative, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 1000 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
                  The governor "userspace" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 3.00 GHz.
analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: powernow-k8
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0 1
  hardware limits: 1000 MHz - 3.00 GHz
  available frequency steps: 3.00 GHz, 2.80 GHz, 2.60 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.20 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.80 GHz, 1000 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: ondemand, powersave, userspace, conservative, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 1000 MHz and 3.00 GHz.
                  The governor "userspace" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 3.00 GHz.

Netbeans 6 has gone beta

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Sep 182007

Finally, Netbeans 6 is out of its milestones period and has entered “beta 1” stage. I’ve already tested several milestones, so the beta1 predicate is only to scare the newbies away. The milestones were rocksolid already. Look here for details and downloads.

Disappointing 64bits experience

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Sep 162007

Sofar, I’m disappointed by the 64-bits experience. For starters, Solaris 10 would not even boot the DVD. Not the normal Solaris 10 DVD, nor the Solaris Express (latest build). The Express version got a little farther in the boot process, but gave up with some error too.

Ubuntu amd64 works. But that’s about it. I installed it on a different partition (duh!) but had to manually add it to the grub config of my 32-bit installation. If the install is recognizing my 32-bit installation and offers me to import my settings (which it did brilliantly) why not add the boot image to grub?
Firefox and Thunderbird2 are NOT in the Feisty AMD64 repositories. Getting them compiled from the sources is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a matter of “./configure;make“. You need to install many development libraries, create config-files (for which there are no examples in the tarball). Eventually I got the Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) sources working (not the standard tarball). For Firefox I installed Swiftweasel (the Epiphany browser does not even show its address and buttonbar), an optimized unbranded version of Firefox.

The soundcard on my motherboard (7.1 C-Media) is not supported (well). At best I get sound without the ability to control the volume. So I disabled the onboard soundcard and plugged my old Sound Blaster Live!1024 back in. It goes without saying that this card is properly supported.

More and more consumer PC’s and laptops have AMD Athlon64 X2 or Intel Core 2 Duo processor, both of which are 64-bits. If the 64-bits support will remain on this (Ubuntu) level, I can see a lot of happy Linux users switching BACK to a Microsoft OS. Don’t worry, I will not, but Vista has proper 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

So tell me, If Ubuntu amd64 is not the way, which Linux distro is?

BTW Very NOT disappointing is the performance of Ubuntu64. Things run just a little smoother than the 32-bits version. But it can be that 32-bit applications runs slower on a 64-bits processor. And of course the big version recognizes all of the 4GB of memory instead of only 3.5.

Soundproblem solved

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Sep 142007

Thanks to the Ubuntu-forums (they are there for a reason) I found out that the onboard sound of the AsRock AM2NF3 actually works as an USB-soundcard. You can verify this with the lsusb command. It should contain a device with a description like “C-Media Electronics, Inc.”. If that’s the case, go to System->Preferences->Sound and change the devices to “USB Audio”. The test-button besides each choice should play a sound now!

Also: install package lib64asound2.

Ubuntu saved the day

4 Responses »

Sep 142007

My PC died two days ago. I thought it was the powersupply, but it was the powersupply and the motherboard. I guess one caused the other to break.

I bought new hardware. P4 mobo’s are hard to get nowadays, so I decided to dive into: 64 bits. AMD’s are cheap nowadays, so I bought a Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (dual core, 3GHz each), a motherboard that had AGP (instead of PCI-e), 4GB of memory (4x1GB) and to complete it all: a 500GB SATA harddisk to replace two old, noisy, heat-producing SCSI disks.

Today I assembled the whole shebang. Whilst putting together the system, I was still in doubt whether I would install Solaris 10 64bits or Ubuntu Feisty 64bits. I like Ubuntu very much, but Sun has tons of experience in 64bits. And I like Solaris.

Not knowing what to expect when powering up the system, I could never have guessed I was in for a very very pleasant surprise. Not only did I get the normal Grub prompt, no, the system completely booted into my existing Ubuntu. Of course the devices in fstab had to be renamed, but that was it. Sound does not work, but that’s because I did not reinstall the soundcard (since the mobo has onboard 7.1 sound).

So here I am. Basically with a complete new system and my OS still runs as always. Are you paying attention, Mr. Gates?

Of course I still need to install Solaris/Ubuntu 64-bits, to use the new hardware to its extends. But that’s an exercise for later.

So whatever these socalled experts say about all the Ubuntu-blogging out there, trust me: Ubuntu rocks big time!

Powersupply fan does not rotate

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Sep 122007

That’s not good, now is it? The powerbounce just a couple of minutes ago and the several reboots for some reason broke the fan of the powersupply, which is getting quite hot now. Solved one problem, now I have another one. Like a broken central-heating boiler isn’t enough?

Ubuntu has some morons working on it

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Sep 122007

For some reason, my desktop bounced. I have a faulty drive in my system that has a VFAT on it that seems to been unclean or something. Leftover from the Great Windows Era. It’s okay, I don’t need it anyway. I can mount it though, so it’s in the fstab.
The system didn’t come up, because of the faulty filesystem. That happens sometimes, so I reboot again. It could not be autocorrected obviously. So, I rebooted again, now in recovery mode. Recoverymode does not check the root filesystem only, no, it checks ALL filesystems. So I can’t boot in recovery mode. How smart is that? It’s the brain fart of a moron, that’s what it is. Must be some Windows loser that thought Linux is just another OS. Unix does not need ALL filesystems to be okay. I will do that by hand. Unix people are capable of that. Fucking morons. The point of having several filesystems instead of one is for recovery purposes.

Now I need to find a bootable CD, mount the root filesystem, edit the fstab and reboot. This is just plain stupid.

WTC stairs

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Sep 112007

9/11 is a memorable day. We all remember the stories about people trying to get away via the stairways. The Scala team released version 2.6.0 final of the Scala-language today. Scala means steps / stairs. Let’s hope we can think of good things from now on when we talk about 9/11.

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