Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

Hm, time for some nostalgia. The original Sim City game is now GPL'd under the new name Micropolis, and currently being packaged for Debian. There goes my 3.7 minutes of spare time per day...

If you're into such games, the Lincity clone has been around for some time now, too. And, as I found out yesterday, there's also Lincity-NG, which is a more recent clone with better (3D/isometric) graphics, sound, etc.

$ apt-get install lincity-ng

(run it as lincity-ng --sdl if you don't have 3D-accelerated drivers)

Have fun!

Very nice tool I recently discovered: ink, a small tool using libinklevel, used to query the ink level of your printer (USB or parallel). In my case this is an Epson Stylus DX4200 (which works very nicely and out of the box btw).

Installation:

$ apt-get install ink

Usage:

$ ink -p usb
ink v0.4.1 © 2007 Markus Heinz

EPSON Stylus DX4200

Cyan:                          76%
Magenta:                       76%
Yellow:                        76%
Photoblack:                    72%

Graphical ink level display:

$ apt-get install qink

Another nice tool built upon libinklevel is called qink, which is a QT-based GUI which displays the same information graphically (see screenshot).

A list of printers supported by libinklevel is available.

Since the "World's First Motherboard Using LinuxBIOS Released" hype at the beginning of this year (which was incorrect btw; it was not the first supported desktop board, there were many others before), LinuxBIOS hasn't been in the news very much. That doesn't mean that there was no progress, however. We've been working hard behind the scenes to improve the LinuxBIOS code, add support for new chipsets and boards, and advance the upcoming next-generation LinuxBIOSv3 version which will brings lots of great improvements in various areas.

Here's a random collection of stuff that happened in the last few months.

New chipsets:

• AMD K8 / NVIDIA MCP55, contributed by Yinghai Lu of AMD
• VIA VT82C686A/B southbridge, contributed by Corey Osgood
• AMD Geode LX / CS5536, contributed by Marc Jones and Jordan Crouse of AMD
• Intel 810 northbridge, contributed by Corey Osgood
• AMD K8 / VIA K8T890 / VT8237R, contributed by Rudolf Marek / Corey Osgood
• AMD K8 / SiS761GX / SiS966(L), contributed by Morgan Tsai of SiS

New mainboards:

• Sun Ultra40, contributed by Ronald G. Minnich (LinuxBIOS project founder)
• K9SD Master-S2R (MS-9185), contributed by Bingxun Shi of MSI
• K9SD Master Series (MS-9282), contributed by Bingxun Shi of MSI
• GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4, contributed by Yinghai Lu of AMD
• NVIDIA l1_2pvv, contributed by Yinghai Lu of AMD
• Supermicro H8DMR, contributed by Yinghai Lu of AMD
• Tyan S2912, contributed by Yinghai Lu of AMD
• Tyan S1846, contributed by myself
• AMD Norwich (AMD Geode LX reference platform), contributed by Marc Jones and Jordan Crouse of AMD
• IGEL Winnet III thin client, contributed by myself
• ASUS A8N-E, contributed by Phillip Degler
• IEI JUKI-511P, contributed by Nikolay Petukhov
• IEI ROCKY-512, contributed by Nikolay Petukhov
• AMD DB800 (a.k.a. Salsa), contributed by Marc Jones and Jordan Crouse of AMD
• ASUS MEW-VM, contributed by Corey Osgood
• Artec Group DBE61, contributed by Marc Jones and Jordan Crouse of AMD
• PC Engines ALIX.1C, contributed by Ronald G. Minnich
• MSI MS-6178, contributed by myself
• MSI MS-7260 (K9N Neo), contributed by myself
• IGEL-316 thin client, contributed by Jürgen Beisert
• AXUS TC320 thin client, contributed by Jürgen Beisert
• GIGABYTE GA-2761GXDK (Churchill), contributed by Morgan Tsai of SiS
• And a bunch of older Intel 440BX based boards, contributed by myself with some help by testers via IRC: ASUS P2B/P2B-F/P3B-F, A-Trend ATC-6220, AZZA PT-6IBD, Biostar M6TBA, Compaq Deskpro EN SFF P600, GIGABYTE GA-6BXC
• ASUS A8V-E SE, contributed by Rudolf Marek

Note that not all of these may be 100% supported, some may still be work in progress with some TODO items left... Check the LinuxBIOS wiki or ask on the mailing list for details.

The future

Most work will probably go into LinuxBIOSv3 in the future, in order to make it suitable for productive use.
Of course, work on new chipsets and boards will continue, too. For example the VIA CN700 chipset (plus Jetway J7F2WE board using it) is being worked on right now, probably also several others I don't know about.

Call for board testers

If you're interesting in trying out LinuxBIOS, please check the list of supported motherboards. If your board is not listed there, but the chipset is already supported we can probably add support for your board relatively easy with some testing help from you.

Please contact us on IRC or preferrably on the mailing list if you want to help get your board supported!

An (incomplete) list of good candidate boards for future support is available in the wiki.

Thanks!

We're very grateful for the many contributors who have helped us with testing and fixing existing code, or who even contributed code for new chipsets and motherboards. Thanks a lot!

Many thanks especially to all hardware vendors who have been supporting us or even actively contributed by submitting code for their chipsets or boards (recently or in the past), including AMD, SiS, VIA, MSI, Tyan, Artec Group, and many others. Your efforts are very appreciated. Thanks!

FYI, my new Miro packages (formerly known as Democracy Player) have now reached unstable.

After lots of ugly, ugly trouble with even getting a successful build (boost/python/dbus related, you don't want to know) the packages are back in shape now, with tons of fixed (or no longer reproducible) bugs and lots of upstream impovements and new features.

If you reported a bug against Democracy Player, please try the latest Miro package and check if it still occurs, thanks!

The upgrade should be seamless, your existing config and videos will be migrated from ~/.democracyplayer to ~/.miro automatically upon the first start of Miro.

Some of the new/fixed things in this release include:

• HTTP proxy support (uses the GNOME proxy settings, use gconf-editor to change them).
• Flash videos now play fine (non-jerky) and with sound!
• You can search various video sites (Youtube, Google video, etc.) online, and even save searches as channels.
• You can export your channel list into an OPML file (and also import OPML files, of course). I've been waiting for this for a very long time (it's a good way to backup your channel list, or move it to another machine)...
• Lots and lots of bugfixes and small enhancements, as usual.

Since a few days I'm a happy customer of Lichtblick, the biggest electric utility (Stromanbieter) in Germany which provides 100% green energy (or Ökostrom as it's called in Germany).

Why?

I was getting tired of all those hypocrites and liars (a.k.a. politicians) who keep on talking about global warming and renewable energy, but fail to produce any real results since many, many years now.

So I decided to do my (small) part to help reduce CO₂ emissions, the greenhouse effect, and global warming. After measuring the energy consumption of all my power-sucking devices and replacing or turning off some of them, and after replacing all lightbulbs with highly efficient energy saving lightbulbs, changing the electric utility was the next logical step.

First try (failed)

As probably almost everyone in Munich, I was a customer of the Stadtwerke München (SWM). According to the last electricity bill I got from them, their sources of energy are: 17% renewable energy, 83% fossil energy sources, 0% nuclear power. Well, at least they don't use nuclear power, that's a big plus IMO, but 83% polluting, fossil crap? Thanks, but no thanks.

So I opted to use their Ökostrom M-Natur tariff, which (they claim) provides 100% renewable energy. They use the so-called Aufpreismodell (sorry, German only), i.e. you pay a few cents extra per kWh, and this extra money is invested in renewable energy sources (mostly small hydropower plants around Munich).

As I found out a few hours later (d'oh!) this "Aufpreismodell" is not really ideal (you still pay a conventional electric utility instead of one with 100% renewable energy, for instance). In addition, I stubled over a petition for the city of Munich to stop investing in a new fossil fuel power plant (bituminous coal, to be more precise). Which I promptly signed (and which went to several local parties including the greens, the mayer of Munich, and others).
Now, this is what I call hypocritical behaviour — on the one side they claim/pretend to be environmentally friendly by promoting their "M-Natur" tariff, and at the same time they invest even more money in fossil fuels? WTF? Anyway, it seems the petition did have at least some impact, the aren't allowed to invest more money into that fossil fuel powerplant than they already did.

For me that was more than enough reason to immediately revoke my M-Natur tariff, and what's more, I switched to a completely different company now, Lichtblick (see also the respective Wikipedia page). I'm not willing to support such energy policies/politics with my money anymore.

Lichblick

Lichtblick is an Ökostromanbieter in Germany, supposedly the biggest one.
Their "energy mix" is 100% renewable energy (which is correct, unlike with SWM, as they do not own any additional fossil fuel plants). 76% of that is hydropower, FWIW.

Their prices may be a bit higher than those of conventional electric utilities, but not all that much; you might even pay less, depending on where you live and which tariff you have now. You can use their price calculator to find out.

Btw, some other good choices in Germany are Greenpeace energy, Elektrizitätswerke Schönau, and Naturstrom AG.

How the switch went

Easy. Grab the respective PDF, print it, fill in the required info, and send it to them. Alternatively, they also offer online registration. It'll take a few weeks until the switch is performed; they have to contact your current electric utility etc. In my case it took ca. 4 weeks.

There are no additional costs for switching. There is no "downtime" whatsoever (not even a few seconds), German law requires that you always reliably get your electricity 24/7 (and it indeed worked just fine for me).

So, that's that. From now on I'm happily using green energy all day (and night) long. I'm doing my part in Saving The Planet (tm) and I sleep a bit better at night...

P.S. No, I'm not getting paid by Lichtblick (or anybody else) to write this.