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Carefully, Correctly Wrong
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| Debian GNU/Linux Lenny on Lenovo 3000 N200 |
[Jul. 20th, 2008|10:45 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | debian, laptop | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Shriekback - "Nemesis" | ] |
So far my experience of this laptop has been good. I installed Debian GNU/Linux amd64 "Lenny", which is still the testing release, using the "beta 2" installer. This is a slightly older version of Lenny than currently available (it's a moving target until it's released).
The lack of a middle button for the touchpad is annoying but liveable with. The placing of Page Up and Down next to the arrow keys is very neat, and it's pretty simple to hit the function modifier to turn them into Home and End too. Annoyingly, the volume up/down/mute buttons don't Just Work like they do on my ThinkPad. To get them working, I had to use xev to work out the keycodes for them, which let me generate the following xmodmap config:
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
I haven't worked out yet how to make this available globally, or indeed outside of X; more investigation is needed.
The main reason I bought this laptop was for its 1680x1050 widescreen display, and this worked straight out of the box, with the free nv driver for nVidia chipsets. I could get some 3D acceleration with the proprietary driver, but I don't want to do that. I'll keep a vague eye on the Nouveau project though.
The wired ethernet works just fine, and the wireless was simple once I remembered to turn off the "kill switch" on the laptop. It's an Intel 4965AG, which according to Intel has drivers in kernel 2.6.24 and up; I just needed to install the firmware-iwlwifi package.
My current niggle which I will be attempting to solve today is that the touchpad's "tap-to-click" function is way too sensitive. It seems to be a Synaptics-type device which means it should be pretty configurable.
I've also been playing with PowerTop and need to find some way to disable the Bluetooth adapter (which uses the same killswitch as the wifi, annoyingly) by default - it seems to be a pretty major power drain. I've not measured battery life as yet.
The webcam seems to be supported by Linux UVC. This isn't included in Lenny's kernel by default, but can be compiled in with module-assistant auto-install linux-uvc. However, the current Lenny version (r193) is not new enough to support the webcam; I had to use an upstream Subversion checkout (r238) to get it working with luvcview. To work with Ekiga I need to install libpt-plugins-v4l2 - currently broken in Lenny. However, libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l2 works as a workaround for now.
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| "Military Pride" and the Imperial War Museum North |
[Jul. 20th, 2008|12:15 pm] |
I suppose while I'm lying in bed it makes sense to scribble something about last weekend's trip to the Imperial War Museum North. Thanks to a lift with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) haggis and fluffyarmadillo, we arrived there with relative ease. The bag search at the entrance was a little disconcerting, though they didn't complain about my crisps and tuna mayo sarnies which I'd brought along to save a little cash. We obtained a natty purple wheelchair for greyeyedeve, and headed off into the museum.
The first exhibition was the Horrible Histories Frightful First World War which was aimed at kids but entertaining nonetheless. Being a big kid myself, I could have spent hours at the interactive projected trench floor where you could splat rats by stepping on them; Eve's wheelchair was particularly good for this. The exhibition tries to engage as many senses as possible; the olfactory exhibits were a bit too much for my delicate sense of smell.
Afterwards, we tried to find our way to the Military Pride exhibition. It wasn't mentioned on the leaflet we'd picked up at the front desk, and didn't seem to be signposted anywhere. Eventually Daz stumbled across it while looking for the loos. The Waterway is the name of the 20-foot-long corridor leading from the main exhibitions to the café. The exhibition was painted on the walls of a busy gangway. All in all, it was horribly disappointing; it concentrates almost exclusively on history since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, has very little content other than a timeline of LGBT reform with a slight emphasis on military regulation, and a small number of short quotes from service members.
As you might expect from an exhibition created with assistance from Stonewall, the B and T words were almost entirely missing - the B word popped up in someone's quote, the T word with reference to a specific case of trans discrimination by the MoD. All in all, it was short on detail, short on inclusion, and short on historical depth. I was hoping to learn more about life in the trenches for gay and bisexual soldiers (I can hear apiphile drooling from here), international perspectives, the blind eye turned to homosexuality among the Allies in World War 2, compared to the gay-hating Nazis, or even the Americans in Vietnam.
On 16th August there's a chance to go to the IWMN in the evening and question the curators of the exhibit; if somebody wanted to go and call for a more in-depth and inclusive exhibition on a larger scale, that would be great.
In the shop afterwards, I bought a WW2 UK National Identity Card for myself, and a postcard for ms_saffie. We went up in the viewing tower (leaving v15u4l_3rr0r downstairs) and caught a wonderful view of Salford Quays and the Lowry Centre in the sunshine. |
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sleepy