Upcoming guide (11/5 - 11/12)

Another week gone by, another Michigan State Spartan loss. As an avid Detroit sports fan, I am proud to say all of the current sports teams are doing well (except for the Spartans). The Lions are 5-2 going into today, the Red Wings are 11-2, and the Tigers just picked up Renteria at shortstop! Because of the fine play (and off season pickups) of the sports teams, this next week should get into some of the finer software available on Linux.

• Beryl - Beryl is a Windows-aero esque application for viewing desktop items in 3D. You can do all of your favorite things such as spinning around through Windows to cool drag and drop effects. I am going to compile from source and grab a Debian package and see if there is a difference in speed.

• Civilization 4 - I have read that the early versions of this game do not run on Wine while the newer patched versions do. I'm going to take a stab at both and see what I can come up with. If you can't wait, you can always visit the Wine App Database and try for yourself.

• Ad Hoc Networking - This week I will also attempt to take a stab at doing some ad hoc networking between two laptops. Because this can be intensive and problematic to setup, the final tutorial may end up carrying over to next week.
  

Upcoming guides (10/29 - 11/4)

Howdy folks! I've been working on some guides I believe you will all find (somewhat) useful. Right now they're about half done and should be up sometime next week. I just flew out to Tennessee to celebrate the wedding of my step brother (Congrats Jeremy) while frantically trying to get some work done. I have been studying for a Calc III exam on exciting phenomena such as Lagrange multipliers and the second partials tests () while dealing with airports and delayed flights. Any who, here's what I've been working on:

• Setting up Battlefield 2 via Wine - The game works, but it has some major bugs. I thought I would post it as a project for some of the readers and I to work on.
• DVD ripping/burning with DVD Shrink and DVD Decryptor - This is just a variation of the tutorial posted by mrbass.org (or just click here if you can't wait). It will cover what specifically needs to be done on the Vostro to get it to work correctly.

That's it for now. If you have any software tutorial requests (within reason), I would be happy to work on it and post a guide up here. Until next time, I bid thee adieu!

Introduction

This blog addresses several issues that arise from installing Debian Linux (sid) on the Dell Vostro 1500. The Dell Vostro is a new widescreen laptop that is targeted towards small business/students that are looking for a sleek design matched with a powerful mix of peripherals, an impressive graphics card and a dual core processor. Here are the specs of my machine:

• Wifi: Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card - Works with light-moderate modification


• NIC: Broadcom BCM4401-B0 - Works out the box


• Sound: Intel 82801H – Works with light modification


• CD-R/DVD-R - Works (including cd/dvd burning)


• Video: 256MB nVidia 8600M GT – Works with light modification


• Integrated Mic: Intel Audio Device 82801H - Does not work


• Ram: 2GB DDR


• CPU: T7100 Core 2 Duo (1.8Ghz)


• Disk Drive: 120 GB SATA