I have a decent computer with a large hard drive. My initial intent was to boot multiple different operating systems (as can be seen by the 6+ EXT3 partitions). However the latest technology hype is the need for virtualization or emulation. In effect, this would allow loading one operating system inside another without any reboot. I use the term “hype” because the consumer demand (i.e. non admins, non developers, people with real lives) is very low.

A fellow developer created a driver for the keys on the Fujitsu Stylistic webpad. The driver is available under the GPL at sourceforge: Stylistic ST4000 Key Driver. I do hope that people find this useful. And for any of the other developers who make come across this, all contributions are appreciated.

AMD released their first X86 based 64 bit processor over 3 years ago. While the original processors, Opterons, were for servers, the desktop variants, Athlon 64, soon followed. Due to the open nature of the Linux kernel, distributions of Linux supporting the 64 bit architecture were readily (and freely) available before Windows. In the past year, the Athlon 64 has made its way into laptops and more users are finding 64 bit versions of their favorite Linux distributions satisfactory for their needs.

Over the last weekend I installed Fedora Core 5 on a Dell Latitude D810 laptop. Unlike Jason’s laptop criteria, I basically required a Dell laptop. I wanted the D610, however it was unavailable and I had to settle for the D810. Even though I customized it, I really did not have any control over what hardware specifically would be better for Linux. However one luxury I was afforded was to be able to maximize the provided features.

Nvidia recently released an update (1.0-8174) to their high performance Linux video card drivers. Usually driver releases are done to support new hardware. In this case SLI series video cards and others such as the GeForce 6100, GeForce 6150 and GeForce 7800 GTX 512. Other than the driver itself, there were some significant changes made. There is finally an HTML Readme. Previously the text based file was very hard to navigate.