Shit They Didn’t tell You About DRI

Extra-short post, stemming from my general annoyance at the difficulty with which I enabled DRI on my latest laptop. You see, there are MANY factors that all come into play, many of which are described in detail at the DRI wiki.. I, however, had to spend an annoyingly long time reading to get it working. Here’s a quick step-by-step for getting it working on a clean (with X) Arch install:

1. Install drivers! Package names for X drivers are formatted as such: xf86-<class>-<driver>. For an Intel video driver, for example, it’d be xf86-video-intel. That should grab DRI packages for that driver as well. For Intel, that’d be intel-dri. In case you forgot or something, you’ll want to install it with pacman -Syu <package> as root.
2. Break out the text editor! Run your editor of choice (nano, vi, gedit, mousepad, etc.) as root, then paste the following in:
   Section “DRI”
   Mode 0666
   EndSection
3. Save that file as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-dri.conf, then quit your editor.
4. Run gpasswd -a <user> video, where <user> is your username, as root.
5. Reboot!
6. Start X!
7. Play Minecraft or similar, revel in the rendering!
8. Profit?

Hope you enjoyed it, and I hope it got you working… leave feedback in the comments!

New Laptop

The title of this post is actually rather misleading, as one might assume that it refers to the first new laptop I have acquired since my last post to this blog. That, however, is not the case. I have actually acquired several laptops, of varying age and performance, since my last post, but I shall save the complete list for a future post. This post shall be dedicated to my latest acquisition, a Dell Latitude D610.  Many of my readers may immediately recognise this as a model that is seemingly ubiquitous in schools and corporate workplaces, and indeed it is to an extent. For example, approximately 20 feet behind me and to the left is a similar laptop, owned by the school. Most of this school’s laptop fleet is made up of this model of laptop, and both of the schools I attended before Compass had similar fleets. Now, for a moment, I’d like to focus on the reason for this model (or, more accurately, series’) apparent ubiquity; its IT-friendliness. The entire Latitude D series is made up of laptops that have many interchangeable components, are easy and fast to disassemble and reassemble, and have relatively inexpensive replacement parts. These factors are, of course, just as attractive to me as they are to IT departments, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons. I enjoy the flexibility of upgrading offered by these laptops, the potential for modding, and the robust stock feature set, as well as the comfortable form factor and wide range of peripherals available. IT departments enjoy the speed with which they can return laptops, working, to their fellow (non-IT) employees, the ease with which they can return a laptop with a failed part to the field, often by simply swapping the part out of another laptop. They also appreciate the fact that they can simply move a “dead” laptop’s hard drive into a “live” laptop to keep all of its data without having to reinstall drivers or reconfigure any part of the operating system (in the case of windows, at least).

Now that I’ve covered some of the advantages of this laptop series, I’ll proceed to my specific laptop. First, the specifications:

• 2.00 GHz Pentium M (Pentium 4 Based)
• 2 GB RAM (Upgraded from 1 GB)
• 80 GB HDD (Upgraded from 40 GB)
• 14″ 1024×768 LCD
• Intel 915 GM Express graphics
• Broadcom BCM4306 a/b/g WiFi
• Dell Bluetooth adapter
• DVD-R/RW Module
• CD-R/RW/DVD Module
• Floppy Module
• Dell Latitude D/Dock
• ~2 hour battery

I swapped it for an iBook G3 14″/900 MHz with 576 MB of RAM, so I believe it was an excellent trade. The only real downside is that I don’t actually have a power cord for it, so I have to charge it on the docking station. To tell the truth, however, the docking station itself is enough of an upside to justify the loss of convenience.

When I first got it, there was an admin password on the BIOS, which was a significant reason for the ease with which I obtained it… I quickly removed the password with the help of the absolutely amazing Dogbert, whose blog can be found at http://dogber1.blogspot.com.

I’ve installed Arch Linux on it, as per usual, and it runs GNOME-Shell marvelously. As of now, it’s yet to stutter on any task I’ve put to it, and I believe it’s a very well-specced laptop. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about it in the future, but at the moment I believe I shall conclude this post. Farewell, and please do look forward to my future posts, which shall hopefully become more frequent.

– platnicat

Music on Slow Computer

The Grand Return!

After not blogging for a very long time, I return! A lot of stuff has changed, but I won’t detail it here… just ask! As for projects, I have a NetPliance i-Opener I’m screwing with, and I have tons of new computers. Stick around!

cd ~ (Webcomic #1)

Hey all, it’s my first post in ages, and it marks the start of my webcomic! However, I have NO IDEA what to call it, so I’d love it if all 1 reader left his opinion in the comment. Enjoy!

cd ~

My Birthday

Hello all, I am writing this at the end of the day on my birthday. I felt that I ought to share what I got and did with the blogosphere, so here goes:
In the morning, I got up, got dressed, and took out the ingredients for my cake. Then, I “subtly” dropped hints that I’d like to see my presents. They were:
A new iPod touch (I dropped my old one)
A SuperDrive for my ThinkPad
And, tickets to Alice in Wonderland, which we went to see.

After seeing Alice in Wonderland, we came back home and ate cake. There really isn’t much else to it.

Boredom Spawns Writings!

Here is a completely context-free story for your enjoyment!

(Yes, I wrote it)

Hi. My name is Skwigly, and this is a little story of an adventure I had a day in my life.

One day, I was running around with Coza, causing general minor mayhem, as is our custom, when I came upon a small bulldozer half-buried in some sand. Being a shape-shifter, I became a digdevice, which is a member of the group “You have to see it to understand it”, and excavated the bulldozer. This accomplished, I immediately became a hoverplate, which is like a plate but with hovering capabilities, and transported the bulldozer to a pentapus refurbishment device. Here, I restored the bulldozer to its operating condition, installed an electro-synthesis engine, and proceeded to drive it along the streets of the Pentapus World, happily humming human songs such as One by Three Dog Night. As I drove, I came to a music store, which existed purely for the purpose of allowing pentapi to listen to music of all types in a central location. Exiting my bulldozer, I went inside. The song that was playing at the time was Visions by The Eagles, which I believe is a wonderful song for exuberantly dancing to. I did so, shifting forms every few seconds, so that the attention of the entire place was upon me. Once the song changed to Octopus’ Garden by The Beatles, I felt it would be more appropriate to allow the pentapi to dance. As the song played, I decided that at its end I would leave so as to go somewhere else in my bulldozer. The next song, which I heard snippets of as I left, was Life in the Fast Lane by The Eagles, which I knew quite well, so I hummed it as I sped along the road. The next place I came to was a grocery store, where I bought a bottle of 1337-Ju1c3, which is a common drink for those as 1337 as I am. The song that was playing over the store’s speakers as I checked out was I’m Only Sleeping (Take 1) by The Beatles, which I felt was a good song to meet my feelings, as by this time I was quite sleepy. After I registered my juice purchase, I drove my bulldozer back to Coza’s house, where I drank my 1337-Ju1c3 and went to my room to listen to more music. I fell asleep to the tune of I’ll Cry Instead by The Beatles.

Note from Matt: This was INTENDED to be written in a tangential and slightly odd style.