Slashdot Mirror

• Ubuntu's security advisories
• Red Hat desktop Workstation (v. 5 client)

Browsing those, the first thing that pops out is that it covers all bugs originating from all the software that aren't installed in the default installation. I mean, Ubuntu's page lists advisories on PostgreSQL, MySQL, tetex, perl, PHP, emacs, CUPS, Thunderbird, ImageMagick, vim, etc... Is the idiot considering the reports regarding those software packages as an operating system vulnerability? The very same thing applies to RHEL Desktop Workstation. It lists both KDE and GNOME advisories along with packages like, again, PostgreSQL, Firefox, ruby, pam, CUPS, tomcat, fetchmail, squirrelmal, PHP, evolution, etc... Quite a few of those packages can't even run on the same system.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SeamlessVirtualization

http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/virtualbox-15-released-with-seamless-windows-integration/

You already do.

First point, about replacing. Same as with windowsupdate, they got crypto checking things.

Second point, about placing malware:
  1. Just about every software is delivered in source code format, and then compiled by the package maintainer, which also tweak the code to work fine with the distribution.
  2. To be a package maintainer you need to get thru quite a few steps, and the last part require meeting in person. You can read more about the process at http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/newdev

So, I see quite a few reasons for why it's much safer than plain old download.

Firefox 3 beta is available for download as a .deb at the bottom of the page.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/web/firefox-3.0

it will never call home

Yeah, you have a point there, I mean how many people really bought that Everex gPC, Oh thats right they sold out. Still, the Asus EEE is sitting on shelves right? No, ok but the Nokia n800, n810 is in the clearance bins right, Oh, no it's not. Well that doesn't mean people are going to use Linux, I mean who's ever even heard of Ubuntu. Still no large companies are going to support it. Unless you count IBM, Google, and Asus as big companies.

The buyer won't know Emacs. But he will have heard of Print Shop, Quicken, Paint Shop Pro and a hundred other programs that for him will be a damn sight more useful. Some people will desperately hold on to proprietary apps, just like they did in the days of Wordperfect. Hell, I clung to DOS well after most had made the switch. That does not mean that my kids will though. My 11 yr old has only ever used Linux, She could Gimp circles around most PSP users. She apt-gets all her software and wouldn't even think of plopping down a dime for application software. She has never even seen Emacs, although she is quite fond of OpenOffice and Inkscape.

Games, yeah again you have a point, It's not like she can play World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Halo, UT2004, Splinter Cell and Half Life 1 & 2, Oh yeah, she can and does. Not to Mention the truckload of Open Source Games available. See My Sig

I guess you don't really have a valid point then. Oh wait printers. Hp printers don't work, Unless ... https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsPrintersHp Those are only HP though, Oh wait, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsPrinters

So, what exactly is your point, I see now, Vista and OSX roxors. Sure they do. I know I like spending money for no good reason while at the same time annoying myself to death with shoddy security, and Overpriced Hardware & Software.

Best Troll ever.

Yeah, you have a point there, I mean how many people really bought that Everex gPC, Oh thats right they sold out. Still, the Asus EEE is sitting on shelves right? No, ok but the Nokia n800, n810 is in the clearance bins right, Oh, no it's not. Well that doesn't mean people are going to use Linux, I mean who's ever even heard of Ubuntu. Still no large companies are going to support it. Unless you count IBM, Google, and Asus as big companies.

The buyer won't know Emacs. But he will have heard of Print Shop, Quicken, Paint Shop Pro and a hundred other programs that for him will be a damn sight more useful. Some people will desperately hold on to proprietary apps, just like they did in the days of Wordperfect. Hell, I clung to DOS well after most had made the switch. That does not mean that my kids will though. My 11 yr old has only ever used Linux, She could Gimp circles around most PSP users. She apt-gets all her software and wouldn't even think of plopping down a dime for application software. She has never even seen Emacs, although she is quite fond of OpenOffice and Inkscape.

Games, yeah again you have a point, It's not like she can play World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Halo, UT2004, Splinter Cell and Half Life 1 & 2, Oh yeah, she can and does. Not to Mention the truckload of Open Source Games available. See My Sig

I guess you don't really have a valid point then. Oh wait printers. Hp printers don't work, Unless ... https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsPrintersHp Those are only HP though, Oh wait, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsPrinters

So, what exactly is your point, I see now, Vista and OSX roxors. Sure they do. I know I like spending money for no good reason while at the same time annoying myself to death with shoddy security, and Overpriced Hardware & Software.

Best Troll ever.

Lyx looks nice. Too bad it's not available for the most common desktop operating systems.

You're on to something there. Here is a sample of XP running under Ubuntu. It's stable, it can be secured. You can use all the free stuff that's a couple clicks away for all Linux users - an embarrassment of choices actually. It supports all of your processors and memory. It's updated more often. It's more secure - and not in the context of "the most secure Windows ever" either. It doesn't have millions of malware applications. Drive-by installs are unheard of. The only anti-virus available is just in case you happen to be serving mail to vulnerable Windows clients.

All that and you can open up a copy of your base VM and if it gets exploited or its configuration goes haywire or something you can just delete it and open a new copy. If it crashes it doesn't take the computer with it. You can keep all the licensed software you paid so much for - and your XP software doesn't expire or phone home and it works with everything XP does except a few games - and fewer every week. Using Samba you can share work folders from the real computer to the VM so your precious data isn't hostage to your flaky Windows environment any more than it must be in order to use all those Microsoft Apps in the first place. Remember to store stuff you care about in portable formats.

Yeah, I like that plan. When you upgrade your computer you can just copy the VM over and it will run again just fine. When you realize you haven't used it in a long time because Windows is like, so last century you can just move it to offline storage and forget it - or move it to a server and remote in. Migration has never been this easy before.

And portable in ways that Windows never has been? How running XP on the PS3 under linux grab you? It apparently grabbed the attention of 700,000 other people. Localization for the OS and apps on a scale Windows has never had and never will - the foreigners will like that.

And well, it looks nice too. From the number of views on this one I would say Vista users are suffering a little bling envy.

How is this not moving forward again?

... "Please protect your Windows investment! Don't use Microsoft products to access the Internet. Instead, go here to request a free (as in beer) CD with the latest anti-spam and anti-virus software. When your CD arrives, just place it in your CD-ROM, and reboot your computer before going on-line. You will then be able to surf the web in full comfort knowing that no viruses, spyware or spam will take over your machine. When you are ready to return to the full Genuine Windows Vista experience for running your favorite games, such as BSOD, simply reboot your machine and take the CD out of the CD-ROM before the reboot starts."

You only have to visit windozeupdate.com if you use windoze...

http://www.ubuntu.com/

also, fuck greedy, evil micro$oft!

If you're interested, here is the spec for LTS->LTS upgrades, it is marked as an "Essential" blueprint for 8.04.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTSUpgrades

Especially interesting is, near the bottom, the ability to allow a virtual upgrade of your existing system, without actually touching your existing system. If all goes smoothly, you know you're good to upgrade. If anything breaks, you just reboot into your unmolested Dapper install.

1. Ubuntu (and I guess that means kubuntu) is also moving to pulseaudio. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/CleanupAudioJumble for details. It's a high priority for hardy heron.
2. KDE's sound server has been outdated forever, and instead they're introducing a wrapper API that'll connect to other backends/sound servers that are in active development. The only thing you can draw out of that is that they've figured out that the backend implementation of the sound system shouldn't be part of KDE.

Personal preference more than anything. Ubuntu works for some but not for everyone. For me Ubuntu is too flaky and the community, while refreshing, can be about as stiff as any other out there. I'm not going to point fingers but some of the Ubuntu main contributors can be a little unpractical when solving problems. From my opinion, the community support I've encountered with fedora was almost non-existent or I was unaware of it completely. Their presence is a little more apparent now but like all communities they can be stiff.

I've kinda got stuck with Fedora and Red Hat. There were more RPMs that met my personal needs; driver support, development apps, etc. There has been more support for fedora/red hat apps without having to compile from source for as long as I can remember. deb systems can be hit and miss. I don't want to use some strangers compiled package. I would like to get packages from a reliable source. I don't want to compile packages every time there is an update. I don't want to watch RSS feeds to see when the updates are available. If I wanted to compile I would build from scratch. I'm not running my own distro here and to be honest it takes too much effort to do something like that. That's my argument for fedora.

For the CodecBuddy (Codeina Project Page), I'm disappointed. It's incomplete and its really called Codeina. The app doesn't do anything but inform the user of legal issues. It then redirects the user to a website to purchase from there. Codeina promises to install the codecs for you but in the end the user will have to do it manually. The app itself is hard to find but it's there. I haven't seen it popup on firstboot. I had to search for it in order to finally see what the whole hubbub was all about.

The whole respin is a good idea but falls apart when you attempt to use revisor. It's another incomplete project (ie.: current bug reports). I use kickstart with livecd-creator because they're stable and reliable. My biggest pet peeve with revisor is that you can only create livecd media. Installation respins fail regardless of architecture. Spinning a 64bit livecd from i386 desktop has been unavailable even though revisor provides options to do that type of task. Hopefully they fixed all of this with their last update from a few days back. I just don't have the time to check. It's a good idea but right now the command prompt app is the better choice.

With Ubuntu, the spins provided are based on either window managers or targets specific markets by generalizing what packages they might need. Respinning trims the fat from the bloat. Even then, Ubuntu has dependency hell written all over it (Ubuntu Desktop Package). I can't uninstall evolution without having to uninstall the majority of applications I need to have on my system. With Fedora and their respins I don't have to have it on my computer at all if I don't want it.

About the theme, it's alright but I still go to gnome-look.org/kde-look.org to get my themes. About PulseAudio: It runs. I still use jack, alsa, oss when it comes to running certain apps. It's seems like it might help with audio. I can't really tell, haven't had a problem with audio.

People complain a lot about RPM based systems. Apt is faster, that's a given. The Fedora team has improved yum quite a bit over the past couple of distros. Yum for FC6 was a pain and with SELinux, the whole update process was a bit of a chore. SELinux-corepolicies update pretty much fixes that problem. With Fedora it's always best to update from a terminal on firstboot. Just press ctrl+alt+f1, log into root, run "yum update" from there and it makes the process run much more smoothly. Afterwards, pup works great for updating the system. Yum is a lot faster than it used to be. On their site t

It gets better. Fedora is a "threat" to Ubuntu, but compared to Debian... He likes the "CodecBuddy" page, which looks a lot like the Ubuntu "Restricted Formats" page, but with less data in how to fix it free. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats He is a big fan of Pulse Audio, a feature he has not tried! As someone who was in the Gutsy testing, there is a damn good reason it is not default for everyone! This article had no content at all. Sounds like a press release from Microsoft.

No. You, sir, are full of crap. When you look at what's actually used and widely recognized in the world of Linux (especially for desktops), you'll plainly see that there are several "mainstream" distros that garner the lion's share of attention and represent the vast majority of the installed base:

In no particular order:

(1) Red Hat Linux

(2) Fedora Linux (community bleeding-edge source for Red Hat)

(2) Mandriva Linux (used to be Mandrake)

(3) Ubuntu Linux (plus variants, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc)

(4) SUSE Linux (owned by Novell these days)

(5) Gentoo Linux

Yes, we also have Debian, Slackware and many others that don't necessarily have huge commercial ties, but they're also the base for many commercial distros. You might be using Linux From Scratch, or one of several dozen other random distros with has an installed base of 100 users, but if that's the case you're pretty far from the average desktop or server Linux user.

My Apache logs tell the story pretty well. As Captial One might say, what's in your logfiles?

From the Read More section: AMD Release 900+ pages of GPU Specs.

There is a fairly stable closed source ATI driver from the AMD website that supports AIGLX (required for Compiz).

As for ATI open source drivers refer to this list. Copy and pasted for convenience:

Unsupported
X1300 / R515 based cards.
X1600 / R530 based cards.
X1800 / R520 based cards.
X1900 / R580 based cards.

2D acceleration only
Xpress 200M Northbridge integrated GPUs

Good 3D acceleration support
9500 / R300 based cards.
9600 / rv350 or rv360 based cards.
9700 / R300 based cards.
9800 / R350 or R360 based cards.
X300 / rv370 based cards.
X600 / rv380 based cards.
X700 / rv410 based cards.
X800 / R420 or R423 or R430 or R480 based cards.
X850 / R480 or R481 based cards.
X1050 / rv370 based cards.

Full 3D acceleration support
7000 / rv100 based cards.
7200 / R100 based cards.
7500 / rv200 based cards.
8X00 / R200 based cards.
9000 / rv250 based cards.
9100 / R200 based cards.
9200 / rv280 based cards.

Looking at the mailing list message linked from the article clears up things. Kubuntu 8.04 will not be "unsupported" - it will simply not be an LTS (long-term support) release. This means that it will "only" be supported for 18 months on the desktop instead of three years.

Also, the concern is not whether features will still be being added to 3.5, but whether bugs fill be fixed upstream. From TFM: "Will a bug in KDE 3.5 receive upstream attention in March 2011?"

Probably not, since it doesn't sound like you know very much.

Oh sorry? Did I offend you? Too bad.

Fortunately. I know more about this subject than you do. I know Mac hardware is not that well supported compared to most other x86 hardware out there.

There are lots of drivers on the Linux side that are missing for thing like wireless and webcams. If you think Linux has that all figured out, you're dreaming.

Lots? Okay. Tell me exactly which wireless drivers are not supported on Linux. Here is a list of wireless devices which can be seen as supported. So you will need to produce chipsets/wireless cards which are not on that list.

Anyway, you can run Linux on nearly anything. Why you would want it to replace OS X is beyond me, but you've got the choice. No lock in.

Here is why I wouldn't use OS X: The GUI does not work for me - I honestly hate it. The POSIX support is crap compared to even Windows (Windows is actually more compliant). The x11 server in OS X can't do drag and drop nor does it handle copy pasting that well. The core libraries don't even behave the same as other Unixes. OpenGL code that works on the BSDs, Linux, Solaris, Windows may not work right on OS X because OS X's implementation doesn't follow specifications properly. There is not really that great selection of linux/bsd tools available - Don't bother mentioning Finf since half of the stuff from it's repositories segfaults and has dependency issues that were solved long ago on Linux distributions (in other words, the tools don't work). The BSD subsystem in the XNU kernel can't even do POSIX signaling properly. Not to mention, developing any cross-platform applications on OS X is terrible (try compiling for other platforms - it's so difficult to get the environment setup). Not to mention my biggest gripe with OS X: It's slow. It's file systems are slower, it's slower at compiling, it's GUI is not as responsive as a Linux distribution running on the same hardware, despite the claim that the graphical engine in OS X is superior.

Your point being?????? Linux runs on just about anything.

True, but it runs very poorly on Macs. Most of devices either don't work or barely work.

Any hard-core graphic card for gaming is going to be a power burner, which is exactly what the Mac Mini form factor is not. It emphasizes size and power saving. So the Mac Mini wouldn't be for you.

You obviously don't know gamers. Not all gamers have unlimited cash, not all gamers have the choice to buy a machine just for gaming and so on. A computer with the Mac Mini specification's having the ability to be upgraded (better gfx card, soundcard) would be a very decent gaming machine.

Sorry, buddy. The lower end models in the PC world (especially Dell) cut corners everywhere, and it shows.

From what I've seen, people still upgrade components and they get better performance from it. Sure it may not be 100% the hardware can do, but it's enough to make people happy - and that is what is important.

If you want a very flexible hardware platform, you're going to be paying a lot for it. Most people don't upgrade anyway, and would rather not paying for the luxury of doing so.

I haven't needed to pay a lot for a flexible platform. Well, only when it come to Macs actually. You're entirely wrong.

The only systems that can do what I call proper hardware changes are made by Sun and IBM. Call me when you're able to hot swap a CPU and we'll talk, but that's off on a tangent.

Not relevant to this discussion either.

Duh. That's what you call a business model. If Apple doesn't want people running OS X on the cheapest hardware available, that's their call. Part of the "It Just Works" ability of Apple is that they concentrate their effo

Hmm. I don't see that sort of problem. Installing kruler on my Kubuntu desktop was trivial:

# apt-get install kruler
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
    kruler
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.6kB of archives.
After unpacking 340kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ dapper/universe kruler 4:3.5.2-0ubuntu6 [66.6kB]
Fetched 66.6kB in 1s (66.1kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package kruler.
(Reading database ... 117359 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking kruler (from .../kruler_4%3a3.5.2-0ubuntu6_i386.deb) ...
Setting up kruler (3.5.2-0ubuntu6) ...

Although I normally use Synaptic which makes package management even nicer.

Ubuntu people have abandoned PowerPC from official distro including G5, Apple introduced pure 64bit OS X for G5 with release of Leopard. If you upgrade to Leopard, you will have a pure 64bit capable OS which also happens to run 32bit stuff just fine.

Their reason was "Lack of new hardware". That was really noted by PowerPC users, not just iMac G5 people, XServe G5 and Quad/Dual G5 Workstation users too.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCReview

You can't compare OS X Leopard to Ubuntu Linux for a simple reason. It doesn't exist "officially" on PowerPC Mac. Ubuntu showed something real bad for its image after that decision.

Of course, there is always real Debian, Yellow Dog and others for PPC people.

Ubuntu 7.10

No need to thank me. Pay it forward, friend.

There is already Ubuntu code in Linspire, which you can pay for (w00t!).

Wait, last I checked, you merely had to tell people where to get the source. As all (x|edu|k)ubuntu distros have that built into the package manager, they -had- told people how to get the source.

I don't see the standard package manager anywhere in the MPAA UT Admin Guide (PDF). It appears to go straight from the splash screen to the "Peerwatch" configuration.

Besides, the GPL section 3 is pretty clear on this: if you're not distributing source code yourself (option a), or a written offer to sell it (option b), then you must "Accompany [the program] with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code". Unless you count disassembling the install CD, they haven't met this at all.

Or are you suggesting that each distro made from Ubuntu must have its own separate repository for the source? That clearly flies in the face of what already exists.

You're going to have to be more specific. I tried a random sampling of a few Ubuntu-derived distro, and I couldn't find one that didn't meet at least one of the GPL's 3 options:
- Xubuntu's download page has a "source" folder along with all the torrents
- MEPIS's store page has a "Need GPL source code but don't have an Internet connection?" link
- gNewSense seems to have *only* source code (SVN, etc.) on their software page
- Ichthux's download page says "1. Download Kubuntu" -- they're *just* a meta-package you install later

By the way, I don't see /etc/rc*.d to be going away anytime soon. If you think there is any important features missing from it, the best way to go is probably to file a wishlist bug in the bug tracking systems of the distributors.

It's being worked on.

DJB's approach to standards is to write his own incompatible version.

Right, since there isn't a standard right now...

As for user friendly, he can't even put the man pages where they can be found.

That's why I called it "trying".

Other than not watching for dead processes, what exactly is the problem with /etc/init.d?

Well, init.d is complete in the sense that brainfuck is Turing-complete.

Which is to say, it's actually awkward for quite a lot of things. For instance: networking.

On Gentoo, the way multiple network interfaces are dealt with is by assigning each of them an init script, all symlinked to the same one. Gentoo init scripts have dependencies, so I can have something depend on some or all of the network interfaces being up.

On Debian, this is dealt with by having one "networking" init script that then ties into its own init-like system for individual interfaces -- ifup/ifdown. I can force certain scripts to run after an interface comes up or goes down.

On Ubuntu desktops, this is dealt with by having a NetworkManager daemon (started by init.d) that handles everything itself, by communicating with a GUI. I'm fairly sure it uses ifup/ifdown in some way, as it seems to respect some of my static scripts.

Gentoo is the closest to the "right way", in that there's a unified way to start/stop something. That is, on Gentoo, I know I can stop a network device by doing /etc/init.d/net.eth1 stop. But Ubuntu's the most user-friendly way, because I can do it from a GUI, and, for instance, easily migrate between wireless networks.

Now, go read about upstart, for a completely different approach. In particular, the ability to receive "events" from, say, udev or HAL, means that the equivalent of "/etc/init.d/net.eth1 start" will be run when I plug a cable into eth1, without removing that functionality, or forcing it into a completely different system (ifup/down).

At least, that's how I think it would work. In practice, while Upstart is used in Ubuntu, it's mostly used just to launch all the old sysv rc scripts, which then launch things like NetworkManager.

Do you think MS will go down without a fight? Do you think that a company with almost limitless cash is going to be threatened by anything less than all-out war from the FOSS community?

I defy anyone to disprove any of my facts.

- No one is going to do anything about MS's monopoly.

- The monopoly will get worse.

- The only people who have a chance to break it are the geeks.

- Even then it would take a united effort from all of us.

Step1) Install Ubuntu
Step2) Turn on Compiz-Fusion
Step3) Install Avant Window Manager
Step4) ...
Step5) Profit!!!

Seriously though, to quote Homer Simpson "why would you pay for something you get for free at home?"

The following prominent page sums up the situatuion:
http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy

In particular:
---
Therefore, if you are creating a derivative of Ubuntu, you may use the Trademarks in association with the software product provided:

        * the changes are minimal and unsubstantial, as described above
        * there is no commercial intent associated with the new product
---

I guess we should encourage Mark to have a few words with them.
Mungewell.

It depends on the search really. I always treated the "I am lucky" button as an "I am sure" button - if you know the first result will lead to the page you want you save loading time and a click. Since the same function is integrated in the Firefox address bar, I'm now using that instead, e.g. "ubuntu" will get you to http://www.ubuntu.com/, microsoft will get you to http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx, "yarr" will get you to http://www.yarr.org.uk/ etc.

So it is indeed a function that increases Google's userbase and what more does a company want?

Here's another

KDE or Gnome won't matter for this sort of thing generally.

Assuming you meant Nasa TV, did you try just installing Real Player? Its Linux version is way less bloated. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RealplayerInstallationMethods

The summary is you add the Canonical commercial repos and then apt-get install realplay.

For most other video (and maybe the Nasa site as well) mozilla-mplayer works well.

My automatic update keeps demanding that I install IE7. Any way to shut this off?

If you're using Ubuntu, the latest security updates should have fixed this already (for a few days, I believe). The Ubuntu security team has USN-540-1 as a notification. It looks like it's an issue in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Ubuntu 6.10, Ubuntu 7.04, and Ubuntu 7.10 (at least), and their respective Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu releases.

All you really need to update looks to be libflac7 or libflac8, whichever exists on your system (8 is only for Gutsy, aka 7.10), though it's probably a good idea to update all the security updates anyway.

Click here for the cure.

IE isn't the only thing it sets up for you; WoW, Steam, EVE are also minimally intrusive installs... People love to say that gaming is the reason they stick to Windows... this is my way of calling BS.

Besides, I love seeing the looks on friends' faces when they realize that I'm not running Windows, when they just borrowed my Internet Explorer to check their email >:)

• Uses inotify
• Tracks backups in a sqlite database
• Separates the backup/restore code into a daemon
• Has a dbus interface
• Has nautilus and system tray integration

Any idea if these guys are working with the Time Vault ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeVault ) people?

There's already been work on a Linux Time Machine, just not ready for prime time yet: TimeVault.

Is Vista better? Of course not! Who needs "names" to tell things apart? Tell ya what, I'll give you a great deal on Ubuntu 7.10, with a numbered version just like God intended!

Are you looking for this?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

It's more than a code name. The apt-get repositories require it for use.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main

$9.99 computer game. Don't think "gamer". Think "lame copy of tetris". Or think of the stuff off gamehippo.com.

It was going up a tic every few seconds or so.

Wow, I would be concerned too. This page seems to suggest that your solution is still the consensus of people in the know. But a 254 in the command apparently makes apm less agressive in whatever it does instead of just disabling it like 255 does.