Overclocking by 1-5% gives you how much of a performance benefit, really? You're far more likely to get a decent speed increase with simply better drivers and more efficiently written games.
For the car analogy; just because your car's RPM meter goes up to 10000, doesn't mean you should hammer it at that constantly, or even ever. A racing driver would never keep his car running at full tilt, nor even try and get there, because the simple fact is that when you do the whole thing becomes unstable and the engine generally starts to burn. Formula 1 car engines are put through rigorous testing to make sure they can actually perform at the performance level they need to, but once they meet that level, they push it to see when it will die. Then they work out the safe level for it to be at and the driver knows this exactly.
What you never see, though, is the results of this, neither for the car engine (trade secret) or the results from the tests at the fab. So YOU have no clue whatsoever what that safe limit really is.
Being in the electronics industry I fully understand WHY these chips go through bin sorts and so on, and WHY you shouldn't actually do anything with them. A good example is the chips Apple used in their late-model PowerBooks. The MPC7447A chip they were using NEVER shipped at higher than a 1.4GHz clock speed. Freescale actually specially sorted out chips which would run at 20% greater voltage and 1.66GHz at the cost of only being specified for a 5 year (standard 10-year) running life at a junction temperature of 85C (standard 105C). They're laser marked on the die, still, as 1.4GHz chips.. this is a case where overclocking is okay, in fact even sanctioned. But they draw a ton more power, generate a ridiculous amount of extra heat, and require a cooling system to match. That's the price of 233MHz extra processor performance.. barely 10% in the real world.
Get a CPU or GPU that says "1.0GHz" on it, and yes, it may run at 1.1GHz with a bit of tweaking, it may even run at 1.5GHz if you are clever with cooling. It may be that your graphics card is one of the lucky ones that can take a good 5% or even 10% clock speed increase, or your RAM may overclock FAR past the JEDEC specs it was designed to meet (however a vast majority of RAM is designed to meet it to within very strict limits, to the point that they use older processes and cheaper production techniques and get it within 1% tolerance, IF THAT - because this is exactly what the JEDEC standard says it has to be). But there is a chance your chip has been validated and tested at that clock speed and voltage, and badged at that clock speed and voltage, for the simple reason that it will not be reliable at anything higher, confirmed by the burn-in at the fab.
Since you simply cannot tell what the actual tolerance is (and those "render something real fast until it starts corrupting the display" tests actually serve to damage the chip), it may well be that your chip could be only capable of running at 0.5% past it's rated value, it could be the lucky 10% chip. You're taking a big risk in even trying, and in the end, getting half a frame per second out of some game isn't worth losing a $300 graphics card over. So you want $3 extra bang? $30 extra bang? Come on..
As for what computer I own; it's a stock Asus P4P-800 which is perfectly good for overclocking, a Pentium 4 HT 2.4GHz which is fine at 2.4GHz, and an ATI Radeon X800 with OverDrive turned *off*. I also have a VIA EPIA, PowerPC G4 (not a Mac, just a board with a G4 in it), PowerPC MPC8641D (which has all the switches to let me configure the entire gamut of bus ratios and core clock speed), a bunch of other embedded chips (PPC, ARM) and a Vaio laptop. I've never had a Mac in my life..
You made it this far without needing SSH from your phone, what makes today any different?
What's wrong with your laptop, which you obviously use right now for this? The limitations are going to be the same.. you need to have it with you to do anything, anyway.
Also, do you really want to be on-call 24/7 just because you have your phone with you, and no possible excuse? This is the start of your availability being abused at work, and that's the end of it. I don't think it's stupid to want to be able to legitimately claim I'm on vacation or it's a weekend and I didn't bring my laptop with me so it'll have to wait until Monday.
Oh. This is all of course if your internet access via the 3G network isn't restricted through god knows how many routers, filters and.. proxies..
The ability to run your favourite app on your phone may not be so cool if you need to find a WiFi hotspot to do it on (not that those won't be similarly restricted in public places, either). That is of course assuming that Debian has any access to the 3G modem to actually connect out without wifi.. good luck with that.
I really don't think it is "cool" at all that running real applications you use in real life on a PHONE, and it certainly doesn't make Android "cooler" than the iPhone (or any other phone) just because it can.. There is a point when running Linux on yet something else gets really boring. It got boring with NetBSD, too.
I wonder if he has tried NOT overclocking the card or changing the fan speed?:D
Overclocking is the stupidest, stupidest thing people can do on modern hardware. By designing a graphics card or CPU that overclocks you're pandering to the statistics freaks who want to get that extra 1% performance increase and therefore "more bang for their buck".
What a f**king ridiculous market. Processors and graphics chips go through sorts and testing for a good reason; they're not rated to go any higher because there is a very good chance they WON'T. Depending on the exact chip you get, at which time in production it was made, and the quality of the PCB it's soldered to (especially if you're overclocking a memory bus, which also relies on the quality of the memory) every card can and will be WILDLY different. Sometimes overclocking by 20MHz is going to completely screw things even though some guy said he got it past 200MHz on some review site.
Simply stop doing it and guess what, the chip won't overheat, and the graphics card will get broadly the same performance give or take a frame per second in some game that your monitor is not fast enough to even display anyway:)
Sometimes you have to put down your money, be happy with what you've got, and enjoy your 1-year statutory warranty which clicking ANY of those overclocking buttons automatically voids.
Yes, by spreading the word and asking people to go look into fixes we crashed the bug tracker so nobody doing kernel development can file new bugs or new bug fixes for anything else today.
Sorry but I don't want to pay $99 a year for bookmark syncing when Foxmarks is free. And my GMail account is free. Some services just aren't something I really feel I should be paying money to get. Google is going for the big "digital life and data storage" angle here, a browser, email, search, contacts, documents, cloud computing etc. If I can use my mail, search history, documents anywhere I want on the web, it's a pain in the ass not to be able to take bookmarks around automatically.
Google Browser Sync was such an awesome tool and consolidated everything I did on a computer that I wanted back up along with all the others. And now, it's gone. I really don't care if they were searching my bookmarks or flagging it for ads or so, it was USEFUL.
As for MacOS, I wouldn't run a Mac even if you paid for it and the subscription to MobileMe. The prospect of updating apps to get new features requiring a new OS every 18 months is just.. ridiculous. While Microsoft may well screw Windows up more and more every time they release, at least if you build something these days it pretty much runs on Vista/XP/2000 without too many problems (at the cost of maybe putting the.NET 3.5 distro and Windows Installer 4.0 packages into your installers...)
1) Google Talk client doesn't support AIM (even though the web version does, sigh) or the video chat. That means you wouldn't use the Google Talk client as much as you might want to
2) Pidgin crashes a fucking hell of a lot. I've never used a version that didn't blow up on exit, or nuke when a file is downloaded, or if someone messages you, or if you enable ANY plugin at all. The quality of the project is absolutely down there in the sewers, and the same bugs affect both the Linux AND Windows builds exactly the same way.
But, since Firefox crashes a hell of a lot I went to Chrome.. but, now I'm missing that feature again.
Why oh why oh why can't this be something all browsers do? Microsoft will probably have a Live Sync/Mesh thing and Firefox has Foxmarks, and Weave (sigh) and I think Opera has a service too, but Chrome.. while pretty damn excellent, and fast, just has no plugin stuff like this and it doesn't look like it will have.
I guess someone could write a Foxmarks-compatible plugin for it. That would be awesome. Then I can share my bookmarks across ALL my systems and ALL my browsers (Firefox and Chrome basically, and only Firefox because of the lack of Chrome for Linux, but if the Linux versions appears.. this is the thing that makes me not want to switch..)
Moving from one of those ergonomic Microsoft Natural keyboards to an Apple keyboard - that is something that might hurt for a bit.
But moving from an ordinary $20 USB keyboard to the Apple one? The Apple one is far superior.
Most people simply have very poor posture, and carry it over to the Apple where it just makes their life worse. If only they typed properly like you and I, they would not be having any problems, and in fact, might actually feel better.
I feel most people here saying that these styles of keyboards suck, basically have no idea what they're talking about. If they really were a problem, Apple (and Sony and now Asus) would have been called on it for selling dangerous products which cause serious, dehabilitating injury to people. Now, while I see Apple being sued for selling 6-bit-per-colour monitors and advertising "millions of colours", and sometimes selling a laptop which randomly dies, or having a shitty battery exchange program, I have yet to see the class action suit against Apple for selling a bad keyboard.
The idea is to keep your wrists straight - holding them like a hawk to type is bad. Wrist wrests are badly named - you should be resting the butt of your hand on them, not your wrist. Type with your fingers out, not bunched up.
> If Apple keyboards are designed to be flat
They're not - but they're on a flat base. Nearly all Apple keyboards have an ergonomic tilt, because of the USB ports on the back.
Compare standard keyboards which have those flimsy stilts on the back, where all the keys are progressively slightly "higher" than the last (because the keyboard is slanted forward yet the keys are perpendicular to the desk, at least on every keyboard I have here). This, in my experience, gives a very poor posture for typing and makes you continually flex your hand to move around keys. It's exactly this that is the cause of RSI.
Like I said, no studies have ever shown Apple keyboards or inset keys to be bad for you in any way. What I see a lot of, is whiners on Slashdot going on and on about how "terrible" these keyboards are for them.
If you're suffering from carpal tunnel you shouldn't be using any keyboard at all, and if you are, go get a wrist brace, it'll help. It's not the Apple keyboard burning it's hatred and bad vibes into your wrist.
> I can't work intensively on my laptop for more than 10 or 15 minutes without significant pain.
You're doing it wrong.
Actually individually inset keys, if done right, are ergonomically better. They also confer several advantages if you're basically willing to give up the EXPERIENCE of a keyboard with a huge travel on the keys - keys are spaced better, so it's easier to hit the key you want, and they're all at the same height, on a flat base, meaning you're basically not lifting your wrists and therefore completely cutting out the need for wrist rests.
Some people don't like them - me included at one point - because they're DIFFERENT, and it takes a while to adjust your posture and typing style to suit the keys, but once you do (and quit lumbering at it like a gorilla, bashing keys with your knuckles) it gets a whole lot better and productivity goes up.
As for the pain, I have to live through every day with some kind of arthritic pain anyway, a bit of discomfort on a keyboard is something I experience with every kind, it actually got better with the Apple.
I have yet to see an actual ergonomic study that shows that Apple keyboards (or Vaio keyboards or this keyboard) is actually bad for you, in any way that any other keyboard is bad for you.
From the original post, he has an XScale board running 2.4 and wants to drop the "ARM-based custom board" (which is what an XScale would be) to move to Atom, and thinks he will need to generate a new toolchain and ramdisk etc. to do it.
If he was running ARM again why would he need to update anything? The toolchain and userland would be identical unless he's moving to a wildly different ARM core, and if that was the case, why is he worrying about Atom in the first place?
I don't think he really made it clear, but with what he did say, I think he's talking about moving CPU architectures, but wants to know if he should stick with the kernel version he's already running. Since moving CPU architectures implies having a kernel that supports that architecture, whether he moves to ARM or Atom at either end means picking a kernel more modern than a 6 year old one with 6-year-old Xscale support..
If he's moving to Intel Atom the best place to be will be the kernel that had the support for the chip when it came out.
Running 2.4.x kernels on Intel Atom - before decent ACPI support, before the power management support for these chips, before a hell of a lot of modern chipset support especially for Intel 945 and PCI Express hit some level of maturity - is bound to be an absolute nightmare.
Linux kernel preemption is about as far from real-time as you can get. It's not even in the same ballpark.
RTAI extensions do it right; it's real, real-time, although still not basically only in the parking lot outside the same ballpark. Which is as close as you need to be to HEAR the game anyway.
I don't think the guy is particularly looking for real-time support here. Pulling data over PCI-X then pushing it over a Gigabit LAN doesn't seem like it needs more than driver support. The Atom will no doubt be faster at it than his previous hardware. I'd say move to 2.6 just so you can run 2.6 and enjoy further development by someone other than yourself. Some parts of 2.6 got relatively less efficient over time (I can't say I particularly see any benefits in real-world use from the "completely fair" schedulers, for example) but in the whole driver support and general stability should be fine.
I'd stick with a kernel a few revisions back though. Don't jump in to 2.6.28. Try 2.6.25 or 2.6.26.
If they can wrangle some kind of Mesa driver for this, so Linux guests get OpenGL acceleration, it will be some kind of wicked coup for VirtualBox. Finally you could run a fancy 3D-accelerated Compiz-enabled desktop in a window under any OpenGL-supporting host.
I'm running Windows XP, so I really don't deserve the low UID do I?:D
Not without a plethora of Linux and BSD boxes around though, I will have to poke around at this and find a nice open proxy in the UK to give it a go. That doesn't help viewing stuff in Canada though.. and for instance if you wanted to watch shows from Hulu.com while in the UK, you'd lose access to iPlayer if you didn't reconfigure your firewall inbetween.
I am fairly sure this will not work, because it uses Flash to detect your native IP address and then effectively denies your connection. BBC iPlayer and, even more on-topic, the CBC copy of the Doctor Who show do not work whatever proxy server you use even if you know for a fact it's hosted in said "legal" country.
I fully understand the work required in running games on the different PPC chips.
What has the price of your new PC got to do with anything? You could build the same system out of PowerPC chipsets for the same price and it will also play anything you throw at it if the games were written for that CPU architecture. PowerPC architecture has been stable for decades - assembler written for the Wii will probably run without modification on a POWER6 multi-core system although why you'd WANT to, is the point here.
The systems we make at Genesi use Open Firmware (which is what EFI blatantly copied, and Apple used previously), run 600MHz-1Ghz G3/G4 processors (think circa 2004 Apple, since that's when we designed that particular product) and right now a 400MHz "G2" (which is about as powerful as the G3 in the Gamecube) embedded product. We have single and dual-core systems in development, and possibly something with the Toshiba SpursEngine which is a Cell without the PowerPC. What you're asking for exists; it can be done because we've been doing it for the past 5 years. There is no technological barrier to a PowerPC-based media-center PC with 4 Bluetooth controllers (this *is* what the Wii is, there is really no architectural difference) which can play games, and there is no reason you can't run a full desktop Linux on it either. In fact you can do this with the PS3 very easily, since it will run a full desktop Linux and reboot (actually, hibernate Linux, so you get a near-instant load time when you're done) into a game if you like.
Windows, probably not, if you want to run Windows games you'll need a PC. But who says the PC industry will stay with Windows? PS3 and Wii don't run Windows. Linux games are getting more popular (see the popularity of Cedega Transgaming and the rumours about Steam!). The industry could move to a PowerPC-based hybrid desktop/media/gaming PC based on Linux with full industry backing from IBM, AMD, Freescale, Sony, Toshiba and Nintendo.
Here's dreaming anyway. I only WISH there'd be this kind of upheaval in the industry and these kinds of unique products. I sit here most days writing marketing and product requirements for this stuff for a living, someone picking it up and doing something with it would be so awesome:D
Slashdot Mirror
Overclocking by 1-5% gives you how much of a performance benefit, really? You're far more likely to get a decent speed increase with simply better drivers and more efficiently written games.
For the car analogy; just because your car's RPM meter goes up to 10000, doesn't mean you should hammer it at that constantly, or even ever. A racing driver would never keep his car running at full tilt, nor even try and get there, because the simple fact is that when you do the whole thing becomes unstable and the engine generally starts to burn. Formula 1 car engines are put through rigorous testing to make sure they can actually perform at the performance level they need to, but once they meet that level, they push it to see when it will die. Then they work out the safe level for it to be at and the driver knows this exactly.
What you never see, though, is the results of this, neither for the car engine (trade secret) or the results from the tests at the fab. So YOU have no clue whatsoever what that safe limit really is.
Being in the electronics industry I fully understand WHY these chips go through bin sorts and so on, and WHY you shouldn't actually do anything with them. A good example is the chips Apple used in their late-model PowerBooks. The MPC7447A chip they were using NEVER shipped at higher than a 1.4GHz clock speed. Freescale actually specially sorted out chips which would run at 20% greater voltage and 1.66GHz at the cost of only being specified for a 5 year (standard 10-year) running life at a junction temperature of 85C (standard 105C). They're laser marked on the die, still, as 1.4GHz chips.. this is a case where overclocking is okay, in fact even sanctioned. But they draw a ton more power, generate a ridiculous amount of extra heat, and require a cooling system to match. That's the price of 233MHz extra processor performance.. barely 10% in the real world.
Get a CPU or GPU that says "1.0GHz" on it, and yes, it may run at 1.1GHz with a bit of tweaking, it may even run at 1.5GHz if you are clever with cooling. It may be that your graphics card is one of the lucky ones that can take a good 5% or even 10% clock speed increase, or your RAM may overclock FAR past the JEDEC specs it was designed to meet (however a vast majority of RAM is designed to meet it to within very strict limits, to the point that they use older processes and cheaper production techniques and get it within 1% tolerance, IF THAT - because this is exactly what the JEDEC standard says it has to be). But there is a chance your chip has been validated and tested at that clock speed and voltage, and badged at that clock speed and voltage, for the simple reason that it will not be reliable at anything higher, confirmed by the burn-in at the fab.
Since you simply cannot tell what the actual tolerance is (and those "render something real fast until it starts corrupting the display" tests actually serve to damage the chip), it may well be that your chip could be only capable of running at 0.5% past it's rated value, it could be the lucky 10% chip. You're taking a big risk in even trying, and in the end, getting half a frame per second out of some game isn't worth losing a $300 graphics card over. So you want $3 extra bang? $30 extra bang? Come on..
As for what computer I own; it's a stock Asus P4P-800 which is perfectly good for overclocking, a Pentium 4 HT 2.4GHz which is fine at 2.4GHz, and an ATI Radeon X800 with OverDrive turned *off*. I also have a VIA EPIA, PowerPC G4 (not a Mac, just a board with a G4 in it), PowerPC MPC8641D (which has all the switches to let me configure the entire gamut of bus ratios and core clock speed), a bunch of other embedded chips (PPC, ARM) and a Vaio laptop. I've never had a Mac in my life..
People also would do well to note that, just like hard disk sizes, wireless speeds are a big fat lie.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/08/08/wireless_throughput.html
You made it this far without needing SSH from your phone, what makes today any different?
What's wrong with your laptop, which you obviously use right now for this? The limitations are going to be the same.. you need to have it with you to do anything, anyway.
Also, do you really want to be on-call 24/7 just because you have your phone with you, and no possible excuse? This is the start of your availability being abused at work, and that's the end of it. I don't think it's stupid to want to be able to legitimately claim I'm on vacation or it's a weekend and I didn't bring my laptop with me so it'll have to wait until Monday.
Oh. This is all of course if your internet access via the 3G network isn't restricted through god knows how many routers, filters and .. proxies..
The ability to run your favourite app on your phone may not be so cool if you need to find a WiFi hotspot to do it on (not that those won't be similarly restricted in public places, either). That is of course assuming that Debian has any access to the 3G modem to actually connect out without wifi.. good luck with that.
I really don't think it is "cool" at all that running real applications you use in real life on a PHONE, and it certainly doesn't make Android "cooler" than the iPhone (or any other phone) just because it can.. There is a point when running Linux on yet something else gets really boring. It got boring with NetBSD, too.
Thousands of poorly maintained, 3 year old apps, too! :)
I can think of one advantage over iPhone; no apps like iFart in the repositories. It will only be a matter of time though.
Is there really anything cool about Debian anymore, unless you're a 57 year old hippie with a beard that would make Brian Blessed jealous?
There are lots of reasons I'd like to run Linux on a phone. But a busybox and apt-get on a phone? Come on.
I wonder if he has tried NOT overclocking the card or changing the fan speed? :D
Overclocking is the stupidest, stupidest thing people can do on modern hardware. By designing a graphics card or CPU that overclocks you're pandering to the statistics freaks who want to get that extra 1% performance increase and therefore "more bang for their buck".
What a f**king ridiculous market. Processors and graphics chips go through sorts and testing for a good reason; they're not rated to go any higher because there is a very good chance they WON'T. Depending on the exact chip you get, at which time in production it was made, and the quality of the PCB it's soldered to (especially if you're overclocking a memory bus, which also relies on the quality of the memory) every card can and will be WILDLY different. Sometimes overclocking by 20MHz is going to completely screw things even though some guy said he got it past 200MHz on some review site.
Simply stop doing it and guess what, the chip won't overheat, and the graphics card will get broadly the same performance give or take a frame per second in some game that your monitor is not fast enough to even display anyway :)
Sometimes you have to put down your money, be happy with what you've got, and enjoy your 1-year statutory warranty which clicking ANY of those overclocking buttons automatically voids.
Well, you boot Android, get Debian on it and the video we're treated to is... ... running apt-get to drag down packages.
Am I the only one who thinks this is totally pointless?
Yes, by spreading the word and asking people to go look into fixes we crashed the bug tracker so nobody doing kernel development can file new bugs or new bug fixes for anything else today.
Awesome plan. Really awesome.
Sorry but I don't want to pay $99 a year for bookmark syncing when Foxmarks is free. And my GMail account is free. Some services just aren't something I really feel I should be paying money to get. Google is going for the big "digital life and data storage" angle here, a browser, email, search, contacts, documents, cloud computing etc. If I can use my mail, search history, documents anywhere I want on the web, it's a pain in the ass not to be able to take bookmarks around automatically.
Google Browser Sync was such an awesome tool and consolidated everything I did on a computer that I wanted back up along with all the others. And now, it's gone. I really don't care if they were searching my bookmarks or flagging it for ads or so, it was USEFUL.
As for MacOS, I wouldn't run a Mac even if you paid for it and the subscription to MobileMe. The prospect of updating apps to get new features requiring a new OS every 18 months is just.. ridiculous. While Microsoft may well screw Windows up more and more every time they release, at least if you build something these days it pretty much runs on Vista/XP/2000 without too many problems (at the cost of maybe putting the .NET 3.5 distro and Windows Installer 4.0 packages into your installers...)
Two problems with that
1) Google Talk client doesn't support AIM (even though the web version does, sigh) or the video chat. That means you wouldn't use the Google Talk client as much as you might want to
2) Pidgin crashes a fucking hell of a lot. I've never used a version that didn't blow up on exit, or nuke when a file is downloaded, or if someone messages you, or if you enable ANY plugin at all. The quality of the project is absolutely down there in the sewers, and the same bugs affect both the Linux AND Windows builds exactly the same way.
So, neither of them are any good for anything.
> Chrome was created specifically to fight against IE
What? Says who? I never saw Google announce anywhere that Google Chrome is specifically targetted to "fight IE"..
I miss Google Browser Sync.
And now I use Foxmarks in Firefox, I got it back.
But, since Firefox crashes a hell of a lot I went to Chrome.. but, now I'm missing that feature again.
Why oh why oh why can't this be something all browsers do? Microsoft will probably have a Live Sync/Mesh thing and Firefox has Foxmarks, and Weave (sigh) and I think Opera has a service too, but Chrome.. while pretty damn excellent, and fast, just has no plugin stuff like this and it doesn't look like it will have.
I guess someone could write a Foxmarks-compatible plugin for it. That would be awesome. Then I can share my bookmarks across ALL my systems and ALL my browsers (Firefox and Chrome basically, and only Firefox because of the lack of Chrome for Linux, but if the Linux versions appears.. this is the thing that makes me not want to switch..)
Thanks for sticking up.
Moving from one of those ergonomic Microsoft Natural keyboards to an Apple keyboard - that is something that might hurt for a bit.
But moving from an ordinary $20 USB keyboard to the Apple one? The Apple one is far superior.
Most people simply have very poor posture, and carry it over to the Apple where it just makes their life worse. If only they typed properly like you and I, they would not be having any problems, and in fact, might actually feel better.
I feel most people here saying that these styles of keyboards suck, basically have no idea what they're talking about. If they really were a problem, Apple (and Sony and now Asus) would have been called on it for selling dangerous products which cause serious, dehabilitating injury to people. Now, while I see Apple being sued for selling 6-bit-per-colour monitors and advertising "millions of colours", and sometimes selling a laptop which randomly dies, or having a shitty battery exchange program, I have yet to see the class action suit against Apple for selling a bad keyboard.
> You should NEVER rest your wrists on ANYTHING
The idea is to keep your wrists straight - holding them like a hawk to type is bad. Wrist wrests are badly named - you should be resting the butt of your hand on them, not your wrist. Type with your fingers out, not bunched up.
> If Apple keyboards are designed to be flat
They're not - but they're on a flat base. Nearly all Apple keyboards have an ergonomic tilt, because of the USB ports on the back.
Compare standard keyboards which have those flimsy stilts on the back, where all the keys are progressively slightly "higher" than the last (because the keyboard is slanted forward yet the keys are perpendicular to the desk, at least on every keyboard I have here). This, in my experience, gives a very poor posture for typing and makes you continually flex your hand to move around keys. It's exactly this that is the cause of RSI.
Like I said, no studies have ever shown Apple keyboards or inset keys to be bad for you in any way. What I see a lot of, is whiners on Slashdot going on and on about how "terrible" these keyboards are for them.
If you're suffering from carpal tunnel you shouldn't be using any keyboard at all, and if you are, go get a wrist brace, it'll help. It's not the Apple keyboard burning it's hatred and bad vibes into your wrist.
> I can't work intensively on my laptop for more than 10 or 15 minutes without significant pain.
You're doing it wrong.
Actually individually inset keys, if done right, are ergonomically better. They also confer several advantages if you're basically willing to give up the EXPERIENCE of a keyboard with a huge travel on the keys - keys are spaced better, so it's easier to hit the key you want, and they're all at the same height, on a flat base, meaning you're basically not lifting your wrists and therefore completely cutting out the need for wrist rests.
Some people don't like them - me included at one point - because they're DIFFERENT, and it takes a while to adjust your posture and typing style to suit the keys, but once you do (and quit lumbering at it like a gorilla, bashing keys with your knuckles) it gets a whole lot better and productivity goes up.
As for the pain, I have to live through every day with some kind of arthritic pain anyway, a bit of discomfort on a keyboard is something I experience with every kind, it actually got better with the Apple.
I have yet to see an actual ergonomic study that shows that Apple keyboards (or Vaio keyboards or this keyboard) is actually bad for you, in any way that any other keyboard is bad for you.
From the original post, he has an XScale board running 2.4 and wants to drop the "ARM-based custom board" (which is what an XScale would be) to move to Atom, and thinks he will need to generate a new toolchain and ramdisk etc. to do it.
If he was running ARM again why would he need to update anything? The toolchain and userland would be identical unless he's moving to a wildly different ARM core, and if that was the case, why is he worrying about Atom in the first place?
I don't think he really made it clear, but with what he did say, I think he's talking about moving CPU architectures, but wants to know if he should stick with the kernel version he's already running. Since moving CPU architectures implies having a kernel that supports that architecture, whether he moves to ARM or Atom at either end means picking a kernel more modern than a 6 year old one with 6-year-old Xscale support..
If he's moving to Intel Atom the best place to be will be the kernel that had the support for the chip when it came out.
Running 2.4.x kernels on Intel Atom - before decent ACPI support, before the power management support for these chips, before a hell of a lot of modern chipset support especially for Intel 945 and PCI Express hit some level of maturity - is bound to be an absolute nightmare.
Linux kernel preemption is about as far from real-time as you can get. It's not even in the same ballpark.
RTAI extensions do it right; it's real, real-time, although still not basically only in the parking lot outside the same ballpark. Which is as close as you need to be to HEAR the game anyway.
I don't think the guy is particularly looking for real-time support here. Pulling data over PCI-X then pushing it over a Gigabit LAN doesn't seem like it needs more than driver support. The Atom will no doubt be faster at it than his previous hardware. I'd say move to 2.6 just so you can run 2.6 and enjoy further development by someone other than yourself. Some parts of 2.6 got relatively less efficient over time (I can't say I particularly see any benefits in real-world use from the "completely fair" schedulers, for example) but in the whole driver support and general stability should be fine.
I'd stick with a kernel a few revisions back though. Don't jump in to 2.6.28. Try 2.6.25 or 2.6.26.
Funny, the comparison that Windows looks a lot like KDE is kind of backwards.
Vista came about long before KDE got it's pretty revamp.. and Windows 7 just looks a hell of a lot like Vista.
Why don't you just TELL them?
I dread to think what you got them for Christmahannukwanzaa this year.
Better yet, coca of the month subscription?
If they can wrangle some kind of Mesa driver for this, so Linux guests get OpenGL acceleration, it will be some kind of wicked coup for VirtualBox. Finally you could run a fancy 3D-accelerated Compiz-enabled desktop in a window under any OpenGL-supporting host.
That really has to be a killer feature..
I'm running Windows XP, so I really don't deserve the low UID do I? :D
Not without a plethora of Linux and BSD boxes around though, I will have to poke around at this and find a nice open proxy in the UK to give it a go. That doesn't help viewing stuff in Canada though.. and for instance if you wanted to watch shows from Hulu.com while in the UK, you'd lose access to iPlayer if you didn't reconfigure your firewall inbetween.
Not ideal is it..
I am fairly sure this will not work, because it uses Flash to detect your native IP address and then effectively denies your connection. BBC iPlayer and, even more on-topic, the CBC copy of the Doctor Who show do not work whatever proxy server you use even if you know for a fact it's hosted in said "legal" country.
Way to ramble.
I fully understand the work required in running games on the different PPC chips.
What has the price of your new PC got to do with anything? You could build the same system out of PowerPC chipsets for the same price and it will also play anything you throw at it if the games were written for that CPU architecture. PowerPC architecture has been stable for decades - assembler written for the Wii will probably run without modification on a POWER6 multi-core system although why you'd WANT to, is the point here.
The systems we make at Genesi use Open Firmware (which is what EFI blatantly copied, and Apple used previously), run 600MHz-1Ghz G3/G4 processors (think circa 2004 Apple, since that's when we designed that particular product) and right now a 400MHz "G2" (which is about as powerful as the G3 in the Gamecube) embedded product. We have single and dual-core systems in development, and possibly something with the Toshiba SpursEngine which is a Cell without the PowerPC. What you're asking for exists; it can be done because we've been doing it for the past 5 years. There is no technological barrier to a PowerPC-based media-center PC with 4 Bluetooth controllers (this *is* what the Wii is, there is really no architectural difference) which can play games, and there is no reason you can't run a full desktop Linux on it either. In fact you can do this with the PS3 very easily, since it will run a full desktop Linux and reboot (actually, hibernate Linux, so you get a near-instant load time when you're done) into a game if you like.
Windows, probably not, if you want to run Windows games you'll need a PC. But who says the PC industry will stay with Windows? PS3 and Wii don't run Windows. Linux games are getting more popular (see the popularity of Cedega Transgaming and the rumours about Steam!). The industry could move to a PowerPC-based hybrid desktop/media/gaming PC based on Linux with full industry backing from IBM, AMD, Freescale, Sony, Toshiba and Nintendo.
Here's dreaming anyway. I only WISH there'd be this kind of upheaval in the industry and these kinds of unique products. I sit here most days writing marketing and product requirements for this stuff for a living, someone picking it up and doing something with it would be so awesome :D