Album Voice of the Kernel OUT Now!

I am pleased to announce the official availability of my new album "Voice of the Kernel". Which includes my latest releases, some new work, edits of older songs and a few older songs in general.

The Ogg-Vorbis files are available from Slated.org.

Track list.

01. Cry of the Forest.
02. Voice of the Kernel.
03. The Slog.
04. The Free Software Song (Feat. Richard M. Stallman).
05. Insence.
06. Credo (Vocal).
07. Gloria (Vocal).
08. Beyond Despair (edit).
09. Amiga Resurrection.
10. Back to the Roots.
11. Compurama.
12. Marti van Lin - Dotcom (Feat. Abbynmrl and Robert D. Steele).
13. openSUSE.
14. Tuxuality (Feat. Linus Torvalds).
15. Websurfing.
16. Cry of the Forest (Reprise).

All songs are published under the GPLv3. Sources of the songs in ether Impulse Tracker 2 (IT) or Fast Tracker 2 (XM) format will be made available soon.

There is only a Slimline CD cover available [PDF].

Enjoy!

Another new song: Voice of the Kernel

Today I released another new song, titled; "Voice of the Kernel", because that is exactly what it is. The text to speech sample this time reads a snippet of the file /var/log/messages from my Acer Aspire laptop.

Download Marti van Lin - Voice of the Kernel.ogg from FileFactory.com

Here is the full "text":

Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.715346] Linux agpgart interface v0.103
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.716157] i2c-adapter i2c-0: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x3040
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.716176] i2c-adapter i2c-1: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x3000
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.767444] ricoh-mmc: Ricoh MMC Controller disabling driver
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.767447] ricoh-mmc: Copyright(c) Philip Langdale
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.767474] ricoh-mmc: Ricoh MMC controller found at 0000:01:04.2 [1180:0843] (rev 12)
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.767485] ricoh-mmc: Controller is now disabled.
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.794289] lirc_dev: lirc_register_driver: sample_rate: 0
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.794389] enecir: KB3926B detected
Nov 9 13:18:04 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 12.794394] enecir: driver has been succesfully loaded
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 13.677289] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 13.677294] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 13.935071] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LGPU] enabled at IRQ 17
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 13.935090] nvidia 0000:00:12.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LGPU] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 13.935344] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 185.18.36 Fri Aug 14 17:18:04 PDT 2009
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.003466] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.003469] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.121310] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.144417] acer-wmi: Acer Laptop ACPI-WMI Extras
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.187714] sdhci-pci 0000:01:04.1: SDHCI controller found [1180:0822] (rev 22)
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.188067] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNK2] enabled at IRQ 11
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.188072] sdhci-pci 0000:01:04.1: PCI INT B -> Link[LNK2] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.190123] Registered led device: mmc0::
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.191174] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:01:04.1] using PIO
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.253387] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
Nov 9 13:18:05 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.271522] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
Nov 9 13:18:06 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.822419] input: PS/2 Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input7
Nov 9 13:18:06 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 14.854536] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input8

Keep on dancing!

New Song: The Slog

What do you do if you are distracted because some Monopolists cheats on everything possible? The only thing you can do, is try to get the truth out there. Concerning $MONOPOLIST from Redmond, we fortunately have sites like Boycott Novell, OpenBytes and Groklaw. But to be honest, writing articles is not my cup of tea.

In my case, writing a song is a nice way to get the facts straight. And with today's computer technology, the possibilities are almost unlimited.

For the Mozilla Firefox web browser there is a excellent Text To Speech add on called Fox Vox.
Besides speaking a selected text on a website or a local html file, it is possible to save a "Audio book", in WAV, Ogg-Vorbis or MP3 file format.

So I googood for microsoft+the slog, and Bingo!

Let the Text to Speech engine do its work and save it as a audobook and then create a creepy tune and import the speech sample.

There it is, a new song, called Tales from the Dark Side: Microsoft - The Slog.

Download Marti van Lin - The Slog.ogg from FileFactory.com

Update: Here is a edited version with louder speech.

Download Marti van Lin - The Slog (edit).ogg from FileFactory.com

Here is the full text:

Text To Speech of Marti van Lin's "Tales from the Dark Side: Microsoft - The Slog".

Verse 1:

Our mission is to establish Microsoft's platforms as the de facto standards throughout the computer industry.... Working behind the scenes to orchestrate "independent" praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy's, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. "Independent" analyst's report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). "Independent" consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). "Independent" academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). "Independent" courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.

Evangelism is War! (4x)

Verse 2:

“Mopping Up can be a lot of fun. In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism’s goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology’s coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry.”

Evangelism is War! (4x)

Credits to: Boycott Novell and Groklaw, where I grabbed the text of the exhibits of the Commes VS Microsoft anti-trust case.

The Free Software Song (Instrumental)

Here is a instrumental version of The Free Software Song, featuring a couple of Richard M. Stallman (RMS) speech samples, from interviews, with the lyrics spoken via TTS (Text to Speech) technology, using the KTTS manager FoxVox (experimental) Mozilla Firefox add-on and the Festival Mbrola TTS backend.

The song was tracked using OpenMODPLUG Tracker using Wine, hosted by Ubuntu GNU/Linux Karmic Koala Beta (which will become Ubuntu GNU/Linux 9.10 on October 29th). I used Audacity to edit the samples.

Here is the Impulse Tracker (IT) file. You can edit it with
every self respecting modern Tracker Editor. MilkyTracker, CheeseTracker or Schism are the interesting native GNU/Linux Trackers. SoundTracker for Gnome, unfortunately doesn't support the Impulse Tracker file format.

The song is strictly distributed in the Free Ogg-Vorbis audio file format. And I hereby politely as you to not distribute it in a proprietary non-Free file format.

My version is licensed under the GPL v3.

So here we have it, the Microsoft shills where right all the way: I am the "stallmanextremist" and the "GNU/Linux taliban" after all :-p

The Church of Emacs goes Disco!
Now shake that boody ;-)

Listen here (or right click to save as...)

[Opinion] The "Joy" of Windows XP

A friend of mine started a study as Hardware technician Computer Repair Technician a couple of weeks ago. For this study he has to be familiar with Batchfiles (the DOS equivalent of a (limited) shell script), Windows XP and two GNU/Linux distributions: Ubuntu and Fedora.

OK first things first ;-)

Just like me, he started fooling around, back in the early 1980's on a 8-bit machine. In his case a Tandy TRS-80.

After the TRS-80 he started working with PC's running MS-DOS. He told me he always hated DOS. I have no idea why he hated it, so be it.

He used Microsoft Windows, starting with version 3.1, just like I did. To the contrary he sticked to Windows, while I favor GNU/Linux since October 1999.

To provide better assistance with his study, I did the unimaginable: In the name of friendship, I wiped my beloved Ubuntu 8.04 LTS in favor of Windows XP Pro SP3 on my good old Dell Optiplex GX240 (hostname: Pleunix) :`(

It's about two weeks ago I installed XP and it's already starting to slow down.

Now here are the two major issues:

1. Networking is seriously flawed in obviously all versions of Microsoft Windows, since Windows XP. The connection with the ISP gets spontaneous frequently lost. The Vole seems to be aware of this issue because if you right click on the icon of the b0rk3d adapter in the system tray, there is a /Recoverry-option/ provided. Now a not flawed OS would not have to provide a "Recovery-option", now would it?

My latest desperate attempt to solve this problem is described in the next issue.

The Microsoft Faithful will probably shout "you're a clueless Lintart". However, my brother GL1MST (a Windows only user) has exactly the same issue!

2. Microsoft Windows XP is spyware out of the box (even excluding WGA) and obviously has a data retention system which overwhelms your harddisk drive with sensitive data. Beside that, your harddisk drive gets stuffed with useless (temporary) data. I cleaned up the mess yesterday (more details will follow) and today I find myself the lucky owner of 9 txt files containing 9 versions of their EULA in the root directory.

The day before yesterday I came across a DEMOware program called SpeedUpMyPC 2009.

Don't get fooled here. The so called "Free download" edition is only a DEMO, it does scan the system, but is not able to solve the issues. There for you will have to buy it.

Anyway, it came up with quite some issues: 100's of sensitive data files, and 1000's of useless disk space consuming temporary files.

And to be honest, that SpeedUpMyPC thingy indeed did what it promised.

There is a whole industry that offers software with only one single purpose: cleaning up The Vole's mess!

• Anti virus;
• anti spyware;
• userland firewalls;
• registry cleaners;
• disk cleaners;
• network settings cleaners (WTF?).

This brings me to the following conclusion:

If there is a Billion Dollar industry with the single goal of cleaning up The Vole's doggy drops, then this marvelous OS with its > 80% market share, is clearly seriously flawed.

I just keep on asking myself that question, over and over again: Why on Earth do reasonable people pay for such a piece of junk for crying out loud?

The first thing I will do, after this friend has finished his study is wiping the piece of junk again.

A closer look at Kubuntu Karmic Koala and KDE 4.3.1

I took a closer look at Ubuntu (Beta 1) and Kubuntu Karmic Koala (Alpha 5), which will become (K)(X)Ubuntu 9.10 on the 29' th of this month.

KDE 4.3.1.

First I installed Microsoft Windows 7 RC1 (build 7100) and next day I added (dualboot) Kubuntu Karmic Koala to it and updated KDE to version 4.3.1.

It is astonishing how beautiful and functional KDE 4 has become. Since a picture saids more than a 1000 words, let me throw some screen shots at you:

What you see is a wallpaper which I grabbed by right clicking on the desktop, then choose preferences and the button "add new wallpaper" Choose this one and clicked the "install" button.

In the lower left corner you see the Lancelot menu, which is installed by default, but not activated. To add it, simply right click on the bar and choose "add widgets", then choose Lancelot from the list. Now remove the standard menu button, right click again on the bar and choose "unlock widgets" and move the Lancelot menu button to the position you prefer.

In the upper left corner you see the Daisy widget. This is another application launcher and you are able to change it' s appearance into a MacOS X alike dock if you wish.

On the right upper corner is a weather forecast widget and in the lower right corner a notes widget, like Gnote on Gnome. The great thing about this one is that you can make it transparent. Just the way I like it.

Technical improvements.

Before I' ll show you some more screen shots, I should inform you about the technical "under the hood" improvements.

First of all the boot time has been improved even upon it' s predecessor Ubuntu 9.04 (The Jaunty Jackalope) the bootsplash was replaced by a X-Window based one.

For me personally - out of the box - support for the Atheros 802.11b/g WLAN adapter is however the biggest improvement.

To get the adapter to work on previous version, I had to compile the sources of some obscure nightly build of the Madwifi driver. In Karmic Koala, it works out of the box. Even the WLAN LED works!

Some more KDE 4.3.1 screen shots.

Thanks to the poster "7" in my favorite Usenet newsgroup COLA, I have learned that I can use more then 4 virtual desktops. I am currently using 6. I prefer the "Cylinder" deformation of the legendary "Compiz-Fusion Cube", because it feels more "natural" then a cube.

Gnome applications also integrate very well in KDE 4.3.1. as you can see. You can' t tell the distinction between a native KDE and GTK+ application anymore. This is my favorite bitmap manager gThumb.

Kpat (the KDE version of Patience / Klondike) had another make over. This time the standard card set is "Ancient Egyptian". Kpat has always been miles ahead of Microsoft' s Patience. However In the Windows 7 release of The Vole's most valuable application, they have copied all the great work from Kpat. Typically Microsoft INNOVA~1

Conclusion.

Ubuntu Karmic Koala is still in Beta status, but looks very promising. To some extend it beats the Release Candidate of Microsoft Windows 7, especially in Wireless networking support.

The big win of Karmic Koala are its even further improved speed, less resources hungriness and improved hardware support.

I tested Microsoft Windows 7 RC1 (build 7100), Kubuntu GNU/Linux Karmic Koala Alpha 5 and Ubuntu GNU/Linux Karmic Koala Beta 1 last week and I'm afraid Windows 7 will (b)eat the dust.

Quick look at KDE 4.3.0.

Yesterday my Fedora 10 (Cambridge) system got updated with KDE 4.3.0. So time to have a quick look at it.

Although translucency has been available in KDE for ages, it is in much more present in the new default Air theme. The bar, which was previously known as the "Kicker" is half transparent.

What I found most interesting, is the consistency of the "Kicker" and the Lancelot menu which I personally prefer over the standard "SLAB" menu. Lancelot now fully looks and behaves like the active theme. Having Air as the current theme, Lancelot also is half transparent and looks very slick.

The Lancelot menu

Another welcome improvement are sub-menus, that pop up after a right mouse click. Long term KDE users where used to these and unfortunately they where absent in KDE 4 so far.

Yay, sub menus are back!


Needless to say that there has been quite some code cleanup. Kwin and KDE 4.3.0 simply feels a lot more responsive and smoother than its predecessors.

So in conclusion, is it worth updating from a previous version to KDE 4.3.0? Defniantly!

The only thing I still find a bit disturbing is that KPackageKit needs some tuning. IMHO it is way too slow and at times just crashes.

This however is not very important, since on my Fedora 10 system I have yum on the commandline (which I prefer anyway, for system management tasks) and I just figured out there even is a GUI frontend for yum:

yum install yum-ext