[nylug-talk] After meeting tonight, anyone want to discuss XEN stuff? (Also a bunch of misc thoughts and notes).

[Chris Knadle]

Hey, Brian.

   Just talking about a couple of specific bullet points some.

On Wednesday 26 March 2008, Brian Gupta wrote:
> 6) Hardy Heron 8.04 beta is pretty slick. Wait for Automatix support
> before upgrading. Envy support is there, assuming you don't need XEN
> support. (Anyone know if closed ATI drivers work on a XEN kernel).

   Last I recall, Automatix installed a bunch of software programs without 
using the package management tools.  If that's still how Automatix works then 
I recommend avoiding using it.  From what I see inside of the Automatix .deb 
package, it contains a bunch of Python programs to do the real work, and the 
control information doesn't look promising, because it mostly depends on 
python programs rather than the multimedia packages.  :-/  User beware.

> 9) SE-Linux is an annoyance when you are learning new technologies.

   Likewise Ubuntu's use of AppArmor can occasionally have a similar effect.  
The fact that AppArmor isn't in the Linux tree is troublesome because if you 
want to run a custom-compiled kernel it means patching.  The kernel as 
shipped from Ubuntu has certain config options that don't have corresponding 
kconfig options, so they drop out when using menuconfig, xconfig, etc...  
including the config option for AppArmor.  Ugh.

> 18) PCI-Express is very different than PCI-X and PCI. PCI Express is
> the future of most PC based expansion card technologies. (And there
> are different kinds of PCI-Express cards x1 being the most common...
> The various PCI technologies is definitely a worthy topic of
> discussion.). Please excuse me for stating the obvious, but my last
> couple rounds of personal tech buying have been laptops, it's been
> about over 6 years since I built or bought my last "desktop".

   And now some laptops have mini PCI-e cards, too, along with mini PCI.  I 
consider that a good thing, since it allows for having discrete components 
instead of everything being unchangable.  

   -- Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us