-Title: Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money
-Tags: english, debian, bitcoin, personvern, sikkerhet
-Publish: 2010-12-10
-Date: 2010-12-10 08:20
-
-<p>With this weeks lawless
-<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
-attacks</a> on Wikileak and
-<a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
-speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
-not be trusted to handle money transactions.
-A blog post from
-<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
-Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
-mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
-involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>. I got
-some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
-some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
-for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
-
-<p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
-crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
-networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
-control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
-and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
-source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
-for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
-line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
-Debian</a> soon.</p>
-
-<p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
-There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
-bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
-currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
-are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
-want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
-you can even get
-<a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
-bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
-<a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
-on the current exchange rates.</p>
-
-<p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
-machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
-donations to the address
-<b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>. Thank you!</p>
+Title: How to test if a laptop is working with Linux
+Tags: english, debian, debian edu
+Date: 2010-12-22 14:55
+
+<p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
+href="http://www.uio.no/">University of oslo</a> testing if the new
+batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
+years the university have organized shared bid of a few thousand
+computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
+five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
+group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
+and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
+perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
+install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
+a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
+something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
+on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
+vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
+have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
+I perform on a new model.</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
+and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
+RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
+
+<li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
+installation, X.org is working.</li>
+
+<li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
+package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
+reported by the program.</li>
+
+<li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
+logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
+are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
+the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
+normally test this by playing
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
+video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
+
+<li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
+memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+
+<li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
+I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+
+<li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
+picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
+
+<li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
+any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
+few.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
+memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
+notice this.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is suspecd/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
+special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
+resume.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
+adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
+switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
+laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
+not.</li>
+
+<li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
+acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
+to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
+existence.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
+for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
+the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
+fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
+and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
+can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
+observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the framerate than
+RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.</p>
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