ap’s websphere

I was a bit disappointed when It came to my attention that the Network Controller in my DI15 is Broadcom, which don’t have any free drivers. Somebody told me that I may have to install NDISwrapper and use the windows driver to make it work. I have googled a lot for the howtos of installing and using NDISwrapper. From a blog I got the information that NDISwrapper not needed any more for Broadcom adapters, there are driver packages available for various GNU/Linux Distros, but are non-free. The only advantage is that we don’t have to go for the ugly windows stuff.

RPMs for Broadcom 802.11 wireless drivers are now available in the rpmfusion repository of fedora 10. All we have to do is 2-3 simple steps and here is what I have done in my system.

1) Enable the rpmfusion repository

You have to enable the rpmfusion repository using the command

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

2) Update the repo and install the driver package

The package we have to install is broadcom-wl and it depends on the package kmod-wl

sudo yum update
sudo yum install broadcom-wl

3) Reboot the system

When the system boots up, network manager will then detect the Broadcom wireless device and you will be able to connect to the wireless network through it

NB: Make sure that the “broadcom” kernel module is loaded. if not, add a line “modprobe broadcom” in /etc/rc.modules (In debian or debian based distros add a line “broadcom” in /etc/modules)

Please post your comments/suggestions here

My first Free Software event of the year was “Insignia 3.0 – Hackerdom” held at Govt. Engineering Collage, Thrissur. It was a pretty good experience with fistful of nice hacking sessions.

DAY 1

The keynote speech was given by Krishnakant Mane (Friends call him KK), who is a physically challenged hacker. He is blind by birth but he use computer as a normal person and contributes to various free software projects with the help of screen reading software “Orca”.

Keynote Speech by Krishnakant Mane

Sujith Haridasan came up with another hacking workshop with CHDK ( Canon Hacking Development Kit). Which is a firmware run in Canon cameras to extend the functionality. He showed sone tricks like printing “hello world” on camera screen and blinking the LEDs etc…

Sujith Hands on CHDK

After that Arun from SPACE and KK moderated a Open Discussion on Insight – The project which helps blind people to use computer. He also demonstrated how he uses computer for hacking with the help orca.

Arun and KK – Open Discussion on Insight

DAY 2

On Day 2 I was a little late due to some reasons, and when I reached the venue, Juan’s session was half on the way.

Another interesting personality was Juan Carlos Gentile who took a fabulous session on “Free Music”. He has been using Free Software for many years for video and audio processing

Juan on “Free Music”

I have attended a workshop session on “Blender” the Free 3D modeling tool using which “Elephant’s Dream and “Big Buck Bunny” was created. The session was taken by Sadik

Sadeek – The Blender Geek

DAY 3

The Sessions I could attend on the last day were “Entrepreneurship and Freedom” by Anoop John and “Hacker Culture” by Anivar Aravind

AJ on the way

In general the event was a good one, Informative and most important factor I noticed was that, Media is now understanding the word “Hacker” correctly which is extremely a happy news because it became a routine of media to use the word hacker in place of cracker.

Congratulations to the Hackerdom Team and Happy Hacking

PS:- All the photos posted here are taken in Sujith’s CHDK camera by either Sujith or Me . More photos are available here

Yet another member to the fedora family, Fedora 10 (Codename: Cambridge) released yesterday. The key features will be the brand new Gnome 2.24 and KDE 4.1. Another interesting thing is that Fedora 10 is stepping out with full support to Malayalam.

Quoting from Jesse Keating’s mail to Fedora announce list.

From: Jesse Keating <jkeating@redhat.com>
Date: 2008/11/25
Subject: Cambridge Launched to Explore Solar System (Fedora 10)

DATELINE: 2008-11-25

KEY FINGERPRINT: 61A8 ABE0 91FF 9FBB F4B0 7709 BF22 6FCC 4EBF C273

LOCATION: GEOSYNC ORBIT, FEDORA SPACE STATION VIA GLOBAL IRC NETWORK

BROADCASTING: FREEDOM FRIENDS FEATURES FIRST

(Cue J. Strauss’ “Blue Danube.”)

THIS IS FEDORA SPACE OPERATIONS ANNOUNCING with great pleasure the
successful launch of the new ship, Fedora 10: “Cambridge.”

Strapped into the pilot seats are the latest GNOME (2.24) and KDE (4.1),
accompanied on their amazing journey by an all star crew of glitch free
audio, better printing and webcam support, and a new faster graphical
startup.

Also on this ride are wireless connection sharing and the next evolution
in PackageKit, hooking through your multimedia applications to help
install supporting software (codecs).

For developers and system administrators on this mission, we have built
in appliance tools, Eclipse 3.4, NetBeans IDE, improved virtualization
management with remote installation and storage capabilities, RPM 4.6,
and new security auditing toolsets.

Please remember to polarize viewports to properly enjoy Cambridge’s
brand new graphics theme, “Solar,” shining on the desktop. Also on this
flight is a new lightweight desktop environment, LXDE, joining the more
recent desktop envionment crew member, Sugar (from the starship OLPC
XO), and the venerable GNOME, KDE, and XFCE.

We are now leaving drydock for a 13-month mission of innovation and
exploration. Crew members and guests are invited to the forward lounge
to use, study, modify, and redistribute.

To get your copy of Fedora 10 visit http://get.fedoraproject.org/

Release Notes:-

English – http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/

മലയാളം – http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/ml/