Dear Lazyweb,

I'm looking for a scanner, with the following requirements:

1. Must work perfectly with Linux. I don't even care about Windows or MacOS.
2. Will be used for documents, not pictures. As such, resolution does not matter, but ADF would be nice.
3. I have a pretty good printer, and we have a system running mgetty for faxes, so I'm not looking for a multifunctional thing. I just need to be able to scan from time to time.
4. Not too expensive.

The problem is that I know splat about scanners in Linux, except that there is this thing called SANE which sometimes seems to help there. I even used it once or twice, but that's about it.

Any suggestions?

Something is broken

Something recently broke with the setup on my laptop.

Symptoms: when I switch from one application to another, suddenly nothing gets updated anymore. I can move my mouse around; but apart from that, the screen shows no updates. Judging by the sound of the fan, it would appear that something or other is looping at that point, too.

So far this has only happened when switching from one GTK+ application to another, but I haven't had enough of them to be sure it really is GTK+-related.

For reference, I'm using the best window manager out there, using the nv X.Org driver, and for now I've seen the lockups when switching between Liferea, Firefox, and Pidgin.

Of course, having a system lock up completely makes it rather hard to debug, especially if you're on the road and don't have a second system handy; but any hints as to what's causing this would be most welcome.

Otherwise, I guess I'll have to "hope" to encounter this when I can actually debug it...

Hardware sucks, but their manufacturers too.

A while back, I needed to do something with a mainboard made by Intel. The mainboard doesn't have a PS/2 connector; so I had to use a USB keyboard. In itself, this is horrible; USB is an incredibly bad interface to connect a keyboard to, IMO. But, well, sometimes the decision isn't yours, you know. Bad Intel.

Given my above-stated opinion on USB, I guess it's not surprising that I don't have a USB keyboard; I don't believe in them. But, well, a mainboard without a PS/2 connector doesn't suddenly get one because I look at it, so I went to a nearby computer shop with the intention to buy me a keyboard.

While it's bad enough that I had to get me a USB keyboard, they managed to make things worse. The particular model that I'd bought is broken in ... well, let me count the ways.

1. Blue LEDs are annoying. Yes, a keyboard needs LEDs to show that num lock (etc) are enabled, but a yellow LED works too, and is far less flashy or distracting.
2. A "Fn" key is nice if you want to overload keys on your keyboard. However, if there is not a single key on your keyboard that is overloaded using the Fn key, then you're silly.
3. The particular model used a "condensed" layout, rather than the standard 105-key be azerty layout. I'm used to the standard 105-key keyboard layout, and having to type on one that is different is no fun. When I mentioned this to the salesguy, he told me that I'd "get used to this pretty quickly". Well, perhaps if that were my only keyboard. But I also have my home desktop (standard 105-key layout), my laptop (apple azerty laptop layout), some m68k macs (mac azerty 105-key layout), and some more; then, it doesn't get so easy.
4. They keys on the keyboard were flat as on a laptop keyboard, rather than thick as on a desktop. This makes it harder to disassemble when it gets dirty, with the risk of breaking it (I've had to have my laptop's keyboard replaced when I broke it by disassembling it because the keys started to get stuck and I wanted to clean it...)

Now obviously it's possible to fix most of these issues by simply buying a decent keyboard—except that the shops that I went to simply don't have a decent keyboard anymore these days. At least this one still had 105 keys; for reasons that totally escape me, some keyboard manufacturers today seem to think it's a good idea to drop the insert key on their keyboards. WTF?

People just don't make decent quality keyboards anymore these days...

Bad hardware manufacturers. Bad, bad, bad!

Counterpoint

Microsoft has an article on their website in which they compare Windows to "Linux". As can be expected, the comparison is rather one-sided, and in some cases flat-out wrong. Usually I ignore this type of things, but this time I decided to just point out why it's so wrong, and put it online. Comments are welcome.

Whoa

I'm not into tattoos, but this is an interesting concept.

Note: this is a "design probe". The movie isn't real, it's an idea that may or may not eventually be made possible. But it sure is interesting.

(via)

(afterthought: Actually I am into tattoos, just not on my own body

debian-photo@lists.debian.org

Yesterday, Lars and I were, for some reason which I can't remember now, chatting about taking pictures over at #debian-devel. As we were doing so, it came up that there are quite a number of Debian Developers and/or users who have (a) digital camera(s) these days, and that it might be a good idea to have a list for amateur and/or professional photographers who want to use Debian with their digital camera. After all, there's quite a bit of software to help with that, but sometimes it can be a bit challenging to set it up correctly.

So Lars sent in a bugreport on the lists.debian.org pseudo-package, asking for the creation of a new mailinglist to discuss anything closely or remotely related to using Debian with a digital (or other?) camera. List creation procedure now calls for people who think it's a good idea (or not...) to speak up and let their voice known. So, if you have a digital camera or are thinking of getting one, and want to share ideas about them, please follow up to the bugreport!

They managed!

It took them half a year, but the Belgian federal politicians finally managed to come up with some form of government. I can't say I'm impressed.

Well.

Granted, Verhofstadt's mission was not as hard as Leterme's. Verhofstadt was told to form a government only to handle the most urgent matters, and which will be disbanded at Easter; Leterme was asked to form a government to last for four years, which is how long a Belgian federal government usually holds office. And yes, Leterme's mission has most likely been one of the hardest one in the history of Belgian formation talks.

But even if all that is true, I'm baffled at the fact that the intention now still is to make Leterme the prime minister at or around Easter. In my opinion, he's had his chance and blew it.

Then again, maybe I'm biased. I've never liked Leterme; and when his party CD&V decided to ally themselves with a separatist party, I decided to gracefully extend my antipathy to his entire party.

2008

It's almost newyear, and people tend to do some predictions around that time about what will happen the next year and beyond.

I've never done this, since I tend to find such things quite stupid. But, hell, sometimes you've just got to change your habits, so here goes:

• In december, just about every Belgian radio station will make an overview of either the most popular songs ever, or just the most popular songs of 2008.
• Also in december, just about every Belgian TV station will produce their version of "an overview of the pasts year", and broadcast that.

Fun if people get predictable.

Not that I don't like such overviews, but sometimes you just want to see something interesting when you put your brain in "off" mode.

In addition, 2008 will be the year I turn 30. It will most likely also be the year I move out on my own. More on that later, I guess.

NBD 1:2.9.9-3

I just uploaded the Debian packages versioned 1:2.9.9-2 (almost immediately followed by 1:2.9.9-3, because I forgot to test part of it, and obviously that part turns out to be broken), containing some updates:

• Added a switch in the configuration file which will cause the initscript to not kill all nbd-client instances, which it does currently.
• Added initramfs scripts.

The two combined should allow for running a root filesystem on an NBD device. Note that the initramfs scripts haven't received any testing beyond my system yet; it's not impossible that they're broken in some regard. Treat them with some caution.

Having said that, testing would be welcome...

Next, I've also started work on partman-nbd. This is in an even more experimental and unfinished state, but the eventual goal is to support installing to an NBD device. Wouldn't that be nice.