Fedora Rawhide Nightly Builds

August 27, 2009 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

fedora_rawhide

The devs over at the Fedora Project are hard at work on the development version: Rawhide. They’ve just setup automated nightly builds of the liveCD which can easily be downloaded and tested on a CD, DVD, USB drive, virtual machine, or separate partition.

Rawhide will be released as Fedora 12 upon completion. With this version you have a choice of Gnome 2.28 or KDE 4.3 for your desktop. There is also improved power management, expanded support for mobile broadband, easy bug reporting, and many more new or improved features. So roll up your sleeves, download last night’s build, and help test some open source software.

[via Download Squad]

KernelCheck Kernel Compiler

August 25, 2009 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

kernelcheck

If you’ve ever tried compile a linux kernel yourself you know the headache of configuring and taking care of dependencies. KernelCheck makes this a point and click process for debian based linux distributions such as Ubuntu. You can use it to compile and install any 2.6.* stable kernel as well as the bleeding edge. KernelCheck even offers custom compilation options such as including kernel patches or rolling in proprietary video drivers. A tutorial (PDF) is also provided so you can see what you’re getting yourself into.

[via Web Upd8]

Hacking The Western Digital TV Media Player

August 25, 2009 by Matt Schulz 32 Comments

Western Digital recently released a media player that attaches to your TV and allows you to play HD media straight from an external USB drive to the television. With a price point of about $100, it’s strange that the device hasn’t made more of a stir in the consumer electronics market. Of course, if it exists, someone will hack it, though. Clever hardware and software hackers have already managed to get an alternative firmware running on the device, allowing for packages like a web server, RSS reader, Apple trailer viewer, and other linux-based packages. It’s good to see a device with so many software mods so early into production.

Palm Pre GPS Tweets

August 25, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnlM8UJUtOQ]

[Mike] sent in this project he’s been working on. He has posted instructions on how to get your Palm Pre to tweet its GPS coordinates at regular intervals. It does require that you have Linux installed on your Pre, but that’s not that big of an issue as he has a tutorial for that too. Getting the tweet to happen involves setting up a custom PHP file that sends the tweet, then a cron job to get it to run on a schedule. He mentions this could be useful for finding a lost phone as well as keeping track of loved ones. We would like to see him add a script to do similar with a picture. Maybe take a picture and upload it every time a call is placed?

Adding A DisplayLink Monitor To A Linux Router

August 24, 2009 by Matt Schulz 14 Comments

slugterm_dl

Routers aren’t just for routing network traffic any more. With the help of alternative operating systems such as DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt, routers are now extremely customizable and can be utilized to suit a number of needs. The main issue with projects built around routers is the need to telnet or SSH into them to get to a console. [Sven Killig] came up with a useful solution that utilizes the USB ports available on an Asus router to display video on a DisplayLink device, allowing a user to sit down and use the device as though it were a physical terminal. This would be a good DIY alternative to commercially available routers that display network graphs, system information, incoming email, and other data.

A Linux Server That Tweets Power Changes

August 22, 2009 by Matt Schulz 21 Comments

Twitter has been used for lots of experiments, both useful and just for fun. [FIRESTORM_v1] sent in his project that falls under the useful category. When he wanted a way to monitor his server’s power statistics, Twitter was a logical choice. Similar to the Tweet-a-Watt, he wrote a script that posts messages from APCUPSd to a Twitter account that he follows, and gets the updates on his phone. [FIRESTORM_v1] documents all of the scripts he used and the steps to get your server up and tweeting.

OpenPogo, An Alternative To Pogoplug Software

August 21, 2009 by Matt Schulz 21 Comments

pogoplug

Many of us heard the news of Marvell’s SheevaPlug plug-in PC being released alongside its consumer solution counterparts. One of the prominent products based on the SheevaPlug hardware is the Pogoplug. The Pogoplug is essentially a no-configuration media server that allows you to plug in a hard drive and network cable to make data readily available anywhere you have Internet access. It’s a great idea, but the underlying software is closed source, limiting the demographic of the device to consumers who are happy with an out-of-the-box solution. Enter OpenPogo, a solution for people who want a bit more control over their device. OpenPogo gives users more say over what their Pogoplug does; from running a torrent client to a web server to a Ruby on Rails server. The possibilities for the device are limitless, and OpenPogo makes turning our ideas into reality it just that much easier.