The Ultimate questions on Linux, the Universe, and Everything

Building a 1 W, 0.5 % decade resistance The seven decade programmable resistor - my variant. Gerry Sweeney designed and built a really neat little SMD decade resistance board a few years ago. He still offers it for sale, already assembled, check it out! You can find it here: https://gerrysweeney.com/seven-decade-programmable-resistor-a-low-cost-solution/ Screenshot from Gerry Sweeney's site. Gerry Sweeney's design is cheap, simple and uses 1 % and 0.5 W resistors in the 1210 size (metric: 3225). Why build my own? I decided to build a similar board, but to use at least 0.5 % tolerance, better temperature coefficient and higher power resistors. This was more of an exercise to see what kind of SMD resistors are available and if it is possible to design it for higher power output and better tolerance at the same time. The answer is that it is, but it comes at a cost.  What kind of resistors? I tried to use 1206 size (metric: 3216) resistors where possible. They are a bit smaller an...

I've had this old multimeter for quite a long time (can't remember; maybe since around beginning of 2000). Nowadays I also have other multimeters that are of better quality. But I wanted to adjust it, because it isn't that accurate. I'm not talking about calibrating, because this meter is too cheaply built, so it cannot be calibrated. The meter had readings that differed noticeably in DC voltage, AC voltage, temperature and frequency in comparison with better quality meters.   I tried hard looking for some information on this meter, but the manufacturer doesn't tell anything and their support forum was quiet (I commented on another post in their forum that was asking the same thing). So I opened the meter up and found six trimmer resistors. All trimmers are labeled VR1-VR6, so it's easy to find them. VR1 and VR5 are hidden below the display on my specimen. It seems that on later models, VR5 is just below the power switch and only VR1 is hidden. I began adjusting...

When publishing software, it is custom to update software version when releasing an update. Why would you just silently replace a released software package with an updated one without changing version? In most cases this means that users downloading the package for the first time will get the latest package, but users that have downloaded the software previously will receive no notification about an update (assuming that there is an upgrade mechanism such as apt, yum or dnf, or in the Windows world maybe a custom software updater). If the update isn't worth pushing out to all users, why not just wait with pushing out the change until next official release? I don't know, but it feels like hiding something. Or maybe the publisher is just clueless. The only thing I could think of that would justify doing this, is if the software installation package has some minor issue (or completely broken thus preventing any installation). But not updating version numbers is just, well... weird...

RuneScape is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game ( MMORPG ) created by Jagex Ltd.. Their Linux client allows you to play the game natively also in Ubuntu. The client is written in C++ and uses OpenGL rendering. For reference, the Ubuntu client is available here: https://www.runescape.com/download . It is possible to play also in other Linux distributions, if you use the same libraries as in Ubuntu. This Fedora rpm is created from the Ubuntu package with two extra libraries that are privately installed. They don't interfere with the rest of the system. I don't guarantee that the client will work in the future, but as of now it works fine. There is a 64-bit package available for Fedora 25 and 26. Because the RuneScape client is proprietary, it isn't possible to host the package in the usual package repositories. For now it is provided here from my own private repository. To enable this RuneScape repository in Fedora: sudo dnf -y config-manager --add...

UPDATE. This headset works without modifications in Linux after the changes were committed to pulseaudio in 2017.  The Steelseries Arctis series headsets are very comfortable. You can wear this headset all day long thanks to the comfortable head strap. Steelseries Arctis 7 There are three models, Arctis 3, 5 and 7. The last one is the most expensive and has wireless connection. Arctis 5 is basically the same without wireless (only USB connection). Arctis 3 has only analog inputs. I've got the Arctis 7 model and of course I'm using it with Linux. There were some issues setting it up. It works fine in Alsa, the device is recognized. You do have to adjust sound levels, at least the mic has too low sound level. Use alsamixer on command line to adjust all volume levels for the headset to 100% (the two outputs and one input). But Pulseaudio has some issues. Only the mono device (chat output) and microphone is visible. This is because the headset uses a non-supported co...

I've read a lot of e-books . And since I use Linux devices, it is sometimes a bit problematic. How do you read e-books that you have bought in Linux? One way is to read public domain and free e-books. There are a lot, just search for them on the Internet. But they are mostly old books. Some writers actually publish some of their books explicitly without DRM. I like those writers. Then it is easy to transfer the book to any of your devices. There are many e-book readers on linux. I like Calibre and Fbreader . Calibre for managing and converting ebooks and also reading on the PC, and fbreader for reading on smaller devices, like my linux phone and tablet. The DRM-equipped e-books that I have bought are all the Adobe DRM type that have to be read in Linux using Adobe Digital Edition (ADE) using wine . So far the old 1.7 ADE version has been sufficient. The good thing with that version is that it just works. No runtime installation in wine or nothing, just install and fire it u...

For a long time, at least a year, Steam Family sharing has been broken on Linux PCs. Fortunately something has changed and it is suddenly working again (as of January 2017). I'm a bit disappointed at Valve's support, though. The problem hasn't been commented on at all by Valve, even though it has been reported both in the Steam support forum and on github: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4051 At least the problem could have been acknowledged.