Posted on December 15, 2024 in foss • 3 min read
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend I finally had some spare time to catch up and ensure the Debian packages I maintain are in good shape. I figured I'd blog about it too, in an effort to get back into blogging and sharing my thoughts a bit more frequently.
Posted on January 22, 2023 in foss • 4 min read
I recently had to replace my motherboard on one of my PCs with a Nvidia GPU, which meant I had to figure out how to get Secure Boot working again with out-of-tree Nvidia kernel modules. Maintaining self-signed kernel modules is automated and zero-effort with dkms, but the initial setup takes a bit of legwork, so I figured I may as well document it for future reference.
This blog post specifically covers the use case of using a signed, standard distribution kernel provided by Debian/Ubuntu and using shim-signed to provision self-signed out of tree kernel modules that are registered with …
Posted on February 22, 2014 in foss • 3 min read
Hi Debian! Just to briefly introduce myself, I'm Vincent ([email protected], vincent_c on OFTC/Freenode) and I'm a recent graduate of the NM process, having attained DD-ship (is that even a word?) about a month ago in January. Before that, I was a DM since mid-2012, and just another contributor for a few years prior to that. Most of my contributions to the Project are related to packaging, especially packages maintained within the Debian Games Team. Outside of Debian, well, I'm just another 20-year-old, 3rd-year undergrad student studying at the University of British Columbia, working towards a major in …
Posted on January 14, 2013 in foss • 3 min read
I actually bought my very first SSD last year during Black Friday, but I never got around to swapping out my hard drive until after exams, and to blog about it until now, heh. It's a 180GB Intel 330, snagged from Newegg for roughly $0.58/GB, which in late 2012 was considered a pretty good deal (although I expect SSD prices to dip even further this year). I've heard from friends previously that I should consider purchasing a SSD, but I never really gave it serious thought until after another hard drive failure.
So long story short, I got …
Posted on October 08, 2012 in foss • 2 min read
It turns out that after thoroughly testing the new laptop I got a few months back for hardware compatibility issues with Linux, there was one thing I forgot to check: the built-in SD card reader slot. And of course, it happens to be the one thing that doesn't work out of the box (aside from Nvidia's Optimus, but I'll save my rant on that topic for another day). However, it turns out that Realtek does distribute source code for their out-of-tree rts5229 kernel module, which is used by my laptop's SD card reader, so luckily enough it didn't take me …
Posted on August 20, 2012 in foss • 7 min read
It's back to school season again, and I've decided to splurge some money on a new laptop a week or two ago. And of course, a new laptop means that I have to make sure that all the hardware components inside work with Linux, which is never a sure thing...
First things first, exactly what type of laptop was I looking for? Here's what I had after a quick brainstorming session: