Linux

Unboxing and setting up the ZTE MF-100 HSDPA dongle won at a Dialog Axiata event — works out of the box on both Linux and Mac OS X Snow Leopard with no caveats.

Samsung ML-1640 is detected automatically on Ubuntu with SpliX drivers and shares cleanly with Mac OS X via a raw printer queue — a solid Linux-friendly laser printer.

Build a load balanced, high availability, shared-nothing web cluster for under $60/month using two Linode VPSes with rsync, MySQL replication, and SSH tunnels.

Switching from Subversion to Git reduced development time significantly — no more waiting on commits, merge anxiety, or overwrite fears. Development is fun again.

KernelCheck automates building the latest Linux kernel on Debian and Ubuntu, requiring minimal interaction while optimising the kernel for your specific hardware.

Avermedia M135A TV tuner works plug-and-play on Linux 2.6.28 with video4linux — all local channels, remote, and audio via sox with no manual configuration needed.

Large print jobs silently fail when the CUPS spool directory runs out of disk space on the print server — print in smaller batches as a workaround.

Build a dual-WiMAX home router on Debian with Shorewall for firewalling and traffic shaping across Dialog Broadband and Lanka Bell connections.

Monit is a lightweight open source Unix tool that automatically monitors and restarts processes, files, and services — far simpler to set up than Nagios or ZABBIX.

Fix ALSA locking and OpenVPN routing issues after upgrading a Lenovo 3000 N200 from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, with config changes for snd-hda-intel and NetworkManager.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex releases tomorrow with GNOME 2.24, kernel 2.6.27, Network Manager 0.7, encrypted private directories, and guest session support.

Fix Duplicity backup failures caused by too many open files on Linux by raising the file descriptor limit for the backup user in /etc/security/limits.conf.