As this blog no doubt reflects, practically all of my computing is done on Linux boxes. Any Windows 'assistance' that may be called for is usually more than catered for via VirtualBox - a VB-Windows XP in my case.
I do have a Windows 7 installation on one PC that I boot into occasionally, when circumstances demand, and yesterday, one such occasion cropped up. I had left my Android tablet on-charge for a day or so and voltage spikes from an intermittent charger lead had hopelessly corrupted the OS, with the result that it would no longer boot properly - just like my Mint 17.3 woes in fact! Anyway, I elected to reinstall Android 'Lollipop' from scratch, and for that, Windows and a USB cable was a prerequisite.
Once this had been achieved, I needed to 'root' the device in order to make it usable. Like the first time round, I went the 'Kingo' route (sic), downloading the software straight from their site. Avira, the (free) Win7 anti-virus software immediately flagged the download as containing Malware and quarantined it. Since I had used it previously with no ill-effects, I disabled Avira and tried again. When I ran the Kingo software, I had second thoughts about continuing when it started downloading stuff in the background. When it then produced a EULA box, I thought, fuck it, I don't remember any of this the first time round, so hit 'Decline' to end the installation. But it continued nonetheless! Next, what I assumed was the usual Windows warning of an 'unknown' driver being installed came up, to which I selected 'Cancel' - but that had no effect either! It just sat there until, running out of patience, I hit 'Install' , whereupon installation immediately recommenced . Upon completion, I got the usual Windows prompt that the computer needed to be restarted.
On rebooting, I was presented with the infamous black desktop with its, "This copy of Windows is not genuine" message. I had seen this a couple of times in the past, and it was always after doing a Windows update. But removing the dreaded 'KB971033' update had always 'fixed' it, and from past experience, I normally have updates disabled anyway. After Kingo had successfully rooted the tablet, I set about correcting the '...not genuine' situation. I was surprised to find that there was no KB971033 file installed, and even more surprised to discover that the 'Daz' Bootloader installation no longer had any effect! Given that this invariably 'reset' things in the past, I'm now inclined to think that M$ is somehow in cahoots with Kingo, out to disable as many Win7 boxes as possible, and by any means necessary. Right now, my Win7 installation is back on a 30-day Trial, with none of the usual 'fixes' having any effect whatsoever. Is M$ really this desperate, particularly with an OS that is practically End-Of-Line?!?!? Maybe, as I read not long ago that the uptake for their shitty Win10 offering was still only round 25%, with more than 50% of Windows users having chosen to stay with Windows 7.
I'm debating whether or not to reinstall a fresh copy, and Updates be damned! While I'd be more than happy to replace it with a copy of Win-XP, my new & improved 7260-AC wireless cards are not compatible with it. That, and the fact that it is also unable to access my external USB 3TB (GPT) hard-drive.
So, just a heads-up for anyone thinking of installing Kingo rooting software on their M$ boxes - you might get more than you bargained for!
Edit:
Although I swore to myself I'd never have anything to do with Kingo again, circumstances dictated otherwise. My car failed to start one morning and needing the check its computers fault-codes, I needed a rooted tablet.
Long story short, one week after installing Kingo on Win7 in order to root the tablet, the dreaded black wallpaper returned, along with the "Windows not genuine error".
Turned out to be the least of my problems as well. While setting about reinstalling Win7 from a backup on an unattached SSD, I presume I accidentally shorted something on the motherboard with a dangling USB cable, because after a restart, it failed to power up again. All I can say for certain is that the SSD I was attaching is dead. The motherboard probably is as well, but I won't know for certain till I can check the CPU. As penance for my stupidity, I've ordered from Amazon what is probably the last & cheapest AMD AM1 motherboard being sold, to do just that. Time will tell...
Fuck Windows, but more so, that Kingo garbage. This has proven to be one expensive lesson.
1 June 2017
My Wireless Experiences - a rethink...
The fickle finger of fate has had me burning the midnight oil once again trying to improve my computers wireless connectivity. Contrary to my somewhat damning previous conclusions regarding Intel cards, I now believe, that it is probably better the Devil you know...
Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm currently of the opinion that Broadcom wireless cards suck huge! Up until recently, my work with the last Broadcom cards that I had bought - one BCM43142A0 and a BCM94322 - involved the new(ish) mini-PC that I had put together, and that revolved around the AMD Athlon 5350. Before its arrival, I was using an integrated quad-core Intel Atom 330, Zotac motherboard. This was bought pre-built and had come with a full-length Atheros wireless card. Having it left running 24/7 for 3.5 years, I can say with some confidence that wireless on this setup was lousy. I in fact have never come across one Atheros-based card that has performed well, and I've had 2-3 of them. Anyway, with the AMD motherboard taking only a single half-length wireless card, I needed to go a-shopping for anything other than Atheros - enter Intel and Broadcom.
Given how few peripheral slots are available on mini-ITX boards, a single wireless/bluetooth solution seemed always the way to go, hence my little obsession with getting this setup to work properly. My experience with Intel's N-7260 had left me somewhat jaundiced by the whole affair admittedly, but work it did, after a fashion, at least with Linux. I have had the 7260 in my Dell laptop, running 24/7 for almost a year now, and say what you will about Intel, their wireless cards rock! Hardly anything to complain about, despite earlier rantings of mine in a previous post. Bluetooth excepted of course - this continues to suffer from the minor annoyance of either failing to start at boot, or when Bluetooth is switched off. Suspending/Resuming the computer a few times will eventually see it start up again.
The N-7260 running with Windows 7 is another matter entirely, at least where Bluetooth is concerned. Wireless is pretty much flawless, just as good as with Linux. Bluetooth, despite another exhaustive attempt to get to the bottom of the matter, refuses to work at all, which is just plain bizarre. After having downloaded and tried every single relevant Intel driver, I recently downloaded & tried drivers from both Dell and Lenovo, in the futile hope that one of them contained the much sought-after magic sauce. All in vain of course. Intriguingly, I googled a reference by someone that said that their 7260 problem was caused by an installed SSD that he was using, so yesterday, I opted for the onerous chore of installing Win7 on a hard-drive to see if that would fix things - the mini-ITX/Athlon 5350 setup has two SSD in it. Unfortunately, shitty Windows refused to continue with the installation when it discovered an ex4 Linux Mint partition on the same drive, claiming that it was a GPT partition and could not continue. So the jury is still out on that one.
But onto my Broadcom rant. Like I said, wireless had always been lousy with my previous Intel Atom/Atheros setup, so when I upgraded to the AMD 5350/Broadcom setup, it took a while to discover that I seemed to have similar problems with a completely different setup, but both use(d) the same all-metal case. Hence my suspicions grew that maybe it was the computer case/antenna setup that was causing the problem, not the wireless cards themselves, and there I left the matter until recently, when wireless once again had gotten so bad with the mini-ITX that I could not even stream a movie from it without it either stuttering badly or the connection failing completely. I therefore opted to investigate in depth the problem and was appalled by what I discovered about the Broadcom cards - namely, they suck!
Putting my (now!) trusty old N-7260 in the mini-ITX computer, I was amazed to find that I had a blisteringly fast & reliable wireless connection. Up until then, I had never really checked the wireless, having been obsessed with the Bluetooth problem. So now I knew the issue had nothing to do with either the metal case or the antenna - two things less to consider! I then went checking the Broadcom cards. Of the two, the one with integrated Bluetooth (43142) was also by far the worst. [Note: This family of cards has such a poor reputation, that (evidently) Linux doesn't support them 'out-of-the-box' - drivers must be manually installed from the repository (bcmwl-kernel-source)] With it located just 1-2m from the router, and Win7 indicating it (unsurprisingly) had 'Excellent' signal strength, it would routinely stutter and stop entirely every couple of minutes. I watched this in disbelief for hours. It performed similarly when in the laptop, whether beside the router or at distance in another room. So this card was completely useless, at least as far as wireless was concerned. Its Bluetooth worked perfectly however, though not (at all!) on Linux, but more on that later. The other Broadcom card's wireless performance, the 4322, was much better, but that still wasn't saying much. It was after all what had prompted the investigation in the first place.
My one and only question is, how can Broadcom even exist as a business entity selling wireless cards that perform this badly? Of the three broadcom cards I've bought, none could be remotely considered as being thought of as a 'good' wireless card.
Given that currently the N-7260 must remain in the mini-ITX computer, and that my Dell laptop would have been Bluetooth-less without it, I attempted to get the BCM43142's bluetooth working on Linux - and succeeded! Mainly thanks to the following user-posts that I googled;
https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-bluetooth/msg47879.html
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=224099
https://github.com/winterheart/broadcom-bt-firmware/blob/master/brcm/BCM43142A0-04ca-2006.hcd
The first, refreshingly describes the steps carried out by the Broadcom card in order to initialise Bluetooth, and where to look for said information in Linux. The second, though not a fix in my case, shows you the necessary steps needed for removing/reinitialising Bluetooth and where to go looking. The third link points to the BT firmware needed by the card itself in order for it to work. Without this, the BT adapter will appear to be working, but scanning for BT devices will reveal nothing. Note that this firmware is for my Broadcom wireless card, other cards may/will use different firmware. You will need to check the Linux "kern.log" file in order to find what Broadcom 'Patch' firmware the BT adapter is trying & failing to load. Do a google for this, copy it into wherever your flavour of Linux keeps this stuff (for Mint, it's '/lib/firmware/brcm') then remove/reinitialise Bluetooth. Hey Presto! - everything should then magically work, or at least in my case it does!
Thankfully I have two wireless slots available on my laptop. One now contains the BCM43142 card for its Bluetooth, which works perfectly, unlike the N-7260. Its wireless is also available of course, but is for the most part, unusable - Shame on you Broadcom! The other slot contains my other trusty Intel card, the 5100.
Right now I'm thinking of upgrading my modem/router from the old but reliable Huawei E3220, to a Huawei E5577. The 4G feature is nice, but where I live, not really an option for the foreseeable future, given the 3G reception itself is poor most of the time. But it does have a dual-band WLAN, whereas the E3220 is limited to just the 2.4G band. This will also (hopefully) finally allow me to see a significant increase in network speed. Right now for practical purposes it's limited to about 1.4MB/s which in this day & age, just doesn't cut it.
That will also mean that I will be considering some more wireless card purchases, and despite my previous utterances, it seems that Intel is the only way to go. Unfortunately the 7260-AC cards are the most highly rated (and expensive) that they currently offer, and given my nightmarish time with the N-7260, I'm reticent about pulling the trigger on one of these. The 'AC' part is also of little use to the E5577, which is not AC-enabled. Decisions, decisions. One thing I know for certain - I will not be buying any more Broadcom cards!!!
Edit1:
Some time later... Windoze finally installed after I had formatted the hard-disk beforehand. No difference whatsoever whether it's on a SSD or a hard-disk, as far as Bluetooth is concerned. I even tried two flavours of Windows 7, Win 7 Home Basic & Win 7 Ultimate - no difference! I then stumbled across another post where someone said that clearing the CMOS info fixed it for him - not for me it didn't! I finally updated the Bios, from version 1.2 to 1.5, no difference there either.
As a last resort, I started downloading & installing Win8.1 & Win10 drivers. I was exhilarated initially to discover that with early Win8.1 drivers, after a reboot, the drivers installed without errors!!! Unfortunately, that is all they did. When I tried changing & saving Bluetooth settings, it failed, saying the device might be unplugged. There was also no Bluetooth tray icon or Control panel settings to indicate that Bluetooth even existed. Naturally, trying to 'Add' a Bluetooth device detected nothing.
So after fighting the good fight, I am admitting defeat on this. Although as I have already said, the N-7260 works fine with Linux, one interesting thing I found was that when installed on the mini-ITX motherboard, I could not disable it from the Bios - I still have a wireless connection when it's supposedly disabled! That is suggestive of a hardware problem somewhere, and given the grief this card has put me through, it's probably the cause.
After swearing to never get another Intel card, I have just gone and ordered 2 7260 AC cards! This means that I will not be getting the E5577 router after all, going more upmarket and getting a Huawei B525. I can get one of these babies for just €50 from my ISP as long as I sign up for another 18 months with them. Given I'm with them well over a decade already, that's no biggie. These also allow for an external antenna, which given the lacklustre 3G reception at this location, means that that's one more thing I'll have to order. Fun, fun, fun.
Edit2:
My curiosity got the better of me, so I tested my N-7260 with Windows 10 - the same problem exists! At this stage, it's looking very likely that it's a hardware fault with the card, and nothing to do with the drivers. Along with the usual 'Cannot start (code 10)' error, one additional piece of info that is shown on Windows 10's Device Manager is a line saying that the Bluetooth adapter is suffering from a 'Power_failure'. I'd probably have taken a hammer to it ages ago but for the fact that N-7260's Bluetooth works fine with Linux. I also discovered why the N-7260 still had internet access when disabled in the Bios - I had put a sliver of cellotape over one of the pins ages ago (a Youtube 'fix' I suspect) and had forgotten about it! When removed, the card once again honoured the Bios settings.
With regard to Windows 10, that was the first opportunity I had to play with it. Wow, I was underwhelmed - I can see why Microsoft has been trying to sneak it onto people's PC's while they are asleep. I cannot understand why they abandoned the 3D graphics look - that 2D desktop looks terrible, like something from the Windows 3.1 era. Windows 7 is a far more attractive desktop.
Edit3:
Haha, even Broadcom's BCM43142 Bluetooth is crap! While it does work, and is usable when listening to music, watching a movie etc. is another matter entirely. The audio stream is full of short intermittent breaks, resulting in the audio going out of sync with the video after just a minute or so. I never had a problem like that with the Intel's N-7260. Yep, Broadcom sure sucks!!!
Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm currently of the opinion that Broadcom wireless cards suck huge! Up until recently, my work with the last Broadcom cards that I had bought - one BCM43142A0 and a BCM94322 - involved the new(ish) mini-PC that I had put together, and that revolved around the AMD Athlon 5350. Before its arrival, I was using an integrated quad-core Intel Atom 330, Zotac motherboard. This was bought pre-built and had come with a full-length Atheros wireless card. Having it left running 24/7 for 3.5 years, I can say with some confidence that wireless on this setup was lousy. I in fact have never come across one Atheros-based card that has performed well, and I've had 2-3 of them. Anyway, with the AMD motherboard taking only a single half-length wireless card, I needed to go a-shopping for anything other than Atheros - enter Intel and Broadcom.
Given how few peripheral slots are available on mini-ITX boards, a single wireless/bluetooth solution seemed always the way to go, hence my little obsession with getting this setup to work properly. My experience with Intel's N-7260 had left me somewhat jaundiced by the whole affair admittedly, but work it did, after a fashion, at least with Linux. I have had the 7260 in my Dell laptop, running 24/7 for almost a year now, and say what you will about Intel, their wireless cards rock! Hardly anything to complain about, despite earlier rantings of mine in a previous post. Bluetooth excepted of course - this continues to suffer from the minor annoyance of either failing to start at boot, or when Bluetooth is switched off. Suspending/Resuming the computer a few times will eventually see it start up again.
The N-7260 running with Windows 7 is another matter entirely, at least where Bluetooth is concerned. Wireless is pretty much flawless, just as good as with Linux. Bluetooth, despite another exhaustive attempt to get to the bottom of the matter, refuses to work at all, which is just plain bizarre. After having downloaded and tried every single relevant Intel driver, I recently downloaded & tried drivers from both Dell and Lenovo, in the futile hope that one of them contained the much sought-after magic sauce. All in vain of course. Intriguingly, I googled a reference by someone that said that their 7260 problem was caused by an installed SSD that he was using, so yesterday, I opted for the onerous chore of installing Win7 on a hard-drive to see if that would fix things - the mini-ITX/Athlon 5350 setup has two SSD in it. Unfortunately, shitty Windows refused to continue with the installation when it discovered an ex4 Linux Mint partition on the same drive, claiming that it was a GPT partition and could not continue. So the jury is still out on that one.
But onto my Broadcom rant. Like I said, wireless had always been lousy with my previous Intel Atom/Atheros setup, so when I upgraded to the AMD 5350/Broadcom setup, it took a while to discover that I seemed to have similar problems with a completely different setup, but both use(d) the same all-metal case. Hence my suspicions grew that maybe it was the computer case/antenna setup that was causing the problem, not the wireless cards themselves, and there I left the matter until recently, when wireless once again had gotten so bad with the mini-ITX that I could not even stream a movie from it without it either stuttering badly or the connection failing completely. I therefore opted to investigate in depth the problem and was appalled by what I discovered about the Broadcom cards - namely, they suck!
Putting my (now!) trusty old N-7260 in the mini-ITX computer, I was amazed to find that I had a blisteringly fast & reliable wireless connection. Up until then, I had never really checked the wireless, having been obsessed with the Bluetooth problem. So now I knew the issue had nothing to do with either the metal case or the antenna - two things less to consider! I then went checking the Broadcom cards. Of the two, the one with integrated Bluetooth (43142) was also by far the worst. [Note: This family of cards has such a poor reputation, that (evidently) Linux doesn't support them 'out-of-the-box' - drivers must be manually installed from the repository (bcmwl-kernel-source)] With it located just 1-2m from the router, and Win7 indicating it (unsurprisingly) had 'Excellent' signal strength, it would routinely stutter and stop entirely every couple of minutes. I watched this in disbelief for hours. It performed similarly when in the laptop, whether beside the router or at distance in another room. So this card was completely useless, at least as far as wireless was concerned. Its Bluetooth worked perfectly however, though not (at all!) on Linux, but more on that later. The other Broadcom card's wireless performance, the 4322, was much better, but that still wasn't saying much. It was after all what had prompted the investigation in the first place.
My one and only question is, how can Broadcom even exist as a business entity selling wireless cards that perform this badly? Of the three broadcom cards I've bought, none could be remotely considered as being thought of as a 'good' wireless card.
Given that currently the N-7260 must remain in the mini-ITX computer, and that my Dell laptop would have been Bluetooth-less without it, I attempted to get the BCM43142's bluetooth working on Linux - and succeeded! Mainly thanks to the following user-posts that I googled;
https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-bluetooth/msg47879.html
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=224099
https://github.com/winterheart/broadcom-bt-firmware/blob/master/brcm/BCM43142A0-04ca-2006.hcd
The first, refreshingly describes the steps carried out by the Broadcom card in order to initialise Bluetooth, and where to look for said information in Linux. The second, though not a fix in my case, shows you the necessary steps needed for removing/reinitialising Bluetooth and where to go looking. The third link points to the BT firmware needed by the card itself in order for it to work. Without this, the BT adapter will appear to be working, but scanning for BT devices will reveal nothing. Note that this firmware is for my Broadcom wireless card, other cards may/will use different firmware. You will need to check the Linux "kern.log" file in order to find what Broadcom 'Patch' firmware the BT adapter is trying & failing to load. Do a google for this, copy it into wherever your flavour of Linux keeps this stuff (for Mint, it's '/lib/firmware/brcm') then remove/reinitialise Bluetooth. Hey Presto! - everything should then magically work, or at least in my case it does!
Thankfully I have two wireless slots available on my laptop. One now contains the BCM43142 card for its Bluetooth, which works perfectly, unlike the N-7260. Its wireless is also available of course, but is for the most part, unusable - Shame on you Broadcom! The other slot contains my other trusty Intel card, the 5100.
Right now I'm thinking of upgrading my modem/router from the old but reliable Huawei E3220, to a Huawei E5577. The 4G feature is nice, but where I live, not really an option for the foreseeable future, given the 3G reception itself is poor most of the time. But it does have a dual-band WLAN, whereas the E3220 is limited to just the 2.4G band. This will also (hopefully) finally allow me to see a significant increase in network speed. Right now for practical purposes it's limited to about 1.4MB/s which in this day & age, just doesn't cut it.
That will also mean that I will be considering some more wireless card purchases, and despite my previous utterances, it seems that Intel is the only way to go. Unfortunately the 7260-AC cards are the most highly rated (and expensive) that they currently offer, and given my nightmarish time with the N-7260, I'm reticent about pulling the trigger on one of these. The 'AC' part is also of little use to the E5577, which is not AC-enabled. Decisions, decisions. One thing I know for certain - I will not be buying any more Broadcom cards!!!
Edit1:
Some time later... Windoze finally installed after I had formatted the hard-disk beforehand. No difference whatsoever whether it's on a SSD or a hard-disk, as far as Bluetooth is concerned. I even tried two flavours of Windows 7, Win 7 Home Basic & Win 7 Ultimate - no difference! I then stumbled across another post where someone said that clearing the CMOS info fixed it for him - not for me it didn't! I finally updated the Bios, from version 1.2 to 1.5, no difference there either.
As a last resort, I started downloading & installing Win8.1 & Win10 drivers. I was exhilarated initially to discover that with early Win8.1 drivers, after a reboot, the drivers installed without errors!!! Unfortunately, that is all they did. When I tried changing & saving Bluetooth settings, it failed, saying the device might be unplugged. There was also no Bluetooth tray icon or Control panel settings to indicate that Bluetooth even existed. Naturally, trying to 'Add' a Bluetooth device detected nothing.
So after fighting the good fight, I am admitting defeat on this. Although as I have already said, the N-7260 works fine with Linux, one interesting thing I found was that when installed on the mini-ITX motherboard, I could not disable it from the Bios - I still have a wireless connection when it's supposedly disabled! That is suggestive of a hardware problem somewhere, and given the grief this card has put me through, it's probably the cause.
After swearing to never get another Intel card, I have just gone and ordered 2 7260 AC cards! This means that I will not be getting the E5577 router after all, going more upmarket and getting a Huawei B525. I can get one of these babies for just €50 from my ISP as long as I sign up for another 18 months with them. Given I'm with them well over a decade already, that's no biggie. These also allow for an external antenna, which given the lacklustre 3G reception at this location, means that that's one more thing I'll have to order. Fun, fun, fun.
Edit2:
My curiosity got the better of me, so I tested my N-7260 with Windows 10 - the same problem exists! At this stage, it's looking very likely that it's a hardware fault with the card, and nothing to do with the drivers. Along with the usual 'Cannot start (code 10)' error, one additional piece of info that is shown on Windows 10's Device Manager is a line saying that the Bluetooth adapter is suffering from a 'Power_failure'. I'd probably have taken a hammer to it ages ago but for the fact that N-7260's Bluetooth works fine with Linux. I also discovered why the N-7260 still had internet access when disabled in the Bios - I had put a sliver of cellotape over one of the pins ages ago (a Youtube 'fix' I suspect) and had forgotten about it! When removed, the card once again honoured the Bios settings.
With regard to Windows 10, that was the first opportunity I had to play with it. Wow, I was underwhelmed - I can see why Microsoft has been trying to sneak it onto people's PC's while they are asleep. I cannot understand why they abandoned the 3D graphics look - that 2D desktop looks terrible, like something from the Windows 3.1 era. Windows 7 is a far more attractive desktop.
Edit3:
Haha, even Broadcom's BCM43142 Bluetooth is crap! While it does work, and is usable when listening to music, watching a movie etc. is another matter entirely. The audio stream is full of short intermittent breaks, resulting in the audio going out of sync with the video after just a minute or so. I never had a problem like that with the Intel's N-7260. Yep, Broadcom sure sucks!!!
19 February 2017
'www.oceanfree.net' email server back in operation.
'www.oceanfree.net' has been on life-support for many years, allowing only the receiving of emails, and no possibility of creating new email accounts. It had in fact at one time given its users a date by which it would scrap the service entirely. Never happened for some reason.
About a week ago, I realised that all emails from Oceanfree had ceased, and figured that they had finally decided the put this mut out of its misery. Nope! Some kind of 'reset' was after been done though, because when I signed in online - doing so from a email client no longer had any effect - I discovered that I could once again receive emails. Thinking something might be afoot, I also tried sending emails from my oceanfree account and was elated to find that this also worked - first time in at least 8 years! Unfortunately, while receiving emails using an email-client is once again possible, it refuses to allow the sending of emails from anything other than web-browsers.
Getting excited about an pop3 email server is kinda sad I admit, but this was my first email address and the only one that I have used consistently over the years, Microsoft's excepted. Since it was mainly used as a junk-email dump, it would have been no great loss either, but then, there's the Nostalgia Factor to consider. :)
The company behind oceanfree, British Telecom, seems to be out to take another stab at the Irish broadband market as it is adding an advert - "from €20 broadband" - to all emails going through its servers. Seeing as I'm paying twice that to Three, another British-based company, I thought it worth checking out, but couldn't find any info on what you would get for that money. Just looking to generate traffic it seems.
Edit:
Despite the above rhetoric (nearly 2 years ago), an indication of how little time I have for this Oceanfree email account is that I've only just discovered that my account's password has been hacked - a couple of months ago, in fact! - and some clown is attempting to extort money, both by threatening to release 'saucy' details contained therein to my family/associates etc. or else triggering an embedded virus to wreak havoc on my system. Good luck with that. This actually gave me a giggle, given that, a) I'm Linux-based, and b) it's been virtually unused for nearly two decades and contains nothing but junk mail! The only reason they managed to hack this account is that it is not on a secure https server - also something I've only just realised...
Which renders all of the above, null & void! If BT were looking to resurrect the Oceanfree email service, the very first thing they would have done was stick it on a secure server - which they didn't, obviously 'cos the notion existed only in my head! Confirmation of this was found when I went to change the email account's login password - I got a 404 'Page not found' error!!!
All of this doesn't explain why sending emails suddenly started working again. Not that any of this matters now, given what has happened.
Final edit:
A couple of months on, and someone has finally drove a stake through this dog's heart - the 'www.oceanfree.net' mail server is no more, with the link now redirecting to a paid-for web-services site. The end of an era, if only in my own head, it being my first email address and all. It will at least put paid to one wannabe extortionist. They'd been spamming this account for over two years with this nonsense, varying the amount demanded by a few hundred dollars, but always with the proviso that this would be their final demand - pay now or suffer the consequences! It would be funny but for the fact that there must be a sizeable percentage of people that fall for this stuff & pay-up.
Oceanfree - RIP.
About a week ago, I realised that all emails from Oceanfree had ceased, and figured that they had finally decided the put this mut out of its misery. Nope! Some kind of 'reset' was after been done though, because when I signed in online - doing so from a email client no longer had any effect - I discovered that I could once again receive emails. Thinking something might be afoot, I also tried sending emails from my oceanfree account and was elated to find that this also worked - first time in at least 8 years! Unfortunately, while receiving emails using an email-client is once again possible, it refuses to allow the sending of emails from anything other than web-browsers.
Getting excited about an pop3 email server is kinda sad I admit, but this was my first email address and the only one that I have used consistently over the years, Microsoft's excepted. Since it was mainly used as a junk-email dump, it would have been no great loss either, but then, there's the Nostalgia Factor to consider. :)
The company behind oceanfree, British Telecom, seems to be out to take another stab at the Irish broadband market as it is adding an advert - "from €20 broadband" - to all emails going through its servers. Seeing as I'm paying twice that to Three, another British-based company, I thought it worth checking out, but couldn't find any info on what you would get for that money. Just looking to generate traffic it seems.
Edit:
Despite the above rhetoric (nearly 2 years ago), an indication of how little time I have for this Oceanfree email account is that I've only just discovered that my account's password has been hacked - a couple of months ago, in fact! - and some clown is attempting to extort money, both by threatening to release 'saucy' details contained therein to my family/associates etc. or else triggering an embedded virus to wreak havoc on my system. Good luck with that. This actually gave me a giggle, given that, a) I'm Linux-based, and b) it's been virtually unused for nearly two decades and contains nothing but junk mail! The only reason they managed to hack this account is that it is not on a secure https server - also something I've only just realised...
Which renders all of the above, null & void! If BT were looking to resurrect the Oceanfree email service, the very first thing they would have done was stick it on a secure server - which they didn't, obviously 'cos the notion existed only in my head! Confirmation of this was found when I went to change the email account's login password - I got a 404 'Page not found' error!!!
All of this doesn't explain why sending emails suddenly started working again. Not that any of this matters now, given what has happened.
Final edit:
A couple of months on, and someone has finally drove a stake through this dog's heart - the 'www.oceanfree.net' mail server is no more, with the link now redirecting to a paid-for web-services site. The end of an era, if only in my own head, it being my first email address and all. It will at least put paid to one wannabe extortionist. They'd been spamming this account for over two years with this nonsense, varying the amount demanded by a few hundred dollars, but always with the proviso that this would be their final demand - pay now or suffer the consequences! It would be funny but for the fact that there must be a sizeable percentage of people that fall for this stuff & pay-up.
Oceanfree - RIP.
7 January 2017
Linux Mint 18.1: Mini review...
Apart from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Linux Mint is my next most-used Linux distro. Deepin Linux of course has a place in my heart as well, but right now, the file-managers available are just too 'primitive' for my liking. The Deepin developers themselves seemed to have already decided that the Gnome3-based file-manager ('Files') was a bit of a dog, so started developing one of their own. This is great to see, but right now, the Deepin file-manager itself is fairly limited, and as a result, I rarely use my Deepin installation anymore - I'm waiting for the Beta of the next version to be released.
So right now, Mint 17.3 is my main OS - with the Mate desktop of course! When Mint 18 was released, one of the main Mate developments was the phasing out of the 'old' GTK2 libraries, to make way for their GTK3 equivalents. Given how much I detest the Gnome3 desktop and its associated components, I took this as a bad omen as far as Mate's future was concerned. Therefore I gave Mint 18 a pass. When Mint 18.1 was released however, curiousity got the better of me. Booting 18.1 from a USB drive, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.
First surprise was that Compiz seemed to work perfectly, right out of the box. Next was how 'unchanged' the Mate desktop appears, despite its use of GTK3 - well done Mate developers! It also ran nice and quickly. Things were looking good.
Given these favourable first impressions, I decided that I may as well replace Mint 17.3, but backed it up beforehand - lucky that I did too!
First problem that became obvious was that 18.1 fails to 'validate' my Transcend SSD. It 'detects' it ok, but when it fails to 'validate' it, it just disables it completely - major bummer! This ruled out any possibility of replacing 17.3, at least by performing a normal installation. Not to be outdone, I then decided to install it on a Hitachi hard-drive, make an image-file of the installation, then overwrite the 17.3 SSD partition with this. After doing all of this, imagine my disgust when Mint 18.3, after booting from the SSD, then proceeded to disable the same SSD when it couldn't complete the 'validation' process! Fighting the good fight, lastly I tried installing a few different kernel versions in the hope that one of them could validate the SSD - nope. Having run out of ideas, I switched to the Hitachi HD for a week of Mint 18.1, to see if it really was worth pursuing any further.
It wasn't. There are just too many bugs present, some old, some newly introduced. The SSD thing itself is a deal-breaker. Then there's Compiz, which despite my earlier hopes, is just too unstable, regularly crashing. Unbelieveably, the audio-preview 'Caja-freezing' bug is still alive & well. Audio-previews, which are disabled by default, tend to suggest that the Mint developers are aware of this problem as well but are unable to fix it. Thing is, when I compile Caja from source, on 17.3 anyway, the problem disappears! A next bug involves audio as well. Speaker audio works fine. However when you plug in a headphone/external speaker plug, audio is always muted, requiring that the user calls up Audio preferences and toggles from Speaker to Headset or vice-versa - doesn't matter which, it just needs to be toggled to start audio getting piped externally. Bloody annoying. Then there's the Bluetooth fiasco. First off, I couldn't get the fully-featured 'Blueman' to work at all. After many hours of trying to get Bluetooth working through 'Blueberry', the feature-lite but new bluetooth manager, I eventually figured out the 'sequence' of actions needed in order to get it running. Problem is, once you disconnect the bluetooth headset, you need to go through the same rigmarole in order to re-connect, which is just not acceptable for everyday use.
There it stands. Another Mint that was worth a look, but with my hardware at least, is just too buggy to be usable. Thanks to the 17.3 partition image that I had created, switching back was a relatively painless procedure. I was impressed though with Mate in general, so much so, that I actually donated €10 towards the project! The developers are doing a great job staying true to the Gnome2 desktop model, despite having had to go the GTK3 route. Although I submitted a bug-report on the SSD problem with Mint, I later tried the same SSD on a HP Pavilion laptop with Mint 18.1 running from the USB, and Mint had no problem detecting & validating the drive. So it's a kernel/hardware combination incompatibility that is causing the problem - after all, on the same Dell laptop, Mints from 16 -> 17.3 work perfectly with the Transcend drive.
So right now, Mint 17.3 is my main OS - with the Mate desktop of course! When Mint 18 was released, one of the main Mate developments was the phasing out of the 'old' GTK2 libraries, to make way for their GTK3 equivalents. Given how much I detest the Gnome3 desktop and its associated components, I took this as a bad omen as far as Mate's future was concerned. Therefore I gave Mint 18 a pass. When Mint 18.1 was released however, curiousity got the better of me. Booting 18.1 from a USB drive, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.
First surprise was that Compiz seemed to work perfectly, right out of the box. Next was how 'unchanged' the Mate desktop appears, despite its use of GTK3 - well done Mate developers! It also ran nice and quickly. Things were looking good.
Given these favourable first impressions, I decided that I may as well replace Mint 17.3, but backed it up beforehand - lucky that I did too!
First problem that became obvious was that 18.1 fails to 'validate' my Transcend SSD. It 'detects' it ok, but when it fails to 'validate' it, it just disables it completely - major bummer! This ruled out any possibility of replacing 17.3, at least by performing a normal installation. Not to be outdone, I then decided to install it on a Hitachi hard-drive, make an image-file of the installation, then overwrite the 17.3 SSD partition with this. After doing all of this, imagine my disgust when Mint 18.3, after booting from the SSD, then proceeded to disable the same SSD when it couldn't complete the 'validation' process! Fighting the good fight, lastly I tried installing a few different kernel versions in the hope that one of them could validate the SSD - nope. Having run out of ideas, I switched to the Hitachi HD for a week of Mint 18.1, to see if it really was worth pursuing any further.
It wasn't. There are just too many bugs present, some old, some newly introduced. The SSD thing itself is a deal-breaker. Then there's Compiz, which despite my earlier hopes, is just too unstable, regularly crashing. Unbelieveably, the audio-preview 'Caja-freezing' bug is still alive & well. Audio-previews, which are disabled by default, tend to suggest that the Mint developers are aware of this problem as well but are unable to fix it. Thing is, when I compile Caja from source, on 17.3 anyway, the problem disappears! A next bug involves audio as well. Speaker audio works fine. However when you plug in a headphone/external speaker plug, audio is always muted, requiring that the user calls up Audio preferences and toggles from Speaker to Headset or vice-versa - doesn't matter which, it just needs to be toggled to start audio getting piped externally. Bloody annoying. Then there's the Bluetooth fiasco. First off, I couldn't get the fully-featured 'Blueman' to work at all. After many hours of trying to get Bluetooth working through 'Blueberry', the feature-lite but new bluetooth manager, I eventually figured out the 'sequence' of actions needed in order to get it running. Problem is, once you disconnect the bluetooth headset, you need to go through the same rigmarole in order to re-connect, which is just not acceptable for everyday use.
There it stands. Another Mint that was worth a look, but with my hardware at least, is just too buggy to be usable. Thanks to the 17.3 partition image that I had created, switching back was a relatively painless procedure. I was impressed though with Mate in general, so much so, that I actually donated €10 towards the project! The developers are doing a great job staying true to the Gnome2 desktop model, despite having had to go the GTK3 route. Although I submitted a bug-report on the SSD problem with Mint, I later tried the same SSD on a HP Pavilion laptop with Mint 18.1 running from the USB, and Mint had no problem detecting & validating the drive. So it's a kernel/hardware combination incompatibility that is causing the problem - after all, on the same Dell laptop, Mints from 16 -> 17.3 work perfectly with the Transcend drive.
3 July 2016
Rant-reprise: Intel's 7260 pci-e Wireless card...
This time round, my cross-hairs are trained firmly at the heart of the behemoth Intel. As one or two of my previous posts will affirm, I'm a huge fan of Intel's wireless cards. After years (literally) of suffering at the hands of Atheros cards in general, and the Linux-driver developers in particular, along came Intel - or rather, I bought an Intel card! - and all was well with the world again, at least the bits that had to do with my computer experience anyway!
Apart from a slight hiccup with my first Intel IWL3945 wireless card, which came bundled with my now long-in-the-tooth Dell XPS M1210 laptop, the performance of the new(er) Intel 5100 card has been close to exemplary - no drama, no fuss, it just works! This I presumed was a result of Intel wretching from the hands of Linux developers, all thoughts of writing their own drivers, and supplying them with a 'binary-blob', that could be packaged in a software 'wrapper' for Linux OS's, but nothing else - Intel took sole responsibility for the cards operation. This policy seemed to work. Then along came the 7260...
More specifically, the card I bought is a N-7260HMW. I bought two cards actually - one an Intel, and to cover all bases, the other was a Broadcom. Both were half-length, single-channel, and included Bluetooth 4.0. But let's just stick with our little Intel saga for the moment.
Out of the gate, I had problems with the 7260. The wireless performed perfectly, it was the bluetooth that gave me headaches. From the get-go, I was using it in the Dell laptop, so that I could enjoy the great sound of my M-Pow bluetooth headset to the fullest. Prior to the 7260, I was using the ancient bundled Broadcom bluetooth, that would disconnect after 15 minutes - so regular was it in fact, that you could almost set your watch by it! The 7260's main problem was getting its bluetooth to start at boot-up. It either started or it didn't, the latter occurring about 50% of the time. The only recourse then was to reboot and try again, at least initially. I later discovered that merely Suspending and restarting would do the trick as well. But either way, it often took several tries before Bluetooth would initialise. Once started, 'pairing' proved somewhat of a chore with the M-Pow, but I'm inclined to believe that this has more to do with them, than with Intel's offering. Though once 'paired', everything was rosy, you could listen via Bluetooth for hours on end.
I noticed one curious thing however. The laptop has two pci-e slots, labeled 'WLAN' and 'WWAN'. Up till now, I had always figured that they were electrically identical. Introducing the 7260 to the WLAN-slot however results in no bluetooth whatsoever, whereas it worked in the WWAN slot - so something is different! That got me curious about how the card would perform in other motherboards, and that was when the shit really hit the fan.
I have two ITX pc's, one a 7 year old Zotac with an integrated quad-core Atom CPU, the other a just-bought ASrock mobo, which takes an AMD Athlon 5350 processor. Given that the Asrock is a Zotac replacement, it's maybe truer to say that I have just the one ITX-pc, but both motherboards were tested as follows, and with identical results.
With the 7260 in the Asrock mobo, and Deepin Linux fired up, Bluetooth starts but is unusable. After hours & hours of fcuking about, the only way I could get the M-pow headset to pair with the 7260 was from the terminal. Once paired & connected, the connection was solid, as was the sound-quality. But try as I might, I could not repeat the pairing, even from the terminal - clearly, the 7260 was not going to be usable on the ITX powered by Linux. As I had a barely-used installation of Windows 7 on the same SSD, I thought I'd give it a shot, just to see the level of service the 7260 should be capable of delivering. Only to recieve the biggest shock of all...
Go to Intel's web-site, you will find that there is no shortage of drivers available for downloading, so finding appropriate drivers took mere minutes. The following hours & days were consumed by trying to find ANY DRIVER that worked! There were none - I couldn't believe it!!!!! I mean, this is INTEL!!! They have either a flawed hardware version (7260) out there, or else they are incapable of fixing the 'Bluetooth problem'. And yes, had I searched beforehand, I would have found dozens & dozens of people complaining about the exact same problem. But I repeat, this is INTEL! How incompetent must they be, that after 4+ years they are incapable of fixing a problem like this, and for Windows no less! - remember, this card first same out in 2012?!?!?!? And the problem seems to also be effecting the newer generation 7260's as well, the 7260-AC's for instance.
To reiterate, with Window's System 7, the 7260's Bluetooth doesn't work - PERIOD! That to me is incredible! With Linux Mint, and Intel's binary-blob driver, the failure to start problem excepted, Bluetooth performs incredibly well. 99 times out of 100, it is the opposite, Linux users always seeming to get the thin end of the wedge. Granted, Bluetooth is almost unusable with Deepin Linux, so maybe I got lucky with Mint. I even downloaded a Linux-lite (AntiX, 590megs) live-CD to test this conjecture, and admit that I could not get Bluetooth to work on that either, although wireless worked perfectly. Intriguingly, I also tried the 7260 with a relatively ancient Ubuntu 12.04 live-CD, and was surprised to find that now its Bluetooth worked perfectly, although I had no wireless, due to a 7260 driver not being available back then. So, a mixed, but generally positive performance where Linux is concerned, whereas Intel can't even get its own hardware working with Windows 7. Shame on you Intel.
But there was always my fall-back, the Broadcom 4314. Curious thing about this card was that it was not even detected when inserted, in any of my computers! After countless more hours trying to coax this thing to life, I finally admitted defeat, but out of curiosity, lifted the soldered-on RF-shielding to see if I could see anything amiss. Sure enough, the main Broadcom chip had a little blackened 'volcano' rising from it near its centre - the chip had been fried! This was sold as a new item, so it just goes to show that some Chinese Sellers (Ebay) will sell you anything.
Right now, I'm again on the lookout for another half-length wireless card, the only type that will fit in the Asrock motherboard. Given my experience with the 7260, one thing I'm sure about is that it will not be an Intel!
Edit: Seems like the wireless component of this card is flaky as well. Since posting this, I've had multiple instances of the 7260-wireless just switching off, the only recourse left being to reboot the computer. Unsurprisingly, 7260-Bluetooth also takes the unscheduled hiatus or two as well. So yeah, the 7260 is a confirmed POS on all accounts it seems. I've ordered a couple of Broadcom half-length pci-e wireless/bluetooth cards which hopefully will perform better, and allow me to jetison this turd. Only reason I'm still using it is for the bluetooth. I'm back to using the full-length Intel 5100 card for wireless.
Edit1: I bit the bullet and re-ordered the Broadcom 4314 wireless card. I had definite deja-vu pangs after installing it on my laptop running Linux Mint. Wireless worked, Bluetooth was detected & enabled, but its resolutely refused to even detect any other bluetooth device, let alone pair with it. Same with Linux Deepin. As a last resort, I gave it a go on Windows 7. After several hours of searching, I eventually managed to find drivers that worked. Had I just downloaded the first driver I had come across, I would have saved myself a lot of time. This was (to me) an astronomical 237meg in size, which I presumed contained drivers for all of the Windows platforms, so spent ages downloading smaller files - none of which worked properly. Turns out the wireless driver is about 30meg, whereas the Bluetooth driver is a huge 220megs - both of which I eventually found & installed seperately, but it would have been so much easier to have downloaded the large 237meg package.
Even with the Bluetooth driver installed, Window's Device Manager happy that everything was working properly and my Mpow headset successfully paired, Bluetooth still wouldn't work! The problem was that there was no Bluetooth option being added to Window's 'Audio devices'. After another hour of messing about, as a last resort I got Windows to 'Troubleshoot' Bluetooth, and was surprised when it found a missing Bluetooth driver, something Device Manager hadn't flagged. Once this was installed, Bluetooth worked wonderfully! As I type this, I am listening to crystal-clear Bluetooth audio on the Mpow from another room while typing this on the laptop, the Windows 7 PC streaming the audio while also re-coding a large HEVC movie with Handbrake. :)
So, yeah, a thumbs-up for the Broadcom card (specifically a BCM943142A0) on Windows 7, it's just a shame that Bluetooth doesn't seem to work at all on Linux. I guess I'll have to go back to using the Intel 7260 in the laptop - though imo, the Intel 7260 still sucks!
Apart from a slight hiccup with my first Intel IWL3945 wireless card, which came bundled with my now long-in-the-tooth Dell XPS M1210 laptop, the performance of the new(er) Intel 5100 card has been close to exemplary - no drama, no fuss, it just works! This I presumed was a result of Intel wretching from the hands of Linux developers, all thoughts of writing their own drivers, and supplying them with a 'binary-blob', that could be packaged in a software 'wrapper' for Linux OS's, but nothing else - Intel took sole responsibility for the cards operation. This policy seemed to work. Then along came the 7260...
More specifically, the card I bought is a N-7260HMW. I bought two cards actually - one an Intel, and to cover all bases, the other was a Broadcom. Both were half-length, single-channel, and included Bluetooth 4.0. But let's just stick with our little Intel saga for the moment.
Out of the gate, I had problems with the 7260. The wireless performed perfectly, it was the bluetooth that gave me headaches. From the get-go, I was using it in the Dell laptop, so that I could enjoy the great sound of my M-Pow bluetooth headset to the fullest. Prior to the 7260, I was using the ancient bundled Broadcom bluetooth, that would disconnect after 15 minutes - so regular was it in fact, that you could almost set your watch by it! The 7260's main problem was getting its bluetooth to start at boot-up. It either started or it didn't, the latter occurring about 50% of the time. The only recourse then was to reboot and try again, at least initially. I later discovered that merely Suspending and restarting would do the trick as well. But either way, it often took several tries before Bluetooth would initialise. Once started, 'pairing' proved somewhat of a chore with the M-Pow, but I'm inclined to believe that this has more to do with them, than with Intel's offering. Though once 'paired', everything was rosy, you could listen via Bluetooth for hours on end.
I noticed one curious thing however. The laptop has two pci-e slots, labeled 'WLAN' and 'WWAN'. Up till now, I had always figured that they were electrically identical. Introducing the 7260 to the WLAN-slot however results in no bluetooth whatsoever, whereas it worked in the WWAN slot - so something is different! That got me curious about how the card would perform in other motherboards, and that was when the shit really hit the fan.
I have two ITX pc's, one a 7 year old Zotac with an integrated quad-core Atom CPU, the other a just-bought ASrock mobo, which takes an AMD Athlon 5350 processor. Given that the Asrock is a Zotac replacement, it's maybe truer to say that I have just the one ITX-pc, but both motherboards were tested as follows, and with identical results.
With the 7260 in the Asrock mobo, and Deepin Linux fired up, Bluetooth starts but is unusable. After hours & hours of fcuking about, the only way I could get the M-pow headset to pair with the 7260 was from the terminal. Once paired & connected, the connection was solid, as was the sound-quality. But try as I might, I could not repeat the pairing, even from the terminal - clearly, the 7260 was not going to be usable on the ITX powered by Linux. As I had a barely-used installation of Windows 7 on the same SSD, I thought I'd give it a shot, just to see the level of service the 7260 should be capable of delivering. Only to recieve the biggest shock of all...
Go to Intel's web-site, you will find that there is no shortage of drivers available for downloading, so finding appropriate drivers took mere minutes. The following hours & days were consumed by trying to find ANY DRIVER that worked! There were none - I couldn't believe it!!!!! I mean, this is INTEL!!! They have either a flawed hardware version (7260) out there, or else they are incapable of fixing the 'Bluetooth problem'. And yes, had I searched beforehand, I would have found dozens & dozens of people complaining about the exact same problem. But I repeat, this is INTEL! How incompetent must they be, that after 4+ years they are incapable of fixing a problem like this, and for Windows no less! - remember, this card first same out in 2012?!?!?!? And the problem seems to also be effecting the newer generation 7260's as well, the 7260-AC's for instance.
To reiterate, with Window's System 7, the 7260's Bluetooth doesn't work - PERIOD! That to me is incredible! With Linux Mint, and Intel's binary-blob driver, the failure to start problem excepted, Bluetooth performs incredibly well. 99 times out of 100, it is the opposite, Linux users always seeming to get the thin end of the wedge. Granted, Bluetooth is almost unusable with Deepin Linux, so maybe I got lucky with Mint. I even downloaded a Linux-lite (AntiX, 590megs) live-CD to test this conjecture, and admit that I could not get Bluetooth to work on that either, although wireless worked perfectly. Intriguingly, I also tried the 7260 with a relatively ancient Ubuntu 12.04 live-CD, and was surprised to find that now its Bluetooth worked perfectly, although I had no wireless, due to a 7260 driver not being available back then. So, a mixed, but generally positive performance where Linux is concerned, whereas Intel can't even get its own hardware working with Windows 7. Shame on you Intel.
But there was always my fall-back, the Broadcom 4314. Curious thing about this card was that it was not even detected when inserted, in any of my computers! After countless more hours trying to coax this thing to life, I finally admitted defeat, but out of curiosity, lifted the soldered-on RF-shielding to see if I could see anything amiss. Sure enough, the main Broadcom chip had a little blackened 'volcano' rising from it near its centre - the chip had been fried! This was sold as a new item, so it just goes to show that some Chinese Sellers (Ebay) will sell you anything.
Right now, I'm again on the lookout for another half-length wireless card, the only type that will fit in the Asrock motherboard. Given my experience with the 7260, one thing I'm sure about is that it will not be an Intel!
Edit: Seems like the wireless component of this card is flaky as well. Since posting this, I've had multiple instances of the 7260-wireless just switching off, the only recourse left being to reboot the computer. Unsurprisingly, 7260-Bluetooth also takes the unscheduled hiatus or two as well. So yeah, the 7260 is a confirmed POS on all accounts it seems. I've ordered a couple of Broadcom half-length pci-e wireless/bluetooth cards which hopefully will perform better, and allow me to jetison this turd. Only reason I'm still using it is for the bluetooth. I'm back to using the full-length Intel 5100 card for wireless.
Edit1: I bit the bullet and re-ordered the Broadcom 4314 wireless card. I had definite deja-vu pangs after installing it on my laptop running Linux Mint. Wireless worked, Bluetooth was detected & enabled, but its resolutely refused to even detect any other bluetooth device, let alone pair with it. Same with Linux Deepin. As a last resort, I gave it a go on Windows 7. After several hours of searching, I eventually managed to find drivers that worked. Had I just downloaded the first driver I had come across, I would have saved myself a lot of time. This was (to me) an astronomical 237meg in size, which I presumed contained drivers for all of the Windows platforms, so spent ages downloading smaller files - none of which worked properly. Turns out the wireless driver is about 30meg, whereas the Bluetooth driver is a huge 220megs - both of which I eventually found & installed seperately, but it would have been so much easier to have downloaded the large 237meg package.
Even with the Bluetooth driver installed, Window's Device Manager happy that everything was working properly and my Mpow headset successfully paired, Bluetooth still wouldn't work! The problem was that there was no Bluetooth option being added to Window's 'Audio devices'. After another hour of messing about, as a last resort I got Windows to 'Troubleshoot' Bluetooth, and was surprised when it found a missing Bluetooth driver, something Device Manager hadn't flagged. Once this was installed, Bluetooth worked wonderfully! As I type this, I am listening to crystal-clear Bluetooth audio on the Mpow from another room while typing this on the laptop, the Windows 7 PC streaming the audio while also re-coding a large HEVC movie with Handbrake. :)
So, yeah, a thumbs-up for the Broadcom card (specifically a BCM943142A0) on Windows 7, it's just a shame that Bluetooth doesn't seem to work at all on Linux. I guess I'll have to go back to using the Intel 7260 in the laptop - though imo, the Intel 7260 still sucks!
25 May 2016
Linux CD/DVD Cataloguers (GWhere & CdCat) rant...
I've got about 300 DVD's, and perhaps 100 CD's, choc-full of mostly media stuff, whose contents I keep track of using the application GWhere. In spite of the fact that this app was last updated in 2007, it is quite good at what it does, it's only real problem being that it doesn't register a new DVD being inserted, and so has to be exited & restarted before it will read its contents.
So, everything was rosy on that front, until recently. I had noticed with Ubuntu 10.04, that whenever I ran GWhere, sometimes, very noticable graphics-corruption would occur surrounding the text-font it used. Although annoying, this wasn't a show-stopper until recently. With Mint 17.3, this now results in the OS entirely locking up, something that is very, very hard to achieve with Linux.
As this is completely unacceptable, alternative solutions were tried. First, as I suspect that this has something to do with an old Gtk graphics library being used, I tried building the package from source, in the hope that it would sort things. This proved to be a non-starter however, as the new(er) Gtk libraries are no longer compatible. Next I tried running the Win32 version under Wine, which worked to a fashion. Unfortunately, whenever you move the mouse-pointer over a Gtk-control, the mouse-pointer disappears! Assigned keyboard shortcuts seem to work, but this is not an acceptable solution either. Finally, the only thing that worked properly was to install the Win32 version on a VirtualBox'ed Win-XP and run it from there - something I'm not at all happy with, but beggars can't be choosers!
Another disk-cataloguer that I had heard good things about, and development-wise, had only been abandoned in 2014, was CdCat. This also had options to 'import' the contents of other Cataloguer softwares, which I had hoped would work with my already-existing GWhere database files. No such luck! Although it can import from 11 different Cataloguer applications, GWhere isn't one of them - which is stupid, given that as there were only 2 main contenders on the Linux scene in the first place (GWhere & CdCat) you would expect the CdCat developer to specifically cater for GWhere files. Or rather, it doesn't import the data in a usable form. The only import option that works is the really old (circa 2003) Linux 'Gtktalog' format. After extracting the compressed database file using 7zip, and adding a 'csv' extension, all the data is imported, but no directory structure is retained - rendering it useless! Incidentally, GWhere also has 'Import/Export' menu options, but unfortunately they are just there for show - what you have in reality are just a 'hook' entry-point for import/export plugins, something that was never developed...
Anyway, given that most of the available versions of CdCat that are built, don't use the most recent source - Ubuntu's 'Trusty' repository for instance has a positively ancient version 1.8, in contrast with the 'newest' CdCat 2.3.1 source - and particularly since its web-page lists the huge number of bugs that were removed in the final versions, I decided to build it from scratch. Not a trivial matter either, as it turned out. Some libraries are no longer compatible, some are completely missing. I eventually found all of its various dependencies and managed to build the package, which can be downloaded from here by anyone so inclined.
It was only after going through all of this, that I discovered that CdCat could not import GWhere's databases - WHICH SUCKED!!! I also then googled an old post of mine on the Ubuntu forum, something I'd completely forgotten about, where I criticised CdCat's speed at reading DVD's - up to a minute to read a disk, which is ridiculous! I haven't tried the newly-built version, but I've little doubt that it's the same. GWhere in comparison, takes 1-3 seconds.
So, I either stick with my present convoluted GWhere setup, or I laboriously re-create all of the databases from scratch using CdCat. Hmmm, or maybe start looking for something Windows-based...
So, everything was rosy on that front, until recently. I had noticed with Ubuntu 10.04, that whenever I ran GWhere, sometimes, very noticable graphics-corruption would occur surrounding the text-font it used. Although annoying, this wasn't a show-stopper until recently. With Mint 17.3, this now results in the OS entirely locking up, something that is very, very hard to achieve with Linux.
As this is completely unacceptable, alternative solutions were tried. First, as I suspect that this has something to do with an old Gtk graphics library being used, I tried building the package from source, in the hope that it would sort things. This proved to be a non-starter however, as the new(er) Gtk libraries are no longer compatible. Next I tried running the Win32 version under Wine, which worked to a fashion. Unfortunately, whenever you move the mouse-pointer over a Gtk-control, the mouse-pointer disappears! Assigned keyboard shortcuts seem to work, but this is not an acceptable solution either. Finally, the only thing that worked properly was to install the Win32 version on a VirtualBox'ed Win-XP and run it from there - something I'm not at all happy with, but beggars can't be choosers!
Another disk-cataloguer that I had heard good things about, and development-wise, had only been abandoned in 2014, was CdCat. This also had options to 'import' the contents of other Cataloguer softwares, which I had hoped would work with my already-existing GWhere database files. No such luck! Although it can import from 11 different Cataloguer applications, GWhere isn't one of them - which is stupid, given that as there were only 2 main contenders on the Linux scene in the first place (GWhere & CdCat) you would expect the CdCat developer to specifically cater for GWhere files. Or rather, it doesn't import the data in a usable form. The only import option that works is the really old (circa 2003) Linux 'Gtktalog' format. After extracting the compressed database file using 7zip, and adding a 'csv' extension, all the data is imported, but no directory structure is retained - rendering it useless! Incidentally, GWhere also has 'Import/Export' menu options, but unfortunately they are just there for show - what you have in reality are just a 'hook' entry-point for import/export plugins, something that was never developed...
Anyway, given that most of the available versions of CdCat that are built, don't use the most recent source - Ubuntu's 'Trusty' repository for instance has a positively ancient version 1.8, in contrast with the 'newest' CdCat 2.3.1 source - and particularly since its web-page lists the huge number of bugs that were removed in the final versions, I decided to build it from scratch. Not a trivial matter either, as it turned out. Some libraries are no longer compatible, some are completely missing. I eventually found all of its various dependencies and managed to build the package, which can be downloaded from here by anyone so inclined.
It was only after going through all of this, that I discovered that CdCat could not import GWhere's databases - WHICH SUCKED!!! I also then googled an old post of mine on the Ubuntu forum, something I'd completely forgotten about, where I criticised CdCat's speed at reading DVD's - up to a minute to read a disk, which is ridiculous! I haven't tried the newly-built version, but I've little doubt that it's the same. GWhere in comparison, takes 1-3 seconds.
So, I either stick with my present convoluted GWhere setup, or I laboriously re-create all of the databases from scratch using CdCat. Hmmm, or maybe start looking for something Windows-based...
24 May 2016
NaturalReader 14 text-to-speech application rant...
I have been a long-time user of NaturalReader, initially having bought version 6.6, which over time, I managed to upgrade online, up to version 9 in fact, before being informed that I was no longer entitled to any more free upgrades. Being also a long-time Linux user, I loathe paying for software, especially where there is a perfectly adequate free alternative available. Well, there wasn't in this instance, on either Windows or Linux - hence, the purchase, along the lines of $40 if memory serves!
In my opinion, the speech-engine used by NaturalReader is by far the best available, and which is licensed by NaturalReader from the mega-corp, AT&T. Although the Google speech-engine is very good, IMO, it still falls quite a bit behind its AT&T counterpart, particularly where higher speech-rates are concerned, though this 'edge' comes at a cost. AT&T's approach uses very large libraries of speech samples, or the phonemes-parts thereof, whereas Google, judging by its speech-engine footprint, uses a different technique, and though smaller, is less effective. So, although the AT&T (henceforth NaturalReader, or 'NR') approach necessitates the use of more disk-space/processing-time, the end-results are I think, worth the effort.
Just recently, out of curiosity more than anything else, I searched out a demo of the latest-and-greatest (sic) NR online, deciding to give it a spin. What immediately caught my eye was the installation size, a whopping 200meg - version 6.6 was about 25meg, whereas version 9 comes in at just under 50meg. So I figured that all those extra megs must be doing something interesting, and sure enough, NR now comes with a built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, which piqued my interest still further.
Given that I'm stuck with using long-defunct VirtualBox'ed Windows XP's (Win7 being both too slow and taking up too much disk-space) I thought this would prove to be a problem. Imagine my surprise when it installed without a hitch. Then imagine my disgust at finding that it would not run without NET 3.0 having to be installed! After downloading and installing this, re-running NR saw it spring to life. Or maybe 'lurch' is more apt - it's painfully slow to load, and more so in operation! But imagine my disgust at finding that this 200meg behemoth doesn't include any proper voices - you are stuck with using Microsoft's Sam, which is, ahem, less than adequate. So off I go asearching again, this time for a disk containing my 'Mike-US' voice for NR 9, all 700megs worth. After installing this, I was relieved to find that it was detected and worked without a problem, albeit as I mentioned, a mite sluggishly.
Next up, a check of NR's OCR prowess. Or at least that was the intention. In practice, it crashed every time I tried it! So, the main reason for installing it in the first place proved to be its epic-fail. Sucks huge.
But my main reason for this blog entry is to point out one simple fact. Although NaturalReader has 'progressed', at least version-wise, from 6.6 to 14 on my watch, the speech quality of the files it produces has not improved one iota! What you are getting now for your money ($120 for the 'Pro' version) is a piece of bloatware that NaturalReader keeps adding bits to in order to justify the version (and price) increases. Versions 6 through to 9 were definite lack-lustre affairs. These softwares were so badly designed, that, for example, you could not search & edit a piece of text simultaneously - you needed to close the Search dialogue prior to editing text due to the shoddy 'modal' nature of the Search menu employed. This was barely acceptable with Windows 3.1, never mind Win-XP and beyond. NaturalReader 14 fares little better in my opinion. Huge file size, dependent on NET, therefore slow as hell, topped off with crashes at the bits that may be of interest.
Do yourself a favour and leave this dog alone. Granted, NaturalReader produces some of the best text-to-speech output there is, but kudos must go to AT&T for this, not the still-lame attempt by NR to 'package this TTS-engine proficiently. If you must go with NaturalReader, search out version 9. Primitive as hell, feature-wise, but it's fast, and sound quality is still the same as with version 14, and it's NR's best attempt, before it became completely dependent upon M$ NET.
In my opinion, the speech-engine used by NaturalReader is by far the best available, and which is licensed by NaturalReader from the mega-corp, AT&T. Although the Google speech-engine is very good, IMO, it still falls quite a bit behind its AT&T counterpart, particularly where higher speech-rates are concerned, though this 'edge' comes at a cost. AT&T's approach uses very large libraries of speech samples, or the phonemes-parts thereof, whereas Google, judging by its speech-engine footprint, uses a different technique, and though smaller, is less effective. So, although the AT&T (henceforth NaturalReader, or 'NR') approach necessitates the use of more disk-space/processing-time, the end-results are I think, worth the effort.
Just recently, out of curiosity more than anything else, I searched out a demo of the latest-and-greatest (sic) NR online, deciding to give it a spin. What immediately caught my eye was the installation size, a whopping 200meg - version 6.6 was about 25meg, whereas version 9 comes in at just under 50meg. So I figured that all those extra megs must be doing something interesting, and sure enough, NR now comes with a built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, which piqued my interest still further.
Given that I'm stuck with using long-defunct VirtualBox'ed Windows XP's (Win7 being both too slow and taking up too much disk-space) I thought this would prove to be a problem. Imagine my surprise when it installed without a hitch. Then imagine my disgust at finding that it would not run without NET 3.0 having to be installed! After downloading and installing this, re-running NR saw it spring to life. Or maybe 'lurch' is more apt - it's painfully slow to load, and more so in operation! But imagine my disgust at finding that this 200meg behemoth doesn't include any proper voices - you are stuck with using Microsoft's Sam, which is, ahem, less than adequate. So off I go asearching again, this time for a disk containing my 'Mike-US' voice for NR 9, all 700megs worth. After installing this, I was relieved to find that it was detected and worked without a problem, albeit as I mentioned, a mite sluggishly.
Next up, a check of NR's OCR prowess. Or at least that was the intention. In practice, it crashed every time I tried it! So, the main reason for installing it in the first place proved to be its epic-fail. Sucks huge.
But my main reason for this blog entry is to point out one simple fact. Although NaturalReader has 'progressed', at least version-wise, from 6.6 to 14 on my watch, the speech quality of the files it produces has not improved one iota! What you are getting now for your money ($120 for the 'Pro' version) is a piece of bloatware that NaturalReader keeps adding bits to in order to justify the version (and price) increases. Versions 6 through to 9 were definite lack-lustre affairs. These softwares were so badly designed, that, for example, you could not search & edit a piece of text simultaneously - you needed to close the Search dialogue prior to editing text due to the shoddy 'modal' nature of the Search menu employed. This was barely acceptable with Windows 3.1, never mind Win-XP and beyond. NaturalReader 14 fares little better in my opinion. Huge file size, dependent on NET, therefore slow as hell, topped off with crashes at the bits that may be of interest.
Do yourself a favour and leave this dog alone. Granted, NaturalReader produces some of the best text-to-speech output there is, but kudos must go to AT&T for this, not the still-lame attempt by NR to 'package this TTS-engine proficiently. If you must go with NaturalReader, search out version 9. Primitive as hell, feature-wise, but it's fast, and sound quality is still the same as with version 14, and it's NR's best attempt, before it became completely dependent upon M$ NET.
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