I find that I have issues with the nvidia driver making my screen flicker/flash and sometime causes my machine to crash. I have found that it can be fixed by modifying /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia and replacing:

with:

(note: that is one single line that may wrap in your browser)

Enabling USB support in VirtualBox on a Fedora host is rather easy, just follow these steps.

Create a group called usb

In F9 that is [System->Administration->Users and Groups] Click the groups tab and click the add group icon. Enter the group name usb and note the group id being assigned (usually something like 502).

Modify /etc/fstab (as root)

Modify /etc/fstab adding the line (this assumes the group id of 502, replace with the correct id):

Remount file systems

You can either reboot or run the following command to make the fstab changes take effect (as root):

Start VirtualBox

Start VirtualBox and you should now be able to activate USB devices using the USB icon in the lower right of the VM window.

Given that Fedora has made it so easy to put a live cd image onto a usb or other external drive to provide a bootable take anywhere OS.

First off, you'll need the Fedora Live CD or DVD iso image, they can be found on the Fedora home page http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

You'll also need to install some other packages available in the standard repos.

Install livecd-tools with your package manager.

Console mode is great for some tasks, but why live with 80x25 when by adding vga=775 to your grub line will give you 160x160 mode (using 1280x1024)... Simple and sweet.

Fedora 9 (F9 Sulphur) has been released. Here I will record my personal setup. Note, this is a work in progress and will be updated as I (slowly) configure my system.

My setup: Dell Inspiron 9400 (E1705)

• Audio device: Intel 82801G High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
• IDE interface: Intel 82801GBM/GHM SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
• Video: nVidia Corporation GeForce Go 7900 GS (rev a1)
• Ethernet: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
• FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
• Network controller: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Auto-scrolling a ListBox seems to be a common question asked and regardless of my googling I was unable to find a solution other than changing the ListBox selection.

After sometime I finally discovered a simple property ListBox.TopIndex which indicates what the topmost visible (shown) item should be. It appears that setting this to the highest numbered item will result in the ListBox scrolling to the bottom.

To create an AutoScroll ListBox simply set the TopIndex property each time an item is added, like:

I've been working with an Inherited User Control that extends the ListBox control and would like to add an AutoScroll option that will perform this each time an item is added, but I am unable to find anyway to fire an event on an item being added. Please leave a comment if you know how to do this.

Well we've heard about 3D printers before, but an open source, self replicating 3D printer sounds like just what we need.

The guys at http://reprap.org/ have done just that, created an open source 3D printer that can print a good portion of the parts required to make one.

To call it replicating is a bit of a stretch, but it's a start. Once it can build an entire machine, only then am I happy to give it replication status.

Are we living in a simulation? An unusual question, and Nick Bostrom has an interesting theory.

The abstract:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;

(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);

(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

Read the full article.

On the usual Fedora (6,7,8) setup the NetworkManager will use the gnome-keyring to retrieve and store connection credentials. One nasty side effect is that on each boot it will require you to unlock your keyring before your wireless connection can be established.

To avoid this make your login password and keyring password the same, ensure that gnome-keyring, gnome-keyring-pam and pam-keyring are installed and make your /etc/pam.d/gdm file look like:

Upon restarting you should no longer be required to open your keyring.

On Fedora 6 - 9, and maybe other Linux distros, the PC speaker is quite loud and beeps at boot up. This can be disabled by adding the following to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist