Between tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2

For a long time I have been wondering what should be the ideal compression when you copy a bunch of files over a local network. Today I copied a full ubuntu installation of 2 G over the network, piping the tar command into ssh.
Something like:

cd /
tar --one-file-system -cf - . | ssh user@backup " cd /restore && tar xf -"

I measured the time taken with the time command.

And the results:

tar cjvf 19m53
tar czvf 9m20
tar cvf 11m02

So it looks it is the gzip compression which saves the more time.

Embedded opensource does not need to be unix-like

Today while looking for some embedded Linux Hardware for libera, I stumbled upon Rockbox, which is an alternative GPL firmware for a variety of MP3 players like Ipod, and Iriver. I found this project quite interesting because:

1. they support quite a number of device including mine ( iriver H340, one of the few MP3 players who supported ogg vorbis out of the box )
   
2. they took the approach to write a firmware from scratch, and not try to port Linux which would be probably overkill for these kind of devices ( ARM cpu, or Motorola Coldfire )
   

I am looking forward to having a try, especially they boast a port of Doom !

Next Ubuntu release will include 802.11n support

I downloaded yesterday the ubuntu kernel source tarball to see which driver, the next ubuntu release will include, and I noticed with pleasure they plan to include linux 2.6.27. Although not officially released yet, 2.6.27 will included ath9k, a driver written by Atheros to support their last 802.11n chipset.
The forthcoming kernel will also include the ath9k driver, wich is a completely opensource driver for older Atheros chipsets, without the binary blob, and it means we will be able to include much more from Atheros in libera.cc

FreeBSD compatibility added to libera.cc

Today we added the last missing pieces for the beta release of libera.cc: the information concerning FreeBSD 7.0 compatibility. It went quite fast, and unfortunately I have to say it is due to the lack of support for many devies , for instance it is not possible to have a DVB-T tuner on FreeBSD, and no webcam with kernel support. I have only experience with FreeBSD on servers and I had no clue about this.
On the other FreeBSD is _much_ more nicely documented, nearly every driver has a man page detailing the chipset that the driver is aimed at, _and_ a list of commercial devices using that very chipset. Which makes finding what works in a much reliable way.
So as usual there is a bit of good everywhere.