viva la xsnow!

In the late 1990's, my friend Doug introduced me to `xsnow`, its a simple little program that makes it snow on your desktop.  Ever since, around Christmas time, I have waxed nostalgic and run `xsnow` in honor of the on-set of winter and Advent.  I was surprised this year when I ran `apt-get install xsnow` and was bluntly told that there was no installation candidate for xsnow! 

I did a little digging and discovered that `xsnow` is still in the source repository!  w00t!  Unfortunately, it's VERY infrequent that I actually build a package from source, so I had to  do a bit of reading to help me do it.  I figured, if I had to look it up, it might be of value to others if I provided the synopsis of how to build the package.

First, make sure your /etc/apt/sources.list file includes the following:

cjs@hp8540w:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep deb-src
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

Next, run `apt-get update` followed by `apt-cache showsrc xsnow | grep Build-Depends`, which will reveal:

Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7), dpatch (>= 2), libx11-dev, libxext-dev, libxpm-dev, libxt-dev, xutils-dev

Now you'll need to make sure these dependencies are installed, with `apt-get install debhelper dpatch libx11-dev libxext-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev xutils-dev`. 

Now you should be ready to build from source.  You build the source via `apt-get -b source xsnow`.  This will build a .deb and dump it in /var/cache/apt/archives.

You can install the .deb via `dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xsnow*.deb`. 

Note: I had to build from source because in Sid there's only an i386 binary for xsnow.  If you're running Sid on a 32-bit x86 box, you should just be able to do an `apt-get install xsnow`, provided you have the non-free repositories in your apt sources.list. 

You can run xsnow from an `xterm` OR, whatever means of launching you prefer (e.g. synapse or gnome-do, etc.)

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How to build your own laptop

Ever wanted to build your own laptop?  What about mod'ing your existing laptop?  These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night (among others.)  I did a little checking this morning, and with minimal effort I found some really fascinating stuff.  I probably have some advantage based on the fact that I've done my share of maintenance on various laptops, but I think that almost anyone could reasonably do this...

So, what do you need?  I'll do a run-down on the "major components", but I'm really only going to spend much time on the ones that are more difficult to find.

Core components:

1. Base-kit -- this is, by-far, the hardest piece to find in all of this, and certainly the most critical.  These will typically include the mother board, power-supply, battery, display, keyboard and pointer, as well as all the chassis plastics. This is going to predicate most of your selections below.
2. Video card -- incidentally, nVidia and Radeon both make some fairly glorious mobile graphics processors.  As such, these are pretty-easy to find on-line.
3. Hard disk -- your disk space.  Duh!
4. cd/dvd/bluray drive -- one beauty of building your own is that you don't even have to if you're hard-core, you may not even need such a thing (or you may want to use an external drive), but these are not difficult to find either.
5. Wireless card -- sometimes these are integrated into the mother board, but a lot of times its a module you have to add.  These are fairly trivial to find on-line.
6. CPU -- the base-kit is going to predicate which CPU form-factor you can support, but these are easy enough to find on-line.
7. Memory -- the base-kit, again, is going to predicate type and quantity.

So, lets talk about the base-kit, because there's a lot of variation with these.  While there are some really crap chassis out there, I don't think that's a governing feature; for the most part, your base-kit is getting you two big things: the motherboard and the display.

The display is fairly straight-forward: you want to get the highest resolution display you can, in the size you want.  Unfortunately you need a magic decoder-ring to understand the display-names and how they relate to features and resolution.  There is a Wikipedia page that decodes these code-names and translates them to features.  Since this is bundled in the base-kit, I'd settle on a lesser display if I got a mother board with all the features I wanted.

The motherboard is the pre-eminent component that governs all other aspects of your build.  I'll go so far as to say that the number-one requirement for any mother board is that it support an independent video card... this ensures that you'll not get a crap graphics solution.  Everything else, for the most part, is a balancing act.  You want to get a mother board that support your CPU of choice, as well as the amount of memory you want/need.  After that, all other features come in to play, such as its expansion slots, card-slots, etc.  For my money, the big-three are maximum CPU support, quantity of memory, and support for an independent video card. 

There are some big players in the base-kit market, most notably MSI.  There are some others that provide good info too, such as Directron, but I didn't look at any of the primary suppliers from China, India or Taiwan, so I know there are a LOT more out there. 

Simply put, I think you'll find its not too difficult to scrounge-up the parts, so why not build your own laptop?  I'll tell you why: warranty.  While the majority of your components will come with a 90-day or 1-year warranty, you won't get any sort of extended or 3-year warranty, and as someone who's had four laptops in the last three years, I can tell you that an extended warranty is a good idea if you do a lot of mobile computing -- for me, I've gone through so many laptops because I carry it with me all the time and routinely work at between two and four sites each day -- including putting my laptop in my backpack, putting it in my car, etc... my laptops get a LOT of wear and tear, probably more than the average user.

Anywho, hopefully this is some help.

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