If you want to install IBM's DB2 on Ubuntu 11.10, it's fairly straightforward. First, pop over to IBM's DB2 download page and grab whichever format of the DB2 Express-C archive you need. (In my case, it was "Linux 64-bit", which gave me a resulting tarball of db2exc_975_LNX_x86_64.tar.gz.)

As the next in what might turn into a series on the Git version control system, this post explains what it means to describe Git as a "content tracking" system, a concept that is sometimes a bit difficult for newcomers to wrap their heads around, so let's explain it by way of comparison and a couple trivial Git examples.

Because the Git version control system takes a rather novel approach to how it stores history, I thought I'd write a very quick-and-dirty explanation of that. Once new users understand how this works, a great deal about Git suddenly becomes a lot clearer. So let's see how well this works out. (I'm still touching up this post, so if you see a typo, leave a comment. Or just leave a comment, anyway. And, yes, I can see Drupal is doing silly things with overly long lines; I'm working on that.)

As a favour to a colleague, I recently downloaded and installed the web content management system eZ Publish (the community version) on my Ubuntu 11.04 system. Conveniently, Falko Timme had already documented the process for Ubuntu 7.10 here and, with only a few tweaks to Falko's writeup, the latest version of eZ Publish went in nicely.

Tuesday, May 24 will represent the first after-work meeting of what I'm unofficially calling the downtown Ottawa Linux kernel geek-up. The plan is to meet on a moderately regular basis after work on selected weekdays in downtown Ottawa, and hash out the gory details of some pre-selected feature of the Linux kernel. (NOTE: It's not a general Linux geek-up -- it's specifically for Linux kernel discussion, just to be clear.)

Recently, a number of people have experienced the "black screen of death" boot issue with Linux, based on some problems with integrated Intel video chips. The problem was allegedly resolved but it's managed to crop up again.

If you've been running into that, and have no problem building and booting a new kernel from the source, here's a simple patch you can apply to the source that appears to solve the problem:

--- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c
+++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_opregion.c

The Linux kernel programming course for beginners? It's right there on your left. Enjoy.

... check back in a bit if you want to know about the introductory kernel programming course Jon Masters mentioned in the keynote. Or just look up there on your left.

No, your other left.

P.S. I'm at OLS most of the week if you want to chat. rpjday@crashcourse.ca.

P.P.S. Feel free to follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rpjday as well.

At this point, we're about halfway through our inaugural "Introduction to Linux Kernel Programming" course. That would be the course link up there on your left. No, your other left.

Enjoy.

P.S. And just wait until you see the new web site banner graphic. Coming soon. You are going to be so jealous. Seriously.

P.P.S. If you want to keep up with course (and other) developments in real time, well, this is me on Twitter. I am now off to write the next lesson.

Not rocket surgery but here's how to check out and build the current development version of Blender on Ubuntu 10.04 so you can get a look at all the cool new features of Blender 2.5.

First, the packages you'll need:

$ sudo apt-get install \
 python3.1-dev \
 scons \
 subversion \
 libsdl1.2-dev \
 libxi-dev \
 libopenexr-dev \
 libavformat-dev \
 libsamplerate0-dev \
 libswscale-dev \
 libtiff4-dev \
 libavdevice-dev \
 libopenal-dev \
 gettext
$