Development new and old

My laptop is really the genuine article. I have considered playing some neat-looking game for Linux (and there's very few of them, let me tell you), but it didn't do much in the way of playing. It seemed to require 3D hardware support. Doesn't sound like anything unusual nowadays (my gaming tastes are hopelessly backwards). So... does my lovely laptop support that?

Well it does... but not for Linux. After spending another couple hours of looking for drivers and success reports, I actually found a petition to AMD for making drivers for ATI Radeon XPress 200M - just my brand.

Not that I would be using it that much, but it's kind of disheartening. Ah, whatever.

For the record, the game that interested me, was SCOURGE. Could be fun. :(

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Some good news in turn: on my work computer, I worried about the sound under Linux. Well, nothing to worry, the default ALSA driver worked perfectly (I don't have speakers yet so it's headphones-only).

Anyway, there is sound! Go MP3s!

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USB is fun, especially under Linux. I didn't use 'em much after upgrading on Feisty, but at some point I tried my USB key. Didn't work.

As the ancient tradition commands, I googled, and found some reports on USB devices being destroyed by the Linux kernel (what?!?). Luckily it turned out to be not my case, What was my case, was a broken new driver, which excluded some devices (like my newer 1GB USB key), but recognized others (like my older 256MB key, and my DVD burner). Of course, I could have only one at a time. There is more in comments on this...

...but isn't THAT fun?