I've been playing with Linux since 1995 and in the very beginning it was a pain in the ass for me and my friends to use it properly and productive. The missing drivers were the main problem. no matter if you were using an isdn card or a scanner, you coulnd't find, compile or write your own drivers. Hardware vendors did their best to keep it this way. There has been no support, no drivers or anything else for any system except windows. I do not want to discuss the reasons here, but as the headline states: exactly this is now the best part of Linux.

Timewarp. 2013. some examples:
I have a cheap Nikon Camera, plug it into my linux desktop and bing, am able to control it completely with my gphoto program, take photos, download them on the computer, compile timelaps films, etc.
Or my scanner, an Canon scansomething. plug and scan. The program "sane" just uses it as any other newer scanner.
My HP Laserjet: just plug it in, use a common pcl driver and CUPS, and print, even in duplex mode.
There are so many examples on how easy Linux is to be used nowadays. No driver CD's needed. Just simply use the tools.

Thew Hardware support is so extreme good because of the need to build common interfaces with little device specific code at the backend. You do not need to install a bloated 40 megabyte diver suite for your scanner, with unusable software , which will probably never be updated again or a 54 megabyte printer driver for just showing you the status of the toner cart...

I hear people talking about a problem in the linux desktop market, but in my view windows has the problem. Drivers refuse to work in newer win versions, older programs refuse to, also. The user interface has been made unusable, even worse is the most used program "word". O M G - completely totally unusable. terrifying

This whole situation, combined with easy to install and use distributions like Fuduntu blow away all doubts: Linux will dominate the whole pc market in a couple of years, not only the servers.


Have fun playing with fuduntu!

p.s. yes, apple os is indeed usable, stable, good looking and very good in hardware support (due to the lack of hardware :P ) but not affordable to everyone.
p.p.s and yes, playing really new games is only possible on windows .... YET... http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/ ... 04151.html

finally, to prove my claim some screenshots:
my desktop showing Xsane

and a scanned random pc of paper...


my camera as detected by gphoto (via console)

Both computers share a UART RS232 ("serial") port in TTL levels,
the C64 0 / 5V, the RPi 0 / 3.3V

if you connect this 2 direct you may damage your raspberry's CPU.
I found out 2 ways of combining the two:

My first (and used, working) idea was to use max232 chips to get the original RS232 level on both sides.
I already used this to connect my c64 to my PC, for the rpi I ordered such an interface for 2$ on ebay.
You need to connect the uart-rs232 module to the GPIO pins as shown in this picture:

(from http://www.savagehomeautomation.com/pro ... -port.html )

connect it to your C64, set up yout raspberry to talk in a speed your c64 can follow
in /etc/inittab set the last line to

T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 300 cater

(which means 300 baud , terminal emulation 'cater' on the serial line)

Visit http://formica.nusseis.de/Cater/index.html to teach your Raspberry to use a language your C64 understands.

done :-D



You are now able to use Your C64 as an I/O for the Rpi (so much acronyms ). For more on this topic visit one of my prior postings on the topic "connecting a c64 to a PC."

The more advanced version to connect both computers is not to wire them via level up / level down switching, but rather just cut the 5 V down to 3.3 ... I found some tipps here: http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/276083 ... should work as well ;-)
UPDATE:
founf this in a german electronics shop: http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/NDk1OTgxOT ... ional.html
should be the one you search for ;)

have fun experimenting !
webdoctor

a little redesign...

In der rpi gruppe auf google+ las ich von der möglichkeit eine kamera über das usb kabel auszulösen.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/117098976115661643090/posts/X8d3HNv1vAe
der autor installierte zusätzlich ein lcd display um die kamera komplett ohne monitor betrreiben zu können.

aber das wirklich interessante daran war für mich die existenz der software gphoto2,
welche als trigger eingesetzt wird. unterstützt werden 1500 digitalkameras, und obwohl meine nicht auf der liste der unterstützten steht, funktioniert sie trotzdem
\o/
mit ffmpeg werden die einzelbilder dann zu einem filmchen zusammengesetzt.
ich freu mich auf den sommer, wenn ich mit der 70€ digicam nikon coolpix ein timelaps video posten kann

geilomat!
webdoktor

Climm is the command line multi messenger.
available on http://www.climm.org
to get it run under the raspbian wheezy distro you need to compile a boatload of packets, as the distro doesnt deliver nearly no needed dependencies:

climm requieres gnutls and tcl (a compiled version, the raspbian tcl package seems to be borked)
gnutls needs to be an outdated version! (i tried 2 days with vers. 3.1.5... 2.8 is working ;) )
gnutls depends on gmp, libgcrypt and nettle
libgcrypt requires libgpg-error and so on,
a few other dependencies have been solved with sudo apt-get install blablabla....


and now: