Archives 2017

Dell Manages to top the Exploding Battery thing [Fixed]

[Update] Second level/RMA support just reversed their decision. I'm afraid I was rather impolite in my email response to their decision.

So the saga so far:

  • Dell laptop 3 months past 1 year warranty
  • Battery starts swelling/eploding while on trip in Italy
  • Turns out it is a "feature" of the XPS laptops as seen in ...

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Docker on Centos7 host underwhelms

So one of the things I've been working on recently is creating a docker-based container to host a complex application for video processing that requires a lot of OS-level setup. I, of course, work on a number of Ubuntu 17.04 machines for development, and docker there has proven to be exactly what you expect. You ...

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GStreamer Playback Captured mpeg.ts using Timestamps

The use case here is capturing a network input source (mpeg ts stream) and then using that capture for playback later. If you just use a filesrc your playback will run as fast as the machine can process it unless you've got an element in the pipeline that will limit the speed (such as a ...

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Dell XPS 15 2016 on Kubuntu 15.10

Update: The battery in this machine started swelling/exploding at 1.25 years, do not order one!

So I finally got a replacement for the old laptop, which works, but is winding up out-of-RAM basically all the time. This time, instead of going for the cheap inspirons I decided to plunk for a higher-end machine that ...

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Review: Dell XPS 15 (9550) as a Linux Developer's Laptop

Update: the battery in this machine started swelling/exploding at 1.25 years Strongly recommend not buying one!

So I've now had a Dell XPS 15 9550 as my primary driver for approximately 9 months. I covered the (painful) setup process a bit when I first got it, so I won't repeat most of that here. Suffice ...

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Dell XPS 15 (9550) Exploding Battery

So I guess it's necessary that I write this up, as my previous reviews of this laptop were relatively positive, despite the PITA-ish ness of using it with Linux and the coil-whine of the power supply, and the latest issue makes it a "stay the hell away" recommendation.

Background:

A few months ago ...

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