Well, yup!

A quick install of CentOS 4.4 later (wow, a base server install off CD is bloody quick!) and it detected the dual cores off the bat.

( /proc/cpuinfo )

Because this isn't a cutting edge system it looks like the kernel has detected just about everything; ethernet, SATA, audio. Haven't tried X yet.

Now I need to decide what sort of virtualisation to run on this thing; vserver or VMware or Solaris 10 zones or Xen or something else. Part of what this machine is going to do is have a couple of "bastion" instances which have incoming internet access (one for web and ssh, one for mail). So far I'm thinking vmware is a bit heavy weight for just a few processes but then it gives the most flexibility. I'm currently using vserver on an old FC1 box, but this won't necessarily patch onto a RHEL4.4 kernel because of all the changes RedHat made. Or do I wait for RHEL5 (and thus CentOS 5) with Xen built in?

*ponder*

Depeche Mode

I'm not a heavy Depeche Mode fan, but I like a number of their songs so I got "The Best Of, volume 1" DVD+CD set. As with all new CDs I ripped it and transferred to my mp3 player; I'll listen to it on the train tomorrow. I played back the first few seconds of each song to see how many I recognised and got to "I feel you" and it sounded like random noise. Originally I thought some DRM protection (I rip on Linux but...) so I played the original CD in my DVD player. Nope, same noise. And on a boom box.. the same. Yikes! I guess that's how it's meant to sound!

So I stick in the DVD and do similar... yup, the DVD version has the same awful noise. As do a couple of other songs. What do they have in common? They were all off "Songs of Faith and Devotion". Heh, the Wikipedia entry says with this album they "significantly changed paced". Yeah, that's true! Fortunately they seemed to recover :-)

I find it amusing that the CD only has 18 songs but the DVD has 23 videos plus a 30 minute documentary.

Hmm, I don't remember hearing "Suffer Well" at all. Not sure I like it as much as "Precious", which was one of the few songs from the past few years that I liked on first listening (I caught it on VH1 Classic "classic modern"). Maybe I'll buy the "Playing The Angel" album on the strength of that.