OLS has always been a time where I end up updating my laptop's software for some reason. It's probably both because some of the talks aren't that interesting to me, so it gives me something to do :) and if something breaks, I have lots of experts around me to ask for help :)

Anyway, I used the opportunity this year to upgrade:

• from 2.6.14 to 2.6.17, along with all the fun that it implies (suspend to ram and to disk, new ipw2200 wireless driver and underlying softmac support, vmware, with new patches to make it compile)
  
• Did a major upgrade of X.org from 6.8 to 7.0 with all its new pathnames
  
• installed the ATI 3D driver, which wasn't a piece of cake, so as to get google earth for linux working with accelerated 3D (it was unusable otherwise). While researching/debugging the problem, I updated a lot online documentation so that other folks don't have to go through the same hassle has me, including this one
  
• fought the failing hard drive firmware in my laptop to get it limping around during the conference
  

By friday, as the conference is winding down, I have everything apparently working, including suspend to RAM and suspend to disk.