New Linux User

Big blue wants a handout but still wants to dish out tough love

2009-02-01T08:57:00.002-05:00

Slashdot has a story about IBM (big blue) canning thousands of people in a city where taxpayers paid $45 million not to cut additional jobs. What's amazing about the story is that IBM is asking for a bailout and still planning on cutting those jobs. I can just hear execs moaning "we're just cutting un-profitable ..." but they've already been paid a couple of times specifically to keep people on the payroll. It sounds like a big money grab to me.

Fire spreading...

2006-10-20T09:50:00.000-04:00

It's become pretty clear to me that Open Source software has caught on, it's become something like Microsoft's viral agent portrayal, but not in a bad way. The other day a professor I once studied under asked me about OpenOffice. This morning I was surfing and came across GamePC which features Firefox and Thunderbird as an important selling point of their machines... pretty cool if you ask me!

The second CPU is in!

2006-08-22T09:39:00.000-04:00

I got the second 200MHz CPU for my Sun Ultra 2 last night. When I plugged it in this morning Gentoo automatically recognized the CPU and sported a second Gentoo console logo while booting. The speed is impressive so far. I bet with a little tuning this baby would beat some of the 400MHz boxes we have around the shop.

Looking at new notebooks

2006-07-17T22:14:00.000-04:00

Since my trusty 1GHz Compaq Armada E500 notebook blew the power socket I've been having notebook withdrawl. I've used a couple of old notebooks from work, but they've been underachievers compared to my E500. It's time for some forward thinking, a new notebook.

I had a few requirements for the notebook, the formost of which was that the notebook had to be truly portable since I do a lot of walking. I wanted 3D support as well so those GL games would be supported. I didn't need 1600x1200, but figured that 1280x1024 might be important for future applications and some of the graphics work I do.

Basically I've broken the candidates down to:

IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X60

Dell XPS M1210

Sony VGN-SZ140 CTO - no link but you can find it on Sony.ca

I discounted a number of manufacturers (HP/Toshiba) because their 12" offerings were difficult to find. Sony had a lot of 12" or less notebooks, but most seemed overpriced for the same functionality of other notebooks.

I like the trackpoint on the Lenovo, it's a big plus; I've always disliked touchpads, they get oily and I feel more precise with the trackpoint.

The Dell offers quite a bit of value for the price.

Sony, is Sony. Their notebooks have always been pretty slick, but the VGN-SZ140 CTO lacks a lot the other two notebooks have.

I'm leaning towards the Lenovo, but there's been a lot of chatter lately about Lenovo not supporting Linux. IBM, however, has been comitting to Linux in a pretty big way the last while. I'll update the web log if I get a chance to try out some live CDs on these books.

Slap all the distribution web masters

2006-07-15T13:01:00.000-04:00

Argh!!! That's the feeling I've had, site after site, while looking for a new Linux distribution to run. I want to slap distro web masters silly because they've done something really dumb, failed to include a System Requirements link clearly on the home page. Hey boneheads, wake up, not everyone had a P4 3.4GHz box! We want to know if you're distro is one of those slow as a dog distros that only work on multi-GHz boxes with a zillion megs of RAM, or if it's run well in 256MB RAM?

Don't throw out that old computer...

2006-06-15T17:43:00.000-04:00

Every Thursday around 9pm I see a man in his mid-sixties riding his bike around my neighbourhood. At first I thought it was a bit odd to see someone of his stature riding around on a bike after the sun went down. While coming home late one evening I finally discovered why he was riding around so late, he was picking through everyone's trash. (Friday is garbage pickup day in my neighbourhood)

How does this relate to not throwing out an old computer? I'm getting to that. A friend recently picked up a computer at a garage sale for $5.00 CDN. The computer in question was a Celeron 533MHz with 64MB of RAM, and a hard drive over 10GB - more than enough to run a Linux server with a little work. This was someone's junk! With another 64MB stick Kev. could run a full blown Ubuntu desktop. (Though 256MB is starting to become a minimum)

I also picked up a "junk" machine. At work we strip anything less than a Pentium II 233MHz (which goes for $15CDN). This Pentium I 90MHz, 16MB of RAM, 1.3GB hard drive came in. What's great about this little box is that it's small, about the size of a size 12 shoe box, but a bit wider and about half the height. The box has no CD-ROM, but it might be possible to put a notebook-style cd-rom in it. Given my experience installing Linux over a network in the past, it didn't concern me that there was no CD-ROM. For those curious, the box has a model number: PDA-2000.

Of course I had to upgrade the box. I removed the Pentium 90 CPU and replaced it with a 133MHz CPU, and replaced the 16MB of RAM with 64MB. I left the 1.3GB hard drive because my plan is to build a simple game server. Lastly, I added a sound blaster, for no reason at all. Yes, the hardware sucks, but the convenience outweighs having a 2GHz processor inside.

Al Gore, who knew?

2006-06-13T22:02:00.000-04:00

The world knows all about the past couple of "U.S. Elections." I don't think more needs to be said about what went on during the elections. I try not to stretch too far out of the Linux-blogging realm, but I'm making an exception tonight. While looking through Google Video I came across a brilliant trailer for "The Inconvenient Truth;" a docu-drama about global warming starring Al Gore.

After seeing snippets of Gore talking I want to watch the movie. Gore seems much smarter than the little I saw of him during the first U.S. election; though admittedly I didn't watch it close.

Linux Games... and iMacs

2006-06-12T21:51:00.000-04:00

If you've glanced at my profile you'll see that I maintain a number of web logs. Maintain is probably a bad word to use because I've let languish most of the blogs. I've started a number of web logs and occassionally contributed to them. One of those blogs, Linux Games: http://www.linux-games.ca/ recently got a wordpress overhaul. I've started trying to post every second day, but today I couldn't because I forgot the admin password. I still have the password, but it's in a book. Writing down passwords isn't very secure, but I have to remember a lot of passwords in my line of work, so it's easy for me to forget.

I've been talking on Linux Games.ca about simple games. I was going to blog about Mahjongg this evening, but the post will be delayed until tomorrow (provided I remember to bring the book). What's interesting about my recent effort to blog about Linux Games is that I haven't used the same computer twice for any post. One post was done from a SuSE 10.1 workstation. Another post was done from my Compaq Armada E500 notebook. This post, and tomorrow's post will be from an iMac running Ubuntu Linux.

About 3 months ago I set up Ubuntu on the iMac to help train volunteers at The Working Centre. Unfortunately I became so busy that our hourly training sessions slipped, and the machine sat collecting dust -- until now.

Linux on the rise, Microsoft slipping, but not sinking...

2006-06-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

There are always zealots predicting the death of Windows. While I'd like to see Microsoft's share drop to about 50% of the market, I bear the evil empire no ill will (snicker). All joking aside, despite Microsoft's best efforts to boost Vista, it seems like a sinking ship. Microsoft has delayed the public release a couple of times. Now OS ews reports that Microsoft has once again been sending information back to HQ without proper disclosure.

In many ways Vista's release reminds me of the Windows 95 release; dates got pushed back, and features (32bit file system, voice recognition) got pushed back, or never showed up at all. Microsoft Watch has an article about Vista feature that has been recently dropped due to security concerns.

In the midst of all this, ZDNet UK reports that Dell now considers Linux among it's industry standard OS's. Whether this means that they will install it on more machines or not remains to be seen. But if public awareness is any gage, a lot of people know a little about Linux. Even if they don't understand it, many are starting to warm to it.

FreeBSD-based LiveCD

2006-06-08T09:20:00.000-04:00

Before jumping full ship to Linux I was a FreeBSD guy, I even published a paper rag called FreeBSD Newbie. I've always had a bit of an affinity for FreeBSD, even though I'm a through and through Linux nerd. Now there's a FreeBSD-based Live CD, so I can still have my Linux cake, and gnaw on a FreeBSD bone too. The distribution is called Frenzy. It has a simple logo, and cool mascot. Can't wait to try it.

Download: ISO (about 200M)

"You must own a Linux-compatible computer" government says

2006-06-06T09:29:00.000-04:00

There was a post on Slashdot today about an article in the Taipei Times which states "The government-run Central Trust of China has mandated for the first time that all desktop computers purchased from now on must be Linux-compatible." Finally, a government with stones!

What's cool about this announcement is that it means there will be less commodity hardware designed for only one OS. Yes, prices might be a bit higher, but hardware prices have come down so much it's difficult not to own a couple of PC's these days - even if one is a Pentium I.

Linux is on the move again in China, and with the population there you can well imaging the amount of open source code potential.

Matter of Taste Barista championship winners!

2006-06-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows I can usually be found at Matter of Taste (MOT) coffee shop when I'm not at work. I've always said Matter of Taste has the best coffee around, and now they have a plaque to prove it. Owner Phong Tran came in second at the Barista championship last Friday, making Phong the most skilled Barista south of Collingwood. Kate, a barista who works at Matter of Taste, placed fifth. Another Phong & Dawn-trained barista, Amber, who now works for a cafe in Toronto, came in sixth. Of the top 6 baristas, 50% were trained at Matter of Taste.

I couldn't attend, but Phong filled me in on the details Saturday, "Lindsay, put on an amazing show." Lindsay, another of Phong's baristas, didn't place in the top 6, but certainly made an impression. Both Lindsay and Kate were asked by Elektra to pose with the Elektra Classic Espresso machine.

Matter of Taste has a really relaxing atmosphere, and the owners, Phong and Dawn, are both very approachable. MOT has a relaxed dress code which seems to consist of black top and jeans. Before the competition Kate and Lindsay were chatting about dressing up for the 'host' role, and as everyone can see, they both look great!

Kate has been training as a Barista since January, 2006, making her fifth place finish is an amazing accoplishment. Being a "regular" I got to hear about the long hours Kate prepared for the competition. There were baristas in the competition who have been baristas for years, who didn't place in the top 6. No doubt Kate's hard work contributed a great deal to her victory.

A big congratulations to all the staff of Matter of Taste! You're all the best!

I'm Palm OS

2006-05-31T09:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, all these "personality tests" are a bit twisted, but I thought this computer-based one would be good for a laugh. It turns out I'm Palm OS; I don't know whether to think it's an insult or not, I'm just glad I didn't get Windows ME!

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/palm.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are Palm OS. Punctual, straightforward and very useful. Your mother wants you to do more with your life like your cousin Wince, but you're happy with who you are.">
Which OS are You?

LVM woes

2006-05-08T15:01:00.000-04:00

Anyone have any ideas about the following?

I'm having a bit of trouble getting a second hard drive to be
mapped by LVM. I think I've got things to the point that I'm just
missing a minor step. Here's the skinny:

1) Initially someone imaged a 120GB hard drive with a 60GB image. I
created a 60GB image and joined it to the other 60GB image.
Everything was cool... I had about 106GB for /home.

2) I just added a second drive, an 80GB drive that I also want mapped to home.

Below is the mess I've created:

--[snip]------------------------------------------

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/hda5
VG Name VolGroup01
PV Size 52.66 GB / not usable 0
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size (KByte) 32768
Total PE 1685
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 1685
PV UUID 57X3AO-NXrE-1Hs1-b2eF-3asW-LtX5-mjRlns

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/hda6
VG Name VolGroup01
PV Size 54.50 GB / not usable 0
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size (KByte) 32768
Total PE 1744
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 1744
PV UUID vYcDST-5ZkY-6TU3-NtvY-nFNN-dywA-O3OrZC

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/hdb1
VG Name VolGroup01
PV Size 76.31 GB / not usable 0
Allocatable yes
PE Size (KByte) 32768
Total PE 2442
Free PE 10
Allocated PE 2432
PV UUID fkslom-Pf5T-tOUc-mPOq-WSXF-U5B6-YaDuN2

--- NEW Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/hdb
VG Name
PV Size 76.34 GB
Allocatable NO
PE Size (KByte) 0
Total PE 0
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 0
PV UUID lRvY0d-5lgb-ZfCy-lwIu-Nkwt-LI1p-1FsrBX

--- Logical volume ---
LV Name /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol01
VG Name VolGroup01
LV UUID dPPB8b-ASXB-3Ha4-mSlj-l648-UTQG-P7Fiz8
LV Write Access read/write
LV Status available
# open 1
LV Size 183.16 GB
Current LE 5861
Segments 3
Allocation inherit
Read ahead sectors 0
Block device 253:0

--- Volume group ---
VG Name VolGroup01
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 3
Metadata Sequence No 8
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 1
Open LV 1
Max PV 0
Cur PV 3
Act PV 3
VG Size 183.47 GB
PE Size 32.00 MB
Total PE 5871
Alloc PE / Size 5861 / 183.16 GB
Free PE / Size 10 / 320.00 MB
VG UUID IzgtV1-R5AB-PuhB-jp5F-xVPy-l8Pj-qcz0Bo

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4.0G 1.5G 2.4G 38% /
/dev/hda1 99M 8.3M 86M 9% /boot
none 126M 0 126M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/VolGroup01-LogVol01
106G 86G 16G 85% /home

--[/snip]------------------------------------------

As you can see, /dev/mapper/VolGroup01-LogVol01 as /home is only
showing a size of 106GB when I do a df -h, but lvdisplay shows
/dev/VolGroup01/LogVol01 as 183.16 GB. It seems to be a matter of
mapping that info so that it gets recognized... just not sure how to
do that. When I did it the first time it was about a year ago. Now I
can't find the docs I used to do the job.

Kudos for one of the Microsoft geeks!

2006-04-21T08:52:00.000-04:00

Hey, someone at Microsoft actually decided to share! David Weiss blogged a tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab at: http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/2006/04/tour-of-microsofts-mac-lab.html.

The write up is a pretty insightful look at Microsoft's Mac lab. I found the Mac mini cluster particularly interesting.

Now if everyone at Microsoft was this open...

First impressions of Fedora Core 5

2006-04-17T12:18:00.000-04:00

A few months back I switched from Ubuntu Breezy to Fedora Core 4 on my Compaq Armada E500 1GHz notebook because of the support for my Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS pcmcia sound card. I was a bit nervous about putting Fedora Core 5 on my system after having spent weeks, a bit at a time, getting things "just right." But after reading some of the benefits of Fedora Core 5, faster load times for Gnome Terminal, Xen, improved UI, I started getting the itch to install it.

The install went quite smoothly other than the initial attempt at upgrading 4 to 5. Originally I was going to upgrade FC4 to FC5, but because Windows XP was complaining that I'd reinstalled it 25 times already and needed to call Microsoft, I decided that it was time to wipe out both partitions, backing up necessary data to my 80GB Maxtor Personal Storage 3100 USB drive. My notebook drive is 60GB. Eventually I will probably load XEN and install SuSE 9.2 (I have the boxed set and IMHO 9.2 was one of the best releases).

Prior to installing FC5 I plugged in my Creative Labs Audigy2 ZS pcmcia card. This proved to be a smart move because later in the install Fedora Core 5 asked which card I wanted to be the default (my onboard or the Audigy). On the initial command line I typed linux resolution=1400x1050 to set the install/default resolution to my notebook's maximum resolution 1400x1050. Note: if you have a Compaq Armada E500, only the 1GHz version supports 1400x1050, see HP/Compaq's web site before you do any hard tweaking of your notebook!

After the install I loaded up Gnome Terminal. It popped up and was ready after about 3 seconds, not the 1 second posted on the Gnome web site, but faster than Gnome Terminal was loading before. One problem that is already starting to irk me is that power management kicks in while I'm typing on the keyboard, it literally goes to screen saver and asks me to type in my password. This might have been fixed in an update. I haven't updated yet. Firefox is slow to load, it loaded in about 20 seconds, too slow if you ask me, but it might have had to do some initial setup.

The new look is fantastic! One of the things that bothered me about the screen saver in version 4 is that it used the old xscreensaver password dialog - that's changed to a beautiful Fedora Core 5 dialog. The colours are amazing. And I love the window attraction feature; basically, windows are now magnetic. When you move a window near another it can attach to the side of the second window. The settings for the attraction are just perfect! I can have a window very close without it being attracted to the other window. This lets me rub the window right up alongside the other, or keep a little space between apps. My beloved Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys still work for switching workspaces.

The screenshot Gnome application is wicked fast, and looks good too. (The shot above was taken with Gimp 2.2 though). The Gnome menu system is responsive, it seems less sluggish than prior versions. One of the things I really love is how fast folders open, there seems to have been a big performance improvement in Nautilus.

As with up2date, yum seems to crash if I run other applications - IMHO this simply shouldn't happen, even with only 256MB RAM. I've never been a fan of Red Hat's graphical update software, at least not since Red Hat 7.2. But I'm comfortable with yum on the command line.

Overall, so far FC 5 seems like a worthy upgrade. Other than the very annoying intrusive screen saver, everything seems to be tickety boo!

Dell whining about being Microsoft's lapdog

2006-04-11T08:27:00.000-04:00

C|Net News has an article in which Dell CTO Kevin Kettler claims they're not the lapdog of Microsoft and Intel. This whining came about at the LinuxWord Expo. Despite Dell's occassional boast to support Linux they've been really passive supporting the open source OS.

Here I sit in a cafe looking at a Dell flyer. The flyer is 8 pages including front and back cover. At the top of the front page, Dell recommends Windows XP Professional. On the inside page same thing, positioned slightly different, but in a very obvious position. The opposing page sports a huge "Intel Inside Centrino" logo. Flip over to the next page and we have more "Dell recommends Windows XP Professional." On the opposing page Dell flouts "Intel Pentium 4 HT inside." Flip over again, more Windows XP, though they do change the logo on the opposing page, the opposing logo, you guessed it, Microsoft Office, not just in one place, but a couple. Finally the last page has both a "Dell recommends Windows XP Professional" positioning and an "Intel Pentium 4 HT inside" logo. No Dell, you're not Wintel's lapdog, not at all.

Marcel Gagne on Call For Help

2006-04-08T10:55:00.000-04:00

Carruthers" />
On the cusp of the release of his new book, Moving to Ubuntu Linux, Marcel Gagne has been busy taping a couple of Call For Help shows with Leo Laporte. As always, Marcel talks about practical applications of Linux on the desktop. In a chat on his IRC server Marcel mentioned that Leo challenged him to prove how quick and easy it was to install applications on Linux. Marcel handily proved his point. I know very little about Leo Laporte, but he strikes me as being clued in. I'm sure Leo knew Marcel would succeed because Leo has probably done the same thing himself a thousand times.

Photo is courtesy of Sean Carruthers www.globalhermit.com who took the photo for Marcel & Leo.

Resources:

Marcel Gagne
Call For Help
irc:chat.marcelgagne.com

Ballmer baloney

2006-03-27T19:49:00.000-05:00

In an IRC chat: irc:chat.marcelgagne.com, Marcel Gagne, Linux Journal columnist, and author of multiple books on Linux, directed chatters to a Forbes article in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks about how he *might* attack Linux claiming a violation of Microsoft patents.

From the first sentence the article is clearly skewed in Microsoft's favour, but hey, we're talking Forbes, "HOME PAGE FOR THE WORLD'S BUSINESS LEADERS." I don't think the concept of "free as in speech" is in their vocabulary. But, back to the first sentence which begins "Fans of the popular Linux software program have long fretted that software giant Microsoft will attack Linux by claiming the free program violates Microsoft's patents." It's a pretty long and loaded sentence.

Starting with the first word, Fans, Forbes portrays Linux users as not being serious, they're just fans. Fans are associated with fun things like sports. Hey, Linux is fun, but there's definitely a serious side, Linux's use in the enterprise is a testament to the fact that there's a very serious side to Linux.

The second problem I have with the sentence is that it claims Linux users have all been worried about Microsoft attacking Linux on the basis that "the free program" violates Microsoft's patents. First, who's worried? I certainly haven't been worried about Microsoft attacking Linux. They haven't been successful attacking Linux through SCO, and now that there is an investigation underway looking into the relationship between SCO and Microsoft the Forbes article looks suspiciously like an attempt to redirect people's attention away from the investigation. Let's be clear, if the courts prove a Microsoft/SCO connection the result could further damage Microsoft by re-opening the monopoly can of worms. The other part of the sentence which is bothersome is the diminishing of Linux as "the free program." Technically speaking, Linux is a program - the kernel. But the article makes no reference to the kernel, and other parts of the article imply that Linux is a collection of programs.

The second paragraph implies Linux is the whole collection of kernel + 3rd party programs, "Right now, I can go out and get a free alternative to just about every product Microsoft sells." So which is it, a program, or collection of programs? Apparently the article author thinks it's either depending on how he can frame Microsoft in a positive light. Ballmer responds to the "why buy Microsoft, if you can get a free alternative" by implying Microsoft software does more. Anyone who has ever installed a Linux distribution like Fedora, Mandriva, Slackware, or Debian, knows the all mainstream Linux distributions come with a lot more software than Microsoft Windows, and are much more capable out of the box. I don't have to purchase add-ons to run a database server, and my office suite doesn't cost me an extra $650 CDN for the version which includes a graphical database. Let's also look at the example of Firefox versus IE. With its extensions, tabbed browsing, and regular development cycle, Firefox does a lot more than IE, and will continue to do so in the future.

Ballmer continues his response for three paragraphs near the end of which he says, "Put the courts aside, we have a lot of competition." Notice the careful redirect, "put the courts aside." Microsoft certainly has done that in the past, and they clearly want the public to forget they're a monopoly while permitting them to attack competitors using monopolistic tactics.

Fedora, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS pcmcia and latest Mac-like screen shot.

2006-03-24T19:52:00.000-05:00

In an effort to provide better audio quality for Kevin and my podcast, The Redneck Linux Podcast, I went out and smacked down $100CDN for a Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS pcmcia sound card. I'm happy to say the Audigy2 ZS works well with Fedora core with the latest kernel. (mine is 2.6.15-1.1833_FC4)

I also grabbed some more themes, icon, GTK2, and backgrounds from gnome-look. Comments?

Screen shot for March 9, 2006

2006-03-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

In this screenshot I'm running gaim instant messenger and gnome-xchat, a variant of the xchat IRC client. The background is sort of windows-ish. I also have a Mac OS/X-like application running at the bottom which does the bouncing and maginfied icons. The application is eye-candy, but not very functional from a productivity standpoint -- still, it's fun!

Success with Gentoo on Sun Ultra Sparc II

2006-03-02T09:09:00.000-05:00

Between 10:30pm and some time this morning I managed to get a functional copy of Gentoo installed on my Sun Ultra II. Why Gentoo? My first choice was Solaris 9, but it took forever to install and ran like a snail trying to navigate a pothole. Part of that fault lay with the fact that my Ultra's CPU is only 200MHz and it only has the minimum RAM 128. The RAM is of course proprietary, so I won't be adding SDRAM anytime soon.

I checked out Aurora, but it kept dumping where partitioning would occur. FreeBSD 6.x simply locked up. Finally, my Debian-SPARC disc was scratched. But all these obstacles were not the primary reason I chose Gentoo. The main reason was because it simply looked more impressive during the install phase. I know it's pathetic, but I love the colours on the command line. I also thought it would be great having the system better optimized for my hardware. So while I was dazzled by the pretty colours, the real reason was because I couldn't think of any other OS that might be more optimized for the hardware (other than LFS... but try LFS in a couple of hours...I don't think so).

There were a couple of bugs in my installation. Some modules did not load properly. I'm concerned because syslog-ng was one of the programs that didn't seem to be properly configured. The others were the sunhme, the cs sound driver, the flash module, and the openpromfs module. It's a bit puzzling, but I'm sure I'll figure it out when I get home from work 14 hours later. ;-)

100th post & Midnight Commander

2006-02-28T18:08:00.000-05:00

If you've read my past web log posts you know I go back to the Commodore 64 days in 1983. Back then my family was lucky enough to own a 1541 floppy drive for the C64. One of the things I learned back then was file management. Dealing with files was different in the PC world, but one thing was the same - there were tools to make file management simpler. One of those tools was Norton Commander for DOS. During my Windows 9x-phase (all 2 years) I really missed Norton Commander. Quite some time ago I discovered Linux has something similar to Norton Commander called Midnight Commander (mc).

Midnight Commander makes file management a breeze. But one of the things I found annoying about it was that it always displayed .dotfiles. The fix is for this is quite easy. Just browse to your ~/.mc directory and edit the file named ini. In the ini file there is an option show_dot_files. It's set to 1 by default. Set it to zero, restart midnight commander, and viola, no more dotfiles.

Well, it seems like just the other day that I started this, my first web log, and here we are at the 100th post! I'd like to thank everyone reading the web log, and special thanks to those who've left constructive feedback.

Resources:

Info page about Norton Commander
Wikipedia's Commodore 64 page
Linux GNU Midnight Commander

Yet another screen shot!

2006-02-08T18:59:00.000-05:00

I have no excuse for not posting lately. I simply have not made the time to post. At home my latest project is working on a mp3 box. I thought I was going to finish it last night, unfortunately the network card refused to work! Since the box was going to be a web-activated player, the NIC was necessary; besides, I also wanted to update the box. The version of Fedora Core 4 I have has about 100 new updates. The Fedora project seems to be gaining a lot of momentum lately.

I'm just about to nuke the 60GB Ubuntu installation on my notebook for SuSE 10 and Fedora Core 4 (I'll probably upgrade to the latest testing version later) Before I did that I wanted to post a screen shot, and just let people know I'm still trying to write in all my blogs, I'm just a bit swamped with projects at, and outside of work.

I've also finally got my Sun Ultra 2 powered up. It's currently in the middle of a Gentoo install. If I can gleam some more RAM for the box I might try out Solaris 10, but with only 128MB (4 x 32MB) currently installed CDE and Gnome are really boorish.

Resources

Screenshot for the day

2005-12-21T21:37:00.000-05:00

I didn't bother changing much theme-wise, but I found this really excellent background image of an Alien which goes really well with lighter themes. The only problem is the ugly logo in the top right, but that's easily gimped out!