It seems an external site was attempting VPN access into our corporate network.  The problem the external site was hitting was that they couldn’t initiate a session FROM their network…but someone from our location could initiate a connection TO their network.  They used a Linux box to provide them VPN, Firewall, and proxy services.  Now, any Linux admin worth his or her salt would have immediately known that being able to VPN back into a site but not VPN out of a site means that the firewall doesn’t have the right ports open and/or forwarded.  This should have been an easy fix…but the guys at this external location evidently didn’t posses this knowledge.

Instead of blame falling on the improper configuration, open source was blamed as a whole.  My colleagues stated that those “free tools people use never stack up to paid ones” and that “you get what you pay for…and if you don’t pay for it you don’t get it”.  So according to these guys:

• Free = poorly designed, less than good software
• Paid = better designed, wicked awesome software

Which of course, you and I know is a bunch of hooey.  And this is what some of the smartest guys I’ve had a chance to work with state about Linux and open source.  Makes me really wonder if they know their Cisco stuff is often times Linux and open source as well.  I guess maybe I should tell them sometime.  Either way, Linux still has a long way to go to garner the acceptance it should have.

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When my family cell plan was set to expire this year, we had a little more excitement than we had in years past.  Afterall, phones have become small computers that house cameras, mp3 players, and fully featured calendars and applications.  I’ve been doing IT for over 10 years now and have never really worked hard at making text messaging part of my work day.  When I started my new job last year, I was suprised to see that that they used a beeper system that utilized SMS technology for on call technicians.  This meant that I could get texts when a system went down or when my expertise was needed at work.  I needed a phone that allowed me to have more options than the old standard phones I usually picked up with the plan…plus, adding texting to my basic 2 year old plan was EXPENSIVE!

After research, I found that I would go with either an iPhone or the Palm Pre.  I chose the Palm Pre for 3 reasons:

1. Sprint has the first operational 4G network currently which is 3 to 5 times faster than 3G (go live was May 25, 2009…announced in 2006)
2. Sprint has better overall 3G coverage than AT&T
3. Palm Pre is Linux

After making that decision and getting my Pre…I have to tell you that I’ve never been more happier with a phone or device.  It’s a fantastic device and the app catalog hasn’t even had developer access to it yet!  I’m really looking forward at seeing what people create when the SDK is opened up and the app catalog begins to fill up.

I’ve posted a few screenshots of my Pre below…just so you know what it looks like.  I’ve posted the most important screenshot at the very bottom of the post…that’s right, Palm Pre works with a KDE4 test build of Unity Linux (duh, it is Linux).  I have NO regrets in my choice of the Pre at all.

Do you have any questions about the phone and Linux?  Want to see more?  If so, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section.

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The full announcement is in the forum here: http://forum.unity-linux.org/general-news-and-announcements/release-3-7-out

Gettinther advises, “It’s still rough around the corners so please excuse us for it. Also the shut down script in livecd mode generates errors. Those are not important and can be safely ignored.”

Please note that we have updated rpm to version 5, the package manager is now the Smart Package Manager as apt4rpm development has ceased, the livecd project has been updated quite a bit to conform to our updated toolchain as well, and detection has been pretty much rewritten to accommodate all the upgrades.

Also, remember that this is not a desktop…this is a core. Unity Linux strives to be a base for people to build from.

You may notice that TinyME influences are very pronounced in this release…this is because TinyME allows us to have a GUI with some of the least amount of requirements and dependencies.  Developers needed a minimalistic GUI to test core components such as Smart and the updated Unity Control Center.  Unity Linux core, on which derivative distributions (branches) will build, will be even smaller than the size of this ISO…as it will not have Xorg or a window environment.

Please report issues to the forum:  http://forum.unity-linux.org/unity-linux-discussion/

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devnet[~]$ cat ~/.bashrc
alias lll="ls -al --color"
alias ll="ls -l --color"
alias l='ls --color'<br />alias search='find . -name'
alias aterm="aterm -fg white -tr"
alias version='cat /etc/zenwalk-version'
alias dh='df -h'<br />export PS1='\u[\W]\$ '
export PAGER="most"<br />devnet[~]$

I don’t use those aliases much…others of you might do the ‘ll’ or ‘lll’ but it’s just not part of my routine.  So, I added in just after line 4 in the code above:

alias ls='ls --color'

You can do this a few different ways…with any command line editor like emacs, vi, or nano/pico. It’s really up to you. The easiest way for new users is to use a text editor:

devnet[~]$ mousepad ~/.bashrc

This will launch the mousepad text editor in XFCE. If you’re in Gnome, try gedit. If KDE, give kwrite a try. You should see something like the following window pop up for editing:

You should see in the picture above, I’ve added in the alias needed to make me comfortable.  After that, File >> Save.  You’re set!  Except, you may notice that when you type the command ‘ls’ there are no colors.  So what gives?  Well, we haven’t loaded our ./bashrc since we changed it.  You don’t have to logout and back in to get things to work though…you can do this right from the terminal:

devnet[~]$ exec bash

Now try giving the ‘ls’ command a try again and you should see that it is in color.  I know a lot of the more advanced Linux guys out there are probably saying, “why’d he waste a post on this!  It’s easy” and you’d be right for a majority of users out there…I hope that this post finds some new user out there that may be stuck for an answer on how to do this.  One final note on this as well: You will have to do this as the root user and change /root/.bashrc in order for your root user to also have color.  Thanks for reading!

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After some initial toolings in Arch and Gentoo, I settled on Slackware…which was my first distribution I tried ever in 1995.  It felt good to be coming back to Slackware…there is a simple elegance about it.  It’s ultimately fast on just about every system I’ve put it on.  I really like the unix like rc files Slackware has; to me, it’s simple to get things working.  This could be because I cut my teeth on Solaris…but then again, I think it’s much easier to manage system services by making an rc file executable (chmod).  Sure Red Hat style is ok with ’service name start|restart|stop’ but I really like going into a directory, listing it out, and seeing all my services that execute on startup in green.  Maybe it’s my nostalgia getting the best of me.  I’m sure that’s it.

Regardless, I stuck with Slackware only a short while because I was interested in XFCE (not that Slack doesn’t have XFCE…just that I wanted to see a distro that prides itself on XFCE) and decided to give Zenwalk 6 a try (I’ve tried Wolvix already…it just didn’t click with me).  I’d heard nothing but good things about this distro and it is Slackware based, which makes all the nostalgic parts of me tingle.

I installed and all I can say is WOW!  It’s a fantastic implementation of XFCE regardless of distribution.  The Slackware speed and rc system are there, greeting me on each startup/login.  XFCE is done brilliantly there and really feels like a superb implementation.  Updating is a snap with netpkg, something I haven’t had any experience with…it does the job nicely though.  Overall, I’m quite satisfied with Zenwalk and will be sticking with it for a while.  I’ll post back from time to time with any tips or tricks I might find as I’m stretching my legs so to speak in my new environment.

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In my day job, I am a Server Administrator at a medium sized hospital.  This means I deal with Unix, Linux, and Windows servers on a daily basis…but with most of my time spent on Windows Server administration.  Many times, I’ll run across a solution to a problem that is hard to solve and would love to share this solution…to Open Source the information so to speak…but my blog here does not give me platform to do that.  For example, if I published Windows Server stuff on a Linux Blog, thousands of voices may shout “KAHN!!!!!!!” in unison in my general direction.  It’s just something you don’t do.

The bad part about this is that many times when finding a solution for a problem in a Windows environment…I’m thinking of how to properly do the same thing on a Linux server…but the lack of platform for writing the Windows solution sweeps the rug out from under me when I begin to write about the solution in Linux…I’m not happy about that but it’s a fact..

Writing and blogging is a process that is best done all the time.  As you continue to publish entries, you begin to develop a desire to continue to publish entries.  If you go stagnant with your posts…it takes more motivation to get you back to where you’re posting with regularity.  If you are limited in what you write about, that takes away from the spectrum of things you might blog about even more.  I feel I’m limiting the scope of what I could post here on Yet Another Linux Blog…and I’ve set out to correct this.

I still will NOT recycle news in the same way other blogs do…I really don’t see a point to that.  But I’ve begun setting up a new blog to absorb this one…this blog will cover more than just Linux…it will cover all of the areas of technology that I deal with in my job and at home.  I’ve also recruited another writer to assist me in this endeavor to give more perspective to anything and everything we cover there.  I’m hoping that my posting frequency will increase and that readers will continue to benefit from how-to’s and tips that I post.

Rest assured, Yet Another Linux Blog will still exist and posts will continue to be posted.  The RSS Feed will still be active and no change will be required by any reader.    We’ll just be broadening the spectrum a bit by providing other RSS feeds dealing with various topics.  I’m an exchange administrator at work so look to see posts on exchange and exchange alternatives running in Linux.  I also work with Sharepoint services at work so look for alternatives to Sharepoint posts.  I’m hoping to widen out quite a bit all while continuing the tradition and quality that Yet Another Linux Blog has had since 2004.  Keep in mind, I’m a Unity Linux developer…so I’m not going to stop blogging about Linux anytime soon

Questions? Comments?  Just drop me a comment and I’ll answer right away.

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Let’s take a look a look at why I’m not all over Ubuntu as a Linux Blog.

Perception is as Perception Does

When I say I don’t blog about Ubuntu…it’s not to say that it was always that way.  I did blog about Ubuntu a bit when it was the 5.04 version.  I put it into the rotation for an experiment I was doing.  See, back then, my wife and I had only been married a short while.  She didn’t know Linux from any other operating system…but the important part is she was willing to give it a try.  So we picked out a bunch of desktop driven distributions like Mandrake (now Mandriva), MEPIS, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS and Fedora Core (now Fedora) and had her test drive each and every one…AND give valuable feedback on what she felt didn’t make the cut for each distro.  I had a set of criteria that I created and I didn’t tell her how to find things on the web…I didn’t hold her hand after installation.  We installed it and turned her loose.  She found Ubuntu to be a very bad experience.  The community, instead of saying “hey, there is a new Linux convert now!  We all win!” thrashed her for all sorts of things.  They didn’t pull any punches…they actually posted so many hateful things, I had to respond to the comments.  The Ubuntu supporters that commented on that post made me ASHAMED of using Linux because of their horrible and hateful words.  The community should be above that…other distributions that I and my wife reviewed were above that.  The Ubuntu community was not.

During that experiment, I was a die hard MEPIS fan.  I think if I hadn’t been using MEPIS before Ubuntu, I would have probably liked it quite a bit. At the time, MEPIS was new and exciting and did TONS for desktop users out of the gate. Handy tools, great installer, debian base. I saw what desktop linux should be in MEPIS and found Ubuntu to be lacking at that time…so I didn’t change what I was using.

Fast forward to the present. Ubuntu is now synonymous with the word Linux.  Articles like “Install 100 fonts on Ubuntu” and “10 Media Players for Ubuntu” are posted to digg.com every hour.  People adore it. The community loves it. Analysts love it. Journalists can’t stop talking about it. Zealots bite your head off about it.  The problem is that if you substitute the word “Linux” for the word Ubuntu in each of those blog posts and articles…it wouldn’t matter.  Ubuntu has become THE Linux and with all other distribtuions being held up to a certain expectation, it can cause confusion.

Refugee Expectations

When a previous Ubuntu user jumps into say…using Slackware Linux…some of the first questions they’ll ask are “Why doesn’t sudo work?” or “I can’t apt-get anything!”.  These things present in Ubuntu are assumed to be present in all of Linux.  Ubuntu has become the face of Linux and with that, holds all other Linux distros up to refugee expectations.  In some instances, this causes those distros to rise above and implement changes for the better (example, Linux Mint).  But in other cases, it just plain confuses both end users and developers.

Keeping this in mind, I’ve found there are more things than just software, packaging systems, and authentication methods being confused and mismatched…

Some People who Blog about Ubuntu Confuse and Muddle Linux as a Whole

Take for example, this article.  It’s a DVD player for Ubuntu. So a new user surfs in and sees that this DVD player is for Ubuntu. Since they are new to the Linux world…they see each distribution as separate.  So they think “Oh hey, that’s only available for Ubuntu”.  Call them properly confused.  A couple of new users I converted to Mandriva didn’t install Banshee because they thought it was for Ubuntu only (after reading a blog post on it).  They also didn’t install fonts from a blog post because they thought it was “for Ubuntu”.

It is my opinion that these authors aren’t thinking much about what they’re posting.  They’re just posting things with exclusivity because they think “if I throw Ubuntu on the name, it’s going to be a wildly popular post and get me more clicks and/or attention/comments“.  I’ve blogged about this before, It’s a foolproof way to garner more clicks and that’s evident by how many Ubuntu articles hit the front page of digg each week.  It’s also misleading.

Now some of you are going to say “well if those users can’t figure this simple thing out…that things are installable on more than just Ubuntu, we don’t need them because they’re stupid” or something similar.  I’d have to disagree with you there because Linux is not exclusionary.  It does not say you must have this much IQ to use.  Open source software means that no matter who you are…you have the opportunity to look at the source and use it how you see fit.  If anyone can look at it and use it how they see fit, should not anyone be allowed to use it no matter their IQ or computer savvy abilities?  I’m of the opinion that no matter where you come from, how much education you have, or who you know…you should have choice to use open source and Linux or not to use it.

Ubuntu uses Gnome. Most of the “cool things” about Ubuntu is just Gnome.

I used Foresight Linux at my last job.  It’s absolute cutting edge for Gnome.  It is where the Gnome developers kit is made…that means SVN builds daily of the best of what Gnome has to offer.  I found it quite usable.  Gnome has great integration and lots of little nice things that work for it.

Don’t get me wrong, Ubuntu does a lot of good stuff for desktops…its detection is right up there with all other distros (you zealots would say it is superior…but that’s hardly true.  All distros are pretty close to equal nowadays…thanks Linus and team kernel!).  I just don’t find it “the best” distribution for new Windows converts.  It just doesn’t fit the bill.  Gnome is too far away from the way Windows looks and feels.  I know some of you will be saying “Bullcrap.  It totally fits the bill.  When I transferred from Windows, I was fine”.  I’m sure  you were.  But a majority of the people that I know that have no idea what Linux is or does are immediately attracted to KDE because of its familiarity and they shy away from Gnome.  These people are ones that don’t delve into customizing and tweaking their operating system.  These are the people that just use a computer to read webmail and hit facebook or myspace up from time to time.  What they’re looking for is a no frills experience with any computing they do.  That means familiarity and things ‘just working’.  I’ve found a good implementation of KDE (like Mandriva or OpenSuse) to fit the bill for most new Linux users.

It is my opinion that the best parts of Ubuntu are Gnome.  And it is also my opinion that Gnome isn’t what I feel is best for new Windows-to-Linux converts.

For Those About to Flame Me

For those of you about ready to flame me after this post, remember one thing:  I believe if one distribution of Linux wins, we all win.  I admire Texstar, the creator of PCLinuxOS, for his take on this;  He was approached in IRC some time ago with some hateful comments of someone who said “I switched to distro X and it kicks PCLinuxOS all over the place” but with explicatives laced inside.  How did Texstar respond?  He said “Congratulations on choosing Linux ”  It’s attitudes like this one that Linux needs to adopt.  If you choose one distribution to use, you win.  You’re in control of your computing.  Therefore, if you are an Ubuntu user and find my post hateful or here to start a flame war, understand that this post isn’t meant to harm but to show how a few voices from a community can change user perception for a lifetime and to show how misconceptions can alter experience.  My wife still despises Ubuntu because of the comments made on her experiment review of Ubuntu.  They made her an enemy for life.

Activism and Promotion

I’ve spoken on this topic before, and I’d like to sum up this post by speaking about it again.  We need the Linux community to understand that everyone does not have to share your opinion on one topic or another…they don’t have to be all about the philosophy behind FOSS and FLOSS.  If they use Linux, that should be good enough…they shouldn’t be ostracized for not picking your favorite.

Keep in mind that there is confusion out there.  It may be caused by your distribution that you use and it may not.  If it does, have patience with new Linux users or distro refugees.  Take the time to explain the how and why of things.  Remember that perception is as perception does and that a new user will remember their initial experiences for many years to come.

It’s a big Linux world and there is plenty room for everyone to thrive.  Let’s all continue to use Linux for the win

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advanced search

This gives us a great opportunity to organize our developer blog feeds and developer resources for the end readers to drill down to the information that is important TO YOU. You’ll be able to search through feeds using the search function on planet or click on tags to display similar content.

So not only is this a new look, it’s a whole new set of features and functions:

• Supports RDF, RSS, ATOM feeds
• Imports and exports OPML
• AJAX powered tagging of feeds and items
• Supports themes and plugins
• Search in your feeds
• Basic i18n support
• Committed to web standards: renders XHTML/CSS
• Gregarius is FREE software and is released under the GPL

Now not all of these features and functions matter to end users, but they do give Unity Linux developers an opportunity to provide you with a good planet experience…that is, getting the most information in the least amount of time with the least effort!

Look for more great improvements soon!  We’re working furiously all the time to make this the best Linux core out there!

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I ran Slackware when it was on 400 floppies.  I ran the 1.x kernel.  I hacked channels on efnet in IRC for bragging rights.  I waited all day long for wavs to download from a BBS.  My game of choice used to be a MUD.

We grow up, we move on, and we get accustomed to a new standard.

It’s like that isn’t it?  As time goes on, the standard is raised higher and we grow accustomed to a base level.  Much like the 2.4 kernel was for Linux…it really moved things forward from previous kernels.  It’s like the high jump in track and field…jumping 5′8″ isn’t that big of deal…but once you hit 5′10″ and above, you’re sailing.

Linux has had a new standard go into effect in the past few years…mostly since 2007 and the 2.6.18 and above kernels.  We’ve come to expect more from our operating system and for good reason.  I for one, am glad that the standard is raised a notch with each iteration…it gives us something to aspire to.  It gives us measured steps from which to guage ourselves by.  Hopefully, with each step forward, improvement comes without regression.

Lately, I’ve become concerned about regression.  I’ve noticed quite a few major distributions are not able to boot a standard Dell Latitude laptop…some taking as long as 20 minutes to boot (yes, 20 minutes…I’m looking at you Fedora 10).  I can’t help but wonder, are we taking steps backwards?  Is this the portion of time where we take one step backward followed by 2 steps forward?  Or is this the time where the kernel becomes TOO big?  I hope it’s the former.  And I hope that my concern is misplaced.

Thinking of all these things and what I’ve become accustomed to…I don’t feel hardcore anymore.  And then I go and hack a python script to update twitter because I can and all is right again…I might as well be riding a Harley.

Just a few thoughts on this sleepless night…

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• We’ve got a Home Page, IRC Channel, Forum, Docs site, a Package Tracker, and a Planet up and running.  
• In works is getting a Bug Tracker up and running…
• We have SVN
• We have Twitter for news
• We have Twitter for commits
• We have a Forum aggregator for Commits
• We have screenshots of build2 (tinyme quick base – developer only)
• We have build3 almost out the door (developer only)

What is Unity you ask?  Unity Linux strives to be a solid core for the mklivecd project. We hope that numerous distributions of Linux that want to make use of functions such as mklivecd and remasterme will base their distributions on our small core. Our methodology is to keep it simple, keep it open, keep it free, and keep it updated!

Some distributions you may see based on Unity Linux: Granular Linux, Producer Edition Linux, TinyMe Linux, TinyFlux Linux, Unity e17 (formerly PCe17OS), and many others.  One of the others I speak of here that might base on Unity is SAM Linux.  For those of you that don’t know, SAM has been doing its own thing for a while now and the ability to have a small core without lots of dependencies with the ability to remaster and mklivecd is appealing to many distributions and remasters out there.  Hopefully, our core will do well for everyone involved.  Thus far, SAM is keeping it’s eyes open and looking at Unity to see where it goes.

So, lots of development is happening right at this moment…and we still have lots to go.  Our developer ranks have swollen to around 29 members now…so we’ve got a GREAT group of people all working toward the common goal.  Right now, our developers want to get a core iso out the door so that everyone can have a common desktop to work on (for our docs guys, for our rpm rollers, for our kernel hackers) to make sure we’re all on the same page.

We’re also beginning to form teams…or at least talk about teams  I think soon we’ll see dedicated team leads come out of the development ranks to step up and develop in their individual area.  If you have questions or concerns or comments about Unity Linux, please drop me a line below!

Sign Up for Unity Linux RSS – Get notified when we release!

Sign Up via Email for Unity Linux Releases 

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