Showing headlines posted by eracc

Yeah, I know. OpenServer is not Linux by any means. But some of you may know someone who may need to read this article. Pass it on.

A recent event with a local client has started me thinking, again, about Microsoft, Apple, FOSS and vendor lock-in. I am not a proponent of vendor lock-in. ...

... I have dozens of scripts on our support system here that had the old dyn.com domains in them for connection to the client sites when providing service each month. ...

... Two of the other locations run DOS based Advantage Accounting Point of Sale on stand-alone DOS boxes. One of these boxes I had built them about 10 years ago finally gave out. ...

... Jerry is on a fixed income and cannot afford to replace the PC with a new one running “Microsoft Latest OS!” at this time. I talked with Jerry about his options, and he decided to give Linux a shot on this old Dell.

Recently I have been emulating Yosemite Sam, but with less creative verbiage. “Why?”, you may ask. Well, it is due to the “new and improved” Evolution 3.4.1 in my shiny Mageia 2 upgrade on my daily use tower PC.

I am jumping the gun a bit and upgrading my Mageia 1 installation on my personal / business SOHO desktop PC tonight, May 21st, to Mageia 2. ... This upgrade is being done over the Internet using the new Mageia 2 media sources with ‘urpmi –auto-update -v’ from a command line login as root on console #1.

... As a homeschool parent once told me, she would never allow her children on the Internet without her or her husband present. ... I think I might have an answer for that homeschool mother and other homeschooling parents in a similar situation. The answer, of course, involves Linux and FOSS.

If you have not been following the saga of the Mageia Linux distribution then you are unaware that Mageia 2 is slated to be released on May 15th. At this point the distribution is in Beta 3 testing and then will have a Release Candidate out right around May 2nd.

Back in the Fall of 2011, September 4th to be exact, I decided it was time to migrate from the sinking ship of Mandriva to the new Mageia distribution which is based on the best of Mandriva while leaving the chaff of Mandriva behind. It is now six months later and I am ready to report on my experience so far. To sum up this article in a sentence, “Mageia works and works well.” If you just want the summary, that is it, you can stop reading here. If you want more, read on. I will start with what I haven’t liked since that is my shorter list.

There is a lot of debate over whether or not one should defragment file systems on Linux. Frankly, in most cases fragmentation of Linux file systems is probably not a problem. However, in a very few cases fragmentation might be a problem.

… and likes it … well, mostly. Hopefully this article will help you if you are searching for that “just right for me” GUI on your Unix/Linux system. But be sure to give e17 a try yourself, do not just pass it over because of anything you may read on the web.

I recently had the opportunity to look into the anti-malware world of Apple OS X. One of our clients moved to a new office in late October 2011. As part of this move they also moved from Microsoft operating systems and software to Apple OS X systems and software, making a clean break from all things Microsoft. While researching their question about anti-malware for OS X I found that the world of anti-malware for OS X is just as fraught with information and disinformation from Apple fans, Apple opponents and anti-malware vendors as the world of Linux seems to be at times with its fans and detractors. I came to the following conclusion which is paraphrased and expanded from the e-mail I sent our client.

I recently had a fun experience. My Mageia 1 Linux system seemed to be experiencing hard lockups requiring a push of the reset button to “resolve”. By “hard”, I mean no keyboard input, no program updates showing in X and sometimes no ping response from another PC on the LAN. I had run some updates, including a new kernel update, and these lockups appeared after running the updates. Cause and effect. Yes? Well, no. It turned out I was having a hardware problem. Here is how I figured that out.

Why? Because the level of skill required to crack a Unix-like OS is much higher than that needed for a Microsoft OS. Further, properly configured Unix-like systems are much more robust than Microsoft systems. Were Military forces using properly configured and properly secured Unix or Linux systems we would not see items like these below being reported.

If you are a Linux protagonist who has been around as long, or longer, that I have, you have seen responses like these over and over as to why Linux distributions will never go mainstream on the PC desktop:

This page describes one method of backing up data from one's Linux or Unix based system to an external medium using a bash script and tar. Here is the script for the impatient ones who "Just want some code!"

I took the plunge to migrate my personal / business desktop PC from Mandriva 2010.2 to Mageia 1 today (Sunday, 4 September 2011). I used the instructions from this page: Migrate from Mandriva Linux. ...

As of today I find myself in the position of deciding whether or not to stick with my previously preferred distribution, Mandriva Linux. This is a bittersweet realization for me.

Hi children! I know it is a bit early for scary tales, we usually get to those in October. But I have one for you that you just might want to hear now. So. Get your hot cocoa, your S’mores and your sleeping bag and come over here by the fire. I have a tale of chills and thrills to tell you young’uns. There now. Are you all snuggled in and ready for a scary tale? Good. Here goes …