Showing headlines posted by Steven_Rosenber

The good news is that Mozilla's popular Firefox browser is getting video support. The bad news is that you probably won't notice. Why? Because the video codec that is coming to Firefox is not commonly used: Ogg Theora. Firefox will also be adding a new HTML tag to make embedding video easier - no more need to launch Javascript - but, again, the video codec is not the ubiquitous QuickTime, Windows Media, or Flash that people use.

I often find it ironic and a little sad that one of the most important security applications on the Internet is so poorly funded. For anyone that manages machines remotely and is concerned about security, it is perhaps the most important application to rely on for security and stability. I'm sure you know which application I am referring to, but do you know that it is the de facto world standard in its class on the Internet? I wonder if there is any other application on the Internet, proprietary or Open Source, that comes close to the market penetration that OpenSSH has earned compared to competing alternatives.

[While not about Linux, this look at OpenSSH (and OpenBSD development in general) is well worth reading - sr]

I know I said in a previous entry that Debian's Xfce installation didn't exactly provide what I wanted, but looking at what I need, Debian rises to the top of the pack. Top of my list: Installing Debian with encrypted LVM. Especially in a laptop, encryption is a must to secure your data from prying eyes, should the laptop be lost or stolen.

I tested quite a few versions of Puppy Linux in recent days on my 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt. The bad news is that version 3.01 wouldn't configure X properly. Any attempts to do so and then start X crashed the box. The other bad news is that while Puppy 4.00 loads fine and runs fine, for some reason the load time for Abiword went from 8 to 10 seconds in previous Puppy builds to 30 seconds. That's quite a rollback. On a more positive note, start times for Seamonkey were about the same.

As I say in a previous post on this very topic, there are many reasons to choose Puppy Linux as the primary OS on the nearly 10-year-old Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop. For one thing, Puppy is ideal — and explicitly designed — to run as a live CD or easily upgraded frugal install, the latter either on a traditional hard-disk drive or a Compact Flash memory card mounted in a CF-to-IDE adapter inside the Compaq's hard-drive caddy. With recent versions of Puppy (2.17 onward, I believe) the ability to encrypt the pup_save file that holds all of the user's files and configurations adds both a needed measure of security to a laptop installation as well as providing an equally easy way to back up the entire system by copying a single large file to just about any storage medium, from USB flash drive to CD-RW to hard disks in formats ranging from old-school FAT to NTFS to Linux's many types of filesystems.

Color me surprised. Dana Blankenhorn, a well-known writer about Linux and open source recently asked for someone—anyone–to send him a loaner Linux laptop to replace his now dead Windows laptop. What, he didn’t already have one?

I didn't have high hopes for Wolvix on the $15 Laptop — a Compaq Armada 7770dmt built in 1999 — since previous attempts to load the live CD resulted in an X configuration that needed a little work. Since then, I've had quite a bit more experience working in the xorg.conf file, and I was able to get a halfway decent X configuration going so I could test Wolvix Cub (the smaller of the two Wolvix distributions, with fewer packages than the larger Wolvix Hunter).

It's one thing to have a skunkworks operating system project, Midori, that could conceivably replace Windows. It's another to actually have plans on how to switch users from Windows to Midori. Guess what? Microsoft actually does have such plans.

I'm going to haul the circa-1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop to the public library where I can run it with free WiFi and see if Seamonkey (in Puppy) and Firefox (in Damn Small Linux and OpenBSD) perform acceptably with my upgraded RAM.

I've been using OpenBSD 4.2 for a few months now on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), and I'm leaving it on the hard drive for now. It does run better with 144 MB of RAM. I may even upgrade the OS to the current version 4.3. OpenBSD with X is nowhere near as fast as the fastest Linux systems, but the added security and overall quality keeps me using it. However, I'm considering swapping out the hard drive (to retain my OpenBSD installation) and trying Debian again.

In the battle for which operating system runs best on the $15 Laptop, Puppy Linux has pulled out front as the fastest system with the most features I need and best functionality on this 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt.

I've come to the conclusion that GNOME is not quite ready in Debian Lenny. A lot of strange things have been happening on my screen. There's the ghosting in the upper menu bar, as well as various hard-to-describe funky things happening in other windows opened by various applications. I had used Xfce quite a bit in Debian Etch, and it also works great in Wolvix. So using it in Lenny is a bit of a no-brainer.

Whatever your feelings are about Linux (or Windows, or OS X , or ...) you really should check out the Linux Hater's Blog. It's actually farther from all-out-flaming than you'd think and basically challenges the Linux community to do better. I particularly enjoyed this entry: 0.99 bottles of wine on the wall.

I'd read the teeth-gnashing about Iceweasel/Firefox 3.0 among developers at Planet Debian, and while I wasn't eagerly awaiting the move from 2.x to 3.0 for Iceweasel -- Debian's copyright-free version of Firefox -- I didn't expect the thing to move from Sid to Testing with huge bugs.

It's been a little while since my last report on how Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has been doing on the $0 Laptop. In short, all continues to go very, very well. At this point I could see ratcheting down my use of Debian on this machine and pretty much devoting it to Ubuntu all the way. Why? Everything in Ubuntu works with as little effort as possible.

I've been saying that Ubuntu should do this for a long time, and now they have: You can get Ubuntu -- the biggest desktop GNU/Linux system going -- for $19.99 in a boxed edition at Best Buy stores.

(I know everybody's writing about this, but how can I not? -- s.r.)

I know that Debian does its thing the Debian way, but I'd like to at least see a definite period of support for the project's releases. That means I don't care when they come out; it doesn't have to be every six months or even every year. But I'd like to see the project pledge to support Etch for five years, regardless of when the next Debian release achieves Stable status. In other words, I'd like to see Debian treat itself a little more like the "enterprise" Linux releases from Red Hat and Novell -- and like Ubuntu -- by taking the guesswork out of how long distributions will receive support.

Why does AT&T Wi-Fi work in Linux but not OpenBSD (for me anyway)? That's a good question.

Adrian, you dumb arse! At least that was my initial reaction when I read his “Linux’s dirty little secret” column about his struggles with installing applications onto a Linux distro. It was either the Linux Geek rage originating from the knowing that he didn’t Read the Fine Manual (RTFM) or the sheer jealousy of not getting 300+ Talkbacks whenever I post something on ZDNet like the fine Mr. Kingsley-Hughes. But I digress.

I've been waiting ... and waiting ... for Debian to come to its senses and re-add the sound chip -- the ESS 1988 Allegro -- in my Gateway Solo 1450 back into the Lenny kernel. Sound had been fine in Debian Etch (Stable) and in the first two kernels in Debian Lenny (Testing), but once the 2.6.24 kernel was added, I lost sound on the $0 Laptop. Reverting back to the 2.6.22 kernel restored my sound, and I eventually hunted down the bug report, which -- in grand Debian tradition -- didn't solve the bug but instead provided a work-around.