Showing headlines posted by Steven_Rosenber

I've been using OpenBSD for a few months now, and one of the problems I've had is the inability to find the master configuration file for .fvwmrc. I've read the man page for fvwm but didnt' read it closely enough. The answer was there all the time. I've grown quite fond of the Fvwm window manager. These days I prefer it to Fluxbox, even, and I have OpenBSD to thank for introducing me to it. (Note: I didn't have the same feeling about Twm, the default window manager in FreeBSD. Even though Fvwm is based on Twm, the former is way, way better than the latter.)

Never mind that what I really need is an up-to-date "Absolutely OpenBSD," but since I'm in an I'll-take-what-I-can-get mood, I just secured a copy of "The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall," which for all practical purposes is the most up-to-date book out there that has at least some focus on OpenBSD. In this book by Peter N.M. Hansteen, I hope to get somewhat up to speed on PF, the packet filter that originated in OpenBSD but which now is available in the other BSDs as well -- though not in Linux.

The market for cheap sub-notebooks is simply exploding. It all started with the OLPC XO, then Intel jumped in with the Classmate. Soon Asus revealed its critically acclaimed Eee PC, and these low-priced, low-powered (often Linux-running) machines truly started to take the world by storm. The latest entry into this field is the Hewlett Packard 2133 Mini-Note PC. The Mini-Note starts at $499, for the entry level model with 512 megabytes of RAM, 4-gigabytes of storage, a 1-gigahertz VIA processor, and Linux.

[Other reports say that the HP laptop will run SUSE -- sr]

HP has entered the mini-laptop arena with a device targeting education and cost-conscious consumers. The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC weighs 2.8 pounds with a nine-inch display and a nearly full-sized keyboard, and runs runs Linux, Windows Vista, or Windows XP on a Via C7-M ULV processor.

The same thing has happened to me more than once. I install a FreeBSD-derived operating system on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450) and I marvel at the way it manages the noisy CPU fan right out of the box. Then, the next day, it's all over. The fan blows. And blows. Even a complete reinstall won't get back my fan-managed bliss.

I've been wondering if and when OpenOffice 2.3 would give way to version 2.4 in the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS beta. It finally happened with one of my recent updates of the system. Like I said in my review of the 8.04 beta, I rarely use OpenOffice, preferring a plain ol' text editor or more-fancy "development" editor (Geany, Bluefish, Scite, Mousepad, Nano, even vi) for most writing, using a lighter-weight word processor (AbiWord, Ted) on occasion. But for "fancy" writing -- i.e. stuff that needs to see print in a certain, specific format (which for me means "smart" or "typographical" quotation marks), OpenOffice is essential.

I generally don't run beta releases, let alone review them, but I'm having a hard time waiting to find out what Ubuntu 8.04 LTS -- nicknamed Hardy Heron and set for an April 24 release -- is all about.

In this week's Distrowatch, I read about a new, small Linux distribution called SliTaz GNU/Linux that packs itself into 25 MB of space, loads and runs quickly -- and entirely into memory with 128 MB of RAM -- and can even run with 16 MB of RAM. Sounds a lot like Damn Small Linux and Puppy, but there's always room for one more project that runs like the proverbial wind on new hardware (SliTaz features a modern 2.6.24 kernel) and keeps the old hardware I use working as well as it can.

I've already written most of my Ubuntu 8.04 beta review, which I'm holding onto for the time being. I don't usually run -- or review -- beta releases, but this time I'm making an exception because a) most Ubuntu releases are hotly anticipated and b) Ubuntu's second-ever long-term-support release is a huge deal for me as a big fan of releases that have lives longer than the standard six months to a year. I ran into a problem starting Friday. I couldn't get any updates from the Update Manager. I then ran Firefox and discovered that my networking was dead. I hadn't changed anything, but I couldn't even ping anything on the local network. I checked my static IP information in Network Settings. It all looked fine.

I'm just a user and wordy blogger, and I find it fascinating to learn how bugs are dealt with in software projects like Debian. I do hope my 2.6.24 kernel-related sound problem gets resolved (even though I can just use an older kernel and have all the sound I want). The other bug that's bugging me is one in which the Epiphany browser (but not Iceweasel/Firefox) always starts in the "working offline" mode, no matter whether I have the Internet connected or not. I don't know whether or not the Debian team is going to get around to "fixing" this bug, since there's a fix out there that anybody can do. Curiously, I had to find it in another Debian bug report.

The Linux kernel is a funny thing. A new kernel should mean increased functionality, but for me and my old-and-getting-older machines, I only seem to lose functionality with upgraded kernels. I hadn't updated Debian Lenny in a while on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450), and when I did it today, I noticed a new kernel being added to the system: 2.6.24-1. I didn't think about the new kernel when I next booted into Lenny, but when I did, I soon discovered that my sound card didn't work anymore. I looked at all the settings, tweaked a bit here and there, but still nothing.

While I was all set to slap the Ubuntu 8.04 beta on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450 with 1 GB of RAM), I had the FreeBSD 7 install CD already burned ... and while it didn't work so well on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), it booted right up on the Gateway. After a few OpenBSD installs, during which I followed the well-written FAQ religiously (and as a result had no trouble whatsoever), I felt I was more than ready to throw FreeBSD on the laptop. And while the FreeBSD Handbook is legendary for its comprehensiveness, I figured I could just fly by the seat of my proverbial pants. And so I did.

We go through this every six months: Ubuntu brings out a new release, and by the time release day comes around, it's murder to get enough bandwidth to grab the damn thing and make a new disc out of it. And no, I don't have any recent Ubuntu installs that I can upgrade, so I need the full ISO. Hence, I'm downloading a Ubuntu 8.04 beta right now.

I decided to start from scratch with my Debian server project. Last time I was too hasty in adding the open-source version of Movable Type to my installation and intermingling files before I was ready. This time I'm going to be a lot more methodical and make sure that Apache and MySQL are working properly -- meaning I can run CGI scripts and have a directory dedicated to same -- before I start with Movable Type. I could've removed Apache, done some cleanup and gone from there, but since I didn't have much "invested" in the install, I wiped the drive and started over.

I'm starting with the sensorsd.conf and sensorsd man pages. And this page from Calomel.org has some tips on what /etc/sensorsd.conf does, how to start the sensorsd daemon. I'm not holding my breath, but if I could run OpenBSD (or FreeBSD or NetBSD) on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop with the fan properly managed, I'd love to be dual-booting it with Debian. Debian Lenny note: While many bugs seemingly got fixed in the Epiphany Web browser in Lenny, one new bug unfortunately has crept in.

And you thought all Microsoft ever did was roll out endless iterations of Windows and Office in between buying some competitors and threatening to sue the rest -- but there's something going on up in Redmond, Wash., that looks like genuine innovation. Yep, Microsoft has been working on a new operating system -- one they say is unencumbered by four decades of computing history -- called Singularity. They've been hacking away at the thing since 2003, but this week saw the first public release of the code. I can barely understand what they're talking about, but it looks as if installing the thing gives you a very Unix-like command line.

I’ve been long interested in the differences and similarities between Debian and Ubuntu. Many Ubuntu developers are current/former Debian developers and users but I think at this point probably a majority have “grown up” in Ubuntu like I have. Because Ubuntu is so heavily dependent on Debian, it behooves us developers to understand Debian processes, policies, and yes, even politics. I thought I’d just randomly share some thoughts on Debian from my Ubuntu-biased perspective.

[Despite the less-than-inviting title, the topic here is important -- Steven]

Or should I say, "How Canonical wants to be more like Red Hat," because the profit-seeking company behind Ubuntu, which wants to compete not just on the desktop but in the server room as well, has a new product called Landscape, which for $150 per node (unsupported), will allow for the full administration of any number of remote Ubuntu-equipped boxes.

Want to see what a non-Windows-based operating system developed by Microsoft looks like? If you are willing and able to sign a non-commercial, academic Shared Source license, look no further. Microsoft on March 4 made the few hundred thousand lines of source code for Singularity Version 1 available for download from its CodePlex site. Microsoft made the announcement at its Microsoft Research TechFest 2008 event in Redmond, Wash.

I've heard of quite a few people still running Debian Sarge -- the stable version of Debian before Etch went stable in April 2007. As per Debian policy, support for what is referred to as "old stable," in this case Sarge, is slated to last for a year after the next Debian release is declared "stable" (Etch). So now we're bumping up on March 31, 2008, and Debian is telling users about the end of updates for Sarge.