Linux

General Image: 

For the past several years I've used the Gnome desktop environment on Linux. Unlike Windows, Linux has several desktop environments that can be switched between quite easily using any login manager. In the distant past I have used WindowMaker, Enlightenment, IceWM, and KDE. Of all these desktop environments I was perhaps most actively involved with WindowMaker and IceWM.

General Image: 

Working in a computer refurbishing environment I get a lot of opportunity to test equipment. One of the nice surprises came a few weeks ago when someone bought a Micro Innovations IC435C web cam from a local bargain store and brought it into our shop. The client wanted us to install the drivers for the camera in their Windows machine. We did the installation and also popped it into our Ubuntu Linux machine.

Ubuntu normally doesn't have any web camera applications installed so I installed Cheese:

sudo apt-get install cheese


General Image: 

One of the books I've been most impressed with on the Linux front is Evi Nemeth, et al's Linux Administration Handbook. I have the second edition of this wonderful book. In the past I've used it as a reference, but I recently started to read it cover to cover in the hope that I'll eventually learn a lot more about Linux internals. What follows are my notes from the first chapter:

Technologies I should learn as a system administrator:
∘ vi/vim
∘ perl
∘ python
∘ shell programming
∘ expect
• Suggested Reading:
∘ Programming Perl by Larry Wall, et al.

In the "it's about time" category, Make Tech Easier reports that the latest version of iFuse now allows you to synchronize your iPod touch and iPhone with Linux using Rhythmbox.

There is a lot of news this week, but one of the more interesting news items is that Novell and the Linux Professional Institute have partnered together on their certifications. This means that if you currently have a LPIC-1 certification you'll be qualified for the Novell Certified Linux Administrator certification without taking the exam, at least according to this report on Internetnews.com. I'm not sure if the reverse is true.

General Image: 

My notebook, a Lenovo 3000 C100, is my main computer at home. In fact it's the only computer I own at home. Because it is my only computer I run a LTS (Long Term Service) version of Ubuntu Linux on it. Now I like to try out shiny new software as much as the next guy. I could go to work, buy a machine, and use it as a Linux development machine, but I'm trying to reduce the number of computers we have in the house, not increase them.

Old Screenshot: 

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.

Old Screenshot: 

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.

This screen shot is a screen shot of the command line behind Ubuntu Linux 8.04-LTS. In this day and age most desktop users don't ever need the command line, but it comes in really handy and tends to be faster than a graphical user interface once you get used to it. What makes this screen shot pretty interesting is that the resolution of this command line is 1024x768. The font is not the standard blocky font. Using a program called startupmanager you can modify the resolution of the "framebuffer" where the command line resides:

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

It's been awhile since I've written anything for blogspot. Over the past few weeks I've been very busy with non-computer related issues. I'm very glad to report that I now have my Microsoft MN-720 wireless adapter working with SuSE 9.2 without any crashes during the module load, or when I shut down my system.

The key is NOT using the Microsoft mn720-50.inf driver, but a homebrew driver created by the good folks at Ankhcraft, a web development business. The driver is located at: http://ankhcraft.com/drivers/mn720-ankh.zip.