Those who know me will back me up on this; I evaluate things fairly. You will never hear me say $FOO is clearly superior than anything else, and there’s no reason for anyone to use anything else. That includes Linux and Linux distros. I calls them as I sees them, and I do not feel that Linux is always better in every situation for every user, nor is one distribution/brand of Linux clearly the best for all situations. And I’ve been using Linux since Red Hat 4.2 in 1997 (I still have the disks).
I recently installed Ubuntu Karmic (9.10), waiting a few months after release as I usually do so the major bugs are already fixed, and ran into many more problems than I expected. I find this unfortunate, because one of the main reasons I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu is no longer valid. Some of this post is about this release, and some is about the state of Linux in general.
Read on…
Red Hat (RHAT) is to be included in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index next week!!! That’s just so cool. While I switched to Ubuntu a while ago myself, Red Hat is a great company with great products, and they contribute very heavily to the Linux kernel, drivers, and software.
Read on…
I’m an officer in the Boston Linux and UNIX group, and have been a member for over a decade. Here are the details of the Wednesday, 06/17 meeting:
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 315
Presenters: Kurt Keville, SDC Coordinator, MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (kkeville alum mit edu) and Brian DeLacey, (bdelacey gmail com)
Kurt Keville, Brian DeLacey and others discuss the 802.11s (Mesh) standard and what it means for embedded Linux distros such as OpenWRT and Robix, the distros of choice for the upcoming local Muniwireless rollouts. Kurt gave earlier talks on Muniwireless at our February 2008 and August 2006 meetings
Note that Brian and Kurt will be holding an all-afternoon pre-meeting, beginning at noon in E51-063. This afternoon session will build a multi-node solar-powered super computer as a clustered web-server using fast flash and Marvell’s SheevaPlugs. Rabeeh Khoury of Marvell will be onsite for lots of Linux and SheevaPlug Q&A. Sage Radachowsky will be showcasing his latest solar circuitry. The working SWARM system will be demonstrated at the main meeting, but anyone is welcome to drop by and pick up a soldering iron or keyboard to work with earlier in the day.
Also, this month is BLU’s 15-year anniversary, and we will be celebrating with a cake at 7:00 PM.
This is the 40th anniversary of UNIX. ComputerWorld did a nice timeline of the history of UNIX. As with anything (or anyone) with a 40-year history, there are going to be fuzzy spots and disagreements about what actually happened, but this accounting looks mostly sound to my eyes. And I have been using UNIX/Linux for about 20 years.
I just moved my server from Fedora 8 (way discontinued) to Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Many networking problems and other wildly different config files. Much sleep lost. But now I have the website back up, webmail working, the Wiki is working, mail with IMAP working, and MythTV working.
Yes, indeed, much sleep lost.
Update
Last night was another night of going to bed after 2AM, but I finally got all the critical set up and working. This is a very multipurpose box. Off the top of my head, it hosts mail in (SMTP), mail out (IMAP), this blog, my Wiki, mailman, subversion, home automation software, and database. I still have a lot to do, but nothing that’s going to keep me up late again.
I’m Assistant Director of the Boston Linux and UNIX group. A few times a year, we have an event at MIT where people come down with their computer and we help them install Linux, or just answer their questions. The event is free (though we do ask for a donation, since we’re not-for-profit), and we’re there all day.
Date and Time: Saturday, May 30, 2009 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 061
Summary: A periodic get-together where volunteers from our group help people with Linux installation and other hands-on issues.We invite you to become a member of the Boston area Linux community and offer our assistance in getting Linux installed on your computer.
We hold our InstallFests several times each year; we meet on a weekend at a location where people can bring in their computers and we can help them install Linux or other Unix variants. It’s also a great way to get together and share our collective experience with each other in a hands-on learning environment, in the grand tradition of the UNIX community.
For more information, check out the page on the BLU website.
The other day I posted about the reference material available on DZone. Today I found this post on LinkedIn’s Linux Expert group from someone who has combined the input from the Linux Documentation Project and other sources into one indexed. I poked around it and really like the way he’s organized it. Check it out here.
From Slashdot: This article tells of how a search warrant was granted simply because this student was running some alternate operating system they didn’t understand. They suspected an email was sent from his computer which defamed a fellow student. But instead of handling it as a disciplinary matter, they’re getting all Brazil on his a**.
“The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is ‘a computer science major’ and he uses ‘two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.’ The EFF is currently representing him.”
I saw a report on this on the news, which said they took every electronic device he owns, including is ipod (an infamous hacking tool, donchaknow.), his computer, and his cell phone. He’s a Computer Sicence major, so he now has no way of completing his schoolwork. And he lost his job at the computer lab.
This is a great combination of “Fear of the unknown” and “Shoot first, ask questions later”. Book burning at its finest. If I were him, I would sue the school for the entire year’s tuition which will now go to waste, missed salary from his job at the lab, the replacement costs for all they took, and a big dollop for mental anguish from having his name dirtied with no evidence.
This is way cool. You can view all the components of the Linux kernel like Google Maps, zooming in and out, panning around, and following liks to content on the selected section. It’s on http://www.makelinux.net/, and you view it in all its geeky goodness here.