Tom Pierce: Linux

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:51:57 GMT

I have done something stupid this week. I did not heed the letter from my ISP that my static IP at home would be changing. Right now, no one in the world knows how to hit my domain. Argh. But, hopefully I'm on the right track to fixing it thanks to this FAQ item. You have to set the TTL on your zone file to something smaller and smaller as the cut over approaches and then start taking it back up again.

Sun's Java Desktop System

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 05:03:39 GMT

In case you haven't seen it or heard about it, Sun is promoting a Linux distribution they call the Java Desktop System. I'm not sure how Java fits in there other than the distro has the runtime. But, more power to them because they are promoting two of my favorite things.

DLINK DWL-650+ under Linux

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 05:36:34 GMT

Holy cow! I got my DLINK DWL-650+ wireless networking card to work under RedHat 9 tonight. It was a bit of a battle, but I followed the instructions on this page and did a bit of work on my own. I had to put a "sleep 1" statement in the start_net script after each iwconfig statement. If I didn't do that, my ESSID and some other settings weren't being set. If you are curious about what is being set and what is not, run the iwc script in the scripts directory and it will tell you what is set for your card.

SO, I'm now up wirelessly with Linux and I'm 128 bit WEP! Woohoo!

ASPCA uses Linux to eliminate email woes

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 18:48:17 GMT

Channel Web is reporting that an IBM business partner converted the ASPCA from NT to Linux based Notes email and file sharing. Since then, the organization has experienced incredible stability, lower installation and licensing costs, and lower cost of ownership. Great success story.

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 23:07:52 GMT

US Navy buys Linux on Apple kit. Biggest ever Xserve sale [The Register]

You're reading that right. Xserve hardware with Linux OS. Hmmm...

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 23:17:18 GMT

Chris Stone Talks Turkey on Microsoft, Ximian and SCO. We caught up with Novell's vice chairman Chris Stone on the day his company acquired Ximian. Stone had lots to say on the future of Novell, SCO, Red Hat and Microsoft. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

6 quick but interesting questions about Novell's intentions.

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 18:53:06 GMT

Dell to Power Third Most Powerful Supercomputer. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which researches everything from the origins of the universe to the human genome, will link more than 1,450 Dell Inc. PowerEdge servers together to create a supercomputer with a peak of 17.7 trillion teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second). [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

Running Linux, of course.

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 13:46:26 GMT

Aug 4th, 2003: Ximian acquired by Novell.. Today Novell acquired Ximian. The press release is available here. Mono and Gnome form an integral part of the Novell strategy. [Mono Project News]

Oh boy. So is Novell going to make another run at Microsoft? I hope this doesn't kill the Ximian projects like Evolution and the Ximian Desktop.

Maybe I'm just being a pessimist. Maybe I should be glad that Ximian is going to have some Novell cash to spur development. Maybe this will revitalize the Ximian offerings. Maybe...

Wed, 30 Jul 2003 18:45:48 GMT

I just read an excellent article on Linux Journal about wiring up an intrusion detection system for your home network. It uses snort, a custom "read-only" network cable, and a hub to intercept attack traffic. Really cool. I have the equipment, I just need the time!

Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:48:20 GMT

Gartner Says Delay Linux Deployment Due to SCO. Sridhar writes "SCO's legal threats have prompted Gartner Group to recommend that companies delay deployment of critical Linux applications, determine "whether ... [Slashdot]

Thanks, SCO. I appreciate everything you've done to hinder the progress of Linux. You're definitely not getting a dime out of me if I can help it.

Farewell to Tux on the desktop - for now

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 04:04:28 GMT

As of today, I'm through using Linux at work for a while. I've really enjoyed banging around in Linux and thumbing my nose at the Microsoft world. But, I have to work with the front end of the web app we are developing, and unfortunately that means using IE. So be it.

I thought I would at least share my observations. I've got two lists about my most recent Linux on the desktop experience: the good and the bad.

The Good:

Super-human control over my environment. ROOT, real process control, total control over services, etc.
Multiiple virtual desktops that really work
Network connectivity speed. "Jon" and I actually observed my Linux desktop beating the pants off his Windows desktop on the same download.
Studly screensavers

The Bad:

Gnome/Bluecurve graphics performance. Probably due to X video driver, but still disappointing compared to Windows.
Java GUI performance - getting there. Still not quite up to Windows snuff.
Pace of commercial vendor releases. We use tools like Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects, etc. Linux versions may be in the works, but they are definitely not in a hurry to release them.

I bid a fond farewell to Tux. However, he will remain in my dreams and perhaps one day our paths will cross on the desktop again.

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 22:28:30 GMT

OpenGroupware.org is developing an OSS groupware server. Their mission?

To create, as a community, the leading open source groupware server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products and all the leading groupware clients running across all major platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through open XML-based interfaces and APIs.

VERY cool! They have integration for MS Outlook, Ximian Evolution, Apple iCal and Mail, KDE, and a web interface. Exchange? Why bother.

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:28:20 GMT

HP to Resell, Support SuSE Linux. Hewlett-Packard Co. and SuSE Linux on Thursday will announce that they have entered into an agreement that allows HP to resell and support SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 on industry-standard HP ProLiant servers and HP's Itanium-based servers. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

Keep an eye on SuSE. There doing some good stuff lately. Check out their Desktop for Enterprise edition and their server products.

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 15:17:01 GMT

The second week of running Linux on my work laptop is moving along smoothly. I've only had to boot Windows once. I needed to edit a Word document that someone else had created and I didn't want to munge the layout and formatting with OpenOffice. (I tried, but it kind of munged it.)

I upgraded the laptop last night to Redhat 9. Instead of actually doing an upgrade, I decided to wipe and re-install. I backed up my home directory and nuked it. Everything went smoothly. Once I got Java re-installed and the system updated with the latest fixes, I was ready to rock and roll.

So far, I only have a few beefs. Here they are:

APM - flaky. But, as a coworker pointed out, it's flaky under Windows, too. BUT, it's really flaky under Linux. Why can't my Intel machines work like my Mac? I put it to sleep and it powers down almost instantly. I hit a button and BOOM there it is, awake and ready to do my bidding.
Laptop hardware support. I can't hotswap the DVD-ROM for my extra hard drive in my modular bay. Just won't work. (Haven't tried on RH 9 yet).
Wireless card. I have an older Linksys wireless card. I wasn't able to get it working in RH 8 without recompiling the kernel and sacrificing to the gods. I haven't tried in RH 9 yet.

Overall, I think things are going extremely well.

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 23:21:54 GMT

Doing It All with OpenSSH, Part 2. Keys, keys and more keys. [Linux Journal]

Nice little 2nd part of an article on configuring SSH and using it with Linux.

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 16:12:20 GMT

Perils of the road less taken. Last month, Chad Dickerson wrote:

With Linux approaching ho-hum status in its ubiquity and MySQL getting its fair share of attention these days, there are still a few open source projects out there that sometimes slip under the hype radar...The free BSD derivatives -- FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD -- have been around for years and deserve consideration alongside Linux. [Chad Dickerson's Weblog

That's true. But as I was reminded yesterday, stepping off the Linux path can lead to serious headaches. A system on which I deploy some Zope-based applications used to run BSDI, and now runs FreeBSD. Building Python and Zope on the box was a lot trickier than it would have been on Linux, just because FreeBSD is the road less taken. I'd pretty much forgotten about that until yesterday, when I decided to add an XSLT processor to the mix. That proved way harder than it should have been. ... [Jon's Radio]

You know, I used to be one of those people that enjoyed getting stuff to work on FreeBSD and alternative OSes. However, I'm not any more. I toatally agree with Jon and I've had similar experiences. The reason I don't run FreeBSD any more is because the Java port has been so slow to catch up with the current JDK.

With IBM's intense backing of Linux, RedHat partnering with people like Oracle, and other corporate interest in Linux, it's getting easier and easier to live in the Linux world. Perhaps that is what is making it ho-hum. But, as I said yesterday, I'm running Linux at work on my desktop right now and loving it.

My annual Linux at work stint

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:50:59 GMT

About once a year I get the urge to try to use Linux on my laptop at work. This usually leads to alot of disappointment on my part because I work with alot of Microsoft only technologies. So, I either spend alot of time in VMWare, or I just run Windows. This year's try could be different.

Currently, I'm working on a project where we're building a J2EE application. I'm mostly working on the "middle" of this application writing business logic and data access. So, I spend all day in Eclipse and Emacs and little else. You're right! Perfect candidates for Linux.

This weekend I made sure that my RedHat 8 laptop was set up to work. Unfortunately, I couldn't do this from my easy chair because my Linksys wireless card isn't supported in the default kernel. I would have had to download some stuff (drivers, user-space programs, etc.) and recompile the kernel. I just didn't have the time or inclination. So, I was wired to the desk in the study.

I copied my project directories, my emacs configuration file, my emacs site-lisp directory (all my extensions), and some other miscellaneous documents to my network. I then switched my Windows hard drive out of my laptop in favor of my Linux one. I fired it up and nuked my old version of Eclipse and made sure my Emacs was up to snuff. Then, I copied all the files off the network and started settting up my environment.

I was able to set up Emacs pretty quickly. The only thing that needed to change was some paths in my .emacs file and nuking out some things I don't need (e.g. Cygwin stuff). I noticed that the performance of Emacs on Linux is about 200% better than the performance of the version I run under Windows. Not really surprising, but it brought a smile to my face none-the-less.

I then downloaded the GTK version of Eclipse and installed it on my laptop. I noticed that the speed wasn't that much different between Linux and Windows. Until recently (jdk 1.4), I noticed that Java GUI applications were much slower on Linux than Windows. They now seem to be about on par. Eclipse is slower with some things and quicker with others. Plus the swapping under Linux is unnoticeable compared to Windows. (I only have 512MB on the laptop).

So, I've been using Linux at work for half a day now. I'm actually pretty stoked about it this year. It seems that, for this project at least, I'm not missing anything from Windows. I'm able to easily do my job and things seem solid and a bit faster over-all. I'll follow up this post in a day or so to report whether or not the shine has worn off. The only ding so far is lack of standard clipboard among applications under Xwindows.

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 18:14:15 GMT

SCO SCO SCO!. Still more links on SCO's assorted allegations of copyright infringement. They say they're going to sue Novell. Software analysts refuse to be part of the hoax ... [Slashdot]

Don't SCO away mad, just SCO away. Sorry, I had to.

Tue, 20 May 2003 04:30:37 GMT

The fear war against Linux. Bruce Perens has an article on News.com titled The fear war against Linux that does a good job of examining possible motivations for SCO's recent attacks against Linux and what Microsoft's involvement may be.... [Jeremy Zawodny's blog]

Great article that may provide an answer to the question, "What the hell is SCO thinking?"

Tue, 20 May 2003 04:23:06 GMT

Opera Releases Opera 7 For Linux. Opera Software on Monday released its latest Opera 7 OS for the Linux operating system, complete with an email client. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

I really like Opera. I'm VERY glad that they've released the latest version for Linux. It's one of the fastest and most convenient browsers you can use. I find myself using Mozilla more often, but I'm not sure why.

Thu, 15 May 2003 15:54:56 GMT

Ballmer on Linux. Refining arguments [The Register]

Interesting. Microsoft is now acknowledging Linux in a few ways. They still have no plans to port any software. They are going to start pushing TCO instead of "we are cheaper to acquire" because they believe Windows environments have lower TCO.

Thu, 15 May 2003 15:48:31 GMT

SCO Warns Linux Users of Legal Liability. SCO Group on Wednesday raised the stakes in its battle to prevent what it sees as the illegal and unauthorized use of its Unix technologies in the Linux operating system. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

This is absolutely terrible. I must admit I don't fully understand SCO's position. They may be right on. I just don't know enough about the problem.

That said, here's my beef with their approach: I can understand going after IBM for infringements with respect to AIX. I can understand going after anyone for infringements. However, to me, the fair thing to do is make it unilateral. They should send notes to OSS development projects to ask them to stop using their software, they could even be cool about it and work with the projects to suggest alternate implementations. If they are going to make it an offense to use their intellectual property, they should just come out and say it to everyone. Right now it seems like they're being a little two-faced. I personally believe that people would respect their position more if they just came right out and asked everyone to stop using their intellectual property.

Thu, 01 May 2003 16:03:27 GMT

SuSE 8.2 approaches computing Nirvana. Review Thanks in part to KDE 3.1 [The Register]

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 14:17:36 GMT

MS issues Visual FoxPro OS statement .... To VFP fan sites [The Register]

MS moves to stop Visual FoxPro developers from using Linux as a development or deployment environment. Another instance of MS trying to tie their dev tools to the operating system via the EULA.

Mon, 28 Apr 2003 14:14:53 GMT

Schemix - A Scheme In The Linux Kernel. via Slashdot Schemix is a Scheme system, implemented as a patch to the Linux kernel. It aims to attain R5RS compliance while remaining small, fast and easy to understand. The intended use of Schemix is for exploration of the Linux kernel and for rapid, interactive prototyping of Linux drivers and other new kernel features. To achieve this, Schemix will attempt to make a large subset of the kernel functionality available to Scheme programs. Interactivity is via a character device, /dev/schemix which presents a REPL (Read, Eval, Print Loop) to anyone having access to the device. The perfect thing to combat Insecure Macho Love. [Lambda the Ultimate]

How cool is that? Prototyping drivers in Scheme!! Too cool.