devnet, Author at Yet Another Linux Blog

Thunderbird and Lightning .8

I saw that Lightning .8, a calendar extension for thunderbird, had been released and my heart jumped. Had they fixed the memory leak that forced me to abandon it in version .7?

I used to use Lightning for my google calendar in versions before .7…

When .7 came out, it caused Thunderbird to rocket memory usage above 80% which brought my computer to a screeching halt. I figured I’d not use it until next version (and submitted a bug report as well).

Today I downloaded .8 in hopes it would work better. It doesn’t. Memory usage still skyrockets when attempting use the google calendar (provider addon) and the remember mismatched domains add on with it (otherwise you’re unable to connect or get a popup every time you view).

Is it one of these plugins causing it? Is it Lightning? I’m leaning toward the latter…even when uninstalling the extensions, I still get memory usage skyrocketing. Either way, syncing your google calendar with Lightning isn’t a very smooth thing to do if it causes your Linux desktop to screech to a halt.

I guess there is always evolution with built in google calendar support. Anyone else getting these problems?

At work, we use Zimbra for emailing. I use Thunderbird with IMAP as my desktop client. I’ve also seen that as of Zimbra 5.0 RC2, they will have the ability to sync with Lightning. Good news! Now if Lightning would stop leaking!

Why Business Doesn’t “get” Desktop Linux

I used to skateboard when I was a teenager. This was during the times when Tony Hawk was in his prime…Powell Peralta was the number one skateboard company on the planet, and Thrasher magazine was the number one choice of reading material.

Most of my friends at that time all rode Powell Peralta boards. The thing is…I was always looking for an advantage…something that could give me a competitive street skating advantage or something that just plainly worked better.

I found that advantage in H-Street equipment. I began riding a naked H-Street board with H-Street Arrow wheels. Switched from tracker trucks to independent and changed my bearings from German to Swiss. I watched Hokus Pokus and idolized Danny Way. I was ridiculed. I was told that I didn’t know what I was doing. I was told that H-Street was no Powell Peralta. A year later, everyone had a Hokus Pokus poster on their wall and were trying to get the gear and equipment I had already purchased.

I’m not saying I’m a trend setter. I’m saying I recognized quality and functionality before most did. Many businesses today are exactly like my friends. They don’t want to change. They don’t recognize quality or something that can give them a competitve advantage (at least not until its too late in most cases).

Why is this? Why is it that many corporations and small to medium businesses cannot or will not take a step back and look at the competitive advantage and cost savings Linux and Open Source software will give their business?

Continue reading “Why Business Doesn’t “get” Desktop Linux”

Get a Link from YALB, Become a Featured Site at Blogbridge.com

I previously blogged about how your website/blog (or one you know of) could be a featured blog for BlogBridge.com. For those of you unfamiliar with what blogbridge is…it’s a program that allows you to manage all your RSS feeds that is cross platform.

This ‘featured’ list is a default list for the “Linux” feed that users can select after installing. If they don’t want to add their own linux feeds and would rather use the “expert feed” built in function, they’ll download the Syndication list I’ve created for blogbridge. Sound like something you would like to be a part of?

The response to my initial post was a bit underwhelming…remember, this could be just a blog you read on a daily basis. If you have a linux website you can’t do without and it has an RSS feed, let me know about it! If you don’t feel like doing that, let the authors of those sites know that they can submit their site. Remember, those I choose will get a direct link from this blog to theirs…which is pretty valuable considering I’m in the top two results in google for search term “linux blog”.

So, if you’d like to be considered or would like a favorite website of yours to be considered, please drop me a comment here with link to the site. I’ll check it out and announce the selections in approximately 2 weeks.

Foresight Users and Developer Conference 2008

Are you interested in Foresight Linux or the Conary package management system? Are you located in or near North Carolina…specifically Raleigh? If so, join us April 18th through the 20th for the Foresight Users and Developer Conference!

Even if you’re not a Foresight User and are just curious about the Conary System Manager, Software Appliances, or software packaging…it would be a great boon to understanding how these things give Foresight an edge over most distros.

Signup on the wiki page (add your name) to attend and we’ll see you there 😉

Installing and Using RealPlayer on Foresight Linux

Last night, I decided to install RealPlayer onto my fresh Foresight Linux 1.4.X install. I’ve replaced my main workstation with Foresight due to convenience (I use it at work) and I use RealPlayer from time to time for videos and music.

No package exists for RealPlayer in the repositories, so head over to Real.com and download the .bin file. After the .bin file has been downloaded, use the following commands to install:

chmod 755 RealPlayer10GOLD.bin && sudo ./RealPlayer10Gold.bin

In the terminal, it will ask you what directory you’d like to install RealPlayer into. I chose /opt/RealPlayer (you’ll have to type it in) because I’d rather have the files installed there than in my home directory, which is where I downloaded the file to. After this, you’ll have a shiny, new shortcut inside Applications >> Sound and Video >> RealPlayer. Click on this to launch the program and follow the wizard.

The wizard will setup the Mozilla (firefox) plugins for you but they still won’t work solidly. This is because mplayer is overtaking the player duties for real media formats. To change this, gedit ~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf and change these entries as shown below:

enable-rm=0enable-smil=0enable-helix=0

Save and close that document. You’re set 🙂 Restart Firefox and go to real.com and test out the player capabilities.

Mediawiki: Remove External Arrow from Links

My main job here at rPath, Inc. is to document our technologies via the rPath Documentation Wiki. For this wiki, we use a Mediawiki Appliance. For those that don’t know, the “appliance” I refer to here is a software appliance…something rPath technologies make easy to maintain and create. For more information see the definition of a software appliance here.

Moving on, I was ANNOYED by the fact that you have a small arrow “” that appears beside any image that references an external URL or any link that does the same. This is fine to let people know that links will take them to a different page…but what I was trying to do was to make a PDF Icon have the same link as the URL it was sitting beside:

So in the above image, if one clicked on the PDF icon or the “Application to Appliance: A Hands-on Guide (PDF)” the PDF would download.

Mediawiki doesn’t provide a fantastic way for you to do this. However, after some snooping around via google, I found a fairly easy way to make things happen.

Continue reading “Mediawiki: Remove External Arrow from Links”