Yet Another Linux Blog - Page 44 of 54

Experiment: Update – Installed Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary

Last night, Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary went on the old experimental computer. There was a bit of trouble with this and I won’t go into details on it (Per request, I’ll let Mrs.Devnet detail this with her review) but after getting things up and running, everything works fine. Look for a final rating for this one sometime next weekend. Mrs.Devnet really digs the look of Gnome…so Ubuntu may have a feather in its hat there.

After finding out the 2 highest rated distros…we’ll go through and review each of them again pitting them against each other using an Advantage and Disadvantage rating system. For instance, hypothetical situation: Red Hat beats SuSe on the area of multimedia…We’d give RH the advantage. So that’s how things will be rated. After that, the winner will be crowned in a huge picture filled final article.

I’ll also have a Q&A session with Mrs.Devnet on where she thinks the distros that didn’t win can improve the most…and we’ll talk about each one specifically.

Then…I myself will take an in depth look at the winner and the runner up and hit some areas that more experienced users might be concerned with. This will be a separate review as well. I’ll also post a ’roundup’ of all the reviews…really, just a single entry with all the links to the distros and their final ratings.

Last but not least, we’ll have some cool badges for display that link back to the crowned winner review. Some examples of the badges might look like this (I’m terrible at graphics…so if there are any artists out there that would like to lend their talents…please feel free to contact me):

So, lot’s on the horizon…stay tuned and thanks for reading. Suggestions? Please post away and let me know what is on your mind!

Making sendmail a better place

Recently, I’ve had a rash of both [SPAM] and hacking attempts at the site. With this being the case, my intrusion detection system has been working overtime. Something I forgot to do though was to forward all system mail to my main email and user account. So I had to read 5 different email accounts in order to get ‘the whole picture’ To combat this, a very nice little trick with sendmail/procmail can come into play and allow forwarding of all email to the correct box. Very handy…especially if you have rootkit detection software installed such as rootkithunter which is a handy program to alert you to hacker attempts. So this entry will be dedicated to some handy sendmail tips. Most of these tips will apply at a server level…but some can be adapted to desktop. To see the full list of tips, hop into the forum and check them out. Registration isn’t required but would be nice 🙂 (check out the navigation pane at the top of this blog for registration/login links). If you have any of your own tips, go ahead and post them in the forum while you’re there!

Sendmail tips and tricks

Experiment 1.4: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 Final Rating

Linuxblog Introduction: We took an average windows user, gave her a handful of distributions of Linux, and forced her to use each distro for one week. We gave her alsaconf, email servers, and mounted her windows partition to the fresh install. Then, we faded away and quietly watched her in her new environment. You too can join us by reading on…

Editors Note: More screenshots would accompany this review, but problems with software/hardware prevented many things from happening. Read on for more.

1) Look/Feel – as far as the look of this distro goes…everything is very nice and professional. This one is extremely easy on the eyes. I was excited at the chance to get to use the gnome desktop by default. I really like the way the menu bar is at the top instead of the bottom. I don’t like the fact that there are very few choices in the menu’s for anything. But overall, everything seems very nice. (Score – 8 )

2) Performance – Slow! With a capital “S”! During my first login, the desktop took approximately 45 seconds to login then froze. So we restarted and tried it again. It improved to 40 seconds but didn’t freeze this time. When clicking on menu’s it isn’t too bad…but whenever I open a program it takes forever and a year to open it up. This is horrible. (Score – 2)

3) Hardware/Software – This was a big issue for me as well. I don’t like the fact that there is very little choice in the menus. Also the fact that it is extremely difficult for me to download and install things (something I haven’t figured out yet in Linux) and that it doesn’t have many choices for software makes it useless for me. Fedora seemed to install all my hardware correctly though. (Score – 5)

4) Upgradeability/Security – Yet again this subject is lost on me. I have to trust that things are secure. Upgrading is a mystery for me. I’ve gotta be fair to this one so I’ll give it what I give every distro. (Score – 10)

5) Documentation – There is loads of documentation available from the Fedora website. However, none of this actually helps me at all. Being a new user this is like looking at a new language to me. I don’t understand any of it. It might be great for other people but it doesn’t help me out at all. Still, they’ve got great organization in place and a very detailed site, so they will score a bit high on this. (Score – 9)

6) Installation – Everything was very straightforward. They have an excellent graphic installation thing. Very easy to use. This might even be easier than Windows. It wasn’t a long installation either. It would be great if all of the distros installed like this. (Score – 10)

And now…once again…it is time for my criteria…

Continue reading “Experiment 1.4: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 Final Rating”

Are too Many Licenses a Bad Thing?

“One country . . . one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches . . . We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind.” Dalai Lama

Open source and Linux is currently at the forefront of the new OSI Licensing Process and the GPL version 3. This usually would boil down to nothing for me and most likely boils down to nothing for most end users. However, in the cases of both of these ‘improvements,’ there are alternative motives. Don’t fool yourself into believing that all intentions of the OSI is to make Joe Common and his laptop full of Linux happy. While they may have Joe’s best interests in mind…they have his pot on the backburner while the new Teflon coated enterprise pot is heating up nicely on the front one.

You’ve heard me talk about this before in a couple of articles [1] [2] that attempt (albeit, my first attempt so please be kind 🙂 ) to address the issues that come into play when businesses and corporations assert their influence into open source communities and projects. Once again, I feel that not enough people are looking at the whole picture. Not to say that I have any ability to understand anything better than others; just that I make a consorted effort to always look at things in 3-5 different ways (leftover habit from college philosophy class).

What do I have a problem with this time? Let’s start with the OSI wanting to ‘trim the fat’ and drop or de-emphasize licenses. Why do we need this? Intel seems to think that it is needed and the community seems to think that there are too many licenses also. Why too many? Who says that this is needed? Can fewer licenses even be feasible?

I don’t think the OSI is actually thinking about things…they’re listening too hard to businesses and enterprise to be thinking. They’re listening to these enterprises and large businesses whine about having to hire X number of lawyers to sift through licenses to make sure that they know what they have to do in order to use the code. Notice I put emphasis on what “they” have to do i.e. the business or corporation. My reasoning lies in the fact that, by nature, a business wants to do as little work as possible to A) save money while at the same time they want to B) save time. In this case, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the benefit of few licenses to sift through and they want the OSI to do it for them…and for free. What’s the best way to do this? Have a keynote speaker (HP’s Martin Fink) from a company that is Linux-friendly (HP) give a call-to-arms at Linuxworld.

Continue reading “Are too Many Licenses a Bad Thing?”

Experiment: Update Fedora Core 4 Test 1

Fedora Core 4 Test 1 went on the test machine 2 days ago. However, mrs.devnet has done little testing as of yet. Real life issues have taken over. For those that don’t know…I’m currently active duty military and am separating from the service this month. As you probably could guess, this means we’ll be moving soon as well as changing employers. Mrs.devent has been furiously planning our move whilst I am looking for employment in the Richmond, VA – Washington, DC area. So there hasn’t been a ton of development on the experiment. I have spoken to her and she promises action on the last two distributions…FC4 test 1 and Ubuntu-current…within the next week. Sorry for our readers…but of course, family will come first. So expect Fedora Core 4 Test 1 to post sometime this next weekend and Ubuntu the following week. Of course, as promised, we’ll take another look at the top 2 and pit them head-to-head against one another. Then we’ll crown the winner. Thus far, PCLinuxOS is in the lead with 10 out of 10 points awarded and SimplyMEPIS is right behind with 8 out of 10. Stay tuned this weekend for mrs.devnet’s review.

On an positive note for the site, I’ll be going hosted soon. I host this webpage on my own server at home and we’ve been getting many hits on the site which taxes my whole entire connection (time warner cable). To combat this, I am purchasing a domain and webhost plan. Look for those changes to happen in May. There will be little if any downtime…just enough for the nameservers to change over. Thanks again for reading!

Experiment Update!

After a lengthy downtime this past weekend due to a server hard disk crash, we’re back up. I moved the server to a new machine this past week as well so we didn’t get time to install Fedora Core current for review either. Therefore, the next step in the experiment will happen on Wednesday when we go forward with Fedora Core current. Mrs.devnet will take a look at FC followed by Ubuntu current next week sometime. She’ll then pick the top two distros of all those reviewed. Then we will have <assume Charlton Heston-like booming voice> THE GREAT DISTRO DRAW DOWN!!!</assume>. Mrs.devent will crown the victor and we’ll have our winner of the “Best New User Linux Distro”

Why is this important? Mainly because it has never been done before. Usually, a linux USER with experience will review a distribution. In this case, someone who has zero Linux experience is reviewing these distros and they’re doing it according to criteria that a windows user would have and rating it according to what provides the best experience for them out of the box; mainly, thing such as checking email, web surfing, file sharing, and playing music. A high percentage of people out there only want a computer for that very reason and this experiment is designed to address those people (such as mrs.devnet 😛 ) and encourage them to try out Linux and making the choice for Windows-Like distro easier.

When the winner is crowned I will draw up a nifty award badge that can be displayed as a linkback to the article which will linkback to the developers main site. I’ll also do a follow up Q&A session with the developer of the winning distro. I’ll also ask the main developer if they will display the LinuxBlog badge on the main site somewhere. This way, the distro that wins may get the attention it deserves. Believe me, whichever distro wins this contest will have EARNED it. Instead of just being a review of some distro from a fanboi as 90% of the ‘reviews’ are out there, it will be an actual deserved win for a distro that is the best for someone trying to get out of the windows rut.

Since the experiment is unique, I’ll need your help to make it a success and give it the exposure it deserves. If your favorite distro is chosen, I’d like to ask you all to help me promote the review. This means posting link backs to it in every single forum or site you can find. Remember, this isn’t to drive traffic here (that’s what blogrolling is for) it is to draw attention to the winner! Linux needs a champion for Windows converts and whichever distro wins this experiment will be the one Linux Blog will stand behind. After the experiment concludes and you’d like to help out, just post a comment under the article and make sure to fill in the blank provided for your email. I’ll contact you with information on where I’ve submitted to so that we don’t have double submissions and then we can get started promoting the winner!

If anyone has any questions or comments, please drop them in the comments section of this post. I’m open to suggestions! Thanks for reading!