Yet Another Linux Blog » YALB http://linux-blog.org Open Source, Open Blog Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:33:43 +0000 en hourly 1 Thank You, Dear Reader http://linux-blog.org/thank-you-dear-reader/ http://linux-blog.org/thank-you-dear-reader/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:28:30 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=2071 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> thank you!

Photo by woodleywonderworks

Thank you, dear reader.

Thanks for making Yet Another Linux Blog one of the top Linux Blogs on the planet!  It was an average day over 8 years ago that I began to host my own blog at linuxblog.sytes.net (thanks No-Ip.com!) on a PII that I inherited from one of my friends.  Slackware Linux hosted the project then and I wanted to use my new blog to explore the Linux world posting tips, tricks, and how-to’s on my way.  Millions upon millions of pageviews and 6 hosting changes later, we arrive here…at the end of 2011.

So am I throwing in the towel since I didn’t post regularly in 2011?  Heck no.  I’m going to continue learning and posting, exploring and writing.  In fact, I’ve made it a resolution to do more posting this year than I ever have to develop my writing as I begin to supplement my technical writing portfolio.  Technical Writing would be my profession of choice if this were a perfect world…getting paid to help people is something I find very satisfying.  For now, I freelance and am looking to possibly make freelancing become my full time job.

Once again, thanks for making Yet Another Linux Blog be a stop in your browser…thanks for making it be a blip on your RSS reader….thanks for your support and continued reading :)

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Thank You, Dear Reader originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on December 26, 2011.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/thank-you-dear-reader/feed/ 0 Back to the Basics with Debian http://linux-blog.org/back-to-the-basics-with-debian/ http://linux-blog.org/back-to-the-basics-with-debian/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:29:35 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=1864 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Sometimes, you just have so many problems with the distribution you’re running that you have to wipe it out with a clean slate. I did that this past week and am now using Debian.

With using Debian there comes a feeling of being back to the very basic of Linux distros…much in the same way when you use Arch…it just feels plain, unencumbered, and basic and there is a feeling you get when build something from nothing…you start with a kernel and just enough CLI tools and create your house…then live in it.

It feels good to be stable. It feels good to not have to worry about programs crashing, the net disconnecting, or not being able to install programs.

People like to ride the unstable or testing route with most things out there…as I move forward in my Linux journey, I find myself looking to be less and less cutting edge and more and more stable. Plus, if there is a program out there that needs updating…backports are always a good way to get them.

I’m enjoying my new digs and will look to getting back into the swing of posting enjoyable articles and how-to’s in the upcoming weeks.

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Back to the Basics with Debian originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 16, 2011.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/back-to-the-basics-with-debian/feed/ 10 Interesting Statistics http://linux-blog.org/interesting-statistics/ http://linux-blog.org/interesting-statistics/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:19:35 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=1618 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Very interesting statistics that I’ve noticed since moving the site to a Linode VPS.

If you take a look at the graphic below, the spike in the middle will probably stick out quite a bit.  Oddly enough, the spike I noticed in CPU percentage used (which is regulated for VPS at Linode) also spiked up disk usage…mainly because I began to swap when cpu/ram use skyrocketed.  All of this happened with Ubuntu 10.04 installed.  CentOS was the first distro I tried but I quickly switched to Ubuntu when I spotted a really nice how-to in the Linode document library.  Oh, and please excuse my horrible gimp skills on the image below…it was a quick and dirty editing of the image:

cpu usage

After switching to Ubuntu, I began receiving alarms for my account due to the high usage of CPU and disk.  I attempted to tweak settings and configuration files for about a week and realized it just wasn’t going to work for me.  I switched to Debian Lenny and the move was a positive as is reflected in these pictures.

disk usage

I was hoping Ubuntu 10.04 would fit for me since it is a long term support (LTS) release.  CentOS is my normal server distribution of choice and I really wanted to branch out and go with something different.  I used a Linode Stackscript for WordPress for CentOS but elected for vanilla installs of Ubuntu and Debian aftwards (I didn’t like NOT knowing what was installed when I first logged in…call me a control freak).

I just found it interesting that Ubuntu 10.04 did so horribly in this instance.  After investigating, I found a couple of likely suspects:

  1. Default Apache install in Ubuntu leaves a lot to be desired..even after tweaking both it and PHP for days I couldn’t get them to lay off the resources.  Even switching to mpm_worker and FastCGI did little to settle things down.
  2. Ubuntu swappiness is bad…it is set at 60 (I use 10 normally) and it swapped every chance it could get…it’s set by default to swap more than it should.
  3. mod_php on Ubuntu is hungry for all your cpu and ram and disk; be warned!

Debian, as the parent distribution of Ubuntu, would most likely suffer from the same problems…except it doesn’t.  Things are working great with it and I’d recommend it for any of your server needs!  Has anyone else seen this oddity with Ubuntu 10.04?  If so, please drop me a comment below.

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Interesting Statistics originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on July 13, 2010.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/interesting-statistics/feed/ 0 Status Update for Devnet http://linux-blog.org/status-update-for-devnet/ http://linux-blog.org/status-update-for-devnet/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:30:30 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=1329 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> For those of you who follow me here at Yet Another Linux Blog you might be wondering where I went the last month.  I assure you I’m still here and I still use Linux every single day.  I’m currently running both Arch Linux (32bit) and Unity Linux (64bit) on my main computer.

I’ve been working pretty hard through the holidays at my full time job where I am a server administrator for a medium sized hospital in the U.S.  Recently (in December), I moved 2000+ users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  We considered farming out our Exchange environment to the cloud or perhaps going with Microsoft Exchange Hosting services but in the end, upper management decided they’d rather underpay someone to work exceedingly long hours with minimal training on a system not built by him.  So, that’s why I’ve been pretty inactive as of late.  As you can imagine working with Microsoft technologies…I always have something to fix and things are always unstable.

I know that some of you might be saying “why not use linux based exchange alternatives in your enterprise?” and I’d say, why indeed.  But I inherited this beast and it’s been Exchange since Exchange came out.  Not only that, but the primary application for all departments (ERM app) runs completely on Windows and plugs into Exchange and nothing else.  Talk about vendor lock in eh?  Well, it’s a job.

I used to work with Linux when I worked for rPath but parted ways with them about a year and a half ago when I had to move away to help out after a death in the family.  I was very sad to leave but am very happy with the large pay increase that came with my current position.  However, migrations do take their toll…lots of hours worked and frustrations vented.  Now that I’m over the hump, I’ll be able to get back into a normal swing of things.

For those of you who might be Exchange administrators in your day to day work, I’ve begun blogging about my experiences and setup a community to share tips, tricks, powershell commandlets, and a place to talk shop.  I figure if I have to work with closed source at least I can open source some help.  Find my Exchange blog at http://teknologist.net

Thanks for hanging in there everyone, and sorry for the inactivity.  Now that I’ve hit 6+ years blogging (in December) here I have even more incentive to continue sharing great Linux help with everyone.  I’ve got some good tips directly in the pipeline and here’s to a great 2010!

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Status Update for Devnet originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on January 5, 2010.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/status-update-for-devnet/feed/ 2 YALB – ITLPD http://linux-blog.org/yalb-itlpd/ http://linux-blog.org/yalb-itlpd/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:41:56 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=1219 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> In honor of today, which is International Talk like a Pirate Day, my blog now comes in pirate flavor thanks to a very interesting plugin.

So have a look around!  Some posts are pretty silly sounding and others are downright hilarious.  And have a great day or you’ll probably have to walk the plank somewhere :)

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YALB – ITLPD originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 19, 2009.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/yalb-itlpd/feed/ 3 Self Musings http://linux-blog.org/self-musings/ http://linux-blog.org/self-musings/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:59:02 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=912 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> With Yet Another Linux Blog silently turning 4 years old this past December, I began to examine what I’ve posted over the years and have tried to take a step back to examine what I’ve accomplished here…first, from a design perspective.  Please understand that these links go to the internet archive so they may take a while to load:

Next, I looked at some of my most popular posts.  Most of these were written quite a while ago.  2 of them are reviews, one is an opinion piece and the last 2 are how-to’s:

And then, there are the most commented articles.  The winner here is Ubuntu articles…but that’s a dubious honor in my opinion as most of the comments weren’t particularly friendly:

  • Why Ubuntu ISN’T for New Users – Done in 2006 and why I felt at the time, Ubuntu didn’t offer new users the best out of box experience.
  • Ubuntu 5.04 Final Rating – An experiment where I took my wife and made her use Linux for a week and give each distro a rating.  Ubuntu bombed on this one.  Of course, the community came back with lots of name calling and “why didn’t you do this dummy” to help her as a new user.  To this day she despises Ubuntu for the comments left there by their community members.
  • Enlightenment e17 Review – Once again, guest editor Misunderstruck’s review of e17.  Lot’s of positive feedback and some questions.
  • Is Ubuntu CE Needed? – I questioned what the point of having a separate distro versus a Meta-Package.  If you recall the release of Ubuntu CE, you’ll remember that there was some controversy surrounding the motivation of doing this as well as a quick release of Ubuntu Satanic Edition.
  • Why Open Source Isn’t Succeeding – My take on what made open source fall short of achieving its goal…in 2004
  • Why Open Source Isn’t Succeeding, Part II – A follow up and clarification of the first article…done so boneheads that “don’t read too good” could understand “more better” what the article intended.

It’s been many years, many reviews, many editorials, and many blog revisions.  Through it all, I’ve tried to stay focused on what matters to me…sharing knowledge with others.  I don’t have any plans to stop blogging and am looking at starting another blog soon that covers Windows administration stuff as well (I work in a mixed environment of Unix/Linux/Windows now as a server admin).  I feel that even if the software isn’t free, the knowledge on how to use it should be.  Thanks for reading!

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Self Musings originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 18, 2009.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/self-musings/feed/ 3 Switched to WordPress http://linux-blog.org/switched-to-wordpress/ http://linux-blog.org/switched-to-wordpress/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:59:38 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/?p=625 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I’ve migrated to wordpress from serendipity. You may notice a few comments have been lost in the migration. However, not much else should be missing. I’ll continue to work on a custom theme for the site during the next week or so.

I may write up a “reasons why I switched” article as well and post it if anyone is interested…but that’s solely if anyone is interested. Otherwise, I’ll keep this as the only reference to it.

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Switched to WordPress originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 3, 2008.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/switched-to-wordpress/feed/ 6 How do YOU Plug Your Blog to Web 2.0? http://linux-blog.org/how-do-you-plug-your-blog-to-web-20/ http://linux-blog.org/how-do-you-plug-your-blog-to-web-20/#comments Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:32:42 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/word/how-do-you-plug-your-blog-to-web-20/ Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I’ve been drastically neglecting a few areas of my blog.  The main one is plugging it into social networks.  I’ve been using things like twitter, pownce, and stumbleupon…but I haven’t truly plugged my blog into these services.

Now there are so many…I don’t even know how to plug them all in :)

Which services are most important?  Which ones are you, the reader, using?  Thus far, the easiest way I’ve found to manage things is to choose one service like Tumblr or Pownce and aggregate all other services into it.  THEN to use friendfeed.com to envelop them into a stream.

I’m curious as to how others are managing things…I’d like to make Yet Another Linux Blog reach a larger audience and I think that this is a good starting point.  So if you have suggestions, please let me know :)

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How do YOU Plug Your Blog to Web 2.0? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 13, 2008.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/how-do-you-plug-your-blog-to-web-20/feed/ 5 YALB – A Look Back after Three Years http://linux-blog.org/yalb-a-look-back-after-three-years/ http://linux-blog.org/yalb-a-look-back-after-three-years/#comments Sun, 20 May 2007 22:26:00 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/word/yalb-a-look-back-after-three-years/ Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Quietly and without fanfare, Yet Another Linux Blog has reached the ripe old age of 3 years. I started it small and hosted at home during May of 2004. Back then it was hosted on a domain called fatalfame.org (since expired). In December 2004, I switched domains to linuxblog.sytes.net and switched to Serendipity for blogging (hence, lost data from May 2004 – Dec 2004) and it is that month that houses my first and oldest post on the s9y platform…and it’s also the month I discovered Technorati and pingbacks :D which gives rise to being indexed for the first time then. The oldest snapshot the internet archive has is December 2004…take a look at how the blog looked then (warning, slow loading).

Back then, it was all about trying new Linux desktops and finding things that worked for my wife and I. Today, it’s still all about the Linux Desktop. YALB hasn’t changed its focus and has made some weak minded enemies along the way, but still is managing just fine.

Today, I’d like to take the time to reflect a little bit and post some links of my favorite posts, as well as share some statistical information about YALB.

The New Distro is Microsoft

These companies are now paying Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft is paying them as well…but the kicker is this: These companies are paying Microsoft for Linux.

Oh, but ask the CEO who made the deal if they think Linux infringes patents and they’ll say “No way! We don’t think Linux violates any patents…we’re just paying in case Microsoft tries to sue us”. Well, let’s put this into perspective shall we?

If I was a store owner in Anycity, USA and paid the mob to not rob my store blind…you know, not because they were robbing it…but just in case. Does that mean that I’m not part of the money that the mob uses to do their dirty deeds? Does that make the cash I’m sending back to them clean? Should my conscience be clear?

Now, I’m not saying Microsoft is the mob…I’m just using that as an example. But they do have a good racket going on here. They get many highly publicized deals where Linux appears to be ‘giving in’ to Microsoft. Microsoft looks to be reasonable with these deals as well saying “hey, we won’t sue you…see, we’re the good guys”. The bottom line is though that Microsoft has no claims on Linux at all…if they did, they would have revealed it already. The reason they don’t reveal anything is because they don’t have anything to reveal. It’s all talk and no walk.

What about the Community?

These companies forgot one thing…the power is with the consumer. The power is in the community. Ubuntu realizes that…they’ve embraced the community and look what’s happened! The community holds the power to make or break…the power of spoken word cannot be underestimated. These companies have either forgotten that or don’t care. My guess is that they don’t care…they worry about making money and not about the tread marks they’re leaving up the back of the community. The community isn’t part of their formula even though it should be the common denominator.

The open source business model hasn’t been around for very long and many are still learning about it. The one no-no that these companies have completely ignored is that they have alienated their own PR system; their own word of mouth. In the end, they didn’t look at what it could cost them to do this deal or they didn’t care. One thing is certain by looking at many examples in the last 20 years…the community doesn’t forget.

MS Now Makes Money from Linux

Microsoft has carved a niche way for itself to make money off of Linux. Are you one of those that are paying Microsoft to use Linux? Are you helping them establish an umbrella Linux distribution made up of all the Linux distros signing up to be a part of their ‘protection’? If so, congratulations on buying your new Microsoft Linux. Have fun over there with Novell, Xandros, LG, and whoever else believes the vaporous and non existing threats from a callow company trying to keep itself meaningful. For myself, my family, my friends, and my distribution…we shall never pay any company that brokers this patent protection deal with Microsoft…you can take that to the bank.

UPDATE 06-14-2007

Looks like I was right! Linspire has also signed a patent racket er…protection agreement with Microsoft. Up next, the other two big hitters in Linux…Mandriva and Ubuntu. 1 down, three to go Microsoft.

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YALB – A Look Back after Three Years originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 20, 2007.

]]> http://linux-blog.org/yalb-a-look-back-after-three-years/feed/ 3 Update your RSS Feeds… http://linux-blog.org/update-your-rss-feeds/ http://linux-blog.org/update-your-rss-feeds/#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:05:35 +0000 devnet http://linux-blog.org/word/update-your-rss-feeds/ Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I’ve decided to add a feedburner feed. Currently, I don’t even know how many subscribers I have to Yet Another Linux Blog and I’d like to know :) because it’s not a bad service. It’s always interesting to find out if anyone is actually out there reading. So please visit the page in the next few days and if you’d like to use the feedburner feed, please update your feedlist.

Thanks for reading!

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Update your RSS Feeds… originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 3, 2007.

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