Michael Dolan Dot Com

Archive for October, 2006

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Fedora Core 6: Nice but there’s just something missing… nvidia

So I installed FC6 and have been using it for a couple days now. My quick summary includes:

1) Getting nvidia drivers running… what a mess. Don’t download from nvidia.com - get them through the livna repository (similar to Packman if you’re a Suse user).

2) Even when you figure out the nvidia trick, don’t expect AIGLX comes easily. I have been able to run AIGLX and XGL on my system under multiple distros but after 2 hrs of dedicated work, couldn’t get AIGLX on FC6. I looked at the popular sites describing how to (lunapark6 for instance) but no go.

3) Not a FC issue, but I’m so tired of not being able to use the nvidia drivers on a Xen kernel…. arrgghhh.

4) OpenOffice - not the Novell kind - when will these go upstream Sun?
5) The “development” options in the install… somehow fail to install kernel sources.

6) I LOVE the double helix graphic art.

7) Really like the LVM partioning maturity - very nice.

8) SELinux - who knew it could be mindlessly simple (ok, maybe not for grandma, but if you know what you’re doing, this is awesome)

9) Virtual Machine Manager - ok, this is really cool, but… lacks the ability to install a virtual image from CD/DVD - you can only do via kickstart or ftp/http???? Why?

10) System Monitor - love it.

11) Frysk fully enabled! Whooaa! Did you see that? I couldn’t believe it.

12) Disk Usage Analyzer - this came out of nowhere.. have never seen this before but it’s really useful. Makes du and df look dumb.

13) GDM is AWESOME - beats any other system’s login screen hands down. The graphics and layout are very polished - sorry Mark S….

14) Is it just me or does the RHEL based distro seem more “standardized” than the Suse stuff? No weird zdm stuff pushed in… I prefer standard.

15) In all my trials with AIGLX, I experienced the most robust xorg implementation and stability than I have ever witnessed.

16) Package Management: it’s much better in FC6. Much. It’s no Portage and it’s not apt-get, but it’s coming along. Even the yum implementation is better than previous experiences.

17) Don’t expect your broadcom wireless to work out of the box. It’s never worked for me out of the box and I’ve done ndiswrapper enough times to see the commands in my sleep.

18) Power management on my laptop WORKS - it’s never worked (not even in Windows). I don’t know what to say - I’m shocked.

Overall, I give FC6 at solid 7.9 out of 10. Once nvidia catches up to FC6 I could easily give this an 9.0.

SLED10 is probably still the best - and I never liked Suse - ever. I’m about to install Edgy so the game’s not over yet.

Oh, almost forgot to mention - FC6 has this “two tier” type menu for Grub. I was puzzled when I saw it for the first time. Not sure if it’s just a new grub or a new facelift for FC but it was cool.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Microsoft and Zend Launch the “WIMP” stack

The acronym makes me smile. Apparently they’re making some updates to get PHP running as fast on Windows as it is on Linux - good luck. This looks more like a containment or “stay close to your enemy plan” than a major shift in Microsoft’s .NET strategy.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6131076.html?part=rss&tag=6131076&subj=news

Monday, October 30th, 2006

Internet Explorer 7: I Actually Like It

I actually like IE7 - I said it. I think the reason why is b/c it’s so much like Firefox. That doesn’t make IE bad in my mind (unless you’re one of the religous types and it’s just like copying Mac windows).

Now it remains to be seen whether the security holds up. I’ve already had to download a boatload of updates since booting into XP which I haven’t done for a while. I didn’t read the whole list to know if any were IE7 related but I’m sure they’re coming. I know my wife’s work sent all employees warnings not to install it…. wonder why…

Anyway, this is my first post here from IE7 and Windows XP (it’ll probably be a while)… I just had to test things out and see how they were. I like the “Quick Tabs” feature the best. Second best would be closing with multiple tabs open - it gives you options for what to do next time. The integrated RSS feeds are ok… but to be honest I’m so used to having a separate feedreader with a preview pane that I really don’t use it in Firefox (and wouldn’t in IE7).

One other thing that I have to mention: it’s about time. This finally brings IE to the Firefox age. It looks like a great piece of work, but ultimately I still think Firefox wins. The openness of Firefox, the underlying XUL technology for building apps, and it’s closeness to the userbase needs/desires will probably keep Mozilla ahead of the game for some time. Oh and I forgot to mention that Firefox doesn’t allow for ActiveX (yet at least). IE7 still has ActiveX controls (why oh why doesn’t anyone see it’s a huge gaping security hole…).

Oh… and one more thing. IE7 does this odd repost thing when there are multiple form controls in a page (like in Wordpress admin posting) and if you’re using Wordpress be careful when opening say the categories list b/c IE7 will try to post… hmm….

Monday, October 30th, 2006

Scary: Print your fake Northwest Boarding Pass…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15449482/

This is pretty scary.. anyway, this quote made me laugh… I’m approaching 30 in a couple yrs and not sure if I should be insulted:

“Before, any 12-year-old could have done it,” Soghoian said on Friday. “Now any 30- or 40-year-old could do it as well.”

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

My First Programming Language: GW BASIC

Memories… I first learned to program in GW BASIC on some pre-286 system I can’t recall. That was before discovering the horrors of COBOL/PASCAL/FORTRAN… and way before VB - and QBasic. I feel old.

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

UBL 2.0: My Quick/Dirty Review

So I tried out UBL 2.0 over the weened - dropped it into VMWare Server - and played around with it. It wasn’t very “new” b/c if you’ve used RHEL 4… it’s the same thing. There are some new logos and that’s about it (except I found 1 Red Hat reference still untouched - hint: it’s in the install). The only other “news” to report is that they messed up the Gnome menu for users - the “start button” doesn’t work. I think eWeek or someone already pointed this out - oops… guess that also shows the bits can be slightly different. Is it just the menu bits … or are there others?

Anyway, b/c of the menu problem I’d call this UBL b2 rather than 2.0. It’s definitely not beta1 but there’s some polish to take care of. Everything else in the distribution is exactly as it would be on RHEL. No surprises there.
Oh… oddly my grub menu was not pink. Not sure how eWeek had that happen without doing it on purpose???

Friday, October 27th, 2006

Wordpress 2.0.5 is out

Head over to wordpress.org for the new release.

Friday, October 27th, 2006

eWeek Walks Through UBL 2.0

http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=&s=25947&a=192535,00.asp

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Shameless Plug: IBM and Open Source Website

This site just went live a couple days ago. It’s a great overview of some of the open source and community innovation businesses IBM is involved in. Some are more open community/standards focused, but the broader theme is accelerating open computing and open standards through open source and community collaboration. Anyway, I’ll stop writing and let you take a look for yourself.

There was also an interesting open source survey that was done and the full report is available here.

There are some great links here too including this page and a white paper on integrating open source into your business. The paper also covers community innovation and open computing.
I’ve heard we’ll be moving the site to a www.ibm.com/opensource URL soon.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Ubuntu “Edgy Eft” 6.10 Officially Released

And in other news…

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Oracle’s Move: Some of my thoughts

There are so many angels/effects on this one and I won’t possibly cover them all here. Stephen has posted his Q&A with coverage of the announcement here.

Taking an perspective a few miles back from the action, to say that no one saw this coming is a bit narrow in scope. If you looked at their Miracle Linux, this is just a copycat move of something Oracle already does… albeit on a grander scale.

Here’s a question for those IT industry trivia buffs out there… how does this Oracle announcement impact this, this and this? Hmmm… anyway, back to the present.

I think this opens up new opportunities for Oracle (as if Larry needs more to work on). I don’t consider forking as much an issue as everyone has been flag waving about. At the end of the day, it’s all the same code (unlike UNIX) but at different rev/patch levels. That’s a different issue than say Unices forking with entirely different code bases, POSIX implementations, etc. Larry made it clear they would re-synch with RHEL regularly (although with Oracle patches) and they’re platinum FSG/LSB now.

Back to new opportunities. Oracle patches released alongside their UBL patches through a single update utility. Oracle could build a test facility into the patch mgmt tools; Oracle could build a “stack” that’s pretuned for perf. Oracle could make Linux mgmt easier - say for the “starter” Windows admin level. If I had to speculate *on technical reasons*, one of opportunity for doing this is that you can config the OS to the tune of your workload (Oracle 10g in this case). So while 80% of RH’s customers may not want particular Oracle 10g perf tweaks (say xyz config option tweaked to 100 instead of the normal 3) - Oracle can do this in the future and match it to 10g needs.

Oracle could essentially create a highly tuned conf.d (although in RHEL the contents of conf.d would be spread throughout the directory structure with no apparent concern for organization). It would be foolish to say this doesn’t also give Oracle “a big seat at the table” when it comes to architectural, community, and strategic decisions. They did join the FSG - which evidences their LSB commitment. Does this make the LSB more relevant - I think it does.

Maybe… we’ll have Oracle 3D data cubes with XGL… didn’t Cognos try that once?

Ultimately we’ll see how this plays out with fireworks and penguin suits b/c I’m sure it will be front and center in the press/analyst/financial communities for some time to come. I’m most “fearful” of RH’s reaction to this - if they do something “stupid” in retaliation that disrupts the community. A 25% stock hit can prompt some drastic behavior (like trying to find an IP route to block Oracle in code rather than compete outside the code). I think right now, UBL is a great announcement for Linux and quite a ringing endorsement for RHEL and Linux as a mission critical, enterprise technology.

It’s also clear Larry has Windows in his sights (his smile at the end of the Q&A Windows question deserves a poster blowup). With UBL’s currently limited scope, I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t give RH a boost in the long run. Think about it: Oracle didn’t announce a distro - they announced support (although basically lied b/c they did launch a distro). Circular yes, but there are thousands of RHEL webservers, DNS servers, SAP servers, DB2 servers, BEA/Websphere servers, etc that Oracle won’t be touching anytime soon (at least at a high volume scale with current model). It’ll take large customers months to test, validate, and decide if they want to roll the Oracle dice too. Even if they want to go with Oracle, it’ll take months of red tape before they buy.

So I’ve said more than usual on this one. I’m sure many will disagree with a point here or there, but overall again I think this is good for Linux and hope you do too. Hey, at least someone’s taking the attention away from rms ;)

BTW, ALL the above are my own personal thoughts and not that of my employer … as if any employer ever endorses someone’s personal thoughts :)

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Unfakeable Linux

Red Hat’s Response. The homepage graphic made me smile.
http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/ 

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

First Look/Review: Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux

Pink Grub? I mean really really pink… wow. Not a glowing review but gives you a sense of the changes Oracle has made.
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=433

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

The Register’s Take

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/25/oracle_red_hat_support/

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

And now we all know…

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Fedora Core 6 is Out (and I need to try it)

If you haven’t seen, Core 6 has been released and reviewed here. I haven’t used Fedora in a while so I’m definitely going to give this one a test.

Interestingly when I hopped over to fedora.redhat.com I was greeted by this.. not a healthy launch message…

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Firefox 2.0 Already Available at Mozilla FTP site

I thought the “official” 2.0 release was Tues, but I got a couple emails this morning linking to the final code that is available at various mirrors already. Not sure what happened but it’s there.

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0/linux-i686/en-US/

Update: appears El Reg is covering this story.

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

Canon Rebel XT vs XTi

I’ve been noticing some conflicting reviews of the new Canon Digital Rebel XTi. While there’s a minor pixel bump up and a dust buster built in, the new LCD is probably the only compelling reason to upgrade for me. Anyway, if any of you have upgraded and can attest to the veracity of these issues, please drop me an email.

One thing the XTi has is cool commercials. (warning to Flash 9/Linux beta users - it’s buggy)

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

Boy Scouts Get “Respect Copyrights” Merit Badge

If you thought the no tag on the playground story was of ridiculous stupidity, you may like this one.

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

Linux 101 Required Reading Linux - from SVN

I had never even heard of Linuxtopia before. Anyway, a few good starter Linux references from Mr. Vaughan-Nichols.