Results matching “ubuntu linux” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

I'm reluctant to republish the content of others (as so many sites already do), but .. I found it interesting & noteworthy that » Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as a threat .. especially since I spent so many hours in Linux these past few weeks (learning the Unix shell)

Copy-n-paste snippet (minor Rad-editing for brevity):

"Microsoft acknowledges Linux as the first viable competitor to its Windows client business, due to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as an alternative to full-sized notebooks.

Microsoft cited Red Hat and Canonical -- the latter of which maintains the Ubuntu Linux distribution -- as competitors to its client business, which includes the desktop version of its Windows OS." </snippet>

Notice how the article said » DESKTOP, and not server. Linux has long been a dominant force in the server market (.. if not the dominant force).

It's difficult to describe why Linux is so cool .. why using it feels so fresh & clean. But I think it has something to do with the good intentions .. that come from thousands of talented programmers donating their time & expertise .. to bring you (for free) an operating system they obviously believe in.

I might be imagining it, but I think you can actually feel these good intentions (while using Linux). Can you feel the difference (in intentions) between someone who genuinely loves you, and someone who is paid to love you?

Moreover, I feel our economy has a lot to do with the Linux threat to the Microsoft desktop. No matter how compelling the product, basic economics suggest it's hard to compete with free. (Which Windows is not.) And in these troubled economic times, free means more than it used to.

Last month I mentioned a quest to learn the Unix shell .. specifically » bash (the Bourne Again SHell). Almost done. Currently ~80% complete .. enough to feel reasonably confident at a terminal.

The 'shell' is simply a program that lets you interact with the operating system (actually the kernel, to be more precise) ..

.. by taking your (text-based) commands and passing them on to the kernel. In my case, this kernel happens to be » Linux (which is but one variant of Unix).

The term 'shell' comes from the notion that this software acts like a 'layer' that sits between you and the operating system .. similar to the way an egg-shell sits between you and your hard-boiled breakfast.

The shell can be intimidating, cuz it uses a (text-based) command-line interface (CLI). No intuitive GUI to help you along. You either know the commands or you don't.

Didn't take me long to realize the CLI was where Linux's true power resides. When we upgraded the site, for example, to a Virtual Private Server, the support-techs who helped me with the move all used the command-line to work their mojo.

Most Linux distros do indeed come with an excellent GUI (usually either KDE or Gnome). But (but!) the Rad VPS does not. Which is why it became necessary to learn the Unix shell. (Something I tried to avoid.)

The Rad VPS is based on CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System), an off-shoot of Red Hat, which is probably the most popular of all enterprise Linux distros (.. and now a new member of the S&P 500, a development you may find telling).

GUIs (such as KDE or Gnome) require lots of memory/RAM. My laptop, for example, has 2-gigs, but the Rad VPS comes with an allotment of only 512-MB (.. upgraded from 384 just today).

With that limited amount, I need to run not only all the standard web applications .. such as Apache (web server), MySQL (database), Perl (scripting language), etc. but also cPanel/WHM.

So there's not much RAM left to run a GUI. [ Don't think I didn't inquire about installing a GUI. =) ]

Bottom line » if you wanna administer your own VPS, you need to learn the Shell. So that's what I'm doing. (Of course, there have been distractions, making progress uneven.)

Two county sheriffs (1 male & 1 female) escorted me out after court this week. That's never happened before. I think they were just ensuring nothing happened en route. Keeping the peace. You know how ugly things can get during a custody battle.

I actually liked being escorted. Felt safe, protected. One walked on each side. They were very nice, professional. So I appreciate whoever it was that set it up. Tho I got some strange looks from passersby.

The sheriffs walked me to the edge of the property, where they watched me cross the street, then waved goodbye. =)

Kinda surreal, I thought, while waiting there at the bus stop (.. like this whole ordeal has been).

This time in court was very different. I hardly said anything. Experts testified.

First, the courtroom was cleared of all unessential people (not uncommon, due to the nature of the accusations). If you were there, and listening carefully, you might've heard the judge say the word I've been waiting to hear for years » enough.

Woke at midnight .. to a disturbing dream. (Didn't get back to sleep 'til 3:30.) Like any artist familiar with affliction, I didn't wanna let good angst go to waste. So I fired up the laptop and resumed my study of the UNIX shell.

Somewhere 'round 2AM I stumbled upon » The Art of Unix Programming (» book at Amazon.com), by Eric Steven Raymond. (Tho I can't recall how I got there.) He's the guy who wrote How to Become a Hacker, which I quote from time to time.

In his treatment of Unix Programming, ESR uses words like culture & philosophy .. which caught my attention .. cuz I've always been fascinated by other cultures .. not so much for the better/worse comparative aspects, but rather for the mind-expanding effect one gets from truly seeing the world from another's perspective. Plus he writes well (or has a good editor), which I appreciate. Couldn't stop reading.

Here are 10 statements/ideas I found particularly interesting and revealing. Perhaps you might also. (Minor Rad editing for brevity.)

• Unix was born in 1969. That's several geologic eras by computer-industry standards -- older than the PC or workstations or microprocessors or even video display terminals.
  
  
• Few software technologies have proved durable enough to evolve strong technical cultures, transmitted across generations of engineers. Unix is one. The Internet is another. Arguably they're one and the same.
  
  
• Unix has supported more computing than all other systems combined. It has found use on a wider variety of machines than any other operating system - from supercomputers to handhelds & embedded networking hardware, through workstations & servers, PCs & minicomputers. In its present avatars as Linux, BSD, MacOS X & a half-dozen other variants, Unix today seems stronger than ever.
  
  
• Unix's durability & adaptability have been astonishing. Other technologies come and go like mayflies. Machines have increased in power a thousandfold, languages have mutated, industry practice has gone through multiple revolutions. Still, Unix hangs in there, producing, paying the bills, and commanding loyalty from the best and brightest software minds on the planet.
  

Been learning the UNIX Shell, which uses a command-line interface (from a terminal) .. something I've wanted to do ever since we upgraded to the Virtual Private Server last year. (Linux is a variant of UNIX.)

Even basic knowledge of (how to use) the Linux command line makes life administering a VPS much easier.

The Shell is simply a program that allows users (like me) to interact with the operating system (sometimes termed the 'kernel'). It can be conceived of as a 'layer' sitting between you and the operating system .. hence the term » shell.

Several shells exist, but nearly all Linux distributions come with » bash (Bourne Again Shell) .. cuz it's free, powerful and easy to use.

On my laptop I have installed a copy of Ubuntu Linux that I use to learn the shell (practice). Before jumping into learning the Shell, I figured this was a good time to upgrade my 'installation' of Ubuntu .. to the latest release (» v9.04, 'Jaunty Jackalope').

So I downloaded » this virtual machine (1.1 gig, using uTorrent). Had trouble getting it connected to the Internet, but that was due to my own inexperience with VMware, and not due to any short-comings of Ubuntu.

Anyway, I am really digging learning the Shell, cuz it's something I can use right away. For example, yesterday I upgraded the blogging software we use here at Radified (Movable Type) to the latest version (» 4.26). Something that used to take hours to accomplish was done in minutes .. (using a series of Shell commands). Beautiful.

With world-economies teetering somewhere between a nasty recession and full-on depression, more folks are turning to open source (free) software to meet their home computing needs.

If you've been Radified any length of time, you know that cloning programs are our specialty, especially when used as a tool to backup your system partition (where Windows resides) by creating an image file.

So the question naturally becomes » What's the best free cloning program?

I've tried many options, such as Macrium and O&O DiskImage Express, but never quite found what I was looking for .. until today, that is.

Perhaps I should interject by saying that, regarding the NOT-free solutions, I've found that Ghost, along with Image-for-Windows to be the best for-co$t disk-cloning tools. (By 'best' I mean » most reliable.) Ghost is also way faster than any other cloning product I've demo'ed .. if speed is important to you.

Lots of people also like True Image, but I had problems with it. (Errors I couldn't resolve.)

But what if you can't afford those apps? Then what? We still need an industrial-strength (nuclear-grade) backup tool. Enter Clonezilla. (Standing ovation.)

First, I'm not crazy about the name .. nor the website's design, especially the tiny menu on the left-side that I can barely read. (Update - looks like they fixed the tiny-menu problem after I posted this.)

Heck, I don't even like their logo (white Linux penguin inside orange penguin). But I *am* impressed with the tool itself .. now that I've had a chance to try it.

Yes, it's significantly more complicated to use than either Ghost or Image-for-Windows, but I don't feel this complexity is a barrier to those with a moderate degree of computer sophistication. (Such as the folks who frequent Radified.)

Note that .. a cloning program can (if used inadvertantly) trash your entire system and wipe out every every file on your hard drive .. with a single click. So you can't experiment like you can with other programs (.. such Photoshop Elements or Sound Forge, for example). In other words, you need to know wtf you're doing.

Perhaps I should begin by defining some terms.

As promised, here's some photos from my South Afrikaan friend (who lives in Johannesburg). He works in the Film industry down there and loves cool technology.

Seems like he's always traveling to one exotic place or another .. places with exotic names .. like Drakensberg (Afrikaan: Devil's Mountain) and Patagonia. (Yes, I'm jealous.)

Today's photos come from » Moçambique. (I actually had to look on a map to see where that is .. as is the case with most of the photos he sends.)

Moçambique sits on the east coast of Afrika, just above South Africa. It also shares borders with Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Off its coast sits the island of Madagascar.

Steve sent 5 pics, with the following note:

Just returned from a weekend escape across the border to Moçambique. Here's some pics from the capital city, Maputo, and surrounding areas.

Jo'burg sits on a high-altitude grassy plain. In comparison to most of Africa, its climate is rather harsh and frigid. Maputo, on the other hand, is further north. It sits right on the coast, and as a result is hot, humid & verdant.

Regulars might recall when I installed a copy of Ubuntu Linux last summer .. an operation I prepared for by creating a separate 20-gig partition (on my new hard drive), which I formatted as EXT3.

Somebody in the forums (Nigel, I think) suggested using VMware (.. either the freebie 'Player' or full-boat 'Workstation' ..) to run a 'virtualized' installation.

I initially balked at the idea .. cuz I didn't grok how virtualization works. But you don't need to understand how an automobile works in order to benefit from driving one. Same goes for virtualization. And the benefits are substantial.

The coolest thing about 'virtualizing' a Linux installation .. is that you can run it from (within) Windows .. just like you can run Photoshop (from Windows) .. or any other Windows-program for that matter .. multitasking all of them at the same time.

I found that .. if you can only use/access Linux by booting into it (and thus leaving Windows behind), you're less likely to use it (.. or so it has been my experience).

So last week I deleted my EXT3 partition, and reformatted it as NTFS .. where I installed a virtual machine containing Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex'.

Intrepid even found my wireless adapter upon initial boot-up. (Woo-hoo!) No more having to troubleshoot wireless connections and installing proprietary drivers just to get internet access.

The only drawback I've found is that you can't copy-n-paste info/text (such as passwords, etc.) between programs running in Windows and those running in (virtualized) Linux. (Tho I wonder if this might help.)

When I finish using my laptop each night, I gently close the lid and shut my eyes. When I wake each morning, I lift the lid, press the power button, and return to where I was working. (Been doing this for years.)

This morning however, the laptop wouldn't start. The BIOS loaded fine, and transferred the start-up sequence to GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader).

But GRUB failed to offer a boot option, and instead kicked me back (automatically) to the BIOS .. in an endless (tho very short) loop. Sukage maximus.

Not much you can do when the boot loader fails to offer an option. I tried powering-off the laptop & powering it back on. Still no dice. "This ain't good," I muttered, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

Last summer, I installed a copy of Linux » Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron (.. to a separate 20-gig partition, formatted as EXT3).

As part of the installation, Ubuntu automatically installs a copy of the GRUB boot loader, which has worked flawlessly .. (uh, until today, that is).

My hard drive is pretty new, so I didn't think it was a problem with the drive itself failing. So maybe GRUB somehow got corrupted, I thought .. tho I did nothing that should've affected it. I mean, GRUB sits in the Master Boot Record (MBR), and I have no reason to go there.

To make matters worse, I haven't backed up in waay too long. Just yesterday, the thought passed thru my head » "You need to back up your system drive soon."

I'm not even gonna say how long it's been .. cuz I'm kinda embarrassed .. especially since Radified is very much about backing up your hard drive (with industrial strength Cloning tools).

Hello August. Feeling pressure. Next month » D-day. I'm normally good at handling stress, but this has been relentless .. like white-water rafting for weeks, or months. Actually, it's been years (plural). And here come the rapids.

Pressure. Tension. Stress. (Long-term)

If you listen carefully, you can hear things starting to crack. Tension. Makes life interesting.

Told the Dog yesterday, "I just want to be bored for one day. One day. Is that too much to ask?"

The dust won't settle 'til next month, but today was the first time I actually felt an air of victory .. like uh, that ol' dog ain't gonna bark no mo'. The writing is on the wall. (Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.)

This ain't to say I've emerged unscathed, or without scar. No. But we do what we must. Right? And victory here is defined narrowly as » not losing.

The Bug's Digital Milestone.dev

In related news .. I'm pleased to report a major developmental milestone » the Bug has mastered both point-n-click, and the click-n-drag.

Kid's software program at the library lets him click on a variety of colors (using paint-bucket palate-tool) and apply color to a picture by clicking on things such as » clouds (white), sun (yellow), trees (green), and sky (blue).

With click-n-drag, he can create rectangles or ovals, depending on the tool selected. To the ordinary observer these skills might seem trivial, but (as a certified geek) I recognized the development as a significant milestone in the digital age.

Installed Linux this weekend » Ubuntu 8.04 (released April 2008). Woohoo! I'm stoked.

Installation couldn't have been easier. After creating a 20-gig Ext3 partition on my new hard drive (see previous entry), I answered a few simple questions, stated my time zone and » Voila!

But then I booted up and couldn't connect to the internet. Ugh. Learned since that 'Wireless' is one of Ubuntu's biggest weak-spots.

Gotta be the worst place for a weakspot. Cuz everybody is wireless these days. And without internet, your PC is pretty-much worthless.

I was tempted to give up. Tried many networking configs. Nothing worked.

"Shouldn't be this difficult," I murmured, getting frustrated. (Ain't like I've never configured a network connection before. Only so many variables.)

I even carried my laptop to the coffee shop, where they have free internet, with NO password (WEP/WPA), and I still couldn't connect. So it wasn't an encryption problem (like I thought).

Ordered more memory/RAM today .. for my laptop. Currently have installed 512-MB (2x256 SODIMMs), but this thing is painfully slow. (Wait, yawn, then wait some more.)

Can't believe it was so cheap » $21 for a full gig. I bought two sticks. So I'll soon be upgrading .. to 2 full gigs (which is the max my laptop can handle). Woohoo!

I read somewhere the bottom fell out of the memory market, due to severe oversupply. So now would be a good time to stock up on the max your system can handle. Plus, RAM upgrades are stupid-easy. (Pop-out old, pop-in new.)

Whilst in the upgrade-mood, I also ordered a new hard drive. Currently have a 60-gigger installed (chock-full o' krap).