J_K9 @ Linux

Life As A Linux/Unix Admin In A Windows World

You may already have read this article - in which case I offer my sincere apologies, but it is too good to miss. “Life As A Linux/Unix Admin In A Windows World” shows how difficult it can be to fit in when you are a *NIX admin, especially amongst Windows admins, and how you must strive to show that both you and the OS you specialise in are better than the opposition.

It is a great read, as I’m sure many of you will have been in a similar situation in the past if you have a similar occupation. Something that really amazed me about the article was how apparently stupid these Windows admins were - is this the general norm in other companies?

Windows vs. Linux - A Desktop Comparison

“Windows vs. Linux - A Desktop Comparison” isn’t so much a flame war as a gallery of pretty pictures - it puts screenshots from SUSE 9.3 Live, Ubuntu 5.10 Hoary and Windows XP side by side doing similar tasks, which allows you to compare each OS’ usability quite easily.

Now, I’m not trying to take sides or anything, but… SUSE kicks ass! The GUI is much prettier than XP’s and Ubuntu’s (GNOME with Metacity), and the vibrant colours make it look much livelier and a pleasure to work on.

Overall, it is a good visual comparison and I advise you to check, because it is a great way to show how features differ between the OSes. Ultimately: To each his own!

(K)Ubuntu Dapper Flight CD 3

From the Ubuntu Announce Mailing List:

From: Colin Watson
To: ubuntu-announce-AT-lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Flight CD 3
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:02:43 +0000

Hello world,

Flight CD 3 is ready. This is the third in a series of milestone CD
images that will be released throughout the Dapper development cycle, as
images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or
installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Dapper. You
can download it here:

Europe:
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/… (Ubuntu)
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/r… (Kubuntu)

United Kingdom, and the rest of the world:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/dapper/flight-3/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/dapper/flight-3/ (Kubuntu)

Continue reading (K)Ubuntu Dapper Flight CD 3…

HyperGet Has Changed

The HyperGet project has changed. I haven’t had the time to update the official site yet, but I will as soon as I can.

The original design involved having two applications - one on the offline computer and another on the online one (as I described in an old post). But now, the design has changed radically. Having got in touch with Synaptic’s maintainer, Michael Vogt, we decided to work together to produce a more efficient and smaller HyperGet.

Continue reading HyperGet Has Changed…

25 Reasons To Convert To Linux

I came across this article about two days ago, but didn’t want to post about it until I had read it fully. “25 Reasons To Convert To Linux” has a list of, surprise surprise, 25 reasons to convert to Linux, and the article goes hand-in-hand with my “Propose A Compelling Linux Business Case”.

Businesses, educational institutions, governmental agencies and other organizations around the world are converting1 their computer operating systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux at an increasing pace. They are likewise converting their application programs from commercial software to free software (also referred to as open source software). There are at least 25 reasons for this situation, including:

…

It is a list which encompasses many different views, and it is a very good read - especially if you are contemplating switching to Linux but need that final push to allow you to do it. Top stuff.

Become Your Own Webhost In 75 Steps

I thought that this article was worthy of a mention, as it explains how to install a FreeBSD webserver (Apache) complete with MySQL, PHP5 and Perl support. While not strictly Linux, I think it’s a great way for anyone willing to host their own website for the reason that some webhosts simply do not stick to their words. Having your server right in front of you also helps if you want to install new applications or change files with the least amount of hassle.

As the fluctuating connectivity in the broadband networks here cannot be trusted, I opted for a commercial hosting solution: BlueHost. BlueHost provide an extremely simple cPanel with which you can control many of your website’s more complex features, they have a superb support team who work diligently to keep everything running smoothly, and I can’t say I’m disappointed with their $6,95 per month deal. If you want to set up your own webserver - go for it! It will be an excellent experience and an opportunity to broaden your Open Source horizons. However, BlueHost just works for me.

Linux Kernel 2.6.15.1 - First Stable Update Released

The first stable update for the 2.6.15 kernel has been released. It contains a variety of patches for crashes and security-related problems. Here’s the email sent to the kernel mailing list:

From: Chris Wright
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@kernel.org
Subject: Linux 2.6.15.1
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:04:40 -0800
Cc: torvalds@osdl.org

We (the -stable team) are announcing the release of the 2.6.15.1 kernel.

The diffstat and short summary of the fixes are below.

I’ll also be replying to this message with a copy of the patch between
2.6.15 and 2.6.15.1, as it is small enough to do so.

Continue reading Linux Kernel 2.6.15.1 - First Stable Update Released…

AppArmor Turns Open Source

AppArmor is an application security tool which was designed as an extra layer to try to prevent application flaws leading to vulnerabilities in your system. It assesses a program and then assigns it a maximum amount of memory and certain priviledges, so that Denial of Service attacks will be limited and to contain any malware which would otherwise have affected your whole system. This brilliant innovation has just been released as Open Source, and so it is being included with the latest versions of OpenSUSE.

Here is a brief overview from the AppArmor page at OpenSUSE:

Included with SUSE Linux, AppArmor is an application security tool designed to provide a highly secure yet easy to use security framework for your applications. AppArmor proactively protects the operating system and applications from external or internal threats, even zero-day attacks, by enforcing good behavior and preventing even unknown application flaws from being exploited. AppArmor security policies, called “profiles”, completely define what system resources individual applications can access, and with what privileges. A number of default profiles are included with AppArmor, and using a combination of advanced static analysis and learning-based tools, AppArmor profiles for even very complex applications can be deployed successfully in a matter of hours.

I am unsure whether it works on other distributions, but there are development .tar.gz packages which I assume can be compiled on any Linux distro - although I would bet my wallet that pre-built packages for other distros will soon be released.

A must-have security application, along with Bastille Linux!

Read the detailed description to discover how it works.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5

Three days late, but not too far behind the news yet - the long-awaited Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 is finally out!

A quick summary of some new features:

“Thunderbird 1.5 introduces several new features including a software update system, spell check as you type, built in phishing detector, auto save as draft, and support for deleting attachments from email messages. Message filtering has also been improved with new filter actions for replying and forwarding. Saved search folders can now search folders across multiple accounts.”

More information can be found in the Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Release Notes.

From: MozillaZine

Previewing KDE 4

Recently at a Linux show, John Littler saw a preview of a new version of KDE running on a KDE developer’s laptop. The interface looked cleaner than before, and apparently there was a whole raft of new stuff under the hood. John recently interviewed KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo about the forthcoming KDE 4 (due in the fall) and also a little about the recent controversy surrounding the porting of KDE to operating systems other than Linux.

KDE 4 is set to rock the Window Manager world, and the new release really is going to have a myriad of new features - as well as vast speed tweaks on the old ones. In fact, so much is changing and being added that it’s almost impossible to summarize the new addons in this post!

In my opinion, these are the most important/flashy ones:

• Switching to Qt4, which brings a host of new capabilities when it comes to visuals (via the Arthur paint engine, which also allows hardware acceleration where available) and application design (improved threading, model/view), as well as having a smaller memory footprint and allowing us to write non-GUI apps that don’t require an X server
• Selecting a new multimedia system (aRts is unmaintained and not providing what we need) - GStreamer is the most probably candidate
• Replacing the desktop and panels with a new application called Plasma
• Introducing a new set of artwork (Oxygen) and bringing an updated human interface guidelines to bear; we will be making extensive use of the SVG format for these items
• Improvements to Qt’s memory footprint (a lot of effort went into making QObject and QWidget, the base classes for most of Qt, lighter in Qt4)
• Redesigning applications so they are able to be optimized better. For example, the desktop and panels are being merged into one app, which also provides for functionality now only available in Superkaramba. The resulting design allows us to much more efficiently share application launch, graphics, and geometry coordination data while also avoiding the overhead of multiple processes where just one will do quite fine. This will allow people to have quite flashy desktops (or even simple plain ones) that are snappier and take fewer resources.

I foresee a prettier, lighter, faster KDE desktop than ever before - and boy will it be nice! Pity there aren’t any pre-release screenshots yet…

Read the article: Previewing KDE 4