Gowator

Need to figure out how to symlink python2.4.3 to python2.4. then I might be able to get it running.

Going to be now but its exactly like a file.... you just name a directoriy instead of the file you want to symlink...

@Gowator:

 

Yeah, i see what you mean... but it's inevitable if you want to produce something of good quality ;)

 

And i wonder: "Is there any use of windows programs while making a distro?".. i guess the answer is Yes?

Well the Joomla logo is pretty cool... pretty hard in firworks probably let alone GIMP but the OpenSourceMatters logo is ... well you don't even need anything as sophisticated as GIMP so just lazyness??? or someone more likely not considering ??

Its funny in a way because many of the OS fanatics are OS in a certain area.... some of the people doing the raw image converters etc. for digital cameras think its the most importanthing but possibly host their site on IIS? OpenSourceMatters aka Joomla think OS apache, perl etc. but haven't considered dreamweaver or fireworks as not OS?

My quest for a PURE OS site is based on eating dogfood... I beleive its possible to get a perfectly acceptable site using OS only tools .. but its freakin hard!!!! :D

This is OS EXCEPT the photo's and possible the get firefox logo (haven't checked it) http://linuxmigrations.hd.free.fr/glutenfree/

same here except photo's http://linuxmigrations.hd.free.fr/rico_art/

This one with the exception of the sample data pictures which are just sample data and will be dumped is 100% OS... all the logo's/sidebars etc. all in GIMP... (work in progress Im learning to write templates for the beta)

http://linuxmigrations.hd.free.fr/joomla1.5-nightly/

nadavvin: try this program

Yep I just tried it outa curiosity and it worked straight off with the wine installed by picassa....

just installed cab extract and ran the setup file :D

Take tymes website... he's hosting flash ... therefore the site is not available to everyone using only a browser. You can't acces the content without using closed source plug-ins...

The player I use was the best thing available for my needs, and it is actually open source although flash may not be. The point of the site is to promote the band, and to do that I needed a player on the site. If you know of any players that don't require a closed source plugin - please, point me in their direction :P

There are a few opensource steamers that use ogg and mp3 (which can be made opensource even if that's in a gray area) I used to have one setup but can't remember which ....

Anyway, its not a criticism... but the idea is exploring the boundaries of opensource ... if flash is really better for your needs then we hit a boundary... else perhaps someone will suggest something equally good. (this is really what Im hoping for ... :D in general not just flash )

@wakish

Download the image then use file , if you can't work it out Ill tell you :D but its a bit of fun :D

another hint: http://www.opensourcematters.org/templates...matters/images/

file <filename>

Yep, you don't have to join the free versions are easily available, and we can help out with any probs you have.

 

First try it and see if you like it before buying it at least.

Yep and we even help if you decide not to choose Mandriva....

If you have good bandwidth then I'd start off with a few live distro's.... get a feel decide your level...

there is no best distro... not even best distro for a single person sionce it changes as you get more experienced.

You can start with Kanotix... its a great install from a liveCD and thingsd are set up pretty well....

Ive given it to complete n00bs and even non computer types who's ideal reference enbds in ..for dummies and they have done fine...

Mandriva live and PC LinuxOS are both excellent starts...

following Novel/Suse and Microsoft jumping in bed I find iot hard to genuinly recomend it...

Whatever you choose... its not for life.... it certainly shouldn't be anyway all distro's have good and bad for different people at different ponts in their linux adventure....

What matters most is the learning curve... some distro's like slackware/gentoo/arch are known for it being steep... others like mandriva for being easy for beginners... its all a matter of choice....

Personally I find something like kanotix perfect for complete n00bs basically because its a no brain install with everything you need and more (needs 2GB installed minimum since the CD is highly compressed...

Mandriva needs a little config but there are wizards to help you... if they work with your hardware then great... so basically the mandriva live is a good way to check....

bank access? Whoahh... would you use the words leakiest browser for bank transactions?

Unfortunately some banks don't give you a choice. They do stupid IE-only stuff, even though it's easy to do without and still have a secure site (on the server side). The company I work for does it...and we even use .Net....

Yep my bank does it as well ... I just don't use it and ring them up ...and when they suggest IE I tell them when they pay for a copy of XP I'll start using it :D

It winds them up no end since they don't want you using their call centre ... its costs them money...

obviously when its your employer its a bit different :D

But the problem is IE6 is bad enough.... SP2 a bit better but I never saw any decent security writeups about using it under wine... It might be safer ..? It might not?

I agree with tyme, its a fact of life unfortunately....

 

Reinstall? The entire system, or just ssh server?

Well it depends on how paranoid ?

Try a live cd with a check rootkit (kanotix works) ... obviously the ultimate is reinstall from scratch ...

not always a bad thing if you have played about with stuff... then decided to harden security ...I just reinstalled debian stable on my server because I had largely played about a lot and lost track ... just odd changing permissions here and there ... usually stuff I mean to be temporary and then forget ...:D

I get hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands per day...

 

I seem to get merely scores. Most of them from India, China, Korea, etc. This is the first I have noted from within the US.

Yeah hosting websites does that .... but I think also its sorta random... groups of script kiddies decide to have a go at a host and I guess its a competition... they already have control of hundreds and use these to attack you.

Watch out for dictionary attacks.... I now have my public facing username extremely long... its a pain to type but its more of a passphrase ... and the password is equally long.

Most dictionary attacks start aa, ab, ac etc. I had a two letter user who was cracked ... it only takes 26^26 combinations to find that username and these attacks can come from hundreds of places at once when they hijack enough hosts...so for instance you can be on aa,ab from Bulgaria and ja,jb from Poland etc.

 

I have not (yet) seen dictionary attacks, but have instead seen attacks with a long list of names tried in largely alphabetical order. I would guess that they just loaded a list from a "baby names" book into the script they are running, so with a long enough list, and user names that are real peoples names, they will eventually hit one of them - not that I have many users, this is after just my home system with very few users anyway.

That was how it started for me :D I dumped the logs a while ago they were massive... but they started off like you say then progressed...

I have some user names in "allow", and several entries in "deny". If I understand this correctly, being not listed in "allow", or specifically listed in "deny" will not let any other user name in, so in a way, it's a double protection.

Yep I have ALL users in deny except one.... really one is all you need unless your using nxserver etc. and want GUI desktops etc. over the internet.

Tis set up here with a 2048 rsa key. At the moment, I still have password entry allowed, but that is for the benefit of the one "test user", a friend who has already helped with tightening security here. I plan on turning that off prior to leaving for my next trip so without a rsa public key, should not be able to get on at all.

Well just deny all users except that and make the username password long... if its your buddies old address or something its amazing how fast you get to typing it...

try a different port for a week .... :D works wonders....

 

Got a range I should pick from?

No expert here but any your not using.... it doesn't really matter to ssh

nmap -sT hostname

see

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/R...rver-ports.html

Why do you need to run IE?

 

Testing web designs and doing some bank transactions is good enough a reason- or not?

Which wine version? Latest ones use IE6 skin and gecko engine, which is a real pain to setup. Last wine version that used a "native" (sorry...) IE6 was 0.9.10, if I'm not mistaken. Also Crossover Office does not use the Gecko hack.

Good reason .... very very very bad reason!

Testing is a good reason .... bank access? Whoahh... would you use the words leakiest browser for bank transactions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Security

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125772-page,3/article.html

8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

 

Full of features, easy to use, and a virtual engraved invitation to hackers and other digital delinquents, Internet Explorer 6.x might be the least secure software on the planet. How insecure? In June 2004, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) took the unusual step of urging PC users to use a browser--any browser--other than IE. Their reason: IE users who visited the wrong Web site could end up infected with the Scob or Download.Ject keylogger, which could be used to steal their passwords and other personal information. Microsoft patched that hole, and the next one, and the one after that, and so on, ad infinitum.

 

To be fair, its ubiquity paints a big red target on it--less popular apps don't draw nearly as much fire from hackers and the like. But here's hoping that Internet Explorer 7 springs fewer leaks than its predecessor.

You don't make a financial commitment with your competition in a free market enterprise system unless there's something in it for you. That's economics 101. Oh... that's right, this is MS we're talking about. I'd like to be wrong, but the MS spin machine and legal dept. are legendary for manipulating and massaging the patent office, the D. O. J. and many of the world's PC users for the past 15 years. I wonder what special powers Novell thinks it has that will keep them from winding up as a brown smear in the MS underpants.

No comment necassary....

This is also military tactics 101 - hold your friends close and your enemies closer.. Even if MS DOESN'T sue Novell or any other linux enterprise, they have the unethical and financial wherewithal to gut any serious market (enterprise) venture of GNU/linux vis a vis perception. All it takes is one well placed "threat" of suit or a manufactured publicity campaign and it's back to square one for opensource. They CAN'T crush opensource, but they can clamp a really , REALLY, REALLY BIG ball and chain on it.

Yes, yes, yes.....

This is exactly the point .... MS have never been able to crush linux because MS only knows one way to play the game. That is buy them out or financially ruin them....if they can't do that see reb2's comment ..

MS couldn't screw IBM to the wall, couldn't buy them out... and couldn't financially ruin them and IBM can afford to play the MS court circuit game of financially breaking a company by taking them to court over something they know they would lose but simply dragging it out so long it financially cripples the company.

So what happened.... well MS more or less ignores IBM...MS tried a few patent strikes and IBM just played them at their own game.... At the end of the day MS has invented .....( ) pretty much nothing ever. Everything has been stolen/bought or aquired ... starting with DOS ...MS don't have a single invention ever... just for fun take something you think is MS and trace it back... I can't think of a single thing even the crappiest stuff like LANMAN ... and the biggest laugh of all is Windows ... yeah sure I was using DecWindows when DOS was a baby...

IBM on the other hand has thousands (actually hundreds of thousands) of original patents ...by origial I mean conceived and developed from scratch...

In 2005, IBM received 2,974 U.S. patents from the USPTO. This is the thirteenth consecutive year that IBM has received more US patents than any other company in the world. In addition to delivering these innovations through its products and services, IBM maintains an active patent and technology licensing program.

So IBM is immune ... Microsoft violates tens of thousands of IBM patents ... so it can't be bought, blackmailed or bribed.

Novell on the other hand ....

Well take netware.... originally based on netbuei based on netbios... all developed by a third company and guess who pressured that company into selling its patents...

Now.....while they're doing all of this in the good ole U S of A, why not take a little trip overseas for some fun and profit and cloak yourself in the new hitech "value added" Linux from MS/Novell? The emerging software market in India and China are going to make someone vomit fountains of cash. That someone probably could not go into these countries wearing the mask of MS, but if they were wearing an OpenSuse mask, well... that would be different. A paltry 3 million dollars could buy a foreign ad campain portraying MS as the repentant bad boy, who has seen the light in opensource and is going to be the third world's technology saviour for the 21st century. In a related story, I wonder if plunking down a bunch of "free" hospitals and schools will help the Indians ,Chinese, and Russians decide which software to buy?

 

cynical I know ... but it's a great sounding story. ;)

Yep 3 Million on ads and 3 billion on bribes.... and if they do it right they can probably get a tax rebate on the bribes... and then get a contribution from the state dept for the money they just claimed back as a expense... and all in the name of Free competition?

Isn't joomla open-source then? I was reading their website, it seems to be so :unsure:

 

Or at least it says:

 

f you want to distribute, copy or modify Joomla!, you are welcome to do so under the terms of the GNU General Public License. If you are unfamiliar with this license, you might want to read 'How To Apply These Terms To Your Program' and the 'GNU General Public License FAQ'

 

from here: http://www.joomla.org/content/view/5/6/

 

hope it's easy as it seems they make out, I might give it a go.

Yes, its open source... yes its very cool and yes its simple...

BUT....

That is not the same as a 100% Opensource/openstandards website....

Take tymes website... he's hosting flash ... therefore the site is not available to everyone using only a browser. You can't acces the content without using closed source plug-ins... (not a criticism, I guess the reason for the site was hosting these tracks, Im just pointing it out and I have non Opensource stuff on my site like photo's)

Take www.opensourcematters.org

Work out why the site is NOT opensource .... (clue download the image)

So most Joomla templates have used non opensource tools to create them... again fair enough but I wanted my website to be 100% opensource/open standards...

The only part I have problems with is photo's....its impossible to have opensource photo's unless you scan them since the camera firmware is NOT opensource. Digital cameras do not take jpegs... they convert the CCD info to jpegs.. The closest you can get is a camera supporting openraw and then use opensource converters to write jpg's... these exist but they are crap for professional quality prints... GiMP is impossible to use since it works in 8bit color space .. its fine for websites but absolutely unusable for any pro quality photo's... my saved TIFF's are 25-30MB each with compression ... for 16bit TIFF's .. Gimp can't even open them without disguarding 90% of the detail... so if I host my photo's my website can't be 100% opensource...

I agree with tyme, its a fact of life unfortunately....

I get hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands per day...

Watch out for dictionary attacks.... I now have my public facing username extremely long... its a pain to type but its more of a passphrase ... and the password is equally long.

Most dictionary attacks start aa, ab, ac etc. I had a two letter user who was cracked ... it only takes 26^26 combinations to find that username and these attacks can come from hundreds of places at once when they hijack enough hosts...so for instance you can be on aa,ab from Bulgaria and ja,jb from Poland etc.

Turn off ssh1

Protocol 2

try a different port for a week .... :D works wonders....

try using denyhosts (a package)... it automatically bans IP's for X number of failed logins.by adding to your hosts.deny.. and mails you.

My hosts.deny has well over 5000 entries....

NEVER EVER post a username on a board.... I get thousands of attempted logins with gowator as the username... where do they get it? Well my sig has my static IP address and I guess they figure I must have a gowator user? It makes it twice as easy if they know a valid user name ..then they can concentrate on the password... and with 30,000 attempts a day ....???

Example username password....

g0wat0rsu3k3eggs4dinn3r/m0nk3ys3atp3anuts4fun

This way they have 23^36 combinations for the username.... but I doubt they try past x chars.... apart from dictionary words .. each run takes exponentially longer and though they are not from their own computer they will soon give up.... what they want is another drone host to attack someone else..

What are we supposed to make now? :unsure:

 

the two sites i've written myself (http://theory-music.com being one) have all been done in open source apps (gimp + screem).

sorry busy few days...........

Anyway... Cool .. I think the next step is you just post ...:D say which tools for what and what you liked and what was a challenge.

Here is a good example of non opensource tools; ironic isn't it?

http://www.opensourcematters.org/

I found this out after trying to make my website 100% OpenSource...

I really struggled with Joomla and had to create my own template from scratch because templates with opensource tools just don't seem to exist?

Same goes fo a lot of KDE/Gnome themes.... so I statred wondering... is it just me or are mostof these made using non opensource apps?

As above....its probably more than one package...

but in any/either case non of them will cause any harm by being installed (presuming they didn't overwrite libs) .. so its got to be something added to your xorg.conf and/or the Xsession line....

Im guessing its either composite extension in xorg or loading a loadable driver....(OpenGL) etc. and you can proabpy find the offerndor in the log file in /var/log/Xorg0.log

or just shut down the dm (in mandr* /etc/init.d/dm stop)

and startx from a CLI

if this is working fine then its probably the kdm config or the ksm config is using a different Xsession line

ps -ef | grep X

root 2646 2640 0 Nov05 tty7 00:06:53 /usr/bin/X -br -dpi 100 -br :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-qM7fh2

this is different for XGL... so you just find that line and stick it back....

The trick is finding the right one :D

tip find the line then do a recursive search like

find ./ -type f -exec grep <XGL> {} \;

where XGL is the name in the line you get from ps -ef| grep X

Yep your router is not holding the resolution for the address...(or forwarding it properly)

Just checking your not behind a proxy are you? or your router isn't acting as one?

The easiest fix is just to add another DNS server (almost any will do) as an extra option...

Here is mine....

nameserver 192.168.1.255

nameserver 212.27.54.252

nameserver 212.27.53.252

iot looks first at the local one and if it doesn't find it has the two from my ISP to search too

The prob I had with ubuntu was fixing the DHCP add to stop overwriting this!

Its probably easier to use your ISP's DNS alround (if a few ms slower) or just add it to the resolv.conf

edit

oops wrong button...

make sure the hosts: line in nsswitch.conf reads

hosts: files dns

then it checks the hosts file first.

Thanks Neddie.

 

In my situation there is nothing covering the GO button (no part page or menu or anything). It is just invisible in its actual location.

Just hovering the mouse pointer over the correct spot where it should be brings it up and left clicking activates it as it should, so there is no need to use the keyboard at all.

What I am trying to find out is what setting in Firefox (2007) causes the button to be hidden.

I have checked the same site page in Konqueror and it is there AOK.

 

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at the website yourself as you did.

 

Cheers. John.

John,

Firefox rendering in Mozilla is way more forgiving of errors than anything else. (including konqueror) ...

I found this out 'the hard way' making sites and using firefox to check what they look like...and then being told by people that it didn't render properly... at this point I knew it had errors just nothing fatal but firefox rendered it based on a best guess wheras konq looked way wrong and IE just a jumbled mess.

However as I got more into this you learn IE needs its own errors specially added to work properly... especially over things like redirections (this is even built into apache) but also many layout items etc.

My guess is nothing is wrong with your settings ...

Script" src="/res/javascript/omniture/s_code.js"></script>

is just plain wrong ...

From html ref W3C example

BAD <script language="Javascript">

 

GOOD <script type="text/javascript">

a bit firther up I find

line 372 column 8 - Warning: missing </a> before <p>

This leads to creating its own error

line 373 column 79 - Warning: discarding unexpected </a>

which iself then causes another error .. etc.

The moz-rendering engine it simply having its best guess....

Unfortunately I always found the same with Mandriva....

In the end I have just given up ... compiled what they pretend is the source and used that kernel and then used that .. they don't seem to like giving up the tweaks they have done IMHO... so they provide a kernel-source and I guess remove patches or whatever... (you can't really tell since the .config doesn't make the same kernel???)

 

If you want an easy option just recompile that kernel ... if you want a tweake mandriva one then sometimes they work..you just have to try lots...

Alternatively you could get one from kernel.org and patch yourself... OR ... use one someone else has made.

I have a suggestion (kano does some great kernels and its all scripted... downloads from kernel.org, patches and everything so could be easier than starting from scratch)

 

You can just download the scripts (no need to install kanotix) ..worse case you get an extra kernel...

 

You can also try the vmware-any patch

http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-update104.tar.gz

 

which seems to smooth over minor differences...

 

Thank you for the help. vmware-any-any-update104 has got it to build, but it will not run now. When I run vmplayer from the command line it says

 

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

 

then nothing, it stops.

 

I have googled this error a bit, and it is a total minefield. In fact, some suggest that the error above is NOT what is actually stopping it running, as theirs will produce the error then continue on to run.

 

:unsure:

Mine does exactly as you say.... gives those errors then starts up...

just checking, your not trying to run it as root?

Unfortunately I always found the same with Mandriva....

In the end I have just given up ... compiled what they pretend is the source and used that kernel and then used that .. they don't seem to like giving up the tweaks they have done IMHO... so they provide a kernel-source and I guess remove patches or whatever... (you can't really tell since the .config doesn't make the same kernel???)

If you want an easy option just recompile that kernel ... if you want a tweake mandriva one then sometimes they work..you just have to try lots...

Alternatively you could get one from kernel.org and patch yourself... OR ... use one someone else has made.

I have a suggestion (kano does some great kernels and its all scripted... downloads from kernel.org, patches and everything so could be easier than starting from scratch)

You can just download the scripts (no need to install kanotix) ..worse case you get an extra kernel...

You can also try the vmware-any patch

http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-update104.tar.gz

which seems to smooth over minor differences...

Its pretty accurate right down to the one glaring oversight ... he already stated his reasons for quiting as Mandrake10 not installing after he paid up....

It seems rather shortsighted to think that 2007 working means 2008 will work.... on_his_machine ...because this is the typical mandr* problem which siphons off experienced mandr*vers to slower moving but more relaible distro's in terms of hardware support....

I really can't think of any single thing with Mandriva that pisses people more.... and Im not talking about new leading edge hardware Im talking about established mature chipsets.

People come over from windows and .. mostly it either works or it doesn't..(and largely when it fails its the actual installer so these people never even see what they are missing).. said n00b then either just goes back to Windows or tries another distro ....

However lets say 80% make it through....they then actively buy supported devices they know work under Mandr* version X... and then its release time and suddenly the whole thing stops working.. you can't install or the devices you bought no longer work....

In overall, linux is quiet suited for desktop use, but not every distribution. There are indeed some really easy to install and maintain distros like Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse. However, there are few that are tough nuts.

 

Windows has only one flavor, you may like or not but it is common and relatively simple for average person's understanding, what contributes to its popularity in the masses. When i started with linux, i didn't know what to choose, so i thought to myself: "There are dozens of distros, what shall i choose? The hell, why bother at all, i don't need it." After a month or so, i decided do try Debian - big mistake. Debian was not intuitive, alien and weird creature. Even now, after using linux for about a year, i don't think i could configure it my way. Debian is great stable system for servers (just an example) but very not comfortable for a desktop use, in my opinion.

Well perhaps ... however this does illustrate the big differences between distro's...

I think a primary difference is going back to the old UNIX concept of how you build a system. Some distro's like Gentoo still keep this as a very real thing... where build means compile from scratch...

Its a philosophy, not a product and installing Gentoo isn't really that hard... if you can read and follow detailed instructions.

Debian has a similar philosophy ... especially the netinstall which basically sets you up a very basic minimum of the kernel, apt and networking ...however that doesn't make it that difficult to configure either.. what you do need is a knowledge of what packages you need ... and to an extent answers to some questions it will ask you.. some of those questions can be intimidating and some of those names of packages hard to know you want to install however like Gentoo the crucial ingredient is actually not so much knowledge but a buy in into the philosophy and ability to read/learn...

In many ways you could compare it to learning a language... any one who was taught part of a second language at school (which I presume you speak at least 2) can have widely different experiences not because of their ability but because of their perceptions and prejudice.

Given your locale I could use an example of Ugaric languages... the emtology is to a large extent blurred but how many Isreali's speak semi-fluent arabic and yet its the closest 'largely spoken' language to Hebrew ...? and indeed varies within itself almost as widely as the differences. (better not dig deeper in that area here).. In the same way many Spanish people speak excellent English and yet no Italian or French or even Portuguese? (and you can swap all of those about pretty much) ... The differences are rather minor compared to English yet probably 90% of the time stick a Spaniard and Frenchman together and their common language is likely to be English which is much further removed from thier native tongues than each other... and if you want to find a Spaniard and Frenchman and Italian who can all converse natively in one language then the chances are it will be Arabic and not even real Arabic but the bastardised Beur of North Africa. The same can be said of Scandanvian countires whom steadfastly refuse to speak the very minor differences between them. Stick Linus and a Norwegian in a room and logically they should speak Swedish ... yet most Finnish people I know REFUSE to speak Swedish at all and much prefer English. Likewise most Norwegians, especially Eastern Bokmal speakers (since a country of 6 million has decided it needs two distinct languages??) can understand and speak Swedish if they wanted... by definition ALL FINNS who graduated from university (i.e. most Finns, I don't know a single one who didn't) speak fluent Swedish.. you can't graduate without it....its required. Granted the two languages are as completely different as Japanese and English yet every single Finn I know refuses point blank to Speak Swedish ... and if finnish has any relationship at all with anything else then Basque is about the closest after Hungarian... yet I have met quite a few Spanish Basques who refuse to speak Spanish but will happily speak French? They are even willing to be violent if you try Spanish they simply HATE the languge ....

True story: I was on a work meal in Spain with about 30-40 people and my boss at the time spoke fluent Spanish.. our other Argentinian colleague was for once happy to speak a little of his native tongue. The resto told us in no uncertain terms if he continued to Speak Spanish they would throw all of us out ... Holy-moly ... they really hate it that much? I guess so....?

A school in Belgium has recently banned French from the school...and I don't mean classroom..I mean school premises... if parents wish to converse with their kids and don't speak Dutch then they have to take a translator?? (or speak a third language.... English is OK...as is Arabic but utter a single Alors! in French when you stub your toe and your suspended?

The same goes for Linux distro's.... 90% of the time the common 'OS' between two linux users is Windows...The differences across the distro's are pretty minor and even to *BSD are much closer but try the same thing as the language and all of a sudden the C: nomenclature is has more common than the hdx linux nomenclature or the *bsd or Solaris ones which are far more closely related?

Like the Belgian school Debian lovers are more or less hated by many Gentooers who spend more time looking for the differences than the 99% of commonaility.

Linux offers a lot of free software and that is one of its main advantages. Yet not all software is stable enough and meets all the demands.

Some proprietary software are coded more professionally, better tested and suited better for a specific job. You also may get support from its creator.

Well I frequently correspond with linux developers, maintainers etc. but I have yet to meet anyone who got Bill on the phone.....;). or more seriously even the Office developers...

People who want to make money are interested that their software would be the best, so they make big efforts to assure this. OS developers are free of this bond and work hard, but with different ideology in mind.

Again I don't really agree.... at least not across the board... indeed many commercial software vendors have no interest in their software being "the best" ... indeed its largely irrelevant ... all they care about is its the most popular or more accurately generating the most revenue and the two are far from the same and history has proven the betamax concept over and over... mass adoption has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with market dominance.

In many cases market dominance has been based on bundling a piece of crappy software like IE ... and to a large extent MS Office. There was nothing wrong with word2.0 specifically, nor Excel 5.0 but feature wise Lotus and wordperfect had more features... the total market dominance we have today of MS Office is not because it was better but because it was pre-installed and like betamax the other superior products couldn't compete with "Just send me the Excel file" because MS spent more time making it incompatible than adding features. Just like the early betamax adopters found out they couldn't rent videos or lend them to friends the early WP/Lotus adopters found they couldn't share documents, at least not without loosing formats.

This wouldn't have been quite so sad if MS backward compatibility had been better... in many cases importing a version x,y,z powerpoint file into Lotus did a better job than importing a x+1,y,z file from different office versions... The reason its sad is people just accepted this.... and each person accepting it and upgrading a version of Word did so not for the features (as I already said Word 2 was perfectly good as a word processor) but the primary reason was ... being able to send and receive properietry format .doc's!

To this end they found they had to upgrade the PC.. and that meant upgrading the OS and the Office suite and for 80%? of office users gaining nothing new...

Indeed I would say that for 95% of things done in whatever version of word is being used today the same could have been achieved easier and faster in Word 2.0... really a business letter is still a business letter ...

So in a way we are back to language and dialects....Norwegian is not a language, much as Norwegians want it to be its merely two dialects of the Nordic family. Bokmal is closer to Swedish than Nynorsk the other language which is itself closer to Danish and both Danish and Swedish are far richer languages than either Norwegian dialect so many Norwegian authors have ... well written in English .... rather than borrow a few words from richer languages which are closer.

and the weird thing.... this mostly happened as a direct result of WP and/or lotus spending a lot of time on import filters and export filters for MS word... such that a WP user would "SaveAs Word" and the Lotus user would "Import word xx format"

The simple fact is market dominance and controlling the standards is what counts most in technology and quite often is the only deciding factor... slowly the WP and Lotus users just adopted the common standard.

I have been using laptops for what seems like forever. My first was a Toshiba 8086 class machine with a huge 20MB drive. From there I went to luggable machines which I kept upgrading whenever I would find a motherboard that would fit inside the case and could handle the display properly. I have had AST, Toshiba, Sharp and IBM machines. The ONLY machines that I will buy nowadays are the IBM Thinkpads although I do want to try out the new Panasonic Toughbooks ( I sail and want to run GPSDrive on the boat).

 

My first Thinkpad 380XD is still running and has been upgraded to Mandriva 2006. I sold it this past year to a writer who doesn't do anything but text and email. The battery is toast but everything else is just like it was on day one. Every key still works, the red IBM pointer has never been replaced, the floppy still works.

 

At the moment, I am using my T23 with Mandriva 2007. Everything works execpt the modem and those I don't care about. Sound, DVD, cd burning, USB, hibernation, wireless; it's all good. I have installed Mandriva 10.1, 2006 and now 2007 on 5 different T23s and they all work beautifully. Bang for the buck, the best machine around.

Good point.... My friend had a gateway and the battery became toast... but it won't even start without a battery with some charge, even when plugged in! I actually have the old laptop she threw out and when I get time will rip it open and see if I can't defeat the built in obsolence but this rather illustrates the difference between the top notch and "disposable" ones...

p.s. check out the Mac laptops too....

The IBM's are solid and have the advantage of being useful in a fight... someone tries to steal it hit em with it and you'll do serious damage... (to them not the laptop)... whereas the Mac's are just lacking that weight :D

Anyway... as I have said before... the most important thing for a laptop is fitness for intended purpose as patrickrea illustrates....

For instance I have a friend who's main reason for buying a laptop is limited space and they have to clear the dining table to use it... battery life is not an issue since it can be plugged in... and I'll bet the IBM patrickrea sold would have done her fine... her primary concern was to be able to take it off the table in one go...

every laptop is a compromise so working out what you want in terms of features is the most important issue IMHO

David,

I'm not using Mandriva so can't really massively help with the Mandriva partitioning and mounting tool except to say if I remember there is an advanced button to press (least wise last time I tried).... its not exactly overly visible ... from what I remember :D

As a tip.. you can't actually change anything while the drive (or more accurately partition) is mounted ....

From what yuo say Im presuming you have mandriva installed on your hda1 (primary master or what would be C: by default in Windows) so this shouldn't represent a problem...

Swapfile config....

Well you don't need a per drive swap file... indeed you don't *need* a swap file at all... but in general its a good idea... (linux gets bvery peeved when it runs out of memory)

Performance wise its best to have the swap on a DIFFERENT drive to the one you are using as the root partition (all other things being equal) since then you can read from one wile writing to the other... but this is not important in general... you can also have more than one swap file... and actually give them priorities .. again advanced stuff

For mounting... whatever tool you use... its manipulating the mount options...

This can be done two ways in linux ...

Firstly one off you can mount any device as a one off from the CLI specificying any options...

mount /dev/hdb1 /media/hdb1 -rw -U <uuid>, -t <vfstype>

<uuid is a user ID what you get if you type id as your user>

<vfstype is the filesystem type like ext3> this is optional but recommended otherwise mount guesses the filesystem type (so for critical stuff its best to be specific)

-o

Options are specified with a -o flag followed by a comma separated string of options. Some of these options are only useful when they appear in the /etc/fstab file. The following options apply to any file system that is being mounted (but not every file system actually honors them - e.g., the sync option today has effect only for ext2, ext3 and ufs):

so from here you get the options to put into the /etc/fstab file

This is the second way to mount in linux... or more accuratly its a list of the options you want to put into mount... so for instance you can use mount -a or mount -a -t nfs etc.... and similarly with unmount

For example if you set up -o rw,users then a normal user can mount/unount which is sometimes convenient

Anything which is default or not explicitly -noauto is mouinted with the mount -a command

This is what happens each time you boot anyway so adding the entry to fstab means it will be automatically mounted by (default root unless you specify user) this doesn't prevent you read/writing... just who can unmount it...

So...

/dev/hdb1 /media/hdb1 ext3 users, rw

If you make sure the /media/hdb1 directory where it will be mounted can be rw from the user

the simplest (and insecure but you can worry about this later) way is just chmod 777 /media/hdb1

It must be unmounted when you do this or it will fail (and say why)

as root

umount /dev/hdb1 (will accomplish this)

p.s. You are asking good questions.... if/when you need more detail just ask :D but you will get the best answers with smart questions like your asking...

Try boot into singel user mode (runlevel 1) by pressing esc at the bootmenu and insert the name of the bootoption followed by a space and 1.

Maybe you can solve your problem from there...

Also try typing your password as login name.. just check you have the right keymap loaded!

I'm a big SGI fan too, there's a couple of octanes and a origin 2000 hanging around the office. Whilst they're pretty much useless for research these days I can't bring myself to throw them away!

 

In my professional life I'm a computational chemist and there's a UK wide working party that have just bought a new computer as a central resource. It's an SGI altix with 224 Itanium 2 cores, 896 GB of RAM and some silly number of TB of storage. Perhaps that's what's helped bring SGI back to life ;)

 

I really hope they survive.

Perhaps it's part of it, but building super computers won't save them and they know it. That's why they got rid of IRIX and changed to Linux. I bet they will start to make cheap servers if they haven't started yet. That's what can save them.

The two are IMHO pretty seperate...and laergely missing out on the mentality of the engineers...

I don't think they bought Cray to save them.... I think they bought it because they thought it was cool.

So long as they have enough to eat most days most of the techies have no desire to sell cheap...

Thier lowest end server is still about $20k

2 x SGI Altix 330 1U Base System. Each contains 2 Drive Bays and 1 x 133MHz PCI-X Slot

4 x 1.5GHz/4MB L3 Cache Itanium2 Processor

2 x 2GB DIMM Set Memory (4x512MB), 166MHz

1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA 2 HDD

Its simply not in the mentaility of SGI engineers to cut corners/costs... and I can imagine most of the engineers find working with x86 derived motherboards extremely distateful... basically because the design is "the sum of everything cheap" ...

Now Im not saying everyone needs a backpane with bandwidths measured in hundreds of GB/sec... Im just saying that is what SGI do.... its not an efficient business model but I doubt they care...

Its largely like Ferarri or Lamboughini selling a $5000 runaround...its just not happening... Lambourghini make perfomance cars and performance farm machinary... they don't make consumer items.

This is largely what makes SGI what it is....

Some manufacturers try and play both ends... BMW sells cheap consumer models, as does Jaguar and now Mercedes ... even Porche sells the Boxter (nice) but Ferarri and Lambourghini are only interested in non-consumer items and if it doesn't include a waiting list to buy one they aren't going to make it.

The bottom line is a Jaguar X-Series is just a crappy Mondeo with a different body shell and trim... and in the same way an x86 motherboard is always a x86 motherboard ... you can add PCI-E all you like but the basic motherboard design is crap compared to a real backpane like you get in a SGI ...

Sun are more commercially minded... they make x86 based PC's like the U10 etc. and IBM so the same and have been doing for a while but sun can never really compete with Dell or whoever on price however many corners they cut.

But the bottom line is not the CPU, Im not saying x86 CPU's are crap, I'm saying the chassis is crap...

Its like the X-types ... whatever Jaguar do with tuning, suspension etc. its still a consumer chassis from a Mondeo. The same goes for x86 .. the actual motherboard design is just a cheap consumer solution ... totally unswitched and hence limited in throughput and compensated by clock cycles...

Its rather like my car .. a Peugeot 306... its got 170hp (unmodified from a 2l 4 stroke injection) and redlines somewhere about 7500 RPM... I have had it up to 240bhp and redlining at 8900 (but put it back for insurance reasons) ... and I have heard of people getting 300hp+ from a basic 2l 4cyl....

There isn't much commercially available under $100,000 I couldn't take on 0-60 or even just top speed ...and M5's were best viewed through the rear mirror (even though they come as standard with 540bhp) they are a lot heavier... and 0-60 I could easily drop a very cheap low end Ferarri like a Maranello....which is only $200,000 or so... because its 0-60 is pretty lousy (4.2 secs) indeed the 306 Maxi rolled of the production line (of 2000) with 280 at 8800 rpm... and 1104 kg ... and is easily capable of a 3 sec 0-60 ..

The difference though is the Maranello with its 6l V12 develops not only 515 hp@ 7,250 rpm but an enormous 434 ft·lbf of torque @ 5,250 rpm so you can start off in first, drop it into 6th at 15 mpg and still get a sub 5 secs 0-60.... which is completely smooth ...

So yep, Ive upped the revs so the 4cyl screams like a motorbike and replaced the injection system with a twin turbo and I got a really fun car to drive... being a passenger however is a different matter since the ride is quite the opposite of smooth.... the huge 6 pot brakes work great... just touch them and you can decellerate like you hit a brick wall (and god help a passenger not ready for it)

I haven't actually been in a Maranello but my brother has an AMG tuned Merc SLK... Its completely different to my little rally tuned 306... just driving the 306 in traffic is hard work... its extremely reactive and no room for mistakes... drop from 6th to 3rd by accident at 140mph while hitting the gas and your front wheels will leave the tarmac in a puff of smoke .... while the car slides all over the place. (not pleasant on a busy track)

The reason I say all this is it must be obvious I like my car :D but its not and never can be a SLK or Maranello ... I can get raw power but the emphasis is RAW... and I do this mainly by beefing up the engine in terms of CPU cycles ... and beefing up the components around it like the brakes ... but in the end its still a 306 chassis.... its still a 4cyl 2L engine... etc. and the torque is still lousy compared with the standard 1.9L turbo deisel Peugeot engine... (which will also probably run 10x longer)

This is very much what the x86 architecture does... it increases CPU cycles and by extension the bus speeds but it doesn't and never can have the throughput (read torque) that a proper switched backplane can have.

So its not a critique of x86.. Im saying its a different beast... perhaps I should have used a truck as a example...?? You can move 5000 motherboards from say Atlanta to NY far faster in a semi-artic than you can in a racing car taking one or two at once....

This is why switched backplanes excel in very huge mutliuser operations.... because they are designed to do that... not run CPU cycles... which is like horsepower but throughput which is like torque...

Intel has made a fortune selling CPU cycles....and that is what the average consumer wants but 3D modelling demands throughput...

I guess this is just for fun but I have an idea for OpenSource and eating dogfood ...

I constantly see stuff for opensource apps (like themes) using non opensource tools...

Sometimes its because the person making the theme knows the software better abd sometimes the opensource equivalent might not be quite as good...

I got nothing against people making Joomla templates using dreamweaver and/or photoshop... Im just thinking it would be interesting to see where the limits are :D

So the idea is any theme, skin, manipulation, desktop etc. you want for an opensource app. using ONLY opensource tools... (KDE/gome whatever)

Lets see how many are interested.... and then list what we needed to accomplish it .. what we tried and what was good and what was bad.

Please no cheating (i.e. writing the file in photoshop then opening and save as in GiMP etc... it defeats the object which is to push the limits of opensource....

Equally if you do run into a barrier I guess you don't need to restrict yourself totally... go ahead and use photoshop or whatever for the operations you NEED and just be honest :D indeed I guess we can have categories and still give prizes (huge kudos on MUB :D) for actually finding the limit...

i.e. Go ahead and use photoshop and say WHY.... and if noone can find an opensource way to do it you can win the category "over the limit"

suggested categories would be

"pushing the limit"

"over the limit"

"outstanding artwork"

"the most cunning use of an opensource tool"

points can be given in the following areas ?

"most inventive use" (if you can do it in a windows opensource app under wine for example)

"using the max of the feature set"

"overcoming restrictions (like GiMP's 8 bit color space)

"artistic merit"

So what do you guys think....

Im thinking personally I could revisit some things I personally cheated on for convenience and have another go in OpenSource apps.

The idea came when listing the software I use for my website ... and what I used .. its easy to say 100% opensource but I edited a font in a Windows app for instance when I could have maybe done it opensource... and I then used this font in the GiMP... to create the banner.

So who is on to explore the boundaries for OpeSource apps ?

hmm... but its working with kde, why wont it work with gnome?

Good question ....

I'm using beryl and though I can't say its without problems I think its easier than XGL ...

specifically you can startup in normal Gnome with metacity and then activate emerald .... it might still crash.. go wonky ?? but the error messages are a bit more useful IMHO... and it can fall back onto the defined WM ... so you can edit a couple of files and try again....