Category: Linux

Categories
Linux

Digg “Linux Nation” for Thursday September 20th 2007

I’ll be posting a new “Linux Nation” every Thursday starting today. Why Thursday? Why not. It’s a not so busy day for me, and I started it last week on Thursday, so I’ll keep doing what works.

  1. SUPERGUIDE: How to replace Windows completely with Linux
    ‘Number 1 With A Bullet’ is a “superguide” and that’s no kidding. A 10-part series of articles on replacing Windows completely with Linux. Part 1 through 9 is a list of tasks, such as installing, email and device connectivity, and part 10 is the conclusion. Go ahead, skip straight to the conclusion (like I did), but please read the rest of the articles.
  2. Funny (but real) linux commands and results
    Oh my… funny errors from Linux commands. I’m pretty sure this is really old, since many of the commands do not work in the BASH shell, but now it’s making the rounds again, making people laugh out loud about something like this one:
    % “How would you rate Quayle’s incompetence?
    Unmatched “.
    3. Continue reading “Digg “Linux Nation” for Thursday September 20th 2007”
Categories
Linux

Busybox Creators Sue Monsoon Over GPL Violation

Here’s the jist of things:

Busybox, the guys who make a single, small, optimized package which contains a total of 17 useful GPL tools bundled into one. From their website:

“It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in bzip2, coreutils, file, findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, modutils, net-tools, procps, sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim.  The utilities in BusyBox often have fewer options than their full-featured cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their larger counterparts.”

Vs:

Monsoon, who makes consumer devices primarily for home multimedia users which are close in function to the SlingBox. They decided to take busybox and use it, without releasing source code as required by the GNU Public License. That’s a shame. I guess we’ll finally see the GPL proven in court in the USA for the first time.

“We licensed BusyBox under the GPL to give users the freedom to access and modify its source code,” said Erik Andersen, a developer of BusyBox and a named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Sept. 19 in Manhattan Federal District Court. “If companies will not abide by the fair terms of our license, then we have no choice but to ask our attorneys to go to court to force them to do so.”

I the best part of the BusyBox website is the Hall of Shame where they list prior violations – a total of 18. That page is no longer updated, instead they refer violators to the Software Freedom Law Center which files suit on their behalf.

The lawsuit, “Erik Andersen and Rob Landley v. Monsoon Multimedia Inc.,” case number 07-CV-8205 (PDF), will be heard by Senior District Judge John E. Sprizzo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

I think this image pretty much sums things up:

ex_a_gnu2.JPG

Categories
Linux

How to Install Adobe Flash Player for amd64 / 64-bit on Debian Etch

Alrighty, so I switched operating systems – again, this time I’m trying out Debian 4.0r1 aka “Etch” after deciding that Zenwalk is for metro-sexuals. First things first right? Gotta get my YouTube working, Firefox Plugins installed, etc.

The following guys made this possible: DIP Consultants and Weiqi Gao.

Unofficial nspluginwrapper & ia32-libs-gtk packages for Etch

———————————————-
First things first, as root:

  • Add repository to sources.list:
    • echo “deb http://www.dipconsultants.com/debian etch main” >> /etc/apt/sources.list
  • apt-get update
  • Install the keyring so you’re not bothered with key/verification warnings:
    • apt-get install markybob-keyring
  • apt-get update once more
  • Install what you want:
    • apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk nspluginwrapper

If you’re looking to install Flash in a 64-bit browser:

  • Do *every* step listed above, then the following as a *user*, not root:
  • wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
  • tar -zxf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
  • mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins/
  • mv install_flash_player_9_linux/flashplayer.xpt install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/
  • nspluginwrapper -i ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  • Start/restart iceweasel/firefox/whatever
  • Enjoy, Etch 64-bit users, from the guys at dipconsultants.com 🙂

The underlined bit is my contribution, for some reason it does not exist by default, probably since the switch to Iceweasel. Honestly I don’t get the point of changing the name and stripping the logos from the browser, everybody knows that Mozilla is NOT going to start charging people for use of their trademark logos. Google would have a hay day and clean some house at Mozilla Foundation.

Damn Debian and their “Social Contract.” It’s silly if you ask me.

On a side note, I did goto the screening of Pirates of the Great Salt Lake tonight, and I thought it was a smart and funny movie that doesn’t have any blazingly obvious flaws.  I rate it 4.5 out of 5 “ARRRGS”

Categories
Linux Windows

The REAL Fix For Comcast BitTorrent Throttling

First, a little explanation may be needed as to what is happening in between our computers, Comcast and the Internet.
Comcast is using a packet filtering platform called Sandvine. This platform is a at its core, a Quality of Service system that has legitimate uses, such as giving high priority to Xbox Live communications and VOIP packets. 

Unfortunately, Comcast has decided to use Sandvine (some say illegally) to impersonate us and send a reset packet (known as an RST flag), which is exactly like the Chinese goverment filters the internet!  (PDF)

TorrentFreak hinted on August 22nd, is that someone was working on a fix for Comcast users.

“…we know that at least two BitTorrent client developers are including this fix in their next update.” –TorrentFreak 

It’s two weeks later, where is the fix!?  And just exactly how do you find out if you’re being throttled by Comcast?  And how can we figure out how to avoid this traffic shaping?

Continue reading “The REAL Fix For Comcast BitTorrent Throttling”
Categories
Linux

Mini Zenwalk Review

Alrighty… Zenwalk.

How about a stream of consciousness review for “zen computing”? That seems fitting to me.

By the way, the iceweasel spellchecker underlines EVERYTHING as being spelled incorrectly, so excuse the mistakes.

Nifty auto-partition, OK text mode installer. Packages chosen by default, gnome, iceweasel, icedove, lilo configured properly. Booted into XFCE, and BAM no DHCP. Lots of hunting later, I find it under System / Zenpanel. Enable DHCP for IP, DNS, etc, everything working. Still looking at 1280×1024 desktop. 2 “videoconfigure” later, still not working. Manually edit /etc/xorg.conf and add resolutions, working great, but compositer still not working despite detection and use of nv driver. gnash required to display some items, Xarchiver wasn’t able to successfully unzip a tar.bz. Tried to open a PDF, defaulted to Evince, which threw up an error stating that the file had an invalid MIME type.

Deep breath. Ahhhh. This is definitely “Zen” for Linux users – but not in 2007. Maybe in 1999. 1.5 Opposable Thumbs down.

I’m not gonna say all negative things about this one. I give it a total of 0.5 Thumbs up for fantastic full-out beautiful dolphin-ized themes for XFCE and bootsplash.

P.S.

Dolphins used as mascots only work in one place, and that’s in Miami. Even then it’s kinda metro-sexual.

I bet there was some manager out there who sent the art team a memo that read something like this:

From: “Manager Promoted For Prodigious Incompetence”;
To: “Artsy Team Mailing List”;
Subject: New Mascot Idea.

Hey guys,

I think we should use a dolphin for our logo. Yeah, that’ll do. And make it YELLOW! ASAP Over and out, 10-4 good buddy.

Categories
Linux

Ubuntu Forums Firefox Plugin – Finding Answers To Stupid Questions Was Never So Easy

Attention Humor Disabled Digg Visitors, the tagline of this article is actually a joke!  HDDV is a serious disease which effects approximately 23 million Digg front page visitors per month.

I remembered awhile back that I had installed a plugin for the Steam forums that gave me a little menu item up at the top inbetween Tools and Help in Firefox that allowed easy navigation of the Steam forums. I thought about it for a bit and thought,

“Hey! Why not make one of those for the Ubuntu forums?”

Well thankfully someone else already has. I present to you, the Ubuntu Forums Menu for Firefox.  If you don’t have Firefox already, click the button below and install it today!

Install and then goto the Addons settings in Firefox. Click Preferences:
screenshot-add-ons.pngCheck the appropriate boxes:
screenshot-ubuntu-forums-menu-settings.pngMenu at the top:
ubuntu_forums.pngRight Click Context Menu:
ubuntu_forums_context1.pngThis is an “insanely great” plugin. Kudos to Adam Smith.

Categories
Linux Rant

Trying out Gutsy Gibbon Part 2

I ran the following commands (again)

sudo sed -e ‘s/\sfeisty/ gutsy/g’ -i /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

12:12 AM Started downloading.

12:30 Installing all the packages.  Downloading from the Gutsy repositories at 6MB/sec didn’t take a long time.

12:42AM I’m concurrently downloading Linux Mint while all the packages continue to install.

12:46AM DONE.  Reboot.

2:45AM Ohsh!t… Houston we have a problem.  I’m gonna rant here for a second.  When I use the brand new awesome thing that smells of a combination of fresh horse manure and burning hair called “Screens and Graphics Preferences” and I select my monitor as shown:

screenshot-choose-screen.png

Notice the little description text that shows that I’m choosing an LCD screen that ONLY displays in a native resolution of  1680 by 1050?

Now, see the list of available resolutions once I save that setting:

showmetheresultion.png

Where the hell is the 1680 by 1050 option?  NOT THERE!

Now, I know somebody is going to say ‘oh well just go and edit the xorg.conf file and you should be all set.’  Here is my preemptive response:

When is the last time you had to edit the registry in Windows to add a resolution option?

I rest my case.

Categories
Linux

Digg “Linux Nation” for Thursday September 13th 2007

I saw a post over on Diggnation forums saying that Diggnation doesn’t cover enough Linux articles.  Well here’s the solution:  Make a list yourself!  Here’s a list for the past week with my own comments.  Buy me a beer (located at the end of this post) and I’ll think about making it into a weekly video.

  1. PC World refuse to repair hardware fault, because of Linux
    • Update:  Linux does not actually void the warranty.  Problem has been fixed.
  2. Fix a Frozen System with the Magic SysRq Keys
    • Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) and then typing REISUB will reboot Linux properly after a crash when the commonly used Ctrl-Alt-Backspace or function keys don’t work.  Great Tip! 
  3. OOXML: nice little standard? [PIC]
    • OOXML is well documented.  🙂
  4. Microsoft starts a “Get the Facts” campaign…against itself
    • Vista TCO is lower than XP.  I don’t believe that for a second!  This appears to be Microsoft doing what they do best, sponsoring surveys and such to get the results they want to be able to publish.
  5. Valve recruiting Senior Engineer port Windows-based games to Linux
    • This is great news.  Surely a job posting is not a news release, but now there is some hope that Valve will be porting Steam and their games to Linux.
  6. Vietnam Says Buh-bye to Microsoft Office, Chooses OpenOffice.org
    • 20k upgrades to Office 2008 is more expensive than OO.org.  Who knew?
  7. AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of ATI GPU Specifications
    • With these specifications, ATI drivers will likely improve in quality on these specific GPUs.  ATI/AMD driver hackers rejoice!
  8. Latest VirtualBox 1.5 runs Windows apps directly on your Linux desktop
    • VirtualBox Windows Emulator has a new version, still looks like Win95, but works well.  This does seem a little bit better than running in VMWare since you can run the program in its own window which is decorated by your window manager.
  9. AMD: GPU Specifications Without NDAs!
    • Same story as number 7.  Dupe!
  10. Lenovo Interested in Linux, Opens Poll for Distro
    • Surprise!  45% of all surveyed want Ubuntu supported on a Levono Thinkpad laptop, then secondarily they want Debian with 11%.
  11. How Linux is being subverted.
    • Somehow, somewhere, whenever a company that does business with Microsoft (in this case, Novell) they’re up to some evil plot and want to take over the world.  I don’t quite think this is true, but it’s a good headline.
  12. IBM dives into OpenOffice.org development
    • IBM is paying some people in Beijing to work on OO.org.  Not a big deal IMO.
  13. Ubuntu Linux Training Software that runs on Windows and Mac only
    • Hmm…. so lemme get this right:  Some folks decided to make training materials for Ubuntu (which they have no relation to as far as i know) and sell it for 89 pounds a pop?  Go them!  Minor problem, it doesn’t run on Ubuntu.  Well… maybe next time guys.
  14. Super-Easy Ubuntu Setup From Windows – For Windows Users Eager To Try Linux
    • Goto http://wubi-installer.org/ and install it if you’re running Windows.  I might tie this into my article about distributing Linux via physical medium.
  15. Edit PDF Files For Free With PDFedit -OpenSource PDF Editor (Ubuntu Feisty)
    • PDFEdit is actually pretty terrible.  The GUI is total shitty and nearly unusable.  I can say this with much certaincy since I actually tried to use it last night for my Tux Mask.  Using a graphical editor and exporting to PDF from OO.org actually works MUCH MUCH MUCH better.  PDFEditor is not worth the time spent downloading it right now, in my opinion.

So there you go, 15 articles that made the biggest splashes on Digg.com this week and a short summary of each.

Categories
Linux

Tux the Penguin Mask 6.0

Download the PDF here!   Tux the Penguin Mask 6.0

Reccomended Usage:

Lan Parties, Microsoft Developer Conferences, and wasting company printer paper.

Installation Notes:

Always ask for an adult’s assistance when using scissors.

Required Hardware:

Scissors
Exacto Knife or Box Cutter reccomended.
Elastic String to tie around your big head.
Color Printer (or BW Printer and Yellow Marker or Crayon)
Paper
Cardstock Paper
Glue

Release Notes:

6.0 Final Release
5.0 Note to Self: While actual penguins are waterproof, penguin masks are not.
4.0 Child Safety Recall after Multiple Reports of Moderate to Severe Paper Cuts and Asphyxiation.
3.0 Complete Re-Write, realized the mask actually looked like a seagull after usability testing.
2.0 Many Bugfixes and Added 3D Rendering Support.
1.0 Initial Alpha Release: Known Issue: Penguins do NOT have horns.

This is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 License.

Here is the *almost* final product, yours should be better after I made a few changes to the PDF.

Tux the Penguin Mask 6.0

Get the PDF at the top of the post.

Categories
Linux

Using The US Postal Service To Distribute Linux CHEAPLY And Effectively

This is part one of a journey of wits and determination, in which I will distribute Linux using a physical medium to everyone in my appartment complex in suburban Utah, which has approximately 200 units.

I figure that’s about a thousand people who have probably never heard of Linux, and my apartments have a heavy concentration of US Air Force and is a fairly affluent area.  The parking lot looks like a new car dealership.  I would venture to guess that most of them have computers, and have a higher than average intelligence and willingness to try new things when it comes to using an operating system.  I could be totally wrong here, but we’ll see.

I spent awhile brainstorming some several methods to distribute Linux to the neighbors in my appartment complex.

The easiest would be to burn a bunch of CDs and just leave them where everyone visits at least once a week -the mailbox.  I could probably make a sign and have penguins on it or something but that would not make the impression I’m hoping for.

The door-to-door approach has merits, but I live in Utah, which is the capital of the world for door-to-door marketing.  There are an amazing amount of missionaries here that go door-to-door preaching religion.  Linix is pretty close to a religion, so I figure it wont go super well.

The United States Postal Service has the Electronic Media Box which will hold a CD or DVD case for NO CHARGE, but it’s for Priority Mailing only, which means it actually would cost me something around $4.00 or more apeice to actually ship.  I could always tape over the label and try to pay first class, but I’m sure that’s illegal.

Serious Direct Mail:   This seems like a good idea to send an actual Business Card CD Linux distribution in the mail to someone, but unfortunately it’s VERY VERY expensive.  I could spend an entire paycheck doing this here.  Scratch it off the list.

Corrugated Jewel case Mailers:  About $56 + $10.53 shipping for 200.  These look like the same ones that the USPS gives you for free.

AH!  I found it.  White Paperboard CD Sleeve minimum quanity of 500 for a for a total of $29.15!  Oh snap, $50.00 minimum order.

Ordering free Ubuntu CDs could also work OK, but up to 10 weeks for an order and unless it’s an organized event doesn’t seem like I could get 200 CDs for free to send to people who may not want it anyways.

I’m going to keep looking, but I’m thinking the best course of action will be to get paper sleeves and mail them first class, and if anyone requests another due to it breaking in the mail, I’ll send another out.  It’ll likely be cheaper in the long run.

Part Two of this article will be the actual written material that I’ll put inside the CD Mailer.
Part Three will be a photo journal of the actual shipping process.
Part Four is going to be determined by whether or not I receive feedback from any people that have received the CD.

If you have ideas or suggestions to help me out in this, I would appreciate a comment or an email to wayne@fsckin.com. 

Thanks for reading!

EDIT:
I’ve come to the conclusion that I should avoid using the mail after all. I’m targeting a very specific area with less than 200 homes, and why not deliver these myself? I can burn some calories AND probably deliver more than what I could in a CD mailer envelope.

So I’ve come up with the alternate plan of simply canvasing the area with plastic door bags with an Ubuntu CD and some printed information.