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Is Desktop Linux going the wrong way?

By on June 28, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, Technology

Via OSNews, Jem Matson asks “Is Desktop Linux Distros Headed in the Wrong Direction?.” “The impending release of Windows Vista with its fancy Aero Glass special effects, along with the hasty addition of the similar XGL and Compiz technologies to the latest SUSE Linux release makes me think that programmers have a warped idea of what desktop computing is about. For some reason, many GNU/Linux users are concerned about competing feature-for-feature with Vista, while Apple and Microsoft struggle to add more graphical extras to their already graphics-intensive desktop OSes. It's gotten so that you need a serious 3D video card (with proprietary drivers) and a fairly fast computer just to keep up with desktop environments. Whatever happened to being productive and having fun?”

Many of us dissed Windows XP when it shipped with the Candyland theme and the Teletubbies hill as a background. A little 3d shading and a shiny thing or two is fine, but eating up half your processing power creating a glittering frame for your black-and-white text is pretty silly.

I've recently installed the Xubuntu desktop package onto a couple of older machines running Kubuntu and I'm delighted with the snappy performance I'm getting out of 5 year-old hardware. The Xfce desktop is plain, clean simple and fast. While I'll ooh and ah as much as the next person over glassy transparent effects, they don;t do a lot for my day to day coding (in text), email (in text) and blogging (in text). Hmmm. Maybe someone should consider better looking… text.

New web site to bookmark: CMSMatrix

By on June 21, 2006 in LAMP, Linux, MySQL, OpenSource, Python, Technology

I never fail to pick up at least one great tip or idea from every meeting I attend, and the Upper Valley Computer Industry Association was no exception. This tip: CMS Matrix, a site comparing the features of a huge number of competing content management systems out there. Like that other Matrix, the problem with Open Source is … choice. Not too many choices, but many. This site helps narrow it down.

Accompanying me on the trip: an audiocast of Doc Searls' wrap-up at the Syndicate 05 conference. Good stuff!

UVCIA Panel 21 June: FOSS: Are there options for your business?

By on June 14, 2006 in LAMP, Linux, OpenSource, Security, Technology

I'll be speaking on a panel next week at the Upper Valley Computer Industry Association. The panel is entitled “FOSS: Are there options for your business? How can the use of FOSS software supercharge your enterprise” and will be moderated by Bill McGonigle. Here's the blurb:

“Please join a panel of local Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) experts for a discussion of what's new in the field. Each panelist will briefly describe how he uses FOSS software to supercharge his enterprise. After that, the panel will discuss a series of issues that are frequently asked about Free/Open Source Software, and will help the audience understand these questions:

  • What is Free/Open Source Software?
  • Why would I want to use Free/Open Source Software?
  • How can I improve my profits by using Free/Open Source Software?
  • What's changed in the past few years?

“The panel will then switch to a Q&A session, answering questions and engaging discussion with the audience members.”

The other panelists include:

The meeting will be on Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 7:30am – 10:00am, at The Fireside Inn. Admission costs $45, which includes breakfast. Details at http://www.uvcia.org — hope to see you there!

New Dabo screencast

By on June 9, 2006 in Python

Ed Leafe posts: “I've just posted a new screencast. This one is different than the others, in that its intent is not to show you what you can do with Dabo. Instead, it shows a little bit of what goes into Dabo classes, and perhaps might help people get familiar with how our stuff works. For those who are new to Python, too, it may also show some elements of Python with which they may not be familiar. At worst, it's me rambling on for 13 minutes or so. ;-)”

http://leafe.com/screencasts/addproperty.html

“A member of the dabo-users list asked how to force the case of characters in a textbox, and while it was certainly possible by coding, I thought that such things should be built-in to the text controls. The screencast is sort of looking over my shoulder as I add that feature to the Dabo base class textbox.”

XAMPP

By on June 9, 2006 in LAMP, Linux, MySQL, OpenSource, Technology

I've been involved for a couple of years in developing Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python apps for various clients. During most of that time, I've used in-house Linux servers for prototype, development and testing, and Linux servers deployed at the client site or a hosting provider for production work. Recently, I wanted to spin off a second copy of an application on a local Windows laptop to test some radical changes while the rest of the development team continued to work away on the dev server. Ideally, I wanted to install the entire LAMP set on my local workstation without a lot of work, configuration, downloads, HowTos, and so forth. XAMPP offers free, prepackaged installation modules for Linux, Windows, OS X and Solaris, bundled with a dozen handy utilities like PEAR and phpMyAdmin. Installation was a click, click, click, done! process. Reading a few READMEs got a few non-standard settings like enabling InnoDB data storage. Slick!

If you need a quickly set up XAMPP stack, you'll want to check this out.

MonadLUG meeting last night

By on June 9, 2006 in LAMP, Linux, OpenSource

Tim Lind put on a great presentation of TrixBox 1.0 (the renamed and renumbered successor to Asterisk@Home 2.8) to ten attendees at tonights MonadLUG meeting. Tim brought nearly the entire system from his Computerborough offices: a salvaged PIII-700, a Digium card card with two daughterboards: FXS and FXO, a couple of cordless phones, an IP phone, and his laptop, and showed us the entire setup. Tim uses the machine to take incoming POTS calls and route it through a digital attendant to one of several phones, ring groups or voice mail boxes. Day and nighttime setups have different rules. In addition, he can route to his cell phone, process faxes, send voicemail messages via email, and a mind-boggling combination of the above and more. With graphs. Wow! Very impressive presentation. Asterisk could be a great solution for nearly any size business, and an inexpensive way to bring a PBX to the small business world.

Next month, July 13th Charlie Farinella will show us how he works with the ‘screen‘ command – a utility for supporting multiple remote terminal sessions on a single connection. Sessions started within a screen session can be backgrounded, suspended, and recovered after a disconnection.

On August 10, Mark and Tim from Computerborough will return again and show us around SugarCRM.

Thanks to Tim for a great presentation, Guy for MC’ing the meeting, and Ken for the facilities!

Lenovo flip-flops on Linux support

By on June 8, 2006 in Linux

Slashdot post: Lenovo Backtracks on Linux Support Statement. After a report that the company would not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs, morcego writes “Looks like Lenovo decided Linux is a good idea after all. From the article: 'Lenovo executives Monday backtracked from remarks last week that the company would not support Linux on its PCs, saying it would continue to pre-load Linux onto ThinkPads on a custom-order basis for customers who purchase licenses on their own. In addition, they said, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company was working behind the scenes to boost its Linux support in conjunction with the expected July release of the next version of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.'” Cool!

Microsoft leaps to nearly 30% of web market, Apache down to 3/5ths

By on June 8, 2006 in LAMP, Microsoft

OSNews points to Netcraft: Microsoft Continues to Chip Away at Apache's Lead. “Microsoft continues to gain share in the web server market, chipping away at Apache's commanding lead. The number of hostnames on Windows servers grew by 4.5 million, giving Microsoft 29.7% market share, a gain of 4.25% for the month. Apache had a decline of 429K hostnames, and loses 3.5% to 61.25%. Apache's lead over Microsoft, which stood at 48.2% in March, has been narrowed to 31.5%, a shift of 16.7% in just three months.”

Wow! That's a phenomenally large shift in a short time period. Looking at the historical graph, the speed of changing is unprecedented. Even with the large shift of parked domains, there's something interesting going on. Did Windows Server 2003 R2 deliver some new compelling feature that caused several large hosting providers to shift over? Did they get a killer pricing deal?

Thursday, June 8th MonadLUG: Tim Lind presents Asterisk

By on June 5, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource, Technology

The next meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) will be this Thursday, June 8th, 7:00pm, at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough. For directions and other information, visit http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/MonadLUG

Tim Lind presents on Asterisk – the Open Source PBX!

Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

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