Tag Archives | Linux

DLSLUG Notes, 6-Sept-2007: ATTACK of the Nifties!!!

By Ted Roche on September 7, 2007 in CSS, Linux, OpenSource, Technology

Bill McGonigle hosted the September meeting the Dartmouth – Lake Sunapee Linux User Group, held as usual on the first Thursday of the month, but at a different location: the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center. Seven members attended.

The night was announced as “Nifties:” short presentations that hope to elicit from the audience just that reaction. Everyone present had something to show off:

I showed the S5 (Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System) developed by Eric Meyer of CSS fame. S5 used standards-compliant CSS, JavaScript and XHTML to generate a slide show with keyboard shortcuts, drop-down slide lists, handout and slideshow formats, additional notes and more. Free as in speech, free as in beer. Nifty!

Bill McGonigle showed off pfSense, following up on a blog entry he had written. pfSense is a spin-off of monowall, the xBSD-based firewall program. Bill talked about how to configure it off a read-only CR, with a small (512 Mb) USB fob holding the configuration file, running diskless on an older computer. The web interface was pretty slick, rich and intuitive, and exposed a huge number of options. Nifty!

Adam showed off some work he had been doing with WebSphere Community Edition (aka Apache Geronimo) and a commercial add-on that provided VT-400 terminal emulation via Java and a browser, to access some legacy machines he needs to maintain. Nifty!

I mentioned that TheOpenCD September 2007 edition was out and available via BitTorrent. We talked about some of the neat software on the disk. PDFCreator seemed most popular, but OpenOffice and WinSCP got good mentions, too. Nifty.

We did NOT mention the OpenEducationCD, a spin-off project, but that got mention at last week’s GNHLUG Board of Director’s meeting.

We talked quite a bit about the OLPC project and I showed off one of the videos available on the RedHat site to great acclaim. Not just “Nifty!” but “I want to work there!!!” There are more videos here, here and here.

Many interesting side discussions, too. Sorry if you missed it; it was a fun night.

Jim Louderback: Passing the Torch

By Ted Roche on August 22, 2007 in Linux, Microsoft, Technology

I’ve been disappointed for years that “PC” Magazine didn’t recognize that Windows was just one option of what to run on a “PC.” In his farewell column as Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine, Jim Louderback give Microsoft a kick in the, uh, pants:

“I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can’t get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.”

Ubuntu kernel panics after partition re-assignments solved!

By Ted Roche on August 19, 2007 in Linux, OpenSource, Technology

Last weekend I upgraded my T40 from the 30 Gb drive it came with to an 80 Gb drive, as I was running out of space and needed to run WinXP under VMWare on my Fedora Core 6 installation. I used partimage to make snapshots of the existing NTFS partition, the WinXP the machine came with, and three ext3 partitions, the FC6 and an Ubuntu boot and root partitions.

I have to grudgingly admit the NTFS was the easiest to move and resize, using nothing but Linux tools. How weird is that? Using Knoppix to capture and rewrite the master boot record, WinXP booted, complained about the size, run CHDSK, fixed itself, and rebooted. Ext3 is a little tougher: it’s a simple but obscure set of commands to drop the journal from the filesystem, turning it into an ext2 system, resizing, and then applying a new journal to the result.

A little fiddling with the grub.conf added the proper menu items, pointing to the new partitions (several had to get renamed to support more partitions, extended partitions, and all that), and Fedora Core 6 came right up. I wasn’t so lucky with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu threw a kernel panic when starting up, and it took a bit of detective work to figure out that the mkinitramfs-tools were the problem. These tools figure out where the swap partition is, and determine if there’s an image there to restore from. The problem was that the old swap partition (/dev/hda4) was now the container holding all of the extended paritions and would throw an error when there was an attempt to read the partition. In the file /etc/mkinitramfs/initramfs.conf or the subsidiary file /etc/mkinitramfs/conf.d/restore.conf, you’ll find a line RESTORE=/dev/xxxx. Change that to the location of your new swap file and presto! You’re back in business!

Hentzenwerke Moving from Windows to Linux

By Ted Roche on August 14, 2007 in FoxPro, Home Page, LAMP, Linux, MySQL, OpenSource, Technology

MySQL-VFP book cover Followers of the Hentzenwerke Publishing empire know that Whil Hentzen has the largest catalog of Visual FoxPro books and an impressive collection of books bridging the gap from the Windows world into the Linux/Free/Open Source world. Whil’s been working for quite some time to put together a book on working with VFP and back-end data servers other than SQL Server. I was one of the many community members who contributed comments, criticisms and ideas to the book, and was honored when Whil chose to designate me as technical editor. Whil Hentzen announces, MySQL Client-Server Applications with Visual FoxPro now on sale:

After far too long a wait, the eagerly awaited companion to our Client/Server Apps with VFP and SQL Server book from years ago is here. The brand new 414 page MySQL Client-Server Applications with Visual FoxPro covers Client-Server apps from the perspective of the hugely popular open-source SQL database, MySQL. Learn how to install, configure MySQL and then connect specifically with VFP. Then get your hands dirty bringing data – both flat files and DBFs – into MySQL databases. Build a variety of user interfaces. Learn about development and deployment scenarios with this multi-platform backend. Each step of the way, real world problems (‘What if the connection fails?’) and potential solutions will be discussed.

The book is on sale only for a short period. Get your copy now!

Seacoast LUG, 13-August-2007: Panda3D

By Ted Roche on August 13, 2007 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Python, Technology

Ben Scott reminds folks about the Seacoast LUG meeting happening tonight:

For the August 2007 SLUG/Seacoast/UNH/Durham meeting, there will be a presentation on the Panda3D 3D engine.

=== About Panda3D ===

Panda3D is an Open Source “3D engine” — software that lets you model a “world”, and then render it in real-time on a graphics display. Think “Doom” or “Half-Life”. It was originally developed by Disney for their massively multi-player online game, Toontown, so it’s got real capabilities. They released it as Free Software in 2002. Carnegie Mellon University and Disney now manage the project jointly. The project emphasizes “a short learning curve and rapid development”.

Panda3D supports the C++ and Python languages, runs on Linux and Windows, and comes with models and artwork to get you started. There is also a library of documentation, sample code, and full projects online, along with what appears to be a reasonably active web forum.

=== About SLUG ===

SLUG is the Seacoast Linux User Group, and is a chapter of GNHLUG, the Greater NH Linux User Group. Rob Anderson is the SLUG coordinator. SLUG meets the second Monday of every month, same time, same place. You can find out more about SLUG and GNHLUG at their respective websites.

Meetings take place starting at 7:00 PM. Meetings are open to all. The meeting proper ends around 9ish, but it’s not uncommon to find hangers-on there until 10 or later. They take place in Room 301 (the third floor conference room), of Morse Hall, at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham.

CentraLUG, August 6th, Special Location: Roger Trussel, Building FireFox Extensions

By Ted Roche on August 3, 2007 in OpenSource, Technology

The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire
chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, occurs on the
first Monday of each month starting at 7 PM. Due to summer hours at the
NHTI Library, we will be meeting at the Sybase offices, 6 Loudon Road,
Suite 501, Concord, thanks to member (and Sybase employee) Larry Cook.

DIRECTIONS: From Interstate 93, take exit 14 and head east over the
Merrimack River. Immediately after the bridge, take the first right.
Drive straight back to the cornfield, then turn right and then right
again to get to the south end of the building. Walk around the building
to the right to come in the front (east) entrance. Take the elevator to
the fifth floor. Straight off the elevator is Sybase. Enter and turn
left. At the end of the hallway is the conference room.

Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/2rtc8k

Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.

Roger Trussell will present a session on building Firefox extensions.
Firefox extensions are small zipped blocks of code that add new
functionality to Firefox, from a simple toolbar button to a completely
new feature. Extensions allow Firefox to stay small and unbloated.
Extensions give content providers another way to make certain features
more accessible to their end-users. We will see some quick examples of
how to build extensions for Firefox 2.x using XML and JavaScript. We
will also see a demonstration of some useful extensions available for
web content developers.

Roger Trussell is a programmer with over five years of experience in a
variety of support roles for health care, software, research, and
manufacturing environments. He has worked at many companies throughout
the Upper Valley such as DHMC, isee systems, inc. (formally known as
High Performance Systems, Inc.), and Timken Aerospace. Roger holds a
Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY. One of Roger’s main interests is
bridging the gap between programmers and end-users. He has worked on
software installer technology and he has worked in end-user support roles.

More details at about this meeting and the group are available at
http://www.centralug.org and http://www.gnhlug.org as I learn them!

Hope to see you there!

“Pretty much anything [Mac] has, Linux can do better.” Hogwash. Can we kill the zealotry? – O’Reilly ONLamp Blog

By Ted Roche on July 29, 2007 in Linux

In O’Reilly ONLamp Blog, Jeremy Jones blogs “Pretty much anything [Mac] has, Linux can do better.” Hogwash. Can we kill the zealotry? and points out: “Anything that Windows and Mac can do, Linux could do.”

DLSLUG, 2 August: Usable Web Applications with Rails and AJAX

By Ted Roche on July 28, 2007 in LAMP, Ruby, Technology

Bill McGonigle announces the August meeting of the Dartmouth – Lake Sunapee Linux User Group, held as usual at Dartmouth College, Carson Hall, Room L01 from 7 – 9 PM. The main presentation will be “Usable Web Applications with Rails and AJAX,” presented by William Henderson-Frost.

“Will will present Greenout!, a new web application that’s focused on usability and developed on the Ruby on Rails platform using AJAX techniques, the Prototype library, and plenty of custom code. He’ll describe the process of developing a web application with Ruby on Rails, the challenges of writing an AJAX application, and some of the tips and techniques he’s developed along the way.”

“Will is a Senior at Dartmouth College, majoring in Computer Science, and a Hanover native. He enjoys good programming languages, like Ruby.”

Sounds like an interesting meeting. Ruby is a pretty sleek language, and the Rails platform makes application development far easier.

Running Windows within VMWare on FC6

By Ted Roche on July 25, 2007 in Home Page, Linux, Microsoft, Technology

One of my current client projects requires me to VPN into their establishment. Rather than have a second machine running Windows, I thought I’d try running VMWare using a dual-boot (WinXPPro/Fedora Core 6) machine. A recent Linux Magazine article by Jason Perlow, “Run Your Windows with VMWare” pointed out that VMWare can read a Windows installation off disk and run it as if it were a virtual image, a feature I wasn’t aware of. You get the benefits of both having a VM and being able to dual-boot. Cool! So, I set about the process of installing such beast.

VMWare offers several versions for free (as in price, not as in speech) downloads. Their main install scripts (written in Perl) are pretty slick, detecting problems, coaching you for the correct actions, and advising about where more information can be found. Several cycles of script, run, error, re-configure, install, repeat got me to a working VMWare install. Extra clues were found in “How to Install VMWare Server on A Fedora Core 6 Desktop” and “Run Existing Windows Installation with VMWare Player.” Some obscure permission errors (VMWare reports that it can’t open the image or some related file) were fixed by adding my login to the ‘disk’ group so VMWare could read the raw disk, and giving the /dev/hda device group-read-write access (sudo chmod g+rw /dev/hda – there’s a way to do this permanently…). I confirmed VMWare was installed correctly by downloading and running one of the many VMs that can be found at the VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace. After a few tweaks to the settings in the Windows-from-disk virtual machine configuration file windows.vmdk and generating a separate file for the MBR from the disk, booting into the VM produced by startup GRUB menu! Selecting a Linux partition started Linux, but selecting the Windows partition just hung after the message “chainloader +1”.

It’s progress. Now to Google around and see what the next tweak needs to be…

Developers Increasingly Targeting non-Windows Platforms

By Ted Roche on July 5, 2007 in LAMP, Linux, Microsoft, Technology

“Windows dominance on the client is cracking, according to the latest release of Evans Data Corp’s North American Development Survey. Targeting of the Windows OS has declined by 12% from a year ago, continuing a two-year gradual decline. Currently 64.8% of North American developers are targeting some version of Windows, as opposed to 74% last year and this is expected to drop another 2% in the coming year. Although Windows remains the largest market segment, Linux targeting has increased by 34% from 8.8% a year ago to 11.8% today.”

Source: http://www.evansdata.com/n2/pr/releases/WindowsInDecline2007.shtml

Via: http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/2007/07/developers-migrating-away-from-windows.html

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