A Curious Collection of the Musings of One Jeremy Wise

Looks like Microsoft finally got the picture. After installing Windows Vista this week, I got an interesting popup bubble for the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program:

It’s been some time since I’ve seen something truly awesome on the web. I posted a few days ago about Writely, but here’s something that’s light years better than even that. EyeOS is an operating system (OS) built into your web browser. It has a modern GUI with a desktop, moveable, resizable windows, etc. There are several applications already, such as a calendar and a calculator and even a web browser. Go have a look at something awesome. :-)

Oh, and for what it’s worth, EyeOS is open source and appears to be written in PHP. There is also a .Net version (.Net 2.0). Very cool stuff.

It’s that time of year again. Every several months, I have to reinstall Windows on my development machine. Somehow it still seems to eat itself up from the inside out, and spyware and snotware seem to seep in and take over my poor computer.

But alas, I now have a fresh, clean machine. It boots fast. It runs fast. It loads programs into memory very quickly. I love this point in a computer’s lifetime. Unfortunately, when you run Windows, it’s a very short time indeed. Linux just rocks :)

How hard is it to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and PHPMyAdmin in Ubuntu Linux?

apt-get install apache2 php4 mysql-server-4.1 php4-mysql php4-gd2 phpmyadmin

How hard is it to install IIS, SQL 2000, .Net, ASP, and ASP.Net?

Well, first you have to boot your machine. Then you have to find the CDs. Then you have to buy licenses. Then you ha…

Error: Insufficient Reading Time Reading M$ Instructions. Please reboot and install LAMP.

For those of you who, like me, are forced by one reason or another to use Microsoft’s Windows OS, there is hope for having decent applications. Windows out of the box comes with a pathetic slew of applications, such as Paint, Notepad, Wordpad, and of course, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. These applications had their place in the early 1990s, but despite the industry’s huge advancements, Microsoft has failed to keep up. But there is hope! If you can’t switch completely to a real operating system (say, Ubuntu Linux), take a look at this list for some very useful open source projects. On top of being free software, they are in nearly every way superior to the products that come (or don’t come) with old versions of Windows (such as Windows 2000 or Windows XP).

After many frustrating nights with Fedora Core 4 and ATI’s drivers just not working, I was rather easily able to get the latest ATI drivers compiled and installed with Ubuntu Linux. I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI’s website, and this time there was a neat installation utility. I ran the utility, and went through many failed attempts. Turns out I was lacking:

• dpkg-dev
• debhelper
• fakeroot

The install log told me what failed each time, so I just figured out what package I needed to get the missing piece and tried again. After half a dozen tries, I had the kernel module installed, the driver installed, and then ran fglrxconfig to setup my /etc/X11/xorg.config. I rebooted the machine just to make sure everything was installed correctly (and because Ubuntu doesn’t have a text-only init level 3), and voila… all my 3D support is here. I love it when things work.

So I now have working MP3 support, working graphics drivers, and I have to figure out if my DVD-ROM drive is bad or if I’m missing some package still for DVD playback! Woohoo.

For those of you who remember the old days of Scorched Earth, you absolutely will love this game: Schorched 3D. I found it when it came with Ubuntu Linux. I’m addicted now. Turns out you can play it in Windows or Linux. If you grab it, love it, and want to try playing an online game, shoot me an email!

Well, I’ve had a chance to try two new distributions, and here are the results. First, I have to say that both SuSE and Ubuntu seemed more polished than Fedora Core 4. I wouldn’t mind running either one of them on a regular basis, and I’m afraid Fedora Core/RedHat has lost its special place in my heart.

Novell’s SuSE Linux 9
The installer, YaST was very similar to RedHat’s installation. It took a couple tries to make sure I had everything I needed, but for the most part, the 5 CD install just took a while to complete. The desktop had a ton of KDE and Gnome programs mixed together. This wasn’t a huge deal, but it seemed a bit inconsistent, and I have never been a fan of KDE applications. The biggest grief I had with the system was that it has no support for MP3s, and even worse, there’s no way to get MP3 support without rebuilding all of the applications. At least FC4 allowed you to download an RPM and fix things up. Same thing with DVDs: No support whatsoever, and no easy way to get it. This was a huge turnoff for me, because I’m trying to build an easy-to-use Linux system for my not-so-compter-saavy neighbors. Sorry, Novell, it’s not ready yet.

Ubuntu Linux 5.10 Preview
I have never had an installation as easy as Ubuntu’s. If you’re just going to have a Linux box (i.e. no dual-booting), then the installation takes one CD, a few presses of the Enter key, and 30 minutes later you’re at a login prompt. Literally, anyone could make it through the installation process. Upon logging in, things seemed far more aesthetically pleasing. There are no KDE apps (everything is from the latest Gnome 2.12), and I love apt-get and the included package managers. Sadly, Ubuntu didn’t come with MP3 support or DVD support, but neither one was difficult to add, after a little searching on Google.

The only real trouble I had was on my Dell laptop. I have a D-Link Airplus DWL-650+ wireless 802.11b card, which previously has not been supported in Linux (not on FC4 anyway). I did a lot of searching, and eventually learned that I just had to disable the default wireless kernel module and slap in ndiswrapper and the latest Windows XP driver files. Now, an ordinary person would have a lot of trouble making it through that, but once it was all done, I had a laptop running Linux with Internet access anywhere in my house.

There was an interesting change in Ubuntu, too. I logged in the first time and pulled up a terminal window. I tried to su over to root, but then realized that the installer never asked for a root password. I searched the web a bit to find out what the default password is, and was shocked: The root account is disabled! This seemed proposterous at first, but then things started to make sense. To avoid the risk of you doing something stupid, like logging in as root, they disabled the account. If you need to run an app as root (for system admin stuff), you sudo it. If you need a root prompt, “sudo -s” will do the trick. So all the necessities are there if you need them, they’re just not made so accessible to all users. You can then control which users are allowed to use sudo for what purposes with the user administration piece. Very cool, actually.

The thing I love most about Linux distros is that you don’t just get an operating system for your money (e.g. Microsoft Windows). You get a web browser, an email client, an office suite, a ton of games, an update manager, help system, IM client, graphics programs, audio players, movie players, and a whole lot more. This is how computers should come. I’m hoping the day soon comes when open source projects commoditize the operating system and a whole slew of awesome programs.

As for the distro match, I’m afraid I have to give Ubuntu the upper hand. The ease of installation was a big win. The fact that I could easily upgrade Rhythmbox and Totem to support MP3s and DVDs was the other winner. And finally, it has a polish and consistency that I’ve yet to see in a Linux distribution. Well done, guys.

One good link leads to another! It seems Gnome 2.12 has just been released. There were a few disappointments last time, such as Evolution crashing on startup when you tried to sync with an Exchange server, but let’s hope we get better results from 2.12. Time to Garnome!

I just found out that you can download SuSE Linux for free. You can grab the stable 9.3, or even the unstable 10.0 beta. Maybe I’ll give this Novell product a shot, since Novell has done many good things for Linux lately.