OpenSUSE

February 23rd, 2007 at 13:19 · Filed Under Computing, Linux · 1 Comment 

I had been away from SUSE and the Linux community for quite some time ever since I moved my computing/working platform to Mac OS X. I stumbled upon OpenSUSE a moment ago when I visited a David’s new blog.

I had been SUSE’s fan but I started to deviate after it was bought over by Novell. Since then, I found their products lagging. Many packages in SUSE distro were outdated, the online update would break the stability and etc. I moved to Fedora and it was not better than SUSE in the online update. Again, FC5 broke the stability and usability of my system. I had even downloaded FC6 but never installed on my system. Why? Because I am quite happy with Sun’s Solaris 10.

The reasons I moved away from Linux are:

  1. the maintenance of software packages is tedious and sometimes mind-bogging, fearing the new software packages would break some dependencies or functionalities of the system or some application software.
  2. the update of kernel is troublesome, so getting some devices to work on a distro is very much dependent to the kernel installed. Updating to a new kernel may break system integrity, sometimes.
  3. The UI of the graphical desktop is never as good as Mac OS X! and it is also very difficult to keep abreast with the latest releases.
  4. Software configuration on many distros are different. For example, some distro uses /var/www as the root directory of Apache, some uses /svr/www.

I love the way Mac OS X handles things. They are standardized among many of its own releases. Mac OS X has a clean cut in system administration.

Now I am having the urge to download OpenSUSE for a try. I hope OpenSUSE will resurrect my faith for Linux.

Tags:

Cease development on SGI’s IRIX

November 5th, 2006 at 23:50 · Filed Under At Work, Business, Days in My Life, Linux, Mac OS X, Software Development, Solaris · Comment 

After a 30 minutes discussion with my co-workers, we have unanimously decided to cease all development on SGI’s IRIX. We began developing applications on SGI’s IRIX about 5 years ago because of demands in 3-D graphics visualization. We used Ada to implement our 3-D visualization solutions.

With today’s availability of powerful microprocessor such as AMD and Intel 64-bit processor, SGI’s hardware has become too expensive too invest and maintain. Another reason is the difficulty to find tools such as gnat Ada compiler. The download site usually provides out of date version that makes maintaining the consistency of compiler versions across other platforms difficult.

This decision should have been made long time ago. A lot of time and resources had been wasted in maintaining existing software and development of new applications. Our clients’ decisions to migrate to Opteron and Mac OS X based platforms have also contributed to this decision. We expect zero or next to zero porting problem because we are using portable technologies such as Ada, GTK+, GtkAda and OpenGL. This decision enables our development to focus on both Opteron (Solaris and Linux) and Mac OS X platforms.

Tags:

Firefox 2

November 3rd, 2006 at 19:10 · Filed Under Blogging, Computing, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, Web · 4 Comments 

Mozilla has released the long awaited Firefox 2 web browser. Firefox 2 is a major upgrade to its popular and acclaimed free, open source web browser. I just finished downloading and installing Firefox 2 on my Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris 10 x86 machines. I noticed improvement in performance, speed and user interface compared to version 1.x.

Firefox 2 has made web browsing easier and delivered best online experience. On Mac, I use both Safari and Firefox for my browsing. Unfortunately, Safari is not really working together with WordPress. For example, I lose all the editing functions when I write my post. The editing functions panel is not displayed in Safari. In the contrary, Firefox 2 displays the editing functions panel and I am able to access these functions by clicking on the icons. Firefox 2 allows me to easily write my posts.

I have not been using any Microsoft products since I completely ditched Microsoft in 1998. The only product that I had on my Mac was IE, Microsoft’s web browser. In terms of performance, speed and security, IE really sucks. I have deleted IE on my Macs and replaced with Firefox.

Mozilla makes improvements to the user interface, security tools and options for customization, combine to deliver rich, engaging, safer and more productive web browsing experience for all.

One feature I like most in Firefox is its ability to view background image and page info. These are valuable tools for web development. Another feature I use most is displaying my browsing history in the sidebar which allows me to browse my history side-by-side with web pages.

Tabbed browsing has become a de facto standard feature in most modern web browser. Mozilla has changed the user interface of tab and allowed moving tab to any position you like so that you can arrange the pages you are browsing according to your priority. Another plus for Firefox 2 which makes web browsing more productive. Apple’s Safari does not allow moving the tab.

Another good selling point of Firefox 2 over Apple’s Safari is the built-in spell checker in input fields. Firefox 2 will underline misspelling inline and is very useful for blogging. With Firefox’s built-in spell checker, there is absolutely no necessity to install additional plugins for blogging tools such as WordPress.

Although Apple’s Safari is also a nice web browser, it still needs some patch up to be on par with Firefox 2. The only best feature in Safari is its excellent support of international character encoding. Apple has done a great job not only in Safari but in Mac OS X and applications as the whole.

So much on the features that I like most and often use. I will let you to discover Firefox 2 yourselves.

Tags:

Tunnel X over SSH

October 14th, 2006 at 23:41 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Hacking, Linux, Mac OS X · 8 Comments 

The drawback of Remote Desktop Login I posted 2 days ago is its slow speed. It takes a while to display the desktop login screen. Another drawback is it creates another X session at the server if you already have another running.

My laziness and desire to start up applications and finish the job quickly makes me look further into the world of remote access. This leads me to X tunneling over SSH.

With X tunneling over SSH, I am able to run X applications (Linux FC5) on my preferred Mac OS X desktop, Pluto. The screenshot shows that I am running KDE Control Center (Linux FC5 on triton1) on Pluto (Mac OS X).

This is how I do it:

  1. ForwardX11 needs to be enable. Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config. Make sure you have ForwardX11Trusted yes is enabled in ssh_config.
  2. On Mac OS X, start X11. At terminal, type 
    $ ssh -X username@ip_address
  3. Start any X applications you like.

Tags:

Remote Desktop Login from Mac

October 12th, 2006 at 23:06 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Hacking, Linux, Mac OS X · 9 Comments 

Some friends told me the laziest programmer is the best and most creative programmer. When a person becomes older, he/she will become lazier.

Remote Desktop Login has been out there for some time ago. I did not try it. Remote Desktop Control has been useful for me occasionally. I had a bad experience with RDC when my Linux server crashed in early September. I was RDC from my SPARC/Solaris workstation. I stopped using RDC since then.

One drawback about RDC is that I have to login before I can access the desktop remotely.

Because of my eye condition, I feel lazy to switch between keyboards and mice and running from one room to another. I decided to check out Remote Desktop Login. It took me a while to understand. But after I tried it out, it was pretty easy though.

Here’s how I do it to login to SPARC/Solaris. Launch X11 from Mac OS X then

$ xhost +ip_address
$ Xnest :1 -query ip_address -geometry 1280x1024

According to some documentation, it is required to configure gdm on Linux boxes. I used the following to configure FC 5 (Fedora Core 5) box:

  1. Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf
  2. Add RemoteGreeter=/usr/libexec/gdmlogin to [daemon] segment
  3. Under [xdmcp] segment, change the line Enable=false to Enable=true
  4. Restart gdm

With Remote Desktop Login, I don’t have to login before I remotely access the PC. It has also save me some money for investing in a KVM switch. I was thinking about hooking up some of my computers with a KVM switch. It will still be a mess with all the cables despite of its pricy tag. Remote Desktop Login is the best method for me at this moment. It allow me to become lazier because I no longer need to login at computers which I want access. I can login remotely, simple!

Tags:

Argh! Another disaster day

September 1st, 2006 at 20:56 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Hacking, Linux · Comment 

Sh!T On August 22, my lovely iBook died. I just brought up Pyxis1 and Pyxis2 yesterday after setting up the network for SOHO. This morning the hard disk on Pyxis1 failed! In just less than 2 weeks, I was stricken by two disasters in a row.

I ran Ark to open a tar.gz file for preview via RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) from Pyxis2. Suddenly, Pyxis1 hung. I could not regain control at Pyxis1 and I forced a power down and reboot. The grub prompt showed up. I knew great problem just knocked on my door.

After trying to boot with grub commands:

grub> kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 1
grub> initrd (hd0,0)/initrd
grub> boot

An error said that it could be hard disk failure. I ran badblocks to check the hard disk and it spat out block numbers that were affected. Here go my data in the server.

I have the data backup to my iBook. They are in the iBook hard disk. I will have to protect the hard disk like a precious gemstone now. Otherwise, HUGE trouble will be.

Tags:

GIMPShop

August 18th, 2006 at 11:55 · Filed Under Computing, Linux, Mac OS X, Photography · Comment 

I turned away from Linux to Mac as my working platform some months ago. I occasionally would use GIMP on my Linux boxes to do some graphics. After switching to Mac as my major working platform, I had missed GIMP a lot. I used PhotoStudio that came with Canon EOS in a CD. I don’t like PhotoStudio because it is very slow and very limited in features and supported only a few graphics formats.

Last night while I was surfing at Apple’s website, I found GIMPShop. I was very excited and quickly downloaded and installed it.

GIMPShop is a free Open Source image editor that is similar to the popular Adobe Photoshop. Specifically GIMPShop is a version of the GIMP that has been edited to be more user-friendly for Photoshop users.

GIMPShop was created by Attack of the Show’s Scott Moschella. The menu structure and terminology are adapted to to look and feel more like Photoshop, and other adjustments were made to make the GIMP more usable. In the Windows version, the Deweirdifyer Plugin has been used to place all of the various windows into one nesting window, so it will act more like a single program that multiple little programs.. Also the menu structure and terminology are adapted to to look and feel more like Photoshop.

GIMPShop was orginally developed for Mac OS X, but has been ported to Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

It is like meeting an old friend after a long time. I feel more at home with graphics now (I am not very good at graphics, but I will do some very basics graphics at times). I think it’s time for me to ditch PhotoStudio!

Tags:

PC is dead!

July 15th, 2006 at 12:08 · Filed Under Computing, Linux · 3 Comments 

My Linux power workstation cum server is dead. It’s motherboard problem. The motherboard is Albatron’s KX-18D Pro II socket 462. It sported an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB RAM, 120GB SATA hard disk, 256MB Video Graphics.

It was one of the fastest PC 2 years ago. Now, it is ancient. It is hard to find a replacement motherboard that supports Athlon XP 3000+.

Perhaps, I should get a dual G5 PowerMac. But it is very expensive.

Tags:

Linux or Mac OS X?

July 8th, 2006 at 18:42 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Linux, Mac OS X · Comment 

I received an email from an old friend asking me if Linux is better or Mac OS X. It is a hard question to answer because both are some kind of Unix with many similarity.

Over the years of using Linux and Mac OS X, I have fallen in love with Mac OS X for its ease of use and configuration. I am using it for my email, web browsing, photos, music, software development and almost everything on my Mac. But I am still running Linux boxes at home for servers and software development. Linux is my second preferred OS.

The problem with Linux is the many different distro. Every distro has their own way to implement things although they work the same. There are no standard defined methods of doing things among these distro company.

In 2002, United Linux was announced. It was an attempt to create a common base distro but it ended in 2004.

One significant advantage of Apple is that it works straight out of the box.

Tags:

« Previous Page