Posted Sun, 05 Feb 2006 23:51:15 GMT to Posted in Life, Geek, School Tags acm, dal, debian, hacking, linux, roomba, xen
So the Dal-ACM hosted another Installfest on Saturday. Rather than be a simple spectator of cool stuff and mooching off the nice spread of snacks, I decided to be an actual PARTICIPANT this time.
Read more...Posted Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:10:42 GMT to Posted in Geek, Reviews Tags linux, scientific linux, upgrades
For my trip to New Jersey, my boss dropped off an old Dell Inspiron 2500 and a set of Scientific Linux 4.0 CDs. Since I didn’t have any other install CDs except Fedora Core 3, I figured I would give this new distro a try. The first thing I noticed is that it appears to be based on Fedora (a deeper inspection seems to indicate it is actually based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux). The second thing I noticed is that it had zero problems installing on this laptop. Some small problems have been encountered, such as not initially being able to set resolution to 1024×768 (fixed by changing the default monitor to a Dell 1024×768 Laptop Display Panel), not being able to put the laptop into hibernate or standby, and the media buttons not working (though do any of those special buttons work properly out of the box on any distro?). So far so good.
Going to their site, I noticed that Scientific Linux 4.1 has been released. Also, they have instructions (though kinda out of date) of how to upgrade from one minor revision to another. This I must try. Step 1) Set up proxy access at work. Step 2) Realize that the proxy is screwing up the compressed yum metadata files. Step 3) Hey, it’s a laptop, I can take it home. Step 4) Start updating.
Final verdict: After rebooting, I have an updated system behaving as expected! A big difference over my botched Fedora upgrades. If only more distros had such a well defined, documented, and tested transition between minor revisions, instead of primarily through downloading the latest 4 (and becoming 5) CDs, I am sure a lot of users would be happy.
Posted Sun, 21 Aug 2005 22:56:09 GMT to Posted in Geek Tags linux, SUSE
If you hadn’t heard by now, Novell is releasing ‘public betas’ of the SUSE linux distribution (openSUSE). This is a similar to Red Hat’s Fedora program.
How is this different from Fedora? From the FAQ:
The openSUSE project explicitly looks beyond the technical community to the broader non-technical community of computer users interested in Linux. The openSUSE project creates—through an open and transparent development process—a stabilized, polished Linux distribution (SUSE Linux) that delivers everything a user needs to get started with Linux. (SUSE Linux is consistently cited as the best-engineered Linux and the most usable Linux.) To fulfill its mission of bringing Linux to everyone, the openSUSE project makes SUSE Linux widely available to potential Linux users through a variety of channels, including a complete retail edition with end-user documentation. Only the openSUSE project refines its Linux distribution to the point where non-technical users can have a successful Linux experience.
I haven’t tried out this new version of SuSE (I used to use 9.2), but from looking at the package list and reading some commentary, I am somewhat leary. Some of the packages seem to be bleeding edge builds (including Samba, Xen, Openoffice, GCC) and it looks like they are going to use openSUSE as a testbed for items to include in their corporate distribution. Just like Red Hat. Granted, Ubuntu has become successful being based off of Debian Unstable, but….....
Regardless, I plan to give it a spin as soon as 10.0B3 comes out (which, if it comes out as soon as Beta 2 did, should be shortly after I get back from New Jersey) and see how that goes. My past experience with SUSE was not bad by a long shot. Here’s hoping that SUSE doesn’t drop the ball.
Posted Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:13:18 GMT to Posted in Geek Tags fedora, linux, upgrade
Over the summer, I have been using 2 operating systems on a regular basis: Windows 2000, which has been running on my home machine for 3.5 years now, and
Posted Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:42:39 GMT to Posted in Geek Tags ati, drivers, linux
The other day ATI released new linux drivers for their Radeon cards, complete with a new graphical installer. In the past, I have had nothing but gried with ATI drivers, never successfully getting 3D acceleration working. However, this time, once I went through the process and ran the configuration, when the display server restarted, and I loaded up Tuxracer (hey, everyone uses it as an indication on whether acceleration is working), what I got was smoothe graphics.
Now, if the same process that I used on my lab machine works on my home machine, I might not need to use Windows anymore.
On a side note, my Windows machine has been running for almost 2 months now with no major problems, but since Win2k support is being discontinued, I wonder how long that is going to last.
