I am an OS enthusiast.
I play with computers, add and change hardware, but more often than that, I play with the operating systems themselves, modifying them until I have them just the way I like them.
I recently moved my very nice Aluminum iMac running the very nice Mac OS X 10.5 into my son's room, and bought myself a Shuttle Glamor, a new monitor and some peripherals. Instead of running Windows on my PC I wanted to move to a distribution of linux because we use linux at work for our development and production application servers.
I know, I have blogged about this stuff before. But I cannot help myself.
I tried several likely distributions (including PC-BSD, which is NOT linux, but more closely related to Mac OS X). I ended up choosing Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is probably the most user-friendly version of linux out there. The installation process is seamless, it supports most hardware, is fairly well optimized and it really "just works." There are a couple of shortcomings but they are solved very easily (and are well documented). One of the shortfalls is the fact that Canonical will not install proprietary drivers by default. So, if you have a fancy ATI or NVIDIA graphics card, a generic, open source (but working) driver will be installed. The proprietary, binary drivers ARE available by simply checking a checkbox in the Synaptic (the operating system's software update program) settings that tells it to allow the installation of proprietary code. Once that is done, you can run the Hardware Drivers program in the Administration application menu and it will ask you if you want it to install the proprietary drivers... you say yes, done.
I have made many tweaks since I first built this system, and it is very personalized. I have changed the UI to a theme called "WoodenLooks", rebuilt my kernel to support more memory, built a more recent version of the NVIDIA drivers, tweaked the networking so I could tunnel into work and installed loads of freeware that I use for both work and play.
I would say the only thing missing from linux are modern games. The usual suite of card and board games are present, but the major game manufacturers who produce games for Windows and Mac OS X do not bother with linux. There was once a company (Loki) who ported the great games to linux, but they went under (chapter 7) years ago. I believe that is because most of the people who use linux use it because it is FREE. Possibly because they cannot afford Windows or Mac OS X software. This would carry over to games, which are not cheap. So the market simply was not there. Recently there HAS been talk that maybe in the near future game companies would begin developing for linux, as the popularity of Ubuntu (a Debian-based distribution of linux) has sky rocketed in recent years.
Anyway, if you are experimental or have older hardware that Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.5 will not run on, consider linux. It has come a LONG way and is seriously on par with the major proprietary operating systems. It is fast, attractive, very reliable, and with free software suites like OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Evolution and others, it provides all the functionality most people would ever need.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Struts 2 and Java 5
Struts 2.0 and Java 5 make a good combination.
I've been working on a project using Struts 2.0 and I have to say it is a major improvement over Struts 1.x. The ability to get things working quickly makes it a pleasure (so far) to use. In my project, I am using FreeMarker templates. I prefer the syntax over standard JSP tag libraries/syntax.
Working remotely is great, but I do run into problems. At the end of last week I spent time trying to figure out what changes I had recently made broke my application. I got a frustrated and left it for today. I fired up my server and my changes worked. Turned out that all my problems stemmed from some sort of network issue where I stopped being able to effectively communicate with either our LDAP server or our Oracle server, despite still having a valid connection, able to perform other networked operations.
Anyway, back to work.
I've been working on a project using Struts 2.0 and I have to say it is a major improvement over Struts 1.x. The ability to get things working quickly makes it a pleasure (so far) to use. In my project, I am using FreeMarker templates. I prefer the syntax over standard JSP tag libraries/syntax.
Working remotely is great, but I do run into problems. At the end of last week I spent time trying to figure out what changes I had recently made broke my application. I got a frustrated and left it for today. I fired up my server and my changes worked. Turned out that all my problems stemmed from some sort of network issue where I stopped being able to effectively communicate with either our LDAP server or our Oracle server, despite still having a valid connection, able to perform other networked operations.
Anyway, back to work.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
More mucking about
I've been fiddling around a bit with my Ubuntu 8.10 installation.
I tried, again, to install the latest NVIDIA driver without success, but then went back to an older version (yet newer than what Ubuntu will provide in its non-free apt sources) and that worked! So I am now in a 180.x version of the NVIDIA driver which is SUPPOSED to have much improved 2D and 3D support.
I also have been fiddling around with various display engines and ended up going back to the standard Ubuntu Desktop, and tweaking it from there.
Fun fun fun!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Ubuntu, NVidia and my Shuttle
I don't mind saying that adding the latest NVIDIA drivers to Ubuntu (linux in general) is a pain.
I picked up an 8400GS for my Shuttle, to free up some RAM being grabbed by the on board GPU. The board went in fine, and I was prompted to install non-free drivers (older ones) which went swimmingly well. My box was up and running even better than before. (I say better because while the Intel GPU did well, it often displayed weird artifacts a moment before refreshing a block of screen. Driver, probably, but annoying.)
I was not, of course, completely satisfied.
Desktop flavors of linux, Ubuntu in this case, are built with smaller, older machines in mind. Because of this, while the kernel supposedly sees 4.0 gigabytes of RAM, in reality you end up with only around 3.2 gigabytes to use. My machine has 4 gigs of RAM in it and I want to use it all. So, I rebuilt my generic kernel, turning on CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G and CONFIG_X86_PAE to make use of my memory. It took a couple of tries, mostly because I was silly and named my new kernel the same as my old kernel, the first time. But an hour or so later I was ready for the next step: Installing the latest NVIDIA driver (1.80-18). This new driver is supposed to be head over heals better than the current driver (1.77-xx). I downloaded the driver installer[s], killed X Windows and installed the driver. Rebooted... KABOOM!
Not only could I not load the new driver, but the old NVIDIA driver was somehow toasted as well. Can you say REINSTALL? I reinstalled, rebuilt the kernel and am, at the moment, running with the older NVIDIA driver. I will have to do some more research before I try and install the newer driver. Too scary. Supposedly the next version of Ubuntu will be going with the 1.80 series from NVIDIA. I suppose I can wait until then.
Anyway, all's well that ends well.
I picked up an 8400GS for my Shuttle, to free up some RAM being grabbed by the on board GPU. The board went in fine, and I was prompted to install non-free drivers (older ones) which went swimmingly well. My box was up and running even better than before. (I say better because while the Intel GPU did well, it often displayed weird artifacts a moment before refreshing a block of screen. Driver, probably, but annoying.)
I was not, of course, completely satisfied.
Desktop flavors of linux, Ubuntu in this case, are built with smaller, older machines in mind. Because of this, while the kernel supposedly sees 4.0 gigabytes of RAM, in reality you end up with only around 3.2 gigabytes to use. My machine has 4 gigs of RAM in it and I want to use it all. So, I rebuilt my generic kernel, turning on CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G and CONFIG_X86_PAE to make use of my memory. It took a couple of tries, mostly because I was silly and named my new kernel the same as my old kernel, the first time. But an hour or so later I was ready for the next step: Installing the latest NVIDIA driver (1.80-18). This new driver is supposed to be head over heals better than the current driver (1.77-xx). I downloaded the driver installer[s], killed X Windows and installed the driver. Rebooted... KABOOM!
Not only could I not load the new driver, but the old NVIDIA driver was somehow toasted as well. Can you say REINSTALL? I reinstalled, rebuilt the kernel and am, at the moment, running with the older NVIDIA driver. I will have to do some more research before I try and install the newer driver. Too scary. Supposedly the next version of Ubuntu will be going with the 1.80 series from NVIDIA. I suppose I can wait until then.
Anyway, all's well that ends well.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Diarrhea and Ubuntu
I awoke to "Mike you have to get up and clean up this mess!" 2:30 AM is not my favorite time to clean multiple sites of dog poop.
So now I cannot sleep and am playing on my new PC. That's right, a PC. I still have my mac (how could I not) but my primary machine is a Shuttle "Glamor" model that I bought as a bare bones kit, added a core 2 quad, 4 gb of ram, a couple of 250 gb disks, a DVD burner and a BenQ 24" widescreen monitor. A nice little machine.
I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on it, had a dickens of a time getting PPTP to work, but in the end it turned out to be quite simple (just had to dredge through muck to get there). I am still getting configured to run all the stuff I need for work, but that should be completed soon (by the end of this week I hope, anyway).
Back to surfing until I grow weary again.
So now I cannot sleep and am playing on my new PC. That's right, a PC. I still have my mac (how could I not) but my primary machine is a Shuttle "Glamor" model that I bought as a bare bones kit, added a core 2 quad, 4 gb of ram, a couple of 250 gb disks, a DVD burner and a BenQ 24" widescreen monitor. A nice little machine.
I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on it, had a dickens of a time getting PPTP to work, but in the end it turned out to be quite simple (just had to dredge through muck to get there). I am still getting configured to run all the stuff I need for work, but that should be completed soon (by the end of this week I hope, anyway).
Back to surfing until I grow weary again.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Week at work
Not much to blog on. I am in Massachusetts this week for work. A couple thousand miles from Phoenix and the nice and toasty sunshine.
It is actually not bad up here for this time of year. Today it is supposed to hit 50 degrees F., not bad at all.
Today I have a 5 and one half hour long meeting. I hope we can take a break or two.
More later, when I return home!
It is actually not bad up here for this time of year. Today it is supposed to hit 50 degrees F., not bad at all.
Today I have a 5 and one half hour long meeting. I hope we can take a break or two.
More later, when I return home!
Monday, November 17, 2008
ARRR ME MATEYS! Piracy and the cycle of life.
What is up with all the piracy. I mean the real, old-fashioned kind of pirates in ships?
AP Top Headline: "DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Somali pirates hijacked a supertanker hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Saudi-owned ship loaded with crude and its 25-member crew, the U.S. Navy said Monday...."
It couldn't have happened to a better entity. (Not fond of Saudi Arabia, and it irks me that our country has any relationship with them at all, let alone a good one.) Still, piracy! Insanity.
Is this a sign of the times? Are moving backwards instead of forwards? Civilization is failing, not progressing. I am not surprised, really. I mean, if you look back in history, all the way back to the ancient "Sumerians" you can see the rise and fall of civilization or empires time and time again. It's obvious we are heading that way again.
The good news is we seem to advance a little bit more whenever a fall occurs. So after centuries of misery, it will get better again for a few more centuries.
I think everyone should read Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible). It covers the rise and fall, cycles, etc. in depth. Everything man does comes and goes and comes again. Nothing under the sun is new, and all things repeat. Only that which God creates is eternal and lasting and eternally pleasing. Solomon was a deep thinker. He pondered and pondered and pondered the meaning of life, it was a torture to him. He saw the cycles, he saw the toil, he saw the toil of past empires and how there was nothing left of them now. He saw these things and it troubled him to some extent, including his own riches and the things he built (including the Temple).
In the end, he realized that a man must be content in living his life, in the day to day details of his life; it is in the details we will find God. God lives in acts of kindness, in love, in doing "the right things at the right time." And wherever God is in, you know it is something that extends beyond this world, this life.
AP Top Headline: "DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Somali pirates hijacked a supertanker hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Saudi-owned ship loaded with crude and its 25-member crew, the U.S. Navy said Monday...."
It couldn't have happened to a better entity. (Not fond of Saudi Arabia, and it irks me that our country has any relationship with them at all, let alone a good one.) Still, piracy! Insanity.
Is this a sign of the times? Are moving backwards instead of forwards? Civilization is failing, not progressing. I am not surprised, really. I mean, if you look back in history, all the way back to the ancient "Sumerians" you can see the rise and fall of civilization or empires time and time again. It's obvious we are heading that way again.
The good news is we seem to advance a little bit more whenever a fall occurs. So after centuries of misery, it will get better again for a few more centuries.
I think everyone should read Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible). It covers the rise and fall, cycles, etc. in depth. Everything man does comes and goes and comes again. Nothing under the sun is new, and all things repeat. Only that which God creates is eternal and lasting and eternally pleasing. Solomon was a deep thinker. He pondered and pondered and pondered the meaning of life, it was a torture to him. He saw the cycles, he saw the toil, he saw the toil of past empires and how there was nothing left of them now. He saw these things and it troubled him to some extent, including his own riches and the things he built (including the Temple).
In the end, he realized that a man must be content in living his life, in the day to day details of his life; it is in the details we will find God. God lives in acts of kindness, in love, in doing "the right things at the right time." And wherever God is in, you know it is something that extends beyond this world, this life.
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