IT Administrators

All of my computers are now on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).  That’s a Dell D820, a Precision 650, the GQ computer  that I picked up at Fry’s a couple years ago, and even the One.  I’m usually cautious about moving from a LTS edition to a newer version, but for some reason I decided to pull the trigger on upgrading each of my systems instead of performing complete reloads.  All four machines upgraded without catastrophic failures.  I did have to reload the kernel modules for my sound card on the Aspire, but it’s not a big deal.  On the Precision, some lunkhead sysadmin (who is reamining nameless) forgot to move /home to the second drive last time.  All I needed were these instructions and I was back in business: http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/01/29/move-home-to-its-own-partition/

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I now have several machines running Ubuntu and Debian on my home network.  Each one had an inconsistent version of the packages on it, and I finally decided this morning I was done upgrading each machine individually and downloading updates when I got around to it.  Mikey’s got his own repo now and Mikey likes it.

I found some very simple, very focused instructions at this link:

http://mediakey.dk/~cc/howto-create-your-own-debian-or-ubuntu-package-repository/

Next step:  Add a GPG key.

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Okay, so the Acer Aspire One now has a nickname of AA1.  I kind of like it, so we’ll see if it sticks. I received my own Acer netbook for my birthday and am in the process of tweaking it to my satisfaction.  My biggest annoyance so far has been the lack of codec support out of the box.  XVID has been my favorite codec for a couple years now and I am not about to go back to wmv, especially on a Linux machine.  One little tip I can throw everyone’s way though, the Fedora Repositories were intruded upon back in August.  VLC is the package I noticed this with, but if you tell yum to install vlc, you will receive these errors:

Error: Missing Dependency: libpulse.so.0(PULSE_0) is needed by package vlc
Error: Missing Dependency: libopendaap.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core
Error: Missing Dependency: libdvdnav.so.4 is needed by package vlc-core

This is a result of the security breach (looks like file corruption to me).  To fix it, you need to run this command:

sudo yum install fedora-release

Information can be found on the following page:

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=48759&p=161972

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Acer recently released the Aspire One.  My wife was looking for a laptop to check email and visit her forums while on the road.  The tech details were GMail and phpBB, for those interested.  We met at MicroCenter after work to look at netbooks on her birthday.  I will not criticize Asus.  They have made large strides in creating the market for the cheap ultra mobile pc, and I love them for it.  But there they were, right next to each other, the EEE Surf and the Acer Aspire One.  Comparing the two, spec to spec, the Acer made the Asus loook like a toy.  It has a standard resolution width (1024).    It has a larger keyboard (80% of a standard keyboard).  To be honest, the “triple-E” looked breakable.

So anyway, we picked one up at a store after dinner.  The clerk gave us the question that I often get hit with when trying to purchase items.  “Now, you know, this isn’t exactly what most people expect from a computer…”  I promptly interrupted, “It runs Linux, right?” Then we walked out the door with her new laptop and weren’t concerned about the price we paid.

I am more than impressed with the thing, mostly for it’s flexibility.  The distribution that it runs standard is called Linpus.  It’s essencially Fedora with a Mobile interface.  It’s very easy to get to a terminal and start customizing to your heart’s content.  I have already added Skype and upgraded the browser to Firefox 3 with AdBlock Plus to prevent the annoyances, both easy tasks if you already understand how Fedora.  For the sake of resource management, Linpus uses XFCE and it’s a simple matter of editing an XML file to modify what your default apps are on the screen interface.

Due to it being Fedora based, I was able to successfully get the Citrix Presentation Server client functioning for her work stuff.  The only major hiccup in this was replacing Thawte’s security certificate in the Citrix package.  It wasn’t very difficult, just a minor annoyance of downloading from elsewhere.  I could see this being a problem for someone with less computer experience.  Here’s my suggestion to Citrix:  Make your software update the certs automatically.  This is the only reason the RPM didn’t work properly.

Well, regardless, the Acer Aspire one is very impressive piece of hardware and I am considering getting one myself just to have the convenience of an extra machine with ssh and a web browser.   Acer really thought this one out.

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Today, Google relased Chrome Beta, an open source web browser based on Firefox and Webkit.  I am currently writing this post from Chrome.  The biggest benefit I see to Google’s method of writing this program is the intense resource management.  If one tab locks up, the others are fine.  From a technical perspective, this is the best idea since tabbed browsing itself.  Here is a link to the download: http://www.google.com/chrome

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