Category: Linux

Posted on

And Now It Comes To This

I’ve been pondering a new computer for the last while. The machine that’s running this site is getting a bit long in the tooth (it’s a shade more than 3.5 years old) and I’ve been pining for a new Athlon64 rig. I have three basic choices: an eMachines T6000, a Compaq Presarrio 8000Z, or a custom made Gamer Ultra 6000 SE (64) from Cyber Power.
There’s three problems with these selections:

  1. I’ve never had good luck with hp/Compaq equipment. Taking a look at the specs of the 8000Z, it looks like they’re using good components and I could potentially get a great machine for a good price, but the fact remains that it would still be a Compaq.
  2. I don’t know anyone who owns an eMachines box. They are getting better and better reviews all around the ‘net, but I’m still not sure. They were just bought by Gateway, after all, and the mobo on the T6000 is an MSI that doesn’t appear to have dual channel memory support and definitely doesn’t have an SATA controller on it. Plus, I’d be limited to a subpar ATI Radeon 9600, whereas with the other machines, I can choose top-o-the-line GeForce cards (much, MUCH better driver support under Linux).
  3. I’ve read some negative reviews of Cyber Power’s customer support and response times and am a bit worried about getting the machine on time. Also, the other two machines have the advantage of free shipping from BestBuy.com.

Above and beyond all this, I promised my wife that I would get her a laptop before I get another machine. I’d like to balance her laptop between features and a decent price. Once again, eMachines sells the fairly attractive Athlon64-based M6805, as well as the less expensive Athlon-based M5309 and M5312. There’s always an iBook as well.
Any advice on these subjects would be most appreciated.

Posted on

Linux & Mac UT2004 Demos

I played a bit of the Windows version of the UT2k4 demo the other day and I must say I’m very impressed. I enjoyed the experience highly and am incredibly tempted to buy the DVD version. EBGames seems to have it on special for $39.99.

Anyways, the Linux demo is available here and the accompanying slashdot story here.

Go forth, download and be fruitful!

Posted on

Linux & Mac UT2004 Demos

I played a bit of the Windows version of the UT2k4 demo the other day and I must say I’m very impressed. I enjoyed the experience highly and am incredibly tempted to buy the DVD version. EBGames seems to have it on special for $39.99.
Anyways, the Linux demo is available here and the accompanying slashdot story here.
Go forth, download and be fruitful!

Posted on

LinuxWorld Expo 2004

Arrrrgh! Blogger ate my post!
Well, here goes another try. I originally wrote up an email recap of Linux World 2004 in NYC for my teammates at work. What follows is a slightly-edited reprint of said email:

LinuxWorld proved interesting yesterday.
This is purely my impression, but it seemed to be better attended than the past two years. There were definitely more biz-types, but, surprisingly, it also seemed that “geek attendance” was up as well. There seemed to be a lot of college guys floating around in a sea of suits.
Oracle, IBM and Intel were pushing “grid computing” (think SETI@Home) heavily. [SNIP]
I received demos from RedHat, Novell and Sun on three products that seem worth exploring.
Novell was touting RedCarpet, which they acquired when they bought Ximian. This tool allows for fairly good site-wide administration of package deployment. It was unclear as to whether it was only going to work with SuSE or with all flavors of Linux, but they suggested that they would continue to support the Enterprise RedHat offerings. (Actually, on viewing this page, it appears as if they’re definitely going to be supporting Novell Netware services on RedHat and this suggests the same for Red Carpet Enterprise 2). [SNIP]

Next up is RedHat’s new Provisioning module for the RedHat Network. Details on it are available here. In a nutshell, it would allow us to do many of the things that Proto does now from a clean GUI interface, including package management, kickstart configuration, centralized config file management and the ability to assign different users differing RHN administrative roles. [SNIP]
Last is Sun’s Control Station. Originally developed by Cobalt to manage their server appliances, Sun obtained it when they bought Cobalt. It allows for similar functionality as the RHN Provisioning module, but it also supports multiple Linux distributions (RedHat, SuSE and Sun Java Desktop as of now). It also supports Solaris clients, although the literature suggests that it only works on x86 platforms, which is a shame. If it allowed us to manage our Sparc boxes as well as our x86 boxes, I could see it being very useful. There is a 90 day trial if we wanted to give it a look.

I also received a copy of Microsoft’s Windows Services for UNIX 3.5. It looks interesting, although I don’t know how useful it would be since we already do a lot of UNIX-to-Windows filesharing by means of Samba.
I received a demo copy of Astaro Security Linux, which is a (by-reputation) excellent Linux-based firewalling and spam filtering package. [SNIP]
I looked to see if anyone was offering a spam-filtering application. Other than SpamAsassin (built in to Astaro Security Linux), the pickings were pretty slim.

And there you have it. Only three weeks past due. A new record, if I do say so myself!

Posted on

Note:
I don’t think it’s physically possible for the new Fedora Beta to kick any more butt than it does. RedHat 8.0 was a step in the right direction, RH9 was almost there.
Fedora 1.0 is going to rock.

Posted on

Sun to Sell Linux PCs

In what has to be one of the worst-disguised, highly-telegraphed moves in recent IT industry history, Sun announced today that they will be selling Linux-based PCs.
These PCs will likely be beefier versions of their Sun Ray thin clients, although, who knows? Maybe they’ll sell a model intended to replace their low end Sun Blade SparcII workstations.
I still don’t know why Sun and Apple haven’t joined forces. “Macs on the desktop, Suns in the server room” makes so much sense, it’s almost ridiculous. Perhaps McNealy and Jobs don’t see eye-to-eye…

Posted on

*Shudder*

Verizon (*shudder*) has switched its techies to Linux workstations, saving $6 million in equipment costs alone. Nice exposure for Linux, but why did it have to be Verizon?
In other news, Larry Ellison is still a jerk. A jerk with some valid points, yes, but still a jerk.