Blog

Windows Vista Refund

jared — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:00:35 +0000

This fellow describes how he got a refund for Windows Vista - a whopping $200 - with the purchase of his new computer. All he had to do was decline the Windows Vista EULA agreement when starting his computer for the first time.

Brilliant! Now a person can go out and buy those low-end Acers you can find for $500, get $200 back and brag to all your friends that you have a fully loaded laptop for the price they paid for their ASUS EeePC or other sub-notebook!

Why a business should consider shifting to Ubuntu

jared — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:27 +0000

Chin Wong has written an article on why some businesses should consider shifting to Ubuntu. In my opinion, this article is a best of breed for such a topic. Chin is a good writer that clearly conveys his thoughts in an organized and objective manner. It is not strategic, biased, or emotional like other other Ubuntu blogs and articles. This was a breath of fresh air.

Ubuntu popularity

jared — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:00:26 +0000

While the Linux Counter aims to determine how many Linux users there are worldwide, the Ubuntu Counter "aims to catalogue the number of registered machines using the numerous variants of the Ubuntu Linux distribution".

If you use Ubuntu, consider joining the Ubuntu Counter project. I did.

Ubuntu testimonials

jared — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:00:19 +0000

I like to hear the experiences of people switching to Linux (especially Ubuntu) from other desktop systems such as Microsoft Windows, Apple, and others.

Although the benefits of using Linux are well cited all over the internet, it's the personal accounts or testimonials that prove these benefits.

Ubuntu Story is a website that let's people share the Linux history and how they found Ubuntu.

More on Ubuntu and Fonts

jared — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:00:40 +0000

For some reason or another, I've always enjoyed topics of Ubuntu and Fonts so this post on how to create or edit fonts on Ubuntu was a pleasant read.

The author does a particularly nice job of highlighting some font related tools one can install on Ubuntu such as FontForge, Specimen Font Previewer, Fonty Python (lol, what a good name), Waterfall and Font Image.

Improve Linux by hating Linux

jared — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:48:43 +0000

The best way to improve a thing is to understand its flaws. The Linux Haters blog (LHB) author shares reasons why Linux and Open Source software is flawed. In so doing he actually helps the open source community determine how best to improve the projects they work on.

One can scour the net for flames, rants and fanboi propaganda but Linux Hater explains WHY Linux and OSS repeatedly fail. These insights are valuable beyond words. Whether or not the Linux Hater actually hates Linux is not a debate to concern ourselves with. What's important is the message - if developers would pay heed to Linux Hater's rants they'd find solutions for making their software easier to use and more widely adopted.

I admit I love Linux but there are days I hate it to no end. I agree with Linux Hater that often the configuration of some OSS is too time consuming to learn or the user interface so convoluted. I am not fond of bloated Microsoft products or expensive Apple products but the OSS community can sure learn a thing or two from both - And that is how to make more user friendly software.

One of the things I hate the most is that sometimes it seems like too many people are working on different projects that perform similar functions. How many CD burning software do we actually need? How many gedit's do we need? If only we could harness this human capital to create 1 or 2 solid, dependable products instead of 20 half-assed ones.

LHB rants are a pleasure to read not only because they are well crafted but because they speak the truth. I'd have to say of all the Linux blogs I've seen, LHB is by far my favorite. Whoever you are Linux Hater, keep on hating.

Others would agree.

Microsoft’s software update DOES NOT beat Apple and Ubuntu

jared — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:20:32 +0000

I have serious concerns about all this news on how Windows update service had no downtime compared to Apple update service and Ubuntu update service. My concern is that it is being hyped up as a massive Ubuntu failure.

If one pays attention to the details, the monitoring timeframe of each service was for April 1 to June 30, 2008. That's 3 months!

Are 3 months supposed to be some kind of indicator that Ubuntu or Apple fail miserably compared to Windows?

Why not measure for 4 months? Maybe the Windows server had a HUGE failure for days before April 1? And maybe on July 1 it went down again for days?
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer a service that went down once for a full day in a given year over a service that crashed multiple times, each time for an hour, throughout the year. To me that suggests the people behind the first service are more knowledgeable. When a service shows it continually has problems and can't be fixed, I begin to worry about their technical expertise.
What was the server load for that time period? How many download requests did each have? Does the time period correspond to some recently released security or bug fixes?
Monitoring occurs by checking the URL's: archive.ubuntu.com, www.update.windows.com and swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/index-1.sucatalog. Are we sure there were no DNS issues during the 3 months?

These servers operate 24/7, 358 days of the year. I demand Pingdom AB group compare their data for 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 5 years if the data is available.

I understand they probably don't have data for server load, server requests, number of updates/fixes, and access to any DNS issues. Someone would need to do a bit of legwork to get all of that.

With all of these information gaps, any claim made that Windows update service outperforms the other 2 update services is meaningless.

Network inventory and configuration management for Linux

jared — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 04:42:10 +0000

I just stumbled across some open source software (multiplatform) that will aid in your inventory and configuration management of your networks called ZipTie. Although I haven't tried it, the screenshots reveal it to be very feature rich and professional grade software.

There are binaries for Linux, Ubuntu, Windows and Mac OS X for both the server and client.

ZipTie allows you to discover all devices in your network to create a comprehensive inventory and to manage the configuration of those devices.
...ZipTie is constantly under development and leverages a large community of network experts who share their tools, device adapters, and experience.

If your a systems or network admin, or just a person with a bunch of computers in your home, you will want to keep this software on your radar.

Network profiles

jared — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:33:11 +0000

I still use MS Windows as my gaming machine because I still find there are issues with relying on Linux to play my 3D games. I thought I'd just quick explain why I use MS Windows as I'm going to talk about a freeware program called Net Profiles.

Net Profiles allows you to create specific network connection identities to easily switch between them. This works particularly good if you are on a laptop and need to connect to different networks depending on your location.

This software is awesome, but really shows a critical fault of Windows XP. Possibly Windows Vista has a feature to switch between networks easily, I don't know. But you think an operating system as "advanced" as MS Windows would have such a feature built into it.

Ubuntu and other Linux have always had the ability to do this. And it's very easy to do so. A simple text file for configuration and some command line commands will have you switching networks in no time. Or you can install software to do it for you - just like Net Profiles. In any event, I think this just goes to show the beauty of Linux.

Popular data backup and syncronization services

jared — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:14:58 +0000

I currently use Amazon's S3 service to backup my important files for both my Linux and Windows machines. Jungledisk is the "frontend" I use to gain access to the S3 service. While this setup works very well for me, it would quite expensive to use it to store all of my important files, which is at 85 GB and growing. For storing alone, Amazon S3 would cost me $12 per month.

So over the next couple of months I'll be looking at other alternatives to backup solutions. It may be that some files I store at home on an external hard drive or DVD's while critical files are stored off-site on Amazon servers.

I did a fair amount of research on various backup solutions before choosing Amazon S3, so I'll be going back to these to see which could fit my needs better. There are many backup solutions but these are the ones that seem to be most popular:

One service I was particularly interested in was Rsync.net. I can't find where I read it, but this service has been around for a long time and they seem to have their act together.

Dreamhost, a web hosting company I deal with, also has a service called FilesForever that may be of interest to someone looking for off-site data storage.

If you are in the market for either data backup, storage or syncronization services or solutions, one of the above options should fit your needs well.