JWP Linux Podcast - Geeky Stuff - And More

The State of Fedora and Ubuntu

jwp5 — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 07:51:35 +0000

I am about a month behind on listening to my podcasts. Life happens and its the middle of Football season. I been reviewing the changes to 10.10 and Fedora 15. I got the disk for Fedora 15 but have not upgraded the machine yet. I have 10.10 on a net book find the live fedora cd very clean and well presented. With the Spins Fedora meets me my needs but I have heard on the fedora weekly podcast that fedora is reviewing how the spins in the distribution work. Moving to a method were you pick what you want. Much like PC BSD will be doing in the future. The changes in plans by ubuntu’s leadership makes sense. Gnome is late and seems fragmented. So to have there own Gnome type shell that they control resources to is fine. Also the Xorg system is years and years old. And you have to look at a new way. We have doing Xorg since the 90s. Ubuntu needs to look 5 years down the line and say this is were linux will be. Sadly it will most likely be only the way people who pay for full time development support want it to be. So linux will be what Redhat, Ubuntu and what is left of Open Suse to pay to develop. While I did think that Slackware and Debain will still be there its important to remember that there only so much Robbie with the slackware crew and the Debian team can do without the other parties. Heavy lifting needs to be done in the next five years to keep up with technology changes in computers.

What is Nano

jwp5 — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:19:50 +0000

Hi everyone I just did a Hacker Public radio show on Nano.
I also emailed the creator of Nano but have not heard back yet.

Nano is a lot like Pico which is included as the editor in pine.
It uses the Control key to execute commands and is very easy to use.

http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.2/faq.html
http://www.nano-editor.org/

Also be sure to donate to Wikipedia.

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10

jwp5 — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:16:24 +0000

I have been using the lastest netbook down load of 10.10 for about two weeks now. I think it is improvement over the old net book design. I have not used the multi touch features as I am using the Asus 701. But works well with the 3GB drive and offers full suspend etc that lxde does not do out of the box. The interphase requires a lot of getting used to. And I did not like very many of the stock applications. One key advantage it has overy jolly cloud however is that it has an offline note writting tool. Of note I am thunder bird guy and i like gaim or pigeon. I do not like oracle office so that was a waste as well. I really like VLC. So what I really wish is something like suse builder for ubuntus netbook release. I want an iso. I want these things on my net book tell me how much space I need.

BBS Doors on Linux

jwp5 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 23:21:34 +0000

I have been looking into a hacker public radio piece about BBS in todays internet. I have found a few places to look there is a free BSD one also. most of them seem to use a synco net and they have clones of all the old bbs types wildcat major etc. This will be an on going BBS note as I learn more about it.

A Linux Update

jwp5 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:18:03 +0000

Hi Everyone hope you are doing fine.
I have been busy I had to do the reserve weekend so there was little linux or opensource in my life.
But I played a lot with puppy today and found the errors that I had been having and a work around for them.

As most of you know I am a usb key freak.
So if I am in the internet cafe and I trying to use my open software or something like that.

I want both the option to boot puppy or use portable aps. Saddly many internet cafes are turning away from usb enablement. Which is a real petty because it makes real information freedom not a reality for many. If you have broadband internet you have an IP address but at the intercafe you are free. You can use your own putty and have ssh so unless they got some one that reads your screen its not really possible to know who you are. Google also an no proof login just create a name and you have ssl secure email. Very nice.

The puppy for some reason was breaking when I used encryption. I just deleted the user file which took away all my custom work about an hour. So I had to start again. I used most of the drive for the sfs file non encrypted. It worked again.

Then I installed portable aps and opera, command prompt, a calculator, putty, winscp, xeon and a small editor. so the stick is once again a true useful thing in any computer any where. I was also having trouble that when I used p magic if I had a ext2 and a fat 32 partition that the fat 32 would not show up on any windows computer. It worked with linux but not the microsoft.

I got several comments about my Asus 701 thank you every one and i down loaded Pepermint and the ice as two users suggested and will start testing it.

I have been using unity for a few days and find it ok but a bit hard to find what want. but it runs good. It did fail the ipod sync test or iphone sync test and rhythum box takes for ever to get catalog down loaded but I need to try this another internet area to be sure I am in Saint Leon rot and lord only knows what types of filtering goes on. But downsloads iso’s in about 4 minutes so its good when a new distro comes out.

Well stay safe and I appreciate your tips.

jwp

Alternative Investing and How the internet Changes the Game

jwp5 — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:20:25 +0000

For My hacker Public Radio spot.
Recently, I had a chance to review about 30 years of my investing and savings.
Being a live long member of the save 10% club and having been debt free for a number years I thought I needed a review.

Having been in the military I had picked almost all the wrong kinds of things to invest in in the pre-internet era that one could think of.
A few years ago when Ron Paul was running for President.
I stumbled upon his web site.
Having shared many views with Mr. Paul and him being a small town doctor from Texas. I was very interested in what he invested in.
I read that he had about 50% of his assets in hard assets like Gold Coins and the rest T bills.
Of course he was debt free and owned his home and land out right as well.

I use Etrade and I am slowy moving the mistakes of the Army.
Its just hard to get in touch with folks that deal with paper.

The reason I like Etrade so much is that they show the total loss or gain each investment right away. No guessing you can see it.
You also pay as you go with them and it is very clear what you have to pay in total fee’s.

I like the treasury direct site as well.

But what really interested me.
Is what is coming. And this is the Hacker part of that really says wow.
I have been a user of pay pal for a long time.
I have a German and American account with them and find its a great way to move dollars to euros with out a lot of over the top fees.
Most people do not think about having two types of money but I assure you the dollar is not worth very much today vs. the Euro.
Which is great for American Jobs.
Being a Pay Pal user I a saw this Microplace site they have.
I used my pay pal ID and it worked.
There was no tricks or anything.
You make a small loan to women in south texas or coco farms in the islands and they really pay you back.
I have done it for a few years and it made feel a lot better about sharing my money and getting a fair return.

I also look into owning a share of Windmill or truck or locomotive but the incoming costs are pretty high. About 15K to starting in Germany to own a share of ship or locomotive. I like this because its a set investment a train that works in the Hamburg harbor and its there you can go and see it on your web cam and see it work. It pays back your entire principle over the 30 years of its life and it pays a share of the profit for that year. I have not found very many American investments like that. But have heard that some Oil trusts can do that. Can I have a web cam of it working would be a qualifying point for me.

Well enjoy and thank about it.
Keep it simple if you do save and watch fee’s.
The younger you start the easier it is.
And do not borrow money with credit cards or by car with credit or buy home unless you put 20% down.
Would be the only other advice.
I read book one time about wealthy barber and another about a guy who saved three years living expenses.
I used much from both.
The one that really changed my life was when I had the living expenses worked out.
It changed how I felt about my Boss and what I would be willing do a lot.
The spirit to take chance also came from that.

In any case I am off enjoy and be safe.

Fedora 14 LXDE Review

jwp5 — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:04:16 +0000

I was traveling again. I had heard from the linux outlaws and fedora weekly that Fedora 14 was alive and well. So I downloaded the ISO at an internet cafe. I had been having trouble with my Mint debian rolling release addition on my Asus 701 4G. As it filled up and and I kept getting error messages. I run Fedora 13 on an old IBM laptop in my basement which provides internet and basic information processing in my basement now. It used to be my wives PC. I found that unlike Debain Mint and before it Ubuntu 8.04 and 10.04 the power buttons did not work It did not ask me what I wanted to do and the battery management was not user definable. To Fedora’s credit the same issue happened when I tested Suse 11.3 with LXDE. I am thinking that LXDE might not be suited to the laptop. I also tried with Salix and the same issue except they had WICD and it did not want to get an IP address. (All three Linux distros have instances on work servers and old desktops at work that are fine) I find it very fast. All of the LXDE that I have tried. But liked the Fedora 14 the best. Very fast for sure going on the basement laptop.

Jolly Cloud Review

jwp5 — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:51:11 +0000

Hi everyone I used Jolicloud, I had heard Jolicloud’s review by the linux action show and thought I would try it. I was on the road in Frankfurt with limited internet access. And you can not install it and look at it with an internet connection. There was no terminal installed on it. Also there was no leafpad editor or note editor installed on it. google docs is no longer supported offline any more so I was stuck.

What I was impressed with.
That it offered a web interface if you use your jolicloud there are files in the cloud and all your internet life is right there one click away. But for traveling with a netbook with no g3 it was not my cup of tea.

The interface is clean and fast on my Asus 701 and it worked really well with an internet connection.

hacker public radio show

jwp5 — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 14:25:43 +0000

first I wanted to share my contact information.

and my rss feed to my show http://jwplinux.libsyn.com/rss

I wanted to talk about two places that really helped me in learning about the command line. Both do not run linux one runs net bsd and the other runs open vms. Both are so geeky you need to beat it away with a stick.

I use really often and have learned so much from the use of sdf public access unix system. It was first done up in 1987 and I really like it. I saw it once in Seatle it is great thing to view. If you liked the old compuserve you are going to love this place. Its free but if you donate I think 10 bucks you get a lot more out of it.

The second place is death row vms I did a pod cast with bev a while back and its agreat place to do unix. its based on open vms which if you can not love it you must hate cute kittens to. Bev has a lot compilers there which can save you so bucks.

Free raid storage at both places.

free email at both places

free IRC at both places#

A lot that geeks like at both places

http://www.sdf.org/

http://deathrow.vistech.net/

Portable Virtualbox

jwp5 — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 13:04:09 +0000

I had an itch I needed to scratch. Which is how my journey in to gagets and linux really started. I had been using DSL Linux with instructions from pendrive linux.com.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/run-damn-small-linux-in-windows/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/all-in-one-usb-dsl/

What I really liked about the above solution was that it did not mess up with the general operation of my work xp computer. As time went on DSL did not get updated. But it still worked on only 64mb of space.

From time to time I go to the pendrive linux site and look around. They have a lot of adds which is a sad thing but often they have very interesting ones. Not just the sex or drugs ones.

I stumpled upon this article and it started a three or four night journey into hours and hours of getting something right.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/portable-virtualbox.html

the down load site seems down in the moment but I got the code about a week ago.

I may put it up on the sdf site I have.

But I got it. One of the really big problems that I have always had with linux and vmware player was that each every time the kernel changes that you to reinstall everything while this is a 10 to 15 minute thing I just can not be doing it on fedora or debian testing every time the kernel changes. The pain was on a windows xp box anyway. I wanted a replacement for DSL that had a lightweight browser, full office suite, openssh, python, pearl 5.0. Also added bc, finch, screan and IRC client to it. it came in at 100mb with tiny core using the vitual box portable which is is fast and clean I had few issues with the the mouse movement and did a lot of clicking of the right central button. But I sense this may in fact be more a tiny core issue than anything else. What this solution does not have is games. DSL had a bunch of nice games on it. So I kept it for the games and did not delete.