Personal

At work I often get asked what UNIX/Linux I use. Truth of the matter is I am an OS harlot :) I run NeXTStep and Rhapsody for fun. When I buy systems I force myself to use them for at least 3 days online to learn them better. Anyways, below is the questionnaire on how I pick a distro/OS Do you want to use learn Linux for work? CentOS or RHEL Do you want to actually learn the innards of Linux? Gentoo or Arch Do you want to use Linux for day-to-day usage? Ubuntu, Debian, or OpenSuSE Do you want to use UNIX for day-to-day usage? Buy a Mac and install macports Do you want to use linux for development of bleeding edge packages? Fedora or Foresight Do you want to learn UNIX, but hear a lot about Linux? FreeBSD is a better SysV learning platform Are you a paranoid security type? OpenBSD Did you buy a lot of old equipment on eBay or Craigslist and can’t stand the vendor OS? NetBSD Are the type of person that has flashing lights and fans on your computer? Do you want matching bling in software? Linux Mint RC Are you building a server for home? Debian Stable Are you building a file server to run NetApp out of town? OpenSolaris ZFS builds Are you building that same file server but Solaris packages make you want to poke your eyes out? Nexenta Are you doing embedded systems for a special project? NetBSD Building a wireless mesh network with captive portals? OpenBSD Or in the end you are as geeky as Nick and change OS like you change clothes Build a Vmware/Xen server and run them all

I was in a bit of a predicament for the past few months. I live in DC and the girlfriend lives in Richmond. Being a somewhat busy dude (60 hours a week the usual) I need my internet. Work provided me a AT&T ExpressCard GT Ultra which is worthless. I even purchased a cradlepoint in hopes that the card just sucked in Linux and Mac. Nope, it sucks with everything. My requirements for broadband were simple, no install wait and quick enough to stream a webex session while checking email. iPhone tethering was working, but I needed something more standard and supportable. Comcast and DSL were worthless as they wanted contracts and long lead times for install. Clearwire and Sprint 4g were my options to weigh out: ...

One of my favorite features with GNOME/KDE is the show desktop button. Expose is great, but I am always clicking around on the dock. This morning the RSS feeds answered my greivance and provided this tip from MacOSX Hints: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20091109075034143 I wrapped the script and put an icon to the file. Here is the file if you’d like to download it for 10.5: Show Desktop.app

Real quick review of the desktop in pro’s and con’s Pro’s Installer is pretty and well laid out Theme extends across all 3 supported desktops (lxde, KDE, and GNOME) Administration utilities use native toolkits for each platform unlike YaST from SuSE Con’s Why wouldn’t you use network-manager rather than your cheesy control center tool I first used in Mandrake 6.1 or 7? The default KDM theme reminds me of the old Solaris days, doesn’t match the feel of the desktop GTK theme seems like a cut-n-paste from QT side and it isn’t pretty Beagle search rather than Tracker? Not starting a mono war here, but beagle is NO where near feature filled Seems to me that they took the bits and pieces from around the world and bundled it together. Problem is the bits they took were from the crappy bucket. Mandriva, I loved you back during the Red Hat vs. Mandrake days were you pushed the technology and ease of use for Linux. Now you just seem washed up.

Below is an excerpt from an email exchange between Mom and I. Love that lady ———- I am alive and my fever is stabilizing. I figured out my thermometer was broke today so I set up a controlled experiment in which I figured out the ratio and then updated my spreadsheet. I can graph my getting better in Excel :) All from my iPhone I might add. Take that technology :) ...