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April 30, 2007
VMWare bits and pieces
Assuming you have it running on linux of course...
You can start a virtual machine using the following:
vmrun start /{path to virtual machine}.vmx/
When you have an issue starting the virtual machine check the directory where the VMX file resies. If the machine is not running and there are .WRITELOCK files present, then delete them.
If you want best performance (or better, at least...) install lots of memory in your host machine - prefereably 3+Gigs and give the virtual machine enough memory that it doesnt have to start swapping to the drive.
Posted by dottie at 6:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2007
Once more into the breach...
I'm passing on my old laptop to my brother and I have to install Windows on it. It's what he wants, so...
I had forgotten how awful the installation experience of Windows on a laptop was.
When you install Linux, you can expect a few problems, missing drivers etc. But, you can usually get your internet connection working and start downloading / upgrading from the net straight away.
Importantly, this is the same laptop that I installed Linux on and was able to start surfing /uploading within the first few minutes (would have been quicker but I always forget to enter some aspect of the DNS / Gateway configuration...).
I have just 'completed' the Windows installation. The Horror. THE HORROR!
A quick overview of the problems (using the hardware manager) - no drivers for graphics card, no drivers for ethernet, no drivers for WiFi (Broadcom), no drivers for audio, no drivers for modem, and no drivers for some 'base system device'. There is no indication what these items might be.
There is no way for me to get on the net and start upgrading the system. Unless I can burn some CD's with drivers downloaded on a net capable computer, I'm shit out of luck. Alternately, using the Linux Live CD which, on the same computer,would allow me to access the internet and burn CD's.
Ridiculous.
Posted by dottie at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2007
AND Thunderbird 2.0 is out too!
Posted by dottie at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Feisty Fawn has escaped!
The game if afoot!
Posted by dottie at 3:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The scaling rails brouhaha
There has been a *little* bit of heat directed DHH's way on comments he has made regarding the problems Twitter were having trying to scale their application. Mark Pilgrim's contribution is the funniest I've seen so far
DHH does seem to have a colossal ego. All the same, it's undeniable that he has initiated a framework that has legs and I am looking forward to where it goes in the near future (speed of development has been astounding)
However, I think the main problem with all of this is that DHH is not Linus Torvalds. Linus is a great leader. He knows when to ignore people, he knows when to say no and he is excellent at handling conflict, getting people talking, overcoming the issue and moving on to a brighter future for all.
As I said DHH is no Linus. That is the only problem here. Any technical issues can and will be overcome. In fact the Twitter issue was largely solved by a plugin developed by a member of the Rails community. Great!
All technical issues will be overcome in the same manner, I guarantee it.
What rails needs now is not more good developers or more work put into x, y or z (well, it does, but..), the area that is most lacing for rails is leadership. DHH seems to be the de-facto leader, but, he has not excelled in the post. I'm not saying he can't - he just hasn't yet. Probably due to the fact that he is more interested in getting on with his life - being a leader takes a lot of time.
If DHH doesn't rise to the occasion, or if someone in the Rails community doesn't see the problem and either call an 'election' (herding cats anyone?) or stage a bloodless coup, then I can see the success of Web2.0 companies based on Rails generating more and more high-profile conflict and divisiveness - maybe even a fork, which would be bad news (or maybe not...)
This can only result in FUD for those considering adoption, and crumble the patience and respect of those already in the community.
In conclusion, what I am saying is - shit or get off the pot, Dave!
Posted by dottie at 1:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 18, 2007
New web development paradigm - step up while it's hot!
Every where I look web companies are describing their programming as 'lovingly hand-coded', as if.
I'm starting a new trend, you saw it here first - foot coding. I've even got a catch phrase
Programmed lovingly by foot so you know if the program stinks - it's not the code!
Posted by dottie at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Linux - hmpf!
Whatever I have managed to do (more tinkering - will I ever learn!) Kubuntu now locks up every frickin' time I insert an audio CD.
I have a feeling it has something to do with trying to recompile the kernel to use the latest ALSA drivers. Or maybe when I compiled Amarok with bleeding edge MTP libraries to try and et it to recognise MP3 music players, or maybe...
You get the picture - I broke Ubuntu - well, cracked more like...
You know what they say about dogs and their owners, well now my operating system and its owner are the same - both cracked!
Posted by dottie at 11:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fessin' up about Linux
I have realised lately that I have become a raving fan-boy for Linux (particularly Kubuntu) snorting with smug contempt every time someone reported problems with Windows or Mac OS X.
So sorry!
The fact is that Linux is hard - sort of.
When everything works (as most things do now 'out of the box') its great - the experience we have all come to know and love from Windows XP (the first Microsoft Distro that has had decent driver support in my experience) or even Mac OS X (ask me about Logic Express for the G5 - here's a hint this release notification is lying)
If you don't mind scratching your head and learning new things (and unfortunately learning that some things aren't possible) then Linux might be for you.
A lot of people balk at the fact that there coul be a lot of command line typing involved. Some people don't like that, but, it is in fact one of the strongest elements of Linux.
I find myself getting peeved having to use KDE control panels - why can't I just edit the file with vim? Command line editing is often quicker than GUI.
Other things are light years ahead of the windows way when you work through the command line. For instance, installing packages - ok, the packages have to be in the Ubuntu repositories in the first place - is FAST and EASY and you are automatically informed of updates. Frickin Sweet!
Compared to scratching around a site looking for the latest version of some third-party software, then downloading it, saving it somewhere safe, installing it, blah,blah on Windows. In Linux (again assuming that the package is, well ... packaged) it is as easy as:
apt-cache search packagename
sudo apt-get install packagename
That's it - apart from having to type in your root password and press return to assure the system that you DO want to install the package its done. The package manager will also pop-up a reminder that the package has been updated, or some library that the package depends on (think DLL's in windows) has been udpated. Frickin sweet!
Having said that, there can be hardward issues. My new laptop rocks with Kubuntu 6.10 - but the sound chip is not fully supported so I can't get a VOIP softphone running. I can use Skype, play music through the incomparable Amarok and watch and listen to videos on YouTube, play DVD's - whatever.
I can run all the important applications I used on Windows (Macromedia Fireworks and Flash, Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape, Scribus, OpenOffice, Skype, OpenSSH, MySQL, Ruby on Rails). I never used much Microsoft software anyway so that part of the swap for me was pretty painless - I still remote desktop (using rdesktop) into my WIndows Development Server (running as a virtual machine in VMWare on my home Ubuntu Server) to do ASP.NET development which fortunately / unfortunately will be paying the bills around here for the next while.
Its been a long road to get here and I have tried more than a few times to swap to Linux successfully, but as I have mentioned before Microsoft finally forced the swap on me. With the impending takeover of the strict-father Vista, I am very happy to be sitting back watching the view form Linux land.
Jump in - the water is hot at first but damn it's better than the boiling oil that the inquisition has reserved for certain other operating systems.
Posted by dottie at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Bladder Bacon
Believe it or not - bladder bacon is popular with the spammers, at least that's the text they have been spamming my comments form with
I wonder what else they may use in the same ilk? Lung Liquorice? Arm Aspic? Guts Goulash?
Ah! All alliterative aspirations are absolutely abhorrent!
Posted by dottie at 6:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 15, 2007
Kubuntu - How to get Thunderbird to open links in Firefox
Open Thunderbird
Go to the Edit > Preferences and click on the 'Config Editor..' button
In the pop-up window, type in the 'filter' box:
network.protocol-handler.app
That should show two entries:
network.protocol-handler.app.http
network.protocol-handler.app.https
These will probably both be set to x-www-browser or similar. Right click on eahc of them, select 'Modify' and change the value to /usr/bin/firefox instead.
No need to restart
p.s. if that doesn't work, then maybe Firefox is in an odd place - just use the command whereis firefox. This will produce a few locations - usually the first is the one to use.
Posted by dottie at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2007
Ubuntu on me new laptop
Smashing.
While it is a road lined with thorny roses, nonetheless, it is lined with roses.
I had wanted to make the swap to Linux for years. I have gradually been swapping to open source programs over the years.
The first casualty was Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is great - there are some compatibility issues (mainly from OpenOffice back to MS Office) and the support for functions, macros etc. in the spreadsheet does need some work (the advanced versions of which *I* don't use - your mileage may vary). However, I have been happily using it on Windows (and now Linux) for the last four years or so - I have also contributed money toward it's further development - not a lot, but still..
Firefox and Thunderbird have made the largest difference to me.
I am shocked, every time I have to check that a page renders properly in Internet Explorer (at this stage I have the quirks down and seldom do I find large issues - that has been a journey of its own...). The irony of the fact that the browser most in need of extensions - such as 'web developer', 'Professor X', 'Firebug', 'ShowIP', 'MeasureIt' etc. etc. etc. - is the browser that doesn't support extensions.
Firefox really was the beginning of the end for me with regard to proprietary software. The realisation that I could customise the entire application for free, by using third party extensions - that (at the time) were going through a turbo-darwinian period of survival of the fittest, one-upmanship the like of which could only exist in the meritocracy that is open source - was a reveation that shouldn't have been so world-shaking to me as it was; I was already familiar with the 'bleeding edge' in all it's glory...
The next big step for me was VMWare. I started in a manner that I now view as arse about tip - I originally ran a linux server as a virtual machine on a Windows Server.
The final step for me, the push that was to turn me away from Microsoft forever, come - not-so-strangely enough - from Microsoft themselves.
I had a stable development environment based around Windows (and Cygwin for OpenSSH) on my desktop machine and a Windows Server that ran Linux as a virtual machine. That was normal enough - I had 'grown up' using Microsoft frameworks (if you ignore the wilderness years programming Perl...) so the vagaries of Active Directory, MS SQL and Windows were not unknown to me.
All was sunshine and happiness until Windows pushed one of it's security updates.
Suddenly, I was in hell.
Cygwin was broken - no SSH to my virtual linux server.
My firewall was broken - Windows didn't like it and so locked horns and initiated a fight to the death over superemacy. Luckily fixable by booting into safe mode and tweaking the Firewall (Agnitum Oupost).
Eventually after days of sleeplessness, stress and frantic googling, I had reworked my development environment.
I now had a much more convenient system - my development server now ran Linux (Ubuntu - thank you, thank you, thank you!) with Windows Server running as a virtual machine.
I could now use puTTY to connect to my LInux server and from there access the Linux server or RDP into virtual windows. Couple that with a secure router that only allowed an SSH port (custom port too...) and tunnel everything. Fucking. Sweet. (ok - that was a long road to get it all working remotely, but it was my first time...)
All was bluebirds and fluffy clouds until Microsoft decided to push another update.
Bang.
The server was OK this time - Linux, how I love thee!
This time my laptop was fux0red. Once again the firewall and windows update locked horns. Unfortunately, this time I couldn't pry them apart. I needed the windows updates to be up to date and a I needed a decent firewall and security suite and despite reinstalling windows, once I updated to the latest updates, windows and the firewall would go at it again killing internet access, CPU, the works - luckily, I had an option.
I had been screwing around with Linux as a dual boot on the laptop for a while. Due to the aformentioned I HAD to swap to linux - I had a load on at the time and I couldn't afford the downtime - plus I had finally had enough of Microsoft. Fucking bastards.
Unfortunately, the linux installation had been used to experiment - there was a lot of crap installed that had somewhere, somehow compromised performance, but despite that I soldiered on - eventually ending up with a system that did everything I could do on windows without the woes of wondering if the next windows patch would fuck everything.
Its been a bitter sweet run with Ubuntu Edgy so far - most things work fine but the laptop (Dell D800) has made some things a bit slow or difficult (At some point in the past I recompiled the kernel to try and get better video card and ACPI support and the performance suffered as a result - I could never retrace my steps to uninstall the offender or recompile the kernel for better performance..)
However, now I have a new laptop (Toshiba Tecra A8-193) running Ubuntu Edgy. Stable, fast, does what I need - yay!
Anyway - I'm pissed now and need some sleep - at least I know that I can wake up to a working laptop tomorrow - maybe?
The take-home : use linux, but be prepared for a steep learning curve which is tempered by the fact that it is well worth it.
Posted by dottie at 2:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack