Linux Mint maintainer

Clement Lefebvre is the BDFL and core maintainer of Linux Mint (an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution I'm considering to implement on my mom's, and my dad's computers because of the Windows 7-hysteria).

I really like this guy, coz he's had a very similar Linux-experience as I have since the 90's. Here's a little quote to exemplify:

I started using Linux in 1996. It was Slackware(!) and I was quite happy with it. I learnt a lot about the internals of the system thanks to that distribution. A few years later more and more distributions became available and at the same time people started to get fast Internet at home with faster and faster download speeds. So I started distro-hopping... a lot :) I enjoyed many different distributions and for different reasons.

As I became more experienced with Linux I started asking myself how I could contribute back. I spent a lot of time helping out on different IRC channels and writing tutorials and reviews on the web. Eventually I even got paid for it and started writing for LinuxForums.com (you can still read some of my contributions here). I specialized more and more on distribution reviews and after a while I became expert (or so I thought anyway :) at seeing pros and cons in each one of them.

Looking at all the other distributions, I got a very precise idea of how I would make the perfect desktop if I was to do it myself. And because everything is easy when you're having fun, it wasn't long until I was producing my first ISO files.

So, to put it all together, we started using Linux about the same time, AND we used the same distro.

And by reading his blog-posts on linuxmint.com, I realized he has a lot of the same ideas as me, quite similar development guidelines, etc.

Linux Mint appealed to me basically ;)

OS X utsatt for botnet-orm

http://www.itavisen.no/811025/forste-botnet-for-os-x

Nå er det i hvert fall ikke trygt å bruke Mac lenger...

Mac / Apple har siden 70-tallet vært trendsetter på data-markedet, så det var ikke et spørsmål om "hvordan" eller "hvis", men "når". Visste det bare var et tidsspørsmål. Og det har jeg sagt lenge, så lenge det finnes en merkbar markedsandel med folk som bruker visse typer systemer, vil disse da bli mål for cyber-kriminelle (crackere).

Botnets har lenge vært et problem med Windows-maskiner. Mac-folket har lenge ment at noe tilsvarende ikke kan skje med deres maskiner. Dels fordi de er en minoritet få virusmakere gidder å bry seg med, og dels på grunn av at Apples operativsystem OS X er bygget på Unix - en plattform som av mange regnes som sikrere enn Microsofts.

En nedlastbar fiks fra Apple, kalt "iWorksServices Trojan Removal Tool", kan hentes ned herfra.

For å videre beskytte Mac- / Apple-maskiner fra slike trusler, bør en installere anti-virus og evt. anti-spionvare programmer (og her gjelder KISS-prinsippet, mer enn ETT anti-virus eller anti-spionvare program på samme maskin byr på mer problemer enn nytte).

Like I said...

Like in my previous post, a lot of IT professionals are also realizing the global network threat that is upon us.

Crackers (like everybody else) are now able to hookup to a decent Internet-connection with "broadband"-sufficient bandwidth, which also means; crackers are now globally able to take down multi-national corporation networks without too much hassle (provided they're not secured too much, not that it can't be bypassed, it just takes a lot longer to do it).

While researching how to protect my domain and network @ home, I discovered this article @ computerworld.com, entitled "100% Cure for Conficker": http://blogs.computerworld.com/100_cure_for_conficker

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Cyber Critic) advises people to jump over from traditional DNS systems, to OpenDNS. After switching my static DNS adresses in my router(s), I found some interesting features in OpenDNS, like the ability to stop phishing-attack attempts, or advanced adress-filtering. They've gone through the works and secured the OpenDNS system to be as secure as can be, without crippling day-to-day performance.

For example, you have to be a registered OpenDNS user with a/multiple registered and confirmed IP-adress(es) to use name resolving through OpenDNS.

E-warfare

The time has come...

Fellow IT crowd: electronic espionage and malicious takeovers are upon us.

The following article-link takes up the subject about cyber espionage on a global scale: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13731776/Tracking-GhostNet-Investigating-a-Cyber-Espionage-Network

A 10-month investigation uncovered what seems to be a Chinese cyber-spy network crossing the globe. Further investigation through fieldwork, technical scouting and laboratory testing uncovered that the "GhostNet" can consist of as many as 1.295 individual computers residing in 103 countries. At least 30% of these can be considered high-value political, diplomatic, economic and military targets.

Some malicious crackers are surely having fun harvesting quite the bot-farm I must say...

And if the technical advisors are right, the Chinese can do ALOT more damage than just steal sensitive information.

We are now living the nightmare a lot of sci-fi literature predicted years ago...

Ph34r!

I'm not saying this affects everyday people at the moment.., but it's a wake-up call to remind us that we're not totally 100% secure online, what-so-ever...

E-beauty

;P

OS/2 lives on :)

The oldschool types never really die, they update and evolve ;) The 90's operating system: OS/2, was a development collaboration between Microsoft and IBM, to introduce the 2nd generation operating system to accompany IBM's second generation personal computers of the early 90's. Today you would assume the OS was long since dead and forgotten.., well, you'd be wrong.

OS/2 lives on to this day, and is represented by Serenity Systems as "eComStation 2.0 RC6a" (2 pictures below).





What I liked about OS/2 was it's clean intuitive interface :) It even had pseudo-3D games! (chessboard in picture below)

From wikipedia.org:

Future

There is a community of OS/2 users and developers, along with loyal company customers, hoping that IBM will release OS/2 or a significant part of it as open source. Petitions to that end were made in 2005 and 2007, but IBM declined, citing legal, technical and strategic reasons.^[35] It is unlikely that the entire OS will be open at some point in the future, because it contains third-party code, much of it from Microsoft.

Also IBM made a deal with Commodore to license Amiga technology for OS/2 2.0 and above in exchange for the REXX scripting language.^[36] This means OS/2 may have code not written by IBM, which can prevent the OS from being open-sourced in the future.^[37][38]

Version 2.0 had such a long design cycle that its design started while OS/2 1.1 was still under development, and thus, portions of it were developed in conjunction with Microsoft, even though Microsoft never released a branded version of 2.0 (although they did release a beta in their name). IBM's contribution to versions 1.2 and earlier mostly resides in the GUI components; however, bug fixes and substantial performance changes to the entire system in 1.3 were made by IBM, and much more of the overall system (including the kernel) for 2.0 was developed by IBM.

The aborted PowerPC port did not involve Microsoft at all, and has been proposed as the basis for an open-source 64-bit version of OS/2.

Still, the community has suggested that, even if only the IBM portion of it is made open, the missing parts could be written by the same community to form a next-generation version of the OS. Code could perhaps be integrated from the Wine or ReactOS projects. Many developers believe that these missing parts include many of the legacy 16-bit components not revised since OS/2 1.x, and are exactly the parts that should be rewritten anyway. There is an ongoing petition to open parts of the OS arranged by OS2World.com.^[39]

With the possibility of an open-source future for OS/2, the OS may be given a new lease of life. IBM's current and heavy involvement with several open source projects indicate that opening parts of OS/2 will not be difficult for the company. But until then, OS/2's future remains in limbo.

Open source operating systems such as Linux have already profited from OS/2 indirectly through IBM's release of the improved JFS file system which was ported from the OS/2 code base.

OS/2 programs will eventually use emulators and compatibility layers for running programs dedicated for OS/2.

Asus 900 PC w/10hrs battery ;P

Hehe, my Asus Eee 900 PC with the 7,4V 10,4Ah battery case

(mildly oversized if you ask me, as shown in the 2nd picture below ↵)





A personal note about modifying this machine:

I cannot believe how easy it was to replace the RAM-module in this netbook! In contrast to the Acer Aspire One (AAO), this netbook was kids-play to open, remove the original RAM-module, and successfully replace with an upgrade.

Two screws opens an access hatch on the underside, which in turn gives access to both the single RAM-module and the miniPCI-express wireless card contained within ;) Both of which are not particularly wear resistant. So it was a blessing to be able to do this task in right under 5mins without having to dismantle the whole machine (as with the Acer Aspire One) to further risk electrostatic damage and so fourth...

I didn't really like Asus all that much before...but now, I LOVE Asus ;]

Among other nice features, it took my Huawei 220 3G USB modem out-of-the-box! No driver compilation, no additional kernel module...nothing. Just 'Plug-And-Play' ;P sweet!

Flash memory

After getting my new Asus Eee 900 PC, I was curious to research flash memory, to see the current state of events surrounding this technology.

Among a few of my notations, I learned that non-volatile memory, is memory that can retain it's information even when power is cut. [ Thus SSDs (Solid State Drives) are non-volatile, because they are supposed to replace the now obsolete magnetic-disk storage format. ]

Another interesting fact about solid state memory, memory chips and programmable memory chips, is the little known fact about how they originated.., or, why they were developed in the first place.

What I found didn't really shock me at all. Like with everything else technology-related, the U.S. Air Force had it's cold, damp hands in the mix.

PROMs (Programmable Read Only Memory chips) were developed at American Bosch Arma Corporation in Garden City, New York as a request from the United States Air Force to serve as a flexible and more reliable way of storing targeting constants (ballistic targeting vectors / calculations) in ICBMs (or, InterContinental Ballistic Missiles).

PROMs are defined as "non-volatile permanent storage devices", as they are programmed after creation, by shorting fuses in the chip to state binary digit programming [1(on) or 0(off)]. Or, to be blunt: PROMs usually contain machine-level instruction-sets to execute pre-defined tasks.

But as with a lot of technology, permanent storage is not a preferred every day method for the average Joe. So, later years were dedicated to develop dynamic flash memory.

In modern flash memory, the chips should be/are able to re-write/delete data up to several times without any significant drops in performance.

Choosing the right flavour...

A lot of Linux enthusiasts argue/claim that Slackware Linux is an outdated and obsolete Linux distro.

Fair enough, if compared to more modern bleeding-edge distributions like Ubuntu, SuSe, Gentoo and the like.

Allthough Slackware is a vanilla-distro (little or no changes/patches to system packages what-so-ever), it can be TWEAKED to include whatever you'd like. It is one of the last "hands-on" distributions out there. ANYTHING can be hacked/tweaked to suit any needs.

Slack forces the user to learn Linux from the ground up, and by this learning-curve, makes the user able to do whatever on whatever distribution in question. However, there are custom-distro's that focuses on specific user-scenarios: Ubuntu serves as a good "out-of-the-box" operating system for "gnubies", Fedora is Red Hat-based and serves as a rock-solid server framework or a good place to start as a sysadmin, SuSe is very good at security and Gentoo for compilation-wizards and optimization-gurus.

But since Slackware is the oldschool-type, it is basically barebones.., it is the base, and it works!

Patrick Volkerding is the maintainer and "BDFL" of Slackware Linux.

The three S' o' Slack:

• Simplicity
• Stability
• Security

Application checker

AppCheck is a testing-application for programs made for linux to check for cross-system portability. AppCheck tests the ELFs, scripts, libraries and more. As a testing framework, it doesn't seem to differentiate itself much from the forerunner of all checking programs: lint. The first program to flag suspicious and non-portable contructs, first appeared in System V Unix version 7 (outside of Bell Labs) in 1979.

But it's what AppCheck does after these checks that makes it stand out. It checks all the components of the program against the Linux Standard Base, AND different distributions listed in the LSB Database. It then displays all of this information on a webpage to make the report more intuitive and structured, and even gives you the opportunity to submit the program directly from the test-program for LSB certification!

After reading about this wonderful piece of software, I was inspired to do more C/C++ programming in my spare time, since AppCheck will spare me a lot of time when it comes to testing.

AppCheck is in no way a perfect checker, it's still in beta, and it cannot check libraries, binaries, and other components that aren't listed in the LSB. But it is a significant step forward for portability development.

** Note however that AppCheck is in no way a debugger **

http://www.linux.com/feature/144170

Memory IS RAM!

Moss on Firewalls

innergeek geektest

35,89744%

Operating Systems & area's of use

I'm getting quite fed up about reading articles discussing and comparing GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. A lot of the people writing these articles are missing the big picture. The systems are NOT similar, they are NOT based on any same principal or guideline what-so-ever...

Now, just to mention it; yes, they ARE based off some common UI (User Interface) guidelines. Most Operating Systems dating before the 80s did not incorporate any graphical user interface.



If you have seen the TV-movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you know that the whole GUI-idea was a rip-off from Xerox in the early 80s. As was the mouse peripheral device. A lot of the standards we enjoy today, were at first experimental projects at big companies that weren't all that comfortable about releasing any new technology, thinking it wouldn't appeal to the computer industry which had a reputation of being very conservative since the 70s.

To clear up about these different systems:

GNU / Linux:
Was developed as a hobby project by a software engineer student from Finland; Linus Torvalds. It was never supposed to become as big as it has. This is mostly thanks to the many computer hobbyists, gamers, professors, nerds and geeks around the world that endorsed development of an Open Source Operating System. For those of us that DO understand computers enough to be able to use a POSIX-system on a regular basis, it was a matter of choice: do we want a system that tells us what we need, can have or do? *OR* do we want a system that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want? and even gives us the ability to modify/improve any part of the system at will?

GNU/Linux is, and will still be for some time; a system for specially interested.

---

MS Windows / Mac OS (X):
Were developed as alternatives to IBM's business systems that were dominant at the time. Most computer systems at the time were very expensive "business machines". UNIX mainframes and super computers running at universities and big companies.

But in the latter part of the 70s and early 80s, Bill Gates from Microsoft, and Steve Wozniak from Apple Computers realized that normal people could benefit from owning a personal computer.

Steve began developing an affordable computer machine in his garage. While Bill Gates and fellow MS-colleague Paul Allen were buzy rolling out their founding product "Altair BASIC". When Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs revealed their machine at a local computer convention, Bill and Allen were gobsmacked. Someone had beat them to the punch. After setting up a meeting with Apple Computers, they *borrowed* the GUI and peripheral device technology, and basically did what a lot of people accuse GNU/Linux communities of doing now; copying the user interface and input technology that had landed Apple on the map.

---

Both companies were basically trying to do the same thing; bring a business-only solution to the consumer masses. Only, they stepped on each others toes in the process. Not to mention quite a lot of commercial sabotage and espionage.

Today though, the companies have different goals. And Microsoft owns quite a large part of Apple.

Apple changed their focus from being just a personal computer manufacturer, to become something of a cult icon instead. Bringing the movie, music and image industries together to worship the Apple Macintosh as the de-facto standard for audio/visual compositioning and editing.

Microsoft on the other hand paved along with their same goal of putting personal computers in the hands of the common man. Succeeding in having almost 90% of all computers running a MS product to this very day.

To quote a software engineering friend:

"Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows"

This says a lot about how normal computer users want to get their hands dirty with software handling. Most people get others to do it for them, or they do as quoted above. How things work, and how they should be set up, are not appealing to most non-tech-savvy people.

So it's not a question of which is better than the other. They have different areas of expertise, and so also different areas of usage.

To quote once more from my friend:

"The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working system."

With popular open source operating systems, this is not actually an idiot-proof option yet. You still have to know what an MBR is, what a bootloader does and have some basic knowledge about different filesystems.

You really have to pocess a fair amount of advanced computer handling knowledge to be able to install a *nix-system on your PC. Let alone getting it working without any headaches or special considerations.

There ARE user-oriented Linux distributions which simplify a lot of the administration-tasks when maintaining a Linux-box. But these are usually quite bleeding-edge compared to older (matured with rock-solid stability) distro's, and tend to be buggy and unstable.., unless, you have prior experience handling difficult Linux-boxes / POSIX-systems like I have ;P

P.S.:
*nix = general acronym for POSIX-based operating systems (UNIX,Linux,BSD,Solaris).

AMD's Linux support leap

AMD have really shown their dedication towards open source software the last couple of years. As explained in the Phoronix-article below this post, AMD has fostered not only one, but two open source driver projects with technical specifications, programming guides and register information for their graphics cards. They have even started shipping their cards with Tux printed on the retail boxes and Linux drivers included on the driver-cd's! Finally, a gfx-card manufacturer that has truly started leaning towards open development.

Personally, I've been using ATi/AMD's proprietary drivers for well over 2 years now. Cannot say I've always had positive experiences with them, but they usually worked without involving too much system hacking and modification. Actually, my experience with problems related to their drivers, were caused by internal driver functions rather than conflicts with system settings/libraries and/or software.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_evolution&num=1

Acer Aspire One

I have made my choice. I chose the Acer Aspire One.

Specs:

• CPU: Intel Atom N270 (1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 Cache).
• Memory: 512MB DDR2 533MHz on-board (Upgradable to 1GB or 1.5GB using 512MB or 1GB soDIMM).
• Display: 8.9" WSVGA (1,024 x 600), LED Backlit, 180 cd/m2.
• Storage: 8GB NAND Flash Module (Linux Versions) & 80GB 2.5in HDD (Windows XP Versions), Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC, RS-MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD).
• Audio: Integrated Intel HD Audio, Integrated Microphone & Speakers
• Communication: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, Integrated 3.6MB 3G/HSDPA (Optional), WiMAX (Optional), 0.3 Megapixel WebCam.
• Dimensions: 249 x 170 x 29mm (WxDxH) for NAND Flash and 3-cell battery version; 249 x 195 x 36mm for HDD version with 6-cell battery.
• Weight: 995g for NAND Flash, 3-cell battery versions; 1.26kg for HDD/6-cell versions.
• Battery: 2200mAh 3-cell battery (3 hours life); 2600mAh 6-cell (7 hours life) - figures derived from NAND Flash editions.
• Warranty: 1 Year Carry-in, upgradeable to 2 Years.

Ordered June 20., Confirmed delivery date: 01.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #1: 09.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #2: 25.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #3: 01.08.2008.

Cancelled order @ retailer, re-ordered @ another retailer June 27., Confirmed delivery date: 09.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #1: 02.08.2008.

Est.delivery change #2: 29.07.2008.

01.08.2008 10:30am - IT HAS ARRIVED! ;p w00h00!

Upgrading to Slackware-12.1

A linux.com article reviewing the new Slackware release, click the post title to read.

Open Source Software FTW!

Promising, promising...

I can't wait until an OEM releases a cellphone with a fully implemented Android software stack. The embedded video below (sporting 2 developers from Google), demonstrates the (simple,sleak,usable) beautiful user interface and some of the current functions from Android. If the final released version even resembles what they show here, I'm _definately_ switching to an OSS Cellphone!

Actually, I'll probably switch most of my embedded equipment to OSS-driven products, and especially Android, because it's Google-sponsored. Giving me a "all-in-one" solution to; e-mail, browsing, text-messaging and telephony. And if they incorporate a Blogger-feature into Android, I'll be in techie-heaven! ;P

iPhone, eat your heart out!

http://code.google.com/android/

I love Google ^_^

Linux-Live: Pocket Operating Systems

I've tried a lot of different flavours (Knoppix,Belenix,CentOS,Linux Mint,etc...). And I've always gone back to my favourite every time I've tried a new one, mainly: Slax.

Since it's based on Slackware (of course), it basically gives me all the superuser functionality I demand from my computer systems, while also providing a simple (non-hardware-accelerated) KDE desktop and basic built-in applications.

I've used Slax before, but I wasn't quite satisfied with the storage mounting system not being fully configured in v5, to allow mounting of USB storage devices automatically (yes, I prefer _some_ automation for basic tasks). Version 5 also incorporated a package system (much like Slackware), only, the packages were built as modules, to be easily added/removed on-the-go. This was also one of the features I did not favour very much, as it would lock up the system at times as i was removing package-modules while the system was actively running X, but this also seems to have been fixed in v6.

Features:

• distribution has reached a more stable level compared with earlier releases.
  
• it is based on Slackware Linux 12.1 (running the 2.6.24.5 Linux kernel).
  
• system size is now reduced to a mere 195 MegaBytes, thanks to the merging of 7Zip-compression (LZMA) into the squashfs filesystem.
• it now has the ability to determine if it is running from a writable or unwritable media, and saves system configs accordingly.
  
• it includes an X Window System and a collection of general network-enabled applications (browser,mail,chat,ftp,games,utilities,etc.), all ready to be used out-of-the-box.
  
• it now includes gcc out-of-the-box, giving the ability to compile third party software, which can then be packaged into software-modules afterwards for quick installation/removal.
• software-packages do not occupy a lot of space thanks to 7Zip-compression (modules now has the '.lzm' file extension).
  
• installation of additional software is easy using the new 'Slax Module Manager', grabbing software-modules from online software repositories, or local media.
• it has procured a large user community, useful for third party support.
  
• and it can be burned onto a CD-R or copied to a USB memory dongle like most other linux-live distros, but apart from other distros, it includes very intuitive installers for these tasks as well.
  

A definate must for OS techies, and Linux followers. I'm building a USB-key version to carry around, keeping my favourite OS of choice close on my person at all times to be easily deployed on a system running other OSes I don't usually favour that much... ;P

It is also a very powerful rescue-tool, allthough you CAN use the Slackware install-disc to do the same tasks, Slax lets you boot into an X environment whereas Slackware restricts to the command line.

Slackware 12.1 upgrade successfull

Successfully installed/upgraded my 3 computers with Slackware Linux 12.1! ;P

• (Desktop machine, "slamd-wifi")
• AMD Athlon XP 2200MHz | 1,1GB DDR RAM

• (Notebook machine, "slackbell")
• AMD Mobile Sempron 1800MHz | 1,1GB DDR2 RAM

• (Laptop machine, "paqslack")
• AMD Mobile Athlon XP 800MHz | 256MB DDR RAM

I'd wish I could have been done with this earlier, but I'm quite buzy nowadays.