ok. i just bought an el cheapo usb 1.1 64mb flash drive (US$12.5).
now surprisingly, suse 9.1 professional, automatically mounted the drive. isn't that amazing?
i run debian sid... now i tried it. ok it didn't mount it automatically. i had to run mount as root but still, man, it worked! :D
i of course was surprised. i half expected the device not to work.
linux is almost ready for prime time!
Friday, November 19, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
What is Clustering
Recent years seem to have sparked a lot of interest in Clustering Technology. In one form or another, clusters will exist and seamless in our everyday lives and vital for the future of computing.
Clustering is not a new methodology. Clusters have been around for decades! There are myriad ways why one would “cluster” computers. Some, because they demand computing power that “ordinary” computers can not provide or because their setup demands redundancy at multiple levels. Clusters are aptly named because you put together individual computers to serve a purpose and typically modern clusters are designed in such a way that the end user “sees” just one machine.
We can generally define two distinct methodologies of clusters: Highly Available Computing (HA) and High Performance Computing (HPC). Each have their own distinct purpose.
Lets talk HA. Highly Available Computing is so named because they are deployed in mission critical setups. It simply means that at no time must the service be denied a user. These are done by Data Centers, Financial Institutions, Media Groups, Email providers, Governments, Military, DNS servers, etc. HA have redundancy built into them. Thats the whole purpose. The “Machine” typically have multiple hard drives, power supplies and entire systems that should any one item or “point of failure” go down another machine or device must take its place. Yet at the same time, data must be secure and available and this action must be seamless to the end user!
Another methodology is called High Performance Computing (HPC). True, HPC is not limited to clustering technology and can mean massively parallel processors but for our discussion we will limit ourselves to HPC as they pertain to Clusters.
As its name implies, High Performance Computing's focus is crunching numbers. Thats its primary purpose. These machines are typically used in laboratory settings--- their purpose in life is to crunch numbers, decode DNA, predict the weather, track satellites and search for that obscure baby name site on the Internet. A pretty good example of HPC are those deployed by Google which they use to search information quickly.
David Becker and Thomas Sterling of NASA back in the 1990s had this idea. Why not build a High Performance Computer out of commodity components? PCs and PC parts had gone to price levels that were so cheap that coupling of PCs to build a supercomputer was possible. Enter the age of Commodity Off-the Shelf-based High Performance Computing which was called “Beowulf”.
Beowulfs are highly scalable meaning you can just add and add more “nodes” to your machine to increase performance. Beowulf runs on Linux and its future is bright as niche market in the ever increasing high performance computing world. Today, Beowulf is an accepted genre in High Performance Computing. (for more information on Beowulfs click here).
Microsoft did a similar project but for Windows way back when called the Wolfpack. Essentially the purpose was to deploy HPC/HA using Windows. However, most people well the sane ones would prefer to deploy Unix and/or its variants e.g. Linux, BSD, etc. on an HA/HPC. Well its much easier on the latter than the former in our humble opinion but thats just us.
Anyway, there are myriad ways to skin a cat, as they say. Present day network technologies allow off the shelf deployment of Cluster technology and its not just Beowulf. Apple Macs utilizing their Rendezvous software solution, Apple Airport (WiFi), Mac OS X and Xgrid software can get you started on a “two” node cluster and can scale appropriately. Linux Virtual Server Project (www.linuxvirtualserver.org) can help you build affordable Highly Available Cluster and then there is something called a Grid (or you can also visit Globus) which is the coupling on not only the hardware/network level but application layer level as well to form inter-operable highly available and high performance systems.
Isn't it all exciting and stimulating?
References and Further reading:
IBM DeveloperWorks Bleeding-Edge Stuff, lots of tutorials on these "edge" technologies. also can be found here.
for linux:
The Linux Documentation Project - everything you need to know about linux.
Linux Virtual Server Project - good primer on clusters and clustering methodologies
Linux Iso Images - site where you can download an iso image to burn so that you can run linux now.
Suse Linux - one of the best commercial distributions of linux owned by Novell
the Debian Project the best linux distribution in my humble opinion on the planet today because of "apt", just don't get involve with the politics!
Knoppix Project! Linux on a LiveCD! it means, you can run the operating system by simply booting the CD or DVD. :D great no? especially when you don't have a hard drive or machine to spare to play with linux!
The Beowulf:
Beowulf Project - Number one resource on the Internet for Beowulf.
Information about Grids:
Grid
Globus Project this will driving Grid technology today and in the future!
Apple Mac:
Apple XGrid - really nice piece of technology. makes life easier.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Wolfpack - article on wolfpack.
Eclipse Project:
Eclispe Project - one of the best development platform out there. could be useful when you start developing Cluster/Grid Apps. very scalable piece of software. It was developed by Big Blue
Clustering is not a new methodology. Clusters have been around for decades! There are myriad ways why one would “cluster” computers. Some, because they demand computing power that “ordinary” computers can not provide or because their setup demands redundancy at multiple levels. Clusters are aptly named because you put together individual computers to serve a purpose and typically modern clusters are designed in such a way that the end user “sees” just one machine.
We can generally define two distinct methodologies of clusters: Highly Available Computing (HA) and High Performance Computing (HPC). Each have their own distinct purpose.
Lets talk HA. Highly Available Computing is so named because they are deployed in mission critical setups. It simply means that at no time must the service be denied a user. These are done by Data Centers, Financial Institutions, Media Groups, Email providers, Governments, Military, DNS servers, etc. HA have redundancy built into them. Thats the whole purpose. The “Machine” typically have multiple hard drives, power supplies and entire systems that should any one item or “point of failure” go down another machine or device must take its place. Yet at the same time, data must be secure and available and this action must be seamless to the end user!
Another methodology is called High Performance Computing (HPC). True, HPC is not limited to clustering technology and can mean massively parallel processors but for our discussion we will limit ourselves to HPC as they pertain to Clusters.
As its name implies, High Performance Computing's focus is crunching numbers. Thats its primary purpose. These machines are typically used in laboratory settings--- their purpose in life is to crunch numbers, decode DNA, predict the weather, track satellites and search for that obscure baby name site on the Internet. A pretty good example of HPC are those deployed by Google which they use to search information quickly.
David Becker and Thomas Sterling of NASA back in the 1990s had this idea. Why not build a High Performance Computer out of commodity components? PCs and PC parts had gone to price levels that were so cheap that coupling of PCs to build a supercomputer was possible. Enter the age of Commodity Off-the Shelf-based High Performance Computing which was called “Beowulf”.
Beowulfs are highly scalable meaning you can just add and add more “nodes” to your machine to increase performance. Beowulf runs on Linux and its future is bright as niche market in the ever increasing high performance computing world. Today, Beowulf is an accepted genre in High Performance Computing. (for more information on Beowulfs click here).
Microsoft did a similar project but for Windows way back when called the Wolfpack. Essentially the purpose was to deploy HPC/HA using Windows. However, most people well the sane ones would prefer to deploy Unix and/or its variants e.g. Linux, BSD, etc. on an HA/HPC. Well its much easier on the latter than the former in our humble opinion but thats just us.
Anyway, there are myriad ways to skin a cat, as they say. Present day network technologies allow off the shelf deployment of Cluster technology and its not just Beowulf. Apple Macs utilizing their Rendezvous software solution, Apple Airport (WiFi), Mac OS X and Xgrid software can get you started on a “two” node cluster and can scale appropriately. Linux Virtual Server Project (www.linuxvirtualserver.org) can help you build affordable Highly Available Cluster and then there is something called a Grid (or you can also visit Globus) which is the coupling on not only the hardware/network level but application layer level as well to form inter-operable highly available and high performance systems.
Isn't it all exciting and stimulating?
References and Further reading:
IBM DeveloperWorks Bleeding-Edge Stuff, lots of tutorials on these "edge" technologies. also can be found here.
for linux:
The Linux Documentation Project - everything you need to know about linux.
Linux Virtual Server Project - good primer on clusters and clustering methodologies
Linux Iso Images - site where you can download an iso image to burn so that you can run linux now.
Suse Linux - one of the best commercial distributions of linux owned by Novell
the Debian Project the best linux distribution in my humble opinion on the planet today because of "apt", just don't get involve with the politics!
Knoppix Project! Linux on a LiveCD! it means, you can run the operating system by simply booting the CD or DVD. :D great no? especially when you don't have a hard drive or machine to spare to play with linux!
The Beowulf:
Beowulf Project - Number one resource on the Internet for Beowulf.
Information about Grids:
Grid
Globus Project this will driving Grid technology today and in the future!
Apple Mac:
Apple XGrid - really nice piece of technology. makes life easier.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Wolfpack - article on wolfpack.
Eclipse Project:
Eclispe Project - one of the best development platform out there. could be useful when you start developing Cluster/Grid Apps. very scalable piece of software. It was developed by Big Blue
Monday, October 04, 2004
Suse 9.1: a Review
Ok. I finally installed that Suse 9.1 DVD Novell. Yes, that free DVD that everyone seemed to want. :D
I installed Suse 9.1 on an ancient P3 600 on 820 intel board and 192MB Ram and nVidia 32MB RivaTNT. Ancient tech. But i was fed up with Mandrake 10. wiped it off the machine and finally installed Suse 9.1 DVD.
I got to tell you, I've used RH, FC1 & 2, Mandrake and the like since 2000 and this was my first crack at Suse. It certainly didn't disappoint.
Installation? Yast? Excellent! It was able to detect every ancient hardware I got. Well, its a rare occasion when linux fails to detect such ancient hardware these days. That was the easy part.
I was able to setup the apps, without trouble. Although I wanted to give the cryptographic filesystem a try, didn't have enough disk space. The machine only had 8GB and 4GB's already running off windoze (i wanted to play games, which is why windoze still exists at all on this machine). Package installation was a breeze. Everything was setup... but I did change KDE to Gnome (just a matter of preference).
Booting? Excellent. No problems and the graphics covering the underlying systems startup is great. :D cool blue with suse logo. GDM did disappoint... didn't look as cool but then, that's just for aesthetics sake so no big problem.
Gnome booted well. All systems enabled. The menus... didn't contain everything I wanted installed... but they were hidden under the “suse menu” which ought to be corrected in future releases. Its hard for a user to just look under three layers of menus for a simple office app. Don't you think? That was my first complaint.
My second complaint was the lack of dvd access. I was playing DVDs that were original and paid for legally. Surely, I have the right as a consumer to be able to play them on my machine? Suse pointed out that there were legal considerations why xine's dvd capability had been disabled and that I should visit the link that they gave me. Unfortunately, the machine didn't have a live Net connection. There are other ways to skin a cat after all (but thats another story).
But, bloody entertainment industry fools, haven't you guys learned from Apple and company? Tech isn't something to be afraid of, its a tool. I digress yet again.
As I was saying, didn't have a chance to run yast on a live internet link. But it used it to install gtk from the dvd. Yast is the package installer/systems control panel thingy and as far as I could tell... runs on text mode (well i've only had suse for 2 days). Which isn't so bad come to think of it. Makes it difficult for a “normal” user to play with. :D you've got to be an experienced/intermediate user to figure out the system or destroy it.
Suse 9.1 is an excellent piece of software. It runs kernel 2.6.4, gnome 2.4 (which isn't so bad) and a whole lot of software that works... including if I may add mono (albeit 0.3).
This is the next best distribution I'd recommend and the first commercial one. The first is still debian of course with its powerful apt! :D
I installed Suse 9.1 on an ancient P3 600 on 820 intel board and 192MB Ram and nVidia 32MB RivaTNT. Ancient tech. But i was fed up with Mandrake 10. wiped it off the machine and finally installed Suse 9.1 DVD.
I got to tell you, I've used RH, FC1 & 2, Mandrake and the like since 2000 and this was my first crack at Suse. It certainly didn't disappoint.
Installation? Yast? Excellent! It was able to detect every ancient hardware I got. Well, its a rare occasion when linux fails to detect such ancient hardware these days. That was the easy part.
I was able to setup the apps, without trouble. Although I wanted to give the cryptographic filesystem a try, didn't have enough disk space. The machine only had 8GB and 4GB's already running off windoze (i wanted to play games, which is why windoze still exists at all on this machine). Package installation was a breeze. Everything was setup... but I did change KDE to Gnome (just a matter of preference).
Booting? Excellent. No problems and the graphics covering the underlying systems startup is great. :D cool blue with suse logo. GDM did disappoint... didn't look as cool but then, that's just for aesthetics sake so no big problem.
Gnome booted well. All systems enabled. The menus... didn't contain everything I wanted installed... but they were hidden under the “suse menu” which ought to be corrected in future releases. Its hard for a user to just look under three layers of menus for a simple office app. Don't you think? That was my first complaint.
My second complaint was the lack of dvd access. I was playing DVDs that were original and paid for legally. Surely, I have the right as a consumer to be able to play them on my machine? Suse pointed out that there were legal considerations why xine's dvd capability had been disabled and that I should visit the link that they gave me. Unfortunately, the machine didn't have a live Net connection. There are other ways to skin a cat after all (but thats another story).
But, bloody entertainment industry fools, haven't you guys learned from Apple and company? Tech isn't something to be afraid of, its a tool. I digress yet again.
As I was saying, didn't have a chance to run yast on a live internet link. But it used it to install gtk from the dvd. Yast is the package installer/systems control panel thingy and as far as I could tell... runs on text mode (well i've only had suse for 2 days). Which isn't so bad come to think of it. Makes it difficult for a “normal” user to play with. :D you've got to be an experienced/intermediate user to figure out the system or destroy it.
Suse 9.1 is an excellent piece of software. It runs kernel 2.6.4, gnome 2.4 (which isn't so bad) and a whole lot of software that works... including if I may add mono (albeit 0.3).
This is the next best distribution I'd recommend and the first commercial one. The first is still debian of course with its powerful apt! :D
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
debian
my previous post... featured installing portage. as much fun as that was, i had to switch to debian. and i can't even stop saying such nice things about debian! bloat ware? forget it! just install the software that you need.
call it somewhere in between fedora core and gentoo--- you've got thousands of apps ready with a simple apt-get install and viola! downloads it and dependencies and installs it!
one of the few things i hated over redhats was that you had to search for dependencies yourself. that can be a challenge sometimes.
sure, downloading sources and compiling them can be fun but sometimes faster uptime is better than going through all the motions (especially when its not mission critic to have the system performance-tuned!
so is debian excellent? yes! :)
call it somewhere in between fedora core and gentoo--- you've got thousands of apps ready with a simple apt-get install
one of the few things i hated over redhats was that you had to search for dependencies yourself. that can be a challenge sometimes.
sure, downloading sources and compiling them can be fun but sometimes faster uptime is better than going through all the motions (especially when its not mission critic to have the system performance-tuned!
so is debian excellent? yes! :)
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
of cows and penguins
gentoo is a great linux distro!
i love portage! very excellent tool. my major complaint? i've been compiling and recompiling everything--- (which was the whole idea anyway) from source so that the machine would be running at optimum condition. unfortunately i forget that it takes eons to do such an insane endeavour!
every tried to compile X11? or gnome? not a pretty sight! you get bored to death! even when the tube's on line or having a ton of divx cartoons/movies playing on another machine.
so i trashed the system... after being able to boot to gentoo and X. i was going to compile gnome... but it kept failing on orbit2. so after trying it out a bit, i grabbed my debian installers and installed it over gentoo.
so i'm aboard debian now. my second debian machine. apt-get is way better than rpms. y? cuz it searches and downloads dependencies! :) redhat/mandrake should learn from that. and its command line... so sometimes there is freedom in it.
now if only i remember how to set up that firewall and dns... lol!
*slips out to do the dirty work*
-c
i love portage! very excellent tool. my major complaint? i've been compiling and recompiling everything--- (which was the whole idea anyway) from source so that the machine would be running at optimum condition. unfortunately i forget that it takes eons to do such an insane endeavour!
every tried to compile X11? or gnome? not a pretty sight! you get bored to death! even when the tube's on line or having a ton of divx cartoons/movies playing on another machine.
so i trashed the system... after being able to boot to gentoo and X. i was going to compile gnome... but it kept failing on orbit2. so after trying it out a bit, i grabbed my debian installers and installed it over gentoo.
so i'm aboard debian now. my second debian machine. apt-get is way better than rpms. y? cuz it searches and downloads dependencies! :) redhat/mandrake should learn from that. and its command line... so sometimes there is freedom in it.
now if only i remember how to set up that firewall and dns... lol!
*slips out to do the dirty work*
-c
Friday, July 30, 2004
saga of emerge system
wow. its been 3 days since i started building gentoo. after a false start... i got the machine to bootstrap properly... with matching kernel-2.6.7-gentoo-rc11 :D
machine built properly, booted... well not so good... i made a mis-step configuring grub... but ran it manually. so no problemo there.
the machine boots!!! hoorah!!! or is it?
hehehehe.
now here i thought the day was going to end right... when as i rebooted for like the nth time that hour... the machine just stopped. wouldn't boot. no apparent reason. was it ram? i dunno... swaped new ones from a spare machine... still no go. vid card? still swaped a new one from an identical machine... no go. so what the heck... i switched all the components... cdr hard drive, fdd, vid, ram, to an identical board and processor... and then it worked.
so off i went and ran emerge gnome... while it was busy compiling... i got my spare knoppix 3.3 cd... and poped it into a spare cd-rom drive... and booted the machine that previously wouldn't boot. surprise! surprise! the blasted thing booted. smoothly.
isn't that insane? but so true.
i ain't pulling your leg here. the only difference is... i didn't pop in the spare usb 1.1 pci card... i left that out on purpose... cuz, the board already has two usb ports and two more wouldn't make a difference as it was just a test. but the machine worked. it boot. was it hardware? i don't know.
so now, here i am... compiling still. i've done with x11... but x wouldn't start. so i'm building the others first... like orbit and bonobo... cuz gnome-desktop crashed whenever it reached orbit2... so there must be some dependency that i need to compile first for it to work.
so emerge isn't perfect. but at least... despite the eternity of building this machine... it does an excellent job of downloading, fullfilling dependencies and installing. so no harm, i love that new toy.
machine built properly, booted... well not so good... i made a mis-step configuring grub... but ran it manually. so no problemo there.
the machine boots!!! hoorah!!! or is it?
hehehehe.
now here i thought the day was going to end right... when as i rebooted for like the nth time that hour... the machine just stopped. wouldn't boot. no apparent reason. was it ram? i dunno... swaped new ones from a spare machine... still no go. vid card? still swaped a new one from an identical machine... no go. so what the heck... i switched all the components... cdr hard drive, fdd, vid, ram, to an identical board and processor... and then it worked.
so off i went and ran emerge gnome... while it was busy compiling... i got my spare knoppix 3.3 cd... and poped it into a spare cd-rom drive... and booted the machine that previously wouldn't boot. surprise! surprise! the blasted thing booted. smoothly.
isn't that insane? but so true.
i ain't pulling your leg here. the only difference is... i didn't pop in the spare usb 1.1 pci card... i left that out on purpose... cuz, the board already has two usb ports and two more wouldn't make a difference as it was just a test. but the machine worked. it boot. was it hardware? i don't know.
so now, here i am... compiling still. i've done with x11... but x wouldn't start. so i'm building the others first... like orbit and bonobo... cuz gnome-desktop crashed whenever it reached orbit2... so there must be some dependency that i need to compile first for it to work.
so emerge isn't perfect. but at least... despite the eternity of building this machine... it does an excellent job of downloading, fullfilling dependencies and installing. so no harm, i love that new toy.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Building w/Gentoo 2004.2
its been almost a day and this is my second install of gentoo 2004.2. i must say, the first time really... was rather difficult. this is now my second try at it. and i must say... the time it takes to compile is a tad... umm... trying. hehehehe.
oh don't get me wrong! its amazing! so far at least. here i am passing time... runnin lynx/links. its a text browser that heck i'm dying to download the new bat begins trailer. *sigh* my machine is stil compiling in the background and the javascript here on this browser crashses whenever i click on that thingy.
so where are we? yeah, after running fdisk for like the nth time since last night... i got it handled. thats the first thing to do. then we made the file system... for / i settled on ext3 but for my home dirs... xfs.
next thing... we downloaded portage snapshot and stage2 tar balls. untaring the packages... we copied the necessary files needed to stay connected to the net like resolv.conf for instance then we chrooted to /bin/bash and ran the bootstrap-2.6.sh script. :)
so now here we are... still on running links and my machine in the background compiling glibc. *sigh* this is going to take awhile.
it make take sometime but hopefully this machine will be much better after.
catch you later.
oh don't get me wrong! its amazing! so far at least. here i am passing time... runnin lynx/links. its a text browser that heck i'm dying to download the new bat begins trailer. *sigh* my machine is stil compiling in the background and the javascript here on this browser crashses whenever i click on that thingy.
so where are we? yeah, after running fdisk for like the nth time since last night... i got it handled. thats the first thing to do. then we made the file system... for / i settled on ext3 but for my home dirs... xfs.
next thing... we downloaded portage snapshot and stage2 tar balls. untaring the packages... we copied the necessary files needed to stay connected to the net like resolv.conf for instance then we chrooted to /bin/bash and ran the bootstrap-2.6.sh script. :)
so now here we are... still on running links and my machine in the background compiling glibc. *sigh* this is going to take awhile.
it make take sometime but hopefully this machine will be much better after.
catch you later.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Friday, May 28, 2004
Fedora Core 2: Review (Revised)
As an update to the previous posting... it seems FC2 really did detect the sound card and that it works.
kudos to fc2 team!
my compile of xine just didn't work out the way it ought to be. hmm. because mplayer worked well. :)
dvd playback was great. mp3 playback excellent.
kudos to fc2 team!
my compile of xine just didn't work out the way it ought to be. hmm. because mplayer worked well. :)
dvd playback was great. mp3 playback excellent.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Fedora Core 2: Reviewed
Can “Red Hat” be any better? Yes. Fedora Core series, particularly Core 2 is a great improvement over its design lineage. In fact, between Mandrake 10 and FC2? FC2 out shines MDK10 on looks. Booting FC2 is amazing, gorgeous.
Here comes the but. :)
Installing FC2 was easy. But the packages? Hello! Developers, too much Bloat-ware! I mean, Developer's Edition? 3GB? My, my, my folks! And to think, that not all the apps you'd normally need are installed. No Video Player at all. And what passes for a music player? Doesn't carry MP3 support because of “political” reasons. DVD-playback? Not even a strip down, no CSS player. Nothing, NADA. MDK10 has slightly over 1.7GB when installed with the developer tools and it comes with a suite of video and music players that actually work.
OK, Red Hat... excuse me, Fedora isn't exactly multimedia friendly proof, ran the standard Sound Test... it works. But aboard Gnome 2.6? I felt deaf. Sound wouldn't work. So as of posting time, I'm still compiling my kernel... embedding directly my Sound Blaster PCI64. That move usually works, as experience has taught me. So we'll find out in a few hours or so.
Compiling on a P3-600 and 256MB Ram isn't what it used to be. Manageable sure but not much else. What simply is amazing is how the Kernel Developers have made the 2.6.x series such a wonderful piece of computing technology, hats off to them. Compiling the kernel didn't even scratch my 512MB swap. Pure genius! To think my load average peaked to 4 at one point, and I had OpenOffice or Mozilla running in one of the workspaces and four terminals and of course, Nautilus running on another.
What are some things I didn't like with FC2? Gnome 2.6 is both a disappointment and a pleasure to use. Its a pleasure to use because its a great piece of software, especially coupled with X11 from www.freedesktop.org the machine ran smoothly on my TNT2 graphics card. Quick response all around compared to MDK10 on 2.4 and roughly the same version of xfree86 on the same machine.
Why is Gnome 2.6 a disappointment? Some users are right you know, opening a folder on Nautilus always brings up a new window. The bar isn't like a browser... it actually reminded me of Program Manager from Windows 3.1 complete with all the menus “File”, “Edit”, “View”, etc. Hello (again) Developers! Don't you guys know of Tab browsing (One of my fave things in Firefox and Mozilla Browsers in general and what i hate that IE doesn't have)? Tabs would have been better and the old fashioned “Open in New Window” would have suffice instead of rewriting Nautilus to open in default, new windows. Bring in Tabs and browser-like controls or come up with more user and visually stunning navigation interfaces please! Innovate people!
Also before I forget, haven't these guys learned... you need “Terminal” on the panel! Its so increasingly irritating that this is not a default on the panel.
Otherwise, Gnome 2.6 is a great piece of software.
OpenOffice 1.1.1 for FC2 is also a great piece of software. I haven't had a chance to fully explore it but the Fedora people took a page (and rightly so) from the Debian (great piece of engineering) Project and “modified” oo111 for their own (the splash is hard to miss). Other features? Like I said haven't fully explored it. But looks great.
So, what's next? Downloading xine and other stuff to play videos and music. And maybe a much needed upgrade to the default 2.6.5 kernel installed. :)
We'll post our findings as soon as possible. :)
Fedora Core 2 is a great piece of software. Its a bit rough on the edges, and if they can help add more multimedia stuff, its simply better than Mdk10.
Here comes the but. :)
Installing FC2 was easy. But the packages? Hello! Developers, too much Bloat-ware! I mean, Developer's Edition? 3GB? My, my, my folks! And to think, that not all the apps you'd normally need are installed. No Video Player at all. And what passes for a music player? Doesn't carry MP3 support because of “political” reasons. DVD-playback? Not even a strip down, no CSS player. Nothing, NADA. MDK10 has slightly over 1.7GB when installed with the developer tools and it comes with a suite of video and music players that actually work.
OK, Red Hat... excuse me, Fedora isn't exactly multimedia friendly proof, ran the standard Sound Test... it works. But aboard Gnome 2.6? I felt deaf. Sound wouldn't work. So as of posting time, I'm still compiling my kernel... embedding directly my Sound Blaster PCI64. That move usually works, as experience has taught me. So we'll find out in a few hours or so.
Compiling on a P3-600 and 256MB Ram isn't what it used to be. Manageable sure but not much else. What simply is amazing is how the Kernel Developers have made the 2.6.x series such a wonderful piece of computing technology, hats off to them. Compiling the kernel didn't even scratch my 512MB swap. Pure genius! To think my load average peaked to 4 at one point, and I had OpenOffice or Mozilla running in one of the workspaces and four terminals and of course, Nautilus running on another.
What are some things I didn't like with FC2? Gnome 2.6 is both a disappointment and a pleasure to use. Its a pleasure to use because its a great piece of software, especially coupled with X11 from www.freedesktop.org the machine ran smoothly on my TNT2 graphics card. Quick response all around compared to MDK10 on 2.4 and roughly the same version of xfree86 on the same machine.
Why is Gnome 2.6 a disappointment? Some users are right you know, opening a folder on Nautilus always brings up a new window. The bar isn't like a browser... it actually reminded me of Program Manager from Windows 3.1 complete with all the menus “File”, “Edit”, “View”, etc. Hello (again) Developers! Don't you guys know of Tab browsing (One of my fave things in Firefox and Mozilla Browsers in general and what i hate that IE doesn't have)? Tabs would have been better and the old fashioned “Open in New Window” would have suffice instead of rewriting Nautilus to open in default, new windows. Bring in Tabs and browser-like controls or come up with more user and visually stunning navigation interfaces please! Innovate people!
Also before I forget, haven't these guys learned... you need “Terminal” on the panel! Its so increasingly irritating that this is not a default on the panel.
Otherwise, Gnome 2.6 is a great piece of software.
OpenOffice 1.1.1 for FC2 is also a great piece of software. I haven't had a chance to fully explore it but the Fedora people took a page (and rightly so) from the Debian (great piece of engineering) Project and “modified” oo111 for their own (the splash is hard to miss). Other features? Like I said haven't fully explored it. But looks great.
So, what's next? Downloading xine and other stuff to play videos and music. And maybe a much needed upgrade to the default 2.6.5 kernel installed. :)
We'll post our findings as soon as possible. :)
Fedora Core 2 is a great piece of software. Its a bit rough on the edges, and if they can help add more multimedia stuff, its simply better than Mdk10.
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