With the installation being complete last night I decided to take my laptop into work today to install various software programs that I would need to utilize and thus make my transition into Linux easier. See I have spent the last 13 years using Microsoft and software programs that only run on Microsoft. So this was a difficult decision for me but I was willing to give Linux a shot after hearing all the wonderful things that the Linux community was doing with software and watching my husband be able to accomplish anything he wants within Linux.

As I mentioned I spent today picking and choosing various software programs to install. So far I think that I have picked the best options for video editing, image editing and creating web pages. I hope to be able to start utilizing these programs very soon once my website is up and running (hopefully by this weekend). My laptop starts and shuts down quite easily and much faster than before. However, it is taking me more time to learn that buttons to close out a program are located on the left. I believe that the Linux Outlaws mentioned that this was a big topic of conversation when the change first occurred. I am confident that this will be a small task for me to learn. Aside from that one small adjustment my initial thoughts are all positive. I hope to have more of an opinion (and hopefully all positive) once I start using the operating system more.

Throughout the course of time Rachel, my wife, has seen me function on Ubuntu and enjoy myself every moment along the way.  Ubuntu has finally developed a polished interface and is “sexy”.  Best of all it is easy to use.  Each distro release comes closer and closer to the a solid desktop.

Recently, I suppose, my wife has felt at a loss in regards to the fact that software licensing under Microsoft has become so expensive.  The most recent being Adobe Pro, which she needs for school.  But why use Adobe Pro when Ubuntu offers so many tools which accomplish the same function like GIMP, Inkscape, Openoffice, etc?

Perhaps I can sway her away from Microsoft.  I really feel strongly that once she experiences Ubuntu she will fall in love with the OS.  I suppose only time will tell.  Wish me luck in converting another from the darkness to the light.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t totally hate Microsoft.  You might find me posting the symbol M$, but I’d be a fool not to admit that there is a reason that M$ holds over 90% of the market share.  Perhaps the reason as to why their market share is dropping is due to the reasons why even my wife is switching to Ubuntu…

It was not that long ago that I was listening to a podcast by Dan Lynch Fabian Scherschel entitled Linux Outlaws.  They are not the indepth technical podcast that I love to listen to, but these guys have the right views and brand of humor to keep me entertained and up to date on all my opensource news.  About a month ago I listened to their show and heard the ad for Southeast Linux Fest in Spartanburg, SC.  Spartanburg, you say?  Well that’s just three hours from my home.  So off I went to my first Linux Fest!

I want to give a slight overview of SELF 2010.  As a new comer I arrived at SELF, excited and scared, Friday evening…  Scared?  Well this was of course my first Linux conference and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be left out in the wind like I was at other conferences.  However, as soon as I arrived I instantly went to the registration desk, which was quite easy to find.  There I picked up my meal tickets, obtained some SELF goodies, and was pointed in the direction of UbuCon.  I figured that UbuCon might just be a gathering of other like minded souls whom enjoyed the Ubuntu distro.  Although, this was some what true, there was also an extra added bonus.  A few Ubuntu Community Managers where there as well including Jono Bacon.  Wow, I sat in the same room with the folks that designed my favorite distro!

After the final session of UbuCon, I went my to room for a moment to attend to my lovely laptop which I attempted to trick out for speed; by mixing and matching LXDE and several other components including GNOME Network Manager.  Needless to say Network Manager had decided to implode the moment it knew I had arrived as SELF.  After about an hour of struggling with the laptop I decided it was time for dinner so I rushed to the lobby.  Upon entering the elevator I met a gentleman by the name of Alan Hicks.  I suppose he saw my newbie-ness to attending Linux conferences and offered to buy me a beer at the 299 (hotel sports bar).  It turned out that Alan was a speaker at SELF and an avid Slackware Linux fan.  After talking with him and several others that night, including a college professor whom had made the trek down from Ohio on motorcycle, I began to feel what I had heard so many others talk about in blogs, podcasts, etc.  It was the power of the community!  Opensource users are some of the kindest people you will ever meet.  Perhaps this is because of the model to which we practice each day, the freedom of knowledge and software.  It has a good ring to it, right?  Feels very liberating…  I went to bed feeling quite well about my choice to attend and looked forward to Saturday.

Saturday was awesome and I will not overwhelm you with all the details but again I was thrown into conference room after conference room with proven industry leaders with tons of knowledge being thrust at me, freely and willingly.  What a blast!  But, all at the same time, I could feel my brain sizzling by 7pm…

Sunday was a sad day, I didn’t want to leave.  Instead I wanted to bag up the Ubuntu Community Managers and take them back to Burlington with me.  What an amazing experience to match faces with names that you see in Launchpad, etc!

I look forward to seeing all the video recordings and presenter slides get posted to the Southeast Linux Fest site soon, so that I can again relive some of those fond moments that the opensource community shared with me!

Thank you Google, Fedora, openSUSE, and many others for partnering this event!

This new storage driver is loaded even if you have RAID disabled in the BIOS!  So upgrading to 9.10 destroyed my workstation and all the data on it!

However this was not all bad.  I took advantage of the new Nvida RAID support, rebooted went into my BIOS re-enabled it, booted off of the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD and simply installed from scratch.  After my new Ubuntu 9.10 install loaded in its new home on the Nvida RAID array, I recovered my data from a USB External Drive, and reinstalled my programs via a bash shell script.

So please take a hint of advice from one Ubuntu novice to another.  If you have an Nvida chipset which supports RAID, please don’t upgrade.  If you want the latest and greatest features do yourself the honor of backing up your data, enable RAID, and install a nice new fresh copy of Ubuntu.

Hello all,

Netware 6.5 is set to retire this year.  Netware made a big splash into the academic circle in the 1990s.  This splash can still be felt into the current day.  However in 2003 Novell acquired SUSE.  As of recent this has become a product that Novell has adapted many Netware nlms to.  I’ve seen quite a few Network Admins struggle with Novell’s new OES2 product set to replace Netware.  Is this due to the fact that they are used to Netware?  Perhaps.  I haven’t had any issues with it.  I’ve migrated a minor file server that is meant for storing media files.  Using the migration utility I was able to dump all pictures from its Netware counterpart on it the new server.  Then I used ConsoleOne to add a read/write replica to the device.  The only issues that I’ve noticed is the following:

-NDS time slip:

This is related to the fact I was running OES 2 inside of VMWare 2.x.  This is a known issue, it is quite simple to fix.  Use crontab and have ntpd resync the time every hour via a bash script! (This is very low overhead and as far as I can tell).  But better yet, I think the time sync issue actually went away when I upgrade the VMWare 2.x server from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 LTS!

-EVMS:

Enterprise Volume Management System is a mess and it is due to be replaced by Logical Volume Management in OES3!  I would suggest setting up any Novell server with ext filesystem on your system drive (notice how I didn’t say partition) and then setup your NSS volumes on a seperate hard drive!  Trust me this is a better method.  There are so many issues with Novell’s EVMS that it isn’t even funny!

-Remote Management:

You now have to log in as the local user root and the root password you assigned to the server unless you setup the Linux Users Management Group correctly.

-Context for Drive Mappings:

Novell has changed the standard in yet again.  When you go to map your drives inside of Novell Console one set your context up in the following manner:

MAP X = volumename.tree:/folder_path

Thats because Novell has switched to an open standard.  I’ll add more clarity to these points over the coming days but until then I really hope this helps!

I know we are all excited about the upcoming stable release of Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” on 10/30/2009.  If you are currently running 9.04 then you can upgrade by pressing:

ALT+F2

This bring up the Run Application Prompt where you can type

upgrade-manage -d

as shown in the picture below.

Then hit run.  Up will come the upgrade manager window which may take a few seconds to fully load as it is updating all the package source index files from their various locations out on the Internet.  Once fully loaded it will tell you that it has picked up a new distribution release “9.10″.  Simply hit the update button and the process will take pace.

NOTE

Please sit tight until the update manager gets the point where it is ready to start download packages.  Prior to this step you may be prompted that a software package will not survive the upgrade or that it will have to remove a package source from the sources.list file located in

/etc/apt/

These prompts will require user input.  I did run into a problem during my upgrade which put the brakes on.  This was due to the fact that I had ksplice installed which hot patches the kernel (so you can do kernel patching w/o a reboot).  I first had to remove the package and the open the sources.list file manually in gedit using sudo and remove the package source for ksplice.  Happy upgrading, leave a comment if you run into an issue!

5/27

It has been a long time

Hello fellow Linux fans (sorry I think I stole that line from Fab on Linux Outlaws)!  It has indeed been a long time since the last time to which I updated my blog.  My apologies.  I’ve been taking time in an effort to figure out what exactly to do with myself.  A few weeks ago I came across several podcasts such as Ubuntu UK, Tom and Larry, and Linux Outlaws to name a few and it dawned on me.  I am ready to continue my life online and I’ll be expanding myself into podcasts with the help of a dear friend of mine, Juan Williams.  So please stay tuned, I intend on creating a blog and podcast that reaches in the the depths of do-it-yourself Linux projects in an effort to help the common man to reach his goals both professionally and personally!

Southeast Linux Fest

Check out Southeast Linux Fest!  I will be in attendance with as many as 750 other Linux fans in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  I look forward to it!  It is going to be a blast, I am very excited to be in the same room as so many Linux fans and industry leaders!

10/29

Do not forget that Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala is due out on 10/29!