Practical Technology

for practical people.

March 28, 2007
by sjvn01
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RIP: Community Linux (1991-2007)

The idea that Linux is primarily a community-based project based on the work of thousands of independent, idealist hackers died a quiet death at home on March 27.

The proximate cause of death was the Linux Foundation’s naming of its new board of directors. This leading non-profit Linux organization’s board included many Fortune 500 executives from around the world — but not one representative from a purely community-based Linux organization.

Linux, as a community project, had been in ill health for some time. One recent setback was the crippling of Debian. Rather than work together on releasing the next version, Etch, of this core community of Linux developers has seemingly slowed their work down to a crawl because of internal disputes.

As Debian’s father, Ian Murdock, observed, not long before moving to Sun, Debian had become a project where the process had run amok. Thus, Murdock said, “no leader feels empowered to make decisions unless everyone agrees with him. And since no one as the size of the organization grows ever agrees on anything, no decisions ever get made.”

Another Community Linux project, Fedora, was to be freed from Red Hat, its corporate sponsor. In the end, though, the company decided that the project would remain under Red Hat control. Fedora’s management was to have gone to the Fedora Foundation.

It wasn’t just ailing projects, however, that brought Community Linux to its untimely end. Linux distributors have long been turning away from the idealistic notions of a completely free software distribution.

Linspire took the biggest step by introducing its Freespire distribution, which aims to include legal support for every proprietary format and program that is available to Linux. Examples include: MP3, DVD, Windows Media, QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real media, ATI and NVIDA graphic drivers, Win-modem drivers, proprietary WiFi drivers, Bitstream fonts, and more.

Eric S. Raymond, Linux’s godfather with his important early support for the operating system, agreed whole-heartily with the concept of supporting necessary proprietary software in Linux and even joined Freespire’s Leadership Board. Raymond said, “If that means paying licensing fees to the Microsofts of the world so that people can watch Windows media files, then so be it.”

Ubuntu, the most popular of the Community Linuxes, remains directed by Mark Shuttleworth and his company, Canonical, and he too has conceded that Ubuntu must include “proprietary drivers [that]… are required to enable essential hardware functionality.”

Attempts to bring Community Linux back to free software ways have met with very limited success. There are only a handful of free-software-only Linux distributions such as gNewSense.

The Community Linux leaves behind a robust, successful family of Commercial Linux operating system children, including: oldest son, Red Hat; step-son, Novell; and desktop daughters, Linspire, Ubuntu, and Xandros. Corporate relatives, such as IBM, HP, and Oracle, aim to make certain that Commercial Linux, as opposed to Community Linux, will have a long, healthy life.

March 27, 2007
by sjvn01
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Adding Apple TV Storage for Dummies

So you want more than 40GBs of storage in your Apple TV do you?

Well, I can’t blame you, especially when you consider that of that 40GBs, you only actually get 32GBs of storage. 8 gigs are used for the Apple TV’s operating system –essentially a stripped down Mac OS X 10.4.7.

So what can you do? Well, if you’re brave, have steady hands, a hex-bit screwdriver, and a spare 2.5″ hard drive you can pop open your Apple TV–bye, bye warranty–and do it yourself. AppleTVHacks has a nice little tutorial on how to upgrade your drive, which I highly recommend.

Let’s say though that, like me, when you try to hammer a nail into the wall, you’re going to hit your thumb nine times out of ten. Well, I may be a menace with power-tools, but I can wield a credit card with the best of them.

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March 26, 2007
by sjvn01
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The Apple TV Media Extender Revolution

The Apple TV makes a great media extender. But, “What the heck is a media extender?”

Good question. While they’ve been around for years, they’re not that well known because, well, they didn’t work that well. In fact, most of them were the kind of half-baked tech toys that even a video geek had trouble loving.

The media-extender idea was, and is, to make it possible to get the video and audio stored on your PC playing on your high-end media center. Yes, it is a neat trick to watch the latest episode of Lost on your 17″ ViewSonic monitor and your Sony Vaio speakers. It’s not, however, all that much fun after the gee-whiz shininess has rubbed off.

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March 26, 2007
by sjvn01
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Here come the RHEL 5 clones

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Red Hat should be flattered. Less than two weeks after the company introduced RHEL 5 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5), StartCom Ltd. released the first RHEL 5 clone, StartCom Enterprise Linux AS-5.0.0.

StartCom announced on its website that it was launching “a release candidate of our upcoming StartCom Enterprise Linux AS-5.0.0 codenamed ‘Kishuf.’ We invite anybody interested to install this test release and help us find eventual problems in this distribution prior to its official release.”

Although the official release of AS-5, including the x86_64 architecture, is scheduled for for April 2, DVD ISO images of the release are already available for download on the company’s mirrors, here (direct link to ISO), here (direct link to ISO), and here (direct link to ISO).

Besides being installable from DVD, you can also install this distribution over the network or by USB-key.

Of course if you go with a cloned RHEL, while you get the code goodies, you don’t get Red Hat’s support. Various Red Hat clone distributions, such StartCom AS-5, CentOS, and White Box Enterprise Linux, are built from Red Hat’s source code, which is freely available at the Raleigh, NC company’s FTP site. The “cloned” versions alter or otherwise remove non-free packages within the RHEL distribution, or non-redistributable bits such as the Red Hat logo.

StartCom Enterprise Linux AS-5 is specifically positioned as a low-cost, server alternative to RHEL 5. This is typical of the RHEL clones.

These distributions, which usually don’t offer support options, are meant for expert Linux users who want Red Hat’s Linux distribution, but don’t feel the need for Red Hat’s support.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

March 25, 2007
by sjvn01
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Apple TV: First Thoughts

Eager tech toy users and media addicts are already tearing–sometimes literally–into Apple’s answer to the media extender: the Apple TV.

With the Apple TV, formerly known as iTV, watch can watch your iTunes library’s digital media on your television. With this, you’ll no longer be locked into an iPod’s 2.5″ (diagonal) display. That’s not a small difference. After all, which would you rather watch, a 2.5-inch LCD screen or 34-inch plasma display?

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March 9, 2007
by sjvn01
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Switching your Linux systems to the new DST

Spring forward; Fall back,” That’s the way the saying goes. Some years I get it backwards, but I eventually catch on. I’ve never had to worry about my PCs getting it wrong before, though. Now, with the recent changes in the Daylight Savings Time (DST) rules, I do.

Fortunately, there are ways to make sure that both my Linux computers and I get the new rules right.
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