I decided to build a Linux server for the purposes of running VM images of various servers. My hope is that with Linux as the host operating system, I can keep the base footprint to a minimum. Right now, most of my VM images are Windows based but for all of my server software [...]

Two words - “DOS prompt”. Get comfortable and back to your 1980’s roots ! You will need to get familiar with the UNIX shell commands. It’s actually not that hard, or at least it has not been a great stress for me but perhaps that is because there was UNIX somewhere, way back in [...]

One thing you will most likely need is the ability to share folders form the “host” OS to the “guest”. In my case, one of my test machines has WinXP2 as the host and I have SUSE as my guest. If it were Windows as the guest, then this is pretty easy, you just “browse [...]

Back in part one of “building my Linux server”, I wrote …
partition the disk with four primary partitions
Source: theSalmonFarm Blog Building my Linux server - part 1
I now want to recant that recommendation. Having setup 4 servers now (mostly in anticipation of Sametime 7.5.1 for Linux), I have settled on a much more simple installation [...]

I’ve had a Windows based DVR (digital video recorder) for about 2 years now. It was working fine when I used it as just a DVR but for the past 9 months, it’s served double duty as a DVR and a Media Center. the problem seems to be that the software - SageTV - doesn’t [...]

I’m the family IT specialist. It’s not a title are really deserve and given my geography, it’s not an easy role to fill. For the past year, the biggest problem has been all the spyware, adware, and malware. My answer to combat these problems has been to change operating systems.  The two choices are [...]

I’m not 100% happy with my Ubuntu T40 but I’m a whole lot closer than I was with the T20. I’ll write up my configuration in a few days. In the mean time …

No, Virginia … it’s not a Mac OS X …. It’s nicer <grin>.

I finally finished (relative term) setting up my older T40 Thinkpad with Ubuntu Linux. The basic install was quite easy. It took about 15 minutes to create the CD image, boot and install Ubuntu. It took another 45 minutes as it automatically checked for all updates (119 of them) and installed them on one pass. [...]

Well, I said the one thing I really needed on my Linux PC before I could call it my “daily driver” was a blogging client. I’m now trying out “Flock“. I hope I get thu this without too much angst but you can be the judge.
Flock is actually a lot more than a blogging client. [...]

The title is nearly a complete rip-off of a number of posts I read in my vain attempt to find a useable blogging client for Ubuntu. I tried three native solutions and three “Windows under Wine” solutions. All of the windows solutions crashed and none of the Linux solutions could do one of the most [...]

I have settled on using Ubuntu as my primary operating system on both my personal laptop and my work machine(s). There were two three four driving forces behind the change.
First, I needed a non-Windows solution for my parents. Windows is just too susceptible to viruses, malware00% , spyware, adware, and Internet gunk. A Mac was [...]

I would love to post this morning that I upgraded all of my machines to the new release of Ubuntu and am happily cruising along. That is not the case. A lot of work went into this release but it looks like it needs a few weeks or a couple of months for a [...]

I still hold by my last blog entry that Ubuntu 7.10 is not quite ready for prime time. But, for those willing and interested enough into a little trial and error and a lot of Google searches (even used Google translation on a French blog to get the video working), it is possible to [...]

I have been evaluating a lot of Linux versions, each with a specific market. In the past, I’d use VMWare images for this type of work but I am encountering a lot of hardware specific requirements with these tests. So, I set aside a single laptop to use for testing no less than 5 operating [...]

I previously posted about building out a test PC that has no less than 5 different operating systems. In that post I created a very small 256MB partition. Here’s why …
I use PartImage to make image backups. This is an open source application which is very close to products like Symantec Ghost or Acronis [...]

In my post on installing multiple operating systems on a test machine, I mentioned (or meant to) that all of the Linux distributions installed on that machine point to the same “swap” partition. The common lore is to make the swap partition 2x the available memory. One of the reasons for this is that, [...]

I have become a personal disaster recovery zealot. I’m like the former smoker railing against smokers - so I’ll try not to preach too much.
When I used Windows on all of my machines, I did the occasional random image backup. To be honest, these occurred about once every 3 to 6 months. Not good. When [...]

There has been a lot of news and internet traffic on the topic of traditional “office suite” software installed on your PC vs on-line web applications. Put another way - Microsoft Office vs Google Apps. How about having your cake and eating it too !
If you subscribe to the 80/20 rule where 80% of [...]

There is a cool Frappr map growing for the Give1Get1 OLPCs starting to ship. The G1G1 program is primarily for the USA and Canada so most of the units will land in that part of the map but a few diligent people have managed to get them to other parts of the world. If you [...]

I have not blogged much this week because I’ve spend most of my free time reading and writing over on the OLPC Forums. Some of it has been a learning exercise while a lot of it has been an education exercise. Here is the difference …
The O-L-P-C is a “dream” - to provide one laptop [...]

There has been lots - I mean *LOTS* and *LOTS* - of press, blogs, forum posts, and news about the OLPC over the past few weeks. Mostly, this has been because of the G1G1 (give one get one) donation program.
This has been both good and not so good. The challenge to all the press is [...]

At MacWorld 2007, Steve Jobs announced “Time Machine” which heralding in an easy to use, consumer focused solution for backing up your computer Mac with Leopard. However, it was not for everyone. It assumed the backup device - a USB connected hard drive was always plugged in which is fine for a desktop computer but [...]

I’ve been looking for a good “screen recording” solution for Ubuntu. When I was a windows guy, I used Camtasia 5. It worked really well. For a while they were even giving away version 3 but that seems to have gone away. Still, if you use Windows, you can make 30 days worth [...]

I nuked my Ubuntu Linux work laptop a couple of weeks ago - on purpose. The ATI video was unpredictable and my Thinkpad T60p would not sleep or hibernate (both known issues due to the ATI chipset). I took a bit of extra time before completely building it back up. I didn’t want [...]

I recently bought a media player. There are basically Linux based two models out there these days each with benefits and flaws. I’ll get into what I am use in a later post. Right now, I wanted to post about how I got my DVDs onto the bloody thing !
Linux may not be [...]

I am trying to create an backup solution for a Windows machine. I have grown to really like the SimpleLinuxBackup solution I have on the rest of my machines. It is simple (obviously) and performs both full backups and incremental backups.
There are five characteristics I need …

“what to include” - directories and files [...]

I’ve been using Wordpress for my blog and recently using the ‘Postie‘ plug-in to have robust blogging using an email client (all of this because there are no good blogging clients for Linux).
I noticed that my embedded links were not opening in a new tab or window - even though I was using [...]

Well, in a week’s time, I will no longer use Ubuntu for my work laptop. I really like the clean efficient experience I get from Ubuntu but my corporate support and the applications I need for work just don’t give Linux the same credence that comes to Windows XP. The downfall came in three parts:

I [...]

ffmpeg is a very useful command line tool for converting lots of different audio and video formats. It sits quietly hidden under a number of popular video conversion software targeted at the iPod consumers.
This post is targeted for a very specific audience - Linux users who want a non-neutered ffmpeg for audio and [...]

I’ve blogged that I am switching back from Ubuntu Linux for my work PC. I still have not gone back. I have been trying to build a “useful PC”. It has not been easy. I’ve become spoiled by some very basic functions that are standard on Ubuntu (and most Linux).
My latest problem [...]

This morning, after Zen’s business, breakfast, and start of her first nap … and my checking email, reading blogs, and deciding how to survive the heat … I head a familiar bird. I had not seen it around since last fall. I quickly ran outside to see if indeed it was back. Sure enough it [...]

I still don’t have TV service and I plan to keep it that way for a while longer. One thing I have missed is the evening national news. I found the NBC Evening News has been made available as a podcast. That’s good, but I don’t like to leave my computers running at night [...]

Back in March I announced I was throwing in the towel on Linux as mu primary laptop operating system. It’s strange that 7 months have passed. Windows has not been perfect during that time but it has done its job. In a couple of days, Ubuntu 8.10 will be released. I cringe at the [...]