Posts Tagged ‘linux distribution’

Fedora 10, thank you very much! (macbook review and fixes)

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

I've never been a big fan of rpm-based Gnu/Linux distributions, since I've always preferred the stability of Debian and Debian based distros, with their great dpkg system.
The problem with Debian on Macbooks is that I do not see both the stability and performance anymore, as I have to use Lenny/Sid. Etch is too old and I don't have the time (*sic*) to play with it to make it work well. Lenny should be next to be released but I don't feel the very famous stability AND lightness of Debian distributions on this release, like I was accustomed in the past years. Is this because I own a Macbook? Maybe, but a Macbook Santa Rosa is nothing more than an Intel-powered notebook with some strange input devices and a strange non-bios system :-)

Regarding Ubuntu, I believe that this distribution has become naff and really slow. See this Slashdot discussion on this topic.

Yesterday I stumbled to Scientechie review of Fedora 10, which convinced me to try it out.
The software shipped with Fedora 10 is aligned with the one provided with the other distributions: Gnome 2.24.0, kernel 2.6.27.5, NetworkManager 0.7.0 (svn) and so on. Read the release notes for more information.

Fedora 10 really surprises me, as it is the first Gnu/Linux distribution in many, many years that makes me feel again the great stability and performance of the Penguin. Therefore I'm writing this review that is also a how-to, as it contains some fixes for Fedora 10 and Macbooks.

(more...)

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Testing Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) beta on a Macbook (updated!)

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

It's a very long time since I abandoned Ubuntu, 1 year and 9 months being precise, although I continued to use Ubuntu derived distros.
I decided today to give Ubuntu 8.10 beta a try. Obviously, every time I decide to try a Gnu/Linux distribution it happens that a new release comes out: I downloaded Alpha 6 yesterday, I fell into problems with it and a apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade brought me Ubuntu 8.10 beta, correcting some of them :-)
(more...)

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

How to install OpenGEU on Macbook

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Introduction

This guide will help you to install OpenGEU and every other Ubuntu based linux distribution on your Macbook (either "normal" or pro). Even Ubuntu will work with this how-to.
The tutorial is aimed on how to succesfully partition the hard disk and to correctly boot the distribution. For a better post-install configuration I suggest you to follow the Ubuntu Wiki.

This tutorial is also posted on the OpenGEU Wiki
(more...)

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

gOS 3 Gadgets (Beta) Review

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

Time for a review. Thanks to the always useful DistroWatch.com service, I discovered a new Gnu/Linux distribution, called gOS. gOS stands for Good Os, born in 2007 in California. The version I'm reviewing is the so-called "gOS 3 'Gadgets'", their third release. gOS 3 Gadgets BETA is based on Ubuntu 8.04.1, and the final release is to be expected in the next 1-2 months.
This distribution is built around Goggle apps and services, comes with Google Gadgets for Linux pre-installed, as well other nice programs, like Google Picasa, Wine, Mozilla Prism for Google web applications and Wbar as launch bar. I've never heard about this bar, it's very quick and light. Good choice! The distro also includes proprietary codecs for multimedia content.
(more...)

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Server updates for the new year

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

Happy new year everybody!
I'm sure you found my site offline quite a lot of times in the last week. I decided to format the whole server and to move from the UML virtualisation system to the more convenient Xen system, which is still in beta testing at Linode but full working for my personal needing. The decision to switch to Xen was because of its support to multicore CPUs, needed by a couple of applications I'm using for personal studies.
The linux distribution I've chosen is Debian Etch again, stable, quite fast and easy to be maintained.
The software has been updated and some security tips have been adopted, and thanks to the free resources upgrade by Linode, Apache server has came back.
I'm really enjoying my VPS experience =)

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Where to find Archlinux in a VPS hosting service

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

You can find your favourite linux distribution at linode.com, a great hosting service where I'm transferring my blog and all other services I need. They offer great cheap VPS solutions, and you can choose Archlinux from the available linux distributions.
Archlinux is currently in testing: for example, ssh will not work after a fresh install. Here I'm going to explain how to fix this and how to access your VPS.

After the installation of Archlinux, if you try to connect to ssh, you will receive this error:

ssh yourUsername@yourIP
ssh: connect to host yourIP port 22: Connection refused

That's because Archlinux does not install the openssh server by default. Let's install it!
Linode offers a workaround to connect to your machines, called Lish, the LInode SHell. From this shell, you will be able then to connect to your machines.

ssh yourLinodeUsername@yourLinodeHost.linode.com

Where yourLinodeUsername is the username you chose for Linode registration, and yourLinodeHost is the host address of the machine (you can see it in this page, after a login: https://www.linode.com/members/remote.cfm, it's in the form hostNUMBER).

You will be then prompted to Archlinux console. Use your root access and install ssh:

pacman -Sy
pacman -S openssh

Add sshd to your deamons array in /etc/rc.conf

DAEMONS=(... sshd ...)

If you try to connect to your account via ssh, you will get another error at this time, because you need to allow external internet connections to the ssh daemon.
Your /etc/hosts.allow should look like this:

sshd: ALL

Start opensshd (/etc/rc.d/sshd start) or reboot the machine, you're finished!

  • Share/Save/Bookmark