We may lose the odd battle, but we'll still win the war ;-)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/16/iso_rejects_ooxml_appeal/

Not strictly Linux-related, but many folks that use alternative OSes also use Google's services pretty heavily. If they're anything like me, they get a bit antsy about a single company hoarding all the user's data away on their servers and making lots of not-quite-promises to lock them in foreve... er, I mean, "look after it" (*cough* Microsoft *cough*). This is quite a nice summary of how to extract your data from our (currently) Benevolent Google Overlords for backup and provider independence purposes.

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/back-up-your-google-apps-data...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/05/ibm_ubuntu/

Read the Introduction

If I hadn't had a pretty good idea of what I was doing when I started this adventure, I'd have been lost in the GNU/Linux jungle and have been eaten by the cannibals native to those parts. It would have been an unpleasant and gory end to me and my expedition.

My choice of metaphor certainly points to the fact that only a seasoned adventurer would have come through the jungle to the promised-land unscathed. In my case I was slightly scathed -- especially by the talons of the Thunderbird and the electrical strikes of its Lightning bolts. I wasn't killed, but that was only because I'd fought with creature in the past, and I knew where to strike at its soft underbelly.

Those novice adventures would have been struck down by the wild Thunderbird of the Gnu/Linux jungle, never to recover. Had they survived the encounter, they'd have returned to their cities where tamer Thunderbirds are kept safely in captivity, behind reinforced Windows.
Even if they manage to avoid the mighty winged beast, and are met with clear, Lightning-free skies, these green jungle explorers will continuously hear the beat of the Samba drums, resonating through the air, vibrating the tendrils that network between the trees of the jungle, and just generally creating a powerful sense of unease.
Though some may not even notice the drumming, a great many would flee from the source of the noise, back-back-back to their safe buildings and Windows.

Turns out there is a beaten path through the jungle, and mostly the Samba dancing, drum-beating natives along that path are quite friendly and helpful. Woe betide you should you have intially entered the jungle, all Gutsy and rearing to go and later crossed over on to the beaten Hardy path, instead of leaving the jungle and getting on to the Hardy path from the point that it first enters the jungle.
Turns out the friendly Samboin natives only live a certain way along the path. The Samboin cannibal tribe live deeper in the jungle, just about where you'll end up when you Gutsily take the short-cut through the jungle to the Hardy path.

I had to battle those cannibals, but I came out of the alive, and the cannibals no longer found me appetising once I figured out how to manipulate their Samba dances.

Even without the cannibals, the Hardy pathway needs maintenance. Nothing serious -- but if the adventurer isn't cautious he or she is likely to trip and stumble over the potholes from time to time.

Ultimately, compared to the safety and familiarity of the civilised world, where glass has been invented, the Gnu/Linux jungle is a terrifying place. There are less scary places in the jungle. Clearings and friendly tribes. Places where you can safely wander and have a picnic, where no wild beasts or angry natives will harass you. They aren't particularly interesting places in the jungle, and you find you can't also do the things you'd like to do in those places.

Fortunately there are also quite a few seasoned adventurers wandering about in the darker corners of the jungle who are quite willing to help protect those new to the jungle from its dangers. They pass through the protected areas from time to time, and so the new guys can hook up with them. They'll show the new guys the vines, and how to swing gracefully from one branch to another. But the new guys still need to be willing to grab those vines, throw caution to the wind, and swing high in the air from tree to tree without a safety net.

Most people are too scared to swing high in the air with no safety net, but the jungle is of limited use at the moment if you aren't willing to try. Plus, what about the frigging cannibals?

Enough with the metaphors. I think you get the point. Migrating to Linux from windows for working environments isn't a trivial exercise, and it sure as hell didn't "just work" for me. However, since I have a fairly good idea of what I was doing, I could make it work. Switching isn't recommended unless you know (or one of those seasoned adventurers knows) how to fix up things when they don't go quite according to plan.

And now for the boring parts, where I actually explain what I did with the computer, and in some cases offer solutions to my problems. You can try the solutions if you are suffering from similar problems, but I don't promise they'll work for you.

If you aren't looking for technical solutions, but just want to read on, feel free. I'm afraid I haven't made much effort to be particularly witty in the sections that follow.

Email: Thunderbird
I had expected that transferring my email wouldn't cause any headaches. Thunderbird is cross-platform, so just transfer the user files from Windows' Documents and Settings to Linux's home folder, right? No problems, right?

Bah!

Copying all the user files from Windows to Linux actually works perfectly, as long as you aren't using any plugins. All the mail is imported correctly.

Assuming you are running a Debian-based system, the procedure would be:

1. Install Thunderbird, using whatever works best for you. This works for me: $ aptitude install thunderbird
2. Run Thunderbird. This creates the .mozilla-thunderbird directory in your home directory.
3. Cancel the new account setup dialogues, and close Thunderbird.
4. Copy all the files in C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[random number].default\ to /home/[username]/.mozilla-thunderbird/[random number].default
5. Restart Thunderbird. All your mail and account settings should be there.

If you had installed plugins, particularly Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar, you'll be in for a serious skull-cracking migraine time.

What it came down to was that I was running Lightning 0.8 and Provider 0.4, and they required a particular library that is missing from the default installation of Ubuntu 8.04.
I fixed it by installing libstdc5, as per this conversation
$ sudo aptitude install libstdc5

It wasn't as easy as I've made it out to be. I trawled the internet for quite some time before I found that Google Groups discussion. I doubted the wisdom of continuing my transition to a more free and open working environment, and had to continue working in Windows for a while until I'd worked out the problems. I stuck to my resolve though.

Network file-sharing: Samba
My office environment requires that I share my projects over the LAN, and have at least one location where other users can copy files to my computer. I also need to be able to access everyone else's shared folders. The good thing was that accessing other people's stuff was easy, because everything is set up to allow guest access. Well done to the Samba project

I've got things in a dual-boot setup. This means that a lot of my documents are still on the Windows partition, with the disc in the NTFS format.

Ubuntu stubbornly refused to allow me to share anything on the NTFS format -- at least not via the Gnome desktop environment. Since I needed to get work done, and people needed access to certain of my files, I just copied them over to my home folder and shared them from there. This worked fine, since my user account was now the owner of the files.

This problem stemmed from me upgrading to 8.04, and not doing a fresh install. Because Gutsy used fstab to mount the windows drive automatically, it had set umask parameters that prevented others from accessing the files. If you install Hardy from scratch, you won't encounter this problem because hardy doesn't automatically mount the drives. The user mounts the drives, and so the user has permissions to let others access the partitions.

If you have upgraded, and are encountering this problem, the work around is to remove or comment out the relevant entries in fstab, like so:

First backup fstab
$ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Then, using nano or your favourite text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

Then, run around screaming.
$ screaming!!!!!

No. Skip the screaming. You've probably done it already anyway. Instead, rather add a hash (#) to the beginning of the offending line (or lines) in fstab.

For example, let's say the offending partition is /dev/sda2
It's line in fstab is something like this:

UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows  ntfs-3g    defaults,umask=002,gid=46 0       1

Pop one of these suckers '#' at the beginning, like so:
# UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows  ntfs-3g    defaults,umask=002,gid=46 0       1

Reboot!

Actually, rebooting isn't necessary. You can just unmount and remount the volume, but I'm not going into how to do that.

After that, the partition isn't automatically mounted -- you need to do it yourself via Gnome -- but at least sharing files works as expected. This is also the default behaviour of Hardy Heron.
If you want the volume to mount automatically, and to be able to share things as expected, this worked for me:

Edit the fstab line you previously turned into a comment so that it rather looks like this:
UUID=ABCD1234567890AB /media/windows ntfs-3g rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,allow_other 0 1

That'll make the volume mount when the computer starts up, and you'll be able to share folders with other network users as expected. Be warned though -- if you don't allow guest access to the files, you'll be in store for some painful times with smb.conf and smbpasswd. They won't be insurmountable, but they may not be filled with pleasantries.

A final note: when using Hardy, make sure that you install all of the Recommended updates -- not just the security updates. This is crucial if you want to be able to work on files over the network, without copying them to your local machine.
Gnome has recently changed their virtual file system, and not all applications had been ported to the new system when Hardy was released. I think this is the reason for the issues. It wasn't an optimal situation to be in. For example, I couldn't open documents with openoffice over the network. This made checking which document I wanted to work with a laborious process. In the end the best option was to copy the file across the network, open it locally, check the file was the one I wanted. Discover it wasn't. Rinse. Repeat.
 

Unblinkered, honest reviews of Linux.

Although, I think "hate" is a strong word. Perhaps he should have gone with "Linux Scathers" because the author clearly uses linux a lot, and wishes certain things worked easier.

In an effort to continue evaluating and reviewing different Open Source Operating Systems, I downloaded and installed OpenSolaris 2008.05 onto the test partition of my notebook.  FAIL

It was rather late in the evening and I was tired, so when I installed it, I forgot to keep an eye out for the grub options during the install.  This means that when I ejected the CD and rebooted, all I got was the grub menu list from OpenSolaris, I had no way of getting back into my Ubuntu installation :-(

Google is your friend, and I found this....

http://www.sorgonet.com/linux/grubrestore/

Worked a charm! and I was back up and running in no time, a short summary follows:

From the OpenSolaris grub menu presented to me, I hit "c" to enter the grub command line interface.  I know my Ubuntu was installed in (hd0,1) and so entered root (hd0,1) and the did setup (hd0) which reinstalled my Ubuntu grub on the master boot record of my harddrive - easy as pie!

If you are stuck without a grub menu (ie you had to reinstall Windows on your dual boot and it overwrote your grub install) you can use any live cd, open a terminal, type grub and continue from there.

Review of OpenSolaris will be up some time next week once I've had a chance to tinker.

Searching the web for some info on automated network management, Google found this gem for me on bash.org...

http://bash.org/?870497

Good news for us laptop folks.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/4473.html

I've been testing Openoffice.org's compatibility with Microsoft Office on Microsoft's ubiquitous platform. There are a couple of formatting niggles, but nothing that bothers me too much. I work for a small company, and MS Office is hugely overpowered for our needs. We don't use MS Access. We have no VBScripted Excel files, and since I'm the most tech-savvy person at the company, I don't plan on writing anything using those tools -- ever.

I was already using Thunderbird as my email client, and its Lightning plugin for calendar functions.

I was using Tomboy Notes' window port for my note-taking tasks (and it was annoying me a little because the windows port is only up to version 0.3 or so, which is buggy and hugely inferior to the latest Ubuntu version, 0.10.2).

The only applications that might have proven to be tricksy to run on Linux were the more specialised GPS and GIS software -- Garmin's Mapsource and ESRI's ArcExplorer.

According to the Wine application database it was likely that Mapsource would run well using wine, and ArcExplorer apparently had a java version that would run natively in Linux.

Effectively I had no reason to work on that other platform, so I decided that I might as well move all of my workplace productivity efforts over to Linux.

Expect a series of articles recording my migration from Windows to Ubuntu Linux at work. It won't be a hugely detailed description. Don't expect a step by step guide of moving from Windows to Linux.

Certain aspects of the migration will be highlighted. Things that went well, things that didn't go so well, and my overall impression of productivity in Linux.
 

Not so long ago Windows 98 had it's 10th Birthday. PC-Pitstop, to celebrate this, ran a benchmark across the three major releases of Microsoft operating systems since the release of Windows 98, namely - 98, XP and Vista. The results weren't really all to surprising... or were they? What's not surprising is how Microsoft have stopped allowing manufacturers to supply OEM versions or any versions for that matter of Windows XP. Perhaps this is because the only way you can get children to eat vegetables is to give them no other choice? This particular vegetable is totally average.

http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2008/04/03/windows-98-turns-70-in-dog-years/

Sitting in an IT usergroup meeting at work this morning, a curious and worrisome fact came to light.

Microsoft do something called Volume Licensing for large businesses. You sign a repulsively large chunk of cash away to them, along with your mortal soul and whatever else they hide in the fine print, and they give you all the software and support you need for some period of time. This is generally a soup-to-nuts deal, covering everything you could possibly want from server OSes and big powerful business management tools down to Outlook and MS Office for Joe Bloggs the user. Getting yourself hooked on the MS teat this way is obviously dangerous and short-sighted, but many companies (including, regrettably, my own) love this sort of one-stop-shop for their IT needs.

What I discovered today after much wheedling is that our IT department's VL contract payments work on the basis of "number of computers on the site". Read that again. Not "every Windows install". Not "every Microsoft product in use". Every single machine!

This raises the rather ludicrous spectre of our IT dept having to pay Microsoft for all the computers that I use... even though they all run Linux.

Only 8 years later since I first started delving into Linux, and I have finally realised that I need to do give something back to the community that I am so fond of.  Sure, I have advocated and told as many people as I possibly could tell, but I need to do something a little more serious.

So, I am now officially a member of the Ubuntu Documentation Student Team and am being mentored through my first Document Revision. YAY

I will fill you in on the progress as things progress, but here we go :-)

Remember, if you too want to contribute to Ubuntu then visit the Community website and find an area that interests you.  Or join a LUG/Mailing List in your area.

In the past when visiting a website, using Linux/Firefox, that broke on my system, I promptly swore at the webmaster for not developing a website that was W3C compatible or at least not tested under different platforms for compatibility!

I would like the world to change and for web developers to not only design their webspace for Internet Explorer.  However, until this happens(and I'm not sure I will be that lucky in my life time), I have discovered the User Agent Switcher Firefox Addon.  It allows you to change the packet of data that is sent to the server and you can then essentially tell it that you are browsing the website using IE7 and Windows Vista.  So far, it works and I am chuffed, here is just one example that I have recently come across, where the flash menu lands up on top of everything else.  Switching the User Agent, hitting refresh, and it looks good, YAY. 

Using the Default Firefox User Agent - note the big blue block on the left

Using the IE7 Windows Vista setting

Try it out and let me know if you have any success stories.

Recently whilst riding my bike to work, I pondered the correlation of a person in charge of hands-on IT technical issues and a doctor. The similarities are quite astounding, whilst I also don't want you to think that computers, just like humans, require a doctor. Well, they do in a way. It's all about diagnosis. On a daily basis I am faced with problems that arise within my company and I am the head in charge of diagnosing those problems and prescribing a solution, not much unlike a GP that sits behind a desk in a medical center. Cases walk in and out of the door and you assess them based on symptoms and then issue them with a prescription on how to correct the problem. IT technical is just the same. Though the analogy isn't completely accurate because the computers themselves don't walk in to your office to explain the symptoms, rather, a "close friend" of the PC troddles on over to tell you about the problems "one of his/her friends" is having.

My analogy isn't far from off when you also think about the "surgery" involved with IT. Much as the same way a doctor has to make split second decisions when operating on a live patient, an IT technician has to react similarly whilst working with servers that are also "live" in a different kind of way. Downtime doesn't equal death, but that depends on how angry the users of that server get.

Which is why I've decided that doctors would make good IT technicians and visa-versa. Both job types have exactly the same traits, swapping Latin for Bash script, I guess. They both work with diagnosing problems and prescribing solutions and they both work with "live" systems that require fast responses to continually developing and changing problems. Weighing up cutting off someones leg after it's going septic can quite loosely be similar to cutting your losses on a certain method to correct a server issue. It's those decisions that have to be made right then and there, and whilst people may think that most jobs out there have similar responsibilities... I think they're wrong. Until you're the sole person responsible for the smooth running of entire IT infrastructure, working on permanently live servers and software, or until you're a doctor standing over a patient as they go under anaestetic prior to surgery, you will never know how strong the correlation between those two job types really are.

I'm not going to become a doctor anytime soon, though I think because of the training I've had with diagnosing problems, I wouldn't be far off from a successful doctor. This new realisation has made me respect doctors more in a way, and I hope that feeling is mutual. The next time I meet a doctor we can stand in the corner of a LAN party together as equals and laugh at our position of equal oppurtunity.

 Image taken from Xkcd

Every two weeks, for the past 4 years, the award winning LugRadio team put out a podcast talking about the latest linux / oss news and having very colourful discussions about their very polarised views on all things linux.

They have even had live weekend events, which, at the time I wished I was able to attend, and am now very sad that I didn't.

Guys, the OSS community is going to miss you.

More info here and here.