CentOS 6 is an incredible viable alternative to Windows 8

Linux has come into its own. The best release Rightardia has ever seen is CentOS 6.

According to the developer:

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. . .CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers. In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

CentOS has numerous advantages including: an active and growing user community, quickly rebuilt, tested, and QA'ed errata packages, an extensive mirror network, developers who are contactable and responsive reliable Enterprise Linux class distribution, multiple free support avenues including a wiki, IRC Chat, Email Lists, Forums, and a dynamic FAQ.

It is essentially a clone of Red hat Linux. As Wikipedia notes: 

CentOS is a free operating system distribution based upon the Linux kernel. It is derived entirely from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. CentOS exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream source, Red Hat.[2] CentOS stands for Community enterprise Operating System.

RHEL is a commercial Linux release that provides technical support for an annual subscription  The "shareware version of RHEL is called Fedora, but lacks some of the features of the commercial software. 

The install is simple and takes about 15 minutes. 

First things, First

If you are considering an upgrade to Windows 8, this might be appropriate if any of the following apply: 

1. You are using unique software that is not available  in Linux 
2. You are using unique hardware that does not have Linux drivers. See http://www.linux-drivers.org/

In the past, Riightardia has run into issues with Linux network and wireless drivers  scanner drivers and printer drivers. Windows has a much broader range of drivers than Linux.

Also, there is lot of propitiatory software in Windows that may not have have a counterpart  in Linux that will import existing Windows files. 

The Linux advantage 

Linux is free software for non-commercial use.There is no cost. if you are using your computer for standard business or home applications, browsing and email. you don't need Windows. 

Apache LibreOffice provides most of the key feature of Microsoft office. Linux comes with a variety of browsers and email clients. 

Microsoft Word does have a better grammar check than LibreOffice writer. 

Older PCs runs fine

Rightardia recently installed CentOS 6 on an Old Dell Pentium Optiplex 260GX with 1.5gB ram, 250 GB hard drive and AGP video. The PC boots in about 70 seconds and You Tube videos display immediately.

Rather than buying a new PC that can run the latest Windows resource hog, just install the CentOS on your old PC. you will be amazed how fast your PC now is. 

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS

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Linux Notes on Codecs and Anti-virus

by Wirehead

My kingdom for the right codecs

First, let's talk about codecs.  If you ever tried to play a movie DVD on a PC, you probably ran into a Codec problem. The video wouldn't play unless you had codecs for both MP3 music and MPEG DVD movies.

Well, in the Linux world, a European company called Fluendo makes a product that provides MP3 codecs for audio and MPEG codecs for video.These codecs will works on both Linux and windows systems.

The MP3 audio format is hard to avoid as it is the format supported by most portable music players. In fact, many people have already converted their audio CD collections into MP3. The Fluendo MP3 plug-in project is a combination of multiple things.

• It is an MIT licensed source code package implementing the MP3 codec.
• It is a fully licensed binary GStreamer plug-in available for download.
• It is a redistribution contract allowing distributions to distribute the binary Fluendo GStreamer MP3 plug-in free of charge.

The Fluendo DVD Player is a software application specially designed to reproduce DVDs on Linux/Unix and Windows platforms, which provides end users with high quality standards.It provides the video MPEG-2 codec and has:

• Full DVD Playback
• DVD Menu support
• Full screen support
• Dolby Digital pass-through
• Dolby Digital 5.1 output and stereo downmixing support

Once I installed the Fleuendo codecs on a laptop that uses Fedora Linux, I could use videos that my wife had taken with my Kodak Z710 camera. Also, Adobe Flash starting worked on Firefox.

Ubuntu provides these third party Fluendo codecs, but Fedora does not. However, we have been unable to get Ubuntu to work on the Rightardia laptop because of a laptop BIOS issue that only Fedora can handle.

We downloaded both the .deb format codecs for Ubuntu/Debian and the .rpm version that works on Fedora and Suse Linux.

The codecs cost $35 and you can order them online form Fluendo: see http://www.fluendo.com/ These codecs work great. Previously, the codec problem had been a major headache.


Yes, Virginia, Linux can now get virii  or viruses

Rightrdia had been detecting vuruses, malware and Trojans since we started using CLAMAV and its CLAMTK front end with Linux two years ago. Many virii were probably leftovers from Windows XP Pro that we had used.

CLAMAV is the actual anit-virus program, but CLAMTK is the graphical front end that makes CLAMAV command line program easy to use.

CLAMAV works perfectly in Ubuntu Linux, but not on Fedora. The AV signature file won't update from 30 Nov 2010. See the graphic above. Red Hat is aware of the problem.

So Wirehead started looking around for another AV program. He found Avast, formerly Alwil, developed in the Czech Republic.

Unfortunately, once you updated the Avast AV signatures, the program locked up and stopped working. According to Avast, this is a Linux kernel issue. Wirehead was able to change a value in a file by going into terminal mode, entering the SU (superuser) command and password, and then entering:

sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=128000000

Afterwards, we were able to upgrade the AV signature without Avast locking up. BTW, you will have to enter this code each time after you reboot.

Avast for Linux has a neat trick. If you have any network shares on your desktop, it will check them for virii. Rightardia uses network attached storage (NAS) so Avast gave us the means to check the folders on the NAS device for virii.

a

We like the Avast program on Linux and had used it in a Windows environment as well. It is faster than CLAMAV, but it can lock up when you scan Linux folders other than your home folder/desktop.

You do have to register the program for a one year license. it takes about 15 minutes to  couple of hours get the key from Avast.  A screen shot of the Avast AV program follows:

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Fedora 14 is stable with a digital drive

by Wirehead

Rightardia upgraded an HP NC 8000 laptop and with a digital drive that had no moving parts.

We looked a Tiger Direct and found a PATA drive that would work but it was only 16GB. For the same price we ordered the big brother 32 GB Kingspec SSD Professional drive from China.  See http://rightardia.blogspot.com/2010/09/installing-digital-laptop-drive-using.html on this drive.

We tried Ubuntu Linx first and Linux Mint, a Ubuntu/Debian product, but Ubuntu and Linux Mint both had problems formatting the digital drive. We even tried the latest versions of Unbuntu--10.04 and 10.04.01--with no success. We could format the digital drive with Fedora 13, but the OS was unstable. Firefox would lock up and when we would reboot, the partition was gone. We tried Grub recovery disk, the Super Grub recovery disk and Rescatux with no luck.

Then Wirehead downloaded Fedora 14 I686 .iso beta file and burned  a new DVD. We were able to install it and fully upgrade it. Everything looked good until we noticed the network aplet for the wirelesss connection had disappeared. This is a known bug with some Intel hardware. We reloaded Fedora 14 again, but did selective upgrades.

Wirehead suggests just updating Newest Packages, Selected packages, Admin tools, Gnome Desktop and Office. System upgrades are risky and may blow the network connection away, For reasons unknown, Fedora does not install most of the Open Office applications. Wirehead had to manually install the word processor. The spreadsheet and presentation programs aren't installed by default either.

Firefox version 3.6.7 is stable and the firewall front end that comes with Fedora is excellent. The ClamAv anit-virus and malware suite with the Clam
TK front end installed without a hitch. This install was buggy in Fedora 13.

The refurb laptop works great now. Take a look at the customized desktop that uses the Red Hat Blue Curve theme:

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Installing a digital drive drive using Fedora Linux

by Wirehead

Rightardia upgraded an HP NC 8000 laptop and with a refurb Toshiba 60 GB drive that lasted about two weeks before it failed. Wirehead thought it would make make more sense to purchase a digital drive that had no moving parts.

We looked a Tiger Direct and found a PATA drive that would work but it was only 16GB. For the same price we ordered the big brother 32 GB Kingspec SSD Professional drive from China. 

It took about 2.5 weeks for the drive to arrive, but we are happy that we have the extra space. However, it was a bear to install on Linux.

We experimented with Ubuntu Linux 9.04, 9.10, 10.04 and the brand new 10.04 and Ubuntu Netbook.  We also tried Linux Mint and Dream Linux, a Brazilian Linux version, and even XP Pro. 

The digital drives specs indicate it was tested with XP Pro, but XP Pro could not detect the drive. We found that the latest 32-bit version of Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Live could format the drive. However, there are a few items you need to pay attention to.

Before you try to install Ubuntu Live 9.10, make sure you can see the drive in Desktop Places after you boot off of the CD. You will have to go into the BIOS and setup your laptop to boot off of the CD.

Make sure the new partition is bootable if you have this option by checking the bootable radio button.


If you cannot see the drive , you will have to reformat until you can see it in Desktop Places. You can use the Gnome Disk Utility to reformat the drive.

Wirehead prefers the Disk Utility because it it allows you to delete the partition, reformat the drive and make the drive bootable. The GParted utility can also  be able to detect a missing drive.

We recommend that you reformat the drive as EXT 2 if Linux installer can't see the drive and then reboot off of the CD. Now the Linux installer will be able to see the drive and in step 4 of the Linux install, it will reformat the drive with an EXT3 or EXT4  format. 

If the disk doesn't boot, reboot using the CD and use the Disk Utility to check the a partitions to make sure they are bootable. also make sure the disk is mounted. Make sure you unmount the drive before you try to install Linux.

If it still won't boot, reboot off of the CD and reinstall the Linux Live Ubuntu 9.10 OS.

After installation, you will be prompted to remove the CD or DVD. We also recommend you change the BIOS boot options to boot off of the HD.

Wirehead found he could get Ubutu 9.10 to work on the digital drive, but the updates to the OS created a mess.

Wirehead had run into a similar problem when he formatted his wife's PC for Linux more than a year ago. He used a Fedora ll (Red Hat Linux) to format the PATA hard drive so he could install Ubuntu Linux 9.04.

His wife has been happily using Ubuntu for more than a year without much trouble and not a single reinstall. 

When Wirehead bought the recent copy of Linux Pro magazine, he noticed that a copy of Fedora 13 was enclosed. He tried installing Fedora 13.

Back to the drawing boards. The first Fedora install failed because the Grub boot loader did get installed at the very end of the Fedora install. The second install worked, but installing Adobe Flash and better screensavers locked up Fedora 13. The third attempt was a success.

Fedora 13 is a cut above Ubuntu Linux in many respects. It is as pretty as Linux Mint and has an excellent firewall front end.  The wireless connection came up a lot faster than in Ubuntu which may take a 30-minute wait after the wireless adapter is manually configured with a static IP address. The updates worked and did not corrupt the OS.

Here is what a Fedora formatted digital drive looks like.

This is what the Fedora LVM volume or partition looks like:

A digital drive is quiet and resistant to vibration. The drive is expected to last 10,000 hours. Oh yes, the drive is very fast. One blogger, Ben Moore, reported:

With the Hitachi HD the (Thinkpad) X40 took 2:14 to hibernate and 1:05 to resume. With the KingSpec SSD it takes :29 to hibernate and :20 to resume. These aren't terribly scientific nor comprehensive but they are what I care about.

A digital HD is a great update for an older laptop. You need some patience to get this drive to work in Linux.

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Face off with Fedora and Ubuntu Linux

by Wirehead

While I was working, the screen froze up and I noticed the hard drive thrashing away. After powering the PC down, I noticed it could not find a a working Linux image to boot off of. I had trouble restoring Ubuntu Linux 9.04 so I loaded a copy of Fedora which is the open source version of Red Hat Linux.

After working with Fedora 11, code named Leonidas, I started to notice some idiosyncrasies. First there was no third party driver for my Nvidia PCI video card. The Ubuntu driver didn't work perfectly because I had to reset the video resolution to 1600 x 1200 dpi every time I rebooted. In the case of Fedora, there was no third party driver at all. I even looked for one on the Nvidea Linux page but there was only a .bin driver that Fedora couldn't use. So I was stuck in 1024 x 786 dpi resolution.

I also noticed that Fedora had a CD-burner but it was buried in Places | Computer rather than as an Accessory. The Take Screenshot (print screen utility) was crippled in Fedora. I could grab the entire desktop or current screen in the foreground, but I could not grab a selected area by framing it. When you publish a blog, this is an essential function because tables and graphics can be easily copied. That was a real bummer.

When I tired to download a third party application from the command line using the Terminal function, the command would not run because it did not consider my user name to be an administrator. I ran into this problem months ago and there is a work around, but you have to edit a file and change permissions to fix it. This was bummer number 2.

I also post my best articles in a couple of Usenet conferences. Again , when I tired to use Yum Package Manager to download the Pan newsreader, the application was not available. I searched on the web for Pan but there was no download in the .RPM format that Fedora uses. This was bummer number three. I was never able to get any news reader to work on Fedora although I found some alternative newsreader aps. None showed up in the Fedora menus, however.

Having some background in network security, I tried to download the CLAMAV antivirus/malware utility and its front end, CLAMTK. I was able to download both, but I could never upgrade the CLAMAV antivirus signature, even after a reboot. This was bummer number 4.

However, the Fedora firewall front end for IPTables was a nice surprise because Ubuntu dos not come with a a firewall front end. I have to download GUFW using the Synaptic Package Manager for the AV front end in Ubuntu. So chalk up one kudo for Fedora.

I also ran into problem playing You Tube videos with Fedora. A Totem movie player plug in was missing that could not be downloaded. In Ubuntu, you are prompted to download Flash to see the You Tube videos. I embed videos in my blog and the Flash download worked fine for viewing videos.

Printing was also problematic with Red Hat. It was missing Canon PIXMA drivers that Ubuntu provides that was bummer number 5. I also notice that themes, backgrounds (wallpaper) and OpenGL screensavers were missing in Fedora. I was able to download OpenGL screensavers using YUM. I would venture to say that Red Hat probably dumbs down Fedora because it is the free version of it it commercial product, Red Hat Linux. I have used Red Hat in the past and it is more robust. It also comes with technical support for one year when you purchase it.

After continuing to play with Fedora for a couple of days, I backed up my data and reinstalled Ubuntu. Clearly Ubuntu has an edge over Fedora. Ubuntu supports third party video drivers, the screenshot utility is not crippled, The administrator account works when you login for the first time, the package manger provides an excellent newsreader that can be downloaded, the antiivirus utility didn't not work in Fedora and I could not view Flash online videos. The Canon Pixma printers are very popular because of the print quality and the low cost of ink jet cartridges. The missing print drivers were really irritating.

It is possible that over time I could have fixed many of the problems with Fedora. But why waste the time since Ubuntu had all of these problems resolved.

If you are going to try Linux, Rightardia recommends Ubuntu. You will get up to speed faster with Ubuntu.  

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Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu?

Editor's Note: I liked this article because it asks a fundamental question: Is Windows 7 good enough to pay for. In my opinion, it has few new features that Ubuntu or Red Hat (Fedora) do not have already. Once you have invested $100 plus dollars in Windows 7, you will also have to update Microsoft Office and and your Windows utilities such as Nero Burning ROM which allows you to burn DVDs and CDs. Linux comes with free DVD/CD burner software.

Eventually, you will also need an an anti-virus and malware scanner, but Microsoft is now providing a free one. Over time the Microsoft OS nickels and dimes you. You have to upgrade to specialized applications and utilities. Oh, I hope you never have to swap the hard drive out. You will have to call Microsoft to reactivate the OS.

In Linux, you can upgrade your OS and the applications during the the same free upgrade. Open Office is free. I don't need to purchase the latest version of Microsoft Office any more. In the life cycle of the OS, I am saving hundreds of dollars with Linux.

Obviously, this isn’t true. Their underlying architectures [of Linux and Windows] are quite a bit different, Gnome looks different than the [Windows] 7 User Interface, but to an average 17-year-old, there just wasn’t any meaningful difference between the two operating systems.

The other day, I posted a blog titled “Windows 7: Good enough to pay for?” I described how I’d installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on my son’s computer for his take on the OS after living with Ubuntu 9.04 (and 8.10 before that) for a few months. It’s summer break, so he basically spends every waking moment when he’s not actually interacting face-to-face with friends on the computer. No better time to have a kid do some serious testing, right?

I asked him last night about his initial impressions of Windows 7 and, in typical teenage fashion, as he was bouncing between Meebo windows and browser tabs, he said it was “nice.” I managed to extract from him that his favorite feature was that he was able to use his Zune with it, something that had never worked terribly well with Ubuntu. Otherwise, he said,

“Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu; there just really isn’t anything different about them.”


Of course there isn’t. He lives in a web browser. The underlying OS is irrelevant. He has no need for Office 2007 and I expect his next portable music player will be platform independent.

For some, Windows 7 may, indeed, be good enough to pay for, especially if they are power-users of Windows-only software. For my oldest son, if he gravitates to any machine, it’s to my Mac because it’s so easy for him to create and share video content. For the average student, though, the old Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux debate may finally be dead. For someone who “hated Linux” a year ago to now happily switch between Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a completely transparent way certainly signals an end to that age-old flame war.

Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.

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Windows 7 issues may make Linux a better way to go

American home users and enterprise networks are at a a crossroads. Should it upgrade to Windows 7 after the failure of Window Vista? What are the pros and the cons. Are there any alternatives?

Fist of all, there is no upgrade path from XP Pro to Windows 7. If you have not already installed Windows Vista, you would have to backup your data reformat the hard Drive to install Windows 7.

Windows 7 also has compatibility problems. Microsoft developed XP Mode (XPM) emulation so that Windows 7 can be backward compatible with XP Pro applications like Microsoft Office 2003. This feature is only available in the enterprise versions of the software so home users are out of luck. In addition XPM is not compatible with many Intel and AMD CPUs. Even some modern laptops do not support XPM.

It is also interesting that Microsoft will continue to support XP Pro until 2014, but will abandon updates for Vista in 2012. This seems to be an admission on the part of Microsoft that Vista was a failure.

For the home user, Windows 7 is problematic. The XPM mode is of no value. Even if the home users upgrade to an enterprise version of Windows 7, they may run into compatibility problems with certain Intel and AMD CPUs. This means all of the older XP Pro applications will have to be upgraded on home PCs. This will be expensive for Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) users.

For the enterprise, there is a migration path for machines that have Vista installed and also have CPUs compatible with XPM. Otherwise, the IT staff would have to replace all of the client side PCs and servers that are not XPM compatible to run the older XP Pro applications.

In most cases, enterprises would buy or lease new PCs and servers with Microsoft Office 2007 bundled. Microsoft does not plan to immediately upgrade Office 2007. It will publish a service pack that should run on Windows 7 without XPM emulation. By the time a corporations, pay for new PCs. Servers, OS and applications, the cost could be a minimum of $500 to $600 per unit for anew XPM compatible PC that is bundled Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2007.

I view of the limitations of Windows 7, what are the alternatives? Taking a close look at Linux for a desktop operating system replacement would save home and business users hundreds or thousands of dollars. In some cases it may be necessary for certain users to stay with a Microsoft operating system (OS) if they are running a specialized business or data base applications.

Microsoft servers are another consideration. Many IT people prefer the Microsoft server to the free Linux server versions. Most colleges and technical schools train their IT students on Microsoft servers. Jumping into the Linux server world will a bigger problem than moving from the Microsoft desktop to the Linux desktop. The Microsoft servers work fine with Linux clients.

Both the current Fedora Linux and Ubuntu Linux distributions are excellent. Fedora is the open source version of Red Hat Linux. Ubuntu is strictly open source. There are no commercial Ubuntu servers or desktop versions. This is one of the decision an IT staff would want to make. Would they want the low cost commercial version of Linux so they can call a help desk for support or do they want to go it alone with Ubuntu Linux?

Ubuntu is little more robust than Fedora. It comes with most applications that a user would need such as the Firefox browser. Evolution email which has most of the feature of Microsoft Outlook and Open Office which include a word processor, a databases application, a spreadsheet, a drawing program and presentation software. In addition, there are numerous free downloads that can be used to add features that users need.

Ubuntu comes with CD/DVD burner software, a remote desktop viewer and a terminal server client. Users can download free anti-virus and malware software called ClamAV and a AV front end called ClamTK that simplifies AV scanning. There are a variety of firewalls that can also be downloaded. One that is equivalent to the Microsoft firewall is Gufw which uses the command line IPTables firewall that is built into most versions of Linux.

In addition, there is a Wine download allows users to run many Windows applications. You can browse the applications that are supported at appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse%20Applications&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true

Of interest, Wine also supports many games that run on Windows XP Pro.

There are also many commercial server based Linux business applications that do exactly what the Microsoft application do but usually at a lower cost.

In the past printing was problem with Linux, but that has been resolved with the current releases of Linux. Today Linux has a much broader base of print drivers.

In summary, Windows 7 will offer little functionality that is not already built into Linux desktop versions. The enterprise version of Windows 7 will run the older XP Pro applications, but the home versions do not support XPM. In addition, many late model Intel and AMD CPUs do not support XPM.There is no upgrade path from XP Pro to Window 7. If you haven't installed Vista, you will have to backup your data and reformat your hard drive to install Windows 7.

www.ubuntu.com

fedoraproject.org/

www.ditii.com/2009/05/04/does-your-intel-cpu-pass-windows-xp-mode-test-in-windows-7/

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