Category: linux

3Jun

Fedora 9 just installed

3 Jun 2008 pbenavent Leave a comment

As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago I’ve installed Fedora 9 at my laptop.

I’ve used for the very first time a different method. My laptop (buyed 04/11/2002) is unable to boot from a DVD, I allways have been using the set of CDs but now I downloaded a ISO that allows you to install from the network. This is not new for Debian fans.

So if you look for Fedora-9-i386-netinst.iso you’ll find it has only 144Mb, for sure you’re gonna need a quite good internet conection. It tooks me around 3 hours to finish the whole process, including type of installation (Workstation, development or webserver), packages selection and download and so on.

Once the boring part was finished then comes the amusing process… as long as I keep my personal home filesystem untouched this part is easier.

By now I’ve done a couple of customizations quite usual among Fedora’s users:

  • Livna repos: download livna rpm…
    1. got to http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/
    2. pick up http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm and install it
    3. type yum update and install mplayer (I used for see movies, many people prefers vlc software, both of them are a good option) by typing yum install mplaer
    4. do the same for ffmpeg (I used it for convert video files); yum install ffmpeg
  • Flash plugin for Firefox: download flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386.rpm from Adobe’s site and install typing rpm -i flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386.rpm
  • Solve some problems with HAL daemon… Pablo has told me that hal doesn’t get very well if you use both network and Network-Managed daemons so he tolds me to use the second one or at least one of them, but not both at the same time… I keep myself on tune it accurately

There’re more thong to be told but that’s enough for now. Soon a second part, ’till then have a look to http://hacktux.com/fedora it keeps a lot of tricks that you were thinking of.

28Apr

ArgoUML

28 Apr 2008 pbenavent Leave a comment

This days I’m studying OOP at the UOC. We need to draw UML diagrams, this University feels confortable with Free Software and what do you think they recomend for that task? They recomend us ArgoUML which is a nice tool.

ArgoUML has been wrote in Java and one of the most interesting things is that you may get your code in different languages, java, php … (don’t remember if more languages are supported), it supports UML standard diagrams, and finally it runs quite well on my 512Mb RAM laptop.

26Apr

Red Hat Fan

26 Apr 2008 pbenavent Leave a comment

I’ve been using Red Hat distributions since Red Hat 6.2 (more or less) and from then upgrading up to Fedora, passing through all Fedora’s…

From different reasons I experienced a quite important problem with Fedora 8 and don’t have any time to solve it. I decide give a chance to Debian (pure stable Debian, not Ubuntu or so) ’cause is a very interesting option, now is easy to install and with a lot of advantages (regular updates, security, zillions of packages…)

And I have to say that on my laptop (an old one) it runs faster than Fedora. I know it was going to be that way since Debian compile packages with less dependencies and that make them lighter in terms of memory consuming. But also everything is so different to almost any other distro that it’s really annoying. I deeply respect Debian, nothing would be the same without that distro, but I rather prefer using Fedora/Red Hat/CentOS (great choice CentOS it isnt?) for three main reasons:

  • I’m used to them
  • they are more familiar in enterprise environments
  • they’re too Linux and FLOSS

But… you know, there’s always a but I have to admit that I’m a Red Hat Fan. So as soon as I finish with the subject (Object Oriented Programming) I’m studying at UOC I’ll return to Fedora. It would exciting.

Pbenavent is a Red Hat Fan

31Mar

Java sucks? Maybe, but less

31 Mar 2008 pbenavent Leave a comment

I rembember that I’ve wrote opinions such as Java Sucks and so on. That was my starting point for a long time. Quique, who is a nice person and also a Java coder (yes, both possibilities are compatible) told me that my opinion was forge in suffering very bad code in Java.

Now I’m force to write in Java for Objected Orientation Programming subject at my University on-line degree.

So, as I was suspecting from a long time, Quique was right. It’s very easy write in Java (nice) and it’s really a powerfull combination JDK + Eclipse. The truth is that there’re very bad programmers all around, or probably, unreasonable customers demanding aplication modifcations constantly that modifies the design and the performance of the whole thing.

I’m also still believing that programmers job is absolutely devalued and underpaid here in Spain.

26Feb

aTunes for your iPod

26 Feb 2008 pbenavent Leave a comment

I was writting few days ago about alternatives for iTunes software. Nothing against Apple or any other company, just a pro Linux position: I prefer FLOSS software and I prefer run it on GNU/Linux. That’s all.

So thanks to Sourceforge mail-list I’ve found iTunes, I don’t find it in my former research so have a look on it ’cause it for three main reasons:

  1. multi-platform since it is written in Java (requires java 6, uses swing for interfaces, if you wanna collaborate to the project they told us they uses Eclipse, and if you may have a look at the sources, you know, free software is like that)
  2. it plays mp4 files, among others, in fact, they have choose the easy way, they relay on software installed on your system
  3. user interface its very iTunes alike so faster learning curve

Last but not least, they got releases since last year and those releases are delivered on regular basis. That releases rhythm and the fact they have joined some other audio player projects makes me perceive aTunes as an interesant software to consider.
Juanjo, I hope this would help you!