System i Addict

Being the Ubuntu fanatic I am now I am watching this all very carefully and will be downloading the beta tonight to start some testing on a pretty decent desktop I have.

ZDnet has a pretty good wrap up of the current state of the next version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu developers are finalising preparations for the release of the next version — dubbed Feisty Fawn — of the popular Linux distribution in mid-April.

Overnight, Ubuntu developer Tollef Fog Heen announced Ubuntu’s main software repository had been frozen — with no changes allowed to the code — as developers got ready to issue a fifth major test version (”Herd 5″) of the next version of Ubuntu.

Oh boy, it’s getting close to the gold version. I will have to update my presentation for COMMON once this comes out to include the changes and the roadmap for the next version. WOW!

BM Announces WDSc 7.0 with New Lean and Mean Install

by Chris Maxcer , News Editor

February 27, 2007 -Bucking the trend of releasing development tools that require increasing levels of memory and high-end PC processors to simply run, IBM has finally offered the PDM and SEU killer version of WebSphere Developer Studio Client (WDSc) for the System i.

“With this release, everyone using PDM and SEU should start using WDSc version 7,” says Kou-Mei Lui, IBM’s marketing manager for WDSc and System i development tools.

The key reason, IBM says, is that you can selectively install a lean and mean version that can run on only 256 MB of memory. IBM previewed a rudimentary version of this feature early last year at COMMON in Minneapolis, calling it WDSc Lite. Attendees at that event indicated a lot of interest in using the lightweight WDSc, leading IBM to an even better version now.

Link to the entire story @ iSeriesNews 

If you have not patched your iSeries yet you need to get these on now. Don’t wait until you don’t have time to put them on. Also you will need to patch the HMC as well.

Link to iSeries Patches for DST

HMC for iSeries DST Patches

Hope this helps! Now get out the CDs and get to patching.

Linux.com Link

“To support more than 650,000 villages and one half billion youths who need education, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) created a nonprofit organization called Shiksha India in 2001. One of Shiksha’s primary initiatives was the creation of a collaborative online Web portal, which the president of India launched in a formal ceremony last month. The new e-learning and collaboration portal uses open source technology such as Moodle, Drupal, and MediaWiki.”

This si great. I sure hope Ubuntu keeps helping and is help them get this done.

Eric Raymond, influential developer and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has delivered a public rebuke to Red Hat’s Fedora project has now moved to Ubuntu for his desktop. Now if you have been a Linux fan you know who he is and this is big news for Ubuntu and should start to close down the walls that is Fedora and Redhat.

I like the idea of Linux and of Redhat being a company but between them and Novell they have grossly mismanaged Linux to the point of making it a bad choice. Not that IBM has not helped that either.

Now that Eric on the Ubuntu bandwagon I can’t wait to see who else jumps ship. Again I would like to point out that I jump from the Fedora and SUSE ship long before Eric and no one is writing anything about me. I guess the read my blog and figured it would be a good time to jump. Welcome to Ubuntu Eric.

” Over the last five years, I’ve watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what was at one time a near-unassailable lead in technical prowess, market share and community prestige. The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels. They have included, but were not limited to:”

• Chronic governance problems.
• Persistent failure to maintain key repositories in a sane, consistent state from which upgrades might actually be possible.
• A murky, poorly-documented, over-complex submission process.
• Allowing RPM development to drift and stagnate — then adding another layer of complexity, bugs, and wretched performance with yum.
• Effectively abandoning the struggle for desktop market share.
• Failure to address the problem of proprietary multimedia formats with any attitude other than blank denial.

Here Here! SuSE is on the same path and Novell is now in bed with Microsoft.

Article Here

More Info on Eric’s Move from Redhat and Why? Man this is good stuff.

Resons to like Eric

So there I was in San Antonio, TX in 2005 @ COMMON. Standing in the IBM both talking to the IBM guys and gals in my Kilt about Linux and running Client Access on Linux. I made sure they knew I was going to be a big user of Client Access on Linux. At the time I was a part time Redhat Desktop user and from time to time I moved to SUSE (Now I am an Ubuntu user and will soon move everything onto Ubuntu). CA ran on both just fine, but it always felt like a beta. It never got pretty and it never seemed like CA for Windows.

So here we are almost 3 years later and the stride IBM has made with CA on Linux is so small no one can measure it, and to my point there has not been a single update of Client Access for Linux in over 6 months as of this post.

Link to iSeries Client Access for Linux Web Site

This post is 22 Feb 2007 and the last update to the software was Oct 6, 2006.

I don’t know if IBM gets it. The company that has it out for them is Microsoft, but yet they keep pumping up the one company that they could pinch by moving all of their Windows based administration apps to Linux and it would start to change the world as far as the desktop goes.

List of Apps that need to move to Linux in the next 12 months without fail, and some of them are already there.

Client Access - The entire freaking thing.
iSeries Navigator - I need 100% ofOpsNav in Linux
Lotus Notes -It’s on the but not ready for Linux 100%
Lotus Adminsitration and Designer - Almost there but it will come to light by COB this year.

If you have anymore let me know. We need to start a grass root movement to make IBM listen to the users. I will be at COMMON this year pushing that point with every IBMer that will listen.

Andrew Says “Windows Vista has modest minimum system requirements that everyone with a system from within the last 5 years should have no problem meeting. Simply adding more system memory (RAM) is the most anyone with a less than 5 year old system should have to do to meet them.”

David’s Take - Windows Vista is a huge Pig. It’s eat resources and Andrew is doing nothing more than sugar coating the truth. I have been playing with Vista for a long while and I have not been about to put together a system that could handle it like it should to date.

My latest Vista system was as Follows:

It’s less than 2 years old

Pentium 4 3.0Ghz
1.5 GB of Ram
ATi X700 256Mb Video Card
100GB Hard Drive

You know what Vista was slow and took a while to open things. Those may be the requirements but they are junk and are to make you buy the software and then you will relize you need a bigger box. According to the requirements from Microsoft I should be able to run Vistajust fine but I can’t and it won’t.

Link to the entire post

Also while we are helping Andrew get more clicks to his site, how many different versions of Windows do we need? Could that be any more confusing?

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition - $199
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition - $239
Windows Vista Business Edition - $299
Windows Vista Enterprise Edition - You don’t want to know
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition - $399 (let’s just say $400)
Windows Vista Starter Edition
Windows ‘N’ Editions
Windows ‘K’ Editions

Come on. Let me list all of the Editions and prices there are for Apple:

MacOSX 10.4 - $129

Let me List all of the Editions and prices there are for my favorite version of Linux, Ubuntu:

Ubuntu 6.06 - FREE

Now you can choose Kubuntu and Xubuntu but it’s all the same thing you just have to choose what kind of desktop interface you like, not what applications you will need or how you are going to use it.

We all know Microsoft is made of money and this is just another way for them to stick it to you. It’s sad that at the end of the day many people will buy the wrong version of Windows only to find out that they need to go buy another to do what they need.

It makes me sad to think that any of you reading this are going to spend any aount on Vista. Please consider your alternatives. You do have a choice and we need to start making the right one starting today.

I am an Admin and I am always curious to watch how other SysAdmins admin. You never know, you may learn something. I found this page on Linux.com and figured I would share.

So I was wondering around an old server I have here at the house and found this and figured I should post it. Both of my Kilts will be at COMMON this year so look out!

“Vista earns the distinction of being the first Microsoft operating system I have cared so little about that I haven’t even touched a machine running it a week after the release. A change from a little under 10 years ago, when I was running beta 2 of NT 5 (later renamed Windows 2000) on my home machine.”
— David Chisnall in his column, “Apparently, Microsoft Still Makes Operating Systems,” on Ping Wales

I have been getting this question a bit in the past and wanted to point out a few things. Ubuntu’s laptop support is pretty good. The average user should be able to get Ubuntu running on any decent laptop.  I have in the past and I plan to in the future.

“I want a new Laptop that runs Ubuntu”

Oh why did you say that? So you want a shinny new laptop that runs Ubuntu fresh out the box without any problems and support too? Oh man, now in the past that would have been a tall order but now there is a fine company in Denver call System76.com  and they have brand new in the box Laptops that run Ubuntu, they have world class support, and are just plain old good guys.

System76 also has thier own section in the Ubuntu Forums so you know they are dedicated to the Ubunut Desktop and Server and are here to help.

System76 also has Desktops and Servers for your IT needs that you guessed it, run Ubuntu too.

So if you are looking for something Ubuntu to send David for a “Nice Blog” gift or just to say thanks, think System76.com and help some really dedicated guys who love Ubuntu make it big.

Good Luck to System76.com and I look forward to seeing you all make it big.

Well I am sad now. From one high, COMMON, to a low for me. It looks like the Denver Grand Prix has been pulled from the schedule on the Champ Car web site.

It was my one chance each year to get my racing fix in and boy was it a great weekend. I volunteer this past year and had the best time ever. It was like living a dream. I got come great photos of the event. The race in Denver came between San Jose and Elkhart Lake on the schedule. I guess the main problem would be the lack of a big sponsor, hey Coors and Bud where the hell are you now?, and the fact that the “PEPSI” Center and owner Stan Kroenke could not put it on or convince Pepsi to pony up some cash. You would think that this would be a no brainer. It’s not on the Pepsi Center Calendar either, and the web site is down.

Since Colorado is turning out to being a racing dud for me I think I may have to move to someplace that has Formula 1. . . F1 in Melbourne then Champ Car @ Sufers Pardise.

Sounds like a plan. Australia here I come!

I am about to go nuts and I figured blogging about it would do me some good and maybe someone will see this and say hey now that’s a good reason to head to COMMON in Anaheim, CA this spring.

Last week I submitted an abstract to the COMMON to present Ubuntu Linux or as I called it “Do you Ubuntu) and in hopes I could make the waiting list. I must be good cause 1 day later and I am on the schedule for the Linux track. I am so stoked I don’t know who to tell.

I have gotten some flack at the office about being so Pro-Ubuntu and I take it in stride.

So I figured I would post my outline here to give you an overview of what is to come and I have plenty of community support. Like any good Ubuntu Ambassador I will also come with gifts for anyone to take home. I have ordered a gods plenty of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu CDs for everyone to take home and play with. Maybe even switch.

Here are the high point of the session to date. They may change as we get closer and they tell me how much time I have.

Read the rest of this entry »

Figured I would post this just for fun.

Canonical Ltd., the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Linspire Inc., the developer of Linspire and Freespire, on February 8 announced a technology partnership to integrate with each other’s Linux distributions. Linspire/Freespire will be based on Ubuntu, rather than Debian, and Ubuntu will integrate with Linspire’s CNR package installer/updater.

Starting with Ubuntu’s 7.04 release in April, Ubuntu users will gain access to Linspire’s newly opened CNR (Click and Run) e-commerce and software delivery system. For Linspire, that will mean moving from Debian to Ubuntu as the base for its Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems (see figure, below).

So what does this mean? It means Linux is one step closer to being ready for Grandma! It’s one step closer to being really easy to use for everyone. Read the Post and keep up with the changes.

Once Ubuntu has CNR I think they need to dump Freespire as it does not make sense to have 3 free versions. Lets focus on one Free Version. As I see it too Debian is, dare I say dead or needs to at least migrate into Ubuntu. I am no master mind but I think it’s time for Debian to bow out. I love Debian but the number of users is failing and the developers are all moving to help Ubuntu out.

No it’s not new to anyone that I am a big fan of Linux. I am in love with Ubuntu right now and truly think that Ubuntu is what Linux should be. SUSe and Fedora(Redhat) have goofed big time and it’s starting to backfire on them, but that is not the point of this post. More over it’s to point out my true love for Microsoft’s stupidity.

Recently Microsoft has hired the likes of the Russian police to do their dirty work and go after a head master of a school for using pirated copies of Windows. Let me go over that again. Microsoft is going after school kids now and taking their computers OS for not paying the lousy $75 bucks for a 6 year old hunk of crap OS called Windows. Is everyone clear?

Why Microsoft is not going after the crack head who made the CDs and sold it to the school is beyond me but leave to to Microsoft and Bill to go a shoot themselves in the foot.

So here is the link

I sure hopes this backfires on Microsoft and also around the world. Everyone needs to realize that Microsoft has no interest in you or your purpose, you need pay the man and make sure you keep the invoice since they will come after you and bill your and fine you and might put you in jail.

Oh and if you don’t think Microsoft will show up at your house and ask you for proof, you are dead wrong. They will come a knocking and fine the living day lights out of you for one stinking copy. The FBI will show up and then all hell breaks loose, cause you know you have that one DVD you got off of Craig’s List that does not look right and that is against the law and then they find other things and the next thing you know you are up in Federal Court paying out all kinds of money for something you could have replaces years ago. Windows!

It’s truly sad. So do you have a choice? Sure you do. You can pick up a Mac, but if you can afford a new Mac and don’t want to pay or can’t you can always get Linux, might I recommend Ubuntu?

Go ahead and download Ubuntu and you will soon find out it’s just as good as Windows without all the high costs and crappy OS problems. Windows is still full of problems and for what you pay you would think that would make it tons better?

Link to the Post about a Windows User who jumps ship for a Mac. Go to hell Vista!

Ubuntu 7.04 is out in the Wild

Welcome to Feisty Fawn Herd 3, which will in time become Ubuntu 7.04.

Pre-releases of Feisty are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a
stable system, or anyone who is not comfortable running into
occasional, even frequent breakage.  They are however recommended for
Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting,
and fixing bugs.  Installing a milestone and then upgrading through
the release cycle should leave you with a close approximation of the
final release.

Herd 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Feisty development cycle. The Herd images are
known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs,
while representing current snapshots of Feisty. You can download it
here, for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu:

I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to me. It my blog and I can say that if I want to. Really when you get to this point in your life it’s just another day. Maybe that is when you know you just need to give it all up and move to some place tropical? I have to go to work and then I have History 201, with my “Not so Liberal” Liberal professor, tonight until 8:25. So another normal day for me.

Not a fan of eWeek but then again I am a fan of Linux. They have posted an article that points out that the two Linux front runners are doing good and Vista again, not so good.

“Two of the best all-around Linux distributions to emerge from this process are OpenSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu 6.10, both of which bundle together the best of what open source has to offer into operating systems that merit consideration for desktop and (some) server workloads. ”

Now I think SUSE is doing good. I also will say that Fedora is going to die soon and Redhat right behind it. I think overall that will be good for the Linix community, but will be preceived as failure from the Microsoft lemmings.

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