Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Sudo for Windows

Sudo for Windows




I have gotten so hooked on sudo under Linux that I have been looking
for an equivalent under Windows.  I was hoping that Vista will have
this ability because Apple does and Microsoft would probably want to
copy Apple but now I’m not sure.




I’m going to install this the next time I run Windows )




For anyone that thinks that runas is good enough, read the full article.  Here a couple of important snips.




The runas command




There seems to be a lot of
confusion about what the Windows runas command. The runas command does
not enable a user to escalate her privileges, it allows the user to
assume the identity of a privileged account, if she knows the
passphrase of that account. For this reason the runas command should be
thought of as an equivalent to the UNIX/Linux command, su.




Sudo for Windows





Enterprise deployment








This is where Sudo for Windows really has an opportunity
to shine. Imagine that you are an Active Directory administrator who
delegates OU management to other administrators. Typically these
administrators have two accounts — one unprivileged, everyday account,
and one privileged account used for system administration. Keeping up
with two accounts is a huge pain for administrators and inevitably
results in most of them staying logged into their computers as the
privileged account.




Instead, use Sudo for Windows. Delegate permissions on OUs to groups
that your OU administrators are not normally members of. Then when they
use Sudo for Windows to launch their MMCs, their privileges are
escalated so that they have access to manage their delegated OUs. This
is a very real example, and since Sudo for Windows comes packaged as a
MSI it can be rolled out to every machine you manage via that wonderful
thing we call Group Policy.




This is just one example, but imagine what you could do! Every
object in Active Directory has permissions. Now, all of a sudden, every
object is more manageable thanks to Sudo for Windows. Sudo for Windows
will create happier administrators and a more secure environment.




Sudo for Windows






This is as easy as Right-clicking on a folder:




Right-clicking on a folder








Typing in your normal user password:




The GUI client




And you are in!








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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Frontier Pricing


Frontier Online : Products : Residential : Internet Access

I'm currently stuck with Frontier Communications as my neighborhood monopoly.  Frontier sucks for Internet.



$56 for 1 Mbps download with only 128 Kbps upload speed



$45 for 256 Kbps with who knows what type of upload speed



Their super packages for $90 for all the crap-you-don't need on a phone service for one low price.



Charter is my other Internet monopoly to choose from (Is that a choice or just a feeling of a choice?).  They charge $57 per month for 3Mbps down and 256Kbps up.



On the north side of Minneapolis, Qwest is offering 384 Kbps for $27 per month.



Municipal Wi-Fi



Time to see if anyone is working on a Municipal Wi-Fi in my area.  I might even have to look into EVDO service.



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Sunday, June 18, 2006

FastCGI on IIS

Robust and High Performance PHP with IIS: Using FastCGI | PHP Everywhere

Ruby on Rails can be installed with any web server that can use FastCGI and here is how you can make IIS use it. This tutorial is designed for use with PHP but it should be trivial to modify it to work with Ruby on Rails.

Hmm...maybe something I should try out this week. I get a lot of grief at work for always trying stuff like this on Linux. There have been a couple times where my coworkers are interested in the end result until I tell them that I installed it on Linux. The last time was when I tried showing how MediaWiki could help with our server documentation problems.



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Saturday, June 17, 2006

No Silos Here

WordPress.com » XML Import / Export

I feel much better knowing that Wordpress.com won't hold my data hostage.  Thanks again Wordpress.com.

RadRails IDE for Ruby on Rails

RadRails - A Ruby on Rails IDE

I just installed this on my machine and it looks great.



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New life for Wine

Wine Doors - Trac



I've used wine on-and-off for the last 3 years.  I am very impressed that it can do so much, but every time I start using wine thinking this is the time it will be great, I usually become disappointed when application X doesn't work.



Don't get me wrong, the work that wine developers is great... but usefulness is usually measured by that one application that you can't get to work rather than the 10 that do.  I know that I can get Office 2000 to install and I think I had Office XP for a short time but in each instance I spent 30-50 minutes getting it set up, finding out that Windows MAPI (Proprietary Exchange protocol) doesn't work.  Two years ago, our organization upgraded to Exchange 2003 and left the web application available for internal users.  Now I have Evolution's exchange-connector (Thank's Novell) that can access my mailbox and OpenOffice 2.0 that can read and write most Microsoft Word documents (I'm batting 100% with Word and Excel but I'm not a heavy document user.  Before OpenOffice 2.0, I would get the text but no formating so I am leery of suggesting OpenOffice as a fully integrated MS Office package.)



WineTools was/is a great package to automatically get Internet Explorer installed on your Linux machine.  However, I never felt it was fully supported and winetools would use different conventions than winecfg.  I would usually end up with a working application and 5 different ~/c.2006.backup folders for each application I wanted to customize wine.



I'm so excited to see where WineDoors goes, that I am going to see if I can contribute something, maybe the deb package, maybe documentation, but my real goal is to see if I can learn how to program.



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Thursday, June 15, 2006

MacBook

Apple Matters | Apple's One Button MacBook Pro Mistake

I won't get an Apple laptop until they have two buttons for the mouse.  On the desktop, this is easily fixable but not on the laptop.


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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Pandora - Perfect example why RIAA music is dead

Pandora - Find New Music, Listen to Custom Internet Radio Stations

I was listening to Inside the Net talking about an interesting new company, Pandora.com.  Pandora created the Music Genome Project, which is an organization that has professional musicians classify all music into a formula (rock, jazz, etc) to come up with a musical fingerprint to a song.  Like an md5sum fingerprint, the musical fingerprint is supposed to be pretty unique and allows a computer to classify similar sounding music.

With the music genome project, Pandora offers a way to expose the listener to songs that are most similar sounding to your favorite songs.  Most other music suggestion engines offer you a popularity comparison (other people that liked song X also liked song Y).  Popularity comparisons only reinforces popular music but does a bad job exposing new musician to new audiences.  Pandora, however, offers to find obscure songs that sound 'like' any song you give it.



Cool concept, right?  Well, it would be a great service if the DMCA didn't mess up Internet radio so badly that I'm calling Pandora a failed United States experiment.



I went to Pandora to create a radio station for my 3 year-old daughter.  She has been singing the "Purple People Eaters" by Big Bop.  After easily finding the song based on the title, Pandora created a radio station and told us how sorry it was that it couldn't play the song we most liked (requested in DMCA language) but here was the most similar song it could find to the seed song.  To my excitement, my daughter liked the similar song and we listened to that song to the end.  The next 5 songs, however, were not good enough to stop my daughter from asking where was the "Purple People Eater" song.  And after skipping around 5 songs, Pandora forced me to listen to one song in its entirety.  Again, Pandora apologizes profusely for not being able to skip the song because of the DMCA.



Pandora would be a great service if it could get rid of the DMCA asinine rules on digital distrobution of music.  They should probably pack up all their servers and rent space from the Pirate Bay.



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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Virtualization

The most exciting application on the virtual pc side is Xen.  It is using a new approach to virtualization where they recompile an operating systems kernel to adapt for a virtual environment.  Since the newer VMware license (since 3.2) doesn't allow publication of comparative benchmarks, the comparisons on this page are a little old.





So far, only open source products have been able to use this technology but that doesn't preclude Microsoft and Apple from compiling their kernel against the xen libraries.  One of the best parts about Xen is that it is open source :) and community driven.  If you want support look to http://www.xensource.com/



Now for the Windows options:



I found this fantastic blog from Mike Holdorf's Blog post comparing Microsoft's Virtual PC and VMware.



So after all of this, it was time to give VMWare a try. I used VMWare a long time ago and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I downloaded Workstation 5.5, installed and everything was fine. Upon download, I also downloaded a Virtual Machine Importer tool so I could reuse my existing VPC machines. I ran the importer and pulled in one of my BizTalk 2006 Beta 2 machines. Holy crap...the VMWare machine was just as fast as my host machine...something I never experienced with VPC. I think I've been sold on VMWare and here are a few of the benefits:

  • Faster performance - I've been able to load Windows 2003 and XP with no issues

  • Display support is better

  • USB support is included

  • Faster pause or hibernation - you can pause a machine with the click of a button and it's paused

  • Faster start up when paused

  • No more loud beeps when you do something wrong - anyone have this issue with VMRC?

  • Better disk allocation - VMWare can be set up to use 2 Gig Files automatically which will lead to less fragmentation

  • Did I mention faster performance?


Virtual PC vs VMWare



Here is a professional comparison between the two products.  For me, I like VMware because it can be run on a Linux host.

Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine Online | Print: A Virtual Shootout

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Podcasting

I don't think I've ever mentioned how much I love my iAudio U2 player.  It works like a 1G usb stick, so it is Windows, Mac, and Linux compatible.  It plays mp3's and ogg files which is neat, I think I like ogg better.  It also has a microphone and a line-in jack for recording.



This is much better than an ipod shuffle but it doesn't quite look as cool as an ipod mini :)











[ Welcome to iAUDIO.com ]



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Virtualization



The most exciting application on the virtual pc side is Xen.  It is using a new approach to virtualization where they recompile an operating systems kernel to adapt for a virtual environment.  Since the newer VMware license (since 3.2) doesn't allow publication of comparative benchmarks, the comparisons on this page are a little old.



So far, only open source products have been able to use this technology but that doesn't preclude Microsoft and Apple from compiling their kernel against the xen libraries.  One of the best parts about Xen is that it is open source :) and community driven.  If you want support look to http://www.xensource.com/



Now for the Windows options:



I found this fantastic blog from Mike Holdorf's Blog post comparing Microsoft's Virtual PC and VMware.



So after all of this, it was time to give VMWare a try. I used VMWare a long time ago and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I downloaded Workstation 5.5, installed and everything was fine. Upon download, I also downloaded a Virtual Machine Importer tool so I could reuse my existing VPC machines. I ran the importer and pulled in one of my BizTalk 2006 Beta 2 machines. Holy crap...the VMWare machine was just as fast as my host machine...something I never experienced with VPC. I think I've been sold on VMWare and here are a few of the benefits:



  • Faster performance - I've been able to load Windows 2003 and XP with no issues

  • Display support is better

  • USB support is included

  • Faster pause or hibernation - you can pause a machine with the click of a button and it's paused

  • Faster start up when paused

  • No more loud beeps when you do something wrong - anyone have this issue with VMRC?

  • Better disk allocation - VMWare can be set up to use 2 Gig Files automatically which will lead to less fragmentation

  • Did I mention faster performance?


Virtual PC vs VMWare



Here is a professional comparison between the two products.  For me, I like VMware because it can be run on a Linux host.

Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine Online | Print: A Virtual Shootout

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IPSEC with Debian 3.0 and Kernels 2.4.xx

VPN



I set up a Debian server to become an ipsec endpoint.  It has run very well for over a year but it is so stable that I forget how I originally set it up when I have to make any changes.



Here is a post that uses the same base as mine and they show how to turn off rp_filter for ipsec0 :)




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Fixing Macromedia Flash

Ricardo Pérez López says:
I have this problem in my Dapper and my nForce2 audio, but I can solve it putting FIREFOX_DSP="aoss" in /etc/firefox/firefoxrc and /etc/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefoxrc, and using the autoaudiosink for gstreamer 0.10. I'm always using the snd_intel8x0 alsa module.

I wonder if the best solution is to put the following by default in any Dapper installation:

1. FIREFOX_DSP="aoss" in /etc/firefox/firefoxrc and /etc/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefoxrc (by now it's set to "alsa09")

2. The alsa-oss package installed (by now it's not installed by default)

3. The autoaudiosink used by default for gstreamer (I think alsasink is used now instead)

Bug #29760 in flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu): “Sound does not work properly in Flash in firefox”


Reading more under the comments shows that this does not interfere with esd sounds from the desktop and fixes the serious problem when Macromedia Flash calls /dev/dsp more than once when using libesd-alsa0.
sudo aptitude install alsa-oss
sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper

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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Article on Screencasting

Linux.com | Creating appealing video software demos in Linux



I just started testing Istanbul with mixed results. I am running my session over freenx, so my situation may be unexpected.



The application installed without a hitch (sudo apt-get install istanbul). It installed a number of gstreamer0.8 dependencies, gstreamer pipeline being the workhorse.



Now I want to test Wink to see where this application stacks up.  Actually, after seeing the license model I think I will stop and unlink to them.  Wink uses a freeware non-open soure license.  You can download the binaries but can't redistribute them without permission from the author.  That means that Wink is not GPL friendly.  Or rather, that you can't build any GPL software off of Wink because GPL doesn't allow you to decrease the freedoms given to you through the software.



I have no problem with Wink using a non-open source license but I will not waste my time trying to use that software when the software can be abandoned.  This type of license is worse in my opinion than proprietary paid for software.  At least with Microsoft software, I have a business relationship from the services/ products paid for that I can use in any disputes.  I understand what I am getting from Microsoft whereas with Wink, I think I am getting something as free as GPL software but it doesn't have the ability to be forked, and built upon.  Under Wink's software, I am 100% dependent on the creator of Wink to support, maintain, and fix any problems with the application.



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Creating Screencasts in Ubuntu

It looks like there in not any easy way to screencast under Linux.  The easiest way I've seen was on a screencast where the Ubuntu system shows the command 'cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg'  The other options seem to be recompiling ffmpeg so that it is compiled with --enable-x11grab or installing alpha software.



Ubuntu Blog » How to Create a Screencast in Ubuntu



From the Ubuntu Blog > Screencast with a gstreamer pipeline, I found these two applications in the comments



Istanbul



Istanbul is a desktop session recorder for the Free Desktop. It records your session into an Ogg Theora
video file. To start the recording, you click on its icon in the
notification area. To stop you click its icon again. It works on Gnome, KDE, XFCE and others.



vnc2swf




Vnc2swf is a cross-platform screen recording tool for ShockWave Flash (swf) format.



And this comment stood out on the How to Create a Screencast in Ubuntu post.



Alexander Grundner - June 9, 2006





I figured out how to get xvidcap working in Dapper (gvidcap crashes for some reason).

1. Download the .deb file of xvidcap from http://www.jarre-de-the.net/computing/debian/




2. You’ll have to correct the libpng.so.2 error by doing:

$ cd /usr/lib

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0.1.2.8 libpng.so.2




3. Launch xvidcap:

$ xvidcap



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Blogged with Flock

Friday, June 9, 2006

EPIC Printing

We are in the midst of implementing our Wave 2 of EPIC and ran into a doozie problem.  The Zebra label printer driver for an LP28844-Z that EPIC required is causing our print spooler service on Windows 2003 to crash intermittently.



After calling Microsoft and determining that the cause was specifically from the Zebra driver, we contacted Zebra.  They are aware of some customers getting this error and said that the newest driver fixes the issue. Zebra Universal Driver 5.5.7.17



Now EPIC probably put a few months of coding behind the creation of our labels and doesn't seem to want to allow us to upgrade to the new driver unless we can crash the print spooler device on command.



The difficult part in this vendor gymnastics, is that for 8 days, our patients have had slower service because the printed labels are taking longer than 1 minute to print or not printing at all.



What surprises me is that I could have almost anticipated the problem before we went live.  We spent the better part of a month creating 3 methods for printing from EPIC.  The printing system is too complicated with too many moving parts.  Here is an example of one method:  EPIC sends a job from unix to a Windows load-balanced pair of servers (EPIC print server) which then has to authenticate and forward the job to a Windows print server.  This happens to be the method that is experiencing the crashing print spooler service.  The other methods are printing plain text directly to the print device from unix or printing to a locally defined printer of the connected client.  Of course, we are implementing a Citrix environment which adds another layer of complexity.



All testing prior to go-live was successful to appearances.  However, it seemed to have too many minor issues that had to be fixed.  After our first tests, we had 50% failure of printers.



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XGL With Dual Monitors

Dual monitors (Twinview) works with Dapper and XGL for an Nvidia Card.



Instead of using Dapper's repository for compiz, I pointed to Quinn's repository.  I mixed the instructions from http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=131267&page=4 and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompositeManager/Xgl



You need the Universe and Multiverse repositories as well as either one of the following two non-Ubuntu repositories:



deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/ dapper main
deb http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main

If you need help with adding repositories, please see AddingRepositoriesHowto.



The packages in Quinn's [WWW] compiz repositories can be gpg authenticated. If you want to be able to check the packages against QuinnStorm's [WWW] gpg signature, import her key by typing the following command in a terminal:



gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x31a5f97fed8a569e 
gpg --export --armor 0x31a5f97fed8a569e | sudo apt-key add -






Upgrade all the packages that Quinn's repository suggests and reboot.  Currently I am using the forums suggested thefuture script, but I will be modifying and editing the ubuntu wiki page listed above once it all settles down.



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Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Score Another Point for Ubuntu

Bye, Apple; Hello, Ubuntu from Guardian Unlimited: Technology

Blogging with Flock

Now you can just click an paste pictures into the Flock blogging tool. This will prompt an automatic Photo uploader (Flickr or photobucket), ask for some tagging, allow you to automatically size the photo, and paste the link to Flickr or Photobucket into the blog entry.

This is so slick, you need to download Flock and try it. This currently only works with hosted blogging services: WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, and Blogger. It does support private blog services that use these APIs: Movable Type, MetaWeblog, Blogger, and Atom.



I switched from blogging on Bloglines.com to Wordpress.com just because of Flock. I liked the idea enough to try out Wordpress.com and liked it enough to move all new posts to Wordpress.com.

Because of Flock, I am actually using my Flickr account and now have signed up with photobucket to see if I prefer their service. What I have seen so far is that I have two services that can host my pictures and from a blogging perspective, it doesn't matter where the pictures are stored. If I fill up Flickr, I can just start posting to photobucket and vice versa.

You also are explicitly given a local save option in the blogging tool which saves to a sane location like "My Documents\Flock Blog Posts"

I'm also very happy with the Linux version. After creating a launcher pointing to /home/username/flock/flock, I was able to use the xpm icon located in the same folder and drag it onto my gnome panel.



Here are a couple screenshots of the photo tools:








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The HowTo for Flock

Thirteen ways to learn about Flock


Flock is a different way to work with the Internet.  It helps to take a moment to learn the new ways you can socially browse the internet.
 

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Flock Release 0.7.0.15

Flock Blog

A super release for Flock.  Finally a web browser with a feed reader that doesn't suck.





I'm also very impressed with the upgraded blogging tools.  When I captured the screenshot above and tried pasting it into the blog window, a flickr upload window asked me if I wanted to crop or adjust the picture before sending it to flickr.  AND it automatically posted the picture into the text above.



I know that Flock doesn't want to get swarmed on development releases but this tool is really good.  Maybe they realize that and are just teasing their audience.



I'll let you know if I find any bugs, but so far every issue I had with the prior release was fixed exponentially.



Now I have to see how easy it is to integrate on Ubuntu.  Currently there are no packages available.  Maybe I'll have to create one to share :)



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Tuesday, June 6, 2006

RoR Migration Tool

Ruby on Rails Migrations
Although migrations are a very cool feature of Ruby on Rails, they are not covered in any of the basic books on RoR i have encountered so far (Agile Web Development with Rails, Ruby for Rails Programmers).

Update: Check out my recent post: Ruby on Rails Migrations: Reloaded for an update.

Mixing Ruby on Rails With Dapper Drake

Step-by-step instructions for installing rails on Ubuntu Dapper 6.06:


Getting Ruby on Rails up and running on Ubuntu Dapper

Here is some explaination why we are not using the dapper repository:

It's Just this Little Chromium Switch Here
Ubuntu Dapper does not provide a working Ruby on Rails environment, but it does eliminate the need for custom builds. Ruby version 1.8.4 is provided, along with a number of useful modules such as rmagick and openssl. The Ruby Gems system, however, is not provided, due to packaging issues. You need to download and install it yourself (which is easy.)

The biggest problem with Ubuntu Dapper is that it includes a useless Rails package. The problem isn't that you need to install Rails on your own (that's easy, it's a one-line gem command). The problem is that unless you know this, you'll spend hours beating your head against the wall trying to figure out why you can't get the Ubuntu Rails package to work. Why could anybody think Rails without Active Record would be something worth shipping? Including a broken, unusable Rails package was an exceedingly bad product decision.

And if I get tired of trying to host the site myself I can always try Dreamhost. They are one of the few hosting services that offer Ruby on Rails. I have not used their service but wanted to keep a link for any future need I might have.

Ubuntu LAMP Howto

The Perfect Setup - Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server (Dapper Drake) | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

Now to modify this to reflect the LAMR or LAPR stack (Ruby and Postgres)





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Problems with LAMP (MySql & Php)

http://blog.develix.com/frog/user/cliff/article/2006-06-04/9

Intelligent article comparing MySql with Postgres.

Tweaking Network Bandwidth


Fluxiontech.com - Boosting your internet bandwith




I've used TCPoptimizer and like the results.  I am still looking for a way to tweak wireless networks. 





 

Sunday, June 4, 2006

Create Screencasts in Ubuntu

This looks like a very easy way to create screencasts in Ubuntu. I don't know if you can save it as any other format, but I'll be playing around with it to see if I can demostrate my xgl desktop.
cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg

(Apparently not with Dapper or specifically with my hardware and Dapper) 

OSvids.com Video Library: Dapper Demo of XGL



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Friday, June 2, 2006

Suprise Configuration

I wiped my home system clean and reinstalled Dapper.  I was suprised at how much manual settings I had to reconfigure.  Maybe we need to create a configuration backup to automate this process.

Backing up an Ubuntu System the sane way

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/07/msg02232.html


"dpkg --get-selections>list_of_selections.txt" can backup a Debian user's
list of currently selected packages. "dpkg
--set-selections<list_of_selections.txt" to start a system restore, iff
packages are available. Some packages get removed from the Debian archive
( http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt has recent examples), if
following unstable or testing, then you may want to use dpkg-repack or
grab a copy of the packages you are worried about.
http://archive.debian.org may also be helpful.


I'm also making a backup of my /etc directory, this has the password database that won't be good on the next system but I use this for reference.
sudo tar zcvf apt.tgz /etc/

-----------------------------------

Unfortunately, I messed up and ran the first selection on the new system which copied the new systems dpkg list over the saved copy. Now, I cannot vouch for this working

Install Linux as an Upgrade to Windows


Install GNU/Linux without any CD, floppy, USB-key, nor any other removable media




http://instlux.sourceforge.net/ 




Upgrade your windows to a Linux system the easiest possible way: running an installer on your Windows.





 



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Video of Newbies using Linux

Data - Better Desktop

Linux Consumer Testing :)



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Thursday, June 1, 2006

Open Source RIS Software

Unattended, A Windows deployment system: Welcome

We have implimented Microsoft's RIS at work and like the results pretty well. It would be neat to see how this compares.





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Ubuntu Dapper is Available

news/606released - Ubuntu Linux




I'm trying to download the torrent as I type this message.  Unfortunately, Charter Communication is blocking my random port that I use.  When I change the port it only takes Charter 5 minutes before it shuts by bittorrent client down from true P2P sharing.




I'll try calling and complaining but I assume they will say that they are preventing illegal torrents and mine is just unfortunately too small to care.  I hope network neutrality takes off. 



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