Blogs

Reinstalling Ubuntu vs Vista

Posted Tue, 06/30/2009 - 14:19 by mtecknology

If you know me, you'll know I run a very trimmed down version of Ubuntu. I love the Ubuntu community and the OS. However, I do feel it's somewhat bloated. I've setup my system to be very lean.

I recently upgraded to 9.10 and then decided to drop back to stable. This involves reinstalling the base system and reinstalling all the packages. My sister complained about her system being incredibly slow. I decided to reinstall both at the same time to compare the time it takes to do them at the same time.

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Backup:
Linux: dpkg --get-selections > ~/packages.list

Moving from personal mail server to Gmail

Posted Tue, 06/09/2009 - 06:07 by mtecknology

I was hosting my own email server for about a year. I enjoyed the fact that I had full and complete control over the entire mail server. I enjoyed being able to fine tune everything to fit my needs exactly. I was doing this for about 1.5 years.

Unfortunately, there were a few things I couldn't control that really killed the fun of running my own email server. First of all, dealing with the people complaining that it's not how they want it weighed on me. Aside from that there were also power outages, hardware failures, software hangs (from power dips), firewall/router deaths, modem spasms (now very frequent), etc. Not only that, but I only had 1mbit upload available and 1.5mib max available at about $100/mo more.

What it came down to is that running a mail server just isn't for me given my limitations. I needed an alternative and I found one. There is this thing called Google Apps (google.com/a) that is capable of hosting your domain email for you.

I decided to give it a shot. It's not a quick or idiot proof process, but it was worth the effort.

Upgrading to 9.04 and Ext4 Remotely

Posted Tue, 04/07/2009 - 13:05 by michael

WARNING! Do Not do this to your systems. This is for informational purposes only. Do this in a virtual machine only. If you do this outside of a virtual machine, your computer will blow up and you will die. You've been warned.

I did in fact do this over SSH which was not safe and not smart. That fact that I did it does not mean any intelligent or knowledgeable person should do so. In fact, they probably wouldn't consider it.

Ubuntu Drupal 6.3.1 Released

Posted Fri, 03/27/2009 - 18:13 by michael

With the coming of Ubuntu 9.04, it was time for a change to this package. Our latest release now has a countdown timer.

You can see available options for countdown images at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown. Unfortunately, this third option being an iframe means that we're unable to include it as an option.

The options available:
* Pick from 3 for the 4 images
* Set position
* Set size
* Set opacity
* Set visibility
* Even IE tested

You can grab the latest package at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-drupal-releases/6.x.

LinkedIn for Ubuntu Members

Posted Thu, 03/26/2009 - 09:19 by michael

I've been starting to use LinkedIn. I've seen great potential in it for career networking.

Admittedly I saw the "Groups" available and my first instinct was "oh... is this going to be another Facebook with a little Launchpad in it?" I quickly realized that this isn't the case at all. It turns out that the groups are what drives the networking process and the applications available are just to add to your profile.

Jaunty Boots Fast <15sec

Posted Wed, 03/25/2009 - 10:35 by michael

I hear a lot of people drooling over how super fast their system boots on Jaunty. I saw one mention on the Planet already about 20.03 seconds being fast. Just after reading this, I decided I need to post mine.

It's less than 15 seconds. Readahead is using up 14seconds of that and I have a feeling I can reduce the readahead time to about 2.5 seconds by just tuning it a little better. Perhaps there's some large files that it's loading which are being counter productive to this process.

I've attached the bootchart image to show how fast it currently boots.

Ubuntu Drupal 6.3.0 Released

Posted Wed, 03/18/2009 - 14:17 by michael

The Ubuntu Drupal team has officially released their 6.3.0 package.

What we've done for this release:
* This package contains fixes for every reported issue
* The theme has been completely cleaned and organized
* Significantly improved OpenID modules
* Alpha release of the Planet module
* Fully working IE6/7 patches (yes... i know)
* I wanted to put a cherry on top of this release

For those of you already using this package, the directory structure has changed. After changing the structure, you need to run update.php.

Ubuntu Drupal 6.2.0 Released

Posted Tue, 03/10/2009 - 22:31 by michael

The Ubuntu Drupal Development team has released version 6.2.0 of the development package.

With this release comes great things:
* Ability to set the width of the page
* Ability to display/hide IE banner
* Ability to change text of banner
* Ability to modify the right side of the footer
* Multiple IE bugs fixed
* A few generic bugs fixed
* Added a Planet module
* Updated modules with their own great changes
* And a few other little extras
* Jaunty artwork is being considered at this point

Planet Module for Drupal

Posted Wed, 03/04/2009 - 10:47 by michael

Ever wonder what Planet Ubuntu runs on? It happens to be a whole CMS. This can be obtained at planetplanet.org.

This doesn't fit so well into sites that aren't meant to focus around feed aggregation however. The Ubuntu Drupal team has come up with a module to fix this.

Here comes the Drupal Planet module. This allows your users to add their own feeds to your own planet. Rather than needing to create a whole new site, the feeds will be listed under /planet of your site. A user can add as many feeds as they want. The feeds get updated during a cron.

Ubuntu Release Cycles

Posted Thu, 02/26/2009 - 10:47 by michael

How much do you know about the Ubuntu release cycles?

First off, the version numbers are simple, year.month. Ubuntu 9.04 is scheduled for release 04/23/09. Therefor, the version becomes 9.04.

Secondly, the Ubuntu has an $adjective $animal naming scheme. The third public release is the first that began at the beginning of the alphabet. They have been moving up one letter in the alpabet since then. My personal for for 10.04 is Leaping Lynx.