The Open Source Advocate

This past week I installed Ubuntu 6.10 on a second hard drive for my father. It is a 250 GB drive, and he wanted to give 30 GB to Ubuntu. I got to the "Resize Partion" step and dragged the slider so that it said "New partition size: 30 GB". I installed Ubuntu and when the system came up I found out that "New Partition" was not talking about the new Ubuntu partition. Instead, it resized the original partition to 30GB, and Ubuntu was now using 220 GB! This confusing behavior led me to update this bug . What do I do now that I my hard drive partitions are not setup like I wanted them to be? Of course, any serious hacker would perform the complex operation of resizing the partitions manually. I, however, prefer to solve things the "easy" way so that I can spend my time on more productive activities. So what is the "easy" to fix this? The answer is... the GParted LiveCD . The GParted LiveCD is an amazing tool that greatly simplifies ...

I have always been interested in backups. (In fact, I created an open source project called SaraB : Schedule And Rotate Automatic Backups.) Anyone who has valuable data should be implementing a proper backup process. For a good primer on the fundamentals of backup, I recommend visiting " The Tao of Backup ". Most recently, I have been trying to decide how to best implement the concept of " Separation ". This requires that I store my data in multiple geographic locations to prevent a local disaster from destroying all copies of my data. Like most people, my collection of photos, videos, and documents has been growing quickly as technology become more prevalent and uses higher resolutions. The value of my data becomes greater with every passing holiday, birthday, wedding, and vacation. Here are some options that I have come up with to backup my data to a remote site. Manual Solutions: 1. Periodically burn DVDs and carry them to another location Pros: Simple Che...

I have been working overtime this Christmas season to help my father and brother improve their experience in Ubuntu 6.10. One of the deficiencies we have encountered is the limited ability to watch news videos from a web-browser (such as Firefox 2.0). I have installed Flash Player 9 Beta 2, and the Good-Bad-Ugly plugins for GStreamer. Here is what happens when we try to watch news videos on these large news sites. ABC News Sound: NO Video: NO BBC News Sound: YES Video: NO CBS News Sound: NO Video: NO CNBC Sound: NO Video: NO CNN Sound: YES Video: NO FOX News Sound: YES Video: NO MSNBC Sound: YES Video: YES Don't you find it ironic that the only major news website that I could get to play videos is owned by Microsoft? Is there anything I can do to get these other websites to play videos properly?

Update : As this deal is now expired, I am removing my phone number. You can always sing my replacement number: 555-867-5309! I apologize that this post is going to show up on the Planets. If anyone knows how to edit posts without it going to the top of the planet, please share. I have verified that the "Post time and date" are not being updated, so I don't know why this happens. I wanted to share this awesome deal with everyone who wants to save money on a phone service. This could be used to reduce monthly charges for people who have a Qwest phone line, or to provide a cheap emergency phone line for people who only have cell-phones. SunRocket has traditionally been one of the cheapest VOIP services around, with an unlimited plan for less than $17/month. Now they have an unbeatable deal, but you need to act fast if you want to take advantage of it. They are offering a free year of service when you buy one year, which brings the monthly fee to $8/month. The dea...

Recently my organization has been looking into purchasing DNS / DHCP / IPAM hardware appliances. This category includes products from InfoBlox , BlueCat , MetaInfo , and INS . It turns out that all of these appliances are running a version of Linux, and they are using open source applications. In fact, some of the vendors proudly admit that they "start with ISC's Bind and DHCP" and then make improvements to them. When I heard these facts, I immediately asked them if they released the source-code to their appliances. They explained that there is no legal requirement for them to do so. Lucky for them, ISC uses the BSD license. But they also are shipping Linux, so shouldn't they have to redistribute the source for that? Tivo publishes the source code to the GPL code that they modify. Perhaps the Linux-appliance vendors are not modifying any GPL code. I must assume that they are not legally required to distribute the source, based on the fact that I am not a lawy...

I have posted before about how cool Nedi is, but now you can see it for yourself. The Nedi Movie If you are involved in network management, I am sure you will see the value in this open source project. We use it everyday, and it is hard to imagine life without it.

This is a list of my favorite games on Linux. They may not be your favorite games, but that is why it is called " Tristan's Favorite Linux Games". If you are one of those people who think there are no good games for Linux, be prepared to be surprised. These games are all free of cost, and they will be labeled if they are not open source. Most of these games also run natively on Windows, so try to get your friends to switch to Linux after playing these games on Windows! This page will become a permanent part of my blog, and I intend to update it when I learn of new favorite games. Turn-based Strategy (like "Civilization" or "Heroes of Might and Magic") Battle for Wesnoth UFO: Alien Invasion Music R hythm Action Game (like Guitar Hero ) Frets on Fire Real Time Strategy (like " Warcraft " or " Starcraft ") Glest Real Time Strategy Shooter Tremulous SAVAGE: The Battle for Newerth - (Not open source) Scrolling Space Shooter A...

I recently had the opportunity to help a co-worker setup Ubuntu 6.10 on his desktop. I was thrilled to see his surprise when he saw how nice the desktop looked. He told me that the Ubuntu desktop looks much better than the last time he had tried Linux. My joy was short-lived when we started to look for a way to extend his desktop across a second monitor. I had never used dual-monitors before, but I assumed that Ubuntu would provide a tool since it does such a nice job in other areas. Unfortunately, there is no GUI tool to configure dual-monitor support in Ubuntu 6.10! Here is how to manually configure dual-monitors in Ubuntu. Note: You are going to need this... Meanwhile, Fedora Core has included a nice graphical tool to configure dual-monitor support. I don't know exactly when this feature was added, but it was in Fedora Core 4 which came out in June of 2005. Let's learn from our friends at Fedora, and provide a GUI to configure dual-monitor setups. Ubuntu, are you g...

Mozy.com provides a hosted backup service which allows users to save a copy of their data on a remote site. It is ran by a Utah company called Berkeley Data Systems. To get started using Mozy, you first install their client on your Windows operating system. They do not have a Linux client, but a Macintosh client is said to be in development. Next, the Mozy client helps you select which data you would like to backup and then proceeds to encrypt it and send a copy of your data to the Mozy servers. Mozy currently offers 2 GB of free storage to all users. If you find that you need more storage, you can purchase a monthly subscription for a reasonable free. This is sometimes called a " freemium " business model, and it is an excellent way for users to evaluate a product. However, I believe that there is an even better business model for Mozy. I want to make the case for a open source strategy for Mozy, with the intent of increasing demand for Mozy services when compared to...