First Linux Steps

I took my first steps with Linux this week. At the start of the week, I installed Ubuntu on my old Toshiba laptop. It installed beautifully, and ran very nicely. Very quick to boot up indeed. In fact, I really, really liked it – especially as I am likely to be using the laptop mainly as a typing machine, the speed and efficiency of Ubuntu was very appealing.

But I have one other use for the laptop, and that is as a testing ground for web stuff. I wanted to get Apache, PHP and MySQL running on it, so I could play about with stuff like WordPress, phpBB and MediaWiki without running up hosting fees or being tied to being online.

As far as I could tell, I couldn’t get those three packages on my Ubuntu setup without web access and downloading them from a repository – and this laptop isn’t hooked up to the web, at least, not yet. That’s a headache I’ll face some other time. It would appear that the price paid for the clarity and speed of Ubuntu is a lack of options for extended use.

So, I installed Mandriva 2006, from 3 CDs compared to Ubuntu’s one. I chose to install everything I could from the start, and soon had a working WordPress install on my laptop. As a beginner, I was delighted. But Mandriva clearly has its own problems – it’s really slow to boot up, and generally the KDE setup it uses is a lot flabbier and slower that Ubuntu’s Gnome. At the end of the day, though, it does what I want it to do, so I am sticking with it for now.

I ought to reiterate though that I was really impressed with Ubuntu, especially for beginners – and by that I mean beginners with computers, not just Linux. From an easy-peasy one CD install, you have every kind of application you could feasibly want from the off. An excellent choice for quickly setting up a working, fully operational system. No doubt that’s why the Ndiyo chaps use it.

I am left with a few issues with Mandriva though. I had to fiddle about to get it to stop crashing on bootup – graphics cards issues. This, for some reason, has left the laptop booting into text only mode, requiring me to enter the kde command to load the window manager. Also, logging out of KDE at the end of a session only returns me to the command line too. The shutdown now command works to a certain extent, but I still have to hold the on-off button to get the machine to switch off. If any one has any ideas on this, let me know.

[tags]ubuntu, mandriva, linux[/tags]

Blogbar

I have installed Blogbar in the sidebar of this blog, which you can use to search the site. The theme I use, Contempt, dosn’t appear to have a search bar included, though doubtless I could conjure one up if I could be faffed.

I would like to know, however, how I can change the search engines used in the search.

Technorati Tags:

update: I have since ditched Blogbar – I was irritated by the search opening in a new window. I just pasted in the php for calling up the default search form. Much more simple. DB 16/04/06

Zoho

Zoho looks like it offers some interesting online applications, the word processor looks especially good as is an alternative for those who can’t get Writely accounts at the moment because of the post Google purchase embargo on new users.

[tags]zoho[/tags]

01:02:03 04/05/06

Robert Scoble posts on the fun they are having over the pond with the fun being had early yesterday morning with the time and date – at two minutes and three seconds passed 1am in American format it appears as 01:02:03 04/05/06.

At least we here in the UK (and, I presume, elsewhere) have this to look forward to in a month’s time!

[tags]date, time[/tags]

To Digg, or not to Digg?

Well, it’s certainly a question. When I load up my RSS aggregator (currently Bloglines – though this could change when the UK finally gets the new Newsgator look) there are always new Digg entries. When I leave it for a few hours, the limit of 200 news posts is nearly always reached.

Now, one of the criticisms, if it can be called that, of the use of the internet and technologies like RSS is that it can result in information overload. I’d generally disagree with this, but with Digg, I am afraid it’s true. The site is a victim of its own success – it’s nice to look at, easy to use and boasts some great features. But it just produces too much stuff – I can’t be faffed even to skim the feed sometimes. And then, when you see something you actually like, you can’t even read it because the so-called ‘Digg effect’ has rendered the site in question unusuable due to server pressure.

That’s why I probably still pay more attention to Slashdot that Digg. Slashdot doesn’t produce the number of posts that Digg does, largely because it has a proper focus in terms of subject matter and it has some sort of an editoral focus too – in that you know which way most of those who use and post to it lean on many issues.

As a completely non-scientific comparison, Digg has 3.909 subscribers on Bloglines, compared to Slashdot’s 66,089. There are bound to be many reasons to explain some of the difference, but I would say Digg has a lot of catching up to do.

One site I have never got round to using at all is the Tech Memeorandum. Perhaps I should subscribe and give it a go.

[tags]digg, slashdot, memeorandum[/tags]