Posts tagged: GNU Linux

FreeGeek Vancouver is Computer Heaven

Freegeek Vancouver is technology heaven and I can prove it. I took photos. It is thriving. It is a beehive of activity. FreeGeek is a ‘non-profit computer re-use and recycling centre’ that only opened in Vancouver a couple of years ago as a branch of the original operation in Portland, Oregon. They have expanded their facilities at least a couple times that I know of just to keep up with the community need to properly recycle computers. If you want to learn about technology, if you want to work in technology, if you want to learn about Free Open Source Software, FreeGeek Vancouver is the place to be. It is computer heaven, because that is where computers go to die and are reborn again.

What you can do at FreeGeek:

  • Donate hardware, books.
  • Recycle.
  • Take short courses in hardware and software, or teach them if you have the background.
  • Mentor someone.
  • Volunteer for 24 hours and take away your own computer.
  • Shop the computer thrift shop, for super affordable computers and peripheral devices.
  • Learn to hack computers and technology, everything an engineer learns how to do.
  • Learn about Ubuntu Linux, and attend the Vancouver Ubuntu User Group meetings.
  • Take part in cleaning up the environmental problems generated by e-waste.
  • Receive a grant of computer hardware as a non-profit community organisation.
  • Donate money or materials for the FreeGeek wish list.
  • Apply for a paid position, or join it as a board member.

Video on FreeGeek:

YouTube Preview Image

Find out lots more about FreeGeek at http://freegeekvancouver.org/ .

My Car Runs On Linux

I converted a car to run on Linux. Runs great. Easy to tinker with. Very efficient. Easy to use for in heavy traffic situations, congested sites and so-on. It supports a good storage capability, low maintenance requirement. I am also able to go anywhere in it and I am free to use it however I want, to share it with friends, modify it in anyway I see fit, and to share my modifications with the community without any encumbrances.

linuxbadge

Learn Ubuntu Linux and Love your Desktop Again

ubuntulogo

If you want to be a power user, there is no time to wait, you must switch to linux. Its not a freaky and far away thing. If you are using a computer right now, you have the skills you need to get into Linux Desktop with Ubuntu. To that end, there is a Vancouver Ubuntu Users Group ready to share the skills you will need in order to get started with Ubuntu Linux.

Have some links and go to a meetup:

1) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CanadianTeam/Vancouver <– the official site
2) http://www.meetup.com/ubuntuvancouver/ <– the membership engine
3) http://identi.ca/ubuntuvancouver <– the news/alerts site

You can do it. So go to it.

KDE4 Killing the Linux Desktop

KDE is a desktop system, used on a few flavors of linux such as in SUSE and Ubuntu, especially the kde4 flavored release of Ubuntu, known as Kubuntu for the new release, 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. I was just stunned at its lack of services and I dont understand the choices they are making in developing this. I think somebody has really jumped the gun in releasing this software way before its time. I was loving kde 3.5 it had all I needed. But KDE4 is a clusterFxxk. Its the Vista of Linux Desktop now. But I am just left wondering why they ever would have done this to all the loyal Linux Desktop fans out there.

  • Dolphin file manager sucks, has fewer features than Konqueror, and has a wierd click and select to open default which is just mysterious.
  • Simple problems copying files in from a thumb drive or even from one directory or another
  • no screen savers
  • no desktop backgrounds supplied bas
  • cant have separate backgrounds for desktops
  • no intuitive way to place application icons on the application bar
  • no way to tweak terminal or not very much
  • plasma widgets act weird
  • kde4 claims to be a bit more efficent on memory, but maybe its because there are fewer features. Actually, it runs pretty leaky.
  • advanced effects killed my display pretty quickly
  • makes my nvidia card driver flicker ever 10 seconds – envyNG fixed that…

Its just a real shame to take a community of the most loyal software users out there and kick them in head.

from a quick web search, there are lots of folks who are really frustrated and not a lot that are wow about it. Im going back to GNOME. At least it had features. And ah aint goin’ back until its got stuff I use. Like moving files from one folder to another successfully the first time.

If we are going to be your beta testers, then tell us ahead of time, please guys?

Essential Cheat Sheet of Shell Commands

Though I would add a list of shell commands I keep using as a guide to myself and others.

svn
make svn code directory, call it codebase. Put a trunk, branches, and tags directory below it. Import all that codebase under trunk. That means, the whole site. Also, make a directory for your db, and put a db dump in there. If you are running a cron, make a directory called cron, put your cron scripts in there and a text file copy of your crontab. Don’t store passwords in subversion, as in the top level file that your site uses. Make a version of the file without the passwords, call it something like config.orig.php or whatever, and check that in instead. Also, you may need the equivalent of the CVS ignore command called svn propset and make use of it.
#svnadmin create repository_directory

#svn import codebase file:///home/user/pathtorepositorydir/repository_directory -m “initial import”
check out your remote repository into your local machine at the command line:
#svn checkout svn+ssh://user@domain.com/home/user/repository_directory/trunk .
local:
#svn checkout file:///home/user/pathtorepository/repository_directory html/

now you are checked in and out, you can delete codebase directory.

svn export works in a similar way. It pulls out the files from the repository sans .svn directories.
#svn export svn+ssh://user@domain.com/home/user/repository_directory/trunk

grep
find instance and string in and below current directory, pipe it to less.
#grep -r “string” * | less

find
find all those old CVS or .svn directories, and kill them:
to look:
#find . -type d -name “.svn”
to dump to a file
#find . -type d -name “.svn” > dump.txt
when you are ready:
#find . -type d -name “.svn” -exec rm -rf {} \;

Another way to wipe out everything:
#find . -name ‘*’ -print0 | xargs -0 rm
this means find here, the name of all, dont print it to stdout, then redirect the output to as an argument that the rm command will execute on.

scp
push a file
#scp localfile.txt user@domain.com:pathtofile/remotefile.txt
grab a file
#scp user@domain.com:pathtofile/remotefile.txt localfile.txt

rsync
get all those image files
#rsync -avz user@domain.com:/home/pathtofiles/ .
ah yes, but I will get a complaint  from subversion about my directory being out of sync because what I just did was downloaded the .svn file from the server over that directory. They arent the same, so your svn update now crashes. What do do?
# rsync -avz –exclude=.svn  …….then everything else after that. More options in the man pages.

mysql
Export a db
#mysqldump -uuser -ppassword -hlocalhost dbname > db.sql
Import a db
#mysql -uuser -ppassword -hlocalhost dbname < db.sql

crontab
A crontab line should point to a .sh script. The .sh script can then execute the shell script. This enables you to use either the sleep funciton or looping constructs to run the script a multiple of times if you like, and  keeps your command to one line inside the cron.
Look at your crontab with #crontab -l edit it with #crontab -e
Crontab time examples:|
1 */3 * * *  every 3 hours, one minute after the hour. Where possible, dont run a crontab exactly on the hour, because that is when everybody else does it on a shared host. Set it for a minute after when the cpu isnt likely to be so taxed.
1 0,12 * * * every 12 hours, one minute after the hour.
*/1 * * 3/6 every minute on every third and sixth day of the week

wget
use wget to grab that tarball directly, for when you are grabbing such things off sourceforge or wherever.
# wget http://domain.com/pathtofile.tar.gz

tar
good old tape archive.
To extract:
#tar -xvvf filename.tar.gz
To archive:
# tar -czvf tarballname.tar.gz directory

screen
Got a shell connection to a dodgy host that keeps giving you the boot? after you login, run screen:
#screen -DD -R

You will still get booted, but at least you can get right back to where you were when you reconnect by replaying the above command.

mysql
you probably know mysql command line access if you are on this page. You have to know how to work with this because a database can exceed the size allowable for transfer over http, making into phpMyAdmin impossible. But a goodie that I found is that case when you want to wipe out all the tables in a db, but not the db itself, in order to preserve all the privleges, and access credentials. The following line can save a step:
#mysqldump -uuser -ppassword –add-drop-table –no-data dbname | grep ^DROP | mysql -uuser -ppassword dbname

Dansette