OSGEEX

Fedora: my new distro of choice

2009-07-03T08:09:00.005+02:00

I always had a strong opinion about Mono/C# and was one of the proposers on Ubuntu Ideastorm to remove Mono and Mono dependent apps from the default install.

Richard M. Stallman made a clear statement about Mono earlier this week.

The next day I came across this article on OSNews.com.

Below is a small quote from the article:

The Mono discussion may be tiring, but the fact of the matter is that thanks to this discussion, various major Linux distributions are now making official statements detailing their position in the Mono/C# debate. The latest to do this is Ubuntu, which reiterated their position yesterday.

Fedora on the other hand announced to drop Mono in the upcoming Fedora 12 (December 2009).

I recently downloaded F10/KDE4 and installed it on this Dell Optiplex GX240 (2002). I expected some difficulties, getting used again to RPM, but that actually was a piece of cake. When I started up the browser (Konqueror), it brought me right to the documentation I required. (If you're not a long term GNU/Linux user, this might be a better starting place).

I learned that yum is as powerful as apt for Debian based distro's. It handles dependencies very well and has a search function. Simply try:

man yum | more

If you don't prefer the command line interface, the Gnome version has add/remove and the KDE4 version provides PackageKit.

What I found most exciting is that I was able to get the old nVidia Geoforce 2 MX/400 to work properly (including AGLX).

Another hapy Fedora user.

So long Ubuntu/Gnome/Mono :-p

Free MultiOS decleared dead

2009-06-29T16:39:00.003+02:00

With sadness in my heart, I declare the Free MultiOS project officially dead. The Uitwisselplatform.nl, (the Dutch implementation of Sourceforge like funet.fi) which hosted the project, was discontinued a couple of months ago and although it could be hosted, via my free ftp-account at Slated.org, I gave up on the project.

Why giving up?

Very simple: most of the counterparts (AROS, FreeDOS, MINIX3 etc.) have grown to large. Most of the distributions consume an entire CD (700 MiB) for them self, so how am I supposed to put them on a single CD?

Any future plans?
Well not for now. I was thinking about a ReactOS++ distribution (with emulated FreeDOS), but my curent POV is that Microsoft Windows and thus ReactOS as well, is prety outdated "technology".

So why bother, while all those top notch GNU/Linux distributions are around?

Special thanks.

I would like to thank everyone who used Free MultiOS, my testers and those who gave me advice:

Michel van Lin;
Ger van Lin (GL1MST);
Theo Haezen (NL0JOK);
Eric Auer;
Shane Martin Coughlan.

Ubuntu, Debian, EleBBS and Twitter

2009-04-25T09:30:00.005+02:00

Ubuntu.

This morning I upgraded Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 on my Acer Aspire 7220 Laptop. Almost everything went well and it feels a lot faster and snappier then the previous release. Unfortunately it broke support for the Atheros Wireless adapter (as expected). I tried the proprietary alternative Madwifi driver which did not worked ether.

I tried the Beta which had more issues with the Atheros Wifi adapter. I wasn't even able to get it to work compiling and modprobing the sources of madwifi. But I already knew that it would be fixed in the final release.

Fortunaly I still had the sources of a nightly bui8ld of madwifi, which worked well on 8.10. I compiled and modprobed them, rebooted and yes it worked. Conclusion Ubuntu dist-upgrade sucessfull!

If you are running Ubuntu 8.10 I highly recommend upgrading to 9.04. The boot time is limited to 30 secconds or so.

Debian.

Hans (my upper neighbour) gave me two years ago this old Pentium II compatible Cyrix MII (300 Mhz) PC with 64 MiB RAM. The reason it is limited to 64 MiB RAM is because it has EDO-RAM sockets. It's pretty hard to get such old junk these days and that's probably the reason noboddy wants it, so I moved it to my bedroom. And actually it's doing nothing but collecting dust.

Fortunately I learned about EleBBS, which is a RemoteAccess 2.xx compatible Bulletinboard system package, with many additional features. You can still use it with a dial up modem and a FOSSIL driver or via broadband using a Telnet server. The Windows NT4/XP/Vista version has a build in server and the Linux version simply takes advantage of inetd or xinetd. The problem with the Linux package is that it's pretty slugish. It is a ZIP file which doesn't contain a directory tree. So the Linux sysop has to figure out where to place all the files. The install.sh file creates a directory tree, but doesn't move the files to the correct directories.

The author is clearly a DOS/Windows user and isn't aware of how a Linux package should be build. There for he even owes more respect, for buiding a Linux version at all.

Thank you Maarten, your great work is highly apreciated!

So the first thing I am about to do, is to build a decent tar.gz package for EleBBS-Linux.

I downloaded the Net Install mini ISO9660 CD-ROM image of Debian GNU/Linux Lenny (latest stable) and installed a base system (no graphic environment, just plain text). After the first bootstrap I installed a couple of additional packages:

apt-get install mc telnetd slrn links

mc = Midnight Commander file manager;
telnetd = Telnet service (deamon, required to run EleBBS over Telnet);
slrn = Usenet mailer (highly popular in the GNU/Linux comunity);
links = Webbrowser.

Twitter.

Today I signed up to twitter as well. My homepage is http://twitter.com/ml2mst.

It's clear: I'm having a lot of fun today. Hacking my *ss of, thanks to GNU/Linux... Yeeeha ;-)

Kubuntu 9.04: Hotter than Hell

2009-04-06T15:40:00.008+02:00

Since I use GNU/Linux, I always preferred KDE. However I recently moved to GNOME, because I downloaded an Ubuntu ISO image in stead of a Kubuntu ISO image and frankly I got used to it, because GNOME actually had a couple of advantages over KDE 3.

Unfortunately I have a problem with GNOME: it is infested with Mono, which I (and many of my fellow Free Software Activists) despise. So I always kept an eye on the development of KDE. Support of KDE on Ubuntu, has always been everything but satisfying. KDE4 packages where horrible but fortunately this has changed recently.

I installed KDE 4.2.0 on Ubuntu 8.10 and I am amazed by its beauty and simplicity.

Installing new themes, color schemes, wallpapers etc. is only a matter of right clicking randomly on your desktop, choosing "Appearences" . This will bring up a menu, with multiple choices. You are able tho install wallpapers, themes and stuff, simply by clicking the "Install" button. KDE4 will contact http://kde-look.org and shows you a preview of the wallpaper, theme etc. It really can't get any simpler! There is no doubt about it, I'm going
to drop GNOME in favor of KDE 4. I'm looking forward to the next release of Kubuntu 9.04. It's Hotter than Hell ;-)
Kubuntu is simply the rock solid Ubuntu, where GNOME (including its horrible MONO) is replaced with KDE. Did I already say that it is Hot, hot, hotter than hell?

MINIX 3: Looking foreward to the next release

2009-03-14T16:21:00.003+01:00

This post might be a little annoying to my fellow GNU/Linux advocates, but I have a confession to make: I'm totally nuts about MINIX 3!

All of this started, when I bought a second hand of the Dutch version of Andrew S. Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems" at the popular Dutch book store "De Slechte" here in Maastricht. I most certainly love this book, it is without any doubt my all time favorite.

I am only an average person and most of the time I am very comfortable with my life, but now and then I feel a little depressed and fortunately I have a unexpected medicine to get rid of these temporary depressions: AST's Modern Operating Systems. And yes, I'm aware of the fact that it sounds odd, because it's a rather "dry" educational book, but heck, it makes me feel good ;-)

Andy explains the distinction between a micro kernel and a monolithic kernel very well. I personally prefer the micro kernel approach.

I installed MINIX 3 quite a while ago on a old piece of junk (Pentium 1 CPU, without MMX extentions, 32 MiB RAM, 2 GiB HDD) and I loved it. The only thing I missed, was that MINIX 3 did not support virtual memory (swapping to disk).

Fortunately AST anounced that Virtual Memory will be implement in the next release of MINIX 3.

For me as a self proclaimed White hat H4X0r, GNU/Linux had become a bit of a bore and thus I'm looking foreward to the next release of MINIX 3.

PCLinuxOS: Radically simple and a bit boring for geeks

2009-03-14T14:11:00.006+01:00

Today I gave the new PCLinuxOS 2009.1 a spin and planned to write a review. The "Problem" with PCLinuxOS is: it actually is radically simple. I downloaded the ISO9660 image, burned it on a CD and booted my Acer Aspire 7220. The proprietary nVIDIA driver was automatically loaded and to make a wireless connection with my accespoint, I opened the "networkcenter" and ran the wizzard, which franky only asked to enter the WPA2 key. I restarted X (by pressing Ctrl+ Alt+ Backspace) and the connection was established.

What a disapointment! (please take this article with a grain of salt) have I educated my self the past 3 decades, to fiddle around with an Operating System that just works out of the box? say it ain't so :-) My conclusion: PCLinuxOS is not suatble for Geeks. If you simply want an Operating System, that runs without configuration PCLinuxOS is for you.

Tex and the Ripper gang have proved once more, that those who claimed "You need at least a master degree in computer science to maintain a Linux system" are rather redicoulous. PCLinuxOS proves that those chaps are simply lying trought their teeth. If you are actually looking for a no brainer OS (no pun intendet), kiss Microsoft Windows goodby and get your copy of PCLinuxOS.

PCLinuxOS == GNU/Linux for non-geeks!

This was proably the most lousy review ever, but I'm planning to replace Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on my 2002 Dell Optiplex GX240 (Pleunix) with PCLinuxOS 2009.1 this weekend. I use Pleunix as a SAMBA file and printer server for the Win98SE junkbox in my bedroom (Iarga). I screwed up the SAMBA config file last week and I guess PCLinuxOS will help me to set it up the easy way. I must confess that it's rather shamefull that an old hacker has become too lazy to manually edit samba.conf. I configured SAMBA this way in the late 1990's and never complained about it. Now I use no brainer GUI tools for such a task.

What a shameless lazy old chap :-(

GNU/Linux and BSD for "dummies"

2009-03-13T15:03:00.003+01:00

This post is a respond to a comment on my "Joe Sixpack goes BSD!" PC-BSD review. The poster wrote:

"It would be nice to have a short note for non-geeks as to why or why not to have a root account/password and when this should be used."

Unix and all its deviates are multi user Operating Systems and thus the root (administrator) account was implemented with security in mind. In fact a "general user" is not allowed to install or remove anything to/from the system.

Just imagine: you are the system administrator of a large company and you are running some server edition of Microsoft Windows and your colleagues are running Windows clients. If you allow them to install software from a floppy disk, CD-ROM or USB thumbdrive you can bet on it, that your system will be infested with mall-ware within minutes. This is why "general users" should not be allowed to install or remove anything.

The poster continues:

"I know you can't do this is LoseDoze, but being able to select multiple programs at one time and let it run in the back ground would be HUGE plus for this OS. Anything to make it less of a hassle to install apps is a plug."

Since PC-BSD is frankly nothing but FreeBSD with a userfriendly installation GUI, it already provides that. It's package manager is called dpkg and it is commandline oriented. It would be great if the PC-BSD team implemented a GUI frontend for this. IIRC apt and Synapics are such forntends for Debian GNU/Linux based systems. In that case they could be ported to BSD.

Most GNU/Linux distributions OTOH even have GUI frontends for this. And since most Xwindow managers support multiple desktops. You have the ability to run it in the background, while simply working on, on another desktop.

The final question is: Why do people stuck to be a "Average users", why not educating yourself. I did it by reading books, magazines and a gazillion of documentation files. If I can do it, anyone else can.

Retro computing: Windows 98SE

2009-03-09T05:48:00.004+01:00

This weekend I've had some fun with Windows 98SE on a outdated Cyrix MII-300 with 64 MiB RAM, 3 GiB and 6 GiB HDD and an additional S3 ViRGE GPU (4 MiB VRAM). Installing Windows 98SE on this old piece of junk wasn't the problem, but getting simple hardware like a USB thumb drive and a USB to Ethernet converter to work, was quite a challenge. My first "solution" was, booting from a KNOPPIX CD and mount one of the harddisks and the thumb drive. Albeit this was a bit time consuming. So I started searching the web for drivers.

It took me hours to find a driver for the USB thumb drive, but I finally found it. During the installation it displayed the warning "this driver requires a English version of Windows 98SE", but hey, this is only a toy machine, so I ignored it. After reboot, Windows 98SE partly changed into English (see screenshot). So what? A bit odd, but not disastrous. Fortunately the thumb drive is recognized by now, don't require to boot KNOPPIX any longer.

The Silicom 2UE USB to Ethernet converter was even more problematic . There are a bunch of "driver sites" out there and all of them want you to install a software package that scans your computer and eventually optimizes your drivers. They assure you that it's no mall-ware riiiight :-)

The greatest thing is that Windows 98SE is still based on MS-DOS and with a small line of code in MSDOS.SYS it prompts a bootmenu after the bootstrap, including an option to boot into the DOS commandline.

In case you didn't know, although I like GUI's a lot, I am more or less a commandline junkie. It at least gives me the illusion that it's more efficient (pipes, redirection and stuff) and that it's faster than a GUI.

Anyway, I don't regret that I installed this old piece of junk on that other old piece of junk.

Reconstructor: create your own Ubuntu spin off

2008-10-17T07:37:00.001+02:00

Nomo please!

Mono, which I consider to be a Microsoft virus to infest the GNU/Linux environment with .NET technology, is deep integrated into the Gnome desktop environment, which is the standard in Ubuntu.

Two (IMHO worthless) applications depend on Mono: the F-Spot photo manager and Tommyboy notes. I need neither of these, since I already was addicted to gThumb (even when I used KDE as my preferred desktop environment) and those yellow "pick up" notes are available from the Screenlet manager.

So I removed those two applications and had this stupid idea I was able to remove the Mono virus from my beloved Ubuntu systems. Well it started complaining about dependencies. So my reaction was, shut the F* up and choose "Remove completely". It came up with another complaint and wanted to remove Gnome almost entirely. So now what?

Reconstructor.

Fortunately I came across Reconstructor, which is a neat GUI to create your own Ubuntu spin off. You have the option to disable or enable (un)wanted repositories, choose your prefered bootsplash, splashscreen, theme, iconset, wallpaper etc.

Beside that yo have the option to include/exclude a couple of ( im)popular packages and fortunately Mono is one of them.

I don't include any screenshots, because Reconstructor is pretty straight foreward. It doesn't require any explanation and screenshots are available on the Reconstructor website anyway.

Conclusion.

Reconstructor is a great application to create your "personal" Ubuntu Live CD/DVD. It's extremely easy to use and pretty straight foreward.

I "created" a spin off, which I call Nomo GNU+Linux. Nomo == No Mono and inspired by a bitmap by Roy Schestowitz of BoycottNovell. It's the bitmap which is included in this article.

Beyond Despair, out Now!

2008-09-01T14:13:00.004+02:00

I am very excited to announce the release of my new album "Beyond Despair" Which includes two brand new songs, all the songs I recently released and which are dedicated to my wonderful Sisters and Brothers (in law) and a couple of remixes, only available on the BOXED: Free As In GNU CD-ROM so far. To create the CD yourself you can download the songs from the list below and burn them on a CD.

Tracklist:

01. Supernova. [XM]
02. Beyond Despair. [XM]
03. Angels Amongst Us [XM] (dedicated to Anneli Koort-van Lin and Marij van Lin-Erens).
04. Hanneman [XM] (dedicated to Lianne and Han van Lin-Pasman).
05. Semse [XM] (dedicated to Michel "Mike" van Lin).
06. Song of a Princess [XM] (in Memory of Dolly van Lin).
07. Wind in Aspens [XM] (dedicated to Franka and Ton van Lin-Kleuskens).
08. The Bear is Loose! (dedicated to Marga and Ger van Lin).
09. Freddy says Shit! (in Memory of and featuring Fred Kaspers).
10. Gloria. [XM]
11. Discovery - Echo Mix -. [XM]
12. The Wicked Woman - Club Mix - (dedicated to Frank Heijnen).
13. Shma Israel - USA Mix -. [XM]
14. Angels Amongst Us - Vocal Mix -

All songs are in the Free Ogg-Vorbis file format and are Licensed under Creative Commons 3 by-sa attrition.

Here is a Slimline CD cover (pdf) - for "Aldi CD's".
And here is a Full CD cover (pdf) - for regular CD Jewelcases.

The cover design is based on a free photo by Ian Britton from FreeFoto.com.

Beyond Despair was created using 100% Free Software. The songs where created using SoundTracker for Gnome, downmixed and converted to Ogg-Vorbis, using Audacity for GNU/Linux. The cover was designed using Kover Artist. A easy to use cover editor for the K Desktop Environment. The master CD was burned using K3B.

Yes, as you can see, not even 0 bit of proprietary software was used!

The Free Music Revolution meats the Free Software Revolution ;-)

Update November 10 2008: I've added the FastTracker 2 [XM] files of most of the songs (unfortunately some are missing). This will make it easier for tracker musicians to make remixes and deviate works.

Enjoy!

Mandriva Linux on my Acer Aspire 7220

2008-08-01T10:26:00.003+02:00

Two weeks ago I bought a Acer Aspire 7220 laptop. Based on a AMD Semphron 3800, Nvidia Geoforce 7000M, 2 GiB DDR2 RAM and a 80 GiB HDD. Everything I could ever wish for is included, except for a webcam.

It came preloaded with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic (well sort of). It was on a "hidden" partition and installed itself at the first bootstrap. No DVD-ROM was provided neither a production key or certificate. I later figured out, its on bottom of the machine. Very handy indeed :-)

In my favorite Usenet newsgroup COLA, there is this character, who digs up "Linux problems" from a diversity of Linux help forums, probably to scare Linux newbies off. According to the "problems¨ this character spews, I expected some problems with Ubuntu and see if I was able to fix them.

The Ubuntu install.
So I installed Ubuntu and the only thing which didn't work properly was the Atheros Wireless adapter. But a search on the Ubuntu forum, solved the problem. I simply opened a terminal window, copied the code from the forum and pasted it into the terminal window. A few packages where downloaded and compiled.

But hey, Ubuntu refused to connect to a insecure accesspoint somewhere in my apartment building, which Vista abused to download its updates. Ubuntu cept on demanding a SSID and password.

Back to Vista.

Because of the absence of a DVD-ROM there was no way to demand a refund for Vista I guess (probably a new trick of Microsoft). So I thought, OK let's give it at least a try.

I removed the demoware and after the next boot Vista reinstalled itself again. Meaning I lost all the software I installed in the meantime and the data, which I copied from my Ubuntu desktop machine.

The Vista MBR disaster.

My friends where quite happy I became part of the Windows ecosystem (read piracy herd) again. So I thought let's make them happy and stick with Vista. Thus I removed Ubuntu in a rush.

Of course the next bootstrap failed. So I used a couple of old Windows CD's to fix the MBR (Master Boot Record). Unfortunately FDISK /mbr did not work, then I tried a Windows XP CD-ROM... Hopeless!

I've searched various Microsoft sites and there was a DVD image, required to do the job. Insane! but after a time consuming Google search session, I found a tool called Fixmbr or the like, which finally did the job.

What is that with Microsoft, have they gone completely insane?

Anyway, Vista and me never became good fiends. It's incredible slow. It takes 4 minutes before I was actually able to fire up any application and desperately wanted to get rid of this limb.

Mandriva just works, including Wireless.

To my great pleasure, I came across this post (please ignore the disinformation by the group's house trolls). Richard Rasker's first respond, moved me to download Spring 2008.1 One, from the Mandriva site.

I booted the CD-ROM and was extremely pleased, because indeed. Everything worked right out of the box, including connecting to the insecure accesspoint of one of my neighbors. It took me 0.30 seconds to make the decision: dualboot? nah Mandriva is going to F* bury that Vista!

RIP Vista, may she burn in hell :-D

Now the only remaining problem is: where do I get a Mandriva or Tux sticker to show the world with pride this Acer Aspire is exclusivly powered by Mandrake Linux?

Many thanks to Richard Rasker and Roy Schestowitz for pointing me in the right direction.

Update: I recorded a small desktop session video in lowres Ogg-Tehora, using Istanbul.

BOXED: Free as in GNU out now!

2008-04-19T07:19:00.000+02:00

I am very pleased to announce the release of my CD-ROM "BOXED: Free as in GNU" which covers all the songs of my albums I produced from 1997 until 2008 in the Free Ogg-Vorbis file format, plus most of the songs in XM tracker file format.

For GNU/Linux there is a very well implemented tracker editor, called SoundTracker, which is available from your package manager. Using SoundTracker, you are able to edit my songs an make derivate works the easy way.

All my songs are published under the Creative Commons, Attrition Share alike. So nothing is stopping you from listening, editing and redistributing my work. I believe that knowledge and art should be freely accessible for anyone.

The goal of this CD-ROM is to show my support to the Free Software Foundation and especially the Play Ogg and Defective By Design campaigns.

The ISO9660 image is hosted at Slated.org.

The size of the ISO9660 image is about 700 MiB and thus requires a 700 MiB CDR(W). The direct link to the file is here.

Thanks to [H]omer for hosting BOXED: Free as in GNU, for free and Gratis!

Ubuntu Steunpunt Daalhof (Update)

2008-04-05T00:55:00.001+02:00

I have recently joined the Dutch Ubuntu LoCo team and started the Ubuntu service site in my area. This is a volunteering afford to provide all the help, with Ubuntu, people in your area might need.

In first case, the Ubuntu websites, forums, mailing lists and IRC channels, are the right spot to get help with Ubuntu. In Belgium and the Netherlands however, if you get stuck on the usual help sources, you can contact the Ubuntu Service Site (Steunpunt) in your area. You can ask your USS for a demonstration, CD-ROM's and eventually additional help with installing and configuring Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Steunpunt Daalhof, however is not limited to the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux. Since I have experience with a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions, Ubuntu Steunpunt Daalhof, will gladly provide gratis support for any GNU/Linux distribution.

I think it's a nice way to finally give something in reverse to the community, that gave us our favorite Operating System.

Update: I have created a website for USD:

http://ubuntusteunpuntdaalhof.googlepages.com

Currently in Dutch only, an English version will be added soon.

Moving to GNOME

2008-03-10T15:24:00.000+01:00

Probably everyone knows, I've been a KDE fanatic for the past decade. And thus I installed the latest KDE4 packages on Kubuntu. Unfortunately many icons where missing in the Ubuntu packages, which made me decide to give SUSE's KDE4Live a try, which I installed on the hard disk of Pleunix. However openSUSE did not live up to my expectations and thus I replaced it with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, using the GNOME desktop environment.

At first planned to install KDE right the way, but while I was playing around with GNOME and took a look at the Gnome-Look site, I came to the conclusion, that there was not any longer a reason to drop Gnome in favor of KDE.

The last time, I seriously used GNOME was on Fedora Core 2 (which is considered ancient by now in the GNU/Linux community). In the meantime GNOME has come along the way. And when ether you like it or not, it has become even more easy and to "pimp it up" then KDE (at least for the 3 series of KDE. What's ahead for KDE, only time will tell). So I'm not running out of conclusions here.

I won't bore you with the installation and configuration process of Ubuntu, because that was (as expected) a piece of cake (not even worth mentioning).

Just wanted to share some screenshots of my new desktop. (click to enlarge to 1024x768)

Song of a Princess

2007-12-06T19:59:00.000+01:00

As promised, here finally is the song, which I composed in memory of our sister Dolly.

Just like Dolly simple, easy going, funny but a little sad to.

Love, kindness, unselfish and her social skills, these are the power of the Princess.

Song of a Princess.

We miss you dear Dolly, but we will always carry you in our hearts, remember your worm kindness and keep you in our prayers.

Your loving sisters and brothers (in law) and children.

You are our Princess for all eternity.

Angels Amongst Us

2007-11-26T18:08:00.000+01:00

I have just released a new song called Angels Amongst Us, which is dedicated to my sister Anneli Koort-van Lin and sister in law Marij van Lin-Erens and in memory of our other sister Dolly. It's a simple 80's dance tune, with of course some new age influences and a fat bass guitar.

The story behind this song is simple: Don't look up to heaven to search for angels, because they are right beside you, everywhere you go there are angels. Ordinary people, the guy or lady next door. If you feel desperate, they'll help you solve your problems and ease your pain, unselfish and right to the point, without questioning why.

Thank you Anneli and Marij, you have proved: Angels are among us, every single day!

Cover photo © 2007 by Michel van Lin.

Free Vista look for Windows XP

2007-11-15T11:42:00.000+01:00

Introduction.

It seems to be a contradiction, a Windows article on OSGeex. Well not quit. Because this one teaches Windows XP users, how to mimic the look and feel of Windows Vista on a Windows XP box for free. I did a similar article on my Dutch blog, with a package, called Vista Transformation Pack, but that package slowed down XP dramatically after installation and in the meantime this package requires the commercial WindowsBlinds.

The complete Free (as in beer) package is called VistaMizer. Besides being free, it almost doesn't slow down your box at all. Its very simple: download the package, and install it. Reboot your system, welcome to the look of Windows Vista, without the glitches and bloatware!

SUDOWN.

One of the "revolutionary things" about Vista, according to Microsoft, is it' s security (by obscurity, if you ask me), using UAC, which brags you continuously with nag screens. Sic and tired of all the nagging, many people turn it finally off. On Unixoid systems OTH, we are supposed to use with limited rights and if we need superuser rights for a single task, we have a tool called sudo. Now at last there is a similar tool for XP, called sudown.

SideBar.

To make the Vista mimic complete, you'll need a SideBar, which was copied form GNOME' s Desklets and KDE' s Superkaramba (INNOVA~1) and there are plenty of these for (your Vistamized) XP. The one that mimics the Vista SideBar at best is Thoosje' s SideBar.

The Wow starts now, without the bugs!

In memoriam: Dolly van Lin

2007-11-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

Unexpected our sister Dolly (9-8-1964/11-02-2007) diseased at the age of 44.

Dolly was my songbird, we frequently did gigs in small local clubs and at parties. Me and our youngest brother Han played guitar and Dolly sang the stars from heaven.

Our songbird has flew to heaven, beyond the horizon.

More photo's and information on Dolly is available (in Dutch) at Mike's.

Joe Sixpack goes BSD!

2007-09-30T15:15:00.000+02:00

BSD has the reputation of being the most geeky OS, simply because it' s rarely used by average users. The reason is that the average think its too complicated, which IMHO is far from the truth. The only thing with any OS is, that if you want to use all of its power, it takes some learning curve, no exclusions.

Once upon a time GNU/Linux was considered a strictly Geek OS to, but times have changed. BSD however remained to be as such. Well, not quite!

Last week the 1.4 release of PC-BSD was announced and things have changed pretty much.

I downloaded the 2 CD-ROM set, installed it and my conclusion is: thanks to the great work of the PC-BSD team, BSD is ready for Joe Sixpack!

Installation.

The installation is pretty straight forward. Just pop in the first CD and boot from it. After waiting a couple of seconds, the installation GUI will fire up. Also that' s pretty straight forward for someone who has installed a GNU/Linux distribution before. Choose your preferred language, timezone, choose the type of installation (new or update), set the superuser password, add a new user, edit your partition table to suit your needs, click on next and enjoy the slick slide show :-)

The installer also gives you the ability to install some frequently used apps. For this purpose you need the second CD. If you prefer to install these apps afterwards, using the PBI system and your native language is English, you don' t even require the second CD.

First boot, the Ooooooh wow! effect.

As written above the installation went without a glitch, this - to some extend - also counts for the hardware detection. The system only installed the wrong nVIDIA driver. However it recognized my Geoforce 2 MX400 without a glitch. Anyway it was very easy to choose an older version of the nVIDIA driver and set up the X.org system without a pain. The rest of the hardware worked without any interaction of my self, even the DVD-ROM I entered into the drive was mounted automatically.

Eyecandy for lusers.

One of the reasons that made me exited about PC-BSD is that Compiz-Fusion is enabled by default and beside that Superkaramba is also installed by default. Now Ive been fooling around with Compiz and Beryl for quite some time and it was always a pain (pretty confusing) to properly set it up. Not anymore! The first time you fire up Compiz-Fusion, PC-BSD asks you whether you want to start it by default after bootstrap. This is a great feature, because until now, I always had to fire up Beryl manually, which is pretty weird, because all Unices that I know of, support so called symlinks (symbolic links == shortcuts in Windows), you simply create a symlink to to the Beryl binary in the "automatically start up stuff" directory (folder) of KDE and it should work. Well unfortunately it did not! Anyway this problem is solved in PC-BSD 1.4.

PBI: the package system.

Now every OS needs a platform to install and remove apps. Here comes PC-BSD' s great strength to exposure. PC-BSD supports FreeBSD' s port system and even provides a KDE based GUI for that purpose, but more interesting is PC-BSD's PBI system, which is comparable with Linspire' s "CNR == Click 'n Run". A shortcut to the PBI Directory, using Konquerror is presented at your desktop by default (don' t remove it, you' ll need it - trust me!).

Spoiled GNU/Linux users will find this system pretty much disturbing and maybe even somewhat clumsy, because every package has to be installed separately. Unlike most GNU/Linux package managers, you can' t install a "batch" of packages. Windows users however will feel very comfortable with this approach. All you have to do is browse the package list, click on a package of your choice and eventually read the package' s description. Choose the closest download mirror and a Install Shield alike wizard will guide you trough the installation process.

Conclusion.

PC-BSD is an extremely user friendly and secure BSD, based on the rock solid FreeBSD 6.2 stable core, with a easy to use package management system, a friendly installation GUI and great hardware recognition. It is easy enough for average users and interesting enough for advanced users. It' s a easy pathway to the world of BSD *a must have*!

Update on request of a reader:

The icon set is simoo's OS-K.
The color scheme is 5er's 53dark Blue.
A screenshot tour is available here.

Meet my desktop

2007-09-17T14:22:00.000+02:00

I've been playing around with a program called Istanbul, which is a desktop session recording program and here is the result, a short video in Ogg-Tehora format. Due to the lack of (hardware) resources, many of the frames unfortunately have been skipped.

Anyway it shows what my desktop currently looks like and shows the concept of multiple desktop spaces, providing the ability of running multiple applications full screen simultaneously. As you can see, the desktop is (30%) transparent, using the Beryl manager and Emerald theme manager.

Still think GNU/Linux is a out of date, sluggish HobbyOS eh?

Istanbul if available for free and Free, from most GNU/Linux distribution's repositories

Hackwerk poster released

2007-09-15T12:16:00.000+02:00

The latest Hackwerk poster has been released!

Meet my heroes!

(Just click on the bitmap above and save it to your local disk (it's in 1024x768x24 PNG format) free as in Freedom)

Update on January 21 2008:

Since some usenet k00k which goes by the main identity named Clogwog (and a hundred of sock puppets) who felt the need to write some pretty retarded (made up) stories about those appearing on the poster. I felt the need to give you their names and why they are on the poster:

Tammy & David E. Farmer (favorite musician), Andrew Milner (author of the RemoteAccess BBS system for DOS), Eric S. Raymond, Jon "Maddog" Hall.

Jos Visser (aka Dr. Unix), Abbynrml (Moloch Industries), Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Bruce Perens.

Dennis Ritchie, Richard M. Stallman, Linus B. Torvalds, Maarten Koopmans (admin Uitwisselplatform, which hosts the Free MultiOS project), Roy Schestowitz (Boycott Novell).

TommEE Pickles (Moloch Industries), Ken Thompson, John "DJR" Vanderaart, Carmin Karasic.

Conclusion: everyone on the Hackwerk poster, contributed to my (computer) knowledge. Everything else, written about them in relation with me is totally made up.

WoW, GNU/Linux!

2007-08-22T09:13:00.000+02:00

This is so freaking cool!

While I was browsing the Dutch Ubuntu forums, just to check out or I could help a n00b, I discovered, that the Beryl manager fully supports a transparent desktop. The screenshot I spotted, had the Ubuntu Studio wallpaper, which looks really cool on a transparent desktop. I was very impressed by this and started searching for the wallpaper and finally found it. So I played a little around with the Beryl Configuration center and below are the results.

Pretty catchy huh?

As usual the screenshots are thumbnails, so click on them for full screen. Remember this all is done on a 1,7 Ghz CPU, 380 MiB RAM and a old school nVIDEA Geoforce 2 MX400 (64 MiB VRAM) GPU, try that with Vista, Doh!

My new desktop. If you look a little closer you'll see multiple applications on multiple desktops.

The Beryl settings manager, mind the numbers I entered.

Still wondering "When "Linux" is ready for the desktop"?

Video

2007-08-17T21:46:00.000+02:00

It's not very geeky, but my favorite artist has a video, which I wanted to share with you.

Check it out!

I want to know you, I want to hear your voice, show me your Glory, Lord I want to see how awesome you are...

Licenses

2007-08-10T14:36:00.000+02:00

I felt, I had to make clear, that all of my documentation, including my weblogs are licensed under the GNU Documentation License. My software under the GNU General Public License version 3 and my music is currently licensed under the Creative Commons, share alike attrition , but I'm looking for a more GNUish license. I prefer the Free Art License. Today I will post a question in the Soundclick forum, asking why they are forcing me to publish my work in the patented MP3 file format under a CC license. I prefer Ogg-Vorbis.

More Personal Information.

2007-08-05T04:38:00.000+02:00

I've added some more details to my Personal Information Page on my new homepage, including my Public PGP key and my geek code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GO d-- s: a+ C+++ ULU+++ P+ L+++ E--- W++ N++ o? K-- w--- O+ M V-
PS++ PE- Y++ PGP++ t- 5? X+ R- tv+ b+ DI? D++ G e h+ r% y++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

For explanation on the code, please check out the geek code website.