Ubuntu Linux Help

It’s funny how some people react when I tell them I use Linux. Sometimes they express the sentiment that I must be very computer savvy. Other’s get caught up in all the brand loyalty hype and still some have never heard of Linux! I kid you not! The truth of the matter is that I switched partly because Windows no longer offered me any challenges and reliability became an issue. The most common question I get asked whenever I present a public speaking seminar is “Why did you switch to Linux?”Well… for all those who asked, here’s the long winded answer.

I first started using Windows when Windows 286 and then later Windows 3.11 were all the rage. (I sold the floppies on eBay about 2 years ago to a collector in Italy). At that time I thought it was hot stuff! All my games were DOS based, but that was okay as Windows at that time required DOS. I went through the Windows 95 and 98 stage and became very interested when Windows NT4 was released. At that time I thought it was an incredible product because of the ease with which I could create peer-to-peer and domain based networks. It was then when I tried Red Hat and quit because (in my opinion) the network configuration and OS installation of Red Hat was a nightmare. (I think it was RH5 at that time). Maybe I just had a poor Linux instructor, I don’t know.

I decided to garner my MCSE certifications because I thought there was a strong future in the Windows (and support) industry; I also thought the certifications would be easy to get because of my experience. I was wrong on both counts. The MCSE (and other certifications) took a lot of hard work, dedication and stress to obtain. I’m happy I was successful and proud of the accomplishment. Microsoft sent me a very cool secret decoder ring and certifications. Not really! They did send certifications and a credit card-like ID:

About a year or so after I obtained my certifications, the IT employment market started to collapse. The employment opportunities for newly certified individuals dried up faster than Read the full post…

Last month we posted a great idea “Make Your Own Plug ‘N Play Zone Using Ubuntu Linux!“, discussing and introducing the concept of a “zone” where laptop (or other) users could plug their units into and have Linux automatically installed upon boot up.

“…It’s a simple 3-step method. Users plug their laptop into one of the two ports and boot off the network. Go away, come back later and it’s all done…“

Some readers have asked me about the actual “code” or parameters - this means the PXELinux Boot Loader - for the auto install feature that would be on the TFTP server. If you’re not familiar with the “Plug ‘N Play Zone”, please do read that earlier post first.

One specific question asked:

“This is a nice how to, but I’m a little confused on one point. It may have to do with me not actually doing the steps … but I have used netboot images before, both on Ubuntu and on Debian.

My problem is that the netboot images I’ve always used just launched an installer. I know you can kickstart autoinstall, but I don’t see that step here. Has netboot changed in the last year, or am I missing something?“

The netboot.tar.gz file that you download, contains the Read the full post…

Some time ago, my father switched to Linux (Ubuntu). I think in some of the contributing factor to his switching was my excitement. I remember when I first tried Linux, it was an earlier version of Red Hat (with the blue install screens). At that time it was a real pain in the behind, and I found it horrible. I gave up and didn’t return until Fedora, at which point I was hooked. Fedora knocked my socks off as it was a smooth sleek OS and far more stable than Windows was then. A few years later I tried Gentoo, but the configuration (at that time) was fiddly, tough and hardly any hardware worked properly. (That’s all changed now, Gentoo rocks!). And finally I came to Ubuntu. I found it to be a great desktop/end user solution for me. Audio was of a better quality than Windows (I still use an older Win2000 PC and play with XP on occasion), video appeared much richer and I’m still hooked on the sheer freedom and functionality of Linux! It allows me to reach heights I never could in Windows.

I don’t know any other older people who use Linux, so I recently asked my father (he’s in his eighties and has been using Linux for about 6 years now) how he felt about Linux and what were some of his opinions. I asked if he could share his thoughts with the Linux community. These are his words, emailed yesterday.

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There appears to be much Read the full post…

One of our articles was posted on Reddit (Top 10 Must Have Applications for Ubuntu.) and one user, made the following comment on:

“Anyone know how to speed up Amarok when trying to listen to a library on a share? My Music library is about 17,000 songs which is stored on my NAS. It takes about 10 minutes to start listening to music from start up of Amarok. I’ve switch Amarok to use MySQL instead of SQL Lite which helped a bit but [not] nearly enough.“

One thing to consider, that will help, is to “Improve Ubuntu Linux Operating Speed Performance.”

I had the same issue but with files (but not nearly as many files as that poster), stored on the local PC. I switched to MySQL stored on a small server (in the same network). While I did see an improvement, it was not as much as I expected. And I was disappointed because it took most of the day to copy the files across the network to the server. After playing and tweaking, I realized four things:

1) The NIC on that server was only Read the full post…

Occasionally I receive a file in .docx format, which for me was useless; and I’ve had to ask the sender to give me the document in .doc format instead. However, there’s a better solution for those of us who encounter the .docx format. It does take a couple of minutes to set up, but is easy to use thereafter.

There are two ways to do this. The “Long” way and the “Short” way.

The Long Way:

We’ll need three tools:

1. OpenOffice. The premier open source office suite.
2. An odf converter. That’s what facilitates the .docx capability.
3. Alien. This is an application that converts archive formats. It allows us to convert packages from other distributions to our format; (I’m using Ubuntu Linux) and then install it.

First, we can get the odf converter here: Read the full post…