Linux Expo Part II

You would expect that a Linux User's Group would be free, as in beer, so I was surprised to learn at the Linux World Expo in Toronto that TLUG, the Toronto Linux Users' Group, had a membership fee of $20. I didn't stand around to find out why the LUG charged fees, but it's possible that it was for computer insurance purposes, or something similar. The user group had a large crowd around its booth most of April 19th so I didn't feel like sticking around, especially since my LUG was free.

Sun Microsystems offering at the expo was very small, in fact smaller than Net Direct, a local (Kitchener) Linux consulting firm, but Sun's thin client offerings looked very cool. I was disappointed that Sun didn't have their latest hardware lineup all on display. Sun has some very cool hardware, it's a shame more local computer companies don't sell low end Sun boxes to the general public - I think there's a fair market, especially for second hand (less expensive) Sun hardware. The thin client I tried ran like a rocket, which left me wondering what kind of blazing server was behind the machines. The Sun representative I spoke with was about as forthcoming as the junior Microsoft reps I ran into back at Comdex '95.

Where was SGI, Silicon Graphics? I know SGI has an office just outside of Toronto. If they were at the show, their booth was so small I didn't come across it - though in my sinus-ladden state I admittedly missed a lot. I didn't plan for this expo because I was so sick leading up to the expo that I spent most of the days prior to the expo in bed. SGI has always put out top notch hardware, it was disappointing not so see them there.

The Kensington booth was a lot of fun. I saw some pretty cool hardware there, including a number of WiFi detectors. I did a search for reviews of Kensington's WiFi detectors and turned up almost all very negative reviews, especially for Kensington's entry level WiFi detector; I still went out and bought one yesterday. As I walked the neighbourhood the other night I found a strong signal coming from the neighbour right behind my house, from a couple of houses a few streets down, and from a few places on the way downtown. Whether they actually have WiFi connections, or whether the readings are false positives, I don't know yet, but I'll probably do a little war walking with my notebook on a better looking day. One big problem I found with Kensington is that no one locally seems to carry the superior model of their WiFi detector, and they weren't selling any at the show. To complicate things, the advanced model at the show seemed to be having issues detecting the various WiFi networks at the show. I've yet to see real positive reviews of WiFi detectors. My biggest issue with Kensington's detector is that the light meter is practically useless in broad daylight. I had to do all my walking later in the evening when the sun started to go down; there must be a better way of displaying WiFi information.

I visited a few other companies at the expo, but I'm going to reserve posting about the other companies until I've played a bit more with their software, or contacted them for more information.

Linux Expo

I talked to a few people after the recent Linux Expo which took place in Toronto between April 18th and 20th, and the general consensus was that the expo was dull/boring and overly commercialized. The main complaint was that the expo was a big sales pitch, rather than a venue for new and exciting technology. Others complained about the fact that the amount of freebies has diminished since the original expo.

Despite being seriously under the weather, I found the expo enjoyable, and while I would have liked to walk away with one of Novell's SuSE chameleon plush toys, I still managed to come away with enough freebies to make my bus trip enjoyable. I discovered a few things along the way, like the fact it's less expensive to claim a "same day return" trip than it is to get a university student return ticket. I only had two regrets: a) I should have left my notebook at home, it was a pain in the butt to lug around; b) I should have seen my doctor sooner so I was well for the trip.

Novell's presence could be felt throughout the expo, their banners were everywhere. I sat through a couple of presentations on Novell's enterprise offerings and came away with the enterprise evaluation kit and a stuffed Tux with Novell emblazoned across the belly - the largest Tux in my small collection. While I would have preferred the Novell chameleon, I've grown attached to my new Tux. I have yet to install the enterprise offering, but I have installed Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) which I got when Anthony Kay, technology solutions architect for Novell, visited KWLUG. NLD is Gnome-based and makes use of extensive use of Ximian, a company Novell bought, technology. One of the questions I posed to both Anthony and the reps at Novell was "Why has Novell closed Ximian Desktop" to everyone but Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) users. To date I still haven't had a satisfactory answer, but the rep at the show said XD wasn't closed and that I should talk to reps at their booth. Regardless, I've been quite happy with SuSE Professional 9.2.

Marcel Gagne, author of the Moving to Linux series of books, and "Linux Journal" columnist, greeted me by name at the expo and signed my copy of Moving to the Linux Business Desktop. We chatted for a few minutes before he had to head out to a signing at Pearson, Intl. Marcel is a great guy, very personable, and he's given talks at out Linux User Group a couple of times over the past few years.

While at the expo I took the opportunity to sign up for a year of "Linux Journal," and I grabbed an issue from a few months ago that I missed on the stands (the DBUS issue), but I didn't bother grabbing the April issue, which I'll probably have to pick up before it leaves news stands. I've heard that SSC is pretty poor at delivering magazines to Canada. I hope the rumour isn't true, but I've heard that some subscribers didn't get their issue until well after the current issue was on news stands. Whether that happens to me or not remains to be seen, but I'll be sure to post that news if it happens more than a couple of months in a row.

I also picked up a couple of issues of Linux Magazine UK edition, my favourite Linux Magazine by far. While I'm happy to support all Linux magazines, there's something about Linux Magazine UK that makes it more attractive, perhaps it's because most of the articles seem to be less enterprise-oriented than other magazines.

More on the expo in the next post.

TCO Linux versus Windows

Last year Microsoft started it's "Get the facts" campaign about how Microsoft Windows Server was suppose to be less expensive than Linux. Microsoft cited studies which they originally claimed to be by an independent group, which turned out to be true, but sponsored by Microsoft, which means not so independent as Microsoft led people to believe.

Eweek has an interesting article about the cost of Linux: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1782587,00.asp

Here's my own simple TCO study:

Windows Server 2003 (10 node license) - $1699
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional - $583.99
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - Price difficult to find, but appears to be per server and client.
IIS - Free
TCO: $2285.99 (assuming I got MS SQL Server for free)

SuSE 9.2 Professional (unlimited node license) - $134.99 (or a free DVD download)
Open Office - Free with SuSE
Rekall - Free with SuSE
MySQL - Free with SuSE
Apache 2 - Free with SuSE
Webmin - Free with SuSE
TCO: $134.99 (or FREE if I just downloaded and burned a typical Linux CD)

Hmmmn...tough choice. The truth about "the facts" is that facts are easy to manufacture, just as Microsoft has. You can pay someone to find ways of discounting anything given certain conditions.

The biggest problem most people have with Linux is the learning curve, but what is often conveniently forgotten is that the same learning curve applies to Windows server products as well. I recently remarked in a forum to someone that comparing setting up a FTP server isn't the same as installing a video game, not on Linux, not on Windows. If you don't know what you're doing you run the risk of being hacked. Where people are lucky on the Windows side is that there is already a big installed base. But what's happening is that the Microsoft base is eroding away. Apple's share recently grew, and the more people I talk to, the more people seem to know about Linux. This year I even shared a house with a fellow Linux user!

Linux is on the rise, and it makes good financial sense. "Get the Facts" is just one more way of misinforming consumers by twisting facts to a particular purpose.

Linux phones, Apple's desktop share growing

I'm always excited to see new Linux hardware on the market. California-based Zultys Technologies has come up with a new family of phones running Linux. Among the impressive features of these phones are support for PoE (Power over Ethernet), line-rate Ethernet switching, and a couple of ethernet ports for 2 simultaneous incoming or outgoing calls. Best of all, the phones seem reasonably priced.

Also newsworthy is a recent article in Network World in which they stated Apple seems to be making a comeback on the desktop. It's a good probability that these new customers are former Microsoft customers tired of licensing issues, being treated like criminals, but no mention was made of where the share is coming from. It's worth noting that these numbers didn't include Apple's new Mac mini, which is sure to shake a few boots in Redmond.

Surprisingly these numbers did indicate a decline in the sales of Mac portables. This is news to me since just the other day I sat the lone PC notebook user behind a string of 3 Apple PowerBook owners .

Diablo 2 works under Cedega!

I've bitched and moaned in the past about how frustrated I was at trying to get Transgaming's Point2Play and Cedega to run Diablo II Lord of Destruction. Diablo II would install fine, but LOD always said there was no CD.

I looked and looked for a solution, tried all the permission changes to the cdrom drives, with no success. I finally found the solution on a user forum, posted by a user. The problem is point2play. If you try to install Diablo II and LOD using Point2Play you'll have no success. Point2Play apparently puts each game in its own drive. (an over simplification)

The solution was to run a rm -rf on the .transgaming and .point2play directories then to change to your home directory (not the cdrom) and type something similar to:

cedega /media/cdrom0/setup.exe

If you have problems ejecting the cdrom, make sure that you don't have it automounted elsewhere. If it's on your desktop, right clicking on the cdrom and selecting eject should do it. I sometimes open a term and type:

eject /media/cdrom0

(I'm using Ubuntu). Anyhow, if you do it this way for both versions of the game you'll have no problem getting Diablo II LOD installed. I also tweaked my .transgaming/config file by uncommenting the Desktop="800x600" in the file. I then pressed ESC when Diablo loaded up and went into its options and set it for 800x600. Thus you see the screen shot below:

phex - Gnutella File Sharing made simple

Phex is a peer to peer file sharing client that looks a lot like Shareza on Windows, but with a few features that make it even nicer. Phex is java based, so it can be run on multiple platforms. SuSE Pro comes with a java virtual machine, so starting phex is simply a matter of typing in:

java -jar phex.jar

If you haven't run a java program before, the -jar prefix is used to run phex.

Phex can be downloaded from:

http://phex.kouk.de/download.php

There is also a Windows executable available on the download page. Don't forget to unzip (not tar.gz) the Linux version:

unzip phex_2.2.0.83.zip

Pitviper gets a facelift

So I decided to wipe out Ubuntu on pitviper because Ubuntu didn't let me control the partitioning of the drives. I decided to put SuSE on the machine. The 3rd and 4th drives are RAID mirrored drives of /home. The first drive /dev/sda has /boot, swap, and /, while the 8GB /dev/sdb has /usr. At the moment I'm a little worried because SuSE is saying that the install will take 6 hours! But that number seems to be rapidly decreasing. I can only stick around for another couple of hours

Ubuntu - A quick glimpse

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution that is available in both a Live CD and installable CD. I installed Ubuntu on a PIII 667MHz box with 256MB of RAM and a 12GB hard drive. Installation went flawlessly, though the one thing I wish I had more control over was the partitioning of hard drives.

One of the more unusual things about Ubuntu is that the root account is disabled by default. If you want to run a command as root you have to use the sudo command and enter in your user password. For example: If I wanted to do an apt-get update, I'd type:

sudo apt-get update

Sudo then asks for a password. I was confused at first because I thought I had to enter a root password (which I didn't know because there is no option to set a root password during the install). As it turns out, the password I needed was my regular user password. Note that not all users can do this, only the user you set up at the beginning and later assign the ability to do sudo commands.

The Ubuntu look is fairly slick, but I prefer my SuSE/KDE, I don't think the look is enough to make people switch from Windows XP, but looks aren't everything. That said, quite a few Windows users are extremely impressed with the xscreensaver displays we have at The Working Centre.

One of the most impressive things about Ubuntu is that it correctly set my notebook display to 1400x1050, the only Linux distribution to do so "out of the box." (And forget Windows XP's 1024x768 which refused to even install until the Reiser file system was wiped from the hard drive)

Unfortunately WiFi isn't nearly as simple to set up as it is on SuSE 9.x. Otherwise a very slick OS.