Planning a Mandriva 2006 install

Friend and Linux advocate extraordinaire, Marcel Gagne, has used Linux Mandrake, now Mandriva, on his desktop for years, at least as long as I've known him. Though Fedora Core 4 has been serving me pretty well the past while, there are things I miss about SuSE Linux, such as the ease of switching between wireless networks - just switch profiles. I'm sure Fedora has such a thing too, but it doesn't seem as evident, and the Fedora docs team just don't seem to have it together quite the way the Ubuntu wiki does. I like Ubuntu, but I want a change, something different from what I install at work, Mandriva fits the ticket.

Before making the move I decided to compile a list of my killer apps:

• Bittorrent - any graphical bittorrent client will do.
  
• Bluefish - I really like the tag completion for CSS.
  
• Camstreams - works well with my IBM camera.
  
• Dia - great for organizing a network or thoughts.
  
• Easytag - must have for retagging audio files.
  
• Gimp - the premier bitmap image editor.
  
• Gnutella - non-commercial gnutella client.
  
• gThumb image viewer - makes very nice web photo albums.
  
• Gweled - I'm a Gweled addict.
  
• Inkscape - couldn't do without, vector image editor.
  
• Ipodder - I'm turning into a podcast junkie.
  
• KBattleship - My brother and I play networked over the net.
  
• Kmail - I like kmail much better than evolution.
  
• Mplayer - the best video viewing package bar none.
  
• OpenOffice 2.x - the office suite that will crush Microsoft Office.
  
• Pan - simple but powerful news reader.
  
• Scribus - great for laying out documents.
  
• Transcode - moving my video collection to hard drive.
  
• Transgaming Cedega - to play Diablo and Nox.
  
• Tsclient - connect to my Windows box.
  
• Xchat - my favourite IRC client.
  
• Xmms - music is best played with XMMS.
  

I'd link to the rest but sleep is catching up with me. Tomorrow I might possibly get to the Mandriva installation in the evening.

Connecting to your Windows boxes

The other day I spent the better part of 5 1/2 hours installing Windows XP, a few drivers (not all the ones I need), and updates, on a tower that was destined to become headless (i.e. I remote desktop into if from Linux). This evening I connected to the now headless box using a program called tsclient. tsclient is a graphical program that raps around various protocols like RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol.

If you zoom into the full-size screenshot I've included here you can see my Fedora Core 4 desktop and a modified Windows XP desktop that's in the process of installing Mozilla FireFox. If you look really close at where the firefox download is coming from you might get a little chuckle. There was an announcement some time back from this particular organization stating that they wanted to become an official Firefox mirror. I thought it was something of a publicity joke - a skin magazine serving as an official mirror for open source, but apparently the company was serious. Adult entertainment organizations of this particular company's size have the often have pretty big Internet pipelines - sex sells.

Note: I altered this image slightly, removing the email addresses in gaim to protect the identity of IM friends.

Resources:

• tsclient

, the Remote Desktop Protocol, c tsclient, a graphical program that makes RDP easy. I'm not sure if this

Connecting to your Windows boxes

The other day I spent the better part of 5 1/2 hours installing Windows XP, a few drivers (not all the ones I need), and updates, on a tower that was destined to become headless (i.e. I remote desktop into if from Linux). This evening I connected to the now headless box using a program called tsclient. tsclient is a graphical program that raps around various protocols like RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol.

If you zoom into the full-size screenshot I've included here you can see my Fedora Core 4 desktop and a modified Windows XP desktop that's in the process of installing Mozilla FireFox. If you look really close at where the firefox download is coming from you might get a little chuckle. There was an announcement some time back from this particular organization stating that they wanted to become an official Firefox mirror. I thought it was something of a publicity joke - a skin magazine serving as an official mirror for open source, but apparently the company was serious. Adult entertainment organizations of this particular company's size have the often have pretty big Internet pipelines - sex sells.

Note: I altered this image slightly, removing the email addresses in gaim to protect the identity of IM friends.

, the Remote Desktop Protocol, c tsclient, a graphical program that makes RDP easy. I'm not sure if this