Cyber-life Interrupted by Real Life

Tags

ccna, certification, Cisco, hiatus, studying

Hello happy readers, commenters, lurkers, etc.

Beginning very soon, like right away, I’ll be somewhat absent from here. The reason for this is that I’ll be spending most of my waking hours (and some of my sleeping ones) for the next 8 or so weeks studying for my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) examination.

If all goes well, I well have that coveted industry cert and those spiffy letters after my name sometime in March of 2013; with a good job to follow shortly thereafter, hopefully. 13 is a good number for me; maybe it’ll be a good year, too. We’ll see…

In the meantime, carry on. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone.

Later…

~Eric

Porteus – Another Excellent Choice for the Thumb Drive Toolbox

Tags

Slackware, SLAX, Porteus, portable Linux, flash drive, thumb drive

A few years ago, I wrote a little article called My Thumb Drive Toolbox for Linux.com.

In that article, I explain how to install Slax on a thumb drive. I also mention Puppy Linux as being usable for that purpose also. It’s very useful to have a full-featured Linux OS on a thumb drive, particularly when repairing corrupted MS Windows systems, as I did earlier this evening for a client.

Over at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux, a topic came up regarding the porteus.org website possibly being down. Hamza from porteus.org dropped in to respond to the issue. After we resolved the issue, I went to the porteus.org website to snoop around a bit. I was, of course, already familiar with Porteus, but I had not visited the new site nor had I used the distribution recently.

My old (ancient, really) version of Slax on my thumb drive toolbox was still functioning, but I had been wanting to update to the newest version of Slax for a while. I’d been waiting for v7.0 for a while. I decided to kill two birds and all that…

I downloaded and installed both Slax and Porteus earlier this afternoon. I’ve had the chance to evaluate them both this evening. Slax is very nice, even with KDE 4. However, this article is about Porteus, which I installed with my favorite desktop environment –> Xfce. I first burned the .iso to a CD (directions on Porteus’ download page) and then booted that CD to use the Porteus Installer app to install it to my thumb drive. It worked wonderfully.

I specifically chose to use the 32 bit version because many of the systems that I would need to boot it from are older 32 bit machines. It’s best to have a diagnostic Linux distribution on a thumb drive that is functional with older machines if you’re in the fix-windows-for-family-and-friends business. HA!

Visit the website, snoop around the forums, then give Porteus a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. This is a quality portable media distribution, with a good documentation and support network. You know I’m going to like Porteus. It’s only natural…

from the Porteus forums:

Porteus is a light-weight, highly configurable and flexible live distribution based on Slackware…

Oh, and don’t forget… if you have the resources available, run it from RAM. It’s GREASED LIGHTING FAST!

Have fun!

~Eric

Slax 7.0? It’s About Time!

Tags

KDE, SLAX, thumb drive Linux

Many of us have patiently waited for this:

New Design for Slax.org, Preparing Final Release

at 17:40 Posted by Barnaby |

Just in time for the expected final release of Slax 7.0 on Monday after all this time the web site has had a makeover as well to serve as a visual reminder that a new age for Slax has truly arrived.

Read the article at Linux, BSD, and everything else…

Hmm… KDE, huh? Well, I’ll deal with that if necessary.

Happy Slaxxing!

~Eric

Think Your Passwords Are Secure?

Tags

brute force, password hacking, security

Maybe you should read this article from PhysOrg:

Password-cracking feats at blistering speed shown in Oslo

Researcher Jeremi Gosney, the founder and CEO of Stricture Consulting Group, was the thinker behind the hardware and software setup that could make 350 billion guesses per second. The result was that eight-character passwords could fall in hours; some passwords could be had in minutes.

Scary, huh?

Later…

~Eric

The Latest Stallman Rant

Tags

Amazon, privacy, rant, Richard Stallman, security, Ubuntu

Always entertaining, often enlightening. Read what Mr. Stallman has to say about Ubuntu’s new relationship with Amazon.

Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

One of the major advantages of free software is that the community protects users from malicious software. Now Ubuntu GNU/Linux has become a counterexample. What should we do?

Read the rest of this interesting article HERE.

Later…

~Eric

A Long Time Coming

Tags

Bits: Daily Report, email privacy, U.S.

A Long Time Coming

Email privacy laws have not kept up with modern times.

It’s about time that changes were made to protect the privacy of those who use email for business and pleasure on a daily basis.

Later,

~Eric

The Future Is Here… 3D Printing

Tags

3D printing, science fiction, technology

Earlier today, I received an email newsletter with a link to an interesting article related to three dimensional printing.

I had only heard snippets about this new technology. It sounded almost like Sci-Fi/Fantasy at first. I had to read a bit more about it to understand just what the technology is and how it works. THIS site has a nice little introduction to the technology and its possibly evolution in the near future. There’s even an interesting little video you can watch:

What the future holds for this amazing new technology is unknown, of course, but you can let your imagination run wild. As with most technologies, I’m sure there will be good and bad aspects to how it is utilized.

There you have it. Read more about this amazing technology when you get the chance. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more about it in your regular news soon.

Later…

~Eric

iFixit – Very COOL!

Tags

Apple, greed, HowStuffWorks, iFixit, rant, repair

While perusing my latest issue of Mother Jones today, I came across a great article about the iFixit website and the fix rather than replace movement.

Wow! What a refreshing idea; fix something rather than toss it in a landfill and purchase another. Who’d a-thunk it? Well, let me brief you younger folks on a bit of history…

Back in the Dark Ages… oh, say 25 years ago or so… we used to actually fix things. Yup. That’s right. When your dad’s Sony Walkman or mom’s Singer sewing machine stopped working for some reason, they’d take it into a shop where a repair person*, with actual knowledge of the device and real tools, would sit at a work bench and troubleshoot and fix the issue for them. Awesome, huh? Then, dad and mom would pay a small price (compared to the price of a replacement) and take their Walkman or sewing machine home for many more years of use and enjoyment.

Now, why did such a remarkably sensible solution to broken items go the way of the T-Rex? Well, it’s simple. Greed. Yup. That’s right. You youngsters may have heard me gripe about greed before. It’s an all-pervasive sickness in this world at the moment. I’m not here to bitch today, though. I’m here to tell you about a really cool website that might appeal to you tech nerds and geeks out there.

iFixit – it’s sorta’ like a Wikipedia for fixing stuff. Between this site and another old favorite of mine, How Stuff Works, you should be able to fix just about anything in your home, as long as you have the skills and can get the parts needed to do the fix. Fixing things yourself is rewarding. You feel you accomplished something. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to fix that favorite old laptop of yours with the jammed up keyboard? You can do it. It could actually be rocket science, but hey… rockets aren’t that complicated. Really!

Well, next time you play with your little iThing, think about the 11 year old Chinese girl who works 16 hour shifts in the factory that makes that thing. Think about the entire countrysides laid waste by the mining of rare earths to make that thing work. Think about all your friends and neighbors who would love a job in a factory that makes stuff instead of some dead-end job in a cubicle farm of some call center. When your iThing breaks, FIX IT! That’ll piss Apple off, huh? Heh-heh…

Later…

~Eric

*For 20+ years I was a component level electronics repair technician. That career no longer exists in the U.S. because very little is actually repaired here anymore. It’s a sad thing.

Image credits: Technician from clipartheaven.com.

Arch Linux Commits to systemd

Tags

Slackware, Arch, systemd, sysvinits

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming. I converted to pure systemd months ago in my Arch.

According the THIS article at The H website and other sources, it looks like Arch Linux is going 100% systemd. Well, that’s cool. I don’t have any issues with that. I’m not completely sold on systemd yet, but I haven’t found anything to really complain about. I do think it’s a slight poke-in-the-eye to Arch’s KISS approach to GNU/Linux, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Arch isn’t the only distribution that has made this leap. I believe Fedora and SuSE are also moving in that direction. I’m not a developer or coder, so I can’t really tell you what the under-the-hood advantages of systemd over sysvinits may be. However, many folks smarter than I am in that area seem to favor systemd.

There are some holdouts. Patrick Volkerding of Slackware has no plans in the current millennium of getting away from sysvinits in his distribution. Slackware is my primary OS, as you know, so this is OK by me. I don’t believe the Debian folks are considering systemd at this time either. I would actually be shocked if they were. Systemd is too new for Debian. It would be a definite threat to their legendary commitment to stability.

Have a wonderful fall season (spring, if you’re way down south )!

Later…

~Eric

New Slackware Linux Documentation Project

Tags

Alien Bob, ArchWiki, community, LinuxQuestions.org, Slackware Documentation Project, Slackware Linux, wiki

A recent posting at Jeremy’s LinuxQuestions.org really lit a fire under some hardcore Slackware users.

There is so much Slackware information spread out over the Net in the form of private blogs, forums, websites, etc. All that wonderful information is so spread out, though. A new initiative has been launched recently to gather all Slackware information together in one location. A wiki-based format is being used with Arch Linux’s outstanding wiki as inspiration.

Eric Hameleers (Alien Bob) and many others from LinuxQuestions.org have spearheaded this new initiative. We even seem to have the blessing of Slackware’s BDFL – Pat V. This is a community thing. All interested people are invited to come join in making this project a successful thing. The oldest living GNU/Linux distribution deserves this.

C’mon over and lend a hand. All assistance is appreciated. Community is what makes GNU/LInux and Open Source the awesome thing that it is.

Regards,

~Eric

Links:

- the LQ.org conversation

- the Slackware Documentation Wiki

- the project discussion mailing list