Monday, March 31, 2008

MySQL and database design for Web 2.0

Disclaimer: I am not a Web 2.0 developer, just somebody who likes to read about technology and architecture design.

On O'Reilly Radar, which blogs about emerging technologies, back in 2006, there were a few interesting posts on how some Web 2.0 companies use databases that I stumbled upon recently.

p.s. I guess I need a new category for such posts not particularly related to Ubuntu or Linux or software.

Friday, March 28, 2008

metacity bug in 7.04

Yesterday evening when I booted my laptop and logged in, gnome started, but things were a bit strange. I could launch applications, actually a single application, e.g. Firefox, but it would start without any window handles (minimize, maximize and close) and missing the title bar. Moreover, I could not switch to another application if it was already launched.

So, after a quick search found out that it is a documented bug in Fiesty where "metacity" fails to launch. Since metacity is the default window manager, and it wasn't being launched after startup/login. All I had to do was to launch "metacity" from command line and things got back to normal. It also was able to run metacity the next time I logged in after logout and restart.

As always with anything Ubuntu related, I am not the first one to face this and the forums provide excellent information:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=446881

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Linux partitions (ext2 and ext3) from Windows

For reasons which don't hold much weight if I am willing to spend more time figuring it out myself (such as need to use Sopcast for watching soccer online), I have always had a dual-boot system, even in the ugly days when I was a RedHat/Fedora user. And my ext3 partition which hold Ubuntu 7.04, is just a small 10GB OS-only partition and my data is still on a NTFS partition that is accessible by both Windows XP and Ubuntu.

So, I have never needed to access anything from my Linux partition from XP. But, seems like there are enough free tools available to achieve this. The most useful being Linux Reader (freeware and closed source) and Ext2 FS (freeware and closed source). The options are nicely analyzed and explained here.
(p.s. Interestingly, I wasn't the first to think that I could prefix 'ubuntu' with my name/initial and it would be a clever blog title.)

Monday, March 24, 2008

hot sun


More news that shows how Ubuntu is gaining traction faster than any other Linux distribution recently. Its the perfect personal computer/laptop distribution, but has started to make significant headway in the Enterprise/Server/Data Center markets. Sun Systems has now started distributing its SMB servers with the option of Ubuntu:
http://www.sun.com/solutions/smb/products.jsp

RedHat does continue to dominate the server market, but having a strong vendor with not-so-cheap customer support/service can only be positive for Ubuntu. Also, the next release (8.04), contains several server-focused enhancements as discussed and mentioned here and there is talk about Dell and HP certifying their server-line products for Hardy Heron (8.04).

Friday, March 21, 2008

hardy heron

Today Ubuntu's next release, 8.04 beta aka Hardy Heron was released. I am yet to move from Feisty Fawn (7.04) to Gusty Gibbon (7.10), so thats that.

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/beta

From the feature list, all the new stuff seems great. The most interesting feature is Wubi. Its an installer for Ubuntu under Windows. No partitions, or boot loader changes, just installs Ubuntu as a Windows Application. Right now, there is a beta for installing 7.04 on the Wubi site. Or if you are bold enough you can try the 8.04 installer here. That seems worth trying out on my work Windows desktop where I have been running Fedora and Ubuntu using VMware Server. The installer seems to download the image when you install, so judging by how my corporate network has been crawling, I would have to make that a weekend project one of these days.

Once again, Ubuntu takes a giant step in easing Windows users into Linux-world.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Vista toilet paper

I am not one of those extremist-Open Source supports with a tattoo of a penguin on my a** and a Linus shrine in my home office. In fact, I refuse to go Linux-only and still maintain a dual-boot with Windows XP (and refrain from labeling the Windows partition as "Windoze") because I still haven't figured out how to get Sopcast running in Ubuntu. But thats for another post.

However, this story about Vista toilet paper is still funny, even though uncalled for.

timeout

I have been sitting on the sidelines since the last couple of weeks as my laptop, which has had power problems before (it was just the connector then which I had fixed), suddenly decided to not cooperate anymore. It seems like not enough power is being propagated to drive the screen and the drives. Thats just my theory.

So, this is me taking a timeout for a few weeks.

On an unrelated note, I have been reading The Linux Journal these days with all this time that I have, and there are always so many useful notes in there for anybody with a faint interest in the Linux world.