Moved to a new location!

Well, I have had been updating at the new location for quite some time now, but I really should be posting the locations of my new blog site. Just in case.....

Back to Blogger, so link is dead

Solaris? Linux? Sun vs. FOSS? Sun with FOSS? OpenSolaris?

Confused yet?

Anyways, I put that there as a culminating topic name. What is the deal with Solaris? What about OpenSolaris?

Well, Solaris is what SVR4/SVR5 implementation of Unix by Sun Microsystems. SunOS, which was its predecessor, was more towards BSD. So, Sun Microsystems does have some background in the OSS community. Solaris is what Sun calls the most advanced OS on the planet. Well, I cannot agree or dispute the claim because I STILL HAVE NOT GOTTEN MY SOLARIS DISCS!!! I ordered them about two or three weeks ago and I still have not gotten them!!! I want to do some work on Solaris especially with QA work of the Enano CMS Project, which I am the QA Manager for that project. I saw a lot of ads for Solaris about their new advanced process isolation systems, and I figured that it would be important enough to test for. Well, I thought, maybe OpenSolaris. The problem is that OpenSolaris is just a bunch source packages…. No binary ISOs to download, though I don’t have the space for Solaris downloading. On top of that, I only download Linux ISOs, but I am being tempted greatly to re-order those DVDs.

The CEO of Sun Microsystems requested some time ago that Linus and himself have dinner at his place to discuss the Linux and Solaris debate and the Openness of Sun. Linus should go there and see, and since I posted so late, it may have already happened, but so far, no results.

ZFS on Linux is already possible thanks to ZFS-FUSE. So, the one thing Linus says that he wants from Solaris is already available, but I think he still wants ZFS in kernel space instead of Userspace. Oh well, to each his own.

I like to keep myself open-minded about the UNIX world, and Solaris is something that piqued my interest. But I am getting mad about that order not going through.

TTFN!

Update on RGW-Net main site restructuring!

I had previously posted about my stupid error in updating the software and the updated software was really messed up. Unfortunately the database restore software would not accept my insanely large SQL file and kept generating ridiculous errors. So, I had set up phpBB3 as an interim install.

Well, I tried out Drupal as a replacement interim, and I have never been more frustrated on working on a CMS than I had been with Drupal. It really doesn’t have a good organization of administration and the system itself is somewhat illogical in my opinion. I mean, why would you make it hard to find permissions stuff and then have forum creation automatically not permissible to most users?! So I said, “Screw this!” and pretty much left alone the current interim phpBB3 site.

It has been a very long time since I last talked about Linux technologies itself (my rpm stuff doesn’t count ) And I will talk about something about that…

RPM.RGW-NET.COM launched! OggConvert package built, signed, and released!

Well, last night, I worked myself to like 4am in the morning setting up a new site, the RGW RPM Repository. I spent quite a bit of time wikifying all the licenses, categorizing them, and having proper legal disclaimers on the bottom of the site. The content on the site by default is dual licensed GFDL and CC-BY-SA 3.0. The RPM packages and specs are by default licensed GNU GPL. In certain conditions, the RPM packaging files and specfiles are licensed under the GNU LGPL. The first package I set up there is OggConvert.

OggConvert is a tiny little pyGTK application that can convert videos and music from any format GStreamer supports to Theora/Vorbis formats. This application is available here and even the author of the actual application, Tristan Brindle, has linked to it on his site! Doesn’t helping out the FOSS community give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside?

Immense Stupidity! RGW-Net main site destroyed! Horrible Final Exams! PAIN!!!

I cannot believe I actually stupidly upgraded the Fully Modded phpBB system on my site! Now I cannot restore the database because phpMyAdmin AND the mysql tools cannot ‘read’ the file. And sometimes, when it does, it is unable to create the database. Apparently my rights to create databases under phpMyAdmin are gone! So, now I am stuck with a simple phpBB3 forum that is interim between the new setup of the main site and the old phpBBFM site. I cannot say that this was a complete loss. This provides the opportunity I need to start afresh. I still can’t believe that RGW-Net’s phpbbFM system required 193 tables in a single database……

The new system currently does not have a downloads manager that is restricted and controlled by the ACLs in place, so I am designing an impromptu downloads system with my limited knowledge of scripting and programming along with a great friend of mine, who will be porting some of the download ACL systems he wrote for me to the new CMS.

However, this week is exams week, so I will be devoting an unusually large amount of time towards studying for my final exams.

This does not mean that work will completely stop. My friend has been working on the CMS for some time and continues to work on it, while I am preparing our testing systems for the QA which I usually supply for. Also, this new CMS is valid XHTML, valid CSS, and valid RSS! And its quite lightweight.

Though it may seem that all this was sprung at the last moment, I have been planning the replacement of phpBBFM for quite some time.

I have looked into various CMS systems: phpNuke, phpBBFM, plone, drupal, MediaWiki + phpBB2/SMF 1.1.x, etc.

PHPNUKE is out because it has a bad business model and the software itself I would consider on the unstable side.
Plone is a python based system, so its out.
Drupal is out because I did not like the feel of it.
MediaWiki + phpBB2/SMF 1.1.x is out because phpBB3 support is not available to work with MediaWiki.

In the end, I settled on one combination of systems. However, if it is not ready by 5/25/2007-5/27/2007, then I am going to set up an interim Drupal installation until it is. I panicked initally, so that is why phpBB3 is up there. I thought about putting my new planned system, but it just was not ready yet.

And I hurt myself four times today! Sprained my ankle, cut my thigh on the bus rail (how does that happen?), hit my head on the cabinets, and tripped over a cable onto the floor (barely missed the laptop in front of me, lazy housemates)…

Vista down! Up next?

We all know about the damned hype about Windows Vista.

“Oooh! Flip3D!” … ok…. Fedora has the compiz/beryl cube that rotates workspaces showing all your stuff.

“New Aero Glass!” Got me there, however there are better stuff out there, and WindowBlinds produces the exact same effects on XP because Stardock developed the theming engine for Windows XP and Vista. Fedora yet again can produce these effects with Beryl and compiz.

“User Access Control!” Umm, ever heard of limited and root accounts? Linux and UNIX have had them for years, decades before Microsoft even thought about multiuser environments!

Here, though, it is proven that most people don’t see Vista as anything worth a grain of salt. We can see that Microsoft has had it coming. I agree that Microsoft is failing because they don’t hold all the cards anymore. Mac OS X is now officially available on the Intel core, and many have gotten Tiger to work on a regular PC. Linux has been around for years, and recently, Ubuntu Linux (now at Feisty), has many headway on the desktop Linux platform with high usability and flexibility.

More people are seeing the alternatives available. For instance, Microsoft Internet Explorer held complete dominance until Firefox 1.0 came out. It spilled through the internet in waves, more and more people downloading and using it. I remember saying that I would never use Firefox back at its 0.9 release, and here I am now, using Firefox 2.0 to type up this post.

As long as there is demand for more quality, with the consumer in mind, Free/Open Source Software will always be around to try to satisfy these desires. WordPress, the software I am using now for blogging, is considered FOSS software. Many people use WordPress because of its simplicity and extensibility.

People wanted a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office, and StarOffice was created from this desire. Sun Microsystems purchased StarOffice company and took it under its wing. It was extended, enhanced, and finally, released as FOSS code to improve. Now, we have OpenOffice.org 2.2, which the latest StarOffice suite is based on.

It is only a manner of time before people realize that there are alternatives out there, cheaper and free, just ripe for the picking.

PC Crashed!

Say farewell to everything I ever did in the last year, because it all is gone, thanks to the unreliable drives that OEMs put in the PCs during assembly. It has been a year and a half since I purchased my computer, and the hard disk has failed on me. Pray for me so that I can manage to fix this HUGE mess and get back on track. ::SNIFF:: All my precious data! ::SNIFF::