The Great Linux Experiment: Turbolinux

Sorry it’s been like two fracking weeks since I’ve wrote anything. Now that I’ve cleared up my college stuffs I can move on to wasting my time blogging or testing Linux operating systems. Or both.

Garbage

So next on the chopping block is Turbolinux. It’s some Japanese distribution aimed at being used in corporate environments. Sounds perfect right? Well it isn’t. Here’s the long and short of it.

• Runs pretty decently.
• No support whatsoever.
• No repository…that I could find (lolwut). EDIT: A repository exists, but you must pay for it.
• Still gave me hell when I tried to bind it to AD.
• Crappy name.
• Smells like sushi.

Yea, so basically I hate this distribution and everything it stands for. Therefore it failed. Miserably. Not even close.

I’d give you a more detailed rundown but I don’t have the time, and you probably don’t care.

Oh, I thought I should mention that Archlinux is glorious and I’m on the verge of breaking it onto the network. Thanks to Bill for mentioning this amazing distribution. More on that later.

Send a Message to Your Great (x1636) Grandkids

So someone told me about this thing called KEO, a satellite that is scheduled to be launched in 2010 that will contain messages from the citizens of Earth. This satellite is scheduled to return to Earth in 50,000 years, in hopes that our ancestors will be around to read our musings on life in the prehistoric age of 2008. Basically a time capsule on steroids.

Anyone can send a message, supposedly uncensored, and it will be placed into the satellite’s memory. I went ahead and did mine…

First off, if this is a human being reading this, WOW. I can’t believe we are still alive. I would have figured we would have succumbed to nuclear war or been wiped out by an asteroid by now. I suppose a congratulations is in order. But first…

Has any semblance of world peace come into place? Are we still fighting petty wars? Is intolerance still rampant? Are people still starving while others gorge themselves? Do we still treat the Earth like dirt? (no pun intended)

If you answered no to the following questions, give yourself, or maybe your grandparents or something, a pat on the back. Please keep up the…satisfactory… work.

Clearly, I don’t believe anyone will read this message, but who knows?

You can send one too, just go to the KEO Website, and hit “Your Message”. You have 6000 words to work with, make it count.

The Great Linux Experiment: Mandrake 10.1

As promised, here is the first mini-review in the “Great Linux Experiment” series.

So I got done installing and testing out the first Linux distribution, Mandrake 10.1.

Mandrake is the precursor to Mandriva, a distribution that I tried earlier and found was way too heavy. So Ifigured going backwards a few years may yield some promising results.

Indeed, the results were promising. After a 3 CD install process (blegh), the ancient computer actually managed to be useful. “Snappy” it was not, but it was a marked improvement over previous attempts. The default KDE interface made it easy for the users to transition into Linux. Also Mandrake had great support for Winbind and Samba which is a MUST.

And it all came crashing down...

However, it was not meant to be. The Altiris Deployment Solution did NOT play nice at all. I was able to create a succesful (or so they say) image and upload it to the server, but when it came time to push it back down onto another PC, I was greeted with a cheery “unbootable partition” message. Supergrub could not save it. I do not know why this was so, nor could I be arsed to work it out.

Therefore, Mandrake 10.1 does not pass the test.

Musical Obsession of the Week

Gotta whip this out quick, because projects are looming overhead. I just didn’t want to fail to post the only regular thing on this blog.

I haven’t been listening to that much new stuff this week, except for I guess this. Islands – Return to the Sea.

Copyright Islands

Islands, I guess, are decent. They spawned off of The Unicorns (see last week), so I decided to try this album. It’s got some good songs, but overall…”meh”. Whatever, it’s new so it gets the prize.

Highlights

Full of more “WTF” videos, but whatever.

Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby

Rough Gem – Odd video. The main reason why this album is here…it’s pretty catchy.

Where There’s A Will There’s A Whalebone

If

Conclusion

Decent I suppose. Rough Gem remains rather addictive.

The Human Zoo

Layout of the Human Zoo

Today at work we had a surprise visit from a cub league baseball team. They all gathered up and watched us cook their food. They began to point, tap on the glass, and otherwise try to get our attention. I give in, and look up. They smile and giggle, then stop until I look down again. I can’t tell whether they are just being friendly or are trying to make fun of us. Judging by their age, I’d say the latter.

Either way, it feels like a zoo.

And we are the animals.

I’m going to destroy that damn window.

Musical Obsession of the Week

Yes, it’s Wednesday! This week there is a clear victor in the battle of my MP3 player’s Now Playing section. The wonderful Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? by The Unicorns hardly allowed for any other music to be played.

Copyright Alien8 Recordings

I’ll be completely honest here, their name, while awesome, presents a problem. I mean there’s no way to answer the question “What are you listening to?” and not feel sheepish when you answer “The Unicorns”. Then you have to quickly assure them of their awesomeness, or just tell them “It’s not something you’d like”, depending on the person. If you like indie, you’ve probably heard of them. They seem to have a fairly large following. Of course I seem to be very late as always in finding this stuff.

For me this album was really refreshing, a band that seemed to not take itself too seriously, able to write some eerily catchy music, and was more or less pretty original. It kind of sounds like standard “indie-pop”  at first glance (excuse me if this is wrong, I’m terrible with genres), but at the same time it’s unique; it stands apart in a way my limited musical describing abilities cannot fathom. Actually it’s probably just because it’s so strange.

Also, I said I wouldn’t review by song but there are some notes I thought I’d like to add anyways, so I retract my earlier statement.

Highlights

Ghost Mountain (Don’t mind the video…only link I could find.)

Sea Ghost (Another WTF video, but it’s all I could find I promise!) At the beginning I think that’s a…yes it must be…it sounds like that certain elementary school instrument that I love so dearly.

Jellybones (At least the video is official…albeit still strange as hell) -  I think I sympathize with this song too much. If only it was longer, then it wouldn’t be inflating my play count…

I Was Born (A Unicorn)

Tuff Luff – Cheery wind music behind lyrics like “we’re going down in smoke in flames” is always fun. The “save us” at the end is pretty awesome too, if you ask me.

Inoculate the Innocuous

Les Os (Another bad fan video…)

Conclusion

AS USUAL. I find out about this after the band has broken up. That’s how it always seems to be.

The singer went off and made some other band, which I may check out.

Either way, definitely a lot of fun to listen to. The Unicorns shall join my master driving playlist of musical win.

The Great Linux Experiment – The Test Begins

I’ve been charged with the task of finding which Linux distribution is best to use on old computers while still retaining functionality. This also means they need to be able to be imaged and work with Active Directory. Sounds simple but there seems to be so many things that can go astray, especially when it comes to getting it to associate with the Active Directory. I’ll be going through several distributions over the next few weeks, and I’ll post a mini-review about how each one performs.

The ‘test subjects’ for my explo-I mean experimentation are Dell GX110s, dated at about 1999. They’re the kind of computers that are probably better used as seats. I think the specifications run something like this:

• Pentium III Processor – About 700-800Mhz (will edit with exact)
• 256mb SDRAM – upgraded from standard 128mb
• 10gb Hardrive
• Something like 8mb onboard video (will edit with exact)

The test subjects.

Before they were retired they were running Windows 2000, but that was much too heavy for them to handle efficiently. In order to make them useful, we have decided to try out the following “light” and sometime outdated Linux distributions. This is a tentative list, a few others may make appearances.

• Xubuntu 8.04
• Turbolinux
• Mandrake 10.1
• Ubuntu 4
• Redmond Linux

The key goal is to be able to reuse these ancient behemoths as student stations at my school. They could possibly even make a new lab if they wished. Revamping them with Linux is a great alternative to shipping them to Africa to let little kids burn out the precious metals if you ask me. Hopefully we’ll be able to strike a balance between lightness and functionality, and continue our school’s Linux revolution!

Look for more posts in the coming weeks.

France…

…where four year olds can be pop stars.

Thankfully, he was banned from the radio waves on account of child exploitation.

Musical Obsession of the Week

I promise I will post something that is interesting (or interesting to me at least…), but tradition prevails so here’s my “Musical Obsession of the Week”.

Allright this week has been a quite the musical mashup for me, so choosing one album was hard. My play time was torn between TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain (a rediscovery of sorts), Beck’s Odelay! (still), and The Flaming Lip’s Soft Bulletin (honorable mention). All are amazing; some may show up in later weeks.

However, the one that really dominated my CD player was Built to Spill’s Keep it Like a Secret.

So yea, Built to Spill. Awesome band. Been listening for aboot a year now but I never bothered to download this album. I had previously only listened to Ancient Melodies of the Future and There’s Nothing Wrong With Love. I bought the CD out of curiosity (or possibly boredom), and it’s probably my favorite Built to Spill album now.

Highlights

This is another album where pretty much every song is solid, but if I had to truncate half of it, here’s what I’d keep.

Center of the Universe umm, awesome guitar riff? Yes.

Carry the Zero is AMAZING. Like seriously, favorite BTS song ever. I can’t find a good youtube link so here’s a stream from someone’s blog.

Bad Light is probably coming in at second.

Else has it’s catchy guitar riff engraved in my brain. Seriously I find myself humming it subconsciously all the time.

Temporarily Blind contains more delicious guitar goodness. Really though I’m starting to sound repetitive, BTS has plenty of guitar goodness in every song they make.

Conclusion

Just some straight indie rock/alternative music here. I personally think Doug Martsch’s guitar work is tops. I’d say that it makes up for the sort of weak lyrics and vocals. ;P

Built to Spill doesn’t disappoint me here. 10$ well spent.

Also, in the future, I think I’ll just stick to plugging the album and leaving some links instead of adding my little analysis of each song. I’m just not good at it.

My Weekend in Review

Also explains why I'm not posting something useful...