Better Late Than Never

“Better late than never.”

Or so the saying goes. Well, this article is more than a tad late, seeing that its been over two months since my last post on this blog. To top it off, this post is about an event that tookj place on September 19, about a month and half ago.

The photos you will find here are from the last gathering of the Cebu GNU/Libux Users Group (CeGNULUG) at the Casa Verde restaurant in uptown Cebu City. Present were the usual suspects including the group’s President, John Clark Naldoza who presided over the meeting.

The gang's all here (at Casa Verde)

Much time was spent on introducing new members to the group and explaining the basic concepts of free/open source software (especially the legal aspects). Aside from that, however, was the usual shop talk and practical problem-solving. Probably just as much time was spent on eating — and going nuts over one of the largest hamburgers I have ever eaten from.

As I write this, there are already plans for another meeting. Not bad. At least now we’re getting together more than twice a year (and I’ll have more photos to post on this blog).

Hopefully I’ll get to update this blog more often than that!

Somehow, John Clark and the monster burger just go together

As you can see, even a burger that size is no match for the combined appetite of CeGNULUG members

IPv6 at Home!

What’s this?

That’s part of the output from the ifconfig command, which is used (among other things) to show the status of my computer’s network interfaces. This little bit here describes the IPv6 tunnel I managed to get running on my home PC. I’ve blanked out the IP address, of course , so don’t get any funny ideas, hackers.

The tunnel was createed using the Gogo6 client (you can get it from Gogo6.net) and a free IPv6 tunnel account on Freenet6. Linux users will have to compile the client software from the source code. This is easy if you have the all your development tools and libraries installed (I didn’t so I had to do some major updating). The only configuration you have to do is choose your installation directory and edit the file gogoc.conf to enter your Freenet6 credentials and make sure you use an authenticated login. In my case, I chose a non-standard installation directory and had to do a bit of debugging to make sure the client software found all the necessary files.

Not everything is rosy, of course. The tunnel seems to drop every few minutes (its brought up again automatically). I can’t seem to get IPv6 DNS working even though I’ve entered the nameserver in my resolver file (/etc/resolv.conf). That means I can’t ping IPv6-enabled sites using their names. I can, however, ping an IPv6 address.

I guess that means I have to do some more tinkering. Second Internet, here I come!

CentOS 5.5 on Dell Vostro A840

When I purchased my Dell Vostro A840 last February, it came pre-loaded with Ubuntu 8.04. This version of Ubuntu was a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means that it is still being updated with security patches and (hopefully) new versions of the installed applications. That being said, I found that this situation left much to be desired.

For one, everytime I upgraded the kernel, I found to my dismay that my sound drivers would go on the blink. Not being familiar with Ubuntu, I didn’t want to go around compiling software (even granting that I could find proper drivers for the hardware). I also found that my applications — updated or otherwise — were very, well… dated. They were usable, yes, but way behind the times.

Upgrading to another version of Ubuntu would have been a solution. But the best way to do that would have been to burn a DVD installer and make a clean installation. If I was going to do that, I thought, then why not go the whole hog and switch to a Liunux version with which I was familiar, such as CentOS?

I checked online and saw that thewre was a new version of CentOS: version 5.5. Now that looked attractive.

When I’m 64…

Vintage electronic memory

Having relatively cheap, 64-bit, multi-core processors readily available for desktops is great. The boost in performance is more than welcome. The only monkey wrench in this scenario is that some software still has to get properly ported to run as 64-bit applications.

I recently had a nearly week-long nightmare trying to get Firefox to play Flash content. I moved to a newer, Intel-based 64-bit system running CEntOS 5.4, from my four-year old, single-core AMD64-based system. Things generally went well, even though I had to manually reconstruct a few mail directories. The real big snag was when Firefox just would not play any Flash content.

I got to working on the problem as soon as I could. I followed the instructions to download the Adobe Flash plugin. Then I made sure to download and install the nspluginwrapper plugin and Viewer (nspluginwrapper and nspluginwrapper-i386), which you can download from here. I ran nspluginwrapper and imported the Adobe plugin, which was copied into the correct directories.

Then I ran Firefox. No cigar. It just wouldn’t work.

I Got My Penguin

Chin Wong gave me a penguin!

Well, at least a personalized drawing of a one on the penguin collection graphic on his website (www.chinwong.com). You can see my penguin (notice the beard) in the blown-up version on the right . The original is a cool, high-resollution affair, and you can get your own penguin on it simply by asking Chin. His site has a form just for that.

Chin was the Editor-in-Chief of Computerworld Philippines, a position he ably held for many, many years. He is also a happy convert to Linux, having made the switch in 2006. In his blog article, “Secret Weapon“, he says this of the tale:

Two years ago this month, I erased Windows XP from my home PC and installed Ubuntu on it and have not looked back since. Today, the Linux-based system I have is more secure, more efficient in its use of resources—and more fun to use— than any Windows-based installation on comparable hardware. It certainly blows Windows Vista out of the water. Remarkably, it’s also 100 percent legal and 100 percent free, which is something you could never say about Windows, whether you used a licensed version or a pirated knock-off.

Now how’s that for a ringing endorsement? it’s these success stories — and helpful users like Chin — that win new converts to Linux.

I first began using Linux in 1999, when I installed Red Hat 5.0 on my 180MHz clone. Just like Chin, I had my ups and downs. Linux was certainly not as easy to install then, and the Red Hat graphical desktop was usable but had some pretty rough edges. I’m now running CentOS, a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If you have a Linux success story to tell, let Chin know about it and get yourself a penguin. You’ll be in good company.

Ya Gotta Hear This (Updated)

I thought that I had heard the worst ravings and silliest nonsense from some of SCO’s people concerning their claims about Unix and Linux. SCO, after all, claimed that some of their code was in Linux, but never managed to prove it.

(Image on the right is from the film “Reefer Madness.”)

After over six years, it seemed that the case was winding down: Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, still owned the copyright to Unix; and SCO filed for bankruptcy. Despite some news that SCO might be bought out and get enough money to continue the case, to me it pretty much boiled down to when — not if — SCO would just plain lose once and for all. Now, like some bad gas emanating from a crypt, we hear this latest whopper from SCO CEO Darl McBride, as reported by Ars Technica in “Deluded SCO CEO on witness stand: ‘Linux is a copy of UNIX’“:

McBride said that SCO holds the rights to UNIX and that “many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.” Specifically, he said, “We have evidence System V is in Linux,”—directly contradicting what Sontag had previously testified. Due to the witness exclusion rule invoked by both parties, McBride was not present during Sontag’s testimony and wasn’t aware of what had been said. McBride’s claims also directly contradict internal SCO memos from 2002, which reveal that the company’s own extensive source code audits had uncovered no UNIX code in Linux. McBride attempted to reinforce his argument with analogy. “When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there’s books on ‘How to Program UNIX’ but when you go to the Linux section and look for ‘How to Program Linux’ you’re not gonna find it, because it doesn’t exist.” Then came the real humdinger, and my jaw dropped when I heard the following come out of his mouth: “Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].”