Linux

Finally, after buying and returning two HP laptops, including the HP DV6120, I settled on one that works with Linux. It is the Toshiba Satellite A100 TA6. The product ID is PSAA8C-TA602C.

The hardware configuration is as follows:

• Intel Centrino Duo T2250 Processor 1.73GHz Processor Speed
• 15.4" Wide XGA TFT with Trubrite Display
• 120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• 1GB DDR2 memory
• Intel 950 GMA graphics adapter (128 MB shared memory)
• Intel 3945ABG wireless LAN adapter
• Realtek 861 audio on Intel High Definition Audio (HDA)
• DVD Super-Multi Drive +/- Double Layer
• 10/100 Integrated Ethernet LAN on the back, left side
• 4 USB ports (two on the right side, and two on the back right)
• Modem RJ11 port (right hand side)
• External Microphone Port, Headphone Port
• S-Video Out (left side)
• Monitor connection (left side)
• Firewire (left side)
• 2 PCMCIA slots (one Cardbus Type II, and one Expresscard)
• xD/SD/MM/Memory stick card reader (does not work in Linux)
• 2.8 kg

The laptop cost $1100 at Staples, with $170 for 3 year extended warranty. They matched the price from Best Buy 10 days after I bought it, and that made it $1040.

I finally bought myself a new laptop. It is an HP DV6120 CA. In this article I describe how I setup Linux on it, what works, what needed workarounds, and what doesn't work. If you have helps or hints or tips, please add them as a comment to the article.

For years, I have been using an IDE Travan tape for backup. I detailed the advantages of removable media like tape and how to use it under Linux in another article.

However, the choice of tape drives and tape cartridges for a home office environemnt are rather limited. The media is expensive, and the drives are also expensive.

My Seagate IDE Travan drive is capable of backing up 10GB, and 20GB with compression. This was satisfactory for years, until I got a 4 megapixel camera, and disk usage started to go up. I had to split the backup into two tapes, one for the pictures directory, and another for everything else.

Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distribution. There are many variants, including Kubuntu (Ubuntu with a KDE desktop), Edubuntu (education oriented Ubuntu), ...etc.Now there is a new edition: Christian Ubuntu. No, it is not a joke. It is real. It includes the Bible, as well as web parental control software. Here is the announcement on the Ubuntu Forums.Of course, something like that would always invoke jokes, such as this blog called Ubuntu Christian Edition Facts. It clearly says that it is a joke.

I needed to update by development server, which is also a home network server, which has Samba, NFS, autofs, NIS as well as the usual LAMP stack, and CVS, subversion, and other tools.

The move was to be  synchronized with my moving from Mandriva to Ubuntu server as well.

Pentium 4 with ASUS P4S8X-MX

Initially, I bought a nice used Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, but it it was unstable and kept rebooting under load. Later, I found out that  the  CPU was defective  and  I am waiting for Intel to send me a replacement. The machine is also based on ASUS P4S8X-MX, which has no lm-sensors support, so CPU and motherboard temperatures and fan speed cannot be monitored on Linux.

Update: this article is for Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06). If you are using later versions, or other Linux distributions, then visit the following links:

• Installing PHP APC on GNU/Linux Gusty Gibbon 7.10 and (Debian).
• Installing PHP APC on GNU/Linux CentOS 5.

APC is a op-code cache for PHP that eliminates the parsing and compiling of script(s) for every page hit. Unlike Zend, it is truly free, and seems to have a lot of commuity momentum behind it lately.

As with all optimizations, there is a trade off. APC can use more memory on your server than without it.

The instructions below assumes that you have full control of your server, whether a physical dedicated server or a virtual private server.

Although one can always compile from source, this is more time consuming than using Debian's excellent apt-get.

Here is how I did it on two machines, with one more to go.

A often repeated fallacy is that Windows is more prone to security vulnerabilities because it has the largest installed base among desktops and servers, both at home and in the corporate world. The fallacy says that if Linux and Apple had a similarly large installed base, they would also be found to be vulnerable.This claim seems to be widespread even among those who are technically savvy. The facts do contradict this claim. For example, Apache is the most widely used web server on the internet, with more web sites running it than all others combined. Apache is not found to be prone to attacks and security issues as much as Microsoft IIS for example.

In the mid 1990, I came to know of a fungicide being sold under the UNIX name.

At the time, I was working in Saudi Arabia for AT&T after its acquisition of NCR, and the general manager called me in to ask about this matter.

I told him that from what I know, trademark law does not cross domains. This means the use of UNIX in domains other than computers is permitted.

I send that info to the late Dennis Ritchie, the father of UNIX, and he put it on his site under Other UNIXes.

After upgrading from Mandrake Linux 10.0 to Mandriva Linux LE 2005 10.2, I found out that there is a serious issue with either Mandriva or with kernel 2.6.11.

This article describes the issues faced upon upgrade, adn how to work around them.

In February 2005, Mandrake Soft of France and Conectiva of Brazil, announced that they merged. Shortly afterwards, in April 2005, they announced that they are changing their name to Mandriva. Then they released Mandriva Limited Edition 2005 (LE2005) which is what Mandrake 10.2 should have been.

Since I have several machines at home, all running Mandrake, it was time to start the annual upgrade to stay current.