Linux

One often comes across objections to using free software in commerical packages. These objections are often not based in reality but rather misperceptions, and FUD (Fear, Uncertanity and Doubt).

In this article, I will try to explore these objections, and counter them by facts.

When I tell people that I have six computers networked at home, they are often taken aback. But really really each one does have a certain function, and is used daily. Yes, I know, I am a techno-nerd. Get over it.

Recently, broadband internet has become so common that the use of modems has dropped dramatically. It has been many years since I had to configure a modem on a computer, let alone do so on Linux. However, modems do still have their uses. I bought a used 3COM 5610 PCI modem in order to be able to fax from Linux, and had to relearn how to configure a modem on Linux again. So, here is what I did.

As my home network expands, the time I spend doing administration tasks on it increases. As machines are added, I am required to add users to each machine, and mount directories so they are backed up on the server. By implementing autofs the problem of users' directories is solved. For users, I decided to implement NIS to centralize user administration.

One of the great things about UNIX and Linux is that they were built from the start to be multitasking and multiuser operating systems.

As networking became faster, new additions were done that was also multitasking and multiuser, such as the network file system, or NFS.

If you are interested in Linux and live in the Arab world you may be interested in the following web sites:

• An Evaluation of the use of Linux in business, government and education is a white paper by Kefah Eisa, in Arabic, and in PDF format.
• Various articles on Computer Arabization - A collections of articles on computers and Arabization, including a list of issues in dealing with Arabic on the Internet, and various methods of achieving it.

Introduction

In another article, I have discussed why tapes are still the most efficient form of backup. In this article, I detail how I used tapes in a Linux based home network for backup purposes, using a Seagate/Certance STT20000A IDE ATAPI Internal Travan TR-5 Tape drive. There are also several resources listed.

Read below for more ...

When upgrading Mandrake, e.g. from 9.1 to 10.0, make sure you delete the old hdlist.cz and synthesis.* files from the previous release, and use urpmi.addmedia to add the new release media (CD) to your machine.Here is a list of commands to do that:cd /var/lib/urpmi/# Cleanup the old media for URPMI.# Note: You could delete everything, or just choose to delete the ones that are on the old 9.1 CDs.

I had Mandrake Linux 9.1 running fineon a Dell Optiplex PIII-550 Mhz. The system had a Mitsumi CDR-2801TEon hdc, running with SCSI over IDE emulation.When the time came to upgrade toMandrake Linux 10.0 Final, I booted up CD1 and it loaded fine, untilthe stage where it tries to access the CD and mount it. At thispoint, the kernel halted with the following error:Kernel BUG at drivers/ide/ide-ops.c:1005!

My history with UNIX

This article describes how I came to know about UNIX, and later, Linux.

Part of this is personal, documenting to myself when I started using each of the aforementioned systems.

Part of it is quasi academic research using digital archeology techniques to dig up old mails, search old files and directories, and try to piece together the sequence of events on how the above happened.