Linux Jobs

There are may types of jobs out there for people who know how to use Linux. One of my favorites was a guy that I met at the library who promotes the use of Linux and other open source programs by teaching the public about them. He gives out free Ubuntu CDs and discusses other ways to get free software. Of course he is also a Linux expert and works with the library system on expanding their network and systems to using Linux and other open source software.

Most of the jobs I see online are for Linux administrators. They use Linux to build servers for businesses or to convert from Windows servers. Another position is for Linux Developers who actually program for Linux/Unix. They use the shell as well as other programing languages like PEARL and C++ to write programs and applications for companies who need them.

Linux Penguin

I honestly think that Mr. Torvalds is like me. He loves penguins! How can you not, they are short, waddle and hope around like they are a little drunk, when the get in the water they swim like highly maneuverable torpedoes, and wear a suit wherever they go. I once got to see them in the wild and they were hilarious the way they walked and played!

Really, after some research, Mr. Torvalds just wanted to give an image of a "lovable, cuddly, stuffed penguin sitting down after having gorged itself on herring" (http://www.linux.org/info/penguin.html).

He wanted an image that would show a fun creature at peace with the world who is contented not to have to use and pay for Windows anymore. A creature that is free to roam the oceans from the equator to the pole without any navigational problems. I could go on trying to be poetic about this but I think that you all get the idea.

Net Neutrality

What is "net neutrality"? What does the FCC and Comcast have to do with it? Take a side and defend your position. Make is interesting for me.

Net neutrality is basically about freedom to use the internet for whatever you want without limitations. Currently there are no laws to enforce this freedom and there are lobbyists on both sides trying to either get it into law or keep it out.

It breaks down like this... Some ISPs may in the future decide that it is in their financial interest to direct traffic to a search engine or other site with whom they have partnered with. They could do this by blocking your access to the other search engines.

Also they could use this to offer tiered service. For example, if you are a web designer and upload a lot of info via FTP or a gamer who likes to play online games the ISP could limit your services if you don't pay more. They could say to the web designer that they have to pay for a more expensive business account or the online gamer to pay for faster access to their games.

The FCC is the regulatory agency that currently doesn't have adequate regulations to allow for net neutrality. Comcast was found to be blocking or delaying BitTorrent uploads on their network. Comcast was penalized for doing so but never had to admit that it did anything wrong. Within a year the FCC ruled that Comcast broke the law by limiting access to bandwidth.

I believe that net neutrality is important but I do not think that we have to go around making laws in favor of it. Congress placing laws against net netrality can just make it harder to change later if those laws are abused. It seems like the FCC did address the problem with Comcast in the end.

Another reason I disagree with making laws is because it goes against the basic idea of capitalization. If a company decides to limit service or offer a tiered system they will most likely fail because everyone will go to a different provider. It is their risk to institute a such a system. If the public decides to go for it, it will be societies fault for not boycotting it. According to Wikipedia, Time Warner Cable "introduced their intention to move to a 'consumption based billing' plan." Basically they where going to charge people more for higher usage. When the put their plan into action the public got pretty angry and they had to abandon their efforts. Regulations can be made as serious abuses are committed but there is no need to overreact.

Buying an iPad?

Basically this article is saying that the iPad may be a wonderful and exciting new toy, but it is just the first product to come out. There will be many more companies that will be bringing out similar tablets that will have many more options. Apple doesn't a wonderful job at putting together sleek cool toys like iPhones and such but many time there are other products that do the job just as well for a much smaller price.

Why would you want to buy an iPad now? For one thing you know that they will just drop the price significantly in another 6 months. Also, as the article says there are Linux based pads coming out. This means that the will be more options and downloads, many of which will be open-source. Do you want to pay Apple for every app you download? Another thing, the iPad is already out of date if you can't even use Flash on it. How many websites are out there that use flash (especially ones like youtube.com)? How much fun can you have with an iPad that runs only one app at a time and you can't even enjoy half of the sites that are out there?

If I were you I would wait and see what happens. Now that Apple has some competition they will have to find a way to upgrade the firmware to allow for more options and lower their price. I wouldn't even buy the iPad because I like that other pads will be open for more development. This means more free stuff! And if Google is getting in on it even better. Then we will see some clean software that runs well and offers ease of use on top.

SCO v. Novell Trial

Basically this lawsuit boils down to who had the right to use the UNIX software. Everything started with a deal in 1995 where Novell transferred certain rights and royalties of said software to what eventually became The SCO Group. The problem then developed when SCO filed a suit against IBM claiming it owned Unix. Novell then stated that it never sold the copyrights and eventually registered several key Unix copyrights later that year.

This really pissed off SCO and they filed a lawsuit against Novell. After years of trials, appeals, etc. Novell finally won the case and as of a couple days ago now officially owns the copyrights.

Blog 5 - Team Frednet

This is a very interesting approach to a sophisticated project. Team Frednet wants to send a lunar rover to the moon using less money by using the open source model. I think that this is an excellent idea! It gets people from all around the world together to work on it, creating a community of people with common interests.

This could eventually advance space exploration technology by opening communication lines between many different scientists and engineers that may never speak or write to each other otherwise.

It also inspires young people to study robotics and space exploration, getting them to think about these things from a young age.

Another great things is that it gets this project away from bloated, publicly funded groups like NASA which means they will find new ways to cut cost and maybe make future space travel cheaper.

Check out their site, who knows maybe you can help too!

Blog 6 - Linux Kernels

The newest linux kernel is 2.6.x. The 2 stands for the version, the .6 stands for a major revision and the .x is the minor revision. Linux uses an odd - even numbered system. The odd numbers stand for the lastest development revision which may have bugs in it and the even numbers stand for the latest stable revision. This means that version 2.5 evolved into 2.6 after all of the errors and bugs have been worked out. Now there is even a fourth number such as 2.6.8.1 which shows there was a very minor change. The reason behind this is to get the development versions out there so they can be worked on by more people to get the bugs out. If you are not a developer and want the most secure version you should always go for an even numbered version.

Blog 5 - Lab 4

Part 1 Using vi

DONE

Part 2

1. Use wc to tell me how many lines are in the file /etc/fstab. How did you do this and what answer did you get?

There are 11 lines in fstab.

First I had to get to the correct directory by typing cd /etc. Then I just typed wc fstab. This command gives me a line that says " 11 51 556 fstab". The first number is the number of lines in the file. Afterwards I checked by typing cat fstab and there are to be 11 lines.


2. Use wc to tell me how many words are in the file /etc/fstab. How did you do this and what answer did you get?

There are 51 words in fstab.

I found this out the same way as above except the number of words is the second number. Here I didn't double check using the cat command.

3. Use echo to tell me what is contained in the following variables:

HISTSIZE - 1000
LOGNAME - mminten
HOME - /home/mminten
MAIL - /var/mail/mminten
SHELL - /bin/bash


4. Create a variable called NAME that holds you first name. How did you do this?

I just typed 'NAME=Matthew'. When I type 'echo $NAME' it appears to be there. Now I have a question for you... when I type 'env' to see all of my variables it does not appear in the list. Where does it go? I can see its value when I type the echo command.

Blog 4

Lab week 4

1. What is your pwd?

The command 'pwd' lists the working directory. Currently it is /home/mminten.

2. Using an absolute path, go to the/etc/gimp directory. How did you do this?

I did this by typing 'cd /etc/gimp'.

3. Using a relative path, go back to your home directory (your pwd). How did you do this?

I can go straight to my home directory by typing 'cd' or 'cd ~'. If I want to go back a step I can type 'cd ..' but this will not get me back to my home directory.

4. What is you PATH set to? How did you find this out?

I found my PATH by typing 'echo $PATH' and my PATH is set to: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

5. From your home directory (make sure you are there using pwd) use the ls –a command to see how many files you have, including the hidden files. How did you do this?

I have 6 files (.bash_history .bash_logout .bashrc Examples .lesshst .profile) in total. I found this by typing pwd to check that I was in my home directory and then typing ls -a to see the hidden files (which have a . in front of them).

6. Create a directory called week4 using the following syntax:

mkdir week4
Check using ls to be sure it is there.

7. Copy the file .profile to your new directory and rename it when you do, using the following command:

cp .profile week4/profilenew

8. See if it worked first by making sure your original file is there and then that he new file is there:

ls –a

Do you see the .profle file? Yes

ls week4
Do you see the new file? Yes

9. Change into your week4 directory using the cd command:
cd week4
Confirm you are there by typing: pwd

10. Once you are in your new directory, you will create a subdirectory inside of it:

mkdir lab

FYI, your absolute path to that directory is: /home/your_login_name/week4/lab.

11. We will now move the file profilenew to our new directory called lab. You need to be inside of your week4 folder for these commands to work:

ls

Do you see the profilenew file? Yes

mv profilenew lab

ls

Do you see the profilenew file? No

ls lab

Is it in the new folder called lab? Yes

12. Let’s try to remove the directory called lab. You should still be in the week4 directory:

rmdir lab

What happens? Why?

Nothing happens, it give an error message telling me it can't remove the 'lab' directory because it is not empty.

Go back to your home by typing:
Cd ~

13. I have told you how helpful the man pages can be. Pretend we just installed a new sound card and cannot remember the command we need that will run the sound volume meter. Le’s use either man –k or apropos to find out what that is:

man –k sound

You can see you can scroll through and find the command you are looking for. What is it?

'vumeter'

Sometimes too much info confuses it. Type:

man –k sound volume meter

Did you get the results you wanted?

I can find the 'vumeter' command in the list but the list is much longer than when I just typed 'apropos sound'.

Blog 3 - Cathedral vs the bazaar

Cathedral vs the Bazaar was an essay and now is a book written by Eric S. Raymond about software development methods. Cathedral and Bazaar are to different model for developing open source code. The Cathedral model basically releases software versions with the source code but between releases only a relatively small group of developers have access to it. The Bazaar model basically develops the code openly over the internet where any programmer has access to it.

The importance of the bazaar model and Mr. Raymond's theory is that you can release software earlier and more often and have your customers and other programmers try to perfect the code by working on all the bugs that everyone reports. This follows the basic idea that two minds are better than one and that hundreds of minds are better than 10 or 20. With this idea in mind the workload diminishes by spreading it out to whoever wishes to work on it.

Blog 2 - Questions 1-4 pg. 277

1. Regarding Konqueror the file manager:

a. Konqueror is a very powerful desktop tool that offers much more than your standard web browser. I can also be used as a file manager with access to local and network drives.

b. With Konqueror you can search the internet, access local files, access an FTP site, and you ca run a textual program by opening the Run Command window.

c. You can search for a file by typing the file name in the search box on the toolbar.

2. A Terminal Emulator brings up a window that "mimics a character based terminal" (p.273). This allows you to run text based programs separate from the GUI.

3. Klipper is a program that stores what you cut and paste to the buffer (like Microsoft's clipboard). Whenever you highlight text it is sent to klipper. If you open klipper you can click on the line you would like to paste then move the mouse to where you want to paste and middle-click.

4. a. Nautilus is a simple File Manager.

b. Two was you can execute a file in Nautilus are through the spatial view and the traditional File Browser view. The spatial view opens each new folder in a new window and the traditional view has a sidepane and a viewpane where files are shown.

c. Nautilus 'knows' how to open a file by looking at it's MIME type.

d. The three most common control bars are the menubar, the toolbar, and the locationbar. The menubar holds all the drop down menus with many options each. The toolbar has navigation tools like forward and back. Finally the locationbar shows where you are (path name) and has viewing options like zoom.

e. The Nautilus location bar is used to show the path name. You can also use it to enter an absolute path name. There are also options to zoom in and zoom out as well as a view as... option.

7 things you don't need to know about me

Seven things you don’t know about me...

1. I am a native Renoite
   
2. I lived in Argentina for 4 years
   
3. I have been working with computers since I was 5 or 6 when floppy discs were 11 inches.
   
4. Soon after that I was programing simple games using Basic.
   
5. I love to cook and read.
   
6. I thoroughly enjoy many of the outdoor sports in this area.
7. I have my own Web Design company: Inventive Web Design