2001 November

Slackware Linux
http://www.slackware.com/
The home of this week’s Great Distro Review contender. Slackware.com is quite a nice site in a simple and straightforward way. In other words, the design lends itself to an analogy to the distribution. Don’t let the simplicity of the site design fool you, though. If there’s anything you want to know about Slackware, this [...]

AbiWord

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/abiword/abiword-0.9.5.tar.gz
http://www.abisource.com/
ABiWord is, as the name suggests, a standalone word processing program. Not just for Linux, AbiWord is available for Windows, Linux/PPC, QNX, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. The design is a page straight out of Redmond - a two-edged sword, if you will. Word users will be immediately comfortable with the interface. Linux die-hards may scoff at [...]

System Services - /etc/inittab
We’re finishing up the first month of Penguin Shell this week. It seems like a good time to dig deep into the heart of Linux. If today’s GnomeCORE seems a bit tough, don’t despair. Read it, understand it as best you can, and save whatever you learn for later use. These are [...]

Colorizing Slack Directories
I’m not a big fan of colorizing. In fact, I’m quite happy that the fad of colorizing old movies has all but faded to a black and white memory. I have, however, been spoiled by the colorization found in recent commercial Linux distros. With bright greens for executable files, blues for directories, and [...]

I hope your weekend was good. Mine was slow and relaxing. After a lighter week last week, I actually got to catch up on some sleep this weekend. About the most taxing thing I did was to string the Christmas lights along the front of our house. Having spent 13 of my younger years in [...]

Free Online Dictionary of Computing
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/
You’ve already seen this link today, scattered throughout the GnomeCORE section. This site is a great resource for learning the terminology of Linux, and of computing in general. Fully searchable, FOLDOC is an exhaustive resource for computer-related terms and concepts. Each term is accompanied by a useful high-level explanation of the [...]

Galeon

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/galeon/galeon-0.12.8-1-rh6.i386.rpm
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/galeon/galeon-0.12.8.tar.gz
http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
One of the things that keeps people from making the jump to Linux is the perceived scarcity of powerful fast browsers. Netscape has, for the most part, fallen into ill-favor with many users. Mozilla is perceived as not yet ready for prime time. You can pretty safely bet that there will never be a Linux [...]

System Services
Linux systems rely heavily on five systems services; init, inetd, xinetd, syslog, and cron. These systems, while relatively simple in structure, handle many of the most important elements of the Linux OS. They are, to a large extent, the crucial elements of the power and speed with which a well-configured Linux system operates. Over [...]

Creating Directories
As with any system, a Linux system can quickly become a computing home. Everyone has a unique method for organizing the items in their life, even if it’s a complete lack of organization! In order for your Linux system to truly become a computing home, you’ll probably need to find a way to organize [...]

Let me say this. It’s incredibly hard to write when, essentially, you’re in a food coma.
By 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I was wondering if I’d reached the highest tryptophan levels possible in humans without crossing over into raging toxicity. Of course, by 4:30 I was so soundly asleep in the easy chair at my mother-in-law’s house [...]

Linux Hardware Database
Unearthed by Eric George
http://lhd.datapower.com/
You know, sometimes I wonder about the order of things in my world. For example, I got this link after spending way too many hours in an ill-fated Debian install. I clearly could have used it on Sunday night!
The truth is, I think I got it because I’d spent so [...]

3Dwm
http://www.3dwm.org/download/3dwm-0.3.1.tar.gz
http://www.3dwm.org/download/rpm/3dwm-0.3.1-3mdk.src.rpm (rpm)
http://www.3dwm.org/
I’ve been on a roll here, lately. A few weeks ago, I loaded Ximian Gnome as my DE. I’ve loved it as have, apparently, many of you that downloaded and installed it. Yesterday, I came across 3Dwm, the 3D Window Manager. This really hold some promise.
I can appreciate eye candy on my desktop. I [...]

Riddle, Mystery, Enigma
I was building startup scripts today at work. Actually, I was adding commands to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file that runs at boot. It’s a good place to autoexecute commands prior to seeing an X Window desktop. I use it for the few tasks we start at boot that require root privileges to execute. Today, [...]

Characters Are Wild
I know we’ve talked a bunch about searching for files, strings and patterns in Linux. As you start to get comfortable with the shell and move around within it more and more, these commands really start to show their power. I want to take a paragraph or two to mention yet another ‘matching’ [...]

The skies were incredibly clear last night. Standing on my light polluted driveway, I could see whisps of the Milky Way running from the north to the south. Saturn stood high, glimmering like a single white grain of sand in a vast black desert. Through the thin breath-clouds condensing in front of me, Vega, Deneb [...]

LinuxIso.org
Unearthed by Aaron Korver
http://www.linuxiso.org/
If you’re up to playing along at home with the Great Distro Review, LinuxIso.org is a great place to find the distro o’ the week. There are 23 distributions available in .iso format, all laid out in a easy to navigate format. Using multiple mirrors, LinuxIso.org attempts to provide you with the fastest connection [...]

Bluefish
ftp://bluefish.advancecreations.com/bluefish/downloads/bluefish-0.7.tar.gz
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/
Bluefish is a GPL-licensed HTML editor for Linux. This is a very strong tool for building dynamic sites, featuring a WYSIWYG interface, CSS dialogs, customizable per-project dialog settings, a full set of wizards, and a complete project/link management system. Bluefish was thought to be the first great WYSIWYG editor for Linux 18 months ago or [...]

Apt Getting
Despite the difficulties of configuration and time with Debian this week, I have seen some very useful and valuable tools that are specific to the distribution. One of those is the Advanced Package Tool or apt. Coupled with get, this tool is easily the most advanced package management system going.
We talked about package management [...]

Changing Users
I made mention yesterday of the “su” command and a difference of opinion in what it actually means. Man - that brought enough email to choke Big Blue. So, I dug through all my resources to see if I could get to the bottom of this command before a comment became a downright controversy.
Several [...]

The Great Distro Review hiccupped today. It actually came to a grinding halt early this morning after two nights of Debian installs. Let me recap the events of the past few evenings for you.
As I noted yesterday, I did manage to find and burn isos for the Debian install. In reality, the download took closer [...]