2002 February

ELX Linux
http://elxlinux.com/
ELX Linux is “Everyone’s Linux,” the distribution we’re looking at this week in Distro II. ELX has focused heavily on the desktop and the crux of this site is the user’s ability to get up and running with little effort. The site also provides some background information on ELX Linux as a company, on [...]

RobotCop [22 Kb]
http://www.robotcop.org/robotcop-src_0.5.tar.gz
http://www.robotcop.org/
“Robotcop is an open source module for web servers which helps webmasters prevent spiders from accessing parts of their sites they have marked off limits. Spiders which read the robots.txt file are held to its rules. If a spider breaks a law in that file, further requests from that spider are intercepted by [...]

Configuring Multimedia Applications
As much as I like playing CDs while working away in Linux, I have to admit to being an mp3 freak. I love the ability to create mood-driven playlists. Really, I enjoy the process of converting files from their original format to mp3. The reason for that enjoyment is quite simple - it’s [...]

Pretty Grubs
The up-and-coming bootloader on the Linux scene is, without doubt, Grub, the GRand Unified Bootloader. It’s configurable, flexible and offers more recovery options than my old favorite, Lilo. You can also make it look pretty. Pretty grubs? Here’s how.
First, you’ll need that perfect splash image. It should be a 14-color 640×480 .xpm image. If [...]

Remember Emily LaTella, one of the Gilda Radner characters from “Saturday Night Live”? Her catch phrase was simple and apt - “If it’s not one thing it’s another.” I could swear she’s been looking over my shoulder with the glee of a proven theory all week.
Sunday evening at 6:00, I started the install for the [...]

802.11b Antenna Shootout
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html
While not strictly a Linux link, today’s GnomeCLICK is clearly indicative of the spirit of Linux - the constant and ongoing effort to make the technology around us work better. Better, even if the improvements involve Pringles cans.
The 802.11b Antenna Shootout stacked a Lucent commercial wireless antenna against the kind of DIY antennas [...]

Album [52 Kb]
http://MarginalHacks.com/bin/albumhttp://MarginalHacks.com/Hacks/album/
“album is a free HTML/XHTML photo album and gallery generator that supports themes/skins. You can choose different themes or write your own to get different layouts and styles. It automatically crops your thumbnails, so that they are all the same shape, and it descends into directories so you can organize your photos. See [...]

Configuring Multimedia Applications
OK. So, we’ve configure the sound card and walked through the GUI CD interfaces in both Gnome and KDE. Linux also provides a strong collection of tools for listening to mp3 files. You can listen with a GUI or without. Today, I’ll point you to an mp3 tool that’s a built-in for most [...]

Log File Administration
As you roll your way through day-to-day Linux use, you’ll soon learn that there are many administrative tasks, both large and small, that should be carried out on a regular basis. One of those tasks is the administration of your system logs. Without regularly backing up and compressing these files, they’ll soon start [...]

I’m well underway with preparations for Distro II, starting Monday. Let me take a few minutes to recap the fundamentals of this round.
First, the reviews will be over a period of no more than two weeks rather than the week we took for each in the Great Distro Review. This will allow me a bit [...]

Linux Newbie FAQ
http://home.clara.net/george.russell/FAQ.html
The Linux Newbie FAQ is a quick and clean list of common problems encountered by new Linux users. The FAQ starts with emergency help, evidence in my mind that these folks’ hearts certainly are in the right place. With sections addressing installation, “How do I … ?”, administration and utilities, the Linux Newbie [...]

Port Sentry [45 Kb]Unearthed by Wooden Pickle
http://www.psionic.com/downloads/portsentry-1.1.tar.gzhttp://www.psionic.com/products/index.html
“As long as we’re talking about security. I have been using a great program fora while called Port Sentry. It comes with Caldera’s latest release and can be installed super easy on other distros. I just wanted to mention it in case it’s helpful for someone else.
“It’s not a [...]

Configuring Multimedia Applications
Believe it or not, I can remember when vinyl LPs were the standard for music. I even owned a half-speed mastered, virgin vinyl copy of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” put out by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. Even harder to believe is the fact that, in a lot of ways, vinyl [...]

System Settings in KDE
For most of its life, Linux has had a reputation as difficult to configure. Or, perhaps more accurately, easy to configure if you could find the right configuration file. That’s become an increasingly irrelevant point with current distributions, as evidenced by the flexibility of the KDE Control Center.
You’ll find the KDE Control [...]

I must say, I’m duly impressed.
Last week I downloaded and installed the full KDE 2.2.2 package, along with KOffice 1.1.x. I’ve been a KDE user in the past, but have preferred Gnome for quite awhile, especially the Ximian Gnome package. While, by default, Ximian tended to “dumb down” the interface a bit, I’ve used it [...]

Lycoris
http://www.lycoris.com/
Lycoris (formerly known as Redmond Linux) will be the first distribution up for review in Distro II, starting Monday. It seems appropriate to give you some background on the distribution, straight from the manufacturer, before we jump in with both feet for two weeks of use and evaluation.
As you’ll see from the site, Lycoris has [...]

DroidBattles [603 Kb]
http://www.bluefire.nu.droidbattles/droidbattles-latest.tar.gzhttp://bluefire.nu/droidbattles/
DroidBattles (formerly known as BattleBots) is a game of programming. The task is to design your bots and then use the hardware as efficiently as possible by writing a program for it, with the mission to kill any enemy bots on the playground.

Configuring Multimedia Applications
We’re all spoiled by the ability to listen to our favorite CD, play our MP3s or assign various sounds to system events. It’s just part of the computing experience for many of us, even if it only serves as the aural background to other tasks. While configuring sound in Linux is easier than [...]

Pronouncing Linux
It’s always been a point of discussion, how to pronounce Linux. Lee-nix, Lie-nux, Lee-nux - I’ve heard some pronunciations that made absolutely no sense to me at all. So, I thought I’d get it straight from the mouth of the creator. And, believe it or not, so can you.
Linus himself tells us how he [...]

It looks like the job search is finally over, if only temporarily. Next week I start a contract project pulling together a multimedia CD package for a local company owned by McGraw Hill. The contract runs for a few months with a possibility of extension for two more phases of the overall project. The upside? [...]