ThreeGeeks.org » Linux / Unix

More #archlinux IRC fun :)

Eric Jackson — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:05:04 +0000

ondemand governor failed, too long transition latency of HW, fallback to performance governor

o.O

try the conservative governor

it reacts slower.

john_f: No politics in on-topic!

!next

Another satisfied customer! NEXT!

ahahah….wow

nice

Opera 10 has been released.

MasterBlasterGabe — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:15:42 +0000

Opera 10 browser released

Opera Software, the Norwegian developer of the Opera web browser, has released a stable Opera 10 update. The new update promises to provide its users with faster downloads and browsing, along with new features. The company said that Opera 10 is significantly faster than the competition on resource-demanding pages such as Gmail and Facebook. One of its new features is new full thumbnails of open tabs.

For those with low speed connections, Opera 10 includes a “Turbo” feature that packages web pages, which it claims can make Opera up to eight times faster than rival browsers. It is battling for third place in the browser arena with Google Chrome and Safari, but is also far behind the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox products.

“We have worked a lot on Opera Turbo technology and have also made major improvements on the overall product stability. This is the most stable Opera browser yet,” Opera Software said. Opera’s desktop browser is more popular in countries like Ukraine and Russia, whereas the Opera Mobile browser is widely used with mobile handsets. Some of Opera’s touted features include…

Notes: Write down notes about the page you are viewing.
FastForward and Rewind: Opera tries to anticipate the page you want to go next and speeds up browsing by pre-loading the page.
Skinning: Changing the look of a browser has never been easier with Opera’s new one-click skin install. Just pick and click once on any of the many skins available at MyOpera community.
Mouse gestures: Browse backwards and forwards, reload pages, close and open windows etc. with simple mouse gestures.
Keyboard shortcuts: Triple your efficiency by getting rid of that ridiculous mouse and use fast and convenient keyboard shortcuts.

Download Opera 10 for Windows
Download Opera 10 for Linux
Download Opera 10 for Mac OS X

Clustering

Eric Jackson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:56:36 +0000

A few weeks ago I saw a guy (X-Ravin) on Overclock.net who had set up a cluster for folding. I asked him how his set up works, and he was kind enough to PM me and explain it very well:

Hey I know this was a few weeks ago, but I just saw where you were asking about my cluster setup. It’s very simple to setup a basic Beowulf cluster with old machines, as long as they can boot from the network. For folding, there really isn’t a whole lot to it. Notfred has a good guide to diskless folding, just google notfred. As for the physical setup, I have a master node with 2 NICs in it. One NIC connects to my home network which is on a basic 4 port Best Buy router. The other NIC connects to a big 24 port Netgear unmanaged switch. In Windows 7 I simply bridge the 2 NICs together so that the internet is shared. That sums up the hardware, now on to the software. On the master node I installed TFTP and configured it as a DHCP server with an IP range above my home network, but still in the same subnet. I then configured TFTP to run in PXE mode, and set it to send the pxe boot file from notfred’s package. Once this is all configured, I just start booting nodes one by one and watching them come online. Finally, since notfred’s distro has samba, you can use fahmon on any computer on your home network or the private cluster network.

Now this isn’t what I normally use the cluster for because folding isn’t a cluster application. Each node is simply acting as a individual computer. Using PelicanHPC Linux I use what is call the Message Passing Interface aka MPI to write and execute programs that use the cluster as a real cluster. Setting up Pelican is even easier, but using MPI can be a bit tougher unless you are familiar with programming in c,c++ or fortran. Anyways, to get a Pelican cluster up, you can use the same setup as above, but internet is optional. Download the latest PelicanHPC DVD and boot it. After it loads, it will list the command to build the cluster, then it will walk you through booting the nodes etc. That’s it! Now you can write and execute MPI programs with no setup. Quite handy, although setting up MPI in Ubuntu isn’t very difficult. It’s getting all the NFS and hosts stuff down that’s tough.

Hope that gives you a start!

I really wish I had a bunch of old computers so I could toy around with setting up a cluster. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it. X-Ravin, thank you for the very thorough explanation.

X-Ravin’s Blog – He does some really amazing stuff. Half of it is completely over my head, but it’s fun to read and attempt to understand, haha.

PelicanHPC

Notfred’s Folding@Home Diskless Programs

[Distrowatch] Kolibri – a desktop operating system in under 3 MB

Eric Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:35:16 +0000

How much memory and disk space do you need for an operating system? If you’re running the latest offerings from Microsoft, you probably want several gigabytes of both. For the larger Linux distros, the answer is probably a bit smaller. For mini versions of Linux one might want a few hundred megabytes of disk space and nearly that much RAM. But what if I told you that I was recently running a modern operating system that requires about 5 MB of disk space and about 10 MB of RAM? That sounds like a stretch, doesn’t it, even for Tiny Core Linux?

The tiny operating system I’m talking about is called Kolibri. It’s a fork of the MenuetOS project and is currently licensed under the GNU GPL. The operating system is designed to run on 32-bit x86 processors and is written entirely in assembly language. Kolibri contains a lot of familiar features, yet stands out with its own identity.

more HERE

Once this matures a bit, it will be great for breathing new life into ancient machines.

Linux is on my TV!

Eric Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:33:50 +0000

That’s a screenshot from my TV tuner. My cable TV seems to be out atm, it’s all fuzz on the normal TV, but for some reason my TV tuner picks this up? The normal TV does have the digital box though, I supposed that has something to do with it just being fuzz and then going to a blue screen instead of getting this Linux broadcast. I’m getting this on most channels. Some are working fine, some are just showing a still image of whatever was on, some just get no signal, but most just have this Linux terminal

Linux is on TV!

Do cable TV provides utilize Linux somehow? I have Comcast Cable by the way. I guess Linux is much more widespread than I thought!

EDIT: Well, my TV is back on now, and the Linux screen never changed, it was just frozen there. I was watching it waiting for something to happen. It would’ve been cool to watch them fix my TV live lol

Arch guys are funny people

Eric Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:48:58 +0000

[PC World] Windows 7’s Deadly Sins

MasterBlasterGabe — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:00:30 +0000

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) last week launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it “treacherous computing” that stealthily takes away rights from users.

At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven “sins” that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users.

They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading your privacy.

“Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,” said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft’s Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have “malicious and really complete control over your computer.”

The result is that Microsoft could do things like Amazon.com, which last month went into customers’ Kindle e-readers and deleted illegally-sold copies of novels such as George Orwell’s 1984 , he said.

“This is treacherous computing,” Brown said.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group, best-known for overseeing the General Public License (GPL) used by most open-source software, including Linux , will hold a rally at noon in Boston Common, where it will unveil a 12-foot-tall art installation depicting Windows 7 “being trashed,” Brown said.

The group is also sending a letter (available at the group’s Web site) to top executives at Fortune 500 companies that argues their companies would benefit ethically, technically and, in the long-term, financially, from switching away from Windows and Microsoft Office to free alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.org.

Founded in the mid-1980s by hacker-activist Richard Stallman , the FSF argues that free software and source code is a moral right. It takes pains to distinguish itself from the open-source movement, which advocates sharing of source code but tolerates charging for software.

Both groups, however, view proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems Inc., and Apple Inc. as the enemy, Brown said.

Even with DRM, users running Windows PCs still maintain more freedom and privacy than those who foolishly use cloud computing services such as Google Docs and store their data there.

“That is the ultimate giving-away of your freedom,” he said. “That’s not a software freedom issue, it’s a stupidity issue.”

While Brown acknowledges that many Fortune 500 companies base their businesses around proprietary business models similar to Microsoft, he also points out that most of them, at least regarding software, are more consumer than vendor.

“Large corporations spend an awful lot of money on software. They face numerous software audits and more vendor lock-in than you or me,” Brown said. “Do you think they would rather be driving on a freeway, or always be paying on toll roads?”

“I’m not expecting an instant wave of companies switching off XP to Linux,” he said. “But we would like get that debate going. Hopefully, some will re-evaluate and say no to Windows 7.”

via – http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170842/windows_7s_deadly_sins.html

My Arch setup

Eric Jackson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:14:56 +0000

Arch screenshot

For those of you curious, I use Openbox as my WM. Credit for the Conky config goes to Ghost1227, I modified one of his themes, the original can be found here. The panel is Tint2.

This is my secondary machine which consists of a 2.4ghz Pentium 4, 512mb of ram, and an AGP Geforce 6200LE. It is set up right next to my main rig, the specs of which were included in my introduction post. My main rig is dual boot with Arch and Windows XP, but is generally running Windows, as I do a bit of PC gaming.

[AP] Ownership of Unix copyright headed to trial

MasterBlasterGabe — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:14:24 +0000

By P. SOLOMON BANDA (AP) – 4 hours ago

DENVER — A federal appeals court on Monday reversed a judge’s decision that granted the copyright of the Unix computer operating system to Novell Inc.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge erred in August 2007 by granting the copyright to Novell. The panel ordered a trial to determine ownership.

Novell, a software and computer infrastructure company, has been locked in a yearslong legal battle with The SCO Group Inc. of Lindon, Utah, over ownership to the copyright.

SCO said the ruling paves the way for resumption of the court case.

SCO filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007, drained by unsuccessfully filing lawsuits claiming its software code was misappropriated by developers of the open-source Linux operating system.

“For us it’s a case of survival, of protecting what we own.” SCO chief executive Darl McBride told The Associated Press.

Part of the Unix computer code, which was developed by AT&T in 1969, is used in the Linux operating system.

McBride said the development and distribution of Linux has caused the company’s revenues to drop from $250 million a year to $15 million, forcing the company to file for bankruptcy.

“There are 20 million versions of Linux running around the world,” McBride said, referring to his estimate of company servers using Linux. “Linux at the end of the day is a knock off of our Unix.”

Novell has operations in Provo, Utah, and Waltham, Mass. A Novell spokesman did not return a message seeking comment.

SCO has another lawsuit pending against IBM Corp., claiming Big Blue’s Unix license for IBM’s core AIX system was canceled in 2003 and IBM improperly gave away Unix source code for use in Linux.

McBride said the appellate panel’s ruling reinstates SCO’s claims against IBM, most which had been dismissed because of Novell’s claim to the Unix copyright. A message left after business hours for IBM was not immediately returned.

Trial dates for SCO’s lawsuits against Novell and IBM have not been set. Both cases are pending in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.

//

via – http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gy7xOEtDPSjS6lcWVH08sJToI4gQD9A9KITG3

[TF] 25 PirateBay Alternatives

MasterBlasterGabe — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:33:30 +0000

The end of the Pirate Bay is nearing. Even if the deal with GGF doesn’t go through the current owners are likely to sell to one of the other interested parties. For many BitTorrent fans this means that they have to find an alternative. Luckily there are plenty of good ones out there.

Replacing The Pirate Bay is easier said then done. The tracker is currently responsible for approximately half of all public torrent transfers, which represents a significant percentage of global Internet traffic.

However, history has shown that BitTorrent users are an adaptive species that simply migrates to the next site when their home bases become uninhabitable.

While private trackers certainly have their place and will accommodate those lucky enough to get an invite, for this article we are interested in sites that are open to everyone, ranging from full Pirate Bay replacements to a do-it-yourself setup.

Full Pirate Bay Alternatives

The only full Pirate Bay alternatives are sites that index torrent files, are open to everyone and also have a working tracker. Unfortunately, there are only a few sites out there that offer this full package -there are four of them below. We decided to include Demonoid here because it tracks many public torrents.

1. Torrentbox

2. 1337x

3. H33t

4. Demonoid (semi-private)

Torrent Indexers

Torrent indexers are sites that have a searchable directory of torrent files, but don’t host a (public) tracker of their own. Mininova has a tracker, but they only allow ‘featured’ torrents uploaded through their content distribution service. The most used torrent indexers are:

5. Mininova

6. isoHunt

7. Torrentreactor

8. BTjunkie

Torrent Meta-Seach Engines

BitTorrent meta-search engines are yet another brand of torrent sites. They don’t have a tracker and don’t host any torrent files on their servers. Instead they search for and link to torrents hosted on third party sites.

9. Torrentz

10. Nowtorrents

11. Qtorrents

12. Torrent-Finder

Private Trackers (open signup)

Most of the larger private trackers require an invite to join, but there are always a few that allow new members. Below are four of these (open) private trackers and more can be found on Btracs.

13. RTN

14. BiteMyTorrent

15. BitShock

16. TorrentIt

Standalone BitTorrent Trackers

Torrent indexers and meta-search engines can be used to find torrents, but none of them will be of much use without a stable BitTorrent tracker. Standalone BitTorrent trackers are much needed, they handle the communication between downloaders but don’t index any torrents themselves.

17. OpenBitTorrent

18. PublicBitTorrent

19. The Hidden Tracker

20. Denis.Stalker

DIY Pirate Bay Alternatives

The last category of Pirate Bay alternatives are the do-it-yourself projects. By using the three ingredients below The Pirate Bay can be easily rebuilt. It might take a few hours, but then the path to world domination is clear.

21. Pirate Bay Torrents Clone

22. Pirate Bay HTML Clone

23. Torrage: Torrent API

24. Tracker Software

Last but not Least

Google, the mother of all search engines has a filetype:torrent search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet. Don’t tell the MPAA and RIAA.

25. Google

If you think we missed any good alternatives, please feel free to add your own in the comment section below, while clearly noting which category they fit into.

Via TorrentFreak