Linux

Face it, not all programs offer a good user interface, or lack some stability. Some even might even drive you crazy. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet. And, in other cases still, you’ll learn that some proprietary programs are real gems, but that the open source advocate can replace those gems with equally shiny objects from the open source repertoire.

One image says more than thousand words. One beautiful image says more than your 50 page report why you need more server hardware. Adding gradients to RRDtool graphs adds the necessary schwung to your monitoring reports.

Linuxscrew.com has a nice overview of Linux alternatives for famous Windows software.

The following error makes me frown : default value in power.sh potentially kills laptop disks. When switching to battery power, /etc/acpi/power.sh issues the command hdparm -B 1 to all block devices. This leads to extremely frequent load cycles, thereby drastically limiting the life cycle of a laptop disk.
It seems this was a month ago on Digg, but I still haven't found out if this is valid or not. The bug thread ends on Oct 13th, so maybe this is solved in Gutsy ?

The Linux Weather Forecast features 'current conditions' for kernel development, a 'short-term forecast,' and a 'long-term forecast', and is an excellent page to keep track of the current kernel development. Its editor is Jonathan Corbet, known as Executive Editor at LWN.

Compiz and Beryl, the 2 Linux graphical environments, are merging into one project, containing the plugin set “Compiz Extras” and the window manager core independent parts of the “Beryl” project. Compiz Fusion is the result. I installed the first release onto my Ubuntu desktop; lots and lots of new eye candy, of which the most important seem to me :

- Desktop Expo : View all desktops at a glance and move windows between them with a beautiful reflective effect.
- Mouse Switch : switch viewports by scrolling on the desktop
- Mouse gestures
- Shift Switcher : switch between windows in a Vista like style or in a Cover Flow style with a cool reflection effect.

However, all of my Windows have a solid black shadow, so I still have the impression that Compiz Fusion still is plagued with unwanted NVidia side effects.

The Proceedings of the 2007 Linux Symposium are now individually available in PDF format.

PowerTOP is a Linux tool from Intel that finds the software component(s) which make your laptop use more power than necessary while it is idle. As of Linux kernel version 2.6.21, the kernel no longer has a fixed 1000Hz timer tick. This will (in theory) give a huge power savings because the CPU stays in low power mode for longer periods of time during system idle. For PowerTOP to work best, use a Linux kernel with the tickless idle (NO_HZ) feature enabled (version 2.6.21 or later). Currently, only 32-bit kernels have support for tickless idle; 64-bit kernels are expected to gain this feature in version 2.6.23.

In Making the Distribution, a series of three developerworks articles, Daniel Robbins talks about the circumstances in which he left Stampede Linux, to found his own speed-optimized Linux distribution we all know now as Gentoo.
Beware of the one-sided view of this article : Daniel Robbins did leave the Stampede project because of severe tensions with other Stampede collaborators. The same thing seems to happen in Gentoo too : Daniel left the project in 2004 for personal reasons. He officially re-joined the Gentoo development team two weeks ago - only to resign a few days later. The reason? Strong personal attacks by some of the current developers of the project. Distrowatch even claims that Gentoo is dying.

Sure, we Unix admins are all command line gurus. But there are always some obscure Unix commands we never heard of. Like 'col' or 'nl'. Tiny little gems, which make our daily lives so much easier. Here are some other handy Unix commands we hardly ever use.