Ubuntu

I use suPHP for security reasons where applicable. Today, I ran into a situation where my Linux distro's package manager installed a php script, but did so in /usr/share/something, which is fine because a quick symlink of ln -s /usr/share/something /home/sitenamedotcom/web/something took care of the issue. (Yes, I keep my sites in /home/sitenamedotcom.) But this won't work at all since this is /usr/share/anything is way outside the docroot that suPHP is configured with.

But wait, suPHP supports multiple docroots as of the December 2008 suPHP 0.7.0 release, awesome. But none of that matters since my distro doesn't have this version. Sure, they will soon, since they're aware of the issue, but given I tend to jump from their long term support releases which come out every two years (as to avoid getting sucked into a six month cycle where it feels like all I do is update operating systems and spend time fixing the configuration that broke) it looks like I'm stuck without this for about 18 months.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why things are done the way they are. But switching to a packaged program as opposed to subscribing to yet another security list and keeping things up to date myself was supposed to make my life easier. Sigh.

Oh and if you're going to go ahead with this anyhow, the default suPHP configuration has check_vhost_docroot set to true. You'll need to set that to false or your error.log will be littered with lots of foo is not in document root of Vhost of bar errors.

PEOPLE encountering Ubuntu for the first time will find it very similar to Windows. The operating system has a slick graphical interface, familiar menus and all the common desktop software: a Web browser, an e-mail program, instant-messaging software and a free suite of programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

While relatively easy to use for the technologically savvy, Ubuntu -- and all other versions of Linux -- can challenge the average user. Linux cannot run many applications created for Windows, including some of the most popular games and tax software, for example. And updates to Linux can send ripples of problems through the system, causing something as basic as a computer's display or sound system to malfunction.

And computer idiots running Windows have no problems, no flaky hardware drivers, no BSODs, no viruses, trojans or spyware and a clean format fixes everything right away? I reformat at least a dozen computers a year that run Windows and every time I need to deal with pain in the neck drivers that I have to hunt for.

There have been a lot of questions today about just what the recent Debian OpenSSL flaw means for Tor clients. Here's an attempt to explain it in a bit more detail.

Asus has an Eee with a 9" screen running at 1024x600, which was the only thing stopping me from getting one and running either Ubuntu and xfce or maybe even OS x.

But as it turns out, even though some are being unboxed now, the Eee launches on May 12 and the Atom version is rumored to launch in June. I'm too damn impatient.

But there's been another competitor, HP's Mini-Note 2133, and reviews love it. Did I mention is has a 1280x768 screen? And is only slightly larger?

How slightly? I made papercraft versions of each machine given their dimensions so I could look at them next to each other and found the small difference in volume to not matter. Little did I know, someone already took pictures of the Eee and Mini-note side by side.

Unboxings of the Mini-note are popping up, the only other information I've seen on this now-shipping machine is one very unhappy user.

Given the Mini-note's larger resolution display and the fact that it is available now, I'm probably going to snatch that up. Why Asus would go with a lower resolution screen is beyond me.

Apple announced today new Mac Pro's:

Apple® today introduced the new Mac® Pro with eight processor cores and a new system architecture that delivers up to twice the performance of its predecessor*. The new Mac Pro combines two of Intel’s new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2 GHz, powerful new graphics and up to 4TB of internal storage to offer the ideal system for creative professionals, 3D digital content creators and scientists. The standard 8-core configuration starts at just $2,799.

...

Every Mac Pro comes standard with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory. The Mac Pro includes a new PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot that delivers up to double the bandwidth compared to the previous generation, and supports the latest generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA, such as the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of video memory, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of video memory and a 3-D stereo port for stereo-in-a-window applications.

Time to eBay my MacBook Pro tonight and pick up one of these. It will make photo work much much faster. I thought about getting a single 2.8 GHz quad-core CPU and just popping in a second one myself since Apple tends to charge through the nose for components, but apparently, the pricing on the CPUs is quite competitive. Factor in the Mac Pro-specific heatsink I'd need to track down and it isn't actually worth it. (But I'll certainly be doing the RAM upgrades myself.)

I remember when I had a dual Pentium Pro tower and all my friends had CPUs that were much faster, but they were single processor machines. But under load, mine was fine and their mouse pointer's position would refresh every half a second. Since then I've been using laptops for portability, but thanks to my iPhone, I've got the web and email in a much smaller (though often not as convenient) form factor. Since I'm starting to do more photography and dealing with many gigabytes of RAW photos, the horsepower would be a welcome addition.

Besides, if I find I really need a portable computer, and not just a phone, I can run XFCE and Ubuntu on an EEE.

eeeXubuntu is a custom version of the Xubuntu 7.10 Live CD with fully-integrated hardware support, including native wireless drivers, functioning Ethernet support, tweaks for low-resolution desktop environments, and other miscellaneous fixes. Wherever possible, these changes are incorporated using custom .deb packages rather than spewing assorted files all over post-install.

I love XFCE.

It's articles like this that make me look into buying virtualization software. I'm very not used to having a MAMP stack because managing a LAMP stack, as I have been for years, is worlds easier. Sure Apple has Software Update for the OS and various other software offerings of theres, but how much longer until an all encompassing solution like Debian's (and Ubuntu's) apt software and deb file format?

There's a debate going on over at bugs.launchpad.net on whether it's the Ubuntu, BIOS, hard-drive manufacturer, or pick-any-player's fault, but Ubuntu (and perhaps any OS) may be dramatically shortening the life of your laptop's hard drive due to an aggressive power-saving feature / acpi bug / OS configuration. Regardless of where the fault lies or how it's fixed, you might want to take some actions now to try to prevent the damage.

What would be scary is if things like this laid the grounds for the claim that running Linux voids your warranty. I'd hate to see that happen.

But what's the point of Gobuntu's existence if it still contains non-free components? Apparently, Canonical even went to the trouble of removing everything except the copyrighted-all-rights-reserved image files. i'm left scratching my head, wondering why they bothered with this farce if they weren't prepared to go all the way?

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I spoke with Mike Connor about this issue, in person, at the Firefox 2 release party last year. (Mike is the Mozilla Corporation employee who filed this bug that eventually led to Firefox’s removal from Debian.) Mike admitted to me that these files are not released under an open-source-compatible copyright license, and that this means that any build or package that includes those files is not open source. Furthermore, he does not have a problem with this (I believe his exact words were "I'm OK with that"), and it appears that his employer shares his apathy. The Mozilla Corporation’s solution to the "Linux problem" has been to pressure each major distributor to ensure that Mozilla’s non-free applications, complete with their non-free image files, make it into the default install. Debian refused to cave to this pressure (Mike literally told them to "bend the DFSG a little" — you can imagine how well that went over), so their only choice was to remove the Firefox package from Debian.

The Ubuntu team is excited to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software that the open source and free software communities have to offer. This is Ubuntu 7.10, which brings a host of excellent new features. You may also like to view the Ubuntu desktop screenshot tour.