Tag Archives: Linux

I know a hell of a lot more now about SCO than I did 24 hours ago. I know all about “Modem Manager”, /usr/lib/uucp/Devices and /usr/lib/uucp/Dialers – Argh! It’s so archaic! For those of you in the Windows world, imagine having to debug or use a Windows 3.1 application. That’s what SCO looked and felt like compared to the modern Linux systems I use everyday. Even a 4 year old Linux box is friendlier to the developer/user.
Finally, thank you Google for finding most of the information I needed. A few hints from a SCO applications developer in Dublin helped too. (“Have you tried 9600? Our modems have trouble connecting at different speeds” *ding*)
It was funny to see a Netscape icon on the desktop and ridiculous to see ncsa-httpd in the output of “ps”. Of course the guys in the office had no idea there was a webserver on the machine…
(Topic is Linux, close enough to Unix to not matter :P)

Kernel Traffic reports that some people are working on compressing RAM instead of swapping it out. This is like the old Quarterdeck RAM Doubler on Win95 so long ago. Results are mixed however, and I even remember on Win95 the technique didn’t make much of a difference either in “real life” situations.

Just getting around to installing Nividia’s drivers today. The updated ones work in Red Hat 9, but as I was offline at home, and never thought of it at work..
I went and downloaded some games today so I might as well get decent performance out of them!
Tuxpuck is very hard though!

Brief and very light tutorial on manipulating Linux’s QoS parameters.

Life at 56K finally is bearable. I was able to type away at a remote shell with a 20MB download pounding along in another window.

After all those “Linux doesn’t work! I’m going home to mammy!” stories here’s a refreshingly positive story about Linux, and also a link to a great apt-rpm repository. Here’s some brief instructions on getting it working. Lots of games and stuff available 🙂

Yaay! Linux drivers for my modem have been released for Red Hat 9 and other distributions! Should be online tonight! Thanks Ruairi!

Justin Mason looks at using VNC for his desktop. His machine is too noisy so what better way to get a quiet PC?
I used to use VNC but it was too slow. I think you’d probably need a switched network with decent network cards and switches. I have decent network cards, but only a hub.

If you use Kmail, then you should be aware of a serious usability error that exists in it. I’ve only tested this in Kmail 1.5 which ships with Red Hat 9. Look at my ILUG post for a detailed description.
Briefly, pressing a key will jump to a folder with a name that starts with that letter.
The problem is, when you have “d” pressed to delete multiple mails..

Carol has lots of tutorials on her site. Including stuff on red eye removal and a “new user” introduction to the GIMP!

Bah! I installed RH 9 at home and now I can’t get my software modem working! The hcfpci driver refuses to compile giving some obscure GCC error about parameters! So, I’m typing this in an internet cafe, otherwise I’d provide links and debug messages for you to digest. Hopefully updated drivers will be forthcoming. In the meantime I’ll have to pry the rpm open and hack the source to get it to compile..
So, if I promised to look at b2 bugs for you this weekend, it probably won’t happen, sorry! I’ll be back on Monday!