GeekLinux

I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected as the new host of the “DistroWatch Weekly” podcast! Wow, what can I say!?! DistroWatch! Ever since I started using Linux I have made weekly trips to DistroWatch.com to check out distro rankings and read the latest news and now I am hosting their podcast! Somebody pinch me!

I would like to thank the former host, Jim Putman for all his help during the transition, Jim has certainly left impressive footsteps to follow in. Thank you to Ladislav Bodnar, owner of DistroWatch, for allowing me the privilege of continuing the podcast.

My first recorded episode is issue 257, 16 June 2008. Here you can subscribe to the mp3 feed or the ogg feed

Well if you landed here because you heard me mention this blog on my podcast then I am very glad you’re here. I have wanted to update this blog for awhile, but until today (Father’s Day) I just really haven’t had the time to. Going forward I want to use this blog as a place where I will write down the issues, struggles, triumphs, and joys I encounter while working with Linux. By doing so I hope others who end up here may be able to benefit from my writing.

Also, I mentioned in the podcast that I have an old version of this blog here. I had said that I was having problems migrating the old posts from my free GoDaddy blog to my new Wordpress blog. Well after some fooling around and some manual copy and pasting I think I have everything migrated over. In the process however I managed to delete the comment that Dan Borislow, the Inventor of the MagicJack had left on my old blog. Thankfully Google cached the comment, so the cached comment can be found here. Hopefully Dan will leave a new comment informing me that MagicJack is coming to Linux soon!

Well better late then never. It has finally arrived! I have enjoyed playing with it so far. I had to add vim to it right away, but that’s ok. You can find lots of geeky things out there on the interwebs about the OLPC like how to overclock your OLPC or loading Ubuntu on your OLPC. Maybe my OLPC will end up here some day, but for now I’m just having fun. FINALLY!

I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that it’s going to take however long it takes…
Yesterday I received the below update email from OLPC.

Dear Donor,

We wanted to update you on the status of your XO
laptop.

Our production schedule is still on track and we
expect to deliver your laptop by the middle part to end of March. Your donation
is in queue and ready for shipment as soon as we receive additional
laptops.

You can continue to check on your order status
at www.laptopgiving.org.

If you have any other questions regarding your XO
laptop, please do feel free to reply to this email or contact our Donor Services
team at 1-800-201-7144.

Thank you again for your patience and
understanding.

Sincerely,

OLPC Donor Services

magicJack is a $39.95 USB dongle for XP and Vista that allows you to make phone calls from your computer on a normal telephone handset, (I will be testing it on Linux/wine soon, so stay tuned). 
I first heard about magicJack on Geek News Central.
As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted one!  I ordered my 30-day free trial magicJack online on 1/30/08 and received it two days later on 2/1/08.
Installing magicJack was a breeze, I just stuck it in my XP Pro SP2 PC and in just a few minutes I was making and receiving phone calls.  When you use magicJack for the first time it will walk you through a registration process where you accept the Terms of Service and Software License Agreement and input your name and address, this information is used for the Emergency 911 system, so you will probably want to use an actual address.  You will get a phone number based on the geographic area you give in your address.  I was able to select from a surprisingly wide range of area codes and exchanges.  I ended selecting a number close to where I live but I wasn’t forced to.
The magicJack has a label on the back warning not to use it in a USB hub but to plug it directly into the computer’s onboard USB jack.  It comes with a USB extension cable, so clearance wasn’t a problem.
The magicJack software automatically opens when you insert it into the USB port and it automatically closes when you remove it.
Some of the features that are included are VoiceMail, Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, Contact Manager, Call Log, and Redial.  You can manage many of your magicJack features by logging in online at your my.magicJack.com.
I’m looking forward to using my magicJack extensively.  If it works out for me I may be buying several of these.  At $39.95 they also make great gifts!

This morning I received the following email from OLPC.  I’m just taking a “wait and see” attitude at this point.

Dear Donor,

Please accept my apologies for the delay in receiving your XO laptop.  Give One Get One was such a phenomenal success that we over-taxed our order processing and payment systems.  Demand exceeded supply.   

Additional XO laptops are being built now and will be delivered in 45 to 60 days.  If you wish to reconsider your contribution in the face of this delay, we will issue a refund to you.  We have set up a dedicated phone line for these requests.  The number is 1-800-883-8102.

In the meanwhile, please know that laptops are in the process of going to Mongolia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and

Haiti as part of the “give one” side of the equation.  Fortunately, OLPC’s mission of getting laptops to the children in these countries has not been delayed.  In

Mongolia , the children are already enjoying themselves and learning new things with their XO laptops. Please see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ulaanbaatar.

Eliminating poverty through learning is gaining wider acceptance thanks to support like yours.

Sincerely,

Nicholas
Negroponte
Chairman
OLPC Foundation

I thought I would drop in on the OLPC status site to see if there has been any update on the expected delivery of my donation.  This is what I saw when I entered my order info:

Your donation is ready to be shipped
and is in our shipping queue. Unfortunately, we are awaiting new laptop
inventory to fulfill your donation. We expect additional inventory to
reach our warehouse from the last week in February through the end of
March, and we intend to ship all remaining laptops to donors at that
time. We will keep you posted as shipments are scheduled, and will send
you an email when your laptop ships, with your tracking number.

I think this may take awhile…

Well I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and blog about my
“ One Laptop Per Child” experience
so far.  I guess from what I’ve heard and read that I am one of the lucky
ones.  I placed my “Give One, Get One” donation on
12/29/2007.  I paid via PayPal.  This morning on the Geek News Central podcast I heard Todd Cochrane mention several PC
World stories that shared some woes of those whose orders were late,
missing, boched, or worse.
On 1/21/08 I received an email from OLPC with the following text.
“Dear Donor,

We are contacting you in
regards to your Give One Get One donation and the shipment of your laptop. Your
donation is in the queue for laptop shipment.

Please expect to receive
another update from us by Wednesday, 1/23, with information on when you can
expect to receive your laptop.

We appreciate your
generosity and patience.

Sincerely,

OLPC Donor Services“

and then on 1/24/08 I received the following
“Dear Donor,

We wrote you several days
ago to let you know that your donation is in our shipping queue for the
shipment of your XO laptop.

We are awaiting the arrival
of new inventory so that we may ship your laptop to you. We will send you
another update in the next few days when we have specific shipping information.

We appreciate your
generosity and patience.

Sincerely,

OLPC Donor Services“

After reading the second
PC World article I decided to head over to the OLPC donor site
and check on the status of my order.  Not surprising I had the same
result, after inputting my email address and order reference number it just
gave me a generic response that said
“We are working hard to ship all XO Laptops. If you are unable to track
your laptop or have not received it, please contact OLPC Donor Services by
calling 1-800-201-7144 for assistance”
So I called the number. 
I was prepared to spend an hour on hold but
surprisingly I was only on hold about 15 minutes.  I got a very helped gentleman
that confirmed that they did have my shipping address information
correct.  He also told me that my laptop was at “status three”, whatever
that means, and that it should ship shortly.
Even with all the difficulties OLPC is having I pray that in the end the world
really will be a better place for all they’ve done.

It took me way longer then it should have but I finally got my Dell PowerEdge 4400 with PERC 2/DC RAID Controller working.  After trying Debian 4.0, Fedora 7, and CentOS v5.0 I was finally able to find a distro that _noticed_ my RAID controller; Ubuntu v7.04 Server.  It installed without a hitch but coming up after its first reboot was a different story.  After a long pause while booting it finally threw a “i20:iop0: could not activate controller” error.  After some googling I found this posting on the Ubuntu forums.  The “CTRL-M I20 to Mass Storage” fix work beautifully.  I now have a another working server to play with…JOY!!!

A friend of friend asked me if I could
look at their 3 month old PC that wouldn’t boot. They said it was
Windows but I didn’t think to get specific. It turned out that it
was Vista. “Was” Vista is a good way to put it because it was
majorly screwed. They did have recovery CDs but, of course, they
did not have a back ups of their precious data which was mostly
digital pictures. After dropping Knoppix v4.02 into the drive I was
able to mount and copy off all their data to a network drive. Then I
did the recovery for them. This was my first look at Vista up close.
Man! Vista is going to make a ton of Linux converts! First of all I
didn’t see any advantage in using Vista over XP SP2 (with all the
patches of course). Secondly neither Windows OS can hold a candle to
Linux. And the eye candy isn’t even that great, and even if you go
in for that sort of thing there isn’t anything there that Linux
didn’t already have 2 years ago.
I hear this phrase batted around a lot;
“Is Linux ready for the desktop?”. You better believe it is!
Its been ready! And thanks to Linux another Windows user got their
machine back, I’m sure I’ll see it again some day. Thanks Linux!