The BBC have an article from Richard Stallman, (he of the Free Software Foundation), regarding Bill Gates recent departure from Microsoft. As with all of Stallmans articles, it’s a pitch for freedom of software. The article is released under a Creative Commons NoDerivs license, read it in full below the fold.
Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category
Richard Stallman on Bill Gates
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008Streaming Media for the Wii
Sunday, August 26th, 2007While the Wii has become the gaming sensation of the year, it hasn’t been without it’s detractors. One of the problems frequently levelled at the Wii is that it doesn’t play DVD’s, or any other media. A company called Orb has come up with a solution to the problem.
The process is fairly straightforward:
- Download the Orb software to your Windows PC,
- Follow on the on-screen instructions and install the Orb program,
- Set up a login account,
- Start the Internet Channel on your Wii and go to mycast.orb.com,
- Login to your Orb account,
- Browse for the audio, video or photos that you want to play.
In order to get the best from Orb, you do need a broadband connection, and your Wii needs to be connected to the Internet. Although it does work, I found that watching videos through the Orb interface is patchy, but that is more than likely down to the fact that my upload connection is terrible. Another thing – at the moment the Orb software is Windows only, but apparently they will be releasing beta versions of the platform for Mac OS and Linux next year.
Setting Up Apache, PHP, MySQL – The Easy Way
Monday, August 20th, 2007I’ve been experimenting with Content Management Systems recently, and after some research, I’ve decided to use Joomla for my next couple of projects. The idea is that I don’t need to spend as much time writing code, and I can get a website up and running quickly. In order to get more experience with of Joomla I decided to install it on my MacBook.
In order to use Joomla, you need three things: Apache, PHP and MySQL. Individually, these are easy enough to install, but getting them to work together can be a bit of a headache. Config files need to be edited, file permissions need to be changed, servers need to be started and restarted, and it can be a bit daunting, not to say time consuming.
That’s where MAMP comes in. An acronym for Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP, it’s a collection of all these programs in one handy installer that does all the work for you. It took a couple of minutes to download and about 30 seconds to install. Once installed you have a full Apache server, MySQL server and PHP 4 and PHP 5 installation. Better still, it doesn’t interfere with any other Apache, MySQL, or PHP installations you may have running, and it’s controllable from a handy Dashboard Widget.
Once MAMP is installed and running, it’s just a matter of downloading the package and installing Joomla. A simple browser-based installer guides you through the setup, and within minutes I was up and running. The only issue I came across was that the permissions of the Joomla folder had to be updated to allow the installation. It was just a matter of selecting the folder, holding Option-I and changing the permissions for “Others”. Done and dusted.
For those of you not on the Mac platform there are also versions for Windows, Linux, and Solaris available, along with a Joomla Standalone Server (Windows based).
Linux on the Desktop
Thursday, March 29th, 2007For the past few years there has been growing support for Linux. And now Dell have announced that they are going to offer Linux pre-installed on select desktops and laptops.They haven’t said when this will happen, or what distribution they’ll use.
Does this mean that Linux is about to hit the mainstream?
I’ve been installing and trying to use Linux for at least the last 7 years, but I’ve always given up in the end. Why? The main reason is that with Linux, the hardware support is basically rubbish. I’ve tried to install 5 different distro’s on at least half a dozen computers over the years, and not once have I been able to get all my hardware to work. I spent countless hours on Google looking for drivers, only to discover that there is no driver available. Happily this has improved with newer Linux distributions, but hardware support is still far from perfect.
Then there’s also the community surrounding Linux. Don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of people who donate their time and energy to Linux do so with the best will in the world. Nonetheless there’s always a few that look down on anyone who has the temerity to pose a simple question. In one case where I posted a request for help locating a driver for my video card, all I got back were standard “RTFM” replies along with someone who kindly told me that there was no driver available, and that if I wanted to use Linux that the least I go do was contribute by writing one. I neither have the ability, time or interest to do something like that. With that kind of attitude, Linux is never going to become a mainstream home OS. Home users want to spend their time working on their computer, not spend time getting their computer to work.
With Dells announcement, that may be about to change. By offering Linux to the average home user, Dell are committing themselves to providing the required drivers and technical support. Your new Linux computer may work out of the box but don’t be lulled into thinking that all your peripherals will work with your new machine. In my experience, there’s a good chance that at least one of them won’t.
When all is said and done, this is still great news for Linux. Despite all my previous problems, and experiences, I remain a fan of Linux. I like it’s security, I like the ability to use the command line to interact with practically any part of the OS, I like the sheer robustness of the OS. And I keep trying it out. I may not be able to get it to work with all my peripherals, and with all my hardware, but I still love the challenge of trying to get it to do so – why else do you think I keep coming back to it!
I may not be able to run Linux full time, but I do have my Mac for when I want to forgt about Windows for a while!
CR vs LF vs CRLF
Sunday, March 25th, 2007If the above title seems cryptic, it’s supposed to be. It’s representative of a problem that I came across today when I was editing one of the plugins on this site. When I went to check the plugin status, I was shocked to see that instead of the normal options to activate/ deactivate the plugin, all I got was a mish-mash of PHP code.
I couldn’t think why this had happened, then it hit me. I had done the editing on my MacBook. The Mac, just like every other platform has built-in text editors. These editors treat text in much the same way as editors on other platforms, although there is one crucial difference. When you hit the enter key on a Mac, a special character is inserted to signal that a new line should be started. On a Mac, this is called the Carriage Return, or CR, character. On a Windows editor, the enter key inserts a Carriage Return – Line Feed, (CR-LF), character, and on a Linux machine, it’s a Line Feed, (LF), character.
So each of the major platforms treat a new line in a different manner. The upshot is that if you write a text document on a Windows machine, the new line will be interpreted correctly on both a Linux and Mac, as it uses characters common to both. However, if you write a text document on a Mac, then it won’t be interpreted correctly on a Linux machine, and vice versa.
So here was my problem, I had edited the PHP files on my Mac and uploaded the changed files to a Linux server. Using EditPad Lite for Windows, I was able to easily convert the newline characters from CR to CR-LF, and re-upload the file. Problem solved. The only thing that I can’t figure out is that if Linux has a problem with the CR-only newline character, how come the plugin worked OK?