From KDE to Gnome

About two weeks ago I made the switch from KDE to Gnome for my Linux desktops. I know, I know – I have said for a long time that I strongly favor KDE over Gnome. I think I finally decided that I really had not given it a fair shot in the past and dismissed it too quickly for a true comparison. So both machines I have running Linux desktops are now running Gnome.

Another factor in this decision was my strong use of CentOS and Fedora recently. Since both are closely related to Red Hat in one way or other – they tend towards Gnome desktops.

It is still a little early to make a final call on the switch, but let’s just say that I am not really missing KDE at this point…

DHCP Setup

Spent a few minutes tonight setting up DHCPD on my file server and moved it off of the LinkSys router. Primary motivation was a move towards PXE boot at Jeff’s World. I figure that will help with rapid setup of VMs as needed in the future. Hope to wrap up some of that config this weekend if time permits!

RAID 1 at Jeff’s World

I took some time this weekend to convert the home file server over to RAID1. Initially, last fall, early winter, I had intended to setup a file server running CentOS 4.x and then use a script to copy things off to a USB drive. This weekend I decided to switch it up a bit and convert the file server to RAID1 with the more critical things being archived to DVD.

I am running with a Hitachi 160GB drive and a Maxtor 200GB drive in the file server. The drives are mirrored with the 40GB of un-mirrored space being dedicated to install flats of various Linux distros to facilitate easy installs. That should also avoid any issue of using two of the same drives that came from the same bad batch.

Now my file server for Jeff’s World is a pretty lightweight box – Celeron 400 with 512MB of RAM. When I copy large volumes of data to the box the load does jump up there, but it seems to handle it just fine. And by large volumes of data I mean GBs worth at a time. The box also runs internal DNS for the house and some other odds and ends, but for a home server it should do just fine.

There is something very satisfying about running RAID1 at home. That coupled with the DVD backups of the really important stuff should serve me well.

AT&T Routing Internet Traffic to the NSA?

I am sure many of you saw the /. articles and such about AT&T routing Internet traffic directly to the NSA. I read through, wasn’t so sure of the initial sources and chose not comment on it at the time. I just saw this Wired article though with more details about what was going on.

So for those that laugh at my high interest in encryption – encyrpting my chat sessions, emails, etc. – keep on lauging. It is quickly becoming not so funny. Yeah, you’re right – do they really care what I have to say? Probably not. But the issue at hand in my opinion is the principal of it. Who gave these folks the right to monitor all Internet traffic? Do we not still live in the United States? The fear mongering is once again causing Americans to put up with their rights being lessened.

Really, who’s the victim here. It is the normal American. You can bet terrorists are using some sort of encryption or code to hide their communications. At any planning of any importance is certain to be guarded by such protections. It is the normal American that is the one subject to this loss of rights.

Pathetic….

VMware Server Beta 2 and Fedora Core 5

VMware released Beta 2 of their server product a day or so ago. Since I had rebuilt the machine I use to host the VMs it was a good chance to apply that update as well. My initial install of VMware Server on Fedora Core 4 was very smooth. Installing on Core 5 was not so smooth, though I think all of the issues were my fault.

When I installed Core 5 I didn’t select any of the development tools. I usually do, I just chose not to for this most recent install. So I had to get a compiler installed and a the kernel-smp-devel package. Once I had those installed it went well. It fired right up and I was able to boot my VMs from the older version with no issue.

I haven’t played enough with the Beta 2 to note any significant differences yet.

Boot Camp – Macs do Windows

Wow! Apple releases a public beta of Boot Camp which will allow you Intel Mac users to install Windows on your Apple. It features automatic partition resizing and creates a CD with drivers for Windows to work with the various Apple hardware. From the initial glance at the page on Apple’s site it looks pretty slick. Not sure why you really want to run Windows, but the concept is quite cool. This should be interesting to watch.

Linkage: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

Fedora Core 5 – New PC

I took the plunge tonight and installed Core 5 on the new PC. I had kept the new machine pretty light on the data because I knew I wanted to get Core 5 on it shortly after it was released. Tonight was the night. I shuffled what data I did have (mainly VMs and some ISOs) off to my /storage partition and fired off the install from the DVD.

The install process took some time. Longer than the Core 4 install did anyways, though I did install a few more things this time around (like OpenOffice). So it really isn’t too fair to dwell on that since my package selections were different. My brief stint with Gnome in the VM easily convinced me to stick with KDE, so that is what I installed this time around. Something about Gnome just doesn’t click with me. ::shrug::

Initial configuration was a piece of cake. All my hardware was detected and worked on the first boot with no issues. It is always nice when that happens. I always have to think back to my very first Linux install so long ago when it took me 6 hours just to get a GUI working! Linux has some a long ways in that regards and Fedora is no exception.

I have only had a chance to hit a few websites, hop on IRC and kick off a yum update, but Core 5 feels a little snappier. Who knows maybe its just the newness.

Well more thoughts and such as the next couple of weeks go by.