Why Linux Web Hosting?

Let's get the hard facts first - as of July 2010, 5 out of the 10 most reliable internet hosting companies are powered by Linux. The rest 5 are run by others including Windows (just 1). So, what accounts for the success of Linux Web Hosting? Well, many things: history, philosophy, cost, versatility and stability. From the very beginning linux (owing to its unix legacy) is built grounds up for web server and and the Internet, whereas Windows had and keen focus on consumer desktop. That difference is apparent even today.

Linux web hosting wards off those typical susceptibility to viruses and malware that's way too common in a Windows environment. Moreover, LAMP (the stack consisting of Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and PHP) provides great options (easy to code, develop and deploy) to build a viable general purpose web server. On the hardware and software front, a Linux server beats Windows on multiple aspects. Linux servers stay up for years without a single reboot, reducing downtime to to minimum. For some security fixes, the tech-guy can apply patches using Ksplice without a reboot. Similarly, most of the libraries, services and applications can mostly be upgraded without restarting the running software. Presence of bonafide malware is very rare in Linux (less than 900 pieces compared to 2 million malware detected for Windows). Nevertheless, one can also deploy anti-malware tools such as ClamAV and Panda only to mitigate spread of Windows malware to windows environments, if they are connected in a linux network.

Also, Linux hosting in the context of Apache server, is very easy and common setup that enjoy a huge user base. The open-source philosophy behind it offers countless online and offline helps in the form of tutorials, forums, newsgroups, IRC channels and user groups. That means it's very easy to obtain assistance with any server issues that one might encounter. It is also quicker and easier to apply patches and updates on a Linux server. Finally, Linux hosting charges much less compared to other hosting options.

HP Linux Servers

I never had a bad time configuring HP printers, scanners and computers on linux. The company has been keeping up closely with Linux to support its Linux Desktop and Server lines. Though there are a few linux desktop offerings (of course you put linux on any of its hardware), it has a considerable server line providing top performance, flexibility and reliability for the most demanding applications.

You get more when you choose an HP Server with a Linux operating system (preferably SLE, RHEL or CentOS). The company offered preinstalled servers or provides everything you customize your installation. Technical support for preinstalled SUSE Linux Enterprise or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on your HP Server is just a call away.

Most ProLiant & BladeSystem Servers (x86) are enabled on community (CentOS) and regional Linux distributions. HP provides management agents and drivers to simplify the operation and management of CentOS on HP ProLiant servers for free! Besides, HP hosts a Linux Forum where you can give and receive help, tips, and opinions.

Here is a list of HP ProLiant Server line on Linux

ML Servers:
HP ProLiant ML 300 Series (G5 & G6)

DL Servers:
HP ProLiant DL 300 Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant DL 500 Series (G5 & G6)

BL Servers:
HP ProLiant BL 200c Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant BL 400c Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant BL 600c Series (G5 & G6)

How to Disable the Ugly Gnome Metacity Minimize Effect

I love to make my Gnome DE as functional as possible rather than making it decorative. I detest the idea of putting those compiz, beryl, emerald or whatsoever they are called. The default metacity is good for me, except for its minimize/maximize effect - which is a real joke. Minimizing windows in Gnome (without compiz fusion) displays a kiddish (often annoying) style of showing a black border closing down into the windows list panel. And there has been no easy fix to avoid it. You can turn this minimization effect off by enabling reduced_resources option through gconftool-2 or gconf-editor, but there you will see a wireframe while dragging an application window, and sometimes you'll see really troubled look in restoring/maximizing a windows.

The real fix to avoid the silly gnome metacity minimize effect is a 2-step process:

#1
Press ALT+F2 and type "gconf-editor" without quotes.
Search for a value "Reduced Resources" (you'll find it at /apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources )without quotes, and check-select it as shown in the pic below.

#2
While you are still in gconf-editor, search for a value "accessibility". It will result in couple of results, check-select the one at /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility as shown in the pic below.

That's it! Now your gnome desktop will act quite responsive without those ugly minimize effects.

StarDict Dictionary - the Real Star!

Whether on Windows, Mac or linux a word look-up application has been my priority from the very day I first started working on a computer. And on the way I have used OALD (soft copy of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary), Wordweb, Wordnet, Dict and many others, for some time. But it was Stardict where I finally settled. The greatest dictionary/encyclopedia lookup program ever created. The pro's of this program is that - it's very responsive, very very contextual, and supports tons of dictionaries. If you recognise the power of OSS by Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Linux Hosting, Jumla and many others, you should give Stardict a try!

What's So Great About it?

It's a Cross-Platform international dictionary Software that supports all the major international languages. It has powerful features such as Glob-style pattern matching, Scan selection word, Fuzzy query and contextual action. In combination with FreeDict it becomes a great translation software also. StarDict runs on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Tablet OS and Solaris.

The Interface

Where to Get StarDict?

You can get binaries of StartDict for Windows, Mac, BSD and various flavors of Linux at http://stardict.sourceforge.net/download.php. But the best way to go, if you are using a Linux Desktop is installing the packages from your distro's official repository. All the major/mainstream linux distributions have StarDict in their repos.

StarDict Packages for Debian Lenny

Supported Dictionaries

Dictionaries of your choice can be installed separately. User can visit http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries.php, download the packages and extract them at /usr/share/stardict/dic directory. That's it!

Rise of Linux Powered Devices

Though linux still doesn't win consumer desktops sitting barely on 2% of the systems, it's surprisingly merging on the mobile devices, gadgets and various other small-form factor computers. Giving M$ a fight on the desktop market was tough owing to vendor indifferences, platform multiplicity and ever-changing linux base. However, it surely hits sweet-pots on smaller computer appliances. Linux operating kernel being minimalistic, easily portable and highly scalable, fits impeccably on those purpose-built devices. To manufacturers linux reduces the hassles of initial development and on-going support costs.

The gadget world (comprising of mini computers, network devices, multimedia consoles, gaming systems, electronic toys, mobile phones and a lot of embedded devices) is steadily turning to linux. Linux has become ubiquitous, many of us might be using it on our favorite devices even without being aware of it. Here is a list of the electronic devices on which Linux has made a prolific resurgence.

• Aigo Mobile Internet Device: It's the talk of the town being the first Mobile Internet Device. Flaunting a 800x480 display powered by Atom Z500 Processor, it's a fully loaded internet device that weights just 352g and runs on a customized linux - Midinux 2.0.
• Nokia N810: The popular tablet packs a lot of punches into a minismally small size. It has GPS, webcam, customized productivity and internet suites, and supports tons of third-party apps to keep you busy always. You can also install Android (again, it uses customized flavor of linux).
• Asus Eee PC netbooks and nettops: Asus has jumped in like no one else, with its range of linux powered netbook and nettop series computers. Both its nettops and netbooks are equipped with Atom processors and a well-trimmed Linux. Of course, the company offers Windows variants at expensive prices.
• OpenMoko Smartphone: It's a highly customizable mobile phone for everyone. It's suitable for students interested to lean how to program a phone with Linux, as well as for geeks who love to tinker their devices.
• Garmin Nuvi880: Running on linux, this GPS receiver has all the goodies that you expect from a device of such type. It's a solid GPS navigation solution that is proven and reliable, and now poised to have even more going for it.
• Motorola Ming A1600: Equipped with GPS, handwriting recognition, 3.2 MP camera and card reader, this smartphone has a quad-band GSM/GPRS Radio that supports Edge networks. It also has all the usual-suspects of a modern mobile phone. However, the real power lies in its linux OS that allows power-users to install tons of 3rd party apps which would be a dream on Windows CE, Symbian or Bru.
• Archos 605 WiFi: Rival to iPod Touch, this entertainment device sports a large sharp display with an excellent web browser. It supports smooth full screen video playback.

Myths Surrounding PCLinuxOS 2010

I had some good time with Red Hat. Then the KDE side of the world looked more appealing, and I had some off-and-on relationship with Mandrake (Mandriva) and Mepis. It was PCLinuxOS who finally won my heart; since 2005 it always sits on one of my PCs. I still do a lot of distro-hopping but never use my PCLinuxOS partition for that purpose. It feels home.

It was a pioneer desktop distribution in its early years, of course there was Mepis (Mepis still is my second choice for its out-of-box usability and Debian stability). Later many desktop wanna-be's merged in the Linux Desktop (Ubuntu and its clan, Fedora, OpenSuse, Sabayon and lot lot more) leading to great divisions in mindshare. Also came along thousands of OSS blogs, forums and websites that regularly register news, events and releases related to linux distributions. Now every average Joe wants to be a Susan Linton and posts his/her linux experience. It's become a kind of fashion to blog Linux/OSS, which, though helpful in promoting linux among the masses, sometimes spreads myths surrounding some distributions. Here's an honest attempt to clear the myths surrounding PCLinuxOS, my fav distro.

#1 PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva Spinoff

It was started with a Mandriva base, but over the years it has grown to a different personality. Except for the beloved Control Center none of the components are borrowed from Mandy. PCLinuxOS 2010 is built from the grounds up using the home grown repository. Tex and PCLOS devs have taken bits and pieces from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva, even some of the patches used are from Debian, PLD and Chakra. Would you call it a respin of all these distros?

The greatness of a modern linux desktop distribution lies in how well you integrate components (no matter from where they are taken) and how well you take decisions regarding choosing/upgrading the critical components and introducing new technologies. In this regards, PCLinuxOS is a tightly integrated, well-put-together, stable and out-of-the-box usable distribution. It's a respin of none!

#2 PCLinuxOS Lacks Roadmap

Yes, it lacks one, if rediscovering itself every six months and pushing untested packages forward is what you mean by a roadmap. Still, it's refreshingly modern, always (the latest release has KDE 4.4.5). Most often your hardware will love the latest PCLinxOS and the repository keeps refreshing the most popular packages. What's more, the new quarterly ISO releases bring you the latest in pclos pool - no need to upgrade hundreds of packages just after installation! It follows rolling-release, a philosophy. You may call it a roadmap.

#3 It's a KDE-Centric Distribution

To some extent it's KDE-centric. But it's not a KDE-only distribution. It has easy-installation options for several other desktop environments. The term "KDE-Centric" gives a feel of "KDE-only" to some newbies, which is bad. The community releases gnome, xfce, enlightenment, lxde and openbox flavours. These are also well-tested and modern.

#4 It Lacks a 64-Bit Version

We know modern PC hardware is 64-Bit-Ready. However, that doesn't mean software-world is also ready for the change. 64-Bit still doesn't make much of a sense for desktops (servers have a different story). Many of the productivity and web software are still 32-bit. Even in many other cases the performance difference between 32- and 64-bit is so negligible that you can't perceive it. 32-Bit is still the main-stay and there's no compelling reason to make the move. If at all you want to use more than 4Gb memory you can pull in a PAE kernel. The good news is pclos people have planned for a 64-bit version, and I am sure they will bring it out at the right time.

#5 One Man Calls the Shots, Undemocratic Decisions, Uncultured Community

It's an absolute myth. PCLinuxOS is driven by community. Tex and the devs listen keenly to its users and work carefully towards fulfilling their demands and wishes. Moving to KDE4 is one such example where Tex and the devs made a smart decision where they took the users' responses and waited long till it became feature-complete and stable to stand up to pclos standards. I am not sure, but pclos forum is the most friendly one. Some forum posts and threads might sound authoritative (not uncultured) because the person helping you is most often a pclos developer (at times Tex himself), and is confident of what he/she says. PCLinuxOS community is full with mature and wise people who provide real help. It's not like noob-helping-a-noob. In my early days with pclinuxos I've even got some apps packaged and sent to my mail by some generous forum members. Where else you'll expect this much help? As for leading the community and making crucial decisions (based on community mandate), I believe, Tex is the best man. Have you ever seen 100 captains sailing one ship or 5 presidents representing one country?

Red Hat Ignores Desktops - Consumer or Enterprise Whatsoever

We had been running CentOS 5.2 on dozens of our office-desktops. They were boringly stable though little obsolete. Finally I wanted to upgrade my system to the latest v.5.5 so as to use some of the updated packages including Firefox 3.5 and OpenOffice 3. Skipping as much as 2 versions to CentOS 5.5 was smooth as a trademark of the enterprise desktop. There were some minor glitches pertaining to drivers which are documented earlier (CentOS 5.5 Left Me Clueless and CentOS 5.5 USB Device Mounting Annoyance). But there is a far more critical (purely on the basis of desktop experience) bug that's some way associated with nash and mkinitrd packages.

The latest and greatest CentOS 5.5 is a pig while it comes to booting on our office desktops. It stays almost 20 sec at "Red Hat nash version 5.1.96 starting". After booting the systems are very smooth and one could see the advancements of v. 5.5 over 5.2 in terms of updated applications, kernel and other goodies.

Around 20 sec wait is a definite annoyance for any desktop user. To get a fix or workaround I browsed through CentOS and Red Hat forums and bugzilla only to end up at nowherelands. I suspected that the problem was associated with raid or selinux but the problem persisted even after disabling them both. There is a thread in CentOS forum, the poster has exactly the same problem though in CentOS 5.3. Even the bug was there in RHEL 5.3 as reflected in RH bug ID 499955. Version 5.4 (of both CentOS and RHEL) retained the bug. Even, Red Hat did not bother to fix or suggest a workaround to stop this annoyance boot delay in its latest version. From the discussion at RH bug ID 499955 it's clear that the annoyance doesn't get any priority from Red Hat developers. Seems this open source giant ignores Desktops - consumer or enterprise whatsoever. The spotlight for RH has always been server where such delay doesn't make a huge difference... Who's going to boot a dedicated server everyday!

Liquorix Squeezes the Most Out of Your Linux Desktop

Switching to Linux has many reasons - Security, Stability, Performance, and of course, Cost. Be whatever the reasons, performance becomes the eventual priority for desktop as the viruses, malwares and breakdowns don't come in the linux-users way.

How to get the most out of a Linux desktop? Well, there are so many tricks, tweaks and hacks such as using a just right, well customized kernel, removing unnecessary services, apps, packages, paralleling boot process, using a lightweight window manager and desktop environment....and a dozen others. A long time user often dabbles to do these things of which the first, and perhaps the most important is hacking the kernel fitting impeccably to his/her hardware and working requirements.

Right patches, schedulers and driver stacks readily come to the mind, when you think of compiling a custom kernel. Though this process is not that tedious, it can surely be cryptic and time-consuming. That's why some don't like to kill hours to get that small/big performance and boot enhancements. Fortunately, they can also have a good time with readily brewed performance kernels by a geek named - Damenz.

I hit Damenz's points on web at http://liquorix.net and http://zen-kernel.org in my search for readymade performance kernels. (However, as a hobby I kill my idle hours in rolling out my own kernel for sanity and speed's sake) . Both his websites are full of no-nonsense clean linux stuff where you are welcome with a "Why drive when you can fly?" slogan. I have tried Damenz's 2.6.34 kernel (2.6.34-0.dmz.17-liquorix-686) in Lucid Lynx and Debian Squeeze (testing). I am very pleased at the desktop responsiveness in both.

Damenz's Liquorix zen based kernel is built using a fine tuned desktop configuration and modified debian package scripts to retain non-free kernel blobs. Installing this kernel is very easy. All you need to do is to add:

deb http://liquorix.net/debian sid main

in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/liquorix.list

Then do apt-get update. If you get gpg errors during update install the liquorix keyring:

apt-get install '^liquorix-([^-]+-)?keyring.?'

Finally, fire up synaptic to browse and install Liquorix Damenz kernel.

You can also have fun in compiling your kernel from Damenz's kernel sources found at http://liquorix.net/sources

Also, if you are working on an rpm based distro such as Fedora or Suse, you have to compile on your own, Damenz rolls kernels only for Debian Sid and Testing which you can also install on the latest Ubuntu.

Rest assured, you will definitely have a "flying experience" if you have been using only the stock kernel of your favorite distro.

Scientific Linux 5.5 is Ready

The best RHEL clone for Desktops, Scientific Linux 5.5 is released! Based on well-tested RHEL 5.5 source (plus some inhouse additions), it's perhaps the only RHEL child that works out of box. In fact, every thing including Wireless, Bluetooth, multimedia codecs, compiz, application programs, sharing, windows partition access (fat32 and ntfs) and other important stuff that any desktop user ever needs, is bundled with utmost care, without loosing RHEL stability.

Urs Beyerle announces "Scientific Linux Live CD/DVD 5.5 has been released for i386 and x86_64. Features: live CD can be installed to local hard disk; live CD runs from USB key; changes can be stored persistently on an external device; live CD can be mounted over NFS (diskless client). Software: Linux kernel 2.6.18, OpenAFS client 1.4.12, X.Org 7.1, ALSA sound libraries 1.0.17, GNOME 2.16.0, GIMP 2.2.13, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, Firefox 3.0.19, Thunderbird 2.0.0.24, KDE 3.5.4 and Evolution 2.12.3"

For more, read the release notes.

Here is a great review on its previous version.

Traditional Server Guy's Views on the Linux Desktop

While Linux is growing leaps and bounds (by feature and performance; not deployment, Redmond still rules the race and will probably do the same for quite long), it's time we spread the same in the mass psyche, public mind share. So, where do we start? Noobs? New converts? Non-profit, governmental organizations? Or from the top, the busy Enterprise Linux server room managed by a traditional server guy? To me the latest seems a good starting point.

Now let's define who a "Traditional Server Guy" is? He is one who oversees all the server tasks, manages jobs, assigns works to the 2nds in commandment. He is a busy person who deployed Linux desktops couple of years back somewhere across some user desktops and has no time to either catchup with the recent advancements or to maintain the leftovers. He still believes CentOS 4 is the most stable desktop around and assumes ver.5 is still in beta (point to be noted, CentOS 6 beta might be brewing in devs' circles). Puns apart, he has been managing the business well, so he has a better command over all the departments.

Here is a few of his theories that coincides with traditional rules of Linux, that have long been challenged and changed.

1. Performance is squarely dependent on the proximity of hardware-software timeline. In other words, a dated software works better on a dated hardware. Conversely, a new and shiny hardware needs the latest software. Latter is 100% true. But not the former. In theory (and in reality) it was recommended that the user should install a contemporary linux OS in relation to the hardware, and it was really a good advice. But slowly the paradigm changed by many factors. In recent years there has been enough refinement on how linux handles drivers, manages system memory and prioritizes tasks on desktops; this ball game was changed to a great deals after kernel version 2.6.31. Of course, kernel alone is not solely responsible for this sweet change, there are tons of changes in userland and system scripts. I have seen the dated computers perform better on CentOS 5.5 and Fedora 12 than they did on Centos 4 or 5.2 or Fedora 10.
2. Age of software has nothing to do with performance, moreover newer packages require more memory and cpu cycles owing to the inclusion of more features and eye-candy. It's true in some cases, but not always. For example, OpenOffice 1.1.1 was a pig at its time, new features added, programs refined, but it was still a pig till ver. 2.0. Then the real changes seemed to show up... on the next point releases the focus was more on performance than features. And on reaching OO.0 3.2 we got a swift office suite that can revolve circles around the older office suites. The story is same with Firefox. First, it was slow, then slower, but later some dramatic changes and it became a faster and less resource hungry browser at ver. 3.6. This trend in software advancement is obvious. First, we punch the features, define libraries and dependencies. Then focus shifts to remove the dead-weight and do some refinement to squeeze more performance out of it.
3. CentOS is a great server and desktop. The statement is partially true. I've installed CentOS server only a few times. Since then it has been working well. It's steeped in the tradition of RHEL stability whose focus has always been the enterprise server. No doubt about it, CENTOS IS A GREAT SERVER. But the same is not true in case of desktops. It's more of a closed and almost a loser to catch up with the alway-merging diversity of desktop hardware. Taming it to meet your requirements is a Herculean task, though it can be done. CentOS is a fit-it and shut-it desktop where stability and security enjoy the most priority. Other linux poster-boys such as Ubuntu, Fedora and hundreds of Debian siblings still value stability (if not as paranoic as CentOS), but for them performance and feature-richness is all that counts the most. Needless to say, it's easy to customize them to your needs. Just do and compare the ease, success and benefits of compiling your kernel in Debian and CentOS. Dirty your hands at the package management tools of both the venerable distributions; add/remove programs, tweak them! You will know to the truth - RHEL clones are not as tamable as Debian siblings. The bottom line is: it's the best to deploy CentOS on servers, but you can find better alternatives for your desktops.