FergyTech

I’m having a hard time understanding what makes Livna so hot, in the linux-world.  To my understanding they are better than getting videocard drivers from nVidia’s web site because they are opensource and when you install the latest kernel update - your card won’t go bonk!? on you.  As for me, I’ve been using nVidia’s propriatory drivers because that’s the only way I get World of Warcraft or any other video game to work.

The only issue that I have to deal with right now IS, when my kernel is updated.  I have to run through the Xserver configuration.  Once I get into my desktop, I would then switch back to my propriatory drivers or CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE back out to a full shell environment to reinstall them.  It is a bit of a hassle, but I have yet to jump on the band wagon of Livna.

Technically, my immediate family is a linux-family; meaning that we run some form of linux on our main computers as our full-time operating system. My wife made the switch this weekend and she was pretty excited about it. We all know it’s going to be a rough ride until we fully understand how things work, but this is very cool news. I’m running Fedora 8 and she’s running openSUSE 10.3.

We wanted her to run Ubuntu 8.04, but had a very tough time getting it to install on ANY computer we have in the house. It keeps freezing up on the boot menu. So; until we figure out what the deal is we looked distros that are backed by major companies.

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Since I have tons of financial responsibilities, I cannot buy a next-gen console. I’m itchin’ for GTA IV, Grand Turismo 5, etc… I did get a chance to play GTA IV at my neighbor’s house the other day and I fell in love with it. Aw, it’s sool cool and he has a big screen TV too so it looked really nice. With touching GTA, it’s hard to go back home and NOT play it. I downloaded GTA San Andreas for my linuxbox and everything ran without a hitch via Wine.

I played some World of Warcraft last night (dinged to 46 on my priest) and was pretty tired - so I said my “gnite” to the guild members and intended to go to bed, but I found myself double-clicking on the San Andreas icon and to my surprise - I was up till 2:00 AM - AGAIN!!!?!?!?! It’s funny playing the game on my PC. I certainly had to get comfortable with the controls - it really handles different than the PS2 controller, but I did notice that I took my time with everything. I actually got more emersed into the world than I did when I played it on my console.

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Just wanted to share this great resource with folks. My brother has recently gotten into linux and he’s trying to stick it out because of the difficulty factor. He got very confused, as did we all, about installing applications and understanding how things are separated in open source and not all bundled together like Windows - where in windows your OS/Desktop/Kernel are all known as Microsoft Windows - compared to linux where your kernel, desktop, distributions, applications are all different applications working together.

OK; I’m ranting. Linux Reality is an awesome podcast, which was retired at episode 100. I’ve downloaded all his files and I listen to it periodically. A good replacement would be Going Linux. This one that I’m sharing is about compiling linux application from the provided source.

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 Linux Reality, Episode 41: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Since I’m new to linux, one of the most important tip to know is how to back up your data. With Windows we’re all used to the fact that our data is saved in multiple areas on the computer. Unless you’re very computer savvy it’s hard to know where everything is. It’s a bit different with linux. The files to your applications may be in different areas of the file structure, but all of your important confirguration files to those applications is conviently saved in your /home directory.

Hidden Files and Folders

You may not see them at first. That’s because they are hidden. If you’re using the GNOME desktop, then your file browser (equivilent to Windows Explorer) is Nauttilus. Find your /home directory, usually found /home/{username}/. You can either click on View | Show Hidden Files, or keyboard shortcut CTRL+H to show your hidden files and folders. Once that’s done you will see files and folder that begin with a period.

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A GUI is a very complex piece of software and there could be any number of reasons why it would lock up on you. If you need to kill your x server and then restart it, here are some tips:

Killing X server via Command

Type “init 3″ in your terminal and that should kill x server.  If it doesn’t find the command, then switch to the root user by typing “su -” (you will need to know the root password).

Restarting X server

Simply use the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE. Some times this will help, but this combination will explicitly restart the X server.

Working with a Console

If the previous keyboard combination did not work then try CTRL+ALT+F1. This will not kill X server, it will simply open a full screen console. I believe Red Hat and Fedora Core have F1-F6 as options. If you want to switch back to a GUI environment use the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+F7.

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I scrolled through my Google Reader to and saw a post on WoW Insider by Daniel Howell about a RAID he was in and he did a great job explaining what hunters to, or did, in a particular RAID.  I have OMEN installed, but I don’t know the first thing on how to make it work.  It pops up when I party, but I usually turn it off.

For some reason I seem more optomistic than I did before. I really hope this movie turns out well. What’s so funny about this is when move studios started to butcher.. ah I mean produce comic-book movies and other shows from my generation I vowed that I would make a GI Joe movie. They could mess up everything else, but no one should touch GI Joe. I was very afraid when I heard they were thinking about doing a live action Joe movie. After watching this - the casting seems reasonable, I will pray for good scripting and acting.

While at work today I got a call, on my cell, from a job agency.  She spoke with me in the past when I was looking for work and she periodically checks up on me to see if I’m looking for work.  She told me of a position that was available, but I kindly told her that I’m still employed by the same company and they renewed my contractor for another year.

With her extensive sales training, she then asked me what she could offer to get me to leave my current job.  I replied, “Well… ironically more money and less responsibility.”  We fleshed it out a bit, but what I meant was certainly more money, but to assign my job duties to a single category and not “manager” and “web developer” and “consultant”.  In the end I told her I don’t want to waste any more of her time because I am happy where I am.  And in deed, I am happy where I am - it’s tough wearing so many hats, but the people are nice, the perks are nice, and they my time is very flexible - you can’t beat it!

Companies now-a-days are doing great things in their marketing department. I just learned today that my epsonality rating is CX9400 - what a number right? Well it’s really a clever way of trying to match your needs with Epson’s products. I think they did their job - if I had the $149.99 to purchase their printer I would have done just that. Since I don’t, right now, I will certainly think of Epson when I’m ready to purchase my next printer. I normally go with Brother because of their durability and price for laser printers, but we’ll see. Check out their site take the test yourself. They put a lot of thought into this marketing campaign and I deem it successful!

www.epsonality.com