David Both Added to Board of Ten Thousand Villages

Along with two others, David Both, President of Millennium Technology Consulting LLC has been added to the board of Ten Thousand Villages located in the Cameron Village shopping center in Raleigh, NC.

Ten Thousand Villages is a non-profit, fair trade retail store that provides vital and fair income to people in developing countries by selling their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America. Ten Thousand Villages works with artisans who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed.

For more information on Ten Thousand Villages.

Article in the News and Observer.

Linux+ Training in Charleston

I will be teaching a 4.5 day Linux+ training class in Charleston, SC, the week of September 21.

CompTIA Linux+ is a vendor-neutral certification, generic across distributions, targeted to individuals with a minimum of six to 12 months of practical Linux experience. The CompTIA Linux+ exam covers fundamental management of Linux systems from the command line, user administration, file permissions, software configuration and management of Linux-based clients.

This class is preparation for that exam using Fedora Linux. Even if you do not take the exam this is an excellent training class for relatively new Linux administrators.

The class will be held at DTC Charleston, a local training center.

1064 Gardner Road
Suite 212
Charleston, SC 29407

Sales: 843-402-0983
Main: 843-225-3494
Toll-free: 866-705-4522
Fax: 775-370-0477

Email: martha_nye@dtccharleston.com

If you are interested in attending this class, please contact DTC.

MTC Featured at LinkingRaleighNC.com

Millennium Technology Consulting LLC is one of this month’s featured companies in the LinkingRaleighNC.com Entrepreneur Spotlight. Each month they feature one or more local entrepreneurs and we are fortunate enough to be selected this month. Be sure to visit their locally oriented business networking web site at http://www.linkingraleighnc.com and check out our spot in the limelight.

Fedora Frog 1.0-11.0.0 released

One of the ways that people give back to the Open Source Community is by writing or contributing to Open Source projects. My programming project is Fedora Frog which I took over in 2007 from Raivis Dejus, a Lithuanian programmer and college student.

Open Source Community at Work

Raivis wrote a handy little utility to assist System Administrators installing software that was not part of the original Fedora releases, or that was not installed by default. Raivis was getting too busy to continue working on the project and asked for volunteers to take it over. I offered and have been maintaining it ever since.

This is how Open Source Software works. People have a need for a particular piece of software and find that existing software does not do what they need so they write their own. Some Open Source Software, such as OpenOffice.org may gain a very large number of developers, testers and supporters, sometimes numbering into the thousands, far more than any company would be able to afford to assign to such a project. I found that Fedora Frog was very valuable to me and so, rather than have it die, I volunteered to take over its maintenance.

Some of the Open Source developers work for companies such as Sun Microsystems in the case of OpenOffice.org, but the vast majority do their work for free because they enjoy it and they are able to make a positive contribution to the project. I happen to enjoy writing programs and, as a System Administrator, I have a frequent need to install software on many remote computers. Fedora Frog is the software I use to do that. So it solves my problem and that of the more than 17,000 other people who have downloaded it since I put it up on SourceForge in 2007.

About Fedora Frog

This version of Fedora Frog is a nearly complete rewrite of the code. I have made it more efficient and combined multiple pieces of code into a single program.

This Bash program provides the Linux administrator an easy way to install applications not installed by default during a Fedora Core installation procedure, and applications that are not part of the standard distribution. It also tweaks some configuration items. Additional repositories are required beyond the normal Fedora ones, and they are added by Fedora Frog as well.

Frog installs media players such as RealPlayer, Mplayer, VLC, Kaffiene and Xine. It also installs Thunderbird, Firefox, GNUCash, Adobe Reader and Yumex, and some things specifically for System Admins such as chkrootkit. Fedora Frog is currently supported on Fedora 10 and 11. Support for all previous versions of Fedora has been removed.

The latest version of Fedora Frog can be downloaded at https://sourceforge.net/projects/fedorafrog/.

Linux Technical Information

If you are looking for technical information about Linux, particularly Fedora and Red Hat based distributions, please see our sister website, www.databook.bz. The DataBook® web site is a constantly evolving and growing collection of articles and posts about the technical and usage aspects of Fedora Linux.

The DataBook for Linux Users is designed for users of Linux who don’t need to know how Linux works but who just need to perform their daily tasks.

The DataBook for Linux Administrators is for the Linux gurus who need detailed information about how to configure, maintain and troubleshoot Linux installations.

Note that because the DataBook web site is still growing, there is much yet to add to both DataBooks. If you don’t see the infomration you need, please leave a comment on there or send an email to dboth at millennium-technology dot com. I will add that information as quickly as possible.

Millennium Reorganized as LLC

We have reorganized as an LLC and our new full name is Millennium Technology Consulting LLC. This change will give us more flexibility to operate in today’s complex business environment. We look forward to serving you and helping you save money and become more competitive.

DataBook® Available Again

NOTICE: A new version of the DataBook is now on-line. This new version will concentrate on Linux, particularly Fedora.

Last summer the original DataBook® website computer crashed beyond the possibility of repair. Old backups were not able to be restored and so I needed to start over. The DataBook for Linux Users and The DataBook for Linux Administrators are located at www.databook.bz. From now on that web site will be primarily targeted to Linux.

Although the entire book DataBook for OS/2 has been lost, I will try to recreate it as time permits. I expect this to be a long and tedious process, so don’t look for much progress any time soon. If you have a specific request for some OS/2 data, please leave a comment and I will add that particular piece as quickly as I can research it and type it in.

DataBook is a registered trademark of David Both.

Welcome

Welcome to the newly renovated web site of Millennium Technology Consulting LLC. Millennium Technology provides Linux and Open Source consulting services for small to medium sized businesses that want to explore the uses of Linux in their enterprise.

In these difficult economic times we can help you save money and extend the life of your your existing computers.

Contact dboth at millennium-technology.com

Certifications

David Both currently holds over a dozen technical certifications, inlcuding:

* Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
* Sun Certified System Administrator
* IBM Certified Warp Server Administrator