I have posted a review of Fedora 13 on my DataBook® web site. Although it is burdened with installation flaws and the default nVidia graphic drivers cause problems, these can be overcome. Overall I have been having a very positive experience with Fedora 13.
Read the full review for the details: http://www.databook.bz/?page_id=2076
Information, Linux | dboth | 
August 10, 2010 7:33 pm | 
Comments (0)
Fedora 13 has been available for a few weeks now. I have started installing it on some of my systems and it seems to work very well.
The Internet upgrade procedure works well but it does take a bit of time. You won’t want to use this method unless you have a fast Internet connection. A standard installation from DVD works well also. There are some differences in the installation procedure, but they are welcome ones including the restoration of the old “minimal” install option, which will be good for creating routers and other appliances.
The latest version of KDE is also very nice and provides a couple interesting new features as well as some new and improved widgets.
I will try to write a more complete critique and post it on my DataBook® web site as time permits.
There is a Linux kernel security fix that should be installed on your Linux computers. Although the problem is esoteric and will not likely be an issue for most users, the kernel patch should be installed so that it can be activated on the next reboot.
IN the meantime, there is a simple configuration patch that can be made to the running kernel that will block the problem from being a security vulnerability. Note that the ability to make this type of configuration change to the Linux kernel while it is running is one important reason why Linux provides better security, flexibility and uptime than Windows.
If you are a customer of Millennium Technology Consulting LLC I have already made this kernel configuration change or verified that the kernel configuration is already set in such a way so that your system is not vulnerable. I have also sent you a notification that security updates are available.
If you are not a customer of Millennium Technology Consulting LLC and do not have a person on staff who can perform the update or install the temporary kernel modification, or at least verify that your kernel is configured so that it is secure, please contact us and I will be happy to help.
Read about the problem in IT World if you want more details: http://www.itworld.com/security/83917/an-important-linux-fix
Critical Notifications, Linux, Security | dboth | November 7, 2009 11:35 am | Comments (2)
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has announced that it will be dumping its $65 Million (US) Microsoft based trading system, TradElect, in favor of the Linux and Solaris based MillenniumIT system. In fact they bought the entire MillenniumIT company for only $30 Million which is a real bargain.
Although some have said that the LSE’s experience with the MS .NET trading system was positive, the Linux and Solaris based system is easier to install and use and executes trades over six (yes 6) times faster than the old system. That is 0.4 milliseconds for the MillenniumIT system vs 2.7 milliseconds for the Microsoft system. In an environment where milliseconds is money, that is a huge advantage.
The other aspect of this is that this leaves the TradElect trading system with only one customer which is currently considering the switch to MillenniumIT as well. Of course they cannot buy the company because the LSE has already done.
Read more details in the IBSJ News.
Although many of you have heard of Linux I know that you are not necessarily familiar with it or the term distribution. This post is intended to answer the question of what a distribution is and how it affects you.
A Linux distribution, or “distro” as they are called by many Linux aficionados, consists of several main components packaged together in such a manner as to be easy to distribute and install. A Linux distro may be distributed on CD, DVD, USB thumb drive, or, via the Internet as an ISO image of one of those media, from which a bootable CD, DVD, etc., can be created.
Mainstream Linux distributions usually contain the major components described in the table below.
| Component | Description |
| Kernel | The Linux kernel is the portion that was developed by Linus Torvalds. It is the core component that gives Linux its identity and basic functionality. The kernel manages the hardware and provides a method for programs and utilities to interact with both the hardware and the end user. |
| GNU Utilities | The GNU Utilities provides two things. First, a set of program libraries that provide additional functionality to programmers. Second, a set of system administrator oriented utility programs to make managing Linux operating systems easier. |
| Application programs | User level programs such as OpenOffice, GNUCash, Firefox, Thunderbird and hundreds of other application programs designed for end users and which allow them to perform useful work with their computers. |
There are literally hundreds of different Linux distributions. The Wikipedia article on the term Linux distribution states that there are over 600 Linux distributions and that over 300 of them are under active development. Each distribution contains a different combination of libraries, utilities and application programs, depending upon its intended usage.
The good news is that most distributions are designed for very specific niches and most people considering the use of Linux at home or in the office only need concern themselves with a very few.
Whether working with a consultant or on your own, it is important to understand what you intend do do with the computers on which you will install Linux. Developing a complete set of requirements for each computer or class of computers in your business, such as servers, development workstations and desktops, will be a key step in in this process.
Your choices will be driven by functionality, security, stability, application availability, interoperability, ease of installation, maintenance, cost and other factors. In some cases your choices will be numerous as multiple distributions may meet your requirements and in others you will be left with only one or two distributions from which to choose.
When using a consulting firm such as Millennium Technology Consulting LLC, we can assist you in making the choice of distributions.
Information, Linux, Opinion | dboth | September 29, 2009 12:48 pm | Comments (4)
There will always be some level of pain associated with moving to a new operating system. This is true whether the upgrade is from Windows X to Windows Y, from Windows to Linux, or from one version of any Linux distribution to another such as upgrading from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11, or from one Linux distribution to another such as moving from Fedora to Ubuntu or the other way around.
Most of the time the results far outweigh the pain of the upgrade. Other times, not so much.
These pain points that are due to moving from one OS to another are usually the little things but they can be time-consuming and frustrating.
The real problems for end users and their points of pain usually revolve around screen resolutions, font sizes, documents that don’t look like they did before because the formatting has changed with the new office suite. There can also be issues with getting printers webcams and other peripheral devices to work. But these are issues for the administrator and over which the end user has no control. End users have no desire to deal with these things; nor should they need to. All of this should be taken care of in the background by the system administrator.
New programs for file management, trying to find the location of menus or documents that are now in a different location after the upgrade, a somewhat unfamiliar desktop landscape and new features and concepts such as multiple desktops can also be hurdles to overcome. These are also issues for the administrator, but these can be dealt with through some level of training on the new environment.
It is important for you, our prospective customers to realize that although there are many benefits to Linux and Open Source Software, there can be pain in making the change from proprietary software that costs money to Free Open Source Software. However all of the potential issues that exist when considering a move from proprietary to Open Source Software can be mitigated with a few simple steps.
As with any major endeavor, proper planning is essential to success when upgrading to Open Source Software. This starts a thorough review of your current computing environment including available hardware and a complete inventory of the programs used in your business. Any industry or task specific software or hardware you use should also be noted.
Preparation for any major undertaking is key. When considering an upgrade to Free Open Source Software, testing of your potential new computing environment should be part of the plan. This may include setting up a pilot project with a small number of employees or a separate test lab in which potential problems can be discovered and resolved before they become an issue for everyone.
This preparation stage of the project should also include ensuring that your employees are kept fully informed of the potential changes. Many people need time to adjust to changes and are better prepared if they are informed in advance that these changes will be forthcoming. In fact these are some of the most important people to have participate in the planning and preparation of the upgrade.
Constant and consistent customer communication is also an important factor in a successful upgrade of any kind. Whenever issues are encountered, whether during the planning, preparation or implementation phase, you should be kept informed by your consultant. The very word consultant comes from the Latin and means “to discuss.” Your consultant should do just that; you should always be aware of the current status of the project. The consultant is there to discuss and inform you of the options and you should make the decisions.
Training is an important factor in a successful upgrade. I have seen many projects fail because the end users, the employees were not trained on the new software or computing environment. While it is not possible to provide training to cover every aspect of this type of upgrade, training should cover the important every day tasks that people perform on their computers. This familiarizes them with the new environment and reduces the stress of having something new just dumped on them. If possible, initial training should be done prior to the upgrade so that everyone will be ready for the change when it does take place. Additional training should be scheduled for after the upgrade to reinforce learning in the new environment.
Training applies not only to end users but also to your in-house IT staff if you have any. You may be surprised to find that your IT staff already has some knowledge of Linux and Open Source computing.
A computer project is not complete until it is fully documented. Yes, this takes time and adds to the initial cost of the project. Proper documentation will save a great deal of pain later. Problems will occur later and proper documentation is important for all concerned because it defines the environment that was created by the upgrade. That documentation allows any consultant or your own staff to have a complete understanding of your new environment as a basis for troubleshooting or further upgrades.
Lastly you should choose a company whose expertise is with Linux and Open Source Software, not one whose expertise lies elsewhere and for whom Linux and Open Source is just an afterthought as it is with many companies out there today. When you select Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to plan and implement your upgrade to Open Source Software you have chosen a company for whom Linux and Open Source Software is all we do.
Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC for a demonstration of Free Open Source Software.
Articles, Information, Linux | dboth | August 18, 2009 8:29 am | Comments (1)
Here is an interesting article at ComputerWorld, “Linux: It doesn’t Get Any Faster” which discusses the current semi-annual ranking of the world’s top 500 supercomputers.
In High Performance Computing (HPC) speed is the only thing that matters and 88.6% of these supercomputers run on Linux. Another 5.8% of supercomputers run a hybrid version of Linux and Unix. Only 1% of the world’s supercomputers run Windows.
The world’s fastest computer is the IBM Roadrunner system at Los Alamos National Laboratory with a capacity of 1.105 petaflops using 129,600 CPU cores. That is 1.105 quadrillion (1,105,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second (flops). And it runs Linux.
Top 500 List links:
Most of us don’t need to power a supercomputer and your computer may have only one, two or four cores instead of 129,600, but you should be able to count on having all of the performance of every processor core you paid for when you need it. And you should not be robbed of any of that performance by the CPU cycle stealing spyware, virii, worms and other malware that permeates the world of Windows.
If you are ready to extract all of the speed that your computer can give, it is time to consider Linux. Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to get all the performance you paid for out of your PC hardware.
Tags: High Performance Computing
Articles, High Performance Computing, Linux, Supercomputing | dboth | June 24, 2009 7:47 am | Comments Off
Of course I have known for years that Linux rocks which is why I use it exclusively. But today I experienced a really amazing example of that. Yet another one. I think this one deserves sharing as it is a perfect illustration of how much more advanced Linux is over other personal computer operating systems.
Yesterday was the first day of release for the new Fedora 11 distribution. I always like to run new distributions in a VirtualBox virtual machine for a few days or weeks to ensure that I will not run into any devastating problems when I start installing it on my production machines.
This morning I started installing Fedora 11 in a new virtual machine on my primary workstation, thinking I had enough disk space allocated to the filesystem in which it was being installed. I did not. About a third of the way through the installation I ran out of space on that filesystem. Fortunately VirtualBox is great software itself. It detected the out of space condition and paused the virtual machine and even displayed an error message indicating the exact cause of the problem.
Since most modern distributions use LVM, Logical Volume Management, and I had some free space available on the hard drive, I was able to assign additional disk space to the appropriate filesystem on the fly. This means that I did not have to reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall the operating system or even reboot. I simply assigned some of the available space to the appropriate logical volume and resized the filesystem — all while the filesystem was on-line and the running program, VirtualBox was using the filesystem and waiting. I resumed running the virtual machine and the installation continued as if nothing had occurred.
Although this type of problem may never have happened to you, running out of disk space while a critical program is running has happened to many people. And while many programs, especially Windows programs, are not as well written and resilient as VirtualBox, Linux made it possible to recover without losing any data and without having to restart the time-consuming installation. How much pain would that cause?
Well-written Open Source operating systems and software are resilient and flexible. They offer significant advantages over many proprietary equivalents. And it is not necessary to reboot just to keep them working, let alone add new disk space.
Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to see how Open Source Software can ease your pain. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.
Information, Kool, Linux | dboth | June 10, 2009 9:31 am | Comments Off
There is a neat little company in Austin Texas that does Linux and Open Source consulting. HeliOS Solutions is doing in and around Austin Texas what we at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC are trying to do here in the Raleigh Durham, RTP area of North Carolina.
They have been doing this for a while now and we are just getting started. So I am not too proud to point you to the What our customers are saying page of the HeliOS Solutions web site to see how satisfied their customers are with Linux and Open Source Software.
Just a couple fragments from that page:
“It is such a relief to not worry about viruses and spyware anymore. What struck us immediately about Linux is the beauty of it.”
“Well, this begins month two without having to reboot our computer and my kids have went download-crazy. The fact that they can play their beloved games and not ruin our setup like it used to happen is not only a relief, it has saved us countless hours of reformating[sic] and reinstalling Windows.”
“I’ve been using Linux now for about a year and a half, and I stopped dual-booting Windows about a year ago. I cannot believe how much time, energy, and money I literally wasted, needlessly, on software while using Windows.”
The company also refurbishes old computers and make them usable by removing Windows and installing Linux. They donate these older but now usable computers to children who would not otherwise have access to a computer at home.
Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to see how Open Source Software can improve your life. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.
Articles, Information, Linux, Open Source Software | dboth | 6:00 am | Comments (1)
“But Linux is hard!”
I hear this quite frequently in many different forms. Sometimes it takes the form, “Do I have to learn to use the command line,” “It is just too complicated,” or, “I won’t know how to use it.” These questions and statements are based upon an assumption that Linux is significantly different from other operating systems like Windows in the face it presents to end users.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth. It is very much like the situation in which your system administrator installs a new computer with Windows on it on your desk. If that same administrator installed a new Linux computer on your desk the experience of moving to a new operating system would be nearly the same. With Linux:
I liken the transition to Linux a little like purchasing a new car. Even when you move from one model or year to another of the same manufacturer the controls may be placed a bit differently, the accelerator and brakes have a bit of a different feel, and it may take a couple times to get used to how the wiper controls work on the new car. Moving from Windows XP to Windows Vista took a bit of getting used to.
When moving to a car from another manufacturer the differences may be a little greater and it may take a little longer to get used to the way the controls work and the car responds to steering, acceleration and braking, but the basics are all the same. The basics of Linux are all the same as any other operating system. Some things work a bit differently but launching and using programs, manipulating application windows, accessing files and many other things are very similar to what you are already used to.
Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC for a demonstration that can show you how easy it is to make the transition to Linux. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.
Information, Linux, Open Source Software | dboth | June 5, 2009 9:05 am | Comments Off
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