Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

3/12/2018

An OS Inside An OS

Filed under: About The Author,Better Living Through Technology,GUI Center,Linux,Never trust a Network Admin with a screwdriver,The Network Geek at Home,Things to Read — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is in the early morning or 7:55 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

As you might have guessed from the title of this blog, I’m a geek. In fact, I’m actually a professional geek. Rumor has it, being a geek is cool now. I’ll get back to you on that.
In any case, one of the ways my geek has expressed itself is in early support for Linux.  I’ve used Linux, one way or another, for more than twenty years.  It’s hard to believe, but it’s true.  What’s more, I’ve been Linux certified for more than ten years!  Strange but true!  I don’t use Linux as my main operating system, though, because I live in the real world, not a Techno-Libertarian Utopia.  And, yes, that means, I use Windows.  At home, it’s Windows 10, because that’s what came installed on the laptops I got for my wife and I while I was a highly-paid contractor in 2016 and we were refreshing all our electronics.  But, much to my surprise, there’s a way to run both Windows and Linux, together on the same machine!  Without having a dual-boot system!  Thanks to an article from the Linux Journal, which almost went the way of the dinosaurs last year, I have activated Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is ONLY available on Windows 10, and then installed Ubuntu, which is free, from the Microsoft Store.  The little screen-shot at the top of this post is Ubuntu, running in its own, little window, on my Windows 10 laptop.

This is exciting!
Now, I can brush up my bash scripting by setting up a series of rsync jobs to keep my two Western Digital MyCloud drives in sync, essentially backing one up to the other.  From the literature, I had thought that was built into the models I got, but it wasn’t.  I tried to use SSH to get that setup directly on the MyCloud devices, since they’re running some limited *nix kernel, but something about the way they were configured made connecting one directly to the other and running rsync from working “as expected”.  This, though, should get me around all that.
Now, all I have to do sort out the syntax for properly mounting the Windows shares I’ve set up in the Ubuntu virtual machine app.  So, I’m not 100% there yet, but this is a great start!

 

9/8/2017

Ulitmate Free Linux Software Collection

Filed under: Fun,Fun Work,Geek Work,Linux,Novell,The Day Job — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:30 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

That’s a long title for something only a few of my hardcore readers will be interested in.

I used to blog about a lot of hardcore geeky things, professional geeky things and personal geeky things both. But, for a while now, I’ve drifted away from some of the geekier stuff. It’s not that I have less interest, because I assure you I’m still a pretty hardcore geek. For instance, the other day, I rooted an old Android phone so I could install Kali Linux on it for some mobile penetration testing. Except, I wasn’t happy with the rooting tool I had used and how the whole thing turned out, so I wiped it and, when thing settle down a bit from the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, I’ll take another crack it, if you’ll pardon the pun.
I’m still an IT professional, and have gotten more technical again in my most current several positions. Which really means that I have spent more time managing systems than people, which is just fine with me. And, as I just mentioned, I’ve spent some time thinking about security, which for me always includes Linux in some form or flavor. Of course, it helps that I’m an old Novell guy and picked up my CompTIA Linux+ back before they changed the requirements to include regular recertification. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t work to keep my Linux skills sharp, just that I’m not required to for the certification.
And, that’s what inspired me to bring my fellow geeks this week’s link; The Awesome Linux Software repository at Github!
If you’re interested in Linux, this is a fantastic collection links to four of the most popular distros (Arch Linux, CentOS, openSUSE, and Ubuntu), and dozens of programs for your every Linux-based need. The maintainer, Lewis Vo, has links to Linux software for Audio, Chat Clients, Data Backup and Recovery, Desktop Customization, Development, E-Book Utilities, Editors, Email Utilities, File Managers, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Productivity, Security, Sharing Files, Terminal, Utilities, and Video, as well as Command Line Utilities, Desktop Environments, Display Managers, and Window Managers. I mean, there are links to EVERYTHING a Linux geek could want.

If you’ve never tried Linux, I highly recommend you do, or talk to a geek friend about it. We’re happy to talk about it for hours!
And, next week, something for a wider audience, I promise!

11/13/2003

SCO Shoots back!

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Linux,News and Current Events,Novell — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is in the early morning or 7:20 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

With subpoenas this time, not just FUD.

(That’s Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, by the way.) Well, according to this article on ZDNet, SCO has filed subpoenas with the U.S. District Court in Utah, targeting Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta.
The article said that IBM responded to the Linux-related lawsuit by asking a federal judge to order SCO to identify illegal source code and serving four other companies with subpoenas of its own. Though it wasn’t clear if they filed before or after SCO. In either case, I hope this gets resolved soon. I’m tired of hearing about it and anyone who knows Linux knows that they have no leg to stand on. Oh, well, at least it gets Linux in the news….

8/25/2003

“They Are Smoking Crack.”

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Linux,News and Current Events — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is in the early morning or 7:21 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

So speaks Linus Torvalds.

In this interview on eWeek, Linus Torvalds, the Father of Linux, refutes the claims that SCO has been making, based on the “leaked” code samples. Basically, what he says is that the code in question is really, really old code found in BSD and the “original UNIX” archive made available by Dennis Ritchie. In fact, it looks to be code written by Ken Thompson, the Father of UNIX, himself. (Ritchie is one-half of the team responsible for the C programming language, among other things.) In short, SCO doesn’t seem to have a leg to stand on, unless they’re hiding a bunch of code somewhere.

And, yes, Mr. Torvalds actually said, “They are smoking crack” in response to a question regarding SCO.

6/8/2003

SCO vs. Novell, Round 2

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Linux,Novell — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Snake which is mid-morning or 10:26 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

Oh, boy, this looks like it’s going to get ugly.

At least, I sure hope so! Let’s get Novell’s name in the media as much as possible, eh? Let them talk about their product and how they plan to use Linux as much as they can stand. Let’s keep the love alive.
Really, the latest volley is that SCO is going to sue Novell. And, so far, that seems okay with Novell. Oh, and SCO has finally agreed to specify what code is in question so experts can look at it.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has suggested Chris DiBona of Slashdot.org and The Screen Savers fame, as a third-party expert to evaluate the code. You can see what he has to say about it on his blog.


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