At approximately 11 am EST today Fedora Core 4 was officially released to the mirrores and bittorrents. I couldn’t wait to get home to download it and install it on my two Linux machines. I’m currently downloading it - unfortunately it currently says I have 65 hours left, but hopefully that speeds up soon. Happy “birthday” Fedora!

Recently I had ocassion to require wireless access on my Linux box. This is notoriously difficult in Linux as of now, although most other hardware devices are found and work right out of the box. I’d gotten it working on my laptop before, but this time it was necessary to get it working on my desktop. At first I tried a USB wireless device, but those are almost no support in Linux so I ditched that effort and bought a D-Link DWL-G510 Wifi G pci card. I hoped it would work out of the box, but it didn’t.

Here I have decided to run the “top” command in the top transparent Eterm window. This is a great command to have running on the desktop. Basically it’s equivalent to hitting control-alt-delete in Windows and then clicking on “processes”. It tells you what you are running on your system, how much RAM/CPU cycles it’s taking up, and a bunch of other information. It dynamically updates so as you run programs you can see what’s holding up the computer. It doesn’t normally have that line running down the middle. That’s a consequence of some glitch when I was taking the screenshot.

Finally I have figured out something else I have wanted to do for MONTHS! If you look on the top-right corner you will see what looks like an embedded terminal in my desktop. The biggest reason why I’ve wanted to do this is simply because it looks really neat to have a terminal “built into” the desktop. I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet, the way people use them to run a logger in the background or other neat utilities. Besides looking really neat, it allows you to enjoy your background while using the terminal instead of covering it up. I mean, what’s the point of going through all the trouble of having such a great background when you can’t even see it? If you are into computers you are now nodding in agreement. So, how did I do this?

I wanted to share my Fluxbox desktop on my main Linux computer both for the geeky motive of showing off my desktop like jocks show off their cars and also to help others achieve the same configurations that I have. Fluxbox, like Blackbox and other *box window managers, are very, very customizable.

Here is the screenshot of my desktop, which you can see in full resolution by clicking it.

First of all, on the left-hand side of the screen you can see my system monitor, gkrellm. If you’ve spent any amount of time checking out screenshots of others’ desktops you’ve definitely seen this system monitor, especially on a non- KDE or Gnome screenshot. I was actually trying to figure out what this program was for months before finally stumbling upon the answer. It is highly customizable both in what it shows and what the colour scheme is. Currently I have it showing my CPU usage, user/program usage, internet traffic, and a few other small things. The best and easiest way to get get gkrellm if you are a Fedora user is to install it from the freshrpms repository via apt or yum. Freshrpms also contains themes and plugins for gkrellm.

As we saw in yesterday’s post, one of the things the author of the article suggested was that Linux needed to get simpler in order to gain a wider audience. But I say, hell no! Do not dumb down Linux! One of the most powerful things about Linux is that we still have access to the raw commands and configurations that allow each person’s computer to be infinitely different from the next. Already part of this process has taken place with a right-click in KDE (at least in FC3) not even having an option for opening a terminal. Look at Microsoft, it’s such a pain to use DOS now and, although some don’t like it, text commands hold a much greater amount of power and complexity than an icon can.

Here’s an example of when a rich person does something for the good of humanity. Sure, he mentions in the article that he wouldn’t mind making money, but he is genuinely doing good for the planet.

Ubuntu Linux encourages sharing and copying 10 May 2005

Free operating system Ubuntu Linux has been heralded as one of the most exciting software projects ever created, writes Michael Herman.

Ask software billionaire Mark Shuttleworth why he has dedicated so much of his time and money to open-source projects since selling his business in 1999, and he is likely to tell you he wants to make the world a better place.

You may or may not know this, depending upon how technologically inclined you are, but you can buy ROMs of the old classic arcade games like Ms Pacman, Arkanoid, Spaced Invader, and much more. (You can also download them off of limewire or kazaa, but that’s illegal if you don’t own the arcade machines) Then there is a group which has developed a program known as the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) which you can use to play these old games. “So?” you may be thinking, “I can find shareware versions of all of those games.” Yes, but this is the actual original version of the game pulled right off the arcade machine without any changes to it whatsoever! What could you do with this? You could do what thousands (or at least hundreds) have already done: build your own arcade machine! There are a few webpages and books on the subject, I know there is one really good book on the subject available at Borders, I can’t remember the title, but it’s fairly obvious. Something like, “Build Your Own Arcade Machine.”

A while back I posted that Mandrakesoft had bought Conectiva and changed its name to Mandriva. What I didn’t both researching at the time was the reason for this move. Apparently, Conectiva made the most popular commercial distribution of Linux in Latin America. In fact, it had contracts with the Brazilian army and navy, as well as others. Looks like they actually made a really good purchase!

One of the most well-known Linux distributions has recently changed names! After their recent merger with Connectiva, Mandrakesoft is changing its name to Mandriva. No more Mandrake Linux! It’s Mandriva Linux now. Their URL will soon be changing to reflect this, so make sure to update your bookmarks.

Only in the Linux world can a brand name change without much repercussion. Information travels fast so everyone knows it’s the same thing. Imaging frosted flakes changing the name and mascot of its cereal. Without an expensive ad campaign everyone would assume it was a new cereal and they would lose their brand recognition. Not so with purely internet entities.