neylitalo

And now for a conversion story a little different than what we've been seeing: I'm switching to Ubuntu. But that's not all - I'm switching from Gentoo. For those of you who aren't familiar with Gentoo, it's considered to be one of the most difficult distributions to master, since you have to do most everything yourself. The most efficient way to install packages is with a command line utility (emerge), and nearly every package you install gets built from source code. When you're installing the base Gentoo system, you create the partitions yourself, you create the filesystems yourself, and you copy the base system over yourself. There is no automation to it at all - you type every command. Now, since Ubuntu is considered a "beginner" distribution, Gentooers are often wont to scoff at the lowly newbies who don't know the first thing about configuring a kernel, and Gentoo provides massive advantages to people who put in the time and effort to learn it. But now I'm dropping it. I had no inclination to explore and investigate the Ubuntu side of things, since I was comfortable with Gentoo, and I was under the (incorrect) impression that the Ubuntu package repositories were pretty much static. (One thing I love about Gentoo is that Portage, its package management system, stays almost perfectly up-to-date with the upstream developers.) But my poor education in the subject blinded me to the possibility that there was an unstable (testing) branch of the packages which stays pretty well up-to-date with upstream, something I'm a bit ashamed to admit. The key problem with Gentoo is that you have to build everything from source, so installing a package takes ages. With binary distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, and others, you don't have this problem. That little bonus, coupled with my recent discovery of the unstable branch (again, ashamed to admit that it took so long), has convinced me that Ubuntu will serve my needs beautifully. One other problem that I had with Ubuntu was that if you wanted to build a program from source, you had to have the headers and development libraries installed for every program and library that it depended on. It's not fun running apt-get a half-dozen times just to get a package to build properly. But in a conversation in the wonder that is IRC, I discovered that you can have aptitude automagically pull the -dev packages when it installs the actual binaries, so that problem is solved. (I have yet to play with it, I'm only downloading the Gutsy LiveCD now.)

While this is probably the most difficult way to make money in this arena, those who succeed usually succeed beyond their wildest dreams. I read an interview that Wired magazine did with the creators of a very popular web comic, and while they didn't get any numbers straight from the guys, Wired estimated their annual income at over 1,000,000 USD. They draw comics, three or four a week, sell merchandise, and sell advertising space. They're millionaires from publishing a simple three-panel comic strip for half of the week and giving their personal opinions in their blog. They don't cater to the readers, they can write and draw what they want, and if the reader doesn't like it, too bad - thousands of other people do. They have the good fortune to have a job where the customers don't dictate the final product, and they love it anyway. If you can find something that you love to do, and then find a way to share that with people, you'll have an excellent chance at being successful. It's absolutely essential that you love to do it, though - you're not likely to be a smash hit instantly, so there will probably be a significant amount of time before you can even make a little money from it. With a little luck you'll even get a cult following. I've been wanting to give something back to the internet community-at-large for some time now, but I can't think of any service that I can provide just yet.

We're getting a little teeny bit off-topic here, so one of two things will happen: The Linux vs. Microsoft Windows discussion will go elsewhere/stop completely, or the topic will be locked. Let's keep the conversation about converting to Linux - I really really don't want to have to lock this topic, there's a lot of good stuff. And I realize that "converting to Linux" is bound to bring up some bones to pick with Windows, but you all know what I mean about the off-topic-ness. I didn't see this earlier, so I'll just include it now - you have no idea how pleased I am to see someone else call it that. It's just so frustrating watching the entire operating system be called by a name that really only fits less than 1% of the entire thing, and not giving any credit to RMS and the people that make up the GNU team.

I'm not sure how much you know about Crossover, but just in case, I'll tell you this: It's just an improved Wine, so it's definitely not perfect. However, I've used it, and while not everything works, the software that they Support works beautifully. I've even heard people say that MS Office on Crossover behaves better than MS Office on Windows. And as for the second part of your question - there are three implementations of Windows that I know of. Wine, Cedega (also just an improved Wine, primarily for gaming, and also known as WineX), and Crossover Office. I've never used Cedega, since they don't have a trial version, but Crossover is definitely better than the vanilla Wine. If I had any Windows applications (none for me, thanks ), I would definitely pay the $40 for Crossover. The Gentoo is one of the smallest, fastest penguins (fact), which is why they named it after Gentoo GNU/Linux. (not actually a fact )

I've used it, but I dropped it in favor of NFS, and I don't really like userspace filesystems in general - but I will admit, it's a pretty cool piece of work.

I've been listening to a lot of ska, folk, and indie/experimental stuff lately - I'll introduce you to my current favorites, many of which distribute their music for completely free. Josh Woodward - acoustic folk/rock, very good - distributes his albums under the CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share and Share Alike) license t r y ^ d - Experimental trip-hop, it's actually a band of ~20 people who collaborate over the internet, they also release their music under the CC-BY-NC-SA license. I highly recommend their album Listen. The Weepies - Also acoustic folk-rock, and also very, very good, but unfortunately, they don't distribute their music for free. Ben Folds - Piano-rock. I've been loving his albums Rocking the Suburbs and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. JT Bruce - Instrumental metal/instrumental progressive rock. Their stuff is a lot of fun to listen to, especially Anomalous Material. (Also release music under the CC-BY-NC-SA) I know I saw someone mention Kings Of Leon - I've been listening a lot to their album Because of the Times. Youth Group, an Australian rock band, one of my favorites. I'd have to say my favorite of their two full-length albums is Casino Twilight Dogs. No, Really is a one-woman acoustic folk/rock band that also released their one full-length album (and a couple of EPs) under the CC-BY-NC-SA license.

Oh, you can use it on any element that you want to - the problem is that it will do crazy things with some elements, and it won't do anything with others. Would you put a font-weight style on an image? I should hope not, it's not going to do anything at all. When I say that you're using CSS poorly if you would have the same CSS with divs and tables, I'm referring to the re-usability that I was talking about earlier, and I'm not necessarily talking about layout anymore. CSS has the wonderful ability to save you a whole lot of typing, with your ability to define classes, assign the same traits to different classes at once, etcetera. If you have the same CSS with divs that you have with tables, the only conclusion I can make is that you're not taking full advantage of the power that CSS provides - if you're using more simplistic elements like divs (You have to admit that tables are a very complex creature), you can create "objects", elements that have a style that's already been created. With a simple "<div class='imageCaption'>This is an image caption</div>", you can assign colors, borders, link hover effects, and any number of things! And the next time you want to create an image caption, it's the same thing - the only thing you have to remember and type is the class. I believe the display:table attribute is designed for an entirely different purpose - I've never used it, or any of its variants (table-row, inline-table, etc.), but this reference page seems to indicate that it's not going to do much of anything.

A handful of people with loads of experience have given you a dozen reasons, yet you don't want to accept that what "everybody" is saying has some truth to it? This is an acceptable use of tables, in my opinion. While a list is more appropriate (because it's a list of information, not a table), I can understand why someone would use tables. We're not saying that creating a list of items using tables is bad, we're saying that blocking out your website layout with tables is bad. Imagine a layout like the image attached. The following is required for the basic table-based layout: <table> <tr colspan='3'> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td width='100px'></td> <td></td><td width='100px'> </tr> <tr colspan='3'> <td></td> </tr> </table> I sure don't want to have to hack that. The same basic layout with divs: <div id='top'></div> <div id='right'></div> <div id='middle'></div> <div id='left'></div> <div id='bottom'></div> And the accompanying CSS: div#top, div#bottom { width:100%; height:100px; } div#left, div#right { width:100px; } div#right, div#middle { float:right; } In this simple instance, you don't get a lot of (any, actually) code reduction. However, if we were to start fleshing out the website and adding content and features, we can create div classes for commonly used elements, and save dozens and even hundreds of lines of code. It's the equivalent of using objects in PHP. You can't do anything even close to that with tables - you have to keep on creating rows and columns. And of course, both versions are going to have massive display bugs in different browsers, but the version that uses divs with stylesheets is going to be a lot easier to fix. Then you're using CSS very poorly. [attachment deleted by admin]

His point is that tables should only be used for data that should be in a table. Just as you shouldn't lay out an essay for school in a spreadsheet, you shouldn't create your website's layout in tables. Tables are designed, and should be used, for tabular data only.

There are a few of us who think that having an operating system that really works and not having to deal with Microsoft's crap is worth the agony of not having text-to-speech (which, as you said, works beautifully with festival) or Flash CS3. And I'm of this opinion: If you're smart enough to run Linux, you should be smart enough to immediately drop Windows from every machine you don't absolutely need it on, and install your favorite distribution of GNU/Linux. I, too, would love to know what distribution it was that ran slow and crashed more than windows, and when it was that you tried it.

Steam and Counterstrike (and CS: Source) work beautifully under Wine - here's the "official" guide to installing them on Unix-like operating systems.

Very cool. It's always good to hear that another person has seen the light, I hope it solves all of your problems.

I've never understood the point to this poll - you use it when it best serves you. I'm going to lock this thread, it doesn't provide any valuable information at all.

I'm afraid it can't be done with any implementation of LDAP that I'm familiar with. You can import the Unix accounts into the LDAP directory, but you can't link them together.

If you use firefox, you can store the websites in a bookmark folder on your bookmark toolbar, and then right-click on the folder and select "Open All in Tabs".

I would use the Ubuntu Server edition for a server if I wasn't able to use Debian - it's basically the same thing, with a relaxed testing cycle. I'm sure it's just a matter of preference. (It seems that most questions about "which is the best <insert whatever here>", related to Linux, can be answered with "It's a matter of preference." )

Not by default, although there may be a way to have Postfix use LDAP accounts for user management, and I know you can have the computer use LDAP accounts for user management. You can check http://directory.fedoraproject.org/ to see if they have any information on the subject. Out of curiosity, was there a reason that you didn't use the Fedora Directory Server?

There may very well be a more efficient way, I just don't know it. DE stands for "Desktop Environment".

I've seen it done where you have a machine with KDE running, and you have that machine browse to the URL and take a screenshot - I'm willing to bet that KDE's not the only one that you can do this with, but I'm fairly certain that you need a DE running.

Not a chance. Google's too powerful as it is, with millions of people storing their emails, documents, and whatever else on their servers - I'm not about to let them have my website. I've undertaken my own personal boycott on Google, due to the uncomfortable feeling I get whenever I'm reminded of Google's control over the world. (Google-free for two weeks!)

Absolutely right. You're all set.

I used this Gentoo tutorial, and I'm currently sitting on a network with LDAP controlling user authentication for six computers, so I'd say it works pretty well. There will be a few minor differences for your distribution (Fedora, right?), but I'm fairly certain that you'll be able to work around them.

If there isn't a service listening on the ports, then they'll be "filtered"; they will only be open for connections when a service binds itself to the port. Just to make sure, does Passive FTP work with that rule?

Yea, but I hoped to do it the other way... I guess I'll do CUPS instead. Thanks for always being there Ney... While I don't share your hesitation to use CUPS, I can accept it - but I think I can safely assure you that within time, you'll be completely comfortable with CUPS. The internet administration tool (http://hostname:631) is awesome, and once you get the printer sharing set up, it's just a matter of checking a box in the CUPS admin on the client-side to get it to pick up the printers. I'll give you the links to my CUPS configuration files - There's nothing host-specific at all, so you should be able to just copy and paste. Client configuration "Server" configuration One thing that may be of importance: For CUPS to automatically see printers attached to other machines, you need TCP port 631 open on the clients, and probably on the server. I would test the server-side for you, but I seem to have just locked myself out of it with some rather stupid iptables rules. Time to hook up a monitor and a keyboard, I guess. And please, just call me Neal - shortened versions of my username look even sillier to me than my username.

Are you using CUPS? If not, you should be. CUPS has always worked for me right off the bat, with a little trial-and-error with the print drivers. It's just a matter of enabling printer sharing on the computer it's connected to, and enabling the use of shared printers on the other computers.