Yacoblog - Linux

ColdFusion Builder on Linux

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:35:00 -0600

If you are a ColdFusion developer that runs Linux on your desktop, you are probably aware that you can't get an official Linux version of CFBuilder. Well, there is a way to run CFBuilder on Linux, thanks to Mark Mandel. He has done some leg work to find the files you need from the Windows version and then you can run a script he wrote to get it all working. I haven't tried this yet, but it looks promising. So my next question is...if Mark can do this, why can't Adobe figure this out and release an official Linux version? Especially since they do have a Linux version of ColdFusion.

Linux installations = recursive masochism

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:01:00 -0600

I have to get this off of my chest. Firstly, yes I am a big Linux fan because it's the only operating system I've used that offers configuration down to the anal retentive levels I prefer. But sometimes Linux makes me want to scream. Installing from source is one of those times. So I like to use Ubuntu desktop because it is a LOT easier to use than any other Linux distro I've tried (and I've tried a number of them). In general, installations are a breeze because I can open up Synaptic Package Manager and search for the program I want (and 9 times out of 10 it's in the repositories). But on occasion the software I want is not in Ubuntu's repositories (nor any of the "universe", "please don't go here", "you will die if you use this" repositories I've enabled). So I am forced to use the old fashioned methods. This is where recursive masochism begins. I'm sure many of you Linux fanboys have suffered this scenario:

Download source files.
Attempt compilation...discover you need some additional library first.
Find dependency on the Internets, attempt compilation...discover you need some additional library first.
Find second dependency on the Internets, attempt compilation...discover you need some additional library first.
Find third dependency on the Internets, attempt compilation...discover you need some additional library first.
Find fourth dependency on the Internets, attempt compilation...it works.
Attempt compilation of third dependency...discover you need some additional library first.
Find fifth dependency on the Internets, attempt compilation...it works.
Attempt compilation of..."Where the &$#% was I??"...
Attempt compilation of originally desired software...discover that their *&%# compile script has an error in it.
Realize that you just wasted the last 6 hours of your life (as well as about 500 MB of hard drive space).
Pray to the Linux gods that some pioneering soul has written a tutorial for installing your desired software in Ubuntu, and that said tutorial will work for your machine.

Com'on, Linux developers! You can't honestly make fun of Windows developers when they figured out user friendly software installation years ago, but in 2009 you guys are still swimming in dependency hell. And for those wondering about all the bleeped out 4 letter words in this post...it takes a lot to make me swear. Linux's dependency hell can bring that out in me. Ok, I feel better now. :)

Ubuntu Jaunty with ATI Azailia (Intel HDA) Audio

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:31:00 -0600

This is a somewhat obscure post, but it's for my future reference and anybody else that had audio problems after upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty. Firstly, let me say that my audio worked fine "out of the box" with Ubunto 8.10 (Intrepid). I have an AMD mobo with an onboard sound card built by AMD/ATI (or Intel), I'm not sure which. Here are some descriptions for my sound card I saw in various hardware lists in my system:
ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
RS780 Azalia Controller
ALC1200 Analog
snd-hda-intel (the driver)
To make a long story short, I ended up following this excellent Ubuntu sound troubleshooting guide in the Ubuntu Help section. The part that seemed to do the trick was when I "purged" all of my audio config/setup and set it back to "factory defaults". This was accomplished with a single (long) command in the terminal. After that, I was able to hear sounds in the "Sound" panel under System->Preferences. However, I had to try all of the different devices under the dropdown before I found one that worked. In my case it was "HDA ATI SB ALC1200 Analog (OSS)". I'm not sure I like that I had to settle with the Analog device instead of digital, but oh well. At least I finally have sound working again. On second thought, I've heard that Analog is better than Digital when it comes to music (sound waves are analog not digital). So I guess I'll survive. :)

How Adobe Can Kill Silverlight: Linux

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:08:00 -0600

This is not my idea, but John C. Dvorak's. Microsoft is making a full frontal attack on Adobe with SilverLight. Dvorak's suggestion is that Adobe should port the full creative suite to Linux, and once that's done make a fully optimized, custom version of Linux for Adobe designers/developers. How would this hurt SilverLight? It wouldn't directly, but it could potentially take money out of Microsoft's coffers (by taking away Windows market share). [More]

Where's Windows Real Time Operating System?

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:22:00 -0600

There is an excellent article in c|net about a new version of SuSE Linux that claims to be a Real Time OS. This got me thinking about Windows, as I'm unaware of Microfost's entry into this small market segment. I'm talking about large enterprise level systems like Wall Street's infrastructure. I know that Microsoft has Windows CE, which is technically a RTOS. But I doubt we'll see a version of Windows any time soon that guarantees microsecond response time. Unless it can reboot that fast...

Dot Dot Enter

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:10:00 -0600

I've blogged about this before, but at my eye doctor's office today I noticed that their computers are running Linux (I recognized the desktop interface widgets). They had a terminal window that accesses a command line/gui type doctor's office application. One girl was getting trained on the system, and I kept hearing them say "dot dot enter", which is a command to go up a directory in some Linux distributions. I also noticed that they had Thunderbird icons on their toolbar. Very cool! :) Oh, and their website is powered by ColdFusion! According to Netcraft, their web server is running Windows 2000 and IIS, which kind of surprised me considering all the above mentioned technology choices.

Installed ColdFusion on Ubuntu

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 11:40:00 -0600

I've been getting Ubuntu Linux up and running on my desktop. Today I decided to use the directions I mentioned earlier for installing CF on Debian Linux (Ubuntu is based on Debian). Those directions help you get things running for a production server, using Apache. I am just doing this to have a local copy of CF for development, so I only used about half the directions. But it worked! :) Also, the guy that wrote the directions had a problem with the graphics server, and I didn't have that problem. My guess is they were installing it on a headless Debian server, because he needed to install some x server libraries, but I already have them.

ColdFusion on Debian

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:26:00 -0600

Steven Erat has published a ton of information for running ColdFusion on RedHat Linux. This is very useful, and you can probably take most of it and apply it to other distributions. However, there may be enough differences between the different Linux flavors that a specific tutorial for your favorite would be great. Today I found one for Debian. This should also be useful for all of the Debian based distros, like Ubuntu.

JavaScript Operating System

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:01:00 -0600

Someone has built a Unix like operating system using JavaScript and a web browser. It uses a lot of Ajax like functionality I'm not sure how useful this would be to anybody, but here's the description: "It comprises a vir-tual machine, shell, virtual file-system, process-management, and brings its own terminal with screen- and keyboard-mapping." I logged to the terminal in and played around a bit. All of the standard commands I tried worked! I looked at man page, and there are 55 commands currently implemented. This is pretty wild, but it doesn't have access to your local filesystem. So it's not very useful. The author says it is demo software, and I think this is another case of someone having too much time on their hands. :)

My Eye Doctor Uses Linux

Tue, 03 May 2005 19:40:00 -0600

Today I went to my eye doctor. While I was standing at the counter with dilated eyes, setting my next appointment, I noticed that the receptionist's computer had the KDE launcher button! On closer inspection, I saw the KDE pager, all the default icons in the system tray, and all that fun stuff. I then saw that she was using SSH to access a server based system. See, there's more proof that Linux can be used in mainstream business.
I think that a lot of businesses would benefit from Linux, especially if they can get away with only using specialized software, or if they have simple computing needs. Why spend an extra $200 per PC to have Windows, when nobody in your company really needs Windows based software? Admittedly, this doesn't work for most companies, but small clinics like my eye doctor are a perfect case for Linux.

SuSE 9.2 popular on Amazon

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:52:00 -0600

Its been over a month since my last post, but I'm talking about Linux again. :)
I'm probably going to buy the next version of SuSE Linux that comes out early next month, and I was checking prices on Amazon (to see if they even sell it, actually). I found out its about $10 cheaper than from Novell ($80), but the cool thing I found out is how popular it is. Amazon ranks their 'early adopter' sales, and in the software category SuSE 9.2 is #4 right now. I thought that was cool by itself, but then I saw that #6 is Half Life 2! The next version of SuSE is more popular than the next version of Half Life? Well, I'd have to say that I agree with the choice myself, but it surpises me to see that from everyone else.
If your curious, 2 versions of Photoshop Elements 3.0 are numbers 1 and 2, PC-cillin Internet Security 2005 is #3, and another version of Photoshop Elements 3.0 is #5.

Linux pre-loaded on a laptop!

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 15:18:00 -0600

HP recently released a Compaq notebook that comes preloaded with SuSE Linux. The price starts at $1199 (US). Its got the Intel Pentium M processor (no AMD option, sadly), a DVD/CDRW combo drive, and a wireless nic. Of course, they have "HP recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional" all over their site, and the notebook by default is configured with WinXP, but this is a pretty good sign for desktop Linux, in my opinion.

Middle click to close tab

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:06:00 -0600

I am a Linux and FireFox user. For some reason, if you middle click a tab in FireFox, it loads some odd page from your history. Actually, what I think it is doing is loading whatever you have in your clipboard, and then going to that. Not sure, but anyway I found how to change that.
If you type about:config in the URL field, and then in the Filter field type 'middlemouse.contentLoadURL'. Double click this Preference and then type in 'false'. Now, if you middle click a tab, it will close. :-D

HP to resell Sendmail

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 10:14:00 -0600

In the past, HP was a strict 'Microsoft shop'. I hate that term... :) Anyway, they have been selling more and more non-Microsoft products lately, like Linux. This is probably because of their customers, as Linux has been making huge inroads in the server space, and even some into the desktop space. Now HP is going to resell Sendmail as part of their server offerings. This is a surprise move, because HP has long been a Microsft Exchange reseller. But if their customers that use Linux need an enterprise email system, Exchange is the wrong duck for their pond. I don't think this news is anything earth shattering...Its just more proof that there are companies out there that use Linux for their mission critical systems. My guess is that most companies that use Sendmail are service providers, like web hosts and ISPs.

Image transparency in The Gimp

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 20:44:00 -0600

As many of you know, I've been a Linux desktop user for about a year now. The only real option for image editing in Linux is the Gimp, and its not a bad program at all. But it sure can be a pain to find some of those common functions you learned in other programs...one example is transparency. If I had Paint Shop Pro in Linux, I'd have that licked right quick, but alas its not available. So after much searching in the menus (its not there), I embarked on a web search. Its not intuitive at all, but here's an easy way I found in an online forum:
First add an alpha channel (Right click --> Layers --> Add Alpha Channel). Make sure you have the color you want transparent set to the background color, then select the background with either "Select by color" (Shift+O) or with the "magic wand" (Z). Cut out the selection (Ctrl+x). Make sure you save it as a file format that supports transparencey (png, gif, etc.)