root:/Linux/User/Wakizaki

2006-04-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Moving to Wordpress

I now use Wordpress for blogging because Performancing for FF is still not deisrable to use (No Titles). From now on, please visit my Wordpress Blog. See you all there :)

Window$ (Ha$ta La) Vi$ta, Baby! :))

2006-04-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

This is a good article why Window$ Ha$ta La Vi$ta :)) should be used (NOT! :)) )

Performancing for Firefox

2006-04-01T23:17:00.000-08:00

Logging into Blogger using third-party apps lately is problematic. My favorite blogging tool Drivel can't login. I have tried Deepest Sender but just the same. I found a way to login to my Blogger account using Performancing for Firefox (the best browser in the planet :) ). Just create a custom blog account on Performancing, choose Blooger API for system type and use http://www.blogger.com/api for Server API URL. Hope this help you all :)

New Study Reveals Linux is More Cost-Effective Than Window$

2006-02-19T20:09:00.000-08:00

I have seen the "Get the Facts" series of advisements from Micro$oft saying Window$ has a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than Linux (Which, for me, is hogwash!!!)...

I was surfing the web when i saw a pdf of a new study that came out saying Linux is more cost-effective than... that other OS... Read it for yourself, and you decide.

25 Reasons to Convert to Linux (Or is it 26?)

2006-01-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my first blog entry for the new year :D I was surfing around on DesktopLinux, when I stumbled upon this: 25 Reasons To Convert to Linux. This page was created by a Linux User Group in the US. It pretty sums up the justifications why one should switch to Linux. I always believed that Linux is a superior OS that, ur, Window$ (I don't give a damn about Vista, it's just a pretty-looking OS with issues coming its way :P). One problem I see is it should be 26 because the are 26 reasons :P Take a look, it is a good read :)

Massachusetts OpenDocument War: The Plot Thickens

2005-12-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

I have been following the OpenDoc decision of Massachusetts on cnet.com. The story gets interesting on the fight on open standards for electronic documents. Micro$oft announced they opened up Open XML (Micro$oft'$ answer to OpenDocument) and submitted the specs to ECMA, a standards body in Europe. Massachusetts said it can support multiple open formats (it other words, it can support Open XML). The story get more interesting when the Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn quits due to his disgust of the politics surrounding the State's decision with OpenDocument.

I hope Massachusetts will not support Open XML. I did some digging around and found out that Open XML is not really open. Open XML is not GPL-complaint. GPL (the GNU Public License) is the most prevalent Open Source License around. One can't get more open than GPL. Also, Micro$oft could have just supported OpenDocument, but they didn't. It seems Micro$oft always wants to be the head honcho, the one in control. The OpenDocument format is vendor-neutral, meaning not one vendor has control over it, something not palatable to Micro$oft. Open XML may then be like wolf in sheep's clothing. It is disguising itself to be an open format but really it is not.

I can understand Peter Quinn for his decision. Politics is a dirty game. What Massachusetts (or the world, in particular) needs are officials who are technically inclined and freedom-loving, not technologically-ignorant and self-serving (to hell with them).

Break Stuff

2005-12-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

It's good to be back from almost 2 months of silence. Many has happened...

Upgraded My Slackware 10.2 to Kernel 2.6.14.3
Upgraded to KDE 3.5 (Unofficial build from kde.org)
Replaced my old CyberDrive CW078D(?) to Benq Combo Drive (I still can't afford a DVD writer :( )
Got an optical mouse
Got a Copy of FreeBSD 6.0 (I don't know if i'll ever install it, I love Slackware too much :D )
Love Life, zero (who needs girls, I got Slackware :)) ).
I got the newest album of Urban Dub, Embrace (These guys rock! Good price too, only P 250)

Also, congrats to Pat Volkerding, our "Benevolent Dictator", for having a bouncing baby girl :) I'll posting a bit more since it going to be Christmas break for me. Later :)

Tompkins County's ITS is Stupid!

2005-10-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

I was browsing Distrowatch when i saw this. My goodness, how stupid can you get...

"Follow the County ITS standards and guidelines regarding Internet usage to prevent your computer from becoming infected with viruses and malicious software. Here are three things to keep in mind: Use County supported browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer... Do not download, or immediately remove FireFox/mozilla browser... Do not use Netscape as your primary browser... All other browsers must also be removed from your computer..."

How came using Internet Explorer (Exploder :)) ) prevent viruses and malware?! Do they have a screw loose?! IE is the primary target of spyware and adware, because it uses ActiveX, unlike Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera. Also , the updates are much frequent unlike the dreaded IE. And as addition, Windows (Winsuck :)) ) is a basketcase for viruses, better use an open-source OS.

I think the people of this ITS need some brain surgery or something... This is not a work of IT experts but IT fools!!!

UPDATE: It seems the page has already been removed, yipee!!!! :)

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Now Stable!!!

2005-10-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

Yeah! The latest version of the popular open-source office suite is now available :D So, get it while it's hot! :D

Belated Happy B-Day to OpenOffice.org :)

2005-10-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, as they say :D Openoffice.org is now 5 years. I wish many more people will discover and use this one-of-a-kind office suite. I have been using Openoffice for more than 3 years now. Can't wait for Release 2 to be stable :D

It's Official: Massachusetts dumps M$ Office! :)

2005-09-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

It is official: The State of Massachusetts have adopted the OASIS OpenDocument and PDF formats for their electronic document needs. This means M$ Office is out of the picture :D It is quite a brave and great undertaking for Massachusetts. I salute them :) The Philippine government should take into consideration the move taken by this State. Read the story here.

-------- MABUHAY ANG OPEN SOURCE!!! ---------

Slackware 10.2 Released!!!

2005-09-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

Yes! Dear fellow Slackware users rejoice! Slackware 10.2 has arrived! For those are anxious, go to this link. Well for me, i'll wait for the UP Computer Center to acquire the ISOs, I'm on dialup :(( Enjoy :)

Slides on Directory Structure for COE 513-1M Now Available --UPDATED!--

2005-09-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

The slides for my report on Directory Structure for Operating Systems Lecture subject can be downloaded on this link. This is a condensed version, it is only 4 pages long. This is on Portable Data Format (PDF). It requires a PDF reader like Adobe Reader 7.0 (on Linux and Winsuck, er, Windows), XPDF, KPDF, or Evince, Enjoy! =)

OpenOffice 1.9.122 Slackpack

2005-08-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

For those Slackware users who want to try out the lastest version of OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta, I found this link after some searching on Google. Enjoy it, fellow Slackers! :D

openSuSE: SuSE Linux, Fedora-Style

2005-08-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

Im happy to see that the openSuSE website is now up and running. openSuSE, for the uninitiated, is Novell's attempt to create a community-driven Linux flavor of their SuSE Linux distribution, more like the model practiced by Red Hat's Fedora Core. It is always a good thing to make SuSE a community project, which what Linux is all about, people working together to make it better. I would love to test openSUSE, the problem is I got no more space in my hard drive for another Linux distro.Im pretty much happy with Slackware , especially with version 10.2 is just around the corner. See you next time :)

Knoppix and Python Saved Wakizaki

2005-08-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy. I met the deadline by my instructor on producing a program simulating the First In, First Out page replacement algorithm on my OS Laboratory class. For the past days, the program on C++ posed some headaches in debugging (maybe the lack of mastery, I presume :(( ) and time was running out on me (about 2 days before deadline!). I decided to try out Python. After some reading on few downloadable e-books from the net and futher research, I pulled it off! Now the problem is there is no Python interpreter installed on my Winsuck 98 lab station (what a bomber!). Then it hit me, why not use Knoppix 3.9 and run the python script on a USB pen drive?! I know that the computer can boot from a CD-ROM and it has USB ports. Then the day finally came. Once inside the computer lab, I booted my lab station on Knoppix, made the USB pen drive to mount as root (anyway, the computers are not networked). I tested the script I made and it ran fine. Then the time came when the instructor tested the program. My program held up :) Best part is, I'm the only one that passed the program for checking :D Thank goodness for Knoppix and Python! They rock!

XPISTUB Problem During Firefox 1.0.5 Installation

2005-07-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

For those who came across the xpistub problem while installing Firefox 1.0.5, here is the fix: after you untar and change to the firefox-installer directory, execute ./firefox-installer -ira via command line and the installation will go smoothly. Enjoy :)

Slackware Linux Users Group, Philippines

2005-07-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

I was surfing the net when I stumbled on something really wonderful: the existence of a Slackware Linux Users Group in the Philippines (SLUGPhils.). As a Slackware user, Im so delighted that such a group is now created :D
Check them out, Pinoy Slackers!!! MABUHAY ANG SLACKWARE!!!

Yes!!! EU Software Patent Law Defeated!!!

2005-07-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

To all supporters of free and open source software in the world, REJOICE, REJOICE! Yesterday, the European Parliament rejected the passing of the controversial Software Patent Law, with a resounding 648-14 vote. This goes to prove that human ingenuity and innovation (in form of software) are precious, and nothing should hinder their growth (as is the case with a patent). I was so happy to read the great news on Distrowatch :D

MABUHAY ANG LIBRENG SOFTWARE!!! MABUHAY ANG OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT!!! MABUHAY ANG LINUX!!!

Mandriva and Lycoris Join Forces

2005-06-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

According to Distrowatch, Mandriva acquires Lycoris, a Linux distribution based on Redmond, Washington. Although not as massive as Mandriva, Lycoris have some innovations under its belt. Seems that Mandriva's acquisition of Lycoris is based on technical and strategic reasons. Personally, I don't care. I have grown weary of bloated Linux distributions. Mandriva and the other linux distros out there should concentrate on making the offerings to be more streamlined. What's the use of a distro that is easy to use but oh so slow to boot, unresponsive and is a system hog? That's no fun at all. I would love to see Slackware rule the world :D Just joking :)

The Birth of OpenSolaris

2005-06-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today marks a milestone for Sun Microsystems. the open-source version of its venerable Unix offering, OpenSolaris, is now available for the curious computing public to behold. Whether OpenSolaris will overtake Linux due to this move remains to be seen, but it is a welcome one. It gives more choice to the computing public, and that is what it is all about. Personally, I believe Linux is here to stay, and it will continue to grow for it has a considerable headstart and a mature community. I would love to try OpenSolaris, if I'm able to have a second hard drive and OpenSolaris ISOs are released. But I will not remove my Slackware installtion, I'm pretty happy with it.

Wakizaki: Now on Slackware

2005-06-12T01:24:00.000-07:00

A pleasant Independence Day to all! It's been awhile since my last entry. Two major development on my part has happened. First, I'm now Four-Eyed Wakizaki (yes, I now wear prescription glasses). Second, and the most important, I think, I'm now Slackware User Wakizaki. I finally took the plunge to Pat Vonkerding's famous distribution. And I may say, I'm very, very happy :) Why the switch? Well, I just got bored with Ubuntu Linux 5.04 (after Mandriva 2005, because of its bloatness and Yoper 2.1, because of aging packages), which I got last month from ShipIt. Also, I heard great things about Slackware. The road to a good install was not an easy one for me, though. I had about 3-4 "unsatisfactory" installs before I finally got the install I want. But I think it's worth it. The only thing that kind of got in the way was the kernel upgrade. The default kernel is 2.4.29. I want a 2.6 kernel so I decided to recompile using 2.6.11.9 kernel sources. Sadly, when I boot up to the new kernel, I just got a black screen. A day or so after that, I decided to take the path of less resistance: get a prebuilt 2.6.11.9 kernel and kernel modules from the net, generate a new modprobe.conf and make an initrd. After a needed lilo change, I booted to the new kernel, Yes! it worked! After that I installed the kernel source for 2.6.11.9 and installed the Nvidia drivers, edited my xorg.conf and removed the old kernel stuff and did a lilo change again. Now I'm running Slackware with KDE 3.4. I added amaroK, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Reader 7, OpenOffice 1.9.100, NeroLINUX (I know, I should be using K3b, but i was having headaches with K3b and cdrecord, maybe some days to come...) Dia and Drivel . For package management, I installed swaret and slapt-get, including frontends Kswaret, QTswaret and GSlapt. Slackware is such a great distro, I never experienced the freedom, flexibility and speed from the distros I tried. I definitely recommended Slackware for those who are sick of the bloated and restrictive nature of others out there. What can I say... Slackware Rules!!!

A Graphical Installer for Gentoo ?!

2005-05-17T02:50:00.000-07:00

Ha... nice to be back again. If you are wandering why so long, well, just got so busy trying to make my CD burner to work in Mandriva 2005 Limited Edtion (just want to try it, because im such a distro whore :)) thanks for the guys at the UP Computer Center :) ). The ordeal ended without resolution. Believe me, I tried everything (well, almost anything i could find on the net and I could think off, except recompiling the kernel with the cd-burning patch which I'm reluctant to try). So much for the alibi, now the real juice: I just read the 100th issue of Distrowatch Weekly. A story that caught my interest is the Gentoo Installer. For the uninitiated, Gentoo is a well-known, source-based Linux distribution. Currently, its installation method is quite tedious, if one has grown accustomed to graphical installers, like Anaconda. Personally, It is a welcome development for Gentoo, to lure more people to try it. I hope it gets implimented on the next release (I'm crossing my fingers...).

Opera 8

2005-05-07T00:56:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to say that I'm glad to be back from almost a month of heidus. The summer heat is taking a toll on me, it feels like I'm in a oven while here at home. For the past week or so, I have been playing around with Opera 8, the latest version of one of the known alternative web browsers today. Although I'm a Mozilla Firefox user, it doesn't stop me from trying other browsers. So, i downloaded the static RPM package from outside (because im on dial-up). By the way, the Linux distro I'm using is Yoper Linux 2.1, with roots from New Zealand (It's pretty fast, considering I'm only on 256 MB of RAM). I installed via Kpackage, quick and easy. After installation, I'm happy to see Opera with a menu entry on KDE 3.3 (the desktop enviroment of Yoper). I fired it up, and greeted with a license agreement window. I just agreed with it then a sort of a configuration windows appeared if I want to register my copy of Opera for $39 or use it free with a non-intrusive banner as you use it, your choose of static or intelligent ads (courtesy of Google AdSense). Here is one of the downsides of Opera, it is crippleware. You have to pay to get the banner off and other cool stuff. That is kind of a drag, considering that in this day and age, most of the web browsers are free commodities. The other thing is that Opera is close source. The bad thing about this is that the source code is not under public technical scrunity, unlike Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox. Well, on the plus side, aside from the usual stuff (tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, skin themes, fast page rendering), it offers a tiled view if you have many web pages on tabs, a much better download manager (but nothing beats a true download manager like Kget or Downloader for X) and integrated mail client (just like Mozilla). Also there are some pages that can't be seen properly in Mozilla Firefox that can be seen on Opera 8, for example the check usage page of Infocom SpeedTipeed. On Opera 8, I can see the user-related fields, not on Mozilla Firefox. Opera 8 is a good companion web browser if you already have Mozilla Firefox, but Opera needs to make a justifiable price for added features, $39 is a bit much for a browser.

Update: I forgot, Opera 8 now supports Gmail in full mode :)

The Demise of Mandrake (Mandriva)

2005-04-08T03:15:00.001-07:00

According to Distrowatch, Mandrakelinux changed its name to Mandriva, reflecting its acquisition of Connectiva. For me, it seems the news is not much of a big deal, due to what I perceive as its “demise”. As it is known, Ubuntu, a relative upstart Linux distribution with South African roots, have over taken Mandriva in the HPD (Hits Per Day) chart of Distrowatch. Even if the HPD chart ranking is described as “non-scientific”, it is a pretty good indication of the popularity of a Linux distribution. What have brought this to Mandrake? Ubuntu's great community aspect is one. Ubuntu has a great community backing and wiki. Another is that the fact Ubuntu does not have a “crippled” version, unlike the Download Edition of Mandrakelinux. Another thing is that Mandrake/Mandriva is bloated. And the most obvious reason: Commercialization. Subscription for support and latest releases (and other things) is an absurd thing. Donating to a Linux distribution is a better proposition. Linux is not just a product, not just an operating system. Linux is an experience. Much better than that, Linux is a brotherhood of people believing in one goal: stable and free computing for all, especially, for people who are willing to learn, who have an open mind. Sure, Mandrake, Mandriva, or whatever it is, change the name all they want, it doesn't really matter, for it seems, blood has been spilled.