The Code : Story Of Linux Documentary.

Great video, the title says it all. The Code : The Story of Linux. Found this in my G+ Stream and thought it was great. Thanks +JayVan Geli

Just Started the Linux Course at EDx

I forgot all about this. I wanted to really improve my Linux skills and I found this free course. You can either get certified for a fee or audit the class for free. I'm cheap and of limited financial means so I opted to audit the course.

I forgot all about it, and just remembered the course started at the beginning of this month. It's a learn at your own pace course, and the courses are all laid out for you. Good news seeing I'm a full month behind the course start date. 

Anyway, consider this a monthly update. As I learn I'll post some updates here. A friend of mine is taking the course and said it starts out real simple and covers the basics and then gets more and more involved. I'm so excited. I just want to get my Linux skills to surpass my Windows skills.

Here's a screen shot of the course and if your interested in signing up, I think sign ups are still available  Click here. 

 

Screen shot of the edX Introduction to Linux course !!! Triple exclamation marks because I'm super excited !!!

Video : Nixie Pixel Explains the Linux File System.

Just playing around on Youtube and came across this video. Nixie Pixel gives a quick tour and explanation of the Linux file system. Very informative, and explains a lot in under 6 minutes.

I Wonder If It's Really Him ? God is that you ?

God ? Is that you talking ?

@NewAeonDesign It's called GNU/Linux, actually.
— Richard M. Stallman (@BigDickStallman) April 26, 2014

My reply :

@BigDickStallman sorry :(
— New Aeon Design (@NewAeonDesign) April 26, 2014

Not being sure if I was actually in the presence of a deity I was at a loss for words and feeling a bit ashamed.

Install Broadcom Driver Dell Inspiron 1750 Linux Laptop

So I had my first major Linux disaster yesterday. Completely crashed the system, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. More on that in a later post. For now , I had to reformat my computer and reinstall the dreaded Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g drivers. This was one of the reasons I was putting off deleting my Windows partition and making this Laptop a Linux only machine. Getting the wireless networking running on this machine was a complete nightmare the last time I tried to do this. I made notes the last time but what should of only took me a couple hours turned into a 5 or 6 hour affair because I had my notes all messed up with other information that confused me. Anyway, I thought I would post the process I used to get this wireless card working on a Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18.

O.K, This is what worked on my Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18 with KDE. When I run lspci from terminal this is what it shows as my Network Controller.

Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

After doing some research I decided I needed these drivers. Now I had earlier release drivers but this only worked with these specific drivers. You need the broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 drivers. I found mine here, and am told it's a safe site to obtain these drivers from. Scroll through the list, find your drivers and download them to your home directory.

Then open up your terminal program and ls to make sure the file is there. Then type in the following commands. I originally found this the last time I had this problem , I did change it around a little, but the credit should be given to its originator, however, it was found long before I had this blog, and I didn't notate my notes with proper credit. Sorry.

Type exactly as shown in terminal. Make sure to su or sudo, you need to be root.

first type:
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
next type:
tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2
then type:
b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.0


You're done. Reboot the system and on the restart you should now have working wireless. Hope this helped and good luck !

Youtube- Why Bloggers Don't Write About Linux

Thought this was an interesting POV. A quick discussion on why more bloggers don't write about Linux. The fact of the matter is , there just isn't enough of us using Linux yet. Contrary to this video though I think the numbers will be growing.

Although there are a ton of different distros right now to confuse a new user, it seems that with every new distro or even various releases, Linux becomes a little bit more user friendly. Not to mention brands like Fedora or Ubuntu who just seem to improve with every release (Well most releases) If you compare setting up a Linux box ten or fifteen years ago to now, it's night and day. I also think that the amount of software was limited for a long time for the average desktop user. Now, for every mainstream program like Photoshop, or Illustrator, someone creates a Gimp, or Inkscape. Linux has come a really long way over the years thanks to the multitude of programmers creating great open source software to share with the Linux community.

I just deleted my Windows partition and am using Linux full time now. There really aren't that many things I can't do with Linux that I could do with Windows. That certainly has changed over the last 15 years or so. If you're a gamer, I think Linux has a long way to go, but there seem to be a lot of developers working on that now, as well. We may be a small fraction of Desktop users, but I think once people really give Linux a fair try, it's kind of hard to return to Windows. If you're not a gamer I strongly suggest giving Linux a try. I think you'll be surprised at what a well configured Linux box can accomplish these days.

Linux Laptop Dell Inspiron 1501 Fedora 18 KDE

I needed a computer to dedicate strictly to printing. Linux uses Cups for printing and it's really not the most secure thing you can run on your computer. I've read posts on securing Cups, but most articles you read say if you have the computer attached to any type of network, Cups should probably be avoided ! So I had an older Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop laying around and I decided to install Fedora 18 KDE on it to see how it would run. If things worked out I would use that computer strictly for printing, and not connect it to the internet for anything. It worked out great with a few upgrades and about $22.00 worth of hardware.

The first thing I did was run a live install of Fedora 17. It clunked away and everything seemed to load great. I did an actual install and decided it was usable but it was a bit clunky with the original 512 megs of ram that came with the computer. I found 1 gig memory sticks on amazon for under $8 a stick,I ordered 2 with shipping the upgrade costed me under $22.00 and now gave me 2 gigs of memory compared to 512 megs. Money well spent in my opinion.
1GB RAM Memory Upgrade for Dell Inspiron 1501 (DDR2-533, PC2-4200, SODIMM)
I installed the memory and it was just what the doctor ordered. It took away most of the clunkiness and the computer was running pretty well. I've wanted to upgrade to Fedora 18 for some time now and decided to try Fedora 18 KDE. I downloaded an ISO of Fedora 18 KDE Spin from the Fedora website burned the ISO image to disk using Brasero on my other computer and ran the install on the Inspiron 1501. It wasn't uneventful, here's how it went.

I booted the computer and hit f2 and set the boot order to boot from the cdrom. I then placed the Fedora 18 KDE disk in the cdrom and rebooted the computer. The disk started chugging away and when it finally loaded I got a screen full of vertical green lines. So I rebooted the computer again and this time I highlighted Fedora 18 install, hit tab which brings up the basic install configuration settings, and added nomodeset to the end of the configuration. This fixed the problem in Fedora 17 but not with Fedora 18. Same problem. I then did a little research and found that by deleting the quite command and adding nomodeset to the end it would load fine. I'm guessing in quite mode it skips a couple drivers or something. So for the tweeted version, Highlight Fedora 18 Install, tab, in command line delete the quite option, and add nomodeset to the end and you'll be on your way.

Fedora 18 does most of the work for you after that. When I got to the partitioning part of the install, I simply set all the partitions to delete, and set it to automatic partition configuration. This deletes the XP install, removes the Dell factory backup, and replaces everything with Fedora 18 KDE. If you are planning to run a dual boot system with a different OS, or you want to save the Dell factory backup this is not the way to do it. However, doing it this way, Fedora set the partitions, handled the swap, and did everything for me with no problems. I was surprised to see the Grub bootloader installed, but I'll look into that down the road.

My Fedora 17 install was running Gnome desktop, the Fedora 18 KDE ran the KDE desktop. For the Dell Inspiron 1501 I would strongly suggest KDE. It ran so much better than the Gnome desktop in my humble opinion. The other surprise I received was that the Wireless was recognized immediately. No configuration, just type in your password, set up Kwallet, and your surfing the net. Rock on, My Dell Inspiron 1750 was a nightmare getting the drivers to work for the wireless. No problem there with the Inspiron 1501 !

Seeing I had internet I loaded Konsole, and added yum install yum-security then installed all the security updates using yum update --security. I then installed all my software using yum. Libreoffice, Gimp, Scribus, Gedit. Played around a bit and everything worked out great. Thats the only software I need for this computer but with the memory upgrade I think it could handle just about anything you threw at it.

There are a couple small issues but nothing to bothersome. Apparently there is a small bios issue with the AMD64 processor that comes in this computer. I did some research and there is a way to reflash the bios to fix the problem. Everything seems to work fine right now for what I want to use this for so I don't think I'm going to do that. Who knows, maybe one day when I'm bored and looking for something to post here I'll tackle that issue. The other thing I noticed is when the computer shuts down I get a weird green pattern that flashes when the computer is shutting down. Again this is nothing that seems to affect the performance of the machine for what I'm using it for.

The sole purpose of this machine is to have a computer dedicated strictly for Printing, and not connected to the internet, or networked to any other machine in the office. Now when I make a flyer design, or any type of advertising or anything that needs to get printed, I can just save my work to a cd, or copy it to a usb pen drive, open it in the other machine and print it from there. Sometime this week I'll do a post on setting up an HP Printer for the Dell Inspiron 1501 and Fedora 18 KDE.

On a final note, if you found this blog looking for information about running Linux on the Inspiron 1501 I hoped this article helped some. I would strongly suggest using Fedora 18 KDE it ran much better than Gnome on this machine, and I highly recommend the memory upgrade. For the $20.00 you spend on memory you're really treating yourself to a much more pleasant user experience. As always, thanks for following, hope you found this interesting and check back soon for updates. Next week, HP printers, Cups, and more on the Dell Inspiron 1501.

Dell Inspiron 1501, so long Windows XP, hello, Fedora 18 KDE. Upgraded memory to 2 gigs from the original 512 megs and this thing runs great. Strongly suggest running Fedora 18 KDE on this machine.

Linux Beginers Tip, Back Up Your Files !

So I've been using my Linux partition on an almost full time basis. I've only discovered a couple things I can't do just as easy or easier in Linux and KDE than in Windows 7. One realization that I came to, and mentioned in an earlier post is that I just need to start using it. Stop screwing around with Windows unless it's an absolute emergency, and focus completely on Linux and KDE.

So far I haven't been able to find a program that batch converts images to thumbnails. I used thumbsplus in Windows, and this should be remedied by creating a script. Something I'll have to work on when I get a chance. I do a lot of stuff with images and web design and a script to work like thumbsplus will be wonderful. The other problem I've had is finding a decent program to convert .docx files. I don't have a lot of those files, mainly recipes for cooking, so I may just start rewriting them for now. I have them on my Google drive and just convert them online using Google drive as I need them not a major pain.

Enough about me, lets talk tips. I haven't had many system problems and everything seems to be running great. There are a ton of things I want to configure differently and I'll be working on that down the road. Now that I have my drive somewhat comparable to what my Windows drive looks like as far as music, graphics work, and various docs and images, I started backing everything up regularly on a terabyte hard drive. Being new to this, I know it's just a matter of time before I really screw something up in a config file, so backing up the drive is probably a good idea.

Just like in Windows, I have a Documents folder, Pictures folder, Music Folder, and Video folder, I also added a couple additional folders. I just copy them to the terabyte portable drive, and if I screw anything up, I should have about 95% of my work backed up. No problem, then format, reinstall and all the important work files should be saved.

On that note, while I was trying to configure a simple program the other night, I had memories of Windows 3.11 back in 1992 or 1993. Although it was easier to use than Linux back then, there was no such thing as plug and play and although software was always easy to install, hardware like scanners, fax machines (lol, not many people use those anymore), and printers could at times prove difficult to install. Yet, learning to install hardware, was one of the things that really helped me become Zen with the Windows environment. If I screwed up, I'd grab my box of floppy disks, format the machine and spend the afternoon inserting disk after disk into the floppy drive, and try not to make the same mistake twice. I also did a lot of tweaking back then.

Many people poo poo OS tweaking but I think it's a great way to learn your system. By doing this you have to learn how to play with config files, and learn basic directory structure, and where everything is on your machine. Yes, there are a lot more important things to configure than that cool picture that loads in grub when you dual boot your system. But by starting out with these simpler tasks, when you decide to bust into iptables, or your boot configs, you will have a general idea of how things work and will be less likely to make mistakes.

So to end this long winded post, I guess what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to use your Linux partition if your just learning. Start hacking around in there, learn your directory structure, make some subtle tweaks to the machine, and above all else BACK UP YOUR DATA, so if you screw up it's only a mild inconvenience and not a major loss of work. The more you install stuff, tweak, and configure the sooner you will be blasting around your system confidently with few set backs.

Tux Hoody and Update

It's been a minute since I posted here last. I've been trying to get to this but with the holidays, new years and a few other projects I have going on it's been impossible. I will be posting on here again real soon.

Over the holidays I got an Amazon gift card, and a new DSLR camera. More on the gift card in a second. but the camera is one of the things that's been side tracking me as well. It's my first DSLR camera and there really is a lot to learn. However, the good news is I will be installing Darktable on my Linux partition and that should lead to some Linux notes being posted here. I also plan on posting some Darktable and Gimp tutorials, so expect those soon.

Now about the Amazon gift card. My cousin, knowing how much I love reading and shopping on Amazon got me a gift card for Xmas. I downloaded a Linux kindle book and then came across this. The Linux Tux hoody. I thought I'd share a pic here.

Me taking a picture of me wearing the Tux Hoody I got for Xmas with the new Nikon D3000 SLR camera I got for xmas.

Anyway, thanks to the two or three people that are following, check back soon for updates, more notes coming soon, and I hope you all had a great holiday season, and wish you all prosperity for the new year !

video How Linux Is Built

Thought this was interesting and worth posting here. This is a video from the Linux Foundation, that explains how Linux is built.