YUM Extender
Finally I found a nice GUI for YUM: yumex (YUM EXtender). It is not as flexible as Synaptic for apt but still makes it a bit more comfortable to work with YUM.
Writing and reading E-mails
I know that some companies have a kind a set of rules for employees regarding reading and writing e-mails at work. Most of the time these rules are to help employees be protected from e-mail trojans and to teach them to write good messages so they won’t be ignored or filtered on the other side.
Few days ago I was asked to help with creating such a rule set and I wonder if anyone already has some ideas which can be included or if there is any place on the web where I can find something similar
Interview with Linus Torvalds
Found a very nice interview with Linus Torvalds here. One of the funny part I found was:
Q: What are some funny things that happened to you or, that you did, when making Linux?
Linus: “Really early on when I was making Linux, one of the things I was really doing was reading Internet news from the university computer. I was dialing up to the university, I usually got a busy signal, so I programed an auto dialer. It would dial and if it got a busy signal, it would wait a minute then redial. I wasn’t using Linux full time yet but was still using it. By mistake, I auto dialed my hard disc and basically I overwrote the operating system with the dial strings. So I had to decide if I would reinstall the OS I was using or start using Linux full time. I said OK, that’s a sign, I’ll start using Linux full time.”
This reminds me of a good way of starting using Linux after you have been using something different for a long time. If you want to succeed and be fast in it - just erase whatever you have, put Linux and start using it :) It might be a bit hard for the first week/month, but after you will catch yourself at using Linux without even thinking of it :)
Filesystem and attributes
A very interesting feature described here shows that it is possible to assign custom key = value attributes to the files and folders on the filesystem level. To use this feature one have to enable it from /etc/fstab during mount time and then get a package of utilities to get/set attributes.
Things missing in Linux
For the past few months I’ve been working a lot with Linux and M$ in parallels and most of the times I was migrating different things from M$ to Linux. During this months I realized why so many people are still stick to M$.
The idea is that it is true that you can replace any functionality of M$ by Linux including servers/desktops/terminals and whatever but the problem is that it is still a bit hard to set up a replacement since there is a lack of GUI (kind of easy usable configuration tools) and all the software comes from different vendors what makes it a bit hard setting it to work together.
For instance, let’s take the combination of Active Directory + Domain + M$ Exchange: it provides a directory server with all those easy administration, data replication and whatever else, plus the whole collaboration package from M$ Exchange. It is known that Active Directory can be replaced with OpenLDAP, Domain can be [almost fully] handled by Samba and M$ Exchange can be replaced by putting together MTA, IMAP, POP and whatever else required. All of the applications can work with OpenLDAP to have a centralized username/passwords and other stuff and it seems that the whole combination is replaced, but not. Have you ever tried butting all of these together? If yes - how long did it take you and finally - how easy is it to administrate? I mean if there is a common place [ok - two] where you can go to do any tasks related to the package above?
I know, there is a major plus in Linux way - a matter of choice. You can choose an MTA you like (Sendmail, Exim, Postfix, Courier, whatever) as well as any IMAP, POP, and even LDAP server can vary from OpenLDAP to Netscap Directory Server or new RedHat/Fedora Directory Server of similar SuSE product. This is what you will never get with M$. But on the other hand it still kinda difficult to set it up and even more difficult to watch it afterwards.
Of course there were some attempts to create some kind of centralized panels for administration [like Webmin or even linuxconf tool] but they all suck at some points. The major problem with them [from my point of view] is that they are modular and different modules are contributed by different people and most of the time there is a problem with compatibility.
The whole post above is not to tell that M$ is better that Linux [although in some cases it might be] but to try and figure out what is missing in Linux to make it easier for people to get used to it.
As an example to confirm the above I would describe the next situation: a while ago a was setting up a simple Linux firewall with a bunch of network services that I usually add to these kind of boxes like [iptables, squid, dhcp, caching DNS and some others] and a guy, who asked me to make this installation was very upset since he can not control this box in a comfortable way (lets say using web interface to have a centralized administration) and the only way for him to change something in the settings was to either call me to SSH to the box and re-configure it or use a bunch of small tools that left him each for changing different settings.