Geeky Baldisms

This big move to a dedicated server is now complete.

And I would like to give an unpaid, hearty endorsement to my new hosting company, jtlnet.com, at this point.

I didn't hear anything for two days after ordering my dedicated server. That made me nervous.

That was the last "negative" experience that i had with them. It's all been very positive since then.

I would rate my technical ability when it comes to Linux web server management at about a 7.5 on a scale of 10. I can tweak conf files, but not without help from others who post their own conf files online. I know my way around chmod's and chown's, and am able to add/remove/update software from the command line.

But I am far from ponytail stage.

That's why my ringing endorsement of jtlnet is now presented for the world to see: their unbelievable technical support.

Here's why I love it:

Computerworld columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols recently posted this article on his blog.

In it, he showed how a serious economic downturn may be good news for the open-source movement.

He outlined five specific programs that can be replaced by FOSS alternatives.

The five are MS Office, Outlook, Quicken, Sharepoint, and Windows itself.

The FOSS replacements are Open Office, Thunderbird, GnuCash, Alfresco, and, of course, Linux.

V-N is an open-source advocate, and we need more of 'em. He doesn't like Windows. That is generally what happens to someone who gets into the world of FOSS.

That is off-putting to many who have been happily running Windows for years. But you have to understand that once you have been exposed to something that is vastly superior to what you have long been used to, the natural reaction is anger at whatever it was that had earlier led you to believe that it was as good as things got.

This is particularly the case with Windows, which has proven itself to be adequate at best, criminally underhanded at worst in its long-term ride at the top of the O/S market.

One of the things that makes people nervous about switching to Linux (and justifiably so) is the prospect of doing without one's favorite programs.

That was certainly a major hurdle that I had to clear.

I did so by going with a virtual Windows machine under VMWare. Plus, I have weaned myself off of the Windows apps that I once used as far as possible. I'm still using paint Shop Pro, but I'm hoping the The Gimp version 2.6 will finally turn me into a Gimp user. Its interface rework makes it much more similar to Photoshop, which it is most often compared to.

What other Windows and/or closed source programs can be replaced with FOSS alternatives?

A site that is of great assistance in making that determination is OSALT.com, the Open Source Alternative site.

Are you a Microsoft Visio user? Give Dia a try.
Or are you dependent on Dreamweaver for web development? There are several alternatives, try Quanta Plus, for example.

OSALT is a very, very valuable resource for thjose trying to escape the clutches of Windows. For that reason, I'm giving them a permanent link right below my Ubuntu version countdown.

I just downloaded and installed the latest VMWare Server (2.0) on my Linux machine (an HP 1483w that has been blissfully freed from having to run on XP) yesterday. And I must say that I am blown away!

It's a major rework. The self-contained front end program is gone. You now manage through a web interface that connects via SSL to your own machine. The interface itself will remind you of VMWare's enterprise-class ESX Server, although not as well equipped. But you can see real-time RAM and processor usage.

The interface is much better, IMHO.

Here's another big plus: you can spawn a console session from the web interface. A window will pop up which you can resize and drag to another desktop if you like.

For me, this means no more remote desktop connections, which are plagued by sporadic sound and copy/paste functionality. The floating window has 100% of the remote desktop session's functionality, with added ease in interacting with other Linux applications.

But here's the best part: BLAZING VIRTUAL MACHINE SPEED!