BLUG

Monday, November 9, 2009

Re: [BLUG] newbee

Anyone that has only used an RPM-based distribution should really try a
DEB-based distribution at some point. -- Just to see some of the other
options.

I've heard a bunch of the Redhat Engineers jumped boat and formed
Foresight Linux: http://www.foresightlinux.org/ I've not used it
myself, but I do know it uses a package management system that is a
full generation beyond the (good) package management systems in other
distributions.

When I try to use RPM-based distributions, I almost always come away
wondering just exactly who the competition of the product was supposed
to be.

I mean, with any DEB-based distribution when you install a package it
will (1) use sane defaults, or (2) ask just enough questions. This
results in packages that always work when installed.

My experience is that RPM-based systems do not ask questions even when
they really need to.

Plus you have the whole upgrading thing... DEB-based distributions
have had in-place upgrades from one major version to the next for 15+
years. Even current Fedora releases "highly recommend" you perform fresh
installs instead of in-place upgrades.

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 09:10:57AM -0500, Kelly McEvilly wrote:
> Well, I chose CentOS mainly because I maintain a RHEL 5 mail server.
>
> I can do the really basic stuff, but that's about it.
>
> I need to learn a lot more about it though. Troubleshooting services,
> disk management, updates, etc.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Krenz" <mark@slugbug.org>
> To: "Bloomington LINUX Users Group" <blug@cs.indiana.edu>
> Sent: Monday, November 9, 2009 8:57:17 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [BLUG] newbee
>
> On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 01:41:14PM GMT, Kelly McEvilly [kellym@wbhcp.com] said the following:
> > OK, since the topic was raised, I'm pretty much a complete noob too.
> >
> > I'm concentrating on CentOS right now.
> >
> > Good, bad, indifferent???
> >
>
> CentOS is pretty solid as its widely used, based on very mature
> technologies (rpm package management), well maintained and is the direct
> copy of another very important commercial distribution (Red Hat). So
> its a good choice. It tends to be a little behind when it comes to
> desktop stuff. Its mostly used for servers and when people want a
> desktop distribution based on Red Hat stuff they use Fedora. But using
> CentOS for desktops is fine too.
>
>
> Some common criteria I use when deciding which distribution to use are:
>
> o Well maintained (packages are updated frequently)
> o Good package management that has good dependency management (RedHat
> used to be a failure in this area)
> o Generally free of bugs
> o Doesn't have weird restrictions
> o Good user community.
>
> Because Linux distros are usually supported by the community, if you
> use a distribution that is not widely used, you will have limited places
> to go when you have questions. On the other hand, sometimes small
> distributions are so eager to get their distro going in the beginning
> that the help is excellent. Usually those distros end up being big
> eventually.
>
> The weird restrictions one can be more subtle, for instance one thing
> I noticed with the XpressLinux distro is that on this page:
>
> http://www.debianadmin.com/xpresslinux-a-new-kubuntu-based-linux-operating-system-for-windows-users.html
>
> In the comments the admin says "xpresslinux is only for desktops"
>
> I kinda doubt this is actually true, but it if was really this way and
> there wasn't an easy way to install Apache, why? I mean I understand
> its trying to be like Windows, but there is no reason to restrict what
> software a user can install like Windows does.

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] How do you listen to music?

In the car, I listen to Sirius. Can barely live without it.

At home/office I usually listen to internet radio. The links below are mp3 streams.

wfpk.org (Public radio Louisville, KY. Huge variety. See playlists online.)

http://streaming.win.net:7070/wfpk_hb.mp3

kuwl.org (Public radio Laramie, Wyoming. All Jazz.)

http://wprhqstream4.uwyo.edu:8000/kuwl128.mp3

grooveradio.com (All electronic, DJ)

http://mp3-hb.grooveradio.com

I also like to listen to live recordings of concerts from the Live Music Archive. And other stuff on archive.org.

http://www.archive.org/details/etree

Enjoy,

Weldon

From: blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu [mailto:blug-bounces@cs.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Shewmaker
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 11:47
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
Subject: [BLUG] How do you listen to music?

Sitting here listening to some music this morning and got to wondering, how do other people listen to music? All on the computer? CD's? LP's? iPods? How does everybody else listen to music? Here's how I do it:

I haven't owned a "real" stereo in years. Actually I think the last stand alone setup I had was a Magnavox 3 CD changer I got for Christmas when I was around 14 and kept until I left for college. I started using my computer as my tv/stereo/home theater setup since 2000 and haven't looked back since (in fact my wife and I no longer have a TV, just main PC and laptops do us just fine). I still have a somewhat largish collection of CDs (mostly classical), but those are all ripped and on my computer. So our main PC is where I have my nice speakers and is the central location for my music listening when I'm at home.

The PC is running Japanese Windows 7 (my wife does translation work from home for a company she works for) and my favorite player across all systems has to be Foobar2000. Even on my laptop, which runs Xubuntu, I often run Foobar through wine when I have it on the home network. I like Foobar b/c it's so flexible and powerful. I mentioned I have a large classical music collection. I started re-ripping all of these recently into lossless Flac (drive space is cheap and plentiful these days, I figure why not have a bit-for-bit copy of the CD? and another reason I'm glad I bought all that music in CD form rather than MP3) and I like to have very detailed meta-data. One of the things I like about Foobar is that I can browse my collection by any tag or custom tag I want. In this screenshot, http://www.shewbox.org/images/foobar.jpg , I'm browsing by composers, which I know other players like Amarok can do, but I can also browse by things like conductor or orchestra or label. If I want to see all the recordings I have with Haitink conducting or the Chicago Symphony I can.

The second place I can find my music collection is online. I am running Ampache, http://ampache.org/, on a password protected subdomain of my hosting account (screenshot: http://www.shewbox.org/images/amp.JPG) . I run a program on the main PC that syncs select bits of my music collection to my server and a nightly cron job updates Ampache's catalogue. Ampache is a really neat open source music web app, although it does have it shortcomings, at least for my classical music collection. It doesn't have the option to browse by anything other than artist or album. A Mahler recording might have Solti and the Chicago Symphony as the artist and Mahler only in the song title or album. So if I want to view everything composed by Mahler, I can't do that with Ampache. That's a minor annoyance though because overall it's great when I want to listen to some of my music away from home. Amarok also has built-in support for an ampache install, which is also really cool. So on my Xubuntu laptop I have Amarok installed and will often use that while I'm on campus since it will automatically connect to my server and stream the music that way.

I never had much of a pop music collection and I've found that right now I really don't have a need for it. There are two free music web apps I use when I want to listen to some random pop song that has popped in my head. grooveshark.com is a bright and shiny web 2.0 music search engine thing of sorts that finds and streams most things I throw at it. I also use skreemr.com sometimes, mainly because it provides direct links to the files it finds if I want to d/l anything. I also find it rather amusing that the RIAA spent the last ten or so years suing everybody and it's easier than ever to listen to just about anything you want for free. Just take a walk down Youtube lane. . . .

And for mobile music I have an (unlocked) iPod touch. It's a great piece of hardware, but with all things Apple I don't like the closed nature of everything. And I hate iTunes. God I hate iTunes. Nothing against anyone who uses it, if you like it great for you. I just can't stand it, as a music player and for the fact that they want to lock the iPod into iTunes and try force you to use it for everything Apple. Yuck. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But the actual iPod itself, that I rather like in spite of itself. Btw, I now want an Android phone, b/c somebody wrote an ampache app for android, so I would be able to listen to my music collection on my phone.

Oh, and as for buying music I still do buy classical CDs from time to time. Honestly, I think buying music online is over priced. Especially if you are getting a lossy mp3 with no album art and in the case of classical music, often poor tags. I think most albums should be $5 tops for an online purchase. There is often very little difference in price in an album download and an actual physical CD. To me anyways, why not pay an extra $3 and get the better package? Isn't one of the reasons why Apple's app store is so popular, because you can purchase apps without a second thought? What if most albums were like $2.99 or something? Then you'd buy just because it'd be a cheap, easy, (and legal!) way to get new music. There is one place I have bought classical music that does it very well, though, and that is Deutsche Grammophon's site. It's still a bit pricey, but on some of their albums you can purchase the album encoded in FLAC, and they include high resolution scans of the booklet and album art. In this case they deliver a much better product for the money. But this could be a topic for an other day.

Oh dear, this ended up being a bit longer than I was thinking. Sorry 'bout that!

Ben

Re: [BLUG] newbee

On Mon, 9 Nov 2009, Kelly McEvilly wrote:

> Well, I chose CentOS mainly because I maintain a RHEL 5 mail
> server.
>
> I can do the really basic stuff, but that's about it.
>
> I need to learn a lot more about it though. Troubleshooting
> services, disk management, updates, etc.

In case you're not already doing it, you might want to
point your newsreader (I recommend Pan) to news.gmane.org, and
search CentOS. (That should get, among other things,
gmane.linux.centos.general -- a good place to get help.)

You'll probably have to subscribe to the underlying list,
and set your subscription to nomail. It's well worth it, if only
for the sake of convenient skimming.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, Erstwhile Historian of Tongues
Sclerotic Squirreler, Double Retiree, Linux Evangelist
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] newbee

Well, I chose CentOS mainly because I maintain a RHEL 5 mail server.

I can do the really basic stuff, but that's about it.

I need to learn a lot more about it though. Troubleshooting services, disk management, updates, etc.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Krenz" <mark@slugbug.org>
To: "Bloomington LINUX Users Group" <blug@cs.indiana.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2009 8:57:17 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [BLUG] newbee

On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 01:41:14PM GMT, Kelly McEvilly [kellym@wbhcp.com] said the following:
> OK, since the topic was raised, I'm pretty much a complete noob too.
>
> I'm concentrating on CentOS right now.
>
> Good, bad, indifferent???
>

CentOS is pretty solid as its widely used, based on very mature
technologies (rpm package management), well maintained and is the direct
copy of another very important commercial distribution (Red Hat). So
its a good choice. It tends to be a little behind when it comes to
desktop stuff. Its mostly used for servers and when people want a
desktop distribution based on Red Hat stuff they use Fedora. But using
CentOS for desktops is fine too.

Some common criteria I use when deciding which distribution to use are:

o Well maintained (packages are updated frequently)
o Good package management that has good dependency management (RedHat
used to be a failure in this area)
o Generally free of bugs
o Doesn't have weird restrictions
o Good user community.

Because Linux distros are usually supported by the community, if you
use a distribution that is not widely used, you will have limited places
to go when you have questions. On the other hand, sometimes small
distributions are so eager to get their distro going in the beginning
that the help is excellent. Usually those distros end up being big
eventually.

The weird restrictions one can be more subtle, for instance one thing
I noticed with the XpressLinux distro is that on this page:

http://www.debianadmin.com/xpresslinux-a-new-kubuntu-based-linux-operating-system-for-windows-users.html

In the comments the admin says "xpresslinux is only for desktops"

I kinda doubt this is actually true, but it if was really this way and
there wasn't an easy way to install Apache, why? I mean I understand
its trying to be like Windows, but there is no reason to restrict what
software a user can install like Windows does.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] newbee

I haven't used CentOS, but I read good things about it online. I'm an
Ubuntu user, and I have tried some other distributions (Puppy, DSL,
PCLinuxOS) on live cd, but the experience isn't great because my laptop
(including optical drive speed) is so slow.

I was reading up on other distros and was thinking about changing, but
the great thing about Linux that I finally realized was that if you use
a good, reliable and well supported distribution as your base, you can
customize almost all of them to be exactly what you want. So if you
start with Ubuntu and realize you prefer KDE, it can be installed and
ready to be used in 5 minutes.

I realized I can learn a lot more and have more fun by customizing one
distribution than obsessing over deciding one. So, after all that
rambling I guess what I'm trying to say is just find one that's known to
be stable and well supported and play with it until it is exactly what
you want.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kelly McEvilly [mailto:kellym@wbhcp.com]
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 8:41 AM
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
Subject: Re: [BLUG] newbee

OK, since the topic was raised, I'm pretty much a complete noob too.

I'm concentrating on CentOS right now.

Good, bad, indifferent???

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron W. Hsu" <arcfide@sacrideo.us>
To: "Bloomington LINUX Users Group" <blug@cs.indiana.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 8, 2009 8:46:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [BLUG] newbee

On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:15:19 -0500, Sidarth Dasari
<Sidster802@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ive heard Linux Mint is also quite user friendly for new users, and of
> course if there is always Ubuntu or Kubuntu which your distro is based
> off of

Alright, that's it, I have to throw in Slackware here. :) The installer
is
a little intimidating if you don't know how to use an ncurses partition

utility, but other than that, Slackware is great for the starting user
who
wants to learn about Linux. On the other hand, if you don't want to
learn
a different modus operandi from Windows, other systems might work better

for you. :-)

Aaron W. Hsu

--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] newbee

Some common criteria I use when deciding which distribution to use are:

The weird restrictions one can be more subtle, for instance one thing
I noticed with the XpressLinux distro is that on this page:

http://www.debianadmin.com/xpresslinux-a-new-kubuntu-based-linux-operating-system-for-windows-users.html

In the comments the admin says "xpresslinux is only for desktops"

Re: [BLUG] newbee

OK, since the topic was raised, I'm pretty much a complete noob too.

I'm concentrating on CentOS right now.

Good, bad, indifferent???

On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:15:19 -0500, Sidarth Dasari <Sidster802@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ive heard Linux Mint is also quite user friendly for new users, and of
> course if there is always Ubuntu or Kubuntu which your distro is based
> off of

Alright, that's it, I have to throw in Slackware here. :) The installer is
a little intimidating if you don't know how to use an ncurses partition
utility, but other than that, Slackware is great for the starting user who
wants to learn about Linux. On the other hand, if you don't want to learn
a different modus operandi from Windows, other systems might work better
for you. :-)

Aaron W. Hsu

Monday, November 9, 2009

Blog Archive