Hello Again….

Ok, I am finally, mostly, kinda using Linux as my primary OS.  I purchased a new laptop and have set it to dual boot Windows 7, which it came with, and Ubuntu 11.10.  I have been booting only into the Ubuntu portion except when I update the Windows 7 OS once a month, or when I remember to do it.  However, I still have my old laptop that is still just a Windows 7 machine.  I don’t know why, but I am still hesitant to move completely away from Windows.

With that said, I don’t have the issue with the side bar in Ubuntu that some people have.  I think it is called the Unity Tool bar?  Whatever it is called I don’t care.  Part of what I am trying to do with my ever so slow transition is to get a real router for the house.  By this, I mean I bought an ALIX.6F2 kit with the wireless kit that goes with it.  I am attempting to get pfSense loaded onto it.  This has really been a learning process for me.  I apparently still have not been able to load the pfSense image onto the Compact Flash card.  So I guess I need to spend more time on various forums as to what I am doing wrong.  I don’t know, it seems like it should be simple but maybe I need to use some switch or something.  I have been following the instructions posted on the pfSense instructions on their site.  The dd command is fairly simple and straight forward so it is probably something simple that I am missing.  But like so many geek/tech projects I have started this year it has been full of failure.

The other big project I started and have since abandoned was doing a manual install of Snorby as a front end of Snort on an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server.  I can get Snort running and have done so many times but getting Snorby running has been kicking my ass.  Since I was doing this at work and  I didn’t have an infinite amount of time to dedicate to figuring this out I eventually downloaded Security Onion.  This has everything I want and more but that was not what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted an absolute minimal install.  I wanted this for many reasons, the biggest being that I wanted a better understanding of how all of this stuff works together.  As much as I like the Security Onion and all of the things that it comes with and the convenience of the simple install it affords, it does not help me develop a better understanding of how everything that is loaded actually works.  I know I am just whining about not getting the learning experience of having to install everything myself and it may seem like I am knocking the Security Onion.  I am not bashing the Security Onion.  I actually really like it and am going to try and get couple more servers running it at work.  First I have some hurdles to jump through, like getting management buy off and such but all that is for a totally different blog post.

I guess that is enough for now.  More whining to come later.

Blank mind….

I have logged in several times and stared at this screen with nothing in my mind to write.  Away from the machine I can think of all kinds of tings to write but not now.  I think that I have heard people who do a lot of writing that just putting words to the page will help.  Maybe that will work, maybe not.  Maybe I just need some sleep.  I think I am going to try and get some sleep. Tomorrow I hope to write more.

An end to frustration….

An end to frustration?  I have been trying to set up my laptop to be dual booted as a windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 and it has not been going well.  So I am downloading VMWare Workstation.  I am going to try it on Windows first but I am curious how well it would work on Linux.  Ultimately I am looking to stay off Windows but despite everything I am not good with Linux.  I am good with Windows because I work with it everyday.  Linux I only deal with on rare occasions and whenever I get the itch at home.  Although for the past two weeks I have been using a netbook running Ubuntu 10.04 almost exclusively at home.  It does most things well but has issues with watching videos online.  It is a netbook and is underpowered so it is to be expected.

I have a bigger drive in my laptop (the other one died) and I am reloading everything from scratch.  I could have imaged the old drive prior to it becoming non functional but the only benefit of that is not having to deal with setting up iTunes again.  Just for the record, I despise iTunes.  I could go on for several pages describing in detail why I hate iTunes so much.  I will summarize by saying that if iTunes did for podcasts what it does for music I would be more tolerant of it being such a resource hog.

I’m rambling and the VMWare Workstation install just failed for some reason.  I am going to end this post before I ramble anymore.

Will it work on Win 7….

I downloaded the Android SDK on my Windows 7 machine last night.  Obviously I am ignoring that Windows 7 is not listed as being supported for the SDK.  I might also try and get the SDK loaded onto my Ubuntu netbook and use Dropbox to share file between the two machines.  It would be awesome if the netbook was capable of running the SDK!

Trying the new Ubuntu 10.04….

I have loaded Ubuntu 10.04 onto my Netbook and it seems to run a whole lot smoother then Fedora 12 was doing.  I still get really good battery life.  I am really enjoying using various Linux installs on the Netbook.  I am not becoming as intimately familiar with the Linux OS as I had hoped.  I am getting pretty good at getting the computer setup to do the things on-line that I want to do from the Netbook.  Unfortunately, it is not looking like I will be using Linux as my primary OS.  Linux has definitely taken a proud place as the secondary OS that I use.

I have been thinking about getting into Android development.  I am not a developer but I do feel that Android is really going to explode onto so many devices that it might be worth while to dabble in.  I also think that their might be a bonus system through my workplace for Android development?  It may never actually happen but their has been some talk and it was on an official internal website.  So maybe, just maybe, I can retire early with these bonus’s.   I can dream can’t I!!!

Need to come up with ideas….

I have loaded Fedora onto several of my computers at home and have become comfortable using it to surf the web.  I have  not tried to do much else with it since my last post.  I still have not taken the time to learn about SELinux or how to get Google Earth working on my Fedora machine.  I have found that once I have things working then Fedora works just fine and I have no problems.  Doing something new is when things get interesting.

I need to come up with ideas that will help me get better with Linux but will not cause me to rip out my hair.  Mostly I am looking at installing and removing software in a manner that will not kill software that is already installed.  Recently at work we tried to reduce the amount of software loaded on one of the Fedora machines that we have.  We were trying to maximize the space on the machine by removing all of the fonts that are loaded by default.  This was a little scary since we did not want to remove any dependencies that the fonts we wanted leave on the machine.  Everything worked out fine however it was an all day thing just to remove the fonts we did not want.

Since my mind is very unfocused toady I will get the basic question that I am looking to get out there before I forget or wonder off again.  Does anyone know of a Linux Tutorials that are good for people that have a little experience with Linux?  Does anyone have any suggestions on an application that can be used on Linux for writing code?  What I am looking for is some thing that works like Programmers Notepad on Windows.

Ok, I can’t remember what else I wanted to talk about today.  I am sure when I review this later I will be scratching my head wonder why I even wrote anything at all.  Oh well, the dangers of posting while tired…..again.

I am now using Fedora but….

I am using Fedora but I am not really happy with it.  It seems to be more of a lack of knowledge on my part.  I figured out that I needed to update PackageKit BEFORE I am able to update anything else.  I need to add my user account to the sudoer file so that I can use the sudo command instead of changing to the root account.  I do not know why that is, some security thing?  When I am doing command line stuff I do not want to do everything as root.  Speaking of things I do not understand, WTF is SELinux?  How the hell am I supposed to configre this thing?  I am seriously thinking of ripping it out of my freaking computer or just dumping Fedora.  I loaded Google Earth and SELinux will not allow me to use it!  It does not give me the option to allow this application when it tells me that it has killed the process.  Well thank you for protecting me, now tell me how to make you stop interfering with what I am trying to do!

Why is it every time I want to do something on Linux I need to spend a couple of evening researching how to do it.  Something simple like loading Flash.  I tried and tried to make the YUM package work.  I read countless blogs, forums, and websites with no success.  Out of frustration I tried the RPM and it works just fine.  I am left sitting in my chair asking why the F### did that work?  Fedora uses YUM to do updates.  When ever I want to load software from the command line I use YUM.

I want to learn more about Linux and everything but I do not want to spend days of my life researching how to o something simple like loading a piece of software.  I obviously can not recommend anyone that I know who is not a tech enthusiast to adopt Linux until the simple things are actually SIMPLE.  Other then that I am enjoying Fedora when It doesn’t interfere with what I am trying to do.