A heavily-discussed topic in this quiet August is Mac OS X piracy. Yet more sets of instructions flow in, which explain about (at least) 3 different ways of installing Mac OS X on non-Apple workstations. To give a snippet of one of them, “1 – Install Darwin 8.0.1…” and yet another: “3. Download Ubuntu Live CD…”. It becomes apparent that a Linux installation is usually, if not always, part of the installation process. It’s a pre-requisite.

OS X will supposedly require its own isolated hard-drive, which is a shame. OS X is good for many things, but not for everything so partitioning would have been a pro. Only 2 days ago I formatted one of my partitions. I would have loved to make it an OS X partition, but I ended up with 2 Linux partitions. Let us refer to it as “two birds with one stone (physical drive)” and needless to mention, penguins are the best birds.

Related items: Mac OS on Every Machine, Dual-Partition Linux

arly this morning I made a bold move; it was bold for me, at least. I decided to make both partitions on my hard-drive adhere to the Reiser filesystem (FS), overwriting an unused Windows 2000 (NTFS) partition, which was rarely ever accessed. At times it was exploited as a storage area, yet no more than once month, which made it a complete waste of space.

Before formatting the NTFS partition, I was able to transfer data to the Windows partition using special tools. Linux can read NTFS, but not write to it, whereas Windows only understands its own filesystems (FAT, FAT32 and so forth) so there is no reciprocity. Nevertheless, there are tools which enable Windows users to read a Reiser filesystem, which is a common Linux filesystem.

• rfstool – read ReiserFS under Windows
• YAReG – a .NET GUI for the above tool

They both require the user to boot into Windows, which is why I gave up on them and decided to stick to Linux partitions instead.

The moment of truth: so long Windows partition (click to enlarge)

To cut a long story short, I now have two Linux partitions, which I am extremely happy with. This move would not have been simple if it weren’t for the kind help from Houghi.

At an earlier stage I thought about installing Mac OS X on the new partition. Unfortunately, the process seems time-consuming, complicated and unreliable at its end. Moreover, it turned out that this had never been possible as Mac OS X (specifically the hacked version which runs on any machine) will not function under a partition, i.e. it requires a separate physical drive. To the curious, there are full instructions on how to installed Mac OS X on any standard PC. Many pictures and screenshots are included.

oogle have recently revealed that they had used Linux from day one. Looking further into the past, why have they not openly expressed their passion for Linux? Perhaps they realised that over 90% of their target audience were Windows users. No user will be inclined to use the service of one that is different, one whose preferences are in ‘disharmony’ with the clients. Under such circumstances, there emerges an inner-conflict, whereby a Google user admits making a mistake, making a poorer O/S choice.

In this article from Computer Business, Google’s open source programs manager lists arguments as to why proprietary software can never offer what Open Source does. There is a long-standing myth that Linux people are incapable and have reached out for so-called ‘abnormal’ sides due to failure in a world that is largely dominated by Windows. I believe that Google have shown, with quadrupling revenues and an enormous rapid growth, that Linux is all it takes to gain advantage.

From the article:

While showing a slide show of Google’s hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of “spare computers that were lying around Stanford” (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google’s current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.

There is still a great deal of secrecy when it comes to Google’s hardware, yet some information is now out. The server rooms have been kept in the dark intentionally. This entire revelation did not come as a total surprise to me as Brin‘s (Google co-founder) Stanford home page showed he had been a Linux user (plenty of Python) in his early days.

Machines by the dozens. Just toss a Linux distro on them.

SD is the Berkeley System / Software Distribution, which is a popular variant/branch of UNIX. It has already reached the average home computer several times in the past, as opposed to being used in machine rooms (e.g. data centres, computational servers). DesktopBSD 1.0 is a new endeavour (yet another distribution), currently at a release candidate phase. It was brought to many people’s attention via Slashdot.

Screenshot of DesktopBSD, on top of which sits KDE 3.4

All screenshots come from the Open Source Directory (feed: ), which is an entertaining site at best and informative at the least. It provides a clear and extensive previews of Linux distributions, thereby helping people select the right one. Screenshots are taken from the very early installation stages (BIOS level) until a running state is reached. There are also many ‘Grand Tours’ of a variety of *NIX distributions.

RedHat Linux

An article from Linspire proves that Linux is cost-effective. Schools are now providing each student with a computer (Linux box) of his/her own.

Indiana Schools Kick Off Program to Provide Desktop Linux Computers to Every High School Student

Linspire Linux Operating System and Indiana-Based Wintergreen PCs Tested and Deployed in Broad One-to-One Computer Plan

You can see further details about this announcement by browsing the KDE news section (RDF feed).

Also see: Open Source in English Schools from the BBC

Getting a higher level of expressiveness using a CLI

In a very recent item from Slashdot:

“According to Stephen Toulouse at Microsoft (rel="nofollow"), because of the possible virus threat that targets Monad the shell will not be included in Windows Vista. CNet is reporting that, even though Monad is not to be included on Vista, it will be included on a major server operating system for servers from Microsoft. Codenamed Longhorn server, that edition is due out by 2007.”

The inclusion of a CLI is primarily aimed at programmers, system administrators and Web hosts who require versatile remote access. I have some suspicion that Monad will introduce users to the power of the command-line¹, who will in turn realise that they can get it all under Linux without the high costs which Windows entails. In the past few days I converted about 3 people from Windows to Linux, which results in a rewarding feeling. It is not a religious war, but one of freedom. Free as in free beer. Free as in freedom.

¹ The “front line”, not MS-DOS, but bash et al. rather.

The latest generation of Web development involves tools such as the one used for managing this Web log. Although many pages continue to be composed in the level of raw HTML code or using What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tools, their days appear numbered. Quite simply, both are antiquated methods of composing for the Web since development is usually done at the remote end — the user’s end. Both content and tools (software) reside on the user’s side. Content then needs to be transferred to the Web server and software is not guaranteed to work on any platform.

In the past few years, many free content management systems (CMS’s) have emerged. They typically re-use GPL‘d components for a more rapid development process, which is the power of Open Source. The result is the existence of many packages and some prominent ones are listed below:

• WordPress is a blogging tool which has recently stretched towards becoming a fully-blown CMS. It powers this section of the site as well as Harvey Tobkes
• Plone, which is highly popular
• PHP-Nuke (and PostNuke) that run The Computer Vision Digest and MARS.
• Drupal, a highly-motivated team that grows rapidly
• Mambo which is very popular among Linux users

There is no “best tool” as it all depends on the task in question and the nature of the Web site to be built. However, Plone is very mature, WordPress is highly user-friendly and PHP-Nuke is versatile. The best thing to do is visit the sites and view demonstrative flagship sites that run on each CMS package. A quick glance will give all the impression that is needed.