The lack of a web browser that works well with Linux is one of my (and many other peoples) big complaints. For those network administrators out there contemplating a migration to GNU/Linux on the desktop, the traditionally buggy performance and lack of features of web browsers for Linux is a huge stumbling block. I have […]

If you wish to change the default printer on a users Windows box via a script, defprint is what you need. Stuart Anderson wrote this fine piece of freeware; however, the site referenced in the file is not available. We put a copy up on NetAdminTools here. Use defprint /P to list your printers: C:>defprint […]

[[LFS Notes: This article worked.. kinda… for my existing Red Hat 7.1 system, and was actually the inspiration for exploring LFS. See the GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS article.]] A few days ago I wrote about improvements in Mozilla. The release of the new Mozilla has made my desktop experience with GNU/Linux oodles better. I decided to push […]

We decided to give Gentoo GNU/Linux a try. We had tested a previous incarnation, but weren’t entirely happy. This time, though, we were impressed enough that Agatha is using it as her main workstation now. For those of you unfamiar with Gentoo GNU/Linux, it is a source-based distribution. Sorcerer, and LFS are other examples. LFS […]

[[LFS Note: This article was based on my Red Hat 7.1 install. See GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS and the hint on LFS for more info on installing Gnome for LFS or you want to dig really deep into the libraries.]] In the article on GNUCash 1.6.2 Compile/Installation I mentioned that Gnome was more stable after I had […]

One thing I like about Eterm is that the users of Eterm, and the author, are serious terminal geeks. I’ve often wondered how, exacty, the backspace works (or doesn’t work). As I flit around different systems and programs, the behaviour is often different. Anyway, I ran across a nice tidbit here that explains what is […]

[[LFS Note: The below procedure works fine with LFS 3.0]] In my continuing search for compatibility, stability and performance, I decided to compile XFree86 4.1.0 from source and install it. I removed the RPMs for my version earlier version of X, as well as Freetype. I also removed my old fonts. I didn’t have any […]

In this article, I fixed my backspace, and it has worked since on every system I’ve logged on to. I had one lingering problem though. When I select text in Vim by highlighting with the first mouse button clicked, when I paste the selection into another terminal, I get extra newlines. This is really nasty, […]

I discussed compiling XFree86 from source in my article XFree86 4.1.0 from Source. One problem if you nuke all associated RPMs, is that the Athena Widget Set is included in the XFree86 distribution. This is in xc/lib/Xaw of the XFree86 source tree. What is a Widget Set? Well, this is the style of buttons and […]

*The* significant point about LindowsOS is that you can buy preconfigured systems at Wal-Mart. Further, the systems are *cheap*. $199 for a PC with an OS installed. For GNU/Linux to be widely embraced as a desktop that is accessible by everyone, this is what needs to happen. We wondered just how easily Lindows was to […]

[[LFS Note: the following was from a Redhat 7.1 perspective. It may or may not work well on an LFS system. For LFS, use the LFS hint to install zlib-1.1.3, jpegsrc.v6b, libpng-1.0.12, lcms-1.07, libmng-1.0.3, tiff-v3.5.5, qt 2.3.1 (change -system-mng to -system-libmng), Openssh (LFS HINT) , lesstif-0.93.9. I added: pcre-3.4, audiofile-0.2.2, libxml-1.8.16, libxml2-2.4.5. After you get […]

Are you tired of looking at an ugly bash prompt like this?: -bash-2.05b$ Well, if you add this line to your .bash_profile: export PS1=’\[\033[01;31m\]\h \[\033[01;34m\]\W \$ \[\033[00m\]’ You will get a red hostname (up to the first .) and a blue current working directory: servername directory $ For more info, see the prompting section of […]

Storing cookies on workstations has both privacy and security issues associated with it. Generally, we like to nuke our cookie files. There is way too much information stored in them and created during web surfing. I (Agatha) visited a site I’d never seen before and was prompted by name to donate money to the site […]

We ran into an interesting problem with PuTTY. PuTTY doesn’t have a print-screen function. We looked around for an application that would simply print the clipboard. True, you could do something like ctrl-v, ctrl-p in notepad, but then you have to change focus, which is distruptive. With PuTTY, you simply highlight text with the left […]

Yes, yes… no time for games, usually, but sometimes a little Sunday gaming can be fun. For grins, we did a bit of googling, and found that Micropolis is available on Ubuntu. We happen to be running 12.10: apt-get install micropolis Reading package lists… Done Building dependency tree Reading state information… Done The following extra […]

We had a workstation that wasn’t getting updates properly. Here are some items in the logs we noticed: Event ID 43: Windows Management Instrumentation ADAP failed to connect to namespace \\.\root\cimv2 with the following error 0x80041002 And: Event ID 1090: Windows failed to record Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) information, which describes the scope of […]