Sounds like something Fedora users might relate to…

I hear many of you finally have smooth Flash support, but me and my Intel card are still waiting on a kernel patch somewhere in the pipeline before we can watch Jon Stewart smoothly.

Posted in: Fun, Linux, Miscellaneous,

I spend way too much time and effort tweaking my SpamAssassin settings on my server just so I can get my email and spam situation manageable.

Anyways, I’m getting sick of the trouble so I am trying out Google Apps for Domains. This allows me to use my own domain name, but using Gmail for email and other Google web based applications (such as “Docs” and “Calendar”) all for free. It is basically the whole set of Google applications made to work from your own domain. The best part is that it can be configured to work without interfering with your actual website. So you can still run your blog, web page or forum.

There are some significant benefits since Google is managing a lot of the software on their side.

Email

In Gmail I can create easily email address aliases or use “subadressing” without messing with things like CPanel or Exim. This is very useful for mailing lists among other things.

Calendar

Even though Google Apps was designed for multiple users, it is just affective for a single user. The Calendar feature can be used online or it can be made to work with desktop applications like Evolution.

Setup

If you want to use this free service, all you need is a domain name (you don’t necessarily need hosting). I was a bit hesitant to mess my main server, so I decided use my unused mjmwired.com which I have through 1and1. Google does a very good job providing information for configurations through some of the most popular domain name providers. Using 1and1 config options, I can redirect subdomains such as mail.mjmwired.com directly to the Gmail login for my domain.

Google Apps for Domains can be used for individuals or even communities or groups (of up to 50 people) for free. The enterprise options provide even more features (at a cost). If you ever considered trying it out, it is not too expensive to get a $7 domain name and the setup takes merely a few hours.

So far I’ve found it quite convenient, and I might migrate further to Google Apps in the future. Even though I too have my reservations about Google’s Privacy issues, this feature is too nice to ignore.

Posted in: Hosting, Miscellaneous, Server, Setup,

There is brief intro presentation on SELinux for “everyday” users. The 12th slides is titled “SELinux - the good”. It has quoted someone by the name Larry Loeb:

Let me assure you that this action by the NSA was the crypto-equivalent of the Pope coming down off the balcony in Rome, working the crowd with a few loaves of bread and some fish, and then inviting everyone to come over to his place to watch the soccer game and have a few beers. There are some things that one just never expects to see, and the NSA handing out source code along with details of the security mechanism behind it was right up there on that list.

I just found that hilarious so I had to pass it on.

I had been disabling SELinux, since it was released in FC2, but as of Fedora 9 I leave it on. For the most part now, it operates pretty transparently.

(Presentation link via James Morris)

Posted in: Fedora, Miscellaneous, Security,

Try out Chromium. Courtesy of T ‘spot’ Callaway:

Using your favorite text editor (as root), create chromium.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d/, with the following contents:

[chromium]
name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Then run (as root):

# yum install chromium

From spot’s blog:

The packages are i386/i586 only (and the i586 chromium is a bit of a lie, it isn’t compiled with the correct optflags yet) because chromium depends on v8, which doesn’t work on 64bit anything (yet). Also, plugins don’t work at the moment and some of the tab functionality doesn’t work right, but as a general web browser, it seems functional enough. (And, it seems to pass the Acid3 test, which isn’t surprising at all, since WebKit does and Chrome uses WebKit.)

Looks interesting!

Posted in: F10, F11, Fedora, Software,

There was some discussion on the fedora-devel list about changing the default architecture for 32-bit Fedora. Which would mean that users running 32-bit Fedora with modern CPU’s will see some improvement, while older hardware will need to be supported by some secondary means or not at all.

There are some good points in the thread, but the question I found myself asking was: “Why do I still run 32-bit Linux at all?". For 3 years, all of my computers have been 64-bit hardware.

I thought it was the web, however …

• Flash: Runs great using 32-bit software in 64-bit Fedora (the native 64-bit plugin is currently in beta).
• Java: OpenJDK has had a native 64-bit browser plugin for Java for over a year (the official native 64-bit plugin for Sun Java was released almost 6 months ago) .
• I don’t even use things like RealPlayer anymore, and most websites no longer bother to embed video directly.

I often would recommend to people that multimedia had limitations or would require work in 64-bit Linux, but all my DVD’s, music and collected media work perfectly fine! And if you’ve looked at tutorials for media playback, there is little or no difference in the work required. (FYI: I have not missed anything for NOT having the win32 binary dll’s).

The only insignificant difference is the (sometimes) 10-15% size increase in downloads and applications for using 64-bit software. However for the performance gain, the cost in hard disk or download time is well worth it.

I feel silly for installing CentOS 32-bit on my personal server last year. That is not even used for multimedia or web. I think may upgrade it.

I admit I’ve been a luddite for far too long. If your hardware supports it (almost no new hardware is pure 32bit), then you should be using 64-bit Linux. In your next update or install cycle, skip the i386 and go download the X86_64!

Posted in: Fedora, Hardware, Linux, Miscellaneous, Multimedia,