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I recently installed (and am using this instant) Fedora Core 2 (FC2) Linux. Fedora is the community arm of possibly the most recognized commercial Linux distribution Red Hat. Red Hat used to distribute its flavour of the OS for free while selling support to corporate clients. While this is still the basis of their business model, they merged with the Fedora project in September 2003 and separated their commercial product "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" from the community supported version "Fedora Core".
Enterprise Linux is still based on Open Source Fedora Core, but includes software updates, support, and systems management. The packages included from Fedora are restricted to a manageable subset for which Red Hat can guarantee support. For more information about the history of Red Hat Linux and Fedora, go here. Red Hat, incidentally, was founded by Canadian Bob Young, from Ancaster, Ontario, who now owns the Hamilton Tiger Cats!
When I first installed FC2, I was impressed with the easy graphical installation. The first time I installed Linux, specifically Slackware Linux, was in 1998 and involved a text based installation with lots of tapping 'y' or 'n' to confirm or deny cryptic configuration options. Getting a graphical interface running was a concerted effort in itself. Installing Linux is now, dare I say, as easy as installing Windows. OK, let me qualify that. Installation is easy, but there were a few obstacles to a fully functional system that required some research and expertise.
My two main problems were wireless networking, and Japanese character input, neither of which were working out of the box.
Wireless Network
The problem with the wireless card was pretty severe. Not only was I not able to connect to the network using the card, but the PCMCIA device itself was not being properly detected. An error message was generated at boot. Those of you familiar with the PCMCIA module in Linux are probably accustomed to the two beep system of notification. The first beep indicates if the card is correctly detected, and the second beep indicates if the card is correctly configured. High pitch is good and low pitch is bad, so what you want is two high pitch beeps.
But now the beep system is gone. cardmgr, the utility responsible for monitoring sockets, can be run with a "quiet" option to disable beeping. But it looks like it is being run normally in the startup scripts, so perhaps the system speaker is disabled. I have yet to figure this out and it only compounded the problem of me not knowing why the card was not working.
I found the following advice in a forum:
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and set 'ONBOOT=no'
And it got rid of my error message at boot, but still no network. I tried the "System Tools" -> "Network Device Control" utility from the main menu, and saw something that looked promising. But when I tried to get the interface activated using the utility, it gave the strange error message:
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Bind socket to interface: No such device
This is because it was using, by default, a nickname 'eth0:1' for the device. When the command 'dhclient eth0:1' is run behind the scenes, it does not execute correctly. It needs to be run as 'dhclient eth0' with the real device name. But once I figured that out, I had another problem. dhclient broadcasts on the network to ask for configuration information from a DHCP server (usually your home router these days). However, the card was still not communicating with the access point.
After blaming the driver (orinoco_cs) and looking for an alternative, I eventually discovered I was using the appropriate driver. After much experimentation with card configuration settings, I finally found the incantation that got my network card to work:
iwconfig eth0 rate auto
So if anyone else out there has a 3CRWE737A AirConnect Wireless LAN PC Card made by 3COM, you need to set the data rate to automatic to get it to work. To have this done by default, edit the configuration script corresponding to your network device (eg. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0_0) so the entry for rate reads RATE=auto. You can also set the ESSID of your access point and other information here.
Japanese Input
Japanese text input was another mystery. One site I read went so far as to claim that the entire Japanese community had been cut off because of the lack of support for Japanese input in FC2. The old method of Japanese input in Linux was to make sure the canna server was running, then launch kinput2. Because I generally wanted everything in English, I would run applications as needed with Japanese support enabled by setting the language and input method environment variables on the command line before launching the application.
I finally found, on the Fedora Core 2 Input Method Testing Guide, the magic I needed to get Japanese input working. Set the environment variables LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 and GTK_IM_MODULE=iiim So if you were running firefox from the command line with Japanese input support, you would type the command:
LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 GTK_IM_MODULE=iiim firefox&
So far this works great! Use ctrl-space, not the old shift-space, to switch between input methods. A little IME (Input Method Editor) button even appears on the gnome taskbar. Actually, only the second variable, GTK_IM_MODULE is necessary to enable the IME.
Satisfaction
I am really impressed with FC2. It runs well, it is very intuitive (unless something is broken!) and it looks beautiful. All the text is anti-aliased and can be configured with sub-pixel smoothing for LCD monitors. The graphical configuration tools work nicely and there is one tool for each job. Previous Linux desktops often included an overwhelming suite of redundant utilities and applications; everything and the kitchen sink. FC2, in contrast, delivers everything you need and nothing more.
I highly recommend you give it a try. Use bitorrent to make the download go quickly and read this before you install FC2 if you want to dual-boot between Windows and Linux. If you have ever used Linux before, installation will be a snap and I expect you will be impressed.
You can learn more about FC2 and download the CDs (for free of course) here: http://www.fedora.redhat.com/
Leave me a comment if you need help with the installation!
The mother clock. This is where Canadians go if they really want the time:
The Frequency and Time Group at the Institue of National Measurement Standards of the National Research Council of Canada is responsible for "official time". Canada's caesium atomic clocks, like the one above, are used in conjunction with atomic clocks from around the world to maintain an internationally accepted time scale known as UTC, Co-ordinated Universal Time.
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a scale based on the position of the sun with reference to the old Greenwich observatory in England at zero degrees longitude. As astronomers and scientists discovered and began to account for discrepancies in timekeeping caused by the inconsistency of the Earth's rotation, new standards were created to replace GMT.
The current standard, UTC, is based on counting seconds. A second was defined in 1967 by the International System of Units (SI) as 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation in the caesium-133 atom. A day is 86,400 seconds based on the rotation of the earth in the reference year 1900. Because our clocks are now more precise than the Earth's rotation, leap seconds are added every once in a while to keep time in sync with the Earth. Upcoming leap seconds are predicted by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS).
The acronym UTC is derived from a compromise between the French "Temps Universel Coordonné" (TUC) and the English "Co-ordinated Universal Time" CUT.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock
http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/time_services.html
http://www.apparent-wind.com/gmt-explained.html
UPDATE:
I forgot to include, of course, the Canadian NTP time server: time.nrc.ca
Use this server to automatically synchronize your computer clock using WinXP, Linux, or a number of free utilities available for download.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
-George W. Bush
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040805-4.html
"You need only 15 minutes to prepare for the night of love! salami firecracker" reads the subject heading of my latest spam email. I use the mail reader that comes with Netscape Communicator 7.1. Usually the built in junk mail controls weed out such messages, but the cunning spam artists append such deviceful phrases as "salami firecracker" to confound the most sophisticated of neural network email filters.
I will never know the content of the message, whether it proports to enhance my natural male endowment or assist my carnal abilities, because I do not read spam.
Unsolicited emails often contain "web beacons", tiny, imperceptible images also called "single-pixel GIFs" which, when loaded as you read your email, indicate to the sender that you have received and viewed your email. So if you do not want your email address added to the spammer's list of live accounts, do not read spam.
An entire town is available for $7-million in Northern B.C. How cool is that? Here are the specs:
Wow. Who would not want to buy that? Unfortunately I spent the $7-million I had on an effort to release funds from a Nigerian bank account. I am still waiting for the billion dollars I was promised.
So I wonder, if you buy the town, can you set up a municipal dictatorship? Make your own laws? The municipal government has a fairly powerful level of autonomy though it must have to operate within provincial and federal guidelines.
What would you do with your own town? How would you populate it?
My favourite quote in the article about someone who owns land in the area speaking about when he visits is: "he loves racing through stop signs at top speed".
I still have not developed the photos from the road trip, which incidentally include some pictures of scenes far more interesting than the road trip, because there are a few shots left on the roll for which there have been no further interesting scenes on which to use them. Once developed, you will be the first to know. For now, I will share something I came across on another website.
Perhaps you are familiar with Amazon's feature whereby users are alerted to material they might be interested in by the "Customers who bought this book also bought:" heading. For instance, if I look up "The Art of Computer Programming", I can find a myriad of other geeky tomes under their suggestion list.
Recently I found a (targetted) advertising link on friendster to an English-Japanese dictionary being discounted by the company Overstock.com. They have a section on the page titled "Customers who bought this item often buy..." and guess what they list.
Apparently customers who purchased that English-Japanese dictionary often buy the Original Soundtrack for "In the Mood for Love". I guess we linguists are just romantics at heart.
Richard and I are back at home base. Pics and a full report to follow.