Scott Yang's Playground

Debian 6.0 Squeeze released. My server platform of choice for the next year and half (until the next Debian or Ubuntu LTS are released)

Recently when I tried to upgrade my ASUS Eee PC from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, it made a complete mess — 4GB internal drive is just not enough to hold all the applications, data + new packages for upgrade. So instead of trying to fix a borked Ubuntu installation, I tried to install Hardy Heron [...]

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron” has just been released, with server edition getting extended support until 2013. It was “Coming Soon” half an hour ago, and it is now here! I am probably going to install that on most of my production servers as I am really growing tired of Gentoo.

No one tagged me but saw history meme and wanted to test it out on my main “workstation” — a Gentoo Linux running inside VMWare Server on a Dell notebook running Windows XP. $ uname -a Linux vmgentoo 2.6.22-gentoo-r2 #1 SMP Fri Aug 17 16:56:49 EST 2007 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz [...]

LowEndBox.com: Virtual Private Servers Comparison Matrix for VPS plans and providers under $7 USD a month. I am talking about a complete Linux server with root account and a dedicated IP address (not some dodgy oversold shared hosting plans), although most low-end plans have no more than 64MB of memory. Well, my first web application [...]

Apple has long been running their switch Get a Mac campaign, luring the PC users to abandon Windows to come to the paradise. Then we have geeks migrating from Mac to Ubuntu out of frustration from the built-in apps. Now, we have David Young, theJoyent CEO, is talking about his switch from Ubuntu to Windows [...]

Mark Pilgrim wrote a bash script to batch-encode videosto H264/AAC for iPod under Linux, utilising other open source applications like ffmpeg and mplayer. One thing I liked about the article is, after listing the prerequisites, Mark wrote “Please don.t ask me for help installing these prerequisites. Consider it a character-building exercise.” Maybe I’ll quote that [...]

Dan Warne of APC talked about Ubuntu Christian Edition in a sort-of mocking way. I actually took a look at this Ubuntu Christian Edition (UBE) thingy, and it is nothing more than one bash script (convert_me) that installs both GnomeSword + a few modules (an open-source Bible study software) and DansGuardian (a web content filter), [...]

Last night I have posted my very first flash video on the web — and it was Anna sitting there watching, her own video for 2 minutes (which probably would only interest the parents and grand-parents). Anna’s video aside, I was also having fun figuring out getting that video online. There are many ways putting [...]

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, a long time Mac user, is talking about switching to Ubuntu Linux for desktop, following the steps of Mark Pilgrim, who has also recently migrated to Ubuntu and suggested Linux equivalents to Mac essentials. And as Jason Kottke has said, “If I were Apple, I’d be worried about this… Nerds [...]

Via /., Lenovo desktops and notebooks are now Windows-only. What?! Linux loves to run on IBM ThinkPads because the Big Blue is actively advocating it, and I know a few sysadmin-type geeks swear by their ThinkPads. At least they can now buy Macbooks and run a decent x86 unix system.

Photo of crashed application running on Linux on an Airbus 330 in the mid air. Yeah, that was the cute Tux in the photo. However I think I will freak out if I see Linux bootstrapping inside my in-flight entertainment centre.

Last night Upgraded my test box’s lighty to the latest 1.4.10 via Gentoo portage (I have lighttpd keyword masked). And then suddenly none of my CGI works. It just kept on complaining: 2006-02-16 23:24:18: (mod_cgi.c.1186) cgi died ? 2006-02-16 23:27:07: (mod_cgi.c.1186) cgi died ? 2006-02-16 23:27:14: (mod_cgi.c.1186) cgi died ? 2006-02-16 23:32:19: (mod_cgi.c.1186) cgi died [...]

Discussion on how Apache prefork MPM handles HTTP keep alive can kill a site under Slashdot effect. That’s the price to pay when each httpd process is stuck handling one pending connection, and that’s why I am keen to migrate my server to lighty + PHP on FastCGI.

Via MacSlash, Apple’s recent SEC filing stated that they felt being challenge by Linux and pirates. Not that the Penguins are pirates, of course, but it suggests that without Linux, Apple would be in a better position today. So what will happen next? Mac moved onto x86 platform? Almost done. Apple teams up with Microsoft [...]