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  Tropical Ice Cube Newsletter #13: Penguins Save Drives!
  From: "Jean-Philippe 'Tropical Ice Cube' Monteiro" <jph'''BY\'''zenerves.net>
  To: pplug'''BY\'''googlegroups.com, barcampphnompenh'''BY\'''googlegroups.com, jugcam'''BY\'''googlegroups.com
  Date: 09/04/08 - 16:14
   
[My apologies if you receive this message 2 or 3 times: it means you are a very committed person 
registered to the 3 fine groups I send this NewsLetter to!]



Howdy, Nixettes and Nixers!

Welcome to issue 13 of the Tropical Ice Cube Newsletter,

your (quite) bi-weekly dose of OpenSource news here in Phnom Penh.

This week: Life Saving Tools, Kernel Numerology & Puppy 4.2


HOT NEWS: Tools of the Drive

We had this week a flurry of releases from small, specialised tools that can _really_ save the day, 
your work or your life for that matter. 

Welcome the latest iteration of Parted Magic, SystemRescueCD and Clonezilla - they all offer on one 
single, open source CDRom a collection of disc drive tools worth thousands of dollars elsewhere. 
Even if you are not familiar with Linux, these tools are ones to keep in your top drawer! You never 
know when failure will occur, and I have saved many, many systems or data by simply rebooting with 
one of these discs in the tray to start extracting valuable data, or perform filesystem check and 
repairs. 

And, with any common sense, the use of a LiveCD is your only option since you wouldn't want to 
perform core HDD operations in/from a drive that is being read and written to! You need to have 
the software ran from outside (RAM or  CDRom) so that the disc drive you want to repair is 'idle', 
available for in-depth scanning/cloning/repairing!


In any case, be carefull and don't hesitate to ask for help.


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LEARNING CURVE: Kernel Numerology


I succeeded yesterday the compilation of the latest official kernel from http://www.kernel.org, the 
2.6.29.1 - I was upgrading from the standard Slackware 2.6.27.7. All good, I have now a Tasmanian 
Devil upon boot screen, thanks to some serious save-the-devil challenges at the last Linux.au 
conference.. (see read/links below). My machine is now faster, and uses less system memory.


Now, 2.6.29.1 that's a lot of numbers. It' s the core of the system, why can't it be called '09' 
or 'lextra' like anyone out there seems to do, moving every other year from a number to a name and 
the opposite? The community-driven aspect of sharing source code means releasing small changes very 
often, as opposite to massive 'service packs'.

- So, we are in Kernel 2, the second proposition of a functional Unix replacement;

- At 2.6 now, after 2.4 needed a massive change in the way external and internal events can be 
(auto)handled by the kernel [2.5 was experimental, as 2.7 is supposed to be too, before going 2.8]
BUT 2.4 and 2.2 are still being developed now, with releases now at 2.4.37 and 2.2.26.

-And 2.6.29 is to celebrate the inclusion of new drivers and file systems abilities over the same 
2.6 architecture;

-while 2.6.29.1 is all about bugfixes over 2.6.29 and will continue for a while, until they release 
2.6.30.


Add on top of that that major distributions ship customs kernels with their own patches, target 
architectures and fixes, and you end up with, in Debian for instance, something as un-readable as 
2.6.18.dfsg.1-24 !!



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SHOWCASE: PuppyLinux 4.2 "Deep Thought"

Puppy is... shall we say 'growing' fast? No, since it is still there at right under 100megs, so the 
Pup isn't really putting on weight, while growing on features indeed. 
This is the first Puppy out since the semi-retirement of former Project leader Barry Kauler, current 
pupcoordinator being Warren Willson. 


Old dogs used to 4.1.2 will mainly notice the new menu' looks, a dark/orange affair that may not be 
to everyones tastes and the over-intrusive Conky system monitor. It strikes me as odd since Conky 
eats up 20% of your screen to give you the kind of information that much better resides in a 
systray.. But, hey, desktop widgets are all the rage these days especially if they feature a 
transparent background, and it does give Puppy a contemporary feel to it, much better than the 
quite M$-W95 lame gray square-ish looks of 4.1.2. [Just between you and me, my laptop will stick to 
4.1.2 for the time being] 


Worthy of _real_ notice though, still on the eye-candy front, is the inclusion of a second 
windowmanager, a wee bit less austere in looks than JWM: welcome IceWM and a ton of new/revamped 
themes to suit it to your liking (I really have a problem with this orange thingie...)


on to what matters for real now:


Puppy is still a snap, the living proof that all your computer does do not need to kill the planet 
to be effective, that you can do the same amount of work with 8 watts instead of 80, and that you 
can do it on a ten years old computer rather than on brand new iron (thanks to the -retro edition 
of Puppy, a 4.2 up-to-date version that ships with an older kernel.)


Add to that the availability of a simple USB installer, and things start to be really portable: 35 
seconds to boot, 0.4 secs to go to a spreadsheet, all settings saved upon resume... Clearly, in 
view of what's happening on the low power Atoms CPU's scene and all them NetBooks out there, I see 
a new, planet-friendly way of computing. And computing fast at that - the problem is barely that 
you need more power; what you need is less software that you don't use 95% of the time!


Go get the  Puppy out for a walk, you'll enjoy it! [And it's available at T.I.C of course]


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LATEST Additions to the DISTROthèque Repository:

http://tic.zenerves.net/latest_news.html

Hang on to something, it's a real cascade of downloads this week!


Tools/Rescue:

-Clonezilla Live 1.2.1-53

-Parted Magic 4.0

-SystemRescueCd 1.1.6


Minimalists:

-xPUD 0.8.9

-Vector Linux 6.0 "Light"



Exotic! OpenSolaris in Ubuntu fashion:

-Nexenta Core Platform 2.0 RC1


Mainstream:

-Debian 5 DVD

-CentOS 5.3 DVD


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This Week recommended READINGS:


About the freshly landed OpenSolaris derivative:


http://www.nexenta.org/

http://www.osnews.com/story/20280/Nexenta_Ubuntu_Server_with_ZFS_goodness



The '29 kernel:


Stupid challenges, cool features:

http://tinyurl.com/tuzandtux


Full feature:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_29


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Visit http://tic.zenerves.net for a full list of available Open Source alternatives for your 
computing performance and pleasure + more info and help.  If you have the bandwidth, share with 
others! Most Linux Torrents can be found here:
http://www.linuxtracker.org/
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The Tropical Ice Cube - To boldly go where no penguin has gone before!


That's it for this week;

Happy Hacking/Clogging/Joomling!


Jean-Philippe Monteiro

The Tropical Ice Cube
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  "Send a Text Message, Receive Linux for Free"
  
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  send us a Text Message from your Mobile Phone, and get the Linux Distribution of your choice, for 
  free!

  Text/call on 012 561 005 with either:
  
    * Your request for Linux distro, with pick-up yourself at my office: I will reply with street 
    address and delay/time to pick up the disc;
        or
    * Your distro request with your street address and possible hours for delivery; cost is 1usd per 
    disc/dvd, Business Hours best.

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Disclaimer:
This "Newsletter"  intends to be low-traffic and informative, to be sent maximum of once a week. 
The editor chooses which groups/lists to send this newsletter to and is a member of said 
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[[Category:Tropical Ice Cube]] [[Category:NewsLetters]]