OpenSUSE Linux Rants

Here’s a great article about a handful of ways that OpenSUSE Linux 11.1 makes for a fantastic desktop.

Excerpt:

“One such distribution, Novell’s OpenSUSE, reached its 11.1 release late last year, packed with the (at times, overreaching) desktop feature ambition on which the SUSE name was built, but also enhanced with the sort of community-embracing capabilities that the distribution will require to hang on to its prominence.”

“In particular, OpenSUSE 11.1 is the first release to ship since Novell’s OpenSUSE Build Service hit Version 1.0. The Build Service enables users to create, compile and host software packages for OpenSUSE, as well as for several other Linux distributions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, and Ubuntu.”

Read “OpenSUSE 11.1 Vies for Desktop Linux Supremacy“

In Linux, it’s a little more difficult to recover deleted files than in Win32 platforms. Some may argue that this is not the case, but for your regular old non-techie email-and-Internet user, I’d venture to guess that it is. That, and I’m always right (Raise your hand if you think I actually believe this. Brett, put your hand down.).

As it so happened, I deleted about 500 photographs of my family the other night. The problem was that those were the only copies. Yep, that sucks.

As it turned out, I was able to retrieve them using photorec, a part of the testdisk suite of tools for the Linux operating system. The latest version of photorec for OpenSUSE Linux is available from the packman repository. Here’s the description from the Photorec Wiki Page:

“PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its ‘Photo Recovery’ name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media’s filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.”

You install photorec and run it from the command line. It will then present you with a few screens, where you tell it how you want it to operate. Generally, you’ll need another partition to restore the files to (I used a USB drive). I was able to recover about 4900 images, which included all of the ones that I had deleted accidentally.

If you accidentally delete images in Linux, give photorec a try.

See, now people always tell me that I am a conspiracy theorist against Microsoft. Alrighty, well, here’s yet another chance for you to see that I am more of a realist than you think.

When you see this, it will give you the willies, and I’d be surprised if you didn’t switch to Linux in a heartbeat.

Excerpt:

Microsoft:”First, the role of ISVs. ISVs- independent software vendors-are pawns in the struggle between platform vendors. They’re essential. So you can’t win without them, and you have to take good care of them. You can’t let them feel like they’re pawns in the struggle. You’re going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just can’t let her feel like that, because if you do, it ain’t going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else you’re never going to get what you’re really looking for. So you can’t let them feel like pawns, no matter how much they really are.”

Read “66 Pages of Microsoft Evilness“

Linux wallpapers can sure be funny. Props to whoever made this (if you know, please let me know). Here’s one that everyone should have the chance to see:

A small (but growing!) handful of additional Linux wallpapers can be found in the Linux wallpaper collection

If you know of any other excellent Linux wallpapers, please drop me a line. Have a good one, all.