Now on linux-planet !

I’m really happy to be now aggregated on linux-planet !

I own two blogs : this one and one in french. My french blog is aggregated on planet-libre which is a quite known planet website, at least for the french-speaking linux community.

Planet-libre is a blog aggregator mostly oriented toward advanced users : technical tips, posts about distribution evolution, software installation and configuration tutorials… and there was no equivalent to planet-libre in english (or at least, planet-libre administrators have not found any).

That’s why linux-planet has just been launched ! There’s not many aggregated blogs currently, but I’m pretty sure it will grow very fast : planet-libre is already aggregating 235 blogs with more than 6000 articles (which are only french speaking !).

If you own or know someone owning a technical blog, think about aggregating it on linux-planet !

Some nice server installation howtos

I recently discovered a very nice site hosting a lot of interesting Howtos (mostly for servers configuration) : HowtoForge. You’ll even find a dedicated Mandriva section and a forum. Have a nice browsing…

Everything you always wanted to know about your IP address

Want to know if you’re blacklisted somewhere ? Want to know what could people find out, just by knowing your IP address ? Just curious ?

Check out www.robtex.com ! (and for a good laugh, read the disclaimer)

Hardware4linux : more than 1500 systems reported and ranked based on their compatibility

www.hardware4linux.info website has now reached 1500 reported Linux systems. It can now be considered as a serious user database which grows everyday and allows everyone to compare objectively support of its various peripherals with the other users.

All components of the system are inserted into the database and can both be ranked and commented so that you’re even able to give little tips like “my SD card reader isn’t working about of the box, but by using X or Y, it’s working perfectly”.

So don’t hesitate to :

For those interested, here’s my laptop configuration.

It’s possible as well to subscribe to the comments RSS feed.

Ah, one last word : try to be fair. Reporting something is working perfectly out-of-the-box (rank “5″) and then indicating in the comments that it doesn’t work, it’s giving wrong input to the database and it won’t help anyone…

KillerStartups

Just a very small note about one website I’ve just discovered and one I already knew.

My new french blog

I’ve completed the creation of my new blog in french (which was rather easy thanks to wordpress import/export functions and the unlimited number of blogs). The link is http://yohofr.wordpress.com.

From now on, I’ll post only english articles in this blog and only french ones in the new one. I still don’t know if I’m gonna translate all articles I’m gonna write, so both blogs may look slightly different in terms of content.

The benefit of doing this is I’m still referenced on planetmandriva while I can now be referenced in http://www.planet-libre.org and various french-only aggregations (like there may be on the mandriva wikik one day…). Moreover, my posts get more readable as french-speaking persons don’t have to scroll all the way down to access the french content.

It’s pity wordpress doesn’t support multi-lingual posts as other blog websites do, but it can easily be workarounded doing what I’ve just done.

Pay to get bugfixes ?

Yes, you’ve heard it : now you have to pay to get bugfixes… What I’m talking about ? Not Mandriva, of course, nor even linux ! I’m talking about Award, AMI and Phoenix, famous BIOS makers.
Most people know BIOS are generally buggy crappy pieces of code (even if I admit the job isn’t easy given space constrainst). So like in any piece of software, there are bugs.
If you seek help to update your BIOS, MOST pages on the internet will lead you to this page (who talked about google poisonning ?). Look at those smiling people on the upper right hand corner of the homepage : they’re all happy to have paid approx. 30$ to get a BIOS with less bugs and be able to run their shiny brand new version of MS Vista (why do people love to install crappy softs ? is it some kind of masochism for geeks ?)…
If you don’t believe it, you’ll probably end up like me : on google desperately seeking for free BIOS updates and reading this ton of posts from people selling BIOS updates themselves (they’ve bought it from the previously mentionned website…) I’m pretty sure people will start selling their second-hand BIOS updates on ebay sooner or later.
I was about to install linuxbios but remembered the computer I just wanted to upgrade was my girfriend’s and I wasn’t 100% sure about what problems I could have run into…
Finally, after googling around, I found some support from the motheboard vendor, but it was already late and I abandonned my quest for the bugfree BIOS. I’ll do it when I’ve more free time.

2007, FUD and scoop

2007 is out. Well, you’re probably already aware of it, but for the first time, it is released both for club members and the public at the same time. You can use your favorite protocol to get it : HTTP, FTP or BitTorrent. I prefer the latest solution because it’s blazing fast and reliable, but I know some people have problems with it.

A few days before 2007 went out, distrowatch went into troll and trash talking about Mandriva, but I hope users won’t care. Until now, feedback about the distro is quite positive. I’ll give mine once I get it installed on my laptop.

I hope 2007 will be, by default, as good as my tuned 2006. When I say “tuned” I mean I’ve modified a few configuration files, recompiled a few packages, even edited some perl binaries and created scripts in order to fulfill my needs. I’ll see.

Now the scoop : Warly is planning to abandon the 1 year release cycle to replace it with a shorter one (he’s talking about 4 months). My opinion is that releasing one distro every year doesn’t bring much benefits. In particular I don’t find Mandriva 2007 especially inovative and stable compared to Mandriva 2006. Distrowatch, please if you quote this sentence, also add this one : I said “compared to 2006″ which means that 2007 is inovative and stable, but despite the one year relase cycle, differences between 2007 and 2006 are approximately equal to those between 2006 and 2005. And of course, another reason is probably Mandriva disappears from the news websites for almost one year.

2007 est sortie. Bon, vous êtes probablement déjà au courant mais pour la première fois, elle est sortie à la fois pour les membres du club et le public en même temps. Vous pouvez utiliser votre protocole favoris pour l’obtenir : HTTP, FTP ou BitTorrent. Je préfère cette dernière solution parcequ’elle est hyper-rapide et fiable, mais je sais que certaines personnes ont des problèmes avec.

Quelques jours avant que la 2007 sort, Distrowatch s’est empêtré dans le troll et le ‘trash talking’ à propos de Mandriva mais j’espère que les utilisateurs ne s’en soucieront pas. Jusqu’à maintenant, les retours d’utilisateurs sur la distributions sont plutôt positifs. Je donnerais le mien quand je l’aurais installé sur mon laptop.

J’espère que 2007 sera, par défault, aussi bien que ma 2006 customisée. Quand je dis “customisée”, je veux dire que j’ai modifié quelques fichiers de configuration, recompilé quelques paquetages, même édités quelques binaires perl et créé des scripts afin de répondre à mes besoins. Je verrais.

Maintenant le scoop : Warly projette d’abandonner le cycle de sortie d’un an pour le remplacer par un plus court (il parle de 4 mois). Mon opinion est que sortir une distribution chaque année n’apporte pas beaucoup d’avantages. En particulier, je ne trouve pas Mandriva 2007 particulièrement innovante et stable comparée à Mandriva 2006. Distrowatch, s’il-te-plaît, si tu cites cette phrase, ajoute aussi celle-ci : J’ai dit “comparé à 2006″ ce qui signifie que la 2007 est innovante et stable mais malgré le cycle de sortie d’un an, les différences entre 2007 et 2006 sont approximativement égales aux différences entre 2006 et 2005. Et bien sûr, une autre raison est probablement que Mandriva disparaît des sites de nouvelles pendant presque un an.

Ouverture facile

I’m kind of a fan of this site : www.ouverture-facile.com. The principle is easy : each level is a riddle (in french…) you have to solve to go to the next level. But to solve these riddles, you have to use everything you can : your browser’s address bar, google, some standard applications (sound recorder, image editor…) , your memory and of course, your brain.

Je suis une sorte de fan de ce site : www.ouverture-facile.com. Le principe est très simple : chaque niveau est une énigme qu’il faut résoudre pour passer au niveau suivant. Mais pour résoudre ces énigmes, vous devez utiliser tout ce que vous pouvez : votre barre d’adresse de votre navigateur, google, quelques applications standard (enregistreur de son, éditeur d’images…), votre mémoire et bien sûr, votre cerveau.

Some of my documents

I just notice I still haven’t published anything about the few documents I’ve wrote about Mandriva on the club Wiki. They are pretty up-to-date, at least for Mandriva 2006.

Most of them are in French (partly because of the lack of French documents on Linux, partly because I’m lazy), except one of them explaining how to configure my laptop (HP zd8000) running Mandriva 2006.

Here’s the list. Don’t miss the little “Next” link at the bottom of the page which leads you to other documents I’ve wrote.

Je viens de m’apercevoir que je n’ai encore rien publié sur les quelques documents que j’ai écris sur Mandriva dans le Wiki du club. Ils sont plutôt à jour, au moins pour Mandriva 2006.

La plupart d’entre eux sont en français (en partie parcequ’il y a un manque de documents en français sur Linux, en partie parceque je suis fainéant), sauf l’un d’entre eux qui explique comment configurer mon laptop (HP zd8000) sous Mandriva 2006.

Voici la liste. Ne ratez pas le petit lien “Next” en bas de la page qui vous mène vers d’autres documents que j’ai écris.