long long time ago, back when linux was getting powerful, there was a boy who started using it. He liked it so much that he would spend all the day learning and exploring. That was when his friends started calling him a dumb geek. So, he decided to teach those losers a lesson.

"We see it all the time, someone straying from one distribution or another because you "have to use the command-line". I've even heard that in person, I've heard it too many times. So, I looked around to see what may be causing this impression, and sure enough it didn't take long to fine.

I’ve moved my desktop at home from a Windows XP to a Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04 - and soon the new Intrepid Ibex), and have had to google a bit to find the answers to my following “problems”.
Here are some of the issues I experienced, and some possible solutions (and as usual, there are several different solutions to each problem).

I thought of trying out Kubuntu (KDE based) this time as I had heard that its doing a lot of interesting things (Akonadi/Nepomuk etc) and that with 4.3.1 it is stable as well. The installation went fine, all over within less than half an hour and then the problems started.

As we approach next week’s LinuxWorld Expo, The VAR Guy was reminded of an age-old problem. During a meeting earlier this week in New Orleans, a solution provider told The VAR Guy he just didn’t understand how to profit from open source. Didn’t we put this issue to rest a long time ago? Perhaps not. Here are eight ways VARs can profit from Linux and Open Source.

I’ve only been providing the community with problems i think should be solved, but not actually providing real solutions. With this article I will spread these solutions and make sure something is done about them.

I’ve been curious about Arch for a long time and now finally I had the opportunity to try it out. Basically, I’m giving new life to an old PC and thus I’m exploring ways to use the most lightweight software possible. That means choosing the right applications and the right distribution. I’m not sure if Arch is the right distribution, but I like it.

when I started using Linux four years later, I was told that with Linux I didn't need to defragment my filesystems anymore, since Linux filesystems don't get fragmented in first place. At that time it left me puzzled, but after a few years of using Linux without defragmenting my filesystems - and without any problems! - it seemed defragmentation was something antique. Nonetheless I still wondered how on earth it was possible the 100k+ files in Gentoo's portage system - updated every time I synchronize the portage tree - didn't fragment my filesystem. Or was my filesystem fragmented and did I not know?

Software engineering tends to be an evolutionary process. Problems are addressed with solutions that can create new problems and subsequently new solutions. Ideally, the new problems that are created justify the original solution. The technology discussed here is one of the secondary solutions to a problem created by server virtualization.