The Roman Senate and Colloseum

Here is a high vantage view of the remains of the Roman senate and the Colloseum. [more videos can be found on my personal blog on the right]

Back

Been awhile since I have updated the site. Went to Europe for awhile. Got to go to Rome, Venice, Florence and then London. Simply amazing stuff. Really makes you realize how young the USA is.

Anyways, I see some of you have been asking for the PLUS edition. I'll upload it this weekend but like all things it is already out of date.

I have built a new iso based on 8.04 before I went on my vacation. I'll upload that as well.

I also played a bit with PCLinuxOS and was able to almost entirely recreate my LAVA using it as a base also. I might upload it so people can check it out. It seems faster on my hardware than UBUNTU and I wonder if it is just the tweaking of the kernel or runtime parameters like sysctl - going to have to do some research cause although I like the speed, PCLinuxOS has a smaller support personnel and less software available thru its package manager than Ubuntu.

I will say for having a lighter support infrastructure and less developers on it, the distro is faster and seems to run on lighter hardware. I was able to install it on a laptop that Ubuntu won't even run live on and that includes the infamous Xubuntu as well. Previously my only other distros I could get on the laptop was Windozes XP and Fedora. Partly cause Fedora automatically initializes the swap file and uses it during install and the Ubuntu and Xubuntu do not. Since the laptop in question only has 128 MB, it was problematic with Ubuntu and Xubuntu and even though I knew this and manually created and initialized the swap file, I think just running the live environment was too much for it. I suppose if I really wanted to I could have downloaded the alternate version of Ubuntu and installed everything from the commandline but that's just too much work especially since the laptop is not one I regularly use. It's more of a benchmark or challenge to any OS I want to check out. "Hmmmm, wonder if it will load on that old laptop of mine."

Anyways, I'll do some uploading this weekend and hope to hear next week how everyone is doing.

As they say in Europe, ciao.

A Looooooong day

So it's been a long day today.

I know this blog is really about LAVA and customizing Ubuntu but I thought you might be interested in some of the things I have done with it so.....

I replaced Microsoft Exchange with Citadel for several of my clients and now I'm tackling the fun chore of pushing their email to their Blackberries as well as Nokia, Window PDAs. I've read about Funambol but never setup the server in production. I played with it several months ago but never deployed it.

For those who do not know what Funambol is, it's a server software which acts like a sync server between your client device or software and the email server. It essentially syncs your contacts, calendar, tasks with your opensource email server. In this case - Citadel running on LAVA.

Citadel has been running great! No spam and fast web interface. My client reports that they have virtually no spam whatsoever compared to the several hundred spam messages per user using Exchange 2003 with the latest service packs. Not to mention that it is easier to use and admin than Exchange. So now they want to expand it to their phones. Most of them have their email already setup on the phones but like most cell phone providers it really is just a push of their email minus the contacts, tasks, and calendar. With Funambol, you get everything realtime.

So I installed a new copy of LAVA 3.0 inside a virtual machine and began printing out the documentation, compile information, etc for Funambol. 3 hours later I had a compiled version ready for testing. Not bad for a days work.

Now the task of learning how to sync all the devices and manage them remotely using the Funambol management console.

New site almost done

I'm almost finished with the new site.

You can view the beta of the site here:
New LAVALinux Site

I'm going to begin the transfer of www.lavalinux.com to this new site in the next couple days. I just have to finish programming the forums, my new remote tool and upload the isos for the PLUS and DEV edition.

Let me know what you think.

Build 3.0 is uploaded

Version 3.0 build of Lava is finalized.

Performance Features
Firefox tweaking for better broadband support. Added additional firefox extensions; fasterfox, google preview, text link, adblock plus, adblock filtersetup updater, get directions from google maps, tab mix plus, wikipedia lookup
SYSCTL.CONF - Kernel parameter adjustments for faster processors, more cache utilization, higher TCP window and connections for broadband
PRELOAD - Preloads parts of programs into memory so they startup quicker
PRELINK - Prelink commonly used DLLS so apps start faster
Gnome, Openoffice, Gconf, Help XML compression so they open faster

Many application changes here are a few of the highlights
Openoffice now has 2007 support for Microsoft Word 2007 formats. OpenOffice defaults to save as Office formats - makes it easier for users who are coming off of Microsoft Office. My motto - "Change their app first then their format later."
Alien for rpm to deb conversions included
Transmission for bittorrents
Gnome Main menu replaces menu
Nautilus addons like 'Open Terminal Here', Convert Images, Run as Administrator, Search for Files, Sendto, Share, Wallpaper
GnoCHM - I have to read those CHM files. Lots of ebooks in this format.
BUM- Bootup Manager
SMBFS - so I can mount samba shares
HardInfo - Hardware information applet
Gnome OSD - Onscreen Display - Shows you what music you are playing onscreen, etc
SYSINFO - System Information Applet
NDISGTK - Helps load drivers for Wireless cards
Cheese - Webcam program
Gnomebaker - CD / DVD burner
gchangepass - gnome password changer - easy access to change your password
usermode / ntf-config - NTFS usermode applet in case you want to change how you mount NTFS drives
Eggcups - Printer applet - lets users know whats going on with their print jobs
gisomount - gnome iso mount utility
gnome-schedule - easy gui to cron
graveman - lightweight CD/DVD burner
glabels - label program
compizconfig manager - extra config options for compiz
gftp - ftp program
curlftpfs - lets you mount ftp sites as drive mounts
isomaster - iso utility extra, build, etc
xnest - multiple x display to local and remote machines
p7zip , rar - compression progs
system-config-samba - applet that has more features than standard ubuntu included applet
liferea - RSS feeder
Flash9

I also added the mediubuntu repo in app get list so you could pull down codecs, etc on your own thru synaptic.

I removed a couple things i did not like and or used.
ekiga
totem-mozilla
ttf-baekmuk
ttf-arphic-uming
ttf-kochi-gothic
ttf-dejavu
example-content

I made alot of changes in each app - example I enabled overburn in gnome, tweaked the burning, changed openoffice settings, firefox, rhythmbox, etc to what I liked.

I found each time I installed ubuntu, I made a huge amount of changes to get the desktop I liked so I bundled alot of these settings into this build.

Keep in mind this is the CD version of LAVA. I have 2 other versions, LAVAPLUS and LAVADEV which I will upload in the next week or so with more features which could not fit on one CD.

Gaming with Ubuntu

For all those who would dare say Ubuntu is a terrible gaming platform. :)

I found a great site that lists games in category. Each game has been successfully tested on Ubuntu, some are native linux games while others are Windows games running in Wine.

If you have a taste for gaming and want to see if Ubuntu has games you like check out http://www.playubuntu.com/

Ubuntu Package

Learned the fine art of packaging and am in search of cool ubuntu software to compile and build from.

I found a game on linux apps based on the DOS and Windows game of Orion so I decided to download it and build a package.

It took about 20 minutes and I uploaded it so others can play it. Here's a sceenshot and the link to the deb file



My DEB File
Original Project Page where I found the program