DigitalHobbit

I just realized that it’s been a little over a year since I pretty much permanently switched from Windows to Linux! I had been using Linux on and off over the past 10 years or so, but it wasn’t until a year ago that I seriously ditched Windows in favor of Linux.

On December 30, 2004 [...]

I just added another external hard drive to my Linux system, and now I’m wondering about a few potential issues. At this point I have one permanently attached external hard drive, one backup hard drive that I only hook up occasionally, my iPod (which I mostly use on my Windows laptop because I don’t want [...]

A good week ago, I decided to install Kubuntu Linux at home, replacing my previous Gentoo Linux installation.

Overall I was very happy with Gentoo, and it still ranks high among my favorite Linux distributions. But while it was cool to have a system that was built from source and therefore (at least in theory) [...]

I just set my Linux box up as an iTunes server. After seeing how easy it was to get this working (not least because of Gentoo’s excellent package management), I’m almost annoyed at myself for putting this off for so long.

The HOWTO Apple ITunes Server document on the Gentoo Wiki was absolutely on [...]

I haven’t tried it yet, but it is possible to set up Linux as an iTunes server, allowing any Windows or Apple machines on the network running iTunes to browse and play any music on that server. This sounds ideal for me, as my music collection lives on my desktop PC that usually runs Linux, [...]

I am currently using both Linux and Windows with my iPod. So far, I have found iTunes to be far superior to any of the Linux applications for syncing songs to my iPod, so I usually dual boot into Windows for this purpose (which isn’t all that often these days, now that I’ve got a [...]

After a bit of fiddling with masked ebuilds, I finally managed to get Bluetooth working with Gnome on my AMD64-based Gentoo system. In case you’re running into similar AMD64-related issues, please check out the following bugs I submitted to the Gentoo bug tracker:

80670 80671 80672

(Hey, I got three sequential bug numbers)

The following bug is also [...]

I just moved the Subversion repository that I created on my Windows box some time ago over to my Gentoo box (actually the same box, just a different dual-boot OS, now that I’m phasing out Windows in favor of Gentoo Linux). This was a very smooth operation, and I’m pretty impressed with the way Gentoo’s [...]

Since I installed Gentoo Linux a few weeks ago, I have made it a habit to check the ATI website almost every day to see if a new driver has been released that supports my AMD64 processor as well as the XOrg (instead of XFree) server. The default driver works fine in 2D, but it [...]

Here is a Great article on Gentoo Linux. It includes a lot of information about Gentoo’s package management system, including an overview of how to build your own or customize existing ebuild files. It also has some very interesting points on how a corporate environment could benefit from Gentoo, which is different from the usual [...]

I ran into another FAT32 limitation yesterday: I had completely forgotten that the maximum file tsize in FAT32 is 4GB. Or more likely, it simply wasn’t an issue back when I was using FAT32 the last time. Unfortunately, it is much more of an issue now. I frequently burn DVDs, and as a regular DVD [...]

Now that I’m getting more serious about switching to Linux, I had to come up with a good strategy for sharing data between Linux and Windows. I still need Windows XP for games, and potentially for a few other applications, so I’m not quite ready to give it up completely. Unfortunately, sharing data between the [...]

I have spent a significant portion of last week installing, configuring, and exploring Gentoo Linux on my desktop at home. I have used Linux on and off over the past 9 years or so, starting with an early Suse distribution (long before there was a graphical installer). Most of my recent Linux experience has been [...]

In one of my previous postings, I hinted at some of the issues I initially had with the Linux workstation at my new job (we use Redhat Enterprise 3.0). The UI was very sluggish, the memory usage high, I was unable to get Bluetooth support working, etc. Some of these issues have been resolved in [...]

At my new job, development is done on Linux workstations. In many ways this is great, as I enjoy the power of Unix. Unfortunately, the experience has not nearly been as smooth as I would have hoped…

I don’t have a Gmail account, but if I ever get one (on that note, please feel free to leave a comment in case you have a spare Gmail invitation ), I’ll be sure to try GmailFS. GmailFS turns your 1 GB Gmail account into a Linux-mountable filesystem. I’m not sure how useful this [...]

I originally wanted to call this post (or series of posts) “Patterns of Home Computing” and provide a lot more background on how I use my various computers at home. However, as I really need to catch some sleep I will keep this initial posting reasonably short.

About 2 months ago, I have bought two new [...]