The KDE Project has released KDE 3.4.1. They’re calling it a ‘maintenance’ release because it’s mostly bugfixes and small alterations. Despite this, the release has some much needed changes. One of the bugs that it solves has been slowing down my work all week.

The KDE Project emphasized fixes in its 50 translations in the official release, but they also listed a page full of bugfixes at their changelog.

Some of the excellent ones:

• ftp will try active if passive fails
  (I’ve been having to use the terminal ftp client alongside Quanta to upload to an IIS ftp server that only does active)
• many good fixes in khtml
  (khtml is to KDE what Gecko is to Mozilla - it’s their web page layout engine)
• a hundred other fixes

I’ll be installing it as soon as it appears on the Gentoo servers.

In the process of installing programs, downloading/ripping movies, and doing whatever else we do with our Linux systems, managing disk space becomes crucial. Here’s some helpful hints on how to measure/manage disk space under Linux.

This command meaning ‘disk free’ will tell you how much of each partition you still have available to you. It handles all mounted filesystems including mounted samba shares. Due to it’s design as a tool to measure available disk space, it won’t tell you anything about your disk drives.

# dfthis outputs a display of the total partition usage
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 13100844 9906872 2528484 80% /
/dev/hda6 5463156 3245016 1940620 63% /mnt/v_drive
/dev/hda7 451564 68 451496 1% /tmp
/dev/hda8 6103648 3706120 2087476 64% /mnt/z_drive
/dev/hda9 24527248 16671184 7856064 68% /mnt/x_drive
/dev/hda1 8361512 5603640 2757872 68% /mnt/winxp
none 451564 0 451564 0% /dev/shm
//192.168.0.7/x 72595456 72282112 313344 100% /mnt/kingdom/x
//192.168.0.7/m 75335680 74567680 768000 99% /mnt/kingdom/m
//192.168.0.7/temp 75335680 74567680 768000 99% /mnt/kingdom/temp

# df -hthis outputs the same thing in a human-readable format
/dev/hda5 13G 9.5G 2.5G 80% /
/dev/hda6 5.3G 3.1G 1.9G 63% /mnt/v_drive
/dev/hda7 441M 68K 441M 1% /tmp
/dev/hda8 5.9G 3.6G 2.0G 64% /mnt/z_drive
/dev/hda9 24G 16G 7.5G 68% /mnt/x_drive
/dev/hda1 8.0G 5.4G 2.7G 68% /mnt/winxp

# df -kif you want to see things in Kilobytes
/dev/hda5 13100844 9906884 2528472 80% /
/dev/hda6 5463156 3247992 1937644 63% /mnt/v_drive
/dev/hda7 451564 68 451496 1% /tmp
/dev/hda8 6103648 3706120 2087476 64% /mnt/z_drive
/dev/hda9 24527248 16671184 7856064 68% /mnt/x_drive
/dev/hda1 8361512 5603640 2757872 68% /mnt/winxp

‘disk usage’ measures individual sections of the filesystem rather than whole partitions. You can pass it a directory name or nothing at all to let it calculate the current directory.

# duthis lists, recursively, the size of all directories beneath the current directory.
68 ./.kde3.4/share/config/session
8 ./.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/contact
4 ./.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/calendar
4 ./.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/konnector
4 ./.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/notes
24 ./.kde3.4/share/config/kresources
12 ./.kde3.4/share/config/colors
648 ./.kde3.4/share/config
32 ./.kde3.4/share/apps/kconf_update
4 ./.kde3.4/share/apps/kopete
4 ./.kde3.4/share/apps/remoteview
8 ./.kde3.4/share/apps/nsplugins
... etc ...

# du /home/danger -hthe same thing as the above but for a certain directory and with better units for filesizes (KB, MB, GB).
68K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/session
8.0K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/contact
4.0K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/calendar
4.0K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/konnector
4.0K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/kresources/notes
24K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/kresources
12K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config/colors
648K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/config
32K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/apps/kconf_update
4.0K /home/danger/.kde3.4/share/apps/kopete
..... etc ......

# du -shcalculates the size of the current directory’s total contents (and prints it in ‘h’ format).
204M

As I learn more about terminals and bash commands I’m finding some excellent shortcuts for common operations. They’re nothing secret, they’re just new to me.

# df -h | grep /dev/hda5 show just one partition/device in the list. You can replace the ‘/dev/hda5′ with any other text that you’re looking for.
/dev/hda5 13G 9.5G 2.5G 80% /

# df -h | grep /dev/hda5 | cut -c 41-43 same as above, but it further narrows down the output to include only the 41st through the 43rd characters of the list - which is the part that shows percentages.
80%

# du –exclude=logthis will ‘du’ all the files except ones that match the pattern in the exclude clause. In this case, any file that contains the three-letter combo ‘log’ will not be counted in the results. Can be really handy also for ignoring movies, music, etc.

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If any of you have something to add, please chime in - I’d be happy to add your comments as an update to this post (as well as try out the new comment display I’ve got - they show up opposite the post on the right side of the page).

Knoppix is an excellent distribution but it should be pointed out that the newer versions of it are optimized specifically to run on newer hardware. It doesn’t require anything extraordinary, but older computers that you’re thinking of fixing up with Linux should be given Fedora, Slackware, or even better DSL.

I tried Knoppix 3.8.2 this morning on a system with a 500MHZ CPU and 128MB mem. The video card was not ancient but it wasn’t anything fancy either. It took Knoppix over an hour to finally tell me that it couldn’t find an X-server that would work. It was comical to watch it click and whir for twenty minutes at a time attempting to get some configuration to function. I’ve used several other LiveCDs on the same machine (I’ve even watched anime on it thanks to Dynebolic), so I know the hardware can support Linux.

Knoppix is an amazing OS, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not your first choice for old hardware.

It’s a slow day on Slashdot and there’s a post up about LinuxISOtorrent.com where several Linux and *BSD distros are available for download via a torrent tracker.

Many of the comments echoed what I’ve thought before - that this is a great service but it would be much nicer if it provided an exhaustive and current list of all distros. Something like this can be done in XML-RPC or RSS because all the information is readily available. I use the Distro Watch RSS feed to keep track of new stuff that comes out, I’m wondering why this can’t be automatically integrated into a tracker where new distros are available for download as soon as Distro Watch says they’re released.

If you have any desire to get involved in this project I’d be happy to hear from you. I’m thinking about doing it myself but I’ve been sorta swamped so it might be a while before I get to it.

I want to start with an apology to the regular Distro Jockey readers, there hasn’t been much posted of late. Along with starting a second programming job I’ve been working on the redesign for this site (and a migration to its own domain).

It’s still the same site though. It’s just me (Danger) and some contributing writers here and there who like to talk about Linux distros and play with them ’till we go mad. If you have ideas for other things I could change, I’d love to hear from you. For now, I plan to resume my schedule of keeping an eye on Distro Watch.com and downloading absolutely as many distros as I can.

Hope you like the new layout, if you have ideas for more color I’d really appreciate some input, I’m not such a fan of grayscale but I tend toward it just the same.

A while ago I wrote a post about a Linux keylogger called lkl. It’s a decent program but it’s rather hard to manage at times and had some configuration bugs. Even once I got it running I’d find that many of the characters were off from what they should have been.

Luckily a reader used the comment form on that post to point out a much better program called uberkey.

Uberkey is awesome because of it’s simplicity. When you download it from the link above (or this link) you’ll be amazed at just how simple the install package is. There are three files:

makefile
uberkey.8
uberkey.c

Installing Uberkey
To install the uberkey keylogger on Linux simply compile the uberkey binary by typing # make. Really, it’s that simple. You’ll now have a fourth file in the current directory named uberkey. Copy this to some executable directory like so:

# cp uberkey /usr/bin/

Uberkey is now installed.

Running Uberkey

Uberkey does not handle log files on it’s own, what it does is when it’s running it will print out the names or values of the keys being hit to the standard output. This is not very useful if you just type it in a terminal straight, but with two very simple changes to the way the program is called it becomes an excellent system keylogger. First, we’ll use the greater-than symbol to direct the standard output to a text file:
# uberkey > /home/myname/.keylogfile

Second, we’ll use the ampersand symbol at the end of the program call to allow this to run in the background and give us our terminal prompt back:
# uberkey > /home/myname/.keylogfile &

If you want this to start at boot, all you need to do is add the last line of code above to one of your init scripts. If this doesn’t seem easy to do, I’ve included a script that you can make into a file and drop into /etc/init.d. Make sure it is executable (# chmod +x filename)

Sample Init Script for Uberkey
(Note: you should have runscript installed to do this)

###############
#!/sbin/runscript

start() {
        ebegin "Starting Uberkey keylogger"

        uberkey > /home/myname/.keylogfile

        eend $?
}
###############

Update: Wicher has told me that sometimes uberkey can mess up X. If anybody knows something about this, I’d love to hear it. So far it’s been working fine for me. Also, has anybody tried uberkey on a non en-us keyboard layout?

The best remote desktop client for Linux is rdesktop. The KDE bundle offers us the ‘K Remote Desktop Client’ in the form of krdc but really that’s little more than a VNC viewer. VNC is great, but it lacks the right protocol to work as a thin client with a Windows server.

When I first installed rdesktop I was befuddled by the complexity of the arguments it needed in the command line. After a few minutes I managed to track down tsclient which is a handy frontend to rdesktop.

What the Remote Desktop Protocol Provides
VNC is a way to replace another’s computer’s monitor and keyboard/mouse with your own. You are able to control and view it as if it weren’t a different computer. While this totally amazed me the first time I used it, VNC has some drawbacks. It doesn’t separate the client session with the console session, it doesn’t handle user accounts at all, and if the host computer hangs on shutdown you’ll never know because the VNC server is the first program to get killed when Windows heads toward a reboot.
Remote Desktop is a VNC-based protocol that solves all these problems. It integrates with the host computer’s client accounts, it runs as a system service, it can even automatically transfer the sounds that should plan on the host computer (far away one) to the speakers of the local computer (the one you’re typing on).

I’ve recently contracted a new development job where they’re running PHP/Apache on a Windows 2003 server. It’s painful to know that they could have saved a lot of money and gotten better performance out of a Linux box (which also would have been easier for me to administer). But since I’m stuck using a Windows server, I’m happy to have found myself some GNU tools to help me get the job done fast.

Links to rdesktop and tsclient:
rdesktop
tsclient

I consider it a given that Firefox is the best browser, but that’s because I haven’t put much time into investigating real alternatives. Kazehakase is a gecko-based browser that uses GTK and runs fast on Linux. Really fast.

It doesn’t have all the features of Firefox and it redefines a couple of shortcuts that make it a little difficult to get used to, but in the short time I’ve spent with it I’ve really come to appreciate it as a browser.

Gecko
Gecko is the layout/rendering engine that powers every Mozilla web product - Firefox included. The main problem with switching browsers is that a smaller group of programmers or a brand new product couldn’t possibly have a robust web rendering engine as some of the big players. This becomes a moot point when a new project decides to use Gecko to run the layout. It immediately competes with Firefox and only has to think about what kind of user interface to build.

GTK
Kazehakase uses GTK and is kinda ugly for a guy like me who’s become overly comfortable with KDE and QT. This was initially a little bothersome but Firefox isn’t much better in the widget department.

Speed
Kazehakase is really, really fast. It takes a few seconds for me to type the whole name with correct spelling into a terminal but as soon as I hit enter the browser is up and waiting for me. If only I could get this kind of love from FF. The page load times are drastically reduced despite a full implementation of JavaScript and the DOM.

Password Manager
I was amazed to find such a speedy little web tool that had the ability to save my passwords. This is an absolute requirement for me because of all the places I have to log into.

Tabbed Browsing
Middle-click on the mouse makes a new tab, as well as CTRL-ENTR (see ‘quirks’).

Bookmarks
This is the first browser that I’ve seen which lets you import bookmarks from Mozilla, Netscape, Galeon, Firefox, Konqueror, and w3m. I imported my FF bookmarks first thing and it actually worked. It’s so impressive that a piece of software could find the right location for my bookmarks on my customized Linux machine. The one major hangup with using Kazehakase is that it doesn’t support FireFox’s extensions like the Bookmarks Synchronizer on which I rely heavily.

Quirks
There’s no Google search bar. This is sad. However, this is replaced by a redefinition of the CTRL-ENTR shortcut key. While CTRL-ENTER normally prepends a www. and appends a .com in Kazehakase this will create a new tab with a google search of what you typed into the address bar. This is actually a pretty good idea considering it lets you save screen space with only one location bar - but I wish they’d used a different shortcut combination.

This is a good browser. I recommend it for use in older computers and low-ram environments but also in situations when you’re FF installation has become corrupted because of your incessant tweaking.

My housemate is a jerk. Dumb jerk. He has a powerbook running Mac OS X and I told him tonight about Gentoo for Macs. I told him that there was a special version of the super-popular (and super hard to install) Linux distro that ran on Macs.

He had the thing running in a couple of minutes. That’s why he’s a jerk. I spent a whole evening and the next day installing, compiling, and configuring my Gentoo system. He only had to download a dmg file and double click it. Then he had Gentoo running.

Gentoo can run on Mac OS X
If you go to Gentoo-Wiki.com you’ll find detailed instuctions on a not-so-difficult process of installing Gentoo. What takes a significant amount of time when starting from scratch only takes a few minutes when you’re embedding it into a running OS. Here are the steps required:

• Download the .dmg file available here
• Double click the installer (it’s called “Gentoo For Mac OS X Installer.pkg”) inside the image.
• type # emerge --sync
• Now you have Gentoo running. Perfectly.

It’s a frustrating thing that one of the most difficult to install Linux distros can be so simple if you’ve already got a host system. It just takes the glory out of it. However, this is a keen illustration of how Gentoo is less like a proper distribution and more like a meta-distribution. Gentoo is mostly just Portage (Gentoo’s package manager) and it can be run on any POSIX-compliant OS (FreeBSD, Mach, Linux). If it can run on a Mac, I really want to see what else it can run on.

For over a month now I’ve been using Gentoo as my primary operating system. It’s been a real treat to get to install it (twice, actually) and learn the ropes by getting my hands dirty. Overall I think it’s my favorite OS because of the transparent way it does packages and the super-ease of upgrading everything. Despite that, I plan to switch to Suse 9.3 soon. Let me explain why.

First, the stuff about Gentoo that excells:

• Gentoo lets you compile everything.
  From the kernel to every single program you run you get to compile it on your own machine. While this doesn’t necessarily offer extra speed, it can dramatically increase system performance if you understand how to use your USE=”" variable in /etc/make.conf. You can set flags that offer your program Gnome supportbut not KDE (USE=”gtk2 -kde -qt”), or the otherway around (USE=”-gtk2 kde qt”). This’ll keep your programs optimized.
  And because compiling everything can be a hassle if you don’t want to wait forever, Portage (the Gentoo package system) also lets you use pre-compiled packages when available through the –usepkg flag. Some things probably aren’t worth the wait to compile them yourself.
• Gentoo lets you upgrade in place
  I remember reading a few years ago that a certain user hated that RedHat didn’t let you upgrade without losing everything. Even Windows gives you the option to not reformat if you want. Lucky for us Gentoo has improved the Linux experience so much that it takes only a second and a single file copy to fully upgrade your system.
  Gentoo uses profiles as release numbers. They are very simply named: 2004.2, 2004.3, and the most current one is 2005.0. To update all the programs on your machine you simply type # emerge --update world and when there is a new profile that you can switch to Portage will tell you to edit your profile to reflect the newly downloaded version of Gentoo that’s available as a folder in /usr/portage/profiles/. To upgrade to the new profile just point the symlink /etc/make.profile to the new folder.
• Huge package warehouse
  The Gentoo package system is full of goodies. There’s everything from the basics of apacha, kde, gnome, php, etc., to obscure stuff like the games ‘Wakkabox’ (?) and even commercial software like VMWare and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for Linux. For commercial stuff your original CD or serial key are required, but Portage will install the program for you. I’ve only twice found a program that I wanted to install which was not already in the Portage tree. For these situations, rpm and make work as well as they do on any other system.

That’s the really good stuff about Gentoo. It has some problems though. Not big ones, but problems that are real enough for me to be switching to Suse 9.3.

• You have to configure everything
  This is usually a plus, but at times it’s really a horrible idea. I’ve been struggling with my Intel ProWireless 2200BG for the entire time I’ve used Gentoo. I’ve followed every tutorial and manual online and I can’t get the thing working. It’s supposed to be hard but possible, this is just frustrating. There are other things I’d like to try that may not be possible for me until I get a distro that supports it a little better (Like the Xen Hypervisor). The ipw2200 (my wireless card) package worked with some bugs on Suse 9.2 - I figure by 9.3 they’ll have an updated version that runs smoothly.
• Speed
  Sometimes it’s just nice to have a system that you know you can install in an afternoon. If something goes wrong you can just make sure you have a backup of key files, wipe the drive clean, and start over in time for dinner. With Gentoo, there’s been at least two nights where I gave it a long list of files to install and I went to sleep - only to find it still at work by breakfast time.

It should be noted that this is not a real criticism of Gentoo. If your hardware (especially networking) is supported natively by the Linux kernel you may never find any need to switch out of Gentoo. In fact, as soon as ipw2200 support becomes reliable enough that I can compile it as a module in my kernel I’ll be switching back to write more. Until then, y’all might be hearing lots about Suse.

I’ve been reading Yet Another Linux Blog for some time now as the writer (’Devnet’) has been submitting various distributions of Linux to a test. He’s used his wife (who has no Linux experience) as a judge to find out which distribution is the best distribution for a brand-new user to work with.

Devnet had his wife try out the following distributions (from having to install them to having to remove them - the whole experience):

• Mandrake 10.1 Community
• SimplyMEPIS 3.3
• PCLinuxOS .81a
• Fedora Core 4
• Ubuntu 5.04 “Hoary”

I won’t mention how each of them performed individually except to say that there were two very big surprises. When Devnet tested Ubuntu it was found to be rather difficult for a newcomer to start off with. This generated a lot of (undeserved) negative feedback toward the project and the people involved from a rather excited Ubuntu community.

And the huge surprise was the success of the little-known PCLinuxOS. I’d never used it until it appeared in this project and was found to be the most new-user- friendly Linux distro. Granted, PCLinuxOS will not meet the needs of every Linux user - but that wasn’t the point of the experiment. According to Mrs. Devnet: “I need to do simple AND it’s easy on the eyes. It serves my purpose, bottom line.”

A big thanks from Distro Jockey to Yet Another Linux Blog for running this test. Linux is steadily approaching desktop-readiness for the real world - this will help the Linux community to know exactly what needs to be worked on to get us all the way.

A lot of websites make money off of selling T-shirts with their logo or something funny on them. I’ve seen this around for a while and it wasn’t until today that I realized the Linux community needs more stupid t-shirts. Really, I think it does.

I’m starting some sketches for a T-shirt that isn’t particularly related to this website but used the phrase ‘Certified Distro Jockey’ or something else equally nerdy. I’d totally wear it and I was wondering if anybody else was interested. I don’t expect a lot of comments on this, but if there’s a couple of people who would be interested in a shirt I’ll go ahead and make the design. All of the revenue from the shirt would be given to the favorite distro of the readers of this site (decided by poll). If anybody has ideas for the best online service to use for the shirt (I only know of CafePress) that’d be really handy.

I just head that Acer is starting sales on a Linux laptop. This is awesome news.

As far as I can tell they’re only selling it in Thailand so far. You can check out the specs for yourself at the Acer Aspire 3000 webpage. Down at the bottom - second from the end - you can see where it says ‘Linpus Linux BE.’ Linpus is not a GPL distro - it’s in the real of Xandros, Linspire, etc. Still, it appears to be a decent OS for new users doing email, movies, office stuff and other basic productivity things. All of the non-GPL, entry-level Linux distros are going to be short on configurability, but that’s to be expected.

This is a great step forward for those of us who want to see Linux become a standard OS for regular users. It’s finally become good enough that Acer expects people to want to save a few bucks and go with a non-free Linux. Maybe the next step is they’ll realize that Mandriva is even more user-friendly and they’ll go with an entirely free distro. I sure hope it doesn’t take long.

Even though this laptop is not running my ideal (at the moment) Linux distro, at least it’s cheap. Even if I bought it with Windows on it I’d just reformat it - so I’d be happy with a cheaper license no matter what software it has.

There’s a petition going around asking printer manufacturers to support Linux with their driver base. This is a rather significant issue for making Linux a real desktop-replacement OS. Right now Linux is excellent at handling all of the various video/sound/networking interfaces that the hardware industry has thrown at it - but it’s seriously lacking in printer support.

I received a Canon i80 as a college graduation present from my grandmother. It’s a wonderful printer because it’s super-portable and prints high-quality documents quickly. The serious drawback is that I have to log into a Windows machine (or Mac OS X) to use it.

This petition has only 85 signatures so far but considering the need for printer support it could quickly become popular. It can only ever be a gesture because petitions don’t work unless accompanied by something with more bite to it, but I think it’s a good start.

If you’re looking to buy a printer or replace your current non-Linux printer, check out the Linux Printer Database. It’s a comprehensive (nearly) list of various makes and models of printers. You can check to see if the printer you’re considering purchasing has support for Linux.

This is one step closer to a full Linux desktop. As soon as we get better printer support we’ll be all that much closer to converting large offices to Linux.

Thanks to Yet Another Linux Blog for the scoop.

I have recently downloaded two Linux distros and begun playing with them, Libranet Linux and Crux Linux.

Libranet Linux is a commercial distro that seems to be trying to position itself alongside SuSe, Mandriva, RedHat and the like. Unlike some of the others, though, its still freely available for download, and it’s the downloaded version that I have. Its latest version uses the v2.6 kernel.

Frankly, I’m pretty impressed. It has a very simple installation process and it comes with an amazing variety of software, including a big handful of windows managers. KDE and GNOME are represented, of course, but so are Enlightenment, Window Maker, Fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, Sawfish, Metacity, IceWM, twm, fvwm, qvwm and others. Nearly every Linux word-processor and text editor I’ve heard of is included, with the same being true for browsers and email clients. Over 100 games are tucked in nicely, too, and sundry other software to the point of frank overkill. If nothing else, it’s giving me the chance to play with software that, for one reason or another, I’d never gotten around to trying.

Despite having that distinct polished edge that most commercial distros have, Libranet does its business in quite a lively fashion. In fact, it’s farily peppy, more so than MEPIS or Ubuntu, much more so than that bloated pig, Linspire. Overall, I was quite pleased.

The fly in the ointment: That was on computer #1 in my stable. When I attempted to load it onto computer #2, it refused to recognize the keyboard at the very beginning of the installation process, bringing things to a crashing stop. That the motherboard in that computer’s not especially Linux-friendly certainly has some bearing on the issue, but it’s disconcerting nonetheless. I’ll be diddling with this more, to see if there may be a solution.

Crux Linux is an expert’s distro and is billed as such. It is a standalone distro; that is, unrelated to any other distro. It’s a smallish installation CD, about 220 meg, and nearly all of that is related to the OS itself, with only a very small number of applications included (Firefox, xchat, emacs, pico…) This is definitely not a distro for the new user, nor especially faint of heart, as it requires that you configure and compile the kernel for your hardware and needs. It only comes with one window manager, Window Maker, and that must be manually installed as well. In terms of installation ease, I place it right alongside a stage 3 Gentoo install, and it’s about as lengthy. While I’m still in the process of getting it set up, I do have it running at the bash prompt and my initial impression is favorable. It seems pretty zippy and is definitely worthy of further consideration. I’ll write more as I go along.

Conclusions: of the commercial and “commercial wannabe” distros that I’ve tried to date, Libranet is most impressive…to me. It’s not as simple to install as MEPIS, not as idiot proof as Ubuntu, but it offers a huge software package, is fast and stable. It’s a good example of how a distro can have a large software stable, with lots of options, yet remain light on its feet.

Crux is a power-user’s minimalistic system that will never be a top hit, but will very likely remain in my stable, if only for the geek factor. This is a good learning distro for those who wish to delve further into Linux’s inner workings.

The Linux community has always had a goal to make Linux a useful and well-used desktop operating system. Thanks to the teams of KDE, Gnome, and countless other development groups there’s been a lot of attention paid to making software more usable for beginners converting from Windows.

I found a real treat today. Ryen Kim is proving that Linux is ready to be used on a primary desktop computer. He’s writing about it at Linux Home. My particular favorite post of his so far is his one about BloGTK - a Linux (GTK-based) blog-writer.

Welcome to the Linux Blogosphere Ryen!