Heart sunk

Mona emailed me today, to tell me that she was terriblly sick and may be absent for at least half a month. I just finished a movie about a sweet love story, the mail shocked me. I became to be speechless for a long while. However, i gotta face it, with the faith that she could overcome it. Her condition has always been like this. I noticed that she always felt bad after a day's work a few months ago, I adviced her to do an overall check back home. Her parents are both working in the hostital, but it didn't help to get her better from the bad luck. I don't know exactly how she was. But I trust that she would recover soon, for me and herself. Praying for her early recovery. I promised to work hard for her along on the campus, and surely will I. Sweetheart, we shall be celebarting for our reunion in a few days. So now, let's postpone it to some days later..

In the slack way

Last week I was spending a whole week waiting for my girl friend back home from her travelling with her parents. I choose installing Slackware to kill my time. After the busy hard week, I am so happy cus I really learned a lot of things. Slack is famouse for its simply design, and text-based configuration. However, it is the most effective distro I've ever known. Everything is designed intentionally to keep it simple. No dependency-checking is enabled while installing a package. As to easy-to-use distros, this could be unable to accept. But as to a distro for geeks and experienced users, they should have known lot of the thing they are going to install. So he himself will make up what is not yet installed or make modifications to make the new things working. Now slackware is one of the favorite distros of mine. I thought it is as great as debian~~ : ) Plus, powered by a graphical installation system, how will debian 4 look like and feel like?

Cracking Rapidshare

Nowadays we have plenty of choices if we want to store our files temporarily. Rapidshare is one of most stablest and fastest one. I like it myself, but there are several restrictions to free account.

1) You can only download certain amount of files within an our. If you got more, you have to wait.
2) You have to wait several seconds to get the download ticket.

As to the second one. I don't believe we can crack it. But I've got a solution to help you pass the first.
Try this tool: RapidShare Grabber.
Collect your own proxy list, and add the file you desire to the target line. Grabber will automatically use the proxies one by one. Different thread of Grabber can run at the same time. So you can download several files at the same time. Although via proxy, the download rate may be relatively slower, but multi-thread running simultaneously could be more productive.
Try it and grab files from RS. I've been using it for more than 3 weeks, it works fine and I've got all my albums with it. Plus try this website if you like metal like me.

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Telling The *NIX history with pictures

A post simply about the history of Unix and Linux. No description I think is needed. The picture here is excellent.
The First one is about the history of GNU Linux...

There are two versions of different pictures about the Unix History. One is simple the other is More complicated.


Learning the history can help us to know the contemporary system better and can give us a clearer outline of the future systems..

PS: The third picture does exist, but it is a rather huge pic and the thumbnail is too small to see... click to get it from ImagesHack.

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In The Debian Way (3)

Last time we finished the installation and we've got a brand new system with almost all the productive applications we need. However, it need to be enhanced.

And this post will guide you to do some very simple and basic configurations.

1) If you are a non-English user, you may be in favor to customize the language so that the new system will be more user-friendly to you.
In Debian distro it is quiet simple. Activate a console and use this command to help you out.
dpkg -reconfigure locales, then select the code you may use and exit.
They try to install the localization for KDE and the console, and you will get a new interface with your favorable language.Take simplified Chinese for example the localization package are named as kde-i18n and zhcon.

2)dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 or dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg (it depends on whether you are running xfree86 or Xorg)
If the display is not satisfying, use the above command to reset them. Most of the mainstream graphic cards could be recognized and configured well automatically. Plus, card make by Nvidia and Ati have their own drivers and softwares. The age for Linux users to worry about his own hardware and are forced to collect drivers all over the internet has already gone. Never worry about your graphic card, let alone the monitor.

3)Debian's stable version included a large number of ancient softwares. Even the testing ones are somehow out of date more or less. So it is highly recommended to alter your source list to unstable (known now as "sid"). Afterwords, if you attempt to do a total upgrade, your tools will far newer.

4) Due to a lot of reasons, fonts in Linux have always been a headache for users who care about them. So it is quite a good idea to import the good-looking yet mature ones directly from M$ Windows. Mount your Windows partition to a mount-point and try to copy the fonts you like to /usr/share/fonts/truetype. Personally I think Tahoma is extraordinary.

5) If you find Debian running a little bit hard on your machine, try to install rcconf to kill some daemon process to accelerate the time of booting and the tool hdparm to activate the DMA mode for your harddisk.The usage of both the two are pretty simple.Google it and learn by yourself.

Now the job is nearly accomplished. You need to install certain tools ,some of them are not included in the CD1 of Debian.

For Office Suite, I recommend Koffice and Abiword. OpenOffice is far better than the two,but too slow, at least for me.
For music, try amarok, you will love it.
For video-viewing, totem VLC and Kaffeine are all outstanding. Any will do.
For Window Management, I don't think KDE or Gnome is your first choice, they have their own edges for example they need no deep knowledge about the configuration and they are beautiful, but they are not stable, at least not more stable than their rivals.I like xfce and IceWM most. Try to install them, they surely will bring you efficiency.

That is all for the simple guide. Wish you can enjoy Debian. Remember, apt system is the best so far as we known.

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In The Debian Way (2)

Since last time I have determined to install Debian, so the most urgent thing to do is to get Debian the software. You have a lot of ways, download maybe the priority choice for most users., plus you can also support the authors and maintainers by purchasing them from varied ways.

Well, you have pretty lotta choice about which kind debian to use. You could choose from stable, testing and unstable. And you may download different Debians of different size. Namely, the biz-card,net installation image, and normal full-size iso image files.

Debian officially offer users a full distribution with 7 cds.But as to normal desktop users, we only need to download the first image file. Download process will cost some time but should not be rahter time-consuming. (How about Fedora Core and Suse?)

Suppose you want to install it via harddisk just like me, so uncompress it to a new directory in either a Windows partition or a Linux one. If you are new to Debian, whose installation program is not pretty user-friendly and may be hard to understand for newbies,please do read the release note and official documentaries.

Now reboot you machine, and try to get to the Grub interface or other system loader.(Here I take Grub for instance), When you see the grub main interface, press C to activate a command line

Now load the kernel and initrd.img file. The command should be like this:
kernel (hdX,X)/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=XXXXX devfs=mount,dall
initrd (hdX,X)/initrd.img

Tips: If you are not sure about the file name of either the kernel or the initrd.img file. Press to Tab key to fill them up automatically. Plus, the two files from the official cd image will not be capable for harddisk boot. So you need to find alternative ones on the internet. (Download Link)

Now,you should wait untile the installation program is started. Select you locale and configure the basic things. Partition arrangement maybe a little chanllenging. Make sure that you have a swap partition and at least one Linux one. After that the base system will be installled to your harddisk, and you will get a basic Debian after the rebooting.

Then the Debian Package System willl help you to install extra packages to your system. However this won't be done automatically because we are doing a harddisk installation. In the base-config process. The apt system (apt is the application which will handle the installtion and removal of Debian packages for users automatically, and is well known among linux users for its super ability, and are also admired by users of other distributions too). So you need to mount your cd image to a local directory so that the system can read the packages from the mount point, otherwise you will need a CD or network connection to finish the package installation.
use ctrl+alt+2 (or 3,4,5,6,7) to acivate a console, use the blow command line to mount the image to your file system.
suppose your cd image is in a Windows partition and the parition is named as /dev/hda5, and the image file name is debian.iso..
mkdir /mnt/src
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt
mount -o loop -t iso9660 /mnt/debian.iso /mnt/src
Now press ctrl+alt+1 to go back to the installation and set the directory to the source of apt package selection. Then select the packages you need and finish it.

By now you will get a Debian completely. Then connect to the internet do some upgrading...
The next post will be about the basic configuration to the system and some introduction of hot tools available on the platform and tips about how to install them, in the Debian way..

To be continued..

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A test of Performancing

A test of Performancing

In The Debian Way (1)

As to Linux, I am absolutely a Distribution Collector. Up to now, I've tried a large quantity of them,namely, Red hat, Debian, Slackware,Arch Linux. Plus once a FreeBSD but failed.

A few weeks ago, i lost all my data on my hard drive, because I made a silly mistake in editing the partition table and I've got no idea about how to recover or keep part of my data. Eventually I got it repartitioned, and began to install Windows on it.

A few days later, I realized that I need to have Linux back,so that i could edit my Babylon dictionary files with the powerful stream editor Sed, which is designed for the open source operation systems. (Now I learned that is has a Win32 version named as Gnu32-Sed). So I began to think about the choice among a number of distros.

The first thing came to me was Redhat, however, i rejected this idea in 5 seconds.
Firstly, my computer won't be capable to run the huge monster.
Secondly, I knew the apt system better that the RPM system,although apt is also available on the RedHat platform.
Thirdly, I have to download 4 cds in one time. It would be rather time-consuming.

So I began to think of its alternatives.Fortunately, without it ,i still have a lot to choose from.How about Arch? It's pretty fast however rather simple. I like simple things but never for computer operating system. Then how about Slackware? Then I must be fed up by the time wasted to search for a configuration file to edit. I like gui-based configure tools better.Without them I will lose my patience.

Then, eventually, i choose Debian again. The distro I've trusted for the most of the times I decided to get a Linux on my pc.

Today, the post in about why I choose Debian,or its advantages. My next post will be about the installation and configuration of it,which may be regarded as a basic tutorial.

To Be Continued...

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About Foobar

I've tried to use foobar for several times. but each time i end up in failure because i was fed up by the complex configuration and the components.
However the Chinese music player (by the name of TTPlayer) i was using was too resource-consuming and it has only an access to a lyrics server with few rock lyrics. So eventually, I began to read the Foobar wiki again...
Then i came across this sweet component -- LyricsDB. A great database covering a large vareity of lyrics. Plus, after seraching it in it database, it will add the lyrics automatically to the tag of the music file.. With the help of another component - Lyrics Pannel, the lyrics will be displayed while playing...
I know it's rather simple, and not time-consuming, too. But it really bring me what i need and what i am always after.
ps: The new beta version of Foobar is really great...

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