Month: May 2004

First (brief) impressions of Fedora Linux Core 2

I’ve upgraded my office workstation from Fedora Linux Core 1 to Fedora Linux Core 2 today. I had only about an hour to play with it, so no super review here.

The upgrade process was very similar to most of the previous Red Hat Linux versions. No surprise. Fedora Linux Core 2 comes binary packages come on 4 CD-ROM disks, which means one extra swap operation. No worries. It will be unnoticable to anyone doing a network install or upgrade.

The first boot indicated that there might be some problems. My machine boots into runlevel 5 where kdm is supposed to meet incoming users. It didnt’ happen this time. X server was running and I saw an nice sandclock mouse cursor rotating above the black background. Consoles didn’t let me in neither as a regular user, nor as root. I’ve rebooted the machine just in case, but got to the same results. Booting it into single user mode revealed a problem with PAM. After playing around for some time and comparing new config files (the magic $ISA) with the old ones I managed to fix the /etc/passwd authentication as well as clear text LDAP. That was my biggest success. For some strange reason LDAP with TLS doesn’t work. I’ve searched through web and tried most of the suggested solutions, but none helped.

…awaiting ideas from Fedora mailing list.

The Butterfly Effect

We just came back from the movies where we went to see “The Butterfly Effect“. Short story: I would rate it 9 out of 10.

Long story: it’s an interesting and original drama which keeps you glued to the screen from start to finish. The story itself is interesting and dynamic as well as all the details around it. There is plenty of good acting by familiar people. Most noteably Ashton Kutcher (“Dude, Where’s My Car?“), who finally gets his serious role, performs excellenty together with Amy Smart (“Road Trip“). Few other people add to the mix.

Special effects, soundtrack, make-up, decorations – everything is matching everything in this film.

Defenetely a must see. Also, it can be seen several times, so adding it to one’s DVD collection isn’t a bad idea at all. :)

Virtual Tourist

It is useful to click Google ads sometimes even on your own site. :) One of the interesting suggested links was VirtualTourist.com.

Apart from being a place for booking hotels and air tickets, it is a huge collection of information maintained and updated by a lot of people. There are pictures, tips, suggestions, reviews and recommendations for virtually any place in the world the tourist can get to. Cyprus is present of course (in the Middle East area) and has few bits in that I didn’t know while living here.

Web design and graphics design resources

I came across few interesting resources on the topic of web design and graphic design for the web. While I am not a designer, sometimes memory refreshment on basic things are good.

Graphic Design for the Web is a collection of articles and links to articles explaining basic concepts and techniques of graphic design. Desktop Publishing is a mega resource with everything from fonts and free graphics to collections of links to other useful places. Web Developer’s Journal is yet another place with articles and links.