Friday, October 27, 2006

Working the dizzy way

Utterly pointless post for a Friday lunchtime, but its been suggested by some that I blog more than I work. I don't work like normal people. One keyboard and mouse controlling two computers with a monitor each where the mouse just glides between screens. This is the joy called x2vnc.

25 comments:

Croydonian said...

I've got two monitors attached to the same PC. Does that make me a trainee geek?

The Hitch said...

And thats it?
two screens , a cup of a coffee , a flouresent light and not a bit of skirt in sight?
Give me homeworking anyday, at least you can knock one out when bored.

dizzy said...

fair point well made Peter

Anonymous said...

Holy Crap is that The Matrix on the right screen!?!

dizzy said...

No leon. That is a blonde and brunette.

Benedict White said...

What OS, or raather flaour of what looks like Unix/linux do you use?

dizzy said...

Slackware

Benedict White said...

Fair enough. I like Archlinux.

That said I have just set up Novell OES on a system and that looks good.

I have a blog for the geeky things I do as well as my political blog.

http://ageeky.blogspot.com/

But then I only scored 77 out of 100 on the nerd test :(

dizzy said...

Gneerally I always gravitate back to Slackware after trying something new. Slackware 11 was released last week and my only compliant is that the default kernel is still 2.4.x and 2.6.x remains experimental. I just don;t understand why the guys are doing that at all. The CPU scheduler in 2.6 is infitely more efficient than 2.4 and there's far more configurability in terms of I/O scheduling too. Such is life though.

Benedict White said...

Still on kernel 2.4.x? Arch is fairly bleeding edge. check it out. We have a few Slackware.

Check it out at
http://www.archlinux.org/

I use it a lot on many different boxes.It runs a rolling release program, so provided you read the notes as you upgrade you could have gone from version 0.1 to the current 0.7.2.

dizzy said...

I've had a look at their wiki, it looks a bit to bleedign edge for my liking. Unsuprisingly, I'm quite a conservative sysadmin. Having said this, I've been trying out Zenwalk which is a Slackware branch and it appeals to me, even if I must recompile the kernel for smp support.

Benedict White said...

LOL Dizzy, get a scapper and try it out! it has got to be better than using a fossilised kernel!

Benedict White said...

Oh, and if you do try it out I would recomend the FTP install as that will get the system up to date from the start as there are some configuration changes you would otherwise have to make from the off.

But do give it a try, you might like it!

dizzy said...

You misunderstand me, I do use 2.6.x, I was just saying Slackware still comes with 2.4 by default. I'll be honest Acrh just doesn;t appeal to me for my requirements. Half the bleeding edge stuff in it isn't a requirement for me. Are you using Arch on production environments?

dizzy said...

I think if I was to move to anything from Slackware it would be Gentoo or possibly FreeBSD.

Benedict White said...

Yes i do use it in production envioroments.

Firstly my homw desktop and server run on it.

I also use it for mail, file and print services including spam cleaning and routing at work and on clients sites.

Its fair to say that at work we use it as a standard except in rare circumstances.

I like the way the config files are where you would expect, and the way you can rebuild your owm packages easily and still use the package manager to install or remove them. For example the samba build does not include Winbind (not needed on a pure Linux network) that is needed if you want to make your samba server look like a full on NT server. No problem, just edit the package build file and add the relevent --with statement and rebuild.

dizzy said...

I may have a look at it at some point. I don't think I'd ever advocate chucking it on prod kit in my area of work, but then we have an unlimited license from Redhat so I can blame them for bad code.

Benedict White said...

Every one has an unlimited licence to use Arch linux. Its just a question of whether you use it or not :)

dizzy said...

yes I think you miss my point. On the kind of systems I'm referring to, high availability web servers receiving hundreds of hits per second, using ArchLinux provides you with bigger all comeback if there is a fundamnetal failure due to package vulnerabilities etc. Using say RedHat, or Suse (not OpenSuse) provides a barrier to that level of risk as you have an SLA on code effectively.

Not sure what sort of business you're in, but certainly in the large-scale ISP industry you're either going to go down a Solaris or RedHat route for reason of support and service level guarantees. That costs money though which many choose not to pay.

Benedict White said...

We are in networks, infrastructure etc for SME's, and I was not suggesting you roll it out for all your hard hit servers, just that you give it a try. maybe on a desk top or some servers on your home network :)

dizzy said...

is there a version available for SPARC?

Benedict White said...

Er no.. There is one for I686 and some AMD 64.

Sorry...

So no good for your sparc servers but may be good for other things.

Also I have just moved to beta. All blogs had to get moved at once though.

dizzy said...

ah well I only asked coz I the only spare kit I have lying is an Ultra10.

Benedict White said...

I see... Well, if you know the comiler switches to add to cross compile...

And you could lend me the kit...

Don't you have an old PC knocking about waiting for some thing to be loaded on it though?

dizzy said...

I had a clear-out recently and just have SPARC spare/ Not to worry, I might find something at work and play.