Well the other day Craig (who I have been trying to get into blogging) decided to move off of Ubuntu for a couple of days and try the new Fedora 15.   The rest of this post is his comparison of the two.   This is just from an email to me but he should really be posting his rants for the world to read.So, after using F15 for a few days now, I have some observations to share.The Ubuntu Unity desktop in my opinion is still a better choice for small screen machines like the HP Mini because it puts the application menu toolbar (File-Edit-View… ) directly into the status bar at the top of the screen. This saves at least 30 pixels of vertical screen space, a scarce commodity on a screen that measures only 600 total vertical pixels on a typical netbook. The Gnome 3 Shell is far better suited to desktop management on larger laptops or desktops. Gnome 3 on a netbook screen is cluttered and switching from screen to screen by moving the cursor to the upper left corner of the display to force an “expose” like desktop view is pain in the keester. Furthermore, Gnome 3 doesn’t always check for the screen size, yielding an application display window that exceeds the size of the screen without a way to resize it leaving the “okay” or “accept” buttons out of reach beyond the bottom of the screen. I like the Gnome 3 shell well enough though to put it on my 17″ Dell monstrosity when I return home. Although, I’m still wary that Gnome 3 might not even be the best choice for my 14.5″ Asus (my main laptop these days.)

<rantmode>The rant is about Gnome 3 itself, not specific to Fedora. As we Linux people are prone to do, I immediately set about playing with the look and feel of the interface. I have some clear preferences about how I want my desktop to look. (I like a particular window border style, I hate blue themes, etc.) So, I set about looking for a way to modify the theme settings to suit my finely hone preferences developed over 15 years of continuous Linux use. My first discovery was … it ain’t easy to modify Gnome 3 using the default tools provided. I had to go on a treasure hunt for the tweak tools and Gnome 3 extensions that allow the modification of the desktop. In my poking around I ran across an article from the Gnome 3 developers responding to comments from other Linux users who share my complaint about lack of configuration options. The Gnome 3 developers … get this … would “prefer to keep user configuration of Gnome 3 to a minimum to make the Gnome 3 desktop more user recognizable and immediately identifiable like the Windows and the Mac interfaces are.” The Gnome 3 developers have *deliberately* hidden the tweak tools, limiting all access of look and feel changes exclusively to the initiated, experienced, die hard Linux veteran. (e.g. I had to manually edit and move modified Metacity files directly into the /usr/share/themes directory to implement changes to the window borders. Your average newbie won’t have a clue how to go about doing that.) Has the Linux community now degenerated to this Eric? If so, I’m somewhat dismayed. Locking down the configuration of Gnome 3 in the mold of Apple and Microsoft brand identification strategy just makes me wanna puke. On the other hand, maybe forcing the Linux user interface back into a manually edited XML file function is a good thing. It keeps the riff-raff from mucking about with things they don’t understand. That’s the way it was in 1995 when I first started using Linux. But if the LInux community is serious about World Domination of the Desktop, this is a bad way to go.</rantmode>

I think we both agree that the Ubuntu installer is nearly flawless for the newbie. I’ve recommended it my non-technical family members with good results. Fedora 15 on the other hand would be a nightmare for your non-techie friends and family. Fedora 15 repositories are completely lacking in the RPM packages for non-free, proprietary or restricted packages. Where in Ubuntu you could just install the restricted extras packages and the Broadcom proprietary drivers are detected automagically, in Fedora one needs to use a wired connection to access http://rpmfusion.org and download Broadcom restricted drivers to even get wireless working. For you and me, that’s okay, but my relatives would be on the phone with me immediately.All the minor rants aside, I’m pretty happy being a crash test dummy with Fedora 15. One of my early complaints with Red Hat and the Fedora Core Project from a couple of years ago centered on some significant RPM dependency issues where installing one package would break one or more others. That now seems to have been addressed and fixed. I haven’t found anything yet that doesn’t work and dependency testing BEFORE the package is installed seems to be consistent and comprehensive. That said, I still much prefer the apt-get package management in Debian based systems over the much slower RPM system used by Fedora. Searching for a known package in Fedora can take up to a minute sometimes, and results are returned using a sorted listing I still can’t fully grok.You might want to experiment around with F15 in your copious spare time, but I can’t recommend it for your HP Mini.

Craig and I carpooled into Pasadena once a week being my house was on his way there.  I have to admit that the time spent in the car on the 210 was well worth everything I could learn in life from Swanny.  Not only the life lessons but the traffic laws that I am sure will prove to be priceless as I continue in daily drives.   I would of never thought that pulling across the double lines into the carpool line in front of a CHP would be against the law.  I have to admit in the last year I have realized how much I really missed those weekly trips to Pasadena.

Like I have said I have worked with Craig for years now.  It is the longest I have worked side by side with someone that I can call a true friend.  I will miss the advice and guidance you have given me over the years buddy.  Please don’t be a stranger and I myself will try my hardest to do the same.

One of the main issues with Ubuntu with Rails running on top is Ubuntu isn’t one to package up and install cutting edge software without you making some machine mods.  There maybe a better way of doing this by adding a repository to your repository list but I didn’t take that route.  Instead Mohammad went for a clean Rails build compiled on his system and I followed his steps with these modifications.

First off install the following packages.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5-dev zlib1g-dev

move to /usr/local/src to download source code and compile it in this folder
cd /usr/local/src

Then pull down the RC2 code from this site (this is where Mohammad and I split up the installation).

sudo wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-rc2.tar.gz

sudo tar xzf ruby-1.9.2-rc2.tar.gz

cd ruby-1.9.2-rc2

Mohammad suggested checking your gcc version and if it was at 4.4 “errors will occur” this isn’t the case with the 1.9.2 version of Ruby you are install.  It seems to work fine on my build (and I have done it twice now).  So move on to the make process.

sudo ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/ruby-1.9.2
sudo make
sudo make install

After these steps you have finally installed Ruby 1.9.2, to check its version
/usr/local/ruby-1.9.2/bin/ruby -v
output like that: ruby 1.9.2dev (2010-07-11 revision 28618) [x86_64-linux]

Now just follow his information on creating your links.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/rake /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/gem /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/irb /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/ri /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.1/bin/rdoc /usr/local/bin

Now instead of installing Rails 2.X I went for the newest version by following the instructions from Riding Rails.

Just run these two commands…
gem install tzinfo builder memcache-client rack rack-test rack-mount erubis mail text-format thor bundler i18n
gem install rails –pre

And now you should have Rails 3 Beta install on your Ubuntu 10.04 server. Warning this code is pretty new and is going to change pretty fluidly.

Mohammad also talks about installing the database but anyone running Ubuntu and Rails for any time should know this and I am moving away from MySQL if I can so I will stay off of the topic.

UPDATE!!!!

OK so after I posted this I screwed up one pretty important piece.  I forgot to mention that Ubuntu will not know where your rails installation is and after using GEMS to install it you will need to set up a link to rails.  I found the tip off of this Ubuntu Forum posted by knetcozd.

locate rails |grep bin

for me its here:

/usr/local/ruby-1.9.2/bin/rails

then just add the link

sudo ln -s /usr/local/ruby-1.9.2/bin/rails  /usr/bin/rails

Now you should see your rails version as 3.0.0.beta4 if you run a rails –version.

So I get to the Cisco site and no updates were available for my downloads.  It was like they didn’t even have any information on it at all.  Alright well not a big deal the device worked I just wanted to upgrade it before getting started.  What seemed to be several months later Cisco finally released a firmware upgrade on their site for the device.   This could be a bit of a crazy thing to figure out for the typical user.

So moving on well finally back in December I was able to download their newest update of firmware for the device.  Version 2.0.8 seems to be a version that has thoroughly screwed up my device.   The wireless portion of the device will die off throughout the day and I have to reboot it.  But its not just the wireless if you just wait the device itself will totally lock up then you will not even be able to reload it from the web interface.  I think I reboot this device at least once a day.   Try doing that while working at home over  a crappy IPSEC VPN that doesn’t understand these failures so easily.

These media players want to by nature take up as much bandwidth or a stream that is available to them.  So it leads corporate networking people to figure out ways of blocking it.  You can just black hole domains like Pandora or Youtube which is not a problem this will keep your users off of these sites.    In my network currently we block Pandora for the reasons of wasting bandwidth.   But users have a nack requesting access to sites you have blocked.  Well today this lead me to visit Pandora and actually dig into it.  Not really the technology behind it but the “Term’s of Usage” agreement.    The 3rd bullet item says this “Pandora is for personal use only, that means you can’t play Pandora for the patrons in your bar, coffee shop, etc.”

This portion of the Pandora Term’s of Usage is very important.  This keeps Pandora running like a radio station where they pay royalties  to the record companies for playing their music.  Now in my working in networking over the years I have had my share of dealing with phone systems and installing PBX devices for employers.   Phones aren’t my strong point but it is a road I have traveled down once or twice.   Working for corporations who might keep a customer or two on hold throughout the day you may want to give them something to listen to this is known as “music on hold”.   Years ago we would just plug in a AM/FM radio put it on the easy listening station and plug the audio out into the phone switch.   Now this has been deemed illegal because the Raido Station’s have the rights to broadcast the music but not rebroadcast the music.  Your PBX would be rebroadcasting these transmissions which then makes your company liable.  There is a great write up of this whole issue here.

So Pandora covers its back by saying “for personal us only”.  This keeps Pandora out of hot water with the RIAA and puts the responsibility all upon the user of such service.   I am sure you will find such Term’s of Usage agreements with every streaming media provider on the web.    This is where the RIAA now has an open door into any company any America that allows their users to stream licensed media across their corporate networks.   I am sure the marketing (money) side of these providers of streaming media do not want the legal side of it to get in the way of making money.   So as long as no one points at the elephant in the corner the marketing guys can say hey look we have X million numbers of hits a day and you should pay us more money to place your ads with our content.   The day they decided to tell corporations they can’t allow their users to enjoy their streaming media I am sure they will take a hit on the amount of views the marketing guys can show to their customers.

Its is all very interesting but in the end of it all just by the very nature of the Terms of Usage on these sites you should have enough of a leg to stand on in your corporate network to block all traffic going to these sites unless there is a business case.

After doing some research I have found Rnews it is a Open Source Server Based RSS Feed Aggregator that was very easy to configure at DreamHost my ISP.  You have to have a database that it can use (MySQL here) but once you have done that you can export your RSS feeds from Google Reader into an OPML XML file and then import them into your Rnews server.  Now I can access my feeds from everywhere over a browser and they stay in sync.   I have a feeling the Rnews project at SourceForge will be getting a donation from me soon.