Yeah! Linux finally goes legit!

I almost forgot this lawsuit that happened in year 2003. Still remember? A lawsuit was fired by bloody SCO, which claimed that IBM and the Linux community has some codes in their Kernel that was stolen from the SCO Unix etc bra bra bra! At that time, probably everybody started worrying about if the uncertainty of using Linux.

Especially, those started migrating from Windows to Linux since couple of years ago. Yeah, we’re one of them, our office servers especially mail, web, name servers are on Linuxes. Even, our databases on Oracle are now on the Linux platform too. Except the workstations, we have now only two Windows servers out of 12 servers here in the office. Lets get back to lawsuit, don’t get out of track of what this post is meant for.

Yeah, Linux is finally legitimate. You can now freely use it as your workstations and servers. The lawsuit that lasted for 4 years finally ended last Friday and Novell is the winner. Yes, Novell came out to defend while SCO was pushing for asking billions of dollars from Linux distis and IBM. And the lawsuit has even created the uncertainty over using Linux in their companies. As people were all worried about deploying their servers or workstations in Linux would end up of having to pay much more expensive licensing to SCO, if SCO won the case. Anyway, Novell is the winner, some more SCO has to pay Novell. Since Novell is the Linux supporter, so there won’t be any issue about the uncertainty of Linux…. Start converting all your servers platform to Linux now if you have NOT!

Source

FireFTP, a drag and drop FTP client that works as a Firefox extension

I’ve used couple of FTP client software over the past few years due to heavily involved in web development that always need me to upload files to servers. I’ve used the kinda FTP client from command line to Windows GUI, some support secure FTP and some don’t, such as CoreFTP, CuteFTP, WinSCP or you name it!

FireFTP is the one that only recently caught my attention, simply but its name that has the word fire. Of coz having a name associated with the word fire is nothing a big deal, it could be just a marketing gimmick for boosting the product. The name FireFTP actually caught my eye from an attached CD that came with the magazine that I bought recently. But, anyhow, I misplaced that magazine, but the name, FireFTP, still remained in mind. So, having a little free time today, I tried googling around what the hack this FireFTP is about.

Well, I got it, it’s downloadable here. It’s a little different than the other FTP clients that I’ve ever used. Yes, it’s different as it works as a Firefox extension instead of a standalone program to be installed on your desktop. Frankly, I’ve been a Linux user for couple of years, but I haven’t got a clue what FTP client available in Linux platform, which is in the GUI mode that allows me to drag and drop as what I’m used to doing it in Windows, such as those CoreFTP, CuteFTP can do. On Linux platform, I’ve been using on the command line interface, firing those commands such as “put”, “mput”, “get” to get those files uploaded or downloaded. Of course, it’ll be lacking some kinda handiness while compared to the drag and drop feature in GUI version of FTP clients. Especially coming to uploading hundred of files or directories.

FireFTP works as a Firefox extension, just enough for me to use it as a drag and drop FTP cliemt, even though I’m now on Fedora Core 7 now. To install it, just download it from the website, it’ll go thru the process similar to what other Firefox extensions offer. And after the installation, you will be able to access it again on your Firefox by going to “Tools” then you’ll see it there! Anyway, FireFTP is still lacking the SFTP feature, I’d love to see an improved version later that supports the secure FTP over port 22.

GIMP, just enough for me to have picture editing while blogging!

It seems to be lacking of some ideas what to write about today. Anyway, this blog post is all about is always the question that my friends and colleagues always ask, “what I use for picture/image editing since I’m on Linux platform?”. It’s GIMP. I’m no good at all at any graphic editing work. But, I’ll always need to include some pictures on my blog, as I always feel that the blog post must be associated with some pictures then only ut looks nice. So, GIMP is the one that I always use for resizing pictures and then upload to wordpress here.

Especially, when writing on this blog, I always need to capture the screenshot, as this blog contains entries about software, web app, Linux stuff that always involve capturing screen shots and also resizing these captured screenshots into smaller images in order to go nicely on blog posts. So, GIMP is the tool I use for doing all that. I ain’t no expert of graphical editing. What I know only is to open up a picture, lets say a captured screen, and then using GIMP’s image scaling function to scale down the image. For example, a captured screen of 1024×768 then I’ll always scale it down to have only the width of 450.

I hope to spend more time to explore more on GIMP. I’m kinda no graphical design background although I’m pretty familiar with web app development such as those PHP, JSP. But when coming to using GIMP or exploring other similar image processing tool, such as Photoshop, I seem to go impatient of doing that. Anyway, GIMP has been the tool that main tool for image editing since I was on Windows platform. Due to mainly it’s open source, no need to bear any license. All free for use. And it follows me even I’m on Fedora Core 7 now. GIMP had gone in during the installation, so to access it, I normally go to the terminal there to type “gimp”, then it will pop up! I hope to free up some time to explore more about the tutorial on GIMP later…