Tag: Linux

Fedora 15: First Impressions…

It’s been nearly six months since I made the switch from CentOS to Fedora as my main desktop OS.

The Fedora 15 final release dropped a couple of days ago and I slapped it on my main desktop PC straight away. As usual, the first impression is all about the visuals. GNOME 3 looks great. I’m sure lots of people think KDE looks great too, but I tend to just stick with the default window manager, so it’s GNOME for me.

If you’ve read any of the press you will know that the menu bar and task bar have been removed. This is kinda weird at first. How does it affect me?

  • Task Bar: I was surprised how reliant I was on the task bar for switching between open apps. I would say about 50% of the time I was using the task bar and 50% of the time I was using alt+tab. Now I’m using alt+tab 100% of the time. I think this change has worked really well for me. I feel like I’m navigating quicker.
  • Menu Bar: I think this one will annoy a few people. In essence, the menu bar is still there, but one layer down. If you click on “Activies” in the top left (or hit the Windows key) you switch to the activities screen. There is a favorites doc on the left and if you click “Applications”, you get a menu (more like a filter) on the right of the screen. That’s all nice, but the thing I really like is if you click the Windows key and type in a few letters it returns all apps and items that contain those letters in the name. Similar to the Windows menu, but prettier. So if you insist on using the menu like an old-style menu, I think this change will annoy you as it requires an extra click and some animations. If you use the favorites doc and the search feature I think it’s quite cool.

The fancy visuals worked straight out of the box for my main desktop machine, but one of my other machines (with a better graphics card) couldn’t handle GNOME 3 and ran using fallback mode. Fallback mode is pretty much like previous GNOME releases with a menu bar and task bar. I’m sure some people will prefer fallback mode, but I think the new stuff is certainly worth a try.

If you really can’t handle the new interface you can manually switch to fallback mode. Start up the System Info dialog (Activities > Applications > System Settings > System Info), click “Graphics” , flick the “Forced Fallback Mode” switch and relog.

As for the OS itself, I’ve had no dramas so far, but it is early days. Time will tell…

By the way, I did the usual Oracle on Fedora thing.

Cheers

Tim…

No Linux servers for Oracle Support…

I was just mailed a bug update and it included this text (spelling mistakes theirs, not mine).

Note customer is on Linux but could not find an available
11.2 Linux database to test on.  Reprocided problem on Solaris
confirming that there is some generic problem here.

Really?

And here’s me thinking that firing up a VM with any version of Linux & Oracle was quick and easy. Perhaps their VMs are running on Amazon, hence the lack of available systems. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit for Mac/Linux v2.1.0.3…

Followers of the blog will know I’m a big fan of UltraEdit. I have a multi-platform unlimited upgrades license, so I run it on Linux, Mac and occasionally on a Windows VM.

I noticed today that version 2.1.0.3 was released for Mac and Linux about a month ago. Not sure how I missed that on the update notices. 🙂 The changes for Mac are not that big because it was already at version 2.x, but the Linux version had been hanging around the 1.x for some time now and was missing a lot of functionality compared to the Mac version. This latest release is a pretty big catch-up for the Linux version and it now contains pretty much all of the functionality I use on a regular basis.

Both the Mac and Linux versions are still lagging behind the Windows version in terms of total functionality, but who cares about Windows… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 11gR2 on Oracle Linux 6…

With the arrival of Oracle Linux 6 comes the inevitable installation articles.

The Oracle installation on Oracle Linux 6 is certainly smoother than the recent Fedora installations have been. Even Enterprise Manager works fine with no meddling.

The official 11gR2 installation guide has not been updated to include Oracle Linux 6 and I can’t see any notes on MOS about it, so I’ve essentially followed the installation for Oracle Linux 5 and adjusted where necessary. I’m guessing when the official notes are released they are going to be pretty close to this. I can’t see any certifications against Oracle Linux 6, so I guess I would avoid it for production Oracle installations at the moment.

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit for Mac, Production Release…

Just to let you know, UltraEdit for Mac has now been released to production.

I’ve been using the beta version for a while and it’s really cool. If you love UltraEdit on Windows, then you will love UltraEdit on Mac. It’s been released as version 2.0, which from what I can see has pretty much all the features of the Windows version 16.x. The Linux version (1.0)  is still missing a lot, but it is supposed to have a version 2.0 release in the new year.

I’ve upgraded my Windows license to a multi-platform license with unlimited updates, so I can run UltraEdit on Windows, Linux and Mac and never pay for an upgrade again. It’s not the cheapest option but for a bit of kit like this I’m very willing to pay up.

So now I have UltraEdit on everything and SnagIt on Windows and Mac. If I could switch from Shutter to SnagIt on Linux I would be ecstatic. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit on Linux and Mac…

When I was a Windows user, one tool I felt I couldn’t live without was UltraEdit. It’s awesome.

A few months ago I checked the UltraEdit website and saw a Linux version of the editor was available. Unfortunately, it only had a subset of the functionality found in the Windows version. I checked again yesterday, and the Linux version is still lagging behind, but it’s a bit better than it was. I wrote to the company (IDM Computer Solutions) to ask when/if some of the functionality I require would be coming and it looks like the next release (start of next year) will include everything I need for my day-to-day use. What’s more, towards the end of this year there should be a Mac version available. Joy!

There are of course alternatives out there, but I really like Ultraedit and I’m happy to pay for a lifetime updates license on each platform (I already have a Windows one) if I have to. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a nice Christmas present from IDM Computer Solutions. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Red Hat heading for Oracle buyout?

I know it’s been said before, but I read this and thought, once Red Hat’s market value starts to drop Oracle could get a really good deal.

I thought the reference to the quality of Red Hat’s support was quite comical. I’ve always found their support to be terrible. To be more specific, you raise a service request and never get a response. If that is quality support I obviously have very different standards to the CIOs surveyed.

Cheers

Tim…