moving category archive

Doing the Samba with the Slug

This post cost me $20.

But only because I wanted to write it after donating to the NSLU2-Linux project so I could put my money where my keyboard is. It’s a token amount for the great work they’re doing and all the great resources they provide for free. But let’s back up for a moment…

I’ve written about my trouble getting network drives to work in GNU/Linux, and now I’m happy to report I’ve made some progress in that area. (I’m not sure how best to refer to this topic–in the Windows world we usually talk about “mapping a network drive”, but I suspect if it’s more common in Unix to refer to “mounting a remote drive.”)

As mentioned, I have this nifty little Linksys Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 …

Inertia prevents Bruce Schneier from moving to GNU/Linux

When you don’t see new posts here, it probably means one of three things:

I’m busy with other things in my life, such as:

Family
Work

I’ve lost interest in the blog.
I’m actually doing the free software thing! I’m learning about free software or getting things set up in support of the move.

While #1 is almost always true, the past week has also seen some of #3, and I’ve been enjoying it. And as always, I’m trying to think about how to write about it. I do want to write about it, hopefully in a way that is useful and possibly entertaining for others. But it takes so much time. So maybe I should learn to just post some hasty blurbs here.

And I’m still wondering how much technical detail to go in to. …

GNU/Miscellany

Even though it’s hard to set aside the urgent need for a backup plan, I dabbled a bit in Ubuntu tonight. One thing I had to do was set up an alias for ls -l. Having used HP-UX at work for years, my fingers want to type ll to get a “long” dir listing.

Searching for [ubuntu shell alias] found me a nice straight-forward explanation of how to set up aliases. I used to know a command in HP-UX for forcing your profile to reload (or your environment, or something like that — I’m afraid I’m going to be butchering a lot of technical concepts in this blog) and figured there must be something similar here. The ArsGeek page showed me that it is source .bashrc in this case.

I considered what to do with this information. …

Windows Baggage: Failing to comprehend ‘network drives’ in GNU/Linux

Update! I figured some things out. See related posts below.

A big challenge for me in moving to GNU/Linux from Windows is not only migrating all the data that I rely on and finding free software replacements, but figuring out how to do the equivalent of all the administrative things I need to do.

When I started using Windows PCs back in 1994, I didn’t have anything. No data, no maintenance requirements. My computing world was a blank slate. I started using my cousin’s Gateway 486 to play Doom (in DOS), and then started going in to Windows to see what games were in there.

Gradually over time I started doing more, and in twelve years I’ve accumulated a lot of habits …

Microsoft Money to GnuCash

Update, 10 January 2008: I ended up going with KMyMoney. See “Moving from MS Money to KMyMoney”. I had to give up classifications as described below, but still, KMyMoney is an excellent replacement for Money.

One of my bigger challenges with moving to GNU/Linux from Windows will be to migrate eleven years worth of MS Money data to GnuCash. (Apparently, GnuCash is the financial application to use, but please let me know if there are good alternatives to evaluate.)

With .QIF exports and imports, it may not be too excruciating to move the data, but I think getting the reports I want will be a challenge. I haven’t fully explored GnuCash reports yet, but so far I don’t see what I want.

I’m …

Still Here

Hi, Everyone. I’m still here. I seem to have a few regular readers, and I appreciate your continued interest. I’ve mentioned before that my goal at a minimum here is to post once a week. I’ve tried doing more than that because I crave attention and the statistics that say people are visiting. But I’m aware that’s not a great way to look for validation.

And there are priorities to consider. I kidded recently about how my daughter interferes with my ambitions, but it really was a joke. She and my wife are way first on my list, and then comes my day job which sustains us.

I was feeling some stress earlier this week, trying to find time for all the things I want to do, and I decided …