Lab Results

Toronto is one of my favorite cities. I love it there any time of the year (I admit, I like cold weather), and in spring it is pretty hard to beat. I love giving sessions at LinuxWorld and SHARE too. So a chance to present at LinuxWorld and be in Torono? Nirvana.

Alas, IT/360 / Linuxworld is over, for another year at least. The session is done. Thanks to everyone that came to hear it, and for all the great back and forth in the session. As always I got as much out of it as I put into it, and this session I put a lot into it! Three 90+ hour weeks of getting ready (plus of course, doing my day job).

The lab has about (and this is going to be pretty technical) about a bazillion ways it can go wrong. I am essentially creating a small company inside the lab, complete with mail servers (MS Exchange and Lotus Notes), SMTP gateways, Wireless access points, router, two different versions of MS Windows, two versions of Linux, two versions of VMware (Server and Player), and so forth.

To make all that easier on myself, I changed tons of things, and added new never been road tested content, just to simplify my life. But this is about Linux, and in a larger sense about Open Source and Open Standards, so I have to make changes every time to keep up with the times. Example: I mentioned in the opening talk that Michael Dell was using Ubuntu 7.04 on a laptop. After the session I read that Dell and Ubuntu had announced a deal to ship Ubuntu Linux on certain Dell laptops and Desktops. This stuff changes all the time!

Then there was the One Laptop Per Child was being set up to also run the three dollar version of MS Windows.. no, its not... then yes it is... then no its not, story cycle. I am glad I didn't have anything in the session about that!

The New Stuff

I have already talked a great deal here (Announcer voice: Previously, in "Adventures in Linux") about the fact that I moved from a customized version of Knoppix 3.6 to the current 5.1.1, and that I also moved from the LiveCD to the LiveDVD. I was pretty nervous about this change. Fear of the unknown. If this doesn't work then the little company I am synthesizing in the lab has broken computers and no time to fix it. the IT department (me) would be raked over the coals. I thought about bringing a complete set of the last sessions lab workbook and LiveCD's just in case, but that would have exceeded my luggage allotment.

I think this change is a keeper though. No one had any trouble booting the disk, and there was a nice mix of computers in the room. Mostly IBM and Dell I think. At least one person commented that they liked having the full DVD version because of all the software packages it contained.

OpenCD 7.02 was new this time. I think is was 4.0 last time, and I am not sure what the big number bump was about: I did not see there ever was a 5.x or 6.x level. Nothing on the web site about those levels existing. The previous version of the OpenCD I used was dual purpose. it not only had Open Source MS Windows software, but was a LiveCD version of Ubuntu. OpenCD is no longer a dual disk. It only has the MS Windows software (but more of it). That threw me for a loop for a while: In testing the CD's, I kept trying to boot the disk, and thinking I was having some very bad burns. One of my team looked at it, and straightened me out on that (Thanks Long!).

At this point OpenCD needs to become OpenDVD, and add back in the LiveDVD boot feature. It was cool in the lab to be able to hand folks not one but two different CD/DVD versions of Linux.

Quick aside: From where I was standing, the WinSCP program on the OpenCD was the one that seemed to cause the most interest. Support for Secure Copy and Secure FTP is pretty cool. FileZilla also seemed to be a winner. Many in the room were already Firefox / Thunderbird / OpenOffice on MS Windows users. Smart people in that room.

This was a *big* change: I ran one of the two servers for the lab as a virtual guest of the Macbook, in part to talk about how all the things one can do with Linux desktops in MS Windows “worlds” are also true about Apples these days. I showed Parallels and talked about using it's built in P2V tool called “Transporter” to import VMware created virtual disk images. I totally zoned and did not show the coherence feature... doh. I also had VMware Fusion Beta three fully tested and ready to show if anyone was interested. We ran out of time. Three hours is just not enough time to do and show everything these days.

The other server rather under VMware Player, under Mint 2.2 on the Acer 5610.

The IBM T41 that used to host the servers for the lab (Now on the Apple) was used to show VMware Server 1.0.2, running MS Win XP, to demo the OpenCD. It's main OS was Fedora Core 6 this time around.

I demonstrated Codeweavers Crossover Office: 6.0 on the T41 under Fedora, and 6.1 Beta4 on the Apple. MS Office 2003 and MS Office 97 respectively. On the Apple I had the same spreadsheet opened under MS Excel and NeoOffice 2.1 for comparison. Most of this was brand new or was upgrades from past versions.

If the lab is called for again soon, I think it is in pretty good shape for a little while.

Other than that list of stuff I want to change of course....

Going through customs with three computers was fun of course.

The question I could not answer

There comes a time in every presentation that every presenter dreads: The question they can not answer.

I may be lying: I never really asked any other presenters if they dread that. I know I do.

It is not that I think I know everything, or have all the answers; Far from it. My primary intelligence points come from the fact that I know just how uninformed, uneducated, and unable I really am. The universe is an infinite place. I am a finite being. End Of Story.

The deal is: This is not only my profession (Computer Generalist), but also my interest (Linux Maven), and in addition what I have spent over the years a total of about 600 or 700 hours getting ready for. It is a point of pride in a way, but it is also that people paid good money, and invested their time to come to this, and I was not able to help.

Makes me crazy.

To make it worse for the poor embarrassed presenter (me), the person asking the question said in essence that they had come to the session (hopefully only in part...) to try and get this question answered. Really, a problem solved.

Here it is: They have Dell and Lexmark printers that do not have Linux drivers. They are attached to MS Windows print servers. So... is there a CUPS for MS Windows that would allow the printers to be used from Linux clients?

That was the original question. But the question became: Is there any way to make this work? Postscript input queue that translates and feeds the MS Windows printer server. Something. Anything? Replacing the printers was not an option.

I could not answer this because at home all my printers are owned by Linux or the Macs. And researched to work w/ Linux before I bought them.

Mostly. truth in advertising: I once bought a Lexmark printer. Once. Didn't do the research. Caught a sale. Gave it to charity when I could not get it going under Linux.

At work, our major printers are already Postscript / Bonjour. Our “minor” (office) printers are all HP.. also Linux

if anyone knows how to solve this one.... Help!