I am working on a kiosk build using Ubuntu 9.10. I will post the iso shortly.

Weta Digital, co-founded by Peter Jackson, is a digital visual effects company that worked on the flora and fauna of Pandora in the wildly popular movie Avatar.

Jordanopensource.org is reporting Ubuntu Linux is the core OS that runs on their massive 4,000 server, 40,000 CPU farm, one of the most powerful in the world. Imagine the cost savings on licensing alone.

Ubuntu 9.10 has been released. Attached are the torrent files as the mirrors are busy as usual. There are many improvements to both Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Help the community out and seed these torrents please.

A big part of my job is using SQL server and having the necessary tools to interface with SQL server is a must. One of the only tools I have found for using SQL server on the Linux platform is SQuirrel SQL Client.

Installing the GroupWise 8 client on Ubuntu Linux 64 bit works great using these instructions. Did I mention that the GroupWise 8 Linux client has Notify built in..and it works? =)

There is a really annoying bug that crops up sometimes in which you will get an error message similar to "xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" or in KDE 4.2 "The audio playback device HDA Intel (AD198x Analog) does not work. Falling back to ."

To fix this, I would normally reboot, but I found a page that specified how to restart the sound system. The instructions, unfortunately did not work for me, and I could not post a follow up.

First run:

$ lsof | grep pcm

While working on a wireless kiosk using Ubuntu, I had the need to shrink the Ubuntu installation. Part of creating a custom install, using remastersys, is creating a live CD iso image.

I did, of course, remove the unnecessary software and programs like the games and cd burning software (see http://www.staldal.nu/tech/2008/12/08/packages-you-might-want-to-remove-...) and I ran several commands including localpurge and deborphan (see http://strabes.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/clean-up-unnecessary-packages-on... ).

A work order had come through at my work several weeks ago stating that one of our public kiosks was prompting for credit card information via the browser whenever a user attempted to use it. This was supposed to be an "internet only" kiosk, which turned out not to be, but was definitely supposed to be a locked down machine.

I ran an installation program using sudo that, after asking where the current version was, which was /usr/bin/, completely emptied that directory.

This should be a reminder that, as secure and stable as Linux is, it is still susceptible to user error and bad software.

SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is a technology that implemented by most hard drive manufacturers that records pertinent information about the hard drive, to the hard drive, which aids in the prediction of a failure.

Linux has tools available that harvest that data, perform tests and aide in the prediction of drive failure. Normally, the bios will prompt you if SMART detects a problem with a drive, but you have to reboot in order to get that prompt and many Linux users don't reboot often.

To install the packages under (k)ubuntu, use: