On to Fedora 8 … I thought I would use KVM. Again it did not work out the box. I ended up having to fix things, etc. Again, not the greatest experience. I am not a guy who likes messing around with his systems. I just want them to work. Not have to spend hours fixing them. So, I was just going to go get VMware Server. But, before that, I thought, let me go checkout VirtualBox. I had used it before and was impressed then. I run VirtualBox and it works. Nothing special, just worked. The other thing about VirtualBox is it is fast. While I was running KVM, I felt that the windows UI that I was running as my guest OS was just sluggish. But, VirtualBox is fast. I am very impressed and am going to use it for a while.

But, this brings us to the state of the open source virtualization tools that the distros are producing (maybe that is not fair, because I only tried FC8, so lets at least say what Fedora Team is producing/releasing) are just not up to snuff. Note I said tools and not the virtualization technology itself. I should try Ubuntu because of it’s superior user experience, maybe later…. But as of right now, the comercial products that I have worked with, VMware Client and VirtualBox, are just much better. In the end, I don’t care how the virtualization is being done, just that it works.

A few weeks ago I noticed I had a bunch of SPAM on the blog. I installed WordPress’s Akismet and that seems to have solved the problem.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I was planning on learning about Xen. The first thing that I learned about Xen was when I run Windows, I can’t access any of the hardware or I don’t have access to it. I wanted to be able to access my USB device so that I could update my iPod via iTunes, but I could not get it to work. As far as I can tell, right now, this capability is not possible with Xen.

I still don’t have a good way to update my iPod. I keep all my music on the big RAID drive and then let iTunes manage it. Still trying to figure that one out…

I am now starting to play with MythTV. Will probably run the backend as a guest OS under Xen. I am looking into using MythDora. Will have to see how that goes…

My friend Patrick Fitzgerald of BarelyFitz Designs has a great blog. He just posted an example of a presentation he gave at Podcamp Atlanta on Screencasting.

Part of the hardware upgrade will include tossing out my Buffalo TeraStation and attaching the IDE drives to the new motherboard. I bought a RAID controller that will do RAID 5 using IDE drives. The TeraStation was just a bad purchase. Currently, when I connect to it with my Windows laptop, it will work for a few minutes and then I lose the share. I suspect that Samba is dying on the TeraStation, because, if I go and do a disk check, it works again for a few minutes and then dies. I called Buffalo twice. In both cases I just did not feel like I got the support that I needed. I have the feeling that this is a closed box that they get from some OEM in Japan and they can’t access the machine’s internals either. And I felt that Buffalo just did not give a damn. Once the support person said, if you still have the receipt for the box and it has not been 12 month, then I could just send it in and get a replacement. But, what if I had it longer than 12 month? SOL? Like I said, I have just decided to dump the TeraStation and am now recommending to all my friends not to deal with Buffalo. Just not a good experience.

But, speaking of good experience, I have to say, I have only had good experiences with Dell. I needed to get a new Windows XP install disk for my Laptop that I had bought from them 3 years ago. I used the online chat/support feature that they have. Talked to a guy and 5 minutes later he was sending me the disks. Another time I had a problem with my motherboard’s power supply. After going through the usual tests they ask you to do, they send me a box and I was able to send them my machine. Within 10 days I had my laptop back. I was impressed. Now, I did buy the extended warranty and maybe that was why I was getting good support. What impressed me was not only how easy things went, but after they were done, they followed up to make sure everything is OK. From, “did you get the box”, to “is everything working now”.

BTW, I love Firefox 2.0’s spell checker. Comes in real handy here.