techiehenry

Slackware is a Linux distro that I’ve been using ever since its 4.0 release. It’s a good distro to use as a study platform, and its system of simplicity never fails to attract a great number of fans through the years. By simple, I mean that most of the time you have to hand-configure everything to get what you want from the system. However, there are some not-often-talked-about scripts that do make the user avoid changing settings by editing every configiration file.

One of them is the netconfig command.

This is a life saver for newbies who are familiar with network settings but are not yet accustomed to changing the necessary configuration files in Linux. What it does is that it would display a series of prompts similar to that presented during the installation process. Information like the server name, IP address, DHCP server address, etc., needs to be supplied by the administrator.

The command is useful if your computer is switching networks, or when there is a change in how client computers are being managed (i.e., change from static to dynamic IP addressing). You may need to restart the network interface after changing the settings.

It has been known that Mac OS X can connect to Windows machines using the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. It accomplishes this through the open source server Samba.

Now being an open source application, this means that the way it can be configured would be the same across any other platform it can be compiled in. The generic way to configure Samba would be through the configuration file smb.conf. Users attuned to the GUI-based System Preferences of Mac OS X may be content with using the settings available there, but the true power of Samba can only be taken advantage of when the config file is modified manually.

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To remove Linux from a computer, at least three things need to be removed, namely the root partition, the swap partition, and the boot loader. This normally wouldn’t be a problem if the target machine runs on a single OS, since the only thing that needs to be done is to backup the data and then reformat the whole thing. But what if the target machine is dual booting Windows/DOS and Linux and a complete reinstall of the Windows/DOS system is not feasible?

This is where things can be quite tricky. However, I found out that the correct way would be to remove the bootloader first, then remove the swap and root partitions. Why is the sequence this way? Explanations follow.

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(image from deviantART)

I noticed that a lot of people who surf the web are still not attuned to using search engines to their maximum capabilities.

Let’s take for example a friend who is looking for reviews for the iPhone’s camera. I’ve observed that most people would go to Google, then place iPhone on the search box. Definitely the site containing the information that is needed would be included in the search results, but since the item placed in the search box is quite general, all iPhone-related items would be included as well, most of the time these putting the needed site several pages into the results. This more often than not defeats the purpose of the search engine, since it is still necessary to wade through the search results to be able to get the information desired.

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Looking at the archives list in the sidebar, I noticed that I’ve already had this blog for a year! Technically, this site is on its 10th month, but content-wise (part of the contents of this blog was taken from my old Wordpress.com free blog) it is on its first year.

I’m having several thoughts about this blog, and my site in general. I want to change everything, sort of refocusing my efforts on blogging. I remember Jayvee Fernandez on his blog challenging bloggers about their blog conviction, and I’m thinking about mine right now. For the previous year, I focused on what I see and read on the internet, my experiences, and even my thoughts on some issues related to computing and the web. Now what do I intend to achieve on this second year?
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