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I’ve been playing with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex for 2 days now, and I could say that it’s definitely a significant improvement. Here’s a few thing that I’ve noticed during these short time of period

• Network Manager Improvement

Ubuntu recognizes the mobile broadband boom, and lots of people using 3G network to browse the internet. In the last release (Hardy), configuring 3G could be a hassle, especially for those who are new to linux. Now in Intrepid, it recognizes my E220 modem immediately after I plugged it in, launch a wizard to help me choose which provider I’m using, then create a network configuration for that. All I need to do is to configure it to use my username.

The beauty of it? It doesn’t even need additional software. (Well, 3G doesn’t require additional software in Hardy  for 3G, but those requires configuration on wvdial, ppp, etc). Integrating it to network manager is brilliant. Back in hardy, everytime I launch Firefox after connecting to 3G network, it wasn’t aware that I’m online and I have to manually untick the “Work Offline” mode. Now, that pain is gone

There’s also additional section in network manager for DSL connection, but since I don’t have DSL connection, I can’t give it a try.

• Tabbed File Manager

Intrepid includes Nautilus FM version 2.24.1, now comes with tabs. Just like a browser, now you can browse to different part of filesystem, without have to open several instances of Nautilus. Good feature.

• Encrypted private folder

This is a feature to allow user to create an encrypted folder in their own home directory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t comes by default. You have to install it manually (use apt-get or synaptic to install ecryptfs-utils). Worse, you can only configure it from terminal (which probably the first reason why Ubuntu doesn’t include it by default in the first place). Before they can put a good interface into this, I think I’ll stick with TrueCrypt.

There are some other features available like private filesystem, integrated USB startup disk creation, etc, but I haven’t given them a try yet. Will keep posted on that.

Any of you discover a new feature you’d like to share?

Intrepid Ibex is out !!!

Getting a new (well not new, actually) laptop, Dell Latitude D630, and after finished downloading the new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I decided to give the new Ubuntu a try.Here’s a quick review :

• Installation

Installation is fine, as with the last Hardy, it’s also an easy install. Aside from partitioning and time zone, you can probably accept all the default setup. It took me about 30 minutes to install the whole system. Booting is fast, I think it’s slightly faster than my current Hardy (well, probably because my Hardy is already bloated with additional services )

• Devices

D630 uses a restricted (proprietary) driver for wireless card, i.e. Broadcomm Wireless. Once you activate the driver and restart the system, it works like charm (probably won’t need restart, but I don’t want to get into a hassle trying to configure it. besides, restarting take less than a minute :p). Display gets 1200×800 out of the box, and is fine. Bluetooth and sound works. One thing that bug me is the that the touchpad response is very slow, probably need some tweaking for that later. Other than that, everything works perfectly !!

• Printing

Continuing hardy tradition, printing is extremely easy to setup. Once I enable printer “Show printers shared by other systems” in System -> Administration -> Printing -> Server -> Settings, then I click new, it detects both Xerox Document Center 236 and HP Color Laserjet 3800 available in my office network. I already setup the Xerox using Generic PCL 6/PCL 6XL Foomatic driver, and it prints fine.

• To Do List

Last thing I need to configure is vmware. Back in hardy, it required some patches, which will probably the same case with this one. Also will need to check whether presentations work ok to projector.

All in all, this release is satisfying. Back when Hardy is initially released, I need to tweak some stuffs to get sound working in my Compaq V3000 series.

Let’s get Intrepid

Saya punya satu klien dengan jaringan kecil (10 client Windows) dan satu buah Ubuntu server sebagai router + DNS + DHCP + file server. Salah satu requirement yang diminta adalah network backup, dan network backup itu harus bisa diverifikasi oleh client yang bersangkutan (dengan kata lain, dia bisa liat langsung hasil backup-nya).

Untuk network backup, sebenarnya ada beberapa kandidat, antara lain Bacula dan Amanda (secara keduanya gratis). tapi constraint yang saya temukan (dan saya belum temukan solusinya) adalah, karena bacula dan amanda menggunakan protokol samba untuk windows backup, fitur incremental backup jadinya tidak bisa dicapai (entah saya yang tidak bisa configure juga barangkali). Sesudah browsing sana sini, akhirnya ketemu solusinya, gabungan antara DeltaCopy di client dan rsync di server.

Langsung saja ke konfigurasi-nya ya:

Konfigurasi di server

• Install rsync dan xinetd di server (rsync secara default sudah ada di ubuntu server, tapi just in case, tetap saya tambahkan di sini )

$sudo apt-get install xinetd rsync

• Buat file /etc/xinetd.d/rsync dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

service rsync
{
disable        = no
socket_type    = stream
wait        = no
user        = root
server        = /usr/bin/rsync
server_args    = --daemon
log_on_failure    += USERID
}

• Buat file /etc/rsyncd.conf dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

log file=/var/log/rsyncd
pid file=/var/run/rsyncd.pid
[data]
comment = public archive
path = /data
use chroot = yes
lock file = /var/lock/rsyncd
read only = no
list = yes
uid = [user yang punya akses write ke path]
gid = [group membership dari user]
auth users =  [user yang akan diberikan akses]
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
timeout = 600

dalam konfigurasi di atas, backup dari klien akan disimpan di folder /data, dan akan ditulis dengan user support

username:password

RSYNC_ENABLE=inetd

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Konfigurasi di Client

• Download Deltacopy dari website DeltaCopy
• Ekstrak file dan jalankan setup
• Sesudah instalasi selesai, jalankan DeltaCopy Client
• Buat satu profile, dan edit parameter-nya (server, path, folder yang ingin dibackup, schedule jika diperlukan, dsb). Hal yang menarik dari DeltaCopy adalah kemampuan untuk scheduling, serta incremental backup. Jangan lupa tambahkan username dan password yang didefinisikan di server pada DeltaCopy Client

Untuk mapping hasil backup client dari Ubuntu ke Windows, saya pasang samba server di Ubuntu.

Secara keseluruhan, konfigurasi-nya sangat mudah. Selamat mencoba

PCWorld released a recap of a recent study showing a stronger ground community-based linux distributions gains in the enterprise market. Quoted from the study :

“Community distributions such as CentOS, Debian, and Gentoo are gaining enterprise respect for quality code, stability, response, and of course, for being “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom”. These community distributions are becoming a more significant market factor with growing enterprise acceptance and use of them”

Apparently more enterprises, especially in Europre, are willing to take chances running community-based distro (as opposed to commercial distro like RHEL or SuSE) using their internally capable resource for system administration, support, as well as application migration, although sometimes they still seek assistance from third-party consultant, which turns out to be cheaper than paying support from commercial-based distro.

Is this the end of commercial-based distro? Well it may be is too early to say so, but commercial distro should start reviewing their business model.