Conecuh Software

The Southeast Linux Fest has been announced for June 13, 2009, at Hendrix Student Center, Clemson University. Several notable speakers will be there, including Mark Spencer of Asterisk and Digium.

This promises to be a well attended, and exciting event. The organizers have a wiki, and hold weekly IRC meetings on Tuesday on #southeastlinuxfest (irc.freenode.net).

Since this is at Clemson University, I plan on taking the Amtrak train from Birmingham (BHM) to Clemson (CSN). Coach price is $48 one way. The Amtrak site doesn’t have any upgrade options currently, but I’m sure that there’s an option to pay more and have more luxury.

Event details:
Where: Hendrix Student Center, Clemson University, Google Maps
When: June 13, 2009
Transportation: Amtrak, Greenville SC (GSP)

While browsing the blog of a fellow penguin lover, I noticed his latest post. Apparently Best Buy is offering Linux on laptops now. Links and images are posted over on Vincent’s post.

I’m embarking on a little Flex development, but I ran into a snag installing the Flex Builder into my *very* stock Fedora 8 system. I found a link to some comments here in follow up comment to the author of the post.

Apparently (and I’m not an Eclipse expert), the problem stems from Fedora’s choice of “Eclipse Europa”, rather than “Eclipse Classic”.

Problems:

• The install says “Choose an existing Eclipse 3.3 or higher root folder to be extended with the Flex Builder Plug-ins”



• An error message is displayed when you select the correct folder

The installation proceeds fine from that point, but the Flex project isn’t available in Eclipse. As it turns out, you need to copy some files by hand:

cd ~/Adobe_Flex_Builder_Linux/
cd com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site
sudo cp features/* /usr/share/eclipse/features/
sudo cp plugins/* /usr/share/eclipse/plugins/


And that’s all there is to it - you’ll have access to the Flex Projects in Eclipse. I’ll update this post if I find any problems with this method of patching the installation

Update: 13-Apr-2008

The above works great for *creating* a flex application, but it will not compile. There is an error generated that says:


Flex 0.0 (1): Flex SDK location "/home/.../configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/bundles/159/1/.cp/devsdks/moxie" does not exist.


I struggled and struggled to find the elusive “moxie” plugin. Alas, It was not found on my computer, or in any of the jar files. It turns out you need to download the “Adobe Flex SDK” from the “Stable Builds” section of (Adobe Wiki link):
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3

1. Download the file
2. unzip it into a directory
3. In Eclipse, Window->Preferences->Flex->Installed Flex SDKs->Add the directory you just created
4. Delete the other installed SDKs for moxie (Flex 0.0)
5. Enjoy!

I hope this helps someone
If you want to test to see if your installation works, add the following between the mx:Application tags in a Flex project


<mx:Canvas width="100%" height="100%">
<mx:Label text="Hello World"/>
</mx:Canvas>


I’m a member of a local Linux users group. Most of the members have Linux installed at home, and are happily learning how to use it, develop for it, or deploy it in a corporate environment. The reality of today’s computing environment is that there are still many Unix (AIX/HPUX/Solaris, etc) machines installed or scheduled to be installed, that require administration. Unix big iron pays the bills in may enterprise shops, and while Linux may get you in the door, Unix will keep the paychecks coming.

The barrier to entry for large Unix environments has the potential to be very high. Contemporary hardware is expensive, and the operating system and software are equally expensive. New System Administrators need access to the Unix OS to at least gain some knowledge about it’s quirks and capabilities. HPUX admins need to know SAM, AIX admins need to know SMIT. Everyone needs to know how to partition logical and physical volumes on their Unix systems.

Luckily, most of the large Unix vendors have test drive programs that allow access to many of their products over the internet, or even in the comfort of your own home. These are usually just a registration form away, and can provide access to OS, compilers, configuration, web servers and a host of other software. Below find links and capabilities of the programs offered by the large Unix vendors.

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