............And other neat tricks

Thank goodness for clarity, I think I got it now. Dyne 2.5.2 does in fact do clustering. The computers have to be on the same network, and their IP's and hostnames listed in a config file. When they see each other they automatically share the work load. Of course they have to be running Dyne to do it. Are there trade offs?? YES! Networking several older machines will probably cost more to run than one fairly high powered newer one. I only have two, so no big deal, how about you? Then with Synergy you can use them all with one keyboard/video/mouse. If you like to tinker and toy and experiment, YOU can do it. Yeah, MS and Apple only let you use their stuff in the prescribed ways. Linux lets you tinker with hardware and code, invent new systems, be a classical "hacker" if you want to. The word "hacker" has been demonized in a negative sense. So if you can understand my advice, if you want your kids to be just computer users, MS and Apple are ok I guess, but if you want them to be something more, Dynebolic Linux opens too many doors to count. Aside from the great applications for multimedia creation, you can do system setups and configs yet to be discovered and application development. The main thing is that it is not all worked out for you, there are still challenges and problems and worlds to conquer and you don't need corporate sponsorship or permission or a user's agreement to use any of it, or to modify any of it. The best knowledge of the scientific community is shared knowledge, the same is true in the Linux computer community. Linuxville residences all have access and share from the mouse mauler to the coder.

More Linux light

Linux has been for much of it's life a victim of it's own progress. How to develop an outcome that advances on all fronts and yet maintaining the backward compatibility. What brought this up, you ask? I was reading over the Dyne:bolic Linux web site and there is a blurb about turning your networked computers into a cluster. A cluster allows you to combine and share the computer power and resources of several networked machines, spread the work among them to get it done faster. Today we have so-called multi-core CPUs that are supposed to do the same in theory. But while operating systems might take advantage of this, the applications do not. You have the latest dual-core cpu's and you got single core applications. Anyway, further investigation reveals that Dyne:bolic Linux version 1.4.1 has openMosix. OpenMosix is a kernel extension that makes for turning separate PC's on the same network into a cluster. This means you could have more computer power and resources for said application and the application doesn't have to be specially designed for it to work. For doing web surfing this is meaningless, but for math intensive graphics......wow. I've done rendering in Rhino3D a MS win software. A final rendering might take 1/2 hour or more to process. A cluster might take 5 or 10 minutes for the same rendering.

A hot topic for a while was building a Blender3D render farm with off the shelf hardware. Today that hardware is mostly used equipment and even cheaper. So, if you ask me, that technology can come off the cutting edge and make a way to the masses. All you geeks and geek artist can explore and extend that technology in practical ways without the complexities of the Beowulf cluster. If I am wrong, tell me.

As of March 2008 the openMosix project closed. They claim the advent of dual-core PC's obsoleted further development. Hey, how many of you folks have hardware made obsolete by MS Vista and is not that old? My main box and my spare are both single core, not that old and I could use the extra computer power on some projects. Dyne:bolic is at version 2.5.2 now and uses a newer kernel. Because openMosix is done for now it is not in the latest Dyne. You know, sometimes the price of progress is to set aside amazingly powerful and/or useful stuff and move on to something else. I think all the user request for wireless support, the dual-core cpu especially in the laptop market and possibilly the home server idea has overshadowed the openMosix folks.

I don't know, nothing left but to download Dyne:bolic 1.4.1 (still available) and see for myself. No big thing folks, I know some of you refused to give up Win95 when Win98/XP came along. And just think of the hassle if it weren't for live-CD's. I guess they should come up with a multi-core version of openMosix and make openMosix an extension to run on any distro. I see that Phantom of the Opera movie, he is at the keyboard, all the PC's lights are blinking and the house power goes dim.........(ooh the power!!) Come on guys, your work's not finished yet.

Just an addition, The Dyne:bolic 2.5.2, the latest does say in the lines that you can cluster with it also. The 1.4.1 version works fine, I have to look into the 2.5.2 version. This is a cool feature if you can find a use for it. Us common folk don't crunch many numbers, our thing is interactive computing. Does clustering speed up games or 3D graphics?

Linux with sunglasses, Dyne:bolic

Most Linux news concerns the big picture. What corporations and systems admin are talking and doing about Linux. And what seems to be the interest of the masses. So, articles are rampant about migrating from XP and the grunts of wireless laptop owners. The one unavoidable thing for most is that if you want Linux, you have to install it or get some savvy geekologist to do the task. This includes configuring, adjusting and bracing yourself for learning a different world view. Yeah, things are different in Linuxville. While most versions of Linux have evolved from the same approach, there a few of note that have taken a different approach. Dyne:bolic is one of those and if you don't play with it you'll never appreciate it. I am writing from within it using a web browser called Bon Echo, which is Firefox. Smooth and stable it all is and the install was painlessly simple, just copy a file from the CD to the root ("/") directory, booting the CD finds the copied file and initiates it. Since I already had Grub and QGrubeditor, I edited Grub using the info from the Dyne:bolic manual and now am dual-booting Ubuntu and Dyne:bolic. It had Abiword which is very cool but I wanted Open Office.org. I downloaded it from the website on the Dyne:bolic page and installed it by moving the file to the module directory and rebooting. Imagine downloading directly to the module directory and rebooting instead of all the hassles of Synaptic and Synaptic is easy. OK, so you don't have the complete catalog of a Debian based distro, but Dyne:bolic is meant to be portable, run on older and lean machines, be as complete a multimedia distro to be used in "any" part of the world. So, this is not a review so much as it is an endorsement. Get it, load it, play with it, use it...........be advised, it is not billed as cutting edge, but it is not fodder for the mainstream, or driven by the hype market either, yet it does the same things as the high priced spread with high usability.

Rediscovering Dynebolic Linux

My last post had me ready to dig into Wolvix. I started having problems with my computer, but I don't know if it was the CD, the CD drive, the downloaded ISO or what. Actually I have a stack of CD's that I have burned and not spent much time with. So, I set aside Wolvix for now until I can figure out what's the problem. In the mean time I am rediscovering Dynebolic Linux. Dynebolic? What's that? It's not in the Distrowatch top 100 any more, but that doesn't make it not cool. Distrowatch has to do with hits and inquiries, not popularity. But you should talk about Dynebolic because it's got some unique features. Like Puppy Linux, the packaging system is a bit different. What got to me is that to install it to disk, you just copy the "/dyne" folder from the CD to the root directory of your file system (Linux, XP, Beos, there's a few), set up Grub the bootloader and you are in there. Now don't copy that folder to the folder called "root" in Linux like I did or it won't work. It's the "/" or top of the file system, the one with the system folders in it. The included manual tells you how to edit the Grub configuration file, it is easy but scary.

Every Linux has got some mystique about it and the developers of Dynebolic are for sure Rastafarian. There purpose is very clear, Dynebolic is free software, multimedia focused and made to run on anything. The artwork is very spicy and the desktop has Windowmaker and XFCE which makes it very flexible and low on resource use. I won't hold you in suspense........
I don't know about Windowmaker shown here but XFCE is cool no matter what. The artist has other artwork on her web site and you could add your own, anytime. Multimedia, that's graphics, TV streaming and editing, internet broadcasting and officeware. There are modules instead of packaging like .deb or .rpm, that have different focuses like games. In a good way once you have settled on one Linux distro, you don't really need another and if I had seen Dynebolic first it would have been questionable about the need for Ubuntu or others. All my needs are here, office, graphics, internet. If you put this on your big jump drive, you could use it anywhere and never install it ever. So this Linux covers a lot of ground, but some will say stuff is missing. If you only use a jump drive or the live-CD there are no worries, the hard drive install might need some security tweaks. I don't know mon, Distrowatch says it's from Italy, but Rasta is from Jamaica. Dynebolic is revolutionary in concept because it is simple to move between PC's and install without reformatting. But, if all you care about is the applications, yes they work well. If you are curious dig into Dynebolic Linux, "don't worry mon, be happy"