Ubuntu Tutorials

I spent some time this evening considering the current status of this blog and the amount of traffic that comes through here on a daily basis.  When I first started this blog I never imagined it would become as popular as it has!  Something that started on an old Pentium III 500Mhz throwaway machine under my desk has evolved into something much bigger, and much more expensive to maintain!  I have been very pleased to be a part of this project and I would very much like to continue doing this, but I need your help.

I spend, on average, ten hours a week working on this site and its contents.  This is on top of my regular fourty-hour job as well as family and church responsibilities.  This, as you can imagine, is a good chunk of my time.  Recently the maintenance has become much more of a focus as the site traffic continues to rise.  I have needed to fine-tune aspects of the current server in an attempt to keep things running smoothly.

For nearly two years I have tried to provide the community with regular, useful tutorials.  I have tried very hard to make the content easy to follow and simple to implement.  I know, based on countless emails, that many of you have found this site very useful.  I would now like to ask for something small in return.

If you are able, please consider a donation to the site.  These donations will be used to improve the server hardware and compensate me for my continued time and effort.  Any amount, even $5 is greatly appreciated!

If you are not able to make a monetary donation, please consider the simpler task of disabling Adblock on this site.  Currently a very, very small percentage of the traffic to this site allows the ads to be displayed.  This results in a very small return for my effort.  If you have found this content useful, please consider this option.

Lastly, for the thousands of you that follow this blog by way of RSS and email.  Please consider visiting the site when you have found an article useful.  If the content helped you–if you’re experience with Ubuntu was improved by content here–please consider helping.

You’ll find a summary of the Fundraiser on the right-sidebar as well as a donation form on the Fundraiser page.

Thank You,

Christer Edwards

Author, Ubuntu-Tutorials.com

I spent some time yesterday evening working on better integrating the forum into the current site.  I’m initially happy with the results (Ubuntu Tutorials Forum).  I appreciate the feedback so far and hope you’ll start taking advantage of the large community we have at this site.

With the forum better integrated now you should be able to use any existing site registration or even openID.

I’ve been sitting on an idea for a while now and I finally had some time to implement it.  After going through the piles of comments that have been left on this blog I thought I would implement an ubuntu tutorials community forum around the site and its tutorials.  I’ve noticed that many of the comments threads have evolved to something very similar to a community forum, so I thought I’d help facilitate that.

The forum is still very young and its still very much a work in progress so it will rely on you to get going.  I still very much believe in the “release early, release often” model so, even though it isn’t finished, please dive in.

I will be attempting to migrate some of the major posts and discussion topics into the forum so that there is a bit more of a starting point.  I welcome any other suggestions.  You can leave them here.

I realize it has been more than a month now since my last post.  That is definitely the longest hiatus I’ve taken from blogging since the start of this site.  Let me give you a heads up regarding recent events.

1) I recently started a new job here in Salt Lake.  I am no longer a traveling Linux instructor.  Although I enjoyed that job very much, I did not want to keep traveling so regularly so I found something close to home.  I’m now a system admin for dozens of Red Hat servers, which allows me to work locally and frequently telecommute.  Working from home with my family sure is nicer than working in a different city every week.

2) I figure I should join the naming meme, although I’m sure I’ve seen this before.  I should mention that I have no creative naming scheme for my machines.  I name them what they are, and since I have such a diversity of hardware that ends up creating unique names.

• macbook – my laptop
• 007 – my EeePC (because everything is smaller in the spy world!)
• sparc – the old Sparc IIe beast I was given
• iMac – my wifes iMac desktop
• martian – my OLPC (because its green and has funny anteanna)
• media – my media server
• brick – my new work laptop.  Dell laptop cases always look so bulky to me.

See, I told you they were boring names.  I’ll be back to blogging one of these days after I get into the rhythm of the new job.  Until then, keep on keeping on.

A few of you have emailed me to make sure I was still alive.  I’m still here, I’ve just been terribly busy.  I just finished six weeks of travel and teaching including OSCON.  I’m ready to take a few days off and once I get some rest and settle back in I’ll have some more updates for everyone.

My thanks for the emails and concern.

I want to thank everyone for the great feedback that I got on the poll regarding what you’d like to see on this site.  I think the results are pretty clear, although some of them did surprise me.  For those that haven’t taken a look at the results they are as follows:

Gnome Desktop Tips : 221 votes

Virtualization Topics : 163 votes

Installation & Upgrade : 163 votes

Security Related :152 votes

Ubuntu Server : 152 votes

3D Effects : 117 votes

Getting Involved : 69 votes

KDE Stuff : 65 votes

If you’d still like to voice your opinion the poll is still up for another day.  You can also comment on this post if you’d like to see topics not listed in the current poll.

I will try to keep these results in mind going forward.  I have seen website traffic go up recently, and I’m glad to see people are interested and coming to read the site.

A new poll will be starting July 1 so please come and give me your feedback at that point.

Some of you might remember, long ag, that I asked for some feedback regarding a presentation at Ubuntu Live 2008. Well, as it turns out the Ubuntu Live conference was cancelled by my presentation was migrated to OSCON instead.  I’m pretty excited to be going to OSCON this year, especially as a speaker.  I went last year, but just to work in a booth as a volunteer.  This year will be a much more fun!

If you’re going to be at OSCON come and say hello.  I’ll be presenting:

LTS Tutorials : Using Ubuntu in the Enterprise – 10:45 on 23 Jul 2008

I’ll be covering things like automated installations with kickstart and preseed, automated “stack” setup with the server installer (LAMP, etc), basic security with ufw, and more.  I think it’ll be a lot of fun and I hope to be able to show how Ubuntu Server can make Enterprise Linux simpler while remaining just as stable and secure as anything else.

If you haven’t yet registered I’ve outlined some of the available discount codes below.  If you can get the time, and if the discount help, OSCON is *really* a lot of fun and the education you get is worth every penny.

OSCON Registration Discount Codes

• os08fts - 65% off with proof of full-time student status: a copy of ID & class schedule demonstrating enrollment in 12 or more units per semester/quarter. Fax to (707) 829-1342. Please use os08fts in the discount field.

• os08team - 10% off per person if you register 3 or more people from one company. Please use os08team in discount field. Proof of status of employment (copy of business card) for each attendee must be faxed to (707) 829-1342.

• os08np - 40% off with proof of full time employment at a non-profit organization and verification of non-profit status (501 c3 or equivalent). Fax to (707) 829-1342. Please use os08np in the discount field.

• os08gov - 10% off with proof of full-time employment with a government agency. Use discount code os08gov, and fax proof to (707) 829-1342.

• os08as - 25% off with proof of full time academic employment status on organization letterhead. Fax to (707) 829-1342. Please use os08as in discount field.

I just finished a phone conversation last night with the hosts of the Fresh Ubuntu podcast.  Someone suggested that I might make a good addition to the show, so you’ll get to hear me talk about Ubuntu related stuff (primarily LoCo work) for a half-hour or so on the next episode.

For those interested check out the episode link here: http://freshubuntu.org/podcast/146/

I just added a WordPress plugin polling system and I’d really like to hear from all of you regarding what you’d like to see more of at Ubuntu Tutorials.  I know there are thousands of you that read the blog, but I only hear from a select few by way of the comments section.

Please take a minute and come visit the poll located on the right sidebar of the blog beneath the RSS icon.  I’d love to write content more targeted to the readerbase, and I can’t do that unless you tell me what you’d like to hear!

Thank You,

Christer

I just finished attending the Ubuntu OpenWeek Session: Packaging 101, presented by dholbach, King of the MOTU! .  It was a great presentation and I learned quite a bit.  I have studied packaging before and I always ran into issues.  I think his presentation made things very clear and he was great in answering the questions we ran into.

We packaged ed, a standard Unix line editor that nobody (except for one of my co-workers) actually uses, but it was a good practice run.  Even with such a simple package we learned how the basic principle works, which should carry over to more real-world packages.

If you’ve been interested in packaging this is a great time to dive in.  We’ve got a small window before Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid” starts and there will be help needed in merging everything and getting that release ready.  I would *love* to be a part of the actual packaging for that release so you may hear more about my journey toward MOTU during this release cycle.  I invite you to attend the remaining packaging related sessions at Ubuntu OpenWeek and pickup what you can.  Ubuntu’s success is very much based on the strength of the MOTU and the number of quality packages it offers.

If you haven’t yet, go check out OpenWeek.  Drop by #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net and join the fun!