Well, the upgrade is done, and while there didn’t seem to be any unrecoverable issues, I can also say that I’m less than impressed with how the upgrade recognized the system after I ran the install DVD. However, I am also more than willing to give excuses given that I tend to munge up my configuration quite frequently, which likely broke some valid assumptions that were made during the installation/upgrade process. Continue Reading »
I’m going to try to upgrade to Fedora Core 6 right now, in shaa Allaah. I’ll let you all know how it went. I usually prefer to install OSes from scratch, but in this case, I’m just going to give upgrading and try and see what happens. If worse comes to worst, then I’ll just go ahead with a fresh install and let yum do the rest. One of the new features for anaconda in FC6 is that you can actually access the software repositories directly from the installation process, but I’m not sure I want to spend hours inside the install routine where I cannot do anything interesting - so I’ll probably just install the basics, and then once the OS is booted-up (boot time should be faster, too) I’ll probably run yumex as I’m checking my e-mail or posting and whatnot.
Here goes! Bismillaah!
Fedora Core 6 final has been released, and torrents are up! You can read the announcement, see the release summary, or just go straight to the torrent page. This release is called Zod, but we can forgive them for that, because amongst other things, this release should have Eclipse 3.2, which means I can finally run Zend’s PHP-IDE based on Eclipse, in shaa Allaah. Another major change includes the upgrade to Gnome 2.16, which, as always, brings some nice evolutionary changes.
I actually have both the Hidayah Online as well as the Audio Islam server connected to the torrents for the x86_64 DVD ISOs, and I’ll leave them seeding for as long as I can once they complete. As it stands now, both should be completed by the time I get home tonight, in shaa Allaah. Once they’re both seeding, it will mean I am contributing a maximum of 30Mbps of bandwidth to a total of 160 peers. You’re welcome. 
Procomm Plus Terminal *beeeeeeee-tshshhhhhhh-khkhkhkkhkhkh* Connected at 9600 bps to Pyro VBBS
I can only wonder how many times the above (or whatever the equivalent was…my memory is fuzzy, at best) information flashed on my family’s Casper 14-inch monitor in the early 1990s (of course, back then, it would have just been “90s”, when we were young & ignorant of such vile truths as Y2K). ANSI art was the height of graphics technology. Our Hayes 9600 baud modem allowed us to look down at those peasants that would dare connect with a lowly 2400 baud no-name brand (probably some upstart company like USRobotics or something…). Indeed, those were the days. Downloads over the zmodem protocol (much better than that xmodem fluf that had been around for so long) brought me my 300kB ARJ archive faster than I could get up, go to the bathroom, make a sandwich, grab a can of pop from the fridge, come back and…find it half-way through. Could things get better? Signs point to “no”. Continue Reading »
I’m sure many others have already editorized about the issue, Anti-userism is a constant & growing problem facing consumers & users the world over. What I mean by anti-userism is the trait that software, hardware, & service companies have of putting the user or consumer last when it comes to priorities, in particular, in relation to their bottom line. Continue Reading »
Astronomy Picture of the Day rarely ceases to amaze me, and a few days back one image earned its place as my desktop background.
If, at first glance, one is shocked at how unreal that image looks, then rest-assured that it is enhanced for contrast. However, the unaltered image, shown below, is hardly any less surreal.
It’s been long on the to-do list, but I’ve finally relocated HidayahTech from http://tech.hidayahonline.org over to my personal webspace at http://www.basilgohar.com/blog, blowing away just about any hint of anonymity I may have carefully accumulated over the past years. This is the new home for HidayahTech and, as a result, I am intending on making it far more personal, not that it was so excessively business-like to begin with. However, I will take the move as an opportunity to expand on more personal topics such as religion, society, & my personal projects.
As the move did involve database migrations, HTTP redirects, & string search-and-replace operations, if you find any glitches, please do leave a comment and let me know! And, in case you didn’t notice, HidayahTech is sporting a new theme! I felt it was about time to freshen things up a bit. The old one lasted about nine months, so we’ll see just how many trimesters this one can make it through.
So, I finally completed the transition from the “dinky” 10Mbps choke hold that was the Hidayah Online server to the mammoth, unmetered 20Mbps Grand Canyon that is the Audio Islam server. I achieved this merely by redirecting all download links to their appropriate locations on the remote server. This way, all old links to the audios (and believe me, there are more than one would think) will transparently map to their new homes, assuming the user agent, be it a browser, a download manager, or a search engine crawler, support standard HTTP 307 code redirects. Once I’ve grown confident the redirects are working at an acceptable level, I will probably convert the redirect code to the more suitable 301 response code.
