Ugo's Blog

For those who don't know, APC is a well-known manufacturer of power-protection equipement, such as UPSs and Surge protectors. An UPS is like a surge protector (protects your equpment from "too much electricity" (spikes, surges), but it has a battery pack that protect equipment in case of drop of voltage (brownout) or power outages. I had to deal with APC support yesterday. In fact, I was a troubleshooting an issue for about une week by e-mail and I called them yesterday. Here is my opinion about APC: 1- They make very good hardware, although I think that Powerware is offering UPSs that have more features (their 9000-serie). 2- I love their live support on their web site. It is probably the thing that makes me buy APC. I can chat directly with a sales rep before buying. 3- I don't like their software. I use Apcupsd on my Linux servers, for a reason. APC's software, PowerChute, will not install on a Linux server without having X installed. I don't instal...

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So, I don't really like Fedora Core 4 up to now. Very slow and a little too buggy. Still haven't found out how to get my second monitor to work, but I'd already like to try another linux distribution. I downloaded the Debian Netinstall iso and Ubuntu DVD. I tried the live-cd part of Ubuntu. Nice, sleek, full of packages available easily, including proprietary software (Wow... Acrobat Reader 7). It seems to be more stable than Fedora, but I only tried it live for about 30 minutes. I wonder if I should backup my Fedora installation before replacing it by Ubuntu. Or maybe Debian? I'm still not sure. I'd like to have something that just works. I can sometimes hate Windows, but Windows XP on my laptop just works and is stable. I just hope Linux on the desktop could be like it is on my servers. But is a different game. On servers, I run no graphical interface and no complex (or new) hardware. The setup on my servers are a lot more simple than what I want it...

I had a bit of spare time at the office this week, so I decided to install (definitevely) linux on my laptop. I decided to go with Fedora Core 4, as I'm more familiar with Red Hat . I managed to get to a fully functionnal setup within a few days. The only thing I haven't worked out yet is getting my external display to work. I have a 17" external monitor which adds a little of workspace. I replaced Outlook with Evolution and its Exchange connector. I was already using Firefox for internet browsing and Thunderbird for my personal e-mail and newsgroups (via Gmane ). XMMS instead of Winamp and all other little gadgets (archive manager, etc.) have their equivalents on Linux. I bought Driverloader to be able to use Windows driver for my integrated wireless network card. All of this works pretty well. I do have a few complaint, though. It is slow. Slower than Windows :(. And I have stability problems. Of course, Fedora is bleeding edge, but... Evolution tends to crash (Ev...