Was surfing around tonight and Stumbled onto The Linux Alternative Project. Ever stopped to consider moving to Linux? Thought you wouldn’t find replacements for that oh so crucial app in Winders? Check out this website for a pretty comprehensive list of Linux alternatives.

Just as I thought, I finally turned Beryl off. Bling just gets in the way of work. Some would argue that this is a direct admition that Aero is superior. My counter to that would be something along the lines of, “idiot.” I still like the bling of Beryl far better than Winders Aero. But, the Viewports concept was annoying me and Beryl was not allowing me to set startup points for windows and apps, even though the functionality is there. I suspect this is a Gnome vs. KDE thing maybe? Dunno, at any rate, I still approve, but I don’t want the bling THAT bad.

Success!! Oh my god that was way more difficult than I thought it would be. I’d like to coin the Law of Multiple Linux Installs, but I can’t do the math to figure out the equation. It just seems that new Linux distros always require multiple installs before you get comfortable — inversely proportionate to the amount of distros you have used in the past… Or something like that.

Anyway, Mythbuntu lives! I finally got it running like a champ on the media center machine. I must say I love all the features it has in comparison to Windows Media Center… But, Windows Media Center was FAR easier to get goin. I’ll pay the price of a less user friendly install for the increased freedom I have, though. It’s nice to be able to rip DVDs into your media library just by clicking a button on your media center. Also, there is commercial detection, master/slave configurations for multiple frontends and backends, and best of all it was $0…

So, highly recommended if you are looking for a media center solution.

So, where am I at now? Well, I have two more clients to get moved over to the new remote Linux server. They’d be moved by now, except they haven’t moved their nameservers yet… Grrr. My local server is now Linux, and I’m creating the file serving structure now. Gotta bone up on Samba!! I took the domain down here at home. I mean really, who needs an Enterprise Domain at home!? I’m trying to be a bit more realistic on my outlook for my home network this time around.

Next in line will be the conversion of the media center from the Dark OS to Linux. That should be interesting. I’ve never ventured down that road before, and I am very eager to see what the outcome will be!

After that, it’s back to dev work on some web properties and trying to monetize them! Hopefully next year will bare some fruits of my labors. Here’s to hoping!!

Kudos to UniExtract! It’s a great piece of software that allows you to extract files from just about any type of file packaging standard! What’s better is it is basically add on Explorer context menus instead of a whole new bulky program. Best of all, it’s free!!

I like to share new whizbang software pieces when I find them, so there ya go!