It may seem like they’re clearly trying to take the lead, but everyone in psychology is familiar with the defence mechanism, which alludes to the possibility that Microsoft is about to have a corporate-equivalent of a stroke.

And honestly, if I were Microsoft I’d be sweating it too.  Its getting to the point where Ubuntu Linux is matching OSX in the eye candy factor (though I’d argue its been vastly superior for years now, especially since XGL and Beryl came onto the scene), its much faster than 7 or XP, in many arenas, much more secure than Vista or OSX (“Vista SP2 most secure OS”…yeah…right, apparently they’ve never encountered OpenBSD or the grsecurity Linux kernel, even the NSA likes Linux), and invariably cheaper (who wants to spend money on an OS AND have to pay for support when they can have a free OS that works most of the time and you only have to pay for support when/if you need it, but even then, there’s plenty of documentation around the web about how to do things, so you really don’t even have to pay for support, though the same could be said about Windows, but sometimes there’s that one situation no one has ever tried before).

So it could be very good news for us Linux fans.  With Google’s Chrome OS coming up (albeit its not truly Linux, it does at the very least include the Linux kernel), OSX on the rise, and Windows 7 on shaky grounds (with the MS Word injunction, and all of the anti-trust litigation surmounting M$ right now); it could very well be the start of the decline of Microsoft’s empire.

You know what they say, everything with a beginning, must have an end.

Now a little of arguing in favor of Microsoft but not in the normal way.  Windows is a business OS, I don’t think anyone can really question that.  Sure it has some entertainment features and such but I’d argue where Microsoft makes its big bucks is in the corporate world.

Indeed they do offer things that the other OS’s are lacking on.  Namely centralized management and policy instantiation.  On Linux its a bit more difficult to control users in a global environment from a centralized point.  Now I’ll probably have people arguing against that point, but honestly the Linux community does need to start pumping resources into a centralized environment that you can do anything from.

Now I’m not saying that’s how environments should be, I’m just tagging along the argument that a lot of companies have against using Linux.  Personally, I think the Windows environment (as a programmer, and a .Net developer at that) has some serious issues, but overall is a good way of working with Windows.  Linux has a very good environment but what it lacks is a central way of working with it in a cohesive manner to all.  Where a developer could run into ActiveDirectory administration and understand what’s going on, or vice versa; that doesn’t exactly work on Linux so much.

As a purist, I’d rather Linux stay a high-end/hobby OS (used by powerful/stable servers and power users alike), but if you want it to take off and become more successful, there needs to be a centralization.  You might think that’s a bastardization of Linux and will probably water down the OS, and I totally agree, but as it stands right now, I’d argue that Linux/UNIX is too advanced for the general population.

For the same reason that people don’t understand why RISC is superior and x86 CISC is antiquated, they won’t understand why their “My Pretty Pony” game doesn’t work on Linux.  Its an advanced argument that deals a lot with advanced computing topics.

Do you want to dumb the whole thing down so users will understand it. or do you want to leave it where it is, in wonderful harmony where we know we have the superior OS from many standpoints, untainted by the craziness of the mainstream world?  I’m choosing the latter.

My friend had me build him a computer, but he lives out of state so I had to send it off.  UPS has good prices in comparison to FedEx and like hell I’m gunna put a desktop computer in the hands of the USPS.  However I know crap happens from time to time, so I packaged the computer in the box the case came in (double walled cardboard and a custom fitting Styrofoam pack), as well as purchased enough insurance to replace the unit should it be necessary.

Well, the worst case scenario ended up happening.  The desktop arrived at my friend’s house with the case trashed and the computer itself, non-functional.  So I had him send it back so I could get a better look at it.  It was indeed broken.

So I filed a claim on UPS’s website (makes things MUCH more convenient to file).  Well UPS came by to pick the unit up while I was in class (when the email I received said the carrier would be in contact).  So I came back having missed him and packaged it up to be sent off the next day where they took it to their nearby hub (this was about the only answer I could get out of the carrier with my simple questions of “where is it going?” “Am I going to get it back?” “When is it going to come back”).  Well 1 rude carrier and 2 days passed, and it was redelivered back to me, and the carrier sped off before I could ask him some questions (kind of a rude fellow).

Another day or two went by and I got a call from what seemed to be a third party telling me my claim had been denied because “it wasn’t packed according to UPS specification”  Well this was crap so I contested the outcome and they escalated it to an adjuster within the company.  He did indeed call back within the time they told me he would (now as bad as the situation was at this point, I can say kudos for UPS to getting back to me and within the times they specified).  Unfortunately, I was in class so I missed the call and he didn’t answer the voicemail I left him.  Well I called again the next day and caught him, and sent pictures of the box and the unit within via email to the adjuster and called him back about 15 minutes later (because he said he would call me back after he got the pictures and I got an email confirmation that my contesting of the outcome of the claim had been approved).  Well he claimed that he hadn’t gotten it still, but oh well.

I waited 2 days and a weekend before finally re-emailing the pics to make sure he got them, within 5 minutes I received a return email…an out of office notification.  Wonderful…But at least I knew he got the email this time.

The very next day I got a call from a different person at UPS (apparently a different division too), unfortunately at an inconvenient time for me to take a call, so I missed it again.

I know what you’re thinking.  “I thought this was supposed to be a good story”.  Well this is where it takes a dramatic turn for the better.  I hate this type of being tossed around stuff typical of many corporations but this next step is where they break the mold.

I call the UPS claims office that had called me back, and immediately I was showered with apologies (sincere ones too “We’re sorry that we broke your package” not “we’re sorry that you have a problem with how we do business”), and after only a few seconds they informed me that my claim was approved and they’d be sending me a check for the claimed amount immediately.  The call was rather short and highly productive.  I received one more asking that I update my account information online because something odd had happened with who to make the check out to so I did and I’ve since been informed via email that my check is on the way.

So UPS ended up making things right, so all I can say is thanks UPS!  You’ve made right what was wronged and I’ll be happy to use your service again farther.

I use the nVidia restricted drivers as well so it could be a problem in that arena, but if you’re suffering from the issue, until it gets fixed, you can just disable the Pidgin libnotify plugin (go to your Plugins menu and uncheck the “Libnotify Popups” plugin). This should fix the issue, I’ll correct myself if it doesn’t.

To fix this, you need to change from a color identifier like

red=’\e[0;31m'

to something like this

red='\[\033[0;31m\]‘

This should fix your problem with the linewrap issues

After investigating farther I noticed the problem was due to a single line in the fstab file under /etc/fstab.  Basically this file is a descriptive table of the layout of your filesystem (hence fstab)  The line of code in question was “errors=remount-ro”.  This was tagged onto my main root filesystem (mounted at /), and basically means that if the system detects an error, to remount the file system as read only.  X11 won’t work under read only mode apparently.

The way to fix this is to run fsck, you can boot into the recovery kernel and run it from there.  This basically replays the journal (if you’re using a journaling file system) and corrects any discrepancies.  I personally also removed the “errors=remount-ro” portion of that line.  I understand that this could lead to data corruption in the future, and you should realize this too if you use that line.  Basically my mounting it as read only, it prevent any further entries into the journal before you can get a chance to run fsck.

Now the permanent fix as I’ve come to find out, has to do with swap space.  From what I understand, in order for suspend to disk to work, you need at lead the amount of RAM you have available in the swap partition.  Most people have double the amount of swap that they do of RAM but I have 2GB of RAM so I only have 1GB of swap.

That should fix the problem.  I haven’t attempted it personally but I do believe this is the problem from the things I’ve been looking at.