Recently I found out, that russian domain mozzy.ru is being forwarded to my website noera.net. Reason? Unknown. I tried to contact owner of mozzy.ru domain, but didn’t get reply yet. What a surprise.

Just a quick note to all of you that are trying to sign up to noera.net via mozzy.ru: Your account won’t be created unless you sign up thru noera.net. Thanx for understanding.

Once I’ll have more info bout this, I’ll send here update.

I found new web service, where you can share your email safe way and protect yourself from spam. Service name is scr.im. And what it does? It’s simple, it creates link for you that you can share. And whoever want’s to know your email can go to that URL and after passing simple test that they are humans your email will be revealed to them.

Simple, nice and easy to use and share.

Enjoy using this service.

So I got myself one of these nice toys. Everyone calls them netbooks. So do I. Bought myself Acer Aspire One. And of course, as it was Windows XP version, my first and only though was how to get rid of it and put linux on it.

I searched and searched and tried and tried one major distro after another. Ubuntu Intrepid, Arch Linux, Debian. And I did succeed. Pretty much everything was working but not everything. And that for some reason was making me unhappy. So I kept on trying and searching.

I found linux distro specialized on Aspire One. Kuki Linux. At the time when I tried it it was only at RC1 stage. But still nice and working ok and out of box. It’s ubuntu based, so I was very glad I found something that was working for me and I was even familiar with.

But as I was playing with it and installing programs I wanted, I found a problem. Tried to put firewall on it. I went for UFW (uncomplicated firewall) as it has even GUI for it, and it’s just very simple to use. Me, as end-user, having this toy for moving here and there, didn’t want to mess up with it much. Just simple tasks and I’m ready to go. That’s what I need, that’s what I want. But here was a problem. After installing ufw, and enabling it, suddenly my network stopped working. And I knew why. When installing ufw, I got error, that my kernel doesn’t support IP multicasting. So I went to kukilinux IRC channel and asked bout it. They told me to submit it as “possible bug?”. So I did it. And of course, I got reply it’s not a bug, but a feature that (maybe) they’ll put in future releases. Well, understandable. Kernel was absolutely lightweight. And booted in 15 sec. I even got reports some people got it up in 8 sec. Well, very nice. But, speed going against security? All people using Kuki I spoken to on IRC were using hardware firewall, so basicaly home router. Well, that’s fine. For them. Not for me. I have direct connection do internet via modem. With public IP, and decent speed. So I do need firewall. And of course, I bought netbook not a huge desktop machine cuz I wanted to be able to take it with me any time. So goin to cafe with some wifi connection, or work, or just bout anywhere is what this netbook is build for. So I didn’t understand part of someone creating linux distro for this particular netbook, with this problem. So it’s fast, easy to use and whatever, but not thinking bout basic security end user would want?

I’m not saying I don’t appreciate their work at all. They did good job, but me, and at this point considering myself as non-geeky end user, would like distro to work pretty much out of box with all security there. I could rebuild kernel, I could do some more tweaking. But then. I don’t need Kuki. I can use just any distro and set it up myslef from scratch. If this would be true, then there’s no reason to have another distributions than major one.

So it meant no Kuki linux for me. So of course, I had to search more and more, and tried setting it up with Arch linux and Ubuntu 9.10 alpha. Last one was working nice. And I was happy, Got decent distro, working netbook and firewall I wanted.
And then I came across to Firefly linux. It being Arch linux based, is working fine and tweaked for my netbook. Now I’m trying it, but somehow deep inside I feel I might stick with it. Arch linux is not release based distro but rollover, so I can upgrade kernel all the time without having to do distro upgrade or reinstalling it.

And the result? Acer Aspire One is nice netbook. At least I like it. And you can use Linux on it. And it will work. And as it applies to any other linux distro on any computer. You – end user – will decide what you like and will use. Linux gives you this opportunity. And it gives you opportunity to put anything you like on netbook as well. With more or less tweaking.

Kuki linux is nice and fast. But not for me. Firefly Linux seems better for me. But at the end of the day, it’s still Ubuntu vs. Arch Linux fight that’s inside me. Both great and I just can’t choose. But that’s me. Never happy with result, and always happy with reinstalling. You choose what you like.

And that’s what I like bout Linux. You choose. It’s your final decision: if you use it, how you use it, and what of it you use.

I’m just never happy guy that changes his mind all the time, so I have to try and change distros on my computer all the time. It’s just me. It’s just this endless story of my mind changing every day.

A warm welcome to noera.net webpage.

What is noera.net? Nothing more, nothing less then just a project. A project for me to learn. To learn something bout creating webpage, administering it, administering CMS (at the moment I’m trying Drupal) and playing around.

At this moment I’m not sure if you’ll see here some useful informations or it’s gonna be just full of rubish.

But as a Linux enthusiast I’d like to dedicate this page not just for my learning purposes, but also to bring you informations about Linux.

At the moment I’m running Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Hardy Heron and preparing to fully reinstall my netbook Acer Aspire One with Arch Linux. But I’m still trying many different distributions and hopefully in future I’ll bring you some revisions of some (maybe even exotic) distros.

Thank you for visiting and hope you’ll come back soon. And surely, I hope I’ll bring you some more stuff very soon.

Sincerely,

Eduard Ihnat