Nicholas Petreley

(LinuxWorld) — I heard it through the grapevine that some phpBB fans were less than enthusiastic with the cursory overview I gave it a few weeks ago. I thought my appraisal was quite positive, but I do appreciate the criticism I found in various threads, including the LinuxWorld forums. It brought my attention to two errors in the article — an omission and a misunderstanding — and gave me a reason to incite more flames. First, I incorrectly asserted that phpBB does not support avatars. I had actually seen phpBB-based bulletin boards with avatars before, but since I saw no way to set an avatar in the user profile, I incorrectly assumed that these bulletin boards made use of some add-on or modification. As it turns out, there is a setting in the administrator control panel that turns on the avatar features. The setting is two levels deep, so while it'... (more)

LinuX-Mas caroling we shall go

(LinuxWorld) — The depressed IT economy may not have made us rich in dollars, but the events of the past year or two have certainly been rich with the kind of material that makes one want to sing Christmas songs with joy. I've prepared this year's round of IT Christmas carols with these events in mind. So gather 'round a warm monitor (or you can find a picture of one and post it on your chilly flat screen LCD display), raise your voices and sing... SUBHEAD2: Microsoft is Coming To Town (To the tune of Santa Claus is Coming To Town) You better watch out You better not cry, ... (more)

Time for a new installation paradigm

(LinuxWorld) — It is time for a radically new approach to software installation for Linux. Starting with this article, I will examine the problems with existing approaches to software installation, look at the technical issues, look at some of the alternatives, and propose a framework for a solution. Let me be clear that this is not an attempt to evaluate existing package-managers. I most often recommend Red Hat Linux, I like Mandrake and Knoppix, I use Debian, and I'm about to try Gentoo, so I'm not here to push one package-format or distribution-type over another. I may like ... (more)

No FUD about FUDForum

(LinuxWorld) -- I found the ideal forum software for my non-profit sites, VarLinux.org and Petreley.org. It's called FUDForum. I'd like to say that I chose FUDForum after carefully examining the interface, feature set, and the quality of the code, but it really came down to one thing. It looked pretty. I later discovered that it also has a wonderful feature set along with many other things to recommend it. However, pure physical attraction caught me. Here's how it happened. One of the computer games I play is Anarchy Online, a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG... (more)

Ion a not-too minimalist window manager

(LinuxWorld) -- All right, I lied. In my last article, I promised to cover file managers you can add to window managers. Immediately afterward, I discovered another window manager that won me over in just minutes. It's called ion. The minimalist Ion is a minimalist window manager. Minimalist window managers refuse to rely on things like icons, title bars, window buttons, launch pads, and the like. I happen to like these kinds of window managers because they try to take the attitude that the window manager should be managing the windows, not the user. That's one of the biggest p... (more)