Month: March 2005

My original plan was to tell you about a new article that is the centerpiece of Bookpool.com’s Open Source sale. It’s called “Making DVD Movies with Linux” and yes, it’s written by me. This article was a lot of fun and I do recommend that you check it out if you want to transfer those home movies to DVD using Linux. I said original plan because I happened to discover that there is a second article out there by me that I didn’t even know about. Actually, it’s an excerpt from my new book and it’s available at InformIT.com (Pearson, …

by Marcel Gagné This article first appeared in the December 2002 Linux Journal François, vite! Our guests will be here any moment. Quoi? You say that you have already prepared everything? Excellent, François! I see that you have already brought up a healthy supply of the 1998 Barossa Valley Shiraz. It will pair nicely with tonight’s menu, don’t you think? Qu’avez-vous dit? Ah, the theme of this issue . . . it is System Administration, mon ami, and tonight I have decided to look into process management. But of course, François, even something as basic as processes can be the …

By Marcel Gagné This article was originally published in the February 2005 issue of Linux Journal. Mon Dieu, François? You look a little green. What is wrong? Ah, you were playing with the 3D desktop switcher and got a little motion sickness. Perhaps with your delicate condition, we should stick to the more classic desktop pagers. Not at all, mon ami, I am not making fun of you. You are just more of a down to Earth kind of waiter and things zooming through space, toward you, or away from you, are obviously not for meant for one such as …

I’ve been busy this evening working on my new book, something my editor will surely be glad to hear. After a few hours at it, I took a much needed break. That’s when I remembered that I had mentioned podcasting in a recent Monday night chat. In fact, the current poll question asks about podcasts. The bottom line appears to be that most people don’t know what a podcast is. If I enter the word “podcasting” into Wikipedia, I get some interesting information. “Podcasting” is making audio files (most commonly in mp3 format) online in a way that allows software …