Marcel Gagné

Hello everyone, It has been one heck of a week, but it has also been a lot of fun. As the title implies, the week of April 18th was the week for Linuxworld Expo in Toronto. Before I forget everything that happened in one massive blur, let me spend a few minutes recounting the events here. Before I get into something resembling detail about the days, let give you my general impression. As with the last of these shows in Toronto (previously called Real World Linux), the atmosphere was friendly and all of those attending pretty easy going. There was …

Today was day one of the LinuxWorld Canada Expo in Toronto. This three day event takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The first day is primarily tutorials and presentations of various kinds. It’s the academic side of the expo while tomorrow and Wednesday is the marketing. That’s when the show floor opens up and companies start showing off all their really cool stuff. Today, I did a three hour tutorial based on my “Moving to the Linux Business Desktop” book. As part of the tutorial, I sent up a (GASP!) Powerpoint presentation (made with OpenOffice, of course) to …

Now there’s a weird subject line if ever there was one. Hello everyone. Yesterday (March 5th), I did a half hour interview on Tech Books (with Carolyn Weaver) talking about Linux in business and, since it was a book show, my “Moving to the Linux Business Desktop“. The show is taped in three seven minute segments followed by a 3 minute wrap-up. During the second break, I fired up a game of PlanetPenguin Racer (PPRacer, for short) which everybody on the set loved so much, we used it as the intro for the third segment. I think I said something …

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 …

Do you sometoimes feel like really getting to know the processor in your computer? You know, getting up close and personal? Then try this at home (or work, or wherever). Open up a shell prompt and type the following. cat /proc/cpuinfo Lots of cool information related to your processor will appear, such as your processor’s speed, the model, who makes it, and the ever popular bogomips, to name a few. Another way to see this information is to run kinfocenter and click on the Processor item in the sidebar (see image below). http://www.marcelgagne.com/images/kinfocenter_processor.jpg Look at the “flags” though and the …

As many of you know, I’ve been doing a couple of shows a month on Call for Help (with Leo Laporte and company) talking about, wait for it, Linux. As I was prepping the segment for the next show I’m taping (taking place on Tuesday), I remembered something Leo said on air at my last taping. He specifically made a point of asking people if they would like to see more Linux content in general and to call with Linux questions — the show is called “Call for Help”, after all. So, if you would like to see more Linux …

Hurrah! It has finally happened. After what seems like forever, the new server is finally online. About three weeks ago, I tried replacing my old Web server with something bigger, faster, and stronger (insert theme from Six Million Dollar Man here) but that quickly became a nightmare. After a great deal of head banging, I discovered that the BIOS was flaky when it came to supporting more than one network card. My new machine was crashing hard every few hours without any kind of message or warning . . . just plain dead. Eventually, I discovered that there was a …