Have you made the switch from Microsoft Office to Openoffice but are really annoyed with how long it takes to open even the smallest of documents? Well here is a quick hack that you can do to decrease the time that it takes for OpenOffice to launch.
Step 1:
Launch any Open Office application. In this example I will be using Writer
Step 2:
Click On Tools. Then click Options
Step 3:
Under OpenOffice.org; click on Java
Then Uncheck Use Java runtime environment
And then Click OK
Evolution is Finally Useful
I have been using Evolution on and off for many years because of its ability to connect to Microsoft Exchange severs. But I typically will use it for a few weeks only to get pissed off because of random crashes or lockups and go back to using Outlook in a Virtual Machine. Even though Ubuntu 10.04 was released with Gnome 2.30 it held back the Evolution release to 2.28. Stupid move IMHO but lucky I have told you all how to update to the latest release.
Well have been using the 2.30 release for several days on my work laptop connected to Exchange 2007 and as the title of this post says, It Finally Useful! I have not had any lock ups or slow downs. I did have an issue with it downloading all of my message headers from my inbox but I have over 5500 emails in there so I don’t blame Evolution. I have since decided to have it download the full emails so that I can use it offline and that seems to have helped. Also after a rocky start with the Exchange MAPI connector in Evolution 2.28, in 2.30 it works like a charm. I can send and recieve email, add events to my calendar and query email address in Active Direcory with no issue.
Kudos Evolution Developers!
Update: (2007-7-26)
Looks like I spoke a little too soon. It seems that Evolution will not send emails periodically. I haven’t been able to pin point what the cause is but as soon as I do I will be filing a but report.
pfSense Firewall
Over the past few months my company has been testing out a different firewall products to protect us from all you h4x0rs out there. Our old Watchguard Firebox is no longer supported so we needed to look elsewhere. We started by looking at a couple of commercial products and despite having a $5000 budget for a new firewall we decided to give pfSense a try. pfSense is a open-source customized FreeBSD installation that is designed from the ground up to be a solid, secure firewall.
Last night I found myself at work late so I decided that after two months of testing it was time to move the pfSense installation onto a production server. I re-purposed an older 1U Pentium 4 4GB of RAM server that was a decomissioned FreeNAS box. Now I releze that this is overkill but it was the only rack mountable server that I had available.
The server has two internal gigabit NICs and 2 dual port NICs for a total of six network interfaces and we are using all but one. Currently we have LAN, WAN, VPN, Training Network, and finally the Guest Wireless all hanging off this box. We are running the Captive portal on the Guest Wireless and currently I am testing the OpenVPN that is built into pfSense to replace our old MS PPTP VPN.
pfSense has a package repository that is contains community created packages. We have installed the Arping, Cron, and Snort. After running the Snort package for a few weeks on the test server (but in production) I determined that China is a pain in the ass due to constant hacking attacks to our FTP server so I found the package Country Block which allow for you to drop packets coming from specific countries. Lucky we are not an international company so I was able to block China, Korea, Russia, and a few others. (Sorry if you are from those countries but a few bad apples ruin it for everyone.)
All and all this is an excellent firewall product that I would recommend for any SMB. They have an excellent community to help you if you have any issues and if your company is worried about relying on strangers they also have commercial support. I have barely descriped a tenth of the features that this awesome product contains so head over to their website for more indepth information. www.pfSense.com
Ha Ha Google
First Python Program
I have been off and on trying to learn Python for a few months now and yesterday I successfully finished my first real application. Unfortunately it was for work and I cannot post the source code for you all to tear a part. But it was an application displayed a menu that allowed the user to choose and made several Oracle database calls using the module cx_Oracle to test some functionality of my companies application.
There was that vague enough?
To make it useful I had to use the py2exe application to make it into a Windows executable. I had to step down my version of Python from 2.6 to 2.4 to get the py2exe compiled python application to work due to the version of C++ that Python 2.4 and 2.6 are compiled with.
I hope to start making some useful applications in the near future where I can post the source code and you all comment on and tear apart.
Review: KDE 4.5 beta on my Asus netbook
I have an Asus 1005ha netbook running Ubuntu 10.04 and last night I decided to install the lasted beta version of KDE 4.5 from the Kubnutu Experimental PPA on it. The upgrade was very smooth but then again apt-get installs rarely fails or cause headaches.
Here are the issues that I have come across.
1) KDM will show the login screen but will not login to either KDE or Gnome. When you do login you are just presented with a terminal, thats it. Kinda reminded me of the old days. I haven’t really looked in to this issue because I just when back to using GDM instead. I will have to tackle this here in the coming nights.
2) The process called virtuoso-t consumes way to much processor. Some where in the neighborhood of 50-80%. Whats worse is that after some Google searches it seems that this is a carry over issue from 4.4x series. I really hope this gets fixed. I was able to kill that process and then the processor drop to consuming a normal 3% or less.
3) Tweetdeck. Yes I realize that this is not a KDE issue, but for some reason when I opened Tweetdeck there is an extra small blank windows that opens in the top left corner. This windows also takes a place in the task bar, which might not seem like a big deal except that I am running a netbook and screen real estate is expensive. I am still looking in to this. Also Tweetdeck consumes way more CPU with KDE than Gnome so for the time being I switched to Gwibber to tweet with.
4) I love the transparent start menu and systray pop-ups but if you have a white window open behind them they are almost impossible to read. This is an easy fix with them changes or modifications.
As for KDE itself. I think after 5 revisions of the KDE 4 series I am finally drawn back to KDE. Thank goodness because I felt like such a trader after using KDE since 1.0. The desktop effects are awesome and very smooth even on my netbook. I don’t want to say who is copying who but I have been using Windows 7 at work and some of the KDE effects are very similar to it. For example being able to drag the window to the side of the screen to tile or maximize it or as you hover your mouse over the application title along the task bar it pops up a small window displaying that application. But KDE has added many other windows effects goodies that blow Windows’ Win-Tab effect away.
There are many other little fixes and goodies stashed throughout this release. I highly recommend this version of KDE once it is released in a few weeks and hopefully it will not disappoint you and will draw you back to the KDE project.