Tag Archives: linux

Proper Shell Scripting on Windows Servers with Perl

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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  • Fact: Shell scripting is a must for any serious IT admin managing a server. From automating backups to checking logs and keeping server performance and load in check, scripting is a must.
  • Fact: Shell scripting on Windows sucks.1
  • Fact: Shell scripting on Linux and other *nix operating systems is powerful, well-documented, and quite straight-forward.

Most people take a look at these three facts, and instantly come to a conclusion.. the wrong conclusion: you can’t properly manage a Windows server because it’s inherently lacking in the shell scripting department.

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  1. Hopefully Monad (Microsoft Power Shell) will provide a solution, but so far the results are mixed; and it’s not popular enough to be considered a viable substitute at the moment. ↩

Complete .NET Portability with Wine & Mono?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Mono is the open-source version of Microsoft’s .NET Framework. It implements most of the backend framework features, but unfortunately, falls flat on its pretty little face when attempting to display the user interface – which is what desktop apps are all about.

Wine on the other-hand, is a Linux port of (major parts of) Microsoft’s Win32 library – the core dependencies of the Windows development libraries, and more importantly, the win32 interface elements. With Wine, you can run many traditional C++ win32 executables on Linux, with certain limitations.

Mono’s biggest stumbling block is the GUI and .NET programs that use P/Invoke to call native non-managed win32 dlls – Mono is a pure .NET environment, and can’t handle them. But from the description above, that’s exactly what WINE excel at… So can’t we use WINE + Mono to make just about any .NET program run on Linux fresh out of the .NET compiler?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Back when the Mono project was first starting out, the Mono development team considered using WINE to implement the System.Windows.Forms namespace of the .NET Framework (which is practically 100% native C++ unmanaged win32 code in .NET wrappers). But they made the right choice in deciding to not take the easy way and go that route, leaving the integrity of the Mono project intact and focusing on true cross-platform user interface libraries instead (the GTK# is now the UI Library of choice for cross-platform .NET applications).

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EasyBCD 1.7 Released & Up for Download!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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 Go and grab yourself a fresh, hot, right-out-of-the-compiler copy of EasyBCD 1.7 before your old bootloader realizes what hit it! Another release of EasyBCD is now available after months of beta testing and – in true NeoSmart fashion – brings dozens of new features and innovative ideas to the table; this time with even more versatility than ever.

Yes, there was a name change. Those of you keeping track of our beta builds are almost certainly wondering what happened to EasyBCD 1.61. To be totally honest here, it was supposed to be released 4 months ago – soon after the 1.6 release back in May. But we got caught up adding a couple of tiny features here and there, and before we knew it, we had a full-blown new version at our hands and not knowing what to do with it – so it’s just shipped as EasyBCD 1.7.

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Ubuntu 7.04: Fiesty or Feisty, Which is it?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Ubuntu is a great Linux distro and all, but couldn’t they have chosen a better code-name for the latest version!? As everyone knows, geeks and nerds are the worlds biggest obsessive-compulsive, nit-picking grammar-Nazis, and they’re also the ones (at the moment) most likely to be using Linux. So, why on Earth is Ubuntu 7.04 called Feisty Fawn and not Fiesty Fawn?

Out of all the Fxxxxx Fxxxxx names Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical Ltd. could have picked for their all-the-rage Linux distribution, it had to be the (only?) one that breaks the infamous i-before-e rule, didn’t it?

‘I’ before ‘E’, except after ‘C’, or when sounding like ‘A’, as in “neighbor” or “weigh.”

 

Everyone who speaks English was made to memorize that as a child (well, if you’re British you would’ve memorized it “neighbour” instead, but that’s not the point ;), yet here we are: grown coders using software built on exceptions to grammatical laws!

Let’s take a quick look at some of the other names Ubuntu could’ve used:

What wonderful code-names! What beautiful, grammatically-sound, alliterations! Maybe they just didn’t notice the grammatical misnomer – plus, there’s always next time. Here’s hoping for more great Ubuntu releases with gramatically-correct names!

EasyBCD 1.5: Multi/Dual-Boot Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, & BSD!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Important! Upgrade immediately and read the docs to make it work!!!

We’ve done it! NeoSmart Technologies has built a better mousetrap, and it’s a beauty. EasyBCD 1.5 is the first and only application to allow users of Microsoft’s new OS complete compatibility with any other OS they might be using! It doesn’t make a difference if it’s Mac OS X or Linux, BSD or Unix; EasyBCD 1.5 means you can boot into it! For too long have Vista’s beta testers been locked-in to Windows simply because nothing else can be easily booted into, but not anymore!

Windows Vista’s new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It’s one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But at the same time, Microsoft shows its disregard for other simultaneously installed operating systems. It overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn’t provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That’s where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!

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