You know the way you set something up once in a while ( when you are not using Microsoft products ) and think to yourself, “That’s Nice”.

Mongrel and Apache working together just gave me that joy.. So simple, especially in single instance Mongrel setup.

Basically:

1) Start Mongrel

cd /rails_app/
mongrel_rails start -d -p 3000 ( where 3000 is an available port)

2) Check Mongrel http://that_domain.com:3000

3) Tell Apache Create a virtual_host entry for the site in question and add:

ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:3000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:3000

The Goal: Build a cheap Ubuntu Linux box for movie and photo viewing on my widescreen TV

I recently experimented with connecting my Xubuntu Linux laptop to my TV and found the results to be interesting enough to seriously rethink my entire media strategy.

It inspired me to embark on a project with a simple goal. To get a PC dedicated to the task. I’m not going to install “Ubuntu Media Server” which is a distribution in it’s own right.. There is no need - it’s just Ubuntu Linux with some extra stuff - so I’m going to install Ubuntu.

My criteria were:

• Spend less than $350
• Leave the door open to upgrade to gigabit ( fast ) network and high end video card
• Find a PC that fit in a space 14.8” high
• Find a PC with low noise levels

Is $350 / entry level too much to ask? NO. Since Microsoft’s launch of Vista, you’ll find that “entry level” for Vista means “loaded!” for Linux!

Build or Buy? What is the best foundation for a Media Center PC

Well that really depends on what special offers you can find, but, it’s more and more common to be able to buy a PC for the same or less than the sum of it’s parts.

I considered one of the cheapo Ubuntu PCs, like the Walmart $199, but reseach that and you’ll find it’s not very expandable - it’s micro sized components in a big box, and more suited to installing in my car than my TV room.. another project brews.

I tracked prices and offers at Tigerdirect.com ( build your own ), HP, Dell and retailers like Circuit City, Best Buy, MicroCenter and CompUSA and decided that I really could buy something within the price range ready made, with the advantage of user reviews to help me gauge fan noise potential.

In the end, the offers at Dell outshone the competion, and their 14.5” high cases closed the deal for me.

How to get the best deal at Dell.com

In a word, “experiment”. There are at least 3 different paths you can take to get the same hardware at Dell.com, with a price variance of up to $60!

On the Inspiron 531 line, you get to choose between standard and “Slim” for the same price. Either could do, but know that the “Slim” version has more limited video driver possibilities - it only accepts half height cards.

The three routes are:

• Build your own ( which takes you down a Vista path )
• Search site for “Ubuntu” which takes you to the Ubuntu Linux Dell PCs
• “Built For you” which offers you a small selection of prebuilt Vista Machines

Try them all! You’ll find price variation like:

• Monitor can be removed from package to save up to $170
• The optical disk on some is a decent Rewrite DVD, and some is more basic with a $30 upgrade option
• Some come with Linux as the OS, but the base hardware is often more expensive!

Another option is to google “Dell Coupons” and see what you come up with. When I ordered, the way to go was the “Built For You” non-customizable machines with the default options, but removed monitor.

• $329
• Free Shipping
• Decent AMD processor ( my preference )
• 1 gig RAM
• 250gig disk
• Onboard nVidia ( for Ubuntu, if in doubt get nVidia )
• Decent Rewriteable DVD that other routes charge an extra $30 for
• A Vista license ( for what it’s worth )

That’s pretty meaty. Just before Vista release I bought my current desktop, a very similar HP for $600 and it has a slightly slower processor!

Tips on Ordering from Dell and getting your gear QUICKLY

Dell go out of their way to avoid giving you shipping estimates during the order process. Their FAQ talks about build times of 3-6 days, but doesn’t make any promises.

Before ordering call DELL customer service and ask what the lead time on builds at the moment. If you have a local DELL store call them too. The answers I got were “about 10 days” and “about 6 days”.

After ordering, the shipping estimate I got from DELL was 30 days!

DELL pride themselves on customer service, and a follow up email detailing that I got verbal estimates of 6 to 10 days got things in motion. I persisted, and the result was an overnight Saturday delivery, 8 days after my order.

I think if you keep going in a DELL email customer support thread, they will continue to make the effort to give you what you consider to be good service. If you don’t ask, you won’t get.

Next steps. Coming very soon

Breaking: Digg crashes under weight of I switched to Linux posts, but nobody spends enough time explaining why they did!.

If I had to hand tweak every application, if my system crashed every day, if I had to reinstall from scratch every 6 months, if I still needed a Windows machine for certain things, if it needed more powerful hardware, if it ran slower, and if I had to buy all new peripherals I would still choose something like Ubuntu* Linux over Windows XP or Vista.

The fact that NONE of these are the case should put things into perspective.

People don’t switch to Linux because they wake up bored one day and can’t think of anything else to do. They do it because regardless of the inconvenience, the time required, the unknowns, they have to do SOMETHING to improve their relationship with their PCs.

There are people out there who love Windows, but I think that most simply tolerate it. Tolerating Windows is what you do if you don’t have a Mac**. That’s just the way it is, and the unexplained disk activity, slow downs, crashes and viruses are just part of the deal.

You don’t “switch” to Linux, you ESCAPE Windows.

For those like me who sit every day in front of a Linux Desktop that they are proud of, switching is not an academic, nor sterile process. It’s an awakening into feelings of liberation, empowerment and even astonishment at working with a glorious OS that is free, and “the man” doesn’t have a piece of.

Do people switch to Linux from a Mac? Some do, but it’s often about principles than the nut and bolts. No, the vast majority of Linux Desktop adopters are Windows people who simply YEARN for change. The growth of Linux on the desktop is pure and simply evidence that many people DO NOT like, and are no longer willing to PUT UP WITH Windows.

There is a tipping point at which a Windows user will look for something else. Joe Average will probably buy a Mac, but the reason why many Linux Desktop users are geeks is because they are the people who have the perception that they can get Linux up and running.

The irony of the average Ubuntu User’s Profile

Ironically, the typical Ubuntu user is in some ways least suited to the OS. “Your granny” or other “normal” people who just surf the web, check their gmail account, skype, IM and do some basic document work is actually the perfect candidate for something like Ubuntu right now.

The Walmart and Sears $199 Ubuntu PCs are a perfectly positioned product, combining cheap hardware that adequately runs Linux with a the low tech savvy consumer. Likewise, something I’ll blog about soon is my Media Center based on a $329 Dell. I got it up and running in 40 minutes with Ubuntu including all the bells, whistles and codecs. No glitches, no problems, no tweaks, no issues. It just installed and worked.

It’s us geeks who want to take it to the limits that have to get under the hood, but that’s also why Windows wasn’t working out for us.

Fixing Linux issues is a doddle compared to fixing Windows issues

Seriously. To any Windows user who thumbs their nose at the need to get down and dirty with the Linux terminal, I say, “Well at least we CAN!”. What do you do when something mysteriously stops working in Windows?

• 1) Reboot
• 2) Reinstall application
• 3) Reboot
• 4) Reinstall associated applications
• 3) Reboot
• 4) Reinstall OS

Not exactly, but my point is that fixing an issue with something under Linux is a matter of using Google to find the fix, then some copy and pasting some commands from some helpful soul out there. This level of ease and visibility is simply unavailable for Windows.. sometimes you are just SOL.

Don’t tell me I’m wrong because that argument doesn’t stand up. I’ve used Windows heavily from it’s initial release through XP and I’m telling you that I had problems that made me want to throw it out the window.

Oh.. that’s because I’m dumb? SWEET! A dumb person who can’t even keep Windows running properly can install and fully maintain 5 functional bleeding edge Linux machines including desktops and web servers - SVN, Rails, LAMP, mongrel clusters, NFS and SSHFS all over the place and more eye candy than you can shake a stick at, not to mention a suite of productivity tools that could design and launch the space shuttle. Tell the world, you don’t have to be smarter than dumb to add printers, webcams, midi devices, drives or any other peripheral to a Linux box. WooHoo!

If you don’t get the point, feel free to come over and I’ll stick it in your ear.

Open Source Changes People

I didn’t get it at first.. I didn’t understand why people hovered on forums giving help and spent their time creating free stuff.

For years my income revolved around an online store that sold niche technology. I hooked up a developer community and a user community, and I took a cut of the sales. The site actually had a policy of “NO FREE STUFF”, so you can imagine, I didn’t “get” Open Source. For a long time I couldn’t understand how people monetized open source, and then realized that for many that is not the motivation for many people involved in the thousands of Open Source projects. I’m not sure that I understand it to this day - but I’m a part of it now. Giving is Receiving in many walks of life.

Don’t work in a cluttered, dingy office with no natural light

Good advice I think - probably no arguments there. Well nothing else that you interact with is an extension to your physical environment as much as your PC.

If you had a paranoid person looking over your shoulder all day interrupting you constantly to have you confirm every step you try to take, you’d likely kick the crap out of them. Why tolerate it from your PC, and even worse, why put so much trust in an operating system that NEEDS to be paranoid to stay healthy?

Sure, I sometimes have a fight with Linux, but I always know I’m going to win.. and I’m fighting for something I care about - not just tolerate. Creating an operating system environment that you love and that works FOR you is nurturing yourself at such a deep level that it’s almost life changing.

I would not be where I am today without Linux

Over dramatic? No. Expanding the horizons of my virtual work environment has expanded my entire business horizons.. I’ve expanded my desktop four fold alone.

Have you tried Rails development on Vista? It’s like pulling teeth. I just don’t think I’d have a Rails based business if my head was stuck in an XP box.. and for sure switching to Rails has changed the amount of enjoyment I have in my life.

Hosting? Yikes.

Look and Feel? My desktop looks just like Vista IF IT CRASHES. Yup. My FALLBACK look and feel is identical to Vista. My primary look and feel is like a Mac on steroids.

If you think Linux is for servers, you’re a few years behind. Last years Ubuntu out-of-the-box has all the UI bells and whistles of OSX Leopard and makes Vista look about as attractive as a turd on a beach.

So to summarize..

When technology is such a central part of our existence, why should we put up with something that does not enhance our lives?

It’s that simple! If you don’t LOVE your PC, do something about it. I’ve been using Linux long enough that I’m passed the stage of believing that everyone should use it, but I’m still squarely in the camp that XP and Vista are not good enough.

Switch to Linux, buy a Mac - I don’t care, but stop compromising. Raise your expectation to something above “tolerable”. Things are getting worse not better. The long awaited Vista has made “intolerable” so much more achievable for the average Joe, with it’s horrific hardware requirements, bad peripheral support and sub-XP levels of security.

Enough already!

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Additional Reading:

• Analyzing Microsofts OS by Linux standards

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*About Ubuntu. Yes, it’s the newbie of all newbie distributions. So what? It’s outgrowable? I don’t think so.

** I like Macs.. I’ll never bash them, but I just don’t NEED one. I don’t need to drop that kind of money to get something that I’m happy with.

Once in a while I panic about backups. As a web developer most of my creative is hosted somewhere, but what about all those pictures? Without an OFF SITE backup I risk loosing pretty much every photo of my kid that I have!

Back when I was a windows user, I solved the problem with a Carbonite account. Carbonite.com allows you unlimited online backup for under $50 / year. I’m sure there are other companies out there offering various services ( including my old buddy Joe at Tilana.com ) but NOBODY is doing a good job of marketing such a service to the home Linux user.

There are options of course. Amazon S3 storage is good one, although when talking about around 100gig between music and pictures, that can get pricey.

In the end, I realized that I could keep things VERY simple.

Having moved on to PCs with SATA drives, I have a surprising number of 250gig IDE drives kicking around. That coupled with the fact that I actually GO “off site” nearly every day to my office at The Fuel Team means that keeping it simple just got simpler.

The plan? To just do a nightly sync to external drives at my home and work machine, then switch them back and forth weekly. Voila! Worst case scenario, a weeks worth of stuff if the house burns down! Me likey. Not only does it give me good backup but it allows me to listen to my monster music collection at work.

Of course, it’s got to be a tidy solution as well as a simple one, so UPS have just delivered my new drive enclosures. I had two already, but one of them is a brick of a thing ( Coolmax NAS ), so I decided to buy two matching ones - then I don’t have to switch power supplies back and forth.

It’s running now - connected by firewire.

rsync is one killer command line file sync utility, and that’s what I’m using over here. I have a cron job as follows:

0 2 * * * /usr/bin/rsync -rtlzv --progress -l --exclude=.beagle/* --exclude=.local/share/Trash/* --exclude=.thumbnails/* /home/MYLOGIN/ /media/disk/MACHINENAME/

The easiest way to create a cronjob, and have it run as root is to type:

sudo cronttab -e

in a terminal, and add a line like you see above.

This one backs up everything in my home directory apart from useless stuff every night at 2am.