loramchugh

I don't think Oracle cares about these small fries. They have no incentive to maintain MySQL because they'd much rather companies use their namesake database management system. MySQL was really unwanted baggage that Oracle got with the purchase of Sun.

The installation procedure above will cause the Apache2 and MariaDB daemons to start, but the PHP module for Apache2 won't be loaded (because the module was installed after the Apache2 server was already started). Restart the Apache2 daemon sudo service apache2 restart In the default Apache2 configuration, the root of your web directory is /var/www. If you open your browser and go to localhost, you'll get the "It Works!" page. To test a PHP script, create the file /var/www/test.php as superuser or root. Put the following in the /var/www/test.php file: <?phpecho 'My version of PHP: ' . phpversion();?> Load the test page in your browser by going to localhost/test.php. I'll post a tutorial later on how to create a database, read data from the database using PHP, and echo it to a web page. Here's how to stop the Apache2 and MariaDB daemons: Stop the Apache2 daemon sudo service apache2 stop Stop the MariaDB daemon sudo service mysql stop

The reason for calling the operating system GNU/Linux is partly a matter of giving credit where credit is due, but that's only secondary. A more important reason to use the name GNU is to remind users of where their operating came from -- it came from a desire to bring freedom to users. The name Linux hearkens to the creator of the kernel, Linus Torvalds, who has been very clear about his "I don't give a ****" stance on freedoms. Torvalds is more concerned about his convenience. If everyone used the name of the kernel to refer to the operating system as a whole, the project's founding principles of freedom to the user will be forgotten. (Using the name GNU also saves us the confusion of wondering whether someone is talking about the kernel or the operating system as a whole.) I probably wouldn't have such a problem with calling the operating system "Linux" if Torvalds' philosophy was more aligned with the movement to bring users freedom rather than convenience. A lot of "Linux" users see Torvalds as a leader and many have adopted his philosophy of convenience over freedom. Freedom is more important than convenience. So, if a laptop has a WiFi device that works only with proprietary drivers, a GNU/Linux user in the market for a new laptop will be compelled to find a different one -- a vote with the wallet! That won't happen with Torvalds allowing hardware manufacturers to insert proprietary binary blobs into the kernel, which makes the kernel nonfree. Fortunately, there is a team of folks in the South American branch of the FSF dedicated to meticulously stripping out the nasty, nonfree bits out of Linux. Their version of the Linux is known as linux-libre.

This follows so closely on the heels of mastercomputers' tutorial about setting up a web server on a Red Hat-based GNU/Linux system because he used the term "Linux" to refer to the operating system as a whole, which raises my ire. I'm shaking my figurative fist at you, mastercomputers! My version of the tutorial will show how to set up a web server on a Debian-based GNU/Linux system. In the place of what is traditionally MySQL, I encourage people to start using MariaDB, because of a worry that Oracle is about to kill MySQL very soon. MariaDB is a fork of MySQL created by the original creator of MySQL. Many of Oracle's MySQL developers have already left to join the MariaDB folks (much like the Oracle OpenOffice.org developers left to work on LibreOffice). Anyway, here's my tutorial. Install Apache2 sudo apt-get install apache2 Install MariaDBUse the MariaDB repository setup page to determine the correct repository to add to your system. In this example, I'm setting up MariaDB on Debian Wheezy. Set up the repository sudo apt-get install python-software-propertiessudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943dbsudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/mariadb/repo/5.5/debian wheezy main' Update your apt sources and install MariaDB sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install mariadb-server Install PHP and the PHP module for Apache2 sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

You can view a web site's HTTP headers using a Firefox add-on called "Live HTTP Headers." Here's the page for the add-on: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Once the add-on is installed, you'll be able to view the server header information by right-clicking on the page and selecting "View Page Info." In the "Page Info" window, you'll see a new "Headers" section. This is what it looks like on my laptop:

Vanity Fair may have changed its servers. Their server headers no longer contain the string "CentOS." But, you can get the "Not Found" page for howardstern.com by trying to load this nonexistant page: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ At the bottom of the page it will say Apache/2.2.4 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.3-1ubuntu6.3 Server at howardstern.com Port 80

Just a bit of fun trivia:Howard Stern's web site is on an Ubuntu system.Vanity Fair's web site is on CentOS.The way I determined this was by trying to load a nonexistant page to get the default Apache2 "Not Found" page with information about the version of Apache2.

One of the most egregiously abused words in recent years has been the word hacker. The term hacker was coined in the 1950s at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club (http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html). The term was used to describe members of the club who were are exceptionally clever at problem solving. When MIT got a computer, a subset of the model train club also became part of the computer club, and they brought the term hacker with them to describe programmers who were exceptionally clever and playful at solving problems using computers. The abuse of the term began in the mid-1980s with a misunderstanding by a journalist writing about computer security-breaking who interviewed the hackers at MIT's Artficial Intelligence Lab. The writer wrongly attributed the term hacker to computer security breaking, and published it in a paper. Then the mainstream media picked this up and it has perpetually misused the term ever since. The unfortunate consequence of this confusion is the inadvertent vilification of all people who have ever been given the honorific of hacker. This is why intelligent people are fighting back by using the word correctly. Even Mark Zuckerberg uses the word correctly, as he demonstrated in his “hacker way” manifesto to investors before his company went public. A clever and playful chef can be referred to as a “food hacker.” A clever and playful writer can be referred to as a “word hacker.” A computer security-breaker is generally neither clever nor playful (although there are exceptions), so it's incorect to call him a hacker. He is more properly referred to as a cracker (think “safe-crackers” who crack safes). To refer to crackers as hackers is to overgeneralize. It would be like calling all NASCAR drivers Asian just because you saw one or two Asian NASCAR drivers. Imagine a young racing fan seeing Dale Earnhardt and saying, Look, mama! It's an Asian!

7zip is released under the GNU General Public License, which makes it free software, not freeware. Freeware is software that does not cost users any money. Free software is software the respects the users' four essential software freedoms, and it has absolutely nothing to do with monetary cost. The word free, in the context of free software, refers only to liberty (a.k.a. freedom). This video explains the four essential software freedoms: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Java was icing on the cake for Oracle. What they really wanted was the hardware. The company can now make its own hardware and stand up against the two big boys: IBM and HP.

After Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, it inherited the OpenOffice.org project. Knowing that Oracle had no real interest in maintaining a free office productivity suite, the OpenOffice team became worried, so they forked OpenOffice.org (in other words, they created a new copy of the source code) to a new project they called LibreOffice, and they started maintaining both OpenOffice and LibreOffice in parallel.When Oracle got wind of this, it gave the OpenOffice developers an ultimatum: the OpenOffice team was to focus their efforts on OpenOffice and remain employed at Oracle, or leave and work on LibreOffice on their own. Almost everyone on the OpenOffice team left to work on LibreOffice on their own. They were funded by user donations and corporate contributions from companies like IBM, Google, and Novell.Soon after, with a shortage of developers to work on the OpenOffice project, Oracle decided to get rid of OpenOffice. At this point, it would have been nice if Oracle had given the OpenOffice trademark to the LibreOffice team, because OpenOffice still had name recognition, but perhaps to spite its former employees, Oracle gave the trademark and code to a competing free software development organization -- the Apache Software Foundation. But OpenOffice had been stagnant for some time before Apache resumed its development. So now OpenOffice has a lot of catching up to do to reach the level that LibreOffice has reached, in terms of added compatibility, performance improvements, bug fixes, and other improvements.

I posted this in the wrong section. This probably should have gone in the "Websites and Web Designing" section. Can an admin please help me move it?

It's very popular to refer to the GNU operating system by the name of the kernel Linux, but to paraphrase Penn Jillette, popular doesn't mean right! Calling the GNU operating system "Linux" is wrong. Here's why.The project to create the GNU operating system began in 1984, and there's significance to the name GNU. There used to be a tradition of naming new programs after the programs that it was based on (if it was based on another existing program). For example, there was a text editor based on emacs that was called EINE, which stood for "EINE Is Not Emacs." Then someone made another version of emacs based on EINE, which that person called ZWEI. ZWEI stood for "ZWEI Was Eine Initially." Following this tradition, the operating system most people call "Linux" was dubbed GNU, which stood for "GNU is Not Unix."The clever programmers (a.k.a. hackers) who worked on GNU were bright students at the Artifical Intelligence Lab at MIT. After these hackers hacked on GNU for about 8 years, the operating system was nearly complete. The only missing piece was the kernel -- the part of the operating system that handles memory management, process management, and devices. They were working on a kernel they called Hurd, based on theoretical work from Carnegie Mellon, but progress was very slow. Then, in 1991, along came Linus Torvalds.Torvalds plugged in the kernel he was working on in college and made GNU into a fully functional operating system. When he shared this work over the Internet. This kernel was named "Linux" after Linus Torvalds. When Torvalds shared his GNU+Linux combo over the Internet, people got so excited, that they mistakenly began referring to the operating system by the name of the new kernel, Linux. And that's when all the confusion began.Now, when people say "Linux," you sometimes can't tell if they're talking about the kernel or the whole operating system. That's why a resonable compromise is to call the operating system GNU/Linux.Now that that's cleared up, we need to corect the misuse of the term "hacker." That will come in another post.

Among the many reasons every web developer should want SSH from a web host, like security, is the ability to edit your web pages directly from the command line. With shell access, you can use the myriad of GNU/Linux system tools to exercise complete control and domination over your web site. Here are some of the tools I use most often: Vim (or vi) This is the first text editor I ever learned to use. Among the functions in vi that I use most often are "set nu" to show line numbers, "%s/<text to replace>/<replacement text>/g" to replace all matching text in a file, "r <filename>" to read a file and insert it into the current file at the line after the cursor, and "/" to search for a string. Emacs I used emacs for a few college courses, but I was always more comfortable with vi, so I didn't stick with emacs. However, in recent years, I've been discovering some of the wonderful features in emacs, like the ability to write your own commands in elisp and the alt+q command to automatically insert line breaks -- a feature that I have found to be indispensible. grep When your web site grows in the number of files, grep comes in handy when you want to find some specific text, and determine which file contains that text. For example, if I want to edit the style for a specific div id or class, and I have multiple stylesheets, I can use the following command to list all the files that contain the div id I'm looking for. grep -l <text to find> ./*.css (the l option tells grep to list the file names of the css files that contain the text in the place of <text to find>.