rsync - Once again why Linux is better.

Linux has this little easy command called rsync. Basically what it did for me today was went through all the music on my computer, compared it with the saved music on my external hard drive, and then copied anything over to the external that wasn't already there.

See, I use my laptop to listen to music and when I get a new cd I put it on my laptop. But then I need to make sure my external is keeping a good/up-to-date backup of all my music in case something happens to my laptop.

Thanks to linuxquestions.com I found a quick and easy way to do that with rsync.

The command I used was:

rsync -avuz /home/awesome/Music/ /media/My\ Book/My\ Music/
(laptop music dir) (ext. music dir)


rsync is the command.
"a" option archives the files to the new directory
"v" verbose?
"u" update - this causes it to skip files that are newer on the destination - that way you don't copy old info over new info (in my case this is a "just in case")
"z" compresses files during data transfer - to speed transfer


Wow, that's excellent.

Linux Mint Review

Linux Mint - "From Freedom Came Elegance" - A Review

First off the very concept of Linux Mint I believe is ideal. If Linux is ever to become mainstream and pose a real threat to the monopoly of M$ and @pple then it needs to get on board with the Linux Mint creators. By far this is the easiest distro I have ever used - installed in less than 20 minutes and every - EVERY - piece of hardware on my computer works with no configuration right off the bat. First off here is what equipment/release I am using:

Gateway MX3560
Processor - Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology with Intel® Pentium® M Processor 7357 - (2MB L2 Cache | 1.70GHz | 400MHz FSB)
Chipset - Intel® 855GM
Memory - 1.5GB DDR SODIMM (PC2700)
Video - Intel® Extreme 2 Graphics
32MB Shared Video Memory
Audio - AC '97 2.1 Compliant Audio Built-in Stereo Speakers
Hard Drive - 160 GB Hard Drive

Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna - KDE Community Edition BETA 011

Installation:

Like I mentioned above installation took less than 20 minutes. It was very simple, truly just a few clicks and we were rolling. If I could make a constructive criticism of it I would recommend a more intuitive partitioning tool. I, and I believe many other Linux users - for the sake of safety/security - partition my hard drive for a separate / partition and /home partitions. The partitioning tool currently in it took me a bit of fiddling to get it to do exactly what I wanted.

Post-Installation - Immediate:

One of the first things I noticed as I booted into this new distro is that Compiz comes pre-installed with Emerald. Unfortunately for all of the wonderful things that KDE is capable I have trouble getting the standard window decorations to satisfy me asthetically. So in my previous distro I went to utilize Compiz/Emerald and was never able to get it to work correctly partly due to the lacking video card of my old system. So it was a welcome change to see the new look and how easy it was to change it around.

Secondly I noticed that my wireless was already picking up signals from surrounding networks. No ndiswrapper or windows drivers or hassling with setup for hours (and having it still not display correctly) - it just worked. I haven't had a chance to test the wireless extensively - ie discovering new networks or switching between networks - but from the little bit of browsing through my kde network manager I have done it seemed to work very well.

Third, codecs. Linux Mint comes with everything you need right off the install in order to play almost any type of music or video file you may have. This includes CDs and DVDs. Even ripping DVDs was simple with KDB already setup. The only problem I had here was ripping mp3s. I tried using the two encoders it gave in the drop down menu - mp3 and mp3 lame - and neither worked. Which is fine, I don't mind using OGG, but it is hard to share then because 100% of my friends and family use either wind0ws or M@c 0S X.

Post-Installation - A Few Weeks Later:

Everything seems to be working fine. I did turn of extra background terminal screens to boost performance, but other than that have made little to no changes. The only problem I had/have was with the auto-mounting of external drives to include my CD/DVD-ROM drive. If I boot with something in the CD/DVD drive or an external drive connected via usb then it will not show as mounted when I login to KDE. Sometime if I have add an additional drive, for example another thumb drive, then the auto-mount utility will not only mount the new drive but will also bring up the drive that was connected at boot and had not yet shown as mounted. It is a small grievance but passing on the knowledge of the problem may lead to it's eventual solution.

My second problem is a problem I believe between the configuration of Linux Mints interworkings interfacing with KDE Network Manager. When switching between ethernet connections Linux Mint has an awesome little configuration GUI that is simple and easy to use. However after introducing a manual configurtation KDE's network manager than goes hands off and will show "Manual Configuration and No Active Connetcion" only (whereas before it showed eth1 and connection details). Then when you switch back say from a set IP scheme to DHCP KDE's network manager doesn't get the change and stays showing "Manual Configuration". I've found what I have to do to remedy the situation - I manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to look as it did before Linux Mints configuration utility edited it. When it's just KDE Network Manager using a DHCP server the file only reads:
auto eth0
However when Linux Mint's configuration utility gets in there it adds an extra line (this is just for Auto DHCP mind you):
intf eht0 auto dhco
Apparently it is that line that Linux Mint adds that KDE network manager doesn't understand.

Despite the few problems I've had, I still think this is one of the easiest and most complete distros I have ran. I can do everything I need to do, easily, and it looks nice too.