The Ubuntu distribution is planning to move to rolling releases instead of releasing a new version every six months. it is very annoying that when you get a new Ubuntu disc, you have to re-install all over again, they should make it so upgrading is possible from the CD without having to backup and install everything once again. Maybe that is why I switched to OpenSuse 11.3 instead of Ubuntu, I can type sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper up to update all of my packages that are outstanding updates needing to be added. If I want to add a package like xv or mplayer I just type sudo zypper install mplayer and it will be downloaded and added to the system.
$ last | tail shoggoth :0 console Wed Nov 24 12:42 - 17:38 (04:56) shoggoth tty7 :0 Wed Nov 24 12:42 - 17:38 (04:56) reboot system boot 2.6.34-12-deskto Wed Nov 24 12:41 - 00:49 (12:07) shoggoth tty2 Tue Nov 23 23:30 - down (00:05) shoggoth pts/0 :0.0 Tue Nov 23 22:17 - 23:28 (01:11) shoggoth :0 console Tue Nov 23 22:13 - 23:28 (01:15) shoggoth tty7 :0 Tue Nov 23 22:13 - 23:28 (01:15) reboot system boot 2.6.34-12-deskto Tue Nov 23 22:08 - 23:35 (01:26) wtmp begins Tue Nov 23 22:08:50 2010 |
This shows the output of the last | tail command that shows the wtmp output at the bottom that tells us when the system was installed. This is how you find this out on Linux.
$ cat /proc/stat cpu 75742 2677 17232 391578 14337 826 129 0 0 0 cpu0 75742 2677 17232 391578 14337 826 129 0 0 0 intr 2802355 526179 4175 0 0 0 0 0 0 66 9587 0 0 705021 0 43468 0 235802 0 2 0 0 0 0 215729 2334 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ctxt 7272383 btime 1290615307 processes 7810 procs_running 1 procs_blocked 0 softirq 1713903 0 1202077 46050 70003 61921 0 118403 0 2036 213413 |
The above command just shows information about your system exempli gratia the amount of running processes and CPU information. These commands are quite good, there are others that are useful and may not be installed like vmstat and htop. The htop command is good to have running in a xterm on your desktop to show off, sure I have the see through desktop cube, but other things can be useful too, like keeping an eye on your systems performance and running processes. The only annoying thing is with OpenSuse is the seeming lack of CPU Frequency Scaling support, I put the applet on the Gnome panel to control that, like you can in Fedora 13 and it will not work. That is quite strange indeed. Maybe I need to install the 230 Megabytes of updates and then a kernel update might help. But the distribution works so well in other ways it does not matter. My laptop gets quite hot whether you use a slower CPU speed or not since the GPU is still cooking whatever it is aimed at. The Labour government is still trying to push it’s National Broadband Scheme onto the populace, even after the failed insulation scheme, the Myschools website, and Grocery Watch amongst other failed projects. This will be overpriced and unpopular, sure I would love this but if it is only 100 Megabits per second and this is not fast enough for some people. I would be happy with 100 Megabits per second on 4G wireless, but you want even faster speeds on a wired connection. And having the Internet Filter would not help things along at all.