So I thought I’d do a follow up on my previous post about switching to linux as my main operating system and there’s not that much to report. Five days in and everything has been working flawlessly, even a Windows only graphics program that I installed and am using thanks to Wine.

My computer is running a lot cooler, with the fan only speeding up occasionally, the OS isn’t constantly bugging me to pay attention to it, tons of work is getting done with less distractions – just the way it should be.

I’m all about keeping things clean and simple, so my desktop is not cluttered with icons, there are no flashy backgrounds, no desktop effects, etc. and that’s what I find so sexy about the way I have Ubuntu Linux set up – it’s naked. Zen like. And that inspires me.

Not much of an update, I know, but there’s really nothing to say about the OS on this computer anymore. It’s out of the way where an OS should be so I can get on with my work.

For the past three years or so I’ve been trying out different flavors of Linux. The only version I actually got to work properly was Ubuntu 7.10 on an older desktop computer. Up until today, any time I tried installing Ubuntu on any laptop I’ve had has been either lackluster, with crucial things like wifi or dual monitors not working, to complete failure.

Today I downloaded the latest release of the Ubuntu Linux operating system, version 9.10. It was only released a couple days ago and searching around on the web I had found several horror stories about it not being compatible, upgraded borking people’s previously working versions, etc. But I took a chance on it anyway.

My main computer for the past 10 months has been a Toshiba Satellite L300-03C, with 3GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 15.4″ screen, 256M video card and the other standard stuff that comes with it. Windows Vista Home Ultimate came pre-installed on it when I bought it and I’ve updated it religiously with all the updates. That laptop has all my stuff on it… work, personal, etc. so I didn’t want to dump the hard drive. I also didn’t want to do a dual OS system because I did that in the past and it was a hassle getting rid of the Linux files and Grub bootloader when it didn’t work and I had to free up space.

So I had a 120GB SATA drive kicking around in a USB hard drive enclosure. The drive was salvaged from another laptop I had that I scrapped because of a motherboard failure. Bingo!

I downloaded the Ubuntu 9.10 iso, burnt it to a DVD using the handy iso converter software that came with the laptop. So now I had a live DVD I could boot into Ubuntu from. I flipped over the Toshiba laptop, swapped out the drive with Vista on it for the 120GB and proceeded to format it and installed Ubuntu. 15 minutes later I was a Linux user.

Now for the real test. In order for me to be able to do what I want for my work and personal stuff, I need these things to work: wifi and an extended desktop so I can use my 23″ Acer H233H as a second display plugged into the laptop. I have never been able to get both working on Ubuntu Linux before and I simply cannot live without both.

So I cracked my knuckles and went into the Display menu in Ubuntu under System > Preferences > Display. I plugged in the video cable for the big monitor, turned it on and in the display menu clicked for it to automatically detect the monitor.

It worked. I moved the two monitor positions around a little to match my configuration on my desk and applied the changes. Boy, was I impressed. It was actually a lot easier than setting up dual monitors with an extended desktop on Vista.

Next came the wifi. It was on – the little light on the front of the laptop said so anyway, but that had happened before with previous versions of Ubuntu, so I was skeptical. I set up my router which until now was still in a box from my move three weeks ago. I typed in the WEP key (password) for the router and waited, and waited. It was already working and connected to the internet. Doh!

So I have all my main programs installed that I used on Vista, like Skype, FileZilla, Thunderbird, OpenOffice which came preinstalled, etc. and they all work faster and better than they did on Vista. Speakers, headset, mic, trackpad, ethernet, SD card reader… everything works perfectly. Oh, and the laptop is running way colder than before.

On Vista, the fan was always on at half- speed and whenever playing a youtube movie or with a couple normal programs running it would run at full speed. The hard drive light constantly flickered even after letting the computer sit idle for a while. What was it doing?

Anyway, the palm rests are cool to the touch as I type this and the fan is running, but it’s so low I can barely hear it. The hard drive light only comes on when saving something now, or when opening a program like OpenOffice.

So far, I’m impressed with Ubuntu Linux 9.10. Really impressed. But this is only day-1. I haven’t really used it for work yet and over time I’ll probably find things I miss about Windows Vista.

So the 250GB Hard drive with Vista on it is getting mounted in my portable USB hard drive enclosure. Vista will stay on it and I’ll be able to swap it back into the laptop at any time. But for now, I’m going to plug it into a USB port and transfer all my work and personal files across to this platform. Once that’s done I’ll have made the switch to Ubuntu.

I’m going to give it three months then swap the drives and boot up Vista for old times sake. Then, as long as everything goes well between now and then, I’m going to reformat that drive and use it for storage.

Now, who knows how to remove all traces of a burnt-on Windows Vista sticker from an aluminum laptop palm rest?

For the past three weeks, I’ve been ripping my hair out from frustration. Personal and family problems have been crushing, my work was affected and I had to cut back to part-time so I wouldn’t be dragging down my whole team and people I care about and to top it all off, I’ve been trying to get a couple simple sites set up with a new web host.

That last part about the web host is what this rant is about.

I have a simple shared hosting plan and the site you’re reading right now is hosted on that plan. I also use it to park a handful of other inactive domain names, etc. But for the new sites, the ones I plan on blowing out into businesses of their own, I want those hosted on VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting so that when the traffic and visitors start to grow, I have dedicated resources to serve up content to them without the costs of a dedicated server. I also want the VPS because they can easily scale into one or more dedicate servers seamlessly, without me having to manually fuck around with moving a site under load.

So in the past week alone, I’ve signed up for two VPS plans from two different companies. The first was going great. I set it all up with the main site running Wordpress as my blogging platform/CMS, and then the problems started. Every time I tried to edit a template file in the WP admin, I had to log in to the server using an FTP program and change the permissions of that file to 777. No other permissions would work, except to make the files world writeable, and that’s not very secure.

Then I installed my core set of plugins that I use on all my blogs, and most of them wouldn’t function at all. Updating them, I had to enter the server name and password in the WP admin or nothing would happen. Then, once activated, any file or folder they interacted with had to have permissions set to 777, world writable. THEN, after all that, any plugin that had to interact with an outside server, like the plugin I use to send an update to Twitter whenever I publish a post, did nothing. I also found out that the site’s xmlrpc function wouldn’t ping update services like pingomatic or google’s blogsearch, etc.

Support tickets? Don’t get me started. I ended up more confused than before.

So I sign up for VPS number two. Slick admin panel, very intuitive, super-nice and helpful contact at the company, among about a dozen other plusses… but after setting up a site on there and feeling like I could finally settle in for a night of writing, I crack my knuckles, wiggle my fingers and check to see that all the pages worked…

404. Every page, every post, everything – 404.

That’s how I discovered that the mod_rewrite module was not installed – a minor thing, surely?

Nope. No mod_rewrite, because mod_rewrite is an Apache server module and the server I was on was using Lighttpd.

Ok, so there has to be a way to make this server software act like Apache and allow my Wordpress install to rewrite the URLs, right? Wrong, not without digging deep into the bowels of the lighttpd.conf file and having to do whatever the fuck it is that some blogger found during a google search said would work but judging by the comments on his post only a handful of people could make it work and even then it was buggy. *sigh*

I`ll stop right there, because If you haven`t already gotten the message… I SHOULD HAVE SPENT THE PAST 10 DAYS WRITING FORWARD FACING CONTENT THAT GENERATES PAGEVIEWS AND REVENUE, Not “Trying this or that an maybe it`ll work.”

So anyone looking at this now who knows how to fix all the problems I had above and have the server purring like a kitten inside of 20 minutes, laugh all you want – but there are millions of people out there who know a hell of a lot less than I do about servers and whateverthefuck.conf files, and some of them want or need a VPS server to host their sites on.

I don`t know what their needs are and to tell you the truth, I don`t really care. But here`s what I want from a hosting company:

1. A VPS hosting plan on a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.) that`s already optimized to run Wordpress – meaning – it just fucking works and runs smoothly if the site gets traffic spikes.

2. I want to sign up and pay <$50 per month, on a month to month basis, using fucking PAYPAL – Fuck you snobs and your credit card only plans.

3. I want a minimum of 512mb dedicated RAM burstable to at least double that. I want 40+ gigs of hard drive space and 500+ gigs of 100mbps bandwidth.

4. I never want to see another .conf file for as long as I live. That`s the host`s problem, not mine and once I`ve configured one or more Wordpress blogs on the VPS, once a week is enough to have to log into the hosting control panel – like, to dump log files or check error logs, server stats, etc. Simple shit like that.

5. I want to be able to upgrade to more resources or a more robust VPS or dedicated server by clicking a few icons, maybe entering a few things in a form if necessary and then paying more. Don`t take this the wrong way, but I do NOT want to have to talk to you or fucking email you.

6. And I want to do all that without ever having to submit a support ticket or email again, but you have to be available 24/7 if I need you.

Ok, so number six is a bit of a stretch, but you get my drift.

I know a few tech guys and even a couple people who ran hosting companies in the past and if they read this, they`ll be saying “OOOhh, lookey at this guy! Who the fuck does he think he is, demanding all that from a web host… What a fuckin ass!”

But listen up, web hosts – all of the above is doable and you know it.

I`m a customer.

I`m stupid when it comes to tech and server crap.

But I`m begging you to take my money and all I want is to not have to deal with you, .conf or your fucking support staff. Make it easy to get what I want.

MAKE THAT HAPPEN FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME FOR CHRIST`S SAKE.

Alexa recently made some big changes to their site and services offered. Now, there’s an obvious change in how the service calculates it’s traffic rank as well.

While surfing around earlier, I happened to check the Alexa traffic rank for a site I was viewing and was surprised at how much it’s numbers had dropped. I was so surprised in fact that I decided to check the traffic rank for a handful of other sites I visit on a daily basis and here’s what I found: