This evening, I installed Debian on a machine which was formerly running Gentoo. I used the new debian-installer currently in testing for release with sarge whenever that happens. It was pleasntly simple and quick, and as I said I now have KDE running and mythfrontend running with video, sound, and everything working with basically no configuration. I did find one hiccup in the installer with resizing existing partitions, but it was easily solved. I installed the unstable distribution for now which includes KDE 3.2 and a 2.4.26 kernel!

Ntop allows you to monitor your network in an unprecedented manner. This tool will track all you could every want to know about your network in real time.

Update: It also fills up your hard disk if you turn on the RRD plugin, and then DHCP dies. You’ll need to make sure you have enough free disk space. It filled about 600MB in only a few days.

I’d heard whispers about User-mode Linux, but I’d never checked it out for myself. User-mode Linux (or UML) is a patch to the Linux kernel which allows launching a new Linux kernel as a process under an existing machine. Thest best way of thinking about this is to think of your main computer running a virtual computer inside of it. Not only does this allow one to run multiple virtual-machines inside a single real computer, but it also allows compartmentalization for control and security. UML allows Linux within Linux.

CoLinux is the analgous solution for Windows. It allows you to launch a virutal linux machine as a Windows 2000/XP process. This could allow you Windows addicts to try out linux without commiting to dual-boot nonsense.