SpamAssassin is one of the most-used spam filtering systems in use today. Unfortunately, because there are so many different ways SpamAssassin can be used, SpamAssassin remains subject to many performance problems. Fortunately, there are several speed-ups and optimizations that can be applied to most SpamAssassin installations to speed up its rule processing, especially on Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux-based systems. These instructions can be adopted to other operating systems as well.

This article does not discuss configuring your mail filtering system (i.e. procmail, maildrop). This depends completely on your setup, and more than likely there are plenty of other articles that describe the best way to setup what you want.

There's been a lot of fallout from Linus' latest criticism of the GNOME desktop, with which I complete agree. I feel as if I need to comment on some of the responses.

Carthik Sharma writes in Of Apples and Oranges, GNOME and KDE:

I dread having to find something, since it most definitely will be placed in some non-intuitive sub-menu.

KDE has no control over where applications decide to place themselves.

I like the way GNOME display fonts on the screen. I don’t want to have to change every little variable to get the perfect system.

GNOME pioneered use of fontconfig; in fact, lately, GNOME has been pioneering the use of many next-gen APIs and technologies (e.g. AIGLX, Beryl, etc). But Qt/KDE have also been using fontconfig for several years now—what's different?

Interesting enough, there has been criticism about how GNOME handles fonts. Taking points from that article, GNOME's font configuration is a mess:

• What's a “Terminal” font (it should be called “Monospace,” as it is in KDE, because this is how it's also used throughout GNOME)?
• What does “size” mean (apparently, it's not what you think)?
• Why do I care about the subpixel ordering of my fonts' antialiasing?
• Why would I need to set fonts at all (see my weblog entry The GNOME font dialog, why?)?

KDE is no different than GNOME in trying to provide “sensible” defaults, defaults that its developers have decided are intrinsic to a “perfect desktop.” But, what the developers have decided is the perfect desktop may not be your perfect desktop—and here lies the essence of Linus' argument, and the difference with KDE and GNOME. With KDE, you may have an option to make a setup “perfect”; with GNOME, quite often the option won't exist and you are limited to what the powers that be decided was perfect for them, not you. This is Linus' argument: GNOME is limiting.

So, you've gotten your shiny new EVDO datacard working under Linux (if not, see High-speed cellular wireless modems (e.g. EVDO, HSPDA) in Ubuntu GNU/Linux 6.10) and you want to now setup the actual Internet connection?

In this article I document how I setup Sprint's Mobile Broadband service with ppp in Ubuntu GNU/Linux 6.10.

Note: If you are running Ubuntu 7.04 or greater, this article is no longer relevant. Your EVDO modem should be detected and run at a higher speed automatically.

I've been raving about cellular wireless modems/data cards for a while now. While they've been available for a long while, they've finally become practical with networks such as EVDO and HSPDA that offer broadband-like speeds. I personally own a Novatel Merlin S720 that I use with Sprint's Mobile Broadband service.

Most of these datacards are easy to get running in Linux--I actually setup mine in Linux faster than I did in Microsoft Windows. However, due to some shortcomings in the kernel used by Ubuntu GNU/Linux 6.10, you cannot take advantage of the speeds that these modern wireless networks offer.

This article talks about some of the problems of the often-used usbserial driver, and how to use the better-performing airprime driver instead.

Find packages that contain a file

apt-file search "somefile"

List all installed packages

% apt-cache pkgnames
% dpkg -l

List files owned by package

% dpkg -L pkg

What package owns a file

% dpkg -S /path/to/file

Display package information

% dpkg -p pkg

Former id games mapper, and creator of the classic 3rd person game Alice, American McGee has switched to Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu Linux only gets more and more popular...

Playing around with the Preferences panel in Ubuntu 6.06, I found an interesting set of options. In the Removable Drives and Media applet, in the Input Devices tab:

Yes, it is a fairly benign UI that lets you set a script/program to run when you connect (aka "hotplug") a keyboard or mouse. Maybe I am incredibily dense but I cannot think of a program anyone would want to run when hotplugging a keyboard or a mouse...

I am sure it is a godsend for those who need it, but how many people really need it? Does it really need its own UI? From the desktop where "sensible defaults" means removal of useful, commonly used options, the same desktop where you need to go messing around with GConf to configure Nautilus to use a non-spatial interface--the presence of this kind of thing does not seem very consistent.

Yes, I am hating on GNOME. GNOME is very slick and polished in Ubuntu, but it still suffers the problems (that its developers deliberately mandate) that make most classic UNIX users (including me) leave it in droves.

The novelty is nice though, just like when I first used Apple's OS X. But I'm sorry, regardless of how much you hype it, it doesn't stop it from sucking (though sheep--er users of Apple's products like to "think different"). I'm timing how long it takes me to give up and switch to the KDE desktop provided by Kubuntu.