One of my boxes is actually a Dreamhost account. I use this box with the promise of high bandwith and large storage for low annual cost. I really do take advantage of this offered service. However, I went to log in and was greeted with a rather sluggish shell. I ran top and got “427.38” (!) as current load (for those that are not aware – it ideally shouldn’t really exceed 1.00). It’s probably the highest load I have ever seen on any *nix box – but still provide a usable (but very slow) SSH connection and yet recover back to a reasonable load.

To be fair to Dreamhost, it did recover itself within a few minutes – but I was quite surprised at this load and thought it worthy of mention.

Screenshot of “top”:

October 24th, 2007 | All, Blogroll, hantslug, ubuntu, ubuntu-uk | 7 comments

Tesco are selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. However much I dislike ‘Tescopoly’; I am impressed that they are selling these systems, and may even get one myself. They state under ‘Features’ that it comes with 6.06, which in some ways is a shame, although it is the current LTS release – these computers are modern enough to really see a benefit from the advancements, and ‘eye-candy’ that Gutsy has given us. Sadly the users will probably not be prompted to upgrade until “Hardy Heron – 8.04″.

One slight concern I do have, is support. New ‘converts’ to Linux tend to require some support and I suspect this is not being offered. Hopefully I am incorrect.

Surprisingly this has come in quietly, and was noticed by the ever shrewd “John Levin” on the Ubuntu-UK mailing list.

Links to the systems offered:

• http://linkpot.net/kidnap/
• http://linkpot.net/chastened/

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October 20th, 2007 | All, Blogroll, hantslug, ubuntu, ubuntu-uk | 19 comments