April 2007 Archives

It's not official, but sources tell Desktoplinux.com that when Dell begins offering PCs pre-equipped with Linux, the distribution that will go on those boxes will be ... Ubuntu:

Analysis -- Officially, Dell Inc. hasn't said a word yet about which Linux it will be preloading on its desktops and laptops. Several sources within Dell, however, have told DesktopLinux.com that Dell's desktop Linux pick is going to be Ubuntu.

While unable to confirm this through official Dell channels, we have heard the same story now from several internal Dell sources. They tell us that the Austin, Texas, computer giant will be preinstalling the newly released Ubuntu 7.04. These systems will be released in late May 2007.

That means Red Hat (RHEL/Fedora) and Novell (SLED/openSUSE) will NOT be the "winners" of the Dell-puts-Linux-on-the-desktop-for-you sweepstakes. Part of the reason has to be the ability of Canonical to support Ubuntu for those willing to pay, and the vast Ubuntu fan base offering support through the forums for the rest.

Another question: Will Dell's probable embrace of Ubuntu change its Linux offerings in the server market? Currently Dell offers servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a "non-factory install" -- and for a pricey $1,900 for a three-year subscription, and SUSE Enterprise Linux for much, much less (depending on the length of your "subscription, either 3 or 1 years, you get a $101 to $500 discount from the base cost with Windows Server 2003) -- or with no OS for a $799 discount from the Windows-equipped product. Will they throw Ubuntu on your server AND give you an $800 break?

Regarding the desktop, I think Dell made the right choice. Ubuntu continues to be white-hot in its popularity, and new releases continue to stream out every six months. The majority of people who answered Dell's recent inquiry about what they wanted on THEIR next Dell asked for Linux -- and specifically Ubuntu, so Dell is betting wisely.

And with Dell focusing at least some of its PC offerings on being compatible with Ubuntu, it can only mean good things as far as other hardware vendors doing the right thing and supporting Linux on their products.

What remains to be seen is whether there will be a discount for buying a desktop system with Ubuntu as opposed to Windows (be it Vista or XP). Microsoft can't be very happy about this, but with Dell being probably their biggest customer (or at least right up there with Compaq/HP), Redmond's leverage isn't what it would be with a smaller vendor.

And for Dell's customers, the lure of a discount -- and all of the free software in Ubuntu -- will be enough to entice them to try Linux. It's a gamble for Dell, but with Vista's current problems, the odds are in the hardware giant's favor. It's also a win for Ubuntu, which has already experienced phemonenal growth and can probably handle the much-higher stakes that the Dell deal will bring.

Again, the loser is Microsoft. Preinstalled Linux (and non-installed Windows) hits them where they live. And if Dell and Ubuntu make it clear that Open Office can sub for MS Office, it can't be good for Microsoft.

There's been some noise on the Web about the Debian Linux distribution changing the name of Firefox to IceWeasel in order to not run afoul of copyright. Debian goes ever further: Besides Firefox becoming IceWeasel, the Thunderbird mail client is IceDove, and Mozilla's great SeaMonkey Web suite (a direct descendant of Netscape Communicator) is IceMonkey.

As far as I know, there's nothing new here (and Desktoplinux.com covered it last year). I remember booting up Knoppix 5.1.1 months ago and seeing Iceweasel -- and not knowing (or caring) why the name was changed. At least it looked, smelled and ran like Firefox.

And IceWeasel, as a name, is a little more edgy, don't you think? But in the Oct. 9. 2006, editorial also linked to above, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols elaborates on why renaming Firefox as IceWeasel is a bad idea for Debian in particular and Linux in general.

And in case you were wondering, the images above are the logos for the respective programs. Get it? Fire ... Ice ... Fox ... Weasel ...

For comparison's sake -- and because I'm a masochist -- I set up my test box (that same converted thin client I've been shoving new distros on for the past month) to run Windows 2000.

Details forthcoming.

If most of the Linux distributions derive from either Slackware or Debian, why not just go to the source? Slackware looks way too hard to figure out, but Debian, which just released version 4.0, offers a net-install ISO -- and I've always wanted to install a distro over the Internet -- so I burned the CD this morning and am currently installing a Debian system over the Internet.

And it's going very, very well, thank you. I didn't know what to expect, but the installer is very much like that of Ubuntu's alternate-install discs (not that I've gotten any of those to work, because I haven't -- my successful Xubuntu install came from the 6.10 live CD, upgraded to 7.04 over the Internet).

Debian, billed as "the universal operating system," is currently installing 656 packages over the Internet, and after that I'll see what the mother of many, if not most, Linux distributions is all about.

Update (12:27 p.m.): The install went without a hitch, and I'm now booting into Debian's GNOME desktop.

Update (12:42 p.m.): I'm posting this update from Debian with the GNOME Web Browser 2.14.3 (also known as Epiphany). All seems to be working fine -- I've got full functionality in Movable Type. There's no Flash, of course, and it isn't as easy to implement as in Xubuntu. But for now, I'll leave Flash on the side of the road. I'm not that big of a YouTube fan.

My immediate first impression: This looks so nice and works so nice -- it's got GIMP, Open Office and the Iceweasel (aka Firefox) browser, GAIM and more. And what isn't available as a Debian package?

Incidentally, during the install, I was given the option of making my /home file in a separate partition. I chose that option, since it might give me a way to reinstall this or another operating system in the main partition without disturbing the data in the /home partition. It might not work, but it's worth a try.

Again, this install was just as easy as Ubuntu's alternate install, and while having the advantage of actually working for me, I also appreciate that as an Internet-based install, I didn't have to download a giant ISO file (the Debian net install ISO is 162, 716 KB) and as a bonus got the latest in all packages.

I was able to choose a "desktop" install, but nowhere was I asked about which window manager I wanted. GNOME is the default in this kind of network install. And I must say, it's looking good and working well on this 1 GHz Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with 256 MB of RAM and a 14.4 GB IDE disk drive and 32x TDK CD-RW drive connected to the single IDE header on the mini-ITX motherboard.

This bears repeating, with emphasis: Installing Debian is no harder than Ubuntu. All my drives were automatically detected, just like Ubuntu. I'm beginning to wonder, just how much of Ubuntu is already there in Debian? It looks like a lot more than I thought.

Update (1:23 p.m.): I click on the GIMP. I'm surprised (and actually happy) to learn it's not really there yet. An install window opens, in which I'm instructed to pick the amount of "tile memory" and the location of swap space for what won't fit in tile memory. I accept the defauts, although I 'm a bit nervous about the 128 MB I'm devoting to tile memory. But it's nice to know that at least for some apps, those I'm not using are not taking up space on the drive. Oh, and the GIMP loads in 20 seconds -- about a third of the time it took on Xubuntu 7.04. It's something I could sure get used to. Update of this update: On second launch, GIMP takes 30 seconds to load (I must've needed to do some swapping with Open Office already up on another desktop.)

Obvious revelation: I discover something that most savvy Linux users probably already know. To navigate among the four available desktops in most environments, ctrl-alt-right arrow (or left arrow) sends you from one desktop to the other without need for the mouse. Brilliant. Four distinct desktops accesible via mouse or keyboard? I consider it a Linux killer app and wonder why Windows and OS X haven't stolen the idea.

So far, GNOME in Debian 4.0 is no slower -- AT ALL -- then Xfce in Xubuntu 7.04. I still get the same "tiling" of windows when I drag them slightly off the desktop, but switching from app to app, window to window and desktop to desktop is as fast -- if not faster -- than it is on Xubuntu. And I'll have to do that GIMP time test again with Xubuntu, because that would be a real difference between the two systems.

With Debian doing so well on this 1 GHz box with an anemic 133 MHz front-side bus and 256 MB of RAM, I can only imagine at this point how much better it could run on a more "modern" desktop, say something with a 3 GHz or dual-core processor, 1066 MHz FSB and 1 GB of RAM. It's got to be great.

The next test: configuring a network printer. I went to Applications-System Tools-Printers, and just like in Ubuntu, a bunch of the printers on the network were detected automatically. I easily select one and successfully print with it. But ... I try to add my "favorite" printer (i.e. the closest one to my desk) ... and while the instructions are clear -- and there are more of them than with Xubuntu -- I am unable to make it happen. I go through all the steps, and at the end, after I click "Apply," nothing is added, nor are there any messages telling me what went wrong. So I am able to print, just not exactly where I want. I was able in Xubuntu, after consulting the Xubuntu Users Guide, to get printing going through CUPS via the browser, and I imagine I could do the same here -- and I just might. But I will give the Foomatic GUI another chance (or five) before I go that route. Update: I also try the utility under Desktop-Administration-Printing. While different, it still doesn't work. But since I can print somewhere, I'm good for now.

Update (2:15 p.m.): At the top left of the GNOME screen, there are menus for Applications, Places and Desktop. The division of labor among the menus is a nice touch. There are tons of configuration utilities. I guess I'm talking more about GNOME than Debian at this point, but GNOME, in this implementation, is the face of Debian in this desktop distribution, and again, it's done well.

Update (3:02 p.m.):Open Office Writer. It takes 1 minute, 3 seconds to launch. That's one of the reasons I'm not so happy with Open Office. I know it's doing all the things that MS Office can do, and that takes a lot of code, but all I need to do is create Word-compatible files (AbiWord can do that) with "typographical" or "smart" quotes (AbiWord can't do that). Still, for what I'm doing these days, I can really leave typographical quotes on the roadside, so maybe I'll try to install AbiWord just to have something that launches quickly and doesn't hog so many resources.

Update of this update: On second launch, Open Office loads in 30 seconds. That I can live with.

Even so, I've pretty much been using text editors to write blog entries and the like, and when it comes to the Daily News, things for publication go through a translation program that takes care of the typographical quotes, so I don't really need to be so anal about this ... but I did have an editor (ther person, not the application) in the past who never got the punctuation right -- quote marks, em dashes -- unless I had it just so in Word, and even then he'd screw it up. I guess it all depends on your situation. Most editors of non-computer publications like to see things in Word format ... though some are OK with pure text files. And creating and sending text files is just so quick and easy, I hope more publications move in that direction.

And speaking about text editors: I like gedit, the GNOME text editor. It looks a lot like Mousepad in Xfce, except that it's got a nice toolbar and actually does the word-counting feature I need.

On a related point, I installed Scribus (open-source publishing program) in Xubuntu. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I will if I ever hook up the hard drive with Xubuntu on it ... or maybe I'll just download it here in Debian.

Update (3:25 p.m.): Once the screen-saver takes over, why do I have to enter my password to bring the computer back to life?

Update (4:30 p.m.): I think I fixed the screen-saver problem. All I did was uncheck a box. That was easy.

Update: (4:45 p.m.): I'm using the GNOME music player, Rhythmbox and listening to one of the included Internet radio stations, this one called Groove Salad. And the audio is perfect. I couldn't get audio this good from Puppy Linux. And the sound chip on the motherboard was detected and set up during the install and required no tweaking (OK, I lowered the volume a bit). Impressive. I switch to the Secret Agent "lounge" channel, which is more to my liking.

To sum up: I've run quite a few distros over the past three months, and with many being based on Debian, I've been led to believe that there's something difficult about Debian, something that needed fixing for the "general Linux public," whatever that is. So far, there's no truth to that. Debian 4.0 is as ready for the desktop as any other distro out there -- and by any other, I include Ubuntu and Mepis. Both of those are great, but Debian is running so well and is so easy to use, I wonder what the fuss over the others is all about.

Debian 4.0 is a great product, and if there was a lot of hype, I'd encourage you to believe it. As it is, with little hype (and a lot of negative news about the gap between releases and other developer squabbling), this is a very fine distribution that every Linux user should try. It sets a standard that others should live up to.

Final words: Xubuntu Feisty would not turn my system all the way off. Drives would spin down, but the power light remained on. No such problems in Debian 4.0.

I made some progress -- and some discoveries -- today with my Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty installation on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client.

First of all, can we all agree that the GIMP, in its heaviness, doesn't really fit in with the Xubuntu philosophy of lighter apps for a lighter window manager?

And with this heaviness in mind, today I installed my first Debian package -- mtPaint, which despite having greater capabilities than GNU Paint while being as quick to load, is not available as a Ubuntu package, either in Universe, Multiverse, or any other 'verse. I found it and downloaded it from the Web, then clicked on it to install. I couldn't figure out how to add it to the Applications menu, but I was able with Xfce to create a desktop shortcut.

Incidentally, I did try out GNU Paint, which is a Ubuntu-approved application, and quite nice for what it does, except that it can't resize images, which is the main thing I need an image-editing program to do.

But the result is that I have, indeed, installed a Debian package in Xubuntu, and it couldn't have been easier. I'll look into getting mtPaint into the Graphics menu under Applications -- how hard can it be? But another thing I did learn is that while the GIMP is torturously slow to load, and probably is quite a memory hog on this 256 MB box, once you have it loaded, it's not any slower or faster at actually processing images. I didn't detect any speed boost using mtPaint ... except for the fact that it loads in about 3 seconds ... as opposed to the GIMP's 60 or so seconds.

The other thing I did was add Wine and Internet Explorer 6 in my quest to do work on Dailynews.com in Linux. Wine is about as mysterious to me as it gets, but I did go into the Ubuntu Multiverse (or whatever 'verse it is) and install Wine from the Synaptic Package Manager. As an aside, it's interesting that besides Synaptic, there's the Add/Remove Programs utility, and I almost prefer it to Synaptic at this early stage.

Back to Wine: I installed Wine from Synaptic and then used IES4Linux to get Internet Explorer into the Wine world. I did this successfully once before with Xubuntu when running it as a live CD, so I knew that this worked. I had IE6 on my desktop, and it actually worked. And while I was able to use the Daily News Web-publishing software (which is browser-based and requires IE), that system is so buggy that I really couldn't run it under Wine due to repeated crashes. The problem is more ours than Wine's, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I tried to install some other publishing software under Wine by moving entire directories from my Windows box to the Xubuntu box, but nothing would run. I'll have to delve further into Wine to see exactly what I need to do. It may be a lost cause, but I'm not expecting much. Still, I'm not above giving Codeweavers a try.

That said, it was only with the IES4Linux package that I got Internet Explorer at all. I wish I didn't have to use it at all, because sticking with Linux-specific browsers and not dealing with Wine at all is a whole lot easier than the alternative.

And what about the 256 MB memory ceiling of this thin client? Some commenters said that it's not an enviable position, to be with this little memory. All I can say at this point is that while there's been quite a bit of use of the swap partition on the hard drive, the system hasn't gone down once, even with all the stress I'm putting on it.

I spent the day upgrading my new Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) installation to Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), and since Xubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, far and away the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, I expected -- and still expect -- a lot more from it.

During my nearly month-long Thin Puppy Torture Test (chronicled extensively in this blog), I managed to get quite a bit of work done with my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA processor, 256 MB RAM, no disk drives at all), most of it related to producing this and other Daily News blogs. From extensive Web surfing to light photo editing, heavy writing and use of Movable Type for Web publishing, Puppy Linux 2.14 performed admirably, even if, along the way, I lost the ability to mount external drives and couldn't really deal with large audio files due to the lack of available memory. But for the basics, Puppy did the job, day in and day out.

With Xubuntu, I hooked up a 14.4 GB hard drive and a 32x CD-RW drive. And by the time I installed Xubuntu, I expected to get even more real work done. This time I seek to up the ante, doing work for Dailynews.com, which entails working with larger photo files (downloaded from services such as GettyImages.com and WireImage.com, although the latter offers a choice of smaller images to begin with).

And eventually, it means, installing some version of Wine (allowing use of Windows programs without the Windows OS installed), with Internet Explorer 6 running, because the Daily News Web publishing system requires IE. (And for the love of God, WHY??)

As far as text editors go, I can use just about anything. Even the anemic Mousepad editor that comes with Xubuntu would be OK, even though I prefer Geany, and even EditPad for Windows. And since Xubuntu's word processor, AbiWord is so light on resources and quick-loading, that could really serve as a text editor for my purposes.

And when it came to image editing, Xubuntu offers the GIMP, which though part of the GNOME office suite (featuring the loosely tied-together AbiWord, Gnumeric for spreadsheets and the GIMP), is a true resource hog, taking a full minute to load in Xubuntu on my 1 GHz box. For my purposes at least, I'm very familiar with the GIMP, as I've been using the Windows version for at least a year (and never having used Photoshop, had nothing to "unlearn"). So already the GIMP is a mismatch for Xubuntu, if indeed one is running it on "low-spec" hardware. I missed mtPaint from Puppy (which I just might install for Xubuntu, if I can figure it out), but I didn't miss the paint program that comes with Damn Small Linux, which doesn't do nearly what I need.

Long story short, I did work on about five photos for Dailynews.com, but the times required to save them in the GIMP really had me thinking about whether or not Xubuntu on this platform could handle this level of work. But I had to stop myself. I don't recall working with original images this big in Puppy 2.14. I mostly took images already sized for the Web and then made them even smaller. Even the GIMP in Xubuntu could make relatively quick work of that. And as far as general Web work with Firefox in Xubuntu, it went smoothly. I was even able to add the Flash plug-in for Firefox without working up a geekish sweat (translation: no command line needed, no Synaptic Package Manager, just clicking in the bar on Firefox to get the needed plug-in -- it was positively Windows-like).

When I write my full-length review of Xubuntu, I'll recount my odyssey of getting network printing working. Yes, it did take me most of the day, and yes, I'm surprised at how unintuitive Xubuntu's printer-configuration utility actually is (I gave up and used the CUPS interface), and I'm shocked that I got printing working much, much easier in both Puppy and DSL (and MepisLite ... and Slax and Knoppix and even standard Ubuntu Dapper). But that's another battle to recount on another day.

Suffice it to say that my first full day with Xubuntu Feisty was maybe a bit less bumpy than expected, especially given the high expectations I have for something that's billed as a speedier version of the hottest desktop Linux distribution on the planet -- however dubious such a distinction may be.

But in my search for answers on whether or not Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop interface is truly ready for real work (or at least for what it is that I do to put out Web pages and newspapers), I'm going to have to compare it to Zenwalk 4.4.1, which features the same interface but is built upon Slackware, as opposed to Ubuntu/Xubuntu's base of Debian. And I'll have to do a traditional hard-drive install of Puppy to see how it performs in that kind of traditional install (and whether that kind of setup allows me to deal with the kinds of large files that I do, in fact, have to process during the course of my day).

And last ... and only least if you think of it that way ... I will do a standard Windows 2000 install on the 1 GHz thin client (because I've got a 2000 disc and not one with XP on it) ... load it up with the requisite open-source apps (Open Office, AbiWord, the GIMP, Avast antivirus, Firefox, even SeaMonkey) to have a truly well-played field on the same hardware before drawing any definite conclusions in the battle for OS supremacy on my low-spec desktop. And honestly, as I work on this entry at home on an iBook G4 1 GHz/384MB laptop with OS X 10.3.9, and seeing how well it runs, I can't leave Apple and its BSD-derived operating system out of the equation.

Ubufied is a nice Ubuntu-focused blog that I'd love to see updated more often.

Going from Edgy to Feisty via network is a long process ... but all is going smoothly as my upgrades are being installed.

After trying -- and failing -- to install about 10 distros yesterday on my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, with a CD-RW drive and hard drive connected but sitting on the outside of the thin client box, I slid my Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty alternate-install disc into the drive and hoped for the best. Keep reading for an account of my day in the Edgy-Feisty trenches.

Since I'd previously installed Damn Small Linux 3.3 on a different hard drive, I tried to install it again on the drive I had connected at the time, an 80 GB Seagate ATA. But even DSL wouldn't boot from the drive, so I reached into my stack of IBM-labeled 14.4 GB hard drives and tried Feisty again. I did a command-line system install, and that went without a hitch. But since I'm not going to be doing everything with vi (I did that in college, thank you), I immediately began to reinstall Feisty in full.

The first time, it hung up somewhere in the middle -- my disc light was pegged on, but none of the drives were doing anything, so I had to reboot. Now it looks like the install is going to happen. I didn't time it, but it hasn't been quick. I'm currently on the "Select and install software," which just failed. But I have the option to try again.

We'll see how it goes.

Update (2:45 p.m.): The installer just won't go past "Select and install software." After a couple of failures, I skipped ahead and installed GRUB, then went back. Why, WHY isn't this part working? (I previously checked CD integrity, and it's fine). As I've written before, this is no typical hardware installation, being a hacked thin client, but I'd still like things to work.

Update (2:55 p.m.): Since it looks like the "Select and install software" step is just completing when I get the error message, and since I already skipped ahead and installed GRUB, I decide to skip ahead again and "Finish the installation." That goes fine, and the CD drawer opens. I move the CD and reboot ... AND get a command-line system again. No GUI.

Update (3:15 p.m.): I had the Live-CD ISO of Ubuntu 6.10, but I had never burned a CD of it. I decide to do so. By mistake, I burn Xubuntu 6.10 (now I've got two), so I load that as a live CD.

Update (3:50 p.m.): The Xubuntu install from live CD is proceeding swimmingly. If this install sticks, I'm going to keep it for awhile. I don't know how the traffic is now on the mirrors for the Ubuntu 7.04 live CD, but I just might wait until the Xubuntu Feisty upgrade is ready ... if this install sticks, that is.

Update (4:10 p.m.): The Xubuntu 6.10 install is almost done. It's currently REMOVING stuff -- language packages, GNOME utilities ... but I'm 97 percent done with the install.

Update (4:12 p.m.): The install finishes, the CD drawer opens, the screen goes blank. I hit return a couple of times and the system proceeds to reboot.

Update (4:20 p.m.): I open Firefox, and it says "Welcome to Xubuntu 6.06." I've got Xubuntu, but did I burn the wrong version? Also, the graphical installer never asked me for my networking settings, so I'll have to do those manually. Only I would burn the wrong CD ... But I do have a legitimate 'Buntu installed on the hard drive connected to my thin client. ... Should I call it Thin Xubuntu, or Thinbuntu? Maxbuntu?

Update (5:05 p.m.): I check my other Xubuntu 6.10 CD ... it seems that they never changed the "welcome" page in Firefox, and even 6.10 says 6.06. One thing's for sure -- Xubuntu isn't as snappy as Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. And when I try to shut down the system, the monitor goes blank, but the box stays on. I have to push and hold the power button to get the box to power down all the way. (I didn't have to do that with Puppy or DSL.)

Update (5:10 p.m.): In the Xubuntu menu, I go to System--Update Manager, which tells me that "New distribution release '7.04' is available." I click the Upgrade button. I get this message: "Authentication failed." Is it the traffic on the Internet, or a flaw in the process? I check for other software updates, and there are 90, totalling 139.2 MB. I start it. As an aside, I miss being able to bring up a menu anywhere on the desktop with a right-click, like I can in the Fluxbox and JWM window managers.

Update (5:55 p.m.): The updates download and install fine. Another try at the 7.04 upgrade. It fails for the same reason. But I do have Xubuntu installed on the thin client. And I'm about 80 percent sure it's 6.10. Time to turn the box off and go home. I'll live to fight another day on Monday.

Update (10:05 p.m.): I neglected to mention that the DesktopBSD install CD will NOT boot on the thin client. Just won't do it. I'd love to get a BSD on there -- will I have to build up from FreeBSD? I'm not completely opposed, but I hoped to get my feet wet with DesktopBSD. And as far as Xubuntu goes, the text editor is not as good as Geany. It's a bit basic, and doesn't have word count. But the word processor with Xubuntu is AbiWord, which is quick enough to launch that I serves as a nice text editor for my purpose, which is writing blog entries and not programming. And yes, I can use vi to hack at config files in the shell.

One of my projects should be digging through my boxes of crap in the shed and seeing if my copy of "Unix for Luddites" is there. I'd love to scan it in and have it available to all, in all its 1980s glory. That photocopied book by UC Santa Cruz's Scott Brookie got me going on Unix during college to write my papers. We used vi to write, nroff to format, and the printouts on a laser printer (in the '80s, for shit's sake) could be collected at the computer center on the far-flung campus, which had dumb terminals to access the system at every one of its eight colleges, as well as at the campus library.

Where did I see a boxed version of Windows XP? At Target. Of course they have just about every version of Vista (which you have to ask for from behind the counter, lest you tuck the smallish package somewhere on your person and leave without paying). But XP is right there -- the upgrade, not a full version -- for you to purchase while you still can.

By the way, Vista goes from $199 up to $200-something. I just can't see ANYBODY going for that. If you buy a new PC and Vista is already on it, that's one thing. But paying an additional $100 to $200 to upgrade from XP? Who is doing that?

Also at Target:

A Microsoft package that includes Works and the 2002 version of Word, among other things. I think it was $99.

A competing "Office" suite from a company I'd never heard of for $20 (never mind that Open Office is free)

Nero for $99. (WHAT are they smoking?)

Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols of DesktopLinux.com (and LinuxDevices.com and Linux-Watch.com) throws it down over Microsoft's plan to sell a Windows/Office package for $3 in the developing world:

Officially, the goal is to help bring social and economic opportunity through new products and programs to as many as possible of the potential 5 billion people who do not yet use Microsoft products.

What a lot of bull feces. The goal is to kill open source off at its roots. Microsoft wants to make sure that young people in developing countries get brainwashed into the Microsoft way of computing.

...

And he thinks the plan, if implemented, will fail:

I don't think, however, that Microsoft will get away with it. Dumping product is a no-no in any country's trade plans. Besides, a home-grown version of Linux, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird is still cheaper than Microsoft's $3 suite. People who don't live in places where Microsoft rules have also realized that, while the first taste of Microsoft products may be free, the long-term costs are enormous.

I don't know whether or not to believe this report that has Microsoft selling a bundle of Windows and Office for $3 in developing countries to thwart piracy and crush the spread of free Linux operating systems around the world:

The Microsoft suite, which will be sold to qualifying governments for US$3, includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live Mail desktop.

Interestingly, the package, which will be be offered in the second half of 2007, includes Windows XP instead of Vista, suggesting that it is aimed at lowly configured and perhaps recycled computers.

Microsoft, which has a massive piracy problem in developing countries, is caught between a rock and a hard place in poorer nations. Most consumers cannot afford its premium priced software and the only way to access Microsoft products is to buy cheap pirated copies. The problem for Microsoft is if it cracks down too hard on piracy in poor countries it risks pushing consumers into the arms of open source alternatives such as Linux.

That's one way to boost your user base and crush competition -- pretty much give it away. Not like it hasn't been tried before -- hell, that's what the Linux community is doing now. If the report is true, this could work for MS in a big, big way. While they wouldn't get as much revenue as if more people paid what the software costs now, being able to control their users and crush piracy while locking in market share around the might just be worth it.

It's not every day you boot a computer with the drives flopped on top of the case, but that's what I'm doing with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, and I still can't believe how much heat a standard hard drive throws off. That thing is HOT. Today I'm using a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80 GB drive, and its listed power consumption is +5V 0.85 amps, +12V 0.75 amps. All that heat must be a waste of electricity. All the more reason for better, faster flash memory to eventually replace conventional magnetic hard disk drives.

When I was beginning my unsuccessful alternate-install of Xubuntu 6.10 last night, I noticed that the options includ doing a Linux Terminal Server Project server install. Very interesting -- LTSP is one of the best things out there for schools and general networking, with its ability to utilize very old hardware as thin clients connected to a more powerful server.

My Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) download went from a 3-hour wait to an estimated 9 hours ... should I abandon hope and try again later/tomorrow?

In any event, my 6.06 LTS (Dapper) install is under way. The graphical installer is nice. Why Ubuntu's desktop theme has to be so brown and boring, I don't know.

Update: My Ubuntu install died at the disk-partitioning stage. The installer was trying to create the ext3 filesystem, and it stopped right there. Only 7 hours, 9 minutes left on my Feisty download (it speeded up a bit). Trying 6.06 again.

Update (12:15 p.m.): Things are speeding up, my Feisty download should finish in 4 hours, 5 minutes. Ubuntu 6.06 install wouldn't go past the disk-partitioning stage. I just loaded the Xubuntu 6.10 live CD ... and I've got to go to a meeting, so I'll continue with it later.

Update (12:50 p.m.): Meeting over, I started the Xubuntu install and got past partioning to "Failed to copy files; faulty CD/DVD? At least it gives me a hint. I'll check the integrity of the CD, then pull it and look for visible flaws. (Turns out there are a few scratches, but nothing too egregious.)

And 2 hours, 42 minutes left on Feisty download.

I probably should've tried Zenwalk Live 4.4.1, which was released Wednesday, but I figured that since Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 is out today (or at least that's when Distrowatch announced it), I might as well get Feisty. I thought I would try Xubuntu instead, given that my hardware is generally as old as the hills, but Xubuntu seems to be the only official 'Buntu NOT to have a release at this time. Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edbuntu are all available ... that is if you can get them. All the mirrors are crazy busy -- I started one download that said it would take 36 hours (and I have a wicked-fast connection). I couldn't seem to even start any more downloads of the ISO for the Ubuntu 7.04 Live CD, and I was surprised when I was able to begin a much-faster download of the alternate-install CD.

In my last post, I recounted how the Xubuntu 6.10 alternate CD would not install on my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client. Well, today I decided to shove a few more CDs into the drive to see what would happen. I began with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, the long-term support edition of Ubuntu. It booted, no problem. But I hesitate to continue with the install because my Feisty download should be done in 3.5 hours.

I did like Zenwalk 4.2, and I will be looking at 4.4.1, but let's face it, in a month that has seen new releases of Debian and Mepis, plus my personal favorites Puppy and Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu is the 9,000-pound gorilla of Linux, and it must be contended with.

... Now my download is saying four hours ... time to install 6.06.

As I wrote in the final Thin Puppy Torture Test entry, I wanted to try some other distributions with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, so I finally shut it down.

After that, I opened up the box, unplugged the CF-to-IDE adapter and plugged in a 14.4 GB IDE hard drive by IBM and a 32X TDK CD-RW drive. I had trouble before even booting many Debian-derived Linux distributions, and I'm not exactly well-versed in the jumper settings for a hard drive and CD drive chained to a single IDE interface (there's only one IDE plug on this VIA-equipped Mini-ITX motherboard).

After leaving both drives as masters, nothing was happening, so I made the HD the master and the CD the slave, and then both were recognized by the BIOS.

And since this is a thin client, there's nowhere to physically mount any drives, so the thin client box is on its side, with the power cable (I had to use a splitter to power both drives from the single power plug) and IDE ribbon cable poking out from the box and the drives stacked on top of it. Man, I didn't know that a hard drive throws off so much heat. It's a far cry from when the thin client was running Puppy 2.14 from a Compact Flash card.

So I had a bunch of discs ready to try. I had previously booted Zen Walk 4.2, so I didn't want to try that one right away. The Fedora Core live CD wouldn't boot -- it kept rebooting the machine in a loop without actually doing anything. I tried to run the alternate install CD of Xubuntu 6.10, and the install went pretty far before I got repeated warnings like this:

Debootstrap Warning
Warning: Failure while installing base packages. This will be re-attempted up to 5 times.

I hit enter and kept going a bunch of times, but the install just wouldn't happen. Previously, the Xubuntu live CD wouldn't run, so I didn't even try it.

I tried openSUSE's net-install CD, and that wouldn't boot either.

Now this box is pretty untypical and tempermental -- when I first got it, the only thing that would run was Puppy Linux. DSL wouldn't boot then, but I tried it again and it not only booted but installed on the hard drive. Near the end of the install, the installer script told me I'd have to reboot, and I figured the system would do it automatically. It didn't, so I rebooted with ctrl-alt-del. The machine restarted and asked me to set root and user passwords (I elected multi-user during the install). I set the password and was off and running with the new DSL 3.3 on my hard drive!

The fact that of all the Linux distributions I've tried, I've only gotten Puppy, DSL and Zen Walk to boot is a testament to the people who put them together.

I should probably try to install Xubuntu again ... or Zen Walk, possibly dual-booting with DSL (I selected Grub as the boot loader, not that I know how to tweak it yet).

But so far, DSL 3.3 is running great on the thin client. Configuration of static IP networking was easy -- it's pretty much the same as in Knoppix, with a terminal window opening and a standard script running. I haven't checked the sound yet (gotta plug in the headphones), but I'll do that soon.

And I'm writing this entry on Firefox 1.0.6, the main browser with DSL 3.3, which also offers the light Dillo that runs so great in Puppy (but which really can't do Movable Type as well as a CSS-equipped browser).

As I wrap up this entry, I have no doubt that just about all of these distros mentioned would install on a "normal" system, and I acknowledge and understand that a thin client with a rare motherboard, non-Intel (or AMD) CPU and single IDE header might be far from normal, but the fact that some distros will boot on this somewhat exotic platform begs the question -- why won't they all?

Why yes, they do. The server for insidesocal.com, the domain name that carries all 33 Daily News blogs indeed runs on Linux. The server is a few states away, and the only reason I know this much is that a few months back, we were having repeated problems with the blog server -- interminable waits to post via Movable Type -- and the decision was made to move to blogs to a new server.

The reason I know the old one was running Windows, the new one Linux? Some of my hand-coded HTML didn't account for the difference between upper- and lower-case letters in file names, and when the blogs moved, some images refused to display. The problem was corrected when I changed the case of letters in the code to conform to the case in the actual files themselves -- and Unix/Linux differentiates between upper and lower case. So WebGraphic.jpg and webgraphic.jpg are two different, distinct files in Linux/Unix, whereas case doesn't matter in Windows, and there can be only one with that name, regardless of the case of the letters.

And I don't know if it was a software or hardware problem, but things have been running just fine since we made the switch.

It's been 24 days since I booted the Thin Puppy (a Maxspeed Maxterm 1 GHz thin client) with Puppy Linux 2.14 by plugging a CD drive into the motherboard's IDE interface, then removing the drive and letting Puppy run free in 256 MB of RAM.

Early on in the test, I lost the ability to mount drives, so instead of using the attached USB flash drive, I stored all my files in RAM, keeping an eye on free RAM for such files with the freememaplet. But Puppy kept chugging along, allowing me to write and post to this blog, download photos and prepare them for the Web. Along the way, I listened to some podcasts (Gxine gave up when a 35 MB download ate into free RAM, but the madplay program is the default for mp3 files, and that offers skip-free audio to be played on this thin client, which pretty much chokes on any kind of audio and video (which, for the record, is the box's problem, not Puppy Linux's).

But it's been 24 days of silent, mostly trouble-free computing with the Thin Puppy (whose fan doesn't run unless the box is held at an 75-degree angle in either direction, but which also has not overheated) and Puppy Linux 2.14.

I'm turning off the box because I want to crack it open, try to get a CD drive and a hard drive connected, and install some other operating systems. I've had trouble getting anything Debian-based to even boot, but I will try for alternate installs of the Ubuntu family, as well as Zen Walk (which I have booted successfully on this box) and Fedora, maybe Sabayon and Mepis.

Next up: I'll try to do an install over the Internet of openSUSE.

And now, after 24 days, It's shutdown time.

Thanks to all the Puppy Linux people who've read my review of Puppy 2.15 CE -- and extra thanks to those who made comments. Just about every comment includes a helpful tip on using Puppy. And that's how it is in the Puppy forums, too -- everybody wants to help everybody else get their system working as well as it can. That's what separates some Linux distros from others -- helpful, active communities of users. And Puppy Linux has one of the best communities I've seen.

And special thanks to those who came over from the Puppy page on Distrowatch (a must-read for Linux and BSD people) and this link at tuxmachines.org. And of course it's me doing the posting at Lxer.com, another must-visit site for Linux and open source.

Sorry about the long title, but some things just piss me off so much. In this case, I want to make it clear that Microsoft isn't 100 percent to blame -- maybe 80 percent, since half the times that Microsoft tries to add value to their operating system, software companies that make money downstream by selling you stuff that would be made obsolete by that added value start bitching about it -- and the feds tell MS to back off.

And while I'm no Microsoft apologist, the consumer often gets screwed in the process. But that doesn't have to happen. There are some excellent free antivirus programs out there (I prefer Avast), and just about everybody knows that Open Office can replace MS Office, GIMP can replace Photoshop, Firefox subs for Internet Explorer, Thunderbird and Evolution (not to mention Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and the like) replace Outlook ... (and, of course, Linux can replace Windows, if you're so inclined).

So now on to my point -- and I do have one. The state of multimedia -- audio and video -- on the Internet is a big hot mess. Microsoft controls the Windows Media format. The MP3 format, which can get you a swift summons from the Recording Industry Association of America, has recently led to lawsuits over royalties for use of the format itself -- and besides that it's lossy and sounds compressed. Apple's AAC is somewhat more accessible, but there still is licensing and proprietary technology involved, and Apple Lossless is another proprietary format.

But there is an alternative: the Ogg Vorbis standard for audio and Theora for video are free, open-source alternatives, and Ogg is the primary multimedia format being used by Wikipedia. For true audiophiles, Ogg's FLAC codec -- used by the Philadelphia Orchestra for its online muslc offerings -- allows for compression but is lossless, unlike MP3 and AAC.

But can your computer play them. (Go to the Ogg Vorbis site for setup info, or keep reading). If you have a Linux box, you're in luck -- just about all the players on that platform can handle the audio Oggs, and many (including mplayer, xine, helix and VideoLAN) support the Theora video format as well.

But what if you have a Windows box? Windows Media Player handles MS's own audio/video format and will play MP3s, but it won't play Ogg files without a helper app. Luckily you can play OGGs on a Web page (as Wikipedia does on this C.P.E. Bach excerpt) if your browser uses Java.

Or you can download an application that will make your Windows Media Player (or other player) able to handle Ogg files. So if you are running Windows Media Player (which I do -- I happen to like it), download and run the program, and then download an Ogg file (like this version of "Giant Steps" by John Coltrate from Wikipedia), right-click on the file, then left-click on Open With and then navigate to Choose Program and choose Windows Media Player as the default app for Ogg files. Then when you click on an Ogg link on Wikipedia or elsewhere, the file will download and play in your Windows Media Player

For Mac OS X users, there are some players available that will handle Oggs (again, check the Ogg Vorbis page), but if you use iTunes (and what Mac user doesn't?), there's a plug-in to enable it to play Oggs.

And for all of these platforms, the Democracy Player is open source and handles just about every video format on the Web, including Theora.

Bottom line: In this case, Microsoft and Apple should add Ogg support to their players straight out of the box. Nobody would complain, sue or petition the government if they did. Users should not be steered toward and forced to use restricted file formats when free, quality open-source alternatives are available. Luckily there are work-arounds for this problem, as I have described above, and I encourage all of you to implement them on your own boxes, tell others about them and help your fellow users do the same.

Given how similar Puppy 2.14 was to 2.13, I was wholly unprepared for how different the latest Puppy release, 2.15CE (community edition), is from its predecessors.

First of all, it looks completely different. That's because IceWM is the default window manager for Puppy 2.15, although the old standby JWM (Joe's Window Manager) is still available. And aside from the radical change in GUI, the desktop background is darker (and less "puppy" themed) than in distros past. Still, the Menu key on the bottom left does have a paw print.

Under Settings-Themes in the main Puppy menu (accessible, as always, by right-clicking anywhere on the screen), you can alter the look of your desktop very easily.

Under IceWM, Puppy remains lightning-fast -- it sure was on my Dell 3 GHz Optiplex GX520 with 512 MB RAM.

All my configuration information from the previous Puppy version was picked up from my pup_save.2fs file when I booted 2.15 for the first time, so my networking, screen resolution and printing were already set up.

When I brought up a Web page, the fonts in the SeaMonkey browser looked "funny," or at least different. The change was due to SeaMonkey being configured to use a serif font instead of the usual sans-serif. Pages looked strange to me, but everything is displaying normally enough. It's nothing that can't be fixed, though, because it's easy to change to sans-serif under the SeaMonkey Edit menu (go to Preferences, then Appearance, then Fonts, then pick sans-serif for whatever seems appropriate. I did just that, and everything then looked like it was "supposed to."

Despite the SeaMonkey change, other apps in the new Puppy, like AbiWord, look terrific with the new window manager. The fonts appear crisper, and as I said, it's just as quick in IceWM as in JWM.

But here's the big "secret" in Puppy 2.15: Restart with JWM (from the Shutdown manager) and you are back in the old Puppy window manager -- and when you do, it looks like you have about TWICE AS MANY APPS in the menus. Open Office, yep. Scribus, yes; the Gimp, Blender ... but none of these apps actually run until you download the proper packages (I haven't gotten to that yet). I assume that they will be accessible from both window managers at that point. (Note: these apps are characteristic of the GrafPup package.)

The Puppy Software Installer (a new utility) is where these packages seem to be, and it looks easy to use. The PETget package manager is still there, and it appears to duplicate the work of the PSI, albeit with fewer apps. I think the PETget packages are more "official," while the PSI contains the old "dotpup" applications. I've heard about apps availabe as .SFS "squash files," especially the ones that crop up in the JWM menus so that's something else I'll have to look into.

When you first load the SeaMonkey Web browser, it tells you all about 2.15CE's downloadable Expansion Packs -- just click on what you want (from Open Office to the GIMP, Opera, Audacity, even KDE, and follow the instructions (or at least that's what I'm led to believe).

Also new -- and on the Seamonkey home page -- are "online applications" -- things you can do via the browser for word processing, presentation, spreadsheets, image editing, office suite, chess and more. I plan to check these out, sinc I have a great insterest in apps delivered over the Web.

There is also 3DCC (under System) to "install drm-modules to enable accelleration for your kernel," Open GL for 3d apps, and the Nvidia drivers for those who have monitors that require them.

The many configuration Wizards under the Setup menu are one of the best parts of Puppy. They make setting up a system easier than any other Linux distribution I've tried. A new Wizard -- the Defaults Wizard -- enables you to see the "default" program that will run for 15 separate tasks, from Web browsing to word processing, drawing, spreadsheet, contacts and more. And it makes it easy to change those apps. For instance, if you want your "write" icon on the desktop to load AbiWord, that's the default, but if you have installed Ted or even Open Office Write, you can make those the go-to app when you click that "write" icon. A great tool.

For some reason, the "free ram" counter did not show up in JWM, as it does in previous Puppies. But it's there in the default IceWM desktop environment.

Another new thing in Puppy 2.15: When you're in ROX-Filer, photo-file icons now feature minature images (like in Windows XP) -- a very welcome addition.

The Shutdown menu from 2.13/2.14 is missing in the IceWM version of Puppy 2.15. In the new GUI, i can quit X from the menu (or ctrl-alt-backspace from the keyboard), go down to a shell prompt and then poweroff or reboot (text instructions are on the screen), but I miss the elegance of directly rebooting and shutting down from the GUI. I know itn's not Unix-geeky enolug, but I like the way it worked before.

Luckily when running JWM, the old Shutdown menu is right there. It all boils down to what you're used to -- and I'm the kind of peroson who doesn't like to change things unless there's a good reason ... call me conservative, but hey, I'm running Linux, not Windows 2000 or XP, so I've got a little daredevil in me, right?

Curiously -- at the prompt, xwin or startx will start IceWM. Some systems will only start a window manager with startx, and it's nice to see Puppy allow for both commands.

Flash video still works great -- Puppy being one of the select distros to provide Macromedia Flash right out of the box. Sure, it's not open source, but Macromedia Flash has pretty much crushed Java and all the other streaming-video technologies in its YouTube-propelled wake. At least it's better than Windows Media, right? (YES, right.)

At one point, I tried the "Change window manager" command in the menu, but instead of going from JWM to IceWM, I got a blank screen. Ctrl-alt-backspace wouldn't kill X at this point, but ctrl-alt-del did shut it down. I didn't do a whole lot of "change window manager" type stuff in 2.13 and 2.14, being a big JWM fan, so this could've been a problem in previous Puppies -- I'll have to look into it further.

Another thing that seemed to change in Puppy 2.15CE is the location of my SATA hard drive in the directory tree. In previous versions, it used to be under /mnt, but in 2.15 it is under /initrd/mnt and is called dev_save instead of sda1. It also was auto-mounted -- something that didn't happen in previous Puppies, in which you have to mount drives you're not booting from. It's an interesting change. Some people don't like drives to be auto-mounted, but I'm on the fence with this one. Still, Puppy's Mounting Utility Tool (a.k.a. MUT) remains easy to use if you want to check and change the status of other drives in your system.

And despite the different look, all the apps I've grown accustomed to using in Puppy are there: the AbiWord word processor, the Geany text editor, the SeaMonkey browser/e-mail/html editor suite, the light Dillo browser, the Gaim instant-messaging program, the ROX-Filer and the mtPaint image editor.

My overall impression of Puppy 2.15CE is a good one. But I wish all the packages I see on the JWM menus were included on the CD, along with clear instructions on how to either install or enable them. And from a quick perusal, it appears that adding the packages while using Puppy 2.15 as a live CD is one thing, but adding them to a hard-disk install is another. If it hasn't been worked out already, I expect it will at some time soon. In Puppy, problems tend to get solved quickly, and the online community at the Puppy Forums is second to none in its ability to help users.

Still, I'm not prepared to give up Puppy 2.14, which I've been running for 22 days straight now on the Thin Puppy (a Maxspeed Maxterm 1 GHz thin client with 256 MB RAM and, since it died, no Compact Flash storage, nor a hard drive or CD drive). I'm used to it. And that's the beauty of Puppy and other distros that are designed primarily to be used as live CDs. You can have a stack of them, with the option of booting any version that works for you -- for your hardware and the work you're trying to do.

The Puppy developers have been issuing new versions at a very quick pace. Looking at Distrowatch, between Sept. 14, 2006 (Puppy 2.10) and April 6, 2007 (Puppy 2.15), there have been six Puppy releases in under eight months -- quite a pace.

One of the neatest features of Puppy is the pup_save.2fs file. When you are running from the live CD, you have the option of creating such a file when you shut down the system. I think it's limited to 512 MB in size, but contained in that file are your downloaded applications and files. And when running from CD, you can keep the pup_save.2fs file on a USB flash drive. Or it can live on your system's main hard drive, even if you're not using that drive as a boot device. As for me, I like to keep a separate pup_save file on each box I run Puppy on. That way I have the settings unique to that computing environment saved.

As far as files go, I prefer to keep them on a USB flash drive so I can take them wherever I need them -- and since Puppy plays well with both NTFS and FAT file systems, I generally format the drives as FAT so they can be read on a Windows system (and so I can work in any environment). The other advantage of keeping files on an external drive is that Puppy's own file system, after booting, is contained entirely in RAM. That's great for speed, but when you download anything large (like giant audio or video files), it all eats away at your free RAM and can really affect the system. But if you store your files on any other drive, be it flash or traditional hard disk, your memory stays fairly intact (except for things such as browser cache) and the whole computing experience under Puppy goes much better.

And if you do run Puppy with a traditional hard-drive install, it's probably a good idea to either partition your drive and save your files on the partition, or use an external flash drive to keep those files portable. That's because even when booting from hard disk, Puppy still keeps its file system in RAM. Again, it's fast, but you run the risk of losing some of your work if you put the available RAM under too much stress. It's not as much of a problem on machines with 512 MB or even 1 GB of RAM, but with 256 MB it's essential, with 128 MB mandatory.

That said, if you've got some free memory left, saving standard text and image files (which is what I do generally) doesn't even dent the free memory, and it's OK to keep those in the RAM-based file system -- Puppy even has a "My Documents" folder to make Windows types feel better. It's probably a good idea, since in Puppy you're always logged on as root, and there are no "user" files characteristic of a "normal" Linux system. There's a bit of a debate about this on the Puppy forums, but those who program the system generally have a reason for it, and if I knew more about it, I'd delve further. As it is, I'm content to use the system as is.

And while many people do install Puppy to their hard drives, the majority probably run it from live CD with a pup_save file on the hard drive or an external USB flash drive. That's probably the best-case use of Puppy. Your file system is easily backed up (just copy the pup_save.2fs file to another drive). And one of the benefits of Puppy running its file system in RAM is that writes to your flash media are kept to an absolute minimum, extending the life of your flash memory indefinitely.

But remember, if you want to download a 600 MB ISO file, you're gonna have to put it on another drive or partition, or you'll soon be in memory trouble. As long as you keep this in mind, Puppy is ultra-stable and is just so plain usable and fun, it remains my go-to distro.

I've been keeping my eye on the new Debian 4.0 Linux distribution -- and I will be doing an install over the Internet at some point -- and for those looking at whether or not they should get to know the distro that has spawned so many others, I offer this excellent article by Bryce Byfield of Linux.com:

... instead of trying to compete directly with distros like Ubuntu for ease of use, Debian is experimenting with a different approach. While growing aware of the need to work with new users, it is also preserving some of the traditional do-it-yourself approach of free software by giving users the chance to learn more about their operating system should they choose. This philosophy shows in every aspect of Debian 4.0, from its install program to its desktop, software installation, security, and software management.

...

Recently, the goal of many distributions seems to have become to be a free version of Windows for users without much understanding of their operating system. Debian counters that trend. Instead of accepting that users prefer to be ignorant, Debian 4.0 treats users as students -- as people who may initially lack knowledge, but who are capable of learning. It's a bold approach, and one that's needed badly enough that Debian may just have found a new purpose -- and, with it, a guarantee of its survival.

And how can you not get behind that?

Now that the news is out about OEMs losing the ability to ship boxes with Windows XP by the end of the year, everybody's writing about it. I particularly enjoyed Jeremy Page's piece from the Ars Technica journal One Microsoft Way (and as I said before, it may be the address of the company HQ in Redmond, but since there's really only one Microsoft way, it's entirely apropos):

Although it's not unusual for Microsoft to push hard for their customers to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, this time they may need to take more care with their customer's feelings. Although Windows still dominates the operating system market, Apple is now a name that most users are comfortable with both from iPods and from iTunes. There are also several Linux distributions working very hard to be easy for non-IT savvy folks. People do have alternatives, more than any time since Windows 95 pulled the rug out from under IBM's OS/2 Warp.

Ah ... if Apple could just ship Leopard already. While I don't think the Linux desktop is anywhere near ready, at this juncture, to take over the world, there will probably be a whole lot of people sampling Ubuntu, Mepis and other Linux distros. ... and if Apple makes good on the rumor of free iWork and iLife with 10.5, it could spell real trouble for MS.

Leopard -- known by number as Mac OS X 10.5 -- previously expected to begin showing its spots in June, will instead go to retail in October. That just raises expectations even more for Apple, which will have a quickly maturing Windows Vista to deal with, instead of flooding the channel with something that could beat the MS OS in functionality, bells, whistles and sheer speed. Now I don't know if any of that will happen, but I do know many, many people who awaiting Leopard with extremely baited breath.

According to ZDnet and via Apple, it's all the iPhone's fault:

…iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team ...

But Apple may be sweetening the pot, also according to Jason D. O'Grady of ZDnet, via Think Secret:

Apple is reported to be mulling the inclusion of iLife and iWork as free part of the OS X package "in an effort to further play up the extra value and features Mac OS X offers over Microsoft's new Windows Vista."

Hmmmm ... free iWork and iLife might prompt even me to upgrade ... and I hate to upgrade (still on Panther 10.3.9).

In keeping with its (monopolistic) policy of phasing out old versions of its Windows operating system, lest you think you don't need the latest version, the Redmond, Wash., giant is phasing out sales of Windows XP by the end of the year. That means it's Vista or nothing (or something that's not Windows) by then.

But hardware vendors are fighting back. They want MS to keep XP as a option. And why not? It's pretty much built like an OS tank at this point. And when it comes to picking the right OS for your hardware, if you want to run Vista instead of XP, start thinking 2 GB of RAM (I run XP comfortably in 512 MB -- can you even boot Vista with that? I think you need 1 GB minimum.)

Forget what Microsoft says, if you really want to run Vista, you'll have to meet requirements that are more like these.

Yesterday I took the Thin Puppy -- the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client now running Puppy Linux 2.14 -- to the brink. This thin client -- with no storage other than RAM memory (I booted it from CD and then disconnected that drive; I lost the ability to mount the external USB flash drive on day 8), has been running with about 41 MB of free RAM for storage. And as I learned before the Thin Puppy Torture Test, when I only had 128 MB of RAM (I'm now at the maximum for this motherboard, 256 MB), Puppy doesn't like it when you get really low on RAM.

I downloaded a podcast -- about 35 MB, I think, and that took RAM very low. It was "Linux Action Show's" interview with Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu (and I encourage you to listen to the show, since it's very well-done).

Well, downloads to the RAM-based filesystem take away from ... free RAM, and as I dipped below 8 MB free, the system didn't exactly cooperate. I couldn't run Gxine to listen to the podcast in OGG format -- it just wouldn't run, and there are two processes that I can't seem to kill out of memory.

Eventually I downloaded the .mp3 version and played it with madplayer, which can't be stopped or paused, but which does play .mp3s without skipping on this audio-challenged thin client.

So the Thin Puppy is now on its 18th day. I've been testing the new version of Puppy Linux (2.15CE) on my other box, and it's quite a radical departure from previous versions. First of all, IceWM is the default desktop, and there are many other differences and enhancements. A full review is forthcoming.

After thinking that I'm "breaking" some kind of news on Fluxbuntu becoming an official port of Ubuntu, I go back to the Ubuntu Forums and find out that the April 1 day meant that it was an April Fool's joke from Fluxbuntu principal Joe Jaxx, reports bodhi.zazen, the other Fluxbuntu biggie who posted it in the first place.

Guess I should've checked it out further.

Here's what bodhi.zazen writes in the forum:

Re: Fluxbuntu

Ha ha ha ...

I forgot to tell you Joe Jaxx told me this on April 1st, so it looks like the joke is on me

Sorry to have mislead you all in my excitement

The Fluxbuntu website is under construction and there is a release planned based on Feisty shortly after April 19 th.

But Fluxbutu is not going "official" at this time. Ha ha

Oh yeah, I'm so laughing right now. Who doesn't like a good software-release April Fool's joke?

GAIM, the great instant-messaging program that handles your IM needs for not just a single service but for Yahoo!, AOL, Google, MSN, ICQ, IRC and even more stuff that I've never heard of is CHANGING ITS NAME.

I got the news from Desktop Linux, which gives the back-story -- the program used to be called GTK + AOL Messenger and, when AOL got squirrelly about it, chenged its name to GAIM . Now that AOL is pushing its IM product as AIM, that squirrelliness has returned, and the open-source project is renaming itself Pidgin.

I've used GAIM under Linux, and it works very well -- I can send IMs to Yahoo! Messenger accounts without all the ancillary crap, like that opening news page and all the other plug-ins I don't need. And since it also works with AOL, Google and MSN's IM services, you can replace a bunch of separate, incompatible programs with a single one that works on all platforms.

For the detailed history of the GAIM-to-Pidgin transition, go to the program's own site, read all about it and download the current version. The new Pidgin 2.0.0 is expected within the week.

GAIM (and soon-to-be Pidgin) works on Linux, BSD and Windows. It will run on Mac OS, but only if you have X server and GTK+ installed, and unless you're obsessed with running Linux-style apps on your Mac, you probably don't (and won't). But you just might want to, because having one IM program for multiple services is an idea who's time hasn't just come -- it's time is here.

Note: The image above is the ex-GAIM, now-Pidgin logo.

UPDATE ON APRIL 11: It was all a joke, I guess "April 1" should've tipped me off:

It didn't happened April 1, but you'd think it did, according to this portion of the Ubuntu forums.

I've given Fluxbuntu middling marks in the past, but I see why the Linux community needs it. To have the lightness of Damn Small Linux (albeit without the ease of use) along with the repositories, support and sheer numbers of Ubuntu would be a very powerful thing indeed. But joking about how your distro is doing better than it really is? I guess if you said something like "CIA adopts Fluxbuntu as spies' distro of choice," it would've been absurd enough, but making your joke along the lines of "if we didn't have so much work to do, what I'm joking about could really happen," that's just a little bit sad.

Where Fluxbuntu can make up for its obsession with "the CLI," as they call it (command-line interface), they'll have to really step it up when it comes to documentation. I think plenty of users would be OK going to the command line for many more things if they knew exactly what to do once they got there. There has to be a Fluxbuntu Cookbook in the mix. (I'm reading the No Starch Press version of the "Linux Cookbook," and am so far very impressed.)

In keeping with this now-not-happening "promotion" for Fluxbuntu, its Web site is down so it can be rejiggered to reflect the change, the forum writer bodhi.zazen incorrectly reports:

Yes, the Fluxbuntu web site is being re-designed to reflect the change. The (first) Fluxbuntu release is due out within a few days of Feisty (Previous releases have been n builds and beta builds).

and on the expansion of the Ubuntu brand ...

The numerous "versions" of Ubuntu are a sign of a large healthy community of Ubuntu users and a testament to the flexibility, versatility, and power of Linux. With a large community there are varied needs. The various "versions" of Ubuntu allow us all to configure the Ubuntu OS the way we like. Personally I like the clean elegance of Fluxbox and I appreciate Fluxbuntu as a lean, fast, and efficient OS.

Fluxbuntu is NOT an ubuntu desktop installation + fluxbox.

Every once in awhile, I check Amazon to see what books are upcoming in various categories (using the "publication date" option), and just such a search has uncovered what looks to be the first Damn Small Linux book, "The Official Damn Small Linux Book: The Tiny Adaptable Linux That Runs on Anything," by Robert Singledecker, John Andrews and Christopher Negus -- and set for release in July.

I believe it's the first book to focus on DSL ... and the first to focus on a single small Linux. Chris Negus has quite a few books out on Linux, including one on live CDs, Fedora/Red Hat and, of course, the "Linux Bible."

He seems to have his own imprint under Prentice Hall. More power (and money) to him.

Other Linux books slated for future release:

"Fedora Linux Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat Power Users" by Christopher Negus, Francois Caen (Sept. 18)

"Linux Networking Cookbook" by Carla Schroder (Sept. 15)

"Fedora 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible" by Christopher Negus (July 10)

"Linux System Programming: Talking Directly to the Kernel and C Library" by Robert Love (July 1)

"openSUSE Linux Unleashed" by Michael McCallister (June 13)

"Ubuntu Linux for Dummies" by Paul G. Sery (May 7)

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed" by Tammy Fox (April 20)

Notice how the DSL book is the only one I mentioned that isn't either a) a generic Linux tome, or b) about Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE or Ubuntu? It just illustrates how hard it is to get a book deal if you're not writing about the top three distros.

What kind of a geek are you, anyway? Look at this guy from the Inquirer, who turns a pile of parts into a complete PC, loads PCLinux, gets it all working with almost ... no work ... and even takes care of nature's call -- all in 38 minutes.

After the install:

I whipped out my trusty USB thumb drive. Lawks! It came up on my screen in a few seconds. I clicked on a Microsoft Word document, and it opened in Open Office. I clicked on an MP3 file, and it played in Amarok. No setup. Nothing. Click and go.

Had to test it with my camera next. Same bit. Plugged my digital cam into the USB, it popped up with Digicam. Downloaded the pictures. No problems. I tried to think up something it would not do. It just worked.

And the coup de grace:

So why is this seen by many (mostly journos) as such a complex thing? I don't know. It works. The price is right. Please, usual flames, usual place.

Let's face it, some distros are more important than others. Debian is one of those, due both to its longevity and the fact that so many others use it as the base for their releases (think Ubuntu, Mepis, etc.).

But Debian doesn't do new releases that often, highlighting the importance of Debian 4.0. Check DesktopLinux.com for a good overview.

How long has it been? I defer to Desktoplinux.com:

At long last, the Debian project team released Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0 -- codename "Etch" -- on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007. The release follows "21 months of constant development," according to the team.

Debian is available in versions featuring the GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktop environments, and it can be downloaded in full, or via a much-smaller network-install CD (or even floppies, for shit's sake) (recommended). It also can be installed on USB flash media, according to the item on DesktopLinux.com. I know that's true for Damn Small Linux, which has Debian at its heart.

And now is a good time to remember that Debian is available for many architectures, including PowerPC. There is also a 64-bit version for AMD and Intel processors of that type.

Here is the official Debian announcement of 4.0.

It's Friday, and while's it's been good enough for this Hebrew, I just had to hear the "Sanford & Son" theme, which I've been teaching to the toddler -- hey, it's our cultural heritage!

I found it at Sitcoms Online, specifically right here, where you can click and hear it in all its .wav glory.

To hear the late, great Redd Foxx say, Lamont, you big dummy! click here. To here Fred G. Sanford have one of his many fake heart attacks, click here.

SUSE root is a nice evangelist-type site about Novell's SUSE -- specifically openSUSE, that tries to answer the questions that could be asked by a potential user of this extremely popular distro.

Looking at The Distrowatch top 100 distributions, there's Ubuntu at No. 1, followed by openSUSE and Fedora. I'm thinking of trying openSUSE because it's so darn popular, is meant for business use -- and I just want to see how it runs.

I know there's the whole Novell-Microsoft controversy over the two companies partnering and MS' subsequent patent-violation accusation against the entire rest of the Linux community, but sometiimes you've just got to see how the big dogs run, right?

Back to SUSEroot ... Here's their answer to "Should I try SUSE Linux?" Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it may be more honest:

There are a lot of things being said about Linux that are not true. Some well-intentioned Linux fans sometimes try to paint Linux as perfect for everyone and that it will solve all your computing problems; this is a disservice to people considering Linux and to the Linux community because people may try Linux with unrealistic expectations and give up on it when they find out so many things they were told by "Linux Superfans" were untrue or misleading.

I guess that if I'd never tried Linux before and knew very little about it, SUSEroot might just make me say, "Why?" Here's their outro:

Hopefully this has helped someone decide if switching to SUSE Linux and indeed Linux itself, is something they want to do. SUSE and Linux aren't for everyone. If you do decide to try SUSE or another Linux distribution, do some research to find out which one is right for you, make sure your hardaware is compatible, switch with realistic expectations, and realize that there will be a phase where you will be confused and frustrated a lot of the time. SUSE and Linux are evolving very quickly, if you do try Linux and find that you don't like it, give it another try later on, you may find that it has become easier for you or the feature you needed has been incorporated.

Again, if anything, it's reasoned and realistic. In a way, it supports my contention that Windows XP is a very good, stable system, and you have to look inward (oy, that sounds weird) for why you want to run Linux. The site does mention the cost factor -- buying a copy of Windows for every box, and updates, being very expensive. But there's no MS-bashing going on.

The site should pimp this page more, which tells how to install Fluxbox, the lightweight window manager that can make a slower system work better -- way better than with Win XP.

Here's SUSEroot's take on SUSE's place in the Linux pantheon:

As far as "cool factor" goes, a SUSE user is not mocked as much as a Mandrake or Linspire (Lindows) user, but we're aparently inferior to Debian or Slackware users (and certainly subordinate to the guys who shun distributions all together and build their own package). So if you're the kind of person who thinks your operating system says something about you, there you go.

I'm left feeling nonplussed. I guess I want to see some passion, you know? Why are you running SUSE?

Maybe Fedora's fans are more forceful ... maybe not. You sure can't beat the Ubuntu people when it comes to pimping their OS.

I'm gonna be busy, because both Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux have issued updates. Here are the announcements at Distrowatch for Puppy 2.15 and DSL 3.3.

Glancing over the changelog for DSL, things I see immediately, aside from bug fixes, are improvements in the MyDSL package utility, updated install scripts for pen drives and other media, a new FreeDOS utilitities diskette bootfloppy for access to DOS installaton tools and updated man script for hard drive install. Go here for downloads.

Puppy 2.15, however, is a departure from previous builds in that it's a "Community Edition," with much input from the active Puppy Linux user base. Puppy improved its PET package management in 2.14, and in 2.15CE, there's an emphasis on applications packaged in SFS files -- also known as "squash" files. And yes, there will be an SFS for Open Office. I believe that advantage of SFS files over PET packages is that the SFS files won't load into RAM until you launch them, thus saving your available memory until you need it. Since Puppy generally loads all OS files AND applications into RAM for quick access, adding a giant PET package to the mix can really weaken your system, taking available RAM very low.

As with any distribution, one of the things I've enjoyed about both DSL and Puppy is that they've introduced me to many apps that I'd never used before -- and which are considerably lighter on resources than the standard ones. For instance, I've been using mtPaint in Puppy, which is way faster than the GIMP and totally adequate for what I'm doing. The same goes for the ROX filer, Geany, SeaMonkey and Dillo.

Puppy 2.15CE is also BIGGER than the average Puppy. Puppy 2.13 is 86.5 MB, 2.14 is 88.6 MB, and 2.15CE is 131 MB. Go here for downloads.

Update: The main Puppy ftp site is a bit slow today -- try this one, it's much faster.

Here's the announcement from the Puppy developers' blog:

The Puppy 2.15CE (Community Edition) is the result of collaboration of a team of Puppy enthusiasts. It is built upon version 2.14 but with many enhancements. In particular the guys have worked on an improved user-interface and nice out-of-the box first impression. They have also developed some "SFS" files that add OpenOffice, web and graphics applications -- SFS files are "combo packs" of applications that can be installed and uninstalled with a few clicks.

In any case, I'll be burning a bunch of new CDs today, and as far as DSL goes, I will be trying the regular ISO, the syslinux version, which just might boot on the Thin Puppy Maxspeed Maxterm thin client) and the zipped, embedded version to run inside Windows.

One of the things that attracts me to the various BSD distributions is that they represent a bit of order out of the chaos. For one thing, package management tends to be well-thought-out, extensive and generally top-notch. That's funny, because in Windows and Mac, there's NO SUCH THING as package management -- you install software either from disc or download from various places and scoot around to various Web sites willy nilly to see if there are updates.

That's one of the things I already love about Linux -- package management where software is supposed to work on your platform and where it can be updated in a sane and rational manner. Sure, OS X and Windows have online updates, but that's only for the OSes themselves, not for all the apps that go with it.

Just look at the list of packages for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and PC-BSD. It's astounding what's available.

And while I'm at it, check out the packages for openSUSE and Fedora.

It's Day 11. That's how long Puppy Linux 2.14 has been running on the Thin Puppy. To recap, the Thin Puppy is a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, with the internal CF card removed (and with the Puppy-loaded replacement since fried). It's based on a mini-ITX motherboard of undetermined origin, running a Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor, VT133 chipset, with what look like s proprietary (to Maxspeed) CF-to-IDE adapter and fanless power supply.

The box has a fan, but it only runs when the client is tilted about 70 or 80-degrees in either direction. Otherwise, the unusual heat sink on the CPU seems to be working. It has copper pipes going from the top of the CPU to additional heat sink material bolted to the metal case.

The box has 256 MB of PC133 RAM installed.

Since the CF card died, I hooked up a CD drive and loaded Puppy, then disconnected the drive and sealed up the case. So the Thin Puppy is running totally in RAM, with no boot device attached. I used to have a USB flash drive connected, but since then the MUT utility that mounts drives in Puppy has flaked out, and I can't mount anything, nor can I seem to kill out the processes that keep me from doing so.

But the Thin Puppy continues to run, and I have been using it heavily these past 11 days. It has given me a good appreciation of this minimal hardware platform and of Puppy Linux as an OS and distribution. I even gave away my Puppy 2.14 disc away since then to somebody who was interested in it. I'll have to burn a new one, although I've got a couple of 2.13 discs for booting my other computers.

Like I've said before, Puppy is the first Linux distro on which I've been able to configure EVERYTHING ... except wireless. But I think my $9 Airlink AWLH3026 wireless card from Fry's is cursed and won't run in any Linux distro.

But other than that, Puppy has been as good as ... yes, OS gold. It wasn't so good with 128 MB of RAM, but ever since I doubled that, it's been running great.

And I expect I'll eventually get a new CF card and turn the Thin Puppy off. But not yet.

Slax is a live CD that I've been very anxious to try. Any distro that claims to be light on hardware -- yet features the KDE desktop -- is something I've got to try. I'm beginning to think KDE gets a bad rap. It runs pretty darn well in this distro, as well as in MepisLite. And I think KOffice is a terrific package, with KWrite being one of the best programs out there for writers.

First things first. Slax is a cutdown version of Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, and one that remains wildly popular (it's No. 10 on Distrowatch). And it's not Debian, if that means anything. I guess I mention that because so many distros use Debian as their base, it's nice to try something different.

The boot process is pretty good. The script displayed on the screen asks you to log on as root with password "toor" And there are on-screen hints, such as startx to get KDE running, flux to use Fluxbox instead, mc to run Midnight Commander and xconf to autoconfigure the graphics adapter. Startx didn't work for me -- my display didn't cooperate, so I killed X and used xconf, which did work. I got the message, "creating /etc/corg.conf ... all done. Run startx now. If you get black screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Plus. But all was well, and I was off and running. Later, I changed resolutions in KDE, and the screen looked absolutely terrific in all its 1280 x 1024 majesty. Thanks, KDE!

And if you want to put Slax on your hard drive, slax-install will do just that. Configsave and configrestore will save and restore your file systems,
fileswap will create a swap file. Pretty simple.

Once Slax KillBill goes into KDE, you see a yellow desktop and samurai sword that means you're in KillBill -- named because Wine is included and you can run Windows apps without Win being installed (hence the "Kill Bill" -- as in Gates -- reference).

On the menu, in addition to the KDE button that can launch just about everything, there is a console button, Konqueror, JuK (music), KPlayer (video??) and K3B for CD and DVD burning.

I easily configured my ethernet card for static IP with KDE -- it was as clear and easy as any other distro I've used.

While KillBill has Wine installed, I couldn't manage to get any Win apps to run. Perhaps I'm missing something? I'll try again later.

Another thing: The version of KWord in Slax killbill is 1.5.2, with KDE 3.5.4. I some trouble getting "smart" quotes working -- it just wouldn't do it. I didn't have this problem in MepisLite, the distro in which I fell in love with KWord. The "current" version of KWord is 1.6.2, so maybe this is a bug that got squashed.

The KDE desktop in Slax killbill is surprisingly responsive. Menus appear immediately (this being a 3 GHz Dell, I expect that, but I don't always get it).

And I got a nice surprise: Many printers on my network were automatically configured and usable without me doing anything. I was able to print to one immediately ... I wasn't able to configure an additional printer, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I could print elsewhere.

KDE is such a nice desktop -- the screen resize and rotate button on the lower right allowed me to immediately pick my favored resolution -- 1280 x 1024, and as I said above, it looks terrific.

I still love KWord. It's my favorite Linux word processor by far. It's much lighter on resources than Open Office, and I've read that it's even lighter than Abiword.

KDE's Konquerer browser responds fast and displays pages well. There was no Flash player installed, though.

Sound worked fine. I had to tweak it with ALSA Mixer in a terminal window, but that's normal for my PC.

At this stage, the sticking points are the smart quotes in Kword, and for the killbill edition, figuring out how Wine works. (Wine remains a mystery to me. The only time I could do anything with Wine was when I installed IEs4Linux in Xubuntu -- that worked. Now I see why Codeweavers has a business.)

Maybe I need to run Winecfg or something. The reason I burned the KillBill version of Slax first was because one of my goals in running Linux is to port over the two Windows apps that I need at the Daily News -- Internet Explorer (because our in-house Web system requires it -- and no, Firefox won't work) and the Hermes publishing system from Unisys, which is our main software for putting out the paper. I'm not against giving $40 to Codeweavers to make it happen, but I figured that a distro with Wine in it already would somehow be easier to use.

Still, my first impression of Slax is a favorable one. I've already burned CDs of the plain Slax and the smaller Popcorn edition, meant to install on 128 MB flash media. I'll try these in the Dell, and hopefully soon in the Thin Puppy (the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client I'm using to write this post). If it works, will I have to rename that machine Thin Slax? Yes, I will.

Here's a plug for Geany, the primary text editor in Puppy Linux.

I've been using Geany for a few weeks now, and it's really a nice piece of software. For one thing, it's not foreign to someone who primarily uses full-fledged word processors -- and Windows ones, at that.

I'm not using Geany to write code. I use it to get stuff written fast -- and all the things I want to do, including changing stuff to upper case, to lower case, get word counts, it does it with ease. And there are plenty of keyboard shortcuts to make this and other stuff happen.

Geany uses the GTK+ toolkit, meaning you don't need KDE or GNOME to use it. There are even versions for Mac OS and Windows, if you want to keep things consistent across platforms.

On Windows, I've been partial to EditPad, but with Geany, I don't miss it.

I ran across this site, BSD/Linux Gangster (also known as Linux/BSD Gangsters), and it is freakin' hilarious. Just dip into the forums and be prepared to laugh your geeky ass off.

P.S. The guy pictured on the left is "Mob Tux"

At this point, I've run about 15 or so live Linux CDs with varying degrees of success. And yes, I have manually configured a static networking connection before -- Fluxbuntu's "command line interface is EVERYTHING" philosophy sent me to the Web for instructions on how to do so.

But I'm not a full card-carrying geek, so I'm not all that crazy about going to the command line with no help whatsoever just to get freakin' Internet flowing into the box with a live CD I've never run before on an OS I've also never run before.

But that's what happened with FreeSBIE, the live CD that features the FreeBSD system. First of all, unless you elect to use the "cheatcodes" (and can figure out from the help screen what exactly to type), FreeSBIE boots, after the usual 4-minute wait typical of a full-fledged live CD, into the shell. Yes, the GUI doesn't start automatically. You're in the BSD shell. At least you're logged in. It does that much for you.

But what to do then? I typed xwin, which I use to restart the window manager in Puppy. No go. Luckily I have two computers at my desk. I got the FreeSBIE "manual" (they are using the term very, very loosely) open and figured out from there that I had to type startx to get Xfce running. Whatever you do, if you plan to try FreeSBIE, print out the "manual" before you begin.

FreeSBIE looks good, and there are all the usual ways to tweak the Xfce interface. There are even printer utilities. But a utility to configure the Ethernet interface? Nada. And since I don't have DHCP here -- it's fixed IP -- I had to figure out how to get the network going.

I just wanted to do it for this one session -- you know, from the command line -- and I looked at the entire FreeSBIE site. Nothing. Even the 900+ page FreeBSD manual wasn't all that much help. I tried to configure, figuring out what the interface was called in BSD (it was bge0, by the way, which is very unlike the eth0 it's called in Linux -- I see nothing wrong with that, I'm just relaying the information).

I followed the instructions, but BSD wasn't accepting the addresses I was typing in. After all that, I kind of know how to get my main address, netmask and gateway into the system, even if they are "out of range" (not sure of the wording, but it was something to that effect). How to allow for my DNS servers? I have no idea. I'll try to find the Linux help page I used with Fluxbuntu, and maybe I'll try again. Maybe not.

So I couldn't connect and therefore couldn't really give FreeSBIE a good test.

Hey, if I can get Fluxbuntu to connect with the command line, I should be able to do it in FreeSBIE, right? Not right. And the whole thing where the GUI doesn't come up unless you ASK for it (or type startx at the prompt)? It's not ready for newbie prime time.

If all you've aiming for is to have longtime BSD users downloading your live CD, and if your sparse Web site gives no information on how to configure networking, then you've made you're own lonely bed, 'cause very few people are gonna lie in it if they can't get Firefox working.

Would it kill you to strap a GUI network-config utility into the window manager? Would it kill you to put detailed command-line configuration information in the help file that pops up in Firefox when it loads?

I don't think that Fluxbuntu has to leave new users in the dust either, but at least I was able to find the information I needed to start networking -- and it worked.

Another thing: I like Xfce a lot. I like Abiword a lot. But the FreeSBIE disk is a bit anemic when it comes to software. There's Abi, Gnumeric, emacs, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, the GIMP, Joe, mPlayer ... and more. But it seems a bit light on utilities (including the aformentioned net config one), and while I understand that they can't cram Open Office on there (the compression on the fly isn't as good as Linux, I believe), I guess I was expecting more.

I'm not ready to give up on FreeSBIE just yet. I will get its networking going, one way or the other (I'm not above bringing in a router and turning my static IP into a DHCP connection).

And I'm not ready to give up on the BSDs either. I have hard drives waiting for DesktopBSD and FreeBSD installs. But in a world of over 100 Linux distributions and at least seven BSDs, first impressions do matter, and FreeSBIE has a lot of work to do in that regard.

Whether or not you like Ubuntu, Knoppix, Puppy and the other distros on live CD, you can't deny that they have a rather gentle learning curve and have done much for the cause of Linux. If a newbie can't get networking started, printing configured and drives mounted quickly and easily, you and your favored OS are in real danger of losing them. And right now FreeSBIE isn't exactly flying a welcoming flag for FreeBSD.

I followed a link to a blog I'd never seen before, Pain and Glory From the Trenches of the IT World, and the author kept plugging BSD -- the Unix offshoots that began as the Berkeley Standard Distribution and have been morphing on their own ever since. He mentions NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD -- three separate projects.

How do the BSDs differ from Linux, you ask? Well, as I said above, the BSDs were borne out of the original Unix code and not written completely from scratch, as is Linux. And the coding on the BSDs is said to be more methodical, slower to be unveiled, ported to many (in the case of NetBSD, many, many, many) platforms, and generally a little less anarchic and chaotic than is Linux kernel development.

What does that mean for desktop users? Well, the BSDs can run just about everything that Linux runs, and each version has its own package-management solution, and for those things written specifically for Linux, there is a compatibility layer that can be added.

To get more specific, any desktop enviroment, from fvvm to Fluxbox, Xfce to JWM, GNOME to KDE, they are all available for the BSDs. Hardware support, however, is generally NOT as extensive as Linux -- but when it works is said to be better. And OpenBSD especially puts its emphasis on security -- there's supposedly only been one worm aimed at BSD in the past many years, and that one only affected machines running the Apache server package (and was quickly snuffed out).

I downloaded a bunch of BSD ISOs, but the one I'm going to try first, of course, is FreeSBIE -- a live CD based on FreeBSD. I'll report back as soon as I get a chance to try it.

While FreeSBIE has a window manager already configured, and offshoots like DesktopBSD and PC-BSD come with as much software as the average Linux distribution, the lure of BSD for some is that it can run on VERY old and underpowered hardware or the almost-latest and greatest. And you can build the system you want from the ground up, adding only what you need. That's what the Pain and Glory guy says here, among other places on his blog.

For me, picking an OS is a popularity contest. If a lot of people are using a given distribution, that carries considerable weight with me. That way you know the distro has something to offer -- and the prospect of getting help from members of the community is that much greater. That's what I like about Puppy and DSL, as far as small distros go.

And that's what is so great about Distrowatch -- you just go there and see what's getting the most hits. As of today, FreeBSD is at 479 hits per day, PC-BSD at 249, OpenBSD at 120, DesktopBSD at 113, DragonFly (another offshoot) at 108, and NetBSD at 95.

So all of those are in the mix, but FreeBSD is way ahead (and remember that DesktopBSD and FreeSBIE are both based on FreeBSD).

As always with these things, your mileage may vary, and for your boxes and your application needs, one of the BSDs may perform well, or they might not be as good as one or two of the hundreds of Linux distros out there. One thing I do like about FreeBSD is the 900+ page "FreeBSD Handbook" available on the site in various formats. (Get it as a zipped PDF here.) An enormous, free book is always OK with me. Good documentation often saves the day.

I just came across this great blog, Pain and Glory From the Trenches of the IT World, I'm not really sure who is behind it, other than being from IT (and I do believe it), but for a reasoned look at operating systems, hardware and general technology opinion, I find it to be a very good read.

For instance, he's of the opinion that converting an old PC into a home server is probably a waste of resources, and you're better off adding a hard drive to your existing PC if you need more storage.

And he things NetBSD would be a good OS for the One Laptop Per Child $100 PC initiative (which is currently using a cutdown Red Hat, I think). Here he's talking about Intel's low-cost PC made for the Third World (and not part of OLPC):

I have used NetBSD on a wide variety of older systems, and I have to say, it works wonders. When using NetBSD, it’s quite possible to turn old Sun SPARCstations into very capable mail servers or web proxies. Now, these low-end laptops are far, far more powerful than such obsolete Sun systems. The enjoyable experience of NetBSD on a 33 MHz SPARCstation 10 will no doubt be quite magnified on a 900 MHz Celeron-based system.

As you may have gathered -- and will gather upon more extensive reading, he's rather fond of NetBSD.

He also likes KDE as a desktop environment and thinks it's not just better but faster than GNOME, he again suggests NetBSD as an alternative to one of today's popular "low-spec" Linux distros, Xubuntu:

NetBSD is a truly remarkable and versatile system. And for many people, I think it would make a great alternative to lightweight Linux distributions like Xubuntu and Ubuntu Lite. The very philosophy of the project, that being widespread portability, will no doubt go a long way towards ensuring it remains a modern system that consumes minimal resources. If you’re currently a user of a minimalistic Linux distribution that you think is beginning to get bloated, maybe you should give NetBSD a try. It may just be exactly what you’re looking for.

I had a little problem with the MUT -- Puppy Linux's Mounting Utility Tool -- and I can't seem to mount my USB flash drive (or any drive, for that matter -- the CD drive is not connected, but it still appeared as a possible mounting choice). So I did something I haven't done in the eight days previous -- I killed X Windows, which took me down to a shell prompt, and restarted the window manager.

It didn't help, nor did trying to kill out some of the errant processes with KP. This isn't enough to end the Thin Puppy Torture Test, but since I can't mount any external drives, it does mean that the test may not go on much longer. I have the network unplugged at the moment, but I'll replug and try to post this. If I continue to have IP coming through, then enough of the system is working to keep the Torture Test running. I can still save to the file system in RAM, and I've got 40.7 MB of space left.

So at the moment I've got a bunch of processes running that I can't get rid of ... but I do have networking, and I am able to post on Movable Type. So the Torture Test goes on ...

Here's an update on the HP t5300 thin client that I got for the low, low price of $20 on eBay. (And yes, I'm writing this with the thin client hooked up to the network).

It runs the Windows CE embeddes system (in 32 MB of flash memory) with only 64 MB of RAM.

When I was researching these, there isn't much documentation out there specific to the t5300 -- HP docs cover the whole 5000 series, so I didn't know that this client has its memory hard-wired to the circuit board -- and there is no way to add additional memory. That's problematic, because I wanted to bump it up to at least 128 MB. The IDE input on the board looks like a 44-pin laptop-drive plug (and there's no additional power leads, so that makes it more likely that it's for a laptop drive). And that input is very close to the edge of the case, making it look like it would need an extension cable leading away from the side, if I were to insert a Compact Flash adapter. By the way, it has a 533 MHz VIA processor and chipset, and the motherboard is so small besides, I think it's a laptop-specific product repurposed here for a thin client ... except that the non-expandable RAM makes it seem like a thin-client design.

But since the thin client's BIOS will boot from USB, I can theoretically create a bootable USB flash drive and boot from there without cracking the case. I couldn't boot from Puppy 2.14 on the USB, but I have yet to try all the available permutations when it comes to creating a bootable USB device.

My best hope now is to a) Use the HP t5300 as a Web terminal with the version of IE 5 in its flash memory (what I'm doing now), try to create a bootable USB drive with Damn Small Linux on it, or turn it around on eBay.

I wouldn't have bought this in the first place had it not been $20, but for those who want to turn thin clients into stand-alone Linux boxes, make sure you can add memory, and also make sure that you can replace the IDE device inside and/or boot from USB.

As far as the IE included in the client, CSS stylesheets are a little funky on some sites, but I am able to use Movable Type with few formatting problems -- this is IE, after all. I bumped the screen resolution up to 1280 x 1024, and it looks great with an LCD monitor.

I'm going to try to update the "image" on the thin client via HP -- wish me luck.

(Minutes later) The update was successful, but the thin client already had this update installed. Given that the amount of flash memory is fixed at 32 MB, I guess I shouldn't expect HP to offer a full-fledged update of the Windows CE OS, along with a IE6-level browser, but it would've been nice.

Considering the matter for a moment (during which I was unsuccessful at printing over the network ... and this box doesn't have a parallel port, so the options are network or COM port -- I don't know if it will print to a USB printer) ... I could actually try to use the HP thin client ... as a THIN CLIENT connected via the Linux Terminal Server Project system.

I know what you're saying: Big freakin' deal. I leave my PC running all the time, all week, all month, all year, yadda, yadda -- what's so special about you leaving the Thin Puppy running for a full week?

A good question.

The difference is that the Thin Puppy is a thin client (a Maxspeed Maxterm) -- 13 1/8 inches tall, 2 1/8 inches wide and 10 1/2 inches deep, and weighs maybe 5 pounds (I can't disconnect it to drop on the scale, so that's an estimate) -- an as a thin client consists of a features-challenged motherboard, small fanless power supply AND little else. I stuffed it with 256 MB of RAM (there's only one PC133 RAM slot, and the maximum the VIA-powered motherboard will address is 256 MB), and there's only one IDE input. As a thin client, the OS (which in this case might've been Windows CD) is on a Compact Flash card plugged into a CF-to-IDE adapter.

The client came with no memory or CF card, both of which I added. I originally put Puppy Linux 2.14 on the CF card (via the Puppy Universal Installer, which allows for installation of the OS on a CF card via a USB card reader, with the CF to later function as an IDE hard drive via the adapter. But either I killed the CF chip, or it died a premature death on its own.

To get the Thin Puppy running again, I connected a CD-R drive to the IDE header (the CF-to-IDE adapter is powered by a floppy power plug, and there's an extra hard-drive power plug that I used for the CD drive). I loaded Puppy from the CD -- the entire program goes into RAM -- and disconnected the drive. So now Puppy is running entirely in RAM. I've since even disconnected the USB flash drive I was using for downloaded files.

The Thin Puppy does have a fan, but it only works when the box is held at a 75-or-so degree angle (why, I don't know). The Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor has a unique heat sink, with pipes going from it to additional heat-sink material that's connected to the metal case for additional heat dissipation. So far the CPU and chipset seems to be running OK. If I could figure out what the actual CPU temp was, I would.

AND ... Puppy Linux isn't generally considered an OS that you boot and leave running for weeks at a time. First of all, it works great as a live CD, and since it runs in RAM, lots of things could be lost if it crashes before a proper shutdown. But since I've upped the RAM from 128 MB to 256, there have been no crashes ... and all has worked perfectly through this -- day 8.

I just got an honest-to-god virus in my Daily News e-mail -- it looks like an e-mail from Microsoft offering a download of Internet Explorer 7, but if you mouse over the graphic (DO NOT CLICK ON IT). you can see that the link doesn't go to Microsoft but to something with the words "gc-music" in it.

The "sender" (and yes, it is easy to put any address in the "from" field) is admin("at")microsoft.com -- and the subject line is "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads."

Whatever you do, DON'T CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC. For more on the virus, go to this PC World page:

The e-mails carry the subject line "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads" and appear to come from admin@microsoft.com. They include a blue, Microsoft-style graphic offering a download of IE 7 beta 2. Clicking the graphic will download an executable file called IE 7.exe.

The file is actually a new virus called Virus.Win32.Grum.A, and security experts were still analyzing it Friday to see what it does. Sophos PLC said it can spread by e-mailing itself to contacts in a user's address book. The virus tampers with registry files to ensure it gets installed, and it tries to download additional files from the Internet, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for Sophos.

Other specifics were unknown yet, but such viruses often install a keystroke logger to steal personal information, and establish a network of infected computers to launch a denial of service attack, Cluley said.

The report also says that this virus is poorly detected by current antivirus programs, and that it affects only Windows users.