August 2007 Archives

It's like deja vu. Using Synaptic to add Flash didn't work in Ubuntu. Doesn't work in Debian either. Adding that package does not make Flash work in Iceweasel/Firefox. And with Debian, I couldn't seem to add the plugin from the Firefox site. But today I went to Desktoplinux.com, and there was some Flash on it. Iceweasel prompted me to get the plugin, and I went for it. It downloaded, and now Flash works.

The only problem: Flash stinks on my old PC, even in Debian. The videos are still choppy, and they slow things down, but at least I have flash.

The commenters in a post a while ago had many tips on how to "toggle" Flash in Firefox. I'll have to go back and look at that to see what my options are.

Updates to this item since it was first written:

-- I finally got CUPS to configure my favored network printer; most applications are printing fine. LeafPad prints a blank page, but printing in LeafPad is notoriously shaky. Out of all the other applications, only Ted refuses to print to this printer, reason unknown. Among the apps that print OK: AbiWord, OpenOffice and Geany. As I say below, my situation is far from typical, and for the vast majority of users, CUPS will make things easier, especially for network printers.

-- I got the OpenOffice 2.2 (an SFS application) to work by changing a portion of its filename from 2.16 to 2.17. Upon reboot, the system picked it up.

-- While I thought that Puppy added Ted and Sylpheed to the base distribution, I was wrong. I had added those two apps as PET packages early in my use of 2.16, and I forgot they were there. When I upgraded to 2.17 (by using a 2.17 CD instead of 2.16), my PET packages were detected and appeared in the Puppy menus -- a nice thing to have happen.

-- I tried to "go back" to Puppy 2.16 by using that CD, but I couldn't open my encrypted pup_save, even with the proper password. Once I went back to 2.17, the password worked and I was back in Puppy, at which time I was able to get CUPS working for my closest network printer.

(original "first look" review begins here:)

Since my Puppy 2.16 review took so long that 2.17 came out before I finished it, I decided to dive into Puppy 2.17 now so I don't get beat by 2.18 (though I offer no guarantees).

I downloaded the Puppy 2.17.1 "no lzma" version -- which runs faster but is slightly larger than the standard version. I'll take faster over smaller any day, especially when "large" is 90-something megabytes.

First the good: As usual, loading a new version of Puppy takes a little longer since old configuration files in my pup_save need to be updated. All of my configuration information transferred over ... except for printing.

When I heard that Puppy was going from its tried-and-true printer configuration system to CUPS, I knew I was in for trouble. I am connected to a network printer, and while CUPS catches about 10 printers on my network with no need for configuration (a plus for about 99 percent of the Puppy users on huge office networks, I admit), my favorite printer -- the one closest to me -- never shows up in CUPS. I always have to add it manually, and I have a ton of trouble getting the configuration right. Basically, CUPS is less than intutive.

In Debian, for instance, I wasn't successful in adding this printer until I used the HPLIP utility (a great tool, by the way). In Ubuntu, I just settled for printing on one of the other printers on our network. I could never get my "favorite" added.

I've been using Puppy since 2.13, and I've written more than once about how great Puppy's printer configuration is .. I mean was. I tried about five times to get my printer configured with no luck.

So while for me Puppy is now harder to use, for 99.9 percent of users it'll be easier to print in Puppy. I guess you could call it a "win," even though I'm personally not so happy about it.

Gparted is STILL broken in Puppy 2.17. It takes forever to list my partitions. I keep Puppy 2.14 close at hand for whenever I need to partition a drive. Guess I still need to do that.

My OpenOffice SFS file did NOT load automatically. I don't know if changing the file name will work, or whether I need to download a new SFS. I'll have to take a look. I don't envision a problem. (Problem fixed ... see note at top.)

I have a soft spot for the lightweight Dillo browser. It's now gone, with some kind of Mozilla subset in its place to display help files. I prefer Dillo -- it was and is faster. I used it. I miss it.

Sorry to start with the negative, but on the positive side, I see some new things in Puppy 2.17 that I approve of:

-- The new desktop, while not excessively colorful, looks nice. It's an improvement over 2.16 (my favorite remains 2.13).

-- I don't know if the Puppy developers were listening to me specifically, but quite a few apps that I like have been added to 2.17: Leafpad, Ted and Sylpheed. The latter two are integral parts of Damn Small Linux, and I really like Leafpad, too. Even though I've written favorably about Sylpheed, I've been using Seamonkey's mail reader of late, and I've been happy to do it. I think all three of these apps were available as PET packages, but it's nice to have them as an integral part of Puppy. (Note: I had forgotten that I added Ted and Sylpheed as PET packages back when Puppy 2.16 came out; they DO NOT come standard with Puppy 2.17. LeafPad, however, appears to be part of the stock Puppy CD. Maybe I missed it in 2.16; if not, it's new for this version)

Questions that remain: Will I solve my problems with printing and OpenOffice? Will Puppy's developers ever fix Gparted (they could go back a version or two)? Can they add back Dillo AND put a text-based browser in the menus (Elinks, Lynx or W3M would be fine)?

I've probably written the following line a hundred times: "The Xfce desktop didn't seem any quicker than GNOME." But that was all about mousing around in the menus, not so much how quickly applications load. And after running the Xfce-based Xubuntu, Vector and ZenWalk, as well as running Slackware with Xfce, I decided to try it in Debian.

Nice.

Now my $15 Laptop (233 MHz Pentium processor, 64 MB) has been running Debian with Fluxbox since I got it running -- I started with a console system, then added X and Fluxbox -- so I have no idea how it would respond on the heavier-than-Flux Xfce, but for my 1 GHz VIA C3 system (which I suspect is running at much less than the full 1 GHz for some reason), Xfce is the way to go.

That said, I finally found a distro on which KDE doesn't run like sludge on my test PC. And that distro is Slackware. No surprise there. But even in Slack, apps are too slow to load. I can't wait 20 seconds for a text editor (Kate or KWrite) to load. I just don't have that kind of patience. I love all the extras of KDE, I love KOffice, but I also love good performance on crap hardware. That's where Xfce comes in.

And to all those who say the GNOME developers should fold their tent and focus on KDE? That's crazy. GNOME may not have all the extras of KDE, but GNOME is way faster on my system. GNOME isn't as fast as Xfce, but it is way more comfortable to use than KDE from a sheer speed standpoint. I hope all of these desktop environments, KDE, GNOME, Xfce and Fluxbox, continue to develop for a long, long time.

But as I've also said before, if you're coming from Windows XP and want a Linux window manager that's of roughly the same "weight," you should be looking at Xfce. That's the one that has the same "feel," I think.

What about other window managers? I like JWM -- the default in Puppy -- quite a bit. I'm not all that fond of IceWM, but that may be because I haven't seen it configured well. I haven't tried any others, but I'm open to the possibilities (and am damn glad they're there).

Movable Type left me with about 4,000 comments as of a week ago. Most were spam, many were marked "junk" and didn't publish. I found about 30 "legitimate" comments that, for one reason or other, were marked "junk." So I finally went through them all, and now the blog has 429 total comments, all legitimate and all bloody fascinating (and I do mean it).

Moral of the story: Keep on top of your spam, or it will bury you.

Another moral: Upgrade your Movable Type to 4.0, which supposedly will minimize the spam-comments problem.

Thinking back to my Vector Linux 5.8 Standard install of a month or so ago, I decided to try it again. This time I wouldn't use the Puppy 2.14 live CD to make my partitions and would instead use the Vector CD all the way. First of all, while I like the installer overall, it makes you do your own partitioning in Cfdisk with no provision for a "standard" partitioning scheme, the latter option -- available in many other distros -- very helpful to new users and those uncomfortable with manual partitioning.

I'm comfortable enough, so I went ahead and made swap, root and home partitions, in that order, on the hard drive. Then I was able to deselect some packages I didn't want (games mostly), and the install continued. At one point during the process, my screen went blank, but the install appeared unaffected. Not comforting, for sure. Turns out it was the screensaver, and the moving the mouse didn't affect it. Hitting the space bar did the trick, though.

Once the files all loaded, it was time for the extensive Vector configuration, including everything from mouse to monitor resolution, with a whole lot in between. Besides creating a root password and deciding which services start up at boot, one of the great things in Vector is the option to run the /tmp directory in RAM. I've heard that this can be a problem if you plan to do a lot of compiling, but since I don't imagine I'll do much of that, I gladly checked off this feature. Anything to speed up the system.

One thing was a bit unusual: When creating user accounts, the system said they had to include at least one number. I picked my usual login and added a 1 to it. Weird, but not that big of a deal.

Vector's Xfce desktop isn't of the minimalist style. Its lower panel includes a bunch of icons, a clickable desktop-switcher, clock, volume control and more. I'm not as in love with the look of Vector as I am Xubuntu, but I'm definitely in love with everything working at first boot, unlike my recent Xubuntu 7.04 install.

My first test: A YouTube video. Flash is included in the distro, so I try a video. It's choppy, but that's to be expected on my hardware, which doesn't handle video or audio especially well. I try an MP3 audio track. XMMS plays it -- and plays it well. The audio is excellent, with no skipping. Mplayer in Xubuntu doesn't do this well. And unlike Xubuntu, Vector has no problem playing an MP3 right away -- no codec downloads needed.

One thing's for sure, Vector is well-equipped for multimedia with XMMS, Mplayer, Xine, Graveman, mhWaveEdit and RipperX. It looks like it can handle DVDs, though I don't have anything better than a CD drive, so I can't check it.

Abiword, Gnumeric and one of my favorite image editors, mtPaint, are included. These are all applications of appropriate weight for an Xfce system. J-Pilot is there, too, and as a Palm handheld user, that's a nice touch. I'd love it if it actually worked. I'll have to dig out the Palm and give it a try.

Xfce's Thunar file manager opens almost instantly. Most apps respond about the same as they do in Xubuntu, some a little slower (AbiWord, Firefox), others a good bit faster (the GIMP). But all in all, I don't see any great speed boost over Xubuntu.

In addition to Mousepad, there's the Adie editor. I'm not familiar with it, but it loads quick and looks promising. For browsing, Firefox is joined by Dillo, Opera and SeaMonkey. It's nice to have Web-browsing choices, especially because most users -- including myself -- spend a lot of time on the Web. Grsync is included for backups -- another nice thing to have.

Right after the install, I wasn't yet ready to do the first software update, but I did want to see how Vector dealt with shutdown and my box's ACPI power-management situation. Vector passes that test and turns everything off. If only Xubuntu did as well (it doesn't, in case you didn't get my inference).

(Days pass ...)

I booted into Vector after a week of ... other things (Slackware, Debian, Xubuntu, actual work), and my network connection didn't work. Like I would do in Slackware, I went to a terminal window, did su to root and ran netconfig. It didn't work. I did it a couple of other times using Vector's VASM configuration application. VASM is kind of clunky -- it's pretty much the same thing you'd get from doing the various Slackware configuration scripts from the command line, except in a GUI window -- but I guess it works. It needs polishing, but it's better than nothing.

After a couple of times through the configuration, I got networking back. I don't know what happened, but it's something I'll be keeping an eye out for.

The Vector boot manager is pretty nice -- and a little different from what I'm used to. Vector Standard doesn't ship with Fluxbox -- I wish it did, but there is the provision to add desktop environments via Gslapt and then choose a different one by clicking Session. If you click System, however, you can select a console login, and since I set up Vector to boot to the GUI (you can choose a console login, I think), I like the option of logging in to a console from the GUI. When I did start at a console, I found Vi, Nano and Midnight Commander. But no Mutt. I imagine that Mutt is easy to find for Slack-related distros, and after adding an SMTP program, I could run my mail from the console.

Now that I've done at least a fifth of the software updating I need to do in my newish Slackware system with upgradepkg at the command line, I have to say that Gslapt in Vector is easier to use. It works much like Synaptic. Of course, installing Gslapt in Slackware would make both systems equal. I could also use Slapt-get, but I don't know much about it.

I like Vector Standard's focus on Xfce. It uses the latest version of the desktop environment, and all the apps seemed to be up-to-date as well. From my limited experience, it's hard to find up-to-date packages for Slackware that aren't already included in the distro. I'd love to add AbiWord to Slackware, but I can't seem to find all the dependencies on Linuxpackages.net. Nor is its version of Abi the latest. But Vector (and ZenWalk, for that matter) champion AbiWord and offer version 2.4.6. Maybe I can get the packages from the Vector or ZenWalk repositories and install them in Slack.

Fluxbox in Vector I used Gslapt to add Fluxbox, and it's the best-looking out-of-the-box Fluxbox setup I've seen so far. The background looks the same as in Vector Standard's Xfce desktop -- a nice blue pattern with the Vector logo. The default "system style" is Magick-X, and it looks and works great. In Vector, as in all distros, applications totally speed up with Fluxbox as opposed to Xfce. The GIMP loads in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds in Xfce. I noted similar gains with the rest of the applications.

Vector does offer a KDE version -- and that is the direction I think they're going in, with the Xfce "Standard" version fading somewhat into the background. I hope I'm wrong and that Vector keeps developing its Xfce platform.

Still, I can't say enough how Fluxbox really, really rocks in Vector. Most stock Fluxbox configurations are heavy on gray, but not this one. I'm sure the expert Fluxbox user can make the window manager look this good and function this well on any system, but it's very nice to have such a positive experience right away. It's so good that I think Vector should do a Fluxbox-only spin of the distro. At the very least, Fluxbox should be included in the ISO -- it's too good not to.

Package managment: Some complain there's "no package management" in Slackware. Well, there is. It's not as comprehensive as apt in Debian, but it's there. Vector, like other Slack-derived distros, makes it even easier for users by including Gslapt and pointing it to the distro's own repository. And you can still use pkgtool and all the other Slackware packaging commands, but for a straight update of the system, Gslapt does a fine job. So Vector is easier to maintain than stock Slackware, but it's nowhere as easy to update as Debian, Ubuntu and the like.

One thing, though: Debian has way more packages than Slackware, and while the Vector and ZenWalk crews are doing their own packaging (a great service, to be sure), you might have trouble finding your favorite apps. On the plus side, Vector has a terrific selections of pre-installed apps and handles multimedia better than average.

Why Vector -- why not ZenWalk? I've wanted to test ZenWalk for awhile, but the current version, 4.6, will not boot on my VIA C3 Samuel-based box. I still have a 4.4.1 disc, and that did install. I tried to do a software update with Gslapt on it, knowing full well that I would probably break the thing. I did. I guess ZenWalk just wasn't made for this CPU. I just heard that ZenWalk 4.8 is in beta. I'll try it out, but I'm not holding my breath about it booting.

The Linux travails of a VIA C3 Samuel CPU: For the record, I've had no problems booting this CPU with Vector or Slackware. However, this box won't boot any Red Hat-based distros. Nor will it boot anything based on BSD. That leaves out Fedora, CentOS, Scientific Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DesktopBSD and PC-BSD. Gentoo does boot but dies during the net configuration part of the install. Everything derived from Debian does boot and run. So it's a big deal for a distro to actually boot and install on this box. If I ever get my Gateway (Pentium-based) laptop fixed, it'll be a whole new distro-testing ballgame, but for now there's a lot of the Linux and BSD world out there that's closed to me.

But if I can run Debian and all its derivatives, Slackware and most of its derivatives, that leaves quite a lot to look at.

Community: The Vector forum has 10,296 posts (going back to the very end of 2006, with other forums before that); ZenWalk's forum has 58,850 (going back to about March 2006); and the Slackware portion of LinuxQuestions.org has 11,136 posts. I don't want to draw any conclusion from these numbers, especially because it doesn't take into account alternate forums and Usenet newsgroups, but at minimum I will say that there are active communities for all of these distros. And especially for Vector and ZenWalk, I see nothing but growth as far as community support and involvement.

Conclusions

Best things about Vector: While I don't think Vector has the best looking Xfce desktop out there, it's far from the worst. Vector is fast, though not appreciably faster than other distros running Xfce. App choice is excellent; Vector gets points for including MtPaint as a low-spec companion to the GIMP, and there are plenty of browsers and editors. I haven't tried Xara Xtreme -- another graphics editor -- but it's nice to be introduced to a new app. Vector excels in multimedia apps and includes Flash and the ability to play MP3s out of the box. Adding Flash to Firefox isn't as easy as it should be. In Ubuntu, I've been able to do it easily, but for most distros you have to deal with tarballs, compiling and the like. I just tried to get Flash working in Debian by using Synaptic, but it doesn't work. Yes, even Debian isn't perfect, and I prefer to have Flash pre-installed, even though it's not open-source (though it is free). Also, thanks to the Vector crew for including the very-light Dillo browser. It's a handy app to have around when you want to instantly open a browser.

Another good thing: Vector is available preinstalled on PCs that cost well south of $200. I like the commitment they show to low-priced hardware. Best of all, once Fluxbox is installed, Vector still looks great and only gets better when it comes to performance.

What needs work: Gslapt is good, but I'd love a friendlier package management front end. Vector's VASM configuration utility is kind of bare-bones and not all that elegant. The installer needs to hold newbies' hands a little more, especially when it comes to drive partitioning. Also, I'd like the choice between LILO and GRUB for my bootloader to be made during the install, not later. Another thing, and this isn't that big a deal: The pointer in Vector is a little large for my taste. I imagine this is configurable in Xfce, but I'm used to smaller pointers.

Final words: When it comes to easier-to-use renditions of Slackware, I suggest trying both Vector and ZenWalk to see what works best with your hardware. If speed is important, and if your hardware isn't new, any of these Xfce-based distros can really bring some sanity to your computing life. Vector with Xfce is really good, but Vector with Fluxbox is excellent. Try it.

I downloaded and burned the Xubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 live CD and loaded it up. I realize that this is beta and not all the bugs are worked out, and with that criterion, things are working very well. But I'm left wondering "Why?"

Never mind that the CD didn't autodetect my correct monitor resolution -- in fact, everything was set up for some monster-sized display. I was able to make the icons themselves, and the icon and menu type, as big as the old Xubuntu through Xfce setup. But in the applications (which do have a new, darkish window -- not an improvement, just different), those menus stayed small no matter what I did. I'm no Xfce expert, and I'm probably missing something, but I hope hardware detection improves before this thing goes gold.

And the Xubuntu bugs that beset my Xubuntu 7.04 installation? The missing panels and lack of a menu upon right-clicking (until enabled manually)? Both persist in Gutsy Tribe 5. At this point, those fixes aren't in. Nor does Xubuntu handle shutdown on my system very well. I had a message that there were ACPI problems upon boot. Still, the list of distros that allow for complete shutdown on this very box is long (and Ubuntu is even on it).

Overall, tt doesn't look like a Xubuntu makeover -- more like a gentle tweaking.

Here's what is changing in 7.10 Gutsy:

-- Any app can print to PDF

-- CUPS replaced by system-config-print from Fedora

-- New Wizard and Extensions Manager for Firefox

-- New artwork (a bit darker -- and not so much to my liking at this point)

So it's definitely a gentle tweaking, nothing game-changing. If they don't screw it up by the time 2008's LTS release is ready, I'll be happy.

One thing I did discover that is totally cool: In the Network Settings box, you can save multiple setups as separate locations, so if you move your PC from one place to another, you don't have to retype the network settings. That is very cool.

Now remember, this is all based on running the 7.10 live CD in beta. I didn't install to the hard drive, and I'm not going to at this point. If bugs get fixed and performance improves, that's great, but there appear to be no major changes in Gutsy. I'm still a big proponent of Xubuntu, but the Red Sea is not parting, at least in my backyard kiddie pool, for Xubuntu 7.10.

Elsewhere: Caitlyn Martin on Ubuntu Gutsy

The one thing that has bugged me about Debian Etch is the quality of the fonts when using Iceweasel (Debian's renamed Firefox). They have a pronounced bitmapped feel. That's because they ARE bitmapped, it turns out. My fonts look fine in Ubuntu, Slackware, Vector, Puppy and everything else. But not in Debian.

First I checked the font manager for clues. Everything was exactly the same as Ubuntu.

Then I found the DebianHELP forum, and I had my answer:

Running dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig in a terminal as root.

> I would try to disable bitmap fonts. ... You
> can run (as root)
>
> dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
>
> and choose "No" for "Enable bitmapped fonts by default?" (This is the
> last question that you will be asked.) Then you can restart X and check
> if this improves things. (Normally it does.)

I followed the menus, turned off bitmapped fonts, closed Iceweasel, and then restarted it.

Now Iceweasel and the rest of Debian Etch looks as good as everything else, and the major beef I have with Debian has been resolved. Thanks, DebianHELP!

Jani Monoses, who claims to be from the Ubuntu project, says in the now-resurrected comments to my Xubuntu 7.04 review, that "the disappearing panel is a bug we have not yet tracked down and it does not affect all installations."

So those of you who say that your panels are fine -- good for you! It's not a bad CD-R, it's just a bug. And I'm glad they know about it and hopefully are working on it.

John Biles said, "If you have an old PC go and enjoy what freedom is with Puppy Linux?" Puppy is great, no doubt there. It's among the best things I've used since getting into all these distros.

And to Chris Hoyt, I just downloaded Xubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5, and I'll be taking a look at that, too.

Fluxbox seems like an afterthought in most distros. You can add it, sure, but it doesn't look or function that great without some work. On one of my Debian installs, Fluxbox is excellent, on the other not so much. Slackware has a nice Fluxbox setup as well.

But I wasn't prepared for how great Fluxbox would be in Vector. In my Vector Standard install, I added everything related to Fluxbox with the Gslapt package manager. MAN ... does it work well. Looks great, works great, with all the menus populated and a great Fluxbox theme that I'd never seen before.

Coming soon: A full review of Vector Standard 5.8

I wanted to install something in Slackware. I picked something with no dependencies: XMMS, the music player.

I got it from Linuxpackages.net. Then I opened up a terminal window, became the su, moved to the directory where I downloaded the file and used pkgtool to install it. Pkgtool even added it to the Xfce menu -- and in the right place.

I downloaded all the updates for Slackware 12.

Then I logged on as root and used the upgradepkg command at a prompt to upgrade Firefox and the GIMP. It works!

I didn't break a damn thing.

Does this mean I get my Slackware merit badge (or is it secret decoder ring)?

Future problem: Will I be able to add a program to Slackware and actually be able to find all the proper dependencies? And will it work?

Today I become a man.

I am downloading the updates to Slackware 12, and I will attempt to install them without breaking the damn thing.

I'm using gFTP to do the download. It's going very slowly. I don't know if it's me or the FTP site.

Tux willing, I will have a fully updated Slackware box real soon.

I finally got to the over 2,000 spam comments that have been clogging this blog for the past few weeks. As I will write in a future-past entry (written before this one but not yet entered in the blog), Movable Type 3.2 does not do a very good job of keeping malicious commenters at bay. Either it lets everybody and everything through, or it makes it so arduous that nobody would want to comment.

So the solution is to delete malicious comments (penis enlargement! cialis! ringtones!) periodically throughout the day -- and a minimum of daily -- to keep them at bay.

I let it go a couple of weeks, and it got way out of hand. I got rid of all the published spam, and I'm letting the system purge all the comments marked as "junk."

What Movable Type needs (and what it has, I hear in version 4.0) is captchas, those crazy boxes that look like this:
They make the commenter type in the letters -- something an automated spambot cannot. It works great in Blogger. It's the single biggest problem with Movable Type 3.2 ...

But for now I have the spam under control.

Ubuntu and its sister Linux distributions -- including Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Edbuntu -- finds themselves in an enviable yet thankless position in the Linux universe. That the 'Buntus are the most popular choice among Linux users is without question. Ubuntu is nearly always at the top of Distrowatch.com's popularity list, its forums are busy -- make that very busy -- and also very friendly. New users are welcomed, their hands are held, and command-line fixes are offered along with gentle encourgement.

But "experienced" users must be accomodated, too -- today's newbie is next month's Linux veteran, after all.

Still, Ubuntu is famous for its single live CD install, huge community, ease of use and, most of all, it's Ubuntuness. I guess what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu changes depending on the person. To me, Ubuntu means (or should mean) a perfect experience out of the box, the best hardware detection available and a system that can grow to serve the majority of PC users.

If you're computer was made in the past couple of years, by all means run Ubuntu, with its GNOME desktop, or Kubuntu with KDE. But for those of us with, shall we say, "vintage" equipment, the search for a Linux distro that makes the computing experience more comfortable -- meaning not too slow -- can be trying. One of the first things I suggest to potential Ubuntu users -- try Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop. It's lighter on resources than GNOME, as are the applications that go along with it.

But does Xubuntu live up to the hype? Is it as easy to use as Ubuntu? Will it satisfy both new and experienced Linux users? How does it compare with other Xfce-equipped distributions?

After trying quite a few Linux distributions that offer Xfce desktops (Slackware, Vector, ZenWalk, Debian), it was time to revisit Xubuntu 7.04, install it from scratch and see how it fares.

I've had a combination Xubuntu/Ubuntu install running for awhile, but it doesn't quite give me the full picture of the Xubuntu-only experience -- plus, it was an upgrade from 6.10 due to install problems at the time, and I wanted to do a clean 7.04 install.

In the past, I've always used the "alternate install" disc, but this time I wanted to try the live CD. Upon booting, however, I got the following error (the x's are numbers that I didn't write down):

[ xxx.xxxxxx] Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0

I don't have a floppy drive connected, and I don't know why the error came up. But after the line appeared with various numbers between the brackets three times, the Xubuntu live CD continued to boot on my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client -- the test machine with long IDE and hard-drive power cables leading out to my CD drive and array of hard disks, which I switch in and out to run different operating systems.

The Maxspeed box features a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz CPU, an eveM motherboard by ECS, the maximum 256 MB of PC-133 RAM, a TDK 32x CD-RW drive and a 14.4 GB IBM IDE hard drive.

The live CD finally displayed the Xubuntu desktop. It didn't look like I could actually do anything, though. Right-clicking didn't give me the Xfce menu, and there were no panels at the top or bottom of the screen. It all looks good, but I couldn't do anything except click the Install icon on the desktop. So I did.

As I went through the steps in the graphical installer, I realized that it's no easier or more difficult to use than the alternate installer for Ubuntu/Xubuntu. It just looks better. I let the installer take care of the partitioning, and it created a main ext3 partition and a swap partition. I've dual-, triple- and quad-booted plenty of systems lately, but I've been in the mood of late to keep it to one distro per drive. You see, at some point we all need a PC that gets work done -- work that doesn't include so much computer noodling -- and I need the space on my smallish drives for actual files. I haven't regretted keeping Debian Etch as the sole distro on one of my drives, and for some time I had a reliable install of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on another drive. It's just cleaner that way -- no messing with GRUB or LILO, no running out of space in the /home partition.

From there, the install continued. One thing that the graphical installs of the various Ubuntus don't do but the alternate installs do take care of is networking. If you're using a DHCP connection, you're fine -- no tweaking required. But if, like me, you need to set up a static IP, the installer does nothing for you. You have to figure out how to set up networking once the system is installed. I've been using Ubuntu and Xubuntu for awhile, so I know exactly what to do, but for first-timers, the alternate install is actually better when it comes to setting up a network connection in a complicated office-computing environment such as mine).

Once the install finished, and I was instructed to reboot without the CD, I ejected it and tried to restart the system with a click on the Reboot button on the screen. That didn't work. I had to do a hard reset to get the system to reboot. But from there GRUB started, and the Xubuntu splash came up.

Once the system finally booted and I logged on, I still wasn't able to launch a program. I went into the Xfce desktop settings and checked off "show desktop menu on right click." The system should have shipped this way -- and I think Xubuntu 6.10 and 6.06 LTS both did. This is a big newbie deal-breaker -- what good is a Linux desktop that doesn't come configured to run a single program? The fix is easy, but the out-of-the-box experience is so important, this bug really needs to be fixed for the next Xubuntu release.

And while I appreciate the clean look of the raw Xubuntu desktop, I really need a panel somewhere to tell me what's going on. I don't know what's happening on any of my virtual desktops, nor can I start a file manager, Web browser or terminal window with a single click. I don't remember my old Xubuntu setup being so bare. Again, for the new user, it just makes it harder to use Xubuntu. I eventually did get the top and bottom panels working (see below), but this is another thing that must be fixed before 7.10 and the next LTS release of Xubuntu are made available.

So I go to set up my networking, typing in my password when requested (Ubuntu and its derivatives being among those that, out of the box, allow the user to "sudo" his or her way through most configuration chores without using the root password ... which is seemingly never needed in the world of Ubuntu).

Since I've done it about a dozen times, setting up the static IP went without incident. I like the networking setup in Ubuntu and its cousins. At the very least, I'm familiar with it, it's consistent -- and it works.

Now that I have networking and can run Firefox, I have to say that the look and feel of Xubuntu is probably the best of any Xfce-based system I've used. The type looks good, the windows themselves look nice -- I like the way the scroll bars look. The type on Web pages in Debian Etch does NOT look this good -- and if it did, I'd probably never look back and stay with Debian. But especially when it comes to the rendering of type, this is a bit of needed polish that many distros -- including Ubuntu/Xubuntu -- thankfully add to the Debian base. And I'm glad to have it.

One thing Xubuntu doesn't include is Flash. I understand that it's not open source, but it is free, and it would be nice to have the distro ship with it. It is in the Ubuntu repositories, but every time I've installed it with Synaptic, it hasn't worked, and instead I have to install the Firefox extension.

Even so, video performance in Ubuntu-based distros hasn't been as good as Debian, Slackware and a host of other distros on this particular PC, so I'm not anxious at the moment to enable Flash.

Even though I didn't have a panel at all, I could switch between desktops with ctrl-alt-(left or right) arrow and spread my applications out a bit. But what if I want a panel? I went into Settings and opened the Xfce Settings Manager. Clicking on most of the icons allowed me to tweak the settings. But when I clicked on Panel icon, nothing happened. I guess Xubuntu really, really doesn't want me to have a panel. But I remember having one in my old 6.10 setup, and it stuck around when I upgraded to 7.04. Even so, that desktop sure looks clean. There's not even a clock showing. (Wait! I have one in my other Xubuntu setup).

I understand and appreciate the minimalism of the bare Xfce desktop, but I'd like to at least have the option of adding a panel. So I Google it. Turns out that running the command xfce4-panel in a terminal window makes the upper and lower panels appear. But as soon as I close the terminal window, the panels go away. Same with xfce4-panel & (to run the job in the background). After re-Googling (is that even a word?), I add xfce4-panel to the list of autostarted applications. It works, but it's messy -- not something a newbie would be comfortable with. Hell, it's not something I'm comfortable with. Hopefully the next Xubuntu release will take care of this -- I can understand wanting no panel and having that option, but the default should be to have the panels showing.

Part of the Xubuntu (and Xfce) philosophy is to use applications appropriate for what is seen as a "lightweight" desktop environment. Things like the Thunar file manager and Mousepad text editor are integral parts of Xfce, and they are included here. Both run extremely well. While the GIMP image editor is a bit too heavy in comparison, it did load in 1 minute, 15 seconds -- about average for this PC. Firefox loads in about 8 to 10 seconds upon first launch, with a second window opening in only 5 seconds. That's very impressive. The AbiWord word processor starts in about 10 seconds. I find that a bit slow, but it's not a deal-breaker by any means. A terminal window opens in a couple of seconds, and by the time 7 seconds pass, I have a prompt. That's good.

This being a new install, I was surprised that the system didn't prompt me to do a whole bunch of updates. And since it was running so well, I was reluctant to force the issue. But I did. I went to the Update Manager, and it said my system is "up-to-date." It couldn't be, since I had done nothing since the CD install. So I clicked "Check," entered my password, and then the system began looking over the repositories.

It turned out there were 76 updates needed. Having about eight months experience installing and using Linux distributions has taught me where to look, but I think that the "naked" Xubuntu screen (which I have to admit is growing on me) and especially the lack of a program menu until it's configured can be a turnoff for the very person that Xubuntu needs to attract -- the first-time Linux user with a less-than-new system. There is a pretty nice (if less than detailed) link in the Firefox browser's home page to the Xubuntu Desktop Guide (which links to a version on the local filesystem, so it will work for those whose networking is not operational), but it doesn't exactly begin with "how to setup Xfce so you can launch a program," nor does it cover how to do an update of the system.

We can argue all day about how appropriate GNOME, KDE, Xfce and other window managers are for the given hardware and computing style, but for me, I think of Xubuntu as not a "lightweight" window manager but a "normal" one. Xfce is not lighter than Windows XP or Mac OS X, for instance. I think of GNOME and KDE as "heavier" -- and they do more -- than what comes with Windows and OS X. So that puts Xfce is in the same league, speedwise, with what most PC users know. When it comes to true lightweight window managers, I tend to think of Fluxbox and JWM.

Anyway, back to the updates. I clicked "Install Updates," and that process began. The updates downloaded and installed without incident.

At that point, it seemed like a good time to shut down. My system has ACPI power management, and most distros handle it without trouble. The thin client shuts down all the way in Ubuntu but for some reason never has in Xubuntu. With this new install, it still doesn't. Everything seems to turn off, the drives spin down, but the power light remains on. To turn the system all the way off, I have to hold in the power button until the system powers all the way down. It's something I wish the Xubuntu team would fix.

As I said before, I wasn't going to install Flash right away, nor would I add anything to play mp3 files just yet. But I did try to play one of the included OGG files to see if sound was configured and how it performed. Sound was working, but the audio skipped terribly while playing an OGG file in Gxine. Sound is marginal on this system, as is video, but I do get acceptable performance from other distros and applications. XMMS in Damn Small Linux is one of the apps/distros that handles sound well on this PC. Sound is also smoother in Debian -- even under GNOME.

Still, I gave Gxine another chance. I tried to play the stream of the BBC World Service. At first I get an error box, but the stream seems to be buffering. Buffering forever, that is. I got nothing. I tried a few other stations, none worked. When I stream audio through Debian, it sounds great, and that makes me wonder what in Ubuntu/Xubuntu is degrading audio and video performance. On newer systems, this shouldn't be an issue, but on older ones -- Xubuntu's target market -- it most definitely is.

Pros:

-- Xubuntu looks great -- no problems there. As good a visual implementation of Xfce as I've seen. From window details to fonts, Xubuntu does very well.

-- 7.04 seems as fast or faster than previous releases 6.10 and 6.06 LTS. It even seems as fast as other distros under Xfce.

-- The Ubuntu community. You won't always get the right answer, but you 've got a great chance due to sheer numbers.

-- A nice set of applications, the ability to add just about everything with the Ubuntu and Debian repositories, plus the ability to install downloaded Debian packages. The use of apt and its helpers (Synaptic) makes updates and upgrades easy and almost foolproof.

-- Ubuntu's Add/Del Program utility is a friendlier version of Synaptic. Plus it automatically adjusts Xfce menus to reflect app changes.

-- The alternate-install CD has ability to install Linux Terminal Server Project packages.

-- The installable live CD and alternate-install single CD make Ubuntu and its brother/sister distros extremely attractive and convenient. While Debian's network-install CD remains, for me, the gold standard in full-Linux install media, the use of a single CD makes Xubuntu/Ubuntu more attractive -- especially to new users -- than distros that require multiple CDs (Fedora, Slackware, most BSDs).

And now, to sum up ...

More pros Performance in Xubuntu is generally good. It's the best-looking Xfce implementation out there. Application choice is excellent. The Ubuntu tools, repositories and community are powerful incentives to use Xubuntu.

Cons: The Xubuntu graphical installer is nothing special. It doesn't attempt to do a customized network connection. Nor does it give any choices as far as applications or start-up services. Installers for Debian, Slackware and Vector are better. The Xubuntu installer gets the job done, but not as well as it should. The "command-line" installer on the alternate CD looks much like the Debian installer and does allow setup of a static IP connection. But I've had many problems with the 7.04 "alternate install" CDs -- and no problems with Debian. During my first install of 7.04, I had to use the 6.10 "alternate install" CD and then upgrade to 7.04 with the Update Manager. It worked, but it's not as easy as starting with 7.04 in the first place. This time I used the 7.04 live CD, and it did the job, but not without a few bumps along the way.

Deal-breaking errors in Xubuntu 7.04: The Xfce panels don't show up automatically. They must be added by the user to the list of startup applications. Even worse, you can't even launch an application until Xfce is tweaked so the right-mouse button brings up a menu. If you're a newbie who has never used Ubuntu (which seems to be free of all these problems), you'll probably give up before you even get started. While fixable, these configuration issues beat out anything Slackware 12 threw at me. In Slack you expect a lot of trouble but get very little. The initial experience is much better. That's not saying much for Xubuntu.

Debian also has a reputation for being difficult, though it isn't. And if Debian can get all of this right, why can't Xubuntu? Ubuntu/Xubuntu has a reputation as being user- and newbie-friendly; the project's developers need to focus on making the initial user experience as smooth as possible. They're not there yet. I hope for better things in 7.10.

And ... the first software update didn't go smoothly.

Multimedia support: I understand that Ubuntu and its derivatives don't support proprietary codecs, but sound and video files that are open play worse in Ubuntu/Xubuntu than they do in most other distros I've tried on the same hardware. Speed otherwise is not an issue, but when it comes to sound and video, Debian, Slackware and Vector do better. On newer hardware, this shouldn't be noticeable. But on my older PCs, it can be a problem.

Xfce-specific issue: Xfce doesn't include a graphical tool that can add and remove applications from the window manager's menus. The Xubuntu team should make this a priority.

Conclusions: I really like Xubuntu, despite its flaws. The bar is high for Ubuntu and anything related to it, and Xubuntu should be better. Major glitches in 7.04 that are present after install are somewhat easily solved by searching the Ubuntu forums, but such problems are major deal-breakers for new users.

For newbies, I recommend Xubuntu 6.06 LTS, which doesn't have these problems. In many ways, Xubuntu still has an edge over other Xfce-based distros, but potential users might prefer Debian, Slackware, Vector or ZenWalk. For new users, Debian-based distros (such as Xubuntu) are much easier to update and upgrade than those based on Slackware, although ZenWalk and Vector have made considerable improvements in this area. Potential users with performance issues may also find that another window manager makes for a better Linux experience. Fluxbox and JWM are two worth considering.

Final words: Xubuntu has the potential to be the leader -- in both popularity and user experience -- of Xfce distros. I'll be looking for improvements in the 7.10 and 8.04 LTS editions. But Vector and ZenWalk are nipping at Xubuntu's heels, and Debian is also worth considering.

Back to 6.06 LTS: I'll admit, my recollection of Xubuntu 6.06 LTS wasn't crystal clear. So I dug out the live CD from my stacks and booted it. I get the panels that are missing in 7.04, and the right-click application menus are also enabled. If Xubuntu could do this in 6.06, why not in 7.04? But on the positive side, the colors in 7.04 are much more vibrant, and everything looks a little bit better. While 6.06 looks like every other Xfce desktop, the subtle differences in design make 7.04 stand out. Even so, for the best out-of-the-box experience, 6.06 LTS has a lead on 7.04. I hope they don't screw up LTS for next year's 8.04. As I've said above, a patched Xubuntu would be hard to beat.

Back to Vector 5.8 Standard: Last time I installed Vector, I used my Puppy 2.14 live CD to partition the drive with Gparted. I started a new Vector install and decided to do it all with the Vector CD. It uses Cfdisk to do the partitioning, and there's not even a provision to do a standard partitioning job -- you have to get your hands dirty and create the partitions yourself. While experienced users may be comfortable with that, others may not. In this instance, Xubuntu wins -- you can accept the automatic partitioning or do just about anything you want.

Ilene is starting her college-teaching gig this week, and today she found out that the built-in projector in her classroom accepts VGA output only. So the composite video/S-video adapter I got a week ago at Fry's won't fly. They didn't have the VGA adapter, but the Apple store does, so I ventured out today and am at the Apple Store now, blogging on the new 20-inch iMac with 2 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo processor and SuperDrive. The whole thing costs $1199. For that price, it should have 2 GB of RAM, not 1 GB, but I quibble.

Safari starts almost instantly, the screen is set up to look really slick (all the colors are changed, and the thing looks definitely modern). I even like the aluminum finish.

Where Apple loses me -- and anybody who can type -- is with this lousy keyboard, with chicklit keys that are way too far apart. They screwed up the Macbook with these awful keyboards, and now they've taken the desktops down with it.

I can barely type with this thing. The keys aren't where they're supposed to be, there is very little "play" in the keys, no bounce when you depress them. It's just depressing. First the damn thing is way overpriced, then I can barely type a sentence without seven mistakes.

But the BIG TALK AT THE WESTFIELD TOPANGA APPLE STORE is the recent visit by Stevie Wonder. I bet he hated this lousy keyboard, too.

And p.s., Apple -- if you're going to do an aluminum PC and aluminum keyboard, what's with the WHITE PLASTIC mouse. You're messing with my feng shui.

I am a regular Mac user, and this is awful. For our iBook G4, we still use an old Apple Extended Keyboard with the Macally adapter that converts the old Apple keyboard ADB signal to USB. The Apple Extended remains one of the great keyboards of all time, and this is a travesty -- A TRAVESTY, I TELL YOU -- that makes the Macintosh worthless to writers of all types -- and all people who type. My fingers would ache after a day working on this thing.

Steve Jobs, maybe the collar on your black mock turtle is too tight, but I can't believe anybody signed off on this piece-of-crap keyboard.

File under "holy crap": Movable Type does NOT like Safari. I can't automatically insert a link, or do bold, italic or blockquoted material without hand-coding it. Can't they just give it up and load Firefox on these things?

The big Debian update is installing now on my main box (desktop install, with GNOME and Xfce) -- I'm pretty confidant all will work when it's all done.

It's so easy to do these updates in Debian (and everything derived from it, including Ubuntu). Even so, I'm committed to learning how to do this very thing in the Slackware environment. My Slack drive sits right next to the Debian drive (each a 14.4 GB IBM-made IDE drive), and my hacked thin client (Maxspeed Maxterm) has extra-long cables running outside the box that enable me to swap drives at will.

Actually, the Debian drive also includes a pup_save for Puppy Linux 2.16. The Slack drive is configured to triple-boot Slackware 12, Vector Standard 5.8 and Xubuntu 7.04. It's pretty full -- not all that much room for files, actually.

And I have a third drive with SimplyMepis 6.5 on it. On this VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz system with 256 MB of RAM, Mepis and its KDE desktop run so slow, it's distracting. KDE runs way better in Slackware, and I've been able to take care of all the configuration issues that have come up (thanks, LinuxQuestions.org!!). Once I write up the SimplyMepis review, that drive is fair game for something new.

(Screen shot of Puppy 2.16.1 with Open Office 2.2 -- notice the six OO icons in the upper-center of the desktop)

Everybody loves a new Puppy. And those behind the Puppy Linux distro are happy to oblige, releasing a new version every couple of months. For the user or reviewer, it's a lot to keep up with. Luckily, upgrading is as easy as popping in a new CD. Puppy excels as a live-CD Linux distribution, and for those who want to run it in a "frugal" install to a hard drive, upgrading is as easy as copying a few new files. For traditional hard drive installs (recommended for low RAM), you have to reinstall the whole system, but just like with Damn Small Linux, even that process is quick, easy and intuitive. Or you can choose not to upgrade and stay with the Puppy that works for you.

I liked what I saw in the Puppy 2.15CE "Community Edition," but felt it strayed too far from the traditional Puppy, and I was glad to be back in familiar territory with 2.16. I know that Puppy 2.17 is already out, but the crew behind Puppy is releasing new versions quicker than I can evaluate them.

So even though new Puppies are being born like puppies themselves, I'm a person of habit and familiarity, and I've pretty much stuck with Puppy 2.14 all this time.

After the IceWM window manager used in 2.15CE, Puppy 2.16 brought the distro back to its JWM roots, and the biggest thing 2.16 adds is the ability to encrypt the pup_save file (the single large file that holds the user's files and settings). This adds a measure of security to Puppy that wasn't previously available. As Carla Schroder of "Linux Cookbook" fame is fond of writing, s/he who has physical access to the machine owns the machine, and before encryption was added, the only way to keep pup_save secure was to store it on removable media and take it with you.

While working in Puppy 2.16, I placed my pup_save file on the same hard drive as Debian 4.0 Etch. When I originally partitioned the drive for Debian, I elected to have the /home directory on its own partition. And at the end of my first Puppy session, when creating the pup_save, I chose to locate it on the same partition. When I subsequently created a /home file for Puppy in which to save the SFS file for Open Office, Puppy somehow merged it with the /home file in Debian, so now my Puppy files show up in my Debian /home file -- which is more than OK by me because I can more easily navigate to everything I might need in the Debian portion of my system. I'm not sure if this would've happened if I had not created the /home folder (which I did since SFS files must go in /mnt/home, and I had /mnt but no /home), but so far it's working out great. Later I learned that you're not supposed to create /home. Either it's there and you can use it, or you don't need it. Despite my error, everything worked anyway,

But it's not all good in Puppy 2.16. The Gparted partition manager, the program that makes Puppy Linux so impressive as a live CD, is somewhat broken in 2.16. It scans for drives, but instead of finding them in a minute or so, takes much longer. For awhile I thought that it never found them, but I left Gparted running on my second desktop and returned sometime later to find all my partitions waving hello and waiting to be tinkered with. I don't know what is causing the slowdown, but I suspect it's the updated version of Gparted in this version of Puppy, and I hope the problem is addresses in subsequent releases of the distro.

Until then, I'm happy to keep the Puppy 2.14 CD handy for when a partitioning job arises and I don't have a full 15 minutes to wait for the partitions to show up in Gparted.

Visually, Puppy 2.16 does move the distro forward. Scroll bars and other little desktop features look slightly different (perhaps a tweak to JWM). 2.16 does look more modern and finished -- perhaps a concession to all the eye candy of 2.15CE.

For those unfamiliar with Puppy, one of its biggest features is that it is designed primarily to be run as a live CD, in many cases loading entirely into RAM (if you've got enough) and running extremely fast. With enough memory, you can even remove the CD during the computing session in order to burn a music or data CD, or to rip music or date from a disc. And yes, Puppy includes all the software to do these things.

One thing Puppy remains is robust. It's as solid as it was during my monthlong Thin Puppy Torture Test, during which Puppy 2.14 ran without a hard drive or storage of any kind besides RAM.

New in 2.16

-- Pmount replaces the superior MUT as the default mounting tool for all kinds of drives (hard disk, floppy, CD and flash). Thankfully both remain in the Puppy menus.

-- There's a new RAM-based filesystem designed, as in past Pups, to minimize writes to the disk, especially to flash drives, extending their lives indefinitely. I'm not qualified to go into the specifics of the filesystem, but I'm happy to know that the Puppy people are working to improve the very basis of the system.

-- As mentioned before, toolbars and windows look more modern. But JWM is still the window manager, and the great ROX Filer remains the file manager. Once you experience the speed of ROX on an older system, it's hard to even wait for Thunar to do its thing.

-- New since Puppy 2.15, and continuing in 2.16, is the use of SFS-based applications -- squash files that make it much easier to install large programs such as OpenOffice. Before the SFS packages appeared, I always had trouble installing bigger applications with the PET and DotPup packaging systems. I never seemed to have enough memory. Problem solved.

Puppy vs. Damn Small Linux

While I love Damn Small Linux and in a number of ways prefer it, Puppy wins in many key areas. It has many applications I need. Puppy also is built on some of the best configuration utilities of any Linux distribution I've used.

First of all, I need a photo-editing program that re-sizes JPGs, and mtPaint is the lightest, best Linux app I know of that can do the job. DSL's Xpaint doesn't come close. (MtPaint is also part of Vector Linux and is available in packages for Debian-, RPM- and Slackware-based distros).

For an instant-messaging client, Puppy's GAIM (now called Pidgin in its latest version) works with AOL's AIM system and Yahoo Messenger, as well as IRC. DSL's NAIM works on AOL only, I believe.

I prefer DSL's default mail client, Sylpheed, over Puppy's SeaMonkey. But I've already installed the Sylpheed PET package in Puppy, so I can use the mail program of my choice.

DSL offers my preferred console text editor, Nano. I have yet to find Nano for Puppy. An older version of Puppy -- One-Bone Puppy (hard to find but worth burning a CD of) does include vi (as does DSL), and I'd like to see either better console support in Puppy included in the base distro or easily added in bulk as an SFS file or with PET packages. For me, that would include fetchmail, procmail, mutt, msmtp, Midnight Commander, Lynx and Elinks, Nano, Vim and Emacs. I know at least a few of them are available for Puppy, but I'd really like it to be easier to run Puppy from the command line.

Still, I understand that Puppy is meant to be, well, Puppy-like, usually equipped with a single program for every task, sometimes up to three, but not 30. And I've discovered many fine apps in Puppy and DSL that I would've otherwise never known about.

One of the things I noticed in Puppy 2.15CE but can't yet find in 2.16 is the ability to easily change which app is launched by the system's generic desktop icons -- say having Sylpheed instead of SeaMonkey launch when the "e-mail" icon is clicked. But for the most part, I'm happy with Puppy's app choices, so this is far from a big issue with me.

The single best thing about Puppy 2.16 -- and the best reason to upgrade -- is the ability to encrypt the pup_save file that holds all your data in Puppy. In the process, this feature adds a kind of password protection that was lacking in the Puppy environment. It's not the same as separate Unix-style accounts (you still run as root), but it does offer some measure of security and allows for multiple users on a single system. There are provisions for normal, strong or no encryption, and with either choice, multiple pup_save files can be created and chosen from during booting.

To bypass all current pup_save files and create a new one, at the boot prompt, type:

puppy pfix=ram

and create the new pup_save when shutting down or rebooting.

The right tool for the job

Throughout the time I've been using Puppy and Damn Small Linux, I learned the value of using the appropriate apps for the given computing environment. This means paying attention to everything from hardware and the choice of window manager to an awareness of shared libraries and the user's needs from the platform.

That means AbiWord as the word processor in Puppy, Ted in DSL.

But sometimes you need the full power of, say, OpenOffice. As previously mentioned, installing large applications via the established PET package and Dotpup methods is often difficult. The filesystem in Puppy is prone to running out of space during the install.

But with an SFS squash file, installation of large programs goes much more smoothly. I downloaded the OpenOffice 2.2 SFS file into /mnt/home (just put it in /mnt if there is no /mnt/home in your Puppy system). After a reboot, a dialog box opens and asks which SFS files you'd like to load -- up to three at any given time.

Once you have successfully placed the SFS file in the proper directory and Puppy acknowledges its presence, upon the next boot, the entire up-to-date OpenOffice suite (word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation program and some kind of mathematical-equation generator) is there -- in the menus and as icons on the desktop.

Whether or not a suite the size of OpenOffice is in keeping with the Puppy ethos is debatable, but if you need what OpenOffice offers (and for me that's a word processor with way more features than the still-great AbiWord), Puppy can accommodate you.

Even so, OpenOfice runs surprisingly well under Puppy, loading much faster than in Ubuntu, for instance.

Word processor vs. text editor

When it comes to the many word processors that don't make it easy to use typographical (or "smart") quotes and em (long) dashes, I find it hard to see what they offer over a plain text editor. (I know: bold, italic, margin control ...) Since beginning this review, I've been using AbiWord more than any other program for writing, and it handles most of what I'm doing on the Linux, Mac and Windows platforms (and yes, I use all three on a very regular basis).

Certainly when it comes to items for Web publication, HTML coding takes care of all formatting, and "straight" quotation marks are perfectly OK, there's no need for a word processor, and the only thing better than a bare-bones text editor is one that automates as much of the HTML coding process as possible without adding lots of extraneous code. This is where the HTML-generating Composor portion of Puppy's SeaMonkey suite fails me.

I haven't had much success, either, with the "save to HTML" options in OpenOffice Write or AbiWord. But to be honest, I haven't spent much time trying to make them work in my situation. What I need to do is be able to copy and past from the document I'm working on and have the HTML come with it. In these apps, usually the text itself is all I get, and to bring the HTML along with it, I need to open a text editor and delete the HTML I don't need.

And if what I need is a text editor, why not just use one in the first place?

Actually -- and this is getting more off-track -- the "save as HTML" option in the online Google Docs program is a pretty good way to generate HTML. It makes up for the Google program's shortcomings when it comes to creating docs for any medium besides the Web.

So the short answer is: I wish AbiWord was better, and it's nice to have OpenOffice, even though it's slow to load (about half a minute compared to Abi's 5 to 8 seconds).

Have I mentioned MTpaint? It's the best lightweight image editor in the Linux world, loading in 3 to 5 seconds (as opposed to the GIMP's 60-second load time). MTpaint uses far fewer resources yet manages to do almost everything I need when it comes to cropping and sizing images for Web publication. Not only do I use it in Puppy, but I grab the Debian package of MTpaint for all my Ubuntu and Debian installs. It's that good.

Vector Linux 5.8 Standard also includes MTpaint -- so there's a Slackware package out there, too. MTpaint is another example of an application appropriate for the system it's running on and the tasks it helps the user perform.

On the Internet

For me, Web browsing, e-mail and FTP are a large part of what I do in any OS. Puppy introduced me, way back in version 2.13, to SeaMonkey, the Mozilla Internet suite modeled after the old Netscape Communicator. SeaMonkey includes a Web browser, e-mail client and HTML editor, all in a single application.

I find Web browsing in SeaMonkey almost identical to using Firefox, and Puppy always has Flash enabled. One thing I enjoy about SeaMonkey is its ability to use Internet search engine by typing a query in the main URL box and clicking on "search," instead of hitting Return. Internet Explorer 6 offers the same feature. (Firefox uses separate boxes for URLs and search.) And now that I have IE6 configured, like Puppy, to use Google as my default search engine, I use the feature many times per day.

SeaMonkey's mail program doesn't excite me as much on my low-spec hardware. I prefer the added speed of Sylpheed, which I easily installed in Puppy with a PET package. But for more modern systems, SeaMonkey's mail client is as good as Thunderbird.

There's also Dillo, the very-low-spec Web browser that loads in 2 to 5 seconds on any Linux box. For quick Web browsing on pages that don't rely on Flash, Java and heavy CSS, Dillo's speed can't be beat.

Puppy also includes a text-based browser, but I prefer Lynx and Elinks -- both available as easy-to-install PET packages.

More than one way to run Puppy

Recently I've had the opportunity to run Puppy as a live CD, as a "frugal" install (in which the three main Puppy files are copied to the hard drive, where they become a full Linux filesystem upon booting) and with the "standard" install (not surprisingly like a traditional install of GNU/Linux).

The latter method, while not as easily upgradable as the first two, did allow me to comfortable run Puppy in 64 MB of RAM. (As always, a Linux swap file outside of your main hard-drive partition can be your best friend.) While I had trouble in the past running Puppy in 128 MB with no swap (or pup_save or any hard drive at all), with either a swap file or a large pup_save file, the distro is quite comfortable in 64 MB of RAM. It's also not bad with 233 MHz of CPU, although Damn Small Linux is just that much better tuned to such low power -- and that has as much to do with the apps chosen for the two distros as it does with any underlying code, scripts or tools.

And while most modern Linux systems try to autoconfigure as much as possible (I've yet to find a distro that won't recognize my Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card), Puppy is -- hands down -- the best distro for configuring what the system doesn't catch at boot.

The Puppy "Wizards" for networking (wired and wireless), printing, sounds, graphics and modems are exclusive to the platform, and they just plain work. And since for most users, getting their hardware working is more than half the battle, Pupy stands very high in the top tier of distros I've tried.

Good dog, bad dog

Places where I do quibble with Puppy include the version of Gparted that came with 2.16. The 15-minute wait to read partitions needs to be addressed in future releases, and I very much hope it will be. And I've never had much luck with the Gxine media player. I much prefer XMMS (included in Damn Small Linux). But Puppy's command-line Madplayer for MP3s works flawlessly on my aging systems, and for that I am thankful.

Using both Puppy and Damn Small Linux has inspired me to install barebones Debian systems on a couple of PCs. First I do the "standard" install, then I add X, the Fluxbox window manager and my favorite apps (many of which are part of Puppy and DSL) to replicate the small-distro look and feel but with the stability and security of Debian 4.0 Etch and -- most of all -- the powerful utility apt to manage applications and the system itself.

But there's still more polish and expertise in Puppy (and DSL, for that matter) than I can bring to my own Debian build, and for that reason I recommend Puppy 2.16, especially as a live CD that can be used on a daily basis, even on a PC with no other Linux distro installed, but also with current Linux boxes. As I've said, for computers with extremely low specs (like my 233 MHz CPU, 64 MB RAM, 3 GB hard-drive laptop), a traditional Puppy install can turn an olde system into an up-to-date workhorse and keep it productive for years to come.

And Puppy 2.16's optional encryption of the pup_save file (a feature that Knoppix has had for years, I understand) adds a welcome measure of security that makes it perfect to use in a workplace environment where many others have access to your PC. The protection is especially important for laptops, which are lost or stolen all too often. At least the casual thief won't be able to steal your data, too.

I'm not sure what the memory cutoff is for running Puppy exclusively in RAM -- it might be 256 MB, maybe 512, but the system tends to access the disc as little as possible, making all the hardware appear to be faster that it is when running standard distros.

Many critize Puppy for having the user run as root -- the so-called "super user." Puppy experts say that the nature of the live CD and the use of pup_save files make it OK to run without traditional user files. I'm not technically astute enough to question this claim, but partisans of Damn Small Linux say that their distro's reliance on a user account (with the option of adding multiple users) is safer and better.

I have a pup_save file stored on my main Debian box, my Ubuntu box and my Windows box. I use the Puppy CD on just about every install I do to partition the drive, and I know that I can get my work done with Puppy's apps on just about any PC. And with the technical advances in version 2.16, Puppy is indeed better than ever -- and well worth having as a live CD in your GNU/Linux arsenal.

---------------------------------------------------------

Puppy versions I've used

Puppies 2.13, 2.14, 2.15CE, 2.16, One-Bone Puppy

One-Bone Puppy?

After much Googling, I managed to download and burn a disc for One-Bone Puppy. It boots to a command line and includes Elinks for browsing, Vi for text editing and Midnight Commander as a file manager. I never managed to get my static IP address configured, but I'm sure I could do it. What separates it from other live CDs that feature a command-line-only environment (what? there are others?) is the use of a pup_save to retain settings from one boot to the next.

Puppy I'm using right now and why

I use Puppy 2.14 about half the time because I need to have a well-working Gparted. However, I am using 2.16 more and more because a) I like the encrypted pup_save and b) I like the option of using OpenOffice.

Rich Text Format vs. .doc

Some time ago, a developer for KOffice told me that when AbiWord saves a .doc file, it's really saving it in Rich Text Format instead of true Word .doc format. I confirmed this when a .doc file I created in AbiWord opened in Rich Text Format in Word for OSX. The question is whether or not this matters. MS Word will always open RTF documents, and Abiword, at least, will just about always open Word .doc documents. At least the less-complex ones, anyway. So ... if AbiWord is really just creating RTF documents with .doc extensions, then the Ted word processor -- which uses RTF exclusively -- is more than worth looking into.

As mentioned above, Ted comes standard with Damn Small Linux and is a PET package in Puppy. One problem: I can't print from Ted in Puppy. I can print from everything else, just not Ted.

Puppy 2.17 reviewed

A site called ReviLinux did a nice, short review of Puppy 2.17, and the reviewer uses an aged laptop similar to (but better than) my Compaq.

What the future holds for Puppy

Barry Kauler reveals future plans for Puppy Linux on the developer's blog.

Since this blog has a category called "The $15 Laptop," you know the following:

a) I love keeping old hardware running
and b) I'm cheap.

The $15 Laptop itself -- a Compaq Armada 7770dmt with 233 MHz processor, 64 MB of RAM, an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver wireless card and a 3 GB hard drive running Debian Etch -- has been a trouper. I did the standard install of Debian and used apt to add X and Fluxbox. It's been great for Web browsing with IceWeasel (nee Firefox), Dillo, Lynx and Elinks. I handle mail with Sylpheed. I use AbiWord, Leafpad and Nano for writing.

Every time I boot the $15 Laptop, I want to party like it's 1999, because that's the year it reverts to each and every time. I could set the system clock at the command line every session, but who wants to do that? I'd replace the battery, if I only knew how. I'd be $10 poorer, too. But there's really no need: Enter the Network Time Protocol.

The Debian Admin site had all the info:

apt-get install ntpdate

That's it. Now my Debian-equipped laptop grabs the time over the Internet every time I boot, and I can stop thinking about where in the hell the CMOS battery even is, let alone how many screws I'd have to remove to get to it.

P.S. I bet ntpdate is a great thing to have even if you're CMOS battery is just fine.

Seen via LXer and written by Dave Gutteridge for the Tokyo Linux Users Group, Windows Is Free gets to the heart of the problem:

The fact is that there's a distortion in the idea that Linux can't be given away. There's something wrong in the idea the price difference between Windows and Linux is representative of the actual quality difference. There's an elephant in the room that no one is talking about.

Windows is free.

I'm not talking about the fact that Windows comes pre-installed in most computers, with its price hidden in the cost of the hardware. That contributes to the idea of Windows being free, but that's not the elephant in the room.

"The elephant in the room that no one is talking about is cracked software." The elephant in the room that no one is talking about is cracked software.

People treat Windows as being free not because they didn't have to buy the copy that came with their computer. People think of Windows as free because when they need a copy, they can get it from a guy they know. Someone has a copy they can just burn to a CD for you.

For me, this is a prime motivator steering me toward free GNU/Linux and applications like OpenOffice, AbiWord, the GIMP, Thunderbird and others.

I don't want to steal. But I don't want to pay, either. Especially for the stuff that Microsoft, Adobe and others are selling and at the prices they're asking. Hell -- a copy of Microsoft Works, which includes an ancient copy of Word, is $99 at Target. MS is about to release a version of Works for free, but you can bet that Word will not be included.

Just about everyone I work with thinks Photoshop, at $650 per copy, runs rings around the GIMP, which is free. For what they're doing -- and for what MOST users need to do -- the GIMP does an excellent job. And for the simplest of tasks, IrfanView in Windows and mtPaint in Linux load about 20 times quicker and do the job just as well.

Yesterday, a co-worker tried to use an old, legit copy of Photoshop to size some images, and it wouldn't open half of the JPGs we threw at it. The GIMP did them all. And upgrades of free software remain just that -- free.

As the article describes, people think that since their computer came with Windows, they have a lifelong license to use any future version without paying for it. I've done it. Now I'd rather not -- and I have an alternative, so I don't.

And just because it's easy to exchange pirated discs of MS Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and the like, the whole thing makes me feel more than a little squirrely. And if I'm not comfortable shelling out what would amount to thousands (and hundreds more every year for "upgrades") just to make my PC do what I want, why should businesses be any more comfortable with it?

And what if that $200 upgrade of Windows Vista runs like crap on my current hardware? Do I get my money back from MS? If SimplyMepis is too sluggish, I can just install Debian or Slackware over it. I can buy more memory if KDE isn't running so well, or I can use XFCE or Fluxbox to make things work on an old computer that won't run XP or Vista and would never load a new version of Photoshop.

One of the great, liberating things that comes with using GNU/Linux and other free, open-source software is the moral high ground. I don't think what Microsoft is doing is right -- abandoning old products so we'll all buy new ones every other year or so. Most respond by using pirated software, but it's better to reject the Microsoft model outright and use free, open-source applications as much as you can.

Don't steal from Microsoft, Adobe and others just because you don't like the way they do business. Take the other road.

Yes, there's a kid out there named @:

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While the "@" simple is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers.

(Story from Reuters.)

Maybe tonight, according to Ars Technica's Infinite Loop:

When we received our first iPhone bill, we were surprised both by how large it was and the reaction the story received. Yes, we know you can call AT&T or go online and cancel the paper billing or remove the itemized data listings, but that didn't help all the iPhone users who received their first box of papers a month after the iPhone's release.

By "large," they mean number of pages:

One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too. What gives?

The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you—well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as "Data Transfer." The Type of file? "Data." My total charge? $0.00.

...

ABC News is hoping to do a story on-air tonight about the iPhone bill issue, and Charlie Gibson wants to hold up an especially egregious example of these monstrosities.

They're looking for New Yorkers, so if you've got a story, go to the Ars site and do tell.

Yes, you can play Pong on the iPhone. Seen on O'Reilly via Jonathan Saggau (go to the link to see the code, check back for a download link.

I really wanted to install ZenWalk 4.6.1, but it was not to be. Add it to the list of distros that won't boot on my test machine, the VIA C3 1 GHz thin client. I don't quite understand it, because Slackware 12 boots (with the huge.s kernel), as does Vector Linux 5.8. So I shrunk my Slackware partition just enough to squeeze Vector Standard on there again.

One thing I can say about Vector, I like its install. Everything was very clear in the menus, the hardware detection and configuration were flawless, and I had a working system on my partition pretty quick.

Since on this drive I already had Xubuntu/Ubuntu and Slackware booting from GRUB on separate partitions, I didn't want to change to LILO for my bootloader. During my last Vector install, LILO didn't pick up my Ubuntu partition, and I know nothing about the bootloader but can generally fake my way through a GRUB configuration. So I skipped that part of the Vector install, did a bit of Googling and found out how to get the new distro onto /boot/grub/menu.lst in Ubuntu.

The GRUB info for Vector wasn't easy to find -- and I didn't figure it out from the Vector site. Instead, a forum for Arch Linux provided me with the GRUB lines I needed.

I like Vector. It looks nice, there's a good mix of software, but again, I didn't detect any speed improvements over either Slackware or Xubuntu. I don't exactly have a lot of room to play with, having three distros on a 14.4 GB hard drive, so huge downloads of ISOs and the like are pretty much out of the question until I clear out one of the partitions.

There was one glitch: Vector didn't recognize my troublesome USB flash drive. It has an advertising CD image on it, and my Mac won't recognize it either. Debian, Ubuntu and Puppy Linux have no problem with it, but in Slack-based distros, I either get the fake CD-ROM part (which usually mounts as sr0) and not the flash portion (sda). Or I get nothing at all.

I really wanted to run ZenWalk, but Vector beat it out by actually booting. Before the install, I used the trusty Puppy 2.14 live CD to repartition the drive. I'm always amazed by the sheer speed of Puppy's JWM desktop, ROX filer and all-RAM way of running.

My rambling post from yesterday got a comment from Wolfgang of The Debian User, saying it was obvious which distro I should be using. He didn't mean just Debian, but other distros derived from it as well. My enthusiasm for Xubuntu was dampened by probably my fourth unrecoverable crash in two days while running Synaptic. Ctrl-alt-backspace wouldn't kill X. Ctrl-alt-delete wouldn't reboot either. I had to hard-boot with the power switch). What gives? It's Xubuntu 7.04. Maybe I need to get back to 6.06 LTS?. I also had a similar crash in Slackware when switching between tabs in Konqueror. Is it the motherboard? The hard drive? Maybe the OS itself?

So I powered down and connected my Debian 4.0 drive. All that's on it is Debian and a pup_save file for Puppy. I ran Synaptic for some updates, and it worked perfectly. So it's not the hardware (but maybe the hard drive).

For some reason, AbiWord was broken in Debian. Synaptic said it was there, but Abi would load from the menu or a terminal window. So at the terminal I did apt-get install abiword. Apt didn't think it was there, so it downloaded and installed it. Now Abi works. Go figure.

I also installed the Xfce desktop and a bunch of related Xfce stuff. Xfce works great in Debian. However, all the little eye-candy things that I also installed -- CPU frequency monitor, weather monitor, etc. -- didn't show up. I'm not well-versed (or versed at all) in modifying Xfce, so I'll have to investigate that later.

It's time to do a month-long Debian test. All I have to do is clear the Puppy, SimplyMepis and Slackware reviews off my plate, plus my more-general series of technology tutorials for new college students ... and I'm on vacation next week.

And I still haven't cracked open the powerless Gateway Solo 1450 laptop and see if I can solder it back to life. I should at least crack the memory door open and see what's in there. A 512 MB SO-DIMM would probably be enough motivation for me to get the jewelers screwdrivers out.

Everybody's always worrying that using flash memory instead of traditional magenetic hard-disk drives will mean quick burnout of the flash devices, which supposedly can accept a limited number of writes before they give up the ghost.

Well, this article from StorageSearch.com seems to say that we have less to worry about that we think, and that solid-state flash memory is ready for whatever our PCs can throw at it.

I'll spare you the details, but the writer says that today's "SSD's," or solid-state devices, i.e. flash memory, will last at least 51 years to more than 85 years under current loads.

I'll be expecting a totally flash-based Mac notebook any day now. Really.

One of the most helpful Linux sites on the Web is How to Forge, which is constantly coming out with detailed tutorials on how to set up the ultimate desktop, server, etc., with a number of distros. Particularly when it comes to Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and Suse, there's a lot to be learned from How to Forge.

I wish they'd pay some attention to Slackware. I've had a lot of success with the Slackware portion of LinuxQuestions.org, the entire site being one of the other great sources for help with just about every distro, but I need something both up-to-date and more complete when it comes to getting Slackware just the way I want it.

It's definitely time to look around for all the Slackware blogs. The truth is out there ...

In the "if it ain't broke, then why the hell are you fixing it?" department, maybe I should refocus my energies on Debian and not worry so much about Fedora/Red Hat. But there's something about Fedora/RHEL that is calling to me. I did get the package manager working in Fedora on the night I ran the live CD in my Dell 3 GHz box, and I found out how to add Open Office but didn't have time to actually do it.

At the risk of repeating myself, after hearing so many horror stories about how hard it is to install and maintain Debian, I've found it to be extremely easy and trouble-free. It's no harder than Ubuntu, although there's a simplicity to a standard Ubuntu install that isn't there with Debian, meaning there is less stuff installed with Ubuntu, more with Debian (although between the two there's probably nothing that isn't available as far as apps go). For a corporate office environment, less is probably better -- but in a big company, there would probably be a custom spin on a distro to install just the software that is needed and no more.

(Two and a half weeks pass ...)

Hankering to try new distros, I spent plenty of time shoving BSD and Linux discs into the text box (the often-mentioned VIA C3-based thin client lashed to a hard drive and CD-RW), and spent a bit of time with SimplyMepis (more forthcoming), Slackware, briefly with Vector, and more than I would've thought with Xubuntu/Ubuntu 7.04.

On my 1 GHz/256 MB RAM system, the KDE desktop in Mepis 6.5 is way too sluggish. Implementation of KDE is fairly good, I did appreciate the Mepis setup tools, the fact that Flash was preinstalled, and the ability to play MP3s right out of the box. I wasn't so happy with having OpenOffice installed instead of KOffice -- I'd rather have both, actually, and I really wished that Mepis shipped with more than KDE for a window manager. Yes, I know I can try AntiX, and I just might, but it's nice that Slackware includes KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox and a few more in the basic install. I did enjoy Mepis' eye candy -- the KWeather icon that I could set to show my local weather, plus a whole bunch of other stuff.

KDE in Mepis didn't come preconfigured for multiple desktops, something I've grown to find essential, but it was easy enough to add them and also add the icon for choosing between them to the panel.

But I was uneasy in Mepis' KDE, so I moved on to Slackware, which has a terrific implementation of KDE and a great mix of programs. The Slackware KDE desktop was much faster, and while getting everything working in Slack requires getting one's hands a little dirty (again, more later), I did pretty much get the results I wanted. While Slack isn't aimed at the novice user, you don't have to be some kind of super Linux genius, either, to make it work.

Slack defaults to a very safe setup. You can't mount any other drives or even burn CDs until you make a few adjustments. In my mind, it makes Slack more ready for the enterprise desktop than many more popular distros -- it's set up from the beginning in such a way as not to be easily f'd up. But most people who run Linux want to mount CDs and flash drives, burn ISOs and the like. And I've been able to do all that with Slackware, learning a bit in the process.

All of this led me to a new appreciation for Ubuntu (and the Xubuntu desktop as well). The distro might not ship with the ability to play MP3s, and you need to add Flash to Firefox, should you want it, but the package-management that comes from Debian, along with the Ubuntu repositories, the huge and usually helpful Ubuntu community -- and the distro handling USB devices, multiple partitions, bootloader configuration and so much more very well -- make me forgive it not being as swift as Debian or Slackware. I did a bit of testing and did determine that most programs run faster under Xfce than they do in GNOME (not a revelation, I know) even though I don't see all that much difference in the desktop speed itself.

Along the way, I thought I had a problem with Synaptic in Xubuntu when it crashed the system a couple of times (screen frozen, drive chunking away, no ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-delete working), but when the same problem happened when switching between Konqueror windows in Slackware, I figured the problem was with the box more than the OS. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying being in the KDE environment of Slackware, and I haven't booted into Debian 4.0 in some time (I have them on separate hard drives, easily swapped out). I need to repartition the Xubuntu/Slackware drive and try to make room for one more distro -- ZenWalk, which I've been anxious to try. Having three Xfce-equipped distros on one drive should really tell me a lot. I'd love for ZenWalk to really grow on me -- we'll see. So far I like what I see in the ZenWalk forums -- always a good sign when evaluating a distro. I also need to spend more time in Slack's Xfce and Fluxbox environments.

And I haven't had my drive with the full Debian desktop hooked up in weeks. I have to confess that part of the reason I run Ubuntu so much is that for the purposes of writing this blog, its popularity is just so massive, I feel that I can't ignore it (or you might say that it's a shameless ploy to get more readers). But as I say somewhere in this ramble, there are many distros out there that make my proverbial heart grow fonder for the many comforts of Ubuntu.

Still, it's getting to the time in my distro-hopping life when I should settle down with only a couple of different setups, max. I still want to run Puppy and Damn Small Linux, but I need to get some stability in my Linux life and really get to know a single system. My $15 laptop is still running Debian with Fluxbox, and that's working about as well as I can expect, if not a little bit better. I'm reluctant to bump up the RAM from the current 64 MB to the max of 144 MB only because I have another laptop, a Gateway Solo 1450 given to me because the power plug broke and it doesn't work.

I removed about 15 screws from the Gateway -- all that I could see, but I still couldn't crack the case. I've already got a couple of new power plugs to solder to the circuit board, and I have a 30 GB drive ready to install (I had to pull the original drive and give it to the person who gave me the laptop -- a small price, to be sure, for a free computer). I just haven't had time lately to get back in there and try to take the Gateway apart without destroying it in the process. The idea of having a 1.2 GHz processor AND 1 GB of RAM may not be earth-shattering, but it could really allow me to run GNOME or KDE with much more comfort (and hopefully Xfce with a whole lot of said comfort). Still, I guess I'll have to look for a 3 GHz box (or a Core Duo) that isn't owned by the company.

And if sticking to a single distro (or two) is where I'm headed, Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu are all good candidates, as they allow for many desktop environments and a lot of flexibility for my very divergent hardware. And I have to say that I've been thinking lately about getting a "real" computer to run Linux on. I'd feel a lot better about Linux on the desktop with a whole lot of CPU and RAM, plus a super-fast front-side bus to make it all flow.

On another note, I've been using the GIMP intensively to cut images for the LA.com Web site, on which I've been doing a lot of work lately. About half the people I work with have heard of the GIMP and have it installed, but their opinion of it isn't very high. Mostly I chalk that up to their own familiarity with Photoshop and lack of same for the GIMP. It is different. But with the help of one of these GIMP doubters, I was able to figure out how to easily crop an image to exact pixel-by-pixel specs (something I've never needed to do before, width being king over depth in my design consciousness). But it's nice to spend much of my work day in free, open-source apps on Windows and Linux platforms -- mostly the GIMP and AbiWord (along with a passel of text editors, from EditPad Lite on Windows to Mousepad and KWrite in Linux).

And as regular readers might've noticed, I haven't been posting nearly as often -- it's been busy at the Daily News, for all of us, with the new (to me, at least) Web site, the entire print section undergoing a massive redesign, plus all my posting to the New York Times News Service wire.

But my long-gestating Puppy 2.16 review is coming, as will be a bit more on SimplyMepis and Slackware, plus hopefully something on ZenWalk if I can clear some space on one of my three hard drives.

If you made it this far in the rambling rant, you get a gold star, to be sure.

Leopard won't be here until October, but get ready for Mac OS 10.4.11 as a software update a month from now, Ars Technica reports. You can't kill a Tiger, I guess.

It's no secret that Apple's OS X is based on BSD -- the true descendant of the original Unix. But it's hard to get the power to call yourself "Unix," a distinction that Apple has just earned.

From Ars Technica:

The fact that Apple can use the UNIX name more freely is cool, but the certification will have a far bigger impact on enterprise customers. Any software written for the SUS specification is easily portable to a UNIX 03 operating system, meaning that enterprise customers who need a "real" UNIX for their applications can now use Leopard servers if they so desire. Leopard's certification also gives developers another option for a development platforms, which could translate into some extra Mac sales.