December 2007 Archives

After reading Wolfgang's blog entry on how easy it is to upgrade a Debian installation (and I recommend The Debian User to any and all Debian and Ubuntu users), I decided to do it myself.

I have a testing hard drive (one of three I can easily swap in and out of my Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client) that began as a Debian Etch Xfce box and recently got all GNOME added. Now I'm doing the easy upgrade from Etch (stable) to Lenny (testing).

As Wolfgang describes, it's easy.

As root (I opened a root terminal), go into /etc/apt/sources.list and change all Etch references to Lenny. Then do:

# apt-get update

# apt-get dist-upgrade

And now I'm watching (with about half an eye) all the newish apps coming onto the system (OpenOffice 2.2.1 to replace 2.0 is coming in now).

They say that Ubuntu is more akin to Debian unstable (Sid) than testing (Lenny), which makes Etch an ultra-stable choice. But I'll give Lenny a spin. This drive is set up as a single-boot system with a separate /home partition, so a full replacement of the OS can be done at any time without needing to replace any files I have in that partition (currently nothing I don't have backed up elsewhere).

Note on the process: I'm doing this on a non-critical drive in a non-critical box. I'm a lot more careful with a system that I depend on daily. As always, backing up user data is the first thing you should be doing before any major upgrade.

A couple hours later: The Lenny upgrade is finished. And the box is rebooting now -- the new kernel is booting fine. Everything's a bit smaller -- menus, icons -- in both GNOME and Xfce (the same thing happened to me with Xubuntu 7.10). It looks more like Slackware does on this box. I'll have to see how I like it. I don't know if the resolution is higher than I'm used to ... or all the desktop fonts are smaller.

Font fix for Etch-to-Lenny upgrade:

Here's how I got my GNOME desktop looking like it "used to," meaning with fonts big enough for my 1024 x 768 screen resolution. Under System -- Preferences -- Appearance, click on Fonts and change everything from 10 to 12. That's it.

I had to do it all over again in Xfce. In the menu, go to Settings -- Desktop Settings. then click on the Behavior tab. Uncheck "Use system font size." For Custom font size, type in 12. That takes care of the desktop, but not the menu and applications. For that, go to Settings -- User Interface Settings and change the font from Sans 9 to Sans 12. And to complete the job, go to Settings -- Window Manager Settings and change the font from Sans Bold 9 to Sans Bold 12. Both of these settings can also be accessed from the Xfce Settings Manager.

Looking back on this install ... and the one after it: It's worth mentioning here that I didn't have this font-size problem the next day when I installed Lenny on the $0 Laptop, the Gateway Solo 1450. That computer only has GNOME (it's a standard Debian install), and all fonts looked fine in Lenny. And I've mentioned before that the way fonts are handled in the Web browsers in Debian causes them to look better on LCD screens than CRTs, hence everything is better on a laptop (and there are ways to fix the fonts for CRTs, although to tell you the truth, I've gotten used to them, so I no longer do this fix).

But there's another problem: I've been adding software (including digiKam, which brought a lot of libraries along with it), and now I'm just about out of room in my / partition. I'll see if I can shrink the /home partition and then expand /. I'm using my go-to live CD for this, Parted Magic. So far it let me shrink the /home partition at the end of the drive and move the swap partition (which for some reason is between the two).

I'm waiting for Parted Magic to do its thing before I try to increase the size of the root partition.

Brief pause to ponder: Gparted is such a great tool -- another example of the power of free, open-source software. I never owned a proprietary disk-partioning program -- and I'll never have to buy one.

How much disk space for / ? Debian at least tells you how much space to allocate for your root partition. The recommendation is 5 GB for a desktop system. I'd say that's about right. I only had 4 GB, and I was running out of space. Of course, that's with Xfce and GNOME. It depends, of course, on how much additional software you want to pack into Debian. I guess it depends on the size of your drive. I'm working with 14.4 GB drives. Better to have something bigger and have a lot of extra space; 10 GB seems like a nice round number.

Back to partitioning: I was able to shrink the /home partition and move the swap partition. Both of those were in an extended partition, so then I shrunk that. Now I'm growing the root partition that starts at the front of the drive. We'll see it Debian Lenny boots when this is all done.

As it stands, I now have a 7.12 GB root partition, a 486 MB swap partition and a 5.85 GB /home partition. That leaves plenty of room for adding software and enough room for data as well.

But will Debian boot?

Yes, it did.

That was the most radical repartitioning I've ever done to a drive on which I actually kept the current operating system intact.

It's "so far, so good" with Debian Lenny. Once again, it just works. Thanks to all who work on the Debian project as well as all the many pieces that go into it.

Best thing about Lenny: I really like GNOME 2.20. Everything looks cleaner. Applications seem quicker, especially Ephiphany (which I find myself using quite a bit when I'm in Debian).

Next job: Upgrading from Etch to Lenny on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) and $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt).

The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is, in my opinion, the crowning achievement of free, open-source software. But figuring out what Debian is all about and what's happening in every inch of the Debian universe is difficult.

I've always wondered how long a Debian release will be supported with security updates and bug fixes. I don't know if there's even a set length of time that a Stable version of Debian will be supported. The current Stable edition -- Etch -- received its "stable" designation in April of this year. And Debian has no set release schedule, preferring to go by the "it's ready when it's ready" dictum. I'm more than OK with that.

I assumed that once a release is declared stable, the old stable release fades into unsupported oblivion.

Not so.

I just got word on Distrowatch that Debian Sarge, the former stable release of Debian before Etch, has received an update, called Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r7.

So even if you never moved to Etch in April, and stuck with Sarge, you are STILL getting security updates and even bug fixes from the Debian project.

And yes, I do think that is great.

In case you're keeping track (and yes, I am), Debian 3.1 Sarge became the project's stable release in June 2005. So three and a half years later, that release is still being supported.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't advocate picking a distribution and sticking with it for three or more years. Hell, I rarely keep the same distros on a hard drive more than a couple of months (although Debian Etch has stuck on this laptop for at least three months).

But if you do find a distro that works especially well with a certain hardware configuration, it's nice to know you can stick with it for a long time. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and the free RHEL clone CentOS) offer years and years of security patches, and it's very nice to see Debian -- and Slackware, too -- supporting older releases many years out.

That said, I've made clear my displeasure with dual-booting (even as I continue to do it myself; this laptop dual-boots Debian Etch and Ubuntu Feisty), one thing I do endorse is a single-OS system with a separate /home partition. If you have your Linux swap partition, then a partition for your OS, then a /home partition for your data (which MUST be backed up regularly -- especially before any changes are made), it's easy to change distributions while keeping your data accessible by any new system you install.

One thing puzzles me (and I haven't experimented enough to know the best way to proceed). You can either delete all the configuration files from /home before installing the new distro .. or leave them. I don't know what will provide the best outcome. It's certainly something to look into.

I do know, however, from my experience that dual-booting with a single /home partition shared by two distros inevitably leads to configuration conflicts that are just plain annoying.

Since my Debian Etch Xfce install has a short life, I decided to screw with it a bit. I wondered what it would be like to add GNOME.

I opened the terminal, became the super user and did this:

# apt-get install gnome

Now it's installing the some 200 packages that will constitute the GNOME desktop ... if I don't run out of disk space in the / partition first.

After the GNOME install, my Debian / partition has 2.5 GB in it. Still nice and relatively small. One funny thing: I have Mousepad and Gedit as GUI text editors. But under Applications -- Accessories, the regular terminal program is GNOME Terminal, but the root terminal is the Xfce Terminal. Both terminals are available in non-root mode under Applications -- Debian -- XShells. The Xfce Terminal makes another appearance under Applications -- System Tools.

One thing you get with a default Debian install vs. a default Ubuntu install is, in Debian, more software. You could probably make Ubuntu look just like Debian, but it's easier to just start with Debian in the first place.

I didn't do the normal fix for the Iceweasel/Epiphany fonts on CRT monitors because I like the default Debian fonts on LCD monitors and now don't mind them even on CRTs, but if you don't like your browser fonts in Debian, here's how to fix the problem.

Another curious thing: Adding GNOME gave me, among other things, Abiword and Gnumeric. I don't remember those being in the default Debian install. I don't mind at all -- I use Abiword a lot -- but it's just kind of curious.

If you came here via the gOS review: Debian has all the things gOS lacks. Ubuntu does, too.

Also curious: I have Synaptic, but not the Update Manager. Also, I did apt-get clean and now the Debian install fills a mere 1.8 GB on /.

I knew there was a Debian KDE group but just did a search and found out that there's a Debian Xfce group as well.

I plan to explore the Xfce group's links soon. Both Debian and Slackware run wicked fast with Xfce, but there's a whole lot missing when you do the Xfce install (no Synaptic, for instance, and no GUI mail client).

For now, I recommend starting with the default GNOME or KDE desktops in Debian and adding Xfce on top of that. That way you have all the utilities you need but can work in Xfce whenever you want. On the other hand, the Debian Xfce install uses relatively little disk space (and that's with Open Office). My current Debian Xfce install, with nothing extra, is 1.8 GB in size. That doesn't include swap or space for /home, so you could set up a 128 MB swap space and still have plenty of room for user files on a small hard drive.

Looking at it a different way, if you're comfortable using apt-get at the command line to do updates (and it's not hard to get such comfort), you don't really need Synaptic.

On my laptop with Etch/Xfce, I've been trying to get the hang of using Aptitude, Debian's more-involved command-line package manager. I've been able to use it, but it is a bit confusing; I could use a detailed tutorial. One thing Aptitude does that neither apt nor Synaptic do (or so I'm told) is keep a record of everything you do with it. I don't know how to access that record, but I like the idea of keeping track of your updated, new and deleted packages. On the other hand, I also like how pkgtool in Slackware lets you see ALL of your packages -- it's a lot more visceral than apt.

'Holy crap' moment of the day: My Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client is notoriously BAD when it comes to multimedia. Videos are jerky, as are MP3s ... even in Puppy Linux, only the console app Madplayer can play an MP3 without it skipping. But I'm using Xfmedia in Xfce to play a song, and it sounds PERFECT. Thanks, Debian!

Flash in Debian Xfce: Since MP3s went so well, I decided to get the Flash plugin for Iceweasel (aka Firefox). This works for me about half the time. I went to a Web page on which I knew there would be Flash, and Iceweasel prompted me to install Flash. I did, and now it's installed. Flash video and audio is still pretty sketchy -- no miracles there. But having smooth MP3 playback is pretty nice.

I'm thinking of doing an installation of Debian Lenny, aka Testing. I already have a CD of the business-card ISO. I got it from here.

I'm generally a big proponent of using Etch, the current stable version of Debian, but Debian Testing is supposed to be as stable, if not more so, than Ubuntu.

One thing Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 do is handle my Alps touchpad better than Debian Etch. Anyhow, I have a drive for the Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client that has Debian Etch with Xfce on it. I just might wipe it and put Debian Lenny on it. Last time I installed Lenny, I think I encrypted the entire drive. Might do that again, too.

I'm always talking about how I prefer to run Puppy Linux (and Damn Small Linux) from the live CD. But I've done both "frugal" and "full" hard-drive installs of Puppy in the past. I've also had GRUB get so screwed up that I couldn't boot anything. I'm far from a GRUB expert.

One thing I need to do -- and something we all should do -- is make copies of /boot/grub/menu.lst whenever it actually boots everything, and keep those files copied somewhere that isn't your actual working drive (where it could get erased). For instance, I couldn't get Slackware 12 to boot on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) the other day, but on the drive I'm using now (on the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client), I'm triple-booting Xubuntu 7.04, Slackware 12 and a frugal install of Puppy 2.17 (running Puppy at the moment).

So from this drive, getting the GRUB entries for Slackware and Puppy saved is a top priority, should I need to re-create this installation from scratch in the future. The problem with triple-booting is that every time you install a new OS, it wants to create a new GRUB installation and looks at all your partition for other OSes and tries to create GRUB entries that work; often they don't. I can usually Google for tips on how to modify /boot/grub/menu.lst, but I've hit a wall with Slackware 12 and the laptop.

The best advice, which I haven't acted on yet is to boot Slackware (and probably the BSDs as well) by installing the default bootloader on their own partitions and NOT on the Master Boot Record. Then use the chainloader command in the MBR version of GRUB to boot each OS with its own bootloader (LILO is the default for Slackware, although once you have it installed you can switch to GRUB if you wish; the GRUB package, along with an installer script, is on the third Slackware CD).

Taking all I've said into consideration, it's easy enought to make a relatively small partition for Puppy or DSL -- even a couple of GB or a single GB -- and do a frugal install. That way you can multi-boot without eating up large chunks of your drive. I could update this partition and go from Puppy 2.17 to 3.01, but everything is working right now, and I tend to run Puppy as is -- not adding anything -- so I'm good with 2.17 for the foreseeable future on this drive.

Linux Loop is a quick way to keep up with the doings in the Linux world. Take a look.

Remember yesterday (I remember it like it was yesterday, which it was) when I I thought I had the spam problem in Movable Type 4 under control? Well, today I find about five obvious spam messages -- with URLs and everything -- in the non-spam comments.

And worse, a comment from an AUTHENTICATED TYPEKEY USER was marked as spam? If anything, a Typekey comment should post immediately -- that's how I have the system set. I immediately marked the commenter as "trusted," which means his future comments should have no problem getting posted.

But how could the MT spam filter let me down that way? A Typekey comment? I repeat: A TYPEKEY COMMENT. Unbelievable.

Obviously, I'll need to keep an eye on the situation.

Since Puppy Linux uses local time, I had reset my test box's clock for the now-aborted Thin Puppy Torture Test II (we've had even more power outages lately, and I'm glad to stop where I did but keep writing about Puppy just the same). But now that I'm back in gOS, I needed to reset the clock to UTC. I'm perfectly capable of opening a terminal and using the command line to set the clock, but I can't believe that the casual, new-to-Linux user with gOS has no other way to set the time. No GUI, big problem.

It's just plain wrong. Ubuntu has a GUI time-setting utility. gOS should have one, too.

Already there's no way to set a static IP in gOS except by opening a terminal and either using the command line or editing the relevant configuration files. And I've already complained extensively about gOS' lack of a GUI text editor; it wouldn't have killed them to throw Gedit or Mousepad on the thing. Instead, you have to run nano or Vim from a terminal. I can use both of these editors, although I'm more rusty in vi/Vim than many. But I still prefer to use a GUI editor when working in X -- it's nice to be able to easily copy and paste in X, and I shudder to think of someone who's never seen a terminal program or text editor before in their entire lives having to use xterm and nano, or even worse, vi.

Again, it's sloppy, and it's wrong.

Assuming that everybody has a dynamic IP is one thing, but assuming that the clock will set itself? Unbelievable.

I just did an update on gOS -- 47 packages, and I had hoped that some of these issues would be solved. But not one was. And I've already had X crash once today, and GRUB isn't working so well, either. That could be due to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS not getting the configuration right for gOS (those long Ubuntu disk IDs -- not quite sure what they are or why they're used -- screw it up often). At one point in the boot, I get to a console and hit ctrl-alt-del, at which point the gOS boot continues, finally leading me to the GUI where I can log on.

The average gOS user is NOT dual-booting, so it's not a huge deal, but it's just another example of general messiness (and more of a warning against dual-booting on any critical systems).

But overall, the more I get to know gOS, the less I like it.

Anyhow, if you came here via a search because you're frustrated with gOS, here's how to set the time (this also works in Ubuntu, which can do this with an easy-to-use utility, but if you're a glutton for punishment, by all means do it this way):

Left-click on the desktop and navigate to Applications -- System Tools -- UXterm

UXterm -- gOS' terminal program -- will load when you click on it.

Once you get a prompt ending in $, you must click on the window to make it active (another bug in gOS that's just plain annoying).

The Linux format for setting time and date at the command line is somewhat arcane, but not overly so. This is how to set the time and date for 10:15 a.m. Dec. 27, 2007. Times must be in 24-hour mode; i.e. 1:15 p.m. would be 13:15. You begin using the date command. The 12-digit format for the date command is month (01 to 12) date (01 to 31) hour (00 to 23) minute (00 to 59) and year (generally 2007), Type the following after the $ prompt (and enter your password when asked for it). Don't forget the double-quote marks (not two single quotes, but the shift-quote key):

$ sudo date "122710152007"

Enter your password when needed (as in all sudo commands)

Then you need to set the hardware clock (make sure the double-dashes are spaced properly, which means they need to be attached to the words they proceed):

$ sudo hwclock --systohc --utc

Enter your password again when asked.

To check the clock:

$ date

For the software clock

$ hwclock

For the hardware clock

Both should output the proper date and time:

Thu Dec 27 10:15:00 PST 2007 (or whatever time it happens to be)

Again, users of gOS SHOULD NOT be made to do this. But they have no choice. Personally, I'd slap Ubuntu or Xubuntu on my Everex box ASAP.

gOS sounds like a great idea ... until you actually start using it. At that point you gain a new appreciation for all the work that has gone into such relatively trouble-free LInux distributions as Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware (yes, even Slackware), Red Hat/CentOS, Fedora, Suse, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS .. in fact, I could name just about every distribution I've tried over the past year (at least a couple dozen).

Again, if the CEO of Wal-Mart asked me how to clean up this mess, I'd tell him to move the Everex to Ubuntu immediately. The hardware can handle it, and it's ready in a way that gOS most certainly is not.

I continue to praise Geany, the GUI text editor in Puppy Linux.

I'm not a programmer, but I use text editors just about every day. Especially for Web work, text editors are must-have tools for writers and editors.

And for me, a text editor needs to do a few things -- and do them well.

Here is my list:

It needs to start up quickly.

It must open ALL files, not just those with .txt suffixes.

It must have word wrap but NOT actually wrap the lines in the text file itself (i.e. wrap for display purposes only).

It must have a search/replace function.

It must have word count.

It must change upper-case to lower-case ... and lower-case to upper-case.

Not an extensive list, but many, many text editors cannot do these simple tasks. Mousepad in Xfce can't (though it is fast), Gedit in GNOME can't. Beaver in Damn Small Linux also doesn't do all of these things.

What I use in Windows: The free EditPad Lite -- a great text editor.

Mac OS X: the default GUI text editor in OS X (I think it's called TextEdit, or something like that) is pathetic. Sorry Mac people. I'd love to have someting better for when I use the Mac, which is often.

Do I use command-line editors? Yes, I do, but it's just much easier to use a GUI editor when I'm working in a GUI. Half of the time, I'm cutting and pasting type from Web pages, e-mails and the like, and it's just too hard to do with console editors. I tend to stick to Nano (Pico in the OS X console) because I just don't use vi enough to keep my skills fresh. And I don't want to get anywhere near Emacs -- I just don't have the desire or the time. Give me Nano, and I'm happy at the console.

Again, I don't program -- I just write, so my requirements for a good text editor are probably very different than the usual crowd at which text editors are named, meaning coders.

We currently have comments on most of the Daily News blogs set to accept both "anonymous" comments -- meaning from just about anybody -- as well as Typekey-authenticated comments. And we haven't yet made the move to Movable Type-authenticated comments (see -- you have a lot of choices in MT 4 ... and while confusing, it's nice to have options), but that's where it's going, I'm told.

I was about to turn off anonymous comments, but then I got a sweet Distrowatch link about a week ago, bringing quadruple to quintuple the usual traffic, and I didn't want to shut potential commenters out.

I realize that many people might not want to sign up with Typekey, and entering a comment while logged into the Typekey system is confusing (the name, e-mail address and url boxes remain after you're logged in, but they SHOULDN'T BE filled out), and I'm pretty much waiting for the Web-biggies here to get the Movable Type login comments working.

So I decided to try adjusting the spam filter once again. Under Preferences -- Blog Settings, click on Spam, and see what your spam filter is set at. All of ours default to 0. I started with +4, but that caught too many legitimate comments, and I finally settled on +3. That flags most of the spam as spam, which I have set to delete when it gets 5 days old. That way I can quickly scan the spam to see if any legitimate entries got caught in the filter. But I don't have to do anything to the 99.99 percent of spam comments that I don't want on the system -- they just go away when they reach the age of 5 days.

So far, the only spam to get through has been these weird Obama entries that don't have a URL embedded in the comment (unlike 99.999 percent of the other spam). I suppose that the only problem is that "real" commenters who include URLs of any kind in their comments might not make it past the filter, but that's why I quickly scan the spam (Under Manage -- Comments, click on Spam Comments on the right side of the screen to see them -- and make sure you have your "view" set up for 100 rows with "action" buttons enabled on top and bottom, so you can restore/delete at the top or bottom of the long list).

And anybody who absolutely, positively must put URLs in their comment can sign up with Typekey and leave an "authenticated" comment. Right now, those go right through (though that parameter is also modifiable in MT 4).

I no longer spend a considerable chunk of time marking comments in "nonspam comments" as the spam they truly are. The easy change in spam-filter from 0 to +3 has taken care of it for me.

In reaction to recent security breaches, the U.S. Army is adding OS X servers to its data arsenal.

The Army isn't exactly saying that Macs and their OS are superior from a security standpoint to competing systems, but I do find the explanation interesting:

The Army isn't using any particular software package or OS X technology to improve security, though. Instead, it's hoping that having a more diverse mix of systems will make its networks harder to infiltrate. The security of the UNIX core of OS X, combined with the fact that less hackers are interested in Macs, were also given as reasons for introducing more Apple hardware.

...

Outside security vendors have leveled a number of criticisms against the Army for its Apple program, and have pointed out that Apple issues significantly more patches than Microsoft. The Army responded by saying that a large number of patches shows a greater commitment to security by Apple. Ultimately, the Army seems to be banking on paying off the extra cost of Macs by making its networks at least a bit less vulnerable to Windows security exploits.

I find Apple's recent efforts in the server space to be an interesting development. The more competition in the server area, the better. I think there's a definite space for Apple in betwen the high end of Solaris and traditional Unix, the Windows Server offerings and the vast Linux server market. If I knew more, I'd say more, but I don't, so I won't.

The Thin Puppy ran all the way through Christmas Day (mercifully, I wasn't here), but today something happened, and the power momentarily went out. I might've kicked the power cord, or something else nefarious happened, but the Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client rebooted, and since there was no CD in the drive, I just shut it down. I'm sure it could've gone much longer than 13 days, but I have accepted that 30 days without a reboot won't be happening.

Anyway, I booted Puppy 3.00 on the $0 Laptop (I haven't done the upgrade to 3.01 on the Gateway yet).

One of the bigger changes recently in Puppy Linux has been the dropping of the lightweight Dillo browser in favor of NetSurf, which looks like a similarly lightweight browser based on Mozilla. I can't be sure of its origins, but it seems to work pretty well, is just as fast as Dillo, and -- most importantly -- seems to be currently in development. Work on Dillo has pretty much stalled, or so it appears. So I think of this as a good choice for Puppy Linux -- the lightweight browser is needed, especially for the lower-spec computers than many of us use to run Puppy.

I thought Puppy also had a text-only browser, but I don't see it in the Puppy 3.00 menu. I'd like to see Lynx or Elinks in the Puppy base. If you must have a text Web browser, Elinks is available as an easy-to-add PET package in the Puppy Package Manager. Even Dillo can be restored via a PET package.

The main browser in Puppy continues to be Seamonkey, which also functions as a mail client and HTML editor. I've always liked Seamonkey, and I continue to see it as an application that fits Puppy very well.

I have one nagging problem: One of the Web sites I work on: LA.com has way too much Flash on it for its own good, and while that may or may not be the cause, the home page crashes Seamonkey every time. I'm generally anti-Flash -- it hogs resources and should only be used when you need to show an actual video (and then only after a link is clicked), but I've accepted that today's Web designers have gone Flash-crazy.

Most of these developers also think that everybody runs browsers with Flash and that they have Flash enabled. I suppose it's true for 95 percent of users, but I don't have Flash activated on this very laptop's Debian partition. In Ubuntu, I do have it, and Puppy ships with Flash implemented in Seamonkey, but the ability to easily turn Flash on and off in Firefox would be welcomed by me. More welcome is the new Gnash open-source clone of Flash. I haven't tried it yet, but it's definitely on my to-do list.

$0 Laptop-and-Puppy update: Puppy runs so well on this Gateway Solo 1450, it should be noted. Since I got the fan under control via a cron job (long explanation of this STILL forthcoming -- I promise), Puppy 3.00 has performed very, very well. I've been running it from the live CD (all the better for impending and frequent upgrades, as well as ease in booting) and have a 1.2 GB pup_save in my Debian Etch partition. I've also had good luck with Knoppix 5.1.1 on this laptop, but not so much with Damn Small Linux, which has problems with the X configuration. And with 256 MB of RAM, Puppy is a much better fit than Knoppix.

I continue to warn against dual- and triple-booting, even as I continue to do it with this laptop (still, avoid pain and DON'T dual-boot -- I'm telling you). But I encourage the use of live CDs on computers with existing Linux (and even Windows) installs. It gives you a nice option and is not likely to screw anything up.

Yeah, I'm posting on Christmas. I don't know if it was the Debian Etch kernel update I did tonight, or something else entirely, but the little Alps touchpad quirk I had on the $0 Laptop, in which tapping on a menu item made it appear and disappear immediately, somehow fixed itself (or was fixed with no work on my part).

Thanks, Debian!

The next day: What Debian giveth, it taketh away. Tapping action has returned to its dysfuctional norm. Tapping on a menu entry now produces the same flickering as before. I wonder what happened?

I've had Debian Etch with the Xfce desktop on the $15 Laptop for a couple of weeks. It took up a lot less space than Slackware 12 with Xfce (and NOT KDE), so I left Debian on the computer, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt with 64 MB of RAM.

I had a trick to get the ALSA sound working in Damn Small Linux, but it wouldn't work in Debian. I don't have the soundcore module installed, and that's the next step in getting the sound working.

I also found out that doing a Google Docs session in Debian on this box is ... frustrating. The screen moves way too slow.

So I went in a different direction. I popped in the Damn Small Linux 4.0 CD (I know they're up to 4.2, but I haven't downloaded and burned the new ISO yet ... I plan to soon).

Already the box seems much snappier. I'm using the toram boot code, which means the whole OS pretty much loads into RAM, but DSL does use the Linux swap partition on the hard drive. I find this to be a good compromise because I'm not committing to even a "frugal" install on the hard drive, and whenever I want to upgrade, I can just burn a new CD and use it -- I'll be using the same swap space when needed, but I won't have to upgrade any files on the hard-drive install because I'm not doing one.

As I've said before, for Linux distributions designed to be used as live CDs -- like Puppy, DSL and Knoppix -- I find that it's best to use them as they were intended and not to do full installs, or even frugal installs (although I've violated my own "rule" many times).

I'm going to run DSL 4.0 for awhile on the Compaq. I might switch it out for DSL 4.2 sooner rather than later because I use MtPaint -- a new app in DSL 4.2 but a longtime Puppy Linux image editor. Once I get a chance to run a Google Docs session in Firefox on DSL, I'll be able to see if it goes better than with Debian ... and how much better. I'll do the same with Puppy Linux before committing to anything, but if I'm using live CDs, there's no reason why Puppy and DSL can't coexist very well on this box.

I still need to do the actual tests, but I get the feeling that I'll be wiping Debian Etch off of the hard drive and leaving just a Linux swap partition and empty ext3 partitions for Puppy and DSL. We'll see.

I haven't updated much in the past few days because I haven't used the Puppy box much in that time. I finished up my long gOS review -- and come to think of it, Puppy would be perfect for the Everex Linux PC. You could keep gOS on there but boot Puppy from the CD/DVD drive and have a super-fast system that blows the standard gOS install out of the proverbial water.

But back to the second Thin Puppy Torture Test. The box has been chugging along, no problem.

Today I had somebody ask me to grab a bunch of photos off of two SD Flash memory cards. I plugged my card reader into the remaining USB port, used the Puppy Drive Mounter to mount and open it, and then I dragged a bunch of images to the My-Documents folder, which if you've used Puppy before, is owned by root.

And in Puppy, you run as root, not in a normal user account. There have been all kinds of arguments about the wisdom of running as root -- and it's many people's main complaint about Puppy, that running as root is not safe. Damn Small Linux creates a user account when you boot the live CD, and you can go multiuser and create named accounts if you want. I believe the GrafPup spin of Puppy also allows the use of user accounts. ... And Puppy allows you to create any number of pup_save files, booting into whichever one you wish (and also encrypting and password-protecting them if you want), allowing for multiple users on the same computer (but still running as root).

I'm not really qualified to comment on the root vs. user debate, but I've never had any problems, and I understand that especially in the live CD environment, it doesn't matter as much. Again, I leave it to the experts.

But back to the photos. There were quite a few of them, and I only have a 256 MB Flash drive connected to the Thin Puppy box, so I didn't/couldn't transfer them all to Puppy's filesystem.

Still, after I transferred some and then later deleted them, my Puppy "free RAM" indicator dropped from 111 MB to 89.9 MB and stayed there. I've been told that this indicator is not a true picture of free RAM on the system, but it's curious that it drops and, at this point at least, doesn't rebound after files are deleted.

I pulled the card reader before unmounting the Flash card, and I got a warning message from Puppy. Remember to unmount your media!! The message suggested that I reboot, but since this is the Thin Puppy Torture Test II, I ignored that warning.

The system is still running fine, and I got the chance to use MtPaint and GTKSee as image viewers. MtPaint isn't really designed to look at images in a "slide show" fashion, but one good thing is that you can open an image in a directory, use ctrl-mouse wheel to shrink it so it fits in the window, and then retain that image size when viewing all the other images in the directory, opening them up as needed.

But GTKSee is better for doing a slide show. Just open the application (under Graphics), navigate to the proper directory, and start the slide show under the Tools menu (or by typing ctrl-S).

P.S. Since I didn't have enough memory in the Thin Puppy to burn a CD with all those images, I started up Puppy 2.17 (it was the first Puppy CD I found) on my Windows box, mounted the SD chip and threw everything into a directory on the Windows drive. I got the usual warnings about writing to NTFS partitions, but I ignored them. I got a warning the next time I booted into Windows, but everything was there, and everything was fine. (I burned my CD in Windows, not Puppy because I had work to do with the proprietary publishing software that I need for my "real" job).

I'll have to experiment with Puppy's CD burning applications later.

But one thing I always forget is that Puppy runs GREAT on my 3 GHz Pentium 4 Dell. I'm not used to running Linux of any kind on such a "powerful" machine. I'd love to run all my Linux distros on something so "good" (its 512 MB RAM is twice what I have on any other box).

One thing about low-spec Linux distros like Puppy. As well as they run on old, old hardware, if you can get everything configured, they really fly on "modern" PCs.

Pup_save thoughts: The pup_save in Puppy Linux has a predetermined size. Usually the largest you can make is 1.25 GB. There is a warning message that crops up (I can't remember where) that says you can make a pup_save up to 1.83 GB, but that is the largest tested configuration. I don't know if there is a limit on the size of a "save" file in Damn Small Linux or Knoppix (both of which use the same "save" technology, I think -- but don't quote me), and having a limit on how big the pup_save can be is somewhat of a limitation in Puppy. I suggest having additional storage space outside of the pup_save on which to store large files -- and large amounts of files, for that matter.

On this Thin Puppy, unless I add another Flash drive, I'm stuck with the 256 MB on the primary USB Flash drive.

Not so great, but not totally unmanageable. Still, that's a lot of spam, I might consider Typekey-only comments in the very near future ... until we implement Movable Type registration.

The fact that a tutorial is needed speaks friggin' volumes. It took me all of yesterday (and about 10 unneeded rebuilds of this blog) to figure it out. Basically, if you are signed up and logged into Typekey, you shouldn't enter name, e-mail address and URL. Then the system will accept your comment as "authenticated" by Typekey. And if you appear to be logged in but the confirmation screen says you need to fill in the name and other fields, just go backward, log out and log in again, and it will work.

Needless to say, we're moving away from Typekey and toward the new Movable Type comment verification system (which is currently in use on our most popular Daily News blog, Inside USC).

I've been using IrfanView heavily on my Windows box. And yes, I love it more than ever. I've been using it to process screen grabs (I use the Print Screen key to copy the screen image, then I start the new image in IrfanView, paste it in and crop what I need).

And I love the "create custom selection" feature, which I have preconfigured with the exact pixel dimension I need for one of the images I have to cut regularly. First I size down the image to a little bigger than I want it, then I go to "create custom selection" in the menu, and a box the exact size I want it is superimposed on the image. I can then crop right there, or right-click with the mouse to move the box exactly where I want it.

Now that I have Wine on my Ubuntu 7.04 install (yes, IEs4Linux did work), I need to start trying to run IrfanView under Linux. If it works, I will be a very, very happy camper indeed.

That's a lot of blather, people.

Tom Gapen, who watches Apple way more closely than I do, tells me that Think Secret regularly breaks news about Apple. And Apple doesn't like not having control over ... just about everything.

But now Think Secret and Apple have come to an "agreement," and the blog will go away.

ZDNet on the Think Secret settlement.

Law & Life: Silicon Valley, by Mark Radcliffe of the huge law firm DLA Piper, looks like a great way to keep up with the legal issues surrounding free, open-source software. I plan to return often.

Thanks to Distrowatch for the following news:

It's been days since I found out about the Damn Small Linux 4.2 release candidate, and it's already available in a final version. Things do happen fast. Replacing Xpaint with MtPaint is a great idea, and this is a distro I'll be downloading and burning to CD soon.

NetBSD prides itself on being ported to the maximum number of platforms possible. Funny that it won't load on my VIA C3 Samuel-based machine, but if you're into BSD, NetBSD 4.0 has arrived.

And people don't tend to think of Linux when the topic of music recording comes up, but I've heard a lot lately about advanced audio tools available in Linux. A new distribution, Musix GNU+Linux 1.0R3 comes from a project that isn't exactly English-friendly. Its Web page is available in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Russian. But there is a Wiki in English. Check out the FAQ.

I'm writing this review on Google Docs in Firefox while running gOS 1.0.1, the Ubuntu-based distribution that steers users toward Web-based applications whenever possible -- mostly those under the auspices of Google -- and which powers the Everex Linux PC being sold for $199 by the truckful at Wal-Mart.

I'm getting more comfortable with Google Docs all the time, but there are times when you need a traditional text editor. Yet there is no GUI text editor to be found in the gOS distro. There is the entire OpenOffice suite and the GIMP image editor, a smattering of games, Rhythmbox for music and Xine for video, but no stand-alone mail client (you're encouraged by the iconography on the gOS desktop to use Gmail ...). Luckily there is a terminal program, which is named UXterm but looks suspiciously like plain ol' xterm, and with that you can bring up Vim or Nano, but that's pretty much it. Come to think of it, without a terminal in the GUI, and a console text editor, gOS would be in a heap of trouble, so it's good that they included one. But every gOS user's life would be a whole lot easier with a GUI text editor. Since you can add anything in the Ubuntu repositories, holes in gOS are easily filled.

But the more I used the new, green OS, the more I wondered whether the Everex (and everybody else) would be be better off with Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian ... or just about anything. While the Everex, with its 1.5 GHz VIA processor and 512 MB of RAM is underpowered when compared to most modern desktops, I regularly run Debian and Ubuntu -- both with GNOME -- and even Slackware with GNOME and Xfce on a machine with similar power but half the memory. And as I found out, the speed and lightness on resources that the Enlightenment window manager promises are just not there.

One thing I do like about gOS -- and this may be a feature of Ubuntu 7.10 for all I know -- is that when you're in a terminal and try to run an application you don't have installed, the terminal outputs what you do need to do to get it.

For instance, I tried to run the Joe editor:

$ joe

and I got the following:

The program 'Joe' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install joe
bash: joe: command not found

Whenever that message comes from, it's a very nice touch and is more than enough to get even a novice user going with apt.

But sheesh, at least give me Leafpad, Mousepad, Gedit ... whatever. Normally I would just add the editor I want, but for this evaluation of gOS, I pledged to stay with Google Docs; that's what they want you to use, so I'll use it. In the past, I've even gone as far as automatically posting a Google Docs item to one of my Blogger blogs, but that feature, in my opinion, is pretty much useless. Why not just write directly in Blogger? And since you can only auto-post from Google Docs to a single blog, the write-to-blog feature won't work for me. However, the post-to-blog feature does work with WordPress and LiveJournal blogs, plus a few others I've never heard of. That makes it more useful, but what I need is for Google Docs to act as more of a "dashboard" app for my various blogs -- I'd like to be able to publish from here to more than one blog (actually about six, and therein lies my sickness).

Update: I was all set to complain about Google Docs' browser-printing problem, but I just printed a document from Docs on my Windows PC, and what Docs did was turn my document into a great-looking PDF, which opened in Adobe Reader and was easily printed on paper. I'm not sure how seamless this integration is in Linux systems, but I plan to find out soon. Printing on actual paper seemed like the weak link in the whole Google Docs scheme, but it looks like they have that problem solved very well -- I may never use a traditional word processor again (especially if the promised offline extension of Docs is ever released).

Google Docs is a whole lot better than many people let on. I never need to insert tables or pictures into my documents. I write stuff. Stuff with words, and if I need to insert photos, I'm generally already in a blog post or on a printed page that I'm dealing with in a publishing program that is a whole lot bigger and more complicated than Google Docs. But Docs CAN insert images, tables, links and more. And it's not a bad HTML generator either. You can look at the HTML source at any time and copy/paste it into your Web content.

For the everyday writer of articles for publication, Google Docs is pretty kick-ass. When not connected to the Internet, or for those who don't want Google to see their documents, there's always the option of using OpenOffice, though I think AbiWord and Gnumeric are more in keeping with the lightness touted by gOS.

Getting back to gOS ... almost: Even though this is supposed to be about gOS, the bare-bones Linux distro relies heavily on the Firefox browser and links to various Web tools like GMail, Google Docs, Wikipedia (see, they're not all Google), Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Google Maps and Picasa. So any review of gOS must take heavily into account the browser experience.

Since I work on four or five separate computers a day, working with docs online and using Web-based (or IMAP-delivered) e-mail is a must for me. I could add a standalone mail client to gOS as easily as I can with any Ubuntu or Debian system, but for now I won't. Even so, a user with gOS can pretty much make it do anything they could do on Ubuntu. Or they could wipe gOS from the drive and replace it ... or perhaps dual-boot.

One of the most attractive things about gOS and the Everex PC is that the combination promises full power management, making for a more green PC than most anything else out there on the desktop, so if you have the Everex PC, making gOS work the way you want it becomes a more attractive option. Hopefully Linux, as it matures even further, will include better power management for all motherboards.

More mail: I'm divided about the use of mail clients anyway. Most of the time, a Web portal is fine for me, especially if the entire session takes place in a secure connection (thanks, DSL Extreme). And I suspect that the vast majority of computer users have never heard of a mail client -- they barely know what Outlook is -- and have been accessing e-mail through the browser as long as they've had e-mail access, so gOS is going in the right direction there.

Gmail tip: To keep your Gmail session secure throughout, start out in your browser with the following:

https://mail.google.com

Note the "s" for a secure connection. You can also type https://gmail.com. Unsecure e-mail, particularly over unencrypted wireless connections, is a real problem, and it makes me reluctant to use Yahoo Mail because only the password is sent over a secure connection. The rest of your e-mail is right out there for others to intercept and use for ill.

Speaking about the greenish gOS desktop, the Enlightenment window manager isn't that bad. I think gOS could've been done just as well with Xfce -- maybe even better -- but I know that some Enlightenment developers are behind the project, and I'm always happy to see any desktop environment taken to the next level. At least it sets gOS apart from the dozen or so Xfce-based distros out there. But speedy, it's not.

One of the first things I did in gOS was add some virtual desktops; it's one of the best features that Windows doesn't offer, and I think the gOS people should ship the OS with more than a single desktop showing. I like the traditional four, so I left-clicked on the mouse and went to Desktop -- Virtual -- Configure Virtual Desktops. I could've added more than four, but I didn't. Switching between desktops is done with the usual ctrl-alt-arrow keys. You can't tell in gOS which desktop you're on, but at least they're there.

One feature I turned on in Enlightenment that I've never seen before in any other window manager (although I'm pretty sure it's there in most window managers) is the ability to switch or "flip" screens by moving the mouse pointer to the left or right edge of the screen, effectively scrolling to the next desktop. It's kind of neat. I don't know if I need it (I discovered it by accident after forgetting that I set it), but it may just be something that gOS users will grow to like. I had to turn the feature off because I kept triggering it by accident -- I like my Firefox windows to fill up the screen, and more than once I found myself on the next desktop when I didn't want to be there just yet. Ctrl-alt-arrow is good enough for me. But if you like the "flip screen" feature, you can make it look even more groovy with "animated flip."

One successful install, one less so: Both my regular test box (the VIA C3 Samuel-based Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client) and the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) are very Ubuntu friendly, meaning installs of Ubuntu-based distros generally go well on both. gOS installed like a champ on the thin client, but it won't install at all on the Gateway. On the latter, the live CD environment comes up fine (and the graphics are much snappier than on the Maxspeed), but when I do the install, I enter all the relevant information, and about six seconds into the actual install, the program crashes -- and that's it. Since I recently did an install of Ubuntu 7.10 on this very same laptop, it's curious, indeed, that gOS will not install. It's regretful, but at least I got gOS on one box. Hopefully the bug, whatever it is, will be squashed in future editions of gOS.

Potential problem: I'm running top in a terminal window on one of my four desktops, and it consistently shows Enlightenment using 9 percent to 12 percent of my CPU and 12 percent of my 256 MB of memory ... at idle. That's not exactly light. I'll have to go back to Ubuntu and Xubuntu and see how much CPU and memory GNOME and Xfce take up. I don't think it's this much. That said, gOS seems to be running as well as anything else, but not radically better. I'm able to switch windows in Firefox fairly quickly and do the same with my virtual desktops. Again, I'd have a better feel for how gOS compares if I could install it on my Gateway laptop.

So I decided to install the next distro I'm testing -- Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0. In case you haven't heard of Wolvix, it's a live CD based on Slackware that runs the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers. It can be used as a live CD, or put on the hard drive as a frugal install or traditional hard drive install. I opted for the traditional hard drive install.

The Wolvix installation process is excellent. I already had partitions set up, but the Wolvix installer offered to start up Gparted and make some or modify those I have. I also had the option of designating separate partitions for /home and other directories (I declined but would have configured a separate /home if I planned to use Wolvix long-term). The installer also gave me the option of booting Wolvix at the console or in a GUI (I chose the GUI), and it offered to put GRUB on the master boot record (I accepted). It also detected gOS, which allowed me to dual-boot. If whatever I install on the remaining partition messes up GRUB, I can easily reinstall it from Wolvix without having to geek out too much. (Note: Wolvix didn't do so well on GRUB, I instead used the gOS install disk to reinstall GRUB, and it recognized gOS perfectly).

I ran top in a terminal in Wolvix Hunter running Xfce, and at idle, with the Firefox window open on another screen (just like in gOS), the top running process was X at between 2 and 4.6 percent CPU and 7.6 percent memory. In short, a whole lot lighter than Enlightenment.

Maybe Wolvix isn't the best distro with which to compare gOS, but the Xfce vs. Enlightenment comparison is more than valid. Is it possible that the Everex PC could perform better with Xubuntu instead of gOS? (The answer is yes.)

Anyway, since Wolvix includes Fluxbox, I decided to go further and check top again. I opened Firefox, opened this document, switched to another window, opened a terminal and ran top. X was still the top running process and veered between 0.3 percent and 1.7 percent of CPU, and 6.1 percent of memory. Again, much better than Enlightenment in gOS.

To provide an even clearer picture of the performance of gOS and Enlightenment, I tested the load times of Firefox and OpenOffice Writer in a variety of Linux distributions and window managers. (Note: Slackware 12 doesn't include OpenOffice, and I haven't bothered to add it, so times are provided for KOffice's KWord -- which is generally quicker to load than OO). Load times were checked twice for each setup, since the second load of each of these two applications often happens much more quickly than the first.

Other variables that may have affected the times: Ubuntu 6.06 uses Firefox 1.5. All others used variants of Firefox 2.0. OpenOffice versions ranged from 2.0 in Ubuntu 6.06 to 2.3 in gOS.

The distros and window managers tested on the Maxspeed converted thin client (1 GHz VIA C3 processor, ECS eveM motherboard, 256 MB RAM) were:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS (GNOME)
Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce and Fluxbox)
Slackware 12 (KDE, Xfce and Fluxbox)
Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)

To sum up before the results are given, gOS was the slowest of the bunch -- even slower than Slackware under KDE -- and also slower than Ubuntu. It may be surprising, but Ubuntu with GNOME compares somewhat favorably to other distros running Xfce; you don't lose much speed by running GNOME as opposed to Xfce. Slackware and Debian with Xfce were another story; both were extremely fast when it came to loading applications. I didn't include Debian Etch with GNOME in the test because I didn't have it installed on one of the thin client's drives. But Debian compared very well to Slackware when both used the Xfce desktop environment. Curiously, Xubuntu -- Ubuntu's Xfce variant -- was slower than Debian with Xfce; in fact (as I already mentioned), Xubuntu didn't provide much of a speed advantage over regular Ubuntu.

I expected Wolvix to be the fastest, or at least as fast as Slackware. but it was buried by Slack. Not surprisingly, when Xfce was chosen for the window manager instead of KDE, Slackware was the undisputed winner, with a first-load time for Firefox of 8 seconds. That said, Ubuntu was slower, but not overly much, so if you prefer Ubuntu and GNOME to Slackware and Xfce, it's not like night and day in terms of application load time; it's more like noon and 2:30 p.m. -- a difference, but not so much as to make the slower of the two unusable.

The reason I even did this test was that from a "desktop feel" standpoint on my underpowered test box, gOS lacked the quickness of most of the other distros, including the Dapper and Feisty versions of Ubuntu.

And while Ubuntu has made some performance gains between 6.06 and 7.04, compatibility with hardware and desire for (or lack of interest in) more up-to-date apps should govern users' choice of the LTS vs. regular releases of the distro. For instance, on the converted thin client, hardware recognition is great in both versions, but on my Gateway laptop, ACPI and touchpad configuration work better in 7.10, and almost as well in 7.04. But ACPI management of the CPU fan only works with the kernel provided in 7.04.

Another aside: I saw practically no difference in application load times between Xfce and Fluxbox. So if you prefer Fluxbox, go ahead and use it, but you won't be gaining any performance over Xfce, at least in 256 MB of RAM. On the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), which only has 64 MB of RAM, I ran Debian with Fluxbox for months, and it runs just as well now that I have Xfce on it. And the superior tools included in Xfce put it ahead of Fluxbox when it comes to usability on the desktop.

The Slackware KDE vs. Slackware Xfce numbers are the most startling; using Slack with Xfce will save considerable load time on slower systems.

On "modern" PCs, however, much of this is moot. With a dual-core processor and 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM, everything loads so quickly that for desktop use, personal preference for one window manager or another holds more sway than load times, which will be acceptably short in just about any desktop environment. And for those who like all the bells and widgets of KDE, if you have enough power to enjoy them, it's probably worth it. Just Konqueror alone, with its ability to function as a Web browser, file manager, file viewer, FTP client and configuration portal, makes KDE very attractive. If only I could get X configured properly in Slackware on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop.

Here are the test results:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 30 sec.
                 2nd load: 15 sec.
OpenOffice 2.3   1st load: 56 sec.
                 2nd load: 21 sec.  

Ubuntu 6.06 (GNOME)
Firefox 1.5.0.13 1st load: 21 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 44 sec.
                 2nd load: 26 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 37 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 22 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 42 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Slackware 12 (KDE)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load: 24 sec.
                2nd load: 14 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 16 sec.

Slackware 12 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load:  8 sec.
                2nd load:  8 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Slackware 12 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 9 sec.
                 2nd load: 9 sec.
Koffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 18 sec.
                 2nd load:  9 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 36 sec.
                 2nd load: 22 sec.

Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 40 sec.
                 2nd load: 18 sec.

Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 10 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 17 sec.

As I say above the biggest thing to emerge is the speed advantage of Slackware and Debian, especially with Xfce. The relative slowness of Slackware 11-based Wolvix was puzzling. And while I didn't have OpenOffice installed in Slackware, and KOffice is pretty much a quicker program, I included its load numbers for comparison's sake. I did first and second loads of all apps because the second load is often -- but not always -- much quicker. Times for office suites were the number of seconds it took to open up a new OO Writer or KWord document.

While I didn't expect Debian to be slow, I also didn't expect it to be so comparable to Slackware. That's good news for Debian users.

But the biggest thing to come out of this test is that standard Ubuntu pretty much crushes gOS. The new, hot distro may be green in color, but it's incomplete and slow.

That said, the idea of doing most work in the browser and drawing on Web-based portals for not just e-mail and "social networking" purposes, but also document creation, photo editing and storage is becoming more attractive and viable all the time. In this realm, gOS is making a big "idea" contribution to the OS game, but in terms of sheer performance, polish and basic tools, it has a long way to go.

The average user -- even newbies -- would be better off with Ubuntu or Xubuntu on the Everex. And as these tests show, the Xfce desktop environment, in most instances, provides more bang for your MHz.

I wanted gOS to be great, but when it comes to Linux and BSD distros, greatness only comes with time and painstaking effort. After all the hype over the gOS-Everex-Wal-Mart effort -- some of it even generated by yours truly -- I didn't expect to see gOS beaten by every single established distro I threw at it. I don't usually do extensive time tests, but the sludginess of gOS drove me to it.

And while I expected Slackware and Debian to acquit themselves well, I wasn't prepared for out-of-the-box Ubuntu to best gOS. It wouldn't make as great a story -- "Wal-Mart chooses Ubuntu" -- but it would be way better for those buying the $199 box from the world's largest retailer.

I've been going on and on about how to print in Google Docs you have to strip the headers and footers out of your browser. Not so.

It's way cooler. I did my first Google Docs printout in months, and here's how it does it:

When you select Print from the File menu, Google Docs outputs your file to a PDF. On my PC at least, Adobe Reader opens the PDF, which looks freakin' great by the way, and I can print a clean document from there.

Genius.

Thanks, Google -- and see you later, regular office software.

Ars Technica lives up to its usual standards with the best Asus Eee PC (yep, it runs Linux) review I've seen.

It's long -- just keep hitting the "next page" button to see all six pages.

Writer Ryan Paul sums up:

The Asus Eee PC offers outstanding value for Linux enthusiasts and good value for a mainstream audience. The laptop brazenly defies the conventional standards of portable computing and delivers extreme mobility at an appealing price.

...

The hardware is impressive for the price, and the sheer portability of the system is mind-blowing. Despite the quality of the hardware, the cramped keyboard will be a deal-breaker for many consumers. ... The low screen resolution is also disappointing, but virtual desktops and font customization make it easier to tolerate.

...

The fact that the Eee lacks an optical drive might turn off some potential buyers, but I found that network file transfers and the SD card slot were more than sufficient for my needs. ... The bundled software is mostly pretty good, but the poor performance of OpenOffice.org is frustrating. Abiword provides a solid alternative, but it isn't officially supported by Asus on the Eee.

...

The Eee PC will likely have a noticeable influence on future mobile computing development. Companies are increasingly adopting Linux in the mobile space, and Linux developers and distributors are embracing this trend and accommodating rapid development.

...

The Eee PC is a stunning example of what a hardware maker can accomplish when mixing a highly compact form factor with a custom open-source Linux platform. With the Eee PC, consumers can get a taste of the future today.

My question: What else is coming into the Eee space? Everex is planning to release a $399 laptop based on the gOS variant of Ubuntu (I'm not so impressed with the OS ... review forthcoming). If only somebody can get a similar device priced at $300, then we'll be talking. And of course there's the Classmate PC from Intel and the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) ... but who knows if or when any of these will come to the legitimate market.

I did two things today: First, I set up printing with CUPS. I never had trouble with Puppy's pre-CUPS printer-configuration program, but since I've learned enough of CUPS to find my sometimes-hard-to-find network printer (one of about 20 in the vicinity), I'm generally a happy CUPS camper.

There was one problem, however. CUPS asked me for a password. I get the same query when adding this same network printer in Ubuntu, but I enter my login and password and move forward. But Puppy runs in the root account. So what's root's password? I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't nothing, not "root," not "toor." The Puppy forums told me to change root's password:

# passwd root

And then I typed in my usual password. I went back to CUPS started adding the printer, used the new root password ... and it worked.

Remember though, for most normal printers, they'll already be preconfigured in CUPS and you won't have to do any of this.

Then I decided to give Gnumeric a try. I can barely use a spreadsheet at all. I just don't have the occasion to do so, although knowing how to create one would probably be of some use.

The one thing I do with spreadsheets is get them from Web sites. Nielsen Media Research distributes TV ratings via Excel spreadsheets on their Web site (you need to be a registered user, which I am). I could never print one of these things out in OpenOffice -- I always get one line per page, meaning the job would be about 200 pages if I didn't kill it before it ran through half a ream of paper.

Well, I went to the page, clicked on the .xls document, and it opened just right in Gnumeric.

And then I went to print it. The first printout cut off one side of the spreadsheeet just a bit. But the whole damn thing printed out on four landscape pages (8 1/2 x 11 size). So I went into the Gnumeric printer settings, told the program to center the spreadsheet and did a print preview. Then I printed it for real. Looks great.

Not a huge deal, but I got printing set up and was able to read and print an Excel spreadsheet, and I'm happy enough.

Today's Puppy "free memory": 113 MB

I've decided to go all in with Google Docs.

Since it's easy to upload files to Google Docs from the app itself or via a unique e-mail address provided to each user, I'm throwing everything up there I can find on my office hard drive. The only "problems," so far are that i have quite a few documents in AbiWord format that aren't recognized by Docs. I didn't expect it to work, but I tried anyway and got the error message, "Sorry, we do not currently support '.abw' files." Does that mean they might do so in the future?

Not a big deal either way, as I can re-save them in .doc format and upload if I need to. The "critical" files that I made in AbiWord are all in .doc format (since I tend to e-mail them to people who don't use AbiWord), and those went up fine.

It's a good feeling to a) have a backup of everything and b) have the ability to access the files from any Web-connected computer.

As I say every time I write about Google Docs, I've set my browser to NOT print the customary headers and footers so I could print a clean-looking file on paper if I wanted. But I haven't really been printing out anything lately, and that's probably one of the biggest non-secrets of Google Docs -- we so rarely print stuff, and the more accessibility we have to docs on the Web, the fewer reasons we have to commit them to paper in the first place.

I did a successful install of Slackware 12 on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), and my two problems are configuring X (I can't get enough colors ... I think I'm stuck at 16 colors -- aka 4-bit color) and getting GRUB to boot it.

I know that Slack will boot because I did the original install with LILO (as usual LILO didn't pick up any of my other Linuxes) and ran Slackware for a day. Man is it nice, the X problems notwithstanding. It's the fastest KDE distro I've ever tried and makes KDE a viable alternative on my desktop. And I love a distro that automatically includes Xfce and Fluxbox as alternate window managers ... AND I like booting into a console and typing startx to go into the GUI (along with Slackware's easy-as-pie xwmconfig command-line utility to switch window managers).

But I can't get GRUB to boot Slack, no matter how hard I try (OK ... I can only try so hard because I don't have that many skills).

I don't have the laptop with me at the moment, but I found this page, which has some tips for Slackware booting in GRUB. The best is the "chainloader" method, putting Slack's LILO on its own partition and then chainloading to it to boot Slackware. I have a feeling that is going to work for me.

The author of the Just Linux entry goes by the name of Saikee and calls him (or her) self "A chainloader +1 believer."

I'm happy enough to discover Just Linux -- looks like a good place to find the info you need to make Linux work for you.

I haven't been keeping up with the Slackware security patches on the one Slack install I do have. That's because a) I'm lazy and b) I'm using that box for the Thin Puppy Torture Test II and don't have a hard drive connected (the test is being conducted with a CD-ROM drive for booting and an USB flash drive for storage). One of Slackware's greatest strengths (and weaknesses, depending on how you look at it) is that security patches must be downloaded and applied individually with the upgradepkg utility. I'm sure this can be automated with Kpackage or gslapt, but that's beyond my current capability (and my short foray with Kpackage in Debian left me less than a believer; I'll stick to Synaptic for the time being).

I still have X to deal with (I tried a bunch of xorg.conf versions and tweaks, none of them doing exactly what I want/need) but booting from GRUB into Slackware is hopefully just a little bit closer to reality.

Note: X in Slackware 12 set up really well on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), and I only needed to tweak the number of colors to make it work). The problem is that I only have a 3 GB hard drive on that laptop, and the full Slackware 12 install is 4 GB+. So I opted not to install anything even remotely connected to KDE and ended up with no office suite and very little free disk space anyway. I wiped the drive and returned to Debian with Xfce, which gives me OpenOffice (which runs surprisingly well on a 233 MHz CPU) and almost twice the free disk space. And it's just so much easier to run apt or Aptitude for updates and adding software. And I didn't mention that learning to use Aptitude (Debian's catch-all command-line package manager) is something I've been meaning to do.

But Debian didn't find my sound card on the $15 Laptop. Gotta figure that one out. I'm using DSL 4.0 and Puppy 3.01 from live CDs as alternate distros for the Compaq, so I'll be evaluating what works better for the hardware and the things I want the computer to do.

Final Slackware-and-X note: I was able to boot Wolvix Hunter from GRUB, and it has perfect screen resolution, too, so maybe I'll boot it again and peek in on the xorg.conf to get Slackware 12 looking as it should.

Nothing much to report today, except that the monitor does go into power-saving mode when idle. It just takes awhile.

Everything is running great. I almost forgot how much I like using Seamonkey as a Web browser. I haven't yet set up the mail-client portion yet, but I do plan to.

I still think Geany is one of the best text editors out there. And despite it's lack of typographical, "smart" quotes, AbiWord is a model of how light yet powerful a word-processing application can and should be. And MtPaint continues to get the job done when it comes to preparing images for the Web (although I'd just about kill for a Linux-compatible photo editor that didn't obliterate and even allowed editing of the Photoshop-implanted IPTC info embedded in JPEG images).

Today's "free memory" in the Puppy Memory Applet: 113 MB.

I hadn't listened to the excerpts of a CD on Amazon in a long time, but I had the occasion to last Friday, and I was unhappy to find out that Amazon switched away from its self-contained music-sampling system (maybe it was Windows Media, but I didn't have to do anything to make it work, so I have no idea, really) to something else entirely. Something else that required the download of RealPlayer.

Now I haven't actually WANTED to have anything to do with RealPlayer since, probably, 2001, and I really don't need another proprietary program f'ing up my system and constantly trying to sell me crap that I have no intention whatsoever of buying. I couldn't believe RealPlayer and RealAudio were even still around.

The installer was long and complicated, and once it asked me for my name, e-mail address, etc., I bailed out of it. All I need is more spam and another f'ing conglomerate getting its mitts on my personal information.

Luckily that was enough to get the minute-30 song excerpts flowing from Amazon, but sheesh, I hope somebody made a lot of money in this transaction that kind-of, sort-of screws up Amazon's ability to not piss me off.

This guy who goes by the name Computer Bob has written a very detailed account of his "conversion" to Debian GNU/Linux, listing each and every step along the way in his install of Debian Etch with the KDE desktop.

I'm using Windows Media Player -- and make no mistake, my opinion of the application itself is much higher than most others have of it -- and I get a message that an upgrade is available. Now remember, I'm IN THE MIDDLE OF USING THE ACTUAL APPLICATION. Being a Linux user mostly, I forget that Windows makes you reboot about 90 percent of the time when updates are done.

The download takes seconds, but it's about 20 minutes before everything is unpacked and installed.

Then I'm informed that I have to reboot for changes to take effect, and would I like to reboot now?

And no, I CAN'T EVEN USE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER UNTIL I REBOOT. I would just abandon the whole thing, but I only started Windows Media Player because I agreed to help someone burn a couple copies of an audio CD.

No, I WOULD NOT LIKE TO REBOOT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I have about 20 windows open right now and prefer to reboot WHEN I WANT, and I would appreciate you TELLING ME BEFORE I AGREE TO AN UPDATE THAT I WILL HAVE TO REBOOT TO MAKE IT TAKE EFFECT.

So I write about four blog entries because I have the links open in about 20 Firefox tabs, then I methodically close everything, log out of Pidgin, log out of our Unisys newspaper publishing system, reboot ... AND THEN I HAVE TO SIGN ANOTHER DRACONIAN MICROSOFT SOFTWARE AGREEMENT. I didn't do the default configuration (NEVER do the default configuration ... that's my tip of the day), and eventually got to a screen on which I could choose the media types that Windows Media Player would handle. As I said above, I actually like using Windows Media Player when I'm using Windows, so I'm happy to have it handle pretty much damn near everything. I found it interesting that Windows Media Player is now equipped to handle FLAC and OGG files -- the free, open-source alternatives to MP3, WMA, AAC and all the other proprietary crap that operating-system makers are supposed to pay royalties for including in their software. But the option to play FLAC and OGG is NOT checked by default. You have to manually check all the boxes -- yep, I did it -- so now I should have less trouble playing OGG and FLAC files.

Note: I could already play OGG files in WMP since I had previously downloaded a codec that made it possible, but it's nice to see Microsoft acknowledging that these open-source alternatives exist and supporting their use.

But making me close dozens of tabs and windows in the middle of a workday just to get a freakin' Windows Media Player update? In the end, Redmond, you wound me.

I hesitate proclaiming the ZDNet blogs the best the Web has to offer, but from the way they're presented (better than anything else I've seen) to the actual content on them, I find more interesting and relevant news there than anywhere else -- and that includes MANY big-name technology-news sites.

Just today, I found all these links that are worthy of a look; I just haven't had time to blog them in detail:

Google vs. Microsoft = Search + Apps
Amazon’s latest web service? A database
WordPress vs. an army of clunky content management systems
There’s still a lot of life left in desktop office suites
Will consumers scrimp on paid security software?
If viruses are no threat to Macs …
Why metered Internet is a really bad idea
Dell needs DNA housecleaning
Red shift meets event horizon
I love Linux, but it’s not going to save the world
Resistance is futile…I want to buy a Mac
And last but not in the slightest bit least, the new ZDNet Digital Cameras blog

I read a lot of tech blogs, and none of the other big ones do it as well on a consistant, day-to-day basis. For some, it's mostly a design problem. The way ZDNet presents its content -- with a longer first item -- gives you more of a clue than usual about what the items contain. And the writers are uniformly top-notch. From breaking news to how-tos to out-and-out opinion, it's all there.

The one problem: The way ZDNet handles and presents comments is annoying. I can understand requiring membership to post a comment, but the fact that you can only see one comment at a time and must click for every new comment is abusive to the reader and nothing more than a cheap way to up ZDNet's page views. Other than this quibble, call me an unabashed ZDNet fan.

Los Angeles Newspaper Group guru Josh Kleinbaum got the comments flowing once again to Click, but the spam is hitting pretty hard, too, so who knows what will happen.

The biggest change in the insidesocal.com blogs is the removal of the IP block that shut all of Europe out of these blogs; not a good thing when you write about Linux and other free, open-source software, which I've learned is way bigger in Europe than it is here.

In any event, I'd like to welcome back the many European readers who can now see these entries. I apologize for the blackout and hope it's the last time something that drastic will ever happen again.

I'm hoping that the blog administrator(s) will be beefing up the comment security, possibly with CAPTCHAs ("word-verification," as Blogger calls it; or "squiggly words" as most normal people know it).

Two things against CAPTCHA -- the blind hate it, and there are clever spammers who get unwitting people to type in the CAPTCHAs for them by showing free porn and requiring the porn-watchers to type in CAPTCHAs of other blogs that are funneled to their screens in order to, ahem, keep the porn flowing. It's ingenious; I don't know how easy it is to do this, or if it's anything more than a myth, but it would be sad to lose yet another way to keep comments spam-free, although it's a very clever (yet malicious) hack just the same. Here are some articles on it:

Boingboing: Solving and creating captchas with free porn

ZDnet UK: Spammers use free porn to bypass Hotmail protection
Sitepoint: The end of CAPTCHA?

My Ubuntu 7.10 Feisty install is still working great. I'm very reluctant to do the Gutsy upgrade because of all the problems I had with it on the $0 Laptop. And while I appreciated the full control I had over the "touchy" Alps touchpad and it's sometimes annoying tap-to-click function, I've grown to like tapping-to-click and really don't see anything in Gutsy, other than that, that I can't get/do in Feisty.

And since non-LTS releases from Ubuntu get 18 months of support, I can easily make it to the next LTS (long-term support) release in April 2008. I could also go beyond that, all the way to October 2008, without upgrading.

I'll might buckle before then and give Gutsy another try, but I'm more likely to wait until the 8.04 LTS release, which has a three-year lifespan in the Ubuntu world.

Still, running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS -- which is scheduled to receive security updates through June 2009 -- is a VERY conservative thing to do. I hope the 8.04 LTS release starts out rock solid and remains so for its projected life.

That said, I wonder how long Debian Etch (which was released in April 2007) will be supported. Debian Sarge was released in June 2005, so it was less than two years between Sarge and Etch as stable releases.

I guess the question remains: How long should the lifespan be of a Linux install? The question would be even more relevant if I wasn't dual- and triple-booting. (Right now I'm back to dual-booting because I can't get GRUB to boot Slackware 12).

Again, I vowed to stop dual-booting and instead mantain separate /home partitions with single-boot installs. That way I could theoretically swap distros in and out but keep my files (backed up elsewhere, of course) on the /home partition in between installs.

I continue to have the feeling that when the hardware stays the same, the makers of Linux distributions (and the Linux kernel) concentrate their efforts on the newest computers, often leaving older ones behind. This is problematic for many reasons, the most important being that users of old computers often turn to Linux when the latest version of Windows a) won't run or b) costs money they don't want to spend. Just telling the new Linux user that they might have to go through a half-dozen or more distros before finding the best Linux for their box is a daunting prospect.

But once you get through the first half-dozen installs. ... It is a bit of a sickness, isn't it?

I found out through Distrowatch that the next release of Damn Small Linux, version 4.2, will replace Xpaint with the unusually light, highly usable MtPaint -- pretty much my favorite Linux image editor. (If it dealt with IPTC info in JPGs, it would be my favorite photo-editing program on all platforms.)

It makes DSL that much more usable for the kind of work I do; with MtPaint, I can easily crop and resize images for Web publication. And MtPaint is one of the fastest programs of this type out there. In Puppy Linux, where I first discovered MtPaint, it loads in mere seconds and does just about everything I need.

And with the the GTK2(??) MyDSL package, you can add AbiWord, then even the GIMP if MtPaint isn't enough for you. It all depends on how much you want to tart up your DSL installation. While I gravitate toward Puppy, I also use DSL quite a bit, depending on which distro works better for the given hardware and working situation.

Hint: MtPaint is NOT available in the Ubuntu or Debian repositories, but IS easily downloaded and installed in .deb package format. There's also a Slackware package at the same site.

Another hint: Distros that offer MtPaint include Vector and Wolvix.

I still haven't finished writing the saga of how I got control over the CPU fan in Puppy 3.00 on the $0 Laptop. But I do want to say that the help I got from the Puppy Linux forum was invaluable. A great community is one of Puppy's strongest assets. The same goes for the Damn Small Linux people. Not only are both groups extremely active, but their advice usually solves most problems right away.

Unrelated Puppy issue: While the pup_save file in Puppy Linux holds all settings and can accommodate as many files as its size will allow, I think bigger files, like Linux ISOs, large amounts of music, video and images, should be stored on a mountable drive outside the pup_save. That way, if you want to access the material with another Linux distro, it's not stuck in a pup_save file that can only be opened while using Puppy.

I think we're getting to that point. We all worry about accessing e-mail over Web portals (or via POP and IMAP servers) that are not encrypted and secure. Or we should be.

And using the Seamonkey browser in Puppy 3.01, I'm constantly being warned about information being exchanged that's not secure.

I appreciate the warning. I even started using my DSL Extreme mail account more often because not only is the Web-portal login secure, but the whole session is as well. And I also have encryption turned on when I access the mail server via IMAP.

And most people won't think of entering personal and financial information when banking or buying stuff online unless they see the "https://" before the address.

So why are we doing so much other stuff without the "s"?

I don't know what the particulars are, but I think we're at the point with the Internet where every single damn thing ought to be encrypted and secure.

As I look back on the past year's worth of Click entries, I see my adoption of Linux play out. The pace of free, open-source software development is so fast that it makes the year seem very long indeed.

The most fun I had writing these entries was during the month of the original Thin Puppy Torture Test, in which the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client ran on Puppy Linux (I think I was using 2.14 at the time) for a month with no hard drive -- in fact, no storage at all except the onboard RAM.

Since then, I've been able to create and access a pup_save file on an attached USB flash drive, and I thought it would be a good time for a second Thin Puppy Torture Test. This time, I burned a fresh Puppy Linux 3.01 CD, booted the thin client, and "upgraded" an existing pup_save file on the flash drive.

I've been planning to get a 2 GB or 4 GB Compact Flash module on which I can dual-boot Puppy and Damn Small Linux with frugal installs (copying the few and huge CD files over to the flash drive and making it bootable) and no spinning drives of any kind attached whatsoever, but in the interim, I'm doing this new rendition of the torture test.

One of the reasons I'm going back to a long-term Puppy test is the nagging feeling that running Puppy and/or Damn Small Linux from live CDs -- or going all-out and doing the same with Knoppix or Wolvix on a 1 GB RAM box -- is a very viable alternative to traditionally installed Linuxes for desktop computer users.

Having a recent Ubuntu Gutsy install go bad on me (twice!) didn't exactly endear me to traditional Linux installs, and from my use of all the live CDs mentioned -- all of which are designed to be used as live CDs rather than as sludgy demos of what a traditionally installed system will do much quicker -- running a live CD completely in RAM, with no spinning hard drives or whirring CD drives, is a refreshing change.

I originally wanted to do a Damn Small Linux Torture test, but I couldn't get DSL 4.0 (or any previous version; I have CDs for 3.2 and 3.3) to boot from CD without a hard drive connected.

So before I begin the torture, I'll give DSL another try with the USB flash drive connected ... but even as I close out this entry, I know that Puppy, out of the box, has more of the apps I want (AbiWord, MtPaint) even while DSL seems lighter on overall resources. (Note: since the original writing, Damn Small Linux has added MtPaint).

Final thought: The mere fact that you can run Linux in a traditional install, frugal install, as a live CD, and make it even quicker by running completely in RAM, illustrates the wonderful freedom of choice we have with a fully open and modifiable operating system.

Google is starting a new service called Knol (as in "knowledge," but easier to spell), according to Google-watcher Garrett Rodgers of ZDnet. The service is not getting a big rollout, with slow debuts being the custom at Google, but there is an invitation to contribute to Knol at the Google blog.

Obviously the target is Wikipedia, which comes up pretty high more times than not in Google searches.

One way that Knol will differ from Wikipedia is that the Google offering will include its authors' names, as opposed to the anonymity of Wikipedia:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

I'm pretty sure "the rest" doesn't include "getting paid."

Anyway, here's what the Insomnia entry looks like:

The Google announcement, by the way, includes links to about a hundred items written about Knol. Funny that I haven't heard about it until today, but then again, I'm under somewhat of a rock.

I have to confess, I didn't understand half of what Dana Blankenhorn is saying in this ZDNet blog entry, Has Movable Type Gone Open Source Too Late?

I get that just about everybody things WordPress is better, and I've had plenty of my own problems with Movable Type. And I get that Google's Blogger product isn't getting the heat and light that's both warming and shining on WordPress, but I think all three platforms are pretty darn healthy at the moment.

I use all three services. Google has done a whole lot to improve Blogger -- setting up the blog the way you want it is easier than ever. I'm enjoying WordPress, especially the built-in stats, which I think Blogger should add immediately. (And no, I haven't tried Google Analytics; they should integrate it with Blogger if that's what they want you to use).

And as I've said, Movable Type 4.01 represents a huge leap over the old version. There are plenty of big companies beating the shit out of it -- we've got so much blog content on MT, it's dizzying. And MT must've really had something to offer to get BoingBoing to move to their system instead of WordPress. I'd like to find out the real story behind that.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are no losers in this game ... among the big 3. I'm sure Yahoo and AOL have blogging services, but who's even heard of them in the past few years?

And we can't count out the blogging functionality inherent in MySpace and Facebook. That's huge, to be sure.

So here's my take: Blogging has so jumped the shark that now we can focus on what it brings to human discourse: the best way yet to create, organize and present information on the Internet.

There, I've said it. Or can I just say "I blogged it"?

I saw an ad for Google Apps, which links to this page containing a video of what Google Apps can do for the business world. Here you can compare the various versions, meaning why you should spend $50 per person per year rather than nothing.

I already solved my biggest problem with Google Apps by killing out the headers and footers in Firefox's printed pages: go to File -- Page Setup -- Margins & Header/Footer and set everything to "blank" under Header/Footer.

As first seen (by me) in BoingBoing, Amazon reviewers are piling on the irony with evaluations, short and long, about Bic ballpoint pens.

An excerpt:

Today is the fourth day of ownership of my pen, and I have to say I'm starting to treat it like an old friend. I walk around the office with it clipped in to my shirt pocket and someone in the accounts department actually asked to borrow it while we were both standing at the photocopier. Would you believe it, they actually tried to walk away with my pen! They were very embarrassed when I called after them as they walked down the corridor and asked for it back. You will be happy to know that it is now back, safe and sound in my top pocket, ready and waiting to start writing again.

There's even haiku:

My name is Thomas My love is this ballpoint pen Moments will be shared

There are currently 44 reviews, but I expect that number to grow as the day goes on.

Funny, this. I thought it already happened. Guess not. But now Movable Type, the blogging software that runs BoingBoing.net, the Daily News' blogs and more, is going open-source.

I'm happier with Movable Type 4 than I was with 3.2. The feature I appreciate the most is being able to publish entries at a time in the future (which I'm doing for this entry, in case you didn't know; that's why everything I write comes out on the hour or half-hour -- because I want it that way).

The upcoming Red Hat desktop product -- called Red Hat Global Desktop, I believe -- has been delayed due to licensing of the codecs needed to provide what is promised to be full support for multimedia, filling in the gaps of most free Linux products, the developers of which often don't include non-free software and usually won't pay royalties either.

But here's one thing I didn't know about the new Red Hat OS: it'll be free:

For some time, getting free and legitimate codecs for Linux has been a problem. While most distros make it very easy to download the codecs required to play proprietary media formats, these codecs are basically illegal in the US. It is possible to purchase legal codecs and most commercial Linux distros do include legal codecs, but there are still many users out there who will not bother to get legal codecs until they are free.

We've heard a lot about the Amazon/Red Hat cloud computing intitiative -- that's where Zonbu users store their files -- but now Google is thinking about getting into the cloud storage business as well, according to eWeek via the Wall Street Journal:

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, claims Google is finishing up a service that would let users store word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and photos on the Mountain View, Calif., company's servers.

With this cloud approach, users could access their data, ideally through a Google search box, from multiple computers and handheld devices with a password, breaking the traditional computing barriers of allowing users to access their data only from their machines.

A release candidate for Windows Vista SP1 is out there, Ars Technica reports.

Traditionally, major vendors wait until Microsoft releases the first Service Pack before adopting a new version of Windows.

I dont' recommend doing it, but if you have a noncritical box and want to try Vista SP1, get it here and here. Ars also recommends reading the FAQ before doing anything.

The writer of the item, Paul Mah, has already dumped Vista:

Unfortunately, to try this I needed a laptop that actually worked more than 50 percent of the time and have already zapped the Vista Business from my Vaio in favor of Windows XP.

And one of the best Windows sources, Microsoft-Watch, has its own take on the blizzard of Service Packs coming out of Redmond.

Ars Technica writes about it:

(The Cloudbook), which will be available for $400 next month, is equipped with a 1.2GHz Via processor, 512MB of RAM, a seven-inch screen, a 30GB hard drive, and a 1.2 megapixel camera. The laptop will ship with gOS, the same Linux-based operating system that is featured on Everex's gPC.

I believe Linux Devices broke the story.

I haven't actually seen the Everex desktop PC, but I have spent a bit of time using its gOS operating system, and I'm not all that impressed with its speed or features. I think plain Ubuntu, or preferably Xubuntu (or even Debian) would be a better choice.

For those with Intel-equipped Macs, you can run Internet Explorer with Wine in much the same method as Linux users do.

A guy named Mike Kronenberg made this possible. The process involves installing X11 and Darwine. I haven't tried this (all I've got is a G4 Mac), but it's worth exploring if, for some reason, you need a version of IE past the final one that Microsoft released for the Mac (5.2 or something of that sort). I'd love to see this for PowerPC, but I'm not optimistic.

PayPal processes $1,571 worth of transactions per second in 17 different currencies on about 4,000 servers running a specially stripped-down and security-enhanced version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, according to Information Week.

(PayPal Chief Technology Officer Scott) Thompson supervises a payment system that operates on about 4,000 servers running Red Hat Linux in the same manner that eBay and Google conduct their business on top of a grid of Linux servers. "I have been pleasantly surprised at how much we've been able to do with this approach. It operates like a mainframe," he said.

As PayPal grows it's much easier to grow the grid with Intel-based servers than it would be to upgrade a mainframe, he said. In a mainframe environment, the cost to increase capacity a planned 15% or 20% "is enormous. It could be in the tens of millions to do a step increase. In [PayPal's] world, we add hundreds of servers in the course of a couple of nights and the cost is in the thousands, not millions," he said.

The Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy install on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) performed admirably for its first few months, but after a couple weeks of inactivity I had trouble during a software update. Everything slowed to a crawl. Apt and Aptitude worked, but any other kind of package management (Add/Del Programs, Synaptic) slowed the system to point that the only way to regain control was a hard reset.

So I reinstalled Gutsy from scratch. Gone was the Feisty-era kernel that expertly managed the $0 Laptop's CPU fan, and this install started exhibiting the same sludgy symptoms almost immediately.

Did a recent update break Gutsy?

I found no evidence to support this from the Ubuntu forums, nor anywhere else.

But I wanted to install wine and Internet Explorer the easy way, and even that wasn't working in Gutsy.

Then I broke my vow to stop dual- and triple-booting and put Slackware 12 in my last available partition. I purposefully installed LILO, and could boot Slackware from the $0 Laptop for the first time. And while I got X working with the frame-buffer version of xorg.conf, resolution was way less than optimal. It was probably running at 16 colors. Still, Slackware -- even in KDE -- was very, very fast. Had I been able to get X right, I would've been tempted to turn the entire laptop over to Slackware.

I tried every xorg.conf that Slackware had in /etc/X11. I tried both the whole file plus the monitor portions of xorg.conf files from Ubuntu 7.10, Debian 4.0 and Puppy 3.00. Nope.

Then it was time to reinstall Ubuntu. I did the only reasonable thing. I put Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty in the No. 1 slot. That brought back GRUB, and I was able to boot Ubuntu -- running fine now -- and Debian. But the GRUB entries for Slackware? None of them work. Kernel panic on all. Then I replaced references to sda with hda. Two got farther than that, but I was left with blank screens and no login prompt. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to set GRUB to successfully boot Slackware 12.

Here's what I had:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-2.6.21.5 root=/dev/hda5 ro vga=791
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Slackware Linux (Slackware 12.0.0) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.21.5-smp root=/dev/hda5
savedefault
boot

Next thing I'll try: adding initrd lines to see if that gets it going.

I'm not ready to give up on Slackware via GRUB yet, but does it have to be so damn hard?

Here's the deal. We've got a Mac at home ... and my two Linux-equipped laptops. This Old PC in the Back Room has no Internet connectivity at present. And the university where Ilene teaches changed their online administrative portal from one that works in Firefox to one that ... does not. It requires Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or greater. That even leaves out the last version of IE that Microsoft deigned to produce for Mac's OS X.

I returned to the easiest way to get Internet Explorer (and the Wine tools required to run it and many other Windows apps). That would be IEs4Linux.

By following the Ubuntu-specific instructions, I was able to get wine, cabextract and all the relevant files to install IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my Gutsy setup. Yep, Gusty is still giving me trouble with any package-management program that isn't apt or Aptitude, but since I have those two at my disposal still, I'm sticking with this install for awhile.

Anyway, even though the process involves changing the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, then downloading, unpacking and installing from a tarball, it's all laid out. My advice: go to the page and use copy and past to get the exact code into your terminal window.

There are also distro-specific instructions for: Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS.

In short, if you need IE, this works. And you now have Wine, with which you can experiment with other Windows apps on your Linux box. It's trial and error (mostly error) in my limited experience; for heavy duty use of Wine, I recommend Code Weavers, which costs money but is probably well worth it.

As I've previously written, my first "experiment" will be getting IrfanView running under Linux. Sadly, there is nothing -- NOTHING -- on Linux to equal IrfanView when it comes to image editing -- or at least the kind of image editing I do.

I hadn't booted my Ubuntu Gutsy partition in a week or two, and I want to put Wine and Internet Explorer on the box (Ilene needs it to access something for the class she teaches at CSUN that didn't used to require IE but sadly and stupidly does now).

So I figured I'd do the software updates I'd missed in the intervening time first. Update Manager said there were 73 updates.

And the box kept on hanging. Even ctrl-alt-delete wouldn't bring it out. The disk was accessing constantly. I did a few hard reboots. I tried apt at a terminal. It was hanging on a package called capplets-data. Yes, even in a terminal, the box hung and needed a hard boot. Not very Linux-like.

Eventually I got the message, both in apt and the Update Manager to run:

# dpkg --configure -a

I started to remove capplets-data (it was slated to be upgraded), but apt told me that doing that would also result in about half of GNOME also being removed. So I aborted the process.

I reinstalled capplets-data with apt, then ran apt-get update (again) and apt-get upgrade.

Things were going OK for awhile, but dring the replacement of Evolution, it's hanging again. What's the deal? I also did an update in Debian Etch today, and it went as smoothly as always.

Now the disk light is basically pegged, and the desktop is unresponsive.

Not a ringing endorsement for Ubuntu Gutsy. I barely use the system for a few weeks, and then I can't do a software update without the box dying a dozen times?

I did check the Ubuntu Forums but came up with nothing conclusive.

I know that hard booting in the middle of an apt update is not conducive to a well-running box.

I tried to ctrl-alt-F1 to a console, but for some reason the type is HUGE, and I can barely see a thing. So I switched to "failsafe terminal" and am running everything again:

$ sudo dpkg --configure -a

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

At least in the "failsafe terminal" things don't appear to be hanging. And did I mention that ctrl-alt-F1 in Debian gives me a normal, usable console if X is freaking out? It's either the dark side of apt, or Ubuntu. I'll see how the box looks with X when the upgrade is done.

Upgrades shouldn't break the box. That's Rule No. 1.

This is a huge pain in the ass. Did I mention that? Probably did.

Update: The thing's still f'ing up.

Get it at the Xfce developer's blog. OK ... so they post only once every six months ... but still ...

My gOS review prompted a thorough investigation of what, exactly, is faster than the billed-as-fast distro's Enlightenment window manager (so far just about everything), and that led me to explore Xfce-based Linux distributions in general, and on the $15 Laptop in particular.

The $15 Laptop is a Compaq Armada 7770dmt, circa 1999, with a Pentium II MMX processor at 233 MHz, 64 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive and an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card as its only networking device.

Here's the scorecard (not all Xfce):

Puppy runs pretty well. I had one fixable glitch: Puppy doesn't configure the Orinoco wireless card if it's plugged in before booting. A quick Web search clued me in to this. The solution is to boot puppy, then plug in the Orinoco PCMCIA card and then configure it. Worked immediately. Also, the parameters generated by Puppy 2.13's Xorg configuration helped me get X properly configured in other distributions (Debian, Zenwalk). I had to use Xvesa in Puppy 3.00, but maybe using 2.13's xorg.conf will fix that problem (or I can just run Xvesa, which Damn Small Linux and Slackware do by default).

Puppy update: Making a pup_save file in 2.13 and upgrading to 3.00 resulted in a non-working X configuration. I couldn't even ctrl-alt-backspace out of it.

Damn Small Linux 4.0 runs great. It's probably the best choice for this particular system. And I can't say enough about how nice the new JWM-based DSL desktop is. I had a DSL 4.0 review in the early stages, but I inadvertently erased it in one of my many installs. ... One thing I recommend: keep Knoppix, DSL and Puppy live CDs around and try all of them on every PC you come across.

The Xfce install of Debian Etch (type tasks=xfce-desktop at the boot prompt of the netinstall disc) is very promising. Debian and Slackware, under Xfce, blew away everything in my lengthy speed test, and Debian is just so damn easy to use. But ... the Xfce install is VERY barebones. No Synaptic, no network manager, pretty much none of the things that Zenwalk or Xubuntu bring to Xfce. I really don't need all that stuff, and as I say, Debian with Xfce is damn fast. I'm very comfortable with apt, and with a wireless card, it's not like I have a lot of heavy network configuration work to do ... I might stick with it. And the X configuration was fine ... once I booted Puppy 2.13 and tweaked Debian's xorg.conf appropriately (hint: use one of Puppy's two drive-mounting tools to get at /etc/X11/xorg.conf on your Debian install).

Zenwalk, as mentioned above, makes Xfce easier to tweak. The ZenPanel, in my opinion, is the "killer app" among Xfce-based distros. That said, I couldn't seem to turn the frame-buffer feature off, and my console sessions were, shall we say, wavy. Once I got X working (again, with Puppy's help), the menus didn't seem as responsive as Debian's.

I tried Xubuntu. I had an alternate install disk for 6.10 lying around, and the install wouldn't complete. Yes, I checked the CD's integrity. It just didn't want to go all the way.

Slackware 12. I'm installing it now. I only have a 3 GB drive.-- otherwise I'd just do a full GNOME install of Debian and then add xfce-desktop after the fact -- and so in Slackware I opted not to install KDE. The install went pretty well. Without KDE checked off, I barely had any apps, although I did get Seamonkey and Thunderbird in addition to Firefox. Debian, in contrast, has Iceweasel (renamed but otherwise exactly the same as Firefox) but no mail client at all. Not that it would be a problem to add one to Debian. In this Slack install, there isn't any office software. I'd have to add Abiword and maybe OpenOffice ... except that I'm getting very close to running out of disk space. I could probably start removing packages and steal some space back, though. On my other Slackware 12 install, I used the Abiword package from Robby's Slackware Packages, with all dependencies also on Robby's site, and that worked great. He also has OpenOffice.

I was surprised at how great OO Writer worked in the Debian Xfce install. Remember, this is 64 MB of RAM and a 233 MHz CPU. I could probably get rid of the other OO apps that I never use (just about all the rest).

And as far as video configuration go, Slackware 12 was one of the few to correctly set the X parameters for the Compaq. I still had the wavy framebuffer console (gotta figure out how to turn that off), but X works fine.

And now that I figured out how to make Puppy's wireless work (the plug-the-card-in-after-booting trick), I have both of my favorite live CDs (Puppy and DSL) at my disposal for this laptop.

I get the funny feeling I'm going to end up with Debian. I like the idea of being able to keep the same setup for a long, long time, updating it easily with apt. Slackware would last longer, since support seems to go on and on. I could also go back to having a separate /home partition to make swapping out distros easier if and when I start to pile some files into this thing.

The better thing to do would be to bite the bullet and get a reasonably sized hard drive and dual- or triple-boot for awhile. And I've got to max out the memory. It might cost too much to get the 1 GB of PC-133 laptop memory for the $0 Laptop (old memory costs between double and triple what new memory costs ... so buy it NOW people), but the 128 MB of EDO laptop RAM for the $15 Laptop will only set me back a few bucks.

But I can see ending up with Etch on the hard drive, augmented by DSL and/or Puppy as live CDs.

Most of the articles I read about Wi-Fi security is of the "sky has already fallen and is crushing your privacy to death -- TO DEATH, I TELL YOU" variety, and besides that wades too far into technobabble to be of use to anybody who really needs to know how to use wireless Internet without getting their identity stolen and privacy compromised.

Leave it to David Pogue -- he of The New York Times, and the Missing Manual series (which is published on his own O'Reilly imprint) -- to clear things up in this not-recent but still-relevant column:

You can take steps to protect yourself:

* If you see the little padlock in the corner of your Web-browser window (or if the Web address begins with “https://” instead of “http://”), you’re connected to a secure Web site. Your transmissions are encrypted in both directions, so you have little to fear from casual packet sniffers. Banking and brokerage sites, for example, are protected in this way.

* You can sign up for encrypted e-mail services or programs, too, if avoiding e-mail eavesdropping is that important to you.

* You can connect to your company over a VPN (virtual private networking) connection, which encrypts *all* data to and from your laptop. This is something a network geek would have to set up for you.

* Otherwise, you can just conduct your online transactions with the awareness that a stranger could be “overhearing” them. Wait to visit Web sites, or to send e-mail messages, of a delicate nature until you’re on a wired connection or a private wireless one.

The many, many comments below the post are also worth scanning.

But basically the 411 is that if the Web site you're looking at establishes a secure connection (look for https:// -- mind the "s" -- or a lock in the proper place in your browser, the information you're sending or receiving is pretty much safe. But the actual URLs you are using will not be similarly encrypted.

As far as using e-mail, the piece says that using Web portals with secure connections is OK. Google allows you to keep your entire session secure by adding the "s" to https:// when accessing the site. And my broadband provider, DSL Extreme keeps the connection secure automatically. Others, like Yahoo! Mail, only keep the password transmission secure, with the e-mail session itself wide open. That's dangerous.

I didn't get a firm answer from the piece and the comments on e-mail clients. Obviously, POP and IMAP e-mail sessions without encryption can be sniffed out by anyone within Wi-Fi earshot, but I think -- and hope -- that communicating with mail servers using SSL encryption is just as safe as using encrypted Web sites.

And for those who are REALLY paranoid about e-mail security, there's always Hush Mail. It offers 2,048-bit encryption, which basically can't be broken. It's also kind of a pain in the ass ... and the company has already dropped a dime on some of its more unsavory users when the government came a-callin'.

Maybe there's a better way to fly under the e-mail radar ...

It would be better to have 128-bit WPA encryption on ALL Wi-Fi communications, and the truly paranoid should probably never use wireless, but for the rest of us, sticking to secure e-mail services and not blindly filling out online forms on unsecure sites, or saying too much over IM (unless it's Google's service, which is supposedly encrypted, the comments to Pogue's article say) should be enough to keep identity thieves from fleecing our respective asses.

Ed Bott of ZDnet has been measuring his PC power consumption.

Not surprisingly, you save a whole lot of power by using S3 sleep mode to dramatically reduce power draw during times when the PC is turned on but not being used. Bott seems to suggest that S3 is something that Windows Vista offers and XP doesn't. I'm not an expert in this realm, other than to report that sleep or "suspend," as it's often called, rarely works in most Linux distributions, and that these days a lot of effort is being expended to get suspend working in laptops under Linux.

But here's Bott on S3 in his experience:

I ... attached a Kill A Watt meter to the Dell C521 PC that I’ve been using for my ongoing Media Center experiments. At rest, it uses about 64 watts, and its power consumption is roughly equivalent to the HP server over time. However, it’s dramatically more power-efficient, thanks to Windows Vista’s sleep mode. In the past 24 hours, it has used less than 0.5 kWh. Over the course of a month, that’s about $1.20 in electricity. The secret of its power-saving success is S3 sleep mode. When this system kicks into S3 mode, it uses a mere 3 watts, according to the Kill A Watt device. That 0.5 kWh equals 8 hours a day of full-power usage, coupled with 16 hours in sleep mode. If I were to leave it on with sleep disabled, energy usage would triple. Using the default Balanced power settings for the three PCs in this house will save more than 1000 kWh over the course of a year, or $82.

He promises more on S3 mode in a future entry. I'll be looking for it.

Suspend works great on our iBook G4, but with Apple and OS X, you expect stuff like that to work -- and you usually get what you expect.

I've been using Damn Small Linux a lot lately, especially the recent 4.0 release, and now 4.1 is out.

Probably the biggest change in 4.0 was the new, more intuitive implementation of the JWM (Joe's Window Manager) desktop. Fluxbox used to be the default window manager for DSL -- don't worry, it's still there and easily switched to -- but with the new JWM version of DSL, there are actually folder icons on the desktop that can be clicked open to run programs and open files.

On the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), DSL runs better than anything else I've tried on it. Even with 64 MB of RAM. I'd normally use Puppy Linux, but this low-spec laptop runs better under DSL -- and Puppy doesn't recognize the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card, while DSL (and Debian, for that matter) does. Right now I'm running Debian Etch with Xfce (MUCH more about this later) on the hard drive and DSL 4.0 from the live CD. When I up the Compaq's memory to the lofty maximum of 144 MB, this thing's gonna really fly (and yes, I can hear you all groaning right now).

New in 4.1, among many things, is the ability to boot a frugal install (a small number of large files on the hard drive instead of the usual "full" install) with the toram option (toram loads the entire DSL OS into RAM for faster loading of applications).

DSL 4.1 also makes it easier to accommodate multiple users and to automatically set the time with a network server when booting -- both very much needed. The one problem I have is that DSL assumes I'm on the U.S. East Coast when grabbing the time. I'll have to hack in there and figure out how to make it set West Coast time.

Since the insidesocal.com domain on which this blog lives has had so many problems with DNS-type attacks, with the solution being blocking the whole of Europe, I've been spreading my technological cheer around some other blogs.

It gets confusing. And in an attempt to actually spend a little time on the entries before they're published, I've been writing in Google Docs. Actually, testing gOS, which relies heavily on using Google services through the Firefox browser, made me take another look at Google Docs, which I've used on and off for awhile.

The whole idea is to have all my writing stored in one place, accessible from any network-connected computer, so things aren't left to die in one /home directory or another on the six or so computers I use during any given week. And as I say, maybe writing and not immediately publishing will make for better entries overall. Later but better.

And while on the subject of Europe, there's a rumor floating around that the IP block for the continent has been removed. So if you see this entry and happen to be a European, please send me an e-mail and tell me the country from which you hail. Thanks.

For those who don't know, the corporate world, when it uses Linux, pretty much splits its loyalty between Red Hat and Novell's Suse. Both cost money but include either Web or telephone support.

And when it comes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the server and desktop, there's another, freer way.

CentOS. Since everything based on Linux and the GNU software tools that make it run is subject to the GPL license -- making all sources open and the code freely distributable and modifiable -- CentOS is carving its own sizable niche in the Linux landscape with its clones of Red Hat Linux distributions. You can get everything from version 2 to the current version 5.

And you don't have to pay a thing.

And since Red Hat recently upped its flagship RHEL 5 product to version 5.1, CentOS has done the same with its clone. (It usually takes a couple weeks or so for CentOS to get the changes from upstream and roll them into their own distro).

So if you want a Red Hat-like system for your desktop or server -- or just want to see how it runs (very well, in my tests), give CentOS a try.

One of the best things about Red Hat and CentOS is the Anaconda installer. It's the best I've seen. (Yes, that means better than Ubuntu, too.) And you can count on quite a few years of support for any of these releases. They're still supporting Version 2, I believe.

But for me, the biggest news is that there is now a netinstall image for CentOS. That's a big deal, because you usually need to download two or three ISO images and burn each on a separate CD to get the full CentOS distribution on your computer. I think the netinstall process for Debian is one of its great strengths, and having a similar image for CentOS is, indeed, a great thing.

Note: If I was about to do a CentOS install, I'd get the netinstall image, but there's also a single DVD image for those with DVD burners (I don't have one; I'm still stuck in the CD era). At least that way you can do the full install without a networking connection. It's nice to have choices, at any rate.