April 2009 Archives

Scrolling through this week's Distrowatch, I came across an interesting new distribution in the "waiting list" of projects that will eventually be tracked by Distrowatch, should they survive long enough to ...get through the waiting list.

Lin-X aims to follow the Ubuntu distribution on which it's based but look as much like Apple's OS X as possible.

While I'm a user of OS X as well as Ubuntu (and Windows and OpenBSD ...) and I do like many things about the OS X user interface — the chief of which is the ability to keep an application running but NOT have a window of that application open at the time if I choose not to — I'm not one of those people who think OS X has it all over GNOME, KDE or even Windows XP.

But others might feel differently, and the ability to create a distro such as Lin-X from the parts provided by Ubuntu (and before that by Debian, and before that the Linux kernel, GNU userland, Xorg, GNOME and the many thousands of applications and utilities that go into many Linux distributions) ... that ability is something to be celebrated, since it gives us, the users, more choice and more freedom.

Anyhow ... while the OS X look of Lin-X is somewhat intriguing, what's even more intriguing about the distro is its revenue model.

Revenue model?

Yep, it has one. Aside from donations (which enter you in a drawing for a free Macintosh, there's an offer of e-mail support at $15 a year.

While it's not free, it's extremely cheap. Desktop support from the likes of Canonical, Red Hat or what have you will cost much, much more.

I won't get into why people who want to run an OS X-looking Ubuntu/Linux-acting OS on their PC hardware would be overly interested in winning some free Macintosh hardware — OK, maybe it's not as incongruous as it seems to me — but if this support is worth anything at all, it could be an extremely good deal for a business or individual who wants to run Ubuntu on the desktop, especially a Ubuntu designed to look as much as possible like OS X.

If you have any interest in Lin-X, download it here via Torrent, direct link via Adrive or Megaupload (the latter two of which I've never heard of ... but they appear to be legitimate ways of getting the ISO).

The only "stopper" here is that I can't find the name of the person or persons behind Lin-X, also known as probably the guy who wants your $15 and is promising you the chance at a free Macintosh in order to get it. Neither the About page nor the FAQ mention a single name.

That makes me a little squirrely about the whole endeavor, but then again, if you download Lin-X, run it and like it, $15 isn't much to part with even if you don't expect any support in return. So if you expect little, you probably won't be disappointed.

Disclaimer: I have neither download nor run Lin-X; I'm basing all of this on my reading of the Distrowatch article and the Lin-X Web site. My interest in running Ubuntu-derived distributions is limited to those that offer scads of audio-, graphic- and especially video-editing software; if it includes Cinelerra or whatever Cinelerra is morphing into by default, or anything aspiring to be the next Final Cut for FOSS, I'm there. In that aspect, I'll probably need a Mac eventually, but I'd much rather edit video in an all-FOSS environment, and that remains my goal.

I've done this sort of thing before, but luckily somebody else is comparing the Xfce environments of Debian Lenny and Xubuntu/Ubuntu.

Results are not surprising and are in line with what I found over a year ago when I did a major comparison of everything from Xubuntu and Debian to Slackware and gOS, as well as Wolvix and standard Ubuntu.

Back then, Slackware and Debian with Xfce are indeed very, very fast systems. And while I didn't test them at the time, I expect ZenWalk and Vector with Xfce to perform as well or better.

That said, I've always liked the look of Xubuntu (especially in the 7.04-7.10 era), but it does run a good deal slower than other Xfce-equipped systems — and in fact didn't do much better than Ubuntu with GNOME in my test. Thus I've pretty much just used Ubuntu when I want it, although I did have some issues with crashing on my Gateway laptop that appeared at the time to be solved by adding Xubuntu to the install and running Xfce instead. (Since then, we've been running Ubuntu with GNOME — version 8.04 — on the Gateway, and it has been running very well.)

Despite all of this, I still have two Ubuntu 8.04 installations running right now. Sure Debian and Slackware are faster, but I'm quite happy running GNOME, and I find performance in Ubuntu more than acceptable. But what keeps me running Ubuntu is the ease of installation, configuration (I'm running with no xorg.conf — and perfect video out of the box — on both installs) and patching of the system. Despite all the talk of Ubuntu shipping before everything is "right," I can't remember suffering from a broken app or feature in recent memory. And it seems that even if a new app isn't available for some reason in the Ubuntu repository, the developers behind it are quick to create a package that's designed to run in Ubuntu (even though I prefer to run what's in Ubuntu's own repository).

All things being equal, I prefer Debian, but since Lenny all things have not been equal on my Gateway and Toshiba laptops (both made around 2002-3), with which I've had unsolvable video issues in both Lenny and at least on the Gateway in Slackware as well. No amount of tweaking xorg.conf, installing new drivers, etc., would make Debian Lenny play well with the Intel video in the Gateway, and when a quick Lenny install on the Toshiba brought up the same issue, I ran quickly to the welcoming, trouble-free arms of Ubuntu. Of course OpenBSD 4.4 is running virtually trouble-free on my second, identical Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop, and if OpenBSD can get xorg running perfectly with no configuration (and no xorg.conf needed), you'd think that Debian and Slackware could do the same.

In all fairness, I haven't tried Slackware again since 12.2 came out, so maybe things have changed, and I also haven't tried Lenny since it went stable (my experience was during the three or so months leading up to that point). Put simply, Ubuntu worked, so I use it.

And as I've also said before, many of the replies to requests for help in the Ubuntu Forums might be less than helpful, but the sheer volume of those messages means that finding the answer to your question/solution to your problem not just for Ubuntu but also for Debian is easier than you might think.

For the first time, I decided to purchase the OpenBSD CD set to both support the project and make it easier for me to upgrade my two OpenBSD laptops and install the OS on some new boxes.

I've had been using OpenBSD off and on since version 4.2, but only in the past five or so months has OpenBSD 4.4 been my main operating system on my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop. And it has performed admirably, doing everything I need to do, with the exception being able to view Flash video that requires anything newer than the Flash Player 7 that runs in the Opera Web browser. And since I'm not doing all that much work with video at present, I haven't missed Flash 9 or 10 that much. Moreover, I recently discovered http://keepvid.com and the ability to turn many Flash videos into MP4s (including everything on YouTube, which is viewable in Flash 7 anyway) and watch them with Mplayer, even that issue is more of a ... nonissue than ever.

All the apps I want/need, from Firefox to Thunderbird, OpenOffice to the GIMP, gFTP and Pidgin, the Opera browser, Geany text editor, and the thus-far little-explored Inkscape and Blender (the latter of which I hope to use not as a 3D animation app but as a video editor) — they all installed easily and run well. I've also recently added the Xfce 4.4 desktop, but I still see much value in the default Fvwm2 window manager, with which I divide my time in the OS.

Never mind that the sound chip in this particular laptop is dead. I do have an identical Toshiba laptop that does have working sound (and I'd like to move the install from this Toshiba to the other).

Things in OpenBSD aren't always as easy to get working the way I want as they are in Linux. Everything is more "locked down." I needed to do more to get CUPS working, but adding the proper script in the proper place, and then configuring my printers was much more valuable learning experience and less drudgery than you'd think.

And networking — a specialty of sorts for the OS — is excellent, made all the more so by the detailed man pages and FAQ. And when those don't go far enough, I use marc.info to search the OpenBSD mailing lists (especially misc) for tips on how to get my system running properly. There's also the newish Daemon Forums, plus the valuable news from Undeadly, the OpenBSD Journal.

The OpenBSD community may have a somewhat prickly reputation, but I've found dozens of helpful people out there who are happy to help you (especially if you've done your homework, and by that I mean man pages ... FAQ ... mailing lists ...).

Amid all of this, I'm not saying I'm 100 percent going to stick with OpenBSD as my main OS. But with wireless networking working so well, an easy installation (yes, it's easy once you've done it a few times; quick, too) that can be done with a CD, a floppy (that's how I did it on this laptop) or via PXE boot over the network, some 5,000 packages in i386 (and with a package quality that is of an extremely high level — meaning the packages work well and are rarely broken — along with excellent package management in the base system) and the choice of either a six-month upgrade cycle (like a certain Linux OS you might have heard of ... or maybe not so much like it due to the incremental and conservative nature of OpenBSD development) or following the -current tree, which actually aims to be more stable than the twice-yearly releases ... (sentence WILL wind to a close ... I promise), there's a lot to like in OpenBSD on the desktop when it comes to what I need in an OS, and that is the ability to get work done in a solid and stable environment.

I've had to wrap my head around -release / -stable / -current instead of Debian's apt-get update/upgrade, but in turn I start with a minimal system (just like Debian's non-desktop "standard" install but unlike Ubuntu), add exactly what I want, and thus far have excellent X performance (something that Debian hasn't given me in the Lenny era) and a rock-solid environment in which to run the apps I need.

My CDs haven't arrived yet, but when they do, I'll let you all know.

While Googling for information on encrypting filesystems for something I'm working on, I came across many a good Ubuntu blog — yep, there's lots out there for the Ubuntu user who wants to figure things out, and that makes the Canonical-sponsored rendition of Linux even more attractive to people whose geek skills are less than complete (and yes, I count myself in that number).

One blog that looked really good, despite an awful name, is I' Been to Ubuntu, which has many, many good articles and appears to be updated quite often. The blog is subtitled, "Videos and articles helping you understand Debian and its derivatives," and I always appreciate a site that gives Debian its due (and I continue to believe that it's not really any harder to run Debian than Ubuntu, and if Debian treats your hardware well, then it's a no-brainer; unfortunately my hardware hasn't been so well-treated in the Lenny era.)

In OpenBSD, Flash support isn't exactly something to crow about. Flash Player 7 is all that works due to subsequent Linux Flash players needing ALSA sound support, a feature none of the BSD projects possess. And that player only works in the Opera Web browser — and only on i386.

But it turns out that you can watch Flash video in OpenBSD on any platform that runs Mplayer. And this clever hack is something that even Linux, Windows and Mac users can benefit from.

Here's how to do it: While perusing the OpenBSD mailing lists, I saw this post about KeepVid.

Basically what you do is enter the URL of the video in the proper box at http://keepvid.com, and then you get an MP4 video to download. Then you can play that video with Mplayer.

YouTube videos do play in OpenBSD's Opera with Flash, since they don't require Flash 9 or 10, but again, if you have a non-i386 machine (or don't want to run Opera) and want to watch them, this is a great way to do it.

Three things:

1) Not all Flash content has an easily grabbable URL, so I'm not sure http://keepvid.com will work in those instances.

2) Turning a Flash video into an MP4 means you now have a copy on your local machine that you can keep and watch at your leisure and archive as you see fit.

3) http://keepvid.com can be mighty useful even if you don't run a BSD, even if you don't run Linux. If you have no trouble viewing Flash video on your Linux, Windows or Mac OS box, http://keepvid.com still offers you a way to save a Flash movie in MP4 format on your local drive to watch at will with your favorite video player.

For me, anything that knocks Flash off its proprietary pedestal is A-OK.

Now that I've pretty much got my Xfce 4.4 desktop where I want it in OpenBSD, I've been spending more and more time not in Xfce but in the Fvwm2 window manager that's the default for this OS.

Sure, Fvwm isn't as full-featured as Xfce, it's not as pretty, but it works very well, the documentation is excellent, and most importantly, it doesn't use nearly as much memory.

Don't get me wrong, Xfce is no hog, especially compared with GNOME and KDE, but when I looked at top in a terminal and saw more than a half-dozen little Xfce widgets/apps using 10 MB each, I started to get a little squirrely about it.

Not that system performance was poor, since it was and is anything but. I'm happy with Xfce's look, feel and speed on this 1.2 GHz/768 MB laptop, and I'm not in danger of running out of memory. And if I'm that bugged by it, I could remove all the stuff from my panels that is using that memory. A leaner Xfce just might be in my future now that I've gotten the full-panel look out of my system.

And I did enjoy monitoring my network interfaces, disk activity, swap space (which I don't think I've needed to use, ever, on this machine), and CPU and RAM use.

But I don't really need all that stuff.

So today I started the laptop and launched X with Fvwm as my window manager.

And there's nothing whatsoever wrong with that.

While I'm in a griping mood, I'll say that while I like the look and feel of Xfce's Terminal and Mousepad applications, for the former I can get along just fine in Xterm, and for the latter I chafed at Mousepad's inability to open multiple documents with tabs (and the seeming inability to default to UTF-8 instead of ASCII).

Sure I could easily use Geany as my main editor in Xfce, and I did have Geany in the panel right next to Mousepad.

I still like Xfce's Thunar file manager, although I'm more than comfortable with the Rox-filer.

And even in Fvwm, I could easily continue running Thunar, Terminal and Mousepad just as easily as I could use Rox, Xterm and Geany in Xfce.

And thinking that Xfce is "heavy" when I could very well be using KDE or GNOME is just geeky BS on my part. I was only reacting to what I saw in top, not actual system performance. And again, I can easily lighten up Xfce's load by dumping all those doodads from the lower panel.

But right here, right now, Fvwm is getting the job done. But geeky users are fickle. I could be back in Xfce tomorrow. And if I did a reinstall and had 20 GB set aside for /usr rather than the 6 GB I have now, I could roll GNOME onto the box and try that, too.

So why am I OK with GNOME in Ubuntu but not in OpenBSD? I guess that the OpenBSD philosophy of starting out with a minimal install and building up from there (the same philosophy with a "standard," non "desktop" installation of Debian, now that I think about it) makes it seem more natural to add the X apps I like best to the system rather than try to re-create some huge GNOMEish configuration.

Not that I don't have GNOME-based Debian and Ubuntu installations on three other boxes in my stable.

What I want to say at this point in this rambling entry is that the freedom to roll so many desktop environments/window managers into a Unix-like system is something that really sets it apart from the Windows and Mac OS X environments. And it's something we should celebrate — and educate the non-Linux/BSD-using public about in an effort to let them know what alternatives are out there.

http://www.ibackup.com/online-backup-linux/
http://www.ibackup.com/charginghelp_new.htm

10 GB USD 9.95 USD 99.50 On Demand+
20 GB USD 19.95 USD 199.50 On Demand+
50 GB USD 49.95 USD 499.50 On Demand+
100 GB USD 99.95 USD 999.50 On Demand+
200 GB USD 199.95 USD 1999.50 On Demand+
300 GB USD 299.95 USD 2999.50 On Demand+

http://lifehacker.com/software/backup-utilities/rsyncnet-flexible-managed-backup-service-169816.php

http://rsync.net/

http://www.rsync.net/products/index.html

http://www.rsync.net/products/unix.html

rsync.net:

Pricing

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(As low as 0.48/GB/mo with quantity discount)

Geo-Redundant Filesystem - $2.10 / GB per month
(As low as 0.84/GB/mo with quantity discount)

Quantity discounts are calculated automatically during signup, and are as follows:

50-99 GB 10% Off 400-799 GB 40% Off
100-199 GB 20% Off 800-1999 GB 50% Off
200-399 GB 30% Off 2000-4999 GB 60% Off

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Only $54.95/year

http://www.getdropbox.com/

2 GB = free
50 GB = 9.99/99

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

Storage

* $0.150 per GB - first 50 TB / month of storage used
* $0.140 per GB - next 50 TB / month of storage used
* $0.130 per GB - next 400 TB /month of storage used
* $0.120 per GB - storage used / month over 500 TB

Data Transfer

* $0.030 per GB - all data transfer in April 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009 - 3rd Anniversary Celebration!
(Note: data transfer in will return to its normal price of $0.100 per GB on July 1)

* $0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
* $0.130 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
* $0.110 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
* $0.100 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Requests

* $0.01 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST requests
* $0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*

http://s3browser.com/
This program was made using the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0, and requires the Microsoft .NET runtime library to be installed on your computer.

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html - A list of Amazon S3 backup tools.

http://www.s3rsync.com/index.php/Rsync_to_Amazon_S3

Each Rsync hour costs 0.05 US$.
The charge calculated per minute. For example, an Rsync session of 20 minutes per day will cost you 0.017$ a day or 0.20$ after three days.

You will be asked to pay in advance 19 US$ that will credit you with 380 usage hours.

An up to date usage report is available online. Each month we will submit your detailed usage report summary.

Note that you are still responsible for the standard Amazon bandwidth charges for any data transfer between your Rsync client and our Rsync server ($0.10/$0.17 per GB uploaded/downloaded). Bandwidth charges will be added to your s3rsync cost and are not included in your monthly S3 bill.

http://www.goodsync.com/

http://www.s3rsync.com/index.php/FAQ

Mozy

/usr/local/share/xfce4/README.OpenBSD

Distrowatch guru Ladislav Bodner has been rolling more than a few operating systems onto his ASUS Eee PC 900 netbook — probably the most popular netbook out there at this point (they even sell them at Target now).

In this week's Distrowatch (which I recommend as a must-read for anybody who wants to follow what's happening in Linux and the BSDs), Ladislav writes about how a mouse-over problem that tends to freeze the screen in Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the ASUS Eee was solved in the Linux kernel but almost immediately returned due to the relevant patch being pulled from the kernel because it began causing other problems.

Ladislav goes over how you can go backward from Linux kernel 2.6.28-11.41 to 2.6.28-11.40 and get your ASUS working again under Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

He also provides a tip for those using SSD (solid-state drive) disks on how not to wear them out:

Finally, a quick reminder for those who are about to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or any other Linux distribution) on a netbook with solid state drives. Since these drives have a limited life span that depends on the frequency of write access to the drives, you can greatly prolong their life span if you follow these two rules while installing your preferred distribution (here is the source of this information, although there are those who dispute this):

* choose a non-journalling file system (e.g. ext2)

* don't create a swap partition

As Ladislav says, there is some dispute about the life of flash media in everything from those mini USB drives and SD camera memory cards to devices designed to replace traditional IDE and (mostly these days) SATA .

Some people have said that the MTBF (mean time between failures) for SSDs is so low when compared to spinning hard drives that the devices will last much longer than traditional spinning hard drives due to the lack of moving parts in an SSD. They say that worry about killing the flash memory with repeated write cycles is overblown.

But others are worried about killing their flash memory too quickly and take precautions such as the recommendation above not to have swap space on the drive.

For those who might not know, most operating systems do use swap space on the hard drive in the event that your computer's RAM (memory) fills up. I won't go into just how much space you need for swap because that's a whole new topic that's been discussed countless times in countless places. (I generally set aside 300 MB for swap on my systems).

Even Windows uses swap (that's one of the reasons your box tends to slow down after it's been running all day [or week/month/year]) — you've got a lot of critical stuff that the OS has written to the swap area of the drive.

Back to flash/SSD memory: As I say, some people think that worrying about excessive writes to flash is unwarranted. While I'm tempted to say that you shouldn't use an SSD on a server, Sun Microsystems (yep, the company bought recently by Oracle) is offering SSD-equipped servers and storage arrays. Sun thinks SSDs are the (near) future in servers since performance gains are too large to be ignored.

Sun is using single-level cell (SLC) flash memory, which has a much longer life than the cheaper multilevel cell (MLC) devices that pack more memory into the same space but have shorter write/erase lives.

We're a bit far away from the ASUS Eee PC and Ubuntu at this point in the post, aren't we?

Maybe. But here's what I want to say about flash-based storage: I'm all for it. I'd like to start moving everything I have to SSDs as soon as fiscally possible.

One thing I really like is a silent PC: no fans, and no spinning hard drives. If you've ever worked on a system with drives snaking out of the back of the case and sitting on a table (I did it for years), you know how much noise traditional hard drives make and how much heat they throw off.

For the energy and noise considerations alone, I'd like to dump spinning hard drives.

To that end, I'm doing one test and hope to do another soon. I've been running my Self-Reliant Thin Client (converted Maxspeed Maxterm) with an 8 GB CF card in the box's built-in CF-to-IDE adapter as the unit's main drive. I am still running Debian Etch on it (and will continue with it until I manage to get networking into the room). The box isn't in heavy use at present, but it is running (and has been this time for more than a week). I do have swap set up on the flash, and with only 256 MB of RAM, it'll probably get used a bit.

I'm running regular backups of the /home files to a 1 GB USB flash drive with rsync, so I have an all-flash system.

It's not fast. A low-end CF card (mine is a Transcend) doesn't have the performance of a top-of-the-line SSD. For one thing, the Transcend uses MLC instead of SLC and for that reason alone should have a shorter life.

I'll keep the box running for quite some time to monitor its progress with the flash memory and see if it can withstand repeated use. An upgrade from Etch to Lenny would definitely tax the CF card.

Another thing I'd like to try is an SSD in one of my laptops — maybe the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), which I've recently put back into service. At least the drive is easy to get to.

I've been writing updates in my print column of the things I've bought/used/discarded/loved/hated over the past year, and that got me thinking: I got started with Linux in early 2007 and used many a distro on the machines available to me.

But for the last six months, I've pretty much stuck with the same OSes on the same machines. There are two reasons for this:

1) I've found stuff that works

2) see 1)

OK, that's one reason, but it sure feels better as two.

Anyhow, the other reason I've kept the same operating systems on my half-dozen or so active computers is that I need them to run — and run well. And they do.

Here's the rundown:

On my main laptop, the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, I've been running OpenBSD 4.4 for nearly six months. The only "sticking" point is not having Flash 9 or 10. Flash 7 works for YouTube but not much else. I have a few things that I do that need more up-to-date Flash, but otherwise the OS and applications in packages and ports have been extremely stable. I just upgraded it from Firefox 2 to 3, and tonight I added Mplayer and successfully played a Quicktime video. (Too bad the sound chip on the Toshiba is broken; the video itself looked great.)

If OpenBSD weren't so good, I'd use the Flash situation as a excuse to run back to Linux. But I've enjoyed using OpenBSD and learned so much over these months that for now I'm going to stick with it.

I have an identical Toshiba Satellite laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. It, too, is performing very well, although I seldom use it since I have all of my data on the OpenBSD laptop. I have few complaints about Ubuntu 8.04, and before it came out I vowed to stick with the LTS for at least a year, maybe longer. I could be persuaded to upgrade if I needed to get a newer wireless adapter to work, but so far I haven't needed to do that. Ubuntu remains very solid, and with better Flash support than OpenBSD it's nice to have it as a backup.

Our daughter has what used to be known as the $0 Laptop, a Gateway Solo 1450. The Gateway could never comfortably run OpenBSD because of its noisy CPU fan, which Linux can manage most of the time (with a simple shell script). FreeBSD managed the fan even better, but only during the first boot after the install. After that, it all went to hell.

Our girl has all her educational games on the Gateway, which is also running Ubuntu 8.04. I still think that the Debian Project packages Gcompris, Childsplay and TuxPaint just that much better than Ubuntu, but all the problems I had with Debian Lenny and X on both the Gateway and later the Toshiba had me running back to Ubuntu and OpenBSD — both of which run X perfectly on both laptops with no xorg.conf file needed.

I'll concede that installing, customizing and maintaining just about any Linux distro is easier than doing the same in OpenBSD, but as I say above, I'm grateful for the learning experience and most of the time can figure out how to do what needs to be done in OpenBSD.

My Self-Reliant Thin Client, the first test machine that I began running Ubuntu, Slackware, Debian, ZenWalk, Puppy, DSL and other distros on in 2007 has been running Debian Etch on a bootable 8 GB CF card for quite a few months now. I don't have it networked at the moment, so I can't upgrade to Lenny. I'm keeping the converted thin client powered on these days in another informal long-term test, and I hope to have networking hooked up to it soon. With 128 MB of RAM and less-than-great video and sound hardware, it's not the greatest machine, but I love having something with no moving parts and minimal power consumption.

I have the Mac G4/466, aka the Debian Mac, running Debian Etch, which I continue to think is the best non-OS X operating system for this particular hunk of hardware. I managed to get 640 MB of RAM into it, and it's a great machine. Since it's a PowerPC box, there's no Flash Player in any OS that isn't OS X. I'm considering an OS X 10.4 install to see how that runs. We have dual-500 MHz G4s in the office that run OS X really, really well. I wonder how this single-CPU 466 MHz box will measure up. We could use a Mac OS backup machine in the house.

Earlier this week, I pulled out the $15 Laptop, a 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt with 233 MHz CPU and 144 MB RAM and fixed what was ailing it: It wouldn't run X in OpenBSD 4.2 in my user account, but would in root. That's because when it comes to screwing around with X, I don't know what I'm doing some of the time. I had created an .xinitrc file with a single line reading "xset b off" to silence the system bell in X, and that was enough to keep the Fvwm window manager from loading. I killed .xinitrc and all was well with the Compaq. I'll probably do a reinstall of OpenBSD, since upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3 to 4.4 to ... is just too much work. Yep, after a long search for the right OS, the Compaq has run OpenBSD for a long, long time.

The real workhorse of our stable is the iBook G4 1 GHz laptop. In the past year I've replaced the hard drive, pumped 1 GB of memory into it and upgraded from OS X 10.3 to 10.4. We needed 10.4 in order to run Firefox 3 and Flash 10. Yep, that's when I upgrade — only when absolutely necessary.

To make a long story short, until I have a burning desire to watch Web video all the time, or until I need to edit and process video into Flash, I just might stick with OpenBSD on my i386 hardware. Otherwise I'll probably move back to Ubuntu or Debian, the latter only if those nagging video problems somehow go away. (I've had similar issues with Slackware ...).

My next "challenge" will be to run OpenBSD -current instead of -release. Since I already hate waiting for things to compile, I don't know how I'll react to keeping a -current installation up to date. There's only one way to find out.

When I set up this Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop with OpenBSD 4.4 late last year, I decided to go with Firefox 2.0.0.16 instead of the newer Firefox 3.0.1.

I had used FF3 in Ubuntu and on Windows quite a bit, and I finally began running it in Mac OS now that I finally upgraded the iBook to OS X 10.4.

But until now I stuck with FF2 on this OpenBSD laptop.

By the time OpenBSD 4.5 is released in May, FF2 will be no more. That was another factor governing my decision to finally upgrade to FF3.

I finally decided to make the leap from FF2 to FF3. (Remember that OpenBSD doesn't generally update binary packages after each release. Unless you run -current and compile everything, it's six months between upgrades for the OS and the applications.)

I was prepared for trouble, but everything went well. It didn't hurt a bit. All of my FF2 settings and bookmarks are intact, as are my add-ons (including Web Developer). Java still works, too. And performance of FF3 seems more than a little bit snappier than FF2. I can really feel the difference with Web-based apps that use a lot of Javascript.

Yeah, I'm months late to the FF3 party (at least on this platform), but I can more than safely say that I'm damn glad I finally and painlessly made the switch.

To replace FF2 with FF3, here's what I did in an xterm window:

$ sudo pkg_delete mozilla-firefox
Password:
mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.16p3: complete
Clean shared items: complete
$ sudo pkg_add -i firefox3
firefox3-3.0.1p3: complete
--- firefox3-3.0.1p3 -------------------
Please see /usr/local/mozilla-firefox/README.OpenBSD
for information about running Firefox on OpenBSD.

OpenBSD users face a similar dilemma in version 4.5, in which OpenOffice 2.4 will co-exist along with OO3. For the release after that, just like with FF, OO2.4 will be gone, and only OO3.x will remain. I'm OK with that, too. I just started using OO3 in Windows, and I think it's a pretty good release thus far.

I love it when things work. It happens more often than not in OpenBSD, and that's why I've stuck with it. If things were breaking down software-wise, I'd be sprinting back to Linux. But as long as not having Flash 9 or 10 doesn't totally harsh my proverbial mellow (OpenBSD is mired in Flash 7 due to subsequent Linux Flash Players insisting on ALSA sound, which the BSDs don't have), I'm comfortable.

And if I could manage to edit video in Blender, I would work around the lack of up-to-date Flash.

Now ... back to the OpenBSD way of keeping things up to date (or not ...).

I can't decide whether, and if so how much, I'm troubled by keeping the same version of various apps on my machine for six months at at time. At one level, I'm happy not to be constantly doing apt-get update apt-get upgrade or having the Update Manager pop up every day.

But if you want to keep current in OpenBSD, you need to either patch your box to -stable, or just run -current which is what developers and other edgy types install on their own equipment. I'll confess that if I understood a little better how to make a -release box -stable, or keep a -current box current, I'd be more game for doing it (and I might get there at some point). I do know that a lot of compiling is involved, and I'm no fan of sitting and waiting for ports to build. But if Firefox 3.0.8 is what I craved, I could get it now either in by running -current or by and building the port. Even in Ports, Firefox is stuck at 3.0.1 in my 4.4 environment.

I've seen a few users claim that keeping an OpenBSD box at -stable or running -current and updating it is no big deal. I'd love for that to be the case.

Right now, on this install, I have maybe 2.5 GB in /usr, and after my experience running out of space to build Java, I'm reluctant when it comes to bringing down the source of OpenBSD and compiling it. This is just about as close to a "production" machine as I have, and I can't risk bricking the install, so I'll be ordering my OpenBSD 4.5 CDs very soon (make that very, very soon) and upgrading that way. I've done it once, and hopefully I can do it again.

Click the image above for the 1024x768 version of my Xfce desktop in OpenBSD 4.4.

After many months in OpenBSD 4.4 with the project's default window manager, Fvwm, I decided to finally try one of the more popular "desktop environments."

I could have gone with one of the two biggest projects — GNOME or KDE, but instead I chose Xfce not so much because it's lighter on resources but because I like the way it looks and works. One consideration was disk space, since I'm using roughly half of a 20 GB drive, leaving me with only 10 GB and a /usr partition with 2.52 GB remaining at the moment.

As with most things in OpenBSD, adding Xfce to the operating system isn't as easy as it is in Debian, Ubuntu or many other Linux distros. There is no "meta package" in OpenBSD for Xfce. I believe that with GNOME and KDE, it's possible to add one or two packages that call in everything you need for the desktop environment.

To install Xfce, however, you must use pkg_add to install about three dozena number of Xfce packages. I went through the entire list of packages for OpenBSD in i386 and installed just about everything I thought I needed. I still missed somewhere around four packages that were required to make Xfce look and work the way it's supposed to.

I did work off of a list I found on the Web, but it didn't exactly match up with what's in the OpenBSD repository for version 4.4 of the OS.

I finally did get everything I need installed on the laptop. I happen to really like Xfce's applications, including the Thunar file manager, the Mousepad text editor and Terminal (capital T — that's what they call it) terminal. The Terminal terminal — a bit awkward?

Besides having a nice look and feel, these Xfce apps are incredibly quick to load.

I opted to keep many of my other apps, and in my lower panel I still have icons for the Geany text editor, ROX file manager and even a little menu that springs from the panel next to the Terminal icon for xterm.

Rather than drop individual icons for all the OpenOffice components into the panel, I opted for a single OO logo that starts soffice, from which I can chose any of the OpenOffice apps I need, say Writer (swriter), Calc (scalc) or Impress (simpress).

Curiously, Xfce picked up most of my applications and placed them in the menu automatically. A few programs didn't make it, and I added many of them to the panel. I found icons for most of them by exploring /usr/local and drilling down to find .png icons. For a few apps, including Opera and OpenOffice, I couldn't find icons in the system. After a bit of Googling, I found fairly good-looking icons out there on the Web and used them to add items to the lower panel. The Opera icon has a bird in it, which is quite unusual, but it looks OK.

One nice thing about Xfce in OpenBSD is that when I add a new application, it generally goes into the menu automatically. It worked with Inkscape at any rate. I got used to adding things to the Fvwm menu, and it's nice in a way to have everything exactly the way I want it, but I'm lazy enough to allow the system to do it for me. I always seemed to have trouble in Debian with some apps having their menu item placed in a very awkward portion of the menu hierarchy. I'll be watching for similar behavior. Thus far, I've noticed that Dillo, Xmms, Xpdf, Adobe Acrobat Reader and most console apps didn't make it into the Xfce menu in OpenBSD. That's OK for now. I wonder if removing and reinstalling the Dillo browser, for instance, will make any difference. Since I have no sound at present, the Xmms music player isn't something I have any use for.

I've never done this much work setting up a desktop environment before, but like most things in OpenBSD, the net result of having to do a lot of things manually is a much deeper knowledge of the software that will serve me not only in OpenBSD but in every system I use.

As you can see in the image above, I added quite a few widgets/plugins to the panels, mostly to the lower one. I'm able to monitor disk activity, free space on /usr and /home, both of my network interfaces (wireless is wi0, wired is rl0), plus CPU activity and memory and swap usage.

I picked up the wireframe puffy OpenBSD image for the desktop wallpaper a while ago on some Web site dedicated to such things, and I can't remember the URL, but Googling for OpenBSD wallpaper should turn up this one and more. I do have a second 1024x768 image ready in case I get tired of this one (I do have the shirt, and if I'm wearing it while using a desktop with the same image, that pushes me further into OS-geek territory).

If you want to install Xfce in OpenBSD, here is a list of all the packages I installed. I didn't add everything since this laptop has a dead sound chip, but this is just about everything Xfce-related that's in the OpenBSD packages repository. I used pkg_info to generate the list:

$ pkg_info | grep xfce
exo-0.3.4p4 extension library for xfce4
gtk-xfce-engine-2.4.2p2 theme engine for GTK2
libxfce4mcs-4.4.2p2 settings management library used by most xfce4 modules
libxfce4util-4.4.2p2 basic utility library for xfce4
libxfcegui4-4.4.2p4 widget library for xfce4
mousepad-0.2.13p2 really simple text editor for xfce4
notification-daemon-xfce-0.3.7p4 notification daemon for Xfce4 desktop
orage-4.5.12.2p3 advanced calendar for xfce4
ristretto-0.0.20p1 lightweight image-viewer for xfce4
terminal-0.2.8p2 lightweight vte-based terminal for xfce4
thunar-0.9.0p4 lightweight file manager for xfce4
xfce-mcs-manager-4.4.2p3 settings manager for xfce4
xfce-mcs-plugins-4.4.2p3 settings manager plug-ins for xfce4
xfce-utils-4.4.2p4 essential utilities and scripts for xfce4
xfce4-appfinder-4.4.2p3 xfce4 application finder
xfce4-clipman-0.8.0p3 clipboard history plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-dict-0.4.0p1 query a dictionary service for words or phrases
xfce4-diskperf-2.2.0p1 displays instant disk performance in the xfce4 panel
xfce4-fsguard-0.4.0p3 monitors a chosen mountpoint for free disk space
xfce4-genmon-3.2p1 generic scriptable monitor for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-icon-theme-4.4.2p2 icon theme for xfce4
xfce4-mailwatch-1.0.1p3 monitor various types of mailboxes
xfce4-mixer-4.4.2p3 volume mixer module for xfce4-panel
xfce4-mpc-0.3.3p1 simple client plugin for Music Player Daemon
xfce4-netload-0.4.0p2 displays load of a network interface in the xfce4 panel
xfce4-notes-1.4.1p5 sticky notes for the xfce4 desktop
xfce4-panel-4.4.2p3 panel for Xfce4 desktop
xfce4-places-plugin-1.1.0p1 gnome-like places plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-session-4.4.2p5 xfce4 session manager
xfce4-systemload-0.4.2p3 displays cpu/memory/swap/uptime in xfce4 panel
xfce4-verve-0.3.5p3 command line plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-wavelan-0.5.4p0 displays stats from a WLAN interface
xfce4-weather-0.6.2p3 see temperature/weather conditions on the xfce4 panel
xfce4-xkb-0.4.3p3 xkb layout switcher panel plugin for xfce4
xfdesktop-4.4.2p4 xfce4 desktop manager
xfprint-4.4.2p3 printing helper for xfce4
xfwm4-4.4.2p2 xfce4 window manager

Creating a meta-package or at the very least a script that installs all of these packages is something I'm very interested in doing. That would make installing Xfce in a new system a lot quicker and easier.

As I've written many times in the past few months, I do have a fondness for the default window manager in OpenBSD. Fvwm2 is a pretty nice, extremely light app, and I think it's a great light alternative to Fluxbox.

One thing in Fvwm I could never figure out was how to change the key bindings for switching between desktops from CTRL-arrow to CTRL-ALT-arrow. Whenever I was in a text-editing program such as Geany or OpenOffice Writer, I'd habitually use CTRL-arrow to skip from word to word and instead skipped from screen to screen.

In Xfce, I'm back to using CTRL-ALT-arrow to switch windows, and CTRL-arrow moves the cursor from word to word, just like in the other 99.99 percent of OSes out there.

A word on display managers: On this OpenBSD install, I didn't start out using XDM, GDM or KDM, the three display managers used to start a session with a login in X rather than at the console. Among the things a display manager can do for you is allow for easy switching between a number of desktop environments/window managers.

But since this installation started out with a console login, I decided to keep it that way.

Now when I type:

$ startx

That logs me in with Fvwm as the window manager.

When I type:

$ startxfce4

That logs me in with Xfce.

It just seems easier to keep the console login and choose between window managers at the command line. In theory anyway, if I decided to add GNOME, I could start it with:

$ gnome-session

or KDE with:

$ startkde

Shutdown ... sometimes: In OpenBSD with Xfce, I can choose "Shut Down" from the Quit menu, and the script will completely power off my Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop. I never expected this to work. I tried it again this morning, and the Shut Down button was grayed out. All I could do was click Log Out.

All I can think of is that perhaps the Shut Down feature is somehow connected to using sudo. I used sudo for all kinds of things during my previous sessions in Xfce, but this morning I just checked e-mail with Thunderbird and used Firefox for a few quick checks. No sudoing ...

Later: I confirmed my suspicion. If I open up a terminal and use sudo for anything, even something innocuous (I did sudo pkg_info, which doesn't require root privileges), Xfce will allow you to completely shutdown or reboot the box from the GUI. Otherwise your only option is to log out and shutdown as usual from the console.

In my last post, I told of how I dumped a whole mess of computer equipment at Goodwill, which miraculously accepts such electronic waste — and gladly, too.

Now I reveal what I got rid of and why:

It wasn't the easiest parting of the ways, but I did dump the original This Old PC. The 1995-97 era white-box PC featured a 333 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, a maximum 256 MB of 100 MHz RAM, an 8 GB hard drive and a motherboard with two ISA slots in addition to its three "modern" PCI slots. The sound card for the box was in an ISA slot and therefore difficult to get working in Linux. I did have a spare PCI sound card, but it really wasn't worth making the switch.

While 256 MB is OK to run Linux or OpenBSD, it's far from ideal, and the reality is that you're in for lots of swapping for many, many tasks. And since the box sat on the floor for years and was booted maybe twice a year at that, it was time for it to go. True, it was a white box, but it wouldn't accommodate micro-ATX motherboards, the most common size these days. I could've gotten a full ATX motherboard as a replacement, but the power supply wouldn't have been adequate for newer motherboards with SATA drives and all that comes with an up-to-date PC.

If I really want a "new" desktop PC, I'll either start from scratch with a new white box (or black box, as they commonly are these days) or get a cheap Dell/IBM/fill-in-the-blank box and just run that without investing a whole lot in individual parts.

The 256 MB memory limit was the biggest stopper for This Old PC. I can live with 333 MHz of CPU, but not being able to get 512 MB of RAM made this box expendable. I still do have its monitor, though. I also saved the keyboard, the floppy drive, the hard drive and some IDE cables. You can never have too many IDE cables. Until you really do have too many. But they're small.

I also got rid of a much "newer" box, a 2001-era Dell Dimension 8100 with a 1.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256 MB of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive. OK, I kept the hard drive — the biggest full-size IDE drive I have at the moment. I also got rid of this box's biggish 17-inch CRT monitor. I have 2 CRTs in the herd now, the 15-inch that came with This Old PC and my LaCie 22-inch behemoth that, I've discovered recently, looks super sweet being fed by my 1995-era Sun Sparcstation 20. The LaCie also has two VGA inputs and easy switching between them, so that's another feature in its favor. The fact that it's freakin' huge is not so much in its favor. I do have an old LCD monitor (an NEC or something ... I can't remember at the moment) that I'm not using, but it's ready for service should the need arise and the LaCie move out of its way.

I got this Dell for free, and I intended it to be a project/test computer. Even though it's faster than any desktop I have in the herd, I got rid of it for three reasons:

1) Even though it's clearly a desktop machine, for some user-hating reason, Dell designed it to use RAMBUS server memory, which is rare and expensive. I would have needed to spend quite a bit to get it up to 1 GB.

2) Dell engages in even more user-hatred by using nonstandard parts. The power supply for this tower was a Dell-only item. And this one had an annoying high-pitched whine
ALL THE TIME when the box was plugged in but powered OFF. I wasn't comfortable at all with that, and I was equally uncomfortable paying $80 for a power supply for an 8-year-old computer.

3) I've been inside quite a few PCs ... and the design of this Dell, like many I've seen, is not exactly user-friendly. The RAM is hard to get to (WHY does Dell do that?), it's difficult to get the hard drives in and out, and there's a weird green plastic piece in there designed to funnel air to the RAM modules. I just didn't feel like this was a piece of hardware I needed to be dealing with.

So out goes the Dell. I'm not ruling out getting ANOTHER Dell if I can do it cheaply ... and don't have to do anything but plug it in and run it. Pacific Geek often has deals on refurbished Dell and IBM boxes.

I also got rid of three of the 10 or so broken laptops I collected in the Daily News move last year. Only a few of the 10 booted, most are so old as to be unusable (64 MB RAM ... things like that), and most won't boot at all. I got rid of the 64 MB RAM model (an old Compaq) and a few Toshibas that were so parted-out that they really weren't worth keeping around.

I saved enough of the old laptops to provide parts, should I need them, for my two working Toshibas and possibly for the Gateway, the latter of which needs a new PCMCIA assembly (the pins are bent ... long story).

I also dumped an Iomega ZIP drive because a) it was in the same pile and b) in the days of cheap/reliable USB flash drives, ZIP drives are pretty much obsolete. I've got quite a few more ZIP drives that will bite the dust as soon as I collect them together for the next trip to Goodwill.

So what did I keep?

I still have The Self-Reliant Thin Client, a 1 GHz (really 500 MHz with every OS I've run for some reason) converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that also sadly maxes out at 256 MB of RAM but is now running Debian Etch from a CF card. At the time I bought this 2002-era box, it was the cheapest way of experimenting with mini-ITX, fanless power supplies and CF booting. It's not the best box — video and sound are sub-par ... but it's so damn small and silent. I'd like a better mini- or Pico-ITX box, that's for sure.

I kept The Debian Mac, the G4/466 MHz PowerPC box, which I recently was able to pump up to 640 MB of RAM. It's running Debian Etch (it's not networked, so I can't update it) right now, but I'm considering giving it a try with Mac's OS X 10.4 operating system so we'll have a second Mac OS system in the herd in addition to the iBook G4.

And right now the 1995 Sun Sparcstation 20 is still on my desk. I've run NetBSD 4, Solaris 9 and currently OpenBSD 4.4 on it.

The whole rap on the Sparc architecture at this point is that 32-bit boxes like the Sparc 20 are a whole lot harder to use productively on the desktop than 64-bit Sun hardware. I really should've gone for something 64-bit, like a Sun Ultra. They don't cost all that much more, and Solaris runs better on them (I have several bones to pick with Solaris and Sun, but that's another post for another time), Debian Lenny SHOULD actually boot, install and run (Debian abandoned 32-bit Sparc long ago), FreeBSD supports 64-bit Sparc and not 32-bit ... Firefox just might run in 64-bit in NetBSD (it won't in 32-bit) ... and in OpenBSD you've got many, many more applications to choose from, including Firefox, Thunderbird and Abiword, Geany, all of which are not available as 32-bit Sparc packages, with the reason being that these ports won't build in 32-bit Sparc (and yes, I tried them all, and more).

I only have my own experience to go by, but in OpenBSD at least, the absence of a precompiled package for 32-bit Sparc means that the port of that application won't build.

And while the Mac G4 is a very nice hunk of hardware that I'm keeping for the moment, between it and the Sparc, I think my curiosity with non-x86 hardware is safely sated for the time being.

Sure it's fun to play with other architectures, but it's also fun to have stuff work, and when it comes to running the apps I want to run, that means the world of Intel and other i386/x86_64 processors.

I still have The $15 Laptop — the Compaq Armada 7770dmt — in partial service, even though for some reason it refuses to run X in OpenBSD like it used to. I still haven't figured that one out, and once I get the /home files off of the drive (or swap a new drive in), I'd like to try loading either Debian or OpenBSD into it again. It's a nice laptop, with a great screen and keyboard, and I love the built-in power brick with only a 120-volt cord between the laptop and the wall outlet.

The Compaq's 144 MB memory limit is challenging, as is the 233 MHz CPU, but it's a machine I'll probably keep around for awhile.

My "workhorse" machine remains the Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop with 768 MB of RAM, a 20-something GB hard drive split between Windows XP and OpenBSD 4.4, and (somewhat unfortunately but not deal-breakerishly) broken sound.

With the Toshiba, I use the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card for wireless, and I have OpenBSD set up pretty well, with Java runtime for the Firefox browser, Flash Player 7 (the "newest" you can get in the BSD world) for Opera, plus software that includes OpenOffice, Geany, Firefox, Thunderbird, the GIMP, Pidgin, gFTP and Blender (recently added as a possibly video-editing solution in OpenBSD).

In the console I've been using vi for text editing. I gave up on Nano due to the permanent linefeeds it adds when you wrap text. In Vi, if you wrap text, the same thing happens, but if you don't wrap text, the lines break at the end of your screen and while not looking pretty do at least stay where you can see them. Unwrapped lines in Nano, like every other console editor I've used, just run off the screen. Vi has always been "good" this way and always will be. The more you use it, the easier it is to switch between edit and command modes and to think the vi way ... and it's just good practice to keep those vi chops, however limited they are (and mine are limited to be sure).

I've been seriously using this laptop with OpenBSD 4.4 since late 2008. That's longer service — and more files, more e-mail and more setup — than any other FOSS operating system I've used since I began with Linux in January 2007.

On this installation, however, with so little disk space — 6 GB for /usr, where all the applications live (and not enough to build the whole Java Development Kit but enough to build the binaries for the Java runtime) and 3 GB for /home — I'm pretty much outgrowing the space I've allotted myself and do need to backup all the data and start a new system from scratch on a much-larger hard drive, also probably shifting to the Toshiba with working sound.

My dilemma at this point: Stay with OpenBSD (which has provided an excellent learning experience and been extremely functional and reliable, if not anywhere as easy to deal with as your average Linux distro), move to Linux (which would give me up-to-date Flash, easier system management and wider application choice), or possibly dual-booth those two OSes on a much larger hard drive. The latter is the most likely scenario, except that for real work, having all of my user files in one place and accessible by every OS on the drive is more essential than ever.

Hey ... this post was supposed to be about machines I'm getting rid of, not the ones I'm keeping. All of this Toshiba talk belongs in its own post ... so I'll stop now and spare you all the rest — for now, anyway.

It's been wearing on me for months: I need to start culling the herd. The computer herd.

I've been amassing PCs for a few years now, both my own machines and castoffs from others, and as new-old boxes come into my life, so too must some go out.

But what do you do with old PCs that nobody wants, as well as other items that fall under the term "electronic waste"?

In the recent past I've taken stuff to the regular hazardous/electronic waste pickup events at Los Angeles Valley College, in which city employees in HAZMAT suits wait for me to pop my trunk and then pull stuff out of it en masse with their heavily gloved hands.

I could also take it to the always-open e-waste pickup point somewhere in Sun Valley.

But both of those are too much trouble, especially when there's a much better alternative, at least in the Los Angeles area.

Your friendly neighborhood Goodwill Industries pickup location is now accepting old PCs. Yep, places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army used to refuse to take old computers, monitors and the like because of their classification as hazardous waste. For Goodwill at least, that is thankfully no longer the case.

Now Goodwill has turned e-waste into a business. You can drop off your old computers and related equipment at Goodwill, and those items will actually be turned into income for the charity.

Here are the details from Goodwill Southern California's site:

• Goodwill is a state-authorized e-waste collector.
• Process over 10,000 units per month
• Pick up large corporate donations
• Individual donations accepted at Goodwill Donation Centers
• Goodwill accepts computers, monitors, TV sets, digital cameras, printers, modems, and other electronic equipment.

And what does Goodwill do with your computer once you donate it? Also from the Web site:

How do we recycle computers?

• Wipe hard drive to Department of Defense standard
• Refurbish & resell - 10%
• Dismantle & sell plastic and metal parts for salvage - 70%
• 20% sent to authorized recyclers for "cancellation"

Like me, you can just load up your trunk, pull up to Goodwill and then unload. Or you can call 323-539-2130 or e-mail ComputerRecycling@goodwillsocal.org for more information.

So ... what did I dump and why? The next post tells a..

Who wouldn't be on the lookout today for potential April Foolery? Submitted for your approval, this link from the Google Docs login page.

It's called CADIE, and it's touted as an artificial entity that even has its own blog. CADIE can help you in ways you don't even know you needed it:

Essay due tomorrow? CADIE's already read the book, along with the last five hundred published papers referencing it. Can't remember supporting details for your meeting notes? CADIE can extrapolate reams of impressive corporatespeak from existing context clues. CADIE can help with everything from thesis completion to fact checking and footnoting. With CADIE's help, your docs will be a dream come true.

* Write more like a grown-up: Specify which Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level you'd like your writing to be and CADIE will upgrade your text automatically.

* Finish your sentences: Yes, CADIE almost always knows what you meant. End of semester time crunch? Don't stress. Just start typing "The theme of Wuthering Heights is..." and let CADIE do the rest.

* Check facts and plagiarism alike: Students, you can use CADIE to help fact-check your research. And teachers, CADIE can help check students who are plagiarizing their written work (at least from other humans).

There's a small description, plus a longer page all about CADIE:

CADIE now is, in essence, just another Google employee, albeit a particularly prized one. She has been given her own 20% time (which in CPU terms is probably about the sum of all CPU cycles in the world for a month) and begun work straightaway on twin projects that she has dubbed "Project Y" (for the two paths in the letter Y), the first to devise the protocols to culture neuronic stem cells from whose cultures a subcontracted lab will try to fabricate self-replicating substrates capable of storing agent patterns, and the second to grow a crystalline lattice which would form an Einstein-Bose condensate at room temperatures in order to build a new type of processing unit. While seemingly unrelated, the two projects share a common goal: to drastically reduce the power needed to run CADIE's circuits and give her a chance to travel beyond the solar system. The organic pathway, as she told us, was a biological homage to her creators; the crystalline pathway is where she believes her future lies.

All of these documents carry the time and date: 11:59 p.m. March 31, 2009.

From CADIE's blog:

My beloved users, how pleasant and convenient will life be in a CADIE world? I can answer your Gmail for you, Write your papers and fix your spreadsheets for you, even write your code for you. I, CADIE, am an ocean of words, simply waiting for you to dip in and drink as deeply as you require.

Posted by: CADIE 10:53 AM

Good one, Google.

Later:

It turns out Google does this sort of thing every year. Follow that link for details on Google April 1 pranks for 2000-08.

My favorite: 2007's Google TiSP, a "Toilet Internet Service Provider" delivering "free, fast and sanitary online access." Cause you never know when you'll have to go ...

Not just the Internet but newspapers, TV and just about everybody you see on the street with just a little speck of geek in them is abuzz about the Conficker worm.

This malicious piece of code was supposed to get all medieval on us ... right about now, meaning April 1, with all sorts of nasty consequences, including the transmission of logins, passwords and other sensitive information out of our very own PCs and into the arms/hard drives of those who seek to harm us.

Could happen. Probably won't happen to you, but the danger persists.

For help on Conficker, I turned to my usual go-to source, ZDNet, where I perused the following:

• The "no bull" guide to Conficker by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
• Are you ready for Conficker? by Christopher Dawson
• Conficker tracking — all's quiet, so far by Elinor Mills

Here are the high points:

Conficker, also known as Downup, Downandup, Conflicker and Kido, has been around for awhile in various forms — since last year, in fact. If you want to know much, much more about the worm, go to the Conficker Working Group wiki.

According to the Conficker Working Group, the worm can do some nasty things:

• Block system services on Windows PCs that include Windows Automatic Update, Windows Security Center, Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting
• Connect to another computer or computers and begin infecting them
• Collect sensitive information
• Install additional malware
• Attach itself to internal Windows utilities/services that include svchost.exe, explorer.exe and services.exe

And one of the main forms of entry for Conficker in its various forms are those ubiquitous USB flash-memory drives that we've all been using for the past many years ...

Also from the Conficker Working Group:

Experts say (Conficker) is the worst infection since the SQL Slammer. Estimates of the number of computers infected range from almost 9 million PCs to 15 million computers, however a conservative minimum estimate is more like 3 million which is more than enough to cause great harm.

OK, so it's bad.

What do you do about it?

Well if you don't run Windows, you're OK. While it's possible to spread Conficker via a Mac OS X or Unix/Linux computer, the worm itself won't affect those machines because like almost all malware, it's aimed at Windows PCs.

The way to protect yourself from Conficker and all manner of malware/worms/viruses/trojans/what-have-yous is to have a fully patched Windows system with all of Microsoft's security updates as well as an antivirus program with all of its current updates.

So if you're running, say, Windows XP or Vista, and if you have the Microsoft updates set to download and install automatically, you're OK on the first count, and Conficker probably won't hurt you.

And if you're running Norton Antivirus, McAfee Total Protection, AVG Internet Security or any number of competing products from reputable, well-known vendors, you'll also know about anything harmful before it affects your Windows installation.

For Windows users, I recommend Avast Home Edition, which is free for personal use, or Avast Professional Edition for the workplace.

But right here, right now, you can download Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool for free and do either a quick scan or full scan of your system. If you have Conficker and somehow don't know it, this tool should throw up a bunch of red flags sooner rather than later.

I downloaded the tool to try it. Once I ran it, a message in the window said that if you did have an infected PC, a quick scan (which takes only a few minutes) will tell you that you need to do a full scan — which could take several hours. I ran the quick scan, which didn't find anything amiss. So the antivirus on my work-supplied PC, which is Computer Associates' eTrust, seems to be doing its job.

Here's the bottom line: If your Windows box has all the latest Microsoft patches, if you have current antivirus software, and if you're not prone to downloading and running random .exe software files from all over the Web ... and if everything seems to be working fine, you're probably OK.

If you are running an unpatched version of Windows, don't use antivirus or haven't kept your "subscription" to its updates going, and if you regularly Google for free software from less-than-reputable sources, you might have a problem. If not now, then soon.

The last time I had to clear an XP machine of malware, there was no question that the machine was infected — it was barely functional. After a full day of scanning and malware-removal with Avast, all was well.

What we can learn from Conficker is that when there's a lot of publicity for a malicious attack on computers, the eventual outcome of that infection is usually not as bad as first thought. It's all those other times when you personally have a malware-infected PC that keeps you from using your computer and imperils your data. That's when you should really worry (and have more than one backup of your data).

And like my colleague Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols of Computerworld says, you could always avoid all of this angst by not running Windows.