May 2010 Archives

In my occasional look at Slackware-derived distributions, why have I missed Salix?

Like many other users, I suspect, what I'm looking for in a Slackware-derived distribution is something just as fast (or faster) than vanilla Slackware, not based on KDE, with enough applications in the repository to keep me happy, easy updating, helpful community ...

Not that Slackware itself doesn't meet most of these criteria, but if there were no need for what the many Slackware-based offshoots provide, there wouldn't be so many of them.

One interesting thing about Salix is that the project Web site claims its repositories can be used as an extra repository by Slackware users.

I've been poking through that repository, and there is indeed a whole lot there - including what looks like a whole lot of GNOME. I will be looking closely at Salix in the weeks ahead.

Later: This review jogged my memory. Salix was started by at least one (if not a group of) ZenWalk developer(s).

How many Linux/BSD distros/projects have slogans? And what do those slogans say about the software projects they represent?

Some of these slogans are more "official" than others, but whether sanctioned or not, they all do say something about the code and people behind them.

Do you think the projects live up to their slogans? If not, what should their real slogans be?

(Note: The initial batch of projects/slogans below is heavy on projects that I happen to have at least a passing knowledge of. Help me fill in the blanks; if you know of any other OS or application slogans, put them in the comments.)

Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Debian: The universal operating system

OpenBSD: Free, functional and secure

OpenBSD (yep, they seem to have two slogans): Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!

Tiny Core Linux: Toolkit for Linux. Build it your way.

Tiny Core Linux (here's another one with two slogans): Fast. Easy. Modular. Extendable.

NetBSD: Of course it runs NetBSD.

FreeBSD: The power to serve.

Fedora: Freedom. Friends. Features. First.

Linux Mint: From freedom came elegance.

Mandriva: A better operating system.

ZenWalk: Ever tried Zen computing? (not sure this is a slogan ...)

Wolvix: For those with better things to do than wobble their windows.

OpenSUSE: Linux for open minds.

PCLinuxOS: Radically simple.

Sabayon: Open your source, open your mind.

Arch: A simple, lightweight distribution (not sure this is a slogan)

Vector: Discover the difference (not sure this is a slogan)

CentOS: The community ENTerprise operating system

Sidux: Debian hot and spicy! (not sure this is a slogan)

Pardus: ... for freedom.

Easy Peasy: Rediscover your netbook.

It's not usually a big deal, getting sound working in Linux or BSD. In my case, however, my laptop's internal sound module is dead, and I've substituted a USB sound module from DealExtreme.com that costs about $2.

It works, but it can be hard to get a given distribution to pipe the sound there rather than to the dead internal sound system.

I installed the OSS app in Tiny Core, ran osstest in a terminal, and the app proceeded to send sound to both of my sound modules. When it got around to the one that is working, I heard some lovely piano music. So I have sound in Tiny Core.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to tell the system to use my USB sound card and not the internal one. But at least sound is happening in some way.

Overall, I have about a half-dozen apps in my Tiny Core setup: Firefox 3.0.4 (aka Minefield), the Geany text editor, gFTP (the gtk2 version because I already had the dependencies), the Rox filer file manager. OK, so that's only four applications. I'm keeping it lean and adding things as needed.

I still need a basic image editor (probably MtPaint; I really don't need GIMP) and maybe an audio player if I do get sound working. I might try running Audacity in this setup just to see if I can.

During my previous Tiny Core experiments I did run OpenOffice, but since I'm using Google Docs so much these days, I don't think I need it.

Right now I'm using a flash drive over USB 1.1 as my "persistent" backup device. It does slow down Tiny Core a bit. I'm not sure how exactly to do selective backups, but I plan to look into it as I further explore the Tiny Core environment.

I tried to move my TCE file from the USB drive to my Ubuntu / partition (since my /home partition is encrypted). For some reason (unknown to me) even root can't mount my Ubuntu / partition. I'll have to look into that one. I'm not above fiddling with my partitions to create some magnetic-hard-drive space for Tiny Core and even integrating it into Grub (especially if I could ever figure out Grub2).

I'm still looking at this as a very fast alternative to Ubuntu Lucid, which I'm continuing to run as the "main" OS on this dying laptop.

And I'm seriously considering swapping out the Debian Lenny-running drive from my Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHz, 144 MB) for a "new" old hard drive that is strictly there to save Tiny Core files - and perhaps do a frugal install of TC to that drive.

I did notice in my Tiny Core tests on the Compaq that quite a few applications would not install, no doubt due to the 144 MB RAM limitation. Like I need OpenOffice there, either ...

One thing I'd like to say about Tiny Core ... and pretty much every other Linux/Unix system I've run over the past 2+ years: Running the live CDs for Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux introduced me to dozens of apps I'd never heard of. Those experiences shaped my view of Linux/Unix in such a way that I run many of those same applications today. Geany, Rox, Fluxbox and MtPaint are the apps (with a window manager thrown in) I still admire and use today — and probably would have never know about had it not been for such lightweight distros as Puppy and DSL.

That experience certainly makes it easier to run Tiny Core and pick the often-lightweight apps I want to build out my system.

While I do appreciate the Seamonkey Web suite, I'm not a big fan and would rather have this "older" 3.0.4 build of Firefox because a couple of my Web-based apps demand it. I'm also pretty much through with mail clients and use Gmail when possible. And while I do a great deal of Web design, I don't need something like Composer, so that makes Seamonkey less than useful for me.

One thing I did do was export my Firefox bookmarks from Ubuntu Lucid, put them up on my FTP site and then bring them down so I could import them to my Firefox setup in Tiny Core. That saved a lot of time and effort in creating new bookmarks.

I've still barely scratched the surface in terms of understanding Tiny Core and fully optimizing it. There's a lot to learn. But I'm having fun with it, and the performance is excellent.

Do you really think Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" would pick Ubuntu as his "favorite Linux-based operating system"?

I've seen this show a couple of times (It's slim pickings out there in TV land sometimes. Especially for someone, like myself, without cable).

If you ask me (and I realize you didn't), Sheldon's got Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Scientific Linux or Fedora written all over him ...

He could even be a tinfoil-hat-wearing OpenBSD advocate ...

I knew I could get Java working in Firefox on my Tiny Core 2.11 Linux installation. I just had to think about it for a while.

I first tried the OpenJDK packages in Tiny Core, but those didn't work. Now that I know what I'm doing ... sort of ... I could probably get them to work, but I went about things another way.

Before I start, let me just stay that I didn't do this the entirely "kosher" way, but it works and for now (and for my idea of what Tiny Core is), I'm OK with it.

First I got the self-extracting Java runtime from Java.com.

After a few aborted attempts, I decided to do this in the /home directory, which in Tiny Core is /home/tc

I had the self-extracting .bin file jre-6u20-linux-i586.bin in the Desktop portion of the /home directory. I made a directory for it:

tc@box:~$ mkdir java

Then I moved the .bin into it — I wanted everything where I could keep an eye on it:

tc@box:~$ cd Desktop

tc@box:~$ mv jre-6u20-linux-i586.bin /home/tc/java

I went into my new directory and, per instructions from java.com, made the file executable:

tc@box:~$ cd /home/tc/java

tc@box:~$ chmod a+x jre-6u20-linux-i586.bin

Then, also per java.com instruction, I extracted and installed the archive:

tc@box:~$ ./jre-6u20-linux-i586.bin

After scrolling through the boilerplate EULA, I agreed to the terms and had the Java runtime installed in the directory I created.

(I know that it's better to have this somewhere under usr/bin, and I might very well move it later, but for now this works, so I'm keeping it.)

The next step was making the symbolic link to the plugin. Most instructions say to make this link in /home/tc/.mozilla/plugins. THIS DID NOT WORK in Firefox 3.0.4 aka Minefield.

Instead, the place to make the symbolic link is /usr/local/firefox/plugins

So opened a terminal, switched to root and did that:

tc@box:~$ sudo su

tc@box~# cd /usr/local/firefox/plugins

tc@box~# ln -s /home/tc/java/jre1.6.0_20/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so

That leaves the symbolic link here:

/usr/local/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so

which leads to:

/home/tc/java/jre1.6.0_20/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Remember, it was my choice to extract and install the Java runtime in the /home directory. There are probably better places for it, but until I know Tiny Core a whole lot better, I'll keep it where I can see it ...

I started Firefox 3.0.4 (aka Minefield) looked in Tools - Add-ons - Plugins, and the Java plugin was right where it was supposed to be.

Just to be sure Java will run in the browser, go to Edit - Preferences - Content and be sure the "Enable Java" box is checked.

Another way to check for Java is to go to about:plugins in the URL window of the browser. You should see a long list of Java-specific output.

I did confirm that Java works in Minefield/Firefox, and now I can use Tiny Core for those few yet critical tasks that require the Java runtime, making TC that much more valuable to me.

Potential problem: One thing I'm noticing is that the java_vm process is still knocking around in my system, even though I'm not using the Java runtime at this particular moment.

It wasn't using any CPU but was eating about 400 MB of RAM. Nice little thing, that Java.

I killed java_vm in a terminal, and it took Firefox/Minefield with it. Nice.

So I have Java, but I'll be keeping an eye on it, wondering if it will behave (and checking my other systems for errant java processes that run on too long).

As a way of explaining what this is all about, Cameron Simpson wrote the following way back in 2005:

The JVM gets started once and hangs around because a JVM has a noticable startup cost. If you want web pages with Java content to be "snappy" in loading (bandwidth aside) it helps if the JVM is already present and initialised, and so it doesn't go away when idle.

Provided it's consuming no CPU then it's no added burden on your system; memory contention will page it out to your swap space if necessary.

Do you have a technical reason for wanting it gone or does it just seem "untidy" to your eye?

I hope that's true. In my case, the /swap on my drive is encrypted and not available to be used by Tiny Core, so I'll be keeping an eye on java_vm when I run Java in TC.

I still like Tiny Core. I just don't think I'm smart enough for it.

I tried to create a "persistent" storage area on a USB flash drive. I did that (exercising what little shell knowledge I have to get the right permissions on my new ext3 partition on the flash drive).

That appeared to work, especially when I used the waitusb=5 boot parameter.

I even added a few applications. Firefox 3.6 didn't work. It was missing a lot of dependencies. I instead tried Minefield, a custom build of Firefox 3.0.4 (the 3.0.x series of Firefox is looking better and better all the time).

I managed to keep the files I created, but the applications disappeared on reboot.

I also couldn't get Java support in the browser. It looks like the openjdk packages in Tiny Core don't provide the browser plugin.

I tried getting the Java runtime direct from the Java site, and I installed it manually, creating the symlink to my Firefox settings directory. That didn't work either. I'm not sure if I needed to do anything to the original plugin permissions-wise to make it work.

So I didn't get Java support in Firefox, which I need.

I'll try again in Tiny Core, but for today I retreat to Lucid Puppy.

The Gxine (is that the name?) media player wouldn't run.

I liked being able to pick my browser of choice. And I did add the Java runtime, which worked. Flash was already there.

And I was able to use the ALSA sound utility to enable my USB sound module.

Speaking of that USB sound module, I need to go back to DealExtreme.com and order a few more of them (or get six — they're about $2 each) because the one I'm using now is threatening to fall apart. Not that I expect more from a $2 part. I should probably electrical-tape it together for extra sturdiness.

Anyway, aside from the media-player issues, which I solved by installing the Mplayer from the Ubuntu Lucid repository, Lucid Puppy (aka Puppy 5) was running as well as previous Puppys — which is great.

And now that I have a 2 GB USB key ready to go, I can turn the whole thing into a pup_save file (or keep a smaller pup_save and have more space for files I can share with the main distro on the laptop, which continues to be Ubuntu Lucid, despite my pissing off fanboys a-plenty by criticizing the choices made for the LTS and complaining without doing a fresh install after starting with the beta version).

Yep, I still like Ubuntu very much, but I really like the idea of a light live-disc alternative such as Puppy or Tiny Core.

Later: So I messed around with Puppy 5 a bit but returned to Tiny Core.

The fact that it takes only seconds to boot into a graphical desktop is something I really, really like. I have no idea how they do it.

For my first boot, I chose the USB flash drive I wanted for my "persistent" setup, and I put both it's information and the waitusb parameter into the boot line:

tinycore tce=sda1 waitusb=5

Once in Tiny Core, I selected the backup/restore tool from the TC panel and saw something different:

sda1/tce

Before I only had sda1.

Now I've rebooted, and my "persistent" setup indeed appears to be persistent.

While I was able to get sound working in Puppy 5, I haven't explored how to do it in Tiny Core.

As far as Java goes, I'll have to experiment more. Right now it doesn't look good for getting a Java browser plugin.

But the whole point is that Tiny Core boots fast and runs fast, and that's what I want.

And now I have it.

Read this comment I wrote to my previous post on Ubuntu Lucid being an LTS with a lot of alpha-feeling features.

I make the following points and ask the following questions:

-- Yes, I installed the beta.

-- I'm no expert but managed to get everything working. Updates from Ubuntu resolved some problems for me.

-- Do most Ubuntu "experts" really think that an installation that began in the beta period cannot be updated through released date and afterward to a fully functioning Ubuntu system?

-- I genuinely like Ubuntu. I agree with its stated mission, and I believe it's the best hope we have for general uptake of Linux/Unix as a desktop operating system, and I believe such uptake is something very important and very much desired.

-- Right now I'm happy with how my Lucid install is performing. I'm using the "social desktop" features even though their design and implementation leaves much to be desired (and developed).

Whenever I criticize Ubuntu, I preface by saying that I hold Ubuntu to a much higher standard than I do any other open-source desktop operating-system project. Ubuntu aims higher. I respect and admire that.

But lofty goals, masses of volunteers, a for-profit company and the No. 1 Linux distribution of all time with global ambitions — we should all expect more (and, if so motivated, be willing to help achieve those goals).

I'm not comfortable doing six-month upgrades. I realize that a regular Ubuntu release has an 18-month support lifetime, and I thing that's about right for my own personal circumstances.

The LTS version of Ubuntu is very important to me. I've relied on it on a few machines, and I think 8.04 LTS shaped up to be a very successful release. I'm still running 8.04 on one of my laptops.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was one of the first Linux distributions I ran (back in 2007). It remains one of my favorite releases (along with Debian Etch and Lenny, Puppy 2.13, Wolvix 1.1.0 and OpenBSD 4.4).

Despite all my bitching and whining, I'll probably stick with Ubuntu 10.04 for a long time. A very long time on some machines.

Like many, I re-evaluate every release about where I'd like to be distro-wise. Debian Lenny was a great release for me. I had more functionality there than just about any other release I've used. I got that itch to use newer packages, and that's how I ended up blowing through Squeeze (dist-upgrade failed me), FreeBSD 8.0 and 7.3 and now Ubuntu Lucid.

I'm also working with Tiny Core 2.11 a bit. I like it a lot. I've booted Lucid Puppy a few times, and that's another very nice release from a project I'm very fond of.

I really like OpenBSD, but I acknowledge that it's not the easiest system to use on the desktop, to upgrade, or to get working with Flash and Java. I miss things like NetworkManager, a utility that went from terrible to excellent in maybe a year and a half.

Again, I'm just a user. I'm not the smartest user, or the most geeky user. I'm only one voice in a blogospheric sea of thousands.

I want open-source environments to be the best they can be. The Ubuntu community, from developer to forum participant, doesn't have to do anything I suggest, implore or cajole. (There may be some transitivity issues in that last sentence, but I'm just letting it flow.)

I'm just a user. But don't dismiss me because I'm critical.

I've got loads of old laptops. Most of them I got for <$20. Not all, but quite a few were <$1.

I have quite a bit of experience having pieces of them go dead, prompting me to rip into them to do repairs.

So how long does the average laptop last?

Two things kill laptops — they get old in a technological sense, and they physically fall apart.

I'll make it simple. Laptops last 5 years. anything more than that is gravy.

That's why I say never to spend more than $500, — $600 at the most for a laptop. They just don't last long enough to justify spending more.

Better to spend $400 and replace after three years than spend $1000 and hope you'll get 6 years. You may not.

But two $400 laptops bought 3 to 4 years apart? That's the way to go.

Things in my personal world of Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 are starting to work themselves out, but it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride on my main laptop.

If you read to the bottom, you'll find that the hacky-as-hell solution to a bug that has plagued my own desktop is followed by my thoughts (not all good) on what exactly Canonical was thinking about when deciding what goes into a long-term-support release.

Let's start with my latest amateur bug fix:

I think I've solved the social-bar-doesn't-appear-in-the-me-menu situation. First of all it's only in my main user account. New accounts work fine with the social bar once Gwibber is set up.

So it's something I did in the early days of this Ubuntu installation, which occurred during the beta phase.

The fix I tried today appears to be working:

First I went into Applications - Accessories - Passwords and Encryption Keys and deleted all password that had to do with Gwibber. I'm not sure whether or not this step is actually necessary, but it couldn't hurt — and that's why I did it.

Then I followed this advice from a Gwibber bug report in Launchpad:

If you are facing this please Quit(not close) gwibber and delete ~/.cache/desktop-couch ~/.config/desktop-couch and ~/.local/desktop-couch and start gwibber and try to add twitter account

In case you're not quite hard-core enough, ~ means your home directory, which in my case is /home/steven ...

I deleted all three desktop-couch folders and then restarted the system, added my Twitter and Identi.ca accounts and then rebooted again. I still didn't have the social bar, so I did one other thing:

In my earlier testing, under System - Preferences - Startup Applications, I added one for gwibber-service. It previously only worked intermittently so I had it turned off.

I turned back on the gwibber-service startup application that I had previously created, then rebooted.

Once again I have the social bar in the Me Menu.

I'll keep an eye on this over the next few days.

I had hoped that the "simple" act of removing the desktop-couch folders and re-entering my Twitter and Identi.ca account information in Gwibber was itself enough to make everything work like it's supposed to.

Creating the gwibber-service startup application is more hacky than I'd like, but for now it appears to be working. And remember, subsequent accounts I've created in this particular installation have no trouble with the social bar in the Me Menu, so it appears that something somewhere in my main account's startup scripts is not properly starting gwibber-service.

Analysis: Things started to go wrong with the social bar when I decided to change my main user account's password. Once I did that the GNOME keyring kept asking me for the old password every time I did something that required that keyring.

Following the not-always-reliable advice I found in the Ubuntu Forums, I deleted the keyring in my user account. After that the keyring worked fine (with the same password as my user account) but the social bar didn't appear except during the same session in which I actively added a social-networking account to Gwibber.

Whether or not these two things are related (deleting GNOME keyring and losing social bar) is still an open question.

What it points to is the alpha nature of the social desktop in Ubuntu Lucid. Not the greatest thing for what is supposed to be a long-term support release. Will they finally figure this thing out in 10.10 or 11.04? I hope so.

Just this kind of problem, in my opinion, is a very good reason why the 10.04 LTS should have been more like a refined, bug-fixed Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) rather than an alpha for what might get fixed in Ubuntu 10.10 or 11.04.

My sense of the whole release philosophy is that Canonical/Ubuntu wanted to make a whole lot of noise with a release packed with a mix of real and imagined innovation (Ubuntu One everywhere! MP3s for sale! Social all over! Mac-like buttons! Purple!) and really forgot what an LTS release is all about: stability out of the box.

My worry (which I hope does not come to pass) is that due to the nature of Linux releases there will be no major bug-fixing in Ubuntu 10.04, and any refinement/stability for the new features will not reach the end user until subsequent releases, making this LTS more of a "lame duck" than it deserved to be.

Here's something that puzzles me: In the final days, Ubuntu decided to pull gThumb 2.11 and replace it with 2.10 because they were worried that the newer version (a major upgrade despite the incremental version number) was too unstable — either potentially or in reality.

But things like this social desktop with tight Gwibber, Empathy and Evolution integration (and between less and no integration with other client software such as Pidgin and Thunderbird), the merits and speed of Ubuntu One and the constantly moving window buttons, seem way more dodgy and unstable.

But I guess that gThumb is GNOME's project, and the social desktop and Ubuntu One are Canonicals, so there are different sets of rules depending on where the code comes from.

Fedora doesn't always make its release date. Neither does FreeBSD (though OpenBSD seems to hit it pretty well regardless). Debian won't even set one. Slackware releases only when ready. Maybe Ubuntu can take a hint here and apply the brakes once in awhile — or at least not get so ambitious and run the risk of severely hobbling a very important long-term-support release.

I remember writing about Twitter in my print column maybe a year ago and predicting that a) some big, big company would buy Twitter for billions and b) there would be at least a half-dozen Twitter rivals out there clawing and scratching for their share of the growing microblogging pie.

Well, nobody bought Twitter (I figured Microsoft or Google would do it). I struck out there.

And while Google (Buzz) and Yahoo (not sure what they call it) both have Twitterish services — doing what's now called microblogging but not really changing the game, there's nobody out there really trying to eat Twitter's lunch.

Little did I know at the time that Identi.ca — an open-source microblogging service, began its life on July 1, 2008 and is now thriving, at least among those steeped in the actuality and philosophy of free, open-source software.

Twitter is built on open-source technologies, as are most Web-based companies such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo and the like, but these big Web firms don't open-source the very technology of their forward-facing services.

Identi.ca does. Behind the public microblogging service is a company AND service called Status.Net that allows just about anybody to set up their own microblogging system with the code that powers identi.ca. Can't do that with Twitter, and even if the company eventually offers a "private tweeting" service, chances are it won't be in the free-and-open way of Status.Net.

Not that Status.Net doesn't offer a microblogging solution in the cloud (it does) as well as consulting/support services for business/corporate/government entities wishing to leverage microblogging in their own enterprises, which they do (both!).

Right now I'm only scratching the surface of Identi.ca, where you can find me at http://identi.ca/stevenrosenberg (yep, got my real name on that one), which for now is also feeding my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/for_django. I'm also generally double-posting many things at the Daily News technology feed: http://twitter.com/dntechnology.

Most of what I do know about the Identi.ca community is that it's heavy on open-source geeks and not so much on people interested in celebrity gossip and 140-character do-gooderism (not that there's anything wrong with that). I don't know if Ashton Kutcher is on Identi.ca (not that there's anything wrong with that - being Ashton Kutcher or him potentially or actually not being on Identi.ca).

Just the fact that there are alternatives to Twitter — everything from Identi.ca to Google Buzz to whatever else I'm missing out there — means we're safe from a single vendor turning the screws on us with our information and manipulating that data for the singular purpose of profit.

I'm not saying that Twitter (or Facebook or Google) ought to be a non-income-producing charity, but at least with some competition out there the propensity to be ultra-evil is tempered with the notion that bad behavior can kill your market share.

Note on my Twitter user name: http://twitter.com/for_django has absolutely nothing to do with the Django Web framework — not that Django isn't something I could benefit greatly by learning (which I believe is, in fact, the case).

No, the "meaning" of "For Django," in my Twitter user name is a nod to the great, late jazz guitarist Joe Pass' seminal 1960s album (itself a tribute to gypsy guitar hero Django Reinhardt). You can't find a better bebop/West-Coast/hard-bop jazz guitar album (or player).

Rhyous's 127.0.0.1 or ::1 covers an interesting mix of FreeBSD, PC-BSD, C# and even Windows 7 issues. An unusual mix (like the blog you're reading now, only more technical, since this guy knows way more than I do) — and now it's in the blogroll.

After slogging through Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04 for the morning, not the most satisfying experience on my 1.2 GHz Celeron system, I decided to run Tiny Core 2.11 in the afternoon.

I added Firefox 3.6, Geany, gFTP, Pidgin, MtPaint, and I was ready to go.

Compared to a "real" distribution like Ubuntu, Tiny Core has way fewer processes running on its much-more minimalist desktop, yet the way the apps sit in a doc at the bottom of the screen is very Macintosh OS X-like. Except here I have multiple desktops, many dozens of apps that can be installed by Tiny Core's package manager ... and I'm running a system that's as efficient as any I can remember. (Despite my aborted attempt to run Slitaz last week, I do remember that one as very, very fast and well-featured; I will try again).

I hesitate to set up a permanent Tiny Core save file on my Ubuntu-running system for three reasons: 1) I really don't understand Tiny Core all that much just yet, 2) My /home is encrypted, so I'd have to make the save file in / ... not that I won't do that, but I'm giving it some time, and 3) I'm OK at installing apps in Tiny Core but not so well-versed in removing them.

A couple of things: Sometimes dependencies are missing in Tiny Core apps. I had to add gstreamer in order to get Pidgin to work. But running the app in a terminal generally shows me the output of what I need (or close to it). A little bit of geek experience seems to be enough to get by in Tiny Core.

For work especially, my needs are specific and not totally out of hand. I haven't yet installed Flash, but it does work as well as it does anywhere (i.e. not all that well, but what can you do?). The Java runtime is available. I haven't yet figured out my sound issues, meaning how to get Tiny Core's Linux environment to output sound to my USB Headphone Set sound module (given that my internal sound module is dead).

I love running the system totally in RAM, and if I were doing this right I'd either have all my files in the Google cloud, in a non-encrypted /home on the hard drive or on a USB stick connected to this system.

One thing I can say about Tiny Core vs. my previous experience with Puppy and Damn Small Linux is that with TC it's a lot easier to build up exactly the system you want. I have more than a few "full-sized" apps in here — Firefox, OpenOffice. But I could be running just a Web browser and nothing more. Sometimes you need a lot of apps, sometimes one - it's nice to have that kind of flexibility without jumping through all sorts of hoops.

The developers of Tiny Core are clearly doing a very good, innovative thing here. I've met Robert Shingledecker at a couple of SCALE shows in L.A., and I'm glad to see him working on this project and being able to do it the way he wants.

Now I've got to start reading up on Tiny Core so I can get more of it figured out.

Having successfully bricked not one but two Linux/Unix installations in the same month (Debian Lenny-to-Squeeze and FreeBSD 7.3-release), I jumped on the Ubuntu Lucid bandwagon early — starting with one of the alpha releases.

I don't normally do this kind of thing and recommend that current or prospective Ubuntu users wait a month or even two after a given release before installing or upgrading.

But I had an empty laptop, needed an OS and figured that Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) was a long-term-support release and might not cause me too much pain.

Well, over the course of the waning days of the alpha (I tested the alpha image in the live environment but installed from a beta), through the beta and now weeks into the release, I've had a few issues to deal with, needing to tweak grub2, Ubuntu One, Gwibber, Totem and various GNOME settings.

But things have settled in a bit, and I'm productive and generally enjoying using the distribution and all that comes with it.

There have been more than a few bug-fixes since the release date, and most have directly benefited me, so I thank the Ubuntu developers for all of those patches.

I originally committed myself to a month in Ubuntu Lucid, but I can see staying here longer. It looks good (especially with the Radiance theme that I'm using to replace the darker Ambiance default), runs well and at this point isn't throwing any bugs or breakage at me that I can't handle.

Of all the problems I've faced, the Totem fixes have been the most welcome. I couldn't run the player at all in FreeBSD, even though it was perfect in Debian Lenny.

Both my "blank screen" and YouTube plugin problems have been solved in recent updates.

Xorg has been running well. Finally the kernel knows to turn off kernel mode setting for this i830 chipset (even though I had been turning if off in Grub for the past few months). Still no Compiz for this video chip (82830 CGC), a feature I had in Ubuntu 8.04 but don't really miss. It would be nice to have the option, though.

I somehow messed up my Gwibber-Me Menu hookup, and over maybe a dozen posts and many dozen tweets have chronicled the solution I figured out.

Geeks love ThinkPads. They used to be IBM ThinkPads before China-based Lenovo bought IBM's PC business, and then as now, developers love these things. They're built like tanks (not quite as tank-like as the expensive, hardened Panasonic Toughbooks, but nowhere near as crappily as what Dell, Toshiba, Acer, Gateway, MSI and pretty much every other laptop maker churns out).

Part of the allure of the ThinkPad is the extensive maintenance manuals that accompany the machines. For most of the laptops I own, you can't find this kind of stuff, and you're on your own if and when you start taking it apart (and I've never once used a laptop that I didn't have to gut at one point or another). And they're actually designed to be serviced. You'd think an item hovering around $1,000, as many laptops do, would not be designed and built as a disposable device. But you'd be wrong more often than right.

ThinkPads don't do it that way. Sure they don't look all that streamlined. Their design is squarish, black and very 10 years ago. But they're tough, they tend to work, and that developer love means that free, open-source operating systems such as Linux and the BSDs tend to run well on them.

Of course ThinkPads tend to be expensive. That's why I took notice of the new Lenovo ThinkPad L series, of which there are two models (as ZDNet let me know) retailing for $599, with Intel Core i3 CPUs and 14- and 15.6-inch screens (same price for both).

This means three things: Cheaper new ThinkPads, cheaper used ThinkPads, and cheaper refurbished ThinkPads. At least I hope so.

If you're in the market for a new laptop — and with the new Intel Core i3/i5 mobile chips (not to mention the general good feeling for Windows 7) beginning to flood the marketplace, it seems like a great time to buy.

Ubuntu was famous for being brown, even though it was probably half-orange for most of its storied existence. Mark Shuttleworth and Co. mostly blew that notion out of the water in Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS), which is purplish and dark.

And if you really, really hate the button placement on the left side of the windows, there is more than one theme in Lucid's default GNOME desktop that automatically moves those buttons back to the right side of the window.

To access all of these desktop designs, go to System - Preferences - Appearance in the menu and start experimenting. There are eight themes in the default along with a link to get more.

I'm pretty simple about these things, so I looked at what came with the Lucid install and ditched the default Ambiance theme in favor of Radiance. I also dumped the purple wallpaper by clicking on the Background tab and selecting the Cosmos slide-show background, which not only presents a nice outer-space view but periodically changes the image (hence the "slide-show" portion of the name).

As you can see above, the panel and window borders are much lighter in color. I realize that the stars/galaxies/planets backgrounds themselves are dark, but everything else is lighter, and I can always find a new background wallpaper if I get tired of globular clusters and the like.

I don't really care about button placement and knowing full well that I can move them to the right side if I wish, I'm just going to leave them where they are.

I've tried many different things in the hope of solving my Gwibber/Me Menu/Social bar problem in Ubuntu Lucid.

That problem, for those not reading along (you're the better for it, I assure you) is that for some reason even after I start Gwibber and send a social-broadcast message (to Twitter in my case), the "social bar" in the upper panel's Me Menu does not appear.

However, if I add a social-broadcasting account (say a secondary Twitter account or Facebook), during that computing session the social bar reappears. However, once the computer is rebooted, the bar disappears and won't reappear until another social-broadcast account is added.

----------------- begin tangent ------------------------

The social bar in Ubuntu Lucid's Me Menu is a great idea. The only problem is that it's powered by Gwibber. It should be a much lighter application in its own right - one that works without the need to start Gwibber. (Maybe it just doesn't work this way on my system.)

---------------- end tangent ---------------------------

Here's how I "fixed" my Gwibber/Me Menu situation:

Step 1: After booting into Ubuntu Lucid, start Gwibber. If you don't have any accounts programmed into the social-updating client, enter one now.

Step 2: In the Gwibber menu, under Edit - Preferences, uncheck the "Start service at login" box.

Step 3: In the desktop's menu, under System - Preferences - Startup Applications, click "Add" and create an entry that runs gwibber-service when you start your computer.

Step 4: Reboot. Now you should have the "social bar" in the Me Menu without having to do anything.

Note: I'm pretty sure that most users do not have this problem and as a result do not need this fix. But if you do have this problem, going through these steps will fix it.

Opinion: Is this how it's supposed to work? It's better than no social bar at all, even though it would be better for the social bar to be available for updating even without Gwibber running.

I'll take what I can get. At least I have the social bar.

Thus far the "social from the start" desktop in Ubuntu is working but needs refinement - not bad for its first release, I suppose.

Ubuntu pushed some updates today involving Totem and the GNOME keyring.

I had hoped they would solve my problems with Totem (blank video when Totem is started, then a video is opened; YouTube plugin not working).

They did. Totem is working perfectly.

I didn't think the keyring update would fix my Gwibber/Me Menu/social bar issue, specifically the social bar/box's disappearance from the Me Menu except during the computing session during which I actually add a social-networking account via Gwibber. After a reboot, that social box is gone (and it's a feature I actually found very useful).

This had no effect on my Me Menu issue.

I've been having problems with the Totem video player and with the ever-loving GNOME keyring.

A bunch of updates are rolling into Ubuntu as we speak, and they have to do with the packages that affect these two services:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude upgrade
W: The "upgrade" command is deprecated; use "safe-upgrade" instead.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
gnome-keyring libgcr0 libgdata-common libgdata6 libgp11-0
libpam-gnome-keyring nvidia-current-modaliases obexd-client totem
totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins
12 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,458kB of archives. After unpacking 61.4kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

Totem's YouTube plugin is broken, and I think libgdata6 is the package responsible. For me specifically, starting Totem and then playing a video works fine, but clicking on the video itself in the file manager leads to a Totem window with good sound but a blank image unless the window is moved by the mouse (with video showing only when the window is moving) or viewed in full-screen mode. I'm not holding my breath on this last bug, but you never know.

And I suspect my Me Menu problem (no social bar, except for right after I add a social-networking account in Gwibber) has something to do with the GNOME keyring since after a password change I deleted my keyring in order to really get rid of my old password.

We'll see. Time to do the upgrade.

Note: I've been using Aptitude in the terminal to do most of my updates because the Update Manager, as configured in Ubuntu over the past couple of releases is a bit unpredictable regarding it's actually appearing out of nowhere in the lower GNOME panel.

Update: I checked in my dmesg, and somewhere in the boot process Ubuntu Lucid is automatically turning off kernel mode setting for my Intel 830m-running (82830 CGC) laptop (emphasis mine):

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ dmesg | grep drm
[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.32-22-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) ) #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010 (Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2)
[ 2.112751] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 2.182073] [drm] i915 disabling kernel modesetting for known bad device.
[ 2.192838] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$

I've been turning off KMS in all Linux distributions for quite some time (OK, maybe the past three months). But recently I've experimented with removing i915.modeset=0 manually from Grub in Ubuntu Lucid, and everything is working as well as before.

Today I edited my Grub configuration (still using the Ubuntu Grub2 community page as a reference) and removed the line turning off KMS entirely.

Looking at the dmesg above, kernel mode setting hasn't been "fixed" for older Intel video, but at least the kernel knows not to turn it on when you're running an i915-type chipset (of which i810 is seemingly a subset).

This is how things should have been handled from the beginning. Better late than never — this remains huge for Linux — and for Ubuntu. Why? Because the potential new user with affected Intel chipsets can now grab a live CD, start up Ubuntu and actually have it work. They won't be stopped and immediately turned off by a totally black screen.

As a user with a little experience, I know about turning off KMS, but if I was coming to Linux with no experience whatsoever, I'd think Ubuntu and/or Linux was a big load of crap (what, the SCREEN doesn't WORK? ... you've got to be KIDDING ME).

This change isn't a technological breakthrough, but it's a huge step forward for Linux (and Ubuntu) uptake among potential users, and I thank whoever is responsible for bringing sanity back to Linux and Xorg.

I'm using Opera 9.64 in Tiny Core 2.11 at present. In recent Tiny Core sessions (some on my 1.2 GHz Toshiba, others on the 233 MHz Compaq) I've also run Firefox 3.6, Chromium (don't know version) and Dillo 2.

There are many more browsers in the Tiny Core.

I ran Geany just now and will try Abiword in a minute.

I didn't have much hope for OpenOffice, and it didn't install. Having only 144 MB of RAM probably has a lot to do with it.

I spent plenty of time running Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and other small live distros during my "early" days (2007-08) with free, open-source operating systems.

In the past couple of years I've settled into the routine of using "big" OSes, meaning full-fledged distros/projects installed to the hard drive in the traditional way — you know, Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

I've been thinking about getting back to the small projects for some time. Today I burned a Slitaz disc. Couldn't get X to start. (And no, none of the vga=xxx boot codes would help.)

So I turned to Tiny Core Linux. I just burned images to both CD and DVD; the latter since my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop's optical drive hates all CDs now (not just CD-R but also CD-ROM) and will only recognize DVD-ROM and DVD+R (yes, I actually am using a DVD for a 10 megabyte ISO file), the former for my 11-year-old 233 MHz CPU Compaq Armada 7700dmt laptop.

I booted the Toshiba from the disc and had a working X desktop in seconds (yes, seconds). I pretty much knew my way around Damn Small Linux (it's not all that hard, to tell you the absolute truth), and while Tiny Core is different in many ways, my DSL experience did help me get started.

I quickly configured my networking interface (I needed a static IP), went to the software-installation app and added Firefox 3.6.

Yeah, I know that Firefox is hardly in keeping with a 10 MB distro, but just the fact that Tiny Core offers Firefox in more than a few guises, as well as Chromium (the open-source project on which Google Chrome is based) was something that heightened my interest in the overall project. And with a "normal" browser, I knew I could blog my experience as soon as possible (and here I am doing just that).

Curiously, the Javascript response from Firefox 3.6.x while I'm typing into this Movable Type window on my 8-year-old 1.2 GHz laptop is pretty much the same as in Ubuntu Lucid. That is a huge thing to learn: So it's not so much Lucid that's slowing things down but Firefox itself. Something to think about — that something being that bloated apps themselves can slow you down as much as anything else happening in the OS.

I love the overt minimalism of Tiny Core (which boots with almost no apps) coupled with a most unusual package manager (called the Application Browser) packed with popular applications. Everything from the aforementioned Firefox and Chromium along with plenty of text editors (including the entire OpenOffice suite) and even what looks like most of GNOME and Xfce means getting a working desktop is something that can be done very, very quickly.

I also added the Chromium browser. All of these apps are downloaded and installed in the live environment (and all in RAM, too). Tiny Core is, indeed, tiny - you add what you want.

For the "experienced" user, that's a good thing. Maybe there's some kind of script/package to add a more full desktop without picking individual apps by the dozen. That would be a great way for users of all levels to quickly get a Tiny Core system with a whole lot more functionality.

But there's a lot to be said for a system with just a Web browser. I haven't heard anybody say this, but the way I have Tiny Core running at this particular moment, I can't imagine the Google Chrome OS being much different. And if you want to boot super-quickly into a working desktop like Google Chrome OS promises, but you want to do it now with old, crappy hardware like mine, Tiny Core is ready to do it today.

I'll be looking a lot more closely at Tiny Core in the weeks ahead.

TuxRadar did a pretty good job of assessing the "smaller" distros (in terms of disk space and resource use) in which they declared Slitaz the winner. What interested me were the comments, many of which suggested Debian as a lightweight distro.

Either built up from the "standard" install with exactly what you want, or with the Xfce or LXDE desktops, Debian runs surprisingly small in disk space and resources — and, being Debian, is easy to keep updated with apt or Aptitude. I've probably done an equal number of Xfce vs. GNOME installs of Debian over the years.

That said, I downloaded a couple of Slitaz ISOs and plan to give it a try. I've used it in the past but certainly not in the last year and then some.

The GNOME Web browser Epiphany — formerly based on Mozilla's Gecko engine and now based on Webkit — doesn't ship with Ubuntu (though it does with Debian and most GNOME-based distros/projects).

But if you're running GNOME, I recommend you add it via your favorite package manager.

What Epiphany offers is a streamlined, faster, less-resource-intensive browsing experience.

I have a few Web-delivered apps that absolutely require Firefox, but for as much else as possible, Epiphany does an excellent job and doesn't stress my less-than-new hardware as much as Firefox.

If you run top in a terminal and keep an eye on the running processes, you'll see that Firefox hogs a lot of CPU and tends to keep hogging it even if you're not "actively" browsing. Other browsers, including (in my experience) Epiphany, Opera, Chrome/Chromium, Konqueror, Midori, Kazehakaze (and really just about anything that isn't Firefox) is much more forgiving of system resources than Firefox.

So it pays to shop around for browsers that do what you want yet don't stress your system so much.

Though it's not open-source, I do use Opera on my super-old systems, where it's light footprint makes even my 233 MHz system usable.

I've been pretty happy with Chromium in Ubuntu, and Chrome in Windows runs better now that I have 1 GB of RAM on the XP box (it didn't do so well with 512 MB).

But in GNOME, I've relied on Epiphany as my browser of choice for some time. I didn't find it slow when it was based on the Gecko engine, and now on Webkit it remains fast and functional.

The more I use GNOME, the more I gravitate toward the "GNOME apps," incluiding Epiphany, Evolution (which I've just started using with a couple IMAP mail accounts), the Empathy IM client, Rhythmbox, etc.

While I think the even-tighter integration of GNOME apps in the Ubuntu panel is theoretically a step in the right direction, I find that things are broken enough that the benefits of that integration aren't terrible available at present (but I hope they will be in future).

Note: In the past month or so, I've run GNOME in Debian Lenny, FreeBSD 7.3 and Ubuntus 8.04 and 10.04.

Between testing Gwibber and the not-cooperating Me Menu in Ubuntu Lucid and using the surprisingly functional HootSuite service, I've gone against my earlier pronouncement to only use Twitter to promote other things I'm writing/doing.

To keep the tweets from getting buried under the mountain that is Twitter, here is what I've tweeted from May 6 through 1 p.m. today:

@ladailynews is following @tonyrobbins - didn't know he was still doing his thing
23 minutes ago via HootSuite

Can someone explain how ♺ differs from RT in the lovely world of Twitter?
25 minutes ago via HootSuite

I'm not expecting it, but it would be very, very nice if HootSuite could add support for Identi.ca.
about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

With HootSuite, sending tweets is so easy, I've gone back on my no-tweet-w/o-link ban
about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

Why is Ubuntu Lucid periodically "forgetting" my chosen sound card (i.e. the one that works)? It's a GNOME issue ...
about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

What does a $300,000 guitar sound like? http://ht.ly/1Il06
about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

RT @defamer: To Prepare for Iron Man 2, Gwyneth Paltrow Ate Nothing But Kale http://gawker.com/5533569/
about 1 hour ago via HootSuite

Few things are more pleasant for the beaten-down Firefox user than the CPU- and RAM-sparing Epiphany Web browser. It's a great GNOME feature
about 2 hours ago via HootSuite

Big change for me: I'm using the Evolution mail client in Ubuntu Lucid. I usually ignore it. IMAP config was easier than I anticipated
about 2 hours ago via HootSuite

Things that play nicely with the Epiphany browser include Gmail, HootSuite, Movable Type. Things that don't: Yahoo Mail.
about 3 hours ago via HootSuite

I updated my daughter's Ubuntu 8.04 LTS box this morning - been running great 1 year +. Curiously, update manager didn't offer 10.04 upgrade
about 3 hours ago via HootSuite

I filed a bug on the Ubuntu Lucid Me Menu - I think changing password, deleting GNOME keyring had something to do with it http://ht.ly/1IiG2
about 3 hours ago via HootSuite

If it works for your given task/site, using GNOME's Epiphany browser is a very pleasant way to interact with the Web.
about 3 hours ago via HootSuite

RT @willysr2804: Slackware 13.1 will include KDE 4.4.3. Thanks to @erichameleers
about 16 hours ago via Gwibber

On my Ubuntu Lucid box, I switched to the Radiance theme (and got rid of the purple wallpaper). Everything is much lighter now.
about 21 hours ago via Gwibber

Engadget thinks the Microsoft Kin is too little phone for too much monthly money http://is.gd/bXwts
about 21 hours ago via Gwibber

Yep, I just added my third and final "social media" account, and the Ubuntu Lucid "MeMenu" social bar has returned.
about 22 hours ago via Gwibber

The only thing that will bring back the social bar in my Ubuntu Lucid "MeMenu" is adding another account to Gwibber.
about 22 hours ago via Gwibber

I reformatted the $20 MP3 player - a Centon Craze 4 GB - and that didn't kill it. Something funky happened with the FAT32 flash memory
about 22 hours ago via Gwibber

Back on the $15 laptop - 233 MHz of Pentium II power http://ow.ly/17hQ5l
10:06 AM May 6th via HootSuite

Here's the bug I filed in Launchpad for the misbehaving Me Menu in Ubuntu Lucid:

I set up the Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop recently in my home office space. I'm using a couple of Netgear power-line networking modules to pipe Ethernet through my electrical wiring - something that surprisingly works and saves me from stringing CAT 5e or 6 cable from the house to the converted garage (or finding a wireless solution that actually reaches both buildings simultaneously.

For those who might not remember, this Compaq, known as the $15 Laptop for the price I paid from a surplus dealer when I had no laptop at all and really needed/wanted one a few years ago is a 1999 model that cost plenty back in the day and sports a 233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor and a maxed-out 144 MB of RAM. It has the original 3 GB hard drive, a little eraser-like pointer instead of a trackpad, is fairly compact and has no external power brick. Yep, the usually brick-contained components are housed inside the laptop case, and all that you need to do to power it is plug the 120-volt cord into the back.

No, I don't have a working battery. I have no battery at all. I managed to get a CD-ROM drive ($10) for it. And going back in time via this blog, I've run everything from Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux and OpenBSD to Debian on it.

Right now I'm running Debian Lenny with Xfce and the Opera Web browser (via the Opera repository). In its default form, Debian with Xfce is remarkably light on resources. (I built it up from the "standard" Debian install. I don't even have GDM - I just startx from the console.)

And with these specs, the Opera Web browser is the only thing that makes computing in a modern (using-the-Web) way comfortable.

One thing I discovered today is that Gmail in the "basic HTML" view works extremely well on this platform.

After all my complaining that 1 GB barely makes it for Ubuntu, it's more than a little ironic that I'm living for the moment in such reduced technical circumstances. It can be done. I don't have Java or Flash on here. I probably have a bigger laptop drive that I could pull for this machine (and probably should). It is certainly better built than the Toshibas I've been systematically destroying ...

Even though I, too, am a Web developer involved in redesigns, whenever one of my favorite sites totally changes things, I'm never happy.

That's because the redesign isn't for the loyal, regular reader. It's for the people who are NOT going to the site and sticking around. That's why I hated the last ZDNet redesign way back in 2008.

I couldn't find what I was looking for. The commenting system was (and is) painful.

But I got used to it. I never got over the layoff of George Ou.

And ZDNet still doesn't have a single writer I can name who's equally passionate, knowledgeable and skeptical about free software, especially Linux and BSD. ("Passionate, knowledgeable, skeptical" - a hard combination, I know ... but there are literally hundreds if not thousands of us out there blogging from just this confluence of perspectives.) And no Dana Blankenhorn doesn't count, even though I do enjoy his work.

Even so, I like ZDNet.

Tonight, http://news.zdnet didn't resolve to anything for awhile. Then it led to http://www.zdnet.com/news.

If you can't easily find the bloggers you want to read, what's the point? Just like in the 2008 redesign, about which I wasn't crazy (but got used to), you can click the "by blog" tab under ZDNet Blogs under the "main" teaser and have blogs and their recent entries ... except that in this "improved" version, those blog listings fill only a third of the screen.

That makes more room for aggregation. (if it's worth linking, why not just blog it?) Ads. Links to stuff I really don't care about.

Brilliant.

Anyhow, it's the content — the blog content — at ZDNet that keeps me coming back despite ill-advised redesigns, each worse than the last. (Note: most links to past news.zdnet.com stories are not working at present; presumably the redirects will be fixed at some point.)

Last time posted about ZDNet shooting itself in the virtual foot, I believe that somebody from the site came to its defense. I'd love for that to happen again, or for everybody's favorite Linux-hating, Microsoft commenter Loverock Davidson to come over and tell me I'm a fucking idiot.

In Loverock's honor (and that of the defunct URL http://news.zdnet.com), I will now recompile absolutely every package in my Ubuntu Lucid system just because I can.

Morale/story: Before you redesign, think — will you gain more than you lose?

My blogroll includes a couple of entries for lucky13, a thoughtful blogger and skilled user of both Linux and BSD.

Lately he's been looking for the right Linux distribution for his Acer Aspire One netbook. At the moment, he's running Scientific Linux, the Fermilab- and CERN-sponsored spin on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to lucky13, one of the main problems he's had with the Acer is with the ath5k wireless driver, and Scientific Linux appears to do well in that regard. And as lucky13 says, you can't beat a RHEL offshoot for long-term support.

So I'm running Fluxbox in Ubuntu 10.04 right now. Fluxbox - that famed lightweight window manager - should give me somewhat of a performance boost, no?

I have htop running in another window, and right now I have 168 tasks running. That's compares to about 200 and a few in GNOME. It looks like networkmanager is running, although I'm not sure I could access it.

None of the background Gwibber stuff appears to be running, but I do see processes for desktopcouch - so it's possible that some of the UbuntuOne services are active in Fluxbox.

Does any of this make my Javascript-ish typing in the Movable Type "create entry" window go any better?

Right now I don't see much of a difference. There's still an occasional lag between typing and those characters appearing on the screen. So between some 50 fewer processes running (or at least hibernating) and any lightness of Fluxbox vs. GNOME, I don't really see much of a difference in the way Firefox is running. This could also mean that Firefox is a resource hog in any desktop you use.

I've always said that GNOME is a lot better on resources than you might think. And I'm sticking to that notion with my preliminary tests using Fluxbox with Ubuntu 10.04.

However, one big difference in using Firefox with Fvwm or Fluxbox in comparison with GNOME is that while Javascript operations don't appear any different, switching from one tab to another is markedly faster in the "smaller" window managers (i.e. the ones that are not GNOME. That's the takeaway for me at the moment.

I've had trouble in the recent past with the screensaver in Fluxbox and Fvwm vs. GNOME. I'm sure this has something to do with GNOME managing that service vs. Xscreensaver in the other WMs ... the whole thing just makes my head hurt.

Notes:

In Fluxbox, Gwibber doesn't appear in the menu. Also, it won't start from a terminal, in which it errors out.

One cool thing you can do in Fluxbox is use the menu to immediately switch to Fvwm. I did that. My two windows (Firefox and an Xterm) were joined at the virtual hip when I was in Fvwm, and I couldn't move one to another virtual desktop without the other tagging along.

I eventually closed the xterm and then started a new one in my secondary window.

One thing that is definitely true about using Fvwm and Fluxbox vs. GNOME and all that comes with it in Ubuntu. However, I'll say again that none of this seems to affect my Javascript-ish performance in Firefox. It's basically the same in Fluxbox and Fvwm as it is in GNOME.

One powerful incentive to use an alternate window manager such as Fvwm or Fluxbox is when you have limited memory in your machine. With 1 GB I don't have much to worry about, but if you're working with 512 MB or less, dropping GNOME for something lighter will significantly lighten your machine's memory load, and that's where you'll pick up in performance.

I've done quite a few Xfce installations of Debian over the years. Unlike Ubuntu's Xubuntu derivative, you don't get almost any GNOME bits in the Debian installation, and it runs really light. GDM is there, but no NetworkManager, Update Manager or Synaptic Package Manager. One thing that makes managing an Xfce install of Debian a great deal easier is the presence of Wicd - the non-GNOME network-configuration utility - in Squeeze.

To see exactly how this works, I'm anxious to either do an Xfce installation of Debian Squeeze, or try ZenWalk or Salix OS (both based on Slackware but offering the Xfce desktop).

Right now it's back to GNOME. It's fast enough.