As one of the ways to keep track of my journey through the world of Linux and BSD distributions, on every CD I try to write the date I burned it. I can't remember how I found out about my first Linux live CD, Knoppix 5.1.1 (some Web story must've gone on about how great it was to run a full Linux without doing a hard-drive install), but the date I wrote on the case is Jan. 29, 2007 -- soon after the 5.1.1 release came out. And it wasn't just my first live CD, it was also the first Linux CD of any kind I made -- and my first experience with a Unix-like operating system since leaving adm3a and VT-100 terminals behind after my college days in the 1980s.

I remember running that Knoppix CD on my Dell box. I didn't know what Debian was. I had no idea that KDE was Knoppix's desktop environment -- or that there were many alternatives. I didn't know why the Web browser that looked like Firefox was called Iceweasel.

Since then I've spent considerable time running Puppy and Damn Small Linux from live CDs (and in hard-drive installs, usually of the three-or-so-file "frugal" variety).

I recently burned both Puppy Linux 3.0 and Damn Small Linux 4.0. On the one hand, I'm thinking about doing reviews of both. On the other, I think it's time to replace the Debian setup on the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt. I've been running it for months with a very basic Debian Etch install. I started with the "standard" install, then added X and Fluxbox, along with the apps I wanted. It's been running fairly well, but the problems with various applications have been piling up. I know that if I use Puppy or DSL, the apps I want should work perfectly from the get-go. Of course I could also do a fuller Debian install -- say the Xfce version -- which would include many more applications ...

So before I dive back into live CDs, here's what's been troubling me with my Debian Etch install. The laptop is so old (probably circa '98) that it doesn't have USB ports. I have my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card installed -- it works with just about every Linux distro out there -- and I have the CD drive plugged in. The floppy drive is dead, but who needs it? I have the original 3 GB hard drive, and it's pretty full, even though I've got nowhere near the full Debian install on it. I really should buy a new hard drive that's way bigger and less prone to failure.

Anyhow, the 233 MHz, 64 MB system probably could run Xfce, but I've been conservative, running both the console and Fluxbox as needed. Maximum memory for the Compaq is 144 MB, but I've been too lazy and cheap to buy the RAM. The CMOS battery is dead, and I've really been too lazy to crack the case (TORX screws aplenty) and see how to switch it out. I have the network time server app installed, and that resets the clock at each boot.

I originally wanted to handle my work e-mail over IMAP with Mutt and MSMTP. Never mind that to get a Mutt setup seems to be the height of geek competence (a height to which I do not reach), but since my original push to get the .muttrc and .msmtprc files just right, something changed and I can no longer send mail. I could never figure out how to handle multiple mail accounts over IMAP (POP is easier, since you can POP all the mail down and filter it ... and by "easier," I mean harder but doable).

So I installed Sylpheed, which I figured would be light enough for the 233 MHz box. I've always liked Sylpheed, although I've migrated over to Evolution and Thunderbird on my other boxes.

On first launch of Sylpheed, I got an error message that some parameter in some file (I confess, I didn't recognize any of it) was missing. So I went ahead and configured Sylpheed. It didn't work.

I have AbiWord installed -- my go-to lightweight word processor -- but the graphics of the laptop just can't keep up. I type, and the letters appear seconds later. Ted might work better, but it's broken in Etch. You can neither create a new file nor open an old one.

On the brighter side, the Dillo browser works great (although the fonts are better in Damn Small Linux and Vector), and I also have had no problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox), Lynx or my favorite light image editor, MtPaint (which should be an official Debian package available via apt-get but for some reason can only be found at Sourceforge and on other distros like Vector and Zenwalk). I've also been very pleased with Mousepad as a text editor, with Nano and Vi as backups. (I'm more of a Nano users because I just don't spend a lot of time in console editors and have ragged Vi chops).

So I'm able to get my work done in Etch, but I have a feeling that I'd be better off -- especially at 64 MB of RAM -- with Damn Small Linux.

And with the release of version 4.0, what better time to re-evaluate the distro, which has been in or near the Distrowatch top 10 for quite some time.

So I pulled the CDs for Puppy 3.00, DSL 4.0 and Knoppix 5.1.1. I'm not ready to break out the Compaq laptop just yet, so I used my main test box, the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that runs a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM.

I plugged in a USB drive, with my hope being that I could then unplug the hard drive, boot from CD and then have no drives whirring for the duration.

That worked with Knoppix, Puppy, even with a Vector SOHO live CD I burned a week ago (and let me say that just as Vector excels with the Xfce desktop, it also does remarkably well in KDE).

But Damn Small Linux? No, it wouldn't boot with the hard drive disconnected. I tried versions 3.3 and 3.2 as well. No go for any of them.

My USB key is a little unsual. It was a freebie, and has a CD advertising image (detected almost always as drive sr0) as well as a 256 MB flash memory. Puppy found the flash just fine (I've always had great luck with hardware detection, especially of drives, with Puppy), and I was able to boot without a hard drive, run entirely in RAM, and save my settings and files to the pup_save on the USB drive. Brilliant, as usual.

Neither Knoppix nor DSL could find the USB flash drive, but I suspect with a "pure" USB drive the results would be different.

Even so, I've done quite a few Puppy reviews, and I wanted to start out with Damn Small Linux. So I plugged in a hard drive, booted DSL (using the dsl toram boot code that loads the whole distro into RAM) and was off.

Quickly, things that are better in DSL 4.0: network configuration is smoother than ever. Once I entered my static IP, DSL guessed the rest of the info pretty darn well. I entered my local name servers, but the gateway and broadcast addresses were correct without me doing anything. I was able to get printing working with apsfilter (I could never replicate my success in Etch, by the way).

The default window manager in DSL is now JWM, and the thing I miss most is the menu that used to come up with a right mouse click. It's easy enough, however, to change window managers to the old DSL's Fluxbox, and then everything is the way I like it. But I'm getting used to JWM (Joe's Window Manager) in DSL, and I like the clickable folders on the desktop -- it's easier and more intuitive than using the file manager.

Anyhow ... I'm not ready yet for a full DSL review, so let me just tell you that to me -- and many others, I suspect -- Puppy, DSL and Knoppix are VERY important distros in the Linux universe. Going from Windows or Mac to the world of Linux might not have happened for many of us if we didn't have live CDs that actually work that way with which to experiment.

And in many cases, working with a live CD or frugal install that allows files and parameters to be saved, either on the hard drive or on removable media, can be an easy, secure and preferable way to use a PC. Especially when it comes to DSL and Puppy, upgrading can be as easy as downloading and burning the latest ISO. And if you don't want to upgrade? No problem -- just use the version you want.

I did spend at least half a day running Knoppix with no hard drive. As I said above, Knoppix didn't find my USB drive (a situation that might be remedied with a more standard flash drive). As the king of live CDs, Knoppix, which is not one of those distros that is continually coming out with new releases, runs very, very well. Even when not running it in RAM, Knoppix is surprisingly quick, even with KDE. And if you do have 1 GB of RAM, I highly recommend running it with the toram boot option. I definitely plan to get the book "Knoppix Hacks," which has a new release slated for this month, as well as the new Damn Small Linux book.

And this thought has crossed my mind: I just might hack together a PC with 2 GB of RAM, and either a Compact Flash card or USB flash drive for storage, with no hard drive at all, to run Knoppix entirely in RAM.

(By the way, Puppy seems to know when it has enough memory to run in RAM -- I don't think you have to pass that information in a boot code).

And while the live CDs of Ubuntu, Mepis and others are helpful in terms of evaluating hardware detection, they're not designed to be used day-to-day in that manner. But DSL, Puppy and Knopix are -- and they all can be installed to the hard drive if you wish.

Before I wrap up this entry, I want to say that everybody should try Puppy, DSL and Knoppix. Download the ISOs, burn the CDs and start experimenting with all the boxes you can find. I've had more fun with live CDs than in anything else I've done with Linux. After a few months in Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu, it's a nice change of pace (and yes, I've tried Slax -- which I like -- and I plan to give Wolvix a spin soon).

So burn yourself some live CDs -- and make a half-dozen or so extras to hand out at will. It's the best way to get people started on exploring the non-Windows world of computing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Daily News isn't known for being on the technological bleeding edge. Not three years ago, we were all cursing Windows 98 for crashing with a single Explorer window open. We were running 400 MB Celerons (not bad) with 32 MB of RAM (very bad).

When we got a new publishing system a couple years ago, that meant new PCs to go with it. They are Dell Optiplexes with Pentium 4 processors at 3 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. Not even a full GB. But I can't complain. With XP, everything runs great. Except for those unexplained instances where everything slows to a crawl.

Aside from our networked publishing system (Unisys Hermes, for those who follow such things) and the antivirus package (can't remember what it is at the moment), every last thing is freeware or shareware.

The company installed OpenOffice. I added The GIMP and IrfanView for image editing and EditPad Lite for text editing. That's pretty much it.

So much of what I do happens via Web interface (software applications as services) that at this point I don't really need to run any applications that aren't available in better and freer versions on the Linux platform.

The exception is one of our Web-based apps that, for some reason, requires Internet Explorer. Even on Mac. Yes, you have to use an outdated, security-compromised browser that Microsoft abandoned years ago in order to make the application work. I'm glad that most of my SAAS work is now on the Clickability Web publishing system, which supports both IE and Firefox.

My big revelation this week is that Clickability works much better on Firefox than on IE. Now even on Windows, where I've continued to use IE heavily even up until this very week, I'm migrating over to Firefox (and away from Outlook and toward Thunderbird as well). See, all this use of Linux just makes you want to use the same apps, even when you must work in Windows.

And it goes both ways. I always say that the best way to get people using free, open-source software is to give them applications on their current platforms. OpenOffice, AbiWord, Thunderbird, Firefox, the GIMP -- use them in Windows and Mac OS X, and it's that much easier and way less foreign to switch to the Linux or BSD operating systems and still be using your new, free favorites.

Only the Daily News' Unisys Hermes publishing system has no open-source client solution. (The product was recently purchased from Unisys by newspaper-system giant Atex, I just learned. I don't know what effect that has on anything. But I bet SAAS is even coming to the print-publishing world, and future newspaper systems will be even less reliant on specialized client software and run on any system that has a compatible browser.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

The Debian Admin site had all the info:

apt-get install ntpdate

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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

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

Windows is free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The beta version of RealPlayer 11 is out and it's free.

Among the new features, RealPlayer 11 allows users to burn videos
to CDs in the VCD format. (You will need to buy the $29.99 RealPlayer Plus to burn to DVDs).

RealPlayer 11 is also capable of recognizing video content protected by DRM (digital rights management) and blocking it from being recorded.

RealNetworks is also planning additional features - such as allowing video content to be downloaded to iPods and other portable devices.

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Huh? What? Why?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for (or perhaps not), the Safari browser that Apple bundles with each and every Macintosh computer sold is now coming to a Windows desktop near you. (Stories here, here and here).

No longer content with Microsoft orphaning its IE browser (no doubt because of the initial development of Safari at Apple), the folks in Cupertino are bringing Safari to the masses -- the Windows-using masses.

You might inquire as to what Steve Jobs is smoking? But he's Steve Jobs ... so whatever it is he in fact is smoking, he's using $100 bills as rolling papers.

Again, why?

But Jobs and Co. have a plan: You will use Safari, O Windows user, because it will be the only way to run Web-compatible apps with the soon-to-debut iPhone. And you will also use Safari, you Windows XP and Vista users, you, because it will be distributed with the wildly popular, culture-changing content-pushing engine known as iTunes.

Jobs cites a 5 percent share of the browser market for Safari, 78 percent for IE, and 15 percent for Firefox.

As for the iTunes connection:

(Jobs) noted that there are a million downloads of iTunes a day, with 500 million of those going to Windows machines.

“We know how to reach these (Windows) customers,” Jobs said.

And Jobs says Safari is faster than Firefox and IE. Want to find out for yourself? Download the beta.

My 2 cents: I was initially a big fan of the Safari browser in OS X. IE on the Mac was dead, killed by Microsoft (for reasons that continue to escape me -- the development of Safari itself not being sufficient), and I thought that Firefox just took too long to load. So I got used to Safari, and it was running pretty well ... until most "sophisticated" Web apps started breaking like crazy. Blogger never worked that well, even before it had a total Googlized redo, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets wouldn't even try to work. Notice that it's Google in both cases? I don't know what that says about the whole deal, but I want to use both Blogger and Google Docs (formerly Writely), and Safari just can't do it.

So I started to use Firefox on the Mac, and I'm pretty darn happy with it. Once you load it (yep, it does take a long time on my iBook G4 1GHz), you can just leave it running and open a new Firefox window in seconds. Now if Safari for Mac "catches up" to Firefox in terms of sheer functionality, I'd be inclined to give it another try. (I'm on 10.3.9, and the Safari developers abandoned that platform long ago ... if Firefox does the same, I'll have to upgrade to 10.4, I guess. But for Mac at least, Safari is in pretty big trouble, in my opinion.)

On my Windows XP box, it's a bit different. I have Firefox loaded, but I rarely use it. I'm pretty happy with IE 6 (I haven't yet made the leap to IE 7 -- I could use the tabbed browsing, but I'm loathe to give up something that "just works.")

Safari for Windows? I'll probably try it. But as I've said before, if Steve Jobs really wants to shake this shit up, he'll release OS X -- IN IT'S FREAKIN' ENTIRETY -- for PC and knock Microsoft and the rest of the computer industry on its collective ass.

So while Safari for Windows is something, it ain't everything by one gigantic, bare-assed longshot.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dell and Canonical have made it official -- the PC-making behemoth will install the No. 1 desktop distro, Ubuntu, on select models. The full interview on video with Mr. Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, is on the Direct2Dell site, which recently asked users what they wanted in their next Dell (most said Linux, and most of those said Ubuntu). But if you don't want to watch the video and would rather read it, go to Ed Burnette's ZDNet blog.

Here's one question and answer:

How did this relationship between Canonical and Dell come about?

I think both organizations have been eyeballing each other for some time. Ubuntu has grown very rapidly as a desktop platform, and many of our users are running Ubuntu on Dell computers. On the Dell side, I think folks have noticed they were hearing about Ubuntu more and more. Michael Dell picked up on the trend of adoption. So, over the last couple years we've slowly been engaging. With the results of the Dell IdeaStorm there was sufficient critical mass for the idea, effectively, to take another step and turn some of those discussions into a project. The team has been working fast and furiously on that for the last couple months.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

George Ou, who writes the Real World IT blog for ZDNet, did a lengthy analysis of Microsoft Office 2007 vs. the free Open Office 2.2 suite. Not surprisingly, Open Office continues to be a resource hog, although the situation is improving over previous releases. Go to the entry for all the numbers, but here are some of his findings:

Office 2007 base memory consumption went up significantly compared to the Office 2003 I measured last year, but it's still significantly less than OpenOffice.org 2.2. Some of the OpenOffice.org applications, like Base, require Java to run, and the memory consumption spikes over 70 megabytes as soon as you start navigating in the interface. However, the difference between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org base resource consumption has gotten smaller.

... we can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft's OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft.

... It would appear that OpenOffice.org 2.2 has gotten significantly better than version 2.0, but it still has a lot to work on. ... So while I may still consider OpenOffice.org a resource pig, the pig has definitely lost some weight.

Since this is an open-source vs. MS issue (and, to some extent, a Linux vs. Windows issue, even though OO has both Linux and Windows versions), there are dozens of comments in various states of support and anger. At least one points out that once you open one Open Office app, it's quicker to open another one.

It's hard not to notice that Microsoft Office apps open extremely quickly in Windows (and, of course, they don't open at all in Linux, unless you're doing so under Wine). I have MS Office 6 on my old Mac Powerbook 1400, and that version is a real, honest-to-God dog, it's so slow. But on a modern Windows box, MS Office is, if anything, fast as hell.

On my Windows box (which DOESN'T have MS Office), the Open Office "Quickstarter" is always sitting in RAM, allowing a fairly quick start of the program. I don't quite know how I feel about it in terms of resources. I don't really use OO that much -- I'm mostly running our paper's publishing system (Unisys Hermes) and for blog writing, when I'm not working directly in Movable Type, I use AbiWord or EditPad. And I open about one spreadsheet a month (I'm a total Excel-phobe) in OO.

I use OO so little on the Windows box, I'm still on version 1.1.4. I have version 2 downloaded; I just have to get around to installing it. We have MS Office on the iBook at home, but I'm not all that comfortable using it (I've gottten rusty in Word over the years). Of course, I have OO on most of my Linux systems, but I'm mostly using AbiWord and a variety of text editors at this point. My love affair with KWrite pretty much stalled when the only time I could get "typograpical quotes" to work was in MepisLite, a distro that Mepis pretty much abandoned. In both Slax and Kubuntu, the "smart" quotes don't work. So it's AbiWord for the moment (and I'm hoping for my two most-wanted AbiWord features -- "smart" quotes and the ability to change the case of letters from the keyboard -- to be added, though I am not holding my breath).

But in the larger world of open source and Linux, Open Office is VERY important. The fact that it's free is a powerful incentive to use it -- and since it covers most of MS Office's bases, it's essential for many who might consider switching to Linux for desktop use. To "sell" open source apps and operating systems to the unbelieving public, you've gotta be able to deal with MS file formats, and while AbiWord and Gnumeric suffice, OO is better, albeit way slower. But if you're spending your whole day in, say, OO Writer, you load it once and keep it running -- start times for the program aren't such an issue.

For instance, I use the GIMP a whole lot, and while it's slow to load, as long as I've got the memory to run it, I just start it when I first need it and leave it running. Not something I'd recommend with less than 512 MB (and something I'd definitely recommend with 1 GB). But for low-resource Linux systems, mtPaint does what I need -- and it loads in a few seconds. The same is true in Windows: Irfanview isn't as powerful as the GIMP, and the former program is kind of quirky at times, but it does a pretty good job of editing images.

Of course, the best thing to do is get a PC with tons of CPU power and memory and just be blissfully unaware of all this.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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

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

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

We'll see how it goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m writing this from MepisLite — the ‘lite’ version of the well-regarded SimplyMepis Linux distribution, which though configured for older systems (just how old I’ve yet to determine) nevertheless uses the KDE desktop environment, which many prefer over the GNOME desktop that runs Ubuntu (although KDE is available for Ubuntu either in its Kubuntu incarnation or as an add-on package).

I was thinking, as I drove in today, how Abiword is such a nice program — fast loading, able to read and write Microsoft Word-format files (a must for the publishing world, even though the Daily News publishing system handles Word and text files with equal aplomb). But its one fatal flaw is a lack of smart quotes — or any ability to easily type directional quotes manually.

The argument against smart quotes (and directional quotes, for that matter) is that they’re not needed (meaning true geeks don’t use them) and that they’re the spawn of Microsoft, and therefore inherently evil. All I can say is that these people are not writers or editors, or at the very most not writers or editors outside the world of blogs, which by default don’t have smart quotes. But the print world does have directional quotation marks, and a word processor, by convention, is different than a plain text editor in that it inserts more formatting to make a printed document look good.

Yesterday, in frustration at not being able to acquire an older PC-compatible laptop (in the 300-500 MHz) range for a price that I consider sane (that price being $100 or less), I fired up This Old Mac, the 117 MHz PowerPC-based Powerbook 1400 that runs System 7.6.1. It does the Internet begrudgingly with Internet Explorer 5 (still the best browser for 7.6.1), a little less well with Netscape 4.x, which I also use as a very slow mail client and newsgroup reader. That said, Netscape is currently the ONLY mail client runs under 7.6.1 and works with today’s POP and IMAP e-mail systems. Not Eudora, Claris, or even Outlook 4.5 (you need at least version 5.something). I’ve tried them all.

But getting back to my point. I ran the supremely fast WriteNow — a program whose copywright is somewhere around 1990 — that’s 17 years ago, my friends, and IT HAS SMART QUOTES. Same for the writing portion of ClarisWorks. But neither can make an acceptable MS Word-compatible document. I don’t even know if they can do Rich Text Format. They’re fast as hell (especially WriteNow), but without file compatibility, not very useful. I do have Office 6.0 on the Powerbook, which, despite being written for PowerPC, isn’t very swift at all.

So if an 11-year-old Powerbook has THREE word processing programs with smart quotes, the Linux of today should offer that feature — and allow it to be turned on or off — on each and every word processor available for the platform. Open Office has it, but for older systems, it would be better to run Abiword or Ted. Abiword, as I said, is ideal, because it saves in Word format. But it doesn’t offer smart quotes. It did at one time. It was buggy, so I read, but instead of fixing it, the programmers decided to keep it geek friendly (and writer unfriendly) and offer straight quotes only.

This brings me to KOffice, with which I’m writing this entry. So far the program works great. It’s very Word-like — but very fast, with great auto correction. And under Settings---Configure Autocorrection there is the provision to turn on or off smart quotes and other various kinds of auto correction that are typically offered in Word and Open Office.

But KOffice doesn’t offer a direct, simple “save as” Word format. There’s Abiword, Open Office (for which even Word is getting an optional filter), HTML (actually freakin’ useful), even Palm (why? unless KOffice will sync my Palm, and it just might, but who knows?) Lotus Amipro (does ANYBODY use that?), Word Perfect, Microsoft Write (at least it’s close) and RTF, which is labeled as “Microsoft Word compatible.” No Word.

Well, maybe it’s time for me to get comfortable with Rich Text Format, since that’s offered in Ted as well, and since I like KOffice so well at this point, being in giddy smart-quote heaven, I just might learn to live with it.

(As an aside, I realize that blogs entries do not commonly use directional quotation marks, but would it kill you to see them? No worry, back to straight quotes in the blog after this.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Via a link from Low End Mac, I came across this great Wired roundup of tools for writers, electronic and not, which brings together some of the other gadgets I've meant to blog on, and introduced me to some new things I've got to check out.

I've already heard about the Alphasmart Neo, a $250 laptop-like device with a full-keyboard and smallish LCD screen. It's aimed at a pure writing experience, and the best thing is that it weighs less than 2 pounds and runs 700 hours on a set of three AA batteries. Yes, I didn't say 7 hours, but 700. It's already been blogged about by the O'Reilly people here and here.

The Wired people also discuss their favorite pens, laptops, and two writing programs that intrigue me enough to try them out:

RoughDraft for Windows and Scrivener for Mac OS X. The best news about these two programs is that RoughDraft is sold on a "donation" basis, and Scrivener, although needing OS X 10.4 to run, costs only $34.99 after a 30-day trial. I don't have 10.4 on the iBook at home, and I don't do much writing on it, either, but I will give RoughDraft a try and report back.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Took a look at the Ubuntu books today, and I didn't see "Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks," which I think will be pretty good, but I did see a few of the others (here's what Amazon offers).

The best I did see was "Beginning Ubuntu Linux: From Novice to Professional," by Keir Thomas. It reads well and has a lot of good information for Ubuntu users, present and future.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sure open-source applications and open-source operating systems are intertwined, but I think the near future is all about people using open-source apps on non-Linux operating systems, i.e. using free software on their existing Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.

It's a natural progression from paying for all software (or, all too commonly, "stealing" those apps) and suffering through the upgrades that follow, paying again and again, yet not having the shock to the system, bodily and computer-wise, of trying to get Linux to work.

I say this partially because my experiences with OS X and Windows XP on newish hardware are overwhelmingly positive. The OSes pretty much never crash, and apps only crash regularly (and recovery is easy). Additionally, the major apps, in Windows anyway, are tuned to load and work quickly. Try loading Word or IE in Windows -- it's almost instant. That's because, as some say, major components of those programs are preloaded with the OS kernel. Whatever the reason, I like it. I don't see the same speed in OS X -- many apps take too long to load, although they're plenty fast once they get going. But from a stability and compatibility point, the two "major" PC OSes work very, very well.

But since I don't want to pay $140-$200 every couple of years for "upgrades," I'm looking extra closely at Linux.

Still, for the business world, it's possible to use Linux and save money, but it's not likely for the majority of businesses, which are pretty much going to order Windows boxes and plop them on desks. That's where open-source software can really shine. Everybody already uses Firefox, and more and more are using Open Office, even if it is slower than MS Office. It's a lot freer, as in NOT $400 or so, and that makes a big difference when it comes to equipment budgets.

Already at the Daily News, we use OO, and a lot of us need the functionality of Photoshop (or even the "light" version). But the company is not running out and purchasing either the $700-ish Adobe CS or even the $70-ish Photoshop Elements. Instead, a bunch of us are using The GIMP, the open-source image-editing program that runs on Linux, Windows and OS X and, again, while possibly not quite as good as the full version of Photoshop, is a whole lot cheaper, being free and all.

So when it comes to apps, it's a slam dunk to pay nothing instead of hundreds of dollars. For operating systems, it's a tougher non-sell, since the OS generally comes "bundled" with the hardware and is good for the life of the box. I can assure you, this newsroom full of Dell Optiplexes with Windows XP will never see Vista -- and that's a good thing, too, since they don't (and never will) have enough memory or graphics power to properly run the latest MS operating system.

Of course, open-source apps on closed-source operating systems is closer to wholly open-source computing, and the needle is most definitely moving.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was looking on Craigslist for bargains. Maybe a 300 MHz laptop with 128 MB RAM for $100. Or an 800 MHz desktop for the same $100 -- or less.

What did I find?

A lot of crap from people who are totally deluded as to its value -- if it has any at all.

Laptops with 100 MHz CPUs and 16 MB RAM for $75 -- hey kids, it comes with a Windows 98 disc! Bargain city! This, clearly is a $25 item, again, if it's worth anything at all.

And desktops -- where are the $50 PC desktops out there? It's hard to get rid of these for NOTHING -- even the Salvation Army doesn't want 'em. My very own This Old PC isn't worth $25 -- and on Craigslist I couldn't find anything priced ... to move.

I'd like an old laptop on which to test Linux. But I'll be double-damned if I'm paying $300 for 5-or-more-year-old hardware. If it cost you $600 in the year 2000, it's not worth $300 in 2007 -- it's just plain not.

Hell, Fry's periodically has a new laptop under its "Great Quality" label for $250 or so. No PCMCIA port (come on, now!) no WiFi. But it's a real PC laptop with a new, working battery, USB ports on the back ...

If they can blow out a new laptop for $250, surely you can let a five-year-old one fly for $100 or less. It's not doing you any good molding in your coat closet.

Every once in a while, somebody breaks out of the beige box when it comes to computer hardware. Not just in case color or size, but in conception, execution -- and even price.

Not that it's happening a lot, Apple being the leader when it comes to all the above angles on innovation -- excluding cost, of course, which remains high for Mac hardware.

But on another front, taking inspiration from the Mac Mini for size, from Linux for value, adding the flash-memory version of Puppy Linux, Michael C. Barnes, the Desktop Linux writer whose articles have been so helpful, has a company in Thailand called NorhTec, that specializes in small, rugged, fanless PCs -- one of which costs $120 and can run Puppy Linux from a Compact Flash memory card. (The people behind Damn Small Linux offer a similar setup but it costs $375-$399.)

The Norhtec machine doesn't have a hard drive. But it's $120. Yes, a new PC -- Mac Mini-style -- ready to be connected to your own keyboard, mouse and monitor. It's got USB ports -- so add a drive that way, if you must.

But in any event, you can run Puppy to get on the Internet, write e-mail, do word processing, spreadsheets and more. Remember -- there's no hard disc, no CD-ROM (or CD-R, or DVD), just a Compact Flash plug on the front, USB and Ethernet on the back.

It's a Linux-running Mac mini footprint minus the drives -- and at less than 1/4th the price.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First of all, I love that song.

Second of all, the Wine emulation program for Linux, which enables users to run Windows apps in Linux without needing Windows at all, is notoriously difficult to install. In fact, there's a whole company -- and resulting software package -- called Codeweavers to make to process doable for those who aren't full-time geeks.

Now I need to run Internet Explorer for one task -- yes, it's a freakin' pain in the ass -- and have had no success in installing Wine on any Linux distribution.

But I came across IEs4Linux, which claims to offer a way to get Wine and IE into your Linux distribution with minimal effort.

It took a small bit of doing, about 5 minutes work -- and you have to open a terminal window.

But it works.

I installed in Xubuntu, using the instructions herein.

In a few minutes, I had a working IE 6 window on the screen. So if you absolutely, positively need to use IE, want to run Linux and can't seem to get Wine working otherwise, I heartily recommend this method -- again, it worked for me.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm running Puppy Linux on top of Windows XP with the help of the QEMU virtual machine -- and the hard work of Erik Veenstra. It's a lot slower than plain, pure Puppy, but since I can't spend all day in Puppy and must use XP to do real work, I can only snatch a few minutes here and there, and having Puppy ready and waiting in the QEMU window -- however slow it may be -- is better than no Puppy at all.

I say it's slow, and this is on a 3 GHz processor. I tried QEMU-Puppy -- the only QEMU-based version of any Linux I've been able to get working thus far, by the way -- on This Old PC at 333 MHz, and it was so slow as to be unusable. But on a fast machine running XP, you can get stuff done.

While in the QEMU Puppy, I changed the dark desktop background to the familiar Puppy blue (and now can see the names of the icons -- black on black never works, people).

I easily added the Ted word processor/text editor with Puppy Package Manager. I tried to add Open Office, but I didn't have enough space on my USB flash drive.

Ted is the word processor in Damn Small Linux. It doesn't save in .doc format, but uses .rtf (rich text format) instead -- a format still readable by Word, by the way. But I like Ted. That's one of the great things about using 10 or more different live-CD Linux distributions -- you get exposed to many different programs that you'd otherwise never see. And both Abiword and Ted have proven to be able writing programs. I like the way the characters look better in Ted, so if I can get away without using smart quotes or saving in .doc format, I will.

Those familiar with my smart-quote obsession might be interested in knowing that the smart-quote debate, while not exactly raging, is simmering in the Linux/open-source community. It seems that at one time, Abiword (which does save in .doc format, and which runs on Linux, Windows and OS X) had smart quotes added.

But in the geek world, smart quotes = Microsoft hegemony. Yes -- Microsoft is being blamed for smart quotes, and real geeks use straight quotes.

I will touch that last sentence no further. So the upshot is that of the leading word-processing programs in the Linux world, Abiword and Ted do NOT have smart quotes (I don't even know if you can drop them in manually), while the more bloated Open Office (not bloated compared to MS Office) offers them.

On the subject of working with Puppy ... there are so many ways to use Puppy. The easiest is the live CD. With that, you can save your session (and parameters) to the hard drive, to a USB flash drive, to an "open" CD or DVD ... or you can mount those drives, save the files you create (they are readable in by Windows apps, by the way -- a nice touch) there ... and do these in various combinations. You can even save multiple configurations (much like the multiple user accounts available in most Linuxes but not Puppy, in which you always work as root (if you don't know what that means, consider yourself lucky).

In fact, I'm going to try that now -- to make separate Puppy config files for running QEMU and the Live CD on two separate PCs.

Wish me luck.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I could never get Damn Small Linux to recognize the Ethernet on the Dell GX 520, so I couldn't really evaluate Damn Small Linux, one of the few, the proud mini-Linuxes that run fast -- and do so on old hardware.

I downloaded the ISO for DSL-n, which is 90 MB, as opposed to plain DSL's 50 MB. Sure it can't fit on a business-card-size CD anymore, but the net configuration in the bigger -n version runs much like its big brother, Knoppix (on which DSL is based). I was on the Web in 2 minutes.

And I'm posting this through the SeaMonkey browser.

On a somewhat related topic, the Daily News blogs moved to a new server over the weekend, promising a better experience for both readers and bloggers. We've had quite a time of late, with CGI timeouts and plain inaccessibility. Hopefully all is now well. I'll report back in a few days.

Meanwhile, I'm exploring DSL-n.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a great site that introduces newbies to Linux and kind of gives you the lay of the land, as it were. It's called Make the Move, and is very, very well done. An excerpt:

Linux comes with thousands of free applications, which are maintained by thousands of volunteers around the world. These projects also release their source code, which means they too are 'open source'.

"But how can they do all this for free?" I hear you ask. The Linux and open source communities do all this for free because they love the software, not because they try to make money from it. They are doing it for prestige, honour and because they believe in open source ideals.

It is important to note that due to the nature of open source software (the ability to customise it however you like) there are many different version of Linux. This is great because you can find a version that suits you best! These different versions of Linux are called 'distributions'. This is because the creators of the various versions take Linux and make their own changes to it, add their own packages and then distribute it for free. It might sound complicated, but it's not. So don't worry, we'll help you get started on the right track!

We invite you to look further into Linux and welcome you to 'make the move' into an amazing new world.

...

Linux runs on anything. In fact it is the most widely supported operating system in the world! From brand new computers to old ones you were going to throw away there is always a Linux version for you. With Linux you can still browse websites all over the internet, watch movies, listen to your music, access your digital camera, use your scanner and much much more. You can also send emails and create documents that are compatible with Windows systems.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The big news in the Linux and open-source world is the agreement between Canonical -- the company/entity/I-don't-exactly-know-what-the-hell-it-is behind super-fast-growing community-rich Linux distribution Ubuntu (and Kubuntu, Edbuntu, Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu) and Linspire/Freespire to bring their distributions together.

This means that Linspire and Freespire will be based on Debian-centric Ubuntu rather than Debian itself. Besides all the bells, whistles and other knickknacks that Ubuntu builds onto Debian, the 'Buntus are released in six-month development cycles, with support continuing for each distro for three years.

In exchange, Ubuntu gets Linspire's CNR (Click and Run) package installer, making adding new software and configuring hardware easier than ever. A key part of this is CNR's amassing of proprietary drivers that promise to make more hardware -- and especially more forms of video -- work in Linux without too much geekery on the part of users.

And as Ubuntu grows in massive leaps and bounds -- it's got to be the go-to distribution for people looking to move beyond Windows -- this will only help Linux in its quest to grab a larger share of the desktop market and, in turn, create a more seamless and enjoyable experience for the user.

Thanks to Desktop Linux for this news, and read their analysis for more:

Jeremy White, the CEO of CodeWeavers, publisher of the popular CrossOver Linux, a program that enables Linux users to run Windows program on their Linux desktops, said, "I have to confess that I've clearly been around too long. I'm just now shaking off this sense that this Ubuntu 'fad' is just a flash in the pan, like many others before it, and Linux enthusiasts are soon going to be moving on to the next 'new thing'."

"But that's clearly wrong; Ubuntu is clearly the 800 pound gorilla in the Linux desktop space, and I don't see that momentum slowing much anytime soon," White said.

"But this is all just good. Ubuntu isn't winning primarily on the basis of marketing (okay, having a billionaire backer allowing free CDs doesn't hurt), but the core reason for their success is simple: they write great software. And that can't help but be good for users," continued White.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My previous Ubuntu post on my inability to boot from the live CD of Ubuntu (or Xubuntu) on an iMac G5 500 MHz has sparked a few comments from G3 users who installed both Ubuntu and Xubuntu directly to their hard drives.

The best report was for Xubuntu -- something I'd second due to its lighter graphics load on the system. Unfortunately, I don't have a G3 on which I can do such an install ... but I will be on the lookout for one.

The situation isn't so dire for most older PCs, as they can run Firefox and IE6, even with Windows 98, but these older Macs have basically been thrown under the bus by both Apple and the browser makers. Hell, Microsoft doesn't even allow its IE for Mac to be downloaded anymore. And I am disappointed in the people behind Firefox for not porting to classic Mac.

But with Xubuntu, you can bring modern browsing back to the G3, plus get apps for writing, spreadsheets, photo editing and just about anything else in the Linux world. It's the best solution today for keeping a G3 relevant and ready for action.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It turns out that there is no stable .iso from which to make a Ubuntu Lite CD, but you can turn your existing Ubuntu installation into the Lite version with apt-get. Here's how.

There was some antipication about a Ubuntu Lite CD being ready "in the near future," but these posts are a year old now ... and a year is an eternity in Ubuntu Standard Time.

My 2 cents: The method described -- and the problems therein -- are beyond my geekery capabilities. I'll stick with Puppy and Xubuntu for now.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote a long post (not up here yet) about how Ubuntu Linux for PowerPC could potentially save G3 Macs from OS 9 obsolescence, principally because modern browsers won't run on anything older than OS X.

Boy was I wrong.

Ubuntu ran great on my iBook G4, which shipped with OS X 10.3, by the way, and for which I really don' t need Linux to save it. It was the smoothest boot of a live-CD Linux yet, on Mac or PC, but for a laptop designed from the ground up for OS X, and which runs quite well on it, the use of Ubuntu is strictly a geek curiousity.

So I tried Ubuntu on two Macs that could actually benefit from Linux and the modern apps that go with it.

An old Power Macintosh G4 tower booted Ubuntu all right, although it did take awhile (slow CD drive). Sound came through fine, as it always does with Macs and Ubuntu. I couldn't get Ethernet working, but I also didn't spend a lot of time on it. But when I tried to start Open Office, the whole thing crashed. It does have at least 128 MB of RAM, by the way.

Today I tried an iMac G3 500 MHz slot-loader with 128 MB RAM. I got the sound, but after 20 minutes, nothing from the CD, not even a full boot. Now I could have let it run for an hour, and I just might do that at some point, but not booting off of a live CD after 20 minutes?

Maybe Xubuntu will work better, but I'm not holding my breath.

No, Ubuntu is NOT a saver of old Macs. If there's a lighter Linux for PowerPC, that might be worth trying. Otherwise, try to shoehorn OS X in there, or stay with the swift and the brave OS 9.2.2.

That's this doctor's recommendation ... and yes, I only play one on TV.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I'm addicted to Puppy Linux and its ability to boot from CD, run entirely in RAM and save to a connected USB flash drive. You could unplug the hard drive and throw it out. New apps that aren't on the CD are saved on the USB drive.

But everybody needs a couple of Windows apps to keep the peace. For me, they are Internet Explorer (one Daily News system requires it) and our networked publishing system, Unisys Hermes. Oh ... and I guess Palm Desktop, unless J-Pilot for Linux happens to work.

So this means I'd need Wine, the Linux program that runs many but not most Windows applications over Linux.

I'm already screwing with the ethos that is Puppy, but if I could get, at minimum, Wine to work with IE 6 and ... shudder ... Hermes, then I could have my entire computing life on a CD-R and USB flash drive to carry with me at will -- and which could turn most PCs into my own personal workstation for as long as I needed it.

Total weight: about 2 ounces. Lighter than any laptop.

This is my dream system ... could it happen? It's my new project.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some are exasperated with smart quotes, others live and die by them. AbiWord at one point did smart quotes, but it didn't work so well, and its developers took out the feature for the time being. Microsoft Word, of course, is king of the smart quotes, and most full-features word processors offer the feature. Open Office does.

My obsession, for a couple of weeks, anyway, was figuring out how to enter smart quotes, em dashes and the like, in the Palm handheld. I figured it out.

But is it really that important? And why am I so concerned.

It's because I had an editor for a time of a smallish, home-produced magazine who never got them right unless I did. If I e-mailed in straight text in the body of the e-mail, I'd get all straight quotes, and I think it looks terrible. So I then sent in Word files only, with the smart quotes and spacing set just so. He'd still screw it up (such is the lament of a copy editor when it comes to his own writing being edited).

But as some correctly point out, any halfway decent publishing software (everything from Quark to InDesign) will apply smart quotes to any text file, and do a better job, probably, than Word alone.

It's certainly true for the Daily News' Unisys publishing system. It gets most of them right. Possible exceptions are when single-quotes follow doubles. Some are the wrong direction. Same for years, like '83. Those are usually backward. But the bottom line is that for the work I'm doing now (especially on the Web), smart quotes don't matter so much, and the effort to generate them is wasted.

So I've got to let go. I've got to know that I CAN make smart quotes if I need to, but it's not the end of the world if I don't.

What are/were you obsessed by that you decided to let go. And I mean this in the geekiest sense, by the way.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of all my various projects over the past year, documented here and on This Old PC and This Old Mac, the most fun so far has been the discovery and use of bootable-CD versions of Linux. I've got about a half-dozen burned so far, with a few more than that ready to try. I still like Knoppix and Ubuntu and was intrigued by Damn Small Linux, but it's Puppy Linux that has worked the best -- it boots from the CD and then loads the entire OS and all apps into memory, so it's blindingly fast (in contrast to the bigger CDs, which are less so).

I'll do a giant Linux link dump later today, but for now, here's this list of all the known CD-bootable Linux flavors.

The one thing you have to be able to do is download the .iso images (faster connections are better, of course) and then make CDs out of them. It's not as easy as it should be. If you have Nero (a real CD-making program), you can do it, but with naked Windows, it's not possible without a helper application. From the Knoppix help pages, I learned how to use ISO Recorder, which is XP- and Vista-specific. I think the instructions that come on the Ubuntu Wiki pages are better because they cover everything from Windows 95 on forward, plus Mac OS X (good for Ubuntu's PowerPC distribution AND for making a PC-compatible disc, by the way) and even Linux itself.

Of course Ubuntu will send you a free CD, and just about every Linux CD and DVD is available on the Web very cheaply. Knoppix, for one, offers this extensive list of places that sell Linux CDs and DVDs, many of which go for $2 or less each. The best thing, though is a fast connection, your own CD or DVD burner, and a big stack of blanks. (I'm headed to Frys to replenish my supply.)

Once you can burn your own discs, you're well on your way to sampling all that the many Linux distributions have to offer -- and you can really find what works best with your hardware, your work ... and you.

And did I mention that my favorite app of the day is Abiword, available for Windows, Linux and OS X, and way, way lighter in resources than Word, but able to create compatible files nonetheless.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since Mozilla is derived from Netscape (no ...
Netscape didn't die ... it was just reborn as Mozilla
and then Firefox), SeaMonkey -- the browser in the small, CD-booting Puppy Linux -- wisely kept Netscape
Communicator's ability to read and send e-mail, read
and post to Usenet newsgroups AND ... my personal
favorite at this very moment ... create Web content
with Composer.

Man ... I've got nothing on my Windows machine to
write HTML, and now I've got the rudimentary but very
useful Composer (love it on This Old Mac) at my
service.

Again ... you may pet the Puppy.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was able to configure Gaim, Puppy's IM client, to
work with Yahoo's instant messenger service. It was
surprisingly easy.

I will say it now. If you tried Ubuntu or Knoppix and
thought them too resource heavy, give the Puppy a try.
It's working way better than Damn Small Linux.

Did you ever run a DOS-only PC with simple apps? Not
Word (even in the days of DOS 5, MS Word was a dog). I
can't remember the apps we used to run for word
processing and database in the old DOS days (Ilene
used them at work when computers were first coming
onto the desks of regular people), but you'd load and
run stuff really quick, since it was pre-Windows with
no GUIs to speak of.

In Puppy, there's a GUI, but it's blindingly fast. So
far I can browse the Web, create Word files, edit
photos, write IMs, get e-mail and newsgroups. And all
without accessing the hard drive. For laptop users,
this could be the key to running your portable PC fast
and keeping your battery running longer, too -- no HD
spinning means less power drain.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My tour through the world of Linux distributions
bootable from CD has taught me one thing. There are
about 100 different flavors of Linux that are bootable
from CD (I will give the link later to a list of just
about that many).

I tried Damn Small Linux yesterday (couldn't get
network services established) and was set to try
DSL-n, which is bigger and presumably has more
flexibility in drivers, but I stumbled across href="http://puppylinux.com/">Puppy, another
small, CD- and USB-drive-bootable version of Linux.
The best thing about it (and yes, I am using it right
now) is that once it boots from CD, the entire OS and
all apps load into RAM (assuming you have enough,
which is somewhere around 200 MB, I think).

That means no accessing the CD every time you load an
app (like Ubuntu
and Knoppix). I
wanted to try Abiword, the lighter (than Open Office)
word processor that produces Word-compatible files. I
wasn't prepared for it to start in under a second. But
it did. Running everything in RAM. It's like starting
every program you're going to use and having it in
your taskbar, or whatever it is they are calling that
thing at the bottom of the screen.

To keep Puppy small, it uses the SeaMonkey Web
browser, which is working great. I'm not sure what the
GUI is, but it looks great. And supposedly it's easier
to make a bootable USB drive out of Puppy than it is
from DSL (a task at which I didn't succeed yesterday).
I plan to try it.

Another thing about Puppy. You can burn an "open" CD
or DVD and save your work on the disc for as long as
you have free space. Or you can create space on your
system's hard drive, save to a plugged-in USB drive
... or to a ZIP drive (something that excites me since
I've got about a half-dozen of them in various states
of usability). You can even boot off of a ZIP disk.

But running everything in memory is brilliant. Now you
are giving up some things to do this. No GIMP, like in
Knoppix and Ubuntu. That might be hard to give up, as
I do a lot of photo editing for the Web. But maybe
there's something good enough in Puppy. This little
Linux can also be installed to the hard drive, and
then additional software can be added, so if I feel
like I need to use this Linux distribution, I can run
it like any regular HD-based OS.

I had to answer a few questions about my display
preferences while Puppy booted, but configuring the
network services was easy. I'm not quite sure how to
get a printer hooked up over the network. I think you
have to choose the model of printer and then select
from a list of available printers on the network.
Since there are about 200 or so printers hooked up
around here, I guess I'll have to do a walk-around and
see what's available. Ubuntu and Knoppix were very
smooth when it came to printer config.

And I am having one glitch in the SeaMonkey browser.
It does automatic Web links just fine, but when trying
to create a new category, a blank window opens, never
to be filled. Puppy also offers the Dillo browser, so
maybe that will work better. I'll try to upload a
photo and see how that goes.
But this running in RAM, apps available nearly
instantly. I could really get used to this. And while
the fatter Linuxes are sometimes billed as able to
resurrect older PCs, a distribution like this really
can do that. Breaking the chain to the hard drive and
running light apps is key to maximizing limited PC
resources.

Now pet the Puppy.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After running about four different kinds of Linux, and also having run OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.6 (albeit sparingly for the latter), I've come to the conclusion that Windows and MS Office are a lot zippier than they get credit for.

If what you need to do is get work done, Windows (and I'm mainly talking about 2000 and XP here) is a workhorse. And there are free apps from today till tomorrow and into the next millennium. And so far, my screen looks better in Windows than it does in any flavor of Linux. Best I've seen so far is the Gnome GUI that comes with Ubuntu. KDE, available for Knoppix or Ubuntu is slower. Too slow, I think.

One thing I'm gonna tell you right now: The whole thing about Linux being able to "save" an old PC from obsolesence. I don't buy it at this point. But if you want to set up a PC to run modern browsers and working e-mail programs, along with Office-compatible free apps, and you don't have a Microsoft Windows OS disc, Linux can provide a very credible working environment. Is it a better one than Windows? No, just different.

What Linux does have going for it, especially the big distributions, is free upgrades forever. And the smug satisfaction that you're not running Windows or OS X. If that kind of smugness is your thing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent a little time trying to boot Ubuntu Linux on the Pentium II MMX 333 MHz. I couldn't force a boot from CD with the F keys, so I went into the BIOS and changed the boot order to CD first, then HD. That worked.

The Linux boot from CD was taking forever. I haven't timed my newish PC's boots of Linux, but on the older one, it was taking forever. At least 7 minutes. I wanted to see if I could get wireless running under Ubuntu, but I hadn't a clue.

Knoppix has a visible wireless configuration utility -- I'll have to try it. Ubuntu might have something. A look at the help pages might shed some light.

But the long boot time is troublesome. Maybe a hard-disk installation will speed things up. All I know is that taking a major performance hit is not what Linux is supposed to be about.

Update: Knoppix was faster on This Old PC.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ubuntu includes Evolution, which is billed as a "PIM client." Maybe it'll work with my Palm handheld. If I can get the Palm and Linux talking ... my life, from a technological standpoint, will be complete.

It turns out that Evolution is, indeed a mail client, and it does handle PIM syncing for Palm. Hmmmm...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Knoppix has so many things to choose from. Multiple text editors, both in the KDE GUI and in terminal windows. A bunch of browsers, including Firefox, and Konquerer.

There aren't so many choices in Ubuntu, although I expect everything you need is available for free download.

One thing: I couldn't get Knoppix to recognize my thumb drive, but I can get to it easily in Ubuntu to save my work when booting off the CD.

Neither version of Linux has Abisoft, an open-source word processor I've been wanting to try, although Ubuntu says somewhere that it includes it. Maybe it's in 6.1.0. I'm running 6.0.6.

Another thing, I was able to up the screen resolution, and Ubuntu looks even better at 1280 by 1024.

(Note: This is being posted from Ubuntu with Firefox)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The PowerPC version of Ubuntu will run on a G3-equipped Macintosh, but If you have a pre-G3 Mac and want to try Unix, this page will help you find a system that will work on both the 603 and 604 PowerPC chips and the 680x0 family.

It turns out mkLinux will run on my old Powerbook 1400, but without Ethernet, SCSI or a working modem. Not worth it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ubuntu in action

I downloaded both the latest Ubuntu 6.1.0 and the
"stable" 6.0.6 iso images and made a CD of the
latter. (I'm getting used to this -- making my own OS
CDs for free).

I popped the thing into the Dell, and after a couple
of minutes (it is loading from CD, after all), Ubuntu
Linux was running.

The only funny thing I noticed is that the screen is
slightly shifted to the left. Nothing that couldn't be
fixed with a slight adjustment in the monitor menu (and after awhile, the screen seemed to "auto adjust" itself during a screen-saver operation).

The workspace on screen in Ubuntu is purposefully clear. Nothing
crowding it up. Setting up network services is even
easier than in Knoppix. It doesn't prompt you to
write to a "terminal"-like window, as in Knoppix.
Instead, you go under System at the top of the screen,
mouse to Administration, then to Networking and set
the parameters for your Ethernet card. At least you
can see everything at once. It configures like any PC
would.

I got it right on the second try. I didn't need any
"broadcast" address, but I did need to click over to
the DNS tab and add my DNS server names to make it
work. Total time spent: about 1 minute.

The best thing about Ubuntu so far: Fonts on the
screen look terrific. Firefox runs great, and
everything in it looks great as well. Better than
Knoppix. It turns out that the difference between the Ubuntu and Knoppix varieties of Linux is that Ubuntu uses the Gnome graphical user interface, while Knoppix uses KDE. And there's a version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu that allows you to switch between the two GUIs. I am going to try it, but I need to get some more blank CD-Rs first.

Another great thing. With this very same CD, it's
possible to install Ubuntu to the hard drive.

Let's see ... I've tried two Linux distributions in
one day. Give me my Geek Merit Badge already.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What if you have a Mac? Try Ubuntu, which runs on PowerPC and also features a single-bootable-CD configuration but which can also be easily installed on the hard drive. It reportedly works on G3, G4 and G5 computers. I imagine that leaves out This Old Mac, the Powerbook 1400 that has a 117 MHZ PowerPC processor and predates all of these, but I do plan to try it, the only problem being that the 1400 supposedly doesn't read burned CDs, only the commercially produced variety.

Ubuntu runs on both the Mac and PC platforms. Go to the attractive Ubuntu home page to begin your journey.

The 6.10 release is the newest, but 6.06 is considered the "stable" rendition, and support is pledged for 3 years on the desktop and five years on servers. Plenty of time, I figure.

You can even get a free Ubuntu CD. Yes, they will send you a free CD, with free shipping.

Even for PC users, I strongly suggest making a Ubuntu Linux CD and running it. What differentiates it from Knoppix is the ability to easily install Ubuntu on your hard drive after testing it out on CD.

For Mac users considering Ubuntu, check out this Low End Mac article.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've now tried Iceweasel/Firefox, and while the fonts
aren't quite as crisp as the Windows equivalent in
some cases, in others there's really no difference at
all. And I suspect that tweaking the monitor settings will take care of all of this. (For those of you know or care about such things, Knoppix used the KDE graphical interface.)

And let me tell you, the speed of this system, even
running off of a CD, is amazing. I'm imagining now how
fast this would be if everything was installed on the
hard drive.

And it's all so ... free ... and Microsoft and Apple
have absolutely nothing to do with it. All upgrades
are free. There are tons of applications. Security is
excellent (it's Unix, for God's sake).

Go back a few posts and TRY THIS YOURSELF. It's the
easiest bit of geek nirvana I've experienced in the
past year, and if that isn't a ringing endorsement, I
sure as f'n hell don't know what is.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Getting Knoppix up and running on a Dell PC was easy
as pie, cake or soda. I'm not quite sure how to get
files into the system from my hard drive so I can
actually work on something and save it for later, but
I did manage to start up Open Office and the GIMP, two
applications with which I'm very, very familiar, as I
use them on Windows.

Even though Knoppix loads from CD and is able to
detect much about the hardware on which it's running,
that didn't extend to configuring network services.

I went under the "penguin" menu and finally managed to
get it working. As part of the process, I had to learn
what a "broadcast address" was -- something I've not
had to configure previously when setting up computers.

Needless to say, setting up for DHCP should be much
easier. But for those who do need to know what their
broadcast address is, I did some research, and it is
usually the regular IP address with the final set of numbers removed and .255 added in their place. Worked for me.

This page helps:

An Ethernet network is type of broadcast network. In a broadcast network any system can send information and all systems receive every message, although they discard messages that are not addressed to them. Broadcasting is accomplished via the broadcast address. This is the address to use for reaching all other addresses on a network. Any address with the host octet set to all 1's, or 255, is by default interpreted as a broadcast address. So the broadcast address is the address of the subnet, plus 255. If a hosts IP address is 129.79.149.145, its subnet address is 129.79.149 and its broadcast address would be 129.79.149.255.

I'm currently doing this post as an e-mail via Yahoo!
Mail in the Konquerer browser, the main browser/file
finder and manager for Knoppix. The disc also includes
Iceweasel, which is another name for Firefox, but for
the moment, Konquerer is working just fine.

Next: I've downloaded images of Ubuntu, and I plan to
try that as a CD-booting Linux in the near future.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The online documentation for Knoppix is scant, but from the Knoppix home page I found a list of books that can help with both Knoppix and Linux in general. Three of those books are Knoppix-specific. They're supposed to be available online -- and are freakin' cheap in that format -- but I haven't been able to find them for sale exactly that way. But they are for sale in plain old paper.

First, there's "Knoppix Pocket Reference," an O'Reilly Media book for a mere $3.90 electronically (but WHERE??).

From the same publisher, "Knoppix Hacks" for $4.79.

And from Extreme Tech, "Hacking Knoppix" for $12.64 online. The print version comes with a Knoppix CD, but it's an older one. And as I said before, if you either can't or don't want to burn your own Knoppix CD (or any other Linux CD, for that matter), cheapiso.com and osdisc.com both sell them really cheap.

If you love "Dummies," there's "Knoppix for Dummies," $15.39 online.

Hey, maybe I should get in on the "Dummies" bandwagon. What can I teach the "Dummies" of the world?

Remember, I couldn't find any of these books in downloadable format, but Amazon is happy to sell you the paperback versions ... for more money, of course.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not that any of you have noticed, but I seem to be doing on geek project a month. First it was This Old PC, then This Old Mac. After that, it was the Palm handheld. And now I'm moving on to Knoppix, the Linux you can run from the CD-ROM drive.

I start with a problem/project, get to the level where it's working as well as it can, and then ... I move on.

For the moment, I'm geeking it up with Linux. I've always wanted to do it but never had a spare PC whose hard drive I could wipe or partition for the free, open-source OS. But Knoppix gets around that, since you boot from CD and continue running in that fashion. It's a great way to get your feet wet in Linux. And that CD also runs applications, including Open Office, Firefox (renamed Iceweasel, for reasons that elude me), the Gimp (which I'm already using on Windows to replace the Photoshop program I don't have) and much more. And there's even more available on the Knoppix DVD, should you have a DVD burner and the bandwidth to download a 4 GB file.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My download of Knoppix happened without a hitch. After installing ISO Recorder, I was also able to make the Knoppix CD, also without a hitch.

To boot from the CD, in my Dell PC at least, you reboot and hit F12 during the boot sequence, then choose the CD-ROM as the boot device. In a few minutes, you are running Knoppix, with Open Office right on the bottom of the screen, as well as the Iceweasel browser, which is Firefox, and for some reason has been renamed.

It looks great, and did I forget to mention that it's completely free. I didn't spend anything (except for the cost of the blank CD-R disk).

Next step: configuring the network preferences so I can get online with Knoppix. I'm using the Knoppix FAQ as my guide.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To make my very own Knoppix CD, and have a version of Linux to run entirely from the CD drive, I first got ISO Recorder so I could make the proper disc image in XP (since plain XP won't do it). I also printed out the how-to page and both the Version 1 and Version 2 pages, even though I'm running XP SP2 -- each seems to have some potentially relevant information for somebody who, until now, didn't know (and is still a little shaky) on what an .iso file is.

Then I started the Knoppix download. Since it's meant to fill an entire CD, it's a 696 MB download, which will take about an hour at Daily News speeds.

More later on the burn ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beverley Mitchell as she will appear in tomorrow's Celebrities column by Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith ...

... and the "7th Heaven" star turned into one of Capt. Kirk's alien love interests (and presented as a faux oil painting, albeit one on black velvet) with Irfanview.

... not that I'm into insect crushing, because I'm not (we use the put-it-in-a-cup method), but sometimes the tool can indeed be too big for the job.

And when it comes to photo editing, the nine-pound hammers are Photoshop (if you got a spare $579.99 lying around) for the pros, Photoshop Elements (a very reasonable $79.99) for the rest, and the great Gimp, which is pretty much pro-level but blissfully free.

But even with Gimp, it's "a mighty heavy load" on your system. Who wants to keep even the Gimp loaded at all times, or wait the minute and a half it takes to start it, just to do a little work on a photo? Not I.

Enter the "batch editing" programs, which can do almost all you need or want to do, only with a much, much lighter system load (and which start up seconds after you click their icon).

While I had been partial to Fotobatch 5 from Keksoft, the fact that the "trial" version doesn't let you actually use it (all pix have an annoying "made by Fotobatch 5" message printed on them) makes it hard to evaluate. It might be worth the $29.95 price, but I don't know.

But never mind all that. I've found a new photo-editing program to love: Irfanview, which is freeware for personal use, created by an Austrian gentleman named Irfan Skiljan.

It loads quickly, enables me to do the few things I need to do to prepare images for the Web (shrink 'em, put borders on, sharpen, change contrast, brightness and color) ... and it has a lot of easy-to-use "special effects."

I've had a bit of trouble creating new images with "save as" and getting them to go into the right folders, but that could be operator error at this point. And one thing Irfanview doesn't do that Gimp and Photoshop do is allow the selection of irregularly shaped areas for toning. You can create boxes and tone in those, but if you want to work on very specific sections of photos, you're out of luck. However, I don't need to do that very often, so a program like Irfanview has a lot of advantages -- I can start it up at any point and be ready to work on a photo in seconds.

Irfanview is also great for doing "slide shows" of photos in a folder, if that's the kind of thing you want to do.

So give me a few days with Irfanview, and I'll tell you whether or not it can really do the job.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Daily News Web guru Josh Kleinbaum has been encouraging me to use The Gimp to process images for these sites, mostly because it's free and the Daily News is in no mood to buy everyone Photoshop (or even Photoshop Elements) for all the people who need it.

I downloaded the Gimp and it's "GTK Runtime" counterpart a couple of months ago. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. So I deleted it and continued my search for another free image-editing program.

Nothing. So I tried the Gimp again, and once Josh told me that to put a border on a photo, I had to "stroke" it (either a poor or very, very good choice of words), all was forgiven, and now I can crop, resize and border photos with impunity.

Aside from working and being free, The Gimp is available in all sorts of languages (hence the Spanish screen above, which I did Gimp to make it smaller) and for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix.

Yet another free program that lets you get real work done. Amazing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)