I've heard of quite a few people still running Debian Sarge -- the stable version of Debian before Etch went stable in April 2007. As per Debian policy, support for what is referred to as "old stable," in this case Sarge, is slated to last for a year after the next Debian release is declared "stable" (Etch).

So now we're bumping up on March 31, 2008, and Debian is telling users about the end of updates for Sarge:

One year after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 alias 'etch' and nearly three years after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 alias 'sarge' the security support for the old distribution (3.1 alias 'sarge') is coming to an end next month. The Debian project is proud to be able to support its old distribution for such a long time and even for one year after a new version has been released.

The Debian project released Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 alias 'etch' on the 8th of April 2007. Users and Distributors have been given a one-year timeframe to upgrade their old installations to the current stable release. Hence, the security support for the old release of 3.1 is going to end in March 2008 as previously announced.

I've heard incredible stories about people running servers with Sarge and having incredible uptimes stretching into full years and beyond. And I'm as loathe to upgrade something that "just works" as much as the next lazy guy, so I understand. Three years seems like a long time ... and if you want more than three years, there's always Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux and Novell's Suse (really just Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones CentOS and Scientific Linux, because what kind of cheap person like myself is going to pay year after year for updates?).

But going three years without needing to do a reinstall is a pretty great thing. And if you start with a Debian release before it goes stable -- like Debian Lenny, which is still in Testing but appears pretty darn reliable to me -- you'll probably get more than three years. At this point, I imagine that most Debian users think of Etch -- the current Stable -- as too old. That's true for desktop users, but if your hardware likes Etch, I really see no reason to move to Lenny unless you want newer versions of all of the packages.

For me, Lenny is working pretty well on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), and Etch is doing great on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt). And this desktop/server I just set up? I used Etch just because I know it works. And I know that getting Lenny to perform well on the Gateway means I'll be able to stick with it for what could be four years (but actually might be less because the wait between Etch and Lenny becoming stable is probably going to be much shorter than the wait between Sarge and Etch ... or at least that's what I think is going to happen).

Yeah, I probably won't be running Lenny three years from now ... but you never know. As I said recently, Lenny is looking very, very good.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just read that Debian is removing Flash from its repository:

Flashplugin-nonfree has been removed (see below), as this is closed source and we don't get security support for it. For security reasons, we recommend to immediately remove any version of flashplugin-nonfree and any remaining files of the Adobe Flash Player. Tested updates will be made available via backports.org.

Since adding Flash from the repository never seemed to work for me in Debian -- I always have to get it through the browser dialogs -- it's kind of a moot point. I haven't yet investigated Gnash -- the free, open-source Flash clone -- but I'd sure like to do so. Flash is a resource hog, and I wish it would go away, but that's probably not going to happen. I just hope that Gnash or some other open-source alternative can replace it -- and quickly.

Back to Debian: The Flash news is part of Debian's main announcement that there's a new netinstall image for Etch:

The Debian project is pleased to announce the third update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems.

Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 4.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update against ftp.debian.org after an installation, in order to incorporate those late changes.

Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.

So you don't really need it, unless you don't already have it, in which case you need it.

I've been running Debian Lenny (testing) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), and it's making significant progress -- it works way better than it did a month ago. I'm dual-booting with PCLinuxOS 2007 at the moment.

The older, weaker $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt) is still running Debian Etch (Stable), with the Xfce build's software, but now set to use Fluxbox as the window manager.

I can't decide whether or not to install Etch again on the Gateway just to see if any other bugs were fixed. For me, Lenny has resolved most of my issues, and I'll be happy to stick with it as it goes Stable.

And while I'm considering building an experimental server with OpenBSD, I might make it easy on myself and use Debian Etch instead.

My advice: If you're worried that either Debian or Slackware is too hard to figure out, don't be so worried. The not-so-hidden secret out there is that Ubuntu isn't that much easier. If you've got Ubuntu figured out even a little, you can handle Debian (and it's a bit faster, with more in the default install, besides). Slackware, you can probably figure out with a little hand-holding. Adding software and doing updates isn't as easy as in Debian/Ubuntu, but it's still fairly easy -- and you'll definitely learn something; actually quite a few somethings.

The flexibility of Debian is legendary. With one little netinstall CD, you can roll out a GNOME, KDE or Xfce desktop, a minimal console-only system (from which you can build what you want), plus any number of server configurations.

Slackware is also very flexible, but in a different way. It can't compete with Debian's 20,000+ packages, but there's a lot in the full Slack install. A full KDE desktop (with Xfce and Fluxbox, too). And if you want to spend a lot of time on the install process, you can pick and choose each individual package before committing to the final install.

Both put a lot of power in the hands of the user. And you do want power, don't you?

Flash update: Sander Marechal provided this very illuminating bug report (in this LXer thread) about the discussion in the Debian community over whether or not (and if so, then how) to include Flash in Debian.

At this point, it looks like the flashplugin-nonfree will be available to Debian users via Backports.org.

In the bug report, Ramond Wan says:

As a Debian user, but someone who isn't related to how Debian is run...I think you are correct and more importantly, what makes you think that Debian isn't political? Every time I visit a web site with Iceweasel and the server pops up an annoying message saying that Firefox is supported but not my browser, I sense only a part of the overall politics in Debian. In this case, I blame the server developers, too, for having such a message (how about if I used lynx?).

Anyway, there is a lot of politics within Debian and it stems from them
drawing a line that forms the basis of what Debian is (i.e., "free").
If they start making exceptions, then that line has no meaning.
Backports is a patch that helps make it easy for many of us. We give up
some things to be able to use Debian (rather than one of the many other
Linux distributions).

Carlo Wood says:

I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to let the debian users of stable and testing suffer like this. It's not like Adobe is going to be like "Oh My God!" and change their ways. They clearly don't give a damn.

I can't help but sense a political reason not to
support flash, just because it's "non-free", the
maintainers of debian WANT it to be broken, almost,
and certainly don't look hard for a way to give
their users an easy way to use flash. Just as long
as the result is that the users blame Adobe, and
not debian, it's ok - regardless of how much the
users suffer because of it.

And Timo Jyrinki says:

YouTube already works with Gnash the free Flash player, so that in particular should not be a problem. Many other sites are not yet working, but Gnash could be possibly defined as working "well enough" in time for the Lenny. At least I'm using it exclusively anyway, and I'm just using the 0.8.1 version, which lacks development for the last four months. But I don't find it problematic to skip sites that don't work with Gnash, so I'm not an average user.

In summary, Gnash works rather well for Flash 7 sites, but quite a large
portion of sites has moved to Flash 8 and 9 which are only a
work-in-progress with regards to Gnash, and most do not work properly.
Time will tell how fast Gnash will progress.

And here's what I say: I'm ambivalent about Flash. Some sites -- yes, even some that I personally help maintain -- use way too much Flash. You can barely navigate a site when you have two to four Flash apps running on a given page. The people who are all hot to use this much Flash obviously don't spend much, if any time using their own sites.

As far as video goes, Flash just seems easier than the alternatives. I know that QuickTime, for instance, runs like an old, three-legged dog on non-Apple hardware. It's just a lousy app.

So as far as video goes, I'd love to see some alternatives to Flash, especially open-source alternatives.

But as I say above, it may be a security issue, but on Debian I've always just gotten the Flash plugin straight from Mozilla through the browser itself.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've taken a few days off from OpenBSD, and in the interim I ran the NetBSD live CD for the first time on the Gateway Solo 1450 (the $0 Laptop). Again, it looks great, but I'm so far from figuring out how to manage the CPU fan in any of the BSDs that I'm not optimistic about running any of them on this laptop. I wish it were different, but until the heavens open and the path forward is made much more clear, I'll stick to desktops (and my old 1999-era Compaq Armada pre-ACPI laptop) for BSD.

During that time, I booted into Debian Lenny on the Gateway and installed 141 updates. Debian Lenny is moving along very quickly. I'm ready to put an Etch install alongside it for comparison's sake during the wait for Ubuntu 8.04 ... which is two months at this writing.

The best text editor for the job: The other day, I needed to do some work at home, and I wasn't having a great time with the Gedit text editor in Lenny. I somehow thought that Gedit had a way to change the case of words, but the Lenny version (Gedit 2.20.4) didn't seem to have it. Was I imagining it, or did the Gedit in Ubuntu 7.10 have this feature? (See below for the answer.)

Anyhow, I need a better editor ... so I went into Synaptic and installed three: Geany, Bluefish and Scite. I'm going to try them all out. So far I can't seem to change the case of letters automatically in Bluefish, but there are so many features that can help with Web development that it's probably worth using. But for the level of work I'm doing, I'm relying on Geany the most at the moment. I haven't used Scite much, but I do plan to give it a try soon.

But ... GEdit does have the ability to change the case of words/letters. Under Edit -- Preferences -- Plugins, there's a Change Case plugin. I enabled it, and now I can change case via the menu with Edit -- Change Case. I prefer to use the keyboard to do this ... so I'll probably keep the other editors in contention.

Foresight Linux: The Foresight Linux booth at SCALE 6X was fairly busy. I could barely get near it during the show, and since I didn't really put 2 and 2 together and remember that Foresight is dedicated to presenting the latest in the GNOME desktop environment, I didn't linger. But I do want to give Foresight a try. It has separate install and live images, so I downloaded the live CD image and am m going to see what it's like.

I'll be your server: I've never set up a server, and all this work with OpenBSD makes me want to roll one myself. I'm going to try to do one on the local network with NFS, Samba, FTP and Apache. I'll probably try in OpenBSD and Debian as well as Damn Small Linux.

Two excellent Linux books: Since I'm not made of money, I got both of these from the library. The "Linux Administration Handbook, " by by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein and an army of more recent contributiors, is a hefty tome that's long on advice, Unix/Linux history and what people like to call "best practices."

While much of the book is flying right over my head, and I don't think you could really administer a system without a secondary reference that's specific to the Linux distribution you're using, this is a very valuable book that every serious Linux user should have. Especially when it comes to servers, there's a lot of information here.

"Linux Administration Handbook" is heavy on the philosophy of how to set up and maintain a system, and amid a sea of distro-specific how-tos that expire with every six-month release, that's a good thing to have. Still, what books like "Linux Administration Handbook" make evident is that at one level, most Linux systems are more alike than they are different, and the skills you develop using one distribution are very much transferable to the others. However, there are pointers everywhere in the book to specific instructions for Red Hat/Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu and Suse.

And if you want to see how professional sysadmins (or at least the good ones) go about their work, this is the book to get. It can't be the only book on your Linux shelf, but "Linux Administration Handbook" pairs very well with a doorstop-sized distro-specific how-to (like the "Unleashed" series of books, or Mark Sobell's "Practical" guide series) to help you get a handle on making Linux work for you.

The other book I got from the library, "Linux Administrator Street Smarts: A Real-World Guide to Linux Certification Skills," by Roderick W. Smith, is a great book for anyone who wants to figure out how Linux works from the command line. The book doesn't assume a vast knowledge of Linux or Unix. It offers many tips, instructions, and again, "best practices" on how to configure and manage a Linux system. This book is also not distro-specific; instead, it's one of the best command-line-centered books I've seen when it comes to basic system administration.

I don't know how good "Linux Administrator Street Smarts: A Real-World Guide to Linux Certification Skills," in helping you get actual "certification skills," but it will definitely help with the basics of setting up and maintaining a server or desktop.

Smith's style is clear and concise -- a rarity in these kind of books, which often leave me more confused than not. I definitely recommend taking a look at this "Street Smarts" volume.

So I had two winners here. I would probably buy both of these books, but that said, I still turn to Carla Schroder's "Linux Cookbook," which I'd love to see updated, and Michael Stutz's same-name-but-different "Linux Cookbook," which could use an update even more.

If I was in a buying mood, I'd get a more recent O'Reilly book, "Linux System Administration," by Tom Adelstein and Bill Lubanovic, and I really like Chris Negus' new "Toolbox" series of distro-specific books. They're fairly cheap and filled with good, timely tips, emphasis on the "timely" part. If only all of these great books were updated every couple of years instead of five years ... or never.

Click frequency: The "publish every day at 5 a.m." thing hasn't been working out so well of late. I just haven't had all that much time to do entries in advance, but I have had an entry every day ... just not prewritten to publish at 5 a.m.

One man's FreeBSD: I admire this guy, William Denton, for chronicling eight years of personal use of FreeBSD.

Debian ... ah, Debian: In case it's not evident, I still really enjoy using Debian. While I'm a great believer in the slimmed-down application mix in the default install of Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) -- with less indeed being more, on many levels I've had a whole lot more success with Debian.

I've done the default GNOME install of Debian, the Xfce and KDE installs, a "standard" install to which I've added X, and a few "standard" installs that were console-only. The flexibility of Debian is legendary, as is its stability and usability.

Some of my hardware has been supported better by Ubuntu at times, but I keep coming back to Debian. I'd love for Debian Lenny to support the Alps touchpad as well as Ubuntu Gutsy does. I'm hoping it'll happen before Lenny is frozen, and I will be trying Ubuntu Hardy when it comes out, but I'd love for Linux in general to get everything right for my Gateway laptop.

But since fan management has gotten worse, not better, over the past six months in the Linux kernels I've used, I'm only cautiously optimistic.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've complained numerous times in the past about the Ted word processor being broken in Debian. On my many Debian installs, I could neither create a new file in Ted nor open an old one.

But on my Gateway Solo 1450 (the $0 Laptop), after doing my big Debian Lenny update yesterday -- which fixed an annoying Nautilus bug by updating to Nautilus 2.20 -- I decided to give Ted another try.

It works.

I can create new files in Ted and open old ones. I tried Ted again on my Compaq Armada 7700dmt (the $15 Laptop), now a Debian Etch machine (with Xfce and, since last night, Fluxbox) that could really benefit from Ted working. No go.

I figured that it was maybe a Lenny-only thing -- some other dependent package got updated and magically made Ted work. Here's Ted's bug status in Debian. I remember trying this "transcoded fonts" solution and having it not work.

So this morning, on my desktop Debian Lenny install, I tried Ted again, and it didn't work. I even installed the transcoded fonts. Nothing.

Yes, I have three Debian installs (two Lenny, one Etch), and Ted works on one (Lenny) of them. That's better than Ted working on none ... but.

I'm wondering if I should even be running Debian on this 233 MHz Pentium II MMX, 64 MB RAM, 3 GB hard-drive laptop. The Compaq performs OK with Puppy Linux and a bit better with Damn Small Linux. And while on my faster, 1.2 GHz laptop I detect almost no difference in response time between Xfce and Fluxbox, on the 233 MHz box, Fluxbox is much snappier, so I take back my previous assertion that Fluxbox doesn't give you much of a performance edge. When you're running really old hardware, Fluxbox can really help.

The problem: I want to have a "full" command-line system in addition to X, and that's harder to do in Puppy or DSL. And I like the fact that Debian and Slackware stay on top of security issues and frequently issue patched packages. And Debian (or Slackware, for that matter) makes it relatively easy to install any console app I want. However, I put a lot of stock in doing as little modification as possible; in my experience, things can get mucked up pretty quickly. And while both Puppy and DSL offer command-line features, neither is a full, modern, updated Debian or Slackware.

And just to provide a little background, Debian, Slackware, Puppy and Damn Small installed just fine on this old Compaq. I can't say the same for Xubuntu, which I did try.

And while I'm mentioning Xubuntu and Debian with Xfce in the same post, let me just say that of the two, Xubuntu is way more ready for prime time. Debian's default Xfce install is missing too many things; I stick by my assertion that Debian is great with the default GNOME, less so in the Xfce and KDE installs that you can do with the Xfce and KDE Debian disks (or desktop= boot parameter in the netinstaller).

Back to the Compaq. Both Puppy and DSL are way better at recognizing and configuring the hardware of this old Compaq laptop. At this point, I'm considering running both Puppy and DSL as live CDs with no OS on the puny hard drive, which would only be used for swap and storage (I could even replace the spinning hard drive with a Compact Flash chip or disk-on-module).

I hate to give up running Debian or Slackware on this laptop -- I've tried both. But when I try to build up the apps on my own, I can never do as well as Puppy and Damn Small Linux -- both of which I've used extensively over the past year and which I value very highly. The people behind Puppy and DSL really know what they're doing.

And while I'm grateful to get Ted running on my Lenny laptop (where I don't really need it), can't Debian just make Ted work everywhere, all the time? Like I've said before, there's probably a good reason that Ubuntu doesn't have Ted in its repository, and I'd say the package not working is a pretty good reason.

I haven't even complained about Ted not showing up where it should in the menus and my not being able to figure out how to put Ted where I want it in GNOME (yes, I used alacarte (here's the Debian bug situation), and no, it didn't let me add menu items (another Lenny bug, perhaps?) -- it almost makes me want to run straight toward Xfce and Fluxbox ... or Ubuntu).

Moral: Debian giveth and taketh away, but it remains damn good.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't think I've mentioned yet one of the great things about Wolvix, the Slackware-derived GNU/Linux distribution that has installed without complaint for me on two occasions thus far.

It uses GRUB, not LILO (like Slackware, Vector and Zenwalk).

I don't want to debate the merits of GRUB vs. LILO, but since the overwhelming majority of Linux distributions use GRUB, I'm way, way, way more comfortable with it.

And I've never, ever done an install with LILO when it picked up any other distribution I already had on the box. Never.

That's why I'm very OK with Wolvix using GRUB.

What I'm going to do the next time I do a Slackware install: I've had trouble figuring out how to configure GRUB to boot Slackware, but the solution is close at hand -- on Slackware disc 3, to be exact.

First: Install Slackware with the LILO bootloader.

Second: Get the GRUB package from Disc 3 of Slackware and install it. It should do everything for you and replace LILO with GRUB.

I have a good feeling that this will work.

Or ... just install Wolvix.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?"

He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.

He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.

And I'm disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn't mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could've also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.

One thing I've learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That's what I'm starting to do; my New Year's resolution is "less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions." See, I'm setting the New Year's resolution bar very low -- then I'll be sure to succeed (unless I'm caught triple-booting anytime soon).

Anyway, I'm still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I'm packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.

I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD -- I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven't seen in the past year.

I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I'm thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 image from Wolvix.org.

After dual-booting Ubuntu (at times 7.04 and 7.10) and Debian (first Etch, then Lenny, then a couple of Lennies for a couple of days) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), I've said goodbye to Ubuntu for the time being and decided to install the dependable Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (the bigger of the two Wolvix distros) and keep Debian (still Lenny). After "losing" two Ubuntu 7.10 installs to unknown causes -- both times processes began slowing to a crawl -- I thought rolling back to Ubuntu 7.04 would give me something stable.

But the boot process for 7.04 began stalling at something having to do with the CD drive (I turned off "quiet spash" in GRUB so I could see where it was dying). I'm thinking that either my laptop or Ubuntu itself must be somehow cursed. One of the reasons I had Ubuntu installed, besides the fact that it works pretty well (when it does work) with this laptop, is that I can easily get Internet Explorer (via IEs4Linux) on the box. There's one Web site I work on that absolutely requires IE, and my need for such access could grow from minimal to critical at just about any time. That hasn't happened yet. What I'd like to see is updated instructions at IEs4Linux to get it set up on Debian. (As far as Debian goes, IEs4Linux remains stuck in the Sarge era).

But suffering through three dead Ubuntu installs in a row has made me weary. For one thing, I'm going back to separate partitions for /home. That's how I have Wolvix set up. Wolvix can be run as a live CD, a frugal install or a full install. I believe the frugal install saves files in the same way as Knoppix and Damn Small Linux, and I want to be able to access the partition when booting Debian, so I opted for the full install. I don't think Wolvix provides updates in the way Debian, Ubuntu and other "established" distros do. No matter. It runs even better on this laptop than it did on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (where Wolvix was tested along with another crop of distros in my gOS comparison).

And Wolvix has another thing going for it: It's a Slackware-based distro that actually installs and runs with no trouble. Slackware 12 runs ... but I just can't get the X configuration right (and just about any other Slack-based distro offers a better Xfce experience in terms of applications and tools than Slackware itself, which remains a KDE-focused distro, albeit a faster KDE distro than any other). Both Zenwalk and Vector have been problematic; I can install, but something funky happens during booting and I can't even get to a console. I suppose I could turn off ACPI, AGP, IRQs and the like ... but if Wolvix can just run, why not the others? I probably will try to put Slackware 11 on the box at some point just to see if it's Slackware 12 that's screwing me over (Wolvix is based on Slack 11).

Anyhow, besides the fact that it runs and installs seamlessly, I really like the look of Wolvix, as well as the software mix in Wolvix Hunter (which features heavier apps like Open Office and the GIMP, along with lighter ones such as MtPaint, AbiWord and Dillo). Wolvix ships with Xfce and Fluxbox as window managers. In my recent tests, I've determined that Fluxbox doesn't provide much of a speed advantage over Xfce, and since Xfce has many more features, I'm pretty much running it exclusively, even on the aged $15 Laptop (a 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM). And while the spread between Xfce and Fluxbox isn't as wide as one would think, Xfce does provide significant speed advantages over GNOME and KDE

The Wolvix Control Panel app is excellent. For everything from configuration to installation, Wolvix is way ahead of most of the distributions I've used. While the network-configuration portion of the control panel can be somewhat confusing (it reminds me of Zenwalk), it does work. Before I figured it out, I tried using Slackware's netconfig utility in Wolvix. It doesn't seem to work, though you can go through the paces. At least Wolvix offers a utility that does work. With a distro like the highly touted gOS offering NO network configuration utility (they think everybody has DHCP), I'm thankful for any kind of help. Yes, I can hack the text files that hold Linux's network configuration, but I'd prefer not to. It's just the way I am.

Since I'm constantly switching between a static IP at the office and dynamic IP at home, it's taking me a few extra steps (I love being able to easily switch between network settings in Debian and Ubuntu), but the trade-off is worth if since Wolvix otherwise performs so well.

And the Debian Lenny honeymoon is way, way over for me. I've considered rolling it back to Etch. My Alps touchpad issues are coming back (it's not as perfect as it is in Wolvix, Ubuntu 7.04 or 7.10), and the fact that the new Lenny kernel seemed able to manage the noisy Gateway CPU fan for a day but not thereafter is very troubling. I can continue to use the Etch kernel with Lenny, and I just might do that, but I'm left wondering what's going on and whether or not there's an easier fix.

What I did do, for both Wolvix AND Debian Lenny, was put my fan-managing cron job to work. It basically checks CPU temp every five minutes and, if it goes above 60C, turns the fan on, then turns it off when it goes below 50C. Rather than a shell script and a cron job, I'd just like a single line of code that I could stick in some config file to make this work. I've seen things similar to what I need, but I haven't yet nailed it down for the Gateway Solo 1450.

I did, however, get the fan to stop in Debian from boot (using @reboot as the time element for the entry in crontab for the first instance of the cron job, then following with */5 * * * * to run it every five minutes thereafter. Again, I will detail the Gateway Solo 1450 fan-control solution, step by step, in a future entry.

And while I think a cron job is a sloppy, hackish way to deal with a CPU fan, I've done it now in Puppy, Wolvix and Debian, so I'm pretty much getting used to it. It's notable that in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I couldn't get the system to allow me to turn the CPU fan on and off, even when sudoing the command. I guess I needed to write to root's crontab, and sudoing can't quite qet you there. At least that's my six-second analysis of the situation. I would've loved to put Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on the laptop -- perhaps it could stick around without self-destructing like 7.10 and 7.04. I seem to remember Ubuntu, at least in the alternate install, offering to create a root account. Maybe if I install with the alternate CD, I can get control of the fan. But do I really want to run Ubuntu 6.06 LTS?

Briefly, here is where Ubuntu is falling down:

$ sudo echo 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state

yields the following:

bash: /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state: Permission denied

In every other distro on which I've used this line in my cron job, I need to su to root to run it (Puppy logs you on as root, so it's no problem there). But I can't seem to get it to work in Ubuntu. As it is, 6.06 LTS only has five months of support remaining still has a year and five months of support remaining (I'm no math whiz). Might as well wait until 8.04 comes out as the next LTS (or just stick with CentOS 5). ... Then again, Ubuntu 6.06 is from the Debian Sarge era. I smell another install of MepisLite 3.3 .. or maybe the recently updated -- even though I thought it was dead -- Sarge itself. I could always try to solve my Alps touchpad problems and stop my whining (if only ...).

UPDATE: I figured out how to shut the fan on and off in Ubuntu. Details tomorrow morning.

I did keep Debian Lenny (upgraded from Etch). And I know this is the testing distribution and not stable, but I was alarmed by a bug I discovered in the Nautilus file manager. When in a Nautilus window, if you right-click on a file and try to get its properties, Nautilus crashes, a bug report screen comes up, and then Nautilus relaunches. I filled out the bug report and went to the Web page for the bug. While there are about 500 reports of the same bug, it looks like the bug itself has been "closed." Well, it's not fixed, but the report is closed. It says that the bug goes away in Gnome 2.20.1. I have 2.20.2, and it hasn't gone away. I'm hoping that it will, but if the problem with the Ted word processor being catastrophically broken in both Etch and Lenny is any indication, I won't hold my breath. I guess I don't quite understand how bugs are dealt with.

As I said, I'm considering rolling it back to Etch. I'm also considering an installation of CentOS 5.0, which manages the CPU fan fine. Pros: CentOS, a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will be supporting this distro for YEARS; if it works now, it'll get security patches for a long, long time. Cons: it's harder -- at least for me -- to find as much variety in software as there is for Debian, Ubuntu, even Slackware. I'm sure there's plenty of software out there -- and there's nothing stopping me from compiling my own -- but I just couldn't get the hang of adding repositories and GPG keys. Just finding and installing AbiWord was beyond my capabilities. Perhaps a RHEL 5 book would help me; they've got to be out there. Another con: RHEL -- and, by extension , CentOS -- doesn't play MP3s or even Ogg audio files. I'm sure the codecs are out there, but I like the fact that most Linux distros -- whatever philosophy of freedom they espouse -- at least play an MP3. Hell -- I even can play Oggs in Windows Media Player on my XP box.

But what I did do with Lenny today was pack a bunch of software onto it. I threw all the kids' educational stuff I could find, the GIMP (I can't believe Debian doesn't ship with the GIMP), plus digiKam, which the esteemed Carla Schroder recommended to me as the best Linux image editor -- one that also deals with the IPTC caption info that I need to both preserve and edit. (Both the GIMP, as well as Krita and MtPaint not only won't edit the IPTC text embedded in a JPEG by Photoshop, they completely erase the info; NOT NICE.)

By the way, I thought about doing a frugal install of Puppy Linux, but what I did was preserve my pup_save on the Debian partition so I can continue running Puppy from CD (I'm still on 3.00; I've had no problems, so I haven't tried the 3.01 CD yet, although I do have it).

I wish Damn Small Linux would run better on the Gateway, but I'm still running DSL 4.0 on the older $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt). There are new releases of DSL in the 4 series and also in the 3 series. I have to say that I like both of them. I did a lot of work with DSL 3.2 and 3.3, and I'm glad the developers are keeping both going. I am disappointed, however, that the version of Firefox (it's 1.0.something) in DSL does not work with Google Docs. I was hoping to run DSL instead of Debian Etch (the main distro on the Compaq's puny 3 GB hard drive) and gain some speed in Google Docs, but it is not to be. For better or worse, it's another point in Puppy's favor -- Puppy's Seamonkey browser/e-mail/HTML-generator app can handle Google Docs. But now that both Puppy and DSL feature MtPaint, at least they're equal in terms of image editing; for me, MtPaint is the best lightweight image editor for Linux. If it edited the IPTC info, I'd be in geek heaven. Since it doesn't, I remain on geek terra firma.

And I continue to prefer Geany as a text editor over DSL's Beaver (and over Xfce's Mousepad, GNOME's Gedit, anything that comes with KDE ... should I go on?).

I'm having one problem with Puppy: One of the Web sites I work on -- LA.com -- has an obscene amount of Flash animation, and it crashes Seamonkey every time I try to access it. I thought that Firefox might make a difference, so I installed the PET package. But the site crashes Firefox, too. I don't have this problem in any other Linux distro or in Windows or Mac, so something fishy is going on. Yeah, the amount of Flash is obnoxious, but it's not my call.

This entry is way too long, and I didn't even mention my re-flirtation with PC-BSD. After I deleted Ubuntu and before I put Wolvix on the laptop, I decided to do another PC-BSD install. The install itself went fine. I still had that weird graphic blob below the cursor. And I downloaded three PBI files to update my 1.4 release (I didn't feel like burning a new CD, since's I've only got two left in my formerly 100-CD stack). One PBI took it from 1.4 to 1.4.1, the next to 1.4.1.1, and the last to 1.4.1.2. They couldn't do this in a regular software update? Anyway, I couldn't go from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.1.2 -- it said something about only updating from 1.4.1. And BSD is different enough from Linux that the prospect of adapting my fan-quieting cron job to BSD is and will remain way beyond my capabilities.

So PC-BSD met the same fate as it did the last few times I installed it; it came down quickly. I'm enjoying Wolvix Hunter right now.

So here's where I stand this week with the $0 Laptop: Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the hard drive (Wolvix with its own /home, so I can roll a new distro over it without killing out my files) and Puppy 3.00 as a live CD. But I'm thisclose to slapping Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or CentOS 5.0 in there.

Like many of you, I'm stuck between changing Linux and BSD distributions like underwear and finding something that can serve me for years without it either falling apart or me yearning for something better.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

Here's the scorecard (not all Xfce):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

I can't believe I didn't think of this before. When the GUI text
editor Geany wouldn't cooperate with the X setup on my Debian 4.0
laptop, I took the advice of all the users of self-described "crap
computers" at ubuntuforums.org and went for the smaller, faster Leafpad
editor. Problem solved. Many of those posting listed all the apps they
user on their low-end systems, many running Xubuntu, some Fluxbuntu but
quite a few Debian with Fluxbox, just like this laptop.

I already knew that the Ubuntu community can be a great help not just
for users of the various 'Buntu Linux distros but also Debian, Mepis,
Mint, and just about every other distribution of the operating system.
Remember, when you get down to the kernel, Linux is pretty much the
same, and a humongous, growing community with lots of newbies is bound
to be helpful.

Back to the low-spec app list. I'm already on board with Sylpheed as the
quickest GUI mail client, AbiWord as the best light word processor,
Dillo as a great GUI browser in addition to the Elinks, Lynx and W3m
text-only browsers, with Lynx my current favorite. (Note: I've been warming up to the e-mail component of Seamonkey when I use Puppy and Vector.)

One thing to remember with a true low-spec computer -- you need to plan
for both GUI (the X Window system) and CLI (command-line interface, in
this case the bash shell) environments. All CLI programs will work in a
GUI environment -- just open a terminal window (generally Xterm, but
there are more than a dozen others) and type in the program's name. But
GUI apps will not run in a console (i.e. the shell).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New in 2.16

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

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

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

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

Puppy vs. Damn Small Linux

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

puppy pfix=ram

and create the new pup_save when shutting down or rebooting.

The right tool for the job

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Word processor vs. text editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Internet

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

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

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

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

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

More than one way to run Puppy

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

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

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

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

Good dog, bad dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Puppy versions I've used

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

One-Bone Puppy?

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

Puppy I'm using right now and why

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

Rich Text Format vs. .doc

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

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

Puppy 2.17 reviewed

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

What the future holds for Puppy

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

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)

I pulled the 30 GB hard drive from the $15 Laptop today, swapped in the original 3 GB drive (which wasn't bootable with its original Windows 98 install) and decided to throw distros at it. For those not following along, it's a Compaq Armada 7770dmt, 233 MHz Pentium II, with the biggest chink in the armor being RAM -- only 64 MB of it.

Here's the scorecard:

FreeBSD: I got pretty far, but the installer refused to write partitioning info to the drive.

DesktopBSD: Graphics flaked out before I could get too far in the install process.

Xubuntu 6.10 alternate install: Got very far, but it wouldn't copy apps to the drive, so the install stopped there.

OpenSUSE net install: Wouldn't boot.

Scientific Linux (science-lab spin of Red Hat Enterprise Linux): Wouldn't boot.

DeLi Linux 0.7.1: Everytime I get to the point where I'm supposed to tell the installer where the CD is, I forget to type in hdb, if that's indeed where it is. If I'm booting off of CD, shouldn't the system itself know where the CD is?

Damn Small Linux 3.3: Runs flawlessly from CD, frugal install to hard drive went without a hitch, and it runs well with a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux 2.14: Due to the slowness of Gparted in Puppy 2.16 and my preference of the plain Puppy over the 2.15 Community Edition, I did a conventional install of Puppy 2.14 (conventional being recommended over frugal install due to my low RAM). All runs well, and while not as snappy as Damn Small Linux (mostly due to the choice of apps in both distro), I could be very happy running Puppy on this nearly-10-year-old laptop.

(Editor's note: This entry, originally slated to run June 25, somehow never got posted. The material below has been added in the last few hours.)

After running a frugal install of DSL for awhile, I decided to build my own Debian system on the laptop. I did a standard install, added X, then Fluxbox. The biggest surprise thus far has been that when I apt-get a new app, it automatically shows up in the Fluxbox menus. That doesn't happen on my other Debian box, which was a Desktop install with GNOME, adding Fluxbox as an alternate window manager. Whatever they're doing over at Debian, they are doing it right. I'm having a lot of fun building up the system just the way I want it.

While I intended to work a lot from the command line, I also needed GUI capability. Dillo runs great, but I needed more. I installed IceWeasel, Debian's renamed version of Firefox, and it's running great. Takes about a minute to load, but after that it responds well. Remember, this is 233 MHz and 64 MB. The only nagging problem is that the laptop's clock battery is dead, so when I start it up, Debian does a lot of filesystem checking. Gotta figure out how to pull that battery and get a new one in there.

So add to the list above:

Debian 4.0: Flawless install. Started with "standard" install, added X, Fluxbox and my favorite apps with apt-get. Running great with low specs.

COMING UP: A full review of Puppy 2.16.1

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Who thought a 233 MHz laptop with 64 MB of RAM -- one purchased for $15, mind you -- could run so damn well. I've been using Firefox to handle my e-mail (and now to post this entry), with Damn Small Linux 3.3 as the Linux distro, and I must say that I am very, very pleased with the way everything's working.

I finally figured out how to save my configuration -- by adding the line /home/dsl/.filetool.lst to the /home/dsl/.filetool.lst file itself (it sounds redundant, or perhaps recursive, but rest assured, adding the name of the file to the file itself enables the backup/restore feature. Since this laptop -- a Compaq Armada 7770dmt doesn't have a USB drive, I went to the backup/restore menu under System and typed in hda4, because that is where I want my filesystem to live (it's also the partition where DSL is installed). It worked, my files saved upon exit, were there upon reboot, and all is well with DSL.

I also recently installed Fluxbox -- the window manager in Damn Small Linux and AntiX -- on my Debian box, and since I had to pretty much jump-start the menus and am now building up my configuration, I'm learning a whole lot about what is fast becoming my favorite window manager. It'll be even better when I add ROX filer.

Here's my Fluxbox tip of the day (and for those who already know it, bully for you): To switch from one workspace to another from the keyboard, hit ALT-F1, ALT-F2, ALT-F3, ALT-F4 for each of the four workspaces. Another thing I recently learned is that you can have way more than four workspaces. I saw somewhere in the Fluxbox configuration a way to add more. I can't remember whether it's in the fluxconf application or in the menus themselves. I'll get back to you on that one.

But again, can you imagine using a 233 MHz laptop with a scant 64 MB of memory and not complaining about slowness? Hell, I'm using 802.11b (not the faster g) and I'm not even noticing the slowdown from 100baseT Ethernet.

That brings me to my Linux tip: The Orinoco Wavelan PCMCIA wireless card has been autodetected by every flavor of Linux with which I've tried it. I have the Silver version (go for it, or the gold, but not the bronze). It doesn't have WPA security, but for cheapness, it's the way to go -- they sell all the time on eBay.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In my geeky haze, I forgot to blog about my triumph last week: I set up the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHZ Pentium II with a whopping 64 MB RAM) to triple-boot Windows 2000, Puppy Linux 2.14 and Damn Small Linux 3.3.

I managed to do them in order, so first Puppy (a traditional, not frugal install due to the low RAM) installed GRUB for me, and then when I added DSL (frugal install), a new GRUB bootloader was added, and that one did pick up Windows (and DSL, of course) but not Puppy. So I found /boot/grub/menu.lst in the Puppy install, copied the code over to DSL's GRUB, and I was able to boot Windows, Puppy and DSL from the GRUB screen.

It was a geek-in-training triumph.

So yesterday I figure I can perform the same magic on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, the 1 GHz VIA C3 processor/256 MB RAM box that I use to test distros. I have three hard drives that I can switch in and out via a long IDE cable that allows the drives to sit on the desk next to the thin client box.

I had my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Windows 2000 drive hooked up. So first I add a frugal-istall of Puppy 2.14. I manage to get Ubuntu back into the new GRUB. And then I make yet another partition and try to add a frugal install of DSL. I figure that if I can do it WITHOUT a new GRUB, I can modify the Puppy Grub to account for DSL and have a quad-boot machine.

Long story short, DSL won't alllow an automated install without GRUIB, and pretty soon I can only boot DSL and Windows -- no Puppy, no Ubuntu.

I worked on if for a little while, but today I just decided to get rid of all the Linux partitions and start over.

For the first partition after Windows, I made a 512 MB Linux swap file. Then I made one big partition for Ubuntu and let the installer do its thing. The 140 updates I needed after the 6.06 install just finished.

I hadn't made that many mods to my old Ubuntu, so it won't take me too long to get this one where I want it. And I can start fresh with my Flash problem.

Bottom line: It'll take me awhile before I become a GRUB master.

What I took away: Puppy and DSL are fast, but they run even faster when installed to the hard drive. My previous installs of both have been "traditional," but the "frugal" install is better for both because it's simpler. You have maybe 3 or 4 large files on the partition, allowing for a very easy upgrade -- just drop in the new files to go to the next version.

You can even have a frugal install in a partition being used for something else, I think -- as long as you know how to boot it, it can coexist with another distro.

My triple boot did work -- Windows, Puppy and DSL. I should give up, but I probably won't. I think install order is important (in lieu of really mastering GRUB).

And I'm almost through with needing to put Windows on these boxes, so it'll be all Linux (and maybe some BSD) in the future. Next time I'll try DSL first, then Puppy, and then Ubuntu/Mepis/what have you. Or I could just try to really, really understand GRUB and all things about the master boot record.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been distro-hopping on the $15 Laptop -- a Compaq Armada 7770dmt -- and so far Damn Small Linux is running ahead of the pack. It does the best with my current 64 MB of RAM, and it looks great. But until now, sound hasn't worked. Before I got the $15 Laptop (purchased from Lots of Laptops), I did some searches on installing Linux on the Compaq, and this page had some useful info on the sound problem in Red Hat:

... from the list pick ES1688 -- that's not the one in the computer but it works if you pick the right setting. You have to select 220 irq 5 dma 1 and 330 ...

That was enough to get sound in Puppy Linux (choosing ES1688 as the sound card and letting Puppy autoconfigure the rest -- as always, Puppy excels at hardware detection and setup).

But how do you configure sound in Damn Small Linux (I'm using version 3.3)? I searched for help with sound in DSL, specifically for Compaq laptops, and this page got me started:

open a terminal and type:

sudo rmmod soundcore sudo modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=0 mpu_io=0x330

and your Compaq Armada 1750 is no longer silent!

I don't have the 1750, but this was enough to get xmms to "play" a sound, even if I couldn't hear it.

I saw what was different. The Compaq 7770dmt uses dma=1, while the 1750 uses dma=0.

So I rebooted and tried this:

sudo rmmod soundcore
sudo modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 mpu_io=0x330

IT WORKED! I now have sound in Damn Small Linux on the $15 Laptop.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't like to generalize, so I'll get specific on the following inconvenient truths:

If you've got a 10-year-old PC and a 10-year-old Mac, you'll get way further with the PC if you want a decade-old computer that's productive today.

This is mostly due to the fact that the Classic Mac OS was abandoned by Apple, and there are almost no apps that have been updated so as to be useful in today's world of computing. In my experience, browsers and e-mail clients that run under the Classic Mac OS just don't work very well with today's Web pages and mail servers. On the other hand, most 10-year-old PCs will run Windows 2000 (or 98), and many will even run XP. And you can also run Firefox, IE, Abiword, Open Office, the GIMP, IrfanView, free antivirus software, EditPad Lite, even the dreaded Outlook Express for e-mail ... and the list goes on.

Windows is not slow. Some Linux distros are. On new hardware, you might not notice. On old hardware, you will.

I'm talking mostly about Windows 2000 here, and to a lesser extent Windows XP. I've run Win 2K on many, many platforms, and I'm continually surprised on how well it runs, even with low RAM. It may not be secure at all, may need lots of add-ons just to be usable and may be orphaned by Microsoft in a few years, but for now it's blazingly fast. I wish I had an XP disc so I could run the same tests with it.

While the Linux command line smokes anything Windows has to offer in terms of sheer speed, offers hundreds of up-to-date apps and can be a boon to productivity (as I learned during my Month at the Command Line), most of the Linux GUIs I've tried are a bit of a strain on the graphics capability of a PC, particularly of an older one with less than 512 MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux works great on most low-spec PCs, but in my experience, things like Flash and other multimedia files play with less trouble in Windows 2000.

Still, Puppy is much better than Xubuntu, which even though boasting a "fast" XFCE desktop, starts to chug considerably when Web pages have Flash on them. For an even faster experience than Puppy, there's Damn Small Linux.

But no matter the window manager, the apps themselves have much to do with performance. I suspect that much of my video problems stem from the Flash player in Windows being a better-written app than the one in Linux. All the more reason for Flash to be opened up to the community -- there's got to be a better player out there to be written. (Maybe the Democracy Player? So far, Gxine has been a disappointment.) If you happen to have an iPod, you're stuck. Apple doesn't appear to be interested in porting iTunes to Linux. I'm not happy about it, and you shouldn't be, either.

Still, there's much about Linux that Windows will never have, including:

a) a free, open-source base,
b) NOT being owned by Microsoft,
c) an extremely customizable desktop experience (from the command line, through basic X and small window managers, to the complex desktop environments of GNOME and KDE),
d) and did I forget to say that Linux is free?

Many, many people use pirated software -- I have, too -- and I don't like the feeling I get from doing it. Even if the apps are too expensive to begin with, and buying them would be out of the question, I don't think stealing the use of them is justified -- even if they're older versions that have been abandoned. (OK, I feel less bad about that, but I still feel way better running Linux and open-source apps whose developers want us to use them ... for free. And when it comes to much commercial software, asking paying customers to fork over hundreds of dollars on a yearly basis to keep their apps current -- is often abusive).

While I've seen many benefits from using Linux instead of Windows, I really don't think that sheer speed is one of them. Anybody who says that Linux is "faster" than Windows (NOT Vista) or Mac OS X, for that matter, at common desktop tasks has not had the same experiences I've had. As always, your mileage may vary, but I've been most disappointed in the XFCE-based Xubuntu, which doesn't seem any faster than regular Ubuntu with GNOME (or fasther than any number of KDE distros, of which NimbleX is my current favorite).

While Ubuntu and a standard desktop Debian both use GNOME, Debian runs faster.

And I'm not sure why. If you only read Web news about Ubuntu and Debian, you'd think that the people behind the extremely popular Ubuntu took an unformed, hard-to-use Debian and performed some kind of magic, bringing some kind of mystical computing power to the people. But Debian is surprisingly well-formed on the desktop, the install procedure is surprisingly like the alternate install of Ubuntu, and once you're up and running, there's not all that much different (except that Debian 4.0 Etch comes standard with more applications and, as I've said, runs just that much faster). And I haven't found running or maintaining Debian to be something only an "expert" can be -- especially since I'm far from being one myself.

It's marketing. Brilliant marketing. Ubuntu's best feature is its huge and helpful community at Ubuntuforums.org. There's a big Debian community out there too, but the Ubuntu people are just so dominant, even Debian users are wise to turn there for technical help since, at their core, the two distros are so similar (given that Ubuntu is derived from Debian, for those who don't know).

And while I'm on the subject, the Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux users are also extremely helpful -- they've come to this blog often with tips and suggestions, and I appreciate it greatly.

The only "modern" PC I have access to is my Dell 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM, and I'm not at liberty to install anything huge (read: a Linux distro) to the hard drive.

I suspect that on a newish PC, the big Linux distributions run like so much buttah and that any speed advantages that an old version of Windows offers is far outshined by the added security, equality and fraternity of free Linux.

It's always better to have new, maxed-out hardware -- a luxury I've never had (besides that, I'm too cheap). And it's mandatory to try before you buy. With Linux, it's easy. Once you have a broadband Internet connection and a CD (or preferably DVD) burner and have learned how to turn an ISO into a bootable disc, you have the keys to quite a kingdom. (Now's the time to rant about how Windows DOES NOT include a utility that can burn a bootable CD. I use and recommend ISO Recorder. Mac OS X also does a good job of burning ISOs with its Disk Utility).

If I were buying a new PC today, would I want it preloaded with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora/RHEL SUSE/SLED, Mepis or PCLinuxOS?

None of the above. I'd prefer a blank hard drive. Any computer user has much to gain by a) experimenting with many distributions, and going through the installation process is part of that experience. Just knowing that you can reinstall your OS if necessary is a powerful and necessary thing for any savvy computer user (and even for some less savvy). Let me install my own OS, thank you.

Are Macs too expensive?

Yes.

What makes you blog day after day after day?

I began blogging on technology with This Old Mac and This Old PC two years ago this month, and I've been posting at Click since September 2006 (that's nine months, by my count), and it's been an enjoyable ride thus far. I haven't lost my enthusiasm for learning about all this stuff, and that's what keeps me going. It's no secret that I've gotten the best response since I began writing about Linux (with many, many thanks to Lxer, which lets me pimp this blog as much as I can. Lxer is, hands down, the best place for news on Linux and free, open-source software).

And finally ...

Linux -- and the choice to use (or not to use) Linux -- is political. There's no denying it or getting around it

It's the same if you choose to run Windows or Mac OS. Cost, convenience, knowledge, passion, maybe even ignorance all factor in, but making the choice to run one, some, all or none of the many computer operating systems out there says something about you and about the OSes themselves (and the companies and communities that produce and support them).

Do the moral, technological and intensely personal factor in? You bet they do. And that's what makes all this so damned interesting and important.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Have you heard me moan? You must have.

"Why, oh why are used laptops so expensive? Even old, doggy ones go for way too far north of $100 -- and we're starting to talk doggy and unusable."

"Are those people on eBay high (on drugs -- they're already high on prices)?"

"If the sellers on Craigslist can't give even the most basic information about the laptop they're selling, and usually don't know it even when you e-mail and ask, why -- WHY -- do they think their 10-year-old laptop is worth $300? Just because they paid $1,000 in 1997 doesn't mean it has retained that much value A DECADE DOWN THE LINE?"

Enough moaning. After bidding on about 50 eBay laptops -- even the 300 MHz models with 1 GB hard drives, no networking (wireless or Ethernet) and no USB, can fetch $200. Everybody seemingly wants their very own laptop, and eBay is, if anything, a robust market.

I wanted a laptop, too. And I didn't want to spend ... anything.

After chucking eBay, giving up on Craigslist, and with nobody to give me the old, moldy laptop sitting in their closet, I went in a different direction.

I'd been watching the Web site Lots of Laptops for a couple of months. With shipping on heavy old laptops at a reasonable rate, the cost of the laptop itself from Lots of Laptops was ... whatever you wanted to pay. Yes, you bid on their laptops, too. But it's no eBay frenzy. First of all, these are, as the site admits, "Grade B and C" laptops. They go from 100 MHz to about 300 MHz in processor speed, they usually don't include hard drives (a corporate favorite -- retire the laptop and destroy/part out the drive so no "sensitive" information can be accessed), batteries, operating systems, etc. So I bid $5 for one. I got an e-mail back suggesting a higher bid, informing me that Lots of Laptops generally sold their inventory for somewhere between $15 and $30 apiece.

So I forgot about Lots of Laptops for awhile. After all, I'd have to put a little money into any laptop from there just to get it working, and who knows how much that would cost?

Well, between then and now, I've come into a whole lot of computer parts, many of them free, and still frustrated by my lack of ability to secure a laptop and not overpay, I tried Lots of Laptops again.

I found a good candidate: A Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with 233 MHz processor, advertised with 32 MB of RAM, no hard drive, no CD drive, but a floppy drive and a power cord. (As I said, most of the used laptops of this vintage, even the ones on eBay, don't include the power supply, which can run between $15 and $50 extra.)

So I bid $15, and Lots of Laptops bit. A Compaq Armada was sailing my way via UPS ground.

I took the time to look for the other parts I'd need. At minimum, a CD drive was mandatory. Luckily I found a new one for $10 (yes, on eBay, where parts can be refreshingly cheap).

The laptop finally arrived. It did come with the floppy drive and a power cord. Luckily the Compaq Armada 7770dmt doesn't use a standard laptop power "brick." The entire power supply is inside the case, and the AC cord plugs into the back. There's only a gaping hole where the battery used to be, but since no laptop of this age has a WORKING battery, I'm happy to save the weight. Maybe I can store a few CDs in there -- the hole seems big enough.

So I plug it in. I hit the power switch. I see a Windows 98 screen (holy shit! There's a hard drive in there! That wasn't supposed to be there, but I'm damn glad it is). That's all I see. It doesn't boot. It was advertised as "power up only," not "it boots," so I'm not surprised. But the "free" hard drive is a welcome bonus. The memory check reveals 64 MB instead of 32. Another nice surprise.

I try to boot from a floppy. Yep, I've got bootable floppies for Linux and Windows (the latter of which which I made from a great Web site, URL to come when I find it again). No go. "Disk controller error." So my floppy is bad.

I've heard that the BIOS on these old Compaqs isn't of the standard PC variety, and that the settings are stored somewhere on the hard drive. I can't access the BIOS, as I'm supposed to be able to do, with the F10 key, so maybe those settings AREN'T there.

But I pull the floppy drive, insert the CD drive, put in the Puppy Linux 2.14 CD ... and it boots into Puppy!

Holy shit, for $15 (plus $10 for the CD drive and about $20 shipping costs) I have a working laptop!

I didn't mention that I already have an Orinoco WaveLan Silver 802.11b wireless card from my old Macintosh Powerbook 1400, and it plugs into the Compaq just fine. Puppy autodetected it, and I was getting the Internet via Wi-Fi with minimal configuration (all I had to do was set it for "any" router and DHCP, the steps for which Puppy walks you through). Now with 64 MB of RAM (the max this laptop can hold is 144 MB -- the internal 16 MB plus two 64 MB SO-DIMMs), Puppy was NOT loading entirely into RAM, but it was running pretty well, just the same, very well given the 233 MHz processor.

Sound was also easy to configure, and I got a tip on that from yet another Linux laptop-oriented Web page.

A few days later, I decided to load Windows 2000. I did the install this morning, and I'm writing this entry over the Wi-Fi at the Los Angeles Public Library's Woodland Hills branch (no Wi-Fi gets into the Daily News building, and there's none coming from within it, either ... and I don't have a PCMCIA Ethernet card). I haven't had the time to download and install the service packs and the hundreds of security upgrades from Microsoft, but to its credit, everything pretty much autoconfigured (a first for me in Windows). Win 2K even picked up my Wi-Fi card -- no external drivers needed -- and configured it for DHCP, and I was off and running.

Windows 2000 ships with Internet Explorer 5 (which kind of sucks) and little else, but as I've written previously, the OS really flies on older hardware, and if you've got a legitimate copy and have a reason to run Windows, both 2000 and XP are extremely hearty platforms, provided you get antivirus protection (I use Avast, although I haven't yet installed it here) and don't do anything stupid with Outlook (like use it).

Before the install, I pulled the 3 GB drive and put a 30 GB from my junk pile into the Compaq, and it's quieter now. I made a 12 GB partition for Windows, leaving enough room for at least two Linux distributions on the drive. I don't know exactly what I'll install next, but candidates are Debian 4.0 Etch, Xubuntu 7.04, Damn Small Linux, and maybe even Fedora or openSUSE (currently being shunned by Linux fanboys over parent company Novell's deal with Microsoft). But even though I rail against such deals in my editorials, I see a reason for Microsoft's existence from a technological standpoint (although I'd really like to see them stop threatening to sue everybody who doesn't do everything they ask at any given moment).

UPDATE: I just tried AntiX today -- a Mepis spin that uses Fluxbox and is meant for a minimum of 64 MB of RAM. So far it works really, really well. It's a bit more complex than Puppy or DSL. It has Synaptic, for instance, but also includes lots of command-line apps that I love, including mutt and nano (which are hard to come by in Puppy land). It doesn't look pretty (it's pretty much gray-black in color), but it runs really fast -- and I haven't even done an install yet (I'm running the live CD of rc5, based on Mepis 6.5, so it's not even at beta). Net configuration was a little tricky, but I managed to get my static IP done right.

But back to the $15 laptop. I've had excellent luck so far. Your mileage may vary if you purchase one from Lots of Laptops, and at this point I'd still recommend Craigslist, since you can at least see and try to boot the thing before you buy. And the company behind Lots of Laptops, Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff, also sells "whole" laptops with better guarantees starting around $170. There are also occasionally good laptop deals (meaning around $100) from the sales division of ElectroRent, and ... that's about it.

But the old laptops are out there. They just need to be found.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)