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 did a Debian Etch install on one of my test machine drives recently, and today I added the openssh-server package so I could play around with PuTTY and Xming.

Once I installed openssh-server (I used Synaptic, in case you were wondering), using PuTTY to start the connection, I was asked whether or not I expected the encryption key to change (I was, since this is the Debian install, not OpenBSD, which I've been using until now).

One bonus of using this Debian Etch install: The OpenBSD drive is noisy, which probably means it's gonna go. The drive on which I installed Etch is much quieter. I probably need to get some newer, bigger drives ... or a whole new test box, but that's another story for another time.

Quirks in Debian Etch with openssh-server: I can run X apps, no problem. When I run:

$ nautilus &

... I get a huge window with the entire GNOME desktop, minus the toolbars. And I can't close that window -- Xming won't let me, I think. X-ing it out doesn't work. I had to kill the process in my PuTTY terminal. (Note: $ startx & does not work ...)

Speaking of security: OpenBSD is known for its security above all else. Here's how using openssl openssh (which was created by the OpenBSD team) differs -- at my lowly level, anyway -- between OpenBSD and Debian Etch:

In OpenBSD: The sshd server is included in the standard install. But it can't be used until rootly powers are used to implement it. Running X over ssh is not allowed until the appropriate configuration changes are made. But root logins are allowed over ssh by default; the administrator, however, can choose to block root login (which I did).

In Debian: Debian installs without the ssh server installed. So without the administrator specifically installing openssh-server, nobody can ssh into the box. But once that package is installed, Debian automatically allows ssh logins -- and X logins as well. As with OpenBSD in its default state, root logins are permitted over ssh until that feature is turned off in /etc/sshd_config.

I don't understand all the lines in sshd_config, but I probably should get better acquainted with each and every one of them.

Speed? It could be the fact that this Debian Etch box has the GNOME desktop, and I've been running OpenBSD either from the console or the default Fvwm window manager, but everything happens a lot faster with the OpenBSD install (hardware is the same for both). I could modify Debian to boot to a console instead of GDM, and that might speed it up a bit (memory is 256 MB), but whatever the reason, thus far OpenBSD is a bit smoother. (Later, things seemed to run a bit better when I didn't log in on the Debian box and hence didn't have GNOME running).

More on security: If this box wasn't just something for me to play with on the local network, the stakes would be a lot higher. I suppose not having sshd is pretty good security when compared to having sshd installed but not enabled. And I also suppose that installing sshd (openssh-server) means that you want to actually use it. But in the case of both OpenBSD and Debian, I wonder why root logins over SSH are enabled by default. If anything, I'd expect OpenBSD to disallow them until the administrator of the box decides to turn that feature on.

And since you can always use su or sudo (Ubuntu has conditioned me to like sudo, and I always add myself to the sudoers list with visudo, there's really no reason for a root login over ssh.

Side note: Debian doesn't automatically add the primary user to the sudoers list, something I always do because on many occasions I'd rather use sudo than su.

Ubuntu, by default, disables root logins entirely and only offers sudo. It makes setting root's crontab a pain in the ass. I use sudo -i crontab -e to get into root's crontab in Ubuntu.

Side note to a side note: While I can fake my way around vi, I like it when nano is the default editor and crontab -e brings up nano instead of vi. The one thing I don't like about nano is that when you wrap text, actually linefeeds are inserted. At least in vi you can have the text break in the middle of a word without turning word wrap on (although you are able to do so if you want wrapped text). The one thing I like in X editors is the ability for text to look wrapped without actually being wrapped.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Quick notes because I've got time for no more:

Debian Lenny: I hadn't updated Debian Lenny in about a week. Bugs are getting fixed all over the place. The latest wave of upgrades includes a couple of fixes for the Epiphany browser, which as a result is running better than ever. Most of what I noticed was cosmetic, but it just adds to the excellent functionality that Lenny already offers users. If you've been worried about running Lenny instead of Etch, I think the time is right to move to Lenny as it makes its way from Testing to Stable.

Preload in Debian: After reading about preload in Linux Journal, I finally installed it. Preload is supposed to monitor what apps you use most and automatically load them into memory, adjusting if your application habits change. Since I tend to run the same apps a lot, and since I have plenty of memory, I'm anxious to see how well preload works.

FreeBSD and the need for speed: FreeBSD 7 is now beginning its life as a stable OS. It's supposed to be up 15 percent faster than the fastest Linux kernels, up to 350 percent faster than FreeBSD 6x under normal loads, and up to 1,500 percent faster under heavy loads. I'm anxious to see how the hardware recognition performs. So far, I've had quite a bit of luck with DesktopBSD 1.6, which is based on FreeBSD 6, and I can only hope for better things with FreeBSD 7, which I plan to test soon.

OpenBSD update: I've been having a lot of fun -- and learning quite a bit -- with OpenBSD. I have the box on the local network, and I've been playing around with the ftp server, Apache Web server and with SSH. First I installed the PuTTY ssh client on my Windows XP box so I could connect from the XP box to the OpenBSD box. I could run any console program I wanted, and while it may not be a huge deal to the more experienced of you out there, it's a huge deal for me.

I wanted to run X over SSH, so I made the appropriate changes in OpenBSD to allow X11 forwarding over SSH. Ahd with the help of my friends over at LXer, I found out about Xming, an X client for Windows.

It took me awhile to figure out that I had to enable X in PuTTY to make it work. Xming runs in the background on the Windows box, and when I open an X program from the PuTTY console:

$ rox &

... A window opens on my XP desktop with the OpenBSD X program in it (which, in the case of the line above, is the Rox-filer). Pretty slick. (The & after the app name makes the process run in the background. I had one snag: I couldn't run the Dillo browser over SSH until I installed all the X fonts for Xming. There's a way to just use Xming to enable the SSH session, but that hasn't worked for me thus far. But since the PuTTY/Xming combination is working, that's what I'm going with.

I'd like to run a full X session with a full window manager running in a window on my XP box, but besides being slower than running single apps, I get the feeling that such a thing isn't exactly looked upon lovingly by the hard-core Unix geeks out there.

But being able to run any OpenBSD (or Linux) app on a network-connected box from a Windows-only PC is so totally cool that I should be sated in my dose of geekdom for the next week at least.

The $0 Laptop and its CPU fan discontents: I've been working with controlling my Gateway Solo 1450's CPU fan for months now. In Linux, I've had it controlled pretty well with a cron job, and in the case of Puppy a few added kernel modules.

But since then, I've come to realize that the cron job, which checked the CPU temperature every five minutes and turned the fan on or off depending on that temperature, is unnecessary.

All you need to do is turn the fan off at boot, and then ACPI will manage it just fine. This revelation comes after considerable work in the console, checking the temperature, running commands, running scripts and generally seeing what happens during the course of a computing session.

So I turned off my cron jobs, and now all I need to do is add the following line to /etc/rc.local:

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

That turns the fan off. I initially thought that only this line -- echo 0 > /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state -- would turn the CPU fan back on, but that is most definitely not the case. Once the fan is turned off with the "echo 3" command (which you can run from the console, just as you can the "echo 0" line), when the CPU gets warm, the fan turns on and then turns off when the CPU cools down.

So that one line added to /etc/rc.local is enough to get ACPI management of the fan working, at least in the Gateway Solo 1450.

Now there's the matter of OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD and this same CPU fan. So far nothing has worked, but I will keep trying.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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)

Google "linux vs. bsd," and this comes up. Written by BSD user Matthew D. Fuller, there's a lot of information to absorb.

Here he is on "Chaos vs. Order":

One common generality is that the Linux methodology is the living incarnation of chaos, whereas the BSD methodology is far more about control. To a large extent, it's true. Linux grew out of a spare-time hacking background, while BSD grew out of a controlled engineering background. Of course, there's plenty of weekend tinkers writing BSD code, and plenty of full-time professional programmers sloughing away at various parts of Linux. But the feel of the systems still does reflect that sort of schism.

We've already discussed the construction methodology; BSD builds up a core system which is uniform, whereas Linux distributions takes pre-existing pieces and pretty much puts them together helter-skelter. Naturally, the BSD method is far more amenable to keeping things ordered, while the Linux method practically necessitates utter chaos. That's not to say that chaos is inherently bad, or order inherently good. They're just different environments.

Linux will also generally chase new versions of other programs much more closely, adopting particularly more major changes like Apache 2 much sooner than BSD will move that way. Now, the stricter separation of "base" vs "ports" in BSD, as well as the structure of the ports tree itself, make it easier to have multiple parallel versions of packages in BSD. Sometimes, it's even possible and easy to have multiple versions installed at the same time. Linux, by not having that sort of separation, makes it very difficult to have parallel versions, and instead almost requires a single "blessed" one.

And the primacy of source-compiling in packages also makes it easier to handle multiple versions. For instance, PHP must be compiled differently depending on whether you're using Apache 1.3 or Apache 2. With from-source packages like ports, I can define an environmental variable when I compile and install PHP to tell it whether to use Apache 1.3 or Apache 2. With binary packages, you'd have to have 2 separate packages available, which will lead to confusion sooner or later.

Followed by "Right vs. Wrong":

The difference can also be seen in the way core code is integrated. BSD tends to always shy away from hackish solutions when there's even a hint of a proper solution in the wings. The theory is that it's far easier to wait for the clean answer, than to integrate the dirty answer now, for several reasons. For one thing, if you integrate the dirty answer, that reduces the incentive to implement a better one. For another, once you dirty up the architecture to integrate something it'll never get cleaned up again. You know it as well as I do. Oh, sure, you'll say it's temporary. But you know there's nothing quite as permanent as a temporary stop-gap. And things grow. The only way to avoid giving a mile is to refuse to give the first inch. It's just like taxes; when was the last time you saw a temporary tax that ever went away?

You also see it in what is there. Traditionally (though not universally), Linux integrates support for a piece of hardware before BSD does. But when BSD integrates it, it works. It's solid. It's stable. Linux drivers tend to have a lot more variance, because they'll be brought in earlier. In many ways, this mirrors the add-on case above, but in reverse. BSD has a very tightly controlled base system, and can be very free with setting up add-on software, since it's all added on by the user independently. Linux has a very loose and fluid coupling between the kernel and the userland, but the userland as a whole, due to not having a base/addon separation, requires a lot more work to keep consistent, which places a much higher requirement for a central "blessing" of various versions of packages. The extensive use of binary, rather than source distribution just makes it that much more so.

There are plenty of other "BSD vs. Linux" items out there, but this is the most detailed and well-reasoned of those that I've seen.

My process goes something like this: If you're starting with the hardware, test everything and see what runs best, what you like best and what fits the task the best. It might be Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Slackware, even Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux. It could also be FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD.

I'm reluctant to give up on the Linux distributions I've come to know over the past year and then some, but in the BSD projects I see an opportunity to learn something new and do things a little differently. And since that's the spirit in which I began use of open-source operating systems and software, it's just part of the continuum of what I'm doing, the path I'm on, if you would be so kind as to indulge such thoughts.

That there's more than one or two -- or more than a hundred -- ways to skin the proverbial cat is a very good thing.

Debian tip: Here's a way to speed up booting of Debian when you're not connected to a network:

If you ever wondered, why exim4 needs so long to start when you have no net access, though you were sure that configured as satellite for a smarthost it should have nothing to lookup as the smarthost in in /etc/hosts, you might just have forgotten to put a

disable_ipv6 = true

in your exim4.conf. (I'm not sure, but that might also help
to actually deliver mail to hosts which also have ipv6 addresses
on servers with outgoing smtp when you forgot to blacklist the
ipv6 module).

Thanks, Bernhard R. Link, who works on Debian, for the tip. And read all of the Debian developer/bloggers at Planet Debian. Ubuntu does the same thing here.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be upgradeable to 8.04 LTS: I've made no secret of my admiration for the 6.06 LTS version of Ubuntu, even though it's over a year and a half old. I like the way it runs, I've never had a problem with it ... and I like the fact that it will have support for three years of life on the desktop, even more on the server (until June 2009 on the desktop, June 2011 on the server).

But now that a new LTS is about to be released -- April's Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (if you haven't yet figured it out, the 8 is for 2008, the 04 for FebruaryApril) -- it's a good time to give it a try. If it works well on one box or another, Ubuntu 8.04 might be a good OS to install and stick with for a year, two or three. Now I've learned that there will be an upgrade path from 6.06 to 8.04.

I recommend a separate /home partition so a full reinstall can be done easily (but don't do it without a backup of /home), and I will probably do a full install instead of an upgrade, but it's nice to know that 6.06-8.04 can be done without a full reinstall.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yesterday I went on about the man page for fvwm, the default X window manager in OpenBSD.

It clearly says that, in the absence of a .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, fvwm will look in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/ for a file called system.fvwmrc:

During initialization, fvwm will search for a configuration file which describes key and button bindings, and a few other things. The format of these files will be described later. First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwmrc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm). Failing that, it will look for system.fvwmrc in ${sysconfdir} for system-wide defaults. If that file is not found, fvwm will be basically useless.

There's a file called system.fvwm2rc in that directory, but it doesn't control fvwm. I know this because I added a line to it, stopped X and restarted it. No change.

Since fvwm looks for the .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, I decided to create one with the help of the system.fvwm2rc file mentioned in the man page.

I used the Geany editor, but substitute any text editor you wish (I'm just more comfortable in a GUI editor when it comes to things like copying and pasting. I don't use vi enough to be all that proficient).

Here's how to do it:

Log on with your user account, open an xterm window and do the following (again, substitute your favorite editor for geany, or install the geany package on your OpenBSD system with $ sudo pkg_add -i geany):

$ geany /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/system.fvwm2rc

Under the File menu in Geany, choose Save As, then navigate to your home directory and save the file as .fvwmrc (in other words, create /home/~/.fvwmrc, substituting the name of your user's home file for ~)

Now you should have a .fvwmrc file in your home directory that is editable by the user account. Modifying the menus is pretty easy. I've already added a category for applications and added all the apps I've installed thus far to it.

I'd still love to find out where the systemwide fvwm configuration file really lives. I don't have enough Unix or OpenBSD knowledge to do so at this point.

I've stuck with fvwm because it's the default window manager in OpenBSD, and it's pretty nice once you learn about it. I've got a long way to go, that's for sure.

Fvwm note: Changes in your .fvwmrc aren't implemented until you quit X and restart it.

Applications I've added to my OpenBSD box thus far:

Geany (text editor)
Dillo (lightweight GUI browser)
Firefox (heavyweight GUI browser)
Nano (console text editor; I just "get it" more than vi)
MC (console file manager)
Rox (the ROX-filer GUI file manager)
Abiword (relatively lightweight word processor)
Ted (even lighter RTF-format word processor)

I haven't added a mail client, and I might add Sylpheed or Thunderbird. I might also add mutt, fetchmail and msmtp and try POP mail from the command line for one account. Generally, though, the whole console e-mail thing baffles me -- and yes, I have done it before. I generally find a GUI mail client or Web mail interface so much easier that I don't need to spend days and days fiddling with mutt.

Essential OpenBSD reading: The OpenBSD Journal. I just found out about this, although I'm sure I've been here before.

Also: OpenBSD 101.

Ted on OpenBSD: I installed the Ted word processor -- an exceedingly light application that reads and produces files in rich text format -- which can be read and edited by most word-processing applications, including Microsoft Word.

Ted on OpenBSD ... how to actually run it:

This doesn't work:

$ ted

But this does:

$ Ted

Remember, Unix-like OSes are case sensitive, and in the case of Ted, it's really capital T, small e, small d.

I've been grumbling about Ted not working in Debian for an age, but Ted works fine in OpenBSD. I'll probably use Geany for most of my work, though. I got used to Geany by using it in Puppy Linux, and while I'm not crazy about its Windows implementation, in Linux/Unix, I still really like it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So I think I'm "discovering" the NetBSD live CD, but I learn that Distrowatch announced the damn thing in 2006. All I can say is that I'm very, very impressed.

It's NetBSD, it boots on my temperamental test box, and not only does it have X, it has a full KDE desktop with tons of applications -- the full KOffice, Konqueror, Firefox, Abiword, K3b, Krita, the GIMP, Inkscape, JuK, XMMS, -- hell, just say it's got a full KDE 3.5.4 setup and then some, and NetBSD autoconfigured for my monitor (with the VESA option) and looks absolutely gorgeous.

If the NetBSD people could someday, someway, make this an installable live CD, they'd really have something here. So far, this looks and works better on my computer than DesktopBSD and PC-BSD. I guess the one thing this version of NetBSD is missing when compared to DesktopBSD and PC-BSD is graphical package managment, but the rest of it looks and works so well ...

While the NetBSD live CD attempts to configure a static IP address for you (ignore this if you use DHCP), it didn't work. To configure a static IP in NetBSD at a terminal -- and it is slightly different than doing the same thing in Linux -- here's how to do it (adapted from my similar tutorial for the FreeBSD-based FreeSBIE live CD):

My Ethernet interface, usually eth0 in Linux, is called rtk0 in NetBSD. If you're unsure, run this command:

$ ifconfig -a

That should output the name of your Ethernet interface.

To set the static IP in NetBSD I either used the same terminal window or opened a terminal window (Konsole in the KDE menu works fine) and became root:

$ su
(When prompted, for a password, the root password is root. If you signed on as root, you don't have to su, since you're already root).

At the # prompt, do the following (substituting your own networking numbers, of course):

# ifconfig rtk0 192.9.200.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.9.200.255

# route add default 192.9.200.254
(Note: don’t use route add default gw, like in Linux — gw is not needed. As above, enter your own router/gateway address)

I also set up my name servers in /etc/resolv.conf (I used vi because I knew it would be there. You can also use any of the other KDE text editors in the live CD environment. Use any text editor you wish in its place:

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

once in the file, I added these lines:

domain yourdomain.com
nameserver 192.9.200.4
nameserver 192.9.200.2

(as always, add your own search domain and name server IPs, then save and close the file; you should now be ready to start Firefox and begin browsing the Web. Note: my connection doesn't require use of a domain in /etc/resolv.conf)

And again, if you have a dynamic connection, ignore this completely.

Additional info: Look at this PDF, which looks like a PowerPoint presentation for some background on BSD live CDs.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Why a desktop installation of OpenBSD?

It's a legitimate question. According to Distrowatch, among the three main BSD projects (they don't like to be called "distros"), FreeBSD is way out in front -- and is the base for PC-BSD and DesktopBSD -- followed by OpenBSD and NetBSD.

And even though there are two desktop-focused versions of FreeBSD, and it's possible to turn all three of the major BSD projects into a desktop-worthy system, the question remains: Why not just stick with Linux, with its usually superior hardware detection, vastly larger community of users (who in theory and often in practice can provide all the help you need to get a system up and running) and much larger choice of distributions?

For one thing, Linux isn't alone on the desktop, nor should it be. Apple has a hugely popular desktop operating system based in part on code from BSD. And another operating system derived from Unix -- OpenSolaris -- is also inching onto the desktop with its Indiana project.

I think the competition is enormously healthy for free, open-source software, and I support that competition and choice wholeheartedly.

And using OpenBSD to build up a desktop system is just plain fun. It's more of a challenge, and all the configuration that I've done and am doing just teaches me more about what makes operating systems tick, even in my technologically feeble state.

I'm no coder. I've never programmed anything. I just mess around with hardware and software and then write about it.

I'm pretty much compelled to do all the things I've done over the past year and a half. It hasn't gotten boring.

And while I'm not going to move away from Linux, if the hardware and software cooperate -- as they have on this test machine -- I see no reason not to spend some considerable time running OpenBSD and seeing what I can do with it.

Again, my thanks go to all the people behind OpenBSD as well as the bloggers whose experience has paved the way for me to consider running the operating system and then to install and begin configuring it.

Going forward, I hope all of the major BSD projects -- FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD -- will continue to grow, keeping their documentation of the same ultra-high quality and enabling users to get more and more hardware working to the point where both server and desktop users have a greater number of choices than ever with which to get things done.

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

Even though I found very specific instructions for making the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 USB wireless adapter work with Linux using ndiswrapper, I've pretty much given up.

In all cases, I can get the wireless adapter to light up, and I can find a wireless network. I just can't get a DHCP connection started.

Doing the instructions in Ubuntu was fairly straightforward. But since I don't have an Ubuntu install anywhere but this WiFi-free office, I couldn't test it.

So I did the procedure on my laptop in Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and in Puppy Linux 3.00. The easiest configuration was in Puppy, which makes using ndiswrapper almost a pleasure. In both cases, I can find the wireless network but can't get a DHCP connection to work.

Configuring ndiswrapper (the open-source program that uses Windows drivers to make hardware work in Linux), I used the Windows XP, 2000 and 98 drivers, all of which worked equally poorly.

In my experience, newer wireless adapters are a bitch to get configured in Linux, whereas older adapters like my Orinoco WaveLAN Silver pretty much configure themselves.

As far as the Airlink AWLL3028, I don't have enough skill or patience to keep going with it. It's disappointing, but that's the breaks.

I was steered by a reader to this Linux Questions page, which lists many networking cards (wired and wireless) and how well they perform under Linux. But for newer cards, I think the best resource is the comments at Newegg, where there are many Linux users to weigh on on whether or not something works.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've blogged before on how Gmail has an advantage over Yahoo Mail -- and most other Web-based e-mail services -- because you can choose to run a totally secure session (by entering the URL https://gmail.com instead of plain ol' http://gmail.com) and feel safe when reading and writing e-mail over public WiFi connections.

Seems it isn't so. According the Zero Day blog at ZDNet, somebody monitoring the radio traffic of your wireless connection can figure out your password through the use of unencrypted cookies with a technique called "sidejacking":

Sidejacking is a term (Robert) Graham uses to describe his session hijacking hack that can compromise nearly all Web 2.0 applications that rely on saved cookie information to seamlessly log people back in to an account without the need to reenter the password. By listening to and storing radio signals from the airwaves with any laptop, an attacker can harvest cookies from multiple users and go in to their Web 2.0 application. Even though the password wasn’t actually cracked or stolen, possession of the cookies acts as a temporary key to gain access to Web 2.0 applications such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. The attacker can even find out what books you ordered on Amazon, where you live from Google maps, acquire digital certificates with your email account in the subject line, and much more.

Gmail in SSL https mode was thought to be safe because it encrypted everything, but it turns out that Gmail’s JavaScript code will fall back to non-encrypted http mode if https isn’t available. This is actually a very common scenario anytime a laptop connects to a hotspot before the user signs in where the laptop will attempt to connect to Gmail if the application is opened but it won’t be able to connect to anything. At that point in time Gmail’s JavaScripts will attempt to communicate via unencrypted http mode and it’s game over if someone is capturing the data.

What’s really sad is the fact that Google Gmail is one of the “better” Web 2.0 applications out there and it still can’t get security right even when a user actually chooses to use SSL mode. Other applications like Microsoft’s MSN/Hotmail and Yahoo don’t even have SSL modes. The fact that they use SSL mode for first time authentication and sign-in is irrelevant because they all drop down to unencrypted mode right after the user authenticates.

I don't use my DSL Extreme Web mail as often as I should. It has a secure connection the whole time, and it's primitive enough -- I hope -- not to have these same vulnerabilities. Fastmail.fm, on which I also have a free account, will also do a secure session if you choose "secure login" when signing on.

I'm far from a security expert, but it seems to me that we'd be in better shape if we had the option of running a Web browser in secure-server mode all the time.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of those people is Orv Beach, publicity chairman for SCALE 6X -- the Southern California Linux Expo -- being held Feb. 8-10 in Los Angeles. Since I'm covering the convention for Click, I took the opportunity to interview Orv after hearing from him about getting press credentials for the event, which I wouldn't miss, by the way. And if you do plan on attending, Orv told me that using the promo code CAST when registering for SCALE can get you 40 percent off of admission.

Orv, where do you live, how old are you, and what do you do for a living?
I live in Simi Valley, California, with my wife Beth. I'm 58, and I have four grown kids and four wonderful grandkids. Professionally, I'm the IT director at Simi Valley Hospital.

How did you first discover open-source software, and what part does it play in your work and home life today?
I've been interested in technology all my life. I got my amateur radio license when I was 17, and enjoyed building radio equipment as much as operating.

I got my first computer in about 1979, and when amateur packet radio was authorized by the FCC, it was a natural to use a computer with it. A popular packet radio program at the time was TNOS, written by Brian Lantz. It ran under DOS, and was a communications program & BBS. Brian had an active users group and was happy to add features to TNOS. As it grew in size, the C compiler he was using had more and more difficulties compiling it (It was Borland Turbo C, I think). So he moved TNOS over to Linux to use GCC as the compiler, and a large percentage of his users followed him.

I got Linux from a programmer at work. At that time it was 16 floppies, and that minimal version didn't include X Windows. I ran it on a 40 MHz 386 with 8 Megs of RAM. I've been using Linux steadily ever since and moved my desktop computer over to it full time about six years ago, and my wife's about four years ago.

At work, while Adventist Health isn't a full-blown user of open-source software, they're edging that way. The web programmers at our corporate office seem to have fallen in love with Plone. Some of the programming groups are moving to Project.Net for project management, too. Locally, I use Nagios to monitor over a hundred devices on our hospital network, and we use ZoneMinder to monitor some video cameras.

Now that SCALE is in its sixth year, how big was the convention the first time around, and what kind of growth has it seen? How many exhibitors, speakers and attendees do you expect this year?
SCALE is an offshoot of the "LUGFests" that SCLUG (the Simi-Conejo Linux Users Group - http://sclug.org) held every 6 months where they met at the Nortel building in Simi Valley. They were miniconferences, with people demonstrating open source software and even a few commercial vendors. Even as limited as they were, they drew Linux users from all over Southern California. SCLUG held 4 of them before Nortel closed down that building. (There's an article on LUGFest III here).

The last LUGFest, LUGFest IV, drew 400 people over two days. Based on the response to the LUGFests, we knew we were filling a need for information and education on open-source software.

So after a hiatus of a year or so, SCLUG, UCLALUG and USCLUG jointly started SCALE. The first was held in the Davidson Conference Center at USC. It was one day, with two session tracks. We had 11 speakers spots and a panel, and it was a struggle to fill them. That first Linux Expo drew 400 attendees.

Contrast that with SCALE 6X, which will be held in February, five years later: The main Expo is now on Saturday and Sunday, has 32 speaker slots and two keynotes spread over four session tracks per day. You'd think that number of topics and speakers would be impossible to come up with. Yet we received over 105 submissions to our call for papers! Whittling them down was difficult, and it was painful, as we had to turn down lots of good proposals. We expect to have about 1,500 attendees for SCALE 6X. The Westin hotel will be bursting at the seams.

Continue reading "SCALE 6X -- An interview with publicity chairman Orv Beach" »

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

I've been toying with removing Debian Etch from the $15 Laptop -- the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor and 64 MB of RAM. When most computer users -- even those partial to Linux -- talk about "old" hardware, they mean either things in the 1 GHz range, even 3 GHz single-core CPU computers with 512 MB of RAM.

For me, a 1.2 GHz Celeron laptop with 1 GB of RAM is good enough to run just about any Linux distribution out there. And my main Windows machine at the office -- a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM is way more than adequate for desktop use.

As far as the 233 MHz Compaq laptop goes, I'm probably going to bump up the RAM from the current 64 MB to the maximum of 144 MB, but that's pretty much besides the point.

When I first got this laptop (yep, it cost me $15, though I had to shell out $10 for the CD-ROM drive on eBay) I ran into a lot of luck, because it wasonly supposed to have 32 MB of RAM but had double that. It wasn't supposed to have a hard drive, but not only was the hard-drive casing intact, but there was a 3 GB drive inside it. It was loaded with Windows 98 but wouldn't boot. Once I had the CD drive (the incoluded floppy drive doesn't work, and I could get another one for $10, but I really don't need it), I was able to run Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux from live CDs.

At first I loaded Windows 2000 just to see how it ran. Win 2K ran alright, but I'm not in this to run Windows. I had pretty good luck with both Puppy and DSL, but Damn Small Linux is really the more suited of the two for a computer with 64 MB of RAM.

Anyhow, I eventually wanted to try Debian Etch on the Compaq. I've done at least four installs of Debian on this computer, but my first began was the "standard" install, which means no X. After that, I added X and Fluxbox, plus all the apps I though I'd need. ROX-filer, AbiWord, Leafpad, Dillo, Lynx, Elinks, Sylpheed (which didn't work), MtPaint for image editing, and eventually even Iceweasel (aka Debian's renamed Firefox).

I was able to actually get work done on the laptop, which can connect to the outside world only through the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card I had previously bought for This Old Mac (aka my 1996 Powerbook 1400cs). And since the PCMCIA slot in the much-better $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) is inoperable ("busted" is the technical term), the wireless card has remained in the Compaq, which has no Ethernet port or USB capability (though it does have a serial port, parallel printer port, built-in telephone modem and a power supply fully enclosed in the case -- yes, a 120-volt power cord plugs right into the back). They made these Compaq's well -- this one still runs great.

Anyhow, my "roll-your-own-X" Debian install did OK. The display was a bit slow in Abiword, but I had everything running fairly well. Just not well enough.

Since then, I spent quite a bit of time testing DSL 4.0 on the Compaq. Damn Small Linux runs great on this thing, that much I can tell you. And I even ran Puppy 2.13 for a couple of days this week.

But I always had Debian on the hard drive. Just not the original Debian. I had wiped the drive and experimented with Debian Etch and the Xfce desktop install (desktop=xfce as a boot parameter in the installer) as well as Slackware 12.0 without KDE (Xfce and Fluxbox).

Well, Slackware without KDE means you don't even get an office suite, and I still had barely any disk space on the 3 GB drive. (I know, I just need to get a bigger drive ... I know.)

So I went back to Debian Etch, again the Xfce desktop. Surprisingly, this install includes the full OpenOffice suite and I still have about a full GB of space left on the hard drive. I have a separate /home partition with 800 MB in it, and a root partition with 2 GB, with about 150 MB left. The rest of the space is swap -- about 120 MB.

And while on the Gateway laptop (1.2 GHz Celeron CPU) I cannot detect a performance difference between the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers, on this 233 MHz CPU, there's quite a difference. I was about to give up on Etch altogether when I decided to again install AbiWord (I tried Ted ... again ... but the RTF word processor still doesn't work, at least in any Etch install I've had), as well as Fluxbox.

Fluxbox makes it a lot snappier. I still have all the Xfce apps, including Thunar, Mousepad and the great Xfmedia.

In fact, I finally got sound working tonight. I don't think it'll survive a reoot, so I'll have to run this line on startup, but for today it did work:

# modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 mpu_io=0x330

I can't run alsamixer, but I can play an MP3 in Xfmedia, and it sounds great even on the built-in speakers on this 9-year-old laptop.

I didn't think I could get sound working in Debian Etch, but since I did, Etch will definitely live to fight another day on this laptop.

Before I close out this entry, let men emphasize that the Xfce install of Debian is a quirky distro, to be sure. It's nowhere near as complete as Ubuntu's Xfce variant, Xubuntu.

Etch in its Xfce incarnation includes the full OpenOffice suite, but not Abiword or Gnumeric (which would be good substitutes). There's no Synaptic or Update Manager, so I've been doing what Debian aficionados always tell me to do: use Aptitude. I was running aptitude in a terminal for awhile, but it's much easier to just run it at the command line:

# aptitude update
# aptitude upgrade
# aptitude install abiword

Yep, just like apt-get and apt-get install, but Aptitude is supposed to do an even better job with dependencies and it keeps track of your changes to the system, should there be any problem.

I also need to do a dist-upgrade -- without moving away from Debian Etch -- to get a couple of packages that have been held back, including a new kernel image, but I'm holding off until I repartition the drive somewhat to put more space in the root partition (taking it away from /home):

# aptitude dist-upgrade

Final note: The fact that Debian Etch -- a modern, up-to-date Linux distribution -- can run so well in 233 MHz of CPU and 64 MB of RAM is something truly to behold. Again, my thanks to everybody at the Debian Project, past and present, for all they've done for the rest of us.

Post-final note: If Debian continues to perform so well, I just might blog the SCALE 6x convention with this 1999-vintage laptop.

Positively the last note: Iin case I only mentioned it once above, Fluxbox is really flying on this setup ... but the ROX-filer is only a bit faster than Thunar. And since the 1999 Compaq with Debian Etch and Movable Type 4.0 are playing nicely, I think this laptop is definitely going to SCALE 6x ... unless I succeed in getting wireless working over USB on the $0 Laptop (more to come on that).

Sorry, just one more note: Look for a SCALE 6x feature on Click in the days ahead.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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)

Sharp and Tappin's PicoPC, shown next to a coffee mug for size (and no it's not a gigantic prop mug, either -- the computer is really, really small).

I'm always on the lookout for ultra-small PCs that are also a) fanless and b) not super-expensive. I've found a good candidate, via this link on Linux Devices, called the PicoPC, from Devon, England's Sharp and Tappin Technology. They use the pico-ITX boards from VIA, and they look great, are really small ... and don't cost an arm and a leg. Well, maybe an arm, but you can keep (at least half of) your leg.

They run a version of Gentoo Linux, and I imagine they can run just about whatever you throw at them, though you probably need a USB-connected CD or DVD drive to get a Linux distro on there. There are two models, with one of them including space for a 2.5-inch hard drive. Options also include built-in wireless.

The PDF price list is in British pounds, and it looks like 286 pounds for the fully assembled Pico PC10 with 1 GB of RAM, and 289 pounds for the PC20 (with the hard-drive bay). I guess if you convert that to dollars, it's more expensive than I thought, but for something this cool, small and powerful, it might be worth it.

There are also optional flash drives, regular hard drives and the wireless card, and the PicoPC comes in many different colors of anodized aluminum.

For some reason, right now they're shipping PicoPCs without an OS, but I'm sure they can help you figure out what to put on there and how to do it. They don't say whether or not they will provide a 120-volt U.S.-compatible power brick, but I hope that's something they can work out.

You can also order the case only if you want to get your own Pico-ITX board. ... but you need to be able to remove the CPU heat sink and fan to put the whole thing together.

OK already ... because I'm so damn lazy, I used Google to figure out what 289 British pounds is in U.S. dollars, and it turns out it's $572. I still want one.

Buzz-killing note: I had questions for the makers of the PicoPC, but e-mails to two different addresses I found on their Web site bounced back ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After yesterday's post on sharware vs. freeware vs. free, open-source software, I decided to install Geany on my Windows box. I've always liked Geany in Puppy Linux, and when I learned from the Geany Web site that the full-featured text editor was available for Windows, I had to try it.

To run in Windows, Geany needs the GTK 2 runtime libraries. Since I already have the GIMP image editor installed on this XP box, I already had GTK 2, so I was able to choose a version that didn't include the libraries.

I just started using Geany in Windows. I opened all the files I was working on last night in EditPad Lite, and now I'm not violating the EditPad license by using the program for "commercial" purposes.

So not only do I feel wrong about using pirated copies of commercial software, I'm not even comfortable running shareware or restricted freeware without paying. And with great FOSS alternatives like Geany, I don't have to.

As I say above, I first used Geany in Puppy Linux, where it is the default GUI text editor. And besides the Windows version, Geany is offered in source code as well as in packages for Gentoo, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Slackware, Mandriva, ArchLinux, AltLinux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Solaris.

And it looks like Geany can run in OS X (if you have the GTK libraries, I presume).

I have plenty of text editors on my Linux boxes, but I just can't work with Microsoft's Notepad. I'm no fan of Apple's text editor in OS X, either -- I'd rather open a shell and use Nano (or is it Pico that's included ... I can't remember).

I've barely begun to scratch the surface when it comes to text editors. There are dozens out there, and Wikipedia does a fairly good job of attempting to categorize and compare them.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS -- the distribution's first "long term support" release -- now has a new installer that incorporates some 600 bug and security fixes and makes installation easier, especially on servers.

It's no secret that Canonical, the company that runs Ubuntu, is making a big play both for the desktop and more-lucrative server markets, and a big part of that play is the LTS release. And even though the next Ubuntu release -- 8.04 (due 4/08 ... also known as April 2008) -- is going to be a Long Term Support release, with fixes, patches and the like for three years on the desktop, five years on the server, there's still quite a bit of time left for the current Ubuntu LTS, which will be supported until June 2009 on the desktop and June 2011 on the server.

The new installer -- you don't really need it if you can successfully use the old installer, already have a 6.06 LTS install (like I do) and have done all the updates -- underscores Canonical's commitment to the LTS concept. While the twice-yearly releases of Ubuntu get most of the light and heat in the uber-geek community, there are many who depend on the relative stability of the LTS release to keep their hardware running. That's especially true on servers, where major upgrades every six months are impractical at best and detrimential at worst -- nobody wants to break a system that's been running well.

And the LTS is vital as a counterweight to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server/Desktop, both of which are supported for years on end.

I'd like to say that Debian Stable (currently Etch) and Old Stable (Sarge) are equivalents, but since you can't pin down a date certain for length of their support, there is a bit of an unknown factor there, although once the Stable release goes to Old Stable, you pretty much know that the new Stable release won't give you too many problems.

Sure, many desktop users generally want something more cutting-edge, mainly something like the regular Ubuntu releases, but there are many people -- and many situations -- that warrant hanging on to a Linux installation as long as possible. Over the time I've used Ubuntu and Xubuntu (from 6.06 LTS through 6.10, 7.04 and 7.10), I've seen some parts of the installation improve dramatically, I've seen hardware work better, then worse, and occasionally not at all.

And we all know an individual or organization that hates doing major upgrades, ever. Those coming from a Windows or Macintosh background aren't all used to major OS upgrades. In the case of Windows AND Mac's OS X, major upgrades almost always cost money. $129 for an OS X upgrade might not sound like much, but paying that much every couple of years when your computer runs just fine the way it is? No thanks. That's why I'm still running OS X 10.3 on my Mac. And Windows? I have a disc for Windows 2000, and I'm not about to pay ANYTHING for the privilege of upgrading my sole Windows box (which I boot maybe twice a year) to XP.

And in Linux, just because we can change out distros 10 times a day if we wish, it doesn't mean that we have to -- or should. For people who crave the stability of long-term releases, one thing generally drives upgrade: newer software they need to get their work done, and new hardware that needs new software to run properly.

I did this most recent Ubuntu 6.06 LTS installation for testing purposes, but I've stuck with it because it just works. On this test box, it's flawless. On my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop, it manages the fan as well as 7.10 (i.e. not at all without a cron job; but well with said cron job), but less well than 7.04 (which has the ACPI working with no coding needed). (Note: I'm not currently running Ubuntu at all on the Gateway laptop, which is currently dual-booting the Slackware 11-based Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny, which I upgraded from the stable Etch.)

Using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on this test box, sure I'm stuck with Firefox 1.5, OpenOffice 2.0, GMOME 2.14.3 and Evolution 2.6.1, but everything works. And there's nothing I do that I can't do with applications of this "vintage." If I this machine had wireless and it didn't work with 6.06, I might feel differently about LTS, but with the hardware I have now, LTS is a good fit.

So if you're looking for stable, supported releases, especially ones that won't cost you anything, it's nice to have Ubuntu LTS as a choice along with CentOS and Scientific Linux (both free versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SUSE, Debian and Slackware.

As far as stable, long-term releases go, I have run CentOS (3.9. 4.2 and 5), Debian (Etch and Lenny) and Slackware (12), as well as Ubuntu LTS, and Ubuntu holds up very well on the desktop in this crowd. It's more flexible, as far as adding software, than CentOS and Slackware -- it doesn't have as many packages as Debian, but it does have plenty -- and the desktop and menus are a bit more tame than Debian's, with a better out-of-the-box experience, especially for inexperienced users.

And the support available from other Ubuntu users is a major component of the distro's success. All the advice may not be of the best quality, but there's just so much of it that you're bound to find the right answer to whatever it is you're asking. Not that the Debian community isn't helpful (I love DebianHELP and the Debian User Forums, but they just don't have the sheer volume of the Ubuntu Forums. Like I said, there's a lot more noise among the Ubuntu people ... but that's the price you pay, I guess.

And since Ubuntu is based on Debian, what you learn in one community is more often than not directly applicable in the other.

Another thing I discovered today: I enjoy reading the Planet Debian blog posts from Debian developers, and I had no idea that there's a Planet Ubuntu as well. Both are more than worth adding to your favorites and checking on from time to time.

Over the past year, I've used both Debian and Ubuntu extensively, and I always say that Debian isn't as "hard" to use as some would make it appear. Nor is Ubuntu a relative cakewalk. Both require, at times, a bit of wading into the muck to make things work. As far as installation goes, Debian's installer -- upon which Ubuntu's "alternate" installer is very closely based, is quite good, and has succeeded for me many more times than Ubuntu's live CD and alternate-CD discs, but Ubuntu works often enough.

What Ubuntu has that Debian lacks is a marketing plan. For some -- especially the average Linux user (read: geek) -- having no marketing plan is, in and of itself, a marketing plan of sorts. Nobody's trying to make Debian "cool," or giving you reasons why you should or shouldn't run it. And while there are a few Debian evangelists out there, and a few for Slackware as well, there's nothing approaching the fervor over Ubuntu.

That might be good, or bad, depending on how you look at it.

A lot of people are running Debian and Slackware -- they're just quieter about it, I guess.

Anyhow, this post has gone on for far too long. All I want to say is that I'm in favor of long-term, "stable" releases with defined periods of support and a smooth upgrade path, and I'm glad that Ubuntu has pretty big foot in this very door.

And I like the fact that 6.06 LTS will be supported for over a year after the next LTS -- 8.04 -- is released a few months from now.

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

I had one of those days this morning when I go to the ZDNet blogs page and find literally 20 entries worthy of comment. I'm at work for the first time in five days, and I have about three Firefox windows open with between five and 20 tabs each. I open a few other programs, and the whole thing starts turning to sludge.

I have to close everything and reboot.

I could open all of those entries again, plus the six or so on LXer, worthy of blogging on, but let me just say that ZDNet has hit on a very good formula for tech blogs that are heavy on news in many different sectors of the tech world. Windows, Mac, Linux, SAAS, storage, digital cameras, education, project failures, green technology, mobile technology ... and more that I'm forgetting about. Let's just say there's a lot there -- and you will have a pretty good grip on the day's tech news if and when you visit.

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

And "not just currently" also means that you can select a distribution and go back in time, following the news all the way back to when Distrowatch first began publishing on the Web, May 31, 2001 -- eons ago in "Linux years."

Whenever I write about a distribution, looking backward on Distrowatch is essential in order to get a picture in my mind of how far that distro has come and when the milestones in its development happened.

Distrowatch sums up the activity for the past seven days in the DistroWatch Weekly, at the bottom of which you will find what Ladislav is keeping track of. It's staggering. For this week, here's the tally:

* Number of all distributions in the database: 557
* Number of all active distributions in the database: 357
* Number of discontinued distributions: 125
* Number of distributions on the waiting list: 218

That's a lot to follow, and without Distrowatch, we'd all be in much worse shape. If there's any justice in the world, Ladislav is making a mint off of this site.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

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

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

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

...

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

ZDNet on the Think Secret settlement.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

For instance, I tried to run the Joe editor:

$ joe

and I got the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://mail.google.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the test results:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

Did a recent update break Gutsy?

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what I had:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 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)

From Linux Journal, the state of Unix on the "IBM PC," circa 1986.

From the Phil Hughes article:

While what I am writing here may sound like humor, it actually is real. That is, it is about what has happened in the last 20 years. That article was about the beginning of the revolution. Our "real" computer in the office was a Codata 3300 which featured an 8MHz 68000 processor, 750KB of RAM and a 27MB hard disk. What did it cost? About 16 thousand 1984 dollars.

In those 20+ years, the price of 1000 times as much hardware has dropped to one tenth the cost of the Codata and the cost of a UNIX-like operating system has dropped to almost zero while the capabilities have expanded possibly one thousand fold like the hardware. In any case, on to the article.

First, lets look at the hardware requirements. Here is what I said in the article.

"To get going with a PC-based Unix system, the minimum hardware requirements are an IBM or compatible machine with at least 256K RAM, one floppy disk drive, and a 10-Mbyte hard disk."

And that was 21 years ago. I imagine today's systems will be similarly arcane 21 years hence.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Denny's Blog, I found a link to bsdtalk, which features podcasts on ... BSD. I'm especially interested in this interview with Richard Stallman, who created the GNU project. The mp3 link is only a preface to the actual interview, which Stallman requested be distributed in an open-source, non-proprietary format only.

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

The $0 Laptop's fan isn't going on any more -- in fact, it barely goes on at all in Knoppix 5.1.1, and I've been monitoring the CPU temperature, which is staying in the 56 to 60 degrees C range.

On a recent session in Ubuntu 7.10, the CPU temp hit 70 regularly. And the fan went on a lot more often. (See update below.)

Next: How does the laptop CPU temp vary in Debian Etch.

And did I mention what a pleasure it is to run Knoppix?

Update:> I ran Ubuntu tonight, all night, and the $0 Laptop maintained a 55-57 degree CPU temp. I guess the whole thing's tempermental.

Sorry, Ubuntu, you don't run hotter.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I confess. It was my first. My first Linux, that is. And that same version, 5.1.1, is still current (developer Klaus Knopper is very methodical in his work).

Besides being a great system to use -- and to use as a rescue disk when things are broken -- Knoppix lets you see what a Debian Linux system can do (and in this case, a Debian system running the KDE desktop and packed with apps). For even more software, get or burn the Knoppix DVD. I have a DVD-ROM but not a burner, and I'm thinking of ordering a DVD. And just as you can run Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux in RAM (if you've got 128 MB for the former, 256 MB for the latter -- though those are just my estimates), Knoppix can be booted to run in RAM (with the toram boot command) on systems with ... is it 1 GB, or 512 MB, I can't remember.

Right now Knoppix 5.2 is starting to float around. It was released in a German magazine in July, and was supposed to be out this summer.

There are some great Knoppix tips in Carla Schroder's Linux Cookbook, as well as books that apply specifically to Knoppix.

I recommend "Knoppix Hacks," by Kyle Rankin. A new edition is forthcoming.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I won't begin to say that I know what the hell cloud computing really is. It has something to do with huge, centralized data centers with virtualization software that enables virtual servers (notice how I used the word "virtual" pretty much twice -- and now three times? I'm at a loss) to exist in said "cloud," with their virtual (there's that word again) presence available for lease -- and for use -- by faraway customers.

Anyway, I've heard that Amazon -- yep, the books-and-everything-else-including-the-kitchen-sink seller -- is heavily involved. Google's also a player (that's a gimmie, I know).

Well, now IBM is getting into the cloud game. And according to ZDNet, that means it's going corporate, since IBM holds a lot of sway in big-business circles.

As I understand it, you rent CPU time from the cloud, and in many cases, you can specify your OS, say Red Hat, Solaris, or what have you. And you get a virtual server to do your bidding, with a bunch of techs far away to take care of everything from maintenance (and power requirements, cooling, security, etc.).

Time to get educated on cloud computing.

From ZDNet:
Google CEO’s new paradigm: ‘cloud computing and advertising go hand-in-hand’
IBM, Google fund cloud computing teaching techniques
Beware: Google cloud platform exposed
(Have I mentioned recently how great ZDNet is?)

But a better place to start (especially for all things tech) is Wikipedia:

Cloud computing is a popular phrase that is shorthand for applications that were developed to be rich Internet applications that run on the Internet (or "cloud"). In the cloud computing paradigm, software that is traditionally installed on personal computers is shifted or extended to be accessible via the Internet. These "cloud applications" or "cloud apps" utilize massive data centers and powerful servers that host web applications and web services. They can be accessed by anyone with a suitable Internet connection and a standard web browser.

The architecture behind cloud computing is a massive network of "cloud servers" interconnected as if in a grid running in parallel, sometimes using the technique of virtualization to maximize computing power per server.

Red Hat partners with Amazon on cloud computing:

Cloud computing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a web-scale virtual computing environment powered by Amazon Web Services. It provides everything needed to develop and host applications: compute capacity, bandwidth, storage, and the leading open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Cloud computing changes the economics of IT by enabling you to pay only for the capacity that you actually use. Compute capacity can be scaled up or down on demand to accommodate changing workloads and business requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for cloud computing makes it easy to develop, deploy, and manage your new and existing applications in a virtual computing environment.

So how much does it cost? Here's the Red Hat/Amazon deal:

Available at a starting price of $19/month per customer plus $0.21 per hour for every deployed server, plus additional bandwidth and storage fees.

So how does this differ from renting a remote server, or space on said server? It's the virtualization. You, in effect, get your own server, even though it's not really there ... but in the cloud.

Prediction: This is gonna be HUGE.

More from Red Hat, and info on Amazon's cloud service.

Here's part of Amazon's pitch:

Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs, and removes the need to over-buy "safety net" capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes.

For those who want to go deep, here's Amazon's documentation on the EC2 Cloud.

And since I write these entries as a stream of consciousness, here's Wired on cloud computing: The Information Factories (from Wired). Most of the article's focus is on power -- electrical power -- and how much a huge data center like Google's needs, and where to get it.

The New York Times (password required, but you should just bite the bullet and get one):

Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research
I.B.M. to Push ‘Cloud Computing,’ Using Data From Afar

And last, not least, but wacky enough, the Times of London's everyman take on it.

The problem I'm having in figuring this all out, is that "cloud computing" can mean stuff like using Gmail and Google Docs, Hotmail and Xdrive. But I'm trying to focus on the clouds-for-rent on which a business can get its own virtual server.

But whether it's virtual servers or SAAS (software as a service) -- the latter with which I'm saddled for half my work already; it needs to be faster, dammit -- data and the apps that manipulate them are moving off the desktop and onto faraway server arrays. Besides saving you the trouble of archiving your own data, it means accessing your personal and business data from anywhere, with any computer or data-collecting gizmo you happen to have in front of you.

What's the state of privacy and reliability of these services? That's a question going forward. But eventually cost will win out. If it's cheaper, it'll happen.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:24 AM | 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)

This thread on LXer is exploding: Members of the site tell how, why and when they made the move from Windows or Mac OS to the free Linux and BSD operating systems. Don't read it all at once -- you've probably got other things to do -- but dip in from time to time and see what the fuss is all about.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's the question George Ou's article is really answering. He hits VIA for charging a premium for its mini-ITX mainboards (which go for twice as much as the average micro-ATX board and, while often fanless and low in power consumption, don't come anywhere near approaching the specs of the mainstream boards).

But he champions Intel for offering its own mini-ITX mainboard for the low, low price of $69.

Hell, I didn't know about this ... and I want one. Now.

I'm a huge mini-ITX fan -- a huge fan of PCs that are small, consume little power and have no fans in general. And if Intel wants to take this market, I'm all for it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

The Debian Admin site had all the info:

apt-get install ntpdate

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

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

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

Yes, there's a kid out there named @:

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While the "@" simple is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers.

(Story from Reuters.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My test box seems to like Debian-based distros and dislike Fedora and SUSE. I've never been able to get Fedora, SUSE to even boot, in fact, on this VIA C7-equipped ECS EVEm motherboard. Early in the booting process, the system resets itself, and just keeps rebooting, never getting anywhere.

So on my test box, I give up, but the Red Hat-derived CentOS 5.0 and Scientific Linux 5.0 do load in my Dell Optiplex 3 GHz Pentium 4 work box, on which I can explore them as live CDs but not actually install them to the hard drive.

CentOS 5.0 loads OK, if a little slow (it was flummoxed for a minute by an unused SATA port), but upon launch looks much like Fedora, which is should, since CentOS is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone. It's a way to get Red Hat functionality for servers and desktops without paying Red Hat fees.

Just like in Fedora, CentOS runs a nice GNOME desktop with the usual apps. But there's no information anywhere on the root password, so I can't configure my static IP and get Internet into the box. If you have a DHCP connection, no doubt this isn't a problem, and you might like using a RHEL workalike. But since I need to do a little configuration, the CentOS live CD isn't of all that much use to me.

So I pump the Scientific Linux CD into the Dell. It's another RHEL clone, this one made by a group of real scientists, including those at Fermilab.

During the boot process for Scientific Linux, I'm told the root password is sluser; so are the standard, non-root login and password. Simple enough.

It boots, and since Scientific Linux, like CentOS, is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the app choices look pretty much the same. Only the desktop art looks different. I'm quite comfortable in GNOME, since I also have a Debian box that is set up with it.

So I configure the network. I've never done a static IP configuration (or any other kind) in Red Hat before, and it takes me a few minutes. But I manage to get Internet flowing through the box. I also start Open Office Writer on one workspace, the GIMP on the next.

Even though this is a live CD, things are surprisingly snappy (I'm running with 512 MB of RAM). Since Scientific Linux is a RHEL clone, I give much credit to Red Hat. While the Raleigh, N.C.-based Linux leader is known for its server installs, this system is functioning quite well indeed as my desktop for the moment, and I wouldn't hesitate at this point to make Scientific Linux (or Fedora or RHEL, for that matter) my default desktop OS.

Now I haven't tried to install any additional apps, and I am running this on my best box, so this all goes for a new, modern system. I'm not saying that Dell made an error in shipping their new non-Windows desktops and laptops with Ubuntu, but here I am using a polished desktop environment, Flash is already installed, sound works right away with no configuration, and the thing is more responsive than Ubuntu, at least in this live CD environment (the Ubuntu live CD doesn't run nearly as well, but since I haven't done a Linux install to this box, I can't vouch for the way it works with a hard drive install).

Before I reboot and get back to my "real" work, I figure I'll try to install some applications and see how that works. I go to the Applications menu and select Add/Remove Software. There's not much there -- most of the apps are already installed. I have Open Office, but I want to install AbiWord. Where is it?

I find Yum. I figure out how to add the repositories. Then Yum crashes. I reload. I add repositories again. I can't seem to find AbiWord, but it just might not be there. Clearly I need some Red Hat tutoring. That's where six months of Debian, apt and Synaptic will get you ...

But overall I'm impressed with Scientific Linux (and by extension RHEL). Aside from the package-management trouble (which at this point I think is solely due to my inability to figure it out), this is a fine desktop setup. And did I mention that it's fast?

All I need now is a new PC that I can install either CentOS, Scientific Linux or Fedora on -- maybe Dell will sell me one.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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)

Given Linspire's recent "intellectual property" deal with Microsoft, by which MS agrees not to sue Linspire or its customers over so-called patent violations in Linux (and leaving the rest of us out to dry), should I continue to use the freelinuxemail.com service sponsored by Linspire?

First of all, I love the service -- run by fastmail.fm -- because it offers the IMAP protocol, has a super-fast Web interface and in the case of freelinuxemail.com (as opposed to the plain fastmail.fm version) comes with outgoing SMTP service for free (fastmail.fm wants you to either pay for SMTP or use your ISPs server).

All my mutt experiments during my Month on the Command Line were done with freelinuxemail.com, and while I'm not currently using the service, I still have the account there.

But given Linspire's recent actions, I'm feeling a bit squirrely about using the free e-mail. I'm a longtime user of Yahoo Mail, and I've never seen a conflict there -- if, as a so-called "journalist," I didn't actually use this stuff, how could I write about it?

But the Linspire thing has got me thinking. If I want IMAP mail, I could stick to the service provided by my ISP, DSL Extreme (which I pay for), I could upgrade my own fastmail.fm account, or find another provider entirely.

It's a dilemma. What do you think I should do?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Fluxbuntu is back, says project leader Joe Jaxx at Fluxbuntu.org of the fledgling Ubuntu variant that installs with a Fluxbox window manager (fast, light -- a great alternative to GNOME, KDE or Xfce.

Jaxx writes:

We were really expecting to release Fluxbuntu Feisty as the Final and First version of Fluxbuntu but we ran into the following problems which were critical:

1. We started 3 months into the Ubuntu Feisty development cycle, which means we lost 3 months in development time compared to everyone else (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu). This also came from starting late within the Dapper/Edgy development cycle.

...

Now we could fix all these things in Feisty, but by the time we do and release, we might have just released Gutsy (and it will also delay Gutsy Development another three months). So I have decided to have Fluxbuntu Final when Gutsy Gibbon is released in October.

...

Standard Features:

1. The ability to choose whether you want to have just VESA support or card specific support

2. The ability to choose which variant of the Fluxbuntu Desktop Environment you wish to use

3. Automounting of Removable Devices

4. On System Documentation on how to use Fluxbuntu

5. Graphical System Configuration Utilities

6. More Intuitive Menu

7. REALLY Nice Artwork

Experimental Features:

Here are some features we are looking at (might or might not be in Gutsy):

1. Document revision control

2. The ability to take your desktop with you and use it on any Fluxbuntu computer.

I liked the Fluxbox window manager so much from my use of it in Damn Small Linux that I recently took my Debian box running GNOME and installed Fluxbox on it. Once I figured out (from the Mepis help pages, no less) how to get a menu on the thing, I started to build it just the way I want it, fine-tuning the apps and menus. And now I have Fluxbox with the power and stability of Debian beneath it. All I need now is a terminal program that defaults to bigger type than Xterm (I have to ctrl-right-click every time to bump up the type size, and I'd rather have it as a default. I'm not above using the GNOME terminal, which is surprisingly quick).

I also like the new AntiX spin on Mepis that is also based on Fluxbox, which is great for low-spec systems ... as long as they have 128 MB RAM, since AntiX (and probably the Mepis code underneath it) can't handle the 64 MB limit of my $15 Laptop but runs great on my test box (Via C3 1 GHz-based thin client, CD and hard drives out of the box via a long cable, 256 MB RAM).

One of the attractions of AntiX, besides a lot of apps that I really like, is that it has Synaptic, although that feature wasn't working the last time I tried it. AntiX isn't even in beta yet, so I'm giving its developer, a guy who goes by the handle Anticapitalista, the benefit of the doubt).

Since Mepis' founder Warren Woodford ended development on MepisLite, I'd been hoping somebody would reconfigure Mepis for the rest of us ... i.e. the low-spec-running world that I'm pretty much working in all the time. And AntiX is a great step in that direction. It's what Fluxbuntu should be aspiring to.

Back to Fluxbuntu: Having a lightweight environment wrapped around the Ubuntu base is a very worthy project, and I hope Jaxx and Co. really do get things back on track.

My impressions of Fluxbuntu's last release candidate were less than glowing. Its developers have a worshipful view of the Linux command line, which is great if you're running a command-line distro -- and anybody can install a stripped-down Ubuntu and build it up from there. But in Fluxbuntu, it all seemed to be done at the expense of even script-drive configuration help (I didn't expect any GUI configuration utilities). If you do throw people into an environment meant for experts only, it's nice to give the non-experts the tools they need to make use of what you're offering them.

When I tried the last Fluxbuntu release candidate, right out of the box I had to figure out how to set a static IP address at the command line. It's really not that hard -- except when you've never done it before. What's needed with Fluxbuntu is extensive documentation on how to set up and use it. Having a couple of good Linux reference books is a must for anybody using the OS, more so for a distro like Fluxbuntu, in which getting your hands dirty, so to speak, is needed on a regular basis.

Even so, I'd sure like to see Fluxbuntu rise again and become a full member of the Ubuntu family.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lyz Krunbach of the O'Reilly Network, a real sysadmin who knows way, way more than I do, writes a nice entry about when she uses Debian and when Ubuntu (in her case, Xubuntu with the Xfce desktop).

The question comes about because, as I've discovered myself, installing and running Debian isn't really any more difficult than Ubuntu (which is supposed to be the newbie version of Debian). And yes, Debian does run faster. Why? I don't know. All I know is that it does.

Here's a sample of Lyz's post:

Some people prefer the older, thoroughly tested packages included in Debian Stable, others want the similiarly stable but consistently newer packages in Ubuntu Stable. Speed is important as well, a couple people I spoke with were unimpressed with the “bloat” that a full default Ubuntu install brings along, and at times expressed that newer desktop environments were slower and heavier in general than the older ones, thus creating a preference for the older packages in Debian.

Today I continue to use Xubuntu on my desktop, I did a server install which decreases much of the previously mentioned bloat. I did switch back to Debian on my laptop for a couple reasons, I wanted to consolidate my Debian development onto one machine, and I fell into the old hardware camp where the older version of XFCE in Debian simply ran faster than the version in Xubuntu. The wireless on my Debian laptop gives me some trouble, and requires manual configuration, but it’s something I can live with and is part of the “well-supported hardware” caveat.

But the crux of the entry is that after years of talk about it, Linux is really ready for the desktop. Not exactly news, but this time it's more "real."

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I pondered for a while whether this story belonged on "Click." It is, after all, step one in what could become the ultimate anti-clicking culture.

Turns out Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Inc. is developing technology to help coach potatoes alleviate the strain on their remote-control finger.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're reading this blog, I can safely assume that you are fond of gadgets and technology. If that's indeed the case, you may want to consider signing up for the European Space Agency's guinea-pig program (okay, that's not the official title).

On the plus side, you get to play with all the gadgets astronauts - okay, cosmonauts - work with during actual space missions and you get paid for it!

The down side? You and 5 other people get to spend 520 days in confinement in a small facility in Moscow with a rationed diet, limited water and no booze!

From the ESA website:

"In order to investigate the human factors of such a mission ESA has teamed up with the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) and will send a joint crew of six on a 520-day simulated mission to Mars.

The simulation follows the mission profile of a real Mars mission, including a exploration phase on the surface of Mars. Nutrition will be identical to that provided on board the International Space Station.

The simulations will take place here on Earth inside a special facility in Moscow. A precursor 105-day study is scheduled to start by mid-2008, possibly followed by another 105-day study, before the full 520-day study begins in late 2008 or early 2009."

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple Inc. announced Monday that its highly-anticipated iPhone (coming to a retailer near you on June 29) will have a longer-than-expected battery life (8 hours of talk time, 7 hours of video playback, 6 hours of Internet use, 24 hours of music playback and 10 days on stand-by mode), leaving the competition in the dust. Currently, devices such as Palm Inc.'s Treo and Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry Curve offer 4 hours of talk time.

Apple said in January that it expected the iPhone to offer 5 hours of "talk/video/browsing" and up to 16 hours of audio playback.

Apple's announcement is good news for us long-distance commuters. Now we can weave our way through traffic all the way from L.A. to New York without having to recharge.

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 6:02 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 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)

When I did my Xubuntu install (the same is true for Ubuntu), I immediately started Firefox and went to my first Web page with embedded Flash.

And then it happened.

Firefox asked me if I wanted to download and install the Flash plugin. Why say no? So I said yes.

Problem: Dailynews.com -- the Web site from the newspaper I work for -- is covered in Flash Addsads, content come-ons, etc., and it was dragging my old systems to a crawl. On a modern 3 GHz system, it's OK to run a ton of flash. Not so on a 1 GHz converted thin client with questionable video and audio throughput.

But how to get rid of Flash? It's not so easy. Mozilla's help pages offer instructions on how to expunge Flash from Windows and Mac OS X, but nothing on getting rid of it in Linux. It's not an installed package, so Synaptic doesn't even know it's there. Apt-get also knows nothing. Why? Because it's hidden.

Finally, after a few sessions of Googling for an answer, this Adobe page provides the answer:

Removal instructions

Manual removal (for users who installed the plug-in via Install script):

Delete libflashplayer.so binary and flashplayer.xpt file in directory /home//.mozilla/plugins/

And for those with RPM package systems:

RPM removal:

As root, enter in terminal: # rpm -e flash-plugin Click Enter and follow prompts

On a related note, a commenter said I should try the Firefox extension Stop Autoplay. It didn't work.

But the other method does. I'm Flash-less -- and on my low-powered system, that's the way it's going to stay.

Update: After a half-hour, I can say definitively that my system is running much, much better. Flash is one of those things that's great if you've got the power but a CPU-hogging nightmare if you don't.

Bottom line, choosing applications that match your hardware (and needs) is the way to go. No matter the window manager (or "desktop environment"), some apps just need a lot of juice.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Consider the MIL-spec Panasonic Toughbook 30:

Out in the field or down in the dirt, the durable Panasonic Toughbook 30 is built to take a beating. MIL-STD-810F-tested for ruggedness, this brawny workhorse is encased in magnesium alloy, with durability designed into every seal, hinge and connector. Plus, as the industry's fastest fully-rugged mobile PC, it's built for lightening-quick processing and wireless connectivity. Communicate in real time from remote areas, access databases online and run sophisticated software applications even in the harshest environments.

Or get a really old one for $169.99.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Put together this primo system, The "Money No Object" desktop PC.

But for those with less money, ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes also spec'd out a $500 budget PC.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the days before the Thin Puppy's CF card died, I was running my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with flash memory instead of a conventional hard drive. And since Puppy Linux takes great care NOT to write to flash very often, the media is supposed to last virtually forever. Why mine died is a mystery, but it wasn't due to wear (more likely I killed it with static electricity).

Now that I'm running Puppy 2.16 (new to me this week!), I've been thinking about going back to flash for this thin-client box -- I'm booting from CD and also have a regular-sized 14 GB hard drive connected outside the box (yes, I truly am thinking outside the box -- or my PC is).

But the conventional wisdom is that for "normal" operating systems that don't use RAM disks, you'll kill flash quickly with the constant writes required by the OS.

But today on Low End Mac, that question didn't come up for these guys who are running their Mac laptops from flash memory. That link was to the letters about this original article, which, in turn, refers to this article about doing it with a Powerbook 1400 (one of which I have ... but which is too frustrating at this point to even contemplate using for my everyday computing for reasons that have nothing to do with flash). This final article -- filled with woe about flash cards that didn't work with the 1400 -- does address longevity of the flash media, saying it should work for "years and years."

I'm going to try it again (maybe even with Debian), but I'm also going to back up all my data ...

And again, if you want to boot from flash but are nervous, give the new Puppy 2.16 a try. I'm in my first full day of use, but so far all is going very, very well.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When was the last time you installed Windows NT 4.0? If your answer is "never," I believe you. If you've done it countless times, do I have your sympathy? I need it.

My most recent major Windows upgrade (chronicled on my This Old PC blog) was taking a Win 98se box to Windows 2000. For those who think Windows has some kind of compatibility advantage over Linux, let me recount how in Windows 98 I didn't have a prayer of getting my cheap Airlink 101 wireless card to work, USB was spotty, and the thing was painfully slow to boot and to run.

Once I did the upgrade to Windows 2000 and added all the service packs and upgrades to that old 333 MHz PC, I was able to get wireless to work, but it didn't last long. Soon enough, the PC stopped recognizing the card (even though Puppy Linux always recognized it but could never make it work ... but that's another story).

So in the interests of comparing Windows performance with Linux on the same hardware -- my test machine, a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA Samuel processor, 256 MB RAM, mini-ITX motherboard (which I now know is called a "micro-mini-ITX, measuring 17 x 19 centimeters) with single IDE header, single RAM socket, built-in networking, graphics and sound) -- I will endeavor to install a Windows system, download enough open-source applications to make it work and see how Windows does in my various desktop tests.

My Windows 2000 Professional disc is labeled as an upgrade, so I get out the only working Windows full-install disc I have -- Windows NT Workstation 4.0, circa 1996. I have some trouble formatting the 14.4 GB IDE drive -- the installer keeps saying the drive or partition is too big. So I keep making it smaller until I can continue. I end up with a 4 GB partition for the C: drive. I have the choice of a FAT or NTFS filesystem, and I opt for NTFS. The partition is initially formatted as FAT, but I decide to continue on, and it is converted to NTFS a little later in the install.

The process goes pretty well, except for my network controller, which isn't detected -- and I have no idea which driver to choose. Once I do select an alternate, I have to go on the install disc and look for it ... nothing automatic or helpful there.

So I play around with Windows NT 4.0 for a few minutes. Among its stellar attributes are Internet Explorer for NT version 2.0 (and remember, I had no networking, so I couldn't really try it out). And then there are the usual suspects -- WordPad, NotePad, the calculator -- all the exciting things a bare Windows system is known for.

My only chance is the upgrade to Windows 2000. In my unschooled opinion, Windows really only became useful in the world of wireless networking and USB with Windows 2000, and I've had pretty good luck with it on my Pentium II box, my wireless problem notwithstanding. And I've said many times how much I like Windows XP (for which I don't have a disc, or I would install that).

And since I could only create a 4 GB partition for Windows, there's plenty of room to dual-boot with the Linux of my choice.

I get a couple "spoolsv.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created" messages, but the "successfully installed" message does appear, and the system reboots. However, upon logging in, the message reappeared.

But I am able to continue.

The good news: Windows 2000 finds my network adapter.

The not-so-bad, but not-great: It doesn't remember my static IP settings, so I re-enter them.

The nice thing about Windows 2000, as opposed to Windows 98, is that when you make a change to the network parameters, there's no need to reboot.

The graphics look like total crap. For some reason, the highest resolution I can select is 800 by 600 with 16 colors (not 16-bit, but 16 COLORS). I haven't seen graphics this bad since ... we had Windows 98 (not even the "se" edition) here at the Daily News. Ah ... fond memories of crap hardware. And I'm back in the wonderful world of Internet Explorer 5. I'm looking at the Dailynews.com home page, which is lousy with Flash, and now the browser is asking me whether or not I want to install the Adobe Flash Player. I accept, even though I've got to get IE 6 and Firefox on this box. Not to mention Open Office, the GIMP (for which I'll need to also get the GTK+ runtime libraries), AbiWord, Irfanview, EditPad and so much more.

During the Flash install, IE crashes. Just like old times. Now I can't run IE at all -- it crashes upon launch every time. Thanks MS and Adobe! I reboot and regroup.

IE is still spotty, I can't figure out how to remove Flash, but I've managed to keep it running. Now I'm going to do a Windows Update, which should take plenty of time. Right now it's hanging -- but that's typical with Windows Update, something I do have experience with.

Windows Update hangs, IE crashes ... I manage to find the Macromedia folder and move it to My Documents. I still can't delete it -- one of the files is "in use." Remember files you can't delete? It's one of the many charms of Windows.

My "Windows Update" is hanging ... literally ... but now that I can actually use IE, I'm downloading all the open-source software I'll need for my test. Compared to the average Linux distribution's package management, this is brutal ... a hanging Web page. I've encountered this in the past, and what I do is start the Windows Update process and then walk away from the computer for as many hours as it takes. I'm not all that confident at the moment.

AbiWord, the GIMP and the GTK+ runtime libraries, and Firefox all download in minutes. Open Office still has half an hour to go (much of this is due to a slow mirror). I begin to download the free Avast antivirus package and discover something: There's a version for Linux. I'm no expert on viruses or antivirus programs, and I've heard that viruses are rare in Linux, even rarer for Mac's OS X ... but it's nice to know that antivirus protection is available.

Back to the Windows install ... now the system isn't recognizing my USB flash drive ... so much for transferring files that way. (Later it comes back in Windows 2000.)

After the Windows Update goes nowhere, I get an idea. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, probably changed the Web address. I go to Microsoft.com and navigate to the Windows 2000 home page. Now Windows Update starts working. You'd think MS would offer a "redirect," but clearly they're not paying much attention to the pre-XP crowd.

First I have to install Service Pack 4. Do I have to get IE 6 separately? I think so.

Application aside: I'm writing this entry in AbiWord for Windows. I love an application that's small, loads fast and does what I want. Give me the option of "typographical" (aka "smart") quotes, and I'll go to the mat for you as best word-processor ever.

Installing the GIMP: The GTK+ runtime environment is a ZIP file ... and with Windows, you can't unzip without installing an unzipping program. So I have to download PKZIP.

PKZIP for Windows 9 asks for a license key. I opt for the "30 day trial." After a few months of Linux, I forgot that Windows doesn't even allow you to unzip a file without paying extra.

I get GIMP installed, and now I'm installing Open Office. My 4 GB of disk space is rapidly filling. I have space left to create a new partition ... but can I make this partition bigger? Working with Windows disks is far from my strong point. And no, I don't have Norton. It's great that users of Windows need to keep paying for essential utilities.

1.8 GB of my 3.9 GB C: drive is full now.

Once I have Open Office installed, I can close it and relaunch in under 5 seconds in this Windows 2000 environment. I know that it only launches so quickly because most of it is preloaded in RAM, whether I'm running it or not -- but it remains impressive, and if OO was that important to me, I'd appreciate the quick loading and tolerate the drain on system resources. That said, I'd like the preloading to be user-selectable, both in Windows and Linux (where OO doesn't sit in RAM waiting to be launched, I believe).

Even in Windows 2000, my graphics remain at 800 x 600 at 16 colors, and everything looks terrible? On this monitor and with the built-in VGA in the thin client, I can do 1024 x 768 in Linux at 16-bit color, not just 16 colors.

AbiWord launches as quickly as it does in Linux.

I try to start GIMP. It won't run. Too bad I dumped the install files. The much-smaller Irfanview does launch. The one thing I don't like about Irfanview is that when I shrink a photo to, say, 200 pixels wide, and then add a 1-pixel black border, the photo is now 202 pixels wide. The GIMP (and most other programs) cut in on the photo with the border and retain the original dimensions. It's something I can live with. But I wonder why the GIMP won't run. I did install the GTK+ environment.

After another install, GIMP still won't run. So I go down a version to 2.0.5. During the install of that version, I am told my GTK+ is too old ... so I install THAT again, and finally get GIMP 2.0.5 to run. Now my graphics still look like hell -- I can't really see what any images really look like -- it all looks like pixilated pop art -- but I do have the GIMP. And it loads in 20 seconds. I had load times between 20 and 30 seconds with GIMP in Debian 4.0, and 60 seconds in Xubuntu on this same computer. But as far as selecting and editing photos, Win 2000 is useless with the current state of the display. I think I need a Super VGA driver. Hunting down video drivers is not something I've had to deal with in a long time.

Now that GIMP 2.0.5 did install, I retry 2.2, and it goes through. The new GIMP starts in a little over 20 seconds -- same as the older version.

Firefox starts in about 10 seconds -- pretty good. It's a lot slower on my 333 MHz system.

The next day, I decided to try a clean install from the Windows 2000 disc. The disc detected my previous Windows install but still let me start over -- and this time I could make the disc partitions of my choosing. So I made a 6 GB C: drive and a 2 GB D: drive, with with the rest left for future Linux partitions.

On this second install, I hope my VGA/Super VGA problem will be taken care of. Hopes dashed, I still have 800 x 600 with 16 colors.

Now I have the base Windows 2000 installed, so it's time to install Service Pack 4 and then do all the updates -- 55 of them.

And while these updates were downloading and now installing, I decided to lift the cover on the thin client's box and once again try to identify the motherboard. I knew it wasn't a VIA, even though that's the maker of the CPU and chipset. I see the letters EVEM written in the middle, and do a Google search for that. Turns out it is an EVEm motherboard from ECS, with a PDF manual here and a page of BIOS and driver updates here.

The manual confirmed what I already knew from Maxspeed -- the memory maxes out at 256 MB. I wish it weren't so, because 512 MB would make things so much easier. The manual's somewhat detailed info on BIOS settings will be helpful. And there is a video driver, which just might be very helpful in Windows, bringing my resolution past 800 x 600 (no driver needed for any Linux I've tried, of course).

After the Windows updates install, I download PKZIP again (all the downloads from yesterday's install died with it), then download the ECS video driver for Windows 2000. I do the install, reboot and have 1024 x 768 video in 16-bit color. The 15-inch monitor looks better in 800 x 600, but most Web pages I'm using won't fit comfortably in that space, so I'll keep it cranked up for now. At least the colors look good.

I didn't have to wipe the drive and do the Win 2K reinstall today, but I was able to create a bigger C: drive than with the NT 4.0 base, and I had to see if Windows 2000 as a base would take care of my driver problem (it didn't). And in the meanwhile, I learned exactly what kind of motherboard I have and now possess a 40-page PDF manual describing it in some detail. But the big coup in learning where the motherboard came from was finding the video driver that enabled the display to look normal.

So I download the PDF manual on the thin client (I found it on my Dell box while the updates were rolling). ... and I can't open it. Windows 2000 doesn't come with a PDF reader. ... Gotta go to Adobe and download one. I've gotten used to not needing to do that -- once again, every Linux distro I've tried has built-in PDF support, all for reading PDFs and most for creating them, too.

After the Windows 2000 install is done, there is plenty of space left. I have a Ubuntu 6.06 LTS disc, so I install that -- and all goes perfectly. Ubuntu installs GRUB, detects my Windows partition and allows for dual-booting, all without heavy geeking of any kind. Why 6.06 and not 7.04? Since Windows 2000 is old and "stable," I figured I'd put the most stable Ubuntu around on it.

Overall the Windows 2000 install process went OK. It was no harder than installing the many Linux distros I've tried (the ones that worked, anyway) and certainly no easier. And for the hardware I have, it is generally detected better in Linux than by Windows.

The biggest difference between Windows and Linux is that Microsoft's OS comes to the desktop with very bare bones. There's IE5, Wordpad, Notepad ... and not much else. But the average Linux distribution contains dozens of utilities, full office suites, powerful graphics programs, multiple text editors,mail and FTP clients and much more. And all of that software is FOSS (free, open-source software) not shareware that compels you to pay if you want to keep using the program beyond a short trial period.

Since I already had the Windows 2000 disc, it cost me nothing to install it. But if I didn't have it, I'd be hard pressed to fork over a couple hundred bucks for the privilege of using Windows. And the greatest thing about Linux, with its many distros, desktops and applications is that you can try and never have to buy. It's a powerful thing, indeed.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'm sure all real geeks know about this already, but there are vi-instruction-emblazoned mugs, shirts, bibs and aprons available via Cafe Press.

I'm sure I'll get my vi sea legs eventually -- if I don't abandon all hope before then.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm tired of debating the relative merits of Linux's various desktop
environments and distributions. Tired of reading about them, tired of
writing about them.

So today an experiment begins:

My month at the command line.

I'm going back. To the $ prompt. No GNOME. No KDE. Not even Xfce, IceWM or
Fluxbox. No X at all. Just the console.

I could use one of my standard Linux systems and either not start X, or kill X and drop down to the command line. But I wanted a command-line system, one built that way.

Being partial to Puppy Linux, I looked into OneBone Puppy -- a special mix of the live-CD distro
without a GUI. And it had Elinks, a text-only browser. I burned a CD and booted it.

I still like the idea of running a live CD and keeping the filesystem in RAM. But more than that, I needed a system that would allow me to install the maximum number of packages -- and do it easily -- so I could get as much done on it as possible.

I went Debian.

I grabbed a hard drive from my stack (yes, I have a stack -- what's it to you?), hooked it up to the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, put the Debian 4.0 Net Install disc into the CD drive and began. This particular hard drive already had Xubuntu 7.04 on it, so I shrunk that partition, made a new 2 GB space for my command-line-only Debian syste and continued forward. When the time came to select the type of Debian install I wanted, I chose a mail server. I could've left all the boxes blank, but I figure I might as well put something on there. I'm not hurting for disk space in this setup, and I just might want to learn a little about what makes a mail server tick. But before running there's walking and crawling.

The reason I chose Debian? Apt-get. I know apt-get works with the Debian-derived Ubuntu. Damn Small Linux can also be installed on the hard drive and made to function as a Debian system. But Debian has worked so well as a traditional desktop system for me, I wanted to keep the core in my command-line system as well.

Once the Debian installer finished, it was time to apt-get as many things as I thought I needed. I started with the Elinks text-based Web browser and then added a bunch of stuff I read about in Michael Stutz's
"The Linux Cookbook."

Here's what I put on so far (with descriptions, because I can't remember
what half of it is):

alsa-utils -- sound configuration
cdtool -- CD player (doesn't work because I don't have the CD audio hooked up to the motherboard)
ee -- allegedly easy text editor
elinks -- text-based Web browser
emacs -- big daddy of text editors
fetchmail -- gets POP mail
fetchmailconf -- configures fetchmail (but doesn't work without X)
imagemagick -- edits images from the command line (this I've got to see to believe
joe -- easier text editor
lynx -- a more popular text-based Web browser
mc -- Midnight Commander file manager
mpg321 -- console-based mp3 player
sox -- sound program
splay -- another console-based mp3 player
wv -- MS Word file translator, now part of AbiWord and KWord
zgv -- Console-based image viewer

And in case you're wondering, I'm writing this in joe because I'm so rusty
in vi that I can barely get through two lines of text before the box starts
beeping uncontrollably and my co-workers begin complaining about the noise. Joe's not bad, but it's no vi. In any case, I have plenty of text editors to choose from. I didn't even mention vim, the juiced-up vi that's already included in the base Debian.

This isn't the shock to the system (my brain, not the computing system) that it might have been. I've been here before.

When I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz in the mid- to late '80s, IBM-compatible PCs and Macs were expensive, and the sole Mac lab was clear across a large, wooded campus. And who wanted to print on Imagewriters, even in 1986?

Unlike most universities, where timeshared computer use was meant for and
restricted to those in computer science, engineering and the like, UCSC had a policy and a mission to
bring the rest of the world into the universe of networked computing.

The thin, photocopied instruction manual, "Unix for Luddites," by Scott Brookie,
cost about $2 at the campus' Bay Tree Bookstore, and it gave away the secrets of
Unix.

First secret: Any student could get an account on a machine named Unix
B. Yes, there was a Unix A, and a C through probably G. Unix B was the only
one of those systems not connected to the Internet -- so mail only went to others in the system, and there was no access to Usenet (and nobody knew what it was, so we didn't miss it).

But Unix B did accommodate about 25 or so users at a time via terminals in 24-hour labs at every one of the campus' eight geographically dispersed colleges.

The terminals we hacked away on were mostly of the adm3a and VT100 variety -- and even then the adm3a was considered a dinosaur. Some labs had highly prized Wyse terminals that
weren't so fuzzy and had great-feeling keyboards -- and those went fast
during prime paper-writing season. And did I mention the giant line printers kicking out that giant green and blue paper? Those were for drafts only -- UCSC and Unix B had something else with which to entice the average essay-writing student:

A real laser printer.

The main point of "Unix for Luddites," and of the UCSC Unix push, was to get
regular students to use Unix to write papers (in vi), format them (in
nroff), and then pick up the printouts -- MADE ON AN HONEST-TO-GOD LASER PRINTER
-- at a computer center buried in a little-traveled area of the campus.

A laser printer! At the time, Apple had just begun selling its first 300-dpi LaserWriter for $6,995. Having access to a laser printer was quite a lure; that and having a teacher's assistant in my Shakespeare class berate me for sloppy typing (I had a MANUAL typewriter and a lot of WiteOut, for crying out loud) was enough to plunge me into the mysterious world of Unix.

And there were a lot of people doing the same thing. In the days before the
Web, before chat rooms, before enough people had PCs and modems and could
connect to PC-based computer bulletin boards, typing the who command on Unix B let you know the logins of the other two dozen users on the system (and it was often so well-used,
you had to wait to log on until somebody else logged off). You could send
mail and use the talk program -- the latter being as much of a time-soak back then as instant-messaging is today.

But back to the command line. I want to see just how much I can do without a
GUI. I don't think I can blog directly from here -- those Web interfaces are
just too complex for a command-line, text-based browser. I guess I should've
put X on here so I could use Firefox, but that would be defeating the
purpose. First of all, I need to figure out how I can get POP or IMAP mail at the command line. Then I'll look into getting an e-mail bridge to Movable Type like the one that makes Blogger.com so useful.

So far, my biggest discovery (thanks, "Linux Cookbook"!) is Imagemagick,
which can supposedly resize photos from the command line. Can't
wait to try that one. And if I can somehow get this entry out of the Debian
box and into one with a modern browser, you'll see it on the Daily News
Click blog. (Note: I couldn't figure out how to mount my USB flash drive, so I rebooted into Xubuntu and grabbed this entry from the Debian partition.)

Meanwhile, I've got to make a decision: vi or emacs? I need to buckle down and learn one of them. I can't use joe forever.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com has all the reaction to Dell's announcement that it will load Ubuntu Linux onto select desktop and laptop models. It's a good way to find out the mood of those behind the other Linux distros, including Red Hat, Novell, Xandros, Linspire plus a bunch of analysts. It's important reading, for this week anyway.

Here's the part I keyed in on:

Looking ahead, (Raven Zachary, the 451 Group's open-source research director) thinks, "We'll see some wait-and-see from the other hardware vendors: 'Let's see how Dell does with this deal.' Also, you could see Red Hat, Novell, and others swarm in to the other hardware vendors to avoid an Ubuntu sweep."

So can we expect a lot of similar deals in the coming weeks/months? Who's going to bring HP/Compaq, Lenovo and the other hardware makers to the mat?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caitlyn Martin of O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter blog, today writes about the Ten Tec RX-320D, a shortwave radio receiver controlled via your PC. The default software runs on Windows, but there's also a Linux package that Martin herself helps maintain for both Ubuntu and Vector Linux:

Why a PC radio? First, I can maintain a nice database with the rx320 software that lets me go directly to a large variety of broadcasts with frequencies and times, all recorded based on my experience of what I can receive clearly at my location. I just right click on the virtual radio on my screen, click frequency database in the menu, choose my station listing, and pick what I want. There’s no meaningful limit on the number of stations I can record information about. Much like a spreadsheet I can sort my stations anyway that’s convenient at the moment with a click or two on a column header.

Part of my geekiness is that I've done a bit of shortwave listening over the years (I sold my Sony ICF-2010 radio on eBay last year -- the money was too good), and I'm also a licensed, yet inactive amateur radio operator -- call letters KC6FYL -- unless my ticket has expired. I can tell you that at $349, this Ten-Tec radio it is quite a bargain, even though it looks like a plain black box -- the power is in your PC, and it's better to have a PC controlling your radio than a bunch of knobs, switches and onboard computer components that can fail.

And TenTec is an American company that makes this stuff in the Great Smoky Mountains

Also on the O'Reilly Linux blog: Julia Kemp talks briefly about sound problems in Debian. Yep, I've had them too, and one of her suggestions has worked very well for me: running alsamixer at the command line and PUMPING UP THE VOLUME. Works every time.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I spent the day upgrading my new Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) installation to Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), and since Xubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, far and away the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, I expected -- and still expect -- a lot more from it.

During my nearly month-long Thin Puppy Torture Test (chronicled extensively in this blog), I managed to get quite a bit of work done with my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA processor, 256 MB RAM, no disk drives at all), most of it related to producing this and other Daily News blogs. From extensive Web surfing to light photo editing, heavy writing and use of Movable Type for Web publishing, Puppy Linux 2.14 performed admirably, even if, along the way, I lost the ability to mount external drives and couldn't really deal with large audio files due to the lack of available memory. But for the basics, Puppy did the job, day in and day out.

With Xubuntu, I hooked up a 14.4 GB hard drive and a 32x CD-RW drive. And by the time I installed Xubuntu, I expected to get even more real work done. This time I seek to up the ante, doing work for Dailynews.com, which entails working with larger photo files (downloaded from services such as GettyImages.com and WireImage.com, although the latter offers a choice of smaller images to begin with).

And eventually, it means, installing some version of Wine (allowing use of Windows programs without the Windows OS installed), with Internet Explorer 6 running, because the Daily News Web publishing system requires IE. (And for the love of God, WHY??)

As far as text editors go, I can use just about anything. Even the anemic Mousepad editor that comes with Xubuntu would be OK, even though I prefer Geany, and even EditPad for Windows. And since Xubuntu's word processor, AbiWord is so light on resources and quick-loading, that could really serve as a text editor for my purposes.

And when it came to image editing, Xubuntu offers the GIMP, which though part of the GNOME office suite (featuring the loosely tied-together AbiWord, Gnumeric for spreadsheets and the GIMP), is a true resource hog, taking a full minute to load in Xubuntu on my 1 GHz box. For my purposes at least, I'm very familiar with the GIMP, as I've been using the Windows version for at least a year (and never having used Photoshop, had nothing to "unlearn"). So already the GIMP is a mismatch for Xubuntu, if indeed one is running it on "low-spec" hardware. I missed mtPaint from Puppy (which I just might install for Xubuntu, if I can figure it out), but I didn't miss the paint program that comes with Damn Small Linux, which doesn't do nearly what I need.

Long story short, I did work on about five photos for Dailynews.com, but the times required to save them in the GIMP really had me thinking about whether or not Xubuntu on this platform could handle this level of work. But I had to stop myself. I don't recall working with original images this big in Puppy 2.14. I mostly took images already sized for the Web and then made them even smaller. Even the GIMP in Xubuntu could make relatively quick work of that. And as far as general Web work with Firefox in Xubuntu, it went smoothly. I was even able to add the Flash plug-in for Firefox without working up a geekish sweat (translation: no command line needed, no Synaptic Package Manager, just clicking in the bar on Firefox to get the needed plug-in -- it was positively Windows-like).

When I write my full-length review of Xubuntu, I'll recount my odyssey of getting network printing working. Yes, it did take me most of the day, and yes, I'm surprised at how unintuitive Xubuntu's printer-configuration utility actually is (I gave up and used the CUPS interface), and I'm shocked that I got printing working much, much easier in both Puppy and DSL (and MepisLite ... and Slax and Knoppix and even standard Ubuntu Dapper). But that's another battle to recount on another day.

Suffice it to say that my first full day with Xubuntu Feisty was maybe a bit less bumpy than expected, especially given the high expectations I have for something that's billed as a speedier version of the hottest desktop Linux distribution on the planet -- however dubious such a distinction may be.

But in my search for answers on whether or not Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop interface is truly ready for real work (or at least for what it is that I do to put out Web pages and newspapers), I'm going to have to compare it to Zenwalk 4.4.1, which features the same interface but is built upon Slackware, as opposed to Ubuntu/Xubuntu's base of Debian. And I'll have to do a traditional hard-drive install of Puppy to see how it performs in that kind of traditional install (and whether that kind of setup allows me to deal with the kinds of large files that I do, in fact, have to process during the course of my day).

And last ... and only least if you think of it that way ... I will do a standard Windows 2000 install on the 1 GHz thin client (because I've got a 2000 disc and not one with XP on it) ... load it up with the requisite open-source apps (Open Office, AbiWord, the GIMP, Avast antivirus, Firefox, even SeaMonkey) to have a truly well-played field on the same hardware before drawing any definite conclusions in the battle for OS supremacy on my low-spec desktop. And honestly, as I work on this entry at home on an iBook G4 1 GHz/384MB laptop with OS X 10.3.9, and seeing how well it runs, I can't leave Apple and its BSD-derived operating system out of the equation.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

It's not every day you boot a computer with the drives flopped on top of the case, but that's what I'm doing with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, and I still can't believe how much heat a standard hard drive throws off. That thing is HOT. Today I'm using a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80 GB drive, and its listed power consumption is +5V 0.85 amps, +12V 0.75 amps. All that heat must be a waste of electricity. All the more reason for better, faster flash memory to eventually replace conventional magnetic hard disk drives.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

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

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

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

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

As I wrote in the final Thin Puppy Torture Test entry, I wanted to try some other distributions with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, so I finally shut it down.

After that, I opened up the box, unplugged the CF-to-IDE adapter and plugged in a 14.4 GB IDE hard drive by IBM and a 32X TDK CD-RW drive. I had trouble before even booting many Debian-derived Linux distributions, and I'm not exactly well-versed in the jumper settings for a hard drive and CD drive chained to a single IDE interface (there's only one IDE plug on this VIA-equipped Mini-ITX motherboard).

After leaving both drives as masters, nothing was happening, so I made the HD the master and the CD the slave, and then both were recognized by the BIOS.

And since this is a thin client, there's nowhere to physically mount any drives, so the thin client box is on its side, with the power cable (I had to use a splitter to power both drives from the single power plug) and IDE ribbon cable poking out from the box and the drives stacked on top of it. Man, I didn't know that a hard drive throws off so much heat. It's a far cry from when the thin client was running Puppy 2.14 from a Compact Flash card.

So I had a bunch of discs ready to try. I had previously booted Zen Walk 4.2, so I didn't want to try that one right away. The Fedora Core live CD wouldn't boot -- it kept rebooting the machine in a loop without actually doing anything. I tried to run the alternate install CD of Xubuntu 6.10, and the install went pretty far before I got repeated warnings like this:

Debootstrap Warning
Warning: Failure while installing base packages. This will be re-attempted up to 5 times.

I hit enter and kept going a bunch of times, but the install just wouldn't happen. Previously, the Xubuntu live CD wouldn't run, so I didn't even try it.

I tried openSUSE's net-install CD, and that wouldn't boot either.

Now this box is pretty untypical and tempermental -- when I first got it, the only thing that would run was Puppy Linux. DSL wouldn't boot then, but I tried it again and it not only booted but installed on the hard drive. Near the end of the install, the installer script told me I'd have to reboot, and I figured the system would do it automatically. It didn't, so I rebooted with ctrl-alt-del. The machine restarted and asked me to set root and user passwords (I elected multi-user during the install). I set the password and was off and running with the new DSL 3.3 on my hard drive!

The fact that of all the Linux distributions I've tried, I've only gotten Puppy, DSL and Zen Walk to boot is a testament to the people who put them together.

I should probably try to install Xubuntu again ... or Zen Walk, possibly dual-booting with DSL (I selected Grub as the boot loader, not that I know how to tweak it yet).

But so far, DSL 3.3 is running great on the thin client. Configuration of static IP networking was easy -- it's pretty much the same as in Knoppix, with a terminal window opening and a standard script running. I haven't checked the sound yet (gotta plug in the headphones), but I'll do that soon.

And I'm writing this entry on Firefox 1.0.6, the main browser with DSL 3.3, which also offers the light Dillo that runs so great in Puppy (but which really can't do Movable Type as well as a CSS-equipped browser).

As I wrap up this entry, I have no doubt that just about all of these distros mentioned would install on a "normal" system, and I acknowledge and understand that a thin client with a rare motherboard, non-Intel (or AMD) CPU and single IDE header might be far from normal, but the fact that some distros will boot on this somewhat exotic platform begs the question -- why won't they all?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I took the Thin Puppy -- the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client now running Puppy Linux 2.14 -- to the brink. This thin client -- with no storage other than RAM memory (I booted it from CD and then disconnected that drive; I lost the ability to mount the external USB flash drive on day 8), has been running with about 41 MB of free RAM for storage. And as I learned before the Thin Puppy Torture Test, when I only had 128 MB of RAM (I'm now at the maximum for this motherboard, 256 MB), Puppy doesn't like it when you get really low on RAM.

I downloaded a podcast -- about 35 MB, I think, and that took RAM very low. It was "Linux Action Show's" interview with Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu (and I encourage you to listen to the show, since it's very well-done).

Well, downloads to the RAM-based filesystem take away from ... free RAM, and as I dipped below 8 MB free, the system didn't exactly cooperate. I couldn't run Gxine to listen to the podcast in OGG format -- it just wouldn't run, and there are two processes that I can't seem to kill out of memory.

Eventually I downloaded the .mp3 version and played it with madplayer, which can't be stopped or paused, but which does play .mp3s without skipping on this audio-challenged thin client.

So the Thin Puppy is now on its 18th day. I've been testing the new version of Puppy Linux (2.15CE) on my other box, and it's quite a radical departure from previous versions. First of all, IceWM is the default desktop, and there are many other differences and enhancements. A full review is forthcoming.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UPDATE ON APRIL 11: It was all a joke, I guess "April 1" should've tipped me off:

It didn't happened April 1, but you'd think it did, according to this portion of the Ubuntu forums.

I've given Fluxbuntu middling marks in the past, but I see why the Linux community needs it. To have the lightness of Damn Small Linux (albeit without the ease of use) along with the repositories, support and sheer numbers of Ubuntu would be a very powerful thing indeed. But joking about how your distro is doing better than it really is? I guess if you said something like "CIA adopts Fluxbuntu as spies' distro of choice," it would've been absurd enough, but making your joke along the lines of "if we didn't have so much work to do, what I'm joking about could really happen," that's just a little bit sad.

Where Fluxbuntu can make up for its obsession with "the CLI," as they call it (command-line interface), they'll have to really step it up when it comes to documentation. I think plenty of users would be OK going to the command line for many more things if they knew exactly what to do once they got there. There has to be a Fluxbuntu Cookbook in the mix. (I'm reading the No Starch Press version of the "Linux Cookbook," and am so far very impressed.)

In keeping with this now-not-happening "promotion" for Fluxbuntu, its Web site is down so it can be rejiggered to reflect the change, the forum writer bodhi.zazen incorrectly reports:

Yes, the Fluxbuntu web site is being re-designed to reflect the change. The (first) Fluxbuntu release is due out within a few days of Feisty (Previous releases have been n builds and beta builds).

and on the expansion of the Ubuntu brand ...

The numerous "versions" of Ubuntu are a sign of a large healthy community of Ubuntu users and a testament to the flexibility, versatility, and power of Linux. With a large community there are varied needs. The various "versions" of Ubuntu allow us all to configure the Ubuntu OS the way we like. Personally I like the clean elegance of Fluxbox and I appreciate Fluxbuntu as a lean, fast, and efficient OS.

Fluxbuntu is NOT an ubuntu desktop installation + fluxbox.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What kind of a geek are you, anyway? Look at this guy from the Inquirer, who turns a pile of parts into a complete PC, loads PCLinux, gets it all working with almost ... no work ... and even takes care of nature's call -- all in 38 minutes.

After the install:

I whipped out my trusty USB thumb drive. Lawks! It came up on my screen in a few seconds. I clicked on a Microsoft Word document, and it opened in Open Office. I clicked on an MP3 file, and it played in Amarok. No setup. Nothing. Click and go.

Had to test it with my camera next. Same bit. Plugged my digital cam into the USB, it popped up with Digicam. Downloaded the pictures. No problems. I tried to think up something it would not do. It just worked.

And the coup de grace:

So why is this seen by many (mostly journos) as such a complex thing? I don't know. It works. The price is right. Please, usual flames, usual place.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Day 11. That's how long Puppy Linux 2.14 has been running on the Thin Puppy. To recap, the Thin Puppy is a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, with the internal CF card removed (and with the Puppy-loaded replacement since fried). It's based on a mini-ITX motherboard of undetermined origin, running a Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor, VT133 chipset, with what look like s proprietary (to Maxspeed) CF-to-IDE adapter and fanless power supply.

The box has a fan, but it only runs when the client is tilted about 70 or 80-degrees in either direction. Otherwise, the unusual heat sink on the CPU seems to be working. It has copper pipes going from the top of the CPU to additional heat sink material bolted to the metal case.

The box has 256 MB of PC133 RAM installed.

Since the CF card died, I hooked up a CD drive and loaded Puppy, then disconnected the drive and sealed up the case. So the Thin Puppy is running totally in RAM, with no boot device attached. I used to have a USB flash drive connected, but since then the MUT utility that mounts drives in Puppy has flaked out, and I can't mount anything, nor can I seem to kill out the processes that keep me from doing so.

But the Thin Puppy continues to run, and I have been using it heavily these past 11 days. It has given me a good appreciation of this minimal hardware platform and of Puppy Linux as an OS and distribution. I even gave away my Puppy 2.14 disc away since then to somebody who was interested in it. I'll have to burn a new one, although I've got a couple of 2.13 discs for booting my other computers.

Like I've said before, Puppy is the first Linux distro on which I've been able to configure EVERYTHING ... except wireless. But I think my $9 Airlink AWLH3026 wireless card from Fry's is cursed and won't run in any Linux distro.

But other than that, Puppy has been as good as ... yes, OS gold. It wasn't so good with 128 MB of RAM, but ever since I doubled that, it's been running great.

And I expect I'll eventually get a new CF card and turn the Thin Puppy off. But not yet.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Slax is a live CD that I've been very anxious to try. Any distro that claims to be light on hardware -- yet features the KDE desktop -- is something I've got to try. I'm beginning to think KDE gets a bad rap. It runs pretty darn well in this distro, as well as in MepisLite. And I think KOffice is a terrific package, with KWrite being one of the best programs out there for writers.

First things first. Slax is a cutdown version of Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, and one that remains wildly popular (it's No. 10 on Distrowatch). And it's not Debian, if that means anything. I guess I mention that because so many distros use Debian as their base, it's nice to try something different.

The boot process is pretty good. The script displayed on the screen asks you to log on as root with password "toor" And there are on-screen hints, such as startx to get KDE running, flux to use Fluxbox instead, mc to run Midnight Commander and xconf to autoconfigure the graphics adapter. Startx didn't work for me -- my display didn't cooperate, so I killed X and used xconf, which did work. I got the message, "creating /etc/corg.conf ... all done. Run startx now. If you get black screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+Plus. But all was well, and I was off and running. Later, I changed resolutions in KDE, and the screen looked absolutely terrific in all its 1280 x 1024 majesty. Thanks, KDE!

And if you want to put Slax on your hard drive, slax-install will do just that. Configsave and configrestore will save and restore your file systems,
fileswap will create a swap file. Pretty simple.

Once Slax KillBill goes into KDE, you see a yellow desktop and samurai sword that means you're in KillBill -- named because Wine is included and you can run Windows apps without Win being installed (hence the "Kill Bill" -- as in Gates -- reference).

On the menu, in addition to the KDE button that can launch just about everything, there is a console button, Konqueror, JuK (music), KPlayer (video??) and K3B for CD and DVD burning.

I easily configured my ethernet card for static IP with KDE -- it was as clear and easy as any other distro I've used.

While KillBill has Wine installed, I couldn't manage to get any Win apps to run. Perhaps I'm missing something? I'll try again later.

Another thing: The version of KWord in Slax killbill is 1.5.2, with KDE 3.5.4. I some trouble getting "smart" quotes working -- it just wouldn't do it. I didn't have this problem in MepisLite, the distro in which I fell in love with KWord. The "current" version of KWord is 1.6.2, so maybe this is a bug that got squashed.

The KDE desktop in Slax killbill is surprisingly responsive. Menus appear immediately (this being a 3 GHz Dell, I expect that, but I don't always get it).

And I got a nice surprise: Many printers on my network were automatically configured and usable without me doing anything. I was able to print to one immediately ... I wasn't able to configure an additional printer, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I could print elsewhere.

KDE is such a nice desktop -- the screen resize and rotate button on the lower right allowed me to immediately pick my favored resolution -- 1280 x 1024, and as I said above, it looks terrific.

I still love KWord. It's my favorite Linux word processor by far. It's much lighter on resources than Open Office, and I've read that it's even lighter than Abiword.

KDE's Konquerer browser responds fast and displays pages well. There was no Flash player installed, though.

Sound worked fine. I had to tweak it with ALSA Mixer in a terminal window, but that's normal for my PC.

At this stage, the sticking points are the smart quotes in Kword, and for the killbill edition, figuring out how Wine works. (Wine remains a mystery to me. The only time I could do anything with Wine was when I installed IEs4Linux in Xubuntu -- that worked. Now I see why Codeweavers has a business.)

Maybe I need to run Winecfg or something. The reason I burned the KillBill version of Slax first was because one of my goals in running Linux is to port over the two Windows apps that I need at the Daily News -- Internet Explorer (because our in-house Web system requires it -- and no, Firefox won't work) and the Hermes publishing system from Unisys, which is our main software for putting out the paper. I'm not against giving $40 to Codeweavers to make it happen, but I figured that a distro with Wine in it already would somehow be easier to use.

Still, my first impression of Slax is a favorable one. I've already burned CDs of the plain Slax and the smaller Popcorn edition, meant to install on 128 MB flash media. I'll try these in the Dell, and hopefully soon in the Thin Puppy (the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client I'm using to write this post). If it works, will I have to rename that machine Thin Slax? Yes, I will.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

I ran across this site, BSD/Linux Gangster (also known as Linux/BSD Gangsters), and it is freakin' hilarious. Just dip into the forums and be prepared to laugh your geeky ass off.

P.S. The guy pictured on the left is "Mob Tux"

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just came across this great blog, Pain and Glory From the Trenches of the IT World, I'm not really sure who is behind it, other than being from IT (and I do believe it), but for a reasoned look at operating systems, hardware and general technology opinion, I find it to be a very good read.

For instance, he's of the opinion that converting an old PC into a home server is probably a waste of resources, and you're better off adding a hard drive to your existing PC if you need more storage.

And he things NetBSD would be a good OS for the One Laptop Per Child $100 PC initiative (which is currently using a cutdown Red Hat, I think). Here he's talking about Intel's low-cost PC made for the Third World (and not part of OLPC):

I have used NetBSD on a wide variety of older systems, and I have to say, it works wonders. When using NetBSD, it’s quite possible to turn old Sun SPARCstations into very capable mail servers or web proxies. Now, these low-end laptops are far, far more powerful than such obsolete Sun systems. The enjoyable experience of NetBSD on a 33 MHz SPARCstation 10 will no doubt be quite magnified on a 900 MHz Celeron-based system.

As you may have gathered -- and will gather upon more extensive reading, he's rather fond of NetBSD.

He also likes KDE as a desktop environment and thinks it's not just better but faster than GNOME, he again suggests NetBSD as an alternative to one of today's popular "low-spec" Linux distros, Xubuntu:

NetBSD is a truly remarkable and versatile system. And for many people, I think it would make a great alternative to lightweight Linux distributions like Xubuntu and Ubuntu Lite. The very philosophy of the project, that being widespread portability, will no doubt go a long way towards ensuring it remains a modern system that consumes minimal resources. If you’re currently a user of a minimalistic Linux distribution that you think is beginning to get bloated, maybe you should give NetBSD a try. It may just be exactly what you’re looking for.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had a little problem with the MUT -- Puppy Linux's Mounting Utility Tool -- and I can't seem to mount my USB flash drive (or any drive, for that matter -- the CD drive is not connected, but it still appeared as a possible mounting choice). So I did something I haven't done in the eight days previous -- I killed X Windows, which took me down to a shell prompt, and restarted the window manager.

It didn't help, nor did trying to kill out some of the errant processes with KP. This isn't enough to end the Thin Puppy Torture Test, but since I can't mount any external drives, it does mean that the test may not go on much longer. I have the network unplugged at the moment, but I'll replug and try to post this. If I continue to have IP coming through, then enough of the system is working to keep the Torture Test running. I can still save to the file system in RAM, and I've got 40.7 MB of space left.

So at the moment I've got a bunch of processes running that I can't get rid of ... but I do have networking, and I am able to post on Movable Type. So the Torture Test goes on ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's an update on the HP t5300 thin client that I got for the low, low price of $20 on eBay. (And yes, I'm writing this with the thin client hooked up to the network).

It runs the Windows CE embeddes system (in 32 MB of flash memory) with only 64 MB of RAM.

When I was researching these, there isn't much documentation out there specific to the t5300 -- HP docs cover the whole 5000 series, so I didn't know that this client has its memory hard-wired to the circuit board -- and there is no way to add additional memory. That's problematic, because I wanted to bump it up to at least 128 MB. The IDE input on the board looks like a 44-pin laptop-drive plug (and there's no additional power leads, so that makes it more likely that it's for a laptop drive). And that input is very close to the edge of the case, making it look like it would need an extension cable leading away from the side, if I were to insert a Compact Flash adapter. By the way, it has a 533 MHz VIA processor and chipset, and the motherboard is so small besides, I think it's a laptop-specific product repurposed here for a thin client ... except that the non-expandable RAM makes it seem like a thin-client design.

But since the thin client's BIOS will boot from USB, I can theoretically create a bootable USB flash drive and boot from there without cracking the case. I couldn't boot from Puppy 2.14 on the USB, but I have yet to try all the available permutations when it comes to creating a bootable USB device.

My best hope now is to a) Use the HP t5300 as a Web terminal with the version of IE 5 in its flash memory (what I'm doing now), try to create a bootable USB drive with Damn Small Linux on it, or turn it around on eBay.

I wouldn't have bought this in the first place had it not been $20, but for those who want to turn thin clients into stand-alone Linux boxes, make sure you can add memory, and also make sure that you can replace the IDE device inside and/or boot from USB.

As far as the IE included in the client, CSS stylesheets are a little funky on some sites, but I am able to use Movable Type with few formatting problems -- this is IE, after all. I bumped the screen resolution up to 1280 x 1024, and it looks great with an LCD monitor.

I'm going to try to update the "image" on the thin client via HP -- wish me luck.

(Minutes later) The update was successful, but the thin client already had this update installed. Given that the amount of flash memory is fixed at 32 MB, I guess I shouldn't expect HP to offer a full-fledged update of the Windows CE OS, along with a IE6-level browser, but it would've been nice.

Considering the matter for a moment (during which I was unsuccessful at printing over the network ... and this box doesn't have a parallel port, so the options are network or COM port -- I don't know if it will print to a USB printer) ... I could actually try to use the HP thin client ... as a THIN CLIENT connected via the Linux Terminal Server Project system.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know what you're saying: Big freakin' deal. I leave my PC running all the time, all week, all month, all year, yadda, yadda -- what's so special about you leaving the Thin Puppy running for a full week?

A good question.

The difference is that the Thin Puppy is a thin client (a Maxspeed Maxterm) -- 13 1/8 inches tall, 2 1/8 inches wide and 10 1/2 inches deep, and weighs maybe 5 pounds (I can't disconnect it to drop on the scale, so that's an estimate) -- an as a thin client consists of a features-challenged motherboard, small fanless power supply AND little else. I stuffed it with 256 MB of RAM (there's only one PC133 RAM slot, and the maximum the VIA-powered motherboard will address is 256 MB), and there's only one IDE input. As a thin client, the OS (which in this case might've been Windows CD) is on a Compact Flash card plugged into a CF-to-IDE adapter.

The client came with no memory or CF card, both of which I added. I originally put Puppy Linux 2.14 on the CF card (via the Puppy Universal Installer, which allows for installation of the OS on a CF card via a USB card reader, with the CF to later function as an IDE hard drive via the adapter. But either I killed the CF chip, or it died a premature death on its own.

To get the Thin Puppy running again, I connected a CD-R drive to the IDE header (the CF-to-IDE adapter is powered by a floppy power plug, and there's an extra hard-drive power plug that I used for the CD drive). I loaded Puppy from the CD -- the entire program goes into RAM -- and disconnected the drive. So now Puppy is running entirely in RAM. I've since even disconnected the USB flash drive I was using for downloaded files.

The Thin Puppy does have a fan, but it only works when the box is held at a 75-or-so degree angle (why, I don't know). The Via C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor has a unique heat sink, with pipes going from it to additional heat-sink material that's connected to the metal case for additional heat dissipation. So far the CPU and chipset seems to be running OK. If I could figure out what the actual CPU temp was, I would.

AND ... Puppy Linux isn't generally considered an OS that you boot and leave running for weeks at a time. First of all, it works great as a live CD, and since it runs in RAM, lots of things could be lost if it crashes before a proper shutdown. But since I've upped the RAM from 128 MB to 256, there have been no crashes ... and all has worked perfectly through this -- day 8.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Day 3 of the Thin Puppy torture test, in which the Thin Puppy -- a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client repurposed to run Puppy Linux 2.14 -- will run continuously to test the hardware and OS ... and also because since the Compact Flash memory died, I booted the machine with a CD drive, then disconnected said drive. So the Thin Puppy is running totally in RAM (I have a 256 MB USB flash drive connected in case I want to save anything big, but there's no OS or apps on it), and it can't be rebooted without me cracking the case open and re-plugging the CD drive, or inserting a pre-programmed CF module in the back (the only "disk" this thin client is wired for is the CF, via an IDE adapter that plugs into the motherboard and a floppy power connector.

Again, the Maxspeed Maxterm, which I bought on eBay, is running a Via C3 1 GHz processor with special heatsink that pipes to two auxiliary heatsinks bolted to the metal case; a VT133 chipset, 256 MB of PC133 RAM, all on a Mini-ITX motherboard of undetermined origin (I don't think Via made it, and it could be PC Chips, but I can't confirm that either), plus a small, fanless power supply, also in the case, fed by an external 12 V laptop-style adapter, and the previously mentioned CF-to-IDE adapter with access through the back of the case.

One thing that Puppy Linux offers is a running tally of how much free memory you have for data. I'm currently at 45.2 MB. The computing session began on March 26, with 49.5 MB and has fluctuated all the while. Much of that is taken up in cache for the SeaMonkey browser; emptying the cache restores some of the memory. But as long as things stay at an acceptable level and nothing else crashes the system, the Thin Puppy should keep going.

The system only achieved its current stability when I swapped in the 256 MB RAM stick -- it would buckle on Flash animation elements of Web pages with 128 MB of RAM because Puppy only had about 5 MB of free RAM for data (it's not ALL the free RAM, just that set aside for data -- caches, added programs, downloads NOT made to the USB flash drive and such).

I used the Dillo browser for most of the day. It's much lighter and faster than SeaMonkey, which itself isn't that slow. But Dillo loads instantly and displays pages almost as fast. The way it achieves that speed is, in some part, because it doesn't use CSS style sheets, Java, or any of that other stuff that makes most browsers work hard. For general Web browsing in which you don't have to fill out forms and do other complex things (or need Flash), it's a great app to have on hand. And while SeaMonkey is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS, Dillo is a Linux-only application, as far as I can tell.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was reading Sal Cangleso's excellent article on his Mini-ITX project, in which he builds small computers that run off of Compact Flash memory (just like the Thin Puppy!), and he mentioned that while he liked Puppy Linux, another small distribution, called Slax, was better. So I went over there and am intrigued -- I downloaded a few ISOs to burn later and try.

It's a small Linux, all right, and the main version is based on KDE, with the wonderful KOffice (smart quotes!!!) also on board. There is also a "Kill Bill" version that includes Wine preloaded to run Windows apps (now you know which Bill we're talking about), and a small version to fit on a 128M USB drive (now if I could only figure out how to make a USB flash drive bootable ....).

While there are a lot of people using Slax, as the forum attests, it is primarily the work of one man, Tomas Matejicek of the Czech Republic. And if you didn't get the reference, Slax is indeed based on that most noble of Linux distributions, Slackware.

For those already knee-deep in Linux, there are many specialized Slax modules available (1,857 to be exact), with options including the Xfce, fwvm, IceWM and Fluxbox window managers. How's that for freedom of choice?

Whether you're interested in Slax or not, you are interested in cool, homebuilt computers, aren't you? Thought so. There are three parts to Sal's Mini-ITX series, and all three are well worth studying before you embark on your own Mini-ITX (or any PC) project.

More from Sal:

Mini-ITX Part 1
Mini-ITX Part 3
The Core 2 Duo Mini-ITX Box

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I pulled the CD-R drive, I did boot the Thin Puppy with Zen Walk 4.2, another of the Linux distributions that are supposed to run well on lower-spec computers. I did it before I boosted the memory from 128 MB to 256 MB, so it all looked pretty good until I loaded up Firefox, at which point the CPU went crazy and killed X. Then, when I tried to shut down, it wouldn't do it all the way. Maybe things will be different with 256 MB. It made a helluva difference for Puppy Linux.

By the way, Zen Walk is based on Slackware, and it ran, while Xubuntu, based on Debian would not boot.

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

I recently borrowed an oldish LCD monitor for This Old PC, since its old Gateway monitor is at the office, hooked up to the now-brainless Thin Puppy, and a try of Puppy with the new monitor didn't produce quite the crisp resolution I'm seeking with such a "high-end" screen.

So I popped in Damn Small Linux 3.2, and I was pleasantly surprised to have an EXTREMELY crisp resolution on the LCD, with sound (from the troublesome ISA sound card that Puppy can't find) present on booting. Now the big beef I've had with Damn Small Linux (DSL for short, not to be confused with the DSL that the other 99.999 percent of the population knows) is its inability to find the onboard Ethernet in the newish Dell at the Daily News. But it sure found the cheap ($1.99) Airlink 10/100 Ethernet card I got from Fry's some time ago.

In case you don't know, This Old PC is, indeed about nine years old, with a Pentium II MMX 333 MHz processor, 262 MB RAM (yes, it's not a round number -- I have three different kinds of RAM in there, and something's fishy). DSL runs great on it. And since the screen looks so good, it's a computing environment I could really get used to. ... If only the printer and Wi-Fi were working. I'm not above getting another Wi-Fi adapter, especially one that works through USB so I could use it on multiple machines.

I had DHCP networking running, but since I don't have any wired Internet in The Back Room, all I could do was configure my router.

DSL, like Puppy, couldn't find my wireless card -- but since Windows 2000 has "lost" it recently, I won't hold that against it for now.

I tried, again, the screwy printer-configuration program that comes with DSL, and again I had no luck. The "test" page just shoots out every page in the printer, and when I try to print something normal, I get nothing. So at the moment, Puppy and DSL are neck and neck. DSL looks better on screen, but Puppy can actually print. I'll have to hit the DSL forums and see some solutions for printing and wireless.

And I'm not above getting a different, cheap Wi-Fi adapter, preferably one that runs through USB so I could swap it into the many test computers I have going at the moment.

Note: DSL-n, the bigger version of DSL with different apps and a newer Linux kernel does work with the newish Dell, so at least I've got that covered.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that the Thin Puppy is out of commission due to the dead CF card, I booted Puppy LInux 2.14 on the Dell (3 GHz, 512 MB RAM), and it ran like a champ. Video looks GREAT. I opened up a bunch of Web pages in SeaMonkey, and all displayed perfectly, even the Flash animation classified ads at DailyNews.com that brought the Thin Puppy to its knees.

I needed to get a bunch of pictures off of an SD card, and the card reader wasn't working in Windows XP, so I fired up Puppy again, and it was extremely easy to get the photos off of the SD card and into a directory on my hard drive. Puppy just makes it so easy to find drives, mount them and navigate with the Rox filer.

So sorry, Puppy, it could be that the Masxpeed MaxTerm thin client's design isn't conducive to working with a full-fledged OS ... or it could be the memory. More testing is needed, but if you have the kind of power that this Dell has, your Puppy Linux experience will be a good one.

It just underscores the rule that one OS doesn't fit all computers or computer users, and it pays to check out an operating system on many different kinds of hardware to determine the proper fit. Yep, it's like shoes. You don't know how good they are until you've walked that proverbial mile.

That said, the next step is to get a CD-ROM drive hooked up to the Thin Puppy and start pumping other OSes into it, everything from Damn Small Linux to the bigger DSL-n, Puppy from CD, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Zen Walk, Mepis Lite, and probably more.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While trying to prepare the Thin Puppy to dual-boot from Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux, the whole thing crashed, with the aftermath being a dead CF card. It has soured me on the use of flash RAM as a boot medium ... and now the Thin Puppy has a heart, but not a brain.

Next for the Thin Puppy: Pulling the spare CD-ROM drive from This Old PC, running MANY Linux distros that way ... or stuffing a 3.5-inch hard drive in there -- there's space for it.

One thing this experiment has done is dampen my enthusiasm for Puppy Linux. Performance with 128 MB of RAM is less than satisfactory. I had a lot of crashes. Downloading large files wreaked havoc with available RAM and made the system unstable. Working entirely in RAM, nothing saves to physical drives until the computing session is finished, meaning data loss in the event of a crash.

Streaming audio and video was choppy -- I expected that from an older VIA-powered board, but -- on the plus side -- Puppy used a very light program that played MP3s downloaded to the system without trouble (something Gxine couldn't do).

Still, configuration of the system has been easier in Puppy than in any other Linux I've tried. Networking, sound, printing, mounting drives, installing a bootable OS -- all goes smoothly in Puppy. And as a live CD, working entirely in RAM is more palatable -- everything saves to your pup_save file when you power down. And it makes the live CD environment work quickly. But with 128 MB of memory, when stress on the system climbs, Puppy starts accessing the drive like mad -- swapping, perhaps? -- and with a CF, that can't be good, especially for a system that is billed as being easy on flash memory. That's true when you work from CD and write to pup_save on flash, but not so true in a HD installation. I don't think Puppy is really meant for that. Like Knoppix, Puppy Linux is designed as a live CD and while it can be installed to HD, I'm not recommending it at this point.

The crashes with 128 MB of RAM are troubling. The Thin Puppy's motherboard maxes out at 256 MB, and once you get to 512 MB of RAM, you can pretty much run any Linux distro. Generally "light" means light on RAM and CPU speed, not just one or the other. Still, I'll have to try Puppy on This Old PC, a traditional box which I can run with 128 MB or 256 MB to compare performance.

Again, to sum up, Puppy is designed to run from a live CD and be shut down and restarted daily. It isn't designed to be installed to a hard drive or flash medium, although it's easy to do so. I really love the working environment of Puppy, but doing everything in RAM memory presents its problems, and I've experienced them.

Question: Is it the Thin Puppy itself, or its RAM (the amount) that's causing the trouble?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I gave Fluxbuntu another try. You remember Fluxbuntu, the erstwhile child of Ubuntu that's even lighter than Xubuntu?

Before booting, I did a little reading around the Fluxbuntu Web site, and I realized that the Fluxbuntu philosophy is to have you configure just about everything from the command line. CLI they call it -- command-line interface. And CLI is like a religion among the Fluxbuntu people. "CLI never crashes," one said somewhere. So true, but it's hell on a new user.

So I went to Linux Headquarters for info on how to configure a network connection from the command line. I followed the instructions (I had to use sudo because I wasn't logged in as root) and everything seemed go go well. I pinged the router and it worked. But nothing came through Firefox ...

I don't know ... a Linux distribution in which you have to use the command line just to get your Internet going? And Fluxbuntu doesn't even have an "off" utility. You pretty much have to hit the power button to tell the system that you want to shut it down.

If only Damn Small Linux would see my Ethernet card -- DSL-n does. Those are better alternatives in this space, I think.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Thin Puppy (Maxspeed MaxTerm 1 GHz thin client converted to stand-alone Compact Flash-driven Puppy Linux box with 128 MB RAM) is behaving today.

I've done a bunch of Yahoo! e-mail, posted blog entries, edited photos -- and there have been no problems. Oh, and I haven't gone to Dailynews.com, which has a bunch of embedded videos that brought the Thin Puppy to its knees yesterday. Nor did I try to install any new, giant applications, another deal-breaker with 128 MB RAM Puppy (I hear you need 192 MB to successfully download and install bigger packages).

I think part of my problem is that I am running Puppy installed on a hard drive -- even if it's a CF chip acting like a hard drive. If I was running from CD, I think the whole thing would work that much better. It's something I plan to try out, since I do have a spare CD-ROM drive; if only I could pry it out of This Old PC (a screw head broke off, leaving it in there for the duration).

Soon the 512 MB experiment will begin. I feel that I have to write more -- and more -- about Linux, Windows AND Mac OS in regard to memory. I think 512 MB is the minimum for Windows XP. We're running something like 384 MB with OS X 10.3.9, and I know it would run better with more RAM. Windows Vista needs 1 GB minimum. Going back to Windows 2000, it runs pretty good with 256 MB, and I suspect it could handle 128 MB, though I haven't done a real-world test. Windows 98 can run in 32 MB, but it crashes all the time; 128 MB gives 98 the room it needs to run, but I wouldn't recommend anybody actually use it -- 2000 is that much better, as is XP.

For Linux, you have a choice of window managers, everything from Fluxbox to JWM, to IceWm, GNOME, KDE ... so there is a flexibility that you don't have with Windows or Mac OS (although there's noise out there that KDE will be available soon for the Unix-based Mac OS X). There are distros out there that work with low-RAM machines -- Damn Small Linux and DeLi Linux among them. At the DeLi site, they say the test box is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, but they recommend 32 MB. With more RAM, you can run more stuff, like Firefox and Gnumeric. Mannn ... I have a DeLi CD, but it's not a live disc, so you need to do an install. (For those who want to know, DeLi uses the Fluxbox or IceWM window managers, with Abiword for word processing, Dillo for Web browsing, See, that's the difference between a "lite" system with less functionality and a "lite" system that works on hardware that will choke on most of the Linux distros out there. DSL can also run with 16 MB ... but runs entirely in RAM with 128 MB. I believe it. But it's too hard to make a bootable CF. I'll try again, but the Puppy Universal Installer is a gift from the Linux gods that I .

Xubuntu is said to run with 64 MB RAM, but I can't believe it can do well even with 128 MB. Something to test. I couldn't even get the live CD to boot on This Old PC with 262 MB ... so that one will have to wait for a new hard drive and the "alternate install" disc. Zen Walk, which is also for lower-power machines, recommends 128 MB RAM as a minimum.

MepisLite (the small version of SimplyMepis) which hasn't reached release 1.0 yet but is pretty stable in my testing of it, is one of the most intriguing "lite" distributions, since it includes the KDE desktop and KOffice. That one's going to get a major workout vs. Xubuntu and Zen Walk in my experimental future.

So depending on what day it is, Puppy is performing well with 128 MB RAM. When the going gets tough, the system starts swapping, and as I've learned, swapping to Compact Flash is a recipe for disaster. Yesterday I had a couple of loops running and hogging the CPU. I could've just killed X and restarted it, but I instead ran KP and slowly waited for the mouse to work its way through all the processes that were causing the trouble. And that means 24 hours of uptime for the Thin Puppy at this point. As I've also said, I think these problems are minimized or eliminated when running Puppy from CD -- the system isn't really using your hard drive -- in fact, it doesn't even need one -- so there's no swapping. What I have to do is get This Old PC hooked up to the Internet so I can replicate these conditions and see how a 333 MHz box deals with it.

I guess the bottom line is that when you get to low RAM, you have three choices: add more RAM, run an older Windows OS, or run a slighter Linux than the main distros. I think the answer, for me at this point, is dual booting.

In reference to today's work with the Thin Puppy, I'm happy to report that mtPaint, the included image editor in the Puppy Linux distribution, works quickly and easily -- and I even was able to put a border around a photo. Who needs the GIMP? By the way, mtPaint uses the GTK+ toolkit and runs in both Linux and Windows.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You'd think with a 1 GHz processor and a super-fast Internet connection, the Thin Puppy would handle streaming video and audio reasonably well. Not so. It's jerky, and frequently the machine just slows down as Puppy Linux begins accessing the CF drive -- creating a swap file, I presume.

So is it the motherboard's video and audio hardware ... or is it the 128 MB of system memory? I'm betting on the latter. Anything that keeps the system from creating swap space is bound to speed things up considerably, because creating swap files and writing to them is slow, all the slower when your storage medium is flash memory -- which in Puppy isn't supposed to be written to at all during the computing session.

All I know is that when I downloaded a 50 MB ISO image and tried to actually ... work with it .. . the available memory went down by .... 50 MB -- and that's out of 73 MB available after the OS is loaded into RAM. That's one of the weak points of this box -- the FSB (front side bus) runs at 133 MHz ... that's why I can use slow PC-133 memory (and am trying to get by with PC-100) ... but it's gotta hit the performance. ...

So the moral of this story is -- front side bus speed matters (that's why it's listed in all the Fry's ads), fast memory matters, and having a lot of memory also matters. If I can find a 512 MB stick of PC-133 RAM, I bet things get better, even for streaming audio and video.

But at 128 MB, the Thin Puppy is doing very, very well for tasks that don't involve those two resource-intensive tasks.

And this leads me to the entry that will, at some point, be on top of this ...

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let's get it out in the open. Java is slow. Flash, though proprietary and closed-source, rules.

That's why I like the Speakeasy Speed Test for determining the health of your broadband connection -- it uses Flash instead of the usual Java.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had problems with the Maxspeed MaxTerm thin client -- outfitted with Puppy Linux on the CF card that serves as its disk drive -- and a Dell LCD monitor. The output was a bit dim, and there was some character "ghosting." Nothing major, but not as good as the output from the Dell Optiplex PC itself.

I suspected that a regular CRT monitor would work great with this thin client, which is circa 2003, the days when CRTs still held some sway in the low-end market.

I was right. After finding one dead CRT in the Daily News boneyard, I brought in an old 14-inch Gateway 2000 monitor (yes, it's the monitor that has served so well with This Old PC), and it is working perfectly. I chose 800 x 600 resolution at 16 colors. I've run it with This Old PC at 1024 x 768, and I just might try that, but for now, this looks great.

Moral: Swapping peripherals is the best way to determine a) what's broken and b) what fits best for a particular system. Ask friends to loan you equipment -- or, better yet, to gift you with the old crap they've got clogging their garages and closets.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I stumbled across this page about a guy who did a whole lot more than I've had to do to get his Wyse WinTerm 3320SE Windows CE based thin client to run on Damn Small Linux and, at this stage, to function as an honest-to-god Web server.

To geek is to live:

For almost a month already, this website is running on a Winterm 3320SE! It's behind an Apache proxy right now. It has a <3MByte (uncompressed) initrd with shell utilities, an SSH daemon, a web server and PHP, thanks to uClibc. It's running pretty well, and at least now we eat our own dogfood! :-)

As you can read, the Wyse is way underpowered compared to the MaxTerm, and it took a lot more geekery to get it going:

... it's a pretty small device. Normally they run Windows CE with RDP (Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop) and ICA (Citrix) terminal clients plus serial terminal software, and it's also possible to install MSIE4 to browse the web. However, that's all. It can't work as an X server, so in non-Windows networks it's not very useful.

The hardware seems to be pretty suitable to run Linux. From the outside you can already see some connectors that probably remind you a lot of regular PC's. And when you look inside you'll indeed find a Cyrix/NS MediaGX chipset with a 166 MHz x86-compatible CPU, 32 MB RAM and 8 MB of flash.

With only 8 MB of flash, it's pretty obvious that we'll have to depend on network-booting if we want to run Linux on these, certainly because we're not even sure if we can use the Flash memory from Linux.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been playing around with the Xorg video settings in Puppy Linux -- it doesn't look as good as it could. It could be the video controller on the motherboard, or it could be the settings. I went down to 1024 x 768, back up to 1280 x 1024, 16 colors, and there's a slight "ghosting" of letters on the LCD screen. I bet it looks great in 1024 x 768 on a traditional CRT, but I don't have one to try at the moment.

I'll have to boot puppy on the Dell and see what the settings are. There's always the option of a separate video card -- that'll set me back $10.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Thin Puppy," that's what I should call this setup. I've had the Maxspeed MaxTerm running all day, and while some of the chips are warm to the touch, nothing's hot, and the fan hasn't gone on at all. Maybe it's there for "harsh" environments, when air temperature doesn't provide convection cooling that's as efficient.

The power brick, which isn't the original, came new in its box -- it's a DVE AC adapter rated at 11-13 V output, 3.8 amp max, 42 W max. It's just barely warm, so this thing isn't drawing much current at all. The brick is rated for 100-240 volts, so it should have no problem dealing with foreign voltages or sub-prime AC power.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, the biggest "hitch" thus far is that the box isn't a champ when it comes to streaming audio and video. It plays back downloaded MP3s just fine with the Gxine player. To hear the audio, I plugged in my headphones. And also, as I said before, audio was automatically configured by Puppy on boot.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Maxspeed MaxTerm thin client from Unix Surplus arrived at 12:15, and here I am running Puppy Linux 2.14, connected to the Internet and blogging about it at 12:35, I haven't had something go this smoothly since ... never.

The MaxTerm came well-packed, with enough foam and bubble wrap to survive quite a crushing. It came missing the screws to close up the case, but since I needed it open to install the memory, it was no problem -- I'll just go to the hardware store and get a half-dozen machine screws to bolt the thing together.

The CPU is covered with a heat-pipe-type heatsink arrangement, with a fan below it. The fan hasn't turned on. I think it's switched on through a heat sensor, and at this point, the heatsink is barely warm, so all is good.

The 128 MB of PC-100 memory (worth about $5 on the open market) went in without a hitch, and the CF card adapter was already connected to the IDE slot on the mini-ITX motherboard. I removed the cover from the CF slot (looks like you can insert the CF card and then close it up again -- one of those screws is missing, too, but again, it's no big deal). To eject the CF card, the case needs to be open.

Mouse, keyboard, power-cube and monitor hookup went fine. The internal power supply is fanless and seems to be running cool. The board has Maxspeed printed on it, so it must be a proprietary part. The motherboard looks like standard Via, with a Phoenix D686 BIOS. There's just the one IDE port, and also a floppy port, though there'd be little reason to use it (you'd need to use the floppy power plug, which is currently powering the CF-to-IDE adapter that's part of the MaxTerm.

I put in the CF card, already configured with Puppy 2.14, and the thing booted right away. I didn't know for a minute, because the monitor I had set aside foir this project was dead. So I'm running it through my Dell's LCD monitor. I chose 1024 x 768 resolution with 16 colors, and that's not ideal for the 17-inch LCD, which likes 1280 x 1024 better. I'll try that on my next boot.

It took the SeaMonkey browser a bit of time to load, maybe 20 seconds. I'll have to see if that improves on subsequent loads. (Later: SeaMonkey reloads in 10 seconds. Excellent.)

Abiword boots in 10 seconds -- very acceptable.

Using Xproc to find out exactly what's inside, I get the following:

Processor is a Via Samuel 2, Speed 501.169, BogoMIPS 1003.69. Don't know exactly what those "speed" numbers mean ...

But the big story here is that the MaxSpeed MaxTerm boots Puppy right out of the box. If you're thinking about repurposing a thin client for Linux, this is the one.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The $75 thin client should be arriving today, and I'm ready.

I cannibalized the following from This Old PC and elsewhere:

-- PS/2 keyboard and mouse
-- IDE drive cable (just in case -- the pictures made it look like I might need one)
-- 1 GB Compact Flash module with Puppy Linux installed
-- 128 MB PC-100 memory module (not from This Old PC, but from my spare-parts collection)
-- 256 MB USB drive with Puppy installed (just in case it does boot from USB)
-- Old 14-inch VGA monitor, off of which I've wiped the first layer of grime.

To get Puppy on the CF module, I used a CF-to-IDE adapter that I plugged into the IDE port in This Old PC. Then I installed Puppy onto it from the CD. The Puppy Universal Installer is pretty good -- it turns out I could've made the CF module into an IDE-bootable drive without using the adapter; the installer will prepare the chip while it's connected via a USB card reader (which I also have ready).

The Puppy Universal Installer offers many options for making USB drives and CF chips (as well as IDE and SATA hard drives) bootable if the standard install doesn't work. Kudos to the Puppy developers for making both the mounting of drives as well as the installation of the OS to them so easy.

So all I need to do now is wait for the Maxspeed Maxterm 1 GHz thin client to arrive ...

Photos: The Maxspeed Maxterm, inside and out, from Unix Surplus' eBay listing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm all for building your own PC, but it doesn't always go smoothly. And believe it or not, Fry's doesn't have everything you need all the time.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDnet's Gear for Geeks blog relates his own experience:

The first irritant is the volume of trash that building a PC generates. In fact, the last two PCs I built created such a volume of waste that I was really appalled. From what I can tell, building a PC with parts sourced online seems to mean that you end up with enough cardboard and styrofoam to fill the box that the case came in. It’s not too bad because 99% of the trash can be recycled (so the process is pretty guilt-free) but you do need the space in order to be able to store the parts and work, and I’m certain that over the years that minimum working space that you need has increased.

The second thing that gets me emotional is the quality of SATA cables and connectors. Why is it that when you buy a quality board like an ASUS or Gigabyte you end up with poor quality cabling that it inflexible and has massive end connectors that make it difficult to route the cables in a tidy fashion? Why not just not bother to supply cables? Or, better still, supply decent quality cables with a decently-priced board? I’m buried here in SATA cables. I have dozens laying about the place. I don’t throw them away because they “could come in handy one day” but they never do. To top that off, why do the plastic SATA connectors on a motherboard need to be so brittle and flimsy? Do they really need to break that easily? Might it be possible to design a connector that can actually hold the cable in place?

Despite the problems, just the fact that you can build your own PC is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

At the moment, my favorite vendors for new parts if you're building a traditional PC (with ATX or microATX motherboards) are Tiger Direct, NewEgg and EWorldSale. My favorite place for used parts is Pacific Geek.

If you want to go small, for mini-ITX components I like Cappuccino PC, iDotPC, Logic Supply and the Damn Small Linux Store.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brian Madden offers a well-thought-out view of whether the thin client model can survive in a world where Dell is selling PCs for $300. Does it make sense to go the thin-client route when you can set up full PCs, either as thin clients themselves, or as "locked down" boxes, for so little money.

He sums it up thusly:

In today’s and future server-based computing environments, it seems like thin clients are losing their advantages. Todays technology allows for you to design fat client configurations in such a way that they provide the same benefits that thin clients do while still delivering better video performance and providing the necessary flexibility. So unless thin client vendors are able to start producing good thin clients at low prices, I think the future of thin clients look bleak.

Do go to the full article and read the extensive comments below it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always thought Ars Technica was cooler, hipper even, than the average geekified tech blog. In a "I start to melt/turn into a pillar of salt when I leave the San Francisco city limits" kind of way.

That's why they had cool blog names like Infinite Loop for the Apple blog, Opposable Thumbs for video gaming ... and M-Dollar for Microsoft. Kinda gets to the heart of the thing, don't you thing?

Well, now M-Dollar has been renamed One Microsoft Way. At first thought, it seems like a wimp-out, a cop-out, but when you think about it, One Microsoft Way is just as insidious as M-Dollar and gets closer to the core (pardon my apple metaphor) of what MS is all about.

The best changes to Ars' look is that you can now jump from one blog to any other without first clicking on the "Journals" tab -- and eliminating one click is a big deal. There's nothing I hate more than Web sites that make me click one or two extra times to get to what should be a single click away. Whether it's a play for more banner ad displays or higher page views, it's amateurish and just shitty besides. Kudos to Ars Technica for making the user experience better.

And while I still think the name M-Dollar is pretty cool, something like Gates to Hell would've been better.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why is the average PC still a giant rectangular box with expansion bays for days, ever-larger power supplies and increasingly faster, heat-spewing CPUs? The fast part's OK, but the rest? What's the deal?

There has been change in the PC market. Most modern motherboards have far fewer expansion-card plugs than in the past. ISA is dead, and there are maybe 2 PCI slots, sometimes only one. That's mostly because the functions that those add-on cards used to perform are almost always taken care of on the motherboard itself. Networking, USB, sound, video, not to mention parallel and serial "legacy" ports (called "legacy" because nobody uses them, although God help you if you don't live in DSL country and need a telephone modem -- a serial version, connecting OUTSIDE your PC remains your best bet). Even wireless networking is included on most laptops. But aside from the add-on video cards needed by gamers, there's less need than ever for expansion cards.

What about drives? Floppies and ZIPs are long gone. Hard disk drives are smaller than ever, and we went from CD-ROM to CD-RW to DVD-RW in rapid succession.

And thank the computer gods for USB; it ended the nightmare that was SCSI. Remember those thick, expensive cables and the SCSI ID problem? USB is the best thing to happen to PCs since the GUI. USB works for printers, wireless adapters, flash drives, hard drives, CD and DVD drives, even stupid little lights and fans that waste the USB ports on your computer. It's all so very, very good.

All this brings me to the incredible shrinking PC, except if you're not using a Mac, you don't see it. PCs -- laptops excepted, of course (and many of today's laptops are gargantuan in their own right -- yes, even Apple's) -- I say PCs are still usually freakin' large. Never mind that the standard motherboard has shrunken to what is now "micro-ATX" size -- 9.6 by 9.6 inches, down from the 12 x 9.6 inches of standard ATX.

Let's assess: Personal computers are still too big, too loud (damn fans!), use too much energy (especially when kept turned on 24 hours a day, every day), boot too slowly, load applications too slowly and are prone to quick obsolescence.

The problem can be attacked in various ways. First, there's a company called Via Technologies, which came up with the mini-ITX motherboard form factor, a mainboard measuring 6.7 x 6.7 inches -- and now there's even nano-ITX at 4.7 x 4.7 inches. Also, Via's CPUs are famed for low-power consumption and often fanless operation, and there are correspondingly smaller cases, fanless power supplies and drives -- HD, CD and flash -- that measure up (or is it down?) to the small motherboards. Sure, this is all par for the course in laptop production -- and these boards are not, as a rule, as fast as the average Intel- or AMD-stuffed variety, but this is a good time to remember that the PC industry has been selling more laptops than desktops as a whole for years now. Still, the revolution in desktops -- where America and the computing world works -- is nigh, or rather should be ... nigh.

One way that business has delivered computing power to the workplace has been with what is called a "thin client," meaning a computer with no disk drives, perhaps a few basic applications stored on the circuit board itself (lately in flash memory) with data and bigger applications fed over a network server.

Hey ... PCs also get data from servers ... and the Internet ... and flash memory is continually getting cheaper and growing in capacity -- a 1 GB chip is now $20, 8 GB is $80, and a 32 GB flash drive is in the pipeline from Sandisk.

So, back to thin clients. They're basically stripped-down PCs -- motherboard and power supply in a small box. Wyse and HP are huge players in the thin-client world, and companies like Devon IT and Neoware are nipping at their heels. And with the mini-ITX credo of small, low-power-consuming, if not the cheapest or the fastest, today's thin clients -- some of which retail for as little as $140 -- are prime to be converted to desktop use wiht Linux, pumped up with bigger flash drives (some already use industry-standard Compact Flash) and loaded up like a traditional PC.

While concern over flash memory's write-rewrite life span is real, some operating systems, like Puppy Linux, write to the drive only once per computing session, extending the flash RAM's life indefinitely. And backups of data to a server, the Internet or to a CD/DVD drive -- which you should be doing anyway, people -- are a small price to pay for compact, relatively swift, silent and now freakishly inexpensive computing.

To this end, I've been trolling eBay for suitable thin clients to fatten up as Linux PCs. It's hard to know what's actually going to be inside the case of any given thin client, but it's easier to purchase on of recent vintage on the cheap -- certainly easier and way cheaper than it is to buy 8-year-old laptops running at 300 MHz, which, as a matter of course, sell for $150-$200 on eBay, even though it's still possible to buy a new freakin' laptop for $400 to $500.

I digress.

The cheapest barebones mini-ITX system is still $200 to $250 -- without memory, drives or flash. But there are thin clients out there with similar -- and often faster -- CPUs for $75 to $100, and sometimes for as little as $30 to $50.

I smell an opportunity. A geek opportunity. But opportunity nevertheless.

To that end, I am on the hunt for sub-$100 thin clients that could be pressed into service with Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, or even Ubuntu or Xubuntu (the latter with a 4 GB or 8 GB flash drive -- or even a small IDE hard drive bolted into the case).

My plan is to take a $75 thin client running at 1 GHz, add the flash memory, SDRAM, keyboard, mouse and monitor I already have collected, and try to get one of the popular small Linuxes running on it. The beauty of it is that I've got all this other junk lying around -- all I need is the box itself -- and in the case of a thin client, it's more cereal box, less ... uh, giant PC box.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I talk about thin clients -- hell, even I didn't know what they were a month ago -- I do so with the belief that in the future, perhaps near but definitely far, we will all be working on computers that, like today's thin clients:

-- Will have no moving parts

-- Will be much smaller than standard PC boxes.

-- And will work with tight applications loaded into solid-state memory, augmented greatly by both applications and data served over the Internet (or, more likely, the freakisly fast and vast successor to today's Internet that, one day, will replace every other media, information and communications delivery system and make today's Web look like a smoke-belching Model T).

Along those lines:

-- Expect laptops with "disk on module" (basically giant flash drives) replacing traditional spinning hard-disk technology in the next six months.

-- Look for Google and Microsoft to up the stakes in their Web-delivered applications technology in the next year.

-- And expect a major broadcast network to offer a 24-hour online feed in the next two years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was rooting around the HP site for information on Linux-equipped HP desktops, and I'm not exactly sure they'll ship you one with Linux pre-installed just yet.

But HP is in the thin-client business, and they offer the relatively inexpensive, diskless workstations in many configurations, including with Linux installed. They've got one with a lot of power for between $450 and $700 (that's a lot to pay for a thin client) -- but it does have adequate memory, a 1 GHz CPU and Debian.

For $199, the systems run 400 MHz Via processors with 128 MB RAM (16 MB reserved for video, unfortunately), and between 34 and 64 MB of flash memory. Underpowered, yes, but that depends on the job they're doing. There are also good deals out there from Devon IT and Cappuccino PC, among others, but HP is surprisingly competitive in this space.

Photo: HP Compaq t5125 Thin Client

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Besides its current play to remain king of the desktop with Vista, Microsoft is quietly (or not so much, depending on your definition of "quietly" -- see the fake newspaper above) making a case for Windows Server over Linux for delivering Web pages, running databases and the like. Check out this Microsoft page, peppered with testimonials and full "case studies" from entities that found Linux hard to manage and, as a result, turned from Linux back to the boys and girls of Redmond.

Here are a couple of quotes:

"Many people underestimate how complex a Linux cluster is to set up and manage. After that, it’s a long learning curve just to be able to use it."

— David Dai, Computer Science PhD Student, Advanced Research Institute Virginia Tech

"One of our scientific programmers had to spend a large portion of his time being ‘the Linux guy.’ Now he can focus on creating chemistry applications instead of on cluster maintenance."

— Matt Wortman, Genome Research Institute, University of Cincinnati

Funny, it is, that the "case studies" are downloadable ... in Microsoft Word format. Glad I have Open Office (and now Abiword) so I can read the damn thing.

Here's a bit of the case study on Continental AG:

IT experts at Continental AG first tested the options of a Linux platform. Supported by Sun, Continental had also evaluated StarOffice. According to Rölz, however, using a Linux/open-source solution would have necessitated an “unmanageable migration expense,” especially because individual Microsoft Office documents and solutions would not have been convertible. Moreover, a series of important applications that run exclusively on Microsoft software would have made it necessary to run virtualization software on a Citrix application server in the background of any new Linux platform.

So ... they clearly haven't heard of Open Office. If they do have a number of "important applications" that only run in Windows, I'll give them that one, but ... what ... exactly ... are ... those "important apps"? In-house hacks, or commericially available programs for which Linux-compatible equivalents could be found?

Then:

Continental chose a uniform client-server infrastructure based on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system (for its server computers) and the Windows® XP Professional operating system (for workstations and portable computers). The company decided to equip each client computer with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

They bought the whole shebangy --- the Server software, plus XP and Office for all desktops.

By way of explanation:

“We were especially concerned about Microsoft Excel macros and Microsoft Access databases that had been developed over the years by many employees at different sites and that over time had evolved into important tools without anyone’s noticing,” reports Dr. Bernd Thomas, Manager of Corporate IT Infrastructure at Continental AG.

What can you do? I'm not an Excel guy, so I don't know how Excel macros migrate over to Open Office's spreadsheet, or Gnumeric, for that matter. But did they test this? Did they try to migrate some of these files over to even the Windows version of Open Office to see how they run?

If you're married to Microsoft Office, I can't tell you to change. And if you're a big, moneyed corporation like Continental AG, I guess price is, if not "no object," at least not as much of an object as it is here, at the Daily News, where we run XP, but no other Microsoft apps. And our main editorial software from the Unisys company runs on Windows and Mac (although we don't run it on OS X), and I believe also will run on Linux (but I'll have to check that one) -- it's very platform-independent, as far as that goes. We all have Open Office, and nobody has complained that it's not as good as Word. I know OO isn't as good as MS Office, but it's plenty good enough -- and free, with no looming, expensive upgrades down the road.

There's been plenty of talk lately about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop. In a touch of irony, I think it's not ready for the casual home user -- it's still in the realm of hobbyist types, even though reatailers such as Wal-Mart are offering Linspire-equipped boxes to consumers.

On the business desktop, I think Linux has an even better chance. After all, when cost is king, Linux can offer a better deal ... out of the box, as it were. If the choice of hardware and OS is based on applications -- and with many business applications becoming Web-based (such as the way I'm writing this blog in Movable Type), it doesn't matter whether the box is running Windows, Linux or Mac OS -- all that matters is whether or not it has a Web browser and some kind of office suite when needed. The temptation to save $200 a box on the OS and somewhere between $300 and $600 on suite software -- and even more on antivirus and related security products -- is powerful indeed. And if the IT people in charge are committed to making Linux work with the hardware chosen, a savings of $800 to $1000 per workstation on software costs, multiplied by hundreds or thousands of PCs, becomes very real money indeed. That's where Linux has its "in," from the cubicle to the shop floor and beyond.

I'm not coming at this as a Microsoft hater -- I use XP every day, and my experience has been very, very good. But I am not using any MS apps, simply because my employer didn't want to pay for them. A wise choice, because our need for that functionality is secondary -- and ably satisfied with Open Office. I even applaud the decision not to purchase Photoshop for everybody. Sure, the photo-department pros have it on their Macs, but for the rest of us, who are pretty much just shrinking and cropping JPGs for the Web, the GIMP is more than sufficient. In fact, I'd like a program with fewer features that loads faster, but nothing else out there will do the job. The best I've found is IrfanView, which is a great photo viewer and pretty good image manipulator -- just not as good as the GIMP.

But since both programs are free, I was able to test them on actual work before I committed to learning one or the other -- and I tested those two and many more.

I applaud the many programmers out there who are offering their work either as shareware or in time-limited trial versions, with a nominal fee due if you continue to use the program. That way, you can decide if it's valuable enough to merit continued use. Codeweavers, the grown-up version of Wine emulation for Linux, and Parallels, which enables Windows and Linux programs to run on OS X are two such programs that allow you to try before you buy -- and which don't cost an arm and a leg if you do decide to pay up. Add to that EditPad, which is free for non-commercial use, and available in a commercial version for $49.99. So between free and $100 per app, there are many ways to get stuff done with a computer.

OK, I realize I'm totally off-track, but another school of thought says that Vista's late and incomplete arrival, coupled with the impending release of the new version of OS X will make things very, very dicey for Microsoft. And if even one of the current or even future Linux distributions steps up and brings true ease of use when it comes to installation, automatic hardware configuration and software management, the whole business of operating systems could shift. (And at this point, that distro is Ubuntu, especially after its alliance with Linspire and impending use of the latters's CNR click-and-run software installation system.)

And remember, there's money to be made with Linux, especially when it comes to support. Ubuntu's parent, Canonical is doing it, and even HP is making good money propping up Linux, bringing in $25 million in fiscal 2006 alone.

See -- when you don't own the OS, you follow the money. And when you're an IT consumer at the business level, you seek savings and relative sanity. So, workers of America, your next PC just might be running Linux; and remember, it's a money thing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been looking all over for Mini-ITX systems -- with smaller motherboards than even mini-ATX -- and have been disappointed by the prices. Seems that it costs about $400 to put together a decent system.

The problem is that there are two ways to go -- regular "small" 200-watt power supply (with a fan) and either fan-cooled or fanless CPU, or a totally fanless system with lower power consumption and ... silence. Not that I notice the fan in my Dell (I'm in a newsroom, you know -- it's not silent here), but the idea of being able to, with good conscience, leave a computer running all the time and not burning off a lot of power, well, it makes a fanless, low-wattage system all the more attractive.

The places I've found that offer such miniature systems include Cappuccino PC, iDOTpc and the Damn Small Linux Store.

Now, you might say, "Why not just get a laptop?" That's a very legitimate question, since a laptop packs the screen, keyboard and mouse into one small package. But there still the fan problem, even the power-consumption problem -- and for a desktop system, why not also have a low-power alternative?

OK, I'll admit -- it's a geek thing. You gotta geek to understand it.

But back to mini-ITX. There certainly are Intel processors in the mini-ITX world, but the space, small as it is, literally and otherwise, is owned by Via Technologies, the company that created it. Since quasi-thin-client and other non-traditional uses, such as home-theater management, are common applications for mini-ITX, and since quiet, fanless construction is encouraged, these boxes, when assembled, are generally not as powerful as regular PCs. Not a lot of 3 GHz chips, meaning.

But many of the mini-ITX systems use processors as slow as 400 MHz ... not the greatest, for sure. And once you get the fan for the traditional power supply, and a fan on the CPU, you might as well do a mini-ATX box for half the price.

Getting to my point ... you can configure these little boxes with internal hard drives, and CD or DVD drives, or you can go diskless and use Compact Flash or Disk on Module internal storage. That's what I'm interested in at this point -- running Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux from a flash drive on a small, silent, power-sipping system. Even the problems with flash memory longevitiy aren't that big if regular backups to an external CD drive are performed. I recently bought a 1 GB Compact Flash chip for $17, and replacing that on a yearly basis is not something I'm totally against. And with a system like Puppy, you only write to the drive once per computing session, so the CF or DOM would last a good long time.

Initially I wanted to have at minimum an internal CD-RW drive, and for that the Cappuccino systems excel. But for real-world use, I think a totally driveless, fanless system -- and one with a little processing power to make it all run good -- is what I want. The best I've seen is the Bargain Fanless Mini-ITX BareBones Computer (pictured above and at right, next to a "big" mini-ITX box) from DSL. Case dimensions are 213 x 45 x 200 mllimeters ... which to you and me is 8.4 x 1.7 x 7.9 inches.

It runs at 1 GHz, yet is still fanless, with a rubberized heat sink that makes contact with the case for additional cooling. A barebones system, it doesn't come with RAM, but does use common DDR memory, which is pretty cheap these days, going for about $30 for 512 MB. It has all the usual connectors (parallel, serial, PS2 for keyboard and mouse, 10/100 LAN, plus mic and audio in, and four USB 2.0 ports. The latter is significant because many of the systems I've seen, especially those destined to be "thin clients," meaning diskless workstations connecting and getting applications via a network, have USB 1.1 only.

I'd run it with Compact Flash as opposed to Disk on Module so the CF chip could be pulled and worked on with a card reader connected to a bigger PC.

The best part: The box costs only $245 ... add $20 for the CF chip, $30 to $70 for your DDR memory stick, and you have a usable fanless system that's about the size of a book. Other systems are comparably priced ... and it's worth checking them out ... but this can get you out the door -- fanless -- for $300 flat. Other than thin clients, it's hard to beat that AND have the 1 GHz processor, which I'm loathe to give up because I want the system to not just be small and efficient, I want it to run well, too. And if I wanted or needed to run a CD or hard drive, they could be hooked up via the USB -- and since this is a Via motherboard, it boots from USB, too.

For comparison's sake, here's a system from Cappuccino PC, the Light 5000 (LT5) 3LAN Fanless Mini PC, measuring 9.2 x 6.9 x 1.9 inches -- and seen at left.. It has a Via processor at 533 MHz, 3 LAN ports (why so many??), 2 USB 1.1 ports, all the other usual inputs, plus interfaces for 40- and 44-pin IDE drives, Disk on Chip and CF capability. The Barebones system is $299. That's without memory or hard drive. You can't add a CD drive on board, but you can stuff a 2.5-inch hard disk in there. Also, there is available Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Putting together a system with only one LAN port (yes, you can do that) saves $30, boosting to 512 MB RAM is $50 (you can probably do better on your own), taking out the HD saves $69, and you are out the door for $380. Add $20 for your CF chip, and that's an even $400. So, let's take away $20 for the memory and say it's $380.

So ... for $300, you get a faster processor and faster USB than you get for $380 ... and that means I've got my eye on the DSL system. Still, should I be all hyped on the fanless aspect, or should I just bite it and get a more mainstream system from iDOTpc, such as the iBox Falcon C3 (pictured in various states of undress below) -- dimensions are 5.31"(W) x 11.75"(H) x 10.24"(D) -- and highly configurable. It does have a more traditional, fan-cooled power supply, with options for motherboards both fan-cooled and fanless. And it can hold both a hard drive and CD or DVD drive -- hey's it's bigger, all right!

The barebones unit is $272. With 600 MHz fanless motherboard, 512 MB RAM, 512 MB Compact Flash (or add your own 1 GB CF for about the same money), the price is $280. Not bad. I'm not sure if both 1 GHz motherboards are fanless, but one of them adds $43 to the price for a total of $307. Pretty good. It's never entirely fanless due to the power supply being a traditional PC type, albeit smaller and rated at 200 watts. But you can add the hard and optical drives, and that makes it more like a traditional PC. At least you have the option -- and you could run a bigger Linux than Puppy or DSL, like Ubuntu, Fedora, or what have you, and get it installed without opening up the box and jumping through hoops. There are many, many more systems available from these three companies, and others are in the mini-ITX business, too. If you're OK spending $400-$700, there are a lot more options. But if you want to go fanless and keep it under $500, I have your best deals right here.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Abiword is one of the great free, open-source, multiplatform programs out there. It looks like Microsoft Word, acts like Microsoft Word, yet is faster than Word -- and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. The only problem -- no smart quotes (since to the Linux geek world, smart quotes are the devil's -- e.g. Microsoft's -- plaything). But I'm learning to live without them, and Abiword is so damn fast, at least I'm getting something for my trouble.

Jeremiah Foster of O'Reilly's Mac blog tells of his brother's surprise when the Microsoft Word on his new Mac suddenly stopped working. Seems it was a "trial" version. He figured that he already paid for Word (even though he didn't), and didn't want to pay any more, so Jeremiah told him about Abiword:

Abiword looks a lot like Word, or rather how you expect Word to look. I have no idea what Word looks like today, with the release of Vista surely the interface has changed in Word but I do not use it. Abiword has all the right buttons in the usual places, it is very easy to get acquainted with its interface. It has all the tools you’d expect, spell checking, various formatting, plus some things you might not expect. One very handy feature is that it reads and writes all kinds of documents. You can use it to write html for example and of course it can read all your Word documents (.doc) and rich text (.rtf) documents. Abiword also has a versioning system. This is particularly useful if you make multiple revisions of your documents or need to get back text you wrote previously. It changes the text of different revisions to make it clear what has changed. It even has a built in tool to report bugs so you can aid in the development of the software.

I already like Abiword better than Open Office (although OO does do smart quotes) because Abi is so much quicker to load, especially on my older hardware. I also like Ted, another slick word processor, which is even quicker to load than Abiword. The only problem: Ted doesn't save in Word's .doc format ... and it's Linux/Unix only.

Another word processor I've had occasion to use in the last week was KWord, part of the KOffice suite that works with KDE desktops under Linux. KDE is known for being slow, but that doesn't have to be the case, I've learned. MepisLite, the still-developing little brother to the SimplyMepis Linux distribution, is surprisingly responsive for a KDE-bases system -- and it's designed to work on older hardware. KOffice ran great, but the one problem I see so far is, again, no .doc option for saving files -- is that so hard, people? Like it or not, and I really do not, Word is the de facto standard for formatted documents, and it's almost as make-or-break as smart quotes for professional publishing. And if you're calling your suite KOFFICE and KWORD, shouldn't they be compatible with the programs from which their names were derived?

I plan to explore MepisLite and SimplyMepis further, so I imagine I'll spend more time in the KOffice world. For real geeks, including Linux creator Linus Torvalds, KDE is much preferred to GNOME due to the former's greater configurability ... and the geekier the better, right?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're interested in Linux news, Lxer stays right on top of it, linking to relevant news, blogs and other meanderings about the free, open-source operating system all day, every day. It's the place I go when I want to find out the latest in Linux.

Here's what Lxer says about itself:

LXer (http://LXer.com/) is a fully independent news and opinion site, established in January 2004, by Linux veteran Dave Whitinger, a well-known personality in the free and open source software community.

LXer is one of the most widely read Linux community news and opinion sites. People turn to LXer for its frequently updated news feed and comments. Over 400,000 unique users from over 165 countries visit LXer each month, and LXer is syndicated by Google and dozens of other community sites. CIOs, CTOs, government officials, as well as programmers, system administrators and end users make up our very active community.

Our top quality editors create, edit, and present information about GNU/Linux and free/open source software via our frequently-updated newswire.

Here are the people behind Lxer (check out the headgear).

An example of the great stuff that Lxer has led me to, is this entry, 13 Things to Do Immediately After Installing Ubuntu, which leads here, if you want to skip a click. It's a way to take care of all the stuff that Ubuntu doesn't do for you, the reasons being mostly political and geekical (no closed-source software, no access to NTFS file systems, no proprietary CODECs, no Microsoft fonts, enabling the "multiverse" to get more software, etc.) Do this after installing Ubuntu and you'll be that much closer to having a system that does all the stuff it should be doing.

And, after that, get the Kubuntu and Xubuntu add-on packages so you can toggle between the three desktop environments while not being limited to one or the other.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The G5 CPU is fairly new, super fast ... and fading into obsolescence.

The same is true for the G4 (except the "new" and "super fast" parts).

The G3: down on all counts.

Many G4s can comfortably run OS X 10.3.9, and I bet most will run 10.4.6 and the soon-debuting 10.5. But that will likely be the last Apple OS upgrade that will even be compiled for any chip in the PowerPC family, I think.

A G3 can run OS X, if it's fast enough. But those machines really thrive on OS 9.2.2. Except that there's no modern Web browser that'll run on them. Oh, and there's been no innovation, support or applications coming down the pike for, say ... seven years now.

Did you know that you can bring a G3 Mac into the era of current browsers and more free apps with Linux? Well ... you can, but it's not all so rosy.

There are a few Linux distributions that compile for PowerPC (going back to G3 and previous PPC chips, but not all the way back), the most popular being the fast-rising, easy-loading Ubuntu.

I have burned PowerPC CDs for Ubuntu and Xubuntu. On my iBook G4, Ubuntu ran right away, with sound and Ethernet auto-configured to work. I've never before gotten sound to work on anything without a little tweaking. Would I dump OS X 10.3.9 for Ubuntu? Probably not, but I'd consider dual-booting for the time being. (Since that machine is used mostly by Ilene, I'm going to leave it as is.)

The relationship between Ubuntu (funded by a weathy South African whose name escapes me) and the PowerPC chip is straining. Since PPC accounts for about 5 percent of Ubuntu users, Ubuntu creator Canonical has recently converted the PowerPC versions of all the 'Buntus from fully supported product with twice-yearly updates to a "community maintained" port ... and a more tenuous status overall.

There is much hair-rending and teeth gnashing in the very busy Ubuntu forums over the distancing from PPC, but the beauty of Linux is that there are hundreds of distributions -- and at least a few of them have PowerPC ports and will maintain them. (Yellow Dog and Suse come to mind).

Let me emphasize: If you're running OS 9 on a G3 or early G4, you might want to give Ubuntu Linux (or its less-powerful cousin Xubuntu) for PowerPC a try.

While the live CD of Ubuntu worked perfectly in the iBook, it didn't fare so well on a Power Mac G4 tower, which pretty much screams on OS 9. On that machine, Ubuntu booted slowly (slow CD drive, I think), Ethernet wouldn't work (I did a quick config and got nothing) and upon launch of Open Office, the whole thing crashes. No 'Buntu live CDs would even load on the iMac G3 500 MHz. Many commenters have said that using the alternative install CD of Xubuntu allows installation to the hard drive, and that method does work.

The upshot: If Ubuntu, or any other distribution, can bring a modern Web browser to G3 Macs, that is huge.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

PowerPC -- it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle (of the end).

By now it's old news that Apple abandoned the IBM-made PowerPC line of CPUs in favor of Intel inside (or is it Inside, capital I?). For the first time, Apple shares a processor family with its Windows-running bretheren. Now if the market share between Mac and PC was 50-50, or even 20-70, this would be even bigger news than it already is. But Apple is still in single digits when it comes to percentage of market share in the computing landscape.

What would really turn the computing world on its ear? An official Mac OS X port for the PC platform. It could be done. Apple could make billions.

They'd piss off everybody in Redmond, and Microsoft might pull the plug on Office for Mac. But Apple has already seen that kind of "trouble," with MS orphaning Internet Explorer for Mac. In that case, Apple thrived with its own Safari browser and the widely used Firefox, now the only browser to run on OS X, Windows and Linux (and yes, I am counting all the Mozilla derivatives as part of the Firefox family, even if Mozilla's the daddy and Firefox the fast-growing baby).

While on the subject, any software that has versions for all three major platforms -- Mac, Windows and Linux -- is a-OK by me. In addition to Firefox, the Abiword word processor and the Open Office suite are fine examples. It just makes it glaringly obvious how badly iTunes needs a Linux port. Keep it closed-source -- I don't care, just get iTunes on Linux already

Now back to our regularly scheduled computer whining ...!

Anything Microsoft did to "punish" Apple in the unlikely event that OS X for Windows is ever released would be dwarfed by fanfare, sales and sheer market-changing force by a real Windows competitor. After all, OS X 10.4 is the product upon which Windows Vista is modeled.

Hey, wasn't it the Classic Mac OS that drove Microsoft to develop Windows in the first place? (Answer: yes, for those of you too young to remember.)

OS X on a PC? You can already run Windows apps on an Intel Mac with Bootcamp or Parallels, and that has -- in some way -- boosted the esteem for Mac in the greater Windows-dependent world.

But a full OS X for PC can be done -- and should be. The fact that it hasn't, though, probably means it never will.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So you want to run Linux from a floppy disk? Here's where to get it. And here's how to make the floppy. I tried it in Windows, but there's some problem running .bat files in XP, so I did it through Puppy Linux.

It works. I think you can only make it through Windows if you can somehow get a DOS prompt, which my version doesn't seem to allow. But downloading the tar.gz into Linux and following the instructions in the FAQ yielded me a perfect boot floppy. You can also make a bootable CD-ROM, but for a Linux this small, the floppy is perfect -- and just about every PC is set up to check the floppy drive first in the boot sequence.

The tomsrtbt floppy is a barebones Linux, for sure, but it did boot on an old Celeron 400 MHz with 32 MB of RAM (it wouldn't run on the newish Dell; that's why I sought out one of the few remaining old, creaky PCs in the building). I checked out a few directories, ran vi (man, I've forgotten a lot of old Unix) and shut it down. But if you want to screw around with the lightest Linux around, give tomsrtbt a try.

Linux on a single floppy. Does it get more geeky?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First of all, I love that song.

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

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

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

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

But it works.

I installed in Xubuntu, using the instructions herein.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer me if you will, why Linux?

I'm having a lot of fun, that's for sure, but is there really a compelling reason not to use Windows or OS X and turn to Linux instead?

I'd say the same thing about open-source software for Windows, but here I am using a bunch of it to get real work done.

Will I be saying the same thing about open-source operating systems a few years down the line?

That said, how much does an OS cost when you buy a new PC equipped with Windows? I'll have to look into it. Buying Windows Vista on its own runs anywhere from $99 for a crippled home version up through $200 for the deluxe renditions. And upgrading Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.4 costs about $150, if I have it right. That's over and above what you paid for the original Windows OS. So over the life of a single computer, and certainly over the lives of many PCs and Macs, the money spent on operating systems can add up.

So you can have fun and get things done on your own desktop, or you can save a business thousands of dollars in software costs by using Linux. On the other hand, while shit happens with Mac OS and Windows, for the most part you plug stuff in, get the drivers loaded and it works. That kind of plug and play is a bit elusive with Linux. But I can't forget not getting ANYTHING to work in Windows 98.

Put your foot in the Linux shoe. If it boots, and if the shoe fits, then wear it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Get a Linux PC ... the whole damn box, for $139.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I downloaded the .iso for the live-CD version of Zen Walk, which is based on GNU/Linux. It runs on the Xfce window manager, which I like so much in Xubuntu, and since it comes from a different branch of the Linux tree (GNU for Zen, Debian for the 'Buntus), I figured I'd give it a try.

I like the application set. It's got Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, Gimp, Abiword, Gnumeric and more. And I like the clean look of Xfce -- it's that much cleaner than IceWM.

The first test is network configuration. In Zen Walk, you need the root password to get into the Zenpanel (it's ZenLive, case sensitive) and then you need to click on the various items a bunch of times. I kept getting hung up, so I would log out and then log back in. Finally I got it. Total time, about 10 minutes. At least I got Ethernet running.

Zen Walk also has an app called Wi-Fi Radar ... not sure what it does, but any acknowledgement that Wi-Fi exists and just might work on a Linux distro is a-OK by me.

As far as hardware requirements, the Zen Walk people say it's Pentium III minimum, but you can try Pentium II:

Hardware requirements:

These are the minimal hardware requirements to run Zenwalk in Xwindow mode, with correct performance (some lower configs work - ie : PII - , but might be slow) :

* Pentium III class processor

* 128 Mb RAM

* 2Gb HDD

Well, at least it's realistic. I really do like the way this distro works so far (clunky net config notwithstanding). I've gotta tell you, the net config of Puppy, Knoppix and Ubuntu/Xubuntu is a whole lot easier. As I said, Damn Small Linux won't even admit that I've got an Ethernet card, let alone allow me to configure it. At least Zen Walk let me run network services. Now ... if I could only get sound.

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

Since the live CD of Ubuntu wouldn't load from CD on the iMac G3 (5oo MHz, 128 MB RAM), I figured I would try Xubuntu, which is supposed to present the system with a lighter load.

Didn't work.

But I heard from a few iMac G3 users who reported success with Ubuntu, but not with the live CD. Either installing to the hard drive from a disc or using an Internet-based install, they've reported success with Ubuntu and a Mac desktop computer that really couldn't run OS X without a whole lot of trouble.

Think of it ... you can get Firefox ... can't get that in OS 9.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been learning about what makes PCs go together, and I've been fascinated by the Mini-ITX standard, freakishly small motherboards, with cases and peripherals to go with them. Via Technologies spearheaded this small-is-beautiful movement, which also champions low power consumption and, in many iterations, fanless processors for low noise.

A small, silent PC? Remember the original Macintosh? Well, many want that experience again. The Mac Mini comes close, but what about PC users? That's where Mini-ITX comes into play.

The stuff is more expensive than the standard Mini-ATX size boards and cases, but for the small form factor and quiet operation, I think it's a tradeoff that many are willing to make.

Also intriguing is that these systems are often configured to run entirely from flash memory. No disk drives. No moving parts.

Some links:

Epiacenter, "the Mini-ITX professionals"
Mini-itx.com "the next small thing"
NorhTec "networking out of the box"
Mini-Box.com "Pico-sized computing"
Cappuccino PC
Logic Supply "Leaders in Mini-ITX solutions"

I've been looking for a place to get Mini-ITX hardware without going broke, and besides NorhTech's MicroClient Jr., which can be had for about $200 with Puppy Linux installed (but which can't really do much else, since it's limited to 128 MB RAM), the next best place is Cappuccino PC, which has a bunch of great-looking little boxes for around $400 and up.

But the best so far, and I've only gotten a quick look, is Damn Small Linux's Mini-ITX Store has complete systems from $245 to $495.

The DSL store offers this tempting option:

We, are also offering Damn Small Linux pre-installed on Compact Flash units. Combine these with an IDE/CF adaptor and you can convert old atticware into a useful and secure Internet station.

You wouldn't even need a USB-bootable BIOS to take advantage of this, since it would be running through the IDE interface. I don't know if they have the CF-to-IDE converter, but Mini-ITX.com has them here. And it would be even easier to put Puppy Linux on one of these CF "drives." Or bypass CF entirely and get a IDE solid state drive (same link as before, but also here from PC-parts giant Tiger Direct.

Photo: NorhTech's MicroClient Jr. with a Compact Flash drive that can hold a Linux OS.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

I first saw word of it on Wikipedia. But there's little else to indicate what's going on -- if anything with Ubuntu Lite, the rumored Ubuntu Linux flavor that's lighter than Xubuntu (which, in turn, is lighter than papa Ubuntu). I can't even load what's supposed to be the official Ubuntu Lite Web page, but this post from Mad Penguin lays it out. And see what the madding crowd has to say on Digg. And there's talk of Ubuntu Lite on the Ubuntu forums.

Ubuntu Lite is meant to run on hardware that even chokes a bit on Xubuntu. 64 MB of RAM will be OK. Lite will run the IceWM window manager (same as Puppy Linux) instead of the Xfce window manager used by Xubuntu. But you will still have the pros of Ubuntu, mainly the easy access to software packages via the distro's install capability.

I'd love to try Ubuntu Lite, if it even exists at this point. So far, I'm really liking Xubuntu, but to have something that can compete with Puppy and Damn Small Linux (which hasn't really worked for me at all, by the way -- I'm getting nowhere even with Ethernet) would be great. At this point, Puppy is getting better all the time, so it would be quite a race if the Ubuntu community got involved in a similar Linux distribution.

That said, some of the commenters recently, and my own look at the situation, tells me that a system that needs 128 MB of RAM or more to run from a live CD would probably do well with a lot less memory if the OS is installed to the hard drive. Damn Small Linux, for instance needs 128 MB to run from CD but can run from as little as 16 MB from the HD, according to the give specs.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've made no secret of my satisfaction with Windows XP and the fact that it's hard to beat -- hell, it can't be -- in the business world. This comes after about a year of daily use (following a few miserable years with Windows 98, not even "second edition" and its inability to even run a single IE window with any degree of normalcy).

From the Linux world, Michael C. Barnes lays out the argument for XP vs. Linux:

Taking on Microsoft Windows 98 on the desktop is one thing, but taking on Windows XP is quite another. Microsoft XP is a magnificent piece of work. We have all heard the arguments about viruses and the arguments about costs. Microsoft Windows XP will certainly run on 100% of the new computers on the market and it will support 100% of the new peripherals made for computers. No Linux distribution can make this promise.

It is also possible to run most major Open Source applications on Microsoft Windows XP. Open Office, GIMP, Mozilla, and many other Open Source applications are available for Microsoft Windows XP. A very good starting place for Open Source software for Microsoft Windows is TheOpenCD. A copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and the software contained on TheOpenCD is another way inexpensively introduce Open Source.

Linux does have advantages over Microsoft XP. Linux is more secure and it requires less resources than Microsoft XP. Linux distributions also allow for faster installs as most distributions install the applications as well as the operating system. The best of the Linux distributions preconfigure everything for the user.

Here's more insight into Barnes' computing life. He again lays out the general parameters for choosing a home OS:

For home computers with 16 Mb to 32 Mb RAM, Windows 98 is the best solution. For computers with 64 to 128 Mb of RAM, GNU/Linux (with all the bells and whistles) becomes and option. Microsoft Windows XP needs 128 Mb or more.

If your computer originally came with a different OS, such as Windows 98 or Windows Me, you must purchase upgrades for each computer. One license is only good for one computer. If I ran Microsoft Windows Home Edition on all five of my home computers, the cost for just the upgrades would be about $500.00 USD. This does not get me the application software I need.

He recommends an Office-compatible suite, 602 PC Suite, that, while not free, is available for $40 -- much less than Office, and even a bit less than Microsoft Works (which Barnes also recommends for home use). 602 also edits photos and creates PDFs. That's pretty useful on both counts. A 30-day free trial is available.

More Michael C. Barnes on "Desktop Options":

Here's a good tip for migrating from Windows 2000 to XP:

When you install XP or Windows 2000, you have a decision to make. The decision is whether to convert your drive to NTFS or not. I have done both. I believe that for most users, leaving file system FAT32 is best. NTFS is suppose to be more stable and faster, but it is also very difficult to convert back to FAT32 in case you change your mind.

More words of wisdom and reason:

The area where Microsoft Windows has been criticized the most is for security. One of the unfortunate facts of life is that one of the biggest challenges anyone using Microsoft Windows will face is viruses. Viruses are not something we can blame Microsoft for directly. If GNU/Linux were more popular than Microsoft, then GNU/Linux's would be the victim of more viruses. Viruses attack Microsoft products because they are the most popular and any weaknesses are well documented. Anyone using Microsoft Windows is well advised to use and update virus protection software.

Go to this article for much more on what OSes are good for what computers.

The gist of Barnes writing is something I almost all the way agree with. He says that while LInux is fun and all, if you have XP, that's the best way to ensure compatibility (and all the free software for Linux is available for Windows as well). But if you're running Windows 98SE and things aren't going well, give Linux a try and find the right flavor for your system. He's not as hot on Windows 2000 as I am. He rightly points out that when upgrading from Windows 98, there are a bunch of driver issues (I also had to junk a lot of stuff when moving), but for me, the superior (i.e. working) handling of USB and CD-R in 2000 made any other issues pale in comparison.

I've still got some quibbles with Windows 2000, but it's pretty stable overall. I'm surprised to learn that my 333 MHz system with 256 MB of RAM can run XP comfortably. Too bad I don't have an XP disc. I am not paying for XP. Not gonna happen.

Photo: Michael C. Barnes from Desktop Linux.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again ... you may pet the Puppy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The SeaMonkey browser is a Mozilla derivative, just
like Firefox, but in this case leaner and ... you know
... meaner.

But back to Puppy. I was pleased to find mtPaint, an
image editor that both sizes photos and puts borders
on them. So I'm definitely good.

The great thing about Linux on a CD or USB drive, is
that if you can boot off of them, you can take the
Linux you know with you and work anywhere with a
familiar set of apps and, if the PC cooperates, a
place to store your data (either on a USB drive or the
open CD itself). It can really change the way you view
computing.

But while it's assumed that PCs can boot off of USB drives, this Dell Optiplex GX520 won't do it. I don't think Macs can boot off of USB (they do boot from Firewire). Does anybody have PCs that boot from USB? One workaround is a boot floppy. I think both Puppy and Damn Small Linux offer images for boot floppies. But by the time you have a boot floppy and a USB drive, isn't it just easier to carry a CD instead of a floppy? Just asking.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really wanted to run Linux from a USB drive, but the BIOS in this newish Dell doesn't allow it.

I call this disappointing, since the ability to boot from USB would also allow the computer to be usable if the hard drive failed but a mirrored backup on a USB drive existed.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

Now that I can download and make my own bootable CDs of ISO images, I'm collecting and sampling all the CD-bootable Linux flavors out there.

So far I've got:

Knoppix
Ubuntu
Xubuntu
Fluxbuntu
DSL (Damn Small Linux)
DSN-n (Damn Small Linux, but a little bigger)

I've managed to make CDs of about half of them. I tried to make a bootable USB stick with DSL, but it didn't work. It can be done, say geeks.

DSL runs great, although it sometimes leaves the mouse behind on the Dell, depending on if/where the USB drive is plugged in. It won't recognize the Ethernet card either. But it's wicked fast. Maybe DSL-n, bigger as it is, will do better.

And Xubuntu is supposedly lighter in resources, which I need for This Old PC, with Fluxbuntu even lighter still (with DSL the absolute lightest). But if I can't get wired Internet or wireless going, it's all terribly academic and not at all useful.

In other news, I downloaded Abisoft for PC to get a feel for it. It's a very light Word-compatible word processor that also runs under Linux and is being included in more and more distributions.

What I like about these Unix distributions: The ones that are meant to be run from a hard drive (the Ubuntu family) allow for easy updating and equally easy search and downloading of new, compatible applications. Huzzah!

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

Update: Knoppix was faster on This Old PC.

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

There are two ways to look at my technological laundry list over the past many months. Old PC rehab, old Mac rehab (everything from new OS to wireless), through the Palm (the search not for Spock but for smart quotes, the importance of which is ... not so much, now that I've found them) and now Linux.

If Palm Desktop ran on Linux, this "progression" would be that much more natural. Ah, if things were only that easy.

Update: There are ways for Palm and Linux to talk to each other. Evolution on Ubuntu Linux seems to be able to do it, and this page has a bunch of other apps that claim to do it, too.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I came across this very cool and helpful Web site, Palm Heads: Cool Palm, Tandy and Linux Stuff We Actually Use. There's information on how to make the Palm handheld computer play with Linux, including pointers to the J-Pilot desktop PIM, Pilot mailsync for Linux and more.

Also, check out PalmHeads' Tandy 102 page, on the first great portable computer, which, believe it or not, some sportswriters at the Daily News still use:

This computer shared alot of the similarities with the PalmPilot now. It has an Address Book, a built-in Text Editor, an Appointment Book. What it had that a PalmPilot doesn't is a built-in modem (at a frightning speed of 300 baud), & a full travel keyboard. It also only had 24K (expandable to 32K) & an 8-bit processor! Chuck in 20 hours battery life on 4 AA batteries & you can start to see its advantages over modern laptops.

Go to Club 100 to find out more from the users group for Tandy 100, 102 and 200 owners.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

Ubuntu in action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This page helps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later on the burn ...

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

I've always wanted to try Linux. But I've never had the luxury of an extra PC with which I could wipe out the hard drive, the making of drive partitions makes me nervous (I confess, I have killed at least one PC with boneheaded use of fdisk), and I want to try before I buy myself a heap of free trouble.

Here comes Knoppix to save the day. It's yet another free Linux distrubition, but what makes it different is that it can boot and run from a CD-ROM drive. And while it's available cheaply if you don't want to burn your own, I am going to attempt my own download and burn (even though Windows is crippled -- probably by design -- from allowing you to burn the disc images, lest you be tempted to leave Microsoft behind, I imagine).

There is an XP helper application to burn what's called an .iso image, and I will try it, but the image can also be made on a Mac, even though the software itself is for a PC (funny, that).

While I do have some experience with command-line UNIX from my days as a PC-less student at UC Santa Cruz in the mid- to late '80s (when only the few and the moneyed had a PC of any kind in their rooms), I welcome a UNIX-derivative with a graphical user interface and a whole host of free applications. I'm already using Open Office for writing, the GIMP for photo editing and Firefox (sparingly). All that and more is on the Knoppix CD, and there's even more if you burn a DVD.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amid all the blather over the iPhone, Google is rumored to be working on its own phone, the Google Switch. Check out The Google Switch: an iPhone Killer?

From Endgadget:

What's pictured in that all too familiar blur (Photoshopped?) is the phone's contact program said to be an extended version of Gtalk combining Gmail, text and instant messaging. According to our tipster, the device doesn't have any on-board storage. That's right, all your applications are served up over the network with new apps "attached" to your account via a web interface. So what is it... the real deal or engorged fanboy fantasy?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend, and now that I've gotten the cliche out of the way, if you're loaded and looking for a last-minute gift, BoingBoing points us to a diamond-encrusted USB drive, made in solid platinum with 350 white diamonds and 4 gigabytes of storage. Cost: $40,000.

She didn't want A GIANT LEXUS ... just a diamonds-and-platinum THUMB DRIVE.

Look on the bright side, it's upgradable, so when 4 GB seems small, they'll pump it up, according to the original post on ShinyShiny. Going back another link, it has 350 white diamonds, total weight of 5.8 carets, and the drive is a Sandisk.

The Stor-Data Web site that's selling this thing barely works, but hey, when you're peddling $40,000 thumb drives, who needs a working Web site?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been working on the Powerbook 1400, the 10-year-old project computer I've been shaping up as much as I can to work in the 21st century. From cleaning the mold off of its bag to loading a new operating system to getting Ethernet to work on the office network and with my home DSL connection, it's been a geeky six-month journey, all chronicled at http://thisoldmac.blogspot.com (I'm not hot-linking until later because I am NOT hand-coding, and no blogging software supports browsers this old -- I'm using IE 5 for Macintosh at the moment).

I'm no techno-genius, and this project happened more due to the enticement of resurrecting a laptop for free than for any other reason. This past week, I got the Powerbook working on 802.11b wireless -- this from a computer produced when the World Wide Web itself was just getting off the ground (about three years into the WWW's life, I believe) and nobody had anything but dialup -- and wireless hadn't been invented, at least for Web connections.

While I've gotten it to work as well as I can, there's nothing like a modern (i.e made in the last two years) computer with fast processors, adequate memory and up-to-date software. But if you have to get along with old, creaky hardware, it can be done, and you will have fun doing it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stuck on what to get the geek who has everything? How about a replica Altair 8800 kit -- a fully functional, build-it-yourself tribute to the first microcomputer available to the hobbyist. Grant Stockley is the guy crazy enough to make this happen, and while the price is steep (he's selling them, at this point, on eBay, and a recent kit went for $1,700), it's a small price to pay ... if you're loaded.

While I'm all juiced about the guy who made a computer with a homebrew CPU, this Altair kit is something that the average Joe can actually acquire and put together. Stockley will even help you troubleshoot the thing if it doesn't work. And he's planning to offer expansion boards for this S-100 bus system. (Remember back in the day when Byte columnist Jerry Pournelle went on for pages and pages about how he wrote all his sci-fi books on these kinds of boxes?)

In the works for this new Altair are:

88-ACR - Cassette Tape Interface Card Set
88-2SIO - 2 Port Serial Card
88-PMC - 1k ROM card
88-4MCS - 4k static memory card
SuperAltair Card - 64k RAM, 512k FLASH, Disk drive emulator, ADM3 emulator (VGA/NTSC/PAL and PS2), Ethernet, MP3, and more!

And there are probably a ton of S-100 cards out there that, if they haven't hit the garbage bin in the last three decades, might just work. It's a wonky-geeky-techie wet dream, to be sure. To learn more, check out Stockley's forums, where the new Altair is discussed in brief -- and hopefully more fully in the near future.

More Altair Kit porn:

The kit under construction
Full set of manuals
New vs. vintage Altair
A bunch of cool pix

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those cool little cameras at the top of Mac screens are great for Web chatting, taking your picture while you're at the Apple Store ... and possibly for hackers to spy on you:

A crafty little trick posted by Joseph Crawford made its way around the web toward the end of last week, wherein he (or anyone) could turn on your local iSight and display it on a web page back to you against your will. This was done by opening up Quartz Composer in the dev tools for OS X, creating a video input and a billboard, and then dragging a line from the video input to the billboard. You then just have to export it to QuickTime and embed it in your web page.

Here's the original post of the "trick." Real or paranoia? You be the judge.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The next space shuttle launch will take place sometime between Dec. 6 and 18 for a planned 12-day mission to the International Space Station. But NASA is worried about Discovery. They want it back by Dec. 31 because they've never flown a space shuttle between the 365th day of one year and the first day of the following year -- and they're afraid the shuttle's computers can't handle it:

NASA wants Discovery back on the ground by Dec. 31 because of concerns that shuttle computers aren't designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the first day of the new year while in flight.

"We've just never had the computers up and going when we've transitioned from one year to another," said Discovery astronaut Joan Higginbotham. "We're not really sure how they're going to operate."

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to know how Google works, or just to see what the giant of search is doing? Go to Google Code. The three main categories are "Enhance Your Web Site," "Reach Google Users," and "Integrate With Google." Resistance is futile.

For the rest of us, the same page offers the Google Code Blog, where you can also find links to other Google geek blogs, which they call "Google Developer Blogs."

Check out the Google Code FAQ.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote just about every paper I ever did in college on the UC Santa Cruz's Unix B computer system in the Unix program vi. As I wrote previously, I learned all I needed from the iconographic "Unix for Luddites," by Scott Brookie, available in Xerox form at the UCSC Bay Tree Bookstore.

But if you want to dip your foot into the geeky world of vi, start at the Vi Lovers Home Page, where I learned you can get a vi clone for everything from an Amiga to Windows XP. Why you'd want to ... well you just gotta be geeky enough.

One of the most well-known vi clones is called Elvis, and all can be learned about it at this page: http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/ (I had to print the URL so you could see it ...)

And for those torn between vi and its rival text editors, there's The Cult of vi.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to show your tech friends that you actually know what you're talking about? Review the blogs at Ars Technica to geek up.

Infinite Loop follows the world of "Apple and Apple-related ventures," including Macintosh and iPod.

M-Dollar is all about Microsoft, these days mostly the trials and tribulations of Windows Vista.

Opposible Thumbs focuses on video games, both for players and from the business side.

And if that's not technical enough for you, Nobel Intent is "science-centric."

And there's lots more to see from the main Ars Technica page, too.

For a taste, Infinite Loop today covered the changing face of Macintosh screen resolution as Apple adopts the Leopard OS, as they quote from an Apple doc:

Macs now ship with displays that sport displays with native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.

And from M-Dollar:

Back in September, the Gartner consulting group predicted that Windows Vista would be delayed until at least May of 2007. The group claimed that Microsoft should delay the operating system in order to avoid antitrust violations, take advantage of more consumer spending revenue in the second quarter of 2007, and keep Vista's code base complete rather than break it into pieces for different release dates. Since then, Microsoft has been working diligently to get Vista on track, and most experts feel the operating system is just about ready to head out the door. Nevertheless, Gartner's bread and butter is in predictions, and the company has been holding to its forecast that Microsoft will delay Vista until mid-2007. Well, it doesn't look like a delay is in the cards, so what does the group have to say for itself now?

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been reading "iWoz," the autobiography of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, in which he details how he developed the Apple I and II computers while at the same time working on calculator designs for Hewlett-Packard. He talked about the early '70s, when the idea of having a home computer was pie-in-the-sky stuff, and how he made it happen, part by part, logical leap by leap, and how he always had the engineering philosophy of using as few components as possible.

This got me thinking about my own misspent, geekier-than-thou youth, during which I, too, dreamed of building my own computer from scratch. I'm at the age -- 40, if you must know -- when I'm thinking about the stuff I had when I was a kid that I let go, and the stuff I never had that I always wanted. This includes the books, electronic gizmos, etc., most of which I got rid of over the years.

Now with sites like Alibris and Abe Books, just about everything is available -- at a price. Sometimes that price is $3, like for the classic Tab Books volume, "How to Design & Build Your Own Custom TV Games," by David L. Heiserman. Sometimes it's more like $70, the going rate for Byte magazine columnist Steve Ciarcia's "Build Your Own Z80 Microcomputer." Ouch -- wish I had saved that one. Then you'd be paying me $70 for it. Or not.

I spent many, many hours poring over both of these books, and others, but for the most part could make neither heads, nor tales, or NAND gates, nor OR gates.

If you get the joke, you're plenty geeky enough. If you don't, consider youself lucky.

Both of these books were chock full of multi-page schematic diagrams, some parts obscenly common (i.e. available at the RadioShack in North Hollywood's Laurel Plaza mall) or just plain elusive (i.e. you had to mail-order them from one of those $25-minimum-order parts places -- and in the late '70s/early '80s, $25 was a way bigger chunk than it is today.

So I've been scouring the Web for the coolest homebrew computer stuff, and since computer history and the Web is a duck-water issue, it Mother Lode-ish in the extreme.

The Homebrew CPU Home Page follows Bill Buzbee's exceedingly cool success in building a computer with a CPU made entirely of TTL logic chips -- the aforementioned NAND, OR, NOR gates, flip-flops, etc., that formed the backbone of 1970s arcade video games, "dumb" terminals like the adm3a's we used at UC Santa Cruz in the mid- to late '80s if a better terminal wasn't available.

Here's what the Homebrew CPU looks like:

I am stunned, in a geeky way, by his intro:

Magic-1 is a homebuilt minicomputer. It doesn't use an off-the-shelf microprocessor, but rather has a custom CPU made out of 74 Series TTL chips. Altogether there are more than 200 chips in Magic-1 connected together with thousands of individually wrapped wires. And, it works. Not only the hardware, but there's also a full ANSI C compiler for Magic-1 (retargeted LCC), and a rudimentary homebrew operating system.

Except when I'm working on it, Magic-1 is connected to the net. It will either be serving web pages at http://www.magic-1.org, or by clicking here you can telnet into Magic-1 and play Original Adventure or run a few other simple programs.

It's made up of 7400-series ICs, no standard microprocessor, no DOS (very, very obviously no Windows) and it's a Web server. Geeks gone wild, indeed. And this monument to geekiness doesn't just sit there and flash its LEDs at you. It is a functioning Web server.

This is bow-down-level geekdom. And I do. Just look at the photo gallery. There are even movies of the Homebrew CPU running, construction photo diaries, a timeline from December 2001 to May 2005, an overview of the project and much more.

Here are the specs: 3.75 MHz (equivalent to an old Intel 8086) 4 MB of memory (a lot for something like this), IDE hard drive interface, two serial ports, 20 MB hard drive as master, Compact Flash card as slave.

More from the builder:

Magic-1 is built out of TTL devices, mostly 74LS, 74F and one 74 series device from 1969. Also included are modern SRAM and a handful of support devices (UARTs, PIO, RTC, etc.). The whole thing is put together using a particular type of wire-wrapping: cut-strip-wrap. This was done using an electric wire-wrap gun with a special bit that cuts, strips and wraps the wire in one action. It's also really good at just breaking the wire off rather than wrapping it.

All together there are more than 200 chips spread across 5 wire-wrap prototype cards. I didn't try to count the number of wires, but my rough guess is around 4,000. Building those five cards took about four months worth of evenings and weekends.

And his goal? To port Minix, a small-fry version of Unix, to the machine.

You can even start a Telnet session with the Magic-1. I just played it in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. It was a draw.

Yeah, I can't even beat a well-wired pile of 10-cent ICs at Tic-Tac-Toe. That's why I'm in this racket.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)