Results tagged “Firefox” from CLICK

I just had one of those ominous Ubuntu crashes in which I can't ctrl-alt-backspace out of X or ctrl-alt-delete out of the OS entirely. I have to hard reset with the power switch.

I'm in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, and this only happens when I'm running my Cnet CWD-854 USB Wifi stick. I do have a backup Wifi card, the trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver (which runs on EVERYTHING), and just for the record the CWD-854 never died in OpenBSD.

But I'm not running OpenBSD ...

I was also running the newish Opera 10 Web browser, which thus far I think is "just OK" in Linux but "totally, completely game-changing" in Windows, where it blows both Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 way, way out of the water.

So just to see what's what (and it did take a couple of hours before the laptop died), I back using Firefox 3.0.14 in Ubuntu ... with the CWD-854. We'll see how that goes. Time to pull a print column deep out of you-know-where ...

How much RAM do you need? There are a lot of factors:

• Hardware
• Operating system
• Applications
• How you use your computer

For me there are certain amounts of RAM that make a given hardware/software combination more or less usable.

I used to think that 512 MB of RAM was enough to make the average Linux system very usable. But things change, and now I'm not even happy with 768 MB running Ubuntu 8.04.

After six months of running OpenBSD 4.4 with that same amount of memory (and, to be fair, the Fvwm2 and Xfce 4 desktops) and never needing to use swap, I got a bit tired of all the swapping going on in Ubuntu. I'm also running a Debian Lenny laptop with 512 MB of RAM, and while it seems somewhat more "frugal" in terms of memory use than Ubuntu (both running GNOME), I haven't put the Debian system under heavy day-to-day testing just yet.

Mind you, Ubuntu 8.04's performance hasn't been bad at all. It's just a bit "slower" feeling than Debian, but not a deal-breaker, and I have doubts that just about any modern Linux distribution isn't "faster" on the desktop than OpenBSD. ... but I open up a terminal, run top and see lots of swap being used in Ubuntu.

Should this bother me? I could return to OpenBSD (if I solve a few critical issues, commit to the extra work getting my desktop where I want it ... and then am OK with the differences in application security between the average Linux distro and OpenBSD).

I could try another BSD (maybe FreeBSD, which seems to be quite "evolved" on the desktop).

Then there's the idea of starting with a stripped-down Linux distribution, say Debian's "standard" installation, or the seemingly elusive minimal Ubuntu instal. Maybe a lightweight Linux such as ZenWalk or Vector?

Since I'm running this laptop as my day-to-day machine, I took the easy way out.

I bought a 512 MB PC133 SODIMM stick of memory on eBay, pulled a 256 MB SODIMM and now have two 512 MB modules in the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101. Yep, I'm back to running a full gigabyte.

So for today anyway, I'm thinking that 1 GB is enough RAM to be comfortable in Linux with some heavy Firefox, Thunderbird and less-heavy OpenOffice, Gedit, gFTP, GIMP and Pidgin use.

OpenBSD vs. Linux note: It occurs to me that each of these operating systems/kernels treat memory and swap differently, and just because Linux [or a given Linux distribution] appears to use more memory or swap, that doesn't necessarily mean that the system using MORE memory (or swap) is either slower or less efficient. The idea here is that performance is one thing and actual usage of RAM and swap may very well be another ... or not. I'll readily admit that the deep mechanics of all this is above my head. And no, that being-above-my-headness doesn't usually stop me from writing about it. If it did, I'd barely ever write anything.

What do you think? How much memory does it take to make you feel good about your desktop operating system? Let me know, either in the comments or via e-mail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I tried quite a few OpenBSD ports during my last run on the Sparcstation 20. None of them would build (Firefox, Seamonkey, Geany).

Curiously, when I ran NetBSD on the Sparc, the Firefox PACKAGE wouldn't install. Not a port that needed to be compiled, but a precompiled package built for the 32-bit Sparc architecture. That didn't give me a whole lot of hope for pkgsrc, which theoretically can be used to bring NetBSD packages into OpenBSD and other OSes. (DragonFlyBSD uses NetBSD packages, and that's a great way for the FreeBSD-derived DragonFly to have a huge package repository, and it makes me want to try it on my i386 hardware).

I spent the past few days installing Solaris 9 on the Sparc 20. (I got the OS super-cheap — $1 plus shipping — from eBay, unopened in the box).

Solaris is quite a bit different from OpenBSD and Linux. I'm still getting the hang of it. A lot of the trouble I'm having is due to my near-total unfamiliarity with it. I do have "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Solaris 9," which I found remaindered at Fry's for a few bucks, and it's a good resource. It's somewhat short — not "complete," but for the "complete idiot," which I am in this regard. There are quite a few other Solaris 9 books out there, including a "Dummies" book by Dave Taylor, who wrote a general Unix book I quite liked (here's everything Amazon has that he wrote).

Back to the Sparcstation 20 after the Solaris 9 installation: With 50 MHz of CPU and 128 MB of RAM, it's far from ideal. GNOME &mddash; which ships with Solaris 9 — is almost unusable, but the CDE desktop is pretty responsive. It reminds me quite a bit of Fvwm in OpenBSD.

StarOffice 6 is included among the many discs in the Solaris box. When I installed it as root, only root could run it, so I started over again in my user account. The answer to this mystery is probably somewhere in my "Complete Idiots" book.

I found a Firefox 2.0.0.20 package built for Solaris 8 at the great SunFreeware site. Again, installing as root meant only root could use it. Even after installing it through the user account with su didn't work all the way. I can still run Firefox as root, but I get errors relating to patches that I need to do when I try to run it as my user. I'll have to read up on Solaris admin and eventually find and install all the Solaris patches.

But I did get Firefox to run, and it's WAY faster than Netscape 4.7, which shipped with Solaris. Yes, I did just type the words "Netscape 4.7."

I could very well keep Solaris on the box, but one idea is to run OpenBSD and then try to use the Solaris binary packages for Firefox and OpenOffice (since none of the OpenBSD ports of Firefox or Seamonkey will install on the Sparc 20).

Running Solaris binaries in OpenBSD is supposed to work. And yes, OpenBSD is a better, faster OS, for my use anyway, than Solaris on this platform.

Sun Sparcstation 5 image from the OSIAH: Online Sun Information ArcHive.

I decided to get deeper into Puppy 4.1.2 on my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop.

I'm always looking for platforms on which I can do all my Daily News-related work, which means I need the Java runtime and Flash video.

Well, there is a Java package for Puppy. I'm surprised Java isn't part of the base install, but it appears not. I installed the package, and I even brought in the Opera Web browser to augment Seamonkey.

Both browsers are performing well, but for some reason Flash doesn't work in either. I distinctly remember Flash working in all of the Puppy 2 and 3 releases I've used previously, and now I'm left wondering what happened.

Also, Java did NOT work in either browser, so easy use of the LogMeIn remote-desktop service is not something happening in Puppy. I'm getting to the point where I'll need to bit the proverbial bullet and install Java from source in OpenBSD on this laptop so I can get that functionality. I can live without Flash (and the Flash I do have in i386 OpenBSD via Opera is marginal at best; it works in YouTube but not in Brightcove). I can sort of live without Java.

But it's better for the work that I do to have both of these things working well.

Also, I was surprised to see not Pidgin or Gaim as the IM client in Puppy but something I'd never heard of. Pidgin is available as a package, so that's not such a problem.

The end result is that while Puppy 4.1.2. runs quite well at first blush, I need to look closer at why I was so unsuccessful at getting Flash and Java to work. It should be easier than this.

And while Flash remains somewhat of a problem in OpenBSD (I probably need to be running an up-to-date Linux such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Slackware, Zenwalk ... take your pick) I'll probably stick with it for the time being as my primary OS.

I've sung the praises of the Opera Web browser many a time. It's a great deal lighter than Firefox, it renders most Web pages well, and most importantly for me, it enables me to use a critical Web-based application that is designed to only work with Internet Explorer, which I try to run as little as possible (and which isn't an option in OpenBSD).

In OpenBSD, Opera is run with the Linux compatibility layer, so it's basically a Linux binary when it comes into the system from ports.

And up until now, I've had no problems with it.

But lately, Opera has been either crashing itself or crashing X.

I can see in top in an xterm window that processes with the name operapluginw (or some other letter after "plugin") can eat 90 percent of CPU and bring the whole laptop to its knees.

Most of the time I can kill the processes in a terminal and then restart Opera right away. Sometimes I can restart the Fvwm window manager from the menu. Other times I have to kill X with ctrl-alt-backspace.

I don't know if the problem is with this specific build of Opera (version 9.51, build 2061), the many packages that allow OpenBSD to run Linux binaries in i386 (including fedora_base and fedora_motif), or something inherent to this hunk of hardware, a 2002-era Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop. It could even be something specific to the software-as-a-service type application I'm primarily accessing with the Opera browser.

Right now the problem is manageable, and I will be testing Opera again in Linux (preferably Debian) very soon.

Due to the inherently quirky nature of our particular development environment, many of my co-workers have been using Opera heavily. The problem I'm reporting here is in OpenBSD only. I haven't seen it in Windows (or previously in Linux). Again, it could be something with the Linux compatibility portion of OpenBSD (this is the only Linux app I'm running), or Opera itself.

In all likelihood, I'll continue running Opera in OpenBSD and see if the problem clears up in the next version of the OS.

And I didn't mention it until now, but my other "main" browsers on this OpenBSD laptop is Firefox 2. In OpenBSD 4.4 for i386, there are packages for both Firefox 2 and 3, but I chose FF 2 for no other reason than that it was still available, and in Unix-like environments I haven't really seen the need to go from FF 2 to 3 if I don't have to.

And Firefox 2 has been extremely solid in OpenBSD 4.4. If I could use it for everything (or could figure out what's ailing Opera), I'd be very happy indeed.

Frustration with my Windows XP box at the office has prompted me to do more and more work at the office on this Toshiba laptop, which happens to have OpenBSD as its primary OS. (I didn't remove Windows XP from the laptop, but I don't use it, either.)

I've never previously used/abused this hardware and OS to the same extent, and in a sense it's a test of the Toshiba, OpenBSD and the applications.

As I recently reported, the whole thing has the potential to run great. If I really needed constant access to Flash video and other such nastiness as Microsoft .NET (which unfortunately I sometimes do), I'd be in a bit of trouble using this platform. I don't even really need Java all that much, but I could install it from ports if things change.

Before I close out this rambly entry, let me remind the reader that one of the things that prompted me to run OpenBSD on this laptop was the balky CD/DVD drive that hates 9 out of 10 CDs I burn for it (and yes, those CDs work fine on other PCs). Even OpenBSD's install CD wouldn't work, so I was able to use the floppy image to boot the system and install over the network.

Even though I do a lot of work in Firefox, where Chris Pedrick's excellent Web Developer add-on helps me code, whenever I'm doing "casual browsing," working in Movable Type, Google Docs, Gmail or any of the various Web-based programs I rely on that allow it, I use the Google Chrome browser.

Why? Speed.

Even though I think a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM is adequate for Windows XP, there's no denying that Chrome is faster to load and run than Firefox (and Firefox leaves Internet Explorer 7 way back in the dust). Chrome is right up there with the Opera browser when it comes to speed, but already Chrome does better in terms of rendering pages.

And basically Google Chrome is a nice, lean, uncomplicated browser.

I made it my default browser because every time I click on a link in an e-mail (usually in Thunderbird, by the way), the machine would open that link in Firefox. And on this box, while I am using Firefox for development, I'm happier doing the rest of my browsing in Chrome.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to run Firefox 3.1, which is supposed to be much faster than 3.0.x.

So what if Chrome had a tool like Web Developer? And what if Chrome ran (and ran well) in non-Windows environments (Linux, BSDs, Mac OS)? Just more world domination for Google (and a faster box for me).

Web Developer or Firebug?: I should probably try to familiarize myself with the Firebug extension for Firefox. Having more than one tool to help with Web development (and I need all the help I can get), isn't a bad thing. I guess I use Web Developer because it was the first of the two that I was able to get working the way I needed it.

Related:

Google Chrome: What does it offer developers?
Chromium Developer Documentation

I know that application startup time isn't everything. But it's definitely something.

Here are the numbers for Puppy 2.13 and OpenBSD 4.2 on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt, 233 MHz Pentium II MMX, 144 MB RAM):

OpenBSD
Firefox 2.0.0.6: 120 seconds
Opera 9.22: 37 seconds

Puppy Linux 2.13
Seamonkey (Mozilla-based): 30 seconds
Opera 9.02: 34 seconds

Analysis: Firefox/Mozilla is a fairly heavy application, but the Seamonkey version of Mozilla does quite well in Puppy, where it beats Opera slightly when it comes to start time.

But in OpenBSD, Opera is a standout for some reason, starting in about a third of the time that Firefox takes to start. Opera works with Movable Type much better in OpenBSD, with no stalled-script messages.

Question: Is there any way to run Mozilla browser code faster than Firefox? I need to test Firefox in Puppy (and, if I had the space, Seamonkey in OpenBSD) to fill out the data.

Conclusion: Application startup and response time is extremely critical with older machines. Since most of my computing time is spent in Web browsers, I welcome the speed and functionality of Opera in OpenBSD; it has pretty much given this OS a proverbial "new lease on life."

I didn't have high hopes for Wolvix on the $15 Laptop — a Compaq Armada 7770dmt built in 1999 — since previous attempts to load the live CD resulted in an X configuration that needed a little work.

Since then, I've had quite a bit more experience working in the xorg.conf file, and I was able to get a halfway decent X configuration going so I could test Wolvix Cub (the smaller of the two Wolvix distributions, with fewer packages than the larger Wolvix Hunter).

As I've written on many occasions, I consider Wolvix to be one of the best Slackware-based distributions available. Both the graphical configuration utility and the very flexible installation utility — also an X application — add considerable functionality to a solid Slackware 11 base.

And with Wolvix (and the rest of the Slackware-derived distros such as Zenwalk and Vector), all of the helpful Slackware console utilities are still there. Xwmconfig, netconfig, mouseconfig, even pkgtool can be used in any of these Slackware-based systems. You might not need them as much as you would in a standard Slackware installation, but they do come in handy.

Wolvix also includes slapt-get and Gslapt, the Debian-apt-like utilities that changed the way I look at package management in Slackware.

Before Wolvix, when running Slackware I dutifally downloaded updates from the Slackware FTP site, then used updatepkg to install them. One by one. By one.

One time I figured that using pkgtool for updates would enable me to save time and avoid all that typing of long filenames, or the almost-as-long procedure of copy/pasting them in the file manager for each and every package than needed updating.

I ended up with "doubles" of every updated package, since pkgtool didn't know I was doing an update and just installed the new packages without removing the old ones. So when you're talking about doing updates of Slackware packages with Slack's default tools, it's updatepkg or nothing.

All it means is that slapt-get and Gslapt, which are included in Wolvix and easily added to Slackware itself, are essential for the person whose life doesn't revolve around using the updatepkg utility.

Just the fact that Wolvix — which can operate as a live CD with a Knoppix-like save file, or in "frugal" or traditional hard-drive installs, can be brought up to date in minutes with Gslapt in much the same way that apt and Synaptic work in Debian continues to be a revelation.

Put it this way: How many longtime Slackware users don't have and use slapt-get/Gslapt? I bet not many.

Once I had Wolvix Cub running as a live CD with X properly configured on the 144MB/233MHz Compaq Armada 7770dmt, I used xwmconfig at the console to switch between the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers.

Not surprisingly, both WMs ran quite well, even with only 144MB in the live CD environment.

What astounded me were the extremly quick application-load times. In previous tests of Wolvix, it was quick but not so quick as to beat Debian Etch or Slackware 12 under Xfce and Fluxbox.

In Wolvix Cub running on live CD on the Compaq, a number of text editors, the lightweight Abiword and not-so-light Firefox all loaded relatively quickly. I need to do more tests, but Firefox seemed as responsive or more so than the Mozilla-based Seamonkey browser is in the ultra-fast Puppy Linux.

I wouldn't want to run Wolvix, even the Cub edition, as a live CD in the same way as Puppy or Damn Small Linux — especially in only 144MB of RAM, but when it comes to a traditional install, Wolvix Cub or the more application-rich Hunter would seemingly make an excellent candidate to permanently run on the Compaq.

In contrast to Debian and Slackware, Wolvix installs with just about every application and utility I like, from Abiword to Bluefish, Dillo to MtPaint, and with extremely well-organized menus in both Xfce and Fluxbox. In fact, the Fluxbox menus even include little icons next to each category of applications, something I've never seen before.

I'm "sure" I could replicate all of this goodness in standard Slackware of Debian, but the former's KDE focus and the latter's devotion to GNOME mean that it would take quite a bit of work on my part to have as good an experience in Xfce and Fluxbox as I already enjoy in Wolvix by simply loading the live CD and doing an easy installation from what I consider to be among the best installers of any Linux distribution.

Previously:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part I — Puppy or Damn Small Linux
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part II — OpenBSD or Debian?
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part III — Browsers and wireless

Coming up:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part V — Where I'm headed
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VI — Younger Puppies
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VII — Debian with Xfce and Fluxbox calls
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")

Things are happening in Debian Lenny, and not just in my installation.

OK, mostly in my installation.

For one thing, something — I have no idea what — made the GNOME Network Admin package disappear. I couldn't change my network settings from the System--Preferences menu or the icon I have in the panel for that very purpose.

I went into Synaptic and reinstalled it. Now it works.

I'm still having the "work offline" problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox) 3. Whenever I start the browser, I'm automatically in "work offline" mode, regardless of whether I'm actually online or not.

I also still have the "ghosting" on the upper GNOME panel.

Right now I'm doing a software update. Among the new packages is a kernel update. Will this solve my problems? And will I have to reinstall the ALSA sound modules for my ESS Allegro/Maestro3 chip in the $0 Laptop?

After the update: The Debian Lenny updates included a 2.6.25 Linux kernel, but boot code for the new kernel didn't get written into the menu.lst that controls the Ubuntu-installed GRUB, which controls the master boot record for this dual-boot system.

It turns out that Debian only updated its own /boot/grub/menu.lst, so I copied the new entries over to Ubuntu's /boot/grub/menu.lst to try the new kernel.

This appears to be the SECOND 2.6.25 kernel in Lenny, but it's the first I've seen of it, and without Ubuntu's menu.lst being updated automatically, a new Lenny kernel is easy to miss.

I understand that dual-booting can pose a problem, but I thought that Debian pretty much knew to look for multiple GRUB configurations and update them all. I guess not this time.

In Lenny with the 2.6.25-2 kernel: Sound still works in the new kernel. (After manually jump-starting sound in 2.6.24, I didn't expect it, but thankfully it does.) Either the Debian developers decided to re-support my sound chip, or my manual installation of ALSA drivers stuck.

Iceweasel 3 still defaults to "work offline" status whenever it's launched. The same problem still (again, thankfully) doesn't affect Epiphany.

The upper panel in GNOME still suffers from the same "ghosting" problem.

Looking at the bug reports, which I did in a very recent post, tells me that the Iceweasel problem is not so much with Iceweasel as with NetworkManager. I can pretty much confirm this, since mousing over the NetworkManager icon in the upper GNOME panel says that there is "No network connection," where there indeed there is. I probably should be looking at bug reports for NetworkManager and not Iceweasel.

I couldn't find anything in Debian's bug reports, and nothing leaped right out of this large page of GNOME bug reports.

I'd read the teeth-gnashing about Iceweasel/Firefox 3.0 among developers at Planet Debian, and while I wasn't eagerly awaiting the move from 2.x to 3.0 for Iceweasel -- Debian's copyright-free version of Firefox -- I didn't expect the thing to move from Sid to Testing with huge bugs.

First of all, and I don't call this a bug so much as a total oddity. Instead of using the standard Iceweasel file as the home page, it now defaults to Mozilla's "Gran Paradiso" page. I've seen other names for Firefox (besides Iceweasel, there's Bon Echo), but this one I can't figure out.

And like Epiphany did a while back (and which I since fixed), now Iceweasel defaults to "working offline" mode, even though I'm definitely online.

When Epiphany "broke" in this same way, I began using Iceweasel more and more just to see how long it would take Debian to fix the problem. When I saw they weren't going to do that (since the bug report included ways users could hack it back to health), I did the fix myself in gconf and moved on.

But having this problem in Iceweasel is bigger, since presumably more people use it than Epiphany.

Again, these problems just don't present themselves in Ubuntu. ... and I had smooth sailing with Iceweasel 3.0 in Sidux this morning, so Lenny is definitely hurting.

Update: I found possibly relevant bug reports from Debian and Mozilla. It appears that the problem is due to Network Manager.

What isn't clear is whether or not the fix is forthcoming. Firefox 3 is working just fine in Ubuntu 8.04, so perhaps when a more mature Iceweasel works its way into Debian Lenny, my problem will be solved. I hope.

Zack Whittaker's iGeneration blog has quickly become a must-read. His post on The Killer Apps of Academia is well worth bookmarking for future reference.

He mentions quite a few apps I use every day, from the obvious (Firefox, OpenOffice) to the less-so (Notepad++, Audacity).

Among the ones I hadn't heard of but want to try immediately are LogMeIn Free, which, if the description is correct, is like GoToMyPC, letting you control a Windows PC from a remote location, but without the costs involved. There is a "Pro" version with more features, but the fact that there even is a free version warms my cockles considerably.

Now that Firefox 3 has been officially released, the Google Gears team wasted no time in pounding out a new version of the API that works with FF3.

Coincidentally, this means that Google Gears now works with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which began its life a couple of months ago with the then-non-Gears-supported FF 3 beta.

According to the blog post cited above, the change was made on June 11, but I don't think the Gears link worked for Linux systems with Firefox 3 (i.e. everybody running Ubuntu 8.04) on that day.

But now that FF3 is officially official, I expect Gears to install in the latest Firefox browser, and I in turn expect my laptop (and me) to be enjoying offline access to my Google Docs files real soon now.

I tried Google Docs with Gears a week ago on Firefox 2 in the Slackware-derived Wolvix Hunter last week, and I was very impressed. Editing of existing Docs files was seamless, and while I miss the ability to create new files in Google Docs while offline, I'm fairly confident that the big brains at Google are hard at work adding this needed bit of functionality to the Docs/Gears world.

By way of explanation, here's what I know about using Google Gears:

Google Gears is what's called an API (which stands for Application Programming Interface), and it installs as a Firefox add-on. If you don't have a live Internet connection, Gears detects this and uses a SQlite database set up in the user's Firefox directory to allow the ability to read and edit files in Google Docs.

When Gears is first installed, the database is created and populated with all the user's Google Docs files, after which Gears attempts at the earliest opportunity to sync that database with the files on the online version of Google Docs.

Like I said, I've tried it, it's brilliant, and it's finally come to the one computer that is regularly offline — my Gateway Solo 1450, which for the time being has no wireless connectivity (something I hope to remedy with a new PCMCIA assembly, should I be able to figure out how to pull the old one and replace it).

Google Gears/Docs update: I installed it in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, and it works. I plan to use it often.

Gears/Docs tip: I think I have a way to get around Google Docs/Gears inability to create new documents while offline.

I haven't tried this yet, but I plan to create a half-dozen to a dozen "dummy" documents in Google Docs while online so I'll have pre-created, empty documents in which to work when I'm not connected and using Docs via Gears.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile (or spent a few hours back in the archives), you know that I run Debian, Ubuntu, Puppy, OpenBSD and Damn Small Linux a lot.

I have had a Slackware box in the past, but I didn't stick with it. Still, one of my very favorite distributions is Wolvix, which is based on Slackware 11.

While I'm generally a GNOME fan, especially on faster boxes, and not a big user of KDE, even on faster boxes, there's a lot of software in the full Slackware installation. Since I'm OK using KWord (and not OpenOffice Writer or Abiword) for the few times I need to kick out a .doc file, I don't feel the need at this very moment to install one of the GNOME add-on projects for Slackware.

If I could, I would install Dropline GNOME, but since the box I'm using is NOT i686 compatible, I can't do that. GNOME Slackbuild looks like it will work, and I might install it, but since the default Slackware installation is working so well, I'm loathe to mess up a good thing.

Here's what I like about Slackware:

In the default installation, just about everything works

Easy-to-use console utilities make managing the box relatively easy. I'm talking about:

xwmconfig
netconfig
mouseconfig
pkgtool (surprisingly helpful when adding or removing packages)

A bunch of window managers, easily selectable before starting X with the xwmconfig utility. It may not have GNOME, but a full Slackware installation does have:

KDE
XFCE
Fluxbox
Blackbox
WindowMaker
Fvwm2
Twm

On occasion, I do use Fvwm2, which I grew to like from OpenBSD, where it's the default WM. Things really speed up on slow boxes when you use Xfce, Fluxbox or any of the window managers that are not KDE.

Other things I like about Slackware:

Long-term support. The Slackware team keeps the security patches coming for many of its releases. I still see updates for Slackware 8.1, which was released in 2002. Six years is pretty impressive. It's up there with the "enterprise" releases from Red Hat and SUSE.

Slapt-get. After using Wolvix and now Slackware itself with slapt-get, I'm a total believer. It makes maintaining a Slackware box much, much easier. Get it here.

Lots of editors. Slackware may not include my favorite (Geany) but nonetheless has tons of editors built in:

Vi
Vim
Gvim
Nano
Xedit
Kwrite
Kate
Kedit
Emacs
Jed
Joe
Mousepad
(and some I probably missed)

Three major Web browsers:

Firefox
Seamonkey (which also features a mail client and HTML-generating app)
Konqueror

I've grown fond of Seamonkey, which is the main browser in Puppy Linux. I usually use Firefox, but it's nice to have Seamonkey there in case I need the Composer app to do some HTML, or to use the mail client (even though I'm pretty much accustomed to Thunderbird).

I like a lot of choices, and while I'd really like Slackware to include Abiword and maybe even OpenOffice, I can add these packages later if I decide I really need them. But I probably don't and won't.

I haven't made the leap to Slackbuilds yet, but I have had success with Robby Workman's precompiled packages.

Great projects derived from Slackware:

Wolvix
ZenWalk
Vector
Slax

I'm VERY partial to Wolvix. If I need to set up a box quickly with all the software I want/need, Wolvix Hunter is the way to do it. Wolvix has one of the best, most flexible installers I've ever seen. You can run Wolvix as a live CD, or in a "frugal" or full hard-drive installation. All are easy to do.

Default fonts in Slackware look better than default fonts in Debian

I like to gave good-looking fonts right out of the gate. Slackware is as good as any modern distribution in this regard. Debian fonts look OK on an LCD screen, horrible on a CRT. I've gotten used to them, and I no longer change them, but I still prefer nice, smooth fonts.

If you're going to run KDE, Slackware's the fastest way to do it

SimplyMepis with KDE is simply unusable on this 2002-era box. It's too slow by far. Slackware makes KDE usable on this old PC.

Granted, KDE is just as fast in Debian, so that's another good choice for the KDE fan who wants to use their favorite window manager on an old box.

A little advice: If you use KDE in Debian, save yourself a lot of trouble and use Aptitude or apt; Kpackage didn't work for me. And conversely, in Slackware use pkgtool/installpkg/upgradepkg or slapt-get/Gslapt, not Kpackage. Maybe some of you have had a better experience with Kpackage. For whatever reason, I don't like it.

Coming soon: Things I don't like about Slackware

I don't mean to be a hater. I'd love to say that Internet Explorer 7 isn't as bad as advertised and that it's a perfectly fine application that holds its own with Firefox 2.

But it doesn't. And Internet Explorer pales in comparison to Firefox by every measure, metric and anecdote I can muster.

Here's the deal: I'm pretty much "forced" to use IE by a single, albeit important, work-related task, and I've taken to using it a bit more just to acclimate myself.

But IE 7 is slower -- a lot slower, crashes more and generally sends me running back to Firefox.

That's it. Mini-rant/review over. Go back to what you were doing.

I can hardly believe that I'm composing an entry in Movable Type Open Source 4.1 using Damn Small Linux.

Now that version 4.3 of the low-spec Linux distribution has added Firefox 2 to its software mix, I can use the browser -- here named Bon Echo for reasons that escape me -- for many more things than I could the Firefox 1.06 browser included in previous incarnations of DSL.

And on the $15 Laptop -- a Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz processor and only 64 MB of RAM -- Damn Small Linux remains the best operating system and is that much better with a browser that can do so many things FF 1 couldn't handle.

Like Movable Type.

And Google Docs, where I just had a very pleasant writing experience.

There are a few niggly things that don't work as well in DSL 4.3 as they did in DSL 4.0 on this laptop, among them the desktop background, which for some reason is absent (but shows up when I run DSL 4.3 on other PCs), and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the menu to show up in Fluxbox. All I get is the DFM menu, not the Fluxbox application menu. Since I'm happy using the JWM window manager, that's not a big deal, but having Firefox 2 instead of 1.06 is a big, huge, game-changing deal that makes Damn Small Linux a must have for hardware at this level.

Thanks to Robert Shingledecker of DSL for continually improving his distribution and saving many an old computer (this one in its ninth year of service) from obscurity.

I burned a DSL 4.4 RC1 CD today, but I couldn't get it to boot on the Compaq. I don't know if it's a bad CD or a bug in the release candidate, but I do plan to try again as the development process continues. I'm also planning to give DSL 4.2 a try to see just where the desktop wallpaper stopped appearing on this laptop. Again, it's not a big deal because the extreme responsiveness and stability and usability of this distribution on a PC with these specs cannot be found in any other Linux distribution -- Puppy and Debian included.

When I make the leap from 64 MB of RAM to 144 MB, things could very well change. I might be able to more successfully run Puppy, Debian or OpenBSD with X, but DSL will also be that much better as well.

I stumbled across this on Slashdot, which led me to Red Hat's own release on all the new things in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (and eventually in the free CentOS clone of RHEL).

The most shocking: Firefox 3. The Red Hat people must have a lot of faith in Mozilla's latest browser.

When it comes to the up-to-date applications, RHEL purposefully stays behind the curve so as not to break anything, especially on servers. But for desktop users, having to run Firefox 1.5 for-freakin'-ever is a bit of a bummer. Same for OpenOffice; the version I last used (probably in CentOS 4) didn't even have ODF compatibility.

Users of RHEL 5.2 will enjoy the following newish applications:

• Evolution 2.12.3
• Firefox 3
• OpenOffice 2.3.0
• Thunderbird 2.0

This is one of the parts of the release that makes me eager to try RHEL 5.2:

We also significantly improved laptop support, with Suspend/Hibernate/Resume enhancements that allow us to certify more laptop systems.

Also, many graphics drivers where updated, including a backport of the "intel" graphics driver commonly used in Desktop and Laptops.

Bottom line: These improvements make RHEL/CentOS much more attractive on the desktop (and especially for laptop users).

Could this mean a greater push from Red Hat on the desktop, even though the company has stated recently that it will not focus on that very market?

I say yes.

Red Hat 5.0 (OK, in my case the free CentOS 5.0) runs pretty damn well on my Gateway Solo 1450 (the $0 Laptop), except that Suspend/Resume doesn't work ... and if it did, I would be very happy about it.

The Red Hat release didn't mention the fact that RHEL didn't suffer from the same OpenSSH vulnerability that has affected Debian-derived Linux distros, but the CentOS team does point it out while also telling CentOS users to check suspect keys from users of Debian-based systems that have had SSH contact with your RHEL/CentOS box.

When I told Ilene that I could probably fix the USB flash drive problem in Ubuntu and could then switch her back from Debian Lenny, she told me it would be better to stick with Debian for now, since there are enough little differences between environments to make it confusing, and she was and is doing well with Debian.

She did say she liked Ubuntu a bit better, but for the sake of productivity, Debian was doing more than well enough to keep until I fix her iBook G4.

Among the problems I'm having with Lenny that I don't have with Ubuntu are lack of control over the Alps touchpad by individual users. I can turn the touchpad's tap-to-click function off as the primary user, but my other users can't use the Touchpad configuration feature in GNOME. When they do, a dialog pops up about SHMConfig not being enabled in X.

Except that it is. That's how I am able to control the touchpad in my primary account.

I wouldn't care if all the users had their touchpad tapping controlled by me, the main user, but every once in a while, it seems that the tap-to-click turns on for a split second in Ilene's account.

Since we're using a USB mouse more than 95 percent of the time, this isn't much of an issue, but it is annoying.

This could be a GNOME bug that doesn't allow for different Xorg configurations in each account, but this is nothing more than conjecture on my part.

Otherwise, Ilene is quite amused by Firefox being renamed Iceweasel due to the copyright restrictions imposed on the Firefox name and logo by the Mozilla Foundation. It's one of those things that really confuses new users to Debian.

I remember seeing Iceweasel in Knoppix and having no idea why it looked exactly like Firefox but had a different name. Now I know about Debian's reluctance to use copyrighted material, and while I agree with it, I do acknowledge that it's awkward and confusing to those who don't know the story.

One thing that I did do for my three users is customize their desktops to some extent. In this case, that customization is limited to putting icons for each user's favorite applications on the upper task bar.

Since I use Epiphany a lot, I kept that there, but added Iceweasel (which I use sporadically) along with all the text editors I'm testing or using (Geany, Bluefish, Gedit) the terminal, the root terminal and the network-configuration app.

In Ilene's, I have Iceweasel and the OpenOffice apps she needs (for text documents, presentations and spreadsheets).

The little girl's account has Gcompris, Childsplay and TuxPaint.

I've said it before, and it bears repeating here: Another reason for keeping Lenny over Ubuntu is the fact that all the children's educational games we use work better in Debian than in Ubuntu. In Ubuntu, sound is spotty on all three apps, and Chidsplay is hobbled by a woeful lack of games. Maybe those additional games are available as packages in Ubuntu, but I'm not sure. All I know is that they are all there in Debian.

Before the rant is over, let me add that all three of these education packages are also in great shape in OpenBSD. You don't normally think of OpenBSD and "the education distribution," but it works very well for us in this regard. All I need is some additional memory on the 1999-vintage Compaq Armada 7770dmt to make the experience that much better.

Here's the error message I got:

Google Gears 0.3.14.0 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.0b5

Maybe I'll try it in Epiphany.

Later: Nope, Google Gears doesn't support Epiphany.

Onto Debian Lenny, which has Firefox 2.

Still later: Nope, Google Gears does not recognize Iceweasel as Firefox, even though it's the same app, different name.

Maybe it'll work with Firefox 2 in OpenBSD ...

Robert Shingledecker told me at the SCALE 6X show earlier this year that he planned to add version 2 of Firefox to Damn Small Linux, and it's finally here in DSL 4.3.

Damn Small Linux hasn't yet moved to a 2.6 kernel -- Robert said he would maintain versions with 2.4 and 2.6 eventually -- but I can wait for that. Just having Firefox 2 is enough to let me use Movable Type, Google Docs and the rest of the Web-based applications that I've come to rely heavily upon.

I just downloaded the ISO, and once I burn it and give it a try -- probably on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt, circa 1999, 64 MB of RAM, 233 MHz Pentium II MMX) -- I will report back.

DSL, like Puppy Linux, is one of those systems that has benefited from continual improvement. Both projects set the bar very high for others that want to play in the small-sized live CD space.

And I do use both -- often.

Update: While DSL has always run great on my VIA C3 Samuel test box and the $15 Laptop, it has barely run on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450). That hasn't changed. Luckily Puppy runs great on the Gateway, even though I'm mostly running Debian Lenny (and will soon be testing Ubuntu 8.04 on it).