Results tagged “OpenBSD” from CLICK
I'm not saying I won't go back to using OpenBSD (or even try FreeBSD on the desktop), but I'm sufficiently busy enough and have had a sufficient number of configuration and upgrade instances either take lots of time or go horribly wrong in OpenBSD that I'm continuing to use Linux (these days Ubuntu) on the desktop if, for no other reason, than that upgrading, configuration and adding the software I need is a whole lot easier.
As I've written recently (OK, I probably "tweeted" it), a true BSD distribution, i.e. one that provided a reasonable installer, timely binary updates and a wide choice of desktop environments easily installed is what I think is needed to take BSD (either Open- Free- or Net- ... or DragonFly ...) to the proverbial "next level," meaning use on the desktop by less-than-qualified geeky types (and maybe even "civilians") like myself.
Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular is just so good at taking care of the less technically minded while still providing a powerful, extendable operating system that can be used at just about every level and for every purpose. That's why I'm using it today.
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 ...
I plucked this from the noise on Twitter:
A new project dubbed AerieBSD is starting, some say as a fork of OpenBSD (and from the looks of the planned architectures, I'd say they're right).
I'm not as enmeshed in the politics of the various BSD projects and their licenses as you might think, and the site isn't giving all that many clues as to WHY it's forking. Look at this (misspellings as they appear on the project Web site):
The ÆrieBSD project strives to produce a free, multi-platform UNIX-like operating system including the best possible free development environment. This includes (in adition to traditional BSD environment) free compilers, assemblers, linkers and other tools for various architectures as well cross-building capabilities.
The only name I can find on the site is that of a German guy named Michael Shalayeff, who's not hiding the fact that there's nothing to see yet ("we're working on our first release"). He is a (former?) developer of OpenBSD. I saw this reference to his work on the hppa port of OpenBSD and CARP.
I guess what Shalayeff is trying to say is that he doesn't want to use tools such as the GCC compiler or the GNU utilities that are not totally free in a BSD-licensing sense ... but I could be wrong. (And OpenBSD has this same goal, I believe.) So it's aiming to be BSD without the GNU (or the GPL).
To get somewhat of a picture of Shalayeff's involvement with OpenBSD and PCC, look at the mailing lists. (To be honest, I'm getting no clues there ...)
Look at the "about" page (emphasis mine, with my comments in footnotes, spelling theirs):
We are a group of individuals who like to hack operating systems. We are not driven by any kind of corporate agenda or market sales and thus can produce the best software ever, properly written. There is not any business or corporate backing (or even sponsourship) for the project. We even pay for it with our ice cream change! Since our time and resources are limited we use lots of software developed by other peoples and projects. Here is what our goals are (not necessarily in the order of priority):
* First of all hacking shall be fun and thus we resent any sort of political gaming and ego worshipping inside the project1. If you want to be famous and naked -- here be a wrong place for you.
* Henceforth developers are the only real value that we have and this is who the project is for2.
* Be open to the community and provide transparency of how the project works3.
* Provide free and functional best possible development environment. This includes free access to all source code, free development tools (compilers, assemblers, linkers, debuggers, text formatting tools, etc), various libraries and documentation.
* Support various hardware platforms (see Hardware page).
* Implement common standards.
* Pay attention to security and correctness4.
* Provide a stable release cycle5, although right now we are working on our first release (;
To keep the code free we prefer code licensed with ISC or 2- or 3-clause Berkeley style licenses. GPL is not really acceptable in the tree as through the years it has proven to be alot of trouble and counter-progressive.
OK, here are the footnotes (this is turning out to be easier to explain than I thought):
1 I assume they're referring to what I call the "benevolent dictatorship" of OpenBSD, which was founded and now run by Theo de Raadt. The wording suggests "Theo doesn't like me/hates me/hates my code," or "my asbestos undies are wearing out."
2 The "developers, developers, developers" mantra isn't just a Steve Ballmer thing. Everyone in the OpenBSD project is very open about that fact that the OS is coded by the developers, for the developers, and anybody else is free to use it as they wish, but if they want a certain feature or other, they best get to coding it themselves. And while everybody involved in OpenBSD thinks (and rightly so) that the OS is important to vast numbers of people, they as developers are pretty much scratching their own itch when it comes to their work. So ... I take this to mean, "We're just like OpenBSD, except we're in charge, and not Theo."
3 The whole thing about openness and transparency ... OpenBSD seems as open as they come. The whole tree can be seen by anybody at any time, everything is battled over in the mailing lists ... so it's more "we're just like OpenBSD minus Theo."
4 "Security and correctness (of code)" — again, right out of the OpenBSD playbook.
5 "Stable Release Cycle" means that, just like OpenBSD, we want it to be released like clockwork, every time ... so again, "just like OpenBSD minus Theo."
So what is AerieBSD and what will it become? I have no idea. If anybody out there knows anything, please post a comment on this entry.
Historical perspective: OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD. Matthew Dillon's DragonFlyBSD is a fork of FreeBSD. I guess you could say that all the current BSDs are forks of the earlier BSD projects, principally 4.4BSD-Lite and 386BSD.
And you might not say that Linux is forked from Minix, it was certainly inspired by it.
Related:
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.
After finally figuring out how to make Xorg work in Debian Lenny (and presumably in Slackware 12.2 and ...), my new method didn't work in Ubuntu 9.04, and I was worried that my Intel 82830 CGC graphics chip would be left behind by Xorg (and by extension Linux and the BSDs and anything else that happens to use Xorg).
Here's what I did to get X working again in Debian Lenny. I added this line to the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
But that didn't work in Ubuntu 9.04.
I tried various other suggestions, but nothing worked.
Then I came across this LinuxQuestions.org page, which had this suggestion specifically for the Intel 82830 CGC:
add these to the device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
It works!
What's funny is that after following the link through from LinuxQuestions, it turns out this tip/hack comes from the very same thread from the Arch Linux forum that helped me the first time.
I consider this ArchLinux thread to be the best ... thread ... ever. I haven't yet taken the proverbial plunge and actually tried Arch Linux, but if ever a single forum thread would prompt me to move to a new distro, this is that thread.
Begin rant: But I'm also worried that your average new Linux user with 5-year-old Intel video hardware won't figure this out and will abandon Linux quickly as a result. I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and the solution wasn't so easy to find.
Very, very clearly, either the configuration utilities that are part of Xorg, or configuration utilities in the distributions themselves, have to somehow add these lines to xorg.conf or somehow compensate and not screw up X when this specific chipset comes up.
If you Googled your way here because you're having problems with your Intel video in Linux, add these two lines to your xorg.conf under the Device section, restart X (either by logging out or rebooting) and try it again. This fixed my Xorg problems and cleared the way for me to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to Ubuntu 9.04 — and to the next version of Debian, to Slackware 13.0 ... and just about everything else Unix-like out there on my 2002-era Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop (and probably on my Gateway Solo 1450 as well, but I'll have to test that with the live CD). And you can bet I'll be trying this with OpenBSD 4.5, too.
Final words: Xorg has been a mess for my Intel video-using laptops since Lenny was in Testing. It only got worse with the newer Xorg in Ubuntu 9.04. This fix to xorg.conf seems to solve the problem. I'm committed to using FOSS operating systems, but this is just another example of why Linux really isn't ready for the average user. In short, users shouldn't have to jump through hoops like this in order to get basic functionality.
I hope your visit to this page fixed your broken Intel video. If so (or not), either leave a comment below, or if you don't want to sign up for that, send me an e-mail at steven.rosenberg@dailynews.com.
It's usually not this easy.
Ever since I did this test Debian Lenny installation with encrypted LVM, I've had trouble with NetworkManager, the package that allows for "easy" management of networking settings. A lot of people dislike this package and prefer to do everything manually. I'm OK with manual configuration, but I like the easy of using this utility.
The problem was that when I went to System - Administration - Network in the GNOME desktop in Debian Lenny, I would get the applet but not the sign-in. I didn't have to supply the root password to modify the settings.
But none of those settings would stick, either. I had to manually configure the network to get the bits flowing.
I had the idea that if I reinstalled all the NetworkManager-related packages, that action might set things right.
So in the Synaptic Package Manager, I searched for NetworkManager. I reinstalled everything that had to do with it:
libnm-glib0
libnm-util0
network-manager
network-manager-gnome
Then I rebooted. I went back into NetworkManager to change my networking (the networks I had set up were still there).
A check of ifconfig in a root terminal:
# ifconfig
revealed that my networking STILL hadn't changed. But a check of /etc/resolv.conf showed that my nameservers DID change.
So I used the root terminal and vi to edit /etc/network/interfaces and REMOVED the static IP lines in there, leaving only these for eth0:
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
I rebooted again, tried NetworkManager again ... and it worked. I'm back in business in Debian Lenny.
Geek addendum: I still feel a lot more comfortable hacking into the basic networking configuration files in OpenBSD due to a) familiarity, b) better design and c) better documentation.
Further geek addendum: I toyed with the idea of setting up multiple NICs (wired and wireless) manually with /etc/network/interfaces containing separate nameservers for each NIC. I couldn't figure it out, but I'm sure it's doable.
What this means: I'm ready to go with the Debian Lenny fully encrypted LVM test. I've always enjoyed the relative quickness of Debian over Ubuntu, and I don't see the encryption slowing me down all that much. We'll see how I feel if and when I rsync everything onto this laptop.
I was listening to the Ubuntu UK podcast yesterday, and they were talking about how to do encryption, either full or partial, to protect the data on your computer from being stolen and used against you should the machine itself be lost or stolen.
While this does happen with desktops (there was a huge desktop theft at an office building here a number of months back, with lots of customer data now in jeopardy), I'm mostly talking about laptops, which we're in the habit of carrying everywhere. And whether out in the wild or at home, a laptop is still more attractive to your average thief because of its portability, value and easier salability.
First there are backups. You absolutely need backups of everything. Aside from loss and theft, there's hardware failure, software failure and the dreaded "operator error." You need backups. My main laptop didn't boot the other day, and while I had a backup, it was a week or so old. Once I calmed down, waited a few minutes and tried again, it did boot. I made new backups right away.
So if you lose that data, there should be a copy (preferably two).
But what about others seeing that data? You could have tons of e-mail, both personal and professional — and with who knows what in there. Then there are all of those browser cookies that help you log in to your various online accounts. Those could really sink you if your machine got into the wrong hands.
Creating encrypted folders is one way to deal with sensitive files. It's easy to do in Windows. I'm not sure how to do it in Mac OS X, and there are packages available in many Linux distributions to create encrypted folders and/or documents.
But ... is encrypting my entire folder of Thunderbird e-mail but not the rest of the directory an option? I don't think the Thunderbird app would be able to deal with it.
I still think the way to go is either encrypted partitions (at least /home /tmp and /swap in Linux) or a fully encrypted hard drive. I've written about encryption solutions before (and I should re-run that column here; I will if/when I find it).
And now I've been testing Debian Lenny with full LVM encryption (LVM = logical volume management, a more modern — and less-understandable — way of partitioning hard drives for Linux).
On the Ubuntu UK show, they talked about the performance hit that results from encrypted filesystems. It could be as high as 20 percent but is not as much of a factor in traditional desktop use as compared to situations where there is a lot more disk I/O, such as a server, or during times of disk-intensive activity (huge file transfers, backups, etc.).
And since Debian out of the box tends to run a bit faster than Ubuntu, I haven't really noticed any degradation in performance.
But ... for some reason NetworkManager isn't asking me for the root password and subsequently not making any changes to the network settings when I run it, so I'm not ready to replace Ubuntu 8.04 with Debian Lenny. ...
Thanks to Dustin Kirkland, I know that in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), it's possible to create an encrypted /home directory with either the live or alternate CDs. What I like about this approach is that the whole installation isn't encrypted. The OS itself doesn't need to be encrypted. Dustin does recommend encrypting /swap, and he provides instructions at the link above.
Fedora does allow use of encryption. It's flexible, and the documentation is great. And Fedora has an install DVD (which my laptops like).
OpenBSD does support encrypted partitions via vnconfig, but setting it up is a bit above my head.
I had planned to transfer all of my data from Ubuntu to Debian, but the non-working NetworkManager kind of stalled that. If I could somehow come to terms with the Intel Xorg issues in Ubuntu 9.04, I could probably save my Synaptic configuration (gotta figure that one out), back up everything and then reinstall with encrypted /home.
Clearest explanations on encrypted /home in Ubuntu: Migrating to an encrypted home directory
and Jaunty encrypted home directories by Dustin Kirkland,
or, better yet, all of his blog posts on this topic.
What about Hardy? How to Forge: Encrypt The System Manually Upon Installation (Ubuntu 8.04) (using the alternate CD).
Performance penalty not so big? Michael Larabel of Phoronix reports that encryption results in only a 1 percent performance hit in most (but not all) cases.
Smart government: The state of Connecticut encrypts its laptops, and the governor is all over it.
P.S. Dustin Kirkland — the same one mentioned above — is a developer with the Ubuntu Server team and was interviewed on the Ubuntu UK Podcast. See his blog.
Final words: Easy-to-configure options for encryption should be offered at install with all operating systems, including Linux-, BSD- Apple- and even Windows-based OSes.
Addendum to final words: Backups should also be easier to create and maintain.
I've written hundreds of posts about Debian, and maybe just as many about trouble I've had with my Intel-graphics-using laptops and screen artifacts in the X Window System graphical environment for Unix/Linux operating systems.
Now I've got a fresh, working Debian Lenny installation on a test machine and have solved the artifacts-in-X problem that has plagued me in Slackware and Debian (and a few other distros that escape me) for probably a year or more.
One of the hardest things I ever did in my Unix/Linux journey was give up Debian Lenny back in its Testing days when I couldn't solve the screen-artifact problem.
I worked for weeks, maybe months, hacking away at the problem, tweaking /etc/X11/xorg.conf any number of ways. But I could never solve it.
Among all the Linux distros I tried at the time (roughly all of 2008), only Ubuntu, it seems, was free of screen artifacts. And it was running without an xorg.conf.
Point of order: The screen-artifacts problem wasn't always a problem. I ran numerous distros on laptops with this Intel graphics chip in 2007, and it never happened. Debian Etch, CentOS 5, many, many Puppy Linuxes, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS, Fedora. At one point in Debian Lenny's development, it started to happen. My conclusion at this point is that changes in Xorg, not in the OS itself, are responsible for the problem.
Further point of order: OpenBSD 4.4 also didn't have this problem. I wasn't so lucky in OpenBSD 4.5, where quitting X causes a segmentation fault and core dump. And the xorg.conf I generated with Xorg -configure in 4.5 crashed X entirely. To run it at all, I needed to use the xorg.conf I generated in the same way in 4.4. I don't think it's using the new intel driver in 4.5 vs. the old i810 driver in 4.4, but it very well could be.
Back to X artifacts in Linux: To attack/potentially solve the problem this time, instead of Googling my laptops' names (Gateway Solo 1450 or Toshiba 1100-S101) I instead Googled X artifacts and the graphics chip's name (which I got from running dmesg in a terminal), which is the Intel Corporation 82830 CGC.
I came up with this page from the Arch Linux forums, which gave this advice:
had this exact same problem. put:Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"into your xorg.conf in the Device section. should fix it!
That worked. After literally hundreds of changes in my own xorg.conf files on a half-dozen or more installs, adding this line to/etc/X11/xorg.conf in Debian Lenny solved my video-artifacts problem.
For me, this is huge. It's my Linux/Unix tip of the year for 2009. Even though there are still seven months left in the year, no tip can trump this one in my own personal FOSS world.
Back to Lenny: A full how-I-installed-Lenny post is forthcoming, but right now I'm in a test environment and will probably change a few things before I nail the tutorial down.
This time at least, I started with a minimal install of Etch and a Half (I'm having CD-reading issues with the Toshiba, and this is the only Debian CD it'll boot from; and I'm also having networking issues with Debian install CDs that are particular to the local network through which I connect to the Internet).
After the minimal install was done from the CD, I then upgraded (aptitude update, then aptitude upgrade, both at a root prompt), added Xfce and a few apps, then changed all references from Etch to Lenny in /etc/apt/sources.list, dist-upgraded to Lenny, added a Lenny kernel (the system didn't do this automatically), did another dist-upgrade, added some more apps, and got Flash and Java working in Iceweasel (the non-branded Debian build of Firefox).
Now I have a working machine that's doesn't quite sip memory like my identically configured (but now written-over) OpenBSD installation but is both faster than my favorite BSD as well as Ubuntu (yes, I know GNOME vs. Xfce isn't a fair fight).
Here's roughly what I have installed on the Lenny laptop:
OpenOffice 2.4
Iceweasel (Firefox w/o copyrighted names or graphics)
Icedove (Thunderbird w/o copyrighted names or graphics)
sudo (I consider it an essential utility, even on systems whose names aren't Ubuntu)
xfce4
xfce4-goodies
2.6.26 Lenny kernel
mtpaint (I'll get around to the GIMP at some point, but this small image editor does most of what I need)
Flash 10 (I used the .deb package from Adobe)
Java in Iceweasel (after adding contrib non-free to the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, I added the sun-java6-plugin)
CUPS
xpdf
menus (so I could use update-menus in the console)
GDM (makes it easier to run multiple window managers; unfortunately there's nothing in Debian like Slackware's excellent xwmconfig console utility)
I don't have the networkmanager app that usually runs in standard Debian with GNOME (and with every form of Ubuntu). I re-learned how to manage the network with config files (a lot different than in OpenBSD, that's for sure) and all network-manager-gnome did was screw things up — I couldn't get to it.
Either I'll get deeper into manual configuration in Linux (likely) and get a couple of NICs set up (wired and wireless), or I'll either figure out how to get the GNOME network manager to install (not as likely) or do a "standard" Debian desktop with GNOME and then add Xfce the next time I do an install (could happen).
As I and others have written before, Xfce in Debian is a whole lot lighter desktop than it is in Xubuntu. It's a bit harder to manage, but after the aforementioned six months using OpenBSD, I'm accustomed enough to using the terminal that I'm very happy to use Debian's excellent aptitude in the console/terminal to update and add/remove applications and really don't need Synaptic (which I could easily add).
As I also mention above, I started with the minimal install because I had problems with networking in the Debian installer (my network's problems, not Debian's), but the next time I do this, I'll probably select Xfce as my desktop either in the installer menu itself (if I can get a Lenny disc to boot) or at the boot line in the Etch and a Half installer (desktop=xfce, I believe the line is). My goal is to find a Lenny install disc (possibly the entire "disc 1" of either the GNOME or Xfce builds ...) that the Toshiba 1100-S101 will boot from. I've made them on various PCs and Macs, and it's hit or miss. The Toshiba will read the CDs, it just won't always (OK, will only seldom) boot from them.
Just to get all the GUI tools you might want in a pinch, it's probably a good idea to start with the "standard" GNOME desktop, but in this case I wanted to save disk space and keep the system lean.
As nice as it is to have Lenny back on one of my desktop systems (I haven't yet made the decision to replace Ubuntu 8.04 on my main production system, and despite all philosophical rants to the contrary, I'm sticking with it at present), it's even nicer to solve that X-artifacts problem that has kept me from using so many good systems for so long.
Helpful links for this install:
(Begin rant.)
I thought the deal with Ubuntu — at least in the 8.04+ era anyway — was that if you tried to play a not-totally-free form of multimedia, the system would open up a window asking you whether or not you wished to download a proprietary codec or some other form of nastiness to facility the playing of such verboten media.
And I even remember one time downloading a Quicktime movie on a Ubuntu box and having just this sort of dialog pop up, soon after which I was happily playing the video.
But today I decided to bring some podcasts into Ubuntu's Rhythmbox music player.
Yes, they were MP3s. If I had known that a friendly Ubuntu dialog box wouldn't pop up, and I'd have known beforehand that I had to dip into Add/Remove programs and add the "restricted extras," I would've done that.
Instead, I added my podcast feeds to Rhythmbox. (First of all, you have to find the feed on your own and add its RSS URL manually; that's not a deal-breaker, especially since the latest rendition of iTunes makes managing podcasts less fun than ever.)
So far, so good. Then I tried to actually play one of the .mp3 files. Nothing. No warning that says something like, "This is a restricted format, you free-software-hating pig, but if you wish to play it, click here and evil codecs will flow into your formerly pure Ubuntu system and you will be awash in .mp3 goodness."
OK, so it's clear that I'm not in the business of writing dialog boxes for Ubuntu.
But I had to resort to Google and find the customary five unhelpful Ubuntu Forums pages before I stumbled upon this page, which directed me to open up my repositories to include non-free software and then add ubuntu-restricted-extras with the Add/Remove Applications tool and then tried to play an MP3 again in both Rhythmbox and Totem.
Still nothing.
I rebooted the system.
Now I have MP3 support, everything plays fine, and all is (almost) all right in my Ubuntu world.
So is my question/problem the same as yours?
I hope so. I've been running Linux and BSD operating systems for about 2 1/2 years at this point, I've had to do a lot of hacking to get things working properly, and I understand that the average Linux or BSD system is not ready for new-user prime time. I know when things don't work that in many instances a little hacking around with a package manager, at the terminal or even (horror!) in the GUI itself will fix whatever happens to be broken.
Yeah, even Slackware isn't all that hard ... if you've been working at it. And while in Slackware you don't expect things to be easy, you are often surprised when it is.
But Ubuntu is supposed to be different. Maybe something got screwed up in this particular Ubuntu 8.04 installation, but I thought that at the very least an attempt to play an MP3 on a system without the proper codecs to do so would at the very least bring up a dialog box with some kind of direction as to what the next step would be.
Having NOTHING happen just isn't a good option if Ubuntu in particular, and Linux and other FOSS operating systems in general ever hope to bring non- or less-geeky users into the fold.
I'm a huge believer in the ogg audio format and in open media formats in general. And depending on how important that sort of thing is to you, I applaud the lengths the most fervent of us will go to in order to keep whatever degree of purity is in keeping with your own personal software philosophy.
I ran an OpenBSD system as my main desktop for a full six months. And before my audio hardware just plain broke, I knew that adding a GUI music player and the proper packages to play the various audio formats was something I needed to do. And I did just that. Getting xmms to play MP3 and OGG files was relatively easy, and nobody who runs OpenBSD expects "easy." (And for the purposes of this rant I'm ignoring the fact that X is pretty much broken on my Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop in OpenBSD 4.5 after having not a single problem with it in 4.4. And while I'm on that subject, I really miss running OpenBSD. I became quite accustomed to it, had done a lot of setup, and now getting segmentation faults and core dumps every time I run X has really shaken my faith in it as an OS.)
I know — I know — that if I or any user wants all the multimedia to work right away, there are always distros like Mint that can make it happen.
And Ubuntu already takes enough crap for not being as pure as Debian (which in turns takes crap for not being as pure as GNewSense).
But for a project/distro/movement that wants to preach not to the choir but instead to the unwashed, Windows-using masses, either let 'em play MP3s out of the box, make it easy to add that functionality (i.e. don't make 'em Google it, for heaven's sake) while at the same time educate them as to why MP3s, MOVs, Flash and all that other royalty-carrying, proprietary crap is bad, or just say right out front: "If you're geeky enough to figure out how to play multimedia, go ahead. But otherwise, reinstall Windows and everything will be fine."
It took a little more Googling before I figured out that merely opening up my repositories either in Add/Remove Programs or Synaptic (or directly in /etc/apt/sources.list) would be enough to get the automatic Ubuntu dialogs to pop up and ask me about restricted-media codecs.
So you have to KNOW you need a restricted driver before the system will prompt you to install one.
OK, I understand that Ubuntu/Canonical is treading a fine line with free-software purists, but in the minds of said purists, the distro has already crossed far over that line.
Here's what I think: Ubuntu should let new users who click on a restricted-media file know that there is indeed a way to play said file, even if they haven't yet opened up their repositories to non-free software. Only giving helpful information to people who really don't need that help is just not ... helpful.
I want ogg to succeed. And I also believe that Flash is the worst thing to happen to open-source software, freedom, security and everything else in the past five years. But with Linux and other free operating systems continuing to languish in the low single digits (some say 1 percent) of the market, not giving new users an easily made choice of what kinds of media they wish to play on their computers is no way to increase the uptake of free software among those who barely know what it is.
The people we need to bring over to free software wouldn't know "Debian" if it put on dark eyeshadow and started picking fights with too-close cousins on "Jerry Springer."
When a lifelong Windows user finds his or herself in a system awash in applications, icons and ways of doing things they've neither seen nor heard of, something like allowing them the choice of whether or not their music files will play is the least we can do to keep them from running away from the keyboard with their heads in their collective hands.
I hold Ubuntu up to a higher standard than I do almost any other Linux distribution or BSD project. That's because I think that Ubuntu is currently free software's best shot at breaking the Microsoft/Apple stranglehold on desktop computing.
I might even run GNewSense myself now that it supports my Ethernet card on my laptop. And I love the Debian Project, Slackware and OpenBSD. I'm getting ready to convert my now-testing laptop to NetBSD just to see how it performs in my work environment.
But when it comes to bringing new people into the free-software world, Ubuntu has a critical role. I think it's up there with Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice as one of the key pieces/collections of software that can change hearts and minds.
And a little help for new users when it comes to media files, even when it doesn't toe the free-software party line is, in my opinion, a very small price to pay for the opportunity to educate those users about the bigger, greater picture.
(End rant.)
I'll keep this quick. I followed the advice of Nathan from OpenBSD101 and replaced my upgraded OpenBSD 4.5 installation with an entirely new, reinstalled system.
That took all of 10 minutes.
I followed the advice of my friend Denny and was able to keep my /home partition intact.
And all seemed well when I booted back into my shiny, new OpenBSD 4.5 desktop. X looked great. I saw a brief "artifact" in the form of a couple words out of place in Firefox (yep, I did have to reinstall EVERY app). But all did seem OK.
Until I quit X.
It wouldn't start again. Segmentation faults? Yep. Curiously, my root user could restart X. Just not my user. The system kept creating .Xauthority files and leaving them in my /home directory. I think one of my old dot-files in my /home directory is wreaking some kind of havoc with X. If that's all that's going on, that is.
I shelved the OpenBSD laptop for the time being, but next move is to create a new user account with a new, clean /home directory. Then I'll see how X runs.
Right now I have the Ubuntu 8.04 laptop running. I added my go-to light image editor, MtPaint. I reconfigured the Mail icon to start Thunderbird instead of Evolution.
And I used the Wolvix live CD to run Gparted and greatly shrink my Windows XP partition and increase the size of my Linux root and /home partitions. Eventually I'll wipe XP from this drive. It's very much unpatched, and I really don't need it.
I also turned off Compiz. Aside from stealing CPU and memory that I expect I'll need, it makes me a bit nauseous to see the screen sliding by like that. Yep, Compiz gives me motion sickness. You read it here first.
After planning for weeks to take my main production laptop from OpenBSD 4.4 to 4.5, I sweated through the upgrade only to lose what was perfect X compatibility and pull the "kill switch," which in this case was transferring everything in my freshly rsync'd backup to my identical Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, a system I've been running for quite awhile on this and another laptop — and which has thus far proven itself to be stable enough for the pounding I give these machines in my daily work.
OpenBSD 4.4 basically "saved" me and one of these marginal Toshiba laptops (both were destined for the garbage) last November when I could barely get an install CD of any type to boot. The install floppy in OpenBSD enabled me to quickly set up a system that worked quite well and did almost everything I needed it to do. And stability was almost a given. I rarely had a problem that wasn't inherent to OpenBSD itself (such as the difficulty of installing Java, nothing past Flash Player 7, the extra steps required to properly configure things such as CUPS).
Since the system ran so well — just like Ubuntu 8.04, video on this Intel-based system ran perfectly with no xorg.conf — I kept it going for the entire six months of the OpenBSD 4.4 release's life.
As those who use OpenBSD know, upgrading the operating system is not as easy as it is in your average Linux distribution. It pretty much comes with the territory that a -release upgrade requires preparation, following instructions, and a bit of manual command-line work. Many times I've heard — both in OpenBSD and in Linux for that matter — that it's easier and cleaner to do a full reinstall rather than an in-place upgrade.
I will still try a full reinstall of OpenBSD 4.5. And I'd like to try running -current — the OpenBSD development branch that can be regularly updated and which is famously stable despite the "development" tag.
But right here, right now, I can't spend weeks diagnosing my X issues (briefly, there's some funky junk hanging from the cursor, and "artifacts" linger on the screen, which isn't redrawn fast enough/often enough to make X usable). The same thing turned me away from Debian Lenny on this and my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop in the months before the then-Testing distro went Stable. Because of my affection for Debian (still one of my very favorite operating systems), I spent weeks trying to diagnose the problem before realizing that dozens of other distros relieved me of the need to obsess (unsuccessfully) over it.
Right now the Gateway, used by our 5-year-old dual-boots Ubuntu 8.04 for her and CentOS 5.3 just because it runs so extremely well on that particular laptop.
And for months now I've had this other Toshiba laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 as a backup. I have Java installed, which I do need. Flash, too. The Opera Web browser.
Today I added Inkscape, Thunderbird, gFTP and Gparted.
On the OpenBSD laptop, I had about 1 GB of e-mail in Thunderbird. It makes rsyncing the box such hell that I'm thinking of writing a script that EXCLUDES the Thunderbird files just so the rest of the backup doesn't take so damn long ... but I digress.
I figured out how to bring my Thunderbird settings and mail over to the Ubuntu machine. I did the same with my Firefox bookmarks.
-- Begin tutorial:
Moving bookmarks from one Firefox 3 installation to another:
- Since Firefox now uses the SQlite database to store/organize its bookmarks, simply moving the bookmarks.html file from one Firefox 3 installation to another will DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You need to do it another way, which I describe right here. First, grab the bookmarks.html file from your old FF installation and put it somewhere in your /home directory where you can easily find it.
- In the Firefox 3.0 installation where you want to IMPORT the bookmarks, go to the Bookmarks tab and click on/choose Organize Bookmarks.
- Click on the Import and Backup drop-down menu and click Import HTML.
- Then navigate to the bookmarks.html file from your old FF 3 installation (you have moved it over already, haven't you?) and click it to bring it into your new installation.
- Note: In Ubuntu at least, this process WON'T allow you to see hidden files or directories, so before you begin, copy your old bookmarks.html file to a place in your home directory where you don't need to go into your old installation's .mozilla directory, for instance.
- FYI: In both of my Firefox 3 installations, the bookmarks.html file is located here:
/home/username/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html
In the above example, "username" is your actual username, and the eight x's are the unique alphanumeric prefix that Firefox gives to your "default" directory under /.mozilla/firefox/
-- End tutorial.
-- Resume rant.
OK, so I'm fully operational in Ubuntu at this point. My respect and admiration for the developers and users of OpenBSD remains, and I hope to get the other Toshiba fully operational under OpenBSD 4.5 as soon as possible.
But I'd be lying if I didn't say I was relieved to have, in Ubuntu, a machine and system that easily updates all of its software with a few clicks and provides me with what — at this point — is a trouble-free working environment.
Of course that could all change. I'll see over the next week how well Ubuntu 8.04 LTS performs on this hardware, with my chosen applications and for the tasks I have.
I could start the distro-hopping merry-go-round and go back to Debian, try out Slackware, ZenWalk, etc., but right now if Linux in this form does what I need it to do (not crash, run acceptably fast, wash, rinse, repeat), I'll be sticking with Ubuntu as long as it fills the bill.
I don't begin to fully understand how computer networking works, but I can pretty much hack my way through it. (My networking "goal" is to set up VNC over the Internet ... but that's light years ahead of where I am today.) And I'm sure I've had this very same problem before (and should probably just try to find an earlier blog entry with the very same problem/solution instead of reinventing a very squeaky, annoying wheel with all you dear readers.
But if I'm having this problem again, chances are some of you might have it, too. And I don't think it's confined to OpenBSD. This could potentially crop up in any number of Linux distributions.
Here's the problem: For the past few days, my OpenBSD laptop has been slow as sludge in the browser (Firefox and Opera are the same in this regard).
But a speed test or a download of a large file shows no connection problem or speed problem at all.
So what is making my Web browsing so slow?
The answer: A bad nameserver in my /etc/resolv.conf file.
You see, I don't use this laptop in a single location. I have it at home, at the office, at Starbucks, and any number of places in between where I connect either wirelessly or with wired Ethernet.
And I usually do it with dynamic IPs, meaning I have OpenBSD set to get a dynamic IP address from the router providing me with networking, be it my home router or any other.
And my home router, a recent Netgear model, doesn't just pass through the two nameservers from my ISP that I have programmed into it. Instead it gives my laptop the nameserver address 192.168.1.1 (the same IP address as the router itself). I assume that the router is making some kind of translation and pushing the nameserver data through the 192.168.1.1 IP address to my laptop.
For the most part this works. And forgive me if the following explanation is either totally wrong or just incomplete. I'm explaining it the way I understand it, and I welcome your clarification and correction:
Usually when a router sets up a dynamic connection, it sends the router's gateway IP to the local machine, assigns the machine its own IP address and provides nameserver data (i.e. the IP address of the nameserver) as well.
So the local machine now knows the router/gateway address (and subnet), local IP address and nameserver address.
But ... one of the networks to which I connect is a bit old school. The router gives me a dynamic IP but doesn't send nameserver data. It assumes that the local machine already has nameserver data entered into the system and doesn't modify /etc/resolv.conf at all. Hence my old nameserver IP address — 192.168.1.1 — is still at the top of /etc/resolv.conf, with my "real" DNS nameserver IPs below it.
And the reason it takes so long for Web pages to appear is that the system is trying to resolve every alphanumeric HTTP address through a DNS server that on this other local network doesn't even exist.
Once I deleted the nonexistent nameserver address from my /etc/resolv.conf and had two "good" nameservers at the top of the file, everything started flowing as fast as it should.
Analysis: This problem stems from using DHCP to connect at multiple physical sites, and the slight differences in the DHCP protocol at those various locations is what's making my Web browsing slow down when /etc/resolv.conf is not properly configured for a given location.
The best "solution" is to always connect with a static IP on the router that doesn't transmit new nameserver IPs to my client computer.
In OpenBSD as I have it configured, I do all my network "tweaking" with text files, principally /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/hostname.
I generally have each "hostname" file filled with a few lines for the various routers I use (with appropriate DHCP or static IP info and any SSID names and WEP or WPA keys needed), and I "pound out" (or "comment out") the lines I don't need. The problem is that I don't keep as close of an eye on /etc/resolv.conf, which is being changed by some of these DHCP servers and not by others.
Without any GUI tools such as the NetworkManager in GNOME, which I've used in Ubuntu and Debian, I either need to be much more mindful of what my configuration files contain at any given time, or I need to write/beg/borrow/steal some shell scripts that allow both the /etc/hostname.X files and /etc/resolv.conf to be modified by me when I decide to connect to one network or another. For instance, I could have the script give me a menu of networks and then modify the configuration files appropriately.
As it is, in Debian and Ubuntu, I often had to go to the NetworkManager to pick a new "location," of which I had many set up just like in this script I envision.
If only there was such a tool already in OpenBSD that would do this for me without needing GNOME, KDE or .... It could already be there and I just don't know about it.
I fondly remember the netconfig script in Slackware, which is one of the simple but supremely useful things I love about that Linux distribution. I'd love something like that in OpenBSD, but hacking into the text files isn't that big of a deal.
And I'll probably avoid the one local network that has DHCP but doesn't send its own nameserver IPs to the client.
I decided to start using Soft Updates on my FFS partitions in OpenBSD. I'm still running version 4.4 of OpenBSD (still waiting for my CDs to arrive and for time to figure out how to do the upgrade).
According to the portion of the FAQ cited above, using soft updates on a Unix-style Fast File System improves disk performance.
You can really see it, supposedly, in disk-intensive applications such as servers, and since all I'm doing is running a desktop (and at the moment trying to compile as little as possible), I don't expect to really "feel" an improvement, though that could very well happen.
Here is the part of Kirk McKusick's explanation of soft updates that made me want to use them:
In addition to performance enhancement, soft updates can also maintain better disk consistency. By ensuring that the only inconsistencies are unclaimed blocks or inodes, soft updates can eliminate the need to run a filesystem check program after every system crash. Instead, the system is brought up immediately.
Soft updates are invoked in the /etc/fstab file that brings up the various filesystems when you boot your Unix machine. Also see the man page for mount for a little more information.
I was already going into my /etc/fstab because I wanted to put the information for mounting a USB flash drive into the file to make it easier for me to mount the drive when I have it plugged in. Now all I have to do is:
$ sudo mount usbdrive
and the drive is mounted. I chose "noauto" as an option in /etc/fstab because I don't always have the drive plugged it. If you wish to mount a drive every session that's always connected, feel free to leave noauto out of your fstab.
Here's what my /etc/fstab looks like now (with the softdep option added to all the FFS partitions):
/dev/wd0a / ffs rw,softdep 1 1
/dev/wd0h /home ffs rw,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2
/dev/wd0d /tmp ffs rw,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2
/dev/wd0g /usr ffs rw,nodev,softdep 1 2
/dev/wd0e /var ffs rw,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2
/dev/sd0i /home/steven/usbdrive msdos rw,noauto,noatime 0 0
Note: since the USB drive is formatted with the FAT filesystem and not OpenBSD's FFS, I can't use soft updates on it. I could reformat it as a native FFS drive, but since I'm using it with my other, non-OpenBSD machines, I need to keep it FAT.
I booted the Toshiba 1100-S101 with Ubuntu 8.04 for the first time in 25 days, according to the Update Manager. Or at least it was 25 days since I updated the install.
Either way, I've been running a nearly carbon copy of this laptop with OpenBSD 4.4, lately with the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, and I'd gotten quite used to it. While I still had only Flash Player 7 through the Opera browser in OpenBSD, I did have the Java runtime installed, so I thought ... thought I could use all the Web-based applications I need to use that require Java. Thought.
Here I am, 10 p.m., working at home, and I discover that LogMeIn just doesn't like OpenBSD. Even in Linux, when you don't have Java you can still use LogMeIn. It's way, way, way better with Java, which is why I installed Java both in Ubuntu 8.04 and OpenBSD 4.4. My other Java-based applet I use, a fairly simple uploading mechanism (for which I could use FTP but the company I'm dealing with has it hooked up so images take forever to process when you FTP them but process immediately when you use the Java app ... so you can guess which one I've begrudgingly turned to), and that works fine with the Java in OpenBSD as well as in Ubuntu.
But LogMeIn ... oh, LogMeIn ... you piss me off. I set up, tested and used Java in Ubuntu 8.04 to control a remote Windows desktop with LogMeIn Free (and I'm announcing right here, right now, if I can get LogMeIn to work in OpenBSD, I will stop being a freeloader and buy your damn service ... but I'm not opening up my wallet just yet.
Anyhow, I'm merrily doing my work on the OpenBSD Toshiba laptop when I fire up LogMeIn in Firefox. I try to bring up my remote machine and I get a blank screen. It appears from my feeble attempts at figuring out the problem that LogMeIn is trying to use ActiveX even though I'm not running it on a Windows box or using Internet Explorer. LogMeIn doesn't need ActiveX. It doesn't even need Java (though, as I say, it's damn near unusable without it). Don't get me wrong, it works great from Windows box to Windows box with ActiveX. It's nearly as seamless with Java, and thus I have Java — with the express purpose being the enjoyment of said seamlessness.
But I had no LogMeIn. So I did my work, doing everything as best as I could. Then I booted into the Windows XP partition on my OpenBSD laptop. Yep, it came with Windows loaded, and I just shrunk the NTFS partition and slapped OpenBSD 4.4 on the newly freed half of the hard drive (and yes, dividing a 20 GB drive between XP and OpenBSD doesn't exactly give you a ton of room in either OS).
My XP partition even has Service Pack 3 and IE7. So I fired up IE, allowed it to install ActiveX (is it ActivX or ActiveX — 'e' or 'no e' ... I have no idea).
LogMeIn ran great in XP, I did my thing, turned off the laptop and went to bed at midnight.
The next day, which is right now, I pulled out the Ubuntu 8.04 Toshiba, cranked it on and tried out LogMeIn. Works great in Ubuntu with Java.
For the Ubuntu update, wait for the next entry ...
For the first time, I decided to purchase the OpenBSD CD set to both support the project and make it easier for me to upgrade my two OpenBSD laptops and install the OS on some new boxes.
I've had been using OpenBSD off and on since version 4.2, but only in the past five or so months has OpenBSD 4.4 been my main operating system on my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop. And it has performed admirably, doing everything I need to do, with the exception being able to view Flash video that requires anything newer than the Flash Player 7 that runs in the Opera Web browser. And since I'm not doing all that much work with video at present, I haven't missed Flash 9 or 10 that much. Moreover, I recently discovered http://keepvid.com and the ability to turn many Flash videos into MP4s (including everything on YouTube, which is viewable in Flash 7 anyway) and watch them with Mplayer, even that issue is more of a ... nonissue than ever.
All the apps I want/need, from Firefox to Thunderbird, OpenOffice to the GIMP, gFTP and Pidgin, the Opera browser, Geany text editor, and the thus-far little-explored Inkscape and Blender (the latter of which I hope to use not as a 3D animation app but as a video editor) — they all installed easily and run well. I've also recently added the Xfce 4.4 desktop, but I still see much value in the default Fvwm2 window manager, with which I divide my time in the OS.
Never mind that the sound chip in this particular laptop is dead. I do have an identical Toshiba laptop that does have working sound (and I'd like to move the install from this Toshiba to the other).
Things in OpenBSD aren't always as easy to get working the way I want as they are in Linux. Everything is more "locked down." I needed to do more to get CUPS working, but adding the proper script in the proper place, and then configuring my printers was much more valuable learning experience and less drudgery than you'd think.
And networking — a specialty of sorts for the OS — is excellent, made all the more so by the detailed man pages and FAQ. And when those don't go far enough, I use marc.info to search the OpenBSD mailing lists (especially misc) for tips on how to get my system running properly. There's also the newish Daemon Forums, plus the valuable news from Undeadly, the OpenBSD Journal.
The OpenBSD community may have a somewhat prickly reputation, but I've found dozens of helpful people out there who are happy to help you (especially if you've done your homework, and by that I mean man pages ... FAQ ... mailing lists ...).
Amid all of this, I'm not saying I'm 100 percent going to stick with OpenBSD as my main OS. But with wireless networking working so well, an easy installation (yes, it's easy once you've done it a few times; quick, too) that can be done with a CD, a floppy (that's how I did it on this laptop) or via PXE boot over the network, some 5,000 packages in i386 (and with a package quality that is of an extremely high level — meaning the packages work well and are rarely broken — along with excellent package management in the base system) and the choice of either a six-month upgrade cycle (like a certain Linux OS you might have heard of ... or maybe not so much like it due to the incremental and conservative nature of OpenBSD development) or following the -current tree, which actually aims to be more stable than the twice-yearly releases ... (sentence WILL wind to a close ... I promise), there's a lot to like in OpenBSD on the desktop when it comes to what I need in an OS, and that is the ability to get work done in a solid and stable environment.
I've had to wrap my head around -release / -stable / -current instead of Debian's apt-get update/upgrade, but in turn I start with a minimal system (just like Debian's non-desktop "standard" install but unlike Ubuntu), add exactly what I want, and thus far have excellent X performance (something that Debian hasn't given me in the Lenny era) and a rock-solid environment in which to run the apps I need.
My CDs haven't arrived yet, but when they do, I'll let you all know.
I've been writing updates in my print column of the things I've bought/used/discarded/loved/hated over the past year, and that got me thinking: I got started with Linux in early 2007 and used many a distro on the machines available to me.
But for the last six months, I've pretty much stuck with the same OSes on the same machines. There are two reasons for this:
1) I've found stuff that works
2) see 1)
OK, that's one reason, but it sure feels better as two.
Anyhow, the other reason I've kept the same operating systems on my half-dozen or so active computers is that I need them to run — and run well. And they do.
Here's the rundown:
On my main laptop, the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, I've been running OpenBSD 4.4 for nearly six months. The only "sticking" point is not having Flash 9 or 10. Flash 7 works for YouTube but not much else. I have a few things that I do that need more up-to-date Flash, but otherwise the OS and applications in packages and ports have been extremely stable. I just upgraded it from Firefox 2 to 3, and tonight I added Mplayer and successfully played a Quicktime video. (Too bad the sound chip on the Toshiba is broken; the video itself looked great.)
If OpenBSD weren't so good, I'd use the Flash situation as a excuse to run back to Linux. But I've enjoyed using OpenBSD and learned so much over these months that for now I'm going to stick with it.
I have an identical Toshiba Satellite laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. It, too, is performing very well, although I seldom use it since I have all of my data on the OpenBSD laptop. I have few complaints about Ubuntu 8.04, and before it came out I vowed to stick with the LTS for at least a year, maybe longer. I could be persuaded to upgrade if I needed to get a newer wireless adapter to work, but so far I haven't needed to do that. Ubuntu remains very solid, and with better Flash support than OpenBSD it's nice to have it as a backup.
Our daughter has what used to be known as the $0 Laptop, a Gateway Solo 1450. The Gateway could never comfortably run OpenBSD because of its noisy CPU fan, which Linux can manage most of the time (with a simple shell script). FreeBSD managed the fan even better, but only during the first boot after the install. After that, it all went to hell.
Our girl has all her educational games on the Gateway, which is also running Ubuntu 8.04. I still think that the Debian Project packages Gcompris, Childsplay and TuxPaint just that much better than Ubuntu, but all the problems I had with Debian Lenny and X on both the Gateway and later the Toshiba had me running back to Ubuntu and OpenBSD — both of which run X perfectly on both laptops with no xorg.conf file needed.
I'll concede that installing, customizing and maintaining just about any Linux distro is easier than doing the same in OpenBSD, but as I say above, I'm grateful for the learning experience and most of the time can figure out how to do what needs to be done in OpenBSD.
My Self-Reliant Thin Client, the first test machine that I began running Ubuntu, Slackware, Debian, ZenWalk, Puppy, DSL and other distros on in 2007 has been running Debian Etch on a bootable 8 GB CF card for quite a few months now. I don't have it networked at the moment, so I can't upgrade to Lenny. I'm keeping the converted thin client powered on these days in another informal long-term test, and I hope to have networking hooked up to it soon. With 128 MB of RAM and less-than-great video and sound hardware, it's not the greatest machine, but I love having something with no moving parts and minimal power consumption.
I have the Mac G4/466, aka the Debian Mac, running Debian Etch, which I continue to think is the best non-OS X operating system for this particular hunk of hardware. I managed to get 640 MB of RAM into it, and it's a great machine. Since it's a PowerPC box, there's no Flash Player in any OS that isn't OS X. I'm considering an OS X 10.4 install to see how that runs. We have dual-500 MHz G4s in the office that run OS X really, really well. I wonder how this single-CPU 466 MHz box will measure up. We could use a Mac OS backup machine in the house.
Earlier this week, I pulled out the $15 Laptop, a 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt with 233 MHz CPU and 144 MB RAM and fixed what was ailing it: It wouldn't run X in OpenBSD 4.2 in my user account, but would in root. That's because when it comes to screwing around with X, I don't know what I'm doing some of the time. I had created an .xinitrc file with a single line reading "xset b off" to silence the system bell in X, and that was enough to keep the Fvwm window manager from loading. I killed .xinitrc and all was well with the Compaq. I'll probably do a reinstall of OpenBSD, since upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3 to 4.4 to ... is just too much work. Yep, after a long search for the right OS, the Compaq has run OpenBSD for a long, long time.
The real workhorse of our stable is the iBook G4 1 GHz laptop. In the past year I've replaced the hard drive, pumped 1 GB of memory into it and upgraded from OS X 10.3 to 10.4. We needed 10.4 in order to run Firefox 3 and Flash 10. Yep, that's when I upgrade — only when absolutely necessary.
To make a long story short, until I have a burning desire to watch Web video all the time, or until I need to edit and process video into Flash, I just might stick with OpenBSD on my i386 hardware. Otherwise I'll probably move back to Ubuntu or Debian, the latter only if those nagging video problems somehow go away. (I've had similar issues with Slackware ...).
My next "challenge" will be to run OpenBSD -current instead of -release. Since I already hate waiting for things to compile, I don't know how I'll react to keeping a -current installation up to date. There's only one way to find out.
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.
Click the image above for the 1024x768 version of my Xfce desktop in OpenBSD 4.4.
After many months in OpenBSD 4.4 with the project's default window manager, Fvwm, I decided to finally try one of the more popular "desktop environments."
I could have gone with one of the two biggest projects — GNOME or KDE, but instead I chose Xfce not so much because it's lighter on resources but because I like the way it looks and works. One consideration was disk space, since I'm using roughly half of a 20 GB drive, leaving me with only 10 GB and a /usr partition with 2.52 GB remaining at the moment.
As with most things in OpenBSD, adding Xfce to the operating system isn't as easy as it is in Debian, Ubuntu or many other Linux distros. There is no "meta package" in OpenBSD for Xfce. I believe that with GNOME and KDE, it's possible to add one or two packages that call in everything you need for the desktop environment.
To install Xfce, however, you must use pkg_add to install about three dozena number of Xfce packages. I went through the entire list of packages for OpenBSD in i386 and installed just about everything I thought I needed. I still missed somewhere around four packages that were required to make Xfce look and work the way it's supposed to.
I did work off of a list I found on the Web, but it didn't exactly match up with what's in the OpenBSD repository for version 4.4 of the OS.
I finally did get everything I need installed on the laptop. I happen to really like Xfce's applications, including the Thunar file manager, the Mousepad text editor and Terminal (capital T — that's what they call it) terminal. The Terminal terminal — a bit awkward?
Besides having a nice look and feel, these Xfce apps are incredibly quick to load.
I opted to keep many of my other apps, and in my lower panel I still have icons for the Geany text editor, ROX file manager and even a little menu that springs from the panel next to the Terminal icon for xterm.
Rather than drop individual icons for all the OpenOffice components into the panel, I opted for a single OO logo that starts soffice, from which I can chose any of the OpenOffice apps I need, say Writer (swriter), Calc (scalc) or Impress (simpress).
Curiously, Xfce picked up most of my applications and placed them in the menu automatically. A few programs didn't make it, and I added many of them to the panel. I found icons for most of them by exploring /usr/local and drilling down to find .png icons. For a few apps, including Opera and OpenOffice, I couldn't find icons in the system. After a bit of Googling, I found fairly good-looking icons out there on the Web and used them to add items to the lower panel. The Opera icon has a bird in it, which is quite unusual, but it looks OK.
One nice thing about Xfce in OpenBSD is that when I add a new application, it generally goes into the menu automatically. It worked with Inkscape at any rate. I got used to adding things to the Fvwm menu, and it's nice in a way to have everything exactly the way I want it, but I'm lazy enough to allow the system to do it for me. I always seemed to have trouble in Debian with some apps having their menu item placed in a very awkward portion of the menu hierarchy. I'll be watching for similar behavior. Thus far, I've noticed that Dillo, Xmms, Xpdf, Adobe Acrobat Reader and most console apps didn't make it into the Xfce menu in OpenBSD. That's OK for now. I wonder if removing and reinstalling the Dillo browser, for instance, will make any difference. Since I have no sound at present, the Xmms music player isn't something I have any use for.
I've never done this much work setting up a desktop environment before, but like most things in OpenBSD, the net result of having to do a lot of things manually is a much deeper knowledge of the software that will serve me not only in OpenBSD but in every system I use.
As you can see in the image above, I added quite a few widgets/plugins to the panels, mostly to the lower one. I'm able to monitor disk activity, free space on /usr and /home, both of my network interfaces (wireless is wi0, wired is rl0), plus CPU activity and memory and swap usage.
I picked up the wireframe puffy OpenBSD image for the desktop wallpaper a while ago on some Web site dedicated to such things, and I can't remember the URL, but Googling for OpenBSD wallpaper should turn up this one and more. I do have a second 1024x768 image ready in case I get tired of this one (I do have the shirt, and if I'm wearing it while using a desktop with the same image, that pushes me further into OS-geek territory).
If you want to install Xfce in OpenBSD, here is a list of all the packages I installed. I didn't add everything since this laptop has a dead sound chip, but this is just about everything Xfce-related that's in the OpenBSD packages repository. I used pkg_info to generate the list:
$ pkg_info | grep xfce
exo-0.3.4p4 extension library for xfce4
gtk-xfce-engine-2.4.2p2 theme engine for GTK2
libxfce4mcs-4.4.2p2 settings management library used by most xfce4 modules
libxfce4util-4.4.2p2 basic utility library for xfce4
libxfcegui4-4.4.2p4 widget library for xfce4
mousepad-0.2.13p2 really simple text editor for xfce4
notification-daemon-xfce-0.3.7p4 notification daemon for Xfce4 desktop
orage-4.5.12.2p3 advanced calendar for xfce4
ristretto-0.0.20p1 lightweight image-viewer for xfce4
terminal-0.2.8p2 lightweight vte-based terminal for xfce4
thunar-0.9.0p4 lightweight file manager for xfce4
xfce-mcs-manager-4.4.2p3 settings manager for xfce4
xfce-mcs-plugins-4.4.2p3 settings manager plug-ins for xfce4
xfce-utils-4.4.2p4 essential utilities and scripts for xfce4
xfce4-appfinder-4.4.2p3 xfce4 application finder
xfce4-clipman-0.8.0p3 clipboard history plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-dict-0.4.0p1 query a dictionary service for words or phrases
xfce4-diskperf-2.2.0p1 displays instant disk performance in the xfce4 panel
xfce4-fsguard-0.4.0p3 monitors a chosen mountpoint for free disk space
xfce4-genmon-3.2p1 generic scriptable monitor for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-icon-theme-4.4.2p2 icon theme for xfce4
xfce4-mailwatch-1.0.1p3 monitor various types of mailboxes
xfce4-mixer-4.4.2p3 volume mixer module for xfce4-panel
xfce4-mpc-0.3.3p1 simple client plugin for Music Player Daemon
xfce4-netload-0.4.0p2 displays load of a network interface in the xfce4 panel
xfce4-notes-1.4.1p5 sticky notes for the xfce4 desktop
xfce4-panel-4.4.2p3 panel for Xfce4 desktop
xfce4-places-plugin-1.1.0p1 gnome-like places plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-session-4.4.2p5 xfce4 session manager
xfce4-systemload-0.4.2p3 displays cpu/memory/swap/uptime in xfce4 panel
xfce4-verve-0.3.5p3 command line plugin for the xfce4 panel
xfce4-wavelan-0.5.4p0 displays stats from a WLAN interface
xfce4-weather-0.6.2p3 see temperature/weather conditions on the xfce4 panel
xfce4-xkb-0.4.3p3 xkb layout switcher panel plugin for xfce4
xfdesktop-4.4.2p4 xfce4 desktop manager
xfprint-4.4.2p3 printing helper for xfce4
xfwm4-4.4.2p2 xfce4 window manager
Creating a meta-package or at the very least a script that installs all of these packages is something I'm very interested in doing. That would make installing Xfce in a new system a lot quicker and easier.
As I've written many times in the past few months, I do have a fondness for the default window manager in OpenBSD. Fvwm2 is a pretty nice, extremely light app, and I think it's a great light alternative to Fluxbox.
One thing in Fvwm I could never figure out was how to change the key bindings for switching between desktops from CTRL-arrow to CTRL-ALT-arrow. Whenever I was in a text-editing program such as Geany or OpenOffice Writer, I'd habitually use CTRL-arrow to skip from word to word and instead skipped from screen to screen.
In Xfce, I'm back to using CTRL-ALT-arrow to switch windows, and CTRL-arrow moves the cursor from word to word, just like in the other 99.99 percent of OSes out there.
A word on display managers: On this OpenBSD install, I didn't start out using XDM, GDM or KDM, the three display managers used to start a session with a login in X rather than at the console. Among the things a display manager can do for you is allow for easy switching between a number of desktop environments/window managers.
But since this installation started out with a console login, I decided to keep it that way.
Now when I type:
$ startx
That logs me in with Fvwm as the window manager.
When I type:
$ startxfce4
That logs me in with Xfce.
It just seems easier to keep the console login and choose between window managers at the command line. In theory anyway, if I decided to add GNOME, I could start it with:
$ gnome-session
or KDE with:
$ startkde
Shutdown ... sometimes: In OpenBSD with Xfce, I can choose "Shut Down" from the Quit menu, and the script will completely power off my Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop. I never expected this to work. I tried it again this morning, and the Shut Down button was grayed out. All I could do was click Log Out.
All I can think of is that perhaps the Shut Down feature is somehow connected to using sudo. I used sudo for all kinds of things during my previous sessions in Xfce, but this morning I just checked e-mail with Thunderbird and used Firefox for a few quick checks. No sudoing ...
Later: I confirmed my suspicion. If I open up a terminal and use sudo for anything, even something innocuous (I did sudo pkg_info, which doesn't require root privileges), Xfce will allow you to completely shutdown or reboot the box from the GUI. Otherwise your only option is to log out and shutdown as usual from the console.
Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin' Los Angeles Daily News).
But Dell is trying to earn your business, and right now (and through April 2) the company is running a "9 great systems under $499" laptop promotion.
True, the $399 Inspiron 13 is no great shakes specs-wise, with a measly 2.13 GHz single-core Celeron processor. But it does feature 1 GB of RAM (barely adequate for the included Windows Vista but quite enough for Linux distributions such as Ubuntu) and a fairly roomy 160 GB hard drive. A 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor adds $100 to the price, and an extra gigabyte of RAM adds another $50 (yes, Dell SHOULD be ashamed to charge $50 for something that couldn't be costing them more than $10 wholesale), and for $550 you have a very respectable laptop that should serve you for at least three years (or 7-10 years if you're me).
What I'm much more excited about is Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 netbook (pictured above), the price of which has dropped to $249 for the basic Ubuntu Linux/512 MB RAM/8 GB solid-state drive model.
I had the pleasure of trying this very-small but quite usable netbook at the San Fernando Valley Linux Users Group booth at the recent SCALE 7x show, and I was quite impressed with it. I've seen quite a few ultra-small netbooks over the past couple of years -- the Asus Eee PC, the Everex Cloudbook, the HP 2133 Mini-Note, and this Dell is the best one I've encountered yet.
The smallish keyboard, while not super comfortable, is definitely usable, and unlike some other netbooks, the Dell Mini 9 doesn't run hot. It has a nice display and is fairly snappy with Ubuntu GNU/Linux 8.04 (the long-term support edition I'm using on the little girl's Gateway laptop and my extra Toshiba 1100-S101). It handled multimedia well when I saw it, and the small size makes it extremely convenient. It's easier to tuck it in a bag or backpack and open it up at will.
Battery life is supposed to be 4 hours. Not bad, but the talk recently of basing the netxt generation of netbooks on power-sipping ARM processors, like those used in cellphones,
and promising all-day battery life, is something to look forward to.
Anyhow, while the base Dell Mini 9 is $249, bringing the memory up to 1 GB adds only $25 to the cost. (Now you're talking, Dell ...) Going from the 8 GB solid-state hard drive to 16 GB adds an extra $50, but that isn't completely necessary (although I'd probably do it) because you can easily save to those miniature SD cards used in digital cameras — most netbooks have a slot for this — and keep your main drive fairly clean.
One catch with netbooks is that they don't have built-in CD/DVD drives, so you can pop for one from Dell for $89, or take your chances and pick one up for possibly less at Fry's or online from an outlet like TigerDirect.com, where USB-connected CD/DVD burners run from $60-80, or not much of a savings.
Again, if you fully embrace the "netbook concept," you won't need an optical drive or a even a huge main hard drive. These little notebooks are supposed to be for casual Web surfing, jotting down notes and the like.
But I still predict that the netbook will become a whole lot more ubiquitous than many hardware manufacturers and especially software giant Microsoft ever thought.
And while Microsoft is making moves to have an operating system other than Windows XP that will run on such lower-spec devices, I think it's just silently waiting and not-so-silently cajoling hardware makers to up the specs of these little laptops so they can more comfortably run not Windows Vista but the upcoming (and said-to-be-lighter-and-higher) Windows 7.
We'll see. The rumors of a shift from Intel-based processors like the netbook-aimed Atom to even-lower-power-using ARM CPUs could throw a considerable wrench into Microsoft's quest to move into the netbook market — a class of hardware the company didn't see coming.
Right now I still recommend running Ubuntu on those netbooks that ship with that version of the Linux operating system. I've heard less-than-glowing things about the netbooks that use modified versions of Xandros and Linpus, but I'll admit right now that I have nothing beyond the anecdotal to go by.
There are many people interested in running everything from Mandriva and Debian to OpenBSD and Novell's SUSE (either the OpenSUSE or SLED varieties) on their netbooks with the help in many cases of active projects porting these OSes to various netbooks.
Maybe you don't want a netbooks. I understand. I do a whole lot of writing on laptops, and that smallish keyboard might not get such a glowing review when I'm cranking 500-word articles on deadline.
But then again, I do the majority of my work on a 7-year-old Toshiba laptop with a dead sound chip and the ultra-reliable OpenBSD operating system, now equipped with Java and Flash Player 7 (the "newest" Flash player available in the BSD world). Right now the Toshiba — with 1.2 GHz Celeron CPU, 768 MB of RAM and 20 GB hard drive split between OpenBSD and Windows XP, which for testing reasons I haven't killed out — is serving me quite well.
And I always have the Toshiba's "twin," running Ubuntu 8.04, at the ready. And that one even has working sound (and with Ubuntu I have Java and either Flash 9 or 10 – I can't remember). If I have to do more with video than currently (now = almost none), I'll have to move back to Linux both for the Flash capability and the availability of more video-editing software.
But for the basics — Firefox, Opera, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, the Geany text editor, the Xpdf and Adobe PDF readers, the GIMP image editor, Pidgin for IM, gFTP and the Rox-filer file manager — I have a pretty nice setup in OpenBSD. I've been using this OS on this hunk of hardware for about three months now, so I should be in a position soon to write yet another distro review, except this one will be based on that three months of use and not the "I installed it, here's how that went, and here's how it's different from what I usually run" reviews that I and many others find so easy to crank out.
Winding back around to netbooks, what I mean to say is that $250 is a better price than $300 for the basic model, and for that Dell deserves at least some praise (and more than a little business).
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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
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