Podcast Hell

I downloaded a ton of tech-related podcasts over the weekend. Some of them were older but still informative, others were more recent and not exactly worth the time or bandwidth it took to listen to them. I’m still going through them. Some merit more ear-time than others.

One of them seemed promising by its name: Productive Linux. I think I downloaded two or three episodes. I stopped the first one I listened to and forwarded to the next when the host started spelling out commands and options for editing Firefox chrome. The last thing I want to hear when I’m running at 4:30 in the morning is a spelling lesson. No thanks, next.

Then I got his review of Absolute Linux, one of the smaller and easier to set up (Slackware is NOT hard to set up — read the documentation and it’s quite easy) Slackware-based sub-distros suitable for older computers. Once I got past the host’s prattle about how “clean” and “vanilla” and “stable” it felt (compared, pray tell, to what?), I got the substance of his review and impressions.

First, the host very obviously didn’t bother to read the Absolute site because — RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT PAGE — it very clearly mentions that it uses Slackware binary packaging:

Accepts packages made for same Slackware Version, so you can use Slackware software repositories.

Duh. Nobody reads anything anymore. Oh, and the bold and underlined emphasis is mine. I’d make it blink but wordpress doesn’t support it. TG.

So I then got to listen to him go off on a tangent about compiling. Yes, you can do that with Slackware because its base is very complete with the most oft-used libraries. But it’s untrue that Slackware requires compiling your own apps because Slackware does have binary packaging.

Then we got into his likes and dislikes. He was disappointed that it didn’t come with audacity. So? How does that relate to productivity? That’s available from the official and many of the unofficial Slack-package sites and repositories. He also didn’t care for the wallpaper or default GTK theme. What was the first application he compiled? A switcher for GTK themes. So productive. I then endured more talk about themes. Productive? Not IMO. He berated the sparse choice of included productivity software. Never mind anyone can get the most current version (that would be the one with the most recent bug fixes and security patches) of Open Office from the Open Office website or from (duh) Slackware’s repositories.

I was about to end this attack on my ears and my intelligence when the host said that the version of Absolute he was using was a release candidate. Oh, nice.

It would’ve been nicer to know that before listening to what an ‘unfinished’ product he thought it was. I wouldn’t have wasted my time. I would’ve been more productive.

EDIT: I realize what I wrote probably seems harsh, but I thought the review was overly critical especially considering it wasn’t RELEASE and because he started with a presumption that isn’t even true (binary packaging).

I take exception, too, to the prevailing standard too many reviews have for distros: that their initial mixes of application are how they should be judged. I think that’s bullshit because anyone can take distro X, change a few apps around, and call it distro Y. Look instead at their paradigms — what do they do differently than the others? In the case of Slackware, it’s about keeping things as simple and straightforward (in the Unix sense) as possible. In other distros, it’s about package management (after all, Debian is aiming for neutrality and has compatibility with other operating systems like FreeBSD and GNU Hurd). It’s not what it comes with but how you use it and what you can add and why. Tell me that, don’t tell me it still uses version A.B.C instead of A.B.D of some application. Tell me why it exists, why its developers do things in certain ways.

I also admit I don’t get the relationship between things like themes and productivity. I’ve edited many themes for jwm for DSL — not because that matters so much to me but to help reduce the noise from people who thought DSL wasn’t aesthetically attractive. As we’ve seen with DSL, it doesn’t matter how many themes you offer or how much you dress it up, people are going to grumble anyway. THAT’S WHY THEMES AND WALLPAPERS CAN BE CHANGED. IT’S SUBJECTIVE. IF YOU DON’T LIKE DEFAULT SETTINGS AND THAT’S GOING TO CAUSE YOU TO WHINE, CHANGE IT. BUT IS THAT REALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT JUDGING HOW DISTROS ARE DIFFERENT?

That’s why I wrote fairly harshly about that particular podcast. Maybe the rest of his stuff is worth listening to, maybe it’s more of what I heard. When I think of “productive,” I think of substance. What little substance he had was misleading (Slackware does have binary packaging and Absolute Linux uses it) and the rest was about stuff that really doesn’t matter.

More DSL Hard Drive Fun

I decided to recompile my DSL hard drive install kernel while watching the Hornets beat down the Mavericks. My goal is to get it even smaller and faster.

Ten megabytes (plus some marginal amount cached) while running X and several other processes (I took the screenshot in console while ssh’elled in and then used sshfs to convert the image from a raw X dump to png on the laptop). Take a look at the torsmo shot in my ‘dsl hard drive’ page for comparison. I’m getting there. Now I need to see why hotplug-knoppix loaded fat/vfat modules (which were loaded when this shot was taken)…

As for the rest of the stats:

% du -h –max-depth=1 /lib/modules/
20M /lib/modules/2.4.31 (default)
1.7M /lib/modules/2.4.36.3-mini (first try)
1.2M /lib/modules/2.4.36.3-miniM (current)

984K linux-2.4.36.3-miniM (current)
988K linux24-31 (default)
My other one was 1.2MB but it was a case of ‘better safe than sorry.’

I’ve yet to run into any issues.

DSL Hard Drive Install Page

I’ve added and linked a shorter version of my Damn Small Linux “hardening” guide, which focuses on some of the changes I make immediately upon installing DSL to hard drive. Some of what I’ve added is security-related. After all, everyone thinks Linux is inherently more secure than Windows — so make sure it is. Other parts, such as recommending kernel recompilation, are less urgent. The gist of my opinion: it works and works well, but it’s easier using a distro that’s intended to be used for hard drive installs if you want to set it up correctly and safely.

The link is here and on the top under “My Pages.” I also hope to have the “MyDSL Pages” available soon, which will also have a link to it.

Additional note: I’ll recommend to Robert that zlib, ssl, and ssh be updated (or use dropbear, which hopefully is updated). If not, I’ll try to submit what I use as dsl/unc.

Tilting at Windows: Don’t Fight for Desktop Linux Adoption

I picked up this article by Caitlyn Martin from Steven Rosenberg’s Click blog. She takes a different tack on some of the issues I’ve addressed when I’ve commented on some of the more exhuberent (and less honest) Linux activism. Her article references one such article, a list of ten points about how Linux has outgrown its geeky past and is appropriate for desktop use.

She writes, “All 10 points in the article are valid. None of them, nor any other efforts at Linux evangelism over the last decade, have worked when it comes to moving the masses towards Linux in the home and office on the desktop. Look, I’m not critical of the article. It may even convince a handful or people to give Linux a look. It, and articles like it, won’t have a major impact.”

This is true and so is her suggestion that it’s preaching to the choir. There have been many activists who’ve attempted to make inroads and get Linux adopted on the desktop. She’s correct that it’s not about cost, it’s not about ease as Linux desktop environments and driver support have improved. Resistance is hard to overcome no matter what price tag you put on or take off.

I think she too easily dismisses a couple things, such as the ease with which devices still work with Windows because their vendors are Windows-centric. If I buy any webcam, I know it will probably work very easily with Windows — plug it in, voila. If I do the same for use on a Linux desktop, I need to first check to see if it’s natively supported in Linux. Failing that, I have to see if anyone else has a driver for it. Then, if there is one, I have to check and see if that driver has enough functionality to be worthwhile. And if I already have the camera and it already works in Windows, why would I want to switch to a “free” operating system that will require me to compile a separate module for my device, run depmod, etc., just to use it? We can argue all we want about closed hardware and software, but these things are reality. We don’t have a magic wand to make it go away.

Substitute scanner, printer, or any other device for webcam. The more stuff a user already has, the more resistance he or she will probably have in switching.

Martin suggests two ways that users may be lured to desktop Linux. One is via well-conceived and well-configured devices like the Asus Eee UMPC that come with Linux. These have been met with more enthusiasm by existing Linux users, though. With these UMPCs increasingly shipping with XP, I don’t see how this bodes well for Linux. (I’m neutral on superiority of Windows or Linux because often it boils down to the same thing: how well things are pre-configured for the less savvy user. The less savvy the user, the worse the perception is if it’s inadequately set up even if the “problems” are very benign.)

The second thing Martin says may help Linux adoption is via concerted effort between Linux developers and hardware vendors — more of a Microsoft approach. There’s a big problem with this: there aren’t many manufacturers of hardware ready to embrace open source, at least not with the kinds of strings that GPLv3 would attach with respect to firmware. While some companies are becoming more lenient when it comes to distributing their firmware (since I just compiled two 2.6.25 kernels, I noticed there’s a lot more of that than in the 2.4 line), they really don’t benefit by pushing Linux on desktops — even a 100% increase in Linux desktop adoption wouldn’t reach the 5% share, so spectacular growth rate keeps you in a marginal market. Hooray, BeOS!

I think where all of this is moot is, we’re moving away from traditional desktop computing. Whether you want to look at mobile computing vis-a-vis laptops, notebooks, and UMPCs or in the direction things appear to be headed with cell/smart phones and PDAs, the real growth is away from desktops. Dittos for other devices popping up in homes all over the world: TiVOs and other DVRs, game consoles, etc. Many of these devices are the real initial contact points people have with Linux.

That’s where hardware vendors are already onboard with Linux. And vice versa. Except for FSF and fringe types who object to the way the real world operates.

My beloved told me she would never use Linux on her laptop. She’s dead serious. She hates my computers. She stopped telling me she’d never use Linux when I pointed out where she was already using it: her cell phone, the router, the server, the DVR, the TV. Things she takes for granted because she turns them on and they work without “eye candy” or code she can audit herself (which would be quite interesting to see!) or lack of command lines. Just like Windows. She’s not in the open source choir and not interested in how many different window managers she can try. She’s just pragmatic.

What Martin argues for is already reality, just not on desktops.

Linux is widely used on mobile hardware like cell phones and it stands a much better chance of widespread adoption there barring more goofy GPL turf wars by zealots who make up words like “tivoization” for problems that don’t even exist (TiVo plays by the rules; so FSF changes the rules and moves the goalposts). Licensing really matters as much as whether the source is open or not. I’ll even argue that adoption of Linux and its funding from vendors would already be more widespread if its license were less restrictive — much the same way TCP/IP became an adopted standard in both open source and proprietary worlds because there weren’t petty restrictions preventing others from integrating it as they saw fit (it’s important to understand that Microsoft and Apple had every bit as much freedom to use TCP/IP as BSD; otherwise, we’d have closed networking stacks that don’t communicate very effectively with each other).

The real battle in this decade is away from the desktop. Those who want to win market share on the desktop are tilting at Windows.

Laptop Kernel 2.6.25

I compiled kernel 2.6.25 for my laptop last night. For once I went through the full menus rather than making a big, bloated kernel via make oldconfig. I did this while watching the NBA playoffs. I took the smart way out by compiling it on my desktop (via screen and ssh) and copying it over to the laptop by sshfs when it was finished. Then installing it was a snap (and the laptop’s fan didn’t even have to kick on for a second!).

I built in much of the support I need (e.g., PCMCIA) and left out everything — in the kernel or as modules — I know I’ll never need. The result is a much smaller footprint (/lib/modules/2.6.25 is under 20MB and would’ve been smaller except I set nearly every possible USB device as a module even though I know I’ll probably never use half of it; who knows, maybe I’ll get some new toys) and much faster boot over the stock Vector kernel.

I still need to upgrade ndiswrapper but their download page had an error message last night and this morning, so I have to boot my old kernel to get online. I also need to update wireless tools. If I can’t get ndiswrapper 1.5.2, I’ll recompile what I have against the new headers. I think I still have source for it here on a thumbdrive.

While I was at it, I commented out the bitmap line in lilo.conf. Now my lilo is a normal text box, as Slackware has always had it. Unfortunately, Slackware 12.1 will have a bitmap background by default so my new look will soon be “old school.” I don’t know why users are so enamored with images that only load for a few seconds like that. Come on, people. If you’re going to use “splash” or whatever you want to call it, at least be sensible about it. Some people are getting way too carried away. Look at the size of the images Vector includes in /boot/bitmap:

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 308322 2007-10-30 03:14 VLwave.bmp
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 309421 2007-02-13 07:51 boot-grub.xpm

A third of a MB just for a bootloader image! That heinous VLwave thing is symlinked to boot.bmp which is the bitmap used in lilo.conf. Or at least it was before I put a nice pound sign in its way. See, that’s one of the things that keeps me from singing praises to Vector. Faster, lighter? YMMV. I really beg to differ.

Two observations:

• Linux 2.6.25 is freaking massive.
• Default/stock kernels are bloated. That includes “faster, lighter” Vector’s.

Everything is being thrown into the kernel source. Every imaginable device, every imaginable driver, everything. “Kitchen sink” comes to mind. And default kernels — since they must of necessity be one-size-fits-as-many-as-possible — take too much advantage of this. The problem with this approach is that users end up with lots of stuff built into the kernel they’ll never use. In my case, it was (net — I built in things that were modules in Vector) over 5MB of crud. Maybe it’s time for distros to decide if they’re desktop-oriented or server-oriented and compile two distinct kernels. At least two. I think the differences between desktops and laptops are significant enough that a separate laptop kernel is also warranted. That would streamline things for users. Not to mention make it safer for everyone because there’s a relationship between security and the number of parts contained in the kernel or in the parts that can be loaded to kernelspace. Servers generally don’t need PCMCIA or all kinds of video drivers; laptops generally don’t need RAID support; etc.

Now it’s time to do the same for the desktop on which the laptop’s kernel was compiled. I’ll probably have that running during the NFL Draft and/or NBA playoffs this afternoon or tomorrow. Or else I’ll download Gentoo or a BSD and go back to using a ports system on it so I only have myself to blame if I compile with every bloated possible option.

As I’ve written lately, I find I’m recompiling more and more stuff because Vector’s packagers appear to be as enthusiastic about features as Ubuntu’s packagers. If it can be enabled, by golly they’re enabling it. I don’t mind recompiling new kernels to suit my own tastes and hardware. But having to recompile so many things just so I won’t need to install A — which I don’t want for a variety of reasons: size, security, stability, etc. — to use B is a real pain in the neck.

JWM Contrast Theme

This is my first accessibility mod. It’s a fairly high contrast theme for jwm. I’ve refrained from gradients and used only three colors/shades of grey: black, medium grey, white. Adjust the font to suit your needs.

<JWM>
<!– dark contrast theme: flat, no gradients; black, white, medium grey –>

<WindowStyle>
<Font antialias=”false”>fixed</Font>
<Width>4</Width>
<Height>18</Height>
<Active>
<Text>white</Text>
<Title>black</Title>
<Corner>grey50</Corner>
<Outline>white</Outline>
</Active>

<Inactive>
<Text>grey50</Text>
<Title>black</Title>
<Corner>grey50</Corner>
<Outline>black</Outline>
</Inactive>
</WindowStyle>

<TaskListStyle>
<Font antialias=”false”>fixed</Font>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>white</ActiveBackground>
<Foreground>grey50</Foreground>
<Background>black</Background>
</TaskListStyle>

<!– Additional TrayStyle attribute: insert –>
<TrayStyle>
<Font antialias=”false”>fixed</Font>
<Background>grey50</Background>
<Foreground>white</Foreground>
</TrayStyle>

<PagerStyle>
<Outline>black</Outline>
<Foreground>grey50</Foreground>
<Background>black</Background>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>white</ActiveBackground>
</PagerStyle>

<MenuStyle>
<Font antialias=”false”>fixed</Font>
<Foreground>white</Foreground>
<Background>black</Background>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>white</ActiveBackground>
</MenuStyle>

<PopupStyle>
<Font antialias=”false”>fixed</Font>
<Outline>white</Outline>
<Foreground>white</Foreground>
<Background>black</Background>
</PopupStyle>

<!– end dark contrast scheme –>
</JWM>

Here are two thumbnails showing contrast in menu and in other decorations (click for 800×600 view):

Maybe it would work better with the window decorations matching the task list colors — black on white — and then use the white on black for inactive windows. Please provide me feedback here or in the DSL forums, especially if it needs adjustments for more clarity (or if the use of grey is a problem and it needs to be black and white only).

Playing in Console

I’m pretty happy I can switch back and forth between console and X now that I have my tty issues resolved with Vector. I decided to find tools to take console shots. I settled on fbdump aliased to pipe the dump through pnmtopng and output a time-stamped png.

This is a scaled shot of my gnu screen session with htop in the foreground.

I’ve set up every .screenrc I use with hostname so I know which computer I’m working on. Comes in handy and helps me keep things straight if I have screen sessions running on multiple computers — home server, work computer, work server, etc. — and shelled in on different ttys. Click on the image below for the 640xn full size version of the caption:

Notice how gentle the demands of console apps are in comparison to GTK1 and GTK2 apps in X (click for full scale):

By contrast, I’m running X and Firefox GTK1 now (one tab open to edit this post). I opened one instance of aterm to run htop. It’s showing 71 MB memory in use.

For what it’s worth, the memory use when I open htop after I boot up and wifi starts is 17 MB. I could probably get that down another MB or two by not starting certain modules I don’t need to start.

Here’s the caption line from my .screenrc:

caption always “%?%F%{-b yk}%:%{-b bb}%?%H %{-b rk}%?%C %{-b wk}| %?%F%{-b bk}%? %L=%-Lw%45>%{-b ck}%n%f* %t%{-}%+Lw%-0<”

Since seeing what Vector Light is/isn’t, I’m going to proceed with the lower resource slackbuild I’ve mentioned the last few days. I’ll post some more ideas in the coming days about the levels of build I think are possible (minimal without X, minimal with X and mix of console and GTK1 apps, and low resource GTK2).

Edit: Here’s a shot showing htop at six minutes uptime with only htop running.

Edited again: It’s not like an obsession or anything, but I got it down to 15 MB:

Note that htop doesn’t count cache (so free -mt actually reports that I’m using 80-something MB). It’s also relevant that to do this I blacklisted all the sound modules that normally would load; I don’t do audio on the laptop — my mp3 player battery lasts longer between charges and the player sounds a lot better.

DSL 4.3 Released

DSL 4.3 is out. Perhaps the most noteworthy change is the upgrade to Firefox 2.0 GTK1 (Bon Echo rebranding) from Firefox 1.0.6. Edit: There are other changes that deserve comment. The browser for MyDSL is now very much improved. The noicons cheatcode will now boot jwm without icons (in addition to not starting dfm on the desktop); this speeds things up quite a bit even though it’s primarily targeted at vintage low-RAM computers.

There are some things about it I don’t like. The first is something subjective and very easily changed: the default theme and wallpaper are too freaking dark. I’m also not a fan of black and white, and that’s essentially the color theme for jwm. This is a shot with Firefox opened all the way hiding the background save for the overlaying aterm. I’d already made some changes to remove the icons from the tray buttons and moved the tray to the top when I took the shot.

My biggest peeve of all is the search engine choice. Not choices, choice. It’s a Google search through DSL’s site. How many concerns do I have about that?

1. Privacy - are click-throughs being recorded? What’s John’s privacy policy for both DSL and Google searches through DSL?
2. Given DSL’s recent downtime and slow responses (see two or three entries ago), will this mean users will ultimately have to type google.com in the URI box anyway just to use Google?
3. Why should users have to go to the Firefox add-ons site to get standard choices for search engines?

Like I’m about to add in the DSL forums, that’s going to be easy enough to fix because I’ll download the GTK1 build of Firefox 2.0.0.14 anyway and just start with a fresh profile. But I think it sucks that someone would direct my searches through his site first. See what I wrote about Vector’s default settings so that every new browser installation or upgrade hits their website. Boo.

Vector Light: Is it really?

I decided to see if I could find any third party information or reviews about Vector Light before I commit to installing it. One of the first things I found was this page with screenshots. It’s not very reassuring given what I wrote this morning.

For example, I see things I wouldn’t ever include in a “light” version -

• bootsplash
• slim login (I think it’s slim, maybe kdm light just like Vector?)
• Fox toolkit (?)
• pcmanfm (?)
• gslapt shows the version of mplayer, and it’s the same as in standard Vector.

I guess what I meant this morning by separate paradigm is that it wouldn’t have multiple tools for accomplishing similar tasks the way you might expect it to be on a more full-featured distro — that there would be more consideration to streamline things and reduce duplication and maximize utility. For example, including fox toolkit along with other GUI/RAD toolkits. I checked to make sure vasmCC uses gambas (yes, it does). And so on.

I also would use a separate repository for “light’s” applications because the user bases aren’t the same. Why install a “light” version and then end up with an identical system when all is said and done once packages are chosen from the repository? The only thing that’s different is the choice of a window manager or desktop environment, and that’s an option that can be chosen when using the normal version of Vector.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll try it anyway and see. Or else I’ll go with my original plan and recompile stuff without bloated dependencies so that it’s genuinely light — lighter footprint, lighter on system requirements and resources, and more nimble than “pretty.” In the final analysis, I care a lot less about how my computer looks than what I can do with it. And I can’t do as much if I have its RAM crammed with big, bloated icons and high resolution wallpaper.

Problems with DSL Forums

This has been occurring with great frequency the past week, and it totally sucks…

If it’s not one thing, it’s another…

Taken within minutes of each other.