Fedora 10 on AA1: Configuring Skype, Using Fluxbox

Using fluxbox in Fedora 10 today. Mainly because I was working on Skype settings between conference calls and writing reports, and Skype is one of those nasty little apps that opens up multiple little windows which ratpoison manages individually. I haven’t had good luck using tmpwm in ratpoison, and I wouldn’t want to do that just to go back and forth to Skype.

I’m also running NetworkManager (and nm-applet) again today while I test something else out. I’m likely removing that altogether ASAP and trying something different and easier to manually configure. I hate having networking spawned as a child process within X. It’s no problem as long as you’re in X but it has to be restarted if you break your X session for any reason. I saw a few options (not wicd — I want something lower resource but still able to choose between certain networks and blacklist others) so I may play around when I have more time and see if I can find something manageable and fairly flexible. Or no?

I had Skype working before I scrapped everything and installed Debian. I had to go through every setting again to remember what I did before, and then I realized Skype’s setting was still stuck on “Let Skype Adjust Your Audio.” Oh no. I got it all fixed when I stopped letting Skype fight me. Skype should be easier to set up without pulseaudio since it uses alsa anyway; IIRC, I had an easier time setting it up before even though I didn’t remove pulseaudio the first time I set up Fedora 10. BTW, I used alsamixer this time to adjust my audio settings.

I know Skype isn’t open source. So what. Not everything is or can be. I don’t have a problem with it. If someone could come up with a legitimate cross-platform open source application that works as well and (in most cases) easily, I’d use it. Right now Linux has no video conferencing software compatible with AIM let alone multi-platform so Skype it is. If there’s an argument against Skype being closed source it means that it can’t be re-written to use only one window. But the same argument is pretty much true of open source software like GIMP which also opens too many windows rather than operating within one.

I’ve also noticed one of those quirks between Linux and Windows. The space just to the right of the Synaptics touchpad gets pretty hot. That’s right above where the wifi card is located. I wonder if that’s why it’s gone wonky on me a couple times before. I haven’t noticed it getting this hot before in Windows. Who knows.

I’ve written before that I’m not a big fan of fluxbox. It works which is all that matters to me. I think I still prefer jwm because it’s more utilitarian and fairly easy to configure. I’ll see if I can get around to binding more keystrokes for things; I’d like to ditch the redundant title bars on the windows, too, and open (most) things maximized.

Okay, back to work. I have a lot of stuff to edit tonight.

Pondering Blog Stats, Contemplating Future

Sometimes I’m amazed at the traffic this blog gets. Maybe that’s because I’ve never been big on advertising this blog — I may link to something relevant I’ve written when replying elsewhere — or utilizing SEO. An exception was at the DSL forums where I put a link in my signature; much of the content of this blog over the previous few years had a DSL bent so I didn’t think I was being pushy. Maybe this blog wouldn’t even exist if Andrews had ever fixed the DSL Blogs, which is where I originally intended to blog.

WordPress is very informative and possesses some great tools. I can see where a lot of my hits originate. Needless to say, I still get traffic from the DSL forums. I also get a lot of DSL-related search hits. This surprises me because DSL’s development appears to have ended. Last time I looked there was no update or roadmap for the future. Yet my DSL pages continue getting hits from those forum links and also from search engines.

Many of the hits from the DSL forums continue to be related to jwm. I also get a lot of hits for searches related to jwm, especially themes. These used to be the biggest source of hits to my blog, but have levelled off a bit in recent months. Not too surprising considering how I no longer post at DSL forums and I haven’t added much new jwm content in a while.

I also get a lot of hits related to dwm, dmenu, ratpoison, ratmen, and screen. At one time I’d considered doing video tutorials for these — better quality than my two crappy videos at youtube. Maybe I should go ahead and do the videos because I see similar search terms popping up frequently. If anyone has questions about these things that they’re not finding here or elsewhere, don’t hesitate to leave a comment in a relevant post and I’ll either clarify in a new post, comment, or (if you ask in the comment) in private e-mail. (That goes for anything I address here.)

The biggest surprise to me is how many hits I get related to Fedora 10 and 11 since I’ve only been using and writing about Fedora for a couple months. It’s very clear to me, if the search terms landing people here are any indication, that there’s considerable frustration with Fedora 11. Maybe my occasionally unrestrained profanity helps this blog’s rankings in Google’s algorithms because many hits since the release of Fedora 11 have included “fucked up” or “shit” in them. Especially combined with USB and live CD. (Edit: Similar terms also result in a lot of Ubuntu Netbook Remix-oriented hits to my review. Pretty clear from the number of search engine hits that I must not have been the only one to suffer crashing menu and desktop problems.)

I almost shut this blog down when I was in Houston last year caring for family. I didn’t have the time to maintain it, let alone add new content. I’d also installed BSD on everything that had Linux on it. Even when I got my AA1, I had no plan to install Linux. But I eventually did. And here we are.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll continue adding new content or what direction that content will take. It seemed easier when I was tied (more or less) to one particular distro and involved in its community. Now, I’m using Fedora (to a smaller degree than Windows) and not involved in its community. I’m also not tied to using Fedora much longer if I find something I think will serve my interests better for a longer term than Fedora’s support cycle for at least F10 (or F11 if it’s stabilized soon).

I haven’t committed 100% to installing Windows 7 when it’s released. But I’m very inclined to do that. If I do, there will probably be a lot less new content on this blog and I’ll be right back where I was when I came home from Houston.

I’ve been blogging on more general purpose topics at another blog. I haven’t added much new content to my BSD blog because there’s not much to write about. I don’t think “my servers are pretty fucking stable” is newsworthy enough. But maybe neither is “I installed ratpoison and changed runlevels and removed a lot of default software.” Yet I still get hits.

Whatever I do, I won’t take the blog down as I’d planned. Aside from a few comments expressing thanks or pingbacks mentioning resolution of issues, I don’t know how many people find anything I’ve written helpful. Hopefully it’s more than I know.