Debian Out, Vector In

Ran into some issues with my tiny Debian hybrid install yesterday. One of the things I wrote about preferring Debian’s packaging to Slackware’s has its dark side: just because you can remove smaller parts to fine tune things, sometimes things are packaged together such that it’s not a good idea. Also, many apps are compiled for use on bleeding edge hardware with compile-time options that require downloading dependent libs and packages all users shouldn’t need. An example of that was the xbindkeys thing I wrote about the other day — massive download for a relatively small utility — especially since it can be compiled without guile; if emacs and vim can have no-X versions, other apps can be added to give users more choices suitable for their own hardware.

I was running into various problems when trying to pare the system down. If I want to remove A, then dpkg insists I have to remove B through K — but that I also have to install L through P, which aren’t currently installed, and then upgrade Q through V. In the process of it all, I was getting the messages that I had all these packages that were no longer needed. That’s when the real fun started.

In the process of all this, I decided it would be easier to start from the ground up and compile things as I see fit. That’s why I’ve favored ports over packages anyway, whether BSD or Linux. And why I’ve favored Slackware because it’s not inextricably tied to its binary packaging. You want source and ports, Slackware is good. You want packaging, Slackware is good.

Since I’m already running Vector, a Slackware desktop-oriented derivative, on my laptop and am very happy with it, I decided that would be good on my new hard drive, too. I’m now running Vector 5.9 both on laptop and desktop. I compiled kernel 2.6.24.3 for the desktop last night (2.6.24.3-r0313 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 13 17:38:20 CDT 2008 i686 to be exact). I have one hardware problem to sort out, and that’s editing my xorg.config so the scroll on my new mouse works — minor issue, which I would ignore if not for having a new mouse.

Vector has slapt-get and gslapt, the Slackware packaging versions akin to apt-get from Debian. It also comes with cruxports4slack, which I’m not sure I want to mess with. If I do use a ports system, I’ll stick with pkgsrc (which I’ve used with great results in both Linux and BSD). If that’s what I wanted, though, I’d start with a base install of Slack or just use BSD.

I started removing packages last night before I started on the kernel — no need for Abiword, Gnumeric, or Gnome Office, didn’t need any of the wifi stuff on this because I’m wired, etc. Have a bit more to do yet. I won’t hang on to XFce even though it’s nice and my RAM use hasn’t been too bad, and the kdm and qt3 stuff will be gone tonight. I’ll stick with jwm and ratpoison.

My only regret is that I didn’t use the same config so I could use the kernel on the laptop, too. On the other hand, it’s been working so flawlessly that I’m not sure I want to change it except to test OpenBSD 4.3 and DragonFlyBSD for the new bwi (Broadcom 43xx) wrapper/cutter. If I ever get time to mess with either of those.

Wrapper Script 101

This is in relation to something at the DSL Forums. Sometimes applications need a little help to “automate” things, work in the desired manner, or to use configurations other than default without having to switch from default settings. In this case, it’s just a simple shell wrapper to open a terminal and use mplayer to stream audio. Below is the resulting output from 181fm Classical Guitar (nice work music) and the simple wrapper script.

I put it in xterm because that’s my “floating” terminal — aterm and mrxvt are maximized without border or title in jwm. I set that wrapper as my run action in rox for PLS streams — click, open, it plays (kills with q, ctrl-c, or closing the window). Not fancy but at least it’s easier on RAM than xmms.

EDIT: Here’s another shot with the same wrapper as my default PLS application in firefox:

Ratpoison, Screen, SSH

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week (and weekend) using the same screen session on my primary computer remotely from my laptop. This has allowed me to do things like compile without burning up my laptop (it gets VERY hot compiling), run the same session of naim, etc., and check back in as I can. No down time between travel, commuting, work, play, etc. I pick up everything right where it is no matter where I go.

I’d installed ratpoison on the laptop when I first installed Vector Linux. At that time, I was willing to give XFce a fair shot against window managers with lower system requirements (not fluxbox, more like jwm). I liked it, but it wasn’t as lean as I thought it should be. Then I installed KDE for a bit. I really like having a fully integrated system, but my laptop isn’t really up to running that.

So I’ve removed both XFce and KDE. I’ve been using JWM with a lot of my anti-WIMP mods from Damn Small Linux as my primary window manager. I’ve been using ratpoison more often again lately.

Not just on my laptop — I went ahead and installed it on desktop, too. I installed ratpoison on this computer because I noticed my USB mouse kept locking up and dmesg informs me that Linux can’t enable port 2 and maybe the USB cable is bad. Yep. After 10 years of abuse, it probably is. Once again, the mouse is unplugged and I’ve set things up so I can live without it (but I did plug it in so I can scroll while I edit this online).

I removed 9menu, which installs with ratpoison via Debian testing, and installed ratmenu as well as xbindkeys. I would’ve compiled xbindkeys on my own if I’d noticed the Debian version requires libguile-ltdl-1, libqthreads-12, and guile-1.6-libs — 2.654 MB(!!!). Ouch. I might go ahead and do that but I have this thing down to under 1.5 GB of disk use now.

What’s not to love about that?! It’s just vim with my ratmenu running in screen. I have a dark-ish grey (grey33) background and default grey text (good old size 10 fixed font!) in aterm. That’s the same screen session that’s been running for over a week, detached and re-attached probably 200 times locally and remotely.

I’m not anti-WIMP. I know there are people who carp on icons and menus and say they get in the way. Do they? Or are they really any different from shell wrappers and aliases? I don’t think they are. I think of that when I edit menus and aliases and write wrapper scripts.

Let me give an example. You probably can’t read the second to the last line clearly in the menu: it says “screen-scaled.” I wanted the ability to produce a scaled screenshot on the fly. So I appended an ImageMagick import line with convert to produce a 400×300 shot suitable for posting on blogs. I write the command(s) once either way whether it’s a wrapper script or a menu item or an alias. Let’s say I alias it as “scaledshot.” When I type sc-TAB, I’d get 28 possibilities for autocompletion. Add the l-TAB, four possibilities. So I’m already at five keystrokes and in need of another e-TAB — seven strokes. I know I can limit that with zsh by TABbing until I find the right one. That still would put me at six anyway.

How much of a barrier is my menu? Ctrl-z-y (I rebound my escape to z) give me a menu. Two up arrows take me backward to that line. Return. Done. Five strokes. Too many? I can bind that to shift-print (print is taken up for the full shot) or something else. If I were so inclined, I could bind it to an icon in another window manager and with one short motion and one click I’d have my stupid 400×300 screenshot to show the world how boring my computers are most of the time.

Anyway, I’m not getting too carried away with filling in the menu. Most stuff will be console anyway and run in screen. The point is, there are plenty of ways to do things. Right now, this is mine. At least til I go buy a new mouse.

Menu Editing, Screenshots

I’ve done a few more things to configure my system include filling in the menu. The JWM menu doesn’t comply with KDE/Gnome so its menu isn’t updated the way others are. No big deal — I’m using a lot of the same apps I already have in my DSL menu so I just copied it over.

I finally changed the default colors for JWM and used my evil cyan glow theme from DSL. I modified it to use the fixed font and reduced the size of the title bar and window frame. I’ll probably edit a theme to match the colors I’m using in mrxvt. I’m using a solid black background even though I have transparency set on for the terminal.

And here’s a shot of GIMP.

That’s not exciting. Maybe some excitement this weekend.

JWM on Debian

Just a quick shot before I go to bed. I didn’t get a JWM entry for kdm when I installed JWM from Sid repository so I added my own link to the Jwm.desktop file. Made a few quick changes to get away from KDE apps. Konsole sucks outside of KDE so I added mrxvt — I get the tabbed terminal without the bloat. Set it same as I run terminals in DSL (no title or borders, maximized). Spent a little time tonight editing a menu and looking at what to leave in, what to add, and what to remove.

That’s right. Boring! Just the way I like it. Default colors for jwm, solid grey22 background.

There’s a lot I want to do to pare this system down further; even with GTK2, I think I can get it down so I can get a sub-80MB ISO. KDE is going this week — not so reluctantly even though I appreciate it enough to install it on my bigger hard drive and faster computer. I want a few apps familiar to DSL users like emelfm(2) and sylpheed (maybe mutt instead).

BTW, previous uptime was 32.5 days. Down because of power failure during excessively windy conditions (40+ mph) last night.

Sidux Update: 2008-01 Preview 1 (pending KDE 3.5.9)

In relation to my upgrades I wrote about this morning, it appears I’m just about up to date with what the sidux gang are doing.

sidux 2008-01 preview 1:

Please note this is not the final release, the full featured final release of “Νυξ” will be ready in about 2-3 weeks (depending on the availability of KDE 3.5.9 in Debian sid), intermediate xdeltas will be provided as needed until then.

At least I have a time line for when I can expect KDE 3.5.9 to show up in the repositories. Other updates in sidux include latest kernel (2.6.24.3), improved wifi support, and support for more webcams.

Various Updates and Thoughts

A few quick updates…

BSD
I updated my BSD blog this weekend. I learned DragonFlyBSD has and OpenBSD will have bwi, a BSD-native Broadcom wirecutter-like module. So I’m at least going to test it out on my laptop and see how well it works. I’m most likely transitioning back to FreeBSD or OpenBSD (maybe DragonFlyBSD), but I’ll continue to do a few things with Damn Small Linux so I’ll keep a few partitions available for that.

TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT
I downloaded Damn Small Solaris, which infringes on at least two trademarks so I’m striking it out. Why can’t people come up with unique names if they’re going to copy everything else another project is doing? Same apps, roughly same size, and then taking their name as well. I guess some people just lack the ideas and originality to innovate or differentiate at all. Damn Small Linux is trademarked. So is Solaris — maybe someone should’ve noticed Sun’s clear notice about use of their trademarks, which has led to OpenSolaris projects with very unique names like Nexenta and Belenix. Sun has a legal team. I hope John of DSL does, too.

LAPTOP - KDE - VECTORLINUX
Back to my laptop. I’ve been running KDE 3.5.8 on it the past week. I need to compare the configuration used by VectorLinux to what I’m using on my desktop because it’s not using as much RAM as I feared it would (an issue with the laptop since it’s “challenged”). I prefer KDE to Xfce. I’m using less RAM when KDE loads than when Xfce loaded. Even with my choice of apps, I’m using less RAM with KDE.

Needless to say, though, RAM use with KDE is about triple after login what JWM requires. I wish there was a way to get KDE’s (start up) RAM use to about 100-120MB. I would use it all the time.

DEBIAN
One thing I like better about Debian compared to Vector/Slackware is the application packaging. Debian’s repositories aren’t just more prolific, Debian allows a bit more flexibility with respect to meta-packaging. For example, I wanted a specific K application. With slapt-get, I had to take it as part of a larger package with stuff I didn’t want; Debian had it by itself.

REMASTERING
I spent some time working on stripping down and updating things in Knoppix to see how small I could make it. I can get it comfortably under 100MB, but I’m leaving in a few things that wouldn’t come with DSL (no, not KDE!). I may get to work on it again later this week. I have the things I want to work working already. The rest is fluff.

Latest Desktop Configuration

I’ve been using Knoppix 5.1 installed as Debian with a few upgrades from Sid (kernel, gcc, etc.) on my desktop for a couple weeks. KDE is very nice — I prefer it over Gnome and Xfce — but I don’t like the tax on system resources even with 256MB RAM. This will soon change when I replace this hard drive with the one I use for Damn Small Linux and the much lower demands of JWM. Not as fancy, but it’s better suited for this computer.

I don’t think KDE is sexy, but I did add a few little personal touches.

$ uptime
11:37:21 up 11 days, 14:26,  1 user,  load average: 0.61, 0.62, 0.84

I think my much delayed hardening guide will be changed to a guide for setting up things on a hard drive install of a live CD — both Knoppix and DSL. Such as which scripts to disable, tweaks I use, and some security settings to consider. There are some things that make a live CD work wonderfully that really aren’t so well suited for standard use. Such as anything that rewrites fstab.

Debian Users Strike Back at SJVN

Following up on Steven J Vaughan-Nichols’ recent muddle-headed articles about Debian, a group of Debian users have published this parody of a SJVN review of “Debain” on Linux.com.

You can generally recognize a Debain user if you see one, as they customarily wear bright colors, have waist-length beards, and tend to sport pastel eyepatches and/or crack pipes. Debain developers look similar, but they usually carry some sort of small monkey, parrot, or miniature fat pony on their shoulders. It’s also easy to recognize Debain developers because none of them are Americans. All true Americans run Genuine Windows Vista, and have no need for Debain.

It is rumored that as many as 110% of terrorists are Debain developers, and that the WrEtch release, occurring as it does so closely to the Vista launch, is a sign that the terrorists wish to leave their mark on Microsoft’s profits in particular, and on the US economy in general. Given all of this, it’s no surprise that Debain’s logo is red and that Debain itself is an ancient African word meaning Down with America.

Murdoch on Sun and Linux

Ian Murdoch of Debian and now Sun’s Chief Operating Platforms Officer is answering lots of questions about Sun’s friendliness with Linux. I wrote earlier about Sun’s partnership with Ubuntu in getting Java development applications into the main Ubuntu repository. Here’s an interview Murdoch gave technewsworld.com. Says Ian,

Solaris has some great technology, and I think Solaris has innovated more than Linux in the last few years. But at the same time, my first thought is [Solaris] seems like Linux 10 years ago [in terms of] installation, packaging and general usability. It comes down to how do you remove those barriers to adoption so that the truly unique and innovative features of Solaris are what people see.

Some of the desktop-oriented Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, for example, have garnered a tremendous amount of developer mindshare. But what people love about Ubuntu is not the Linux kernel, but all of the stuff that lives above it. So we [could] take all that stuff above Linux and put it above Solaris in a way that does not leave behind all of the differentiating features of Solaris.