Planet CrunchBang Linux

Larry Cafiero: Going to the show

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:47:18 +0000

If you’re a baseball fan, the blog’s title needs little explanation. Just in case you aren’t — and that would include most of you who aren’t on the North American continent — when a baseball player in the minor leagues “goes to the show,” it means he’s been called up to the Major Leagues.

Of course, going to the show can mean something completely different in FOSS circles, like going to the show, as in the Linux expo or gathering.

I don’t know him, but a friend of a friend in the Silicon Valley who goes by “jefro” posted a schedule of FOSS events throughout the year on his blog here. Admittedly most of them are in the U.S., and most of those in the U.S. are actually near where I live, so I’ll be going to many of them.

The schedule is posted here in order for others to get an idea of what’s out there, show-wise. If you’re near one, attend. If you’re near one and attend — and help promote CrunchBang at the event — that’s even better.

Not only was it a privilege to represent CrunchBang at the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 10X, I had a lot of fun in the process. It’s not hard, people are curious about CrunchBang and, in many cases, the distro promotes itself on its merits.

Next on my schedule is Linux Fest Northwest, in late April in Bellingham, Washington, just north of Seattle and just south of the Canadian border. CrunchBang already has a table and I’ve submitted both a “Intro to CrunchBang” talk and there will be a CrunchBang “Birds of a Feather” gathering during the course of the show.

If you live nearby, come on up to Bellingham and help out. You get free admission as an exhibitor. Ping me if you’re interested.

Live in the Carolinas? Head to POSSCON, the Palmetto Open Source Software Conference in South Carolina next month. Indiana? Indiana Linux Fest is held in mid-April in Indianapolis. Texas? Texas Linux Fest will probably be scheduled for early to mid-May this year in Austin, and while the site has yet to be updated, I think I’ll probably make it this year.

Want to go to a show? Great! Get there because there’s a lot to see and a lot to do. Want to go to represent CrunchBang and need help? Not to worry: I am an old hand at this, so ask me. I used to organize the booths for the Fedora Project in the expos west of the Rockies for years and I know the ins and outs of how to organize these things.

CrunchBang deserves to go to the show, both in a baseball and non-baseball sense. So do you. So what’s keeping you?

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox, POSSCON, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Indiana Linux Fest, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox, POSSCON, SCALE, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo, Texas Linux Fest

Larry Cafiero: Real-world CrunchBang adventures

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:44:57 +0000

[Blogger's Note: From time to time I will step off the soapbox for a moment to let someone else step up and speak. Today, I am letting VastOne, who is a CrunchBang moderator on the forums, take the microphone and post this blog that comes in response to my last blog item. Take it away, VastOne! --LC]

In the blog post “One way or another,” there were several great points made about the need to learn a bit of terminal and bash skills to be effective within any flavor of Linux. These skills are invaluable and after years of using Linux, most of us take our own expertise in these matters for granted when advising a new user.

In another world, there are users who are jumping on the Linux bandwagon out of necessity. A majority are just fed up with the amount of viruses, worms and attacks on their machines. Some are coming over due to financial or fiscal reasons that stem from no longer being able to afford proprietary software’s steep licensing costs.

I work in this world every day. My clients are usually a small business, a non-profit group, church or school district. Since the majority of the work I do is done pro bono, I have an easier time convincing these clients to switch to Linux.

For years, I used Ubuntu as the easy choice for an installation. It was intuitive, popular and was pretty easy to manage a cookie-cutter installation. The objective for me is to have limited return calls and to leave the client with enough resources and knowledge that a simple daily process would guarantee success.

This worked great until Unity arrived. It was such a radical change that the clients I deal with had no clue how to use it and on a dime their worlds changed. I had to revisit every client and start over. I made a decision to find a new platform to work with, where changes would not be so drastic.

A few friends of mine, also in the same line of work, had been telling me about CrunchBang Linux for quite some time. For whatever reasons, I had it in my head that CrunchBang was a terminal-driven distro that was for power Linux users, not far from the Arch world. Once I installed the Xfce version of CrunchBang, the platform I was looking for suddenly opened up. It was nothing that I expected and by far the easiest and lightest Linux distro I had ever seen and a very easy drop in replacement for my clients. The fact that Crunchbang is based on Debian Stable was the icing on the cake, guaranteeing long term stability.

With my client base, I have found that for a new Linux user — coming from a XP, Vista or Win7 world — the Xfce desktop is a perfect leap to a comfort zone in a short period of time. Its menu driven setup is perfect for a user who is accustomed to right clicking the desktop and applications. The fact that most of the new applications installed show up on the this menu makes my long term job easier with the clients. I have not had a single client reject the Xfce desktop and generally after a weeks time they tell me that it is the easiest desktop they have had to use.

The final pieces in a new client install is a simple lesson with Synaptic, how to open terminal and an understanding of how to search Google effectively. As soon as the client grasps how easy Synaptic is and how easy it is to install software, my job is almost done.

I use .bashrc and .bash_aliases to create a cheat sheet of the standard commands that needs to be done for standard Linux tasks. They are basic commands that we take for granted in apt-get update, apt-get install, apt-cache policy etc etc etc.

The aliases are structured so that when I get the call for that important application that is needed, I simply guide the client to a terminal session and have them type

get gimp

Once they have entered their password, they are done. After the second or third time doing this, most clients grasp how easy it is and begin to understand. One of these aliases is an alias to print to the screen what all of the aliases are by typing al in the terminal and getting a list of aliases and what they can do.

Now one would ask, “These new clients have no problem with these commands?” No! Most clients are looking for stability and an easy way to get their jobs done. They couldn’t care less what an apt-get is, but they do care that there is a simple method to the madness.

Is this the best method for client conversions? For my client base it is. Everyone is happy with CrunchBang Linux, although most would look at you funny if you asked them about it. It also keeps the return calls and visits I need to make at a minimum, which is my most important objective.

Moving each client to Linux with CrunchBang Xfce, Synaptic, terminal and aliases is as easy as it gets. My client base could care less as long as they can get their work done with minimal changes.

Sounds like a perfect world to me.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox, SCALE, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo

Larry Cafiero: One way or another

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:03:22 +0000

Originally, I had started a “Larry the Free Software Guy” blog item on the newly released, Mideast peace-securing, cancer-curing, saivor-of-all-mankind Head-Up Display from Ubuntu — “head up” what, exactly, is unclear, but not much imagination is needed — in which I promised to try it, but I still wonder aloud about the degree of “innovation” in what appears to be a GUI for the command line, to say nothing of the competing ease between clicking on a menu item versus typing it in a field.

No, I left that pinata alone for the moment to address something else.

What causes the bloggus interruptus today is an exchange I had a couple of days ago on a CrunchBang forum with rhowaldt — it was completely tongue-in-cheek by both parties — where doing a task had more than one method to fix what a new user wanted to achieve.

In the exchange what was said, in effect and in jest, is that you can do it the cool, “l33t h4xx0r” way using the command line, or you can use the n00b-oriented, menu-driven program written for the window manager that comes with the program. While poking fun, the subtext here still speaks to a digital caste system where the more experienced are put in a position of superiority, either real or imagined (and I choose the latter), than the inexperienced.

Naturally, I concur that there is more than one way to a solution: Yes, the command line is the more direct way to get things done. However, not everyone using Linux — even CrunchBang, if the threads on the CrunchBang forum to which I refer are any indication — is that well-versed in using the terminal, and when it comes to tools, some of the menu-driven ones can be a godsend.

The point I’d like to make is that there are folks out there who have made and maintained programs like Obmenu and Obapps in Openbox, to use the example from the forum exchange, that essentially give the keys to those less experienced to change their digital experience without having to traverse the potential landmine the command line can be for new or less-experienced users.

For that reason, when the tools are available I use them, and when asked on a forum about how to do things and I know an option like this exists, I’ll make this Plan A in my suggestion. Again, there is more than one solution, and if someone goes to the effort of explaining the commands to use in a terminal, more power to them.

In fact, I should thank rhowaldt and others on the CrunchBang for taking the time to make these command-line instructions available, since it is to the new users’ benefit that they get into this mindset. Learning some of the more basic commands — even some simple bash scripting — should be part of every Linux users repertoire. It may be intimidating at first to new users, but over time it is something one can get used to.

Meanwhile, back at the original topic: Yes, it may be a little less “h4xx0r” to do it from a program, but using these tools gives those who put in the effort a tip of the hat for going the extra mile and providing a method that helps out.

So to those of you who work on developing tools like Obmenu and Obapps — thanks for your efforts and keep up the work that, though anonymous, is vital to the success of distros everywhere.

We now return to writing another blog item, which is already in progress . . . .

Larry Cafiero: A perfect 10

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:41:35 +0000

I’m going to try to say this in my best movie-preview-guy voice.

More than 100 exhibitors.

Larry Cafiero: Somebody give me a cheeseburger

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:49:21 +0000

[Blogger's Note: This originally ran as a item in the Larry the Free Software Guy blog in June 2011. I am repeating it here in order to urge those who use CrunchBang to donate to the distro at the link here, and the way this can be done relatively painlessly -- and how we all benefit -- is explained below. Thanks, and a report from SCALE 10X is forthcoming -Larry.]

During my campaign for Insurance Commissioner of California in 2006 — where I just missed being elected to state office by a mere 46.5 percent of the vote — one of my campaign fundraising materials was a handout with a sandwich on it. It said, in effect, that if you give up one of these a week and send the money — $5 per week, in this case — to the campaign, you could have proper representation in Sacramento.

[It should be noted that, as a Green Party candidate, I did not take corporate campaign donations -- not that any were forthcoming -- so I needed a lot of sandwiches to mount an effective campaign. Thank goodness for FOSS, since I didn't have to buy any software, but that's another story.]

Yesterday’s blog item about the Ubuntu earrings that are being used as a fundraiser for Partimus started me thinking about how some people shy away from donating to groups or, in our case, FOSS projects because they think it takes a lot up front.

Nope, it doesn’t have to. It takes one sandwich at a time. Or coffee. Or dessert. Giving up one of these just once a week, multiplied by a significant number of people, can put some well-deserved projects in some pretty good financial shape.

It’s very simple — instead of having that grande iced mochajavafrappamacchiato at Starbucks today, send the money via PayPal to a FOSS project that you use regularly, as a way of saying, “Thanks.”

Give to Partimus, the project that is putting Linux-based computer labs in low-income schools in Northern California (or buy a pair of earrings). Or the HeliOS Project, since “a child’s exposure to technology should never be predicated on the ability to afford it.”

Like GIMP? Give to them here. Don’t like it? Give to Inkscape instead.

The possibilities only end at the number of FOSS programs that are taking donations. Go to the programs that you use and look for a “donate” button.

Then give ‘em a sandwich.

[Extra points to whomever can identify which song the title of this blog comes from. No Googling.]

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, GIMP, HeliOS Project, Inkscape, Openbox, Partimus Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, GIMP, HeliOS Project, Inkscape, Openbox, Partimus

Steven Lawson: Change of direction after long absence

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Lawson) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:03:35 +0000

Hi,For years I kept this blog going by writing about technology in general and Linux operating systems in particular.But as we grow older, we change and our interests change and we follow new directions.My new direction has been... outdoor.Basically, in the years since I last wrote a Linux review on this blog, I have spent a lot of my free time - practically all of it, really - outdoors.I have

Larry Cafiero: Six months ago . . .

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:41:48 +0000

About six months ago — on July 24, 2011, to be precise — I became a CrunchBang user after giving the distro a test run for my blog, “Larry the Free Software Guy.” I wrote about it with glowing praise here, and unlike some of the other distros I’ve tested, used for a few days and moved on, I stuck with CrunchBang for a good reason.

I wrote these two paragraphs toward the end, which I still stand by today:

“CrunchBang is probably not for the neophyte, but if you’ve been using GNU/Linux and FOSS for about a year or longer and you are comfortable tweaking your system, you should have no trouble getting up to speed on this quick distro. The site does have a caveat on the ‘about page’ at the bottom that ‘CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.’

“I think the lawyers made them say that, because after four days of tweaking, some of which not exactly the most advised (but nonetheless corrected), I have yet to make it go “CRUNCH! BANG!” In fact, I think I may keep the drive with this distro installed in the ThinkPad for awhile for use on a daily basis.”

I should add that I never replaced the drive in the ThinkPad and I’ve been using CrunchBang on it — my main computer, really, since this laptop never leaves my side — ever since I wrote this.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m about to give two presentations at SCALE 10X this weekend, and I had to go back and re-read this blog item (among other things) to talk about CrunchBang in a presentation entitled “On Beyond Zenwalk,” which is a riff, of course, on the Dr. Seuss book title “On Beyond Zebra.” You can be certain that the Debian representative in this mix, CrunchBang, will be ably represented.

The presentations will be streamed, and when I get the information, I will post it in a blog item as well as posting it on the CrunchBang forums. Watch this space.

Alistair McKinlay: The Day the Internet Went Black

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:22:47 +0000

Wikipedia will go black on the 18th in protest of SOPA and PIPA, along with many other websites. This is a big deal.

Now, some of you may not know what SOPA or PIPA are, even though you read this blog, so I’ll try to explain it simply.

PIPA and SOPA are bills that are being pushed through the American government that would essentially allow the entertainment industry a really easy way to block any website in America that they feel like.

Most people and companies in the tech industries are against this, including big companies like Google, Facebook, Ebay, Amazon etc, because it doesn’t help fight “piracy”, it censors the internet in America and has wide-ranging consequences for everyone, not just people in America.

It would break DNS (the fundamental force of the internet), cause legitimate websites to be blocked (it has been done before, that things to get rid of piracy have cause legitimate websites to be blocked) and force many people outside of America to block these sites even though there is no law saying they should…as the governing bodies of the Internet are American organisations, and therefore subject to their laws.

The fundamental problem is…this will not stop piracy. Pirates will go around these issues and you cannot stop that. There are always ways around these things. You need to either go after the money…or don’t try.

If you want to help (even if you aren’t in America, you can still do something) – go to this website: http://americancensorship.org/ - it explains everything. Scroll down a bit and you can petition the American State Department to stop being hypocritical.

In solidarity with the websites that are going black on Wednesday the 18th, this blog will also be going black from 00:00 GMT till 00:00 GMT on the 19th. That is a full 24 hours it shall be out.

Larry Cafiero: T-minus 96 hours and counting

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:29:21 +0000

Those who know me well know that, among other things, I really don’t like ice hockey. Oh, I root for the San Jose Sharks in the National Hockey League because they’re the “home team” here, just over the hill in the Silicon Valley. But to be honest, it’s a sport that makes me grind my teeth. The truth of the matter is that I don’t like it because I can’t play it.

Skating on ice is hard enough. Canadians, Scandinavians and Russians: I know you all have a gene that allows you to turn pirouettes on the ice straight from the womb, and that’s great. But I can’t stay perpendicular for very long while on skates on frozen water. Add to this that I’d have to stay perpendicular on the ice and keep a rubber disk in front of me with a stick; difficulty squared. The clincher? Keeping perpendicular on the ice while keeping a rubber disk in front of me with a stick while people are trying to knock me down (which, of course, would anger me to bodily harm on the ice, and I understand that you can’t legally hit people with your stick, unfortunately).

“So,” you ask, “are we going to get to the point of this blog anytime soon, Larry?”

Yes.

While I don’t like hockey, currently my favorite article of clothing is my SCALE hockey jersey, which is now packed and ready for SCALE 10X. SCALE 10X is being held Friday to Sunday of this week, a mere four days from today, at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.

A little history: At SCALE 9X last year, the powers that be at the show figured there should be some way to identify the staff on the floor of the show — something that would make them stand out. The result: SCALE hockey jerseys, with the name of the staff person across the back. If you were a speaker, a vendor, an exhibitor or anyone else at the show and you needed something, you needed to give a hip check to the person you saw running around with a hockey jersey.

Or you could find me: I’d be the one in the hockey jersey taking five steps and immediately falling down, but I digress.

I’m giving two presentations at SCALE 10X this year — “User Groups 2.1: Noob Morning in America” (a reprise of last years “User Group 2.0″ talk) at 10 a.m. Friday in the hotel’s beautiful Catalina D room, and “On Beyond Zenwalk” on Saturday at 3 in the hotel’s Los Angeles B room. I’m also your host for the CrunchBang GNU/Linux “Birds of a Feather” event on Saturday evening as well — so everyone, from the CrunchBang faithful to the merely curious, are welcome to stop by.

Just don’t ask me, over the course of the weekend, to shoot and score.

More on SCALE 10X coming this week in this blog. Watch this space.

Larry Cafiero: A response to a FOSS skeptic

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:09:44 +0000

[Blogger's note: This is not a CrunchBang-specific blog item, but since it has to do with Free/Open Source Software and it explains a lot of how the paradigm works, it might be beneficial to CrunchBang users and the FOSS advocates among us. Thanks. --Larry]

Don Parris wrote a book a while back called “Penguin in the Pew.” The book is an outstanding guide for nonprofits — aimed at churches, but it can apply to any other nonprofit — in the way to use Free/Open Source Software, which Don like to call “libre,” but you know it’s the same thing.

While the book is due for an update (I say, nudging Don . . .), I also have to confess that I’ve used the points the book makes to apply to the for-profit business advantages of using FOSS in a business environment. This is important to me in my work at Redwood Digital Research, where a great part of our business is to provide small businesses and home offices with FOSS solutions instead of the closed-source proprietary software they are, for the most part, forced to use.

But I digress. Don wrote a brilliant blog item this morning in crossing verbal swords with a FOSS skeptic. It starts out as follows:

“Someone I know well and admire greatly recently sent me a question about the premise of my book, ‘Penguin in the Pew.’ His question, I think, reflects the mindset of many who remain outside the realm of the libre software domain. It has taken me some time to get around to answering his question, but I thought I would expand on my response to him here on my blog.”

And that he does, in a very complete, civil and concise way. It’s definitely worth a read.

Meanwhile, I have two presentations (three if you count the UpSCALE talk I’m doing with my daughter Mimi), a tsunami of press releases and other media work to do for SCALE 10X before next weekend (not to mention studying for the LPI-1 exam), so posts are going to be a little sparse over the next two weeks; unless, of course, they’re about SCALE. That could be disappointing to some and a relief to others.

But, as always, watch this space.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started testing and developing software in his new home office, Redwood Digital Research, in the redwood-covered hills of Felton, California, USA. RDR is a consultancy that advises small business/home office owners on the benefits of using FOSS in the business environment.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Don Parris, Openbox, Penguin in the Pew, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Don Parris, Openbox, Penguin in the Pew, SCALE 10X

Alistair McKinlay: Tech Predictions Review: 2011

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:24:26 +0000

Time for my review of 2011′s tech predictions. Wide range of predictions, from gaming to phones to…well snarkiness. And I think I did not too bad last year. Let’s have a look.

There will be at least 1 upgrade to either ps3, 360 or wii at E3. Most likely will be the wii, as I think it is the 1 most needing an upgrade. We haven’t heard any rumours yet, but that makes this one more fun. PS3 will hopefully not, as it should have a long time left in it as we haven’t reached its potential yet (and I’ve only had 1 for a year…) 360 will probably get 1 next year.

Wii U was announced. Wasn’t released, but I think that counts

Google TV will have its Hero moment (arguably the point when android on phones became properly usable for everyday users). It will have a couple of upgrades, and actually start to be usable by normal people. This will then cause people to buy it, and make it useful and fun.

Well, I was right about the update. It was quite late in the year, but the Honeycomb update for Google TV made it really nice and useful and fun, and people are starting to like it. But still…not many people are buying it.

We will drown in tablets and e-readers. The first colour e-reader will be released, and this will be kinda rubbish, cause the refresh rate will still be pretty crap. Better devices will not be released until 2012 (probably until after an Apple colour eReader, an i-nk-pad perhaps?).

Hmmmm. Ok partly right about the first bit. Wrong about the second bit. But technically probably will be right about the last bit? (not the Apple bit though…).

The Notion Ink Adam will be released?

It was. And what an anti-climax that was. I never ended up getting one. Got a transformer instead.

New iPad, iPhone and iPod touch (pretty obvious…) No MacBooks this year though. They seem to be going off MacBooks and releasing them with more than 1 year gap. They will slowly be turned into the iPad with a keyboard.

I was right, right and right. But then I was wrong. There was a Macbook refresh. Maybe even 2…can’t quite remember.

Windows 8 will be announced, but will not be released till either the end of 2012, or beginning of 2013, but they will say beginning of 2012. It will look exactly the same, but will have great “security” features. Including, but not limited to, something “unhackable” and also a new “uncrackable” activation code system, that they seem to spend a lot of time on…

Right to start with, but then very wrong. It is nothing similar in look and feel…hello Metro interface.

Commercially available 4K tv. People start to hear about it, forget about 3D. Although, people will continue to say that the number of pixels I have just now is fine, thank you very much. But they will buy one eventually anyways…

Nope. Sad times. Sometime though.

Android 2.4 and 3.0 will be released within the year.

Hmmmm. Well, I was wrong about the numbers…but 3.0 and 4.0 should count I’d imagine. Who would have known exactly what would have happened with all this crazy tablet only version of Android and stuff. But I’ll take that as a win.

Canonical will continue alienating people and projects, and will continue on its mission to mac-ify the Linux desktop.

Hmmmm wow, I was feeling snarky that day wasn’t I. I’ll just leave this one at the side for just now.

Hulu will get off their backside and start their UK service. People celebrate…

Nope, and we didn’t even get Netflix last year In fact, apparently, Hulu just gave up. This is weird, and I wonder whether Netflix got some of these deals and managed to make them exclusive first? Who knows what actually happened. I guess we never will. The whole industry seems to be giving up on Hulu anyway.

All in all, a reasonable year. Lets just look forward to another year of awesome technical innovations. I’m excited. I hope you are too

Larry Cafiero: Flocking together

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:28:50 +0000

Most of you already know this, but the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 10X, like other Linux expos, holds events called “Birds of a Feather,” or BoF. A BoF is an informal meet-up or discussion, where expo attendees can get together and discuss a shared interest without a pre-designated agenda.

So since I am going to be there, I took the liberty of signing up for a CrunchBang BoF at SCALE 10X. If anyone else is a CrunchBang user who is attending SCALE and wants to give me a hand, all the better. If you’re a CrunchBang user attending SCALE and don’t want to help, well OK, but you’re still welcome to come by.

What I plan to do is simple — have some burned Live CDs and set up one of two laptops to be able to install live USB onto drives folks give me, if they want CrunchBang (it’s the “loaves and fishes” trick that Fedora once used when it ran out of media at OSCON one year), as well as having some information about #! to give to the curious. Depending on the turnout, we can see where we go.

Also, I’m open to ideas, too, if anyone has one (or several) on how to promote CrunchBang.

If other events that you might be going to have BoFs — I’ll be doing the same at Linux Fest Northwest in Bellingham, Washington, USA — and you feel up to the task, I would urge you to do the same.

[Apologies to those reading this on the CrunchBang Planet -- on the WordPress site, the SCALE 10X logo runs around the text just fine, but on the Planet, it doesn't seem to. I'm working on it.]

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

corenominal: A geeky HPR New Year's Eve

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:00:35 +0000

I am not sure if it is just me, but I have always found New Year’s Eve to be problematic. Social doctrine dictates that I should probably celebrate the event by socialising in meatspace, which involves getting totally wankered on alcohol, dancing like a complete muppet, and freezing my tits off as I watch a squazillion pounds worth of gunpowder being shot into space. Now, call me a “boring old fart”, but personally that sounds like far too much complicated multitasking for one night.

So, when I read that the Hacker Public Radio crew were planning on holding a special 12 hour LIVE New Year’s Eve event, I danced with joy (well, not quite, but I was pretty excited.) I mean, what better way to celebrate the New Year than by joining some like-minded geeks for an open round-table discussion?

So, both Becky and I joined the event for a few hours and we spent our night chatting about all manner of things. Topics included some chatter about CrunchBang, mesh networks, drugs and naughty stuff, as well as other random subjects.

It was a fun event and I just wanted thank everybody involved for allowing Becky and I to be a part of it. It was definitely the geekiest New Year’s Eve that I have ever experienced and I really hope it becomes a regular event!

P.S. If you missed the event, but would like to listen to the discussions, the whole 12 hour show is being made available from the HPR site.

--
Tagged: crunchbang linux, hacker public radio, hpr

Larry Cafiero: Origins of this blogs name

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:05:24 +0000

Several days ago, it was pointed out by johnraff in this CrunchBang forum thread that if there is any “CrunchBang Guy” around these parts, let alone on the planet Earth, it’s Philip Newborough, aka corenominal.

No truer words were spoken, and thank you, johnraff, for pointing that out. In naming the blog, my intention was never to imply that Philip was not THE — that’s T-H-triple E — CrunchBang guy, and I apologize to anyone who misunderstood this.

The origin of this blog’s name stems from my original blog that I’ve been writing since 2007, Larry the Free Software Guy (briefly, “Larry the Open Source Guy,” before I saw Richard Stallman speak at the University of California Berkeley campus), which is of course a play on the name, “Larry the Cable Guy,” an American comedian who plays an oafish redneck who gets into a variety of situations (also, he’s the voice of Mater the tow truck in “Cars”). His catch phrase of “get ‘er done” can be found under the title of this blog, with a slight modification.

Of course, the similarities between the character and me end abruptly at the fact that we share a first name.

I realize that there are probably CrunchBang users on other continents that may now know the comic work of Daniel Lawrence Whitney (Larry the Cable Guy) and, as such, I’m pointing it out here.

Just so there’s no mistake going forward . . .

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

corenominal: Good things

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:39:41 +0000

Just recently, I have received a number of emails from people who have discovered CrunchBang. The following, by Paul McClellan, is just one example:

Wanted to tell you that after using linux as a desktop & server for 12+ years, I never found a linux distro that I liked for the packages, the stability & the aesthetics all at once. At most got two out of three. Until I found #! - I can’t tell you what an eerie yet delightful experience it was when I first started it up & found everything just so.

I hope to see you continue with this distro, while the donation is a tiny pittance, I hope to do more as time goes on & send like-minded folks along to try #!. I think there are many of us who are like me somewhat technical, yet have a sense of aesthetics and efficiency that recoils at either “bling” loaded desktops or worflow-interrupting instability.

My sincere esteem to you sir for making a Good Thing.

Now, I do not seek out affirmation that CrunchBang is a worthwhile project, but now-and-again it is nice to hear from people who seem to “get it”.

P.S. if anyone is reading this, I wish you a Happy New Year and I hope 2012 sends many good things your way! :)

--
Tagged: crunchbang linux

Alistair McKinlay: Tech Predictions: 2012

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:37:56 +0000

So, I forgot to write this post before the New Year, so its coming out a few days late. But don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten about it totally. Just was very busy.

Amazon release Adwords competitor.
Amazon opens first physical shop in Q4.
High street starts to change into what it’ll be in the future (blog post coming in a few days/weeks, hopefully)
Google starts to drop content businesses, becomes mainly service oriented.
Google TV starts to become popular, people realise how useful it can be. Many new ways of interacting with TVs will be announced and shown off at CES, and many will be released quite soon into the year.
A few point releases of Android, followed by Android 5.0 (Jelly) at the end of the summer
Apple TV (never to become iTV btw…) adds native apps.
Apple releases new iPhone in June, despite 4s only being out for ~8 months at that time.
Wii U released, flops quite spectacularly, like the 3DS.
New Xbox at least hinted at, at E3. Possibly not officially announced, but I think it might be.

So, these are my predictions for this year. I shall write a post going over what I said last year and see what came true etc. I also have my post about the future of the High Street coming up. Both of these will be hopefully soon, but I do have exams coming up, so it might be a week and a bit before they get up. Either way, I’m going to start blogging more again, because I’ve really not been doing much recently.

Larry Cafiero: Thats my name, dont wear it out

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:59:01 +0000

[Blogger's note: This item ran as today's item in the Larry the Free Software Guy blog. Because this item includes CrunchBang, I'm taking the liberty to publish it as a Larry the CrunchBang Guy item as well. --LC]

Katherine Noyes put together a brief piece for PC World today about Linux release names which, overall, she seems to consider “silly.” In the process, she omits a great bit of detail on the “what” and “why” aspect of distro communities and how they come up with these “silly” names.

Digitally speaking, from a purely anthropological standpoint it is far from silly, and actually it’s quite an interesting topic, though Noyes seems to race through it without giving much detail.

So let me help out here.

Debian: Release names come from “Toy Story.” As humorous as it is simple, this naming convention is one of the best. An interesting corollary to this is the Debian-based CrunchBang naming convention mirrors the first letter of the current Debian release, but matches it with a character from “The Muppet Show.” So Debian “Squeeze” is translated in CrunchBang to “Statler. “Wheezy” begets “Waldorf.” Statler and Waldorf, of course, are the two old guys in the balcony in “The Muppet Show.”

Linux Mint: I particularly like the naming convention Clement Lefevbre has come up with for Linux Mint. It’s alphabetically a woman’s name ending in “a.” We’re at Julia now. I asked Clement once what he’d do when he got to “Zelda” (or whatever the “Z” name will be for Linux Mint when they get that far . . . and they will), and he said that it was simple: Start with a name beginning with “A” and end the name in “e.”

Ubuntu: We all know the drill here — SABDFL* Mark Shuttleworth comes up with an adjective and an animal with the same first letter and hands it down to a waiting community. Which is in complete contrast to . . .

Fedora: There is a formula here that the Fedora Project adheres to before all hell breaks loose and fistfights break out in the Fedora community while they vote on the release name. The formula is simple: “$CURRENT_RELEASE_NAME is a (whatever it is — i.e., city, body of water, person, thing) and so is $NEXT_RELEASE_NAME.” Looking at Fedora 15 “Lovelock” to the current Fedora 16 “Verne,” it goes like this: James Lovelock was a futurologist, and so was Jules Verne. How they got from Verne to Fedora 17′s “Beefy Miracle” is a mystery for the ages.

OpenSUSE: OpenSUSE’s naming convention . . . does OpenSUSE even have a naming convention for releases?

Got a distro that has a naming convention worthy of mentioning? Let me know.

*Self-appointed benevolent dictator for life, for those of you keeping score at home.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started testing and developing software in his new home office in the redwood covered hills of Felton, California, USA. Watch this space.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Openbox, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Openbox, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu

Larry Cafiero: Selling a VP on CrunchBang

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:10:00 +0000

Greg DeKoenigsberg, vice president (community) of Eucalyptus, threw down the gauntlet on Facebook this morning: “So I get why the whole ‘why you’re supporting #!’ — tell me why you’re *using* #!. Consider me a potential convert. “

Challenge accepted.

But first, let’s talk about one of my favorite topics: ice cream. Were we to go to Baskin-Robbins, which flavor would you choose? If you choose Gold Medal Ribbon, you and I would be having the same flavor. I always order that flavor because it’s the one that I like best, the one that works for me. You might not like that flavor and might go with something else, and that’s OK too.

Distros are like flavors of ice cream — we all have our favorites and while you might prefer one flavor over another, we can agree that we like ice cream. Same with distros; different flavors, same product.

Forgive this brief sermon to the choir, because I know you know this already. Obviously, that’s for the benefit of those in the blogosphere who might take a “$DISTRO uber alles” approach to FOSS, which you and I will agree is not the best policy.

Let me briefly tell you why I’m using CrunchBang: Part of it is performance — using Openbox window manager tosses out a lot of what bogs down a desktop environment, memory-wise (and since I’m stuck with older hardware for the moment, that in and of itself is a blessing). Part of has to do with personal experience: Having five years of Linux under my proverbial belt, I found I don’t need an off-the-shelf distro any longer, and CrunchBang has a tweakability that I find suits my level of growing expertise. Also, over the last several months, I find that answers to questions I have about CrunchBang are readily available on a very well-organized and well-stocked forum.

I also like the idea of contributing to a distro and a community that has the potential to grow. CrunchBang is not going to replace Fedora, Ubuntu or Linux Mint any time soon — no one in their right mind thinks that — but it has its place in the Linux strata in the same way that while Porsche does not rank high among the sales leaders in auto sales, its quality and reputation precedes it.

Such is the case for several distros that (shameless self-promotion alert) I’ll be talking about during my presentation, “On Beyond Zenwalk,” at SCALE 10X next month.

What it all boils down to — and I realize that I don’t win any sales points here — is honesty. In the final analysis, you have to try it for yourself.

If you like it, use it. If you don’t, use what you like.

Personally, I’m looking forward to your keynote at SCALE next month and I’d be glad to talk to you more about it if you’re interested. Meanwhile, to your question “why” I’m using CrunchBang, I hope this will suffice.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Eucalyptus, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Eucalyptus, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Openbox

Alistair McKinlay: If you oppose this then…

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:00:58 +0000

Stop Online Piracy Act, Protect IP Act, Digital Economies Act.

All sound like good things, don’t they? You’d have to be a pirate, thief or criminal of some sort to oppose one of these things yeah?

Of course you would. Or, that’s what we are told. You can’t oppose this legislation, it protects people. That is what we are told time and time again. Well, we shall not fall for that. We shall not be bullied into agreeing with your crappy rules that make no sense.

In America, there is a big fight happening about the SOPA and PIPA legislations that are trying to be pushed through into law. And last year, in Britain, the DEAct was pushed through in the run up to the 2010 General Election. We are told that these will protect jobs. They will protect legitimate jobs, and punish those who do wrong. Now, there are 2 main issues here:

Piracy costs money and jobs

This is the second issue people normally come to when we come across this issue, but IMO, it is the main one. There are a number of people who pirate things

Those who can’t afford.
Those who don’t want to pay because they feel entitled to content.
Those who are against the “man”.
Those who can afford but want to try it out first.

For both 2 and 3, these people will never pay. If they didn’t get the things illegally, they wouldn’t pay. They never will. There is no point in fighting these people because either they will continue to get your stuff or they won’t. Lost causes, all of them. And yeah, I agree that these people are doing wrong things. But theres no point. Such a waste of time and money.

For 1, the only way to solve this is by giving them more money. So stop wasting money on ridiculous bills like this.

For number 4, they are the people who spend more money on content than people who don’t pirate. They already give you loads of money, and they aren’t going to give you more if they can’t get their tasters. They might even spend less.

So, basically…I don’t believe that piracy costs money or jobs. If you can prove that people would buy it if they can’t get it illegally, then I’ll retract my statement. But I think its rubbish.

We have to break the internet

This is the other issue. Which, to be honest, is kinda moot after my last statement. But even if you do take the stance that it needs to be stopped, for goodness sake think about this properly. This is whack-a-mole. You can’t get rid of these sites by breaking DNS (and no matter what Lamar Smith says, this is breaking DNS) at all. You have to go after the route cause. Most films are pirated before they are even released in the cinema. How does this happen? Inside jobs. Go after your own people for goodness sake.

I’m a man with a website that has copyrighted material. My domain disappears. What happens? Most of my clients are clever enough to find ways around it. And if they aren’t, well…I set up another domain, or I tell people an IP address to get to. Etc etc. They are probably all following me on twitter, Facebook, google+, identica, etc. Think you can stop this by taking domains off the internet? Really? In that case you are insane.

In summary…there is no need to do this, and even if there is, this is the wrong way to go. For goodness sake, spend all that money you are spending this on important things. The American government could spend the money on getting rid of their TRILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT. And the industries could spend the money on making better films? Or maybe helping people who are starving in this world while you are worrying about a few 15-year-old getting a free copy of your film. Boo hoo for you.

My main point is, stop with these Bill names that are a way of saying “This is good, no matter what it says, if you oppose it you are a criminal.” I’m fed up of it.

Larry Cafiero: Im new here myself

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:29:51 +0000

A little over five years ago, I started using Linux — GNU/Linux, to be more precise, but you’ll forgive me if I use “Linux” here completely as shorthand, in the same way a Chevrolet is called a “Chevy.” In short, this personal odyssey started with Debian, meandered through several *buntus (favorite, even still: Xubuntu), distro-hopped on every distro on DistroWatch except Gentoo (which I’ve never gotten to run on any machine) until settling down in 2009 with one primary distro among a handful I regularly use.

Since July of this year, though, I’ve been using CrunchBang on a regular basis, and over the last six months it has grown on me enough to become my distro of choice.

Those who know me well know that, until recently, I was a Fedora guy, one who bled Fedora blue. There is a lot to be said about the way Fedora does things — from development on the engineering side to an design team that is second to none to a promotional side that has an army of informed and swag-stocked ambassadors promoting it. From a purely organizational and execution-of-objectives standpoint, Fedora does everything right and is the standard by which the operations of other distros should be judged.

The distro is not bad, either, but I digress.

Having been entrusted with leadership roles in the Fedora Project — I served briefly on the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee last year, as well as being a Fedora mentor and the guy in charge of supplying swag to Fedora folks in the US West Coast states — I have the playbook, so to speak, on how to run successful distro teams. Not that they mind, of course, since everything Fedora does is fairly transparent, and simple research could find out the knowledge I have through my experience.

But I’m new here and I don’t want to overstep any boundaries. It’s hard to find a way to couple my experience with my enthusiasm in now working with CrunchBang (if you’ll have me, that is) without sounding egotistical, arrogant or pushy, which I honestly don’t mean to be (no really, I don’t . . . ). Assuming this is a meritocracy like other FOSS projects, I have yet to put up the work to gain the community’s trust, and that part I’m working on. Also, I would imagine that there’s a “CrunchBang way” of doing things that I may yet be unaware of. So forgive me in advance if I am tripping over boundaries oafishly, and please point out the error of my ways.

Yet over the last six months, I’ve found that CrunchBang is an outstanding distro, and Philip Newborough has seemed to put a lot on the line to make it happen, both recently and in the past. That alone is inspiring — and if it doesn’t tug on your heart strings, a local coroner will be by shortly to do your autopsy — and he’s got good reason to put a lot on the line with the quality this distro provides. This “quality” stems not only from Philip’s guidance and work, but also from those of you who contributed back to the project in whatever form. From what I can tell, many of the CrunchBang users on the forums and the IRC channel are pretty knowledgeable folks willing to help — the forum itself stands out as a wealth of knowledge.

So all the pieces are here to make CrunchBang a more successful and a more popular distro, if that interests the community as a whole.

In the coming months, I would like to promote CrunchBang a little more agressively within FOSS circles — true, CrunchBang will not replace Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Fedora as a mainstream distro, but it does offer much to the Linux user who no longer needs training wheels, “trading up,” in a sense, from some of the more popular distros.

I have plans, ideas, etc., regarding how to raise CrunchBang’s visibility. But first, I should ask: Does anyone else want to discuss this further?

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started testing developing software in his new home office in the redwood covered hills of Felton, California, USA. Watch this space.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

Larry Cafiero: Back in the saddle

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:07:21 +0000

Between writing my usual Larry the Free Software Guy blog and the holiday — not to mention doubling and tripling up at work thanks to colleagues on vacation — last week was pretty much a write-off regarding stuff I wanted to do, CrunchBang-wise

But it’s a new week. Christmas is over, and Boxing Day — yes, I’m probably the only American that observes it — consisted of putting the ZaReason Limbo 5440 back into the box to send back to ZaReason in Berkeley. For those of you keeping score at home, ZaReason asked me to review it for them, and I have nothing but good things to say about this machine. It’s a little on the high side, price-wise, but I think it’s worth every cent.

This week I plan to get back in the CrunchBang saddle and write more about this great distro, as well as outline some ideas I’d like to toss out to the CrunchBangers to make waves in 2012.

Interested?

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

rich: Send email from a fake address

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:53:00 +0000

How to send fake emails from fake/invented email addresses

Want to play a trick on your friends?

How about sending an email to your Linux-using Geek buddies from Linus Torvalds, or the Queen of England? Maybe your sister loves Justin Bieber?

Ok, you just need Postfix installed on your Linux box and a simple bash script, and the most excellent mime-construct. I use Vim text editor for my guide, but just replace it with the editor of your choice.

1. Install mime-construct from the repos:
sudo apt-get install mime-construct

2. Put this bash script in your /bin directory:

cd bin

vim fakemail.sh

And add this simple code:

#!/bin/bash
# Fake email just for fun
cat victims.txt | { while read; do
echo $REPLY >> fakemailog.txt
mime-construct --header 'Sender: queen_elizabeth@buckinghampalace.com' --header 'From: queen_elizabeth@buckinghampalace.com' --to $REPLY --subject 'Invitation to the Royal Ball' --file fakebody.txt
sleep 2
done
}

4. Make the script executable:

chmod +x fakemail.sh

5. Write your funny fake email message in a file called "fakebody.txt"

vim fakebody.txt

----------
The Queen is holding a special royal ball for the gullible people in your town.

You are invited to assist on the 1st of April, 2012

RSVP
----------

6. There is a log file in case you mail to multiple addresses
(to run a "tail -f fakemail.txt" to see how far the script has got with your list of victims):

vim fakemailog.txt

7. Now create the list of email addresses you want as victims :)

vim victims.txt

And add:
-----------
myvictim@aprilfool.com
myvictim2@biggerfool.com
etc
----------

8. Run your fake email script:

./fakemail.sh

Off you go and have some fun, I need to dash, I just received an email from the Queen!!

Larry Cafiero: Becoming a Conky junkie

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:19:50 +0000

One of the things I like about CrunchBang — one of the many things, acutally — is that I have a lot of information about my laptop at my immediate disposal, displayed on the screen thanks to the modern miracle of Conky.

So allow me to preach to the choir momentarily, in case there are one or two of you out there who don’t know what it is: Conky is a free, lightweight system monitor for X that displays any information on your desktop. Conky is licensed under the GPL and runs on Linux and BSD. That’s from the Web site, but it’s a lot more than that, to the tune of about 300 built-in objects more.

But I digress.

The December 2011 Conky Thread on the CrunchBang Forum has a lot of great Conky themes available and, for newb and experienced Conky user alike, it does not disappoint. The examples shown here are outstanding, and this is a particular favorite, though I’d probably sub out one item here for a temperature display. Excellent work, Jinnstar. Or this one, and if you’ll note, the 15 pages in the forum (so far) are chock full of suggestions and explanation about how to make some of these themes work.

So now I’m hooked on tinkering with Conky. Excuse me while I go and get a fix.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LCA, Linux Conf Australia, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

Larry Cafiero: Down on the farm with CrunchBang

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:34:00 +0000

The Felton Linux Users Group hosts a table at the Felton Farmers Market, located in the parking lot of St. John’s Catholic Church a little less than a mile south of the traffic light on Highway 9 (directions enough in Felton, California) from May to November, making “organic software” — Linux distros and FOSS programs free of artificial colors or preservatives — available free to the grocery-shopping public.

The table is distro-neutral: It’s common to find a stack of Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE live CDs among the other materials on the table. We find that there is a wide cross-section of people who stop by, ranging from those who either use Linux or have used it before to those who say, “Isn’t that a car?” (No, that’s a Lexus.) Most people fall somewhere in between: “Yes, I’ve heard of Linux but I haven’t tried it,” or “I think I know what it is,” or “Please save me from Windows.” The idea behind having a table is to get people exposed to Linux and FOSS, and to promote the LUG meetings, which are on the second Saturday of each month at the Felton Fire Station.

Now that the Felton market is closed for the winter, there are other farmers markets in the area that Felton LUG can, and will, set up the “organic software” table. After the first of the year, you’ll find Felton LUG at the farmers market in Scotts Valley, the next town over, as well as (crossing fingers) at the larger Santa Cruz Farmers Market on Wednesdays.

How does CrunchBang fit into this? I’m planning to burn some CrunchBang Live CDs and bring up CrunchBang to those folks we meet who either know what Linux is or have tried it before. While I don’t think CrunchBang is for everyone, in the same way that driving a Ferrari is not for everyone, I do think that those who have been exposed to Linux might want to step out of the family sedan of Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE, and step into something a little more “high performance.”

Watch this space and film at 11.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LCA, Linux Conf Australia, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

rich: Getting Java Console on HP ILO to work with Iceweasel on Debian 64bit

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:59:00 +0000

Remote HP Server Administration via ILO
If you ever have to connect to remote servers, especially HP which have ILO (Integrated Lights Out) technology, you'll probably have come across the problem where you can get to the Administration page, but the Console won't open.

Using Windows
I used to just fire up Virtual Box with Windows Xp (32bit) installed an do everything from there. ILO allows you to connect with Java install and on windows the .NET framework.

Linux and 64bit Java
One of he main issues with Linux and Java was that you could get the (Sun) 32bit Java to work, but the 64bit Java would fail miserably.

Java Versions
Java can be a real pain if you don't have the latest version installed, and if you run Debian "Stable" (Currently Squeeze) you will have to install the Sun Java package from their website if you need the latest version as Debian is no longer going to have it in the repos: http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2011/15/#javarm

Java (64bit) Version/Package Experiments
One of my work colleagues recently called me over and showed me the ILO Java console open and working with Iceweasel on his Debian Squeeze box. I was amazed and asked how he did it.
He'd basically installed a specific version (jdk1.6.0_17) of the sun-java6-jdk package, and symlinked to it.

Howto:

1. Download the sun-jdk1.6.0_17 source (i'll post a link later)
2. Unpack it to /opt
3. Cd to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
4. Symlink these two files

libjavaplugin_jni.so -> /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_17/jre/lib/amd64/libjavaplugin_jni.so
libnpjp2.so -> /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_17/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

bobobex: Lincoln LUG November meeting

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:17:43 +0000

This is a little late, but as they say “better late than never”!

We held our latest Lincoln LUG meeting on 16th November, and again, we made Ye Olde Crowne pub our venue of choice. We were joined yet again by the intrepid Hull LUG crew (this time just Dave and Jon), and as well as Lincoln LUG regulars Neal, Jo, Philip and myself, we were also joined by 2 new members – Simon from Lincoln and Kevin who drove down from Scunthorpe.

This LUG meeting was billed as a hands-on “techy” event with some mobile phone rooting going on, as well as a distro install-fest on an old, steam powered laptop brought along by Jo. We were also going to attempt a live Google+ hang-out so that our on-line friends could join in. Well, an achievement of 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!

We can see you!

Jo arrived early (first!) and she was keen to get her tech out, so Philip set about installing a custom version of CrunchBang Linux onto her old lappy whilst I got the beers in! Then Dave and Jon arrived (with Dave brandishing his shiny, brand new Thinkpad) and they set about initiating the Google+ hangout. Neal was researching Philip’s mobile phone type to make sure he had the right Cyanogen Mod ROM and I was welcoming and chatting to our 2 new members, Simon and Kevin.

In the end, we ran out of time to root the phone, much to Neal’s relief! He was so nervous about “bricking” Philip’s phone that he had only had half a pint of Guinness all night. You should have seen him make up for lost time once he knew his services weren’t going to be called upon!

Yet again, the evening went by so quickly, with much Linux banter and swapping/sharing of ideas to help each other. I even took my knitting needles along and got Jo to show me how to knit in the round so that I could knit some winter socks on circular needles! See that’s what you get when there are ladies involved We ended the evening with a promise to Hull LUG that some of us would make their Christmas LUG meeting on 6th December.

For Lincoln LUG’s next meeting, we decided to miss the December one as it would only be a few days before Christmas. We shall next meet on Wednesday 18th January 2012 at Ye Olde Crowne pub again, starting at 7.30pm.

corenominal: Hacker Public Radio Interview

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:08:46 +0000

Back in August, while at OggCamp 11, Becky and I were interviewed about CrunchBang by Ken Fallon of Hacker Public Radio. Now, I am not very good at giving interviews, or talking for that matter, but I figure I should probably mention it, mainly to try and help promote HPR.

Interestingly, or not, during the interview, I can be heard talking about dropping Openbox from CrunchBang, in favour of using Xfce. As it turns out, I ended up dropping Xfce. Yes, it is true, I am a walking contradiction.

But enough about me and my flip flops, back to HPR and Ken Fallon. During OggCamp, I was fortunate enough to stay at the same hotel as Ken, and even more fortunate to share a breakfast table with him (Ken is truly is one of the most friendly, intelligent and witty people you could wish to meet) where we discussed, over bacon and eggs, HPR and his involvement with the project.

Now, before talking with Ken, I knew that HPR existed, but I did not really have much of a clue as to what it was all about. It only took Ken a few minutes to convince me to look into some more and I have been an avid listener since (admittedly, I do not find all the episodes to be of interest, but once in a while, you come across a true gem).

Ken does fantastic work with HPR and I think he was probably the most enthusiastic and dedicated person that I met during OggCamp. While most people seemed to be socialising and recovering from the previous night’s beer intake (myself included), Ken managed to set-up and man the HPR stall (on both days), interviewed countless people for HPR, and even managed to find the time to give a presentation about the project (which was really well received!) That weekend, Ken’s dedication to his project was almost superhuman and in my eyes, the guy is a total legend!

So, if you are not familiar with it, check out Hacker Public Radio, and if you can, please give some thought about how you might be able to help Ken out and contribute a show — if you have a working knowledge of anything, from hacking with GNU Emacs, to hacking your backyard with chickens, you are eligible to contribute!

--
Tagged: crunchbang linux, hacker public radio, hpr, oggcamp

Larry Cafiero: CrunchBang at SCALE 10X?

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:28:02 +0000

Several weeks ago, I mentioned in the CrunchBang Talk forum about whether it might be feasible to have a booth at the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 10X in January. Or at least at a minimum, if some of the CrunchBangers who are attending the show want to meet during the course of the weekend and talk CrunchBang.

The feasability here would consist of a.) having people other than me at SCALE and b.) having something to give the folks who stop by the booth. As far as getting the booth, CrunchBang would qualify for a dot-org booth, though I think there are only 10 spaces left as of today (the answer to how I know that can be found two paragraphs down).

(Of course, those of you who are going to Linux Conf Australia that same week are welcome to organize the same type of event — I just can’t be there, unfortunately, because I’ll be in Los Angeles.)

Truth in advertising: I am part of the SCALE team, and I am one of the publicity co-chairs. I would be able to help secure the space for a booth — it’s a table, really — but since I’m in perpetual motion during the course of the show (if you go, it’s really a sight to see me work nonstop from Friday morning to Sunday evening), I wouldn’t be able to staff the table.

But I can do this if there are folks who are coming to the show anyway, those who might like free admission (as the exhibitors get) in exchange for staffing the CrunchBang table. With a few of us at the show, it would allow folks to ramble around while the booth remains staffed.

So as far as item a.) above goes, I’m not available to staff the booth, but I would have a hand in acquiring it. But for b.) above, I might be able to burn Live CDs, print some nice labels (probably a large #! along with instructions on how to use a Live CD to go on the label — don’t laugh, I have stories . . . ), maybe some printed materials on CrunchBang. This can be discussed further, if anyone is interested.

You can leave a comment here or leave a comment on the forum where this topic is being discussed.

(As an aside, at SCALE I am giving a presentation on up and coming distros called “On Beyond Zenwalk,” where I will be talking a lot about CrunchBang — you can count on that — as well as a couple of others.)

Looking forward to other shows, I will probably be at the Texas Linux Fest and Linux Fest Northwest in the spring. I actually don’t work at those and I’d be glad to arrange a booth for CrunchBang and staff it. But I’d hate to do it alone — the more the merrier.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LCA, Linux Conf Australia, Openbox, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, LCA, LinuxConf Australia, Openbox, SCALE 10X, Southern California Linux Expo

Larry Cafiero: Hello world!

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:50:16 +0000

[Blogger's note: Since I'm using CrunchBang more often and since I'm going to be writing about it as a result, I've established this blog, Larry the CrunchBang Guy. All the CrunchBang items that appear in the Larry the Free Software Guy blog will also appear here in this blog. Thanks for reading. --Larry the Free Software Guy]

Larry the Free Software Guy, Nov. 27, 2011: What’s that sound?

Originally I had planned to write about Philip Newborough of Lincoln, England, who some know as corenominal and who even others know as the lead developer of CrunchBang GNU/Linux. The tale I had originally conceived to put on pixels here was how Philip not only talks the FOSS talk, but he also walks the FOSS walk: He has decided to leave gainful employment recently in order to concentrate on developing CrunchBang.

That’s no small feat, for starters, and it takes an enormous amount of courage to make that proverbial leap, especially when one has a family, as Philip does. Additionally, this leap of faith multiplies by a factor of several due to the enormous amount of confidence in the project one must have to press forward with this life-altering change.

Fortunately for Philip, his Debian-based distro CrunchBang does not let him down.

And while I had planned to write about Philip and how he took the plunge, I thought it would be a better blog to talk about the improvements he has made to what can clearly be described as the best distro you’ve never heard of.

With the cacophony of writers singing the praises of Linux Mint on the release of Linux Mint 12 Lisa, it might be a good idea to listen to the more dulcet tones of a Crash and a Bang and take a look the new release of CrunchBang Statler as well.

Over the weekend, Philip made available some updated CrunchBang Statler images. The changes were somewhat profound and, as Philip points out in his blog, “the new images are not really about additional features, but more about what has been removed and/or cleaned up (although there are a few new features to look forward to).”

CrunchBang is going the window manager route with Openbox, so that means Xfce version of CrunchBang is retired. the main thing to have been removed/retired is the Xfce version. “Besides,” Philip writes, “there are plenty of brilliant Xfce based distributions available, and if you know what you are doing, installing Xfce under Debian is really not too difficult.”

GDM? Gone, and it’s replaced by SLiM.

Plymouth? Gone, and the decision to remove it was really a personal preference. “I apologise to any bling lovers, but personally, I believe that graphical boot loaders take away more than they give,” Philip writers. “Also, CrunchBang is not really an exercise in branding and so removing a flashing logo is not a problem at all.”

So what’s new and/or added to CrunchBang Statler?

Openbox 3.5 — The latest and greatest version of the window manager.

Iceweasel/Firefox 8 replaces Chromium 9 — CrunchBang seems to switch back-and-forth between default browsers, according to Philip, probably like a lot of users
do. “I do not think this is problem, but merely reflects the state of browser development and availability at the time.” Agreed.

Geany replaces gedit — Geany is highly configurable, has lots of great plugins and is desktop environment independent. So it serves as an adequate replacement.

Gigolo and Thunar for managing connections to remote file systems — CrunchBang Statler includes Gigolo, configuring it to work out-of-the-box with Thunar. It is now simple to connect to remote file systems via SSH and Samba, among others.

LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice.org — Writes Philip: “Actually, CrunchBang ships with AbiWord and Gnumeric, but many people choose to install a more feature rich office suite via the CrunchBang post installation script. The script has been changed to suggest LibreOffice.”

I’ve been using CrunchBang since July on a second laptop that usually accompanies me wherever I go (long story there, but part of it can be found in an old blog here). I have always liked the speed CrunchBang afforded this old laptop, and if it runs this well on older hardware, it must fly on newer machines.

You can easily consider me a convert to the ranks of the CrunchBangers, and as such I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. Philip and CrunchBang are raising funds to get things off the ground, and I’d invite you to join me in donating to help CrunchBang along.

So thanks to Philip and the CrunchBang team for making an excellent distro.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox

CrunchBang Linux: CrunchBang 10 “Statler” R20111125

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:04:15 +0000

New Statler images have been made available. These new images contain some significant changes since the last release. More details about the changes can be read at http://corenominal.org/2011/11/26/updated-crunchbang-statler-images/

The new images can be downloaded here: http://crunchbang.org/download/

If you would like to discuss the changes, please see this forum thread.

corenominal: Updated CrunchBang Statler images

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:53:14 +0000

Yesterday, I made available some updated CrunchBang Statler images. I have made a good number of changes to Statler, probably more than I should have, but the changes were considered and needed to be made in order to progress.

In many ways, the new images are not really about additional features, but more about what has been removed and/or cleaned up (although there are a few new features to look forward to).

I guess the main thing to have been removed/retired is the Xfce version. I love Xfce and I thought about this long and hard, but I really want to concentrate on making CrunchBang give the best possible out-of-the-box Openbox experience possible. Besides, there are plenty of brilliant Xfce based distributions available, and if you know what you are doing, installing Xfce under Debian is really not too difficult.

GDM is the other big loser, being replaced by SLiM. This is something which should probably have happened a long time ago. Traditionally, I have always used GDM and for the most part, it just worked, but in comparison to SLiM, it is a bit of a beast. Also, while I was content with using the legacy GDM packages, I do not think that GDM3 is something I would like to see included with CrunchBang, and so the move to SLiM seemed obvious. I know that other display/login managers are available, but SLiM seems to do the job nicely at the moment. Moving to SLiM has also meant that I needed to make some changes to CrunchBang’s custom logout/shutdown/reboot script, which now relies on HAL. This may, or may not prove problematic at some point in the future, but for Squeeze based systems, it should be fine.

Plymouth, the graphical boot loader, has also gone from the default install. The decision to remove it was really a personal preference. I apologise to any bling lovers, but personally, I believe that graphical boot loaders take away more than they give. Also, CrunchBang is not really an exercise in branding and so removing a flashing logo is not a problem at all.

Other changes include:

Openbox 3.5 — the latest and greatest release. You might want to check the changelog on the Openbox website as a number of significant changes have been made.
Iceweasel/Firefox 8 replaces Chromium 9 — CrunchBang seems to switch back-and-forth between default browsers, probably like a lot of users do. I do not think this is problem, but merely reflects the state of browser development and availability at the time. Having said that Firefox seems to be getting better with each release and the mozilla.debian.net team are doing a fantastic job of keeping up with the new release schedule. So, I have mirrored the mozilla.debian.net repository and will keep it in sync. Also, for any Google Chrome and/or Opera users, there is a new Openbox pipemenu for installing these browsers with minimal effort, and a menu item for setting the system’s default x-www-browser.
Geany replaces gedit — I spend much of my day in my editor and until a few months ago that editor had always been gedit. Then someone suggested I take a look at Geany, so I did and it won me over. Geany is a fantastic editor, is highly configurable, has lots of great plugins and maybe just as importantly, is DE independent.
Gigolo and Thunar for managing connections to remote filesystems — in the past, some reviewers have mentioned the fact that there has not been an easy way to mount and browse remote filesystems through the default file manager. I have addressed this by including Gigolo and configuring it to work out-of-the-box with Thunar. It is now super simple to connect to remote filesystems via SSH, Samba etc.
Improved D-I preseeding — all packages related to the LiveCD are now completely purged during the installation process, resulting in a much cleaner system.
Linux kernel 2.6.39 replaces 2.6.32 — this is the kernel from the Debian backports repository. Debian backports are enabled by default.
LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice.org — actually, CrunchBang ships with AbiWord and Gnumeric, but many people choose to install a more feature rich office suite via the CrunchBang post installation script. The script has been changed to suggest LibreOffice.
New repository locations — as part of my ongoing work to move domains from crunchbanglinux.org to crunchbang.org, the repositories for these builds have been moved. Also, a new website is being constructed, but is very much a work in progress. Apologies if this causes any inconvenience or confusion to anyone. I will write more about this at some point in the future.
Many more minor and cosmetic changes.

A note to any existing Statler users: if you are happy with your current installation, I would suggest keeping it. However, if you are interested in using the new images, I would recommend backing up your data and performing a clean install. Ultimately, for reasons which I hope are obvious after reading this post, a clean install will take less time and will result in a cleaner system than if you try to bring your existing installation in line with the new Statler repositories. Apologies again if this causes any inconvenience, but in the long run, I hope it will be worth it.

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Tagged: crunchbang linux, debian, openbox

corenominal: Not dead

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:51:18 +0000

Just so you know, I am not dead, and neither is CrunchBang.

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Tagged: crunchbang, life

rich: Howto Crunchbang install proprietary Ati drivers

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:02:00 +0000

Installing Manually on Crunchbang Statler (32/64bit)

This method uses the latest Catalyst driver downloaded from AMD/ATI's site.

This was tested on a virgin install with no other previous attempts at installing Ati drivers. If you have an already edited system, with other drivers installed, remove them "completely" first.

Do everything below as root, in the /root directory

Install the prerequisite packages:

apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 module-assistant

Make sure you are ready to go with Module Assistant:

m-a prepare

Download the latest Catalyst package:

This package contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit driver (if you are on a 64bit machine, install ia32-libs)

cd ~/; mkdir catalyst11.10; cd catalyst11.10/

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-10-x86.x86_64.run

chmod +x ati-driver-installer-11-10-x86.x86_64.run

Launch the Ati installer and go through the motions:

./ati*run

Now reboot, don't try glxgears or the catalyst control center, in fact don't touch anything, just reboot.

Hanna P: Pretty Firefox Theme

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:40:23 +0000

I like solid desktop look. And the fact that Iceweasel didn’t quite blend in has been bugging me, as much as I like the personas. Anyway I found GTK+ Native and it’s awesome!

In other news, I upgraded my #! Statler which is bases on Debian Squeeze to Debian Testing today. :o Took a while but everything seems to be working. Pondering just what to do with the long autoremove list.

ps. In future you may expect a recycled PekWM post.

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Tagged: debian, firefox, iceweasel, screenshots

Steven Lawson: Ubuntu and Unity

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Lawson) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:27:04 +0000

So, I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and I would be quite enjoying the experience - except I hate the Unity interface with a passion (seems I'm not alone in this regard).So I changed my default desktop environment to LXDE.There... that's better. A proper desktop again. Nice.

Alistair McKinlay: Video of the Week: Humble Voxatron Debut

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:21:13 +0000

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blog posts recently, I have been extremely busy with both uni work, and a new website I am creating for someone. I’ll let ya know about it when I’m done, I’m sure my client would love the publicity

Anyways, this weeks’ video is about the new Humble Bundle. You will all have heard of it if you read my blog. The Humble Bundles are games that you can name your price for a cross-platform, drm-free awesome game and help charity at the same time. This is the video promo for the new one, and I quite liked the video so thought I would share that as well as telling you all to go buy this game. I would if I had any money just now, but it looks pretty awesome.

Best quote from the video : “Whatever the verb for Google+ is”

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

bobobex: Lincoln LUG October meeting

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:10:17 +0000

Lincoln LUG held their second meeting on 19th October, and this time the venue was the recently re-furbished Ye Olde Crowne pub in Lincoln. Dave, Steve and Jon from Hull LUG made the journey down to join us again, and as well as Neal, Philip and me attending, we were also joined at this meeting by Carl and Jo.

Once the introductions were out of the way, and the food and drink ordered, we all quickly settled into discussions about our work; favourite distro’s; favourite podcasts; shared interests and our favourite sci-fi viewing. Steve tried to ruin Battlestar Galactica for Philip and I by telling us the plotlines, but luckily we managed to shut him up before too much info was given away. Jo and I even talked about knitting and crocheting, and I put her in touch with my friend Hanna, who has a shared passion for all things wool-related. There was the usual tech out on display, and being the resourceful lady that she is, Jo also brought an extension lead which was heavily utilised. We did a quick straw poll on who had updated to the new and shiny Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot release which then prompted Carl to tell us about how he was still using Slackware as his distribution of choice. Everybody then proceeded to get out their business cards and play business card Top Trumps, trying to out-do each other on size, design, & graphics. Philip and I didn’t play as neither of us have business cards – something we really need to remedy for the future! We all got together for a team photo holding our Linux Format magazines (see photo below). We really are a diverse bunch!

Linux Format magazine rules!

The beer and food were excellent, and the bar owner even brought over an extra bowl of chips for us. He did make the mistake of asking us who we were and what we were doing, and I watched his eyes glaze over as I mentioned Linux and open source – I really must improve on my marketing/selling skills!

All too quickly closing time was upon us and it was time to say our goodbyes and leave, but not before we had agreed to go back to the venue for November’s meeting which will be on Wednesday 16th November starting at 7.30pm. We all agreed that for the next meeting we would try and sit in either the Library bar area or the tiered seating area, as it was too cold sitting by the door!

I am really enjoying the Lincoln LUG meetings (including the organisation and promotion of them) and I am so glad that I persisted and got this LUG up and running. Getting to meet new and unique people with a shared passion for Linux and tech over a few beers every month has made it all worth it!

Martijn Cielen: One month with VikingTalk

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:48:10 +0000

My experiences with VikingTalk after one month. I'll start with a score of 10 and increase the score by 1 point for each advantage and decrease it by 1 for each disadvantage.

Installation: pretty painless, though confusing for non-techies. You have to install the app, then contact VikingTalk. They send an sms stating you have to remove any previously installed version and reinstall it. After that, you receive a second sms to activate your account.
After upgrading my iBrain to iOS 5, I had to repeat the entire process. So -1 for the rather complicated setup process.

Using VT over Wifi: All good as long as I have 3 bars of wifi. Any less will cause terrible calls with loads of hickups. No information seems to be available on how to optimize your wifi settings (QoS?) for VikingTalk. 0 points added/detracted.

Using VT over 3G: Good call quality from my side. Other side sometimes complains about call quality. +0.5

Using VT over Edge: absolutely impossible to use. -1.

Total score: 8.5

It's a promising application, but more info should be released on how to troubleshoot bad call quality.

Disclaimer: I suspect our Telenet wifi router to be absolute rubbish, but still, without any info on the protocols used/possible optimizations, it's very hard to draw a final conclusion.

Tags:

apple

misc

Hanna P: Uniguin

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:49:01 +0000

Uniguin (thanks for inventing that name goes to Robert at G+) is mythical creature. It’s like penguin with pretty pearly colour horn. I had been pondering bit what do to this default layout and then was inspired by joke that went old before telling it for the first time. I was thinking unicorn but I felt that penguins fitted to my theme better. So uniguins were born and they are as rare as girls in internets. This is still pretty much the default. :P I’m quite surprised I was able to draw that penguin and make it look fine with GIMP. Yay. :D

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Tagged: uniguins

rich: Howto Flash DarkyROM 10.2 Resurrection from Debian on your Samsung Galaxy S

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 08:22:00 +0000

Alistair McKinlay: Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) Review

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:07:15 +0000

So, I’ve reviewed most Ubuntu releases since 2009 (I think…don’t quote me ) and I was trying to decide whether or not to review this one when I asked the question on Google+ “Is Ubuntu relevant”. It appears so. Although very few people in my circles are talking much about it, most of them still use it. I also checked over my site logs, and my 10.10 post is *still* my most viewed post ever, and also had more hits in the single day that I posted it, than I get most months. So clearly people still want to hear my opinion on Ubuntu. So, I downloaded the most recent ISO of 11.10 and set about reviewing. Obviously its not 100% done when I am writing this, so if something is different, this is why, but it should be pretty much the same as I’m writing it the day before it comes out.

On booting up the ISO, the boot screen is still not great. This is 1 thing that Ubuntu has annoyed me with for a long time. It tries so hard to get everything to look nice and shiny, but yet when you get an error on the boot screen, you have this horrible looking splash screen replacing the normal one, and the error is normally even wrapped across more than 1 line.
When installing, it does, however, have a really nice looking hard drive chooser. You get 2 options: “Use entire hard drive” or “Do something else”. This is fantastic, IMO, as it is essentially giving a really easy option to people who don’t know what they are doing.

The rest of the install is fairly basic for Ubuntu. Like previous versions, it starts installing and asks you your personalisation options (a thing that I really love for the record). Location, keyboard and user settings. And then a bunch of information about stuff included in Ubuntu while you wait. For the record, the user settings is simplified a bit I think. Really simple. I like.

Right…now on with the actual OS:

Dash

The dash has been changed quite a bit. The button up the top left has changed to a proper button in the sidebar, which looks a lot nicer, but uses more vertical space. I guess its not a huge issue, as when you have lots of things in the sidebar they go into that cover flow style stacking thing, and I do prefer the look of it. It seems a lot more responsive than previous versions (I always would sit for quite a while waiting for it to load up previously).

The main change is the addition of “lenses”. If you look at the screenshot of the dash, you will see a bunch of icons at the bottom. These are essentially filters that allow you to search through various different types of things. There is an api that allows you to build other ones, but to start with there is “Applications”, “Files” and “Music”. IT seems like a really interesting idea, and certanarily helps with trying to find something, as there is also a “Filter results” option once you are in a lense, which allows you to be more granular. All in all, it seems really nice, and certanarily helps with the whole “Where did I leave that file…”, or an easy way to find a music file that your music manager puts in some odd place.

Window buttons

It would not be an Ubuntu release, without something about the window buttons. If you look at the screenshot to the right, the top is the bar with the mouse hovering over it and the bottom is without that. There has been many a discussion about that, so I will just give a quick opinion about it, and that’ll be all. I think its a great idea, but there is 1 issue with it. Its not obvious how to get to it. Once you are used to it, it is. But there is no obvious visual cue that you need to hover to get this. And that’s my only issue with it.

Software Centre

The software centre has had a massive overhaul. It looks much nicer and its really easy to find stuff you want now. There

are a few screens that don’t fit in with the theme of the normal pages (the installed and history pages), but all in all I think

it is really positive.

I did find a few programs that said they cost money, but actually cost “$0.00″ and were trial versions. This is a minor thing, and I know you can then upgrade these within the programs, but it seems a little silly. Maybe have a different section for trial ones? Don’t get me wrong, its better having them in the “for purchase” section than in the free section, but it still seems a bit odd…

Settings menu

This is something I asked for from Ubuntu a year and a half ago, and hey presto…we have it. A concise Settings menu that gives you all the options the average user could want. It is simple, obvious and actually pretty good looking. You get there by clicking on the power menu (top right) and choosing System Settings. Then do what you want…exactly what I wanted

Thunderbird!

Not much else to say, Thunderbird is the default mail client. Seems to integrate really nicely into the desktop and, let’s be honest, its a real improvement to evolution.

Other minor things that I don’t really have the space to cover in detail (read as: things that normal users probably won’t care much about):

Alt-tab
Gnome 3.2
Finally, no Synaptic installed by default (Yes I think this is good, cause if you want *that* much detail, you’ll know how to install synaptic, and it just wasted space….)
Some arm builds
Improved 32-bit library installation on 64-bit
OneConf has now been integrated into the Ubuntu Software Center to help keep your installed applications in sync between computers.

All in all, it seems like a very nice release. Seems much nicer for people who don’t care how their machine works, and people who like unity should like everything that has changed. I apologise for the amount of stuff in here, and I’m sure many of you will suffer a case of (TLDR), but if you really care about what I feel is important, then I’m sure you skimmed the bits you didn’t care about. Let me know what you think about it in the comments…and what your favourite/worst thing about it. Trolling won’t be accepted

rich: Howto Cyanogenmod on Samsung Galaxy S GT i9000

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:42:00 +0000

Hanna P: Nifty little app that I love

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 07:59:10 +0000

I live in metric world and I don’t get all these feet and oz and pounds and whatever. Anyway I love units, it has made my life so much easier in the world of inches. :D

┌─[10:55] hanna@elrond: ~
└─> units
2411 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units

You have: 67inches
You want: m
* 1.7018
/ 0.58761312
You have: :D

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Tagged: apps, units

Hanna P: Hello World

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 07:45:39 +0000

Welcome to Whird! This is your first post. If you have not done so already, login and then click the “edit” link in the page footer to begin.

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Tagged: whird

bobobex: Lincoln LUG overview of our first meeting

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:26:44 +0000

Lincoln LUG held its first real-life meeting on Tuesday 27th September at Lincoln Bowl. There were 9 people in attendance; myself and hubby, Philip; Adrian and his wife, Linda; Neal, Kev and 3 members of Hull LUG, Steve, Jon and Dave. Lincoln Bowl made us all very welcome, allowing us to completely re-arrange the furniture in their bar area, and they even produced a mains power extension lead for us to plug into and recharge (our computers!)

Adrian had brought along his wife’s laptop and explained that he was having problems auto-connecting to his home wi-fi without having to keep inputting the password every time. The laptop was duly passed over and fault diagnosis ensued but it was unable to be tested until Adrian got the laptop home. Adrian also announced that it was his 65th birthday, so we all wished him a Happy Birthday (no, we didn’t sing!), we bought him a non-alcoholic beer (as he was driving) and then offered him a fresh Linux install of Linux Mint

The Hull LUG guys had brought along their tech, and Philip and I had a drool over Steve’s Kindle. Linda was also interested in the Kindle, as she is an avid reader. Dave then got out his Android Tablet and fresh drooling commenced. There were numerous conversations going on throughout the whole group including Thinkpads, The Big Bang Theory, an exchange of knowledge on must-see Sci Fi programmes, our various real-life jobs, how we got into Linux, installing Qwit as a Linux Twitter client, a hands-up on who was an active KDE user (no-one was!) and much, much more.

Doing what we do best ... geeking out with friends!

I did get a chance to pose my questions about how often the Lincoln LUG should meet, when and where, and the format of the meetings. Everyone was pretty easy-going with the decision making but we finally agreed on holding Lincoln LUG meetings on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. We discussed how a last-minute change of venue had deterred a couple of LUG members from attending due to transport issues, and I agreed that I would source a more central venue for our meetings. We also discussed that the format of the meetings should take the form of an informal social gathering at a pub in central Lincoln.

All in all, I think our first meeting was a great success and I hope that the other members who joined us enjoyed themselves too. I want to thank everyone who attended, especially those who had driven over an hour and a half to join us. I had a wonderful evening, meeting new friends and old, and am looking forward to the next meeting.

Martijn Cielen: Facebook status update from Google+

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:01:51 +0000

An easy way to push Google+ status updates to Facebook, is to create a circle with one address, being the mail address you can use to send Facebook status updates to.
If you go to http://www.facebook.com/mobile, you'll see an address like some123digits@m.facebook.com. Use this address in your G+ circle.
Now whenever you share something on G+ you want to share on Facebook too, add this circle.
The advantage is you don't have to rely on 3rd party services.

Tags:

misc

rich: Howto install Minus.com filesharing desktop app on Debian Squeeze or Crunchbang

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:32:00 +0000

Alistair McKinlay: Video of the Week: Show me where your noms at

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:26:50 +0000

This video is quite clever. I liked it. That’s all. I sometimes feel like I have to say something interesting before it, but the video speaks for itself…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Alistair McKinlay: US only?

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:21:08 +0000

Today, we heard about the long awaited and rumoured Amazon Tablet. Which has finally been named as the Kindle Fire (which, btw, is named after a Voltaire quote, incase anyone is wondering…) The problem is, its US only.

We also heard about the new Kindle Touch, which is an e-ink Kindle with an infrared touchscreen. Looks aweseome. Also has more efficient e-ink (so longer battery life) and larger internal storage. However…its US only.

What is Amazon’s obsession with US only things?

Amazon appstore, Amazon cloud player, Kindle fire, Kindle touch. Many many Amazon products that are only available in the US. Yes, sure, I understand, many other places do this as well and then release to the rest of the world. But, this is a huge thing to not ship to other countries. I also understand why the Fire is not shipping anywhere else, as many of the apps on it are US only. However…can someone tell me why the Kindle touch is US only?

Amazon…we want your products. You aren’t a US only company.

Richard Querin: Dead to Me.

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:59:18 +0000

It’s been about six and half years since I started writing on this weblog. And in that time, you’d be lucky to find me writing more than once or twice in passing about anything work-related.

This is one of those times.

I will make it super brief and will desperately try not to let it happen again.

A certain someone I work with finished up their employment this week after having found a nicer job closer to home. This person was super-smart, super-sharp and super-sarcastic. Exactly what I like. It’s a shame they are gone. It made work ~~bearable~~ quite a bit more enjoyable at times.

Two very important points to make about this:

Judging by their past performance, I predict they will do well at whatever they do.
They are dead to me.

rich: Howto Debian Live – Build your own distro

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:48:00 +0000

bobobex: Introducing Technology Served

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:07:52 +0000

Exciting developments today in CrunchBang Towers; Philip launched his brand new website, Technology Served. This site will hopefully be the platform from which Philip can launch a successful career as a freelance web designer/developer.

I wish Philip good luck in his new venture

rich: Liquid Lemur - Openbox Edition Aborted

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 08:37:00 +0000

Alistair McKinlay: Video of the Week: Pop Culture (Dance)

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:24:55 +0000

I recently found this out thanks to Alan Pope on google plus. He simply said “I love this video. All of it. Every time I watch it.” – so I had to watch it. And ya know what, I do too. The video is so awesome, so intricate, the dancing is great but the actual video editing and the time and effort put into this is the most awesome bit about it. The song as well, is just fascinating. Madeon managed to mix this completely live, with clips from 39 different songs. See how many you can tell, and then go onto his youtube page and see if you were right, and what ones you missed. (I got 4…)

Anyways, enough prefab…lets get on with the awesome video.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

rich: How to: Shared Directory Permissions for specific Users of a specific Group

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:13:00 +0000

rich: How to install Libre Office 3.3.4 Final on Debian with Openbox Menu

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 07:05:00 +0000

bobobex: DIY success

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:02:08 +0000

We moved into CrunchBang Towers (as I like to call our house) just over a year ago and pretty much have done nothing to the inside of the house or outside in the garden for that matter! I reasoned that we needed a year to get to know our house and garden, and to see what decoration of the previous owners that we could live with, and what decoration we couldn’t. You will see from the photo below that the previous owners had very unique tastes in decoration. This is what the ceiling in Emma’s room was like – a fully gloss-painted map of the solar system, including suns, moons and planets.

We promised Emma a make-over for her room, something more fitting for a young lady but on a budget (Philip is now self-employed, after all!). Emma went all Homes and Gardens on us, and chose to have a complete colour-scheme change including a brand new carpet, a papered feature wall, and new textiles to match her chosen theme of Ubuntu Aubergine!

Philip and I are very happy with the finished result, and Emma is ecstatic. Not bad for a couple of computer geeks who detest DIY, though worry not, the rest of the house is safe as we’re not in a hurry to start any more decorating any time soon!

Alistair McKinlay: To patent or not to patent

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 11:25:04 +0000

We have recently heard of a bunch of new patents from Apple. Now, don’t get this as being an Apple bashing post, this is a stupid patent bashing post. Lets have a look at, first of all, what patents were designed for in the first place.

If you have been reading tech blogs over the last few months, or listening to pretty much any TwiT or Sixgun (yeah, that’s right, I put them in the same category now ) podcast, you will have heard the opinion that patents were origionally invented to encourage openness.

Now, there is many an opinion that patents are there to protect people from their ideas being stolen. But, it appears that patents were, infact, designed to encourage people to tell the world how they did this, and in return they got a temporary monopoly on this particular technology. Now, however, patents seem to be a way to get as many obvious things as possibly patented so you can make lots of money…

Lets take some of the new patents from Apple as an example:

Solar powered charging for iDevices

Now, maybe its just me…but where on earth does taking a widespread technology, and putting it on another widespread technology make it unique and patentable? Now, I’m not an expert in legalese, but from reading the patent document, it seems like they are just saying “We will stick a solar charger on our devices…”.

An apparatus for operating a portable electronic device, comprising: a voltage converter having an input and an output, wherein the input is capable of being coupled to a solar power source and the output is capable of being coupled to a portable electronic device, and wherein the voltage converter is configured to convert solar power received from the solar power source to power the portable electronic device

I have a solar battery charger. If you consider a portable battery charger as a “portable electronic device”, then this describes my battery charger almost exactly. What on earth is unique about this patent? Connecting a solar panel to an electronic device is not new, innovative or clever…

“Rotating the display orientation of a captured image.”

Do I need to say anything about this one? Digital cameras have done this for about 10 years…I’m sorry but this one is ridiculous.

“Automatic configuration of peripherals”

Erm…I don’t really understand this one, I’ll be honest. Are they just saying making a peripheral do soemthing automatically when you plug it in? This seems extremely vague and the complete opposite of revolutionary.

Cover flow for videos

Right, finally we are actually at something that is more possibly patentable. However, lets think about this. Apple technically already have a patent for cover flow in general. Not getting into whether or not this is a decent patent, it shouldn’t be patentable a second time. Using video instead of pictures is not a hugely revolutionary step, and if it is, its already been done.

You could argue quite easily that cover flow is now an “obvious” thing because its been around for such a long time. Heck, I have a coverflow style window switcher on my Linux desktop. Google has it in their new music app. Etc etc, and Apple isn’t pursuing anyone around these patents, so clearly it agrees with me that it is obvious. Therefore, using video in this way (which the netflix app on google tv uses) is not really revolutionary.

Ok, there are 3 problems with all of these patents. None of them are revolutionary, none of them actually are in a working product from Apple, and they are all generic “ideas”. For a patent to be patentable, they should be new and revolutionary, they should have at least a working prototype not a vague wishy washy “we might do this in this sort of way…”, and they should be specific implementations, not vague ideas. This is just getting ridiculous and the system needs an overhaul, if not a complete scrap. But at least an overhaul…

Alistair McKinlay: Paper: a dying relic, or here for a long time to come?

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:09:34 +0000

We are in an interesting, yet confusing time, of transition. We have various types of people in the world currently:

People who primarily use paper, for books, for writing things on, etc etc
People who use a combination. They might own a kindle, yet have lots of paper books. They might use email yet still send letters. They might use google docs yet still print out to read or send to people.
People who primarily don’t use paper (someone like me) who hardly have any paper books, doesn’t own a printer, and its a once a year time that he actually recieves a letter…

This leads us into a fascinating time of variety and choice. Yet it leads to annoyance in many people’s eyes.

For example, if I am handing in a uni paper to someone, how do I do it? Well, it depends on the lecturer. Some lecturers like us to email them the papers, or put them online in our VLE. However, some like us to print it out and hand it physically into the office. This leads to the constant weekly thing of “how are we handing this one in?”, and, frankly, I spend far too much time doing that.

Let me take another example…books. If I were to want to buy a book, generally I would have to get it in paper, as most of the books that I would want are not in any electronic format. If I want a uni textbook…I must buy it physically. Which is an annoyance for me as I don’t want that. Sure, I may be able to get it in an illegal form on my computer (there was an example where one of the textbooks that we used last year was circulating through the class in a pdf) but we can’t get them, in general, legally.

This leads us to the question, “Will paper be with us for a long time, or will it just go away please?”. I think that it depends on what paper is used for. In general, paper will be with us for a long time, but for some things it just makes sense not to have paper at all.

Back to the example of books, do I want a bookshelf full of 100 books, or a nice little e-reader that fits in my bag with everything on it? I know the answer to that one. Same with textbooks. I just got rid of 25 Chemistry and Chemical Engineering textbooks, and they were taking up so much space in my room, which I really can’t be bothered with. So, actually in my Computer Science course I have only ever bought 1 textbook, because I just can’t be bothered with the space. In this way, I believe that paper will dissapear. Or at least books will become a rarity. Much like vinyl, tape and many other technologies, it will become a niche thing. Sure, it’ll still exist, but the majority of people will love the convenience over anything else.

I have at least 2 women in my life who both love books, and they will continue to argue with me about this. They think that paper books will continue to be important in everyone’s lives, but they are the exact type of people who will keep buying books. They are the book enthusiasts. Much like vinyl, film and tape enthusiasts, they will continue to say that their way of doing it is better while the rest of the world starts to ignore them.

There is nothing wrong with this, I am going to have to live with books because 1 of these women is my girlfriend, and I accept this. But generally the rest of the world doesn’t care about it. They want convenience over anything else. They always do.

bobobex: Surprise a new, updated Blog

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:03:27 +0000

I have previously posted here about how Philip has recently decided to go self-employed. Until some regular, paid work starts to come in, he has decided to update and add to his portfolio so he can increase his marketing. Unknown to me, he chose to surprise me with a blog theme redesign which included links to popular social media, and he also created a new, clever plugin which broadcasts to identi.ca when I publish a new blog post. The result is awesome, I think you will agree

Thanks love!