Planet CrunchBang Linux

rich: Icedove Thunderbird - Debian Ubuntu not opening with NS_GetServiceManger Error

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:52:00 +0000

Icedove fails to open after system cleanup
I had a clean out of old applications and files on my work Debian Squeeze box, only to reboot and find that Icedove email client wouldn't run.

I opened the terminal and ran "icedove" and got this error message:

/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/icedove/components/libimgicon.so: undefined symbol: NS_GetServiceManager

A quick Google around a few forums and mailing lists showed it to be a lib error (probably from my recent clean out) and not specifically Icedove on Debian (Hence the reason i've posted this here and not on DebianAndI) as it also appeared for Ubuntu users and Thunderbird as well. Anyway, there's an easy fix.

1. Backup your Icedove email files just in case:

cp .icedove icedovebkp

2. Completely remove Icedove:

sudo apt-get remove --purge icedove

3. And then reinstall:

sudo apt-get install icedove

4: Open your terminal and type:

LD_BIND_NOW=1 icedove

Icedove should open and everything should be back to normal.

rich: Convert to and split flash video (flv) files for Youtube

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:50:00 +0000

I recently got asked about uploading videos to Youtube by a friend, and decided to look at the best way to first convert them to Flash (.flv) and then split them into chunks to get round the Youtube video size restrictions.

Winff
If you've never used Winff before, then you'll love it. It allows you to choose your video file and convert into various formats, including Flash for Websites (.flv) It's available in most Linux repos, and you can find more info here: http://winff.org/html_new/

sudo apt-get install winff

Ffmpeg
Ffmpeg is the tool for everything video and audio. It's available in all Linux repos and you can find more info here: http://ffmpeg.org/

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

VLC Media Player:
I would also recommend installing vlc which is probably the most complete lightweight Video/Audio player available. It's also available in all Linux repositories, more info here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Basically you just convert and split.
1. Open Winff, open the file you want to convert, and choose Flash/Website
2. Let it convert then open your terminal ready for some ffmpeg-foo

Ok, so, case scenario:
You have a video file called "bacon" that is 30 minutes long and you want to create two 15 minute files. To get file number 1 you split from 0min for a duration of 15 minutes, and then for file number 2 you split from 15min for another duration of 15 minutes like this:

ffmpeg split originalbacon.flv from [startpoint 0] [for duration 15] to newbacon1.flv
ffmpeg split originalbacon.flv from [startpoint 15] [for duration 15] to newbacon2.flv

Which in the Terminal is like this:

ffmpeg -i input.flv -sameq -ss 00:00:00 -t 00:15:00 file1.flv

then:

ffmpeg -i input.flv -sameq -ss 00:15:00 -t 00:15:00 file2.flv

Happy splitting and uploading :)

rich: Broadcom BCM4311 problem on Debian, Mint, Ubuntu

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:40:00 +0000

The STA driver does not work properly for the BCM4311 in Mint/Ubuntu/Debian.
The Restricted Driver Manager only gives you the Broadcom STA driver as an option.

Yesterday got asked by a friend to remove Ubuntu from his 5-year-old laptop. It's a 64bit, 1Gb Ram machine, with an Nvidia graphics card and Broadcom wireless.

I was pretty certain that the 64bit Linux Mint 12 would just work out of the box, even though i've had problems with the Broadcom firmware on other machines (wireless cutting out and needing to be restarted)

The install went fine, and I went straight to the "Restricted Drivers manager" for Nvidia and Broadcom. The STA driver was recommended so I installed it. Only to find it would work.

My laptop at home works ok with the older B43 module, so I went the traditional route and installed that instead.

Install:

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer b43-fwcutter

Then unload both modules:

sudo modprobe -r b43 wl

Now reload the B43 module:

sudo modprobe b43

If when you reboot, the B43 module doesn't get loaded:, just add it to "modules":

sudo vim /etc/modules

and add b43 at the end of the list. Now it'll load at boot.

The STA module may also load at boot, so just blacklist it by adding it to the blacklist:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and it like this:

blacklist wl

Now reboot, and you'll have Broadcom 4311 wireless working.

Larry Cafiero: ZaReason Alto 3880: The honeymoon continues

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:18:39 +0000

[Note: This item is being resposted from the Larry the Free Software Guy blog. Because it mentions CrunchBang, it is included in this blog as well.]

When I reviewed the ZaReason Alto 3880 earlier this year, I liked it so much I got one, and I told Cathy and Earl Malmrose of ZaReason that I’d write my impressions of the Alto three months later.

That was in February and now it’s May — three months hence — and I have to say that I have not had one bad experience with the laptop.

To recap: Until I gave the Alto a test run, I was a dyed-in-the-wool ThinkPad guy, utilitarian to the core. All my ThinkPads — and there are several — look like NASCAR entries with their sticker-laden covers displaying the best of FOSS programs.

Since February, though, I’ve been using the Alto for hours on end on a daily basis, giving it the rigorous workout that the ThinkPads normally got when I was using them exclusively. The Alto 3880 has proved to be a very tough machine going step-for-step, measure-for-measure with the ThinkPad in all categories.

The advantage that the Alto has over the ThinkPad is that it looks good — no, it looks great — doing it.

Which of course brings me to the keyboard: As I wrote earlier, I thought the keyboard in the Alto 3880, at first touch, was a little light. With the pounding I normally give the sturdy ThinkPad keyboard, I openly worried about my heavy fingers and not-so-gentle touch on what I thought might be a less-than-sturdy keyboard. I was completely wrong about this — the keyboard is tougher than the first impression lets on, and it is one of the Alto 3880′s outstanding features. If it handles the range of tapping I give it — and it has — then it passes that test with high marks.

As I’ve written before, I’m running CrunchBang Statler on this machine and it runs flawlessly on the Alto. In the original blog, I mentioned that I had also run other distros on the Alto as well, but I choose to run CrunchBang for a variety of reasons I write about in another blog. For the unenlightened, CrunchBang — which is on the verge of releasing another version soon — is a Debian-based distro running the Openbox window manager. On the Alto, the combination of Openbox with Debian rumbling under the hood makes this laptop a digital rocket.

The ZaReason Alto 3880 is an outstanding machine that continues to earn my highest recommendation. The specs are here and, as I mentioned in the original blog item, the price is higher than you’d pay for something off the shelf at a big box like Best Buy (and, in a word, don’t!). But the Alto is worth every bit of the extra cost, and one of many features that ZaReason offers is that they provide a wide variety of distros to choose from on their hardware — though I don’t use it often, I understand Linux Mint would be a good off-the-shelf choice — and they even will install a distro at your request.

Like — oh, I don’t know — CrunchBang, if you ask for it.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(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, Openbox, ZaReason Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Openbox, ZaReason

omns: Ahoy there! I'm in a quandary.

noreply@blogger.com (Grant Galbraith) — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:47:36 +0000

Recently I've been in a bit of a quandary about Creative Commons licensing of my work. As mentioned previously I've been a long term user and supporter of the license and have seen it work quite successfully for many artists and enterprises.

My latest thoughts revolve around wondering if it is personally worth the effort and does it really provide any advantages over standard copyright licensing. Basically I use Creative Commons for a couple of reasons. One is because I'm a believer in community based open source software development. As a long term Linux user I guess it would a little strange for me not to be.

In terms of my photography, writing and art I've always seen Creative Commons as an extension of that and saw it as a reasonable way of addressing the issue of piracy of my work for personal use. If you want to use it on your PC or phone as a background then Creative Commons gives you the right to do so freely. However, by providing high res images of my work for this type of use, does it really make any difference to maintaining standard copyright with download restrictions etc. The reality is that even if I employ strategies like disabling right click downloads, people will still obtain my work for personal use via screen grabs etc if they really want it.

As I'm likely to never do anything about my work being pirated at this personal level (in reality I'd encourage it) I'm left wondering if Creative Commons provides me with any greater protection of my work in a broader more commercial sense. How does it really hold up in a court of law? I imagine it varies from country to country. For example, here in Australia not all of the Creative Commons licenses are compatible with Australian copyright law. I may be under the misapprehension that my work is covered commercially but it might fall flat if tested. My reading tells me that I should have been using an Australian version of the Creative Commons licensing to protect my content. It's all a bit grey and hazy for my liking.

In light of this I think I'm going to scale things back a little and revert to using standard copyright licensing on my thoughts, images and web based content at this blog. Of course I know that if you want my images here you'll take them and still use them on your desktops etc. Reverting to standard copyright is more about protecting my rights in a broader more commercial sense.

Now of course this places the whole notion of this blog in somewhat of a dilemma. I think I'll maintain the domain though and look at it from a slightly different angle. Im a fairly common run of the mill guy so it still fits with a creative interpretation. I'll still be supporting free software etc but when it comes to my photography and art you'll be seeing it from a slightly more traditional perspective.

omns: CrunchBang Linux Waldorf - Development Release Review

noreply@blogger.com (Grant Galbraith) — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:47:16 +0000

It's not my intention to proliferate this blog with Linux reviews. Its purpose is largely related to my photography interests but occasionally I'll feel the need to put some words down about Linux. My interest in the development of Linux distros has largely dissipated in recent times and I now just use it as one of my preferred tools. In this context I'm now just looking for highly polished distros that pretty much just work out of the box and involve only a small amount of tweaking and maintenance to be productive in other more important areas of my life. An example is my recent Unity setup. It's something I definitely would have shied away from in the past but now I find it to be a very productive environment that suits my workflow. It runs on a machine with plenty of RAM and CPU power so it's shortcomings in that area are not a concern.

All that said I think there will always be one distro I make an exception for and that is CrunchBang Linux. Those of you that know me well would know of my strong interest in this wonderful distro in the past. I was there from the beginning of its community, was its first forum moderator and am somewhat proud of the friendly community we developed there. It was wonderful to see it go from strength to strength over the last 3-4 years. I no longer maintain that moderator and community role but do like to pop in and see how everyone is going from time to time. It's wonderful to see it continuing to prosper and the same friendly atmosphere continuing. It really is quite unique in the Linux world.

Back to the main point of this review and recently Philip Newborough released the first development build for the next stable version of CrunchBang codenamed Waldorf. As most people know CrunchBang follows the Debian release cycle and after Debian's Squeeze and CrunchBang's Statler stable releases we can now look forward to Debian's Wheezy and CrunchBang's Waldorf.

I have been looking for a distro to replace my Fedora 16 Xfce install. It has served me well but there is a significant wireless bug in the Fedora kernels that effectively cripples my ath9k card if I upgrade from the old 3.1 kernel it currently uses. I have been looking forward to Fedora 17 to see if it resolves the issue but this release of CrunchBang proved to be far to tempting :-)

First I would have to say that it takes a tremendous amount to tear me away from my beloved Xfce desktop, especially when Xfce 4.10 has just been released. Openbox really is the only decent alternative and as a CrunchBang user it is the alternative I'm most familiar with. CrunchBang also utilizes Xfce tools like the Thunar file manger so I feel right at home in this environment.

So at the risk of being horribly subjective, here is my attempt at an objective review of CrunchBang Waldorf. As you can probably tell by now it will be a fairly positive review but I have been critical of CrunchBang in the past which upset several people. I do stand by that review and hopefully this one as well :-)

I approach this review from some new perspectives. The first being that I'm quite out of touch with developments in Debian. Most notable is the installer. It really has developed into a mature and intuitive installer and I think this is largely to do with the graphic version being so stable and usable now. The Squeeze installer was fine but I was more inclined to use the non-graphic version. Perhaps that was just familiarity with the way that worked but the graphic installer is now a joy to use and I'd recommend its use in the first instance.

Naturally enough CrunchBang also uses a slightly modified version of this installer. It's sleek and very CrunchBang. The only gripe I have with it is the removal of setting up a root password in favour of setting up sudo. I dislike sudo but this is just a personal preference. Most people coming from bigger distros like Ubuntu will find it very familiar and in the long run its very simple to set up the root account for my needs post install. During install I chose to use the guided partitioning setup. Again this is not something I normally do but I was impressed with the default LVM options and automatic partitioning allocations so decided to proceed with it. This is also the dedicated OS on this machine so the simple defaults are more than adequate. I chose a simple /, boot and swap setup but there are other options for separate partitions like /var etc as well. This further highlights the developments in the Debian installer. It really is a joy to use.

Okay onto my first boot and I was greeted with the SLIM login manager. This choice is fine by me as I only intend to use the default Openbox session. I can see some complaining about having to set it up manually for other environments but when I look at the skill level of users who explore other window managers with a CrunchBang base this really isn't a great barrier. This week I've also noted the development of a new GUI based autologin tool that may incorporate some mechanism for changing the default boot environment as well. From a security perspective I'd discourage the use of autologins but that is a matter of personal choice in the long run. As it stands now though, SLIM is highly effective and does the job admirably.

Onto the desktop and the defining element of CrunchBang kicks into gear with the first boot terminal based cb-welcome script. I'm a little biased because I love developing scripts like this and cb-welcome is the script that I have modified over the years for my own Debian build-scripts. It has developed into a highly efficient set of scripts and provides many options for the first time user. These include an initial system upgrade followed by installation of printer drivers (a compromise over Philip's aversion to printers in general), installation of LibreOffice and other options like extra development tools etc. I've noted several other distros that have adapted this script for their needs and it really is a wonderful tool. You won't see it again after this first boot but it can easily be used again by running the cb-welcome command in a terminal.

First impression of the desktop are that it's very CrunchBang. A simple dark grey desktop, tint2 and conky. Naturally enough I think most users options would be to start fiddling with cocky and tint2 configurations but the defaults are very usable if you've never seen them before. The default wallpapers on offer suit the distro well and I must issue a disclaimer when I state how nice they are. Yes, I created several of them and it always gives me a buzz to still see them included with each release :-)

The other defining point of CrunchBang is its excellent Openbox menu. Everything is included here with easy access to configuration files and tools to begin personalising your desktop to your personal needs. The various pipe menus on offer are excellent with options to install things like LibreOffice if you missed it in cb-welcome and other browsers like iceweasel, chrome and opera. The default install now comes with Chromium which is a nice choice. Normally I would just install Chrome for the extra bits and pieces it provides but Chromium is suiting the simple browsing needs I have on this machine well so far.

Overall impressions are that this release is already very stable. This obviously reflects on the development of Debian more than anything else but it's also great to see Philip putting the same high levels of stability into his his various additions, packages and configurations.

So would I recommend this release to others? Absolutely? This is the first time in quite a while that I'm really enjoying using Openbox again. I'd forgotten just how nice it is and it's a joy to be hacking away at it again. Not that I've made many changes from the defaults, just a few tweaks like tint2 on the left side which suits my screen real estate better. My next stop is conky. I like the default but when I get the time I'll probably dig out some old configs and put together something more suited to my needs.

I guess then that my final words should be a congratulations to Philip for another fine job with Waldorf. It's nice to be back in the Debian world again and given my needs on this machine, CrunchBang is the perfect fit right now.

---------------------------------------------------

My current desktop. Minor Conky/tint2 changes and a few compositing tweaks. Wallpaper courtesy of a friend who recently snapped an image of me doing my thing.

omns: Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Grant Galbraith) — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:46:41 +0000

Welcome to A Creative Commoner. This blog will document my adventures in a a variety of interests from Photography through to open source software. Roughly posts will fall into these categories.

Photography - basically this will be images from my recent shoots. I'll restrict it to what I hope are some of my better efforts and share more details about techniques used, settings and post-processing. This will be more detailed than appears on my Google+ profile.

Photography software - currently I'm embarking on a project to review as much photography related open-source software as I can with the primary goal being to see if the open-source offerings are a viable alternative to photoshop etc.

Open-Source in general - naturally enough to do the above it will work best on a open-source platform like Linux. I'll review other free software for OS X and Windows but these posts with have a large Linux flavour. At the moment I only have an iMac at my disposal so it will be dual booting until a different arrangement comes along. I plan to begin this process with a an install then extensive review of the next LTS Ubuntu release 12.04. Those of you who have known me for some time might find that a bit shocking but my days of immersing myself in the never ending world of Linux are long over. These days I'm just focusing on getting the job done on a platform that has a large package base and a base that the latest release of the packages being reviewed will run on. In that sense Ubuntu wins hands down.

A little later I plan to develop a smugmug site for anyone who might be inclined to support my photography interests in a more formal/financial way. Until then you are free to use my images for personalise use as outlined in the creative commons license. For any commercial use please contact me via my Google+ profile and we'll work something out :-)

Original Image can be found here - http://goo.gl/l4xLh

Released under a Creative Commons Non Commercial License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

rich: Add PPA Repositories to Debian

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:20:00 +0000

Ubuntu PPAs on Debian?
I know some people are going to flip about "dirtying" their Debian box with Ubuntu PPAs, but sometimes there are external apps that you want (think new Gimp 2.8) which you either just can't get or you can't be asked to manually compile. In any case, if you are an experienced Debian user, you'll know how to reverse this if it causes any problems, and we all love a bit of breakage.

The DebPPA script

vim debppa.sh

Add this code:
http://aprendiom.com/downloads/debppa

Move it and make it executable:

sudo mv debppa.sh /usr/sbin/debppa
sudo chmod o+x /usr/sbin/debppa
sudo chown root:root /usr/sbin/debppa

Use it like this:

sudo debppa ppa:ppa-name

That's it, now you can add PPA repositories and get the latest applications.

Larry Cafiero: Ready for Waldorf

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:02:01 +0000

Before I start, there’s an interview I had given while at Linux Fest Northwest with David Whitman of Hacker Public Radio about CrunchBang. It rambles a little, so I apologize for that, and I didn’t hear all the New Year’s Eve HPR shows that Philip (corenominal) and Rebecca (bobobex) Newborough did, so I wasn’t in on the “wife” reference that David asked me about. Serves me right for not listening to all of the two shows in their entirety.

Anyway, the HPR interview is here. And thank you, David, for taking a few minutes to talk to me.

Back to the topic at hand: I’ve been using the Waldorf development build for the last couple of weeks on my old, but equally trusty, IBM ThinkPad T30, and I have to report that I haven’t yet broken it — clearly a good sign, first off, that corenominal has done something right (yet again) and there are things about it that make the T30 run better: off the bat, a wider range of screen resolutions and an improved network manager that plays a lot nicer with the T30 than Statler are two improvements right off the bat.

As many of you who read the Larry the Free Software Guy blog know, I think reviewing an unfinished distro — which is what an alpha, beta or a development build actually is — is akin to telling someone how great a cake would taste by sampling the batter. So I don’t review distros until they’re done.

However, I can tell you this about Wheezy-based CrunchBang 11 Waldorf: All indications point to the fact that this stands to be an outstanding release.

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

rich: Howto setup any HP printer on Debian

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:22:00 +0000

Other Printers
I've written other guides on setting up printers with Cups in the web browser via localhost:631 (which is still an easy way to setup most printers, however, the drivers weren't listed for my current printer, so I Googled for the Hplip site at Sourceforge and found a neat little script.

Hp Deskjet 3050
In general with any Linux distro with a full desktop environment you would just install the Hplip package with GUI via the package manager. I have a minimal self-built Debian Squeeze with Openbox window manager, and as such, not all installed applications appear on the Obmenu (even the added Debian menu), so I have my own default menu with my frequently used apps. basically, when I installed the Hplip GUI there was no link to be seen on the menu, so I did an Alt+F2 to do arun-search of all the hp* references.

HP-Setup = No USB Printer Detected
I ran hp-setup and it informed me that there was no printer connected via USB, even though lsusb showed it listed. I checked for usual dependencies, unplugged and replugged the printer, nada, so off to Google I went.

Using the Hplip script from Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.jp/projects/sfnet_hplip/releases/

1. Find the latest *.run script (Currently hplip-3.12.4.run) and download it.

2. Open a terminal and go to your "Downloads" directory

cd Downloads

3. Create a HP directory (A lot of files will be downloaded when the script runs)

mkdir HP

4. Move the script there

mv hplip-3.12.4.run HP

5. Change to the HP directory

cd HP

6. Run the script as a regular user

sh hplip-3.12.4.run

Now just go through the motions, it's self explanatory and will guide you step by step. Basically after reading it turns out that I just said YES to all the default options, and now have a fully working HP Deskjet 3050 on Debian Squeeze.

Larry Cafiero: Linux Fest Northwest makes its mark

Wed, 02 May 2012 04:26:05 +0000

Those of us who have been to Linux shows, or especially have worked Linux shows, in the past know the drill. It’s something out of “Field of Dreams.” If you build it — the “it” here being a Linux event — they will come, and they will all seem to come right at Saturday morning at 9 sharp when the show officially starts.

They did just that at Linux Fest Northwest. Past its first decade of operation, LFNW has established itself as the premiere Linux event in the region and, as I’ve mentioned before, next to the Southern California Linux Expo, it’s the best show on the West Coast. For two days, geeks in the Northwest get to listen to top-notch presenters — as well as people like me — and visit exhibits from distros, software and hardware makers.

The Bellingham Linux Users Group and volunteers from other open source user groups in the area never fail to put on a great expo, and I think I speak for many attendees when I say that I’m deeply grateful for their efforts. About 1,200 people attended LFNW on the campus of Bellingham Technical College over the weekend. Thanks, LFNW folks.

Here’s a look at the weekend:

Not another distro . . .: Bill Smith and his wife Portia staffed the CrunchBang booth with me, and again my thanks go out to them for the help. Visitors to the booth ranged from those who knew what CrunchBang was to those who whined, “Not another distro . . .” To which I replied far too often, “Yes, another distro. This one is Debian with the OpenBox window manager,” before explaining the advantages of CrunchBang. “There’s a digital Darwinism at play here, with the good distros gathering a strong community and thriving, and others . . . not so much.” There were about 150 pieces of media burned — CDs and DVDs — all of which went out the door with prospective users. I, of course, will sit in the corner with the pointy hat because, truth be told, I forgot the banner and the “success kid” stickers made up for LFNW, but we’ll use ‘em next year.

Hello, I’m Greg DeKoenigsberg: The printed program had it right, as did the Web site. But the large poster on the wall on the Haskell classroom building on Saturday morning had Greg’s presentation on the schedule where I was giving the Intro to CrunchBang talk. With LFNW’s permission, Greg and I had switched presentation times more than a week prior to the event, since he was getting in late. But the poster outside the wall had the old schedule. Try as I might — which, of course, was not very hard — I could not convince the folks that I was the Eucalyptus VP. After an announcement that if you were there for Greg’s talk, it would be tomorrow, only a couple of people bailed out. As for my talk, it went as well as my talks usually go — no one was injured and law enforcement officials were nowhere to be found — and Scott Dowdle videotaped it, so as soon as that gets posted, I’ll let you know.

The (two) big thing(s): The big thing at Linux Fest Northwest — not including OpenSUSE rep Bryen Yunashko’s hat — was the Pogo Linux’s booth, which featured a full-fledged, sit-behind-the-wheel racing game with three large-screen monitors, where drivers navigated a course and prizes were given for the fastest laps. No, my racing days are far behind me, but from what I was told by someone who raced cars and turned the second fastest lap on Saturday, it was very realistic. Another big thing — bigger to the Android crowd, apparently, and arguably just as fast as the racing game — was the ZaReason tablet, which many folks tried out at our booth (ZaReason shared the CrunchBang booth at LFNW). Keep an eye on that, since this full-fledged Android tablet will be coming out very soon.

Hands across the water: It was a grand experiment, though operator error by yours truly may have kept it from being a huge success. But during the CrunchBang Birds of a Feather meetup on Sunday morning, we used a Google+ Hangout to raise CrunchBang lead developer Philip Newborough. Sort of. Despite getting dropped a couple of times — once because I hit the wrong key — we got to talk about the show, about what’s coming up for CrunchBang and things along those lines, and it was very informative for those in attendance. Thanks, Philip, and Rebecca Newborough as well, who in her capacity as the CrunchBang Community Leader also participated from the Lincoln side of things.

Bon mots: I’m still apologizing to Deb Nicholson for forgetting her surname in introducing her to Philip Newborough at the BoF on Sunday morning. You know you work with someone in FOSS circles for years and something like this happens . . . . A shout-out goes to Eric Craw, a new CrunchBang user from Washington who converted at Linux Fest Northwest. Not only did he start using CrunchBang, but he already started contributing code back to the project, showing that this is what FOSS is all about . . . . David Whitman of Hacker Public Radio gave me a few minutes of interview time at the end of Linux Fest Northwest, so all that thumping and loading in the background may or may not be audible once the interview is broadcast . . . . I drove 962 miles each way to attend LFNW, but this show is so great that I would have walked 962 miles to get to Bellingham. Again, kudos to the LFNW crew.

Start rumors: In my capacity as publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo, I finally got to sit down with my good friends Warren Sanders and Scott Dowdle, and two folks from the Big Sky Country that I hadn’t met — Rocky Mountain College’s Andrew Niemantsverdreit and Gary Bummer, who is Scott’s colleague at Montana State University — and the five of us discussed bringing an event to their area. So be on the lookout for Montana Linux Fest, or something like it, in 2013.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox

CrunchBang Linux: Waldorf development images ready for testing

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:05:35 +0000

The first CrunchBang 11 “Waldorf” development builds are now available for testing. For anyone unaware, these are the first builds to be based on Debian Wheezy sources. Wheezy is the current testing branch of Debian and therefore is likely to experience changes, bugs and breakages. These first builds are not recommended for anyone who requires a stable system, or is not happy running into occasional breakages.

For more information and discussions, please see the forum announcement.

Larry Cafiero: Notes on Linux Fest Northwest

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:55:52 +0000

I’m currently on the road in Oregon, heading back to the cozy confines of the redwoods of Felton, but I wanted to get a couple of notes down before posting a more comprehensive blog item at home about Linux Fest Northwest which was, in a word, outstanding.

First things first: I would venture to guess that there were more than 1,000 folks who showed up to the event, and I’ll try to dig up a more accurate number later. In fact, we had folks checking out the CrunchBang table before we had even set up around 9ish on Saturday morning. While the show, of course, had its Saturday morning tsunami of humanity followed by a more reasonable and slow-paced Sunday, it was never lacking the electricity that Linux expos usually transmit during the course of the weekend. Carl Symons and the rest of the crew at LFNW put on a great show, period.

The CrunchBang table: Bill Smith and his wife Portia did outstanding work staffing the booth, and my thanks go out to them for the help. It should be noted that Bill’s attire — a Tux vest — was great, and Portia had #! painted onto her nails. Needless to say, they were ready for the show. Many visitors to the table already knew what CrunchBang is, and some were, “What’s CrunchBang?” We gave away about 100 pieces of media and displayed on my old ThinkPad T30 and a newer ZaReason Alto 3880 how CrunchBang works across a wide range of computer hardware.

The ZaReason tablet: A last-minute request by computer-maker ZaReason had me splitting the table between CrunchBang and ZaReason, and one of the things that drew attention and cause some buzz is the tablet that ZaReason will be coming out with soon. We had one of them in the booth, and many folks thought it was pretty cool, though one person said it looked too much like an iPad (and I don’t believe that was a compliment).

Friends old and new: Seeing old friends and making new ones is one of the great things about the shows. Great as always to see Rikki Endsley, Robyn Bergeron, Deb Nicholson, Jeff Sandys, Greg DeKoenigsberg and others whose names I’ll remember between Springfield and Felton and try not to kick myself for forgetting while driving. A special shout out goes to Eric Craw, a new CrunchBang user who installed it after hearing my presentation on Saturday and immediately did some programming to submit to the distro.

I’ll get into more of the nuts-and-bolts of the show in the next blog item when I return home, like getting to start my presentation on Saturday morning with “Hello, I’m Greg DeKoenigsberg” (in my best Johnny Cash) and more details on my talk and the hands-across-the-water CrunchBang Birds of a Feather meetup. But it’s about time to get back on Interstate 5 and head south.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox

Larry Cafiero: Ready for Linux Fest Northwest

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:36:31 +0000

The CrunchBang disks are burned, the stickers are being printed up, and the presentation still needs tweaking, but for all intents and purposes I’m ready for Linux Fest Northwest, which takes place this weekend at Bellingham Technical College.

Next to the Southern California Linux Expo — which will turn it up to 11 at SCALE 11X in February 2013* — Linux Fest Northwest is the best show on the West Coast. Collectively and in choral harmony, I can hear all of you saying, “What about OSCON?” True, OSCON is the biggest of the West Coast shows, bringing out all the big guns, both in FOSS personalities as well as in software and hardware. There are many excellent presentations offered every year at OSCON, however with the show growing to the commercial entity that it has become, there’s a slickness to it that has a tendency to leave many visitors adrift in a vast sea of marketing.

Not so Linux Fest Northwest: It’s in its 11th year in Bellingham, Washington — essentially Microsoft’s backyard — and from the ground up it an all-community affair, completely run with a volunteer staff that puts on an outstanding show on what seems to be the Pacific Northwest’s best weekend of weather. The classrooms at Bellingham Technical College are ideal for presentations and the expo floor is big enough to be interesting but small enough not to be too overwhelming.

I’ll be presenting on Saturday morning — Greg DeKoenigsberg and I switched times so he could give his presentation on Sunday — on “An Intro to CrunchBang” in Haskell 103. Be there or be square. Also there’s a CrunchBang Birds of a Feather meetup on Sunday morning as well. The CrunchBang booth — which will also feature some ZaReason hardware — will be in the center of the room diagonally across from where the raffle will take place.

So if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, you should head over to Linux Fest Northwest. You can sign up at the LFNW link above (it’s free, but you have to sign up for a badge), and head over to the show.

See you there.

*Truth in advertising: I have a vested interest in SCALE since I’m the publicity chair. But even if I wasn’t, I’d still think SCALE is the best show on the West Coast. Frankly, I think it’s the best show in the hemisphere and I’m beyond proud to be a part of it.

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

omns: The journey begins...

noreply@blogger.com (Grant Galbraith) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:09:57 +0000

My first go at using open source processing software with my photos. Used in this photo are:

RawTherapee 4.08
Darktable 1.0
Gimp 2.8

I've used Gimp extensively in the past so was more interested in the raw processing and filtering capabilities of the other two. Out of these RawTherapee has impressed me the most and will be the focus of my first review on this blog.

Below is the final image I came up with. If you compare it with the rest of the images in this album on G+ I think you'll agree that these open source alternatives hold up pretty well against Lightroom, Photoshop, Camera Raw etc that were used to produce the rest of the album.

See this Google+ album for a full sized image. Click on Options and choose 'Download full size'
Released under a Creative Commons Non Commercial License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

omns: Dual Booting Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 12.04

noreply@blogger.com (Grant Galbraith) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:00:15 +0000

The first step on my open source digital imaging project was to get a Linux system up and running. As I'm dual booting an iMac and don't have a lot of time to mess around with my install I decided to go with a distribution that develops a live image specifically designed for Macs, namely Ubuntu. I've always tested each new release of Ubuntu but I've always had a number of issues with the way they do things so have mainly stuck with the Debian mothership over the years. That said, with this install I was looking for newer versions of imaging software so the Ubuntu PPA's are convenient and effective.

The first task was to install rEFIt and get it set up for dual booting. There are many guides out there on setting up rEFIt and repartitioning your drive so I wont go over it again here. The best one I've found for this task is at the link below.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/10/dual-boot-os-ubuntu/

Please note that I've set up this dual booot on a Snow Leopard machine. I haven't enjoyed the Lion experience and recently set about deleting it and restoring the snow leopard setup that came with my Mac. What I didn't like about Lion could fill a number of blog posts but I also was unable to find a decent how-to on how to dual boot any Linux distro with Lion. I've become increasingly unhappy with Apple in recent years and this may be the last Mac I purchase as I'll probably move to Linux box like this one. At worst I can run photoshop etc in wine or a Windows virtual machine but I'd prefer to keep it as native as possible, hence this little project.

Anyway, back to the install. After setting up refit and ensuring it was booting properly I embarked on installing Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. I downloaded the Mac specific build from the daily builds (April 17) and with only 11 days until the final release I figured everything should be okay.

The install process was fairly straight forward but I did strike a few snags. The install disc itself was easy to boot and when it got to the section where I could I could try the desktop or proceed straight to the installer, I chose to go straight into the install process. I always setup my partitions manually and this is where I struck my main snag. After setting up swap and main / partition I started the install and received an error stating that I needed a dedicated partition of at least 1mb for grub. Back in the installer I setup this partition as advised but still received this error. I tried a number of partitioning scenarios to try and work a way around this and even if I got the install to proceed it failed at installing grub. This install would still show up in redit as an efi boot on restart but it would proceed.

After a number of failed attempts the solution to this was a relatively simple one. By proceeding to the live desktop and launching the installer from there I was able to setup my normal partitions in the dedicated space and everything went smoothly. It's also important to boot the CD by holding down the C key during startup and bypass rEFIt to boot the install CD.

Also of note during the install on my Mac was the wireless card. My model has a Broadcom card so it is an optional install to get it working. The additional driver application starts soon after the live desktop is up and running and the necessary driver can be installed and downloaded from the install CD. You are then asked to restart but this of course defeats the purpose on a live CD so just quit the additional drivers application and within a minute or so your wireless card should roar into life. An active Internet connection greatly improves the initial install with the ability to draw in 3rd party drivers and updates via the connection. It's well worth the effort to get this up and running if you have a Broadcom card in your iMac. Also of note is that any Bluetooth keyboard or magic mouse you may have will not work with the installer so have a USB key keyboard and mouse ready for the install. The mouse can be paired later but I'm still working on getting the keyboard working. If this is the only issue I have I'll be quite happy with the install overall as it was pretty painless once I got past this live desktop installer issue.

Overall I'm quite impressed with 12.04 and Unity so far. I was quite a fan of the 11.04 release but didn't like the 11.10 release when Gnome 3.2 was first introduced. 12.04 and Gnome 3.4 has restored my faith somewhat.

I haven't changed things to far from the defaults as yet except to install MyUnity and tweak the desktop a bit. I really preferred Confity for this task but I'm not sure if it is still alive as a project. I couldn't get the 1.7 release of Confity to work with 12.04.

Other aesthetic tweaks and immediate additions were to install Faenza icons and a few apps like Terminator, Gimp and Darktable to get my project underway with Darktable being the first piece of software I will be reviewing in the weeks ahead. As a Lightroom replacement it looks quite feature rich so I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs, particularly with Raw files.

In wanting to use the most current versions of Gimp and Darktable I've used their PPA's and added and installed Gimp 2.8 and Darktable 1.0 with the following commands.

Gimp:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp

Darktable
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install darktable

Finally a note about the Ubuntu Software Centre. It has improved greatly since I last looked at it and I'll now use it instead of Gdebi to install debs. It handled a Chrome install quite well but I do have reservations about how it automatically handles package dependencies when uninstalling and installing software. Bascially I want to know what's going on and what is being added or removed from my system. For this reason I will probably add Synaptic as it has more control over these sorts of things or more likely just use apt-get at the command line. Old habits die hard it seems :-)

As for the rest of the integrated Ubuntu bits and pieces I don't have any use for them as I mainly use Google and Dropbox for everything in my day to day work. That said I'm really looking forward to firing up Darktable and reporting back on how it performs.

Until then... :-)

Some Screenshots

My desktop

The Dash

Workspace Switcher

Darktable (a Lightroom alternative)

RawTherapee

Gimp 2.8 in single window mode

jargon: Mighty Mouse

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:27:31 +0000

(Click to for large version)

My mouse, the Logitech Trackman Marble. I’ve had this device for two years now and it has vastly improved my pointing device UX. It stays completely out of the way, no pick-up-and-shift-pick-up-and-shift clack-clack-clack, no distracting red laser. Just silent efficiency. I love it. Picture taken with my Nokia N900 using Solarize effect (installed BlessN900).

Larry Cafiero: Asking questions, getting answers

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:51:24 +0000

One of the best parts — arguably the best part — about being a CrunchBang user are the answers that are readily available in the CrunchBang forums, whether they’re already there (a search usually brings up a question you might have that has been discussed and answered already) or whether you’re asking it for the first time to an enthused group of forum folks ready and willing to answer your unasked question.

And now you’re expecting me to say, “But,” or “However . . . .” Surprise: I’m not. The reason I bring up the CrunchBang forums and how well they work is to raise one of my personal quests in the FOSS realm that, if I were to succeed, I think it would make things a lot easier for everyone on several levels.

You could ask, “What might that be?” And I would answer, “asking questions better and answering them more civilly.”

Eric Raymond and Rick Moen wrote a treatise about this many years ago that’s required reading at Felton LUG. It’s called “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way” and it is a remarkable guide regarding how to ask questions that will outline your problem efficiently for those who have to answer it. At the same time, it also has a guide for those who have been around the FOSS/Linux block — OK, for some, around the FOSS/Linux world — a few times regarding how to answer questions as well.

Bear in mind that I don’t bring this up because I think there’s a problem in this regard in the CrunchBang forums. Far from it; I think that questions and answers are handled quite well there. In fact, I’ll go one step further: I think the way the CrunchBang community works, as shown in the forums, is a textbook case of how FOSS communities should work.

I bring it up only as a reminder that I think everyone should give “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way” a read — from the newest Linux user to the most seasoned veteran — because there’s something in it for everyone.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, Eric Raymond, Openbox, Rick Moen Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Eric Raymond, How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, Openbox, Questions, Rick Moen

rich: Howto install Perl Volwheel volume controller

noreply@blogger.com (rich scadding) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:48:00 +0000

Volwheel is a nice little Perl script panel applet which provides a lightweight sound/volume controller on your chosen panel/toolbar. I use Tint2 on my Openbox desktop, and volwheel is always a part of my setup.

First download Volwheel

wget http://aprendiom.com/downloads/volwheel-0.2.8.tar.gz

Untar it

tar zxvf volwheel-0.2.8.tar.gz

Dependencies

sudo apt-get install libgtk2-trayicon-perl

Install

cd volwheel-0.2.8

sudo ./install.pl

Copy Icons to System

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/volwheel/icons

cd icons

sudo cp -a * /usr/share/volwheel/icons

Copy Libs to System

cd ..

cd lib

sudo cp -a * /usr/lib/perl5

Launch Volwheel

volwheel &

Change the theme and settings (I use static + speaker-black)

Right click on Volwheel icon, choose Preferences

Autostart for Openbox

vim .config/openbox/autostart.sh

Add this line:

## Start volumeicon after a slight delay
(sleep 5s && volwheel) &

That's it, now you have a nice Perl volume icon.

Larry Cafiero: Update on Linux Fest Northwest prep

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:20:46 +0000

As I’ve mentioned ad nauseum on the CrunchBang forums, I have arranged for a booth at Linux Fest Northwest this year, being held at the end of this month in Bellingham, Washington. For those of you keeping score at home, here’s where we are with the CrunchBang booth at LFNW.

Booth: The booth — table, actually — has been secured and we have a listing on the Sponsor page (though we’re really not sponsors in a monetary sense — like other dot-orgs, we’re designated as “community supporters,” which is pretty obvious ). Also, I’ve already had a few folks from near the northwestern Washington area — CrunchBang users all, along with a spouse — sign up to help out at the booth and attend the show.

Presentation: The presentation “An Intro to CrunchBang,” given by me, has been approved, though it has yet to be scheduled. I am working on the slides for the presentation now and, so there are no surprises (“I swear I don’t know how that slide got in there!”), I’ll be running the presentation by the CrunchBang faithful and, of course, Philip Newborough just to make sure I get his imprimatur on the slides. Once they’re ready, they’ll be used at Linux Fest Northwest and they’ll be available to anyone who wants to use them for any CrunchBang presentation at a LUG or any other gathering, should anyone want to do a presentation.

Birds of a Feather: Linux expos here in the U.S. have gatherings called “Birds of a Feather,” or BOFs, because — say it with me — “birds of a feather flock together.” These usually happen on the Saturday night of the weekend show, and it’s usually a chance for distro or FOSS program users to get together around their chosen software and discuss things. At the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 10X in January, the CrunchBang BoF was fairly successful — about 10 people, most of whom were at my presentation about smaller distros — came and I gave away around 4 or 5 USB sticks with CrunchBang on them (that’s all I had in my pocket and backpack, sadly). We’ll be having a CrunchBang BoF, yet to be scheduled, sometime over the course of the weekend at LFNW.

Media: Ah, media. I am currently burning CDs of the latest Statler image, plus we’ll have one of my laptops that will be specifically set up to make live USB sticks (provided to us, of course, by those who have them and want a copy of CrunchBang). To be honest, this part is going slowly — it’s like cooking a hot dog with a match. However, I would like to think we could have 200 CDs burned by the time LFNW rolls around. Since the show has about 1,000 attendees, this will probably mean that the “loaves and fishes” trick will have to come into play sooner or later, but we’ll see how long the media holds out. When we’re out, we’ll start making USB sticks.

Materials: I’m open to suggestions on this. I have a sticker that I’m making up for the event, a copy of a meme that SaltStack used at SCALE this year (copying with their blessing, of course). I will probably spring for a 50-pack set of stickers from the CrunchBang shop. Fliers — anyone have any ideas here? Otherwise, I’ll make up some of my own. I’m also making up a banner to go with the booth patterned after the rectangular sticker — very basic #! CrunchBang Linux, white lettering on black background — but for future shows, I’d like to use a tablecloth with the CrunchBang name and logo, taking a page from Fedora’s playbook.

Other stuff: ZaReason, a Linux hardware maker in Berkeley, California, has asked if they can share the table with us, providing a couple of their laptops running CrunchBang. I said yes, but if anyone has any objections, I could always shelve that plan. There’s a good chance I’ll be traveling to Bellingham by train — now that Amtrak’s Coast Starlight route has wireless (thank God!), I’ll be on line for the better part of the trip.

In case this is a concern, because it’s bound to come up sooner or later: This is not costing CrunchBang anything — I am doing this on my own (and on my own dime, so to speak) because I believe that CrunchBang is an excellent distro that, despite the fact it’s not for everyone, deserves to reach a wider audience.

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

Larry Cafiero: Why solutions like CrunchBang matter

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:04:49 +0000

Living just “over the hill” from the Silicon Valley, there’s a word bandied about in these parts that is about as nebulous as it is grating. This word — “solutions” — describes what works, in a digital way, for individuals on computer hardware.

I confess to being guilty of using the word myself. Redwood Digital Research started out as just a software testing outfit — you bring us your software, we’ll break it and when we can’t break it any further once you’ve fixed it, it’s ready — and now we also bring Free/Open Source Software, ahem, “solutions” to the small business and home office environment.

Again, “solutions,” as obtuse as it is, equals software that works.

If you’ll permit me a slight tangent for a moment, I know CrunchBang’s lead developer and fearless leader — and we’ll let Rebecca tell us if he’s really fearless — Philip Newborough has been known to make the point that, “It is a common mistake to think that every developer wants their project to be widely popular.”

Which brings me to a.) why I brought that quote up in the first place, and b.) why I’m hosting a table for CrunchBang and giving a presentation about it at Linux Fest Northwest in late April.

Philip is right about bringing up the direction that developers want to see their projects take. It’s their project, their vision. As I’ve written before, perhaps the main reason I’m here as a CrunchBang user is that I think Philip has done a remarkable job on this Debian-based distro that is as dependable as it is fast across the board on a wide range of hardware — old and new — and its dependability in most cases makes its name an inside joke that describes the complete opposite of what is bound to happen.

In other words, CrunchBang is a “solution” that I, and many of you reading here, have made a part of our daily digital lives. So the reason I am going to the extent that I am to promote CrunchBang in the United States is not because I want CrunchBang to be “widely popular,” but rather to share this outstanding distro with others, letting those who wish to try it decide for themselves whether it’s right for them.

CrunchBang is not for everyone. There is a learning curve for those brand new to Linux and FOSS, but for those who know their way around, CrunchBang is probably the best distro you can use. There’s little that can beat a quality distro backed by a dedicated cast of forum folks willing to help. That’s pretty much the gist of my talk at LFNW, with an outline of some of CrunchBang’s features, of course.

But meanwhile, back in Bellingham (if I can project forward to late April), 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. I also have a few folks who are willing to staff the booth and attend the expo, and once again if you’re within driving distance of any Linux show or expo, I would strongly urge that you attend.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox

Larry Cafiero: How we do things here

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:40:16 +0000

[NOTE: This is a reprint of today's Larry the Free Software Guy blog. Because it deals with CrunchBang, I'm using it as a portmanteau to also be today's Larry the CrunchBang Guy blog item. --LC]

This is how things are done in these parts: I don’t want to speak for him because I know my friend Don Parris has his own explanation for it (which he outlines on his blog here), but it appears that while building up his bash scripting skills, he noticed a certain finality to deleting filed in bash. So he wrote a script to keep the files around in case there’s an “oops-I-needed-that-file-after-all” moment.

So Don did what we do in these parts, this paradigm known as FOSS: He wrote his own script. Not only this, he put it under the GPL and put it out for the benefit of the wide world to use.

Is it something that will be widely adopted and catapult Don to a nomination for the Nobel? Probably not. But for those of us who would use it, it’s a pretty nifty tool, and my hat is off to Don and the Bash Trashman (which you can get at the link two paragraphs up, and note to Don: I sort of like Brash myself, but snicker uncontrollably at the thought of calling it Bashmaster, a la Bassmaster).

Because that’s how things are done here.

There’s a flip side to this coin, too: It’s when someone visits to a distro or a project and tells the community “Hey, you can do things better. Let me tell you how.”

I bring this up in the wake of a thread in the CrunchBang forums around what might — might — constitute improvements in that particular distribution. That’s reason number one. The second reason is that I’m guilty of this, too, and learned my lesson years ago.

While there is always room for improvement in anything, the changes the original poster suggests are things that are already found commonly in other distros and, arguably (as noted in the thread) CrunchBang’s strengths lie in what it “lacks” in the way of digital creature comforts as much as it lies in the great job Philip Newborough has done putting together an Openbox-based distro that’s fast on old hardware and lightning quick on the newer stuff.

You’ve heard me say this before, mantra-like, and I’m going to have this etched on my tombstone: Use whatever distro/FOSS program that works for you. This is one of those basic truths, like the inevitability of death and taxes and the inability to comprehend how gravity works, understanding the Wankel engine or the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To go to one community set in their ways and say, “You know, you’d be a lot more popular if $LIST_OF_REASONS” doesn’t fly because, in the constellation of the 320-something distros in the Linux/BSD universe, there’s a distro out there that will do exactly what you want it to do. As it should be. And if this one doesn’t do it for you and you’re not using one that does work for you — opting to try to change it to your tastes instead of changing yours to fit the distro — you’re falling into the trap outlined in that popular Southern expression: “Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.”

To his credit (and I’m assuming the original poster is a he), the original poster has stuck with CrunchBang and he seems to be working out some of the bugs he’s finding. Also, one of the things I hope he’s finding is that there is a wealth of knowledge and education a question away in the CrunchBang forums, which is a huge and positive testament to that particular community.

As an aside, I use CrunchBang regularly as my primary distro because a.) I like it and b.) it does what I need it to do across a wide range of hardware which, say it with me, means it suits my needs. The fact that it’s a community with a wide range of smart people is a perk.

Which is as it should be.

Filed under: bash, Bash Trashmaster, CrunchBang, Debian, Don Parris, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian

Alistair McKinlay: The problem with Game

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:53:09 +0000

This week, we have started to see the demise of Game, the UK computer game shop company. They own Game shops and Gamestation shops, as well as a bunch of websites. They were massive at one point. Everyone would buy from them. I’ve spent countless hours in those shops over the years pouring over the stuff they had in stock to see if I could get a bargain. But I never could. Well, that’s a lie, I could. But it was never great.

We have found out that Game are looking for a buyer as they are in serious financial trouble. So much so that EA and a number of other game’s companies have refused to supply them, the biggest title being Mass Effect 3. Game had none of this title in stock from launch till now. Today, after they said that they were in serious trouble, their stock price dropped 50% and is (as of market closing 12th March) sitting at £1.16. It dropped to a low of 85p today.

Some of us have expected this for a while. And when you go into the shops you can clearly see how they got into this mess. I saw a copy of Little Big Planet today, second-hand, not in original packaging, for £15. This is a game that is about 4 years old, and you can buy new on Amazon for less than £10.

So, this is clearly 1 of the reasons that they have gone down the pan. But it’s not the only one. This is specific to this one company, but there are reasons that I believe that the industry of physical game shops (with the exception of 1 chain) is on the way out. It may take a few years, Gamestop in America still has a lot of clout, but it’ll happen eventually.

I want a game. What shall I do? I have 4 choices:

Buy it from Amazon
Buy it from PS store/XBL/Steam
Buy it from a physical shop
Get it second-hand

Now let’s look at the pros and cons of each:

Amazon

Pros: Easy to buy, you don’t have to take the time to go to a physical shop, they don’t have to pay for high street buildings, so generally cheaper.

Cons: Don’t get to see the item in real life, have to get it delivered.

PS store/XBL/Steam

Pros: Easy to buy, you don’t have to take the time to go to a physical shop, they don’t have to pay for high street buildings, so generally cheaper.

Cons: Not always cheaper than Amazon, no physical media, no ability to resell.

Physical shop

Pros: Get to see it physically before you buy it, the community aspect.

Cons: Normally more expensive, time-consuming to get to and generally quite annoying.

Second hand

Pros: The price.

Cons: Well, its second-hand. Sometimes the DLC bundled with it is 1 time only.

Basically, what does a physical shop give you (apart from second-hand) that online and download-only can’t? The community aspect. But then, we are gamers. We don’t really like talking to people in real life. If we want to talk, we’ll do it on our respective social networks or gaming multiplayer networks.

For all intents and purposes, downloading games is the future. It isn’t the present, as it’s still annoying as we can’t resell them, they are sometimes more expensive than Amazon and we sometimes have rubbish internet connections. However, it is the future. And for that, physical shops don’t matter. Other than that, if you know what you want to buy, you know what you want to buy. Why would I want to see the case for a game I want to buy in real life before I buy it? I won’t, I’ll buy it off Amazon.

Now, we come to the type of physical shop that will survive for a while. Second hand game shops. I was in CEX today, and it was full of people. The prices were much lower than Game and Gamestation (even with their apparent fire sale) and there was just a great feeling in there. People love a bargain, and they love waiting a month and getting a second-hand game for £25 instead of £40 or £10 instead of £20, or whatever. It’s just a great feeling.

Basically…the reason Game is going to disappear (even if it gets bought over, it’ll disappear soon enough) is because there is no need for them anymore. The internet and dedication second-hand shops have replaced it, and the industry is just going to have to get used to it.

jargon: A shorter prompt

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:33:10 +0000

Linux users who work in the terminal a lot might often find themselves with overly long bash prompts, the deeper into their directory tree they get. I have this problem a lot and after searching around a bit, I managed to keep my bash prompt nice and short. Here is what it looks like now:

In the image you can see the prompt now shows only timestamp, username, hostname and current working directory. Home, in this case. And right above the prompt is the output of the pwd command, the current working directory: /home/dayo

I get an automatic pwd output after each cd.

This prompt will only show the current working directory, no matter how deep you go:

My home directory structure is very nested, so this shorter prompt is quite neat. I find this especially handy when delving into system related directories.

To get this shorter prompt, all you need to do is edit your ~/.bashrc file. If you want to make the shorter prompt available system-wide to all users, you will have to put the changes in /etc/bash.bashrc instead.

Append the following to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc or /etc/bash.bashrc:

# Shorter prompt

# ANSI color codes
#This is so you don’t have to write all that ANSI code over and over again.
#Now you can just use $FBLE to set foreground (text) to blue, instead of \[33[34m\].
RS=”\[33[0m\]” # reset
HC=”\[33[1m\]” # hicolor
UL=”\[33[4m\]” # underline
INV=”\[33[7m\]” # inverse background and foreground
FBLK=”\[33[30m\]” # foreground black
FRED=”\[33[31m\]” # foreground red
FGRN=”\[33[32m\]” # foreground green
FYEL=”\[33[33m\]” # foreground yellow
FBLE=”\[33[34m\]” # foreground blue
FMAG=”\[33[35m\]” # foreground magenta
FCYN=”\[33[36m\]” # foreground cyan
FWHT=”\[33[37m\]” # foreground white
BBLK=”\[33[40m\]” # background black
BRED=”\[33[41m\]” # background red
BGRN=”\[33[42m\]” # background green
BYEL=”\[33[43m\]” # background yellow
BBLE=”\[33[44m\]” # background blue
BMAG=”\[33[45m\]” # background magenta
BCYN=”\[33[46m\]” # background cyan
BWHT=”\[33[47m\]” # background white

PS1=”$HC$FBLE\t $HC$FYEL\u$HC$FGRN@$HC$FGRN\h$RS $HC$FWHT\W$HC$FWHT: \\\$ $RS”

As you can see, first in the lines before “PS1=..” (which defines the prompt) I defined a bunch of variables to make using ANSI colors easier. In the screenshots, you can see I have customized the colors of my prompt to match the colors of the Rwandan flag.

In the “PS1=…” line I have formatted the prompt to show only timestamp (\t), username (\u), hostname (\h) and basename of current working directory (\W). This way, any directory change will only ever show the basename of your current working directory, and not the whole long line of the absolute path. For more prompt options check the man pages for bash and search for the paragraph on “Prompting“.

To have pwd give an automatic output of your current directory after each cd, you need to add the following functions:

function dir(){
ls -alh;
printf “ %b%b%b\n” “$INV” “$PWD” “$RS”;
}

# Print current working directory after a cd.
cd() {
if [[ $@ == '-' ]]; then
builtin cd “$@” && dir > /dev/null # We’ll handle pwd.
else
builtin cd “$@” && dir
fi
}

Note: Don’t forget, to make your changes to ~/.bashrc or /etc/bash.bashrc effective you will need to save these files and then run exec bash at the command prompt.

That’s basically it. The other functions are things I use to make my work at the command line more efficient and enjoyable. Check out http://www.shell-fu.org/ for more such nifty functions. Edit as required and feel free to share your versions here.

Larry Cafiero: Whats that?

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:44:19 +0000

Among the plethora of things that have kept me busy the last week or so was preparing for and giving the SCALE Linux Beginners’ Class last Saturday at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport, the site for SCALE (and, if you’re prepared to mark your calendars, SCALE 11X will be the last weekend in February).

I had an interesting thing happen while giving the “History of Linux” presentation at the class. Well, two interesting things: The first is that I’ve never given a presentation using this new machine that I’m regularly using (the ZaReason Alto 3880), and when I plugged in and set up, I couldn’t see my screen on the laptop screen, but it projected fine on the projector. Navigating while doing this is sort of disconcerting, and I’ll look into why it did that (I have a feeling it’s something simple).

The second thing was that someone noticed that I was using something different — they were installing Fedora 16 — and after my presentation, which ended right at lunchtime, someone asked me, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” I asked, and when he pointed at the projector, I realized he was talking about CrunchBang.

So I got to talk a little about CrunchBang and introduce this new user to the distro and the concept of window managers like Openbox and how they work, et cetera. I just did it for as long as his eyes didn’t glaze over, but I think I may have planted a proverbial seed.

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

Larry Cafiero: Odds and ends . . .

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:38:54 +0000

. . . though I believe on the other side of the Atlantic, it’s odds and sods. After an incredibly busy fortnight which included a lot of FOSS and non-FOSS (as in “life”) occurrences, it’s time to get back on track here.

CrunchBang in the Pew: Several years ago, Don Parris wrote a book called, “Penguin in the Pew,” which is a book aimed at churches (though it could be for any nonprofit as well) and how they can use GNU/Linux to help save money and, of course, because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do. Don and I have been in contact over the years, mostly around his book, and yesterday morning he posted on Facebook this tidbit: “My first foray into virtual machines – running a live session of CrunchBang Linux in VirtualBox. Very cool indeed!” He went on to say later in the comments about CrunchBang: “I do like it. It’s very clean and simple. Or sparse, depending on your viewpoint. But it’s certainly well done.” Of course, we went on to blame me for suggesting he use it, but that’s another story for another time.

But wait, there’s more: Today, Don writes this. “Running CrunchBang and OpenSUSE Linux in VirtualBox on a laptop running Kubuntu Linux. For my non-computing friends, let’s just say this saves me having to buy more computers – I can run my own virtual enterprise right here at home! And yes, I could (if I had $200-$300 to spare) install Windows as well.”

Linux Fest Northwest: I’m still tying up the loose ends on the CrunchBang booth at Linux Fest Northwest. Currently, the personal debate is around whether to bring a CD/DVD burning machine (a small one) up with me or to burn all the media here at home — slated for 100 or so CDs (more, maybe?) and do the “loaves and fishes” trick with the laptop should we run out. That trick, which was invented in the Fedora booth at OSCON 2009 (or maybe 2008?), where we had run out of media and had folks either give us a blank CD or a USB stick.

I have an intro to CrunchBang talk slated, though I don’t know when that will be yet. Linux Fest Northwest is in Bellingham, Washington, USA, on the last weekend in April. If anyone is in the area and wants to volunteer for the booth — free admission is included for the volunteers — e-mail me at lcafiero-at-lavabit-dot-com.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Linux Fest Northwest, SCALE

jargon: Getting nitrogen to sort the image listing alphabetically

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:04:22 +0000

CrunchBang Linux (with the Openbox window manager) comes with a wallpaper browser and setter called nitrogen. I won’t go into any detail of how to use nitrogen, because I feel its menu is straightforward enough for even a beginner to use without any difficulty. Instead, what I want to talk about is how to use alphabetic sorting with nitrogen.

This is something that bugged me right away about nitrogen, by default when you launch it, the images are not sorted in any way useful to me. According to the nitrogen man pages:

By default, items are sorted as they are found on the filesystem, giving a quasi-newest first sorting order.

I always use one of two types of sorting when browsing files: modification time or alphabetic. In the case of wallpapers, I prefer to have nitrogen sort these alphabetically. And if you’re into that type of stuff too, here is how it’s done.

First, let’s see what nitrogen looks like without sorting. To do this, you need to launch nitrogen. In Openbox, simply right-click on the desktop and go to Settings and then click on Choose Wallpaper.

As you can see by the file names, the images listed by nitrogen are in no particular order, which can make it difficult for me to find wallpapers. And I usually end up scrolling up and down, looking for that right one….. I know it’s here somewhere…

Going back to the man pages, let’s see what it says about sorting:

$ man nitrogen

–sort=[option]
Sorts the background list by the given option. By default, items are sorted as they are found on the filesystem, giving a quasi-newest first sorting order. Valid options are:

alpha Alphabetical order.

ralpha Reverse alphabetical order.

time Modified time, ascending.

rtime Modified time, descending.

–sort=alpha /path/to/folder/containing wallpapers. Wonderful. Just what I was looking for.

Now that we know how to get nitrogen to alphabetically sort our wallpapers, we could open up a terminal and type (in my case):

$ nitrogen –sort=alpha ~/images/wallpapers

Please note those are two ‘-’. Not one. WordPress is making it look like it’s just one minus, and I don’t know how to change that.

Everytime we need to use nitrogen. Or to make things easier we could just put this in ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml so that everytime we launch nitrogen through the Openbox menu, the images are already alphabetically sorted.

Open menu.xml with your favourite text editor. Mine happens to be vim, but you could also use Geany, which also comes default with CrunchBang Linux since Statler R20111125.

$ vim ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml

menu.xml is the configuration while for the Openbox menu. You can find all the right-click menu entries in there and easily tweak them to your needs. Make sure you backup the file before every edit. That way, if you muck something up, you could always go back to a last known good config.

Find the line where the nitrogen menu entry is. At the time of writing this blog post it should look like this, by default. Look at the line where my cursor is:

And so we make the necessary changes to get nitrogen to always launch with alphabetic sorting. This means we add the –sort alpha option. Note that the path ~/images/wallpapers/ is the path to the folder where I save all my wallpapers. Make sure you have that set to the path where you save your wallpapers.

Save the menu.xml file and close it. In order for these menu changes to take effect, you will need to reconfigure Openbox. Right-click on the desktop and go to Settings, then to Openbox and click on Reconfigure.

So, if you launch nitrogen again, you will see that the images are now listed alphabetically, which I think is a much more usable approach. Now, if I could only get round to giving all my wallpapers descriptive file names, then this would be even more usable.

nitrogen sorted

Note: On my netbook (Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N450 @ 1.66GHz) launching nitrogen on a folder with lots of hi-resolution wallpapers tends to max out my CPU. The 50%-65% CPU usage by nitrogen tends to push the CPU all the way up to 100%. So, I try to be quick about it, in and out. Use at your own risk.

EDIT: As pointed out by Kris in the comments (3):

**IMPORTANT** -if you have nitrogen hotkeyed (i have mine set to W+n) you also need to add the “–sort=alpha [path]” line to the execute command in your rc.xml file as well as the menu.xml

Alistair McKinlay: We need to fix Linux

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:35:38 +0000

How do I change the name of a USB stick?
How do I mount an ISO?
How do I automatically mount a file server at boot?

If the answer to any of these questions starts with “Open a terminal”, that is a bug. A design bug. What some people might call a Human Computer Interaction bug. You may know how to use it, and I’m sure most people reading this blog will know exactly how to do these things. The first one would probably start with “open gparted”, but ya know what…that isn’t good enough. When a normal person wants to edit the name of a USB stick they look in the file manager, they right click on it and expect to be able to click on “rename”. As far as I know, that doesn’t work in anything. It definitely doesn’t work in nautilus (and therefore Gnome) and probably won’t work in KDE or similar. This is not good. This needs fixed.

Ubuntu calls these “papercuts”, and btw, this is a fantastic project in Ubuntu. And I know half of you have now gone “oh no, another Ubuntu-ism”. Well, I don’t care what you think about the name. The name isn’t the important thing. What is important is the concept. These are design issues that we need to solve, and they are not being solved in any way.

I think it stems from a fundamental problem with a lot of Linux users. You don’t want “normal” people on Linux. You are quite happy with having it all to yourselves. Well ya know what, if you really like choice like you say you do, we need to work on these problems. If you want normal people to take you seriously when we think about these things, these need sorted.

This is why I am calling for distributions and programs to take a cycle out from implementing new features. Ya know what, things happen so fast, we can afford for 6 months – 1 year to get rid of a lot of these issues. The main reason I think we should do it now? Windows 8 is going to be a big disaster. I can feel it. I can already feel the venom coming out of people about metro, and the fact that the desktop on Windows is probably going to be a second class citizen.

What are these people going to do? Are they going to continue using XP or 7? Well, some may continue to use 7, and a few will use XP (although hopefully that will decrease rapidly), but we need to offer an alternative. Some will go to osX, but what about the serious users who realise the need for change, but don’t want an operating system that doesn’t function like a traditional desktop in any way? They know osX is going that way as well. We need to be that other desktop. The choice we offer is huge and means there will always be a stable, functional, supported desktop that they will like in some way. But they won’t come if we have these horrible issues.

**EDIT** Some people seem to be missing the point. This is not about these specific issues, so please don’t give me solutions for them. The point is the overarching issue of design problems that we quite often ignore as geeks. **EDIT**

That is all I have to say now, apart from the fact that there are other issues with Linux. I hope to focus on some of them in the future, such as the stupid way some things are organised in the filesystem (just try and find that executable for that program please, or that specific library…oh its in /lib? /usr/lib? /usr/local/lib? /usr/share/lib? /usr/local/share/lib? …?????) and the pathetic attitudes of some people in the communities that give our great fantastic people a really bad name.

Larry Cafiero: High on the Alto 3880

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:58:44 +0000

[Blogger's note: This is today's Larry the Free Software Guy blog item, reprinted here because it talks about CrunchBang. --LC]

Those of you who know me know that I’m an old ThinkPad guy, in more ways than one. I myself am older than many of you reading this — well on my way to AARP membership status as I reach 55 this November — and the ThinkPads I use on a daily basis are themselves old, namely a T30 and an R40.

ThinkPads are painfully utilitarian, amazingly solid, and like the Model T Fords come in a wide variety of colors as long as you choose black. For these reasons, ThinkPads lend themselves to being the laptop of choice for many laptop users, mostly developers. To make them more attractive — for loss of a better word — many a ThinkPad is embellished with stickers on the cover, rivaling the best of the NASCAR field. Mine is no exception: My ThinkPad does its laps with EFF, SCALE 10X, Oregon State University Open Source Lab, Open Source for America, two Google Summer of Code, and No Starch Press stickers gracing the laptop cover.

So when ZaReason sent me an Alto 3880 to put through its paces, my first reaction was, “Wow. This is too nice to put stickers on.”

The Alto 3880′s cover is a very stylish silver and should be kept in its pristine form. A look around the laptop before opening it shows that ports are readily available on the sides — with monitor, ethernet and USB ports conveniently located on the left side instead of on the back. While many might find this a simple design, ThinkPad users would be thrilled to know that the oft-inconvenient ThinkPad reacharound to plug in USB cables or thumb drives is not necessary here. In giving it the once over before opening it, the Alto is light in one’s hands, but it still feels sturdy.

Opening the cover and pushing the on button reveals a screen with remarkable clarity contrasted on a black background and base. If you’re a regular ThinkPad user, the keyboard is different — flat keys at the same level — and takes getting used to. With heavy fingers like mine, the pounding I would normally offer the ThinkPad feels like I’m mercilessly pounding this keyboard and suggests some behavior modification. But ultimately the keyboard is tough enough to withstand it and after adjusting to the new keyboard — wider than the ThinkPad’s — it is easy to adapt to and to get accustomed to the additional real estate for your hands.

Performance wise, the Alto 3880 flies on the trio of distros I used on it, and without boring you with the minutiae, with one exception that turned out to be a software clash, the laptop performed without a hitch. With the 1366-by-768 resolution on a an remarkably clear 14-inch screen, the laptop would make a fine — no, make that an outstanding — replacement for my old ThinkPads.

I used three different distros on the Alto 3880, and each performed well, and each would make a fine choice for the person owning this laptop. The three contestants, for the sake of argument, are Linux Mint and Fedora — both which you can have preinstalled by ZaReason — and CrunchBang, which you can install on your own (until I convince ZaReason to make it a choice). However, as I understand it, if you request a different distro, ZaReason will install it. Or if you want no operating system, they’ll send it like that, too. Unlike other Linux hardware vendors, ZaReason offers a wide choice in this department.

But I digress. Here’s how the distros did:

Alto 3880 with Linux Mint: Originally, the laptop came to me with Linux Mint 12, which is the latest version of the distro with the GNOME 2.x-type desktop. The Alto 3880 did remarkably well with Linux Mint, which is growing on a lot of people (including me). Switching from MATE to GNOME to Cinnamon was a snap, and the performance was outstanding. In one instance on a busy morning where I forgot to plug in the laptop, I got just over four hours from the battery using multiple programs on Linux Mint.

Alto 3880 with Fedora 16: I’m waiting for the myth that Fedora is too “cutting edge” for the average user to go the way of the Studebaker and the hula hoop. It’s just that — a myth — and Fedora 16 runs circles around just about everything else on this machine. After installing Flash so one can — oh, I don’t know — participate in the wider Internet world, the distro and hardware handled everything I threw at it from a video and audio standpoint with aplomb.

Alto 3880 with CrunchBang Statler: The laptop has the horses, so to speak, to run the previous two desktop environments without breaking a sweat. So when faced with handling the Openbox window manager on CrunchBang, the distro soared. Also, the built-in camera worked flawlessly during a Google+ Hangout with the CrunchBang crew.

Alto 3880 strengths

Regardless of what distro is running on it, the Alto 3880 is remarkably versatile and handles a wide range of work without complaint. In fact, the only problem I had was helping my daughter solve what turned out to be a common GIMP and Banshee problem where the programs, both running simultaneously, weren’t playing nice with each other — clearly not a reflection on the hardware. The screen is very clear and handles high resolutions flawlessly, which is a benefit for those who want to do things like watch videos or do intricate graphics work (Note: My daughter Mimi will be writing her own review of this laptop as well). Across the distro board, the audio and video performance was outstanding, with the onboard speakers sounding good enough to forgo plugging in speakers in some cases (though the speakers sounded good, too, when used to watch DVDs). the laptop itself is lightweight but solid, and the design is top-notch — this is a beautiful laptop.

Needs improvement?

There is a lot to like on this laptop, but the one thing that took getting used to is the keyboard. Again, this might be just something for the personal preference folder, but the keyboard at first tends to feel a little light to the touch. Also, the mouse button, which is a single bar at the same level as the touchpad operating on a centered fulcrum (click the left side for the left mouse button, right side for the right) is hard to adjust to when coming from hardware where the buttons are raised. To be fair, it would be difficult to imagine that a ThinkPad-like keyboard would work, design wise, on a laptop like this.

A final look

I don’t have a rating system — stars, penguins, horseshoes, whatever — in place, but if I did I would rank the Alto 3880 very high; for the sake of argument, let’s say 4.5 penguins out of a perfect 5 penguins. Its combination of sleek design and high performance make this laptop one that would easily draw me away from the ranks of the ThinkPad users. The retail price for this machine is $599, which many of you might think is a little high compared to what you could get at Best Buy. But when you consider that when buying from a Linux hardware vendor, you’re not only getting a quality machine with a great OS, your purchase supports FOSS, for starters, by not putting another “sale” in Redmond’s tally. With its wide range of capabilities and performance, the Alto 3880 is a laptop I would be proud to own and, if Uncle Sam is generous with a tax return, would be glad to purchase.

Specs

Screen: 14-inch HD, 1366-by-768 Glossy LED Backlit Display
Processor: Pentium B940, 2 GHz, 2 core, 2 thread
Memory: 4GB DDR-3
Graphics card: Intel Integrated HD Graphics
Hard Drive: 250GB 5,400 RPM (NOTE: Tested with 400GB HD)
Optical Drive: Combo CD/DVD burner
Audio: Speakers above the keyboard for quality sound output
Wireless: 802.11 B/G/N WiFi included and Bluetooth
Reader: 3-in-1 card reader — SD/MMC/MS supported
Camera: 1.3 Megapixel webcam included
Ports: HDMI and VGA monitor ports; Gigabit Ethernet port; ensington lock port; Headphone and microphone jacks; three USB 2.0 ports
Operating System: Your choice from a variety of Linux distros, or no operating system
Battery: Six-cell battery, up to 5 hours
Weight: 4.5 pounds
Price: $599

Coming tomorrow: This . . . is . . . STRATA! A look at the ZaReason Strata 6880.

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

Larry Cafiero: A brief, albeit funny, exchange

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:21:13 +0000

After I dropped my daughter off yesterday for her chemistry class, I do what I normally do to kill the two hours until I pick her up again — go to the Firefly Cafe in Santa Cruz and have a cup of coffee in the biggest mug they have and catch up on work.

While at Firefly, I sat at a table across from a guy who I had not seen before, who had a laptop with a Creative Commons sticker on it. While I unpacked my Targus backpack we talked about what we were running on our laptops. Ubuntu, he said.

I reached into my backpack and as he said, “What about you?” The ThinkPad T30 that has been the mainstay of my computing experience for the last several years slipped out of my hand and, fumbling to catch it unsuccessfully, it went thunk on the floor.

Picking it up, I said, “CrunchBang.”

Hilarity ensued.

The laptop is fine, the coffee was good, and my daughter didn’t blow up anything in class. So overall it was a successful few hours.

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

CrunchBang Linux: CrunchBang 10 “Statler” R20120207+

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:44:36 +0000

New Statler images have been made available. The images have been built, in part, to address issues raised by users about the default use of backport packages in the previous builds.

To resolve these issues, the new Statler R20120207 images are available in stable and backport flavours. For further information and to discuss the new images, please see this forum thread.

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

corenominal: Legs

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:40:13 +0000

Last month, Mr Dark wrote:

Why have you turned #! into a server distro????
Debian Stable is the server version… (to be compared with centos)
Debian Testing however is the desktop version of Debian!
Please do yourself a favor and add “Testing” images back.. that way as many users wount leave you as they do now, and some might even move back!

Normally I would be happy to ignore such a comment, (it obviously came from a misguided person, or troll) however, it did get me thinking about how fantastic a release Debian Squeeze has been.

I have been using Squeeze, in one guise or another, on desktops and servers, for well over 18 months and it has been an absolute joy to use (I say “joy”, but to be honest, I am not sure that “joy” is the correct term. What is the correct term for something that stays out of the way and just works?)

I am so glad I made the decision to switch from using Ubuntu when I did. This last 18 months of using Debian has not only provided me with a solid OS on which to build, but it has also given me a better understanding of the advantages of using a release for more than 6 months at a time; something I am sure I would never have been able to achieve as an Ubuntu user. Now, before I get slated, I should point out that I am well aware that Ubuntu do provide a long term support release, but the thing is, as an Ubuntu user I always found the temptation to upgrade too much to resist (I point the finger of blame directly at the Ubuntu hype machine, not at my infallible self) :P

Anyhow, while I am looking forward to playing around with Debian Wheezy, the current Debian testing branch, I can foresee Squeeze and my #! Statler builds remaining on a couple of my boxes for a good while yet. IMHO, the release still has plenty of legs left in it, even if some people consider it only fit for servers. Troglodytes!

BTW, I updated the Statler images today :)

--
Tagged: crunchbang linux, debian

Larry Cafiero: Passing the test

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:37:12 +0000

In my capacity as the blogger commonly known as “Larry the Free Software Guy” (at least to those who like me; the others . . . ?), I get to test hardware from time to time to review. To be honest, I hate doing reviews because, when the last period is put into place and I push the “publish” button on WordPress, I get a barrage of “How can you like this . . .?” or “How could you not like that . . . ?” Ad nauseum.

But still, coming in the next few days to the Larry the Free Software Guy blog will be two reviews: one of ZaReason’s Alto 3880 laptop and the other a review of ZaReason’s Strata 6880. Spoiler alert: Though I had some minor issues with both of them which stem from personal preferences rather than technological shortcomings, both machines are top notch laptops well worth the price.

But I digress. What I wanted to mention here was that during the course of putting these laptops through their paces, I used Linux Mint, Fedora and, of course, CrunchBang. As far as the latter is concerned, CrunchBang soared on these laptops, and it’s quite heartening to see CrunchBang perform so well on brand new hardware (as opposed to the old hardware I’m used to using on a regular basis).

Looking at the disparity of hardware on which I use CrunchBang this particular week — the IBM ThinkPad T30 that accompanies me everywhere to these newer ZaReason laptops — it never fails to astound me that the range of hardware on which CrunchBang works is wide, and this flexibility is a testament to the great versatility that CrunchBang offers.

I will suggest to ZaReason that they include CrunchBang in their roster of distro options to be installed upon purchase. As it stands now, the options are Linux Mint, various ‘buntus, Fedora, “Tell us what you want,” or no distro installed.

Filed under: CrunchBang, Debian, LFNW, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox, ZaReason Tagged: CrunchBang, CrunchBang GNU/Linux, CrunchBang Linux, Debian, Linux Fest Northwest, Openbox, ZaReason

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: 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

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