Yep, I'm back again already. It turns out I made one little mistake when complaining about Gnome 3 Fallback.
You know I said there was no way to customise the panel, because the right-click menu for adding applets had gone?
Well, it does exist - it's just not discoverable. You have to hold Alt and click on the panel, or something along those lines.
But in discovering this, I've found something else - panel applets are now aligned as left, right or center - and you don't get to choose which.
Hmm. An undiscoverable means of customising the panel, and less choices for the applets? Seems to me like I just reported one bit of good news and two bits of bad.
I'm trialling Mate, the Gnome 2 fork, though. While there are a few bugs still in it, and the project is definitely in need of helping hands in nearly all forms, it does provide what it says it does; a fork of Gnome 2 that is functional. I hope someday through a community effort it reaches the point of becoming a well-maintained alternative to those who dislike Gnome 3 and Shell, like those who favour KDE 3.5 over 4.x still.
If you like what the Mate project is doing, help out - at the time of writing this, as far as I can tell it's a project with only one person involved. Help out, help de-bug Mate and bring Gnome 2 back to the masses.
And who knows, maybe, just maybe Mate will surpass Gnome 3/Shell for the point of one of the most used desktops, and people will talk about KDE, XFCE and Mate instead of KDE, XFCE and Gnome.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Gnome: A quick update
Recently discovered. For those of you who want Gnome2 back, this is the fork project I'm aware of - the Mate Desktop Environment, with it's homepage here:
http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate
And if you want to download it, read this page:
http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate/wiki/Download_Mate
Archlinux has packages in the AUR and a custom repo already, so people who want Gnome2 back on Arch can go grab it right away!
http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate
And if you want to download it, read this page:
http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate/wiki/Download_Mate
Archlinux has packages in the AUR and a custom repo already, so people who want Gnome2 back on Arch can go grab it right away!
Gnomes and Themes
Some time back I trialled the Gnome Shell. To say the least, my views on it were not complimentary.
However, since Arch Linux has become my new current distro and it has Gnome 3 and by extension Shell in the repositories in favour of Gnome 2, and because this is a different system entirely from the one I originally trialled the Shell on, I thought maybe it was time to give it a second chance.
I thought that maybe since it had become a production and stable release of Gnome, there had to be some improvements, right?
Well, I'll concede the 'some' point of it. Improvement... that's questionable.
Let's start with Pulseaudio, now apparently a requirement for Gnome. Many, if not most distros, have told us this is so for a while now, but Arch had made it clear that it was optional in Gnome 2, but required for Gnome 3.
I do not like Pulseaudio. Perhaps it's just me, but sound quality seems to be lost, all sounds have a lag between when they're meant to happen and when you hear them, and I've always found it hogs system resources. What can it offer me that I'm going to use, and that ALSA can't handle? Nothing at all. ALSA has served me well and never once given me any trouble.
But this can be solved by installing 'gnome-settings-daemon-nopulse' from the AUR, which, as the name suggests, removes the Pulseaudio dependency. True, this also breaks the Gnome Shell's volume control, but I don't see that as any great loss - I never used any applets to control my volume anyway, since I have buttons on my keyboard that are set up to handle it already.
Next we have the Shell itself. With the addition of the Gnome Tweak Tool to ease some of the settings that should really have been made available with the Shell, and not as a separate package, it becomes slightly more usable. Since my original trial of it, improvements have been made to the performance of the Shell, and it runs much smoother than it did back then. However, I cannot change the panels, I have no way to edit the menu, no way to edit what gets shown where - I'm almost completely stuck with the basic layout and settings that Gnome has decided for me.
This is not good. This suggests a very Mac-like 'You will do it our way, you will never need to do it any other way' kind of philosophy which I detest. Don't hide options from your users - give them the choice. Don't hide it away in separate applications. Gnome 2 made nearly all of it's customization through the Gnome Appearance Properties, which came with Gnome Control Centre and was a requirement on almost every Gnome install I ever did. Shell does not offer the same.
Furthermore, the Shell is not intuitive, not helpful and is far from good at removing the clutter and such that it claims to, in fact making it far more difficult to use my computer than anything else I've ever run on here. And I've tried a lot of Window Managers of late. The Shell does not even merit consideration for inclusion in the top choices, let alone the secondary fall-back choices.
And lastly, we have GTK3.
GTK2 themes could be applied by almost any application. LXAppearance was perfect for handling it when not running Gnome. You didn't even need that sometimes, just create yourself a file in the right place with the right settings in, and it'll get picked up by all GTK2 apps that run after that.
But GTK3 doesn't do it like that. GTK3 settings, it seems, can only be applied by Gnome Tweak Tool, and only picked up on by any GTK3 apps if the Gnome Settings Daemon is running to tell them so. Without it, no GTK3 themes get applied or even noticed. They won't inherit a GTK2 theme, but they'll inherit the mouse and icon themes. So if you don't run Gnome or it's overweight Settings Daemon in whatever WM or DE you're running that isn't Gnome, they'll be with that all-too familiar blocky, ugly grey. And no amount of tweaking will change that.
Now, it's known that you can, once more through the Gnome Tweak Tool, force your session to default to 'fallback' mode. Which is meant to be Gnome Classic, or Gnome 2.
Oh, no it isn't.
You can't customize the panels for a start. No more panel applets for Gnome, just what they give you, again with the Mac-like philosophy of our way or no way. Once more, the Pulseaudio raised it's head, but as before, the keyboard keys offered salvation.
Like the Shell, you have to use the Gnome Tweak Tool to set the GTK theme and such. Why is this not included by default with Gnome? Do not want your users to be able to customize what it looks like? What is this, emulate Windows with it's one panel only, no icon theme changes without too much work, just the mouse, desktop wallpaper and very minimal changes even in Winodws 7?
Gnome is removing far too much choice from it's DE like this, removing too many things that made it such a widely liked DE on Gnome 2. I applaud the efforts of those who are taking a leaf from the KDE Trinity project, which forked KDE 3.5, and are forking Gnome 2 so those who truly want it back instead of the cheap rip-off that Fallback is can still use it. As soon as packages are made for Arch Linux, I will waste no time in getting them.
Give me Good Old Gnome 2 and GTK2 any day. Gnome Shell, Gnome 3 and GTK3 are just monsters that but for those who for whatever unfathomable reason like them, we would be better off without by a considerable deal. I maintain that they along with Ubuntu Unity are the biggest disgraces ever to be called a desktop.
However, since Arch Linux has become my new current distro and it has Gnome 3 and by extension Shell in the repositories in favour of Gnome 2, and because this is a different system entirely from the one I originally trialled the Shell on, I thought maybe it was time to give it a second chance.
I thought that maybe since it had become a production and stable release of Gnome, there had to be some improvements, right?
Well, I'll concede the 'some' point of it. Improvement... that's questionable.
Let's start with Pulseaudio, now apparently a requirement for Gnome. Many, if not most distros, have told us this is so for a while now, but Arch had made it clear that it was optional in Gnome 2, but required for Gnome 3.
I do not like Pulseaudio. Perhaps it's just me, but sound quality seems to be lost, all sounds have a lag between when they're meant to happen and when you hear them, and I've always found it hogs system resources. What can it offer me that I'm going to use, and that ALSA can't handle? Nothing at all. ALSA has served me well and never once given me any trouble.
But this can be solved by installing 'gnome-settings-daemon-nopulse' from the AUR, which, as the name suggests, removes the Pulseaudio dependency. True, this also breaks the Gnome Shell's volume control, but I don't see that as any great loss - I never used any applets to control my volume anyway, since I have buttons on my keyboard that are set up to handle it already.
Next we have the Shell itself. With the addition of the Gnome Tweak Tool to ease some of the settings that should really have been made available with the Shell, and not as a separate package, it becomes slightly more usable. Since my original trial of it, improvements have been made to the performance of the Shell, and it runs much smoother than it did back then. However, I cannot change the panels, I have no way to edit the menu, no way to edit what gets shown where - I'm almost completely stuck with the basic layout and settings that Gnome has decided for me.
This is not good. This suggests a very Mac-like 'You will do it our way, you will never need to do it any other way' kind of philosophy which I detest. Don't hide options from your users - give them the choice. Don't hide it away in separate applications. Gnome 2 made nearly all of it's customization through the Gnome Appearance Properties, which came with Gnome Control Centre and was a requirement on almost every Gnome install I ever did. Shell does not offer the same.
Furthermore, the Shell is not intuitive, not helpful and is far from good at removing the clutter and such that it claims to, in fact making it far more difficult to use my computer than anything else I've ever run on here. And I've tried a lot of Window Managers of late. The Shell does not even merit consideration for inclusion in the top choices, let alone the secondary fall-back choices.
And lastly, we have GTK3.
GTK2 themes could be applied by almost any application. LXAppearance was perfect for handling it when not running Gnome. You didn't even need that sometimes, just create yourself a file in the right place with the right settings in, and it'll get picked up by all GTK2 apps that run after that.
But GTK3 doesn't do it like that. GTK3 settings, it seems, can only be applied by Gnome Tweak Tool, and only picked up on by any GTK3 apps if the Gnome Settings Daemon is running to tell them so. Without it, no GTK3 themes get applied or even noticed. They won't inherit a GTK2 theme, but they'll inherit the mouse and icon themes. So if you don't run Gnome or it's overweight Settings Daemon in whatever WM or DE you're running that isn't Gnome, they'll be with that all-too familiar blocky, ugly grey. And no amount of tweaking will change that.
Now, it's known that you can, once more through the Gnome Tweak Tool, force your session to default to 'fallback' mode. Which is meant to be Gnome Classic, or Gnome 2.
Oh, no it isn't.
You can't customize the panels for a start. No more panel applets for Gnome, just what they give you, again with the Mac-like philosophy of our way or no way. Once more, the Pulseaudio raised it's head, but as before, the keyboard keys offered salvation.
Like the Shell, you have to use the Gnome Tweak Tool to set the GTK theme and such. Why is this not included by default with Gnome? Do not want your users to be able to customize what it looks like? What is this, emulate Windows with it's one panel only, no icon theme changes without too much work, just the mouse, desktop wallpaper and very minimal changes even in Winodws 7?
Gnome is removing far too much choice from it's DE like this, removing too many things that made it such a widely liked DE on Gnome 2. I applaud the efforts of those who are taking a leaf from the KDE Trinity project, which forked KDE 3.5, and are forking Gnome 2 so those who truly want it back instead of the cheap rip-off that Fallback is can still use it. As soon as packages are made for Arch Linux, I will waste no time in getting them.
Give me Good Old Gnome 2 and GTK2 any day. Gnome Shell, Gnome 3 and GTK3 are just monsters that but for those who for whatever unfathomable reason like them, we would be better off without by a considerable deal. I maintain that they along with Ubuntu Unity are the biggest disgraces ever to be called a desktop.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Moving off again
As so often happens with any box, little niggles crop up, gremlins find their way in and leave bugs strewn all over the system. We try our best to oust these pests, but sometimes they win.
This is such a case. Gentoo has it's good points, no one can deny that. The USE flags allow for instant removing or adding of functionality, compile-time optimizations result in a snappier system - but as time's gone past, I've found that it starts to become difficult to maintain.
So though it has served me well, and as always I've learned a great deal, I feel it's time I moved off it and began the search for a new distro candidate once more.
Some time back, I would have defaulted back to Ubuntu for a time until I found another one that caught my interest. However, with what I see as the stupid choices to go with Gnome 3, Gnome Shell and Ubuntu Unity, three of the biggest unmitigated failures I've ever seen disgrace a desktop, this is no longer an option. And that's not to mention the simple fact that I dislike Canonical's habit of hiding away things to make things easier for the users.
On Gentoo as it is right now, I've gone and nicked parts of Crunchbang to give me a nice Openbox desktop, and I like the minimal yet functional set up it gives me. Conky delivers what I want to know easily and tint2 provides a nice panel which neatly integrates running apps, the systray and a built-in battery monitor.
But the issue with Crunchbang is that they only offer torrent downloads, which are not a favourable method of downloading anything on my home network for many reasons.
Most of what it offers is easily obtainable in any distribution though, if one takes care to examine their wiki to obtain various config files.
Crunchbang is based on Debian, one of the oldest and most venerable distros out there. There's little it hasn't tried to do, and even less it's failed at. A great many distributions can be traced back to it eventually, though most through Ubuntu.
Debian is also an old friend to me, and somewhat of a frequent curiosity. Within it's vast repositories of packages lies nearly everything and anything one could ask for, and unlike Ubuntu it doesn't seem to want, need, or care much for third-party repositories. Certainly they exist, but seldom have I found reason to use more than a few.
But one of the most attractive features about Debian as I've discovered time and again is that it remains stable - nearly always with complete disregard to whatever you may be trying to do.
So where Ubuntu has made bad choices in desktops, and K/X/Lubuntu hardly seem to be much better most of the time, Debian takes over. Until I find another Distro out there that piques my curiosity, it's time for me to move back to the tried and tested, and get a stable system that doesn't take forever to set up and get configured.
If you have any non-Ubuntu based suggestions for other Distros to try, do feel free to suggest them.
Until next time folks.
This is such a case. Gentoo has it's good points, no one can deny that. The USE flags allow for instant removing or adding of functionality, compile-time optimizations result in a snappier system - but as time's gone past, I've found that it starts to become difficult to maintain.
So though it has served me well, and as always I've learned a great deal, I feel it's time I moved off it and began the search for a new distro candidate once more.
Some time back, I would have defaulted back to Ubuntu for a time until I found another one that caught my interest. However, with what I see as the stupid choices to go with Gnome 3, Gnome Shell and Ubuntu Unity, three of the biggest unmitigated failures I've ever seen disgrace a desktop, this is no longer an option. And that's not to mention the simple fact that I dislike Canonical's habit of hiding away things to make things easier for the users.
On Gentoo as it is right now, I've gone and nicked parts of Crunchbang to give me a nice Openbox desktop, and I like the minimal yet functional set up it gives me. Conky delivers what I want to know easily and tint2 provides a nice panel which neatly integrates running apps, the systray and a built-in battery monitor.
But the issue with Crunchbang is that they only offer torrent downloads, which are not a favourable method of downloading anything on my home network for many reasons.
Most of what it offers is easily obtainable in any distribution though, if one takes care to examine their wiki to obtain various config files.
Crunchbang is based on Debian, one of the oldest and most venerable distros out there. There's little it hasn't tried to do, and even less it's failed at. A great many distributions can be traced back to it eventually, though most through Ubuntu.
Debian is also an old friend to me, and somewhat of a frequent curiosity. Within it's vast repositories of packages lies nearly everything and anything one could ask for, and unlike Ubuntu it doesn't seem to want, need, or care much for third-party repositories. Certainly they exist, but seldom have I found reason to use more than a few.
But one of the most attractive features about Debian as I've discovered time and again is that it remains stable - nearly always with complete disregard to whatever you may be trying to do.
So where Ubuntu has made bad choices in desktops, and K/X/Lubuntu hardly seem to be much better most of the time, Debian takes over. Until I find another Distro out there that piques my curiosity, it's time for me to move back to the tried and tested, and get a stable system that doesn't take forever to set up and get configured.
If you have any non-Ubuntu based suggestions for other Distros to try, do feel free to suggest them.
Until next time folks.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Mix it up or stick to one?
Obviously, I'm on about desktops again. This time it's not anything specific as such though.
One of the best points I've always held about Linux is that immense amount of choices you have - this Window Manager over that one, the text editor from there instead of there, and so on.
It could be said that in places there is too much choice, and that the overwhelming number tends to be, well, overwhelming. But that's a topic for another time.
Like anyone else, I like thing to work my way. This means that while I'm now running a KDE4 desktop - which hasn't managed to disappoint me yet, a fair feat given past experience with this troublesome DE - not all my apps are KDE, or even QT based.
For example, while I'm running KWin as the window manager, the effects don't seem to want to stay on, even if all I want is the compositing. And of course, even if I can get that to work, the moment I start to use Portage, it disables them again because the compiling uses too much resources.
Compare this to Metacity with it's own built in compositor. It only disables itself if you tell it to, and doesn't get in the way at all. On the other hand, there's no standalone application to set the window border without pulling in a lot of Gnome.
Now, while KDE offers the option to use another Window Manager instead of KWin, besides having to remember how to set themes for that Window Manager, it also isn't going to integrate well.
The solution? I'm running KWin, with effects disabled and using 'xcompmgr' to give me Metacity-like compositing that doesn't turn itself off, though I have a handy plasmoid that looks like a little switch. Turning it on starts up xcompmgr, and turning it off kills it. There's a similar plasmoid available on kde-look.org that does this for KWin's own, but this one can be customized to do anything really.
Problem solved.
The programs I use also tend to be similar. Chromium is a GTK+ based application, as is GEdit, but both of them have a few things about them that I like and want to keep.
Konqueror has, rather impressively, managed to overcome both Chromium and Firefox as the default web browser (and file manager too, an invaluable feature for me) but I keep Chromium around because sometimes it does have it's little issues.
Similarly, while Kate and KWrite are decent applications too and also have their good points, GEdit is a long time friend of mine - it's familiar, I know it, and I know how to make it do what I want.
Some people say this is wrong, and one should stick to apps from one single toolkit, but with GTK+, QT, and ETK (Enlightenment, in case you're wondering) not to mention any other toolkits I've not noticed and of course anything running through Wine, you're never going to be able to get one single unified toolkit. There'll always be people who like applications for one toolkit, while running a desktop for another.
So in short, don't feel that because you're running one desktop, you can't choose applications from another toolkit. They may not look right, and sometimes they may need a little work to make them play nice. My workaround to compositing proves that.
But never be put off doing it - mix things up, go with what you want regardless of what others suggest.
In slightly unrelated news, has anyone ever managed to get KDE 4.7.x to emerge successfully on Gentoo? It doesn't seem to want to play nice with me. Not that I have any problems with the 4.6.5 I've got now, except a periodically segfaulting Konqueror, but I feel like giving it a try.
Right, that's all. Keep rocking, people.
One of the best points I've always held about Linux is that immense amount of choices you have - this Window Manager over that one, the text editor from there instead of there, and so on.
It could be said that in places there is too much choice, and that the overwhelming number tends to be, well, overwhelming. But that's a topic for another time.
Like anyone else, I like thing to work my way. This means that while I'm now running a KDE4 desktop - which hasn't managed to disappoint me yet, a fair feat given past experience with this troublesome DE - not all my apps are KDE, or even QT based.
For example, while I'm running KWin as the window manager, the effects don't seem to want to stay on, even if all I want is the compositing. And of course, even if I can get that to work, the moment I start to use Portage, it disables them again because the compiling uses too much resources.
Compare this to Metacity with it's own built in compositor. It only disables itself if you tell it to, and doesn't get in the way at all. On the other hand, there's no standalone application to set the window border without pulling in a lot of Gnome.
Now, while KDE offers the option to use another Window Manager instead of KWin, besides having to remember how to set themes for that Window Manager, it also isn't going to integrate well.
The solution? I'm running KWin, with effects disabled and using 'xcompmgr' to give me Metacity-like compositing that doesn't turn itself off, though I have a handy plasmoid that looks like a little switch. Turning it on starts up xcompmgr, and turning it off kills it. There's a similar plasmoid available on kde-look.org that does this for KWin's own, but this one can be customized to do anything really.
Problem solved.
The programs I use also tend to be similar. Chromium is a GTK+ based application, as is GEdit, but both of them have a few things about them that I like and want to keep.
Konqueror has, rather impressively, managed to overcome both Chromium and Firefox as the default web browser (and file manager too, an invaluable feature for me) but I keep Chromium around because sometimes it does have it's little issues.
Similarly, while Kate and KWrite are decent applications too and also have their good points, GEdit is a long time friend of mine - it's familiar, I know it, and I know how to make it do what I want.
Some people say this is wrong, and one should stick to apps from one single toolkit, but with GTK+, QT, and ETK (Enlightenment, in case you're wondering) not to mention any other toolkits I've not noticed and of course anything running through Wine, you're never going to be able to get one single unified toolkit. There'll always be people who like applications for one toolkit, while running a desktop for another.
So in short, don't feel that because you're running one desktop, you can't choose applications from another toolkit. They may not look right, and sometimes they may need a little work to make them play nice. My workaround to compositing proves that.
But never be put off doing it - mix things up, go with what you want regardless of what others suggest.
In slightly unrelated news, has anyone ever managed to get KDE 4.7.x to emerge successfully on Gentoo? It doesn't seem to want to play nice with me. Not that I have any problems with the 4.6.5 I've got now, except a periodically segfaulting Konqueror, but I feel like giving it a try.
Right, that's all. Keep rocking, people.
Friday, 22 July 2011
When giving it a Bash just doesn't cut it
Or what's in a Shell?
Bash is pretty much the de facto standard shell everyone sees whenever they open up a terminal. I can't say for BSD, Solaris or Mac systems, but on every Linux based system I've ever used, and even on Cygwin/MinGW on Windows, the Bash shell is the default.
Bash has and still does serve many people well. It's extendible with the bash-completion options, adding lines to the right files it sources can be quite powerful. Even the prompt itself can be customised a great deal.
But there comes a time for nearly every app on any system where the user will inevitably ask that question: 'Is there anything better out there?'
Of course 'better' is a matter of perspective. Some say KDE is better than Gnome. Some say the spartan desktops provided by just a simple tiling window manager are better than a fully fledge desktop session.
But the only real way to tell if something is better in your own opinion is of course to try it yourself.
Now, the Bash shell is something that like many people I rarely actually think about. I think in terms of the terminal itself - right on the console with no X session, within Terminator or a Gnome Terminal, maybe even xterm when all else fails for whatever reason. But essentially all they are is a way to give you your selected Shell - Bash.
Over time though, and through periodic trawls through package listings when bored, I keep noticing other shells. ksh, dash and zsh to name but a few.
Zsh is the only alternative I've tried yet, and after a little experimenting with it, its quickly become the default shell for me. I find it's even more powerful than Bash, without losing any functionality at all. The completion in Zsh can be autoloaded and is much better than in Bash.
Small annoyances such as forgetting to type 'cd' when moving around directories are easily resolved with a simple command. Type a directory, and it can be told to act as if you'd prepended it with 'cd'.
Often find yourself mistakenly typing suod instead of sudo, or other such similar mistakes? There's a little command that'll make zsh prompt and ask if you want it to auto-correct it for you.
There are two caveats though.
Firstly, if zsh can't find and .zshrc in your home folder, it'll assume you've never run it and go through a sometimes bemusing first-run wizard. Which is useful in it's way, but you're better of creating the file yourself and running around the Internet looking at the great many guides and pages on it - or of course, read the man pages on it. I'm not going to list all the pages here, but two that you should definitely look at are the Arch Linux wiki page, and the Gentoo Wiki page (Note that the latter is not linked to from gentoo.org - go to en.gentoo-wiki.org instead)
And Secondly, it doesn't always act the same way as Bash. For example, Home and End do not move to the start or end of the line you're entering. I've yet to find a fix for this, but it's only a minor annoyance for now.
These are just my initial impressions of it. I've barely been using it for an hour, but it's impressed me, and I'm sticking with it for now. As for you, as said earlier - the only way you'll be able to tell if it's better for you is to try it yourself.
That's all from me. Keep on rocking, people.
Bash is pretty much the de facto standard shell everyone sees whenever they open up a terminal. I can't say for BSD, Solaris or Mac systems, but on every Linux based system I've ever used, and even on Cygwin/MinGW on Windows, the Bash shell is the default.
Bash has and still does serve many people well. It's extendible with the bash-completion options, adding lines to the right files it sources can be quite powerful. Even the prompt itself can be customised a great deal.
But there comes a time for nearly every app on any system where the user will inevitably ask that question: 'Is there anything better out there?'
Of course 'better' is a matter of perspective. Some say KDE is better than Gnome. Some say the spartan desktops provided by just a simple tiling window manager are better than a fully fledge desktop session.
But the only real way to tell if something is better in your own opinion is of course to try it yourself.
Now, the Bash shell is something that like many people I rarely actually think about. I think in terms of the terminal itself - right on the console with no X session, within Terminator or a Gnome Terminal, maybe even xterm when all else fails for whatever reason. But essentially all they are is a way to give you your selected Shell - Bash.
Over time though, and through periodic trawls through package listings when bored, I keep noticing other shells. ksh, dash and zsh to name but a few.
Zsh is the only alternative I've tried yet, and after a little experimenting with it, its quickly become the default shell for me. I find it's even more powerful than Bash, without losing any functionality at all. The completion in Zsh can be autoloaded and is much better than in Bash.
Small annoyances such as forgetting to type 'cd' when moving around directories are easily resolved with a simple command. Type a directory, and it can be told to act as if you'd prepended it with 'cd'.
Often find yourself mistakenly typing suod instead of sudo, or other such similar mistakes? There's a little command that'll make zsh prompt and ask if you want it to auto-correct it for you.
There are two caveats though.
Firstly, if zsh can't find and .zshrc in your home folder, it'll assume you've never run it and go through a sometimes bemusing first-run wizard. Which is useful in it's way, but you're better of creating the file yourself and running around the Internet looking at the great many guides and pages on it - or of course, read the man pages on it. I'm not going to list all the pages here, but two that you should definitely look at are the Arch Linux wiki page, and the Gentoo Wiki page (Note that the latter is not linked to from gentoo.org - go to en.gentoo-wiki.org instead)
And Secondly, it doesn't always act the same way as Bash. For example, Home and End do not move to the start or end of the line you're entering. I've yet to find a fix for this, but it's only a minor annoyance for now.
These are just my initial impressions of it. I've barely been using it for an hour, but it's impressed me, and I'm sticking with it for now. As for you, as said earlier - the only way you'll be able to tell if it's better for you is to try it yourself.
That's all from me. Keep on rocking, people.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Office Suites
One of the main reasons I like Linux distros over Windows is because of how much software they come with out of the box - or at least, easily available. No hunting around for things, just ask the package manager.
But even the package managers have to admit defeat sometimes, and it seems that alternative Office Suites are one of those areas.
As far as I can tell, there are four main options: OpenOffice, LibreOffice, GOffice and KOffice.
The first two are well known enough. Both have pretty good track records, though OO.o may soon be heading away from that thanks to Apache.
GOffice isn't so much a suite as it is a collection of apps that give you most of it, but the down-side is that Abiword and Gnumeric can't always open documents not saved in their own formats - and the OpenDocument formats Libre/OpenOffice uses are the biggest casualty here, as I've yet to make them open one without getting a stream of garbage data.
KOffice on the other hand is a fair competitor to Open and Libre, and as its name suggests is designed to work with KDE. Which kind of makes it not so helpful for those of us who don't run KDE, or want to pull in half the dependencies just to work on our documents.
However, since my Gentoo install has begun to throw up unusual errors when trying to run LibreOffice, errors that refuse to be solved by rebuilding, removing all trace from the home directory and even starting on a fresh user, I'm at a bit of a loss. KOffice seems like overkill for a Gnome-based and mostly lightweight desktop, and as OpenOffice is doing the same as LibreOffice, it too is counted out.
GOffice as mentioned has trouble with the OpenDocument formats, which most of my work is, rather inconveniently, saved in.
This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma, since no one seems to be able to give even the slightest hint on the LIbreOffice errors (if you're curious, look here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/gentoo-87/libreoffice-exits-immediately-after-starting-890419/) I can't work on my work.
For now I've got a temporary stop-gap measure by using the Windows LibreOffice through Wine, but it's far from perfect.
So does anyone happen to know of any LibreOffice-compatibile word processing apps out there?
But even the package managers have to admit defeat sometimes, and it seems that alternative Office Suites are one of those areas.
As far as I can tell, there are four main options: OpenOffice, LibreOffice, GOffice and KOffice.
The first two are well known enough. Both have pretty good track records, though OO.o may soon be heading away from that thanks to Apache.
GOffice isn't so much a suite as it is a collection of apps that give you most of it, but the down-side is that Abiword and Gnumeric can't always open documents not saved in their own formats - and the OpenDocument formats Libre/OpenOffice uses are the biggest casualty here, as I've yet to make them open one without getting a stream of garbage data.
KOffice on the other hand is a fair competitor to Open and Libre, and as its name suggests is designed to work with KDE. Which kind of makes it not so helpful for those of us who don't run KDE, or want to pull in half the dependencies just to work on our documents.
However, since my Gentoo install has begun to throw up unusual errors when trying to run LibreOffice, errors that refuse to be solved by rebuilding, removing all trace from the home directory and even starting on a fresh user, I'm at a bit of a loss. KOffice seems like overkill for a Gnome-based and mostly lightweight desktop, and as OpenOffice is doing the same as LibreOffice, it too is counted out.
GOffice as mentioned has trouble with the OpenDocument formats, which most of my work is, rather inconveniently, saved in.
This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma, since no one seems to be able to give even the slightest hint on the LIbreOffice errors (if you're curious, look here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/gentoo-87/libreoffice-exits-immediately-after-starting-890419/) I can't work on my work.
For now I've got a temporary stop-gap measure by using the Windows LibreOffice through Wine, but it's far from perfect.
So does anyone happen to know of any LibreOffice-compatibile word processing apps out there?
Friday, 1 July 2011
USE flags and Updates
For once, something that at first seems like a regular annoyance has turned out to be an interesting habit.
I had originally decided not to customise the USE flags on my Gentoo install too much, preferring instead to modify them only where I felt necessary. After a bit of a delve into the details though, I've decided the reverse is true.
It's quite an interesting ability, being able to disable or enable support for something so easily, rather than having to dig into the configure-time details to see if things can be changed thus.
What's more, where I used to think I'd chafe at the time spent compiling periodic updates, I've found that properly set up, Gentoo is quite happy to update, or rebuild a large number of packages with new use flags or even both, without getting in the way too much. Maybe updates do take a little longer, but with the massive flexibility given, it's well worth it.
The only complaint I have is that there's no easy way to figure out what packages aren't needed any longer - you know the kind, they were pulled in as a dependency, but aren't needed any more? I used to regularly tidy up the system of such packages, but I can't seem to find any easy way to do that on Gentoo. At least not yet.
But overall... I don't think I'm going to be leaving the comfort of Gentoo anytime soon.
I had originally decided not to customise the USE flags on my Gentoo install too much, preferring instead to modify them only where I felt necessary. After a bit of a delve into the details though, I've decided the reverse is true.
It's quite an interesting ability, being able to disable or enable support for something so easily, rather than having to dig into the configure-time details to see if things can be changed thus.
What's more, where I used to think I'd chafe at the time spent compiling periodic updates, I've found that properly set up, Gentoo is quite happy to update, or rebuild a large number of packages with new use flags or even both, without getting in the way too much. Maybe updates do take a little longer, but with the massive flexibility given, it's well worth it.
The only complaint I have is that there's no easy way to figure out what packages aren't needed any longer - you know the kind, they were pulled in as a dependency, but aren't needed any more? I used to regularly tidy up the system of such packages, but I can't seem to find any easy way to do that on Gentoo. At least not yet.
But overall... I don't think I'm going to be leaving the comfort of Gentoo anytime soon.
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Gentoo: AKA Time Well Spent
Eight days ago, I started installing Gentoo Linux on my laptop.
Three days later, I had a working Gnome Desktop.
And now, after much patience, it's finished. Who'd have thought I'd finally get around to doing this?
Not me, if you'd asked me when I first understood what Gentoo was about.
There's still the odd little thing now and then, but they're now restricted to my making spelling error when trying to use Portage. The graphic frontends aren't entirely perfect, but they're good at what they do, and I'm getting to grips with how the whole thing works.
I've even managed to get some apps working that never worked for me before.
The biggest bother for me though is lib* updates - more often than not, this results in a lot of packages that depended on the old version needing to be rebuilt - but with the handy command of 'revdep-rebuild', even this is no problem.
I like Gentoo. It's a bit of a hassle to get up and running, especially if you're a stranger to configuring your own kernel (Which I cheat on and use genkernel with a few tweaks), but in the end I think it's worth it.
Not one for those without much patience though, that's for sure - especially if you decide to compile Firefox, Xulrunner, Wine or LibreOffice from source. These do take time. LibreOffice's ebuild helpfully says that it could take 'up to a day' depending on system speed. I found this to be a little inaccurate, taking this laptop a little over six hours - but even so, this is a bit of a wait.
Right, I'm done for now. Expect Gentoo-related posts whenever I remember I have a blog again unless something manages to push me off it. Which isn't likely.
Rock on.
Three days later, I had a working Gnome Desktop.
And now, after much patience, it's finished. Who'd have thought I'd finally get around to doing this?
Not me, if you'd asked me when I first understood what Gentoo was about.
There's still the odd little thing now and then, but they're now restricted to my making spelling error when trying to use Portage. The graphic frontends aren't entirely perfect, but they're good at what they do, and I'm getting to grips with how the whole thing works.
I've even managed to get some apps working that never worked for me before.
The biggest bother for me though is lib* updates - more often than not, this results in a lot of packages that depended on the old version needing to be rebuilt - but with the handy command of 'revdep-rebuild', even this is no problem.
I like Gentoo. It's a bit of a hassle to get up and running, especially if you're a stranger to configuring your own kernel (Which I cheat on and use genkernel with a few tweaks), but in the end I think it's worth it.
Not one for those without much patience though, that's for sure - especially if you decide to compile Firefox, Xulrunner, Wine or LibreOffice from source. These do take time. LibreOffice's ebuild helpfully says that it could take 'up to a day' depending on system speed. I found this to be a little inaccurate, taking this laptop a little over six hours - but even so, this is a bit of a wait.
Right, I'm done for now. Expect Gentoo-related posts whenever I remember I have a blog again unless something manages to push me off it. Which isn't likely.
Rock on.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
From Gentoo
That's right, Gentoo. After only a few issues with getting the graphics card and wireless to play nicely, I have a functional Gnome desktop running on Gentoo.
I've been after something like this for a long time.
The problem now remains that since I chose to emerge gnome-light instead of the full Gnome suite, I have to fetch all the other bits and pieces I want, copy all kinds of things from my Sabayon home folder, and generally finish setting it up the way I want.
But the point is, it works.
And now I'm going to see how long it takes for me to break something.
This will probably be until I change USE flags, or add any more testing packages. Firefox 4 is one of them, but emerged after only a few minor issues.
Oh. And I have to get used to Portage. This could take me a bit longer. So I'm going to see what graphic Portage frontends there are and use one to give me a hand in this area.
That's all for now.
I've been after something like this for a long time.
The problem now remains that since I chose to emerge gnome-light instead of the full Gnome suite, I have to fetch all the other bits and pieces I want, copy all kinds of things from my Sabayon home folder, and generally finish setting it up the way I want.
But the point is, it works.
And now I'm going to see how long it takes for me to break something.
This will probably be until I change USE flags, or add any more testing packages. Firefox 4 is one of them, but emerged after only a few minor issues.
Oh. And I have to get used to Portage. This could take me a bit longer. So I'm going to see what graphic Portage frontends there are and use one to give me a hand in this area.
That's all for now.
Friday, 27 May 2011
A change or two
It's been a while since I last updated this, with good reason - too much has been changing.
So far, I've ditched Arch Linux because of issues with KDE and power management, ditched KDE in general (again) because as usual, I just can't seem to get on with it, and picked up both Sabayon and Gnome (again).
And now I'm headed from Sabayon to Gentoo.
Normally when I've tried Gentoo, I end up giving up before I even see a usable X session or desktop.
Over time, the reasons for this have been anything from a failed kernel config (I don't care what they say, it most definitely is NOT easy) to missing drivers or a lack of patience.
However, I'm putting all that aside and giving it another go.
And I'm using genkernel because I'm not going to muck about trying to build my own kernel.
Gentoo is often reported as having the most flexibility of all, quite probably because everything gets compiled (unless you opt for the -bin packages) with your choice of compiler and USE flags.
In deciding to use genkernel instead of tinkering, I've already taken one part of that flexibility and high-optimisation out of my soon-to-be (hopefully) install. In deciding not to alter any USE flags, I've removed another.
Why? Because my desktop, window manager and default apps change so much, that there isn't much point in tailoring everything for a GNOME session, then deciding I want to try KDE again and having to recompile many packages to give them KDE/QT support again. So I'm opting for wide-scale compatibility and as few rebuilds as I need.
So far, I have my typically vague plan of what I intend to end up with out of it.
In this case, it'll be a GNOME session, with GDM to login, Chromium as the browser, LibreOffice and Dropbox around, and WICD for the network management. And that's all. The rest will come as and when I get to it.
In theory, this shouldn't give me any trouble.
However, such theories generally don't translate to practice very well when dealing with me and Gentoo.
So with any luck, the next post here will come from a working Gentoo system, or be complaining about whatever put me off it this time.
Incidentally, has anyone ever managed to get the blogtk application to work with Blogger? It'd be nice to have a desktop app for posting these things - one that works, for a change.
Rock on, people.
So far, I've ditched Arch Linux because of issues with KDE and power management, ditched KDE in general (again) because as usual, I just can't seem to get on with it, and picked up both Sabayon and Gnome (again).
And now I'm headed from Sabayon to Gentoo.
Normally when I've tried Gentoo, I end up giving up before I even see a usable X session or desktop.
Over time, the reasons for this have been anything from a failed kernel config (I don't care what they say, it most definitely is NOT easy) to missing drivers or a lack of patience.
However, I'm putting all that aside and giving it another go.
And I'm using genkernel because I'm not going to muck about trying to build my own kernel.
Gentoo is often reported as having the most flexibility of all, quite probably because everything gets compiled (unless you opt for the -bin packages) with your choice of compiler and USE flags.
In deciding to use genkernel instead of tinkering, I've already taken one part of that flexibility and high-optimisation out of my soon-to-be (hopefully) install. In deciding not to alter any USE flags, I've removed another.
Why? Because my desktop, window manager and default apps change so much, that there isn't much point in tailoring everything for a GNOME session, then deciding I want to try KDE again and having to recompile many packages to give them KDE/QT support again. So I'm opting for wide-scale compatibility and as few rebuilds as I need.
So far, I have my typically vague plan of what I intend to end up with out of it.
In this case, it'll be a GNOME session, with GDM to login, Chromium as the browser, LibreOffice and Dropbox around, and WICD for the network management. And that's all. The rest will come as and when I get to it.
In theory, this shouldn't give me any trouble.
However, such theories generally don't translate to practice very well when dealing with me and Gentoo.
So with any luck, the next post here will come from a working Gentoo system, or be complaining about whatever put me off it this time.
Incidentally, has anyone ever managed to get the blogtk application to work with Blogger? It'd be nice to have a desktop app for posting these things - one that works, for a change.
Rock on, people.
Friday, 29 October 2010
HAL - I can't let you do that
Linux users know what HAL is, or should.
It's what lets you plug something in and have it ready to go without breaking everything, or needing you to reboot a la Windows.
X.org recently had support added for Input Hotplugging by Udev, which makes HAL rather redundant.
Unfortunately, a great many things still rely on HAL, and for someone trying to make a HAL-less system like me, this is inconvenient.
Now, since re-writing the source code of every HAL-dependent package I wanted to use would take a long time, not to mention requiring experience on my part that I don't have, I opted for a different approach to it.
Arch Linux's system for creating packages makes this simple, so with a copy of the PKGBUILD for HAL, and a few alterations to it, fakehal was born.
It's an empty package, which is designed to replace the HAL package, but provide and depend on nothing.
This has probably produced a highly unstable result, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a great many HAL-dependent packages don't work without it - but finding them and finding out if things can work with a fake HAL installed is part of the experiment.
I've uploaded the package to the Arch User Repository by now, which I'm guessing is most likely how you ended up here. If you want to give it a shot, go ahead and install it. Comments, suggestions, etc, just leave them in the comments or drop me a mail. I think I left my email around here somewhere.
It's what lets you plug something in and have it ready to go without breaking everything, or needing you to reboot a la Windows.
X.org recently had support added for Input Hotplugging by Udev, which makes HAL rather redundant.
Unfortunately, a great many things still rely on HAL, and for someone trying to make a HAL-less system like me, this is inconvenient.
Now, since re-writing the source code of every HAL-dependent package I wanted to use would take a long time, not to mention requiring experience on my part that I don't have, I opted for a different approach to it.
Arch Linux's system for creating packages makes this simple, so with a copy of the PKGBUILD for HAL, and a few alterations to it, fakehal was born.
It's an empty package, which is designed to replace the HAL package, but provide and depend on nothing.
This has probably produced a highly unstable result, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a great many HAL-dependent packages don't work without it - but finding them and finding out if things can work with a fake HAL installed is part of the experiment.
I've uploaded the package to the Arch User Repository by now, which I'm guessing is most likely how you ended up here. If you want to give it a shot, go ahead and install it. Comments, suggestions, etc, just leave them in the comments or drop me a mail. I think I left my email around here somewhere.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Open, Free - what's the difference?
Apparently a great deal, in the eyes of Oracle and the OpenOffice team.
It seems the OpenOffice team - now the LibreOffice team - have had some kind of falling out, and the resulting schism means that if you'd like to best of OpenOffice, you'll want to move to LibreOffice.
Most users can find a download for it at their download page:
http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/
Linux users won't always have their distro catered to, but this is a common occurance. In due time, it should be as widely available as the older OpenOffice was.
So we won't talk about that.
What we'll talk about is the differences, specifically in the naming.
Naturally, OpenOffice is now LibreOffice. This brings other side-effects though. The binary name is no longer soffice, but libreoffice - make note, those of you who use custom menus. You'll need to update them.
This also means that users of Cairo-Dock (and potentially other docks) will need to alter their launcher.
Now, for other docks you may have to do a little figuring out, but for Cairo-Dock, here's how to alter an OpenOffice Writer launcher to serve the same purpose with the new suite.
Grab your launcher settings, and set the command to launch to this:
libreoffice -writer
If you'd prefer it to launch without starting Writer, Calc or any other, simply remove '-writer', or change it to the part of your choice.
Now, while your Launcher will work in this state, if you open a document, you'll find that it won't use the launcher as it's Icon (if you have that option turned on). To fix this, open the 'Extra parameters' part of the launcher properties, and look for the part labelled 'Class of the program'. Change this to 'libreoffice' and watch as your documents all move to the launcher.
While this change may be small, it's an interesting one. I'm interested to see what's coming next for the newly rebranded LibreOffice.
It seems the OpenOffice team - now the LibreOffice team - have had some kind of falling out, and the resulting schism means that if you'd like to best of OpenOffice, you'll want to move to LibreOffice.
Most users can find a download for it at their download page:
http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/
Linux users won't always have their distro catered to, but this is a common occurance. In due time, it should be as widely available as the older OpenOffice was.
So we won't talk about that.
What we'll talk about is the differences, specifically in the naming.
Naturally, OpenOffice is now LibreOffice. This brings other side-effects though. The binary name is no longer soffice, but libreoffice - make note, those of you who use custom menus. You'll need to update them.
This also means that users of Cairo-Dock (and potentially other docks) will need to alter their launcher.
Now, for other docks you may have to do a little figuring out, but for Cairo-Dock, here's how to alter an OpenOffice Writer launcher to serve the same purpose with the new suite.
Grab your launcher settings, and set the command to launch to this:
libreoffice -writer
If you'd prefer it to launch without starting Writer, Calc or any other, simply remove '-writer', or change it to the part of your choice.
Now, while your Launcher will work in this state, if you open a document, you'll find that it won't use the launcher as it's Icon (if you have that option turned on). To fix this, open the 'Extra parameters' part of the launcher properties, and look for the part labelled 'Class of the program'. Change this to 'libreoffice' and watch as your documents all move to the launcher.
While this change may be small, it's an interesting one. I'm interested to see what's coming next for the newly rebranded LibreOffice.
Friday, 8 October 2010
Firefox Collections
Following on from my previous post, Yet Another Computer Blog now has it's own official collection, which you can find here.
This collection is so far made from my own list of addons, but in time will be influenced by readers and comments made about it.
I've made some more discoveries since the last post as well, in particular ones giving me a rather Chrome-like experience.
Now, for the hardcore, there's the Chromifox themes and extensions which bring the entire Chrome look to Firefox, but what if you like your Firefox theme or persona? Fear not, we have the answer.
Firstly, you'll need only two addons.
Tabs On Top - Does exactly what it says, moves the tab bar to the top of the window.
Hide Caption Titlebar Plus (Smart) - This lets you remove the window manager decorations, cutting it down to just Firefox, and adding it's own controls for minimize, maximise and close.
Optional extras:
Tab Wheel Scroll - This lets you change tabs with the mouse wheel just like Chrome.
App Tabs - More from ChromeOS than Chrome itself. Have a tab set aside for web-apps, like GMail.
Download Statusbar - Chrome pretty much has this built into it.
Locationbar^2 - Chrome highlights the domain name, and this replicates it.
Smart Stop/Reload - Combines the two into one intelligent button that shows the most appropriate one.
And that's pretty much it. Experiment with the configuration a bit, and you can get quite close to Chrome.
There are probably other addons that can make Firefox even more Chrome-like without sacrificing your theme/Persona, so if you find a working combo, please go ahead and suggest it!
This collection is so far made from my own list of addons, but in time will be influenced by readers and comments made about it.
I've made some more discoveries since the last post as well, in particular ones giving me a rather Chrome-like experience.
Now, for the hardcore, there's the Chromifox themes and extensions which bring the entire Chrome look to Firefox, but what if you like your Firefox theme or persona? Fear not, we have the answer.
Firstly, you'll need only two addons.
Tabs On Top - Does exactly what it says, moves the tab bar to the top of the window.
Hide Caption Titlebar Plus (Smart) - This lets you remove the window manager decorations, cutting it down to just Firefox, and adding it's own controls for minimize, maximise and close.
Optional extras:
Tab Wheel Scroll - This lets you change tabs with the mouse wheel just like Chrome.
App Tabs - More from ChromeOS than Chrome itself. Have a tab set aside for web-apps, like GMail.
Download Statusbar - Chrome pretty much has this built into it.
Locationbar^2 - Chrome highlights the domain name, and this replicates it.
Smart Stop/Reload - Combines the two into one intelligent button that shows the most appropriate one.
And that's pretty much it. Experiment with the configuration a bit, and you can get quite close to Chrome.
There are probably other addons that can make Firefox even more Chrome-like without sacrificing your theme/Persona, so if you find a working combo, please go ahead and suggest it!
Monday, 4 October 2010
Hybrid - a horror or not?
It was remarked recently that I'm a bad Linuxer because I use a hybrid desktop - hybrid in this case meaning a mix of GTK (AKA Gnome/XFCE), QT (KDE3.5 and 4.x) and Windows (via Wine) applications.
To this I say: What's wrong with that?
Now, I understand that if you keep all things native to your current session, eg Gnome apps in a Gnome session, KDE ones in a KDE one and so on, then you'll likely have better overall performance and a uniform look.
But the downside of this is that some of the session specific options I don't like, and want what I want instead.
Even though this means having my GTK apps look different to my QT ones, I don't mind that. I could use the QT or Oxygen engines for GTK, I could use the GTK engine for QT, but I don't want to.
What this boils down to is that I like things my way, and I couldn't care less what widget set or session it was made for - if it runs with the ones I'm using, then I'll use it.
This is especially useful right now, since I've changed my desktop again. To what? Well, not Gnome, as I've fallen out with it again.
No, this time it's KDE, but not the monster of the KDE4.x series - Thanks to the Chakra project, based on Arch Linux - which conveniently, I use - I've dug out the kdemod-legacy repository, giving me the older KDE 3.5 desktop - and it beats even the 4.x series. Yes it's unsupported. Yes, 4.x has all those flashy bells and things. Yes, I still use some Gnome apps. But overall, KDE 3.5 is one of the better sessions I've had.
It's customized, naturally. The default panel was shrunk down to the K Menu and a CPU monitor, and is auto-hidden in a corner, appearing only when I need it. Everything else is taken over by the Avant Window Navigator at the bottom.
Compiz and Emerald replace Kwin as the window manager of choice. While this takes up a little extra resources, it provides a few things Kwin can't.
And that's actually where KDE stops, because most of the applications I use are actually GTK-based.
OpenOffice, while not strictly speaking a GTK app, pulls it's theming from the current GTK settings. Since KDE has a handy module for choosing the GTK theming while in a KDE session, this isn't a problem, even if I use a KDE colour scheme that normally upsets OpenOffice - which is often.
Pidgin has taken over from Emesene (MSN) and XChat (IRC), also taking support for Google Chat and Twitter, bundling them all neatly together into one GTK application. Pidgin's plugin framework makes it unparralelled for those who use lots of IM networks, let alone those who use IRC and more on it.
Transmission Bittorrent... well, actually I'm trialling the QT interface for it, which I previously hadn't known about. So far so good, except for one mysterious crash I can't seem to replicate, but if I find any real problems, it's back to the good old GTK one.
Lastly, Firefox.
Regulars will know that Iron and Firefox regularly clash over my favour. However, through now fault of it's own, Iron has finally lost out for good.
The main reason is XMarks. If you don't know what it is (or possibly was) it's a cross-browser and platform bookmark sync tool. It's kept my Firefox and Iron bookmarks up to date and synchronized so that no matter which one I added a bookmark in, both had it.
However, they're discontinuing their service, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative that works for both Chrome and Mozilla based browsers.
So once more, I've tweaked out Firefox with a ton of extensions, with Firefox Sync supplanting Xmarks.
One further note on Firefox though, specifically the TACO extension.
There's a little controversy going on over TACO since TACO 3.0.
TACO 2.0 (Which lives on as Beef TACO) was an invaluable tool for blocking and opting-out of a lot of unwanted things. I'll let you read up in more detail on the Beef TACO page here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/180650/
TACO 3.0 'with Abine' sees a massive increase in the size of the extension, and adds this Abine thing. This appears to be some kind of iTunes store like extra where you can purchase extra functionality, at the cost of some massive reduction in performance, with it nagging you pretty much constantly.
The same results TACO 3.0 offers, without this and without the massive footprint, can be achievevd through several smaller extensions. Beef TACO, of course, replaces this. Add in the BetterPrivacy and NoScript extensions, and you're set to go. Adblock is an optional extra. Alternatively, if you don't like the way NoScript handles it, set up Adblock and Flashblock instead. Flashblock conveniently handles Silverlight as well, making it more useful.
Stop Autoplay is another optional addition, removing yet another web annoyance.
OptimizeGoogle is useful for removing a lot of junk from Google's search and other tools.
Greasemonkey, and by extension Greasefire, is also useful. Pull in user scripts that work on pages and you can enhance things yet further - not to mention some scripts are also capable of handling some parts of what TACO 3.0 tries to do.
Basically, there are better ways to handle it than TACO 3.0 - and all of them, regardless of what these Abine people think, are better than TACO 3.0
In similar Firefox news, since I tweaked it out, I found some interesting new extensions. I won't go on about them here, instead I'll just list them. You can look them up yourselves.
If there's interest though, I might turn it into a collection if people want to see just what I use and why.
So here's the official YACB interesting new extensions list:
All-in-One Sidebar
App Tabs
Hide Caption Titlebar Plus
Liquid Tabs
RightToClock
Tab Progress Bar
Tab Wheel Scroll
Unread Gmail Favicon
That's all for now.
Until next time, keep rocking.
To this I say: What's wrong with that?
Now, I understand that if you keep all things native to your current session, eg Gnome apps in a Gnome session, KDE ones in a KDE one and so on, then you'll likely have better overall performance and a uniform look.
But the downside of this is that some of the session specific options I don't like, and want what I want instead.
Even though this means having my GTK apps look different to my QT ones, I don't mind that. I could use the QT or Oxygen engines for GTK, I could use the GTK engine for QT, but I don't want to.
What this boils down to is that I like things my way, and I couldn't care less what widget set or session it was made for - if it runs with the ones I'm using, then I'll use it.
This is especially useful right now, since I've changed my desktop again. To what? Well, not Gnome, as I've fallen out with it again.
No, this time it's KDE, but not the monster of the KDE4.x series - Thanks to the Chakra project, based on Arch Linux - which conveniently, I use - I've dug out the kdemod-legacy repository, giving me the older KDE 3.5 desktop - and it beats even the 4.x series. Yes it's unsupported. Yes, 4.x has all those flashy bells and things. Yes, I still use some Gnome apps. But overall, KDE 3.5 is one of the better sessions I've had.
It's customized, naturally. The default panel was shrunk down to the K Menu and a CPU monitor, and is auto-hidden in a corner, appearing only when I need it. Everything else is taken over by the Avant Window Navigator at the bottom.
Compiz and Emerald replace Kwin as the window manager of choice. While this takes up a little extra resources, it provides a few things Kwin can't.
And that's actually where KDE stops, because most of the applications I use are actually GTK-based.
OpenOffice, while not strictly speaking a GTK app, pulls it's theming from the current GTK settings. Since KDE has a handy module for choosing the GTK theming while in a KDE session, this isn't a problem, even if I use a KDE colour scheme that normally upsets OpenOffice - which is often.
Pidgin has taken over from Emesene (MSN) and XChat (IRC), also taking support for Google Chat and Twitter, bundling them all neatly together into one GTK application. Pidgin's plugin framework makes it unparralelled for those who use lots of IM networks, let alone those who use IRC and more on it.
Transmission Bittorrent... well, actually I'm trialling the QT interface for it, which I previously hadn't known about. So far so good, except for one mysterious crash I can't seem to replicate, but if I find any real problems, it's back to the good old GTK one.
Lastly, Firefox.
Regulars will know that Iron and Firefox regularly clash over my favour. However, through now fault of it's own, Iron has finally lost out for good.
The main reason is XMarks. If you don't know what it is (or possibly was) it's a cross-browser and platform bookmark sync tool. It's kept my Firefox and Iron bookmarks up to date and synchronized so that no matter which one I added a bookmark in, both had it.
However, they're discontinuing their service, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative that works for both Chrome and Mozilla based browsers.
So once more, I've tweaked out Firefox with a ton of extensions, with Firefox Sync supplanting Xmarks.
One further note on Firefox though, specifically the TACO extension.
There's a little controversy going on over TACO since TACO 3.0.
TACO 2.0 (Which lives on as Beef TACO) was an invaluable tool for blocking and opting-out of a lot of unwanted things. I'll let you read up in more detail on the Beef TACO page here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/180650/
TACO 3.0 'with Abine' sees a massive increase in the size of the extension, and adds this Abine thing. This appears to be some kind of iTunes store like extra where you can purchase extra functionality, at the cost of some massive reduction in performance, with it nagging you pretty much constantly.
The same results TACO 3.0 offers, without this and without the massive footprint, can be achievevd through several smaller extensions. Beef TACO, of course, replaces this. Add in the BetterPrivacy and NoScript extensions, and you're set to go. Adblock is an optional extra. Alternatively, if you don't like the way NoScript handles it, set up Adblock and Flashblock instead. Flashblock conveniently handles Silverlight as well, making it more useful.
Stop Autoplay is another optional addition, removing yet another web annoyance.
OptimizeGoogle is useful for removing a lot of junk from Google's search and other tools.
Greasemonkey, and by extension Greasefire, is also useful. Pull in user scripts that work on pages and you can enhance things yet further - not to mention some scripts are also capable of handling some parts of what TACO 3.0 tries to do.
Basically, there are better ways to handle it than TACO 3.0 - and all of them, regardless of what these Abine people think, are better than TACO 3.0
In similar Firefox news, since I tweaked it out, I found some interesting new extensions. I won't go on about them here, instead I'll just list them. You can look them up yourselves.
If there's interest though, I might turn it into a collection if people want to see just what I use and why.
So here's the official YACB interesting new extensions list:
All-in-One Sidebar
App Tabs
Hide Caption Titlebar Plus
Liquid Tabs
RightToClock
Tab Progress Bar
Tab Wheel Scroll
Unread Gmail Favicon
That's all for now.
Until next time, keep rocking.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Long time, No post
It's been some time since I last remembered I have a blog. I guess I'm not the kind to do these things often.
A lot's happened though. I got a new laptop, which came with Windows Vista. And like many a good Linux user, I removed it, right?
No.
I've been trying to put up with it, and I found that but for a few small issues, and that I keep getting lost in the control panel, it doesn't live up to the bad press - you just have to stick with it.
However, since it developed a mysterious and unfixable issue connecting to networks by wireless, I told it to budge up and make room for Arch Linux, which is now the dominant system. I keep Vista around only for the things that Wine can't handle.
Now, I've remarked on my liking for Arch Linux before, and if I haven't, I should have. It's nice, simple, and I like it's way of installing the essentials, then waiting for whatever you want next.
I chose to give KDE4 a try again.
KDE and I have a bad relationship. I've tried it time after time, and sometimes it's managed to keep me interested for a while, but inevitably loses out. On this laptop, more powerful than the last, it went through yet another stage like that. I just cannot get along with it. It's far too heavy for me.
Next was XFCE. XFCE, with it's similarity to Gnome, lasted a lot longer. Unfortunately for it, I found a few issues which got in the way of my normal use, and once again, I come back to Gnome.
I like Gnome. With Metacity's compositing enabled in place of the somewhat heavy Compiz, I can do everything I want with relative ease.
Though the most recent Xorg says you no longer need HAL, Gnome didn't listen and still needs it. However, this means that mounting and unmounting of partitions and removable disks is a breeze.
The default Gnome menus aren't so nice, however. I've replaced them with MintMenu from the AUR, and find it quite adept at handling it.
Docks, now docks are a sticking point with me. I like to arrange all my applets on one panel at the top (a la Mac OSX, but without the Global Menu) and have a dock at the bottom.
There are five ways I choose to handle this.
1: DockbarX. This is the most simple. Create a panel that expands and add DockbarX to it. I like DockbarX. Try it yourself if you're a Gnome user.
2: AWN (AKA Avant Window Navigator). With DockbarX installed, it can take it as an applet, but it can hold it's own without it. It's collection of addons and plugins are unparalleled, but it's the heaviest of the options.
3: Cairo Dock. This, and it's similar counterpart GLX-Dock (Built in) is a nice one for those who don't want to activate Compiz. It doesn't have such a selection of additions, and doesn't take up as much as AWN. It also offers to activate Metacity's compositing feature if it's not active, which is useful since I've yet to track it down without it.
4: Gnome Do. In ordinary circimstances, I wouldn't even consider this and the next option because of it's dependency on Mono. Mono is a reimplementation of Microsoft's .Net framework, and if you examine something that runs on Mono, you'll see, yes, a .exe program and lots of .dll files. However, that said, running in Docky mode it's not bad at it's job.
5: Docky. This is, essentially, Gnome Do in Docky mode, without the Do part. Like Gnome Do, it's a Mono application but it too is good at it's job. It's also the lightest with the exception of the first option, provided you don't activate the window preview function of DockbarX.
Now, many people dislike Mono. I too don't really like it. However, I've granted it a chance to do the same as Vista - prove itself better than the bad press. So far, Docky is managing to do just that.
So far.
Other things of note are certain choices in other applications.
Tweetdeck, for example. Despite it's dependency on Adobe Air, which being an Adobe product and like Mono I would never let on my system, Tweetdeck manages to redeem it insofar as there appear to be no decent GTK based Twitter clients.
Liferea has proved itself to be better than my Windows based FeedDemon. It's a neat and tidy application that does exactly what it's meant to do, without any extras.
GNote for notes. It's the C++ (AKA Mono independant) version of Tomboy notes. Unlike Docky, Tomboy has given me nothing but trouble. GNote, despite what I've heard about it being unstable, is actually very stable. True, I only use it for a ToDo list on the desktop, but it's better than Tomboy's refusal to stay where I want it, when I want it to, or to load the correct note.
Finally, the Iron web browser has managed to completely supplant Firefox but for one site.
Iron, for those who don't know, is Chrome (And by extension Chromium) but without any tracking extras. It's perfect for the paranoid like me. And I don't care what Google's Eric Schmidt (Sorry if that's not spelled right. It serves him right for having a strange name) says about 'If you've got something to hide, you shouldn't be doing it' talk. If people want to know my browsing habits, they can bloody well ask me for them.
That's all for now.
Rock on people.
A lot's happened though. I got a new laptop, which came with Windows Vista. And like many a good Linux user, I removed it, right?
No.
I've been trying to put up with it, and I found that but for a few small issues, and that I keep getting lost in the control panel, it doesn't live up to the bad press - you just have to stick with it.
However, since it developed a mysterious and unfixable issue connecting to networks by wireless, I told it to budge up and make room for Arch Linux, which is now the dominant system. I keep Vista around only for the things that Wine can't handle.
Now, I've remarked on my liking for Arch Linux before, and if I haven't, I should have. It's nice, simple, and I like it's way of installing the essentials, then waiting for whatever you want next.
I chose to give KDE4 a try again.
KDE and I have a bad relationship. I've tried it time after time, and sometimes it's managed to keep me interested for a while, but inevitably loses out. On this laptop, more powerful than the last, it went through yet another stage like that. I just cannot get along with it. It's far too heavy for me.
Next was XFCE. XFCE, with it's similarity to Gnome, lasted a lot longer. Unfortunately for it, I found a few issues which got in the way of my normal use, and once again, I come back to Gnome.
I like Gnome. With Metacity's compositing enabled in place of the somewhat heavy Compiz, I can do everything I want with relative ease.
Though the most recent Xorg says you no longer need HAL, Gnome didn't listen and still needs it. However, this means that mounting and unmounting of partitions and removable disks is a breeze.
The default Gnome menus aren't so nice, however. I've replaced them with MintMenu from the AUR, and find it quite adept at handling it.
Docks, now docks are a sticking point with me. I like to arrange all my applets on one panel at the top (a la Mac OSX, but without the Global Menu) and have a dock at the bottom.
There are five ways I choose to handle this.
1: DockbarX. This is the most simple. Create a panel that expands and add DockbarX to it. I like DockbarX. Try it yourself if you're a Gnome user.
2: AWN (AKA Avant Window Navigator). With DockbarX installed, it can take it as an applet, but it can hold it's own without it. It's collection of addons and plugins are unparalleled, but it's the heaviest of the options.
3: Cairo Dock. This, and it's similar counterpart GLX-Dock (Built in) is a nice one for those who don't want to activate Compiz. It doesn't have such a selection of additions, and doesn't take up as much as AWN. It also offers to activate Metacity's compositing feature if it's not active, which is useful since I've yet to track it down without it.
4: Gnome Do. In ordinary circimstances, I wouldn't even consider this and the next option because of it's dependency on Mono. Mono is a reimplementation of Microsoft's .Net framework, and if you examine something that runs on Mono, you'll see, yes, a .exe program and lots of .dll files. However, that said, running in Docky mode it's not bad at it's job.
5: Docky. This is, essentially, Gnome Do in Docky mode, without the Do part. Like Gnome Do, it's a Mono application but it too is good at it's job. It's also the lightest with the exception of the first option, provided you don't activate the window preview function of DockbarX.
Now, many people dislike Mono. I too don't really like it. However, I've granted it a chance to do the same as Vista - prove itself better than the bad press. So far, Docky is managing to do just that.
So far.
Other things of note are certain choices in other applications.
Tweetdeck, for example. Despite it's dependency on Adobe Air, which being an Adobe product and like Mono I would never let on my system, Tweetdeck manages to redeem it insofar as there appear to be no decent GTK based Twitter clients.
Liferea has proved itself to be better than my Windows based FeedDemon. It's a neat and tidy application that does exactly what it's meant to do, without any extras.
GNote for notes. It's the C++ (AKA Mono independant) version of Tomboy notes. Unlike Docky, Tomboy has given me nothing but trouble. GNote, despite what I've heard about it being unstable, is actually very stable. True, I only use it for a ToDo list on the desktop, but it's better than Tomboy's refusal to stay where I want it, when I want it to, or to load the correct note.
Finally, the Iron web browser has managed to completely supplant Firefox but for one site.
Iron, for those who don't know, is Chrome (And by extension Chromium) but without any tracking extras. It's perfect for the paranoid like me. And I don't care what Google's Eric Schmidt (Sorry if that's not spelled right. It serves him right for having a strange name) says about 'If you've got something to hide, you shouldn't be doing it' talk. If people want to know my browsing habits, they can bloody well ask me for them.
That's all for now.
Rock on people.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Web 2.0 madness
Web 2.0, the all singing, all dancing, way to throw your personal life around the internet.
Oh gods.
Now call me weird, but I don't like this. I don't like, or want to be convinced to like it. It's impersonal, among other things.
I admit to having used Facebook once. Just once. And now I'm gone from there, after digging around for a permanently and completely delete my account option. I found it, by the way, thanks to a blog around the interwebs. If only I could find it again...
Anyway.
I'm going to pick on Facebook because it annoys me the most, was the single biggest source of blatent spam ever to (dis)grace my inboxes, and gets the most attention.
Here's a short list of why I detest it:
-No, I do not want to know about every thing every one who I ever knew is doing right down to every single stupid little badly made and worse looking web app game. Farmville, I'm looking at you, ever since my own mother signed up to the website. That was the final straw for me.
-No, I do NOT want you to tell every website that even has a single bit linking to Facebook everything my 'friends' think of it. I'm web savvy. I know what a blatent threat is when most people think it's legit. I don't care to have people tell me what to think about it. I get to decide that, no one else.
-No, I DO NOT want you to plaster every single bit of information over the web for me. Google Buzz, I'm looking at you as well here - both the implementation of Buzz and the so called 'privacy' reform that showed everyone's everything to the entire world were badly thought out, stupid, brainless and full of sheer wrongheaded idiocy.
-And finally no, I DO NOT WANT to have to put up with potential employers stalking through my profile, and picking out some message I put there years ago, citing it as a reason not to employ me. I have enough trouble as it is without people stalking me.
That's just a few reasons. My main reason for refusing to use FB or sites like it, making an exception in the case of Twitter, to which I tweet very rarely, and use it more like I do RSS feeds (More on that in a bit) just to keep up with things, my main reason is the impersonality of it. If you want to get to know me, don't get to know who I am online. Come and find me, ask me if I can spare a few minutes, and do it in person, damn you. And not over the phone. If people try that, they'll be in for a surprise, because as far as I'm concerned, a phone call is just like saying, 'I don't want to meet you, just talk to you'
/end rant.
In COMPLETELY unrelated computer news now...
Farewell Ubuntu. Goodbye to your arbitrary decisions without consulting your users, to your dreadful Ubuntu One that Dropbox beats hands down, to your iTunes like plugin for Rhythmbox, and many others things. I grant that it's not a bad distro for those new. But what I get out of my Arch Linux install is unparraled except by Gentoo, and as said before I don't have the patience for that.
Arch doesn't modify applications or set them up with what was somehow decided as 'the best defaults that are better than the package maintainer's ones' like Ubuntu does. I can choose everything. True, it's a bit more work, and I still have the odd problem like getting Samba to work, but I like that. I can see everything, I can learn a lot more.
Have you gathered that I now dislike Ubuntu and like Arch? I thought you might have.
RSS feeds aren't something new, but they're something I've never really bothered with until recently. I used to have a long list of websites I visited regularly, and most of them didn't have updates.
A lot of them had the orange RSS subscribe icon though, so I gave in, installed Lifera (The unstable version, naturally) and subscribed to all the regulars that had them, found a few more interesting feeds, stuck it on an hourly update, and lo and behold, updates. So much easier.
It's cut a huge chunk out of how long it takes to run through regular stuff. If you haven't tried RSS feeds yet, and like me you keep watch on a lot of things, see how many of them have an feed you can subscribe to, and find out just how much time you can save. Believe me, it's one thing you'll wonder how you did without afterwards if you're anything like me.
Well, that's all from now. There's other news, but it's not computer related, and it's more personal stuff, which as I said, you want to know, become real life friends.
So rock on people.
/me out.
Oh gods.
Now call me weird, but I don't like this. I don't like, or want to be convinced to like it. It's impersonal, among other things.
I admit to having used Facebook once. Just once. And now I'm gone from there, after digging around for a permanently and completely delete my account option. I found it, by the way, thanks to a blog around the interwebs. If only I could find it again...
Anyway.
I'm going to pick on Facebook because it annoys me the most, was the single biggest source of blatent spam ever to (dis)grace my inboxes, and gets the most attention.
Here's a short list of why I detest it:
-No, I do not want to know about every thing every one who I ever knew is doing right down to every single stupid little badly made and worse looking web app game. Farmville, I'm looking at you, ever since my own mother signed up to the website. That was the final straw for me.
-No, I do NOT want you to tell every website that even has a single bit linking to Facebook everything my 'friends' think of it. I'm web savvy. I know what a blatent threat is when most people think it's legit. I don't care to have people tell me what to think about it. I get to decide that, no one else.
-No, I DO NOT want you to plaster every single bit of information over the web for me. Google Buzz, I'm looking at you as well here - both the implementation of Buzz and the so called 'privacy' reform that showed everyone's everything to the entire world were badly thought out, stupid, brainless and full of sheer wrongheaded idiocy.
-And finally no, I DO NOT WANT to have to put up with potential employers stalking through my profile, and picking out some message I put there years ago, citing it as a reason not to employ me. I have enough trouble as it is without people stalking me.
That's just a few reasons. My main reason for refusing to use FB or sites like it, making an exception in the case of Twitter, to which I tweet very rarely, and use it more like I do RSS feeds (More on that in a bit) just to keep up with things, my main reason is the impersonality of it. If you want to get to know me, don't get to know who I am online. Come and find me, ask me if I can spare a few minutes, and do it in person, damn you. And not over the phone. If people try that, they'll be in for a surprise, because as far as I'm concerned, a phone call is just like saying, 'I don't want to meet you, just talk to you'
/end rant.
In COMPLETELY unrelated computer news now...
Farewell Ubuntu. Goodbye to your arbitrary decisions without consulting your users, to your dreadful Ubuntu One that Dropbox beats hands down, to your iTunes like plugin for Rhythmbox, and many others things. I grant that it's not a bad distro for those new. But what I get out of my Arch Linux install is unparraled except by Gentoo, and as said before I don't have the patience for that.
Arch doesn't modify applications or set them up with what was somehow decided as 'the best defaults that are better than the package maintainer's ones' like Ubuntu does. I can choose everything. True, it's a bit more work, and I still have the odd problem like getting Samba to work, but I like that. I can see everything, I can learn a lot more.
Have you gathered that I now dislike Ubuntu and like Arch? I thought you might have.
RSS feeds aren't something new, but they're something I've never really bothered with until recently. I used to have a long list of websites I visited regularly, and most of them didn't have updates.
A lot of them had the orange RSS subscribe icon though, so I gave in, installed Lifera (The unstable version, naturally) and subscribed to all the regulars that had them, found a few more interesting feeds, stuck it on an hourly update, and lo and behold, updates. So much easier.
It's cut a huge chunk out of how long it takes to run through regular stuff. If you haven't tried RSS feeds yet, and like me you keep watch on a lot of things, see how many of them have an feed you can subscribe to, and find out just how much time you can save. Believe me, it's one thing you'll wonder how you did without afterwards if you're anything like me.
Well, that's all from now. There's other news, but it's not computer related, and it's more personal stuff, which as I said, you want to know, become real life friends.
So rock on people.
/me out.
Friday, 30 April 2010
Here goes again
Distributions always seem to be something I can't settle on. While I always seem to gravitate back to Ubuntu from time to time, I still try to find a better one for me. And in that seemingly never-ending quest, I've gone through a lot of distributions. I have a folder of CDs and DVDs that now encompasses five BSDs, an OpenSolaris snapshot, four development releases, and currently twenty different Linux distributions.
So, once in a while, when Ubuntu's obsessive user-coddling gets to me, I run through once more, and give another one a try.
Slackware, one of my favourites, has actually fallen from graces for a change. While I admit I've learned more about Linux with it than I have on any other distribution, I found myself doing a lot of './configure, make, make install' just to get some software up to date, so it could open documents I've been working on in the Ubuntu environment. I'm not always patient enough to handle this, which is the main reason Gentoo always slips right past me, so after a lot of issues, complaints and annoyances, I chose to give it up, and go on to another.
In this case, Arch. I don't recall if I've ever mentioned it before, and I'm feeling too lazy to go look because I've been unwell recently, so bear with me.
Arch and Gentoo are very similar, they both ask you to use the online handbook to install the system, they both only install the core, and they both then reboot and say 'OK boss, what now?'
This is a useful thing, for me. Ubuntu always suffers immense amounts of tinkering in places normal users don't go before I can call it adequate, and it never works as well as it should.
Arch, on the other hand, doesn't have anything to tinker with, beyond what it's built-in installer gets you to do. I can install what I want, pick and choose, and just get what I want, without the fluff. I don't have to install a complete Gnome desktop just to have to remove it and put Openbox on, I can just have Openbox out of the proverbial box. It's perfect for those people who want specifics, and don't want to be coddled with unnecessary extras that they don't want (A big culprit of that being Adobe - if you don't agree, see the website http://dearadobe.com).
The installer's also well made as it is - it's not quite as simple and self-explanatory as Slackware's, and it doesn't offer quite so much choice as Gentoo when following the handbook, but if you know what your partitions are, and what you're going to do, you don't even need the guide on the ArchWiki, you can just power through and have a working system within two hours on a good internet connection, or less than an hour if you install packages from the CD.
The only caveat I've discovered is audio - the ArchWiki guide says to install ALSA. You'd think that would work, right? Nuh-uh. Look at any full-featured distribution, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and such. Look in the listings, and while you'll find ALSA installed, you'll also find PulseAudio installed.
As I understand it, without PulseAudio, only one process can hold the audio channel at any one time. Install it, and you get the same level of audio capabilities as the mainstream distributions do. People new to, or considering going to Arch, take note of that, and when it tells you to install ALSA, also call up the ArchWiki page on PulseAudio, and install that too.
(Note: If you want to be safe though, leave it until after you've finished going through the guide.)
What else do I like about Arch? Pacman. No, not the little yellow ghost-eater, the package manager. I admit to being fond of Apt, with Yum coming a close second, and I can use either with a fair degree of proficiency, skill and speed. Pacman I can't do the same with still, but it's simple, no-nonsense approach to it is well thought out, and doesn't leave much to worry about. Like most advanced package managing tools, it resolves dependencies, and provides a very apt-like output telling you what it's going to do, and asking for confirmation. Even during the package install step of installing Arch, it gives you an idea of what you'll see and get, and even allows you to scroll through the output once it's done to check up on it.
All in all? Arch is one of the better distributions I've come across. For someone who has patience enough to tweak and install what they want, install of what the distributor decides, but not enough patience to sit and watch Gentoo compile everything on the go, this is perfect. For those who want more than is available in the Arch repository and it's testing repository, there's AUR - the Arch User Repository. Unlike other equivalents, such as Ubuntu's PPAs, it's not a repository you pass to Pacman - it's just a collection of scripts that you can download. You execute them, and they create a Pacman-usable package, thus giving you the flexibility to examne, refine and edit the script, with all the benefits of the package manager. It's like being able to 'make, make install' then have your manager install it alongside all the other packages.
If you want more customisability, give Arch a go. I guarantee that if you've enough patience and time enough to do a little work, you won't be disappointed.
So, once in a while, when Ubuntu's obsessive user-coddling gets to me, I run through once more, and give another one a try.
Slackware, one of my favourites, has actually fallen from graces for a change. While I admit I've learned more about Linux with it than I have on any other distribution, I found myself doing a lot of './configure, make, make install' just to get some software up to date, so it could open documents I've been working on in the Ubuntu environment. I'm not always patient enough to handle this, which is the main reason Gentoo always slips right past me, so after a lot of issues, complaints and annoyances, I chose to give it up, and go on to another.
In this case, Arch. I don't recall if I've ever mentioned it before, and I'm feeling too lazy to go look because I've been unwell recently, so bear with me.
Arch and Gentoo are very similar, they both ask you to use the online handbook to install the system, they both only install the core, and they both then reboot and say 'OK boss, what now?'
This is a useful thing, for me. Ubuntu always suffers immense amounts of tinkering in places normal users don't go before I can call it adequate, and it never works as well as it should.
Arch, on the other hand, doesn't have anything to tinker with, beyond what it's built-in installer gets you to do. I can install what I want, pick and choose, and just get what I want, without the fluff. I don't have to install a complete Gnome desktop just to have to remove it and put Openbox on, I can just have Openbox out of the proverbial box. It's perfect for those people who want specifics, and don't want to be coddled with unnecessary extras that they don't want (A big culprit of that being Adobe - if you don't agree, see the website http://dearadobe.com).
The installer's also well made as it is - it's not quite as simple and self-explanatory as Slackware's, and it doesn't offer quite so much choice as Gentoo when following the handbook, but if you know what your partitions are, and what you're going to do, you don't even need the guide on the ArchWiki, you can just power through and have a working system within two hours on a good internet connection, or less than an hour if you install packages from the CD.
The only caveat I've discovered is audio - the ArchWiki guide says to install ALSA. You'd think that would work, right? Nuh-uh. Look at any full-featured distribution, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and such. Look in the listings, and while you'll find ALSA installed, you'll also find PulseAudio installed.
As I understand it, without PulseAudio, only one process can hold the audio channel at any one time. Install it, and you get the same level of audio capabilities as the mainstream distributions do. People new to, or considering going to Arch, take note of that, and when it tells you to install ALSA, also call up the ArchWiki page on PulseAudio, and install that too.
(Note: If you want to be safe though, leave it until after you've finished going through the guide.)
What else do I like about Arch? Pacman. No, not the little yellow ghost-eater, the package manager. I admit to being fond of Apt, with Yum coming a close second, and I can use either with a fair degree of proficiency, skill and speed. Pacman I can't do the same with still, but it's simple, no-nonsense approach to it is well thought out, and doesn't leave much to worry about. Like most advanced package managing tools, it resolves dependencies, and provides a very apt-like output telling you what it's going to do, and asking for confirmation. Even during the package install step of installing Arch, it gives you an idea of what you'll see and get, and even allows you to scroll through the output once it's done to check up on it.
All in all? Arch is one of the better distributions I've come across. For someone who has patience enough to tweak and install what they want, install of what the distributor decides, but not enough patience to sit and watch Gentoo compile everything on the go, this is perfect. For those who want more than is available in the Arch repository and it's testing repository, there's AUR - the Arch User Repository. Unlike other equivalents, such as Ubuntu's PPAs, it's not a repository you pass to Pacman - it's just a collection of scripts that you can download. You execute them, and they create a Pacman-usable package, thus giving you the flexibility to examne, refine and edit the script, with all the benefits of the package manager. It's like being able to 'make, make install' then have your manager install it alongside all the other packages.
If you want more customisability, give Arch a go. I guarantee that if you've enough patience and time enough to do a little work, you won't be disappointed.
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Reaching Enlightenment
It's been a long time since I first started using Linux, and even longer since Gnome caught me in it's clutches. In that time, I've used Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, BlackBox, FluxBox, OpenBox, FVWM, JWM, IceWM and even WindowMaker. All of them had their good and bad points, but for the first time since Gnome, I've found something I like more.
E. AKA E17, or Enlightenment.
Enlightenment isn't included in Ubuntu Karmic by default, or if it is, I never noticed it before.
The useful tools of Ubuntu-Tweak and the sources generator at repogen.simplylinux.ch also don't have it listed (Although between them they cover sources for an immense amount of repositories for nearly everything).
Ubuntu Tweak's website, however, does include it. Why it doesn't show up in the app's sources centre, I don't know.
Now, Enlightenment's website does give a list of repositories for it's packages, but it's conspicuously missing Karmic. So I'll give you the instructions here to make it simple.
First you'll need the repository key, of course. Open your favourite terminal (Guake, in my case) and enter the following command:
sudo wget -O - http://packages.enlightenment.org/repo.key | sudo apt-key add -
(Note that the space on the end appears to be necessary)
Next, open /etc/apt/sources.list in your favourite text editor, and add the following line:
deb http://packages.enlightenment.org/ubuntu karmic main extras
Run a complete update, and as a good practice, I always apply any upgrades before continuing, but that's just me.
Now, to install the core of Enlightenment, just install the package 'E17'
If you're used to the flashy effects of Compiz Fusion, you can get the Enlightenment port of it by installing the package 'ecomorph-core' - note that if you do, when you choose your session at GDM, KDM or whatever you choose as your login manager, you'll need to choose the Ecomorph option, not the one for Enlightenment. Also, there aren't many Compiz plugins available, and some aren't quite the same. Try Wobbly Windows for an example.
If you want to add more functionality, have a look at the emodule pacakges. There is a dummy packages 'emodules-all' that pulls in them all, but be warned, it also pulls in the Enlightenment Network Manager, which may insist on removing your current one. If you like the network manager you already have, or aren't sure, pick and choose your emodules by hand.
There's a few other packages of note with it. Empower is like gksu, though I've never actually got it to work. emprint, and it's corresponding emodule is the screenshot tool. There's more to, of course.
It's fairly easy to customize too, with an entire section of the OpenDesktop site to itself, namely, e17-stuff.org - though there isn't much there in comparison to Gnome-Look and the like, it's enough to get started.
With that, I've found that Enlightenment without EcoMorph is a very good desktop for older computers, while including it provides a nice balance between usability and special effects.
Overall? E17 is an impressive desktop environment, and if you're not certain what Window Manager or Desktop Environment to use, give it a shot, and give it a fair trial. It takes a little getting used to, and it also takes some customising to get it how you'll like it, but it's definitely worth a good trial.
E. AKA E17, or Enlightenment.
Enlightenment isn't included in Ubuntu Karmic by default, or if it is, I never noticed it before.
The useful tools of Ubuntu-Tweak and the sources generator at repogen.simplylinux.ch also don't have it listed (Although between them they cover sources for an immense amount of repositories for nearly everything).
Ubuntu Tweak's website, however, does include it. Why it doesn't show up in the app's sources centre, I don't know.
Now, Enlightenment's website does give a list of repositories for it's packages, but it's conspicuously missing Karmic. So I'll give you the instructions here to make it simple.
First you'll need the repository key, of course. Open your favourite terminal (Guake, in my case) and enter the following command:
sudo wget -O - http://packages.enlightenment.org/repo.key | sudo apt-key add -
(Note that the space on the end appears to be necessary)
Next, open /etc/apt/sources.list in your favourite text editor, and add the following line:
deb http://packages.enlightenment.org/ubuntu karmic main extras
Run a complete update, and as a good practice, I always apply any upgrades before continuing, but that's just me.
Now, to install the core of Enlightenment, just install the package 'E17'
If you're used to the flashy effects of Compiz Fusion, you can get the Enlightenment port of it by installing the package 'ecomorph-core' - note that if you do, when you choose your session at GDM, KDM or whatever you choose as your login manager, you'll need to choose the Ecomorph option, not the one for Enlightenment. Also, there aren't many Compiz plugins available, and some aren't quite the same. Try Wobbly Windows for an example.
If you want to add more functionality, have a look at the emodule pacakges. There is a dummy packages 'emodules-all' that pulls in them all, but be warned, it also pulls in the Enlightenment Network Manager, which may insist on removing your current one. If you like the network manager you already have, or aren't sure, pick and choose your emodules by hand.
There's a few other packages of note with it. Empower is like gksu, though I've never actually got it to work. emprint, and it's corresponding emodule is the screenshot tool. There's more to, of course.
It's fairly easy to customize too, with an entire section of the OpenDesktop site to itself, namely, e17-stuff.org - though there isn't much there in comparison to Gnome-Look and the like, it's enough to get started.
With that, I've found that Enlightenment without EcoMorph is a very good desktop for older computers, while including it provides a nice balance between usability and special effects.
Overall? E17 is an impressive desktop environment, and if you're not certain what Window Manager or Desktop Environment to use, give it a shot, and give it a fair trial. It takes a little getting used to, and it also takes some customising to get it how you'll like it, but it's definitely worth a good trial.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Identifying a 64-bit CPU - the one step easy guide
This old computer I've had for a while, I've always run 32-bit systems on. A couple days ago, I happened across something that I wish I'd known before - it's 64-bit capability.
So, here's the simple way to identify whether your CPU is 64-bit capable. Note this only works on Linux, but then, why would you want to run anything else? (BSD might also work, but I don't know for sure. Can anyone confirm?)
You'll need a terminal. Enter the following command:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
Read the output, and look for the section on Flags. For my CPU, it looks like this. The bolded part is the one to look for.
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 44
model name : AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1000.000
cache size : 128 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow up rep_good pni lahf_lm
bogomips : 1999.70
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc
Notice in that the list of flags, there's 'lm'?
If you see that in your CPU's list of flags, you have a 64-bit capable CPU.
Simple, innit?
And all this time I've been running a 32-bit system on it. To think I never knew.
To be fair, switching from 32-bit Ubuntu Karmic to 64-bit Ubuntu Karmic hasn't been entirely smooth. I've yet to manage to get Skype to work, and a few of my other applications don't seem to have amd64 packages, only i386 ones. This is inconvenient, but on the other hand, gets me experimenting with alternatives I don't normally consider, thus allowing me to learn more.
So next time you're sat wondering if you can run a 64-bit system... fire up a terminal (Or if you're not on Linux, grab a Linux LiveCD and use that instead) and run that command, and lo and behold, definite proof.
Rock on.
So, here's the simple way to identify whether your CPU is 64-bit capable. Note this only works on Linux, but then, why would you want to run anything else? (BSD might also work, but I don't know for sure. Can anyone confirm?)
You'll need a terminal. Enter the following command:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
Read the output, and look for the section on Flags. For my CPU, it looks like this. The bolded part is the one to look for.
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 44
model name : AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1000.000
cache size : 128 KB
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow up rep_good pni lahf_lm
bogomips : 1999.70
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc
Notice in that the list of flags, there's 'lm'?
If you see that in your CPU's list of flags, you have a 64-bit capable CPU.
Simple, innit?
And all this time I've been running a 32-bit system on it. To think I never knew.
To be fair, switching from 32-bit Ubuntu Karmic to 64-bit Ubuntu Karmic hasn't been entirely smooth. I've yet to manage to get Skype to work, and a few of my other applications don't seem to have amd64 packages, only i386 ones. This is inconvenient, but on the other hand, gets me experimenting with alternatives I don't normally consider, thus allowing me to learn more.
So next time you're sat wondering if you can run a 64-bit system... fire up a terminal (Or if you're not on Linux, grab a Linux LiveCD and use that instead) and run that command, and lo and behold, definite proof.
Rock on.
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