Loving the Penguin

Fixing CodeBlocks AVR build problems on Debian Wheezy

2012-01-16T22:57:00.001+02:00

This might be a bit off-topic, but I didn't know where else to put this.

I spent a good part of this evening trying to figure out why I could build AVR projects in CodeBlocks using an old profile (i.e., personality) but not a new one. When I tried to compile with a new one (even on a different machine), the compile would generate a

/usr/include/features.h:323:26: fatal error: bits/predefs.h: No such file or directory

error.

By comparing the old and newly created profiles, I was able to figure out that new profiles were setting default include directories for building indiscriminately versus not at all for the old profile. The following seems to fix things, but to be honest I have not tested a wide variety of AVR builds nor have I tested any other kinds of projects. But I can't see why it should mess anything else up.

Open Settings > Compiler and debugger... > Global compiler settings
Under Selected compiler, select "GNU AVR GCC Compiler"
Select the "Search directories" tab
Select the "Compiler" tab
Select the /usr/include entry and click the "Delete" button
Right next to the "Compiler" tab, select the "Linker" tab
Select the /usr/lib entry and click the "Delete" button

AVR builds should now succeed. This fix should work with additional profiles you add as well as to the default.conf profile.

Lightweight Qt-based DE?

2011-12-08T22:33:00.004+02:00

The last couple days, I've been wondering if it might be possible/worthwhile/stupid to build a Qt-centric lightweight desktopish environment. In other words, something to be to KDE what Xfce/Fluxbox/Openbox are to GNOME.

Today, I decided to do a bit of Googling and discovered Egg Window Manager, Qt Window Manager, and R Window Manager. I've yet to try any, but it's nice to know that there are people working on this.

Update [2012-01-12]: Reader CTown points out Razor-qt--a Qt-based desktop environment--is available as well. It's apparently a member of the QtDesktop project. It's worth pointing out that Razor-qt uses Openbox by default, and Openbox, while being a really nice WM, uses GLib--a GTK+ dependence. But maybe in combination with one of the WMs above ...

Installing Oracle Java in Wheezy

2011-11-23T21:45:00.019+02:00

This is going to be something of a living document. Earlier today I moaned about how Oracle's Java has been removed from Debian and how OpenJDK just isn't really working for me (yet, I hope). Herein I will document progress I am making toward making the non-free Java binaries downloaded directly from Oracle work. I will update this post as I make progress.

The following applies to Java 6. I don't know what needs to change for Java 7. Is this the best way to do this? Probably not. If you know of something better, please let me know.

Get and deflate the JRE binaries

Go to the Oracle Java for Linux page and follow the directions to download the *.bin (i.e., Linux self-extracting) file. (I opted not to use the RPM version even though Alien is available in Debian to install RPMs. The Java RPM is so full of stuff and Alien is so less than 100% reliable that I didn't want to risk messing up my system.)
As root, make a directory /opt/java
Copy the *.bin you downloaded above into /opt/java and issue the following commands in a terminal (as root):
# chown root:root {name-of-the-file-you-downloaded}
# chmod a+x {name-of-the-file-you-downloaded}
# ./{name-of-the-file-you-downloaded}
The first one makes sure the file is owned by root, the second one makes the file executable, and the third one executes the file -- which deflates all the Oracle Java goodness into a directory called something like jre1.6.0_xx.
Create a link called jre to the directory jre1.6.0_xx (or whatever) created above. This link will make updating the binaries much easier in the future. Use this link from now on to reference files in the jre1.6.0_xx (or whatever) directory.

Point the system to the new java executable

Use your favorite method to install the galternatives package from the repositories. Galternatives gives you a nice GUI interface to the "Debian alternatives" system. We will need this to override the default system alternative you may already have for the java command.
Open Galternatives and look for an entry in the "Alternatives" column on the left called "java". If you don't have a "java" entry, skip the next step.
When you click on the "java" entry in Galternatives, the right pane should show you a list of available alternatives that you can set your system to use as the java command. Click the "Add" button on the bottom of the window and navigate to /opt/java/jre/bin/java . After you close the file browser dialog and return to the main window, click the radio button next to the /opt/java/jre/bin/java choice to tell the system that you want to use that java to handle java commands. Skip the next step and go directly to Testing.
Do this step only if you did NOT have a "java" entry in Galternatives. Create a soft link from /usr/bin/java to /opt/java/jre/bin/java . (Changing the /usr/bin/java link when it has been set by the Debian alternatives system may give you a whole lot of future pain, so mind the caution!)

Testing

Open a terminal and enter the command
$ java -version
The resulting output should give you a version number that matches what you downloaded above. If it doesn't, something went wrong.

You should now have a system that will run Java apps using the Oracle JDK you downloaded. Applets will not yet be working. We'll tackle that next.

Configure browser plugin
The directions for installing the browser plugin given by Oracle may leave some browsers out in the cold. I put together a script that creates a link to the plugin in all the locations that the last debian sun-java1.6 plugin package did.

Download the script from here.
Look it over to make sure it's configured correctly for your system.
In a terminal (as root):
# chmod a+x {name-of-the-file-you-downloaded}
# ./{name-of-the-file-you-downloaded}
Restart your browser and test that applets are working by going to the Oracle Java test page.

I tested the above with Iceweasel, Chrome, and Opera and they all worked as expected. On one of my machines, I had to re-enable the plugin in Chrome. To do that, enter chrome://plugins in the URL bar and the rest should be obvious.

If you study the script carefully, you will see that there are commented-out bits that you can use to remove the links it created. Lemme know if you need to do this but can't figure out what to do.

Configure Webstart
In Iceweasel and Opera, configuring Java Web Start for me was as simple as going to a page that had a Java Web Start app in it (e.g., this one), clicking on it, and then directing the browser to use /opt/java/jre/bin/javaws.

I was able to get Chrome to work in a roundabout way by first downloading a *.jnlp file and then using my file manager (Thunar in Xfce) to tell it to open *.jnlp files with javaws by default. After that, in Chrome I downloaded a *.jnlp file again and then (still in in Chrome) I clicked the arrow next to the file name and selected "Always open files of this type." There may be a better way to do this.

Put the Java binaries on the PATH
There's a bunch of execuatables in /opt/java/jre/bin that will make life a lot easier if they are on the PATH. To that end,

As root, copy the file found here to /etc/profile.d/oracle_java_mfk.sh (the actual name isn't really that important as long as it ends with .sh).
Reboot.

On reboot, the executables in /opt/java/jre/bin will be available on the command line, which is as God, er, Oracle, intended. Feel free to test by opening a terminal and entering
$ which keytool
The result should point to the executable in /opt/java/jre/bin. If doing this spooks you (it is, after all, a system file), you can still get by without. But you will have to launch things like the Java Control Panel and other goodies from the /opt/java/jre/bin directory rather than as a command or by using one of the convenient GUI desktop entries (discussed below).

Install desktop files
There are a bunch of files in /opt/java/jre/lib/desktop that help to integrate the JRE into you system. These aren't critical, but they're probably nice to have. At the very least, they add a menu entry to start the Control Panel. I have written a script to install these files here.

Note that this script copies stuff into your system, which means 1. it will clobber resources you might already have (which you shouldn't if you completely removed the Wheezy sun-java6 packages) and 2. it makes uninstalling a tedious process of manually deleting the files that were copied over. Don't delete the directories mentioned in the scripts! There is probably stuff in those directories that your system needs. Instead, look at the files in the directories and subdirectories in /opt/java/jre/lib/desktop and delete each of those manually. (For more info on MIME stuff see http://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/mime.html.en).

Install Java fonts
Oracle Java includes a group of fonts from the Lucida family of typefaces. Yup, I've got another script for installing those, and you'll find it here. More than you ever wanted to know about fonts in Debian is here.

Updating the system
When a new version of the JRE is released, updating should really be just a matter of deleting everything in /opt/java and repeating the steps in the Get and deflate the JRE binaries section. If you want to be really thorough though, you'll also want to repeat Install desktop files and Install Java fonts sections.

The somewhat massive gorilla in the room now is, "How do you know if an update is available." Sadly, for this I have no brilliant solution. That means you should probably check the Java SE Downloads page occasionally to see if one has been released.

Update 2011-11-26: Added Install desktop files section. Added the Install Java fonts section.
Update 2011-11-27: Changed path to javaws executable and updates info on getting Webstart to work with Chrome. Added comments about (not) getting notified of updates in Updating the system. Added how to configure plugins in Chrome to Configure browser plugin.

Debian drops Oracle Java

2011-11-23T17:22:00.003+02:00

I am sorta bummed that the Debian devs have decided to ditch Oracle Java. At the present time, there are no sun-java6 packages in Wheezy, and sid has old builds (for some reason). It is unclear to me whether Oracle Java was dropped because of licensing issues or because it has unresolvable security issues. I assume the former even though the bug report gives the impression of the latter.

In theory, the free OpenJDK packages provide a sufficiently stable and functional alternative to Oracle Java. But if you read up enough on this, you'll find that people are still having issues with OpenJDK. I am among them. In particular, I am finding OpenJDK provides noticeably slower performance than Oracle Java. With things like Processing and FreeRouting, the difference is quite noticable.

Of course I would prefer to use the free OpenJDK over the proprietary Oracle Java -- but OpenJDK just doesn't seem up to the job yet, at least not for the kinds of things I need Java for. There is a bit of a vicious cycle here -- OpenJDK is unlikely to get the kinds of optimizations it needs unless people are actually using it and bump into its limitations. To this end, I will happily take a bit of a performance hit or other inconvenience, but not as much as I am seeing.

I am now trying to rip out all the sun-java6 and OpenJDK stuff on one of my computers and install the full-fledged Oracle Java experience (JRE, browser plugin, Webstart, and JDK) from the Oracle site. I'm working with the JRE only at the moment, and it's proving to be a pretty painful process. More later if I succeed.

Selecting sudo/su authentication mode (without gconf-editor)

2011-09-25T23:56:00.001+03:00

This may be Debian-specific.

Apps like 'Synaptic' and 'Root Terminal' when launched from a desktop menu (e.g., your panel's applications menu) will ask for authentication. By default, Debian uses gksu for these tasks. However, it's possible and quite easy to configure things so gksudo is used instead. The following assumes you have already configured your system and user to use sudo.

I first learned how to do change the setting by using gconf-editor. If you have gconf-editor installed, go to the entry for /apps/gksu and click the checkbox next to sudo-mode. But that's the fiddly way to do it. I just discovered by accident a much easier way -- one that doesn't require gconf-editor. Simply launch:

$ gksu-properties

as user (not root) and set Authentication mode to su (to use gksu) or sudo (for gksudo). While you're there, you can also disable screen grabbing, though why you'd want to I'm not really sure.

Note that this is a per user setting. There's probably a system-wide config for this, but I'm feeling too lazy to find it.

Fixing ugly Qt fonts in Openbox, Fluxbox, etc.

2011-07-18T17:32:00.004+03:00

On Debian Squeeze at least, unless you are using GNOME or Xfce (or ostensibly KDE) or are running the configuration daemons that come with these, fonts rendered by Qt apps look like utter crap.

It seems that Qt honors neither ~/.fonts.conf, nor what's in ~/.fonts.conf.d, nor what's in /etc/fonts/conf.d. This is a problem if you want to run light-and-lean and not use the GNOME or Xfce daemons in Openbox, Fluxbox, and likely many other window managers.

After much hair pulling, I finally managed to work around the problem by using Xresources. Adding the code below to either ~/.Xresources (for user-only changes) or to a new file /etc/X11/Xresources/fonts-default (for system-wide changes) fixed the issue for me. It also fixes problems with ugly font rendering in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.

What I added is:

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.autohint: false
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault

The dpi entry is there just for good measure. Change settings as needed according to taste.

Fixing ugly LibreOffice UI in Squeeze

2011-06-25T18:17:00.003+03:00

I removed OpenOffice.org from my recently Lenny-to-Squeeze updated machine and installed LibreOffice from backports instead. A succinct how-to for doing that is available here.

The installation went without a hitch, and LibreOffice started just fine. But the UI was ghastly, horribly, I would-rather-look-at-and-smell-a-garbage-bin ugly.

Easy fix:

# apt-get -t squeeze-backports install libreoffice-gtk

Aaah.

There is a libreoffice-gnome package as well. I don't know what the difference is yet, but I suspect it would be a good idea to go through all the libreoffice backports for Squeeze to see if there's anything else I missed.

Squeeze, Fonts, Firefox update

2011-06-25T17:57:00.007+03:00

This is good.

This morning I finished upgrading a Lenny installation to Squeeze. (For those of you who might know what's coming next, this installation had the plain old standard libcairo2 -- no patches of any sort.) So far things seem to be just fine. But it's Debian and so this is no big surprise. This is not why I'm writing this post.

The reason for writing this post is to let you know that indeed the rumors are true. Installing Iceweasel 5 from http://mozilla.debian.net/ solves three problems that have plagued lots of Linux users:

Obsolete Iceweasel/Firefox.
Ugly font rendering with official Firefox binaries.
Ugly font rendering everywhere on the system.

You heard it right, folks. Installing Iceweasel 5 in Squeeze brings in a version of libcairo2 with all the yummy Ubuntu font rendering goodness. Like I said, this is good.

But there are a couple small gotchas:

Confusing instructions
The directions given at http://mozilla.debian.net/ are complete, but the order in which the info is given is confusing. So here is what you need to do, in the order in which you need to do it.

Add the following entry to /etc/apt/sources.list or a new file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/:
deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ squeeze-backports iceweasel-release
Add the archive key to your apt keyring:# wget -O- -q http://mozilla.debian.net/archive.asc | gpg --import
Import it into the APT keyring:# gpg --export -a 06C4AE2A | sudo apt-key add -
Update the repository database:# apt-get update
Install Iceweasel 5 with the following command:# apt-get install -t squeeze-backports iceweasel

Configuring fonts
After I did the above, fonts were still not quite right. So I added the ~/.fonts.conf file posted ~~here~~ here*. (Blogger, please make it possible to post code with angled brackets!!)

I don't know which is the magic setting responsible for letting the fonts come out all pretty (I suspect lcdfilter), but I'm happy enough with the results now that I'll just be using the setup for a while. It's only a process of elimination to figure out which setting is the key, and once it's found it should be an easy matter to make these the system default so you don't need the ~/.fonts.conf file.

[update 2011-07-11: Changed sources.list addition to reflect changes at http://mozilla.debian.net/.]
*[update 2011-07-01: I added rgba settings for completeness.]

Colorful GNOME-colors

2011-06-11T17:44:00.027+03:00

One of my favorite icon sets is the GNOME-colors series. The shapes, contrast, perspectives, and luster (not too shiny) are all just right. One thing that wish it had a bit more of though was color diversity. When you use gnome-brave, for example, things become just a bit too blue for my taste. And I don't mean from just an aesthetic perspective--it impacts usability for me as well.

So, I wrote a little (translation: longish) script that will make a new hybrid icon set from all the icon sets in the whole GNOME-colors pantheon. The script was written for Ubuntu/Debian and is I hope self explanatory. The basic idea is that it makes a copy of one of the sets (I chose gnome-brave because it's closest to what I want) and then selectively copies over the bits from the other sets. Hacking the script for other distributions and/or local installations should be pretty straight forward. The script includes a full list of the icons that are part of the Ubuntu package; ones that do not deviate from the default are commented out.

After running the script, you will have to move the directory it generates to ~/.icons or to /usr/local/share/icons.

Odd and pesky details:

Requires at least bash 4.
Assumes you have the gnome-colors package installed.
Don't try running this from within Geany. For some reason, Geany chokes on declare -A statements. It works just fine if you run it inside a terminal.

You can download the script from http://download.tuxfamily.org/skinny/misc/make-gnome-colors-hybrid.sh. I would show it here except that I'm tired of fighting Blogger's inability to properly implement pre and code tags or provide some other means of sharing code without messing it up.

Installing the Qt SDK

2011-04-02T11:50:00.010+03:00

Update: Bits of this have been obsoleted with the 4.7.3 release. I'll try to post an update soon. [09 May 2011]

Because I live fast and loose and on the bleeding edge, I decided to install the Qt SDK using the Nokia download rather than from my distros' package manager. Actually, the real reason is that I was seeing a weird message in the debugger in Qt Creator on Ubuntu 10.10 and hoped the a newer SDK would fix that. But alas it did not--on neither my Ubuntu nor my Debian Squeeze development system. But I will continue to use the downloaded SDK because it will let me update to the latest versions.*

What follows is a brief guide to help you integrate the downloaded SDK into your system should you opt to do so.

The most important difference between installing the downloaded SDK versus installing from the repositories is that the downloaded install will only install for a single user.** The installation itself is pretty straightforward:

Download the installer.
Make the installer executable: In a term open to the directory where you downloaded the installer, enter the command
$ chmod u+x {the-name-of-the-installer}
In my case {the-name-of-the-installer} was qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-2010.05.1.bin
In the same term, issue
$ ./{the-name-of-the-installer}
and follow the resulting directions. The installer will let you pick the directory where the SDK will go. Don't feel obliged to use the default. Because I didn't want another visible directory in my home directory, I installed into ~/.opt/qtsdk.

The above will install all the SDK bits in the specified directory and create two *.desktop entries for the Qt Creator IDE: one on your desktop (drag it to the trash) and the other in your ~/.local/share/applications directory--so that you get a menu entry for it.

Adding some missing bits
The above process gives you a working SDK that's well suited to using the Qt Creator IDE. However, for more general work there are a few things missing:

qmake and other executables will not be available as system commands
There is no menu entry for the Qt Designer GUI layout tool.

The first is required if you plan to do Qt development with another IDE (Netbeans, Eclipse, Monkey Studio, etc.). The second is nice to have in any case. Both are fairly easy to fix.

Making the SDK commands available
To do this we are going to edit your .profile file. Before making changes to your .profile, make a backup of it so you can get back to it easily if you break something! If you have also installed the SDK from the repositories, what follows will cause the repository commands to be overridden by the commands in the local SDK. If you don't want this, then don't do this.

Open ~/.profile in a text editor. Toward the bottom, add the following:

# set PATH so it includes local Qt SDK tools
QTSDK_LOCATION=$HOME/.opt/qtsdk
if [ -d "$QTSDK_LOCATION/qt/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$QTSDK_LOCATION/qt/bin:$PATH"
fi
if [ -d "$QTSDK_LOCATION/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$QTSDK_LOCATION/bin:$PATH"
fi

making sure to change QTSDK_LOCATION as needed for your installation. When you logout and log back in, the executables in the two bin directories should be available as commands. Test this by issuing
$ qmake -v
in a term. The output should make sense.

Adding an entry for Qt Designer to the menu
Assuming you have done the stuff in Making the SDK commands available, you can just add the following file as Nokia-QtDesigner.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications

[Desktop Entry]
Value=1.0
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=designer %F
Name=Qt Designer
GenericName=GUI designer for Qt applications
X-KDE-StartupNotify=true
StartupNotify=true
Icon=Nokia-QtCreator
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development

If you have not done the Making the SDK commands available stuff, then change the Exec= line to point directly at the designer executable (which should be in {qtsdk}/qt/bin)

Now I'm going to move on to testing alternatives to Qt Creator. Qt Creator has a very nice feature set, but the UI is a bit quirky. I'll let you know if I find anything I like better.

* A possible consequence of this is that installing extra bits and baubles will no longer be easy. For example, it seems the Qt4 Designer plugin for QScintilla 2 (libqscintilla2-designer in Debian-land) doesn't ship with Nokia's SDK, and I don't know if Qt Designer will pick up libs installed in standard system library locations.
** I'm quite certain that you can install the downloaded SDK for all users, for example by installing as root into /opt. However, doing so may generate *.desktop files on root's desktop and in root's .local/share/applications dir, and I am not sure if that will mess anything up. If you try this, please let me know how it worked for you.

Debian Firefox 4 Font Failure

2011-03-23T22:48:00.008+02:00

[Update 2011-06-25: You should consider this post obsolete. See this post for more info. Iceweasel 5 installs most beautifully on Wheezy.]

I just tried building Firefox 4 on Debian Wheezy. I build Firefox for my machines because (1) I want the latest FF and (2) I want subpixel rendering--which tends to get turned off sometimes|always in Debian and Ubuntu builds of Firefox and Iceweasel.

My first attempt failed. Why? Because if you enable-system-cairo in the build, FF4 insists that you have at least version 1.10 of libcairo2--and Wheezy and Squeeze are both at 1.8.10. One upshot of this is that there will be no way for Squeeze users to get subpixel rendering in FF4 using the default libcairo2 packages. Wheezy users will have to wait until the current Sid packages trickle down. Once that happens, it theoretically will be possible to backport the Wheezy libcairo2 to Squeeze (with patches even) , but I am frankly getting a little tired of this.

I am now making a second attempt to build FF4 wherein I did not enable-system-cairo, and it seems to building just fine. That should be ready for testing in another hour or so. But of course I expect font rendering to be just tragically bad. (Update: it built and runs fine and renders fonts every bit as badly as I expected.)

Tomorrow I will probably try building FF4 on Ubuntu 10.10, whose libcairo2 is at 1.10. I tried running the Linux prebuilt binaries from Mozilla on my Ubuntu machine, but as I have come to expect from Mozilla's FF builds, cairo did not seem to be enabled. (Update: Building on Ubuntu also failed. Apparently FF4 with enable-system-cairo also needs cairo-tee greater than 1.10, but Ubuntu's libcairo2 doesn't seem to be built with --enable-tee=yes.)

It seems every other post of mine in the last couple years has dealt with the agonies I've had in getting consistently good font rendering in Linux. It really shouldn't be this difficult.

OpenOffice.org + dark theme + Openbox

2011-02-02T19:57:00.000+02:00

I've been noodling with the very, very dark aud-Default GTK+ theme--which also happens to play very well with the Onyx Openbox theme. However, as nicely as it plays with Onyx, it plays very, very badly with OpenOffice.org. If you get your Google on, you'll find a number of workarounds for OO.org and dark themes. What I wanted is an easy to implement and (more importantly de-implement) solution. A solution in the Crunchbang Linux forums spells out just the ticket. In your ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh file, add the line:


export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen

This will make OO.org fallback to its native theme ... ugly as sin, but usable.

Note that if you are having the opposite problem--that you can't get OO.org to render with your GTK theme--then try adding:


export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome
export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk

instead. This suggestion is from the #! forums and Urukrama's blog.

There are a few other usability issues I'm having with aud-Default , but I'm willing to work at it some more given the sweet way it renders entries in fbpanel's taskbar.

Fixing overzealous hard drive head parking

2011-01-02T12:55:00.008+02:00

Debian Squeeze on my Samsung R510 has been working very well, with one exception: pause... pause... click... pause... pause... pause... click... The hard drive seems to be overzealous about parking its heads. There are some (strawman alert?) who feel that heavy head parking actually reduces the life of a drive. Whether or not that's the case, I find the frequent clicking to be downright annoying on this otherwise intensely quiet computer.

As is the case with many things in Linux, a fix is at hand. Many thanks to SammyNetbook for pointing the way. The frequency of head parking can be changed by lowering the aggressiveness of APM power saving through the hdparm command. In the case of my lappy, running

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

(as root) solved the headparking issue. (There maybe lower levels that work as well, but I'm happy enough with the result now that I haven't experimented.)

Running the command at startup
The effect of the above command ends at restart. To automatically run it when my lappy starts up, I used init.d. I first created a file mfk-hdsilence.sh in /etc/init.d:

#! /bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/mfk-hdsilence.sh
#

# Some things that run always
hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

exit 0

Then to activate this:
# update-rc.d mfk-hdsilence.sh defaults

I got a warning when I did this, but it seemed safe to ignore. Result? A non-clicky, super silent lappy. Life is good.

Update: it seems suspending the lappy resets the drive's APM, so I'll need to figure out a way to rerun hdparm when waking up. I am currently experimenting with placing a file 30_mfk-hdsilence.sh in /etc/pm/sleep.d:

#! /bin/sh
# 30_mfk-hdsilence.sh
#

# silence aggressive head parking
case ${1} in
 resume|thaw)
  hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda
  ;;
esac

exit 0

It seems to be working, but I'll need to live with it for a while to make sure. Suspending under Linux is always stressful for me.

XDG menus in Openbox

2010-12-20T22:34:00.001+02:00

Now I feel stupid. For year(s) I've been sorta griping about how the Openbox menu doesn't give you a program listing that coincides with what you get in GNOME, Xfce, and even fbpanel. I've hunted for solutions to this before but came up short. Turns out the solution is insanely simple.

The following is a direct quote from from the excellent ArchWiki. I tried it in Ubuntu Maverick and it works.

Obm-xdg

obm-xdg is a command-line tool that comes with Obmenu. It can generate a categorized sub-menu of installed GTK/GNOME applications.

To use obm-xdg, add the following line to ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml:

{menu execute="obm-xdg" id="xdg-menu" label="xdg"/}

(note: the curly brackets above should actually be angled brackets, but this crazy Blogger interface makes it close to impossible to write the above with angled brackets.)

Then run openbox --reconfigure to refresh the Openbox menu. You should now see a sub-menu labeled xdg in your menu.

Note: If you do not have GNOME installed, then you need to install gnome-menus package for obm-xdg to work.

Update: This is having issues on Squeeze. More later as I (if I) figure it out.

Java Swing anti-aliased font rendering

2010-12-18T18:51:00.004+02:00

[Update 2011-04-03: The Arch Wiki describes lots of options for the export below. I've been having good results with export _JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=setting']

Today I noticed fonts in my Swing-based Java apps were utterly hideous. They were no longer being rendered with anti-aliasing. I don't know if this is because today I logged into a minimal Openbox+fbpabel setup and GNOME was handling this automatically or if it's caused by some other subtle thingy.

No matter, it's pretty easy to fix. Add

export _JAVA_OPTIONS="-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on"

to your ~/.profile file. You'll probably then have to logout and back in. After this anti-alised rendering will be the default.

Supposedly, you can do this system-wide by adding

_JAVA_OPTIONS="-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on"

to your /etc/environment file, but I have not tried this.

Update There is one downside to this: the JVM will write Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on to the console. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is a little annoying.

No Gnome in Maverick Meerkat

2010-10-21T17:53:00.000+03:00

I am a little surprised that no one has yet commented on how there is no longer a Gnome entry in the Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat login screen. Instead, you have various options for "Ubuntu Desktop Edition." When you select "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" you get something that looks, acts, smells, and sounds almost exactly like Gnome. For now.

Enabling touchpad clicking and edge scrolling in Squeeze

2010-10-19T21:09:00.000+03:00

Gnome has a mouse configuration interface that lets you enable touchpad clicking and scrolling. But if you are a Debian Squeeze user and prefer Xfce, LXDE, or some handmade alternative, you will find that your touchpad's clicking and edge scrolling won't work [1]. You'll also find that those functions don't work in the GDM login screen even if you do use Gnome. No probs. The fix is easy.

To fix:

Open /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf (as root) in an editor.
Add the textOption "TapButton1" "1" Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
between Section "InputClass" and EndSection.
Save, reboot and enjoy.

Note that if you use Gnome, you might find that your old mouse settings are messed up after the above. Set them again and all should be fine.

If you don't like the idea of changing system config files, you can use synclient in a startup script to enable things as well.

Useful links:

[1] At least at the time of this writing. When Squeeze is eventually released, this may change.

Fixing brightnes control, etc. on a Samsung R510 with Debian Squeeze

2010-10-14T21:41:00.004+03:00

I finally got around to installing Linux on my Samsung R510 laptop. One of the problems with Samsung laptops is that they don't play well with some Linux standards. One example is the brightness control--it just doesn't work. There are some other issues that are less irritating, but this one is the worst for me.

There is a fix for these ails that was developed for Ubuntu (some of which is also at Google code.). The problem is that my current distribution of choice is Debian Testing (Squeeze). The good news is that these bits developed for Ubuntu can be used in Squeeze as well.

We need to install three different packages: easy-slow-down-manager, samsung-backlight, and samsung-tools. Here's what I did after installing Squeeze with Gnome on the R510:

easy-slow-down-manager
Download the Maverick *.deb for easy-slow-down-manager from from https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa and install it directly with gdebi or your favorite package installer. It's all DKMS source code, so installing the package in Squeeze should be ok.

samsung-backlight
Downloaded the Maverick *.deb for samsung-backlight from from https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa and install it directly with gdebi or your favorite package installer. Like easy-slow-down-manager, it's all DKMS source, so installing the package in Squeeze should be ok.

With a lot of Samsung laptops, we'd be done with these two packages. Sadly, the R510 needs some extra love. The following is taken almost verbatim from http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=516&start=0&hilit=r510

First (as root):
# gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keyboard-force-release.rules

In the Samsung section you will see a line with *N130*|*N140* etc. Add |*R510* there

Do the same for:
# gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules

Next, add "acpi_backlight=vendor" to grub:
# gedit /etc/default/grub

and add "acpi_backlight=vendor" to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT so it looks like
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_backlight=vendor"

Save the file and then update grub:
# update-grub

samsung-tools
It may or may not be ok to install the Ubuntu package for samsung-tools on Squeeze, but since it's got binaries in it, this is risky. I decided to download the sources and build a package on the Squeeze-equipped R510 instead. Start by getting some build tools:
# apt-get install build-essential devscripts fakeroot

Then from https://launchpad.net/~voria/+archive/ppa get the Maverick *.tar.gz sources for samsung-tools. Expand the *.tar.gz and inside the directory that has the debian directory (i.e., not in the debian directory, but in the directory immediately above), open a term and:

dch -l {your initials}

and add comment like "Compiled for Debian." Close the editor and in the term build the package with:
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

You may need to add additional dependencies if it fails. Pay attention to the error messages. Assuming it completes, this will generate a *.deb package file. Install it using gdebi or whatever.

After rebooting, you should now have working brightness buttons and a host of other working {Fn}-{Fsomething} keys. You will also have a new app under System->Preferences->Samsung Tools Preferences that you can use to change keybindings, etc and/or run as a Gnome panel app.

If it doesn't work
If the above doesn't work, you may be interested in playing with brightung. I haven't played with it except to confirm that (as root)

# setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B={some-hex-number}

changes the brightness on my R510.

Workaround for installing desktops in Squeeze

2010-10-14T20:54:00.002+03:00

I've done a couple new Debian Testing installations in the last couple days and have noticed something strange in the installer. At a point in the installation process, you will be offered a menu of choices for major package bundles to be installed. If you want a desktop environment, you're supposed to select "Desktop environment." In the past when I did this, the following screen would offer you a choice of DTEs including Gnome, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE. However, the last few installs I tried did not. And exactly what it installs I'm not sure because I wasn't willing to wait 3 hours (at my connection speeds) for the download and install process to complete. So here's the workaround:

First, using the installer, install the system you want but do not install a desktop environment.

When the installation completes, login using the command line. Then become root
su

Next, make sure you have tasksel installed:
# apt-get install aptitude tasksel

Finally, use tasksel to install your desktop. To install Gnome:
# tasksel install gnome-desktop --new-install

Reboot:
# reboot

and when your computer restarts, you should be good to go.

Scrpit for building Debian Squeeze libcairo2 with Ubuntu patches

2010-09-29T18:03:00.013+03:00

[Update 2011-06-25: Indeed, you should consider this post obsolete. See this post for more info.]
[Update 2011-06-24: This whole business may be unnecessary as it appears installing a recent version of Iceweasel from http://mozilla.debian.net/ also installs new libcairo2 with decent font rendering. I've yet to do careful comparisons, but it's possible that this solves both "ugly rendering in general" as well as "ugly rendering in Firefox" issues.]
[Update 2011-03-06 Reader datSilencer points out that the location of the Arch patch has changed. I have updated the script to reflect the change.]

Based on the post I wrote earlier, which is itself based on work published in a CrunchBang Linux Forum thread and by quanliking, I put together a script for quasi-automatically building libcario2 for Squeeze using the Ubuntu and Arch patches.

You can get the script at http://download.tuxfamily.org/skinny/libcairo2-patched/build-libcairo2.sh.

Prerequisites

Enable sources in your /etc/apt/sources.list (i.e., make sure sources.list has something similar to deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib in it). If you make any changes, be sure to # apt-get update
# apt-get install build-essential devscripts fakeroot
# apt-get build-dep cairo

To use

Download build-libcairo2.sh into the directory where you plan to build the packages. I recommend you start with a dedicated and empty directory.
Open the script in a text editor and change the constants at the top as documented.
Make the script executable and execute it:
$ chmod +x build-libcairo2.sh
$ ./build-libcairo2.sh
Part of the way through, it will prompt you to fill in a line that opens in your default CLI editor. Do what it asks.
When it's finished, open a term and follow the directions to install.

Rebuilding
When it comes time to rebuild (i.e., after a new Debian release) you must start over with an empty directory. Or at the very least, you must rename the top-level folder named libcairo2 that your previous build generated. This is to make sure that you get the most recent everything and that there are no goofy problems that might lead to a build that melts Arctic ice or increases the mercury content of fish.

Todo
An obvious bit of low-hanging fruit is to make entering of version info interactive, but it's arguable that that would be easier and less error prone that editing the script.

To round this out, we also need an additional script or package that adds the needed files from Ubuntu's fontconfig-config package to /etc/fonts/conf.avail and /etc/fonts/conf.d.

Notes
I uploaded the i386 packages that I built for my own use to http://download.tuxfamily.org/skinny/libcairo2-patched. Feel free to try these if you don't feel like building them yourself. However, I'm not making any promises that I'll keep these up-to-date.

Legal disclaimer
I have tested the code and packages mentioned here to make sure they don't bruise kittens or eat children. However, I wrote and built this stuff for my own use and have made it available here with no warranty of any kind whatsoever in the hopes it might be useful to others. Use at your own risk.

Firefox 3.6 with pretty fonts in Debian Squeeze (easier version)

2010-07-15T18:20:00.007+03:00

[Update 2011-06-25: You should consider this post obsolete. See this post for more info.]

If all the Mercurial and Namoroka in my previous posts about building and installing Firefox 3.6 in Squeeze has your head spinning a bit, here's a simplified version that gets the sources via FTP. As was the case in the previous build, this version enables cairo so you get nicer font rendering. This version also configures the build to use official Mozilla Firefox branding so you don't get Deer Park icons and such.

Preproduction
1) Create a working directory. Use a file manger or whatever you are comfortable with to do this. I called mine ~/firefox-release.

2) Get all the tools and things you need to build Firefox. In a terminal as root (using su):

# apt-get build-dep iceweasel
# apt-get install libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libnotify-dev libxt-dev libiw-dev mesa-common-dev autoconf2.13 yasm
# apt-get install libidl-dev

Get and build
1) Get the source code. Open a web browser or ftp client and go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.6.6/source/. Download firefox-3.6.6.source.tar.bz2 into ~/firefox-release. (If 3.6.6 is no longer the most recent version, then replace 3.6.6 above with whatever the most recent 3.6 happens to be.)

2) Extract the archive you downloaded. Use tar -jxvf *.tar.bz2 on the command line or whatever GUI tool you are comfortable with. This will give you a mozilla-1.9.2 directory inside ~/firefox-release.

3) Make a configuration file. Create a new file inside ~/firefox-release/mozilla-1.9.2 called mozconfig. Open mozconfig inside a text editor and paste in the following text:

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-release
#mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding
ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo

Save the file and exit the editor.

3) Build the beast by opening a terminal in ~/firefox-release/mozilla-1.9.2 and entering the following command:

make -f client.mk

Once the compile is done, the binaries will be in
~/firefox-release/mozilla-1.9.2/ff-release/dist/bin/.
As a test, execute the file firefox to make it go.

"Install"
1) Copy the contents of the bin directory to /opt, converting links to actual files. Do not try to copy the files with a file manager because it probably won't convert the links to files--which will render your "install" nonfunctional. Instead, open a terminal and go to ~/firefox-release/mozilla-1.9.2/ff-release/dist/. Then become root (using su) and do:

# cp -R -L bin /opt/firefox-release
# chown root:root -R /opt/firefox-release

You should now have a new directory in /opt called firefox-release. Inside it will be an executable file called firefox. If all went well, executing this file (NOT as root) will launch the browser.

2) Create a command that lets you launch the browser. As root, make a softlink from /usr/local/bin/firefox to /opt/firefox-release/firefox:

# ln -s /opt/firefox-release/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox

3) Create a desktop file to introduce the new stuff to the menu. As root, create a file called firefox-release.desktop in /usr/local/share/applications (adding any directories that aren't already present.) Paste the following into firefox-release.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox Release
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
X-GNOME-FullName=Firefox Web Browser
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/firefox-release/icons/mozicon128.png
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;
StartupWMClass=Firefox-bin
StartupNotify=true
Name[en_US]=Firefox Release

Save the file and exit the editor.

You're done.

Fixing OpenOffice.org font rendering in Debian Squeeze

2010-07-15T00:36:00.001+03:00

I guess I'm on a roll with font rendering improvements...

After patching libcario2 in Squeeze, I noticed font rendering in OpenOffice.org was really awful. It may have been equally awful before and I never noticed. In any case, it's now something that needs attention.

Ugly fonts in OO.org have been reported under Ubuntu and other distributions as well. A good explanation of the problem (in Ubuntu, at least) and a workable solution is offered by Mike Kasic about halfway down the bug report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cairo/+bug/271283. I tried his suggestions on my Squeeze installation, and it worked. If you don't want to be bothered filtering through the bug report, here's the executive summary.

Fixing just the session
Open a terminal and do:
echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" | xrdb -merge

Making the fix persist across sessions
echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" >> ~/.Xresources

Apply the fix for all users all the time
As root:
# sudo sh -c 'echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" > /etc/X11/Xresources/lcd-filter-lcddefault'

Note: I have only tried the first two above. I have not tested applying the change to all users.

The fix also works on my Sabayon Linux 5 install that uses the lcdpatch in cairo.

"Installing" handmade Firefox 3.6 in Debian Squeeze

2010-07-14T19:53:00.006+03:00

[Update 2011-06-25: You should consider this post obsolete. See this post for more info.]

Yesterday we saw how to build Firefox 3.6 from sources. This post shows you how to "install" it.

The reason I put "install" in quotes is because it's arguable that what we're going to do is a real installation. In a real Linux installation, you splay the various bits and pieces of your app into /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/share, /usr/local/lib, and various other places (or /usr/bin, /usr/share, /usr/lib if it's an official distribution package). What we are going to do here is take the easy way out--but a way that lots of "packages" take. We're going to dump stuff into /opt.

If you open up {whatever}/firefox-mercurial/192src/objdir-ff-release/dist/bin/ (or wherever you built your sources), you'll see that quite a few of the items in the bin directory are relative links to resources outside bin. If we try a conventional copy of the bin directory to /opt, what we get won't work because the targets of those links won't be copied. You could copy the whole objdir-ff-release to /opt, which will copy the needed link targets, but this will produce something many MB more than we need. The solution is to convert the links into targets themselves when you copy the file. This is actually pretty easy to do using the command line.

Copy the bin
Open a terminal in {whatever}/firefox-mercurial/192src/objdir-ff-release/dist. From there, become root (using su) and then:

# cp -R -L bin /opt/ff-from-src
# chown root:root -R /opt/ff-from-src

You should now have a new directory in /opt called ff-from-src. Inside it will be an executable file called firefox, and what used to be links will now be actual files. If all went well, executing this file (NOT as root) will launch the browser.

Making commands
We will next do a couple things to let you launch your new Firefox as a command and add an item to your menu.

1. Using whatever mechanism you are most comfortable with, make a softlink called firefox in /usr/local/bin to /opt/ff-from-src/firefox. You'll need to do this as root.

2. Add a png icon called firefox-namoroka.png to /usr/local/share/pixmaps/mozilla. You'll probably need to add the pixmaps and mozilla directories. Again you'll have to be root to do this. The icon can be whatever you want the icon to be in your menu. I used this one, even though it's the same one that Swiftfox uses. I wanted an icon that said "Firefox" but that differentiated itself from the stock FF icon. I scaled the icon to 128x128. Another nice icon is this one, but in spite of the attribution given on the page, I'm not sure it's actually GPL or where it originally came from.

3. Create a file called firefox-namoroka.desktop in /usr/local/share/applications again adding any directories you need and again as root. Copy/paste the following into firefox-namoroka.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox Namoroka
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
X-GNOME-FullName=Firefox Web Browser
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/local/share/pixmaps/mozilla/firefox-namoroka.png
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;
StartupWMClass=Firefox-bin
StartupNotify=true
Name[en_US]=Firefox Namoroka

You should now have an entry in your desktop menu and other desktop integration niceness.

Firefox 3.6 with pretty fonts in Debian Squeeze

2010-07-13T20:18:00.011+03:00

[Update 2011-06-25: You should consider this post obsolete. See this post for more info.]

Iceweasel 3.6 has yet to trickle down to Debian Testing and very well may not make it before the freeze. However, some of us would like to have some 3.6iness in spite of this. If you've tried downloading SwiftFox, IceCat or the Firefox 3.6 binaries, you know that you get a 3.6, but the font rendering looks poopy.

Here's what I did to compile FF 3.6 from sources and get the same smooth font rendering that you get with Iceweasel 3.5 from the Squeeze repo. I'm not an expert, but this seems to have worked.

The following is based mostly on Mozilla's documentation on a Simple Firefox Build and Linux Prerequisites.

Preproduction
First, create a working directory. I called mine firefox-mercurial. The reason for the name will become obvious shortly.

Next, get the tools you need to build stuff. Since there's no firefox package in the Debian repos, I used (as root):

# apt-get build-dep iceweasel

Then install a bunch of other stuff that is supposedly needed:

# apt-get install mercurial libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libnotify-dev libxt-dev libiw-dev mesa-common-dev autoconf2.13 yasm

You will also have to add:

# apt-get install libidl-dev

This isn't documented anywhere that I know of. I found this out the hard way after my first attempts to compile failed.

Get sources
With a regular user terminal open in firefox-mercurial, use mercurial to get the sources:

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.2/ 192src

This will get you the latest, most update, bleeding edge version of 3.6--which may or may not be the same as the release version. For example, at the time of this writing, the latest version is 3.6.8pre and the latest release is 3.6.6. To specify the exact version you want, use #{tag}, where {tag} is one of tags listed at http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.2/. For example, to get and build FF 3.6.6:

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.2/#FIREFOX_3_6_6_RELEASE 192src

Getting the sources will take a long time, but not nearly as long as compiling will later on.

Next we need to move into the 192src directory and set up the mozconfig file that tells the system how to build firefox:

cd 192src
echo '. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig' > mozconfig
echo 'mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/objdir-ff-release' >> mozconfig
echo 'mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"' >> mozconfig
echo 'ac_add_options --disable-debug' >> mozconfig
echo 'ac_add_options --disable-tests' >> mozconfig
echo 'ac_add_options --enable-optimize' >> mozconfig
echo 'ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo' >> mozconfig

The objdir-ff-release is the name of the directory that built stuff will end up in. You can change this name if you want. The line with --enable-optimize is optional. The last option above, --enable-system-cairo, I found looking through the list of available options, and I'm pretty sure it's what gives you nice font rendering in GTK+ environments.

Build the beast with

make -f client.mk

The build will take forever. Once the compile is done, the binaries will be in
{whatever}/firefox-mercurial/192src/objdir-ff-release/dist/bin/.
Execute the file firefox to make it go.

When you make it go, you'll notice that the app is identified by its code name, Namoroka.

Updating
I have not yet tried this, but according to Mozilla's documentation, to build a new version you'll need to update the sources with

hg pull -r default
hg update

I suspect you do this in the 192src directory and I suspect you'll need to rebuild as above afterward. Also, I suspect that in place of default above you'll want to use a valid tag (as when you first cloned the sources), but until I actually update I won't be able to say for sure.

Extra credit
Once I've done some more testing, I will be move the built files to /opt/firefox and add a *.desktop entry for it. The big question is whether I should call it 'Firefox' or 'Namoroka'.

Ubuntu font rendering in Debian Squeeze

2010-07-10T01:22:00.012+03:00

[Update 2011-06-25: Confirmed. Updating Iceweasel from http://mozilla.debian.net/ fixes fonts. See this post for more info. So there's no longer any real need to do what's below.]
[Update 2011-06-24: This whole business may be unnecessary as it appears installing a recent version of Iceweasel from http://mozilla.debian.net/ also installs new libcairo2 with decent font rendering. I've yet to do careful comparisons, but it's possible that this solves both "ugly rendering in general" as well as "ugly rendering in Firefox" issues.]
[Update 2011-03-08:] Reader datSilencer points out that the location of the Arch patch has moved. Therefore, the process for extracting and applying the Arch patch won't work. I am updating the script but I won't be updating this post. If you want to do things manually, please consult the script for the needed changes.]
[Update 2010-09-23: I made a script to semi-automate a lot of the following.]

I love Debian. I really do. But one thing I don't love about Debian is the way it renders fonts in GTK. Or rather, the way Ubuntu renders fonts has spoiled me. After reading about how some people have successfully patched their libraries to use the same changes used by Ubuntu, I've finally succeeded myself. It's been so gratifying and such a good learning experience that I wanted to share.

The process below is based on information from the CrunchBang Linux Forums and from one quanliking. Huge, huge thanks to those people.

To get Ubuntu font rendering in Debian Squeeze, we need to download, patch, rebuild, and reinstall the libcairo2 package. If this breaks your system don't sue me. I am not an expert nor do I play one on TV.

Pre-production
Begin by making sure downloading of package sources is enabled for apt. The line below should be in /etc/apt/sources.list and not commented out:

deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib

The actual address will differ depending on which mirror you set up your system to use, but there should be a line that begins "deb-src", has a mirror's address in the middle, and ends with "squeeze main non-free contrib" or "testing main non-free contrib".

Install the needed build tools (as root):

# apt-get install build-essential devscripts fakeroot
# apt-get build-dep cairo

As a regular user, create a new directory called patched-packages in your home directory.

Get the patches
Open the patched-packages directory you created above in a terminal (i.e., the prompt should read something like username@computername:~/patched-packages$).

At the command prompt:

mkdir libcairo2
cd libcairo2
mkdir downloaded-patches

We now need to get two sets of patches, one from Ubuntu and the other from Arch Linux. To get the Ubuntu patches, go to http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/libcairo2 and look at the list of links on the right. We want the file cairo_1.8.10-{#}ubuntu1.debian.tar.gz. Download it into ~/patched-packages/downloaded-patches and expand it. This should produce a new directory inside ~/patched-packages/downloaded-patches called debian (i.e., you should now have a ~/patched-packages/downloaded-patches/debian).

I'm not yet sure what the original source of the Arch Linux patch is, but apparently we need it. So go to http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=17327 and download the file cairo-respect-fontconfig.patch into ~/patched-packages/downloaded-patches

You're done getting patches.

Get the sources
We now need to get the Debian source package for libcairo2. In a terminal inside ~/patched-packages/libcario2,

mkdir deb-sources
cd deb-sources
apt-get source cairo
cd ./cairo-*

Then copy the patches we downloaded earlier to the Debian package's patches directory:

cp ../../downloaded-patches/cairo-respect-fontconfig.patch ./debian/patches/
cp ../../downloaded-patches/debian/patches/04_lcd_filter.patch ./debian/patches/
cp ../../downloaded-patches/debian/patches/06_Xlib-Xcb-Hand-off-EXTEND_PAD-to-XRender.patch ./debian/patches/

Next, apply the patches to the sources:

patch -p1 -i ./debian/patches/cairo-respect-fontconfig.patch
patch -p1 -i ./debian/patches/04_lcd_filter.patch
patch -p1 -i ./debian/patches/06_Xlib-Xcb-Hand-off-EXTEND_PAD-to-XRender.patch

We now need to modify the changelog to indicate that we've diddled with the package and set a version increment:

dch -i

This will open a text editor. Once there, add

David Turner's ClearType-like LCD filtering patch and fix.

after the asterisk at the top and then save and exit.

(Note: Instead of dch -i above you can also use dch -l {your initials}.)

Build and install
Time to build it. Continuing from where we were in the terminal above (i.e., inside something like ~/patched-packages/libcairo2/deb-sources/cairo-1.8.10) do

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

The result should be a bunch of new packages inside ~/patched-packages/libcairo2/deb-sources/

Look if you don't believe me. All that's left is to install. Open a root terminal and go to the ~/patched-packages/libcairo2/deb-sources/ directory. Then do:

# dpkg -i *.deb

This will install all the debs that were made, of which you may actually only need a subset. Apart from taking up some disk space the extra packages won't hurt anything, and if you install a package in the future that needs one of these, you'l be glad you installed them now.

Congrats. You should now have (IMHO) much improved font rendering. This should hold you until Debian releases a new libcairo2. If the new libcairo2 release doesn't have the "Ubuntu patches" already built in, you'll have to repeat the above process, making sure you get patches that are appropriate for the new version and that there are no additional patch files. (If there are, you will need to copy/add them before rebuilding.)

Rolling back your system to the original Debian packages should be as easy as using Synaptic to "Package -> Force Version..." to the original libcairo2 packages.

Happy building.

Debranding Firefox in PCLinuxOS

2010-07-05T00:37:00.005+03:00

I'm not a huge fan of third-party branding. One of my (minor, when put into perspective) gripes about PCLinuxOS is that they sorta go nuts with it. One of the apps that's the target of their branding is Firefox. If you are equally bugged by this, debranding the default profile used as the template for new profiles isn't that hard.

Download the official firefox-3.{whatever}.tar.bz2 archive from Mozilla's servers. Be sure to download the version that's the same as the one that is already installed on your machine.
As root, deflate the archive. I am pretending we're in /opt and got a /opt/firefox directory:
# tar -jxvf firefox-3.{whatever}.tar.bz2
Again as root, replace /usr/lib/firefox-3.{whatever}/defaults/profile with /opt/firefox/defaults/profile

Now you can delete the profiles in ~/.mozilla/firefox. (This will of course wipe out all your old bookmarks, etc. Jump through the needed hoops now if you want to save anything.) When you restart Firefox you'll now get the profile defaults, links, etc. that the Mozilla upstream devs thought you would want. The same will be true for any new users or profiles you create from now on.

The downside to this is that to keep the PCLinuxOS branding at bay you'll need to repeat steps 1-3 every time a new FF update is installed.

Fixing ugly fonts in Sabayon Firefox

2010-07-04T02:18:00.005+03:00

I've been taking the Gentoo-based Sabayon rolling release distribution for a spin. One of the things that you'll notice is that some fonts in Firefox look ghastly horrible. Luckily, there's an easy fix. The problem involves the rendering of Helvetica, Lucida, and Times fonts and is discussed (and solved) on the Gentoo mailing list.

Instead of editing /etc/fonts/local.conf, I changed my ~/.fonts.conf file. I got better results using "Sans" than "DejaVu Sans" and in a similar spirit I used "Serif" instead of "DejaVu Serif". My entire .fonts.config looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

<!-- see http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg83300.html -->
<!-- Replace Helvetica with DejaVu Sans -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any"><string>Helvetica</string></test>
        <edit name="family" mode="assign">
                <string>Sans</string>
        </edit>
</match>

<!-- Replace Lucida with DejaVu Sans -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any"><string>Lucida</string></test>
        <edit name="family" mode="assign">
                <string>Sans</string>
        </edit>
</match>

<!-- Replace Times with DejaVu Serif -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any"><string>Times</string></test>
        <edit name="family" mode="assign">
                <string>Serif</string>
        </edit>
</match>
<!-- -->

<match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
<!--
   <const>hintmedium</const>
-->
   <const>hintslight</const>
  </edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>rgb</const>
  </edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
</match>

</fontconfig>

Speaking of font rendering, Sabayon has default font rendering that's almost as nice as Ubuntu's. IMHO the only thing that gives Ubuntu the edge is a bit more contrast. If I find a fix for this, I will post this as well.

Thunderbird 3 new account config workaround

2010-06-27T23:16:00.005+03:00

Thunderbird versions 3.0 and 3.1 have a feature that's meant to make configuring new accounts easier but in fact may just make life more complicated for some users. When you set up a new account, the new Tbird account wizard asks you for your name, email address, and password. It then automatically tries to configure the account for you by probing various "best options" using common conventions for port numbers, server names, etc. ... then Voila! you have a fully functioning account configured with SSL and the like if it's available, all without the hassle of dealing with entering server name and port numbers and "Use TLS/Use SSL" options.

The problem is that there's no way to override this. The new account wizard doesn't ask if you want to try an autoconfig or do a manual config--it just starts the autoconfig automatically. There is a "Manual Setup" button on the autoconfig dialog, but there's no way to press it before the autoconfig starts.

"No big deal," you say. "Just wait for the autoconfig to run its course and then go back and manually set the parameters you don't like." Well, that only works for some options. In particular, the "Account Settings" dialog doesn't let you change from IMAP to POP--so if the autoconfig decided that IMAP was your "best option", then that's what you're stuck with. And I've found no way to hit the "Manual Setup" button on the autoconfig dialog before the IMAP/POP selection has been made.

The problem has been reported in bug reports, and the developers' response seems to be, "We will address this in a future release."

"Ah," you say. "It's best to stick with Thunderbird 2 then." However, that's not such an attractive option. Quoting from the Mozilla website: "Please note that Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 is the last planned security and stability release of Thunderbird 2.0. We encourage you to update to Thunderbird 3.1."

So here's a workaround for dealing with v3's new account issues.

In the new account wizard dialog, enter a short bogus email address:

Then click "Continue".

The wizard will vainly try to find the bogus address and eventually give up.

Now is the time to select whether you want POP or IMAP. You will not get a second chance to do this. After you have made the appropriate selection, click "Manual Setup..." and then enter the real account details.

It may not be a pretty, but it seems to work.

(No) icons in GTK buttons

2010-06-18T04:01:00.003+03:00

I don't know if this has anything to do with the no icons in menus issue, but the solution is darned near the same. I noticed that my Ubuntu Karmic doesn't serve up icons in its buttons with GTK apps in GNOME. The fix comes from someone trying remove his icons:

There is now a new key in GNOME Configurator Editor. Below are the steps to disable buttons on icons in GNOME 2.26 and above.
Press Alt + F2
Type gconf-editor and hit Enter.
Go to Desktop –> GNOME –> Interface
Uncheck the key buttons_have_icons

Just check the box to get your icons back.

via Manas T

startupmanager is your friend

2010-05-12T23:59:00.001+03:00

After a recent update to my Karmic system, I noticed my boot screen icon's colors went all hallucinogenic. I later noticed that doing a Ctl-Alt-F1 resulted in a console that was nearly impossible to read: the text was a veeery dark grey. I figured the problems were related and I was right.

Using startupmanager (in the repositories), I was able to fix both problems by setting the boot screen bit depth from 8 bits to 16 bits. Dunno exactly what happened, but it's fixed now.

Configuring grub2/boot stuff is definitely easier with the startupmanager around. Recommended.

Getting your menu icons back in GNOME 2.30

2010-05-11T21:30:00.002+03:00

According to this post, the Interface tab in GNOME's Appearance Preferences has been removed in GNOME 2.30. I can confirm that as of this writing the tab isn't available under Debian Squeeze.

Thia means if you want to have icons in menus enabled (who doesn't?) you need to resort to gconf-editor (i.e., Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor) and set the key:

/desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons

I mean really. Who doesn't want icons in their menus?

sox and mp3

2010-03-30T23:59:00.001+03:00

This is just an info nugget that I hope will save someone else the half-hour it just cost me. In Debian, sox won't play mp3 files by default--even with the baddest, ugliest gstreamer bits installed. The magic bit of fufu dust you need to make sox play mp3 is the libsox-fmt-mp3 package. But as long as you're at it, you may as well just install all the libsox formats with:


# aptitude install libsox-fmt-all

GNU IceCat and file managers

2010-03-28T22:49:00.001+03:00

There's no shortage of essentially identical Mozilla-derived browsers in Linuxspace now. Firefox is the official Mozilla product. Two better known variations are Iceweasel--a Debian project that replaces the not-really-covered-by-a-free-license Mozilla branding stuff in Firefox with really-covered-by-a-free-license branding, and Swiftfox--which offers processor-specific optimized compiles of the Mozilla code.

Perhaps a lesser-known variant (as of this writing) is GNU IceCat. IceCat is very similar to Iceweasel in that its main purpose for being is to remove the non-libre Mozilla bits from Firefox. It goes one step further than Iceweasel in its pursuit of libreness in that it redirects its add-ons explorer to a GNU-maintained list of add-ons that are fully-libre. Don't worry--you can still install any add-on that you can in normal Firefox by visiting Mozilla's add-on site. Seems like a winner: promoting libre software without limiting the use of proprietary software.

However, more interesting than the above for me is something I've found to be case with the latest version of IceCat that is not the case with the other three. In any of the other three (or four if you count hand-installing the official Mozilla binaries rather than the Ubuntu and Debian packages), no matter what I've tried, I have not been able to tell the browser in the downloads dialog to "open containing folder" using the file manager of my choice. Whatever I've tried, they all insist on opening folders in Nautilus. However, IceCat has a file: application type with which you can set the desired file manager just as you might with any other type. And there was much rejoicing.

The weird thing is that I seem to recall that the file: application type was present in older versions of Firefox--e.g. as included in Jaunty. So I don't know if the current lack of the file: type is a temporary abnormality or the sign of things to come on all fronts. Whatever the case, IceCat is my default browser on my Debian machines because I tend to use a custom Openbox/Thunar environment most of the time. It not my default on Ubuntu because it--along with Swiftfox and the binaries directly download-able from Mozilla--does not respect your system font rendering settings. (It's always something, isn't it?)

There's a PPA for Ubuntu users and deb packages for 32-bit Debian users if you wanna give it a go.

Ubuntu as not Linux

2010-03-24T00:20:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, I commented on how there seems to be a concerted effort by Canonical to brand Ubuntu as an independent OS and conceal the Linux that it is. I based this view mostly on UI and software developments I've seen in the last few Ubuntu releases. Today, I got a bit more curious about the PR side of things and had a look at the Ubuntu website.

As a start, I wanted to see how prominently the site featured the term "Linux". And after visiting a whole bunch of pages a typical user would, I couldn't find a single use of the term. Compare this to the respective sites for Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, and even openSuSE, all of which state very plainly on their home pages that they are Linux-based distributions.

So, I fired up Google and searched for "linux" site:www.ubuntu.com to see if I missed something. Excluding mentions in security reports (which a typical user will almost certainly never access), the term "linux" popped up in Google's results in three places:

The Ubuntu Server Edition page--which a regular (i.e., desktop) user will likely never visit.
The Ubuntu MID Edition page--which is intended for use by industry folk building MIDs, not by end users.
In passing in the list of download options. (Look for it ... can you find it?)

This is making me sad.

Gamesters of Triskelion

2010-03-22T12:18:00.005+02:00

Like a few others, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the direction that Ubuntu seems to be headed. In essence, it seems that there is a concerted effort 1) to brand Ubuntu in such a way that it conceals the Linux that it is and 2) to do this in a way, along with some other stuff, to lock users into the OS. In other words, the motivation behind Ubuntu may not be to create a better Linux through which the parent Canonical will make money by providing support to Enterprise and other commercial users; rather the whole raison d'etre may be to develop a platform to market and sell to regular desktop users proprietary services that will increasingly come glued to the platform. And it just so happens that a Linux base provides most of the functionality for the required platform--as well as a core of well-meaning developers who are willing to work for free and who will have done all the heavy lifting for you

In other other words, I am concerned that the monetization of Ubuntu via content services is the gold standard and that the love-for-all goals stated in Canonical's publicity is just propaganda meant to get people on all sides on board. I really, really, really hope I am wrong and that I am being far, far, far too cynical because I've been well conditioned with the nutty stuff that Microsoft is known for doing, Apple has started doing, and Novell is doing with openSuSE.

In any case, based on my growing concern I did a tiny bit of research into Canonical Ltd. Just about everyone knows that it was founded by Mark Shuttleworth, who is (according to Wikipedia) South African by birth, a SA and UK citizen, and a space tourist. But not everyone may know that the company he founded to develop Ubuntu is registered in the Isle of Mann.

It's worth noting that the Isle of Mann is not part of the UK--it is a British Crown dependency. However, it is a great place to setup a business bec ause, "The Isle of Man is a low tax economy with no capital gains tax, wealth tax, stamp duty, death duty or inheritance tax and income tax rates of 10% and 18%; corporation tax is at 0%." In fact it is quite well known as a center for offshore banking, and, "banking and other services now contribute the great bulk of GDP."

I now place the tinfoil hat firmly upon my head.

The national symbol of the Isle of Mann is the triskelion:

Compare this with:

and

Just a coincidence or a weird joke?

Karmic and Pulseaudio (not SOLVED)

2010-03-06T12:32:00.005+02:00

I have been bitten by the bug reported at https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/352732 . In fact, I was bitten by this back in Jaunty. There the problem was isolated to logging out of a non-Gnome session (and into Gnome? I forget exactly). In Jaunty I solved the problem by killing pulseaudio before terminating non-Gnome sessions. Now in Karmic this solution doesn’t seem to work in all situations, so I am trying the suggestion in post #77. Namely, in /etc/pulse/default.pa, comment out the line load-module module-device-restore

Here is the snippet from my /etc/pulse/default.pa:

### mfk addition: comment out "load-module module-device-restore"
### see https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/352732 #77
#load-module module-device-restore

We’ll see how it goes.

Update (2010-03-10)

I just noticed that my soundcard input selection is being disrespected. There are two inputs on my lappy, and the system always defaults to input 1 no matter what. I don't know if this is related to the above or not.

Update (2010-03-12)
I re-enabled load-module module-device-restore , and my input settings began to be respected. However, the trashing of output settings returned. So ... pick your poison. I guess I am coming down on the side of those who complain that Pulseaudio is (still) not ready for prime time. Or is this a problem with the way it's implemented in Ubuntu?

Karmic, openbox, and messed up desktop numbers (SOLVED)

2010-02-15T11:55:00.006+02:00

I think it started after I upgraded to Karmic. When logging into an openbox session, the number of desktops I was getting was equal to one ... no matter what I set the number to during the previous session. Herein I describe a fix.

The script that gets called when GDM starts up an openbox session is /usr/bin/openbox-session. It just so happens that before I upgraded to Karmic, I had created a new script in /usr/local/bin/skinnydebbie-session that was a copy of the Jaunty version of /usr/bin/openbox-session with a few changes in the config files called. The interesting thing was that after the Karmic upgrade I did not have the wrong-number-of-desktops problem when starting from /usr/local/bin/skinnydebbie-session.; it only manifested itself when starting from /usr/bin/openbox-session. A quick comparison of the two files revealed a fix. At the top of my /usr/local/bin/skinnydebbie-session is the following snippet of code which I am sure was inherited from the Jaunty version of /usr/bin/openbox-session and was probably left off the Karmic version:

# Clean up after GDM
xprop -root -remove _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS \
      -remove _NET_DESKTOP_NAMES \
      -remove _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP 2> /dev/null

I added this snippet to my ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh and voila! I get the right number of desktops. I am pretty sure it would work if I added it to /usr/bin/openbox-session instead.

This should probably be a bug report, but I'm feeling a bit too lazy now to do it.

Squeeze and the Java plugin (SOLVED)

2010-01-23T19:40:00.008+02:00

Another Squeeze issue popped up: the Sun Java plugin (i.e., sun-java6-plugin) doesn't work. It took a bit of poking around to find a fix, but here it is. As root in a terminal:

# nano /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf

Then change

net.ipv6.bindv6only = 1

net.ipv6.bindv6only = 0

Finally,

# invoke-rc.d procps restart

I have no idea what other positive or negative ramifications this will have to your system, so proceed with caution. I'm pretty sure you can undo any damage by setting the 0 back to 1 and doing the invoke-rc.d call over.

FWIW, the icedtea6-plugin doesn't work either, but I haven't been able to figure out that one.

Squeeze and GRUB dual boot problems (SOLVED)

2010-01-16T22:12:00.003+02:00

Earlier this evening, I installed a command-line version of Debian Squeeze (i.e., still "testing" as of this writing) from the netinstall CD alongside a regular Ubuntu Karmic installation and had an issue with GRUB that nearly had me cleaning my underwear.

Toward the end of the installation, the Debian installer told me that it saw I had Ubuntu installed and so would I want to install GRUB? It also assured me that it recognized that I had Ubuntu installed and that everything would be ok.

I've been through similar prompts with dual-boot installations before, and indeed everything has always gone just swimmingly. So, I said, "Sure." What I didn't know was that Squeeze is using the new and possibly-not-entirely-ready-for-prime-time GRUB 2. (I guess Karmic is as well.)

When I rebooted, GRUB gave me options for the new Squeeze install, but any trace of the Ubuntu install was gone. Hunting for /boot/grub/menu.lst gave me nothing. That's when I discovered that Squeeze installed GRUB 2 and most of the GRUB repair stuff on the Internet was obsolete. I was about the resort to drastic measures when this post inspired me to try

# update-grub

and it worked.

Changing keyboard layouts

2010-01-02T13:17:00.000+02:00

Just a quick post to mention an easy way to change keyboard layouts. From the command line:

setxkbmap [layout]

For example, I sometimes need to switch to Turkish Q:

setxkbmap tr

And then back to US:

setxkbmap us

Cheers.

JWM and GDM in Ubuntu

2009-12-18T00:08:00.004+02:00

JWM is a lean yet featureful window manager. It's the default WM in Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. I wanted to do some work with JWM on my Ubuntu Jaunty machine, but I noticed after installing it I didn't get an entry in the GDM login screen giving me the option of using it. Fortunately, this is easy to fix.

As root, create a file called jwm.desktop in /usr/share/xsessions containing the text below:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=JWM session
Comment=Use this session to run JWM as your desktop environment
Exec=jwm
Icon=
Type=Application

(Note that the file has to be in /usr/share/xsessions -- it won't work if you put it in /usr/local/share/xsessions even though you'd think it should.)

Logout, and you should now have an entry that reads "JWM session" in GDM's session selector that starts JWM.

Anti-aliased fonts in Wine

2009-11-24T16:25:00.005+02:00

Anti-aliased fonts in Wine seem to be disabled by default. This leads to some pretty ugly font rendering. (No flames, please. If you don't like anti-aliased fonts, then please move along.)

An almost-in-passing comment on this post tells you an easy way to turn on anti-aliasing. I tried it on my Ubuntu Jaunty installation, and it seems to work fine. To spare you the need to reference and hunt and peck the original post, here's what I did:

Open the file ~/.wine/user.reg in a text editor.
Change the entry "FontSmoothing"="0" to "FontSmoothing"="1"
Close your text editor
There is no fourth step.

Enjoy.

Later addition: There is a more comprehensive discussion of enabling anti-aliasing (including ClearType) here.

Different GTK settings for different sessions

2009-11-22T15:52:00.016+02:00

Here's the situation:

You like using different window managers for different things. For example, sometimes you want to use IceWM, other times Openbox, etc. This is easy enough to do if you are using GDM, but there's a small thing that bothers you. All the above WMs will use the same configuration files for GTK settings, but you want to use different settings for each. For example, in Openbox you may want to use Tango icons but you like the default Gnome icons better in IceWM.

I describe below a way you can make this happen. It's a tiny bit hackish, but it seems to work just fine. It assumes you are not using gnome-settings-daemon.

GTK settings--the easy way

First of all, make life easy for yourself and install LXAppearance. It is part of the LXDE desktop environment, but many distributions let you install it as a standalone package. It is the best tool I know of to adjust GTK appearance settings. You do not need LXAppearance to do what I describe below, but you will love life a little more if you have it.

Different settings per Window Manager

Here's where the fun begins. This should work with any WM that has a startup script (required) and a shutdown script (strongly recommended but not strictly necessary). I used IceWM to test the idea.

GTK settings are stored in the .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory. What we are going to do at startup is redirect this by doing the following:

create a file .gtkrc-icewm-2.0 to store the GTK settings for icewm
copy the original .gtkrc-2.0 file to a backup location.
delete the original .gtkrc-2.0 file
then create a link from .gtkrc-2.0 to .gtkrc-icewm-2.0

And at session end, we will:

remove the link, and
restore the backed up .gtkrc-2.0

There are a few test we should do in the process to make sure we don't mess anything up. Below are experts from my ~/.icewm/startup and ~/.icewm/shutdown files that outline the needed tests.

Excerpt from ~/.icewm/startup:

### This section lets icewm use its own gtk settings ###
# it uses the following files
# .gtkrc-2.0             original gtk settings file
# .gtkrc-icewm-2.0       file where gtk settings for icewm session are stored
# .gtkrc-2.0-orig.BAK    file where original .gtkrc-2.0 is stored
#
# if .gtkrc-icewm-2.0 doesn't exist, make it
if [ ! -f ~/.gtkrc-icewm-2.0 ] ; then
   if [ -f ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ] ; then
       cp ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ~/.gtkrc-icewm-2.0
   else
       touch ~/.gtkrc-icewm-2.0
   fi
fi

# if .gtkrc-2.0 is a regular file, move .gtkrc-2.0 to a backup file,
# then link to .gtkrc-icewm-2.0. (This should be undone in shutdown.)
if [ -f ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ] ; then
   cp ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ~/.gtkrc-2.0-orig.BAK
   ln -sf ~/.gtkrc-icewm-2.0 ~/.gtkrc-2.0
fi
#
### end gtk settings stuff

Excerpt from ~/.icewm/shutdown:

# if .gtkrc-2.0 is a link then remove link and restore backed up .gtkrc-2.0
if [ -h ~/.gtkrc-2.0 ] ; then
   rm ~/.gtkrc-2.0
   cp ~/.gtkrc-2.0-orig.BAK ~/.gtkrc-2.0
fi

If you don't do the shutdown bits, then the link to the .gtkrc-icewm-2.0 file will remain in place when you start a session in a different WM. This means that every WM you use that doesn't use gnome-settings-daemon (and maybe xfce-mcs-manager) must do a restore on startup if things are not to get really wonky.

issues with libtrash and ROX or Firefox

2009-10-26T08:40:00.006+02:00

libtrash is a shared library by Manuel Arriaga that gives Linux delete operations a trashcan behavior. When I tried it under Debian Etch with ROX, I don't remember having any problems. This weekend I gave it a go with Ubuntu Januty, and, sadly, it is having issues. (I haven't tried it on Debian Lenny yet.)

With both Openbox or IceWM, ROX started behaving a bit strange. In particular, any attempts to move into parent directories took a very, very long time.

There are also issues with Firefox. libtrash's website points out a problem with segfaults when starting up on some systems. I didn't see segfaults on my system; instead Firefox just didn't want to start. Even from the command line, all I got was a stuck process (no debug/warning/etc. messages).

I really hope these issues get ironed out because when it works, libtrash is pretty cool.

ssh via Cygwin

2009-10-06T14:16:00.003+03:00

Argh. I am trying to set up Unison on my Windows XP box at work. Unison needs an ssh connection, and the ssh server I had been using, KpyM Telnet/SSH Server, just doesn't seem to get along with Unison. This has led me try try the ssh server in Cygwin, and all I can say is "Ouch."

While Cygwin is truly a blessing, it is not exactly easy to set up. If you are trying to set up a ssh server with it, I found the directions here to be a godsend. Be sure to read it carefully as there are lots of little bits and pieces that can be messed up in the default install. In particular, I ran into a roadblock with group IDs right, and this solved it.

Starting up gnubiff

2009-09-29T22:42:00.009+03:00

I am using gnubiff as my email notifier because it's cuter and more flexible than the defacto standard Mail Notification. In fact, I use two different instances of gnubiff to provide notification for two different groups of email accounts. (Yeah ... I have too many email accounts.)

However, one of gnubiff's issues is that once it encounters an error (such as if the Internet connection isn't up) it tends to get stuck even when whatever caused the error is fixed. To help with this problem, I wrote a script that I call when my session starts up. The script waits until the Internet connection is up before starting my biffs. You'll need to modify the specific biff/gnubiff/whatever calls for your needs.

#!/bin/bash

# Copyright (c) 2009, Mithat Konar
# All rights reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 
# modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
# met:
# 
#     * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 
#       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#     * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
#       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
#       documentation and/or other materials provided with the
#       distribution.
#     * Neither the name of the  nor the names of its
#       contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
#       from this software without specific prior written permission.
# 
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
# IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
# THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR 
# PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR 
# CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, 
# EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, 
# PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR 
# PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF 
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING 
# NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS 
# SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
#
# Delays the launching of biffs so the network can get setup.
# Requires wget, zenity.

MAX_TRIES=4   # max number of attempts to verify connection
DELAY=15   # time between attmepts to verify connection
TEST_URL=http://www.google.com # the URL used to verify connection
TMP_FILE=/tmp/start-biffs-mfk # a needed temp file; must be user r-w

###########################################################################

rm -f $TMP_FILE
numTries=0
while [ "a" == "a" ]
do
if [ $numTries -ge $MAX_TRIES ] ; then
zenity --question --title "biff startup issues" --text "I haven't been able to detect an Internet connection.\n\nShould I continue trying?"
if [ "$?" == "0" ] ; then
numTries=0
else
exit 1
fi
fi
wget $TEST_URL -O $TMP_FILE
if [ -s $TMP_FILE ] ; then
break 
fi
sleep $DELAY
let numTries=numTries+1
done
rm -f $TMP_FILE

###########################################################################
sleep 5
gnubiff -n --systemtray -c ~/.gnubiffrc-gmail&
sleep 10
gnubiff -n --systemtray -c ~/.gnubiffrc-misc&
# the following isn't really a biff, but it's close enough to count as one
sleep 10
~/Apps/scripts/email-notify-mfk&

Running commands on GNOME logout

2009-09-25T20:02:00.005+03:00

This post deals with GNOME, which disqualifies it from any reasonable "light-and-lean" discussion, but I don't exactly know where else to make a note of this.

One of the bigger omissions from GNOME is that there is no built-in mechanism for executing commands at logout. I discovered this the hard way when trying to set up MPD to run completely in userspace (to be documented in an upcoming post). However, it is possible to make GDM run arbitrary stuff at the end of the session, and that can be used to good effect as described here. In the event that that link goes bad, in summary what you do is edit /etc/gdm/PostSession/Default
and add

logoutscript="$HOME/.gdmlogout";
if [ -x "$logoutscript" ] ; then
su $USER -c "$logoutscript"
fi

to the file. Then create a file .gdmlogout in your home directory and make it executable.

You need to note that this will only work if you are using GDM and the .gdmlogout file will execute no matter what desktop environment you log into.

Use ROX-Filer to open containing folders in Firefox/Iceweasel (Part 2)

2009-09-14T14:10:00.004+03:00

About a year ago, I wrote up a method for getting Firefox/Iceweasel to open files in ROX-filer in Debian Etch. Recently, Into.The.Void wrote up a much more sane way to accomplish the same thing in Gentoo that works with more recent versions of ROX.

ROX's -U option that Into.The.Void uses is not available in the version of ROX that's in Etch, but it is available in Lenny. (You have updated to Lenny, haven't you?) The bad news is that, the file used in Into.The.Void's script, /usr/lib/rox/ROX-Filer/AppRun, is not part of the ROX package in Lenny. But the good news is that it is trivially simple to change the script so that it does work in Lenny.

So, here is Into.The.Void's method adapted to Lenny:

As root, make a new file /usr/local/bin/roxuri and copy the following into it:

#!/bin/sh
exec rox -U "$@"

Make the new file executable for all by using ROX or by issuing the command:

chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/roxuri

Open Firefox/Iceweaswel and set it to use the script to open files with Edit -> Preferences -> Applications: file and selecting /usr/local/bin/roxuri

Enjoy.

I don't know if this will work with Ubuntu because for some strange reason Ubuntu's version of ROX in 9.04 is quite a bit older than what ships in Lenny.

SkinnyDebbie for Lenny

2009-08-14T00:00:00.004+03:00

I just released an advanced beta (i.e., good enough for daily use) of the SkinnyDebbie light-and-lean flavorizer for Debian Lenny.

Please, do go forth and enjoy.

Xstarfish

2009-06-10T00:59:00.003+03:00

Xstarfish is another tool you can use to set your screen's background image. However, unlike other wallpaper tools that simply paste pictures into the background, Xstarfish creates a new random image everytime it is invoked; you can also set it to periodically generate a images. I won't go into how to use it here; the man page is clear enough.

Urukrama's Weblog has a couple nice screenshots to give you an idea what it does.

A word of warning: if you go for the '-s full' option, it will eat a lot of cycles before it shows anything.

via Urukrama's Weblog

Nitrogen

2009-06-07T13:44:00.007+03:00

Nitrogen is a friendly tool you can use to set your screen's background image (i.e., wallpaper). To select a new background image, launch nitrogen from the command line, passing it the directory in which you store your background images:

nitrogen /path/to/background/images

This brings up a GUI from which you can select, stretch, etc. your desired image.

You can restore the most recently set background image with the command:

nitrogen --restore

If you place this command in your session startup scripts, every time you login to your session nitrogen will restore your background image.

The only problem with nitrogen is that its image browser expects to be told the directory to search for images. In other words, it does not have a built-in directory browser. To that end, I wrote the following little script to wraps nitrogen inside a directory selection GUI. Enjoy.

#! /bin/bash

# Mithat Konar 2009-06-07
# Wraps nitrogen inside a directory selection GUI.
# Requires: nitrogen, zenity

ui_browseTitle="Select a directory (Cancel to quit)"

theDirectory=~

while [ "$theDirectory" != "" ]; do
theDirectory=$(zenity --file-selection --title "$ui_browseTitle"  --directory --filename="${theDirectory}/");

if [ "$theDirectory" != "" ]; then
nitrogen --no-recurse "$theDirectory"
fi
done

Thanks, Yellow Dog! :-)

2009-05-12T23:53:00.008+03:00

Executive summary:
If you are having trouble getting Debian Lenny to give you anything other than 800x600 resolution on a Macintosh Cube, try the xorg.conf file below.

The long version:
In a previous post, I mentioned how easy it was to tweak the Etch-based version of SkinnyDebbie so it worked on a Macintosh Cube. More recently, I've directed some energy into getting Lenny up and running on the Cube as a precursor to making the upcoming Lennified version of Skinny work on it as well.

My adventure started by installing the Xfce version of Lenny on the Cube, and it worked ... sort of. As long as I was happy with 800x600 resolution, it worked fine. As far as other resolutions go, there were none. 800x600 was the only thing available. Much Googling and dinking around with /etc/X11/xorg.conf changed nothing or made the situation worse.

So, I tried a full Gnome install. Same thing. I tried building a system from the ground up, adding all the bits and pieces incrementally. I got no further than installing xserver-xorg. Groan. More Googling and I learned that the r128 driver used by the ATI Rage 128 Pro card has been relegated to legacy status. Despondency ensues.

I then turned my attention to other distributions in the hope that whatever goofy thing was responsible for this was resolved there. Ubuntu? Nope. PPC no longer officially supported, and a recent install disk wouldn't even pass Go. Fedora? Worth a shot ... I downloaded the Xfce spin and ... exact same behavior. More despondency.

Then I remembered Yellow Dog Linux. YDL is a distribution specifically targeting PPC machines, including the Sony Playstation and older Macs. The number of packages supported by YDL is fairly limited, but, hey, a 1280x1024 Cube beats a 800x600 Cube even if it means having to compile everything yourself. So I gave it a shot ... and it worked! Oh, what glory. Gnome and Enlightment only, but it worked.

Then I had an idea. What if I take the display-related stuff in YDL's xorg.conf and use it in Lenny? I was fully expecting a catastrophic video fail with this, but maybe I would learn something in the process. And, much to my surprise, it worked!

Gasp.

Hoo-ray! Full resolution Macintosh Cube Lenny at last!

Now, I know I'm not the only one with this problem. I suspect there are at least ten of us that are in this boat. So for the benefit of the remaining nine, I present below the xorg.conf file that finally did the trick. I haven't spent any time trying to figure out what the magic change is, I'm just so jazzed that it works that I wanted to share.

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier    "Generic Keyboard"
Driver        "kbd"
Option        "XkbRules"    "xorg"
Option        "XkbModel"    "pc104"
Option        "XkbLayout"    "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier    "Configured Mouse"
Driver        "mouse"
EndSection

Section "Device"

#Option    "ShadowFB"    "true"
#Option    "fbdev"    "/dev/fb0"
#BusID    "0:0:0"
Identifier  "Card0"
Driver      "fbdev"
Option        "UseFBDev" "true"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
Identifier   "Monitor0"
ModelName    "Monitor Model"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
HorizSync    30.0 - 81.0
VertRefresh  56.0 - 60.0
Option        "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device     "Card0"
Monitor    "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection "Display"
Depth     8
Modes    "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth     16
Modes    "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth     24
Modes    "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth     15
Modes    "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

#Section "DRI"
#    Group        0
#    Mode         0666
#EndSection

Not all Xfce's are equal

2009-05-05T02:26:00.004+03:00

I happened by chance onto a post in the CrunchBang Linux forum that led to an interesting article comparing Debian's and Ubuntu's Xfce-based desktop installs. And now that Wicd is available in Ubuntu 9.04 as well as in Debian testing and lenny-backports, I am starting to get unreasonably excited.

A .fonts.config file

2009-05-04T23:47:00.005+03:00

For whatever it's worth, I've been having pretty good luck with the following .fonts.conf file after installing msttcorefonts in both Debian Lenny and in Ubunty 8.10 (Intrepid). I haven't really tried it in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), but it's worth noting that msttcorefonts is called ttf-mscorefonts-installer in 9.10.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
<const>hintfull</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

CrunchBang Linux

2009-04-04T15:52:00.003+03:00

The people over at CrunchBang Linux have put together what they promise is a lightweight Ubuntu-based distribution. It comes in Standard, Lite and Eee versions. I have yet to try it, but I absolutely love the minimalist default desktop and am very impressed by what I've read.

CrunchBang's approach to implementation and design differs a bit from what I'm trying to do (ever so slowly lately) with SkinnyDebbie. Implementation-wise, CrunchBang is a full distribution that is based on a standard distribution (Ubuntu); SkinnyDebbie is a configuration that sits on top of a standard (currently Debian) distribution. In terms of design, without actually trying it I can't say for sure, but it looks as though CrunchBang is aimed at users that have at least a bit of Linux familiarity and a tiny bit of hardware headroom.; the design philosophy behind SkinnyDebbie is to make it as useful and inviting as possible to computer newbies while using the lightest-weight core options that still get the job done.

Of course neither approach is better than the other; CrunchBang and Skinny are intended for slightly different audiences/flavors of users. If you are looking for a lightweight Linux distribution, please give CrunchBank a spin and let me know what you think. If CrunchBang had been around when I started Skinny, I might never have started it. :-)

SkinnyDebbie has moved

2009-03-12T12:25:00.003+02:00

I've moved SkinnyDebbie to a new home. Skinny's new home will be able to give the project more of the services it wants and needs. From now on, the best place to get the Skinny is http://skinny.tuxfamily.org/ .

Lenny is out!

2009-02-15T19:44:00.004+02:00

Debian gives us a Valentines Day gift by releasing Lenny. :-)
via Slashdot

The Joy of X

2009-01-29T23:39:00.013+02:00

I've been doing some work with Lenny in its current pre-released state. It's actually pretty stable and usable, with one 1000-pound gorilla exception: X.

In case you are as new to Linux as I was last year, the X Window System (or simply X) is the name of the service that provides graphics in Linux. There used to be competing flavors of X, but now the world has pretty much settled on the version offered by the X.Org project. In contrast with the myriad choices for file managers, text editors, window managers, etc. that characterizes the rest of Linux, if you want graphics (i.e., GUI), you need to deal with X, and you will almost certainly be dealing with X.Org's implementation.

Right now I kinda wish you didn't.

The 1000-pound issue with the latest (i.e., found in Lenny) version of X involves automatic modes detection. In Etch, when you installed X the installer ran a script that made a reasonable guess concerning what your video system was capable of and then asked you if it got it right. Then it would write the data to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and use that data when delivering services. If you changed/added monitors or video cards you had to rerun the config routine with


# dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

(as root) and that would generate a new xorg.conf file. The syntax of the xorg.conf file is really painful, especially for your grandmother, but if for some reason you needed to optimize some settings manually, you could. This hasn't been needed on any of the four SkinnyDebbie systems I use. Overall, the arrangement was not ideal, but it was workable.

Then the X people decided to make it ideal. The idea(l) is that the video system should tell the X server what the video system is capable of when the X-session starts up, and X should then use that data. If you change/add hardware, all you need to do is restart your X session. Beautiful.

Except in my Lenny experience a lot of video cards and monitors (especially slightly older ones) do not (correctly) tell the system what they are able to do. And while you can still hand-edit the xorg.conf file to force it to tell X what the video system can do, there is no way to get the data into the xorg.conf file without teaching your grandmother the painful xorg.conf syntax. In other words as near as I can tell, dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg doesn't have a "manual override" mode. Ugh.

Just as bad:
The standard Linux program for resizing/rotating your display is called xrandr. Among its jobs are reporting back to you what the X system says you can set for resolution and refresh rate and allowing you to select the mode you want to use. Except it hasn't worked with any setup I've used using totally autoconfigured X.

I really, really hope this one gets worked out.

Where is Lenny?

2008-12-28T15:33:00.005+02:00

Additional development of SkinnyDebbie has been held up by two things. The first is an unbelievable workload this term. I am teaching almost double the standard load. And on top of that (not because I am an idiot, but because I had no choice) I am taking two classes for my PhD program--two classes that are turning out to be much more time demanding that I had anticipated. I am hoping next term won't be as insane as this one.

The second reason is the delay in Lenny's release. It was originally on track for a September/October 2008 release, but due to some release-critical bugs, the final release is now not expected until June of 2009. (See also this and this.)

I don't really want to develop/fix/improve anything with SkinnyDebbie until Lenny's final form sees daylight. Given that there are release-critical (i.e., significant) bugs and the projected timeline for resolution is so long, there is a good chance that important bits of anything I develop now may break by the time the release is finalized, possibly is subtle, hard to find ways. I'd rather have a go at it once the infrastructure is finalized.

In the meantime, what is a light-and-lean Linuxer to do? The big concern I have with Etch is that support for Firefox 2 will soon go away. I'm pretty sure that means no more security updates from Mozilla. Does that mean that Etch will upgrade Iceweasel to v3 in Etch? Will Iceweasel developers backport security updates to v2? I haven't heard anything about this yet.

Given the delay with Lenny and issues with Etch's age, I am considering converting the SkinnyDebbie project to an Ubuntu-based deal. But I need to let this term play out before I can make a good decision. In the meantime, if you are brave you can use SkinnyDebbie as-is with Lenny. Some things won't work--the widgets for setting display resolution for example--but in my testing the overall scheme holds up pretty well.

Samba: passwords

2008-09-22T18:04:00.006+03:00

Samba drove me nuts until I figured out that it keeps its own database of passwords. In other words, for each user that you intend to permit access for in Samba, you must also create a password. It's easy enough to do:

sudo smbpasswd -a <username>

but if no one tells you this, you will go nuts trying to figure it out. Not even the official Samba HOW-TO gives you a decent clue about this.

Apparently, you can set Debian Etch up to sync Samba and user passwords, but I haven't gone there yet.

Music Playing Daemon: setup

2008-09-20T17:09:00.005+03:00

I've been having way too much fun with MPD lately. It is now my default tool for music listening at home. I am using Music Player Minion, Ario, and QMPDClient on my Windows laptop to control the server, gmpc as a Linux GUI client (Etch doesn't have Ario or QMPDClient), mpc for terminal one-offs, and ncmpc for SSH sessions. Phew. I haven't gotten around to trying Bluetooth devices, etc. It's all quite cool.

As with many things Linux, setting up MPD can be a bit confusing. Below I describe my current setup, which was designed for a reasonable but not paranoid amount of security. It's all quite geeky. If you are not capable of this level of geek, you might want to stay away from MPD until you are.

I will assume that you have already installed MPD and (optionally) Samba. You can point MPD at any directory for it's source of music. Since it's a server and gets launched at system startup (at least in Debian Etch and therefore SkinnyDebbie), I decided the best place to store files is in a system directory rather than directory inside a user's home directory.

So here's what to do:

Make a group called music:

sudo groupadd music

Now create a directory to store your music collection -- I suggest /srv/media/music. Set the directory to be owned by mpd and of the music group:

sudo chown mpd:music /srv/media/music

Note: The group name created above does not need to match the directory name.

Set /srv/media/music so that members of the group music have write permission and all other have read permission:

sudo chmod 775 /srv/media/music

Note: /srv and /srv/music need to have their read and execute bits set for everyone. This will happen by default on most systems, but if this isn't the case in your case:

sudo chmod 755 /srv
sudo chmod 755 /srv/media

Edit /etc/mpd.conf so that MPD points to the new directory

music_directory         "/srv/media/music"
playlist_directory      "/srv/media/music"

While you are in /etc/mpd.conf, to make MPD is reachable by clients outside the localhost, comment out the line:

bind_to_address    "localhost"

by placing a # in front of it. Now is also the time to set a MPD server password if you want one, change its port number, etc.

Add users you want to be able to manage the music collection to the "music" group

sudo usermod -a -G music <username>

Note: the user must logout and log back in for changes to take effect.

Optional: if you are using Samba to share files on the network, create a share called "Music" and make it fully public by adding to /etc/smb.conf:

[Music]
path = /srv/media/music
browseable = yes
read only = no

Linux's underlying permissions will keep members who are not in the "music" group from writing to the directory. Note that whatever you copy into this folder will be owned by the user who copied it in. Therefore permissions must allow MPD to read all files. This will happen by default on most systems, but if you have problems you can check this.

Be sure to update the MPD database when you add new music:

mpc update

You might consider is setting up a cron job to periodically update the database.

Oldschool wireless

2008-09-17T00:13:00.006+03:00

There's a really good guide to setting up WiFi without using NetworkManager at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834.

Why would you want to do this? Because when you do, the wireless LAN connection comes up automatically when you boot the machine. This is a really good idea if you are running any servers (e.g., the outrageously fun MPD). Of course it's a really bad idea to run a server off a wireless connection whether it comes up automatically or not, but sometimes you just can't snake cables where you want your machine to be. And if you're not running any servers, it spares you the bother of having to type in connection authorization at login. If you do a lot of roaming, then giving up NetworkManager (or the similar netapplet) may not be such a great idea; but if you don't, this approach may save you from some bother.

The only things I would add to what is posted in the Ubuntu forum are:

You can include more that one interface in the /etc/network/interfaces file.
If you use a network interface card that is removable (PCMCIA, USB, etc.) you may get better results if you specify it as allow-hotplug rather than auto.
If you do specify an interface as allow-hotplug rather than auto, issuing the
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
command won't bring up the interface(s). To do that you will need to issue
ifup < the_name_of_the_interface >

My main SkinnyDebbie test machine has one PCMCIA slot and no built-in networking. I tend to swap out a wireless and a wired Ethernet card. My /etc/network/interfaces file looks like this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
#auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug ath0
#auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver madwifi
wpa-ssid ufart
wpa-ap-scan 1
wpa-proto WPA
wpa-pairwise TKIP
wpa-group TKIP
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-psk <>

Of course, your details will differ.

MadWifi and SkinnyDebbie

2008-09-09T19:39:00.008+03:00

My main SkinnyDebbie test machine is an Acer TravelMate 508T laptop. It has no built-in Ethernet. I don't think I need to say that it has no built-in WiFi. It has one PCMCIA slot.

I use a 3Com OfficeConnect 10/100 LAN adapter card (PCMCIA) for Ethernet connectivity. I've never had to do anything special to make the lappy's networking go with any Linux distribution I have tried. It just works "out of the box." I also have a D-Link DWL-G630 WiFi card (also PCMCIA). It works "out of the box" in Xubuntu, but not in SkinnyDebbie. This is a summary of how I got it to work.

I bought the D-Link card because it was listed as Linux compatible at http://linux-wless.passys.nl/ (and because of favorable comments at Newegg). The site says that my card is compatible with MadWifi drivers--drivers that have been developed to support Atheros chipsets. The process below is adapted from MadWifi's own newbie installation guide; however, I had to do some extra stuff and not do some other stuff to make it go in SkinnyDebbie. I expect that the instructions below will work for any MadWifi-compatible card. There are lots of little steps here, none of which are large or complicated, but all of which add up to some tedium. Sorry about that.

Preparation

I started with my wired Ethernet card in the laptop. The WiFi card was not physically in the machine.
Verify that your WiFi card is compatible with the MadWifi drivers at http://linux-wless.passys.nl/. Be sure to check the vendor/product code of your card as well as the product ID because manufacturer's routinely change chipsets in their cards without changing model numbers! If it's not listed as working with MadWifi, then don't install the MadWifi drivers.
Open a terminal and type:
sudo aptitude install network-manager network-manager-gnome
This will install a network management system and notification tray applet that takes a lot of the headache out of setting up and signing on to WiFi networks.
When that's done, type
sudo aptitude install module-assistant build-essential
When that's done, type
sudo m-a update sudo m-a prepare
The above will install the header files needed to build the MadWifi drivers.
When that's done, type
geany ~/.icewm/startup
In the text editor window that opens, right after the line
xscreensaver -no-splash &
add the line
nm-applet --sm-disable &
Save the file and exit Geany.

Build and install drivers

Download the drivers from the Madwifi home page. I used v0.9.4. If something doesn't work in what follows, it may be because of a version change.
In ROX-Filer, navigate to the *.tar.gz file you downloaded and double click on it to extract it.
Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you extracted the package. (This may be a good time to get to know ROX-Filer's Window -> Terminal here command or it's keyboard shortcut, `.)
Type the following in the terminal:
sudo ifconfig ath0 down sudo ifconfig wifi0 down
You will probably get warnings or errors. Don't worry about them.
Now type the following:
cd scripts ./madwifi-unload ./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r) cd ..
This removes any old modules, which you almost certainly don't have anyway. We are now ready to build the drivers.
Still in the terminal, make sure you are at the top level of the downloaded and extracted MadWifi directory and type:
sudo make sudo make install
Both of the above may take some time. You should not see errors. If you do, curse the Linux gods and give up.
Type:
sudo geany /etc/modules
In the text editor window that opens, add the following line to the bottom:
ath_pci
Save the file and exit Geany.
Logoff and power down the computer. Replace the wired Ethernet adapter card with the WiFi adapter card.
When you start the computer and login again, you should see a new icon in the notification tray. When you click on it, you will be able to select and sign into available WiFi networks

There remains one minor problem with this setup: every time you reboot your computer and login, you will be prompted to re-enter the passphrase for the network you want to join. Improving on this situation is probably possible, but it's not something I am going to tackle right now. If I do, you'll read about it here.

SkinnyDebbie and the Macintosh PowerPC

2008-09-09T14:02:00.016+03:00

I tried loading SkinnyDebbie onto an old Macintosh Cube.

"Linux on PowerPC?" you ask? And at 450 MHz? Debian is one of the few distributions that officially supports the PowerPC architecture. And SkinnyDebbie on i386 at 500Mhz works just fine. So it seemed natural to try.

It worked. In fact, I am really happy not just that it works but also with how well it works. So far I have found only four gotchas--two having to do with SkinnyDebbie and two having to do with Larger Issues. The SkinnyDebbie ones are easy to fix. The Larger Issues are not.

First the SkinnyDebbie stuff:

IceWM's network traffic monitor doesn't work. This is caused by the fact that (at least on my Cube), eth0 gets assigned to FireWire networking and eth1 to Ethernet. The fix is easy: open ~/.icewm/preferences and add eth1 to the list of monitored network devices in the NetworkStatusDevice field. When you restart IceWM, you should now see the network traffic monitor. (Make the same change as root to the corresponding file in /etc/skel to make the change happen for new users as well.)

The volume control is batty. The Cube uses a USB sound card and SkinnyDebbie is currently using ALSA. It turns out that Debian Etch doesn't play perfectly with this combination--on either PowerPC or i386 platforms. I'll say more about this in a later post, but the fix is again simple: use gnome-alsamixer or aumix-gtk instead of alsamixergui and comment out the volume changing hotkeys in ~/.icewm/keys.

And now for the Larger Issues:

Flash is very limited. Adobe doesn't make a version of Flash for Linux on the PowerPC. Why would they? There are a couple open source alternatives--Gnash and Swfdec--but neither will do Flash video. So, no YouTube on PowerPC Linux for you. It's just not possible in any PowerPC Linux at the moment. The best workaround is to download videos with any of the million YouTube download services and then watch them in VLC.

Java is at best a PITA. Sun doesn't make a version of the Java Runtime Environment for Linux on the PowerPC. If you want/need Java, the best workaround seems to be GCJ and its bundled GIJ interpreter. I have had success in compiling command-line apps from scratch in GCJ, but I have not had success with GUI apps using GIJ. This definitely needs more research to see just how viable a solution it is.

I am hoping Lenny (the next Debian release, due later this month) works as well as Etch on this hardware. Should it be enough to make you abandon Mac OS? Given that the next OS X release may not support PowerPC, you might think so. But this isn't really a good enough reason since maintenance support for older OS X releases will likely continue for quite a while. The decision to switch in this case needs to be made based on what you want from the OS and operating environment. OS X is certainly more polished and easier to use than SkinnyDebbie. But it costs more and doesn't let you run at least one thing that makes Linux really attractive.

Use ROX-Filer to open containing folders in Firefox/Iceweasel

2008-08-18T20:24:00.016+03:00

Update: See this for an easier way to accomplish the same goal.

One of the slightly bothersome things about using ROX-Filer with Iceweasel in Debian Etch (and I suspect Firefox in other distributions) is that Iceweasel won't "open containing folders" with ROX-Filer from Iceweasel's Downloads window. I was therefore pretty jazzed when I found this link at Rubylution that shows you how to tell Firefox (and Iceweasel) to use a specific file manager to open folders.

Of course I tried it, and of course it failed. The problem is that Firefox/Iceweasel sends the specified file manager the name of the directory in the form of a file://<filename> URL, and ROX-Filer doesn't get file URLs.* So, I wrote a script that uses sed to decode the URL to a form that ROX-Filer understands and then calls ROX-Filer with the decoded path.

So here's what you do:

Create an executable /usr/local/bin/rox-open-url:

#!/bin/bash

# Opens input argument in rox, where input argument is assumed to be a URL
# of the form file://<path-to-file>

# Mithat Konar 17 Aug 2008

# Requires sed and /usr/local/share/rox-open-url/urldecode.sed

##############################################################

# strip away file:// prefix and decode remaining characters
thePath=`echo "$1" | sed 's/^[fF][iI][lL][eE]:\/\///' | sed -f /usr/local/share/rox-open-url/urldecode.sed`

rox "$thePath"

Remember to make it executable.

Now create the file that sed will use to convert encoded characters in /usr/local/share/rox-open-url/urldecode.sed:

s/%08/\\b/g
s/%09/\\t/g
s/%0[aA]/\\n/g
s/%0[dD]/\\r/g
s/%20/\ /g
s/%21/\!/g
s/%22/\"/g
s/%23/\#/g
s/%24/\$/g
s/%25/\%/g
s/%26/\&/g
s/%27/\'/g
s/%28/\(/g
s/%29/\)/g
s/%2[aA]/\*/g
s/%2[bB]/\+/g
s/%2[cC]/\,/g
s/%2[dD]/\-/g
s/%2[eE]/\./g
s/%2[fF]/\//g
s/%30/0/g
s/%31/1/g
s/%32/2/g
s/%33/3/g
s/%34/4/g
s/%35/5/g
s/%36/6/g
s/%37/7/g
s/%38/8/g
s/%39/9/g
s/%3[aA]/\:/g
s/%3[bB]/\;/g
s/%3[cC]/\</g
s/%3[dD]/\=/g
s/%3[eE]/\>/g
s/%3[fF]/\?/g
s/%40/\@/g
s/%41/A/g
s/%42/B/g
s/%43/C/g
s/%44/D/g
s/%45/E/g
s/%46/F/g
s/%47/G/g
s/%48/H/g
s/%49/I/g
s/%4[aA]/J/g
s/%4[bB]/K/g
s/%4[cC]/L/g
s/%4[dD]/M/g
s/%4[eE]/N/g
s/%4[fF]/O/g
s/%50/P/g
s/%51/Q/g
s/%52/R/g
s/%53/S/g
s/%54/T/g
s/%55/U/g
s/%56/V/g
s/%57/W/g
s/%58/X/g
s/%59/Y/g
s/%5[aA]/Z/g
s/%5[bB]/\[/g
s/%5[cC]/\\/g
s/%5[dD]/\]/g
s/%5[eE]/\^/g
s/%5[fF]/\_/g
s/%60/\`/g
s/%61/a/g
s/%62/b/g
s/%63/c/g
s/%64/d/g
s/%65/e/g
s/%66/f/g
s/%67/g/g
s/%68/h/g
s/%69/i/g
s/%6[aA]/j/g
s/%6[bB]/k/g
s/%6[cC]/l/g
s/%6[dD]/m/g
s/%6[eE]/n/g
s/%6[fF]/o/g
s/%70/p/g
s/%71/q/g
s/%72/r/g
s/%73/s/g
s/%74/t/g
s/%75/u/g
s/%76/v/g
s/%77/w/g
s/%78/x/g
s/%79/y/g
s/%7[aA]/\z/g
s/%7[bB]/\{/g
s/%7[cC]/\|/g
s/%7[dD]/\}/g
s/%7[eE]/\~/g

Once you've done this, you can use the method described at Rubylution to set rox-open-url as the command to use to open containing folders.

Caveats: The script and sed file should be considered beta. I have done my best to make sure that the files render properly in HTML, but conversion gremlins may exist. If you find any problems, please let me know.

Reinventing the wheel? Probably. I'm pretty sure someone else has already done something very similar to this, or there may be an easier way to do the same thing. But in the two minutes I spent trying, I wasn't able to find anything.

*This is true at least in Firefox 2 and the version of ROX-Filer that's part of Debian Etch. I don't know what Firefox 3 does nor if the latest release of ROX-Filer handles file URLs.

Tweaking the Debbie

2008-08-18T02:04:00.003+03:00

I've made a few tweaks to SkinnyDebbie, some to fix bugs, some to make some behavioral improvements. In particular, I have:

Added /usr/local/bin/rox-open-url and /usr/local/share/rox-open-url/urldecode.sed
Added config-iceweasel-defaults.sh to install process that modifies Iceweasel default preferences (/etc/iceweasel/profile/prefs.js) to download files to home directory (with prompt) and use rox-open-url to "open containing folders".
Changed ownership of /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup to root
Changed tooltip and properties text for "Screen resolutions" control panel.

The official changelog is here.

If you are an early SkinnyDebbie adopter and want to implement these changes, let me know and I'll send you a custom updater script.

SkinnyDebbie is done

2008-08-06T09:57:00.004+03:00

The initial release of SkinnyDebbie is done. What started as something that I thought I could put together in a few evenings has turned out taking far, far longer than that. But I think the results have been worth it. There are aspects of the user experience that still need cleaning up, but overall I think it's a pretty decent lightweight desktop.

Most of my time was spent writing scripts to make system administration easier for less-than-sys-admin types. Automounting in particular was a royal time hog. If you are insane enough to actually read all the custom scripts (both the ones that do the installation as well as the ones that are installed as part of SkinnyDebbie), you will be able to track the development of my Linux competence.

I've decided to give SkinnyDebbie its own website. For the time being, it will be hosted at http://birotechnology.com/skinny. I am hoping this is a temporary situation and that a more suitable location will present itself. I'm also hoping to flesh out the installation instrutions a bit more once I have recovered a bit from the last few days of development and testing.

Now, please go forth and install. And then let me know what you think.

automounting - part 2

2008-08-05T12:34:00.010+03:00

Here is a brief (!) summary of the problems I encountered in setting up automounting in SkinnyDebbie and what I did to get it to behave. The whole process relies on hal and ivman. Maybe there is a better way to do this; if so I would love to learn how.

In no particular order ...

If media is present when user starts machine, the media automounts under ivman's account, and then a regular user can't unmount it.

Solution:

Disable ivman daemon so that the ivman user doesn't do any mounting:# update-rc.d -f ivman remove
Start ivman under the user's account at login so the regular user can mount via ivman.

In other words, have ivman run as user and do not have it run as ivman (which is what the daemon makes happen). The major consequence of this approach is that it will only work if one user at a time is logged into the machine or only one user at a time is authorized to use automounting.

Turning off the ivman daemon is handled by the SkinnyDebbie installer. I wrote a custom script (start-ivman) to handle user startup that checks the above at IceWM startup. I also wrote a control panel widget that repairs the above if it breaks (e.g., after an ivman package update).

The default SkinnyDebbie behavior is that automounting will be started for the first user that is logged in and not for subseqent users until the first user logs off. In practice this is fine because SkinnyDebbie is intended for single-user logins. The start-ivman script warns the user if someone else is already using automounting.

Not all media automounts, USB hard drives in particular

Solution:

Add /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mountpolicies.fdi as documented in http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ivman (2009.10.30 update: I think this has been moved to http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Ivman).
Remove CDROM and DVD but not FLOPPY entries from /etc/fstab.
Remove CDROM and DVD but not FLOPPY links from /media.
Remove CDROM and DVD but not FLOPPY links from /.

These are done automatically by the SkinnyDebbie installer, except for removing CDROM and DVD links from /. The repair control panel applet also removes directories in /media that do not appear in /etc/fstab.

It's not at all obvious to the regular user where/when removable media is inserted

Solution:

Edit ~/.ivman/IvmConfigActions.xml so that:
ROX-Filer announces the insertion of media and prompts the user for desired action (e.g., open /media directory, launch CD ripper, etc.)
ivman scans on init
Add /media link to the desktop
Add /media link to Rox's bookmarks
Add /media link to IceWM's "start" menu

SkinnyDebbie's ~/.ivman/IvmConfigActions.xml is configured to handle CD-ROM, CD-Audio, DVD-video, and USB-based storage devices. At the present time I don't know what it will do with other removable media ( e.g., Compact Flash). It will also scan on init.

There are several custom "annc" scripts (anncRoxMedia, anncCDDA, anncDVDvideo) that get called per media type. These scripts check to see if ROX's pinboard is running; if it is, then it will announce the insertion of media. The IceWM startup delays the start of ROX's pinboard by a few seconds so that the user doesn't get bombarded with media announcements when logging in.

If user logs off without unmounting stuff, the folders remain in /media but the media is not mounted

Solution:

Write script pumountall that pumounts everthing and use it to unmount everything at logoff (via ~/.icewm/shutdown).

User needs guidance in good habits (i.e., unmount before remove)
Solution:

Write script pumount-fb, which does pumount with GUI feedback.
Tell ROX-Filer to use script pumount-fb to unmount.

CD and DVD media don't mount ... ever
See "Not all media automounts, USB hard drives in particular" above.

automounting

2008-07-13T23:55:00.002+03:00

To be concise, automounting of removable media in Linux hurts.

SkinnyDebbie's first release has been held up by issues surrounding automounting. Getting automounting to sorta work is easy. Getting it to be reliable and usable is another story. I think I've finally gotten things figured out to the point where the system is sufficiently usable and reliable. But I would like to make sure that there are no gremlins hiding in the works. When mountpoints go bad, the results can be fairly ugly.

I also want to add a bit of UI sweetness to the automounting deal: I'd like the the appropriate folder to open in the file manager when the media is mounted to let the user know that the media has, in fact, been mounted. This shouldn't be too tough -- but then that's what I thought about automounting in general.

One annoying thing: Linux does not consider audio CDs and video DVDs mountable media. That means that you literally cannot mount either of these kinds of discs and browse their files on the command line or in your file manager. This doesn't mean you can't open discs in applications designed to read from them (e.g., VLC, Xine, Audacious); it just means that you can't ls, mv, cp, etc. the files on the discs. In theory, it's possible to set things up so that when you insert, say, an audio CD, an application that can read audio CDs will launch and open the CD in the application.

I'm dithering on whether this is a good idea or not. It's a good idea because it makes the life of the end user easier. But it's a bad idea because the application the system designer thinks is best for reading CDs or DVDs may not be the application the user prefers to use. In this case, the psuedo-automount is just a nuisance to the user. As near as I can tell, configuring what application is associated with CD/DVD media isn't that easy either.

Like I said, it hurts.

An inadyn wrapper

2008-07-02T13:18:00.010+03:00

Inadyn is a lightweight command-line tool for updating dynamic DNS addreses. Its use is supported by DynDNS, FreeDNS, and others. Binaries are available for Windows and Linux, and Debian and Ubuntu both have inadyn packages. Overall it seems like a good choice for a dynamic DNS update client.

In Linux, administrators usually set inadyn up to run as a daemon. But for regular desktop use this might present some problems. Most notably, if a network connection is not available when inadyn starts, it just exits. Another problem is that setting up a daemon can be a little scary for new users.

So I came up with a little script that can be run at login that launches inadyn not as a daemon but as a regular process. If the process is already running, it will warn the user. If the process didn't start, it will warn the user. If everything goes ok, it lets the process run and quietly retires.

You will have to hand-edit the 'inadynOptions' variable below to make it suit your needs. The whole thing looks like (you may need to copy/paste the text into a text editor if the left margins are cropped):

#! /bin/bash
# (c) 2008 Mithat Konar
# 2008-07-25

# Try to start an inadyn process. If it starts and doesn't quit right away
# (perhaps because the network isn't available) exit the script leaving the
# inadyn process running. Otherwise, prompt the user that it's not running
# and give the user the chance to try again or quit.

# Requires zenity

# =========
# constants
# =========
# use absolute paths only ... relative paths and env variables not tested! really!!
inadynOptions="--input_file /home/mithat/.inadyn/inadynAfraid.conf" # options to pass to inadyn

timeBetweenTries=20s   # time between attempts to restart the process

# ==========
# UI strings
# ==========

uiAlreadyRunningTitle="Inadyn already running?"
uiAlreadyRunning="It looks as though
inadyn $inadynOptions
is already running.

Shall I force it to start anyway?"

uiNotRunningTitle="Inadyn not running"
uiNotRunning="Inadyn isn't running, possibly becuase the network isn't up.

Try again?"

# =========
# functions
# =========

# tryToStart() will try to start the process "inadyn $inadynOptions"
# it does not check to see if the process is running
# requres global variables 'timeBetweenTries' and 'inadynOptions'.
# writes the PID of the process to global variable 'PID'.
# if startup was successful, sets global variable 'isRunning' to
# process information, otherwise isRunning will be blank.
function tryToStart()
{
/usr/sbin/inadyn $inadynOptions &   # try to start it
PID=$!     # capture the process ID
sleep $timeBetweenTries   # give it some time
isRunning=`ps aux | grep "inadyn $inadynOptions" | grep "$PID" | grep -v grep` # check
}

# ======
# "main"
# ======

isRunning=`ps aux | grep "inadyn $inadynOptions" | grep -v grep`
if [ -n "$isRunning" ] ; then
zenity --question --title "$uiAlreadyRunningTitle" --text "$uiAlreadyRunning"
if [ $? -eq 1 ] ; then
echo -e "$0: User cancelled"
exit 1
fi
fi

tryToStart    # try to start the process

while [ -z "$isRunning" ] ; do  # while the process isn't running ...
zenity --question --title "$uiNotRunningTitle" --text "$uiNotRunning"
if [ $? -eq 1 ] ; then
echo -e "$0: User cancelled"
exit 1
fi
tryToStart   # try to start the process
done

Be sure to set the file in which you save the script to be executable (using chmod or your file manager).

You will also need to make /usr/sbin/inadyn executable by regular users. In a terminal:
sudo chmod u+s /usr/sbin/inadyn

To start the script in Xfce, open "Autostarted apps" and add an entry for
bash -c "<path to the script>"

To start the script in IceWM, add
bash -c "<path to the script>" &
to your ~/.icewm/startup file (don't forget the & at the end of the line!). Adding just
<path to the script> &
seems to work as well.

SkinnyDebbie : an introduction

2008-06-30T00:40:00.006+03:00

It has required more work than I originally expected, but I think SkinnyDebbie--a light-and-lean proof-of-concept "distribution flavorizer"--is almost ready for its first public release.

SkinnyDebbie is a scripted installation scheme that lets a user set up a light-and-lean Debian-based Linux system without a huge hassle. It should be especially attractive to users of systems that are not powerful enough to run the Gnome, KDE or XFCE desktop environments.

SkinnyDebbie's main job is integrating the following windowing and desktop components into an efficient desktop environment:

IceWM: a lightweight yet full-featured window manager
ROX-Filer: a fast and light file and desktop manager
XDM: the classic display manager that is more resource-friendly than GDM or KDM
Dropline Nuovo!: an icon set that is more inviting than the default Gnome icons

It also installs a handful of utilities and other applications that you will need to have a reasonably smooth GUI system, and it does as much configuration as it can for you. It installs a few custom scripts that simplify some basic system management stuff, and it installs and configures theme stuff so the whole experience is almost attractive.

It won't install a boatload of applications the way full-fat distributions do--mostly because if you are running a light-and-lean setup you are probably challenged for storage space. Thus, I figured it was best to leave the decisions regarding what application software you need up to you. However, it does install Debian's branded version of Firefox and Thunderbird (called Iceweasel and Icedove respectively) because not having a Web browser and (arguably) email is utterly insane.

Philosophy
SkinnyDebbie is what I am calling a "flavorizer". It is not a Linux distribution. Rather, it is a set of scripts that when run will configure a standard Linux distribution (a Debian Network Install in this case) to match a given target "flavor", using as much as possible the packages that are already part of and maintained by that distribution.

Why build SkinnyDebbie as a "flavorizer" instead of making an independent distribution? Simple. A "flavorizer" approach lets light-and-lean users directly benefit from the security updates and other improvements/upgrades of a major distribution. A SkinnyDebbie user gets a light-and-lean system that is 100% (ok ... 98%) pure Debian, and that means the user can participate in and benefit from Debian's excellent community support and other resources. (Or, if I were trying to sound ubercool, I would say that it means the user can leverage Debian's excellent community support and other resources.)

Known limitations
Networking works superfine if you are using an Ethernet connection and DHCP. This will be all most users will need. But if you plan to use a wireless connection or do not want to use DHCP, you will have to figure that out on your own. And if want to go old-school with a dialup modem, you're again on your own. I'm not saying it's not possible; I'm just saying that you will have to figure out what additional packages need to be installed and how configure things by yourself.

Advanced power management (sleep, suspend) is completely untested. It may work, it may not; but testing and tweaking it's not a priority.

Accessibility features (large print, high-contrast window decoration, etc.) don't exist.

Internationalization is a bit of a problem. The custom scripts and other bits are written to make it easy to implement translated versions, but no translations are available at present.

Installation
I'll post information regarding how to install SkinnyDebbie as soon as I finalize a couple small details and figure out how to host it. See you soon.

DPI: part 1

2008-06-25T15:57:00.005+03:00

Another example of "too much choice can be a bad thing" rears its head in the way that Linux renders text. The headaches arise out of the interaction between a few variables, some of which may or may not be known. Lets try to break this down a little bit.

Screen resolution
The easiest variable to understand in Linux's windowing/font-rendering system is what most people call screen resolution. It's also the easiest part for Linux's X.Org windowing system to get right. Screen resolution is simply a measure of the raw number of pixels used to draw your display. Common sizes are 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, etc. These are familiar numbers to Windows users.

The X.Org server installation process executes a command that 1) tries to determine what resolutions are supported by your connected display, 2) asks you which ones you want to use, and 3) writes a configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf that stores this and other information. Sweet. Easy.

Screen size
Screen size refers to the actual physical size of the display, measured in millimeters. This is where things can start to go a little wonky. When the X.Org server installer creates its main configuration file (i.e., /etc/X11/xorg.conf), it also asks the display (not you) how big it is. Sometimes a display knows how big it is, sometimes it doesn't. If the display reports a size in a way the installer understands, this information gets stored in the configuration file. If the display doesn't, then it doesn't.

The result is that sometimes X.Org server knows how big your monitor is, and sometimes it doesn't.

DPI
DPI stands for dots-per-inch and is probably the hardest concept to get your head around -- and the hardest part for Linux to get right.

Font sizes are typically defined in points, where one point equals 1/72 inch. Therefore, a system that renders fonts on a computer screen needs to know how many dots-per-inch it should use to draw the text. If the DPI setting is not correct, then all text will appear either too small or too large.

It's quite natural to think that a screen's DPI should simply equal the number of pixels in a dimension divided by the physical size. If we have a 1024x768 screen and the screen is 10.7" wide by 8" high, then we should get 96 DPI in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. If we have an 800x600 screen that is the same physical size, then that should result in 75 DPI. However, life in Linux-land is not quite that simple. One of the reasons is technological, the other is contextual.

First the technological issue. Remember above we said that the X.Org server configuration process tries to figure out physically how big your screen is? A problem arises when for whatever reason the screen's physical size doesn't get recorded into the /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. This happens often enough, and when it does, the poor system simply has to guess what DPI to use. The results can be pretty tragic.

The contextual issue is a result of the way things work in Windows and MacOS. In both of these systems, the DPI is fixed no matter what physical screen size you have. Windows' default is 96 DPI, although you can change this to 120 DPI by using the "large fonts" mode. (In fact, you can tell Windows to use whatever DPI you want, but I've never seen this in practice so I am concluding that it is rarely done.) Apparently, MacOS defaults to 72 DPI.

Some Linux developers assert that Linux should follow Windows' "defacto" standard and set systems to 96 DPI, no questions asked. Some developers (therefore?) assume 96 DPI when they develop their software. Others don't. This results in a situation where you can't get all your software to look right no matter what your DPI setting is without additional tweaking.

Note that this DPI concept only affects text rendering. The sizes of icons and similar things are usually set in pixels, and a pixel is a pixel in Linux.

Overriding DPI
Normally, X.Org will try to calculate your system DPI based on the screen size and the display's resolution. If it doesn't know the screen size, it will make a guess. However, it is possible to override the calculated/guessed DPI setting. Since this is Linux, there's more than one way to do it, and I have listed the methods I have actually used below. Except for one they all involve editing configuration files. If the following doesn't work for you, please do some Googling and let me know what else you find.

1. Overriding DPI with a local configuration file
I have used this method with Debian Etch and Xubuntu 7.10. It did not seem to work with Xubuntu 8.04, so expect your milage to vary. It is, however, the easiest way to set DPI.

If a file called .Xresources doesn't already exist in your home directory, create it. (Rememeber that the '.' makes the file hidden!) Add the following line to it:

Xft.dpi: <dpi>

where <dpi> is the DPI you want to use. For example, to force the system to use 96 DPI:

Xft.dpi: 96

When you log out and log back in, you should be using the new DPI setting. If not, delete the file and try another method.

2. Overriding DPI using a session manager's global configuration file
The following will only work if you are using XDM (rather than the more common GDM or KDM) as your session manager. However, you can do something similar with GDM and KDM. I have used this with Debian Etch using XDM instead of the default GDM, and it works as expected.

Make a backup copy of the file /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers. (This will let you get back to where you were in case you mess something up.) Open /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers as root in a text editor. Find the line towards the bottom of the file that looks something like

:0 local /usr/bin/X vt7 -nolisten tcp

The line in your file may not be identical to the above, but it should be similar. Add a -dpi <dpi> option to the line that specifies the DPI you wish to use. For example, to force 96 DPI, you would add the option as below:

:0 local /usr/bin/X vt7 -dpi 96 -nolisten tcp

If the line already has a -dpi option, then change the number to reflect the DPI you want.

Restart the X server (by rebooting or typing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and log back in. You should now be using the DPI you specified.

3. Overriding DPI with the global X configuration file
This is the most foolproof method and also the most difficult. Basically, we are going to hand edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and tell it the size of the screen we have so that it produces the desired DPI. I am using this method on an old laptop with an 800x600 screen running Xubuntu 8.04 and it works.

Make a backup copy of the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. (This will let you get back to where you were in case you mess something up.) Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf as root in a text editor. Find the section in the file that begins Section "Monitor" and add a line (or edit the line if one already exists) that specifies the width and height of your screen (in mm) using the syntax:

DisplaySize     <width> <height>

(In case you forgot, one inch equals 25.4 millimeters.)

As an example, the section from the xorg.conf file used in my 800x600 laptop system looks like:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier      "Configured monitor"
DisplaySize     246 184
EndSection

Don't change anything else! Just add (or edit) the one line that specifies the monitor's size. The dimensions you use should be either the real physical dimensions of the screen (in mm) or values that you have calculated to produce the DPI you want.

Restart X (reboot or Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and see the results. From what I gather, there are some video cards that require even more xorg.conf tweaking to make behave, so if this doesn't work, do some Googling with xorg.conf and the brand/name of your card.

In case something goes wrong
If you really mess up your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, you can regenerate it by running from the command line:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

for the simple version, or:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow xserver-xorg

to set each and every option. Depending on your distribution, you may need to delete the messed up /etc/X11/xorg.conf file before it will be replaced. You should also execute the above if you change displays.

4. Overriding DPI when not using a session manager
This is also a foolproof method, but it only works if you don't use a session manager and instead use the command-line to start the window system. (If you are using SLiM, I believe you can tweak it to use this method as well.)

The standard way to start X from the command line is the startx command. You can pass the command a parameter that tells it what DPI to use. For example, to start X windows and tell it to use 96 DPI,
$ startx -- -dpi 96

Make sure you get all the dashes correct.

Looking forward
In an upcoming post, I will let you know what appears to be best practices regarding DPI settings. But first I need to do some more work on this. In particular, it looks as though there are DPIs for Xserver DPI and for Xft (the tool used to render Linux's "pretty" fonts) and it looks like they don't need to agree. And then there's the fonts themselves.

It really is a bit of a mess, isn't it?

Update

2008-05-07T00:28:00.002+03:00

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy developing a scripted install for a light-and-lean Debian system, and it's turning out to be more work that I originally expected. Most of the additional work is coming from the critical need I saw for some service applications as well as a few tweaks to pre-existing Apps.

I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel ... as well as an attractive fork in the road: the latest version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) while having a sorta-stupid name is an LTS release. That makes it quite attractive, especially given that Debian Etch may be aging a bit.

File managers

2008-03-26T21:27:00.005+02:00

Linux gives you a choice of about a million different file managers. They differ in how much they do, how they do it, whether they are text or graphic based, etc. I have been able to narrow things down from the available choices to three that make sense to me. Each have their pros and cons and are discussed below.

The standards for selection are that the manager be fully GUI based and it must behave well. Even though this whole deal is about being light and lean, I consider ncurses or otherwise not fully GUI managers just too primitive for most users—including myself.

The three finalists currently on the shortlist are Thunar, ROX-filer, and PCManFM. An honorable mention needs to go out to XFE. It has its heart in the right place, but I just couldn't get it to look right.

Thunar
Thunar is the file manager used in the Xfce desktop package. Although part of the Xfce desktop, there is nothing to keep you from using it under other window managers.

Pros:
* Looks good.
* Automounts removable media (this is huge).
* Talks to Firefox/Iceweasel's download window—meaning that "Open" and "Open containing folder" links in Firefox/Iceweasel's download window work as expected.

Cons:
* It's the biggest of the three and therefore takes a relatively long time to load.

ROX-filer
ROX has been around for a while and is part of a larger ROX-desktop initiative. It is actively developed and has a strong following. Many of the parts that make up the whole ROX-desktop world are also worth investigating, particularly the concept of "zero install"—which replaces the idea of installing software with the idea of requesting software execution.

Pros:
* Fastest of the three
* Built-in drag-and-drop desktop management (and more).
* Looks, while not as conventional as the other two, are good. You might even call it cute.

Cons:
* Locating and selecting files/directories using just the keyboard is frustrating (e.g., typing the name of a file does not select it).
* Doesn't talk to Firefox/Iceweasel
* No "sidebar"

PCManFM
If I remember correctly, PCManFM is developed as a side-project by a Taiwanese medial student. (And I whine because I never seem to have enough time ...) It's designed to be lightweight and useful.

Pros:
* Faster than Thunar (but not as fast as ROX).
* Has tabbed panes.
* Can manage the desktop (though support for this in the version I tried was not very good).

Cons:
* Development is slow
* Doesn't talk to Firefox/Iceweasel
* Some reports of stability issues

Of the three, I think ROX has the most balanced promise, and that is what I am trying to make go at the moment. However, the other two are still quite tempting—especially Thunar's automounting.

Posted: An Even Lighter Debian

2008-03-26T20:38:00.000+02:00

An Even Lighter Debian has been posted. Phew.

Guides

2008-03-21T22:37:00.000+02:00

I added a new "Guides" section in the Links section (on the right) where I will try to summarize what I've learned so far in this adventure in a way that's operationally relevant. A beta version of the first guide, "A Lighter Debian", has been posted. I have also added a "Recommended Practices" section to make deciding what to do a little easier. Following these will be "An Even Lighter Debian" that documents how to make an, er, even lighter Debian. Eventually I will also publish a "Minimal usable Debian" guide to help you setup a minimal GUI system that you can then tweak to your heart's content.

Xubuntu--the hard way

2008-03-19T18:20:00.000+02:00

I recently tried installing Xubuntu "Gutsy Gibbon" on an older laptop using a whole bunch of methods: the "alternate" Xubuntu 7.10 installer CD, the "alternate" Ubuntu 7.10 installer CD, the "server" Ubuntu 7.10 installer CD ... and they all failed. In all cases, the problem was the same. After the installer booted off the CD and moved through some preliminary information gathering, it would complain that the CD-ROM from which it had been loading was no longer mounted/found (Do you want to install the drivers from a floppy?).

Eh?

A visit to the Ubuntu forums didn't really help... a couple other people had the same problem but with no solution. My best working theory at this point is that the problem is caused by the CD-ROM being an older LG device. There was a time where installing (some?) Linux would allegedly destroy (some?) LG CD-ROM drives. I think that this made a lot of developers paranoid and build kernels without support for many (all?) LG CD-ROM drives. Or not.

In any case, I managed to work around the problem and get Xubuntu installed. That's the good news. The bad news is that the system doesn't recognize the CD-ROM drive, but I was expecting that to happen anyway.

Here's what I did:
1. Download the "Minimal CD" version of the Ubuntu install CD--which basically does a network installation, sucking in what it needs over the Internet.
2. When you get to the point in the process that asks you if you want to install a desktop environment, indicate that you want XFCE/Xubuntu.
3. There is no third step.

It took forever to download the desktop environment, but it worked. It's a little interesting (and scary) that I didn't have this problem with Debian Etch, and I hope the next version of Ubuntu fixes the problem and/or the next version of Debian doesn't break it.

SLiM

2008-03-19T18:06:00.001+02:00

I decided to take a closer look at SLiM--the Simple Login Manager--as used by Fluxbuntu (instead of GDM). SLiM is light (about the same as XDM) and it looks really good, even in its default state. What more could you want?

Turns out that while SLiM makes logging into your session easy, it makes powering off or restarting your system from the login screen something of a pain. You need to use "special names" or setup special accounts with special permissions. Either approach is 1) not intuitive from the user's point of view and 2) a security risk. The developers say that implementing a better method is on the TODO list. Once this is done, I think SLiM will be a credible and much more attractive alternative to XDM.

A Debian alternative?

2008-02-14T22:07:00.000+02:00

I just noticed that Debian has a single-CD distribution that uses Xfce as the window manager, Thunar as a file manager, and GDM as the desktop manager. It's a full-featured install, with GIMP and OpenOffice goodness standard. It seems a credible alternative to Xubuntu.

I installed it on a 128MB/466Hz machine as well as in the virtualized environment on my 1.7GHz laptop. In both cases I configured Xfce and GDM to use the minimal amount of eye candy, and in both cases the result seemed better than Xubuntu under similar circumstances. However, I will need some more testing to be sure.

Debian with Xfce/Thunar/GDM still eats a lot of RAM. On the 128MB/466MHz machine it's just barely tolerable. I really wish that Ubuntu and Debian would consider IceWM for their light-and-lean distributions as still nothing I have found beats it for performance and RAM use. I keep hoping to find something that's easier to install but as fast and usable (and maybe a bit more sexy) than IceWM/ROX-filer/XDM, but still no luck.

Fluxbuntu--login manager followup

2007-10-29T22:35:00.000+02:00

I just did some poking around and discovered that Fluxbuntu uses SLiM for login management. I don't know much about SLiM, but knowing this much is a good thing.

Fluxbuntu--first impressions

2007-10-29T21:29:00.000+02:00

I downloaded the latest Fluxbuntu over the weekend and gave it a very quick spin. Here are some very hasty first impressions.

The worst news is that I could not get this "Gutsy Gibbon" Fluxbuntu release candidate to install on my old laptop. I haven't been able to get the "Gutsy Gibbon" release of Xubuntu to install on that laptop either. In both cases the problem is the same: the installer (after booting from the CD and prompting me for a bunch of info) cannot find a valid CD drive when it comes to doing the actual install work. I guess this is a typical example of Linux's hardware temperamentalness. The weird thing is that I have no problem installing older versions of Xubuntu on the same machine. Gnarly.

Anyhoo, I instead installed Fluxbuntu using Qemu (via Qemu Manager) on my workhorse laptop (1.7 GHz Intel Centrino with 1.5 GB RAM). The emulation was set up to use 128MB RAM, so this should give a reasonable idea of what would happen in a slim system. Doing some very rough benchmarking suggests that the effective clock rate of this setup is around 800 MHz. If I turn off all acceleration, then it drops down to something like 300 MHz.

Anyhoo, anyhoo, the installation went fairly smoothly--except for it asking me to install native language files for an English language install. Now for the report card.

First, the worst part. Startup is slower than expected. A lot slower. Like, "Is it working?" slower. But in the end it does start up. I wasn't able to tell what DM they are using yet, but it has been Fluxbuntu branded and it looks pretty nice. Still, the slowness may be due to a DM that's more bloated than it really needs to be. Or it may be because there's a lot of daemons, etc. starting up. The weird thing is that Xubuntu doesn't take as long to get going.

Once inside, you are presented with a very attractive desktop. I noticed some sluggishness, so I disabled the soothing wallpaper in favor of a solid backdrop. That seemed to help a bit.

I set up the emulated screen with 800x600 resolution, and sure enough one of the problems that I have seen with a lot of distributions manifested itself here as well: DPI ambiguity. Almost all 800x600 screens are physically 75 dots-per-inch screens, but they are treated as 100 DPI by some applications in many Linux installations. I solved this problem on the system(s) I have been developing by adding explicit DPI configuration information to the files that affect X-server startup (I am using XDM). This seems to solve the problem for all but the oldest or worst designed programs. In theory this should be possible with whatever DM Fluxbuntu uses as well, but it require some more research to find out 1. what DM they are using and 2. how to change the config stuff. (In fact, given the slow startup that I have already mentioned, it may make sense to just replace it with XDM because it is leaner than anything else I know.)

I found it interesting that the Fluxbuntu people opted to use ROX-filer for file management and managing desktop icons; they are also using Leafpad as the default text editor and settled on Abiword and GnuMeric. It's interesting because I have settled on exactly the same applications for the same, er, applications.

However, for web browsing Fluxbuntu uses Kazehakase rather than Firefox or Iceweasel. I will need to use it a bunch more to see what it's like. Fluxbuntu uses a similarly obscure email client, Claws, rather than the now-classic Thunderbird.

One thing that I will need to test is what happens to the non Debian-menu menu items in the Fluxbox menu after installing new apps.

My impression so far is that Fluxbuntu looks promising, but it will need some tweaking if it's going to work on PII-era machines.

Fluxbuntu

2007-10-28T01:07:00.000+03:00

The Fluxbuntu project has released a candidate "Gutsy Gibbon" (7.10) version of their Ubuntu-based "lightweight, productive, agile, and efficient" distribution. If they've done their homework, they may have made my little odyssey moot. You will recall that I started this whole adventure because I wasn't able to find a light-and-lean Linux distribution that floated my boat. I will download the ISO over the next few days and let you if Homer is headed back to Ithica.

Diverge, diverge

2007-10-27T22:50:00.001+03:00

I'm noticing some strange behavior with my Openbox+ROX+fbpanel setup. In particular, when you restore windows after hiding them with fpanel's "show desktop" button, they come up in a strange way. It's pretty much not acceptable behavior ... So I am back to considering IceWM+ROX and Fluxbox+ROX.

There are a few more things that need to be ironed out with the Fluxbox setup (e.g., getting CPU and net transfer metering setup ... using Conky? Slit-widgets?). I like Fluxbox's aesthetics and aesthetic opportunities better than anything I've seen with IceWM, but I am not convinced as to its usability. I think ultimately some user testing will be needed to determine whether an IceWM or a Fluxbox-based solution will be best.

Converge, diverge

2007-10-25T18:04:00.000+03:00

Things were beginning to converge and congeal up until last week, but now they have begun to diverge again.

First, I was settling on a solution using an Ubuntu/Xubuntu command-line system as the base. But I am running into some difficulties with some of the non-standard ways that Ubuntu/Xubuntu handles some things--having no real "root" for starters. This is making it harder to get e.g. sound going in this context.

So... now I am working with a minimal Debian install in the hopes that it will be less irregular and more completely documented. (Ubuntu/Xubuntu doesn't need to document a lot its inner workings because they wrap those workings in GUI goodness. It's only to people with geek interests like me that it matters.)

Another alternative I am considering is starting with a full Xubuntu install and then stripping away the heavy bits and replacing them with lighter ones. But I think I am going to try working with building up a command-line based Debian install first. If I can get this to go without too much pain, I think it will make future maintenance a lot easier.

Second, I was settling on IceWM as a window manager/desktop environment solution because it does both in one swoop, integrates some widgets as well (CPU load, etc.), and does it at a very low cost. But I am having a hard time accepting the way it structures its program launching menu. The default setup is kind of klunky and modifying it involves hacking a text file. Also, even though the whole package is theme-able, I have yet to see a theme for the taskbar that makes me really love the visuals. It's a good solution for sure, but I am wondering if there is better.

One option I have considered on-and-off is Fluxbox. It's configuration isn't that awful mostly because there are nice GUI tools available to help you. But the WM's behavior doesn't feel 'right' to me. For example, the right-click nested menu options are tweaky to navigate no matter what theme you use. I have yet to figure out exactly why this is so, but I suspect the nested menus are a bit too eager to let go of their states. Also, while I think Fluxbox's panel looks really neat, I don't like the way open windows are dynamically sized on it starting from 100% for one window and then shrinking linearly. Finally, to make it work with ROX-filer (the leading contender for file management) you have to use ROX's "Blackbox hack." And even then I've seen one or two weird things happen. Still, it's worth keeping an eye on.

The option I am currently most seriously considering is a combination of Openbox and fbpanel. Openbox is fast and lean; fbpanel can be made to look good fairly easily, isn't a total pain to configure, and handles default menus in its program launcher better than IceWM. fbpanel isn't as lean or as widget-full as IceWM's taskbar, and I don't completely love Openbox's context menus or the poor frame grab hints, but the combination is a credible alternative to IceWM and is worthy of further exploration.

I looked at PerlPanel and PyPanel as alternatives to fbpanel. PerlPanel is awesome in the configurability department, but it's quite a memory monster and it no longer seems to be actively maintained. PyPanel was just weird. Maybe I need to spend more time with it, but its default setup was nearly unusable with Openbox+ROX.

I also made an Openbox+ROX-desktop detour (using ROX-Session) but had setup issues that no end-user would want to have to deal with. I love the ideas behind a lot of what the ROX project is trying to do, but I am not sure they've got the implementation quite right yet. So unless ROX's desktop setup gets better organized, I am not going to further investigate that route right now.

Hammered

2007-10-09T21:50:00.000+03:00

My "short break" from making entries is going to be longer than I expected. I've been hammered with an especially demanding course load this term and so I won't have much time at all for anything else!

I will try to add what wisdom I have collected so far when I can, but I think it will take a while before I have the mental space to collect additional thoughts.

(Intermisssion)

2007-09-10T19:49:00.000+03:00

I am going to take a short break from posting because:

I need to concentrate on preparing course material for the new semester, and
I think I’ve amassed enough stuff here now that I need to convert the site to a more browseable interface.

There’s lots more to come. Be back soon.

*nix and GUI

2007-09-09T19:48:00.002+03:00

When you install a Windows or OS X system, you get a big, integrated package that gives you a graphical user interface, a desktop with a trashcan, a system of standard windows, etc. All the bits that make this happen seem to magically work together to give you the OS's experience, and it all happens without the user having any idea exactly what's going on.

This is so not the *nix way. Part of the *nix philosophy is to write something that does one thing, but does it well. Then that one thing gets used in a bigger thing that does one (bigger) thing well, and that thing used in another, etc. This is a fairly common development methodology, but the difference when it comes to *nix is that all the little bits that make up a Big Thing are released as independent entities, very frequently with access to the underlying source code.

This has a few interesting ramifications. The biggest is that it facilitates iterative refinement of sub-modules. Since a sub-module is a distinct entity from the higher-level entity that uses it, someone can refine the sub-module without having to keep things in sync with people maintaining the higher-level entity. Another is that it minimizes the need to duplicate effort. If you (as a programmer) have access to a widget that, say, lets you do all sorts of neat networking things, then you don't have to develop the code that does that yourself.

This is all very interesting if you are a programmer, but if you have no interest in developing *nix programs then why should you care? Well, if your interest is only in using your computer, then it will still have impact your life. The biggest of these is that you will need get used to the idea that things you used to think of as monolithic entities are actually made up of smaller bits that you will have to deal with independently.

The most important example of the above is the way *nix systems set up graphical user interface environments. In a Windows or OS X install, you get a massive package that delivers a complete graphical user experience. However, in the case of *nix, it's all broken into its various little bits, the most important of which are listed below.

Most *nix GUI-based systems have the following components:

A window system. A window system provides your computer and OS a bare-bones way of making graphics go. It gives other programs a standard way of interfacing with a system's graphical abilities. The most common *nix window system specification is the X Window System, and the most recent version of this protocol is called X11. The two most popular open source implementations of X11 are X.Org and XFree86.

A window manager. A window system provides only a very basic way of communicating with a computer's graphics system. A window manager builds on this by providing the kinds of window features we are all used to now: windows with title bars that have "close", "minimize", and similar buttons, etc. You only need to install one window manager to make the system go; in spite of this, there are billions and billions of different *nix window managers, each trying to address some niche scenario and/or let a programmer prove his/her mettle. Some popular window managers for the X Window System are Blackbox, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, Openbox, and Sawfish.

File managers. A file manager lets you browse and (typically) open files installed on your system. Popular *nix file explorers include PCMan File Manager, ROX-filer, Thunar, XFE, Konquerer, and Nautilus.

Taskbars and pagers. Windows users are used to having a taskbar at the bottom of the screen to help with launching programs and keeping track of what's open. OS X users have a menu bar at the top of the screen and a Dock at the bottom that serve a similar purpose. These kinds of things are independent entities in the *nix world. Popular *nix taskbars and pagers include bbpager, fbpanel, F***inf Small Panel, PyPanel, GNOME Panel, PerlPanel, and Xfce4 Panel.

Display managers. Do you want to be able to login to your computer using a graphical user interface? Then you will need a display manager: GDM, KDM, and XDM are popular examples.

Misc. Do you want to put icons on your desktop? Then you will need a program that makes that happen. Do you want a trashcan? Then you will need a program that implements that as well. Do you want a screensaver? I think you are beginning to get the idea.

Integration
Many popular window managers break with the strict *nix tradition of compartmentalizing functionality and instead integrate some of the above functions. For example, Fluxbox and IceWM have their own built-in taskbars. Going even beyond this, there are packages that incorporate most of the above functionality into a complete comprehensive desktop environment, which is what Windows and Macintosh have been doing all along. The most popular *nix desktop environments are GNOME, KDE, and Xfce.

Most Linux distributions include a default desktop environment, usually GNOME or KDE. For example, Ubuntu is based on GNOME and Kubuntu is based on KDE. This approach simplifies things for the end-user by delivering in one integrated package the basic GUI features that many users have come to expect. The downside to GNOME and KDE is that, like Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X, they are resource intensive. On a low-end machine, these environments will deliver very slow performance. Xfce (used in Xubuntu) is less resource hungry than GNOME or KDE, but even it is a bit too heavy for many older machines.

Why-oh-why?
The conventional way of installing a GUI system on *nix is a tweaky process. That is a big turn-off for many users, your grandmother in particular. However, it does let you create a custom mix of all the various bits and pieces that make up the desktop experience using only the most efficient but still usable alternatives. And that will let us build a modern, solid and usable system that runs on obsolete hardware.

Ground rules

2007-09-07T22:19:00.009+03:00

I was having a really tough time getting things going until I found an article on adapting Ubuntu to low memory situations at Ubuntu’s community documentation site. The basic idea outlined there is to install a text-based system and then manually add lightweight GUI stuff and other applications. One cool thing about this is that we don’t need to limit ourselves to an Ubuntu based install: since Ubuntu is itself based on Debian, it should be possible to do with Debian what the article suggests doing with Ubuntu. The article also mentions the possibility of installing Xubuntu and then replacing the heavier items with lighter alternatives.

So, overall this gives us three different promising paths to follow:
1. A text-based Ubuntu install plus a manually installed GUI environment.
2. A text-based Debian install plus a manually installed GUI environment.
3. A full Xubuntu install with unnecessary stuff removed and heavier items replaced with lighter alternatives.

Approaches similar to the above should also be possible using any other major distribution. However, at this point I want to limit myself to Ubuntu and Debian. These are two very well-supported distributions, and I don't see what will be gained by considering other distributions. Of the major Linux distributions, Ubuntu is the most consumer-oriented. Debian is an attractive alternative to Ubuntu because Ubuntu has a reputation for doing some things in a slightly non-standard way; Debian is an accepted, established, and carefully maintained standard that may overcome some problems presented by using Ubuntu.

I have been working mostly with parallel installs based on 1. and 2. I will postpone working along path 3. until after I have a better understanding of what’s going on. An additive approach to functionality lets you learn what each package, etc. does and gives you a more fully integrated idea of what’s happening. A subtractive approach only tells you what’s not needed—and it doesn’t guarantee that you have a minimal set of what is required. However, I will probably play around coarsely with an Xubuntu install before I have a really good idea what's what to see what might be possible along that path.

Kudos, Windows 98. RIP.

2007-09-06T21:10:00.001+03:00

Before I go any further, and at the risk of suffering the wrath of the Linux police, I would like to mention how incredibly well Windows 98 has worked on my old laptop and desktop systems. In fact, my preliminary experiments with various lean and light Linux distributions left me with new respect for the lowly Win98. Yeah, it was shipped riddled full of security holes and lacked a lot of what you might expect in a modern OS, but it (still) delivers pretty snappy performance on quite modest hardware. It’s very easy to bash Microsoft for delivering compromised solutions—God knows I’ve done it myself often enough. That makes giving credit when it is due even more important. In spite of its shortcomings, Windows 98 was a pretty usable, efficient, and responsive OS.

There is a call from some quarters for Microsoft to open the Windows 98 sources and let a community continue maintenance. It would be awesome if this were to happen, but I would sooner expect the Pope to embrace birth control and gay marriage.

Why Debian?

2007-09-05T20:51:00.000+03:00

At the moment, I am working exclusively with Ubuntu and Debian as bases. Why Debian?

Because Ubuntu is based on Debian.
Because Debian is solid.
Because Debian isn’t in a big hurry to offer bleeding-edge (and therefore slightly rough) packages.

Why Ubuntu?

2007-09-05T20:49:00.000+03:00

At the moment, I am working exclusively with Ubuntu and Debian as bases. Why Ubuntu? Because of the major distributions I have investigated, Ubuntu is the most consumer-oriented.

Why Linux?

2007-09-05T20:29:00.000+03:00

There are quite a few gratis operating systems. Given the wide range of options, why settle on Linux?

It’s an obvious question. Here are some obvious answers:

1. It’s free. For the present purposes, gratis is more important than libre.
2. It’s active. There are millions of monkeys pounding out millions of lines of Linux-compatible code.
3. It’s supported. In particular, precompiled binaries of *nix programs are widely available for Linux. (Compile-it-yourself may be a good option for compugeeks, but it is not a solution for a consumer-oriented system.) Also, there are lots of community-based forums (fora?), wikis (wikia?), and the like (lika?) offering technical assistance.

Good reasons for not using Linux are discussed at the swax project website. In spite of these reasons, I feel Linux holds the best potential for the present purposes. Time will tell…

Linux as Desktop OS

2007-09-03T18:00:00.006+03:00

I suspect one of the biggest problems with Linux for personal computing* is that *nix operating systems were never designed for this application. *nixes have their roots in large-scale Systems managed by officially sanctioned System Administrators. This has produced a *nix way of doing things, at heart of which is “Thou Shall Let Only Thy SysAdmin Manage Thy Resources.” And just to the right of that is, “Text, man… it’s all in the text.” The *nix way of configuring things is through text files. Lots and lots of text files, in lots and lots of different places, many of them controlled by the God SysAdmin.

*nix’s infatuation with texfiles is both good and bad. It’s good because it’s easy to open/edit/fix/replace plain text files. You don’t need a special configuration editor or “regedit”-like program to maintain your system. It's bad because hacking text is usually not the most intuitive way to configure something and it makes it easy to introduce syntax errors. It's even more bad because if you wanna change something, you need to start looking for the right text file to tweak, and then hope to God you don’t need to be God to change it or that you can convince the master gatekeepers that God sent you. This is the spirit of *nix.

I wonder if the *nix take on system management was a major reason that Apple decided to forego the X Window System in OS X (ironic, really, given the name) and write their own window system. By writing their own window system, maybe Apple was able to bypass a lot of the user and developer *nix inconveniences while still retaining a BSD core. Or not.

In any case, the *nix way of doing things (including the X Windows System) doesn’t mean that Linux can’t form the core of a consumer-oriented PC operating system. Canonical’s Ubuntu proves this. Ubuntu does a very good job of wrapping the *nix way of doing things in user-friendly, user-managed interfaces. But in spite of these wrappers, you can still sense residue in the form of a bit of klunkiness and hoop-jumping-ness. Given the amount of work Canonical have put into their effort, I think it’s fair to expect that any other approach, and especially a home-brewed one, will be much more klunky. So if you are planning to install a conventional Linux system (as am I), don’t expect as smooth sailing as provided by Windows or OS X or even Ubuntu. Be prepared to jump through hoops on a semi-regular basis and try to learn and even love the process. Once you get a feel for how *nix works, it’s not nearly as sucky as it seems at the start.

*By this I mean a desktop or laptop computer used by at most a family-size group of people, networked to at most a family-sized network, and administered by one or more of the users themselves.

Goals

2007-09-02T14:07:00.001+03:00

It would probably be a good idea at this point to outline in greater detail what the goals of this little undertaking are. In no particular order:

A Windows 98 alternative. As mentioned on the About page, the primary goal here is to find or develop an operating system for Intel-based machines that are too limited in resources to support Windows XP (or, by extension, Vista) or Canonical’s Xubuntu (or, by extension, Ubuntu).

Windows 98 UI reproduction not a goal. While the goal is to find an OS that is an alternative to Windows 98, reproducing the Windows 98 user interface is not a criterion. I consider it acceptable for the user to have to change the way he or she is used to doing things, in much the same way one would need to adapt to OS X from Windows or vice-versa. By the same token, a solution that resembles Windows 98 or XP (or Mac OS X or OS 9 or any other system for that matter) is fine as well.

Usability. The fact that reproducing the Windows way of doing things is not a goal does not mean that usability is not a goal. Quite the opposite: while the ultimate solution does not need to resemble any popular OS, it must be easy to use by typical computer users. Pushing the envelope to include your grandmother would be great, but I have something closer to my cousins in mind instead as target users.

End-user management. The system needs to be manageable by end-users, not system administrators. It shouldn’t be assumed that the end-user will be satisfied with the applications and configurations that are included in the default distribution/installation. Indeed, this is where a lot of Linux distributions fall short. Many of them essentially place the distribution packager in the role of System Administrator, and that’s not gonna cut it for my purposes.

Stability. It’s gotta be stable enough for everyday use.

At this stage, I don’t want to get into specifics about what particular activities and services the system needs to support. I will merely say that the system should support the kinds of activities and services that are expected from a modern consumer-oriented OS. In reality, it’s going to come down to what I can get away with on the limited hardware.

An Even Lighter Debian

1971-01-01T00:00:00.029+02:00

Note: The material here has pretty much been obsoleted by SkinnyDebbie (blog postings | website) and is probably obsolete in other respects as well. I am leaving this page here for reference purposes.

If after installing a basic Debian-Xfce environment you find that your computer is still not fast enough for you, you can lighten up your system considerably by changing the default window manager, file manager, and some other things. This will take some time and patience to set up, but it will give you a desktop environment that's quite fast. This is especially useful if you have a RAM-starved or slow system. The result might not be awesomely pretty, but it will give you a very fast, usable, and secure system.

Install a baseline Debian-Xfce system
Go through A Lighter Debian and follow the instructions.

Install IceWM
IceWM is a very light yet highly usable window manager. To install it:

$ sudo aptitude install icewm icewm-themes

If you look through Synaptic, you will see iceme and iceconf and may be tempted to install these as well. I suggest that you not do this and instead learn how to configure IceWM directly through editing its configuration files. It's not that tough, and good documentation is available at the IceWM website.

Install ROX-filer
ROX-filer is a lightweight file manager with desktop management features. We will use it instead of Thunar.

$ sudo aptitude install rox-filer

Update menus

$ sudo update-menus
$ update-menus

Set IceWM as the default window manager
Logout. Then from the login screen's "Sessions" menu select IceWM and initiate a login. When asked if you want to make IceWM the defualt window manager, answer "Make Default".

Configure IceWM options
This is such an involved process that I decided to publish configuration files to make it easier. The basic idea is to copy some configuration files to IceWM's hidden folder in your home directory.

Start ROX-filer,

$ rox

and make your hidden files and folders visible by clicking on the eye icon or typing Ctrl-H. (Remember that in Linux, files and folder whose names begin with a period are "hidden". To see hidden files, you will need to tell your file manager to show hidden files.)

Open your WWW browser and go to http://mithat.co.nr/linux/icewm-config. Download each of the files to a temporary location and then use ROX to move them to the .icewm folder in your home directory. Important: The files you download should have no file extension. If your WWW browser adds an htm extension, remove the extensions by renaming the files.

Make the startup file executable:

$ chmod u+x ~/.icewm/startup

Logout by clicking on IceWM's applications menu icon (the leftmost icon on the taskbar) and select "Logout...", then log back in. ROX should now be managing your desktop and IceWM will generally behave better (or at least more to my liking).

You can now drag and drop items to your desktop and get to know how ROX-Filer works in your freetime.

Notes:

ROX-Filer places links to things on the desktop, not things themselves.
System icons (png, svg, etc.) that you can use for decorating what you place on your desktop are located in /usr/share/icons.
Some of the applications under "Utilities" will not work yet. This is because we have yet to install them.

Additional notes:

There is a weird bug in either IceWM or ROX that will make a 'rox' button appear and flash in the taskbar whenever you log in. You can make it go away by clicking on it.
The "Desktop" folder in your home directory is Xfce's desktop -- not ROX's. If you are absolutely certain that you will never use Xfce again, you may delete this folder. (It's probably empty anyway, so you can simply add it again later if you decide to revert to Xfce.) Also, you will want to open the WWW browser and tell it *not* to use the "Desktop" folder as the default download location; your home directory is a good alternative for a default download location.

Change IceWM's theme
IceWM's default theme will probably not be to your liking. Change it by clicking on IceWM's applications menu icon and navigating through to the available themes. I tend to use IceBlueOkayish. There are more themes available at http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/925/, but really good ones are hard to find.

Set ROX-filer's options
Start ROX from the command line or IceWM's applications menu.
In a blank area of the ROX window, right-click and select "Options..."
Go through list of options and set as desired. I use the following (only differences from defaults are noted):

Filer windows -> Sorting : Directories come first
Filer windows -> Tools/Minibuffer : Toolbar type : Text under icons
Pinboard : Pinboard behaviour : Icon grid step : Medium
Pinboard : Iconified windows : [unchecked] Show iconified windows
Menus : Behaviour : [checked] File menu on right click
Menus : Behaviour : Terminal emulator program: x-terminal-emulator
Types : Themes : Icon theme : Tango
Compatibility : [checked] Window manager problems : Pass all backdrop mouse clicks to window manager

Note that ROX's default behavior is to open things with a single click. Since I have moderate RPI issues, this works well for me. But you can change this to the more standard double-click if you prefer, both for regular file manager windows and for pinboards (i.e., the desktop).

Add a sound mixer
Start Synaptic under sudo and use it to install aumix-gtk, a commonly used command-line sound mixer with a GUI wrapper.

Bonus: The IceWM configuration files you downloaded earlier include keyboard shortcuts that use aumix to increase (Alt-UpArrow) and decrease (Alt-DownArrow) the master sound level. You can change these keys in ~/.icewm/keyboard.

Note: alsamixer and gnome-alsamixer are also popular sound mixers, but I haven't found a way to use either to control level with IceWM's keyboard shortcuts.

Setup a rubbish bin
One of ROX's biggest shortcomings is that it does not come with a trashcan by default. ROX lets you delete files, but when they are deleted, they are permanently deleted. However, we can add a basic Rubbish bin to the desktop manually.

Create a hidden folder in your home directory called .Apps. (Notice the period before the name; there is no perdiod after the name.) The Rubbish script will ultimately reside here, and you will be able to place other local service applications that you want hidden here as well.

Goto http://www.hayber.us/rox/ and click on the appropriate link to download Rubbish. Download the file into your home directory. Open a terminal window any type:

$ tar -xvvzf ~/Rubbish-001.tgz

(changing the name of the file if needed) to decompress the file; this will produce a Rubbish bin in your home directory. Move the directory into the ".Apps" folder using ROX; then drag and drop the Rubbish icon from the ".Apps" folder onto the Desktop. You now have a Rubbish bin link on the desktop.

Important note:
When you drag and drop items onto the Rubbish bin, they will stay there until you "Take out the rubbish" with a right-click. However, if you delete an item directlty with ROX using a right-click on an item's icon and navigating to Delete (or using the Ctrl-X shortcut), the item will be permanently deleted. I don't love this behavior, but it's best we can do without a lot of work. Xfce's trash/delete system works the same way, so there's at least some precedent for this behavior.

Change the theme used in toolbar icons of GTK2 applications
To use Tango icons in GTK applications, create a (hidden) file in your home directory called .gtkrc-2.0 and add the following text to the file:
gtk-icon-theme-name="Tango"

Extra credit: Change session managers
In theory you can lighten your system a bit more by removing the Gnome Desktop Manager (GDM) and using X Desktop Manager (XDM) instead. However, I am not entirely sure the savings is worth the hassle. Also, using GDM will make it a lot easier to switch between IceWM and Xfce (as a fallback). But if you want to try it or if you need to save every last bit of RAM, do the following in one sitting and without logging out until directed to do so.

Start Synaptic:

$ sudo synaptic

and use it to uninstall GDM, then use it to install XDM.

Create a file called .xsession in your home directory, open it in an editor, and add the following lines to it:

# This is a simple .xsession file that simply starts IceWM.
# Start IceWM (or run xterm if it fails.)
exec icewm-session || exec xterm -fg red

Make the .xsession file executable:

$ chmod u+x ~/.xsession

(FYI, the above is documented in http://www.icewm.org/FAQ/IceWM-FAQ-3.html.)

Replace XDM config files:
Download the three *_mfk files from http://mithat.co.nr/linux/xdm-config to a temporary location. Then open a file manager window as root (sudo) and move the files from the temporary location into /etc/X11/xdm/.

Edit /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config so that the *_mfk versions of the files are pointed to by making the following changes:

DisplayManager*resources: /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources_mfk
...
DisplayManager*startup:  /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup_mfk
...
DisplayManager*setup:  /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_mfk

Logout and restart. You should now see the XDM login screen. Note: to toggle between Username and Password fields, use your keyboard's TAB key. You will not see anything when you are typing your password. Hit ENTER when you are ready to login.

Note: If you want to revert to Xfce, rename the .xsession file to something like .xsessionICEWM and logout/login.

Enjoy
Welcome to the world of Linux. You will now rely heavily on the Internet and the command line to figure out how to set up things that this tutorial hasn't talked about, such as:

Printing
File serving/sharing
A music player (try Amarok or Rythmbox)
Networking (including wireless networking)

Dealing with this kind of stuff is part of the joy and culture of Linux. It's not for everybody.

A final note
When you add new users, you will need to go through much of this setup for the new user. Sorry. After the new user has logged in, start from the top and do everything except install software (i.e., anything that starts $ sudo aptitude or that you do with Synaptic.)

Recommended Practices

1971-01-01T00:00:00.026+02:00

Note: This content is almost certainly obsolete. It's left here mainly for reference purposes.

Here are my current recommended practices for raising a happy skinny penguin. Please note that I am not a Linux expert. That's not such a bad thing because it means I have to deal with all the problems and frustrations that you would from a perspective that is something close to your own. With any luck, you will be able to benefit from my experience in getting skinny penguins going.

Before we start, there's something you need to be aware of. Full-blown desktop Linux (e.g., Canonical's Ubuntu) may have come of age--meaning that it is now possible to run a general-purpose Linux system on recent hardware that is easy enough for anyone used to Windows or Mac OS to configure and use. However, if your goal is to try to install a desktop Linux system on a circa Windows 98 machine, it's not going to be as easy as using Windows or Mac OS. Depending on the route you take, the initial installation may be easy or tedious. But more importantly, after the installation you may need to learn how to configure stuff that Windows and Mac OS do for you without your having to think. This is especially true if you want/need advanced features such as wireless networking, local-network file sharing, automatic mounting of removable media, and the like. Even something as basic as creating a new user account in lean Linux can be a pain. This learning curve can be very discouraging, so unless you are prepared to embrace a lot of stuff that may sometimes have you pulling your hair out, you might want to cut your losses at this point and turn back.

If you are still with me, then read on.

I have broken things down into different categories depending on how fat your penguin is allowed to be. Pick the category that comes closest to describing your situation.

You have 192MB or more of RAM
Recommendations:

Xubuntu
Debian-Xfce
Fedore Xfce-spin (untested)

Canonical's Xubuntu is an Xfce-based Linux distribution that aims to offer a fully-featured desktop environment but with lower system requirements than those using the more common Gnome or KDE envoronments. Indeed, Xubuntu offers quite a bit of polish and a lot of features. Things like automatic mounting of portable media and notification of software updates happen out-of-the-box. So my first suggestion is to try Xubuntu to see if it works for you.

Debian also offers a version with an Xfce-based desktop environment. The Debian-Xfce install is a maybe a bit less demanding of system resources than Xubuntu--but it's also less feature-filled. If Xubuntu is a bit too sluggish for you or if you just have to have a Debian system, try Debian-Xfce. Start by reading the tips described elsewhere on this site if you want to go this route.

You might also consider the Fedora Live Xfce Spin, which I have not explored any further than loading up the live CD and using it for about one minute.

You have between 64 and 192MB of RAM
Recommendations:

SkinnyDebbie
Lighten up a Debian-Xfce based system
Absolute Linux

SkinnyDebbie (blog postings) is my own "Debian flavorizer" that makes installing a lightweight Debian-based system easy. Read about it. Try it. Then let me know what you think so I can make it better.

If SkinnyDebbie doesn't float your boat and you don't mind getting down and dirty with the installation, follow these instructions (including the Even Lighter Debian step) to give yourself a light and fast Debian system that also introduces you to the joys of Linux administration. It's actually kind of fun in a perverse sort of way. Regular Debian-Xfce and Xubuntu will run in less than 192MB of RAM, but I won't say the experience will be a good one. In fact, this whole skinny penguin adventure got started because I was frustrated with Xubuntu 6.10's performance on a 192MB laptop I own and really annoyed by its performance on a 128 MB desktop.

Another option you may consider is Absolute Linux. Absolute Linux is a Slackware-based distribution that uses IceWM as it's window manager and includes many custom utilities to make configuring things easy. It comes with a wide range of applications, and more are available on an additional CD. It's more complete than most other "light and lean" systems I've looked into, and it works. (Or at least it used to work. I've had the version 12.1.0 beta8 of Absolute fail to properly launch a X server session on at least one machine. I hope they fix this.)

The biggest downside to Absolute Linux is that since it is Slackware-based, installing programs that are not part of the original distribution will be harder than would be the case for SkinnyDebbie, Debian-Xfce or Xubuntu. This is because the standard Slackware package manager (the thing that handles the installing of new software) does not do dependency checking--as do most other Linux package management systems. Possible solutions to this include slapt-get and/or swaret--tools for Slackware that manage dependencies and that you might be able to install under Absolute. Also, Slackware repositories aren't as rich as Debian's and Ubuntu's. However, for most users, (e.g., your grandmother) the applications that come with Absolute Linux will be all that's needed, so this won't be a huge deal.

You have less than 64 MB of RAM
Recommendations:

Damn Small Linux
Puppy Linux

If you have a really old computer or one that is seriously RAM challenged, Damn Small Linux is a good alternative. DSL is cute and functional. It has a limited (but still very useful) complement of programs. Changing things like screen refresh rates will drive you mad, but that's probably the least of your worries if you are running with less than 64 MB of RAM.

Others have recommended Puppy Linux as well, but I have not tried it so I am unable to comment.

A Lighter Debian

1971-01-01T00:00:00.025+02:00

Note: This content is almost certainly obsolete. It's left here mainly for reference purposes.

If you are looking for a useful and standard lighter-than-most Linux distribution, Debian's Etch using the Xfce desktop environment is a pretty good choice. Xfce's window and desktop manager and its associated Thunar file manager are somewhat easier on system resources than the much more common Gnome and KDE desktop environments but retain much of the usability and features. The Debian-Xfce distribution also ships with a good range of software. I installed Debian-Xfce Etch on an old 192 MB, Celeron 500 MHz la

Publish Post

ptop. With 192 MB the results are not snappy, but the system is certainly usable.

Debian-Xfce is very similar to Canonical's Xubuntu (which is itself based on Debian). However, while Xubuntu is more feature-filled than Debian's distibution, Debian's is more standard than Xubuntu (e.g., Xubuntu doesn't use a root user), and that's why I prefer it as a starting point for exploring a lighter-and-leaner Linux. If you have 256 MB or more of RAM, you probably won't have speed issues with Xfce, so I would recommend you first try Xubuntu without making any changes as it is a friendlier experience than Debian-Xfce. If Xubuntu doesn't work for you, then come back here. Or you may also consider Fedora Live Xfce Spin, with which I have no experience.

Some argue that Debian's biggest strength is also its weakness: major updates are well-tested but conservative and infrequent. What this means is that if you want the latest versions of Linux software titles, Debian's recommended "stable" releases may not make you the happiest camper. However, if you really insist on having the latest stuff, you can still have it with Debian by using their "testing" and "unstable" releases. But I will let you explore this on your own.

Debian-Xfce is a very usable distribution out-of-the-box, but it can benefit from a few tweaks to make it more usable and a bit faster. The most important tweaks are outlined below. In what follows, I am assuming you know what a terminal window is, what the difference between root and standard users is, and what sudo is. If you don't, do some priming and then come back here. Lines below begining with $ indicate a terminal window prompt.

Let's begin.

Install Debian-Xfce from CD
Download the "stable" realese of the single-CD Debian-Xfce installer (e.g., debian-40r3-i386-xfce-CD-1.iso) using http/ftp, bittorrent, or jigdo. Be sure you download the single-CD Debian-Xfce installer and not a multi-CD or DVD full version of Debian. Burn a copy, boot from the CD, and follow the instructions to do the install.

Add yourself as a superuser (sudo)
Login using the normal (not root) account that you created during the installation. Open a terminal by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Terminal. Convert this regular terminal to a root terminal with the command


$ su -l

You will be prompted to enter the password for the root account that you specified when you installed the system. Enter it, and at the following prompt type the following command:


$ visudo /etc/sudoers

This will open a text editor as root. To the end of the file add the line:

user ALL=(ALL) ALL

where user is your username.

Save the file and exit the text editor. Type exit into the root terminal to exit from root (su) mode and the type exit again close the terminal. From now on, never open a terminal as root unless you have really good reason for doing so.

Edit apt's sources.list file
Open a regular terminal by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Terminal. (Henceforth we will only be using regular terminals. In case you missed the warning above, never use a root terminal unless you have really good reason for doing so.) Now type the following command:

$ sudo mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list

You will be prompted for your password. Enter it (i.e., your password, not the root account's) and proceed.

In the sources.list file that opens, comment out all the deb cdrom: ... lines unless you want to have to insert the CD-ROM whenever you install software. To comment out a line, add a # character at the start of the line.

Add contrib and non-free to the existing entries (after main) to gain access to a much wider range of software.

Save the file and exit.

Update and upgrade

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude upgrade

Install Synaptic
Synaptic is a nice GUI-based software installer. It's basically a GUI version of aptitude, if you know what aptitude is.
$ sudo aptitude install synaptic

Install some fonts
This is especially useful for web browsing.

$ sudo aptitude install msttcorefonts

Add the Tango desktop theme
This is optional, but I like the Tango icons much more than the default Xfce ones.


$ sudo aptitude install tango-icon-theme

then right-click on the desktop and go to Settings -> Settings Manager -> User Interface. Select the Icon Theme tab and select Tango.

Update menus

$ sudo update-menus
$ update-menus

Tweak Xfce to make it a bit faster
Open the Xfce Settings Manager by right-clicking on the desktop and navigate to Settings -> Setting Manager. Then click on Window Manager in the window that appears. Select the "Advanced" tab and uncheck both "Display content of windows when resizing" and "Display content of windows when moving."

You may also see some benefit by opening the Desktop panel from the Xfce Settings Manager and telling it not to use a background image and to use a solid color for the background.

Fix Iceweasel's DPI handling
Iceweasel is Debian's totally libre version of Mozilla Firefox. Both Firefox and Iceweasel have default DPI handling that might leave onscreen type looking too large or too small. Luckily it's pretty easy to fix. Launch Iceweasel by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Web Browser. If you don't like the way web pages render, open about:config in Iceweasel and change the layout.css.dpi entry from -1 to 0. If you try it and don't like it, you can always change it back.

And while you're at it, change the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll entry to true.

Set the Xserver screen DPI if needed
Sometimes Linux's video server gets screen DPI settings wrong. If the type you see on the screen is consistently too small or too large, you can override the DPI setting used by creating a file called .Xresources in your home directory and adding the following line to it:

Xft.dpi: 96

Note that the name of the file begins with a period. This makes it a hidden file in Linux. To see hidden files, you must tell your file manager to show hidden files (View -> Show Hidden Files or Ctrl-H in Xfce's file manager). If you are using the command line, issue the ls -a command.

The number 96 above is a DPI setting that is as close to a standard as anything. Feel free to adjust that number up or down as needed to get text to display properly. Other common values are 75, 85, 100, and 120.

Use a lighter terminal
The default Xfce terminal is feature-filled but pretty heavy. uxterm and rxvt-unicode are lighter alternatives. If you want to use rxvt-unicode (I like it), you will need to install it; uxterm should be installed already. To install rxvt-unicode,


$ sudo aptitude install rxvt-unicode

Now set the default terminal program,


$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

and select urxvt if you want to use rxvt-unicode or select uxterm to use uxterm.

Update menus (again)

$ sudo update-menus
$ update-menus

Add Gnome system tools (maybe)
Caveat: I'm not sure that this is the best idea because it really digs deep into your system, and since you are not running Gnome it may not do it in the cleanest way. Unless you have special needs--like wireless networking--you may want to skip this step.

Gnome system tools put nice GUI wrappers around administrative tasks that normally drive newbie Linux users nuts. They tend to be resource hungry, but since you will only run them occasionally, the hassle of waiting for them to start will probably be a much less terrible torture than trying to do these tasks via the command-line. If I find a better (i.e., non-Gnome) way to add similar functionality, I'll let you know. But for now your Linux life will be less sucky if you:


$ sudo aptitude install gnome-system-tools

The above adds some stuff that we really don't want, so now we need to uninstall a few things:


$ sudo aptitude remove nautilus
$ sudo aptitude remove gnome-control-center
$ sudo aptitude remove gnome-media

Update menus (yet again)

$ sudo update-menus
$ update-menus

Silence the beep
The GDM login screen beeps when it's ready for you. The terminal beeps when you backspace too far. Both of these behaviors use the PC's built-in speaker and are really annoying. One solution is to turn off the PC speaker completely so nothing can beep at you. This won't disable regular sound on your system; it will only disable the miserable beeper speaker inside your box. To do this:

$ sudo mousepad /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Add this line to the end of the file:


blacklist pcspkr

When you restart, you should now have a beep-free login screen. If you ever want the beep back, just remove the blacklist pcspkr line and restart.

Final comments
Please note that there is a goofy behavior in the Debian/Xcfe setup: the desktop Trash icon does not update when you throw something away. You didn't break it; it was broken from the start.

If after doing the above, your system is still not fast enough for you, consider making it even lighter by using an even less resource hungry window manager and file manager than the Xfce and Thunar pair. One way to do this is described in An Even Lighter Debian.