Debian Testing... only with LXDE...

I feel like wiping my Suse partition... KDE4.1 is better than  thought, but still too "heavy" for my taste... 

I feel like (once again) performing a minimal Debian Testing install (32bit of course, despite my amd64 cpu...).

-So what would be the difference ??? I already wrote about that some time ago...

This time, I read here: http://debian-news.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4526 that "LXDE has entered Lenny, thanks to Andrew Lee. It is a quite
lightweight desktop environment that is made with the Eee PC in mind."

I don't own an EeePC, but I feel like experimenting with LXDE, and comparing it to a barebone Fluxbox install...

Also from the same blog, a goode news for me and my TVcard: "The
debian-kernel team was prompt to add atl1e to 2.6.26 which has just
been uploaded to sid. We hope 2.6.26 makes it into Lenny."

I have a dumb "Real Angel 330", which according to this site: http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Powercolor_Real_Angel_330 "This board is supported on kernel 2.6.26 and above."

Let me tell you that I am resisting the urge to go for a Sid or Sidux experience, as I just don't feel at ease with Sid... I am more of a "Stable" kind of guy, willing to go to "Testing", when it is well-tested...

Gotta leave you guys, power just went off... will write about it later !

The Kill A Watt device... usefull... see it here:

Saving power while using your PC...

As some of you might know, I live in a touristic beach-town on the north-east shore of the Dominican Republic. The power company (Luz&Fuerza) is privately run, this is why we are escaping those long black-outs that are common elsewhere in the island.

Of course, there's a price tag to that. Our Kwh is very expensive. It costs us roughly 0.50 US$ per Kwh !

-So what do I do ?

I am one of those guys that enjoys having my PC on all the time. I turn it off at night, because it would be too expensive. I use the "power saving" feature that shuts down the monitor (lcd) after 6 mn of not touching the mouse.

Right now, I have a quad-boot: Ubuntu 8.04(with Gnome/OpenBox mainly), OpenSUSE 11.0 (with KDE4.1), Arch (with Fluxbox only) and Windows XP.

I bought a Kill-a-watt device (see it here: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html ). It is one of those things that you plug in the wall, then plugin your item, and it measures the amount of Watts, amps, and other things that your item sucks...

I was wondering if using a distro vs another one would make any difference... Or possibly a DE vs another one, or even a WM vs another one...

My experience is by no means anything close to scientific, but I now gets precise numbers thanks to the Kill A Watt device.

As you FLOSS people would have guessed, Windows XP is the one that sucks more juice, around 166 Watts.

Disclaimer: here's what's plugged in: a homemade desktop PC (MSI K9N Neo V3 motherboard, AMD Sempron cpu, 1 gig of ddr2 ram, a big 320 gigs sata hdd, a Dell LCD monitor 18" UltraSharp, an Omega 600 UPS, a Speedtouch adsl modem, a Buffalo wireless router, an 8 ports switch, and Labtec speakers). When I measure using the Kill A Watt, I have Pidgin, Skype, Firefox, and a web-radio playing.

So here is it: not only Windows XP (sp3 with Classic looks) is way slower than any Linux distros on that hardware, but it sucks 166 Watts.

Here comes a big fat juice sucking distro as well : OpenSUSE 11.0 with KDE4.1 ! It uses about the same amount that WinXP does, sometimes a bit more... I have seen the meter going to 168 Watts... Maybe the reason is that I had some desktop effects enabled, but the very minimum ones, not the cube or any woobling windows...

Our "middle-ground" contender would be Ubuntu with the Gnome/OpenBox interface... The meter was giving me around 162 or 164 Watts... I would not see it as a big difference...

Then here's our champion of the day: Arch Linux with Fluxbox only. I am using it right now, and the meter shows only 152 Watts. I would say thios is a significant difference.

-Why is that ?

It makes me wonder... Would it be because I performed one of those famous minimal install, with only relatively lightweight apps, such as PCManFM, Fluxbox, Aterm, ePDFview, Exaile, Firefox & Opera, Pidgin & Skype... ???

-Would a "netinst" of another distro performs just the same with the same choice of apps ?

Too bad I wiped my Debian Testing partition !!!

But for me, a difference of 15 Watts is important enough to take into consideration... 

That's it for mow, but this subject is a fundamental one for me, so feel free to post your insight on the "save a watt" distro...

A good sources.list for Debian Testing:

As of playing mp3's, installing Picasa, Flash, Opera, Skype, and codecs, here's my sources.list:

(you need to open a terminal, log in as toot, edit (with Leafpad or Gedit) /etc/apt/sources.list)

-My sources.list: 

#################### 
## Debian Testing ## 
#################### 
 
# Testing 
deb ftp://bigmirror.crossbowproject.net/pub/debian/ testing main contrib non-free  
deb-src ftp://bigmirror.crossbowproject.net/pub/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

 
#Testing Security updates 
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib 
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib 
 
#debian multimedia repository (http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/24283/) 
deb ftp://linorg.usp.br/debian-marillat/ testing main 
deb-src ftp://linorg.usp.br/debian-marillat/ testing main 
 
# Official site for latest version of skype. 
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free 
 
# Google picasa  
#(wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - ) 
# or (gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv A040830F7FAC5991 && gpg --export --armor A040830F7FAC5991 | sudo apt-key add - ) 
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free 
 
### Opera Browser (http://deb.opera.com/) ### 
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ testing non-free 

Back here....

Ok, I haven't been writing for over a month now... But those who know me can understand why. I moved !
I finally left downtown Las Terrenas, its dusty & noisy streets, for a paradise-like atmosphere in Playa Bonita...
Fantastic change, I am very happy with it ! (my family too...)
But I was busy setlling down, getting things to work in my new place, like having my ADSL internet transfered, for instance, and installing my workshop in a smaller space...
It's done now. Well, almost...
I shall be here more often, sharing thoughts, asking myself questions, or simply ranting, if it is not too wildly incorrect...

One of my favorite swims... see the yellow line:

An "Arch-like" Debian Testing !

Well, I finally made my own cooking, thanks to all people whom advices I have read here and there in the world wide web...

I decided to keep my working Ubuntu Hardy and Arch partition, and use the 3rd partition available to setup a minimal install of Debian Testing, following this guide: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/432

But I didn't install any GDM or XDM... Stciked to startx...

Only OpenBox (with PyPanel...)

Enjoyed reading this gentleman's choice of apps: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/

That gave me some good tips, so I installed Mirage (to view photos), ePDFView (instead of xPDF), Leafpad (instead of Mousepad)...

Aterm for a terminal, Exaile for music, radio & podcasts, Claws-mail, Emesene for MSN messenger Alsamixergui for sound control,  and for the rest, very classical apps such as Iceweasel, Opera, Skype, Abiword/Gnumeric, PCManFM, TVtime, Brasero, Transission, aMule, Picasa, Gimp...

I must say I am not yet very used to OpenBox (I have always used Fluxbox for lightweight...), but it seems a dynamic community of users, and I have been reading those guides: http://urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/ as well as the one from the Arch wiki...

Very informative !

Needless to say the PC boots in no time !!!

One thing, I kept a 32bit Debian, despite having this 64bit amd Sempron... I just don't want to mix any libs... I am on a 486 kernel, might upgrade to 686... Not sure yet...

So the whole concept of this install was to do it "the Arch way", but with a Debian Testing base, since it is my area of choice...

Of course, I will miss my good ol' Nautilus, but the whole point of that is not to install Gnome... And if I really need to connect to other PC's (which I will !), that mean I'll have to reboot into either Ubuntu or Arch :(

Or learn how to better handle ssh and smb without Nautilus... But I am so used to the easy gui thing... We'll see...

bored... (but lots of swimming !!!)... Making my distros to go faster...

Ok, day off today, Corpus Cristi... Sunny days, went to the beach, and swam my @$$ off :)

Been arguing about Arch in the Ubuntu forum... (it's here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=773260&page=3 ), and finally admited that it did boot faster indeed... So that made me want to improve my 'Buntu !

I read that guide: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optimize-Ubuntu-Feisty-Fawn-for-Speed-53836.shtml

...and it worked... I gain (...only...) 8 seconds at boot time, but overall my Gnome desktop seems faster...

-Is it only a feeling ???

What else... I wiped Slackware for Sidux, but I still am not happy... I guess I am simply allergic to KDE... Or is it the overly complicated version of the apt-get system that disoriented me ?

I might stick some Slack derivative or maybe Mandriva... Don't know... But I'll stick to 32bit...

I know now: I would use a 64bit distro if I needed no 32bit apps... And I still need just one: Skype !

I just dislike mixing 64 & 32...

Bottom line, this Debianista here is still happy with his 'Buntu, despite all of what's online about it... I downloaded a snapshot of Debian Testing netinst i386, but I feel lazy...

I gotta swim more... much more !

I went swimming again, 4 days in a row ! Beautiful, I feel so much better !
It's been warm, we had the elections... Leonel won, here's a photo fo him:



We'll see if he (still) does a good job (it's his 3rd term !)

Strange impressions about Arch...

Ok, so I managed to instal Arch Linux on my main box... I now have a multi-boot with Ubuntu 8.04, Slackware 12.1 and Arch... All are 32 bit version, despite my cpu being a 64bit Sempron... So far I feel better with a 32bit distro...

So I made it... I basically followed the Arch Beginners Guide...

It wasn't that hard since the guide is well done. I understood that I had to set my eth0 to DHCP to connect. That was the mistake that stopped me last week, when I first tried... (and failed).

So now I have a nice Gnome desktop, with mostly exactly the same apps that I use in Debian and Ubuntu... I only changed 2 of my usual regulars: Thunderbird instead of Evolution, and Exaile instead of Rhythmbox... But that was only a fantasy...

It seems to work well... I must admit that I cheated for one thing during the install: Since my xorg.conf file didn't seem to give me the proper res' at my first gui boot, I booted back in Slackware, and copied my Slack's xorg.conf to Arch... Booted back to Arch, and it worked great ! That is one of the beauty of the multiboot...

Also I need to precise that each distro has its own /home partition... I didn't try to have them all share the same one... Easier...

But now, here comes my greatest impression: I don't really see any difference in speed between Arch, Slackware and Ubuntu ! Now, I must tell you that I have been performing any type of exact measure... But the "human" feeling is that they all "work" at the same rhythm...

Furthermore, I would say that (it seems to me...) Ubuntu boots much faster than both Slack & Arch... Strange... I was expecting a "Ferrari" after all those years reading comments on how fast Arch was...

At the end of the day, I am only a "soho user", but apart from the educational factor and the "rolling release" factor, I don't see the big advantage of using Arch over Debian (or Ubuntu)...

I will however keep both Arch & Slack partition and update them often, to see if I missed something, to learn more...

My feelings, after all...

Ok, it's only been 2 days with Slackware, but it keeps on being a "PITA"...

I mean, there's no internationalization! Apart from KDE, everything is in English, plain and simple !

I found some stuff in Italian, but that doesn't really help me, as I need French & Spanish...

Also, I managed to get my usb drives to "automount" following this guide:

http://www.mutaku.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20071218003749377

But it didn't help when I plugged in a friend's Ipod (I don't own any of those...).

Anyway, I just happened to boot back in Hardy, and everything looks nicer, more polished, easier... I am definitely one of those "lazy users", as I tend to enjoy when things "just work"...

I'll keep this Slackware partition, to keep on experimenting, and implementing tips that I am sure I will learn along the way, but I am such a Debianista, and tonight, I know why...

My next experiment will be with Arch (2nd try...)

It's Slack time again !

-So what happened to my Debian Talibanism ???

Nothing... Debian is still my fav' distro... But that doesn't mean I can multiboot to enjoy other distros...

My main desktop is now multibooting Ubuntu 8.04 (works fine for me) and Slackware 12.1 (the new one).

I am mainly a Gnome guy, used to apt-get... So it feels really exotic to boot into KDE (3.5.9), in a Slackware environment...

I can't believe I only found out about "xorgsetup" now... I tried Slackware often, and always complained about issues with the lack of scroll mouse, and the wrong screen resolution... Until yesterday, when I happened to find that useful command !

It fixes all the above mentioned issues, automatically ! Good !

Now, I am not (yet) a Slackware guru, so I did the "newb" thing to install slapt-get and gslapt... I even added the Slacky.eu repos, to get all the goodies. I read on Planète Béranger that it isn't supposed to be the best way, but it was so easy to do, I guess you can blame that on the fact that I am a Debianista at heart... Add a repo, and install all the stuff... That simple...

According to Luis, a gentleman who comments on Planète Béranger, I really have to try Arch as well...

Actually I did, the other day, but I could manage to configure the Pacman repos correctly... However, just for fun, I might add a partition to my spanking new sata hdd (320 gigs !!!), and sweat a bit more...

Too hot !!!

It's a bit of a heat-wave down here...

I have been quite busy last week. The weather is simply gorgeous, blue sky, transparent water, but the heat is unbearable.

Good news, I went swimming a lot last week-end. It felt like a giant swimming-pool, and I have the "good resolution" to get back in shape...

Swimming really helps break the "computer geek" habit of sitting 14 hours a day in front of a monitor... Great for my back, and actually great for my mind too !

So it takes Speedo briefs and Aquasphere goggles, and I feel like an amphibian !

This is the real beauty of living here in Las Terrenas... See the pics on the side to understand...

A quick look to Xubuntu Hardy...

Ok, no fuss, as I only ran the live-cd.

-What was my motivation ?
-Well, I still have that (very old) Toshiba laptop with Xubuntu Dpper. Kept it all the way, instead of my all-time favorite Debian Stable, simply because the PCMCIA wifi card (RTL8180) works out of the box in Dapper, but was "kicked out" of the kernel for some technical reason...

So I still carress the idea of being able to install anything else... No stress, as I still have a bit more than a year of support for Dapper, but Gaim 1.5 and FF 1.5 make me feel like living in the 1960's ;o)

Anyway, back to this Hardy live-cd. Nice boot-splash, beautiful wallpaper (I have to find it for my own use on Gnome). I am ok with the choice of app... Mainly because I am a "Gnome guy", so I am not disturbed by all the "Gnomification" of the Xfce desktop...

That makes me wonder if Xubuntu is really any lighter than Ubuntu... Feel free to post your feedback on that one...

Now, the real question is this one: Can a Xfce desktop be as functional as "good ol' " Gnome ?

I guess it depends on the level of tweaks... I have more homework to do about that...

It's raining today in LT... I have a long long week-end ahead, with departures & arrivals... I'll be kept well busy. Don't be surprised if I don't post for a couple of days...

J'ai des doutes...

I am wondering if any of you readers have troubles reading my blog. By that I mean if the text doesn't appear the way it should. What triggered this is the comment from my good cyber-friend Monsieur Béranger de la Planète du même nom. You can read it under "comments" from the post underneath...
Feel free to post here, it will help me better understand that issue...

Mono etc...

Just another political statement:

Today, I removed all Mono related stuff (TomBoy, F-Spot, Mono etc...) from my Hardy desktop.
I am not sure which one is ethically better, but I installed, just like I usually do in my Debian boxes, Google Picasa. It is closed sources, it uses Wine, but it works well enough, and it is cross-platform, so I can easily support all those Windows-customers of mine by using that same app...
Mono seems vicious... I do understand however the validity of the research, same thing applies for Moonlight, the FLOSS Silverlight clone...

But if I can avoid those things on my personal box, I would feel much better.
I am heading towards a "Gnu certified" desktop ;o) ... Well not really, since I have all the bad & ugly plugins, and the Nvidia drivers that I don't even use for my graphic card and a bunch of shameful codecs !...

I also installed the Java JRE 1.6... Heck, it's almost free ! But the Mozilla plugin seems to work better than both OpenJDK and Iced-Tea...

I must admit having the msttcorefonts also, mainly for my wife's account, as she does a lot of office work for university students, and they come with .doc from thumbdrives... It needs coherence...

Hey, thanks to the various devs, it's all possible today... Good job !

Swfdec, Gnash and Flash in Hardy...

I have read here and there that Firefox 3 crashes often (yes, Fernand, I am refering to you).

So I grew curious to see that mine had not yet experiment the first crash. I strongly suspected it was an Adobe Flash issue. And I have not installed that plugin, but instead the swfdec one.

You can read more about swfdec here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swfdec

I noticed that I could do most of my regular "Flash needs", such as watching a YouTube video, or regular web-browsing without the annoying warning that one needs to download a plugin. Of course, I don't get to see most Flash banners, as I am extensely using AdBlock Plus, in order to avoid those annoyances... I happily use Opera without any Flash plugin, for a change, and mostly don't notice the difference.

One thing I noticed is my favorite podcast (http://www.europe1.fr/podcast/index.jsp) wouldn't play with sound with swfdec... So it is not "perfect".

It gave me the idea to uninstall Swfdec, and to install Gnash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash) instead. Indeed, Gnash works fine in my Debian Testing PPC Mac iBook G3.

So I did get Gnash up and running on my Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. I fired up FF3, headed up too Youtube, and watched the video playing, but... no sound... Problem...

I thought, what the heck ? headed to Synaptic, uninstalled Gnash and went for the "Flash-nonfree", which is the proprietary Adobe Flash.

...Rebooted FF3... Headed to Youtube... Crash... Tried again... Crash...

...Went back to Synaptic, uninstalled  "Flash-nonfree" and went back to Swfdec... It seems it is the "best" of the Flash player available right now for FF3, at least until further updates from Mozilla & Adobe...

I also makes me feel nice to use some Free Software when I can... Maybe I'll end up running Gnewsense ;)   (just kidding..)

Anyway, I wish some readers can pass this info along when it comes to FF3 users complaining about random crashes... Use Swfdec, get rid of Adobe Flash !

Rain, politics, Hardy etc...

Down here in Las Terrenas, we have had some heavy rain... Big showers, for about 40 mn, and then humid sunshine...

Yesterday afternoon, there was a rock-concert on the beach. What a change from the "boring" merengue music :)

Here in Dominican Republic, we will have the presidential elections in less than 3 weeks. The campaign has been idiotic, no debate whatsoever about anything, just finger-pointing towards each other's corruption... Leonel will have another 4 years, as most are not too keen to see PRD back in the Palace...

The week-end has passed and I still enjoy my spanking new Hardy desktop... I feel a bit of a traitor to my newfound love, Debian, but for the time being, this Ubuntu release wors for me.

As stated before, there are annoyances, such as the inability to give a static IP... Or the crashing Nvidia drivers (closed source...) but I trust those issues will gradually be reduced through the updates from now until july, when Canonical issue the "stable" 8.04.1 iso...

I am very glad I came back to a 32bit OS (on my amd64 Sempron cpu)... No exotic 32bits stuff in a 64bit environment... Sounds healthier... I was so disapointed when I had to finally gave up my Debian Testing amd64 system after upgrading from Debian Etch, because of those funny libs needed to run Skype 32bit in amd64... Even when I eventually go back to Debian Lenny, I'll happily go for an i386 iso, unless Skype releases a 64bit Skype !

Fernand was telling me about downgrading Firefox to 2.x from 3.x. Actually, much to my surprise, I haven't encountered any unstability with FF3... I guess it is because I didn't installed Adobe Flash, but SWFDEC... So far it seems to be working ok, I have to give it some time. I would have gone for Gnash otherwise, as it performs just fine on y Mac iBook G3 PPC, with Debian Testing on it...

Lots of work and things to do this week for me in my "regular life".... We'll se how it shall go...

Sarko on TV...

I was watching Nicolas Sarkozy, a couple of days ago...

Interesting from the Dominican Republic, where politic is only a big playground for corruption !

Actually, I felt like the guy was good... Not perfect, but who´s perfect anyway ?

In France, they are too harsh on him... I wish they could live in a corrupted nation, to see how it really is...

The Hardy controversy

As I read in Planète Béranger about Hardy´s shortcoming, it makes me wonder...

I am (as you could realise) a Debianista at heart.

But I gave Hardy a try (still use it now), because the opportunity came, and I had no sound with the 2.6.18 kernel from Debian Stable.

As stated before, we Gnu/Linux users should know first hand the Ubunut world, as regular folks, Mac & Windows users have a tendency to believe that Linux IS Ubuntu. As of me, I still believe there´s no such thing as Debian Stable.

Anyway, here´s what I wrote @ Béranger´s:

"Caraibes - Today at 11:40:50 GMT

Actually, I also was surprised by that "root" free access (!!!!!)

After a great day with a fancy "desktop effects" Hardy, I shut down the PC. When I came back, it simply would not log in. GDM, and nothing more... In cli, it would not startx...

So I did the recovery mode. I am glad it exists. There's a "fix X" option, which worked well. It basically made back to a functional desktop, without the proprietary Nvidia drivers, which seems to have been the cause of the bug... I plan to stick with the free drivers for a while, until some updates fix this disturbing issue.

As of the root access... Bad... -Maybe there's a way to make it ask for a password ? Feel free to post ideas here :)

Anyway, overall, not that bad... I plan to write a bit more in my blog:

"cough" (shameless announcement) "cough"

http://free-las-terrenas.blogspot.com/"

And also:

"Caraibes - Today at 11:56:14 GMT

All those bugs are annoying... I would definitely have kept Debian Stable on my "new" main box, if it wasn't for that "fancier" Nvidia integrated sound card that doesn't work with a 2.6.18 kernel...

For some reason, I was experimenting many Iceweasel and Gtk apps crashes in Debian Testing... Wondering if it was because of the proprietary Nvidia video drivers on an amd64 system.

I am sticking to 32bits distro now (on my amd64 cpu...)... If Hardy really sucks that bad after a week (I have to give a chance to potential updates to fix issues...), I'll go back to Debian Testing, but 32 bits...

Anyway, experimenting is good. We are talking about the "poster child" of the Gnu/Linux universe, whether we like it or not... We better know first hand how it works..."

I am reproducing those here, as it gives an idea of my state of mind...

Anyway, the bottom line is to give some time to this spanking new release, I might set up a dual-boot with Debian Testing... More later, or tomorrow...