linux Archives - Page 23 of 28 - Yet Another Linux Blog

New Category, New Direction

So I’ve decided to write a bit more for the blog again. Too many editorials/Rants regarding stupidity/injustice in Linux have been published as of late. This portrays the wrong purpose for Yet Another Linux Blog. I originally started the blog to serve as a place where I could chronicle my search for the best Linux Desktop, which, as some of you witnessed, I found for 2005. It seems I’ve started to migrate away from this purpose. Well, it was bound to happen right? I mean, there is plenty of stupidity and injustice floating around…

Therefore, I opened up this category to record my true learning…true as in I’m going to step through each and every application present in most desktop distros…of KDE. I haven’t even begun to find out what every single application in KDE does or what it is for…I’m just as big of a newb as most people are having started and remained with slackware and the shell for so long. So this will be fun.

I figured that many people switching to Linux probably wouldn’t use half the applications because they most likely wouldn’t know what they are for. With a little help from your friendly neighborhood Linux Blog, hopefully things will right themselves in the KDE world. I’ve also got plans to enter the forray that is Gnome very soon as well. I would cover XFCE but a majority of the programs present there are in both Gnome and KDE so it would defeat the purpose. Perhaps a review of XFCE 4.2.2 would be a good addition to these categories?

Anyway, this first entry serves as clarification on the direction this category will go. Each week I’ll pick out an application (or maybe a few if they are smaller) and I’ll go through the functionality and purpose of the application as well as which desktop distros have this application by default. I’ll also link to the author/homepage for the app. As I said, I hope this helps some people out. I know I was confused the first time I logged in on a desktop distro chock full of applications.

I’ve also found that the Linux Blog forum has been gathering some cobwebs as of late. I think this is a shame because it provides such an organized way of discussion. Thus, I’m closing comments on KWhat? (on all other posts besides this one) and the “yet-to=be-named-gnome” category and redirecting comments and questions on the article to the forum. So this sounds like a good time…if I can get another hard drive (I had one die on me) so that I can get the old PII 350 up and running as a spare test box. That way I can triple boot on two machines and check out different desktop distros simultaneously. So if any of you have a spare 10+ GB ATA hard disk laying around, get in touch with me 😉 That’s it for now. Look for Kwhat? to begin sometime this week.

What’s in a Name?

With Knoppix at least they named the distros differently. With KDE and Gnome, taking the first letter of the names was good enough. But Ubuntu and those using it have developed a silly idea and are trying desperately to make it ‘cool’. Unfortunately, most people seem to agree with them that this naming convention is just that…cool. My stomach turns…

I disagree with this notion of ‘cool’. I think it is silly and unprofessional. For those that have no idea what I’m speaking of, please take special note of the names of the following distros:

Edubuntu
Kubuntu
Ubuntu
What next?

Perhaps some of you may think I’m being harsh. I don’t think so. Adding oddly named distros of Linux that are so similar in name have a chance of confusing the general public. Is there anything to stop these projects from popping up? Will there be derrivatives such as Gamebuntu or other such oddities as GovBuntu or Serverbuntu/Mailbuntu in months and years to come? Not if good taste comes into play. I defeatedly will wait for Pornbuntu to come out sometime in the next few years (ok…perhaps I’m stretching, but you should get the picture). Why didn’t Canonical just name it Ubuntu – Education Edition, Ubuntu – KDE Edition, or something along those lines. Why try to make it ‘cool’ to have Ubuntu inside that new name for the new project? Why Why Why?

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Slackware 10.2 + 350Mhz PII = Bliss

Slackware 10.2 came out a few days ago and I’ve recently decided to dust off a Pentium II 350 with 524MB PC100 RAM to see how things work with it. All I can say is WOW! I have resurrected this old computer to a new life. Slackware was where I started and I can assure you it will be a staple of my Linux diet for years to come. Despite the age of the computer and the slower processor, things are blindingly fast. I’m going to slim it down a bit more and tweak the boot process to speed it up even more.

Slackware 10.2 more than stacks up to my expectations…having not installed slackware since version 9, I was very impressed. XFCE 4.2.2 and KDE 3.4 are just a few of the nice things that come with Slack. My XFCE desktop was decidedly fast…much faster than any other distro that has run on my ancient PII desktop. That in itself is amazing. So amazing in fact that I immediately set out to document as many tips and tricks as I can for all of us slackers 😛

So, I’ve written a nice How-To for installing the 2.6.13 kernel that didn’t come installed by default with 10.2 (Patrick instead opting for the proven 2.4 tree with 2.4.31). I dropped the how-to into the forum in case anyone had questions…since the forum would provide for a much more organized and dynamic way for people to pose questions. You must be registered to post questions (see links at top of the blog). So, if you’re interested in having Slackware 10.2 with a 2.6 branch kernel ( 2.6.13 ) then check it out!

Thanks for reading

Linux-Blog: Gartner needs to get a clue ASAP

Gartner: Linux ‘five years away from mainstream use’ I read that little gem above and laughed aloud. Mainly because if you’ve been living under a rock for the past year you might agree with that. However, with Novell entering the community with SuSe, Red Hat’s Fedora, and Mandriva’s 2005/6 editions I don’t think we’ll have to wait 5 years for things to happen. It’s obvious that Microsoft doesn’t think so either…otherwise, why are they advertising on television and launching a major ad campaign? Don’t you usually do this when sales are slow or interest is abysmal? By the way, who is it that they are competing against in the desktop area again? Oh that’s right, 90% of all desktops use Windows already. So in this case, they are either A) beating a long dead horse, B) slightly worried, or C) all of the above. When in doubt, choose C. So Microsoft might be slightly worried by Linux/Mac/BSD intruding into the desktop arena…and subsequently mainstream. But Gartner doesn’t seem to think that it is an issue until 2010. If you’d have caught me in about 2002 or previous years I might have agreed with them. However, there are some things that are making Linux into a force to be reckoned with. These are small programs that have begun to make desktop Linux exciting. These programs are often referred to in group by the label “Project Utopia.” Basically, what they do is work with each other to automatically add any device you plug in to your computer. Continue reading “Linux-Blog: Gartner needs to get a clue ASAP”

Enlightenment 17 Review

My first Linux experiences came through Knoppix and Mandrake, which send you to the KDE desktop by default. I used KDE at first, but I wanted to experiment with other less Windowsesque environments. The first one I installed was Enlightenment 16, which I must confess I had first heard of in Neal Stephenson’s essay “In The Beginning There Was the Command Line.” In that essay he said Enlightenment “may be the hippest single technology product I have ever seen” and that “it looks amazingly cool.” Since these sentiments were written in 1999, plenty of rivals have emerged for the title of “hippest tech.”

Once I had Enlightenment installed on my laptop there was no going back. I tried out a few other window managers, but the efficiency of E16 was hard to beat. My only complaints were that Enlightenment seemed a bit short on conveniences such as launchers, so I ended up running GNOME stripped down to one panel and the main menu with E16 as the window manager. Meanwhile, I read the descriptions of the new “desktop shell” that the Enlightenment crew was working on, dubbed Enlightenment DR17 (or E17, as I’ll refer to it from here on) and thought it sounded like exactly what I wanted.

I should mention that “window manager” isn’t quite the right term for E17. The developers call it a desktop shell, intending it to fill in the space between a simple window manager like the original Enlightenment and a full-featured desktop environment like GNOME. In other words, they were setting out to create a desktop not unlike my own E16/GNOME hybrid. In this respect it does not disappoint.

In creating E17 the Enlightenment crew have created a set of shared libraries (the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) with the goal of building a complete set of applications to create an integrated environment where all files and programs are readily available that remains fast and non-resource-intensive. Essentially, E17 breaks down a desktop environment into its essential components (window manager, file manager, launcher, main menu, etc.) and offers them as a completely customizable package, where the user chooses which elements to use at any time.

Early Impressions

When I started using E17 back in early May, I had already been a regular user of E16 for a while. My first impressions were that E17 sported some neat features, but configuring the menus (by making all those damn eapp files, E17’s special icon format — read on for more details) was a hassle, plus E17 was missing many of the small features, such as edge-flipping or icon boxes, that I liked in E16. But I stuck

run command

with it, updating it on a regular basis and reading the continually updated user guide at Get-E.org, and usability has steadily increased. Also, a number of the features I had been missing were added (like

window list

edge-flipping) or had been there all along (turns out there is an icon box module called ibox, which is disabled by default). A graphical eap creator and other additions like a run command, alt-tab window switching (complete with a well designed display) and, for those who use sloppy or mouse focus, automatic placement of the cursor in the newly selected window have improved general usability.
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State of Linux: The Linux Wizard

I started asking myself questions about Linux the other day. I began to think about what Linux lacked that Windows had (trying to get into the head of a die hard Windows fan and persuade them to think Linux). Certainly it isn’t appearance. Windows is actually behind Linux in this area. Certainly it isn’t detectability. Linux is also ahead of Windows in this area. Driver support? Yes…big gap…but one that we as Linux programmers, developers, and users are all well aware of and one that cannot be improved drammatically unless manufacturers get behind Linux. So what is left? Wizards. Wizards? That’s right. Wizards. No, not the D&D spellcasting folk…put your twenty sided die away. I’m speaking of the nice trail of menu’s that greet you to set up a function in your operating system.

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