Sunday, August 26, 2012

a good idea

The now-dormant distribution Pardus Linux had a utility called Kaptan for helping users to customize a fresh Pardus installation. An article over at LinuxBSDos.com discusses Chakra GNU/Linux's Kapudan, a port of the Kaptan utility. The article, "Every distribution should have its own Kapudan," includes some nice screenshots that show Kapudan in action, beginning with this one:




Should every distro have something like this? I'm not sure about that. Some people might see it as too much "hand-holding." But looking over the screenshots, I do think that it's an excellent idea, especially for distros that cater to folks new to Linux -- Linux Mint comes to mind.

The "Cancel" button at the lower-left of each screen hints that it may be easy to bypass the Kapudan set-up utility. I can imagine myself either taking advantage of Kapudan or clicking "Cancel" and going directly to the default desktop.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised to see other distros doing something like this. Why not?

found some good ones

Just completed this one:

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. I enjoyed the story, but didn't like that it's part of a trilogy, so I don't think I'll read the other two books. I might check out the movie, though.


Still working on these:

Journal of a Mountain Man, James Clyman (edited by Linda M. Hasselstrom). I stumbled upon this one at a thrift store; the writings of James Clyman, describing his travels and adventures on the plains and in the mountains of the North American West in the 1800s.

Telling New Mexico: A New History, edited by Marta Weigle. This one was in the stacks at the Albuquerque Public Library, downtown. Here's what it says on the back cover:

This extensive volume presents New Mexico history from its prehistoric beginnings to the present in essays by forty-five prominent scholars and writers representing diverse disciplines including anthropology, Native American and Chicano studies, history and geography.


jump!

What a fun, summertime photo! Found this one at annarbor.com. This is from Saturday at the Parkridge Community Center Summerfest in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

new stuff

They're calling it a "quarterly" update, but six months after PCLinuxOS 2012.02, the next PCLOS maintenance release, version 2012.08, is finally out. To get info and download one of the .iso's, see this page. If you're already running PCLOS and have already updated to KDE 4.8.3, you don't need to install PCLOS 2012.08, unless you want a clean start.

Also, Anthony Nordquist has announced the first development build of SalineOS 2.0, based on Debian Wheezy. SalineOS comes with the Xfce desktop environment. Still a lot of work to go on this one; information and downloads can be found here.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

a bit about man

A few tips about Linux man pages:


See man man for general info on this topic.




Linux man pages are displayed by the less program, which is important to remember for quickly getting around inside of a man page. See man less.

For a keyboard reference, type h within a man page. This will bring up the “summary of less commands.”

To search for string in a man page, type a forward slash (/) followed by the string, then press Enter:

/string [Enter]

All instances of string will be highlighted. Toggle this highlighting by pressing Esc, then u.

If you press n, the page will go to the next line containing string. Shift+n will take you to the previous line containing string. Those lines will be at the top of the page.

To quit a man page, type q. The same thing will get you out of the “summary of less commands.”


Press the up arrow or down arrow to move back or forward one line at a time.

Press PageUp or PageDown to move back or forward one page at a time.

Press the Home key to go to the beginning of the document, and the End key to go to the end of the document.

Here's a table of commands and keys, from tuxfiles.org:


Command / keyAction
e, j, Enter, or Downmove forward one line
y, k, or Upmove backward one line
f, Space, or Page Downmove forward one page
b, or Page Upmove backward one page
/characterssearch the manual page for the specified characters
qquit


(Source for the above table: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/manpages.html)


All Linux distros include man pages (as far as I know), but you can also find Linux man pages online. For example, you can easily find the man page for the ls command by typing man ls in your search bar. Or, do a search using the terms linux man pages, and you'll find results for different sites that contain man pages, and other info about them.

If you use Duck Duck Go, there's a !bang command that will take you directly to a man page. For example, for the man page for the cal command, type !man cal in Duck Duck Go's search bar.

alphabetical order?

In my post just a few tweaks (August 11, 2012), I showed the contents of my (then) current ~/.fluxbox/init file. Later, I wondered if it wouldn't be easier find things in that file if the lines were put in alphabetical order. Why aren't they in alphabetical order in the first place? What would happen if I did it?

So I made a back-up copy of my init file, and then I sorted it. By the way, you can do something like this quickly by using the sort command (see man sort).

So, I haven't seen where sorting it causes any problems. Yet. Anyway, here's my new ~/.fluxbox/init file from Mepis 11 (I did move a few lines around after sorting):


session.screen0.allowRemoteActions: false
session.screen0.autoRaise: true
session.screen0.clickRaises: true
session.screen0.clientMenu.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.colPlacementDirection: TopToBottom
session.screen0.defaultDeco: NORMAL
session.screen0.demandsAttentionTimeout: 500
session.screen0.edgeSnapThreshold: 10
session.screen0.focusModel: ClickFocus
session.screen0.focusNewWindows: true
session.screen0.followModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.fullMaximization: false
session.screen0.iconbar.alignment: Left
session.screen0.iconbar.iconTextPadding: 10l
session.screen0.iconbar.iconWidth: 70
session.screen0.iconbar.mode: {static groups}
session.screen0.iconbar.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.maxDisableMove: false
session.screen0.maxDisableResize: false
session.screen0.maxIgnoreIncrement: true
session.screen0.menu.alpha: 200
session.screen0.menuDelay: 200
session.screen0.menuDelayClose: 200
session.screen0.menuMode: Delay
session.screen0.noFocusWhileTypingDelay: 0l
session.screen0.opaqueMove: true
session.screen0.overlay.capStyle: CapNotLast
session.screen0.overlay.joinStyle: JoinMiter
session.screen0.overlay.lineStyle: LineSolid
session.screen0.overlay.lineWidth: 1
session.screen0.rootCommand: ~/.fluxbox/autostart.sh
session.screen0.rowPlacementDirection: LeftToRight
session.screen0.showwindowposition: true
session.screen0.slit.acceptKdeDockapps: true
session.screen0.slit.alpha: 255
session.screen0.slit.autoHide: false
session.screen0.slit.layer: Dock
session.screen0.slit.maxOver: false
session.screen0.slit.onhead: 0
session.screen0.slit.placement: RightBottom
session.screen0.strftimeFormat: %a %b %d  %R
session.screen0.tab.placement: TopLeft
session.screen0.tab.width: 64
session.screen0.tabFocusModel: ClickToTabFocus
session.screen0.tabs.intitlebar: true
session.screen0.tabs.maxOver: false
session.screen0.tabs.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.titlebar.left: Stick
session.screen0.titlebar.right: Minimize Maximize Close
session.screen0.toolbar.alpha: 255
session.screen0.toolbar.autoHide: false
session.screen0.toolbar.height: 0
session.screen0.toolbar.layer: Dock
session.screen0.toolbar.maxOver: false
session.screen0.toolbar.onhead: 0
session.screen0.toolbar.placement: BottomCenter
session.screen0.toolbar.tools: prevworkspace, workspacename, nextworkspace, iconbar, prevwindow, nextwindow, systemtray, clock
session.screen0.toolbar.visible: true
session.screen0.toolbar.widthPercent: 90
session.screen0.tooltipDelay: 500
session.screen0.userFollowModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.window.focus.alpha: 255
session.screen0.window.unfocus.alpha: 200
session.screen0.windowMenu: /home/steve/.fluxbox/windowmenu
session.screen0.windowPlacement: RowMinOverlapPlacement
session.screen0.workspaces: 4
session.screen0.workspaceNames: one,two,three,four,
session.screen0.workspacewarping: true
session.appsFile: ~/.fluxbox/apps
session.autoRaiseDelay: 250
session.cacheLife: 5l
session.cacheMax: 200l
session.colorsPerChannel: 4
session.configVersion: 10
session.doubleClickInterval: 250
session.forcePseudoTransparency: true
session.ignoreBorder: false
session.keyFile: ~/.fluxbox/keys
session.menuFile: ~/.fluxbox/menu
session.slitlistFile: /home/steve/.fluxbox/slitlist
session.styleFile: /home/steve/.fluxbox/styles/Steve-BlueNight
session.styleOverlay: ~/.fluxbox/overlay
session.tabsAttachArea: Window
session.tabPadding: 0

Saturday, August 11, 2012

best tool for the job

No matter what distro I'm using, it's common for me to use applications that are not native to that distro's desktop environment.

Right now, I'm logged into Mepis 11. The default environment is KDE, but I'm logged into a Fluxbox session. Here, I prefer to use xfce4-terminal instead of Konsole because Fluxbox's transparency works with xfce4-terminal, but not with Konsole.



Mepis 11 comes with Firefox. I prefer to use Chromium, but the version from the repos is still at 13.0.782.220, so I installed google-chrome-stable (now at version 21.0.1180.75)  from outside of the repos, and I use that instead.

KWrite is the default text editor, but I prefer to use Geany.



For file management, KDE has Dolphin, which I use most of the time, and Konqueror. But I also have Thunar (from Xfce) and PCManFM (from LXDE) installed.



I don't use either of those very much, though.

Gwenview is the native image viewer, but I also like Geeqie and Mirage.



The idea is to use what you feel is the best available tool for the job. Linux gives you tons of choices; you don't have to only use applications that come with your distro's default desktop environment.

Unless you really want to.

ubuntu DE usage

Over at Ubuntu Vibes, there's a post with some interesting stats on Ubuntu desktop environment usage, compiled from Ubuntu Popularity Contest stats. Here's a link:

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/08/ubuntu-desktop-environment-usage.html

The stats don't tell the whole story. For one thing, as the post's author notes:

Not all Ubuntu users have popularity-contest enabled. It's disabled by default and most Ubuntu users have likely never heard of it. So this will not show a true picture of DE usage on Ubuntu. Also the results may not be 100% accurate.

The author also mentions other factors that should be considered when looking at the data; read the entire article, and also check out the comments that follow.

In any case, here's the table that appears at that web page:


DEPackage NameTotal UsersRecent Users (used in last 30 days)
Classic Gnomegnome-panel1527309 (59.96%)62875 (28.24%)
Unityunity397130 (15.59%)71106 (31.94%)
KDEkdesktop237579 (9.32%)50369 (22.62%)
XFCExfce4-panel238688 (9.37%)10165 (4.56%)
Gnome Shellgnome-shell106107 (4.16%)24626 (11.06%)
LXDElxde-common29589 (1.16%)1375 (0.61%)
E17e1710696 (0.41%)2076 (0.93%)


I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't show usage for Openbox, which is a window manager that I often use in Ubuntu.

resources

There are tons of resources available for information about configuring Fluxbox.

Often, a web search is the best bet. For example, to learn how to edit the ~/.fluxbox/init file, a web search using the terms fluxbox init will probably help you find what you need.

Another thing I like to do: Paste a line from a config file into the browser's search bar. For example, I wanted to find out what this line in the init file does:

session.screen0.toolbar.layer: Dock

So, I used the following in my search bar:

"session.screen0.toolbar.layer"

Doing a search with terms like fluxbox configuration will turn up more info than you'll ever need. But, one of the best resources for info about Fluxbox is right there on your Linux system.

It's called man fluxbox. Duh. I always forget about that one.

It's a long document, and it might seem like too much trouble to use it, but a lot of times it's really the best place to go.

just a few tweaks

Playing around this morning with Fluxbox in Mepis 11, making a few tweaks.

I didn't like how, by default, the application icons take up the whole iconbar on the toolbar, so I made the application icons look more like buttons by going to the ~/.fluxbox/init file and finding the following line:

session.screen0.iconbar.alignment: Relative

I changed this to:

session.screen0.iconbar.alignment: Left


I thought the workspace names were taking up too much space, so I changed

session.screen0.workspaceNames: Workspace 1,Workspace 2,Workspace 3,Workspace 4,

to

session.screen0.workspaceNames: one,two,three,four,


I gave myself some transparency: Fluxbox menu > Configuration > Transparency > Force Pseudo-Transparency. Then I set "Unfocused Window Alpha" and "Menu Alpha" to 200.



For toolbar transparency, I set the alpha to 200 under Configuration > Toolbar.

I thought the workspace name, and the text in the clock, were crowded too far over to the left. After digging around for awhile, I revised the current style ("BlueNight") under /usr/share/fluxbox/styles. In the "BlueNight-revised," I changed

toolbar.justify:                     Left

to

toolbar.justify:                     Center

Then I selected "BlueNight-revised" as my style, instead of "BlueNight."

Here's my Fluxbox desktop with the application windows minimized, showing the menu opened to "Styles":



It's helpful, sometimes, to see examples of configuration files that other people are using in Fluxbox, so here's the contents of my current ~/.fluxbox/init file:

session.screen0.menu.alpha: 200
session.screen0.tab.placement: TopLeft
session.screen0.tab.width: 64
session.screen0.titlebar.left: Stick
session.screen0.titlebar.right: Minimize Maximize Close
session.screen0.window.focus.alpha: 255
session.screen0.window.unfocus.alpha: 200
session.screen0.clientMenu.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.iconbar.mode: {static groups}
session.screen0.iconbar.alignment: Left
session.screen0.iconbar.iconWidth: 70
session.screen0.iconbar.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.iconbar.iconTextPadding: 10l
session.screen0.tabs.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.tabs.maxOver: false
session.screen0.tabs.intitlebar: true
session.screen0.overlay.lineWidth: 1
session.screen0.overlay.lineStyle: LineSolid
session.screen0.overlay.joinStyle: JoinMiter
session.screen0.overlay.capStyle: CapNotLast
session.screen0.slit.layer: Dock
session.screen0.slit.autoHide: false
session.screen0.slit.alpha: 255
session.screen0.slit.placement: RightBottom
session.screen0.slit.acceptKdeDockapps: true
session.screen0.slit.onhead: 0
session.screen0.slit.maxOver: false
session.screen0.toolbar.layer: Dock
session.screen0.toolbar.alpha: 200
session.screen0.toolbar.height: 0
session.screen0.toolbar.widthPercent: 90
session.screen0.toolbar.maxOver: false
session.screen0.toolbar.visible: true
session.screen0.toolbar.autoHide: false
session.screen0.toolbar.placement: BottomCenter
session.screen0.toolbar.tools: prevworkspace, workspacename, nextworkspace, iconbar, prevwindow, nextwindow, systemtray, clock
session.screen0.toolbar.onhead: 0
session.screen0.windowPlacement: RowMinOverlapPlacement
session.screen0.menuMode: Delay
session.screen0.strftimeFormat: %a %b %d  %R
session.screen0.workspaces: 4
session.screen0.tooltipDelay: 500
session.screen0.focusModel: ClickFocus
session.screen0.edgeSnapThreshold: 10
session.screen0.maxIgnoreIncrement: true
session.screen0.opaqueMove: true
session.screen0.tabFocusModel: ClickToTabFocus
session.screen0.allowRemoteActions: false
session.screen0.workspacewarping: true
session.screen0.maxDisableMove: false
session.screen0.windowMenu: /home/steve/.fluxbox/windowmenu
session.screen0.workspaceNames: one,two,three,four,
session.screen0.showwindowposition: true
session.screen0.menuDelay: 200
session.screen0.colPlacementDirection: TopToBottom
session.screen0.rowPlacementDirection: LeftToRight
session.screen0.rootCommand: ~/.fluxbox/autostart.sh
session.screen0.defaultDeco: NORMAL
session.screen0.autoRaise: true
session.screen0.maxDisableResize: false
session.screen0.clickRaises: true
session.screen0.menuDelayClose: 200
session.screen0.followModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.fullMaximization: false
session.screen0.focusNewWindows: true
session.screen0.userFollowModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.noFocusWhileTypingDelay: 0l
session.styleOverlay: ~/.fluxbox/overlay
session.colorsPerChannel: 4
session.doubleClickInterval: 250
session.cacheMax: 200l
session.tabPadding: 0
session.appsFile: ~/.fluxbox/apps
session.forcePseudoTransparency: true
session.tabsAttachArea: Window
session.keyFile: ~/.fluxbox/keys
session.ignoreBorder: false
session.autoRaiseDelay: 250
session.cacheLife: 5l
session.menuFile: ~/.fluxbox/menu
session.slitlistFile: /home/steve/.fluxbox/slitlist
session.styleFile: /usr/share/fluxbox/styles/BlueNight-revised
session.configVersion: 10

Monday, August 6, 2012

rolling, still

PCLinuxOS had been stuck on KDE 4.6.5 for quite a long time, but I finally found something in the forums saying that KDEupgrade, the script that would upgrade the system to 4.8.3, was ready to go. I never really saw an actual announcement in what I took to be the appropriate sections of the forums, but logging into the forums gave me access to some areas that I couldn't get to otherwise, and digging around, I was able to find good info on doing the upgrade.

I had already decided that if this upgrade wasn't successful, I was going to replace PCLOS on my desktop pc with Sabayon. I've had this PCLOS installation going for two years now, since August, 2010. My preference was to keep it going, but if I was gonna have to do a fresh installation, I was just gonna bail. PCLOS is a "rolling release" distro, though, and I really want to see how long I can keep it "rolling."

There were actually two approaches mentioned for getting KDE 4.8.3 (besides doing a fresh installation). The first one involved going to Synaptic, then Settings > Repositories > click on the active repo (the heanet repo, in my case) > under Section(s), change “kde4” to “kde” > Reload > Mark All Upgrades. This gave me the following error message:

E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

Reading info at the forums, I determined that this might have been due to the heanet repo not being completely synced with the ibiblio repo, with packages being rebuilt all the time, or something like that.

So, I installed the KDEupgrade package and ran that script (Main menu > More Applications > Configuration > KDEupgrade), but I kept getting a message that I needed to upgrade my system, and that further details could be found at /tmp/KDE_STEP00.log. The contents of that file:

Reading Package Lists...

Building Dependency Tree...

The following packages will be upgraded

mozilla-thunderbird (12.0.1-1pclos2012 => 14.0-1pclos2012)

1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 removed and 0 not upgraded.

Inst mozilla-thunderbird [12.0.1-1pclos2012] (14.0-1pclos2012 Unknown:Unknown/Unknown)

Conf mozilla-thunderbird (14.0-1pclos2012 Unknown:Unknown/Unknown)


But Synaptic still showed mozilla-thunderbird at version 12.0.1-1pclos2012, so I was kinda stumped.

Back in Synaptic, I switched to the ibiblio repo, and in the Section(s) area I changed "kde4" to "kde," and tried the first method again. Once again, I got this message:

E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

But I also noticed an upgrade for mozilla-thunderbird to 14.0-1pclos2012, so I decided to try to deal with that by itself. At this point, I changed everything back to the heanet repo and kde4, reloaded, then ran KDEupgrade again. That ran fine, then I got the following message:

KDEupgrade initial tests completed successfully. To continue ALL users including yourself MUST log out NOW!

Remember to write down the next steps:
1) At the KDE login window select Menu > Console Login and login as root
2) At the red root prompt enter the command KDEupgrade

Note:
- the upgrade to KDE 4.8.x will only be initialized if you run the command as outlined in step 1 and 2 above, if you do not do this then your system remains unchanged
- output of the intermediate upgrade steps are copied to /tmp/ku_stepX.txt
- if KDEupgrade fails you could get back into a GUI with: apt-get install task-lxde

So, I followed those instructions, and everything went fine. At the end of all that, the system rebooted by itself. I booted into PCLOS and came to a fresh default desktop. I ran the following command:

# rpm -qa | grep 4.6.5

It showed no results, so I assumed that all of the 4.6.5 stuff had been removed correctly.

In Synaptic I noticed that the heanet repo had been left at "kde," which is what I had hoped to see.

There was supposed to be an icon on the desktop to restore the old KDE settings, but it wasn't there, so I manually set everything back up to suit my tastes, which wasn't too painful. Everything looked good in the end, and my PCLOS upgrade to KDE 4.8.3 was complete.



PCLOS is still behind some other distros that are at KDE 4.8.4, and 4.9.0 is also out. But that's okay; I'm just happy that everything went well. Not the simplest upgrade ever, but the PCLOS folks did a good job.