Monday, November 5, 2018

lxpanel for a wide screen

LXDE in Arch, with a left-side, vertical panel:



Right-click anywhere on the panel and select "Panel Settings" to open up the Panel Preferences window:


LXDE has never been the most polished desktop environment, but I like that it's lightweight, configurable, and comfortable to use for getting work done. Looks like LXDE's days are numbered, though; Lubuntu, for example, has switched to LXQt. I think I'm gonna try to keep LXDE for maybe a couple more years, until LXQt matures a bit.

Friday, November 2, 2018

another arch setup

ArchLabs is very nice (see "ob-love!" and "...and, some fluxbox love"), but in the end I decided to replace it with "straight" Arch, adding Openbox and setting that up myself.

Later, I added Fluxbox. Here are a few shots of my Fluxbox setup in Arch:






Thursday, September 27, 2018

openbox keybinds

The Openbox keybinds are set in the ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml file. There's a GUI app to handle this, called obkey, but you won't find it in the Debian repos (in Arch, users can get obkey from AUR).



Changes made with obkey are saved to the ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml file unless a different file is specified.

To add obkey in Debian 9 ("Stretch") Openbox, first I went to https://github.com/nsf/obkey. I clicked on the "Clone or download" button. Clicked "Download ZIP", then "Open with unzip (default)".

This gave me the ~/obkey-master directory, which I moved to ~/source/obkey-master. Then I ran the following:

$ cd ~/source/obkey-master
$ ./obkey ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

That opened up the obkey GUI.

For my Openbox menu, I used the following command for starting obkey:

/home/steve/source/obkey-master/obkey

Here's a shot of the entry in the menu:


For a little more info, see: https://code.google.com/archive/p/obkey/

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

for simply converting and resizing

It's been about five years since I first mentioned ImageMagick (see: "resize an avatar"). Lately, I've kinda "rediscovered" it, and I've found its tools to be quite convenient for resizing images and for converting images to different formats. I haven't actually done much with ImageMagick besides those types of easy conversions, but there are many, many other things this software can do.

The magick and convert commands require the imagemagick package, as they are part of the ImageMagick suite of tools. For simple procedures like the ones being discussed here, either magick or convert will work. However, note the following about the convert command, from man imagemagick:

convert
 

Backwards compatiblity [sic] for ImageMagick version 6 "convert". Essentually [sic] an alias to a restrictive form of the "magick" command, which should be used instead.

FWIW, imagemagick is currently at version 6.9.7.4 in Debian Stable and in Ubuntu 18.04, and it's at version 7.0.8.12 in Arch. In any case, I think it's ok to use either one of the two commands. [Edit: Looks like the magick command can be used in the imagemagick version 7.0+ found in the Arch repos, but it doesn't exist in the 6.9 version found in the Stable repos; with that version, the convert command must be used.]




converting and resizing

To convert from jpg to png, run magick [oldfilename] [newfilename], making sure to change the file extension from .jpg to .png. For example:

$ magick /home/user1/image.jpg /home/user1/image.png

Here's an example of resizing an image to 1366x768 and also converting it from jpg to png, using magick:

$ magick /home/user1/image.jpg -resize 1366x768! /home/user1/image.png

(The "!" forces the conversion to the specified dimensions, ignoring aspect ratio.)

Doing the same thing using convert:

$ convert /home/user1/image.jpg -resize 1366x768! /home/user1/image.png


For more info, see man imagemagick, man magick, man convert, convert -help, etc.

Also see:
https://www.lifewire.com/convert-linux-command-unix-command-4097060
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php


Sunday, September 23, 2018

...and, some fluxbox love

I added the fluxbox package to ArchLabs:

$ sudo pacman -S fluxbox

The default desktop looked like this:


I spent a good amount of time fixing things up; here are a few shots, from later:





Tuesday, September 18, 2018

ob-love!

Yesterday I downloaded archlabs-2018-07-28.iso to have a look at the latest from ArchLabs, the Arch-based, Openbox distro that offers a BunsenLabs/CrunchBang look and feel. I ran the live session from a flash drive. Here's a look at the Welcome window on the default desktop:


I thought everything looked good in the live session. I decided to do a hard drive installation; I found the "Run Installer" option right there in the desktop menu:


The installation was probably the most pleasant experience I've had building an Arch system. The installer walked me through everything, even offering other desktop environment/window manager choices, and handled the UEFI stuff on my HP 15 notebook perfectly.

The default ArchLabs desktop is quite usable "out-of-the-box". They went with a polybar instead of a tint2 panel, but a nice tint2 option was provided. ArchLabs has some interesting menu tools; the default menu is a "static" menu, but the user can switch to a "dynamic" menu. I found a good selection of default apps and tools.

In /etc/pacman.conf, I found the following repos enabled: [core], [extra], [community], [multilib], and [archlabs_repo]. And I found aurman included, for dealing with AUR packages. I checked to see how many packages were from that [archlabs_repo]:

$ paclist archlabs_repo
archlabs-aurman 2.17.2-1
archlabs-common 1.3.5-1
archlabs-dARK 1.0-1
archlabs-fonts 1.2-1
archlabs-homepage 1.2.1-1
archlabs-icons 1.2-1
archlabs-keyring 2018.06.09-1
archlabs-kickshaw 0.6.4-1
archlabs-networkmanager-dmenu 58.2-1
archlabs-ob-autostart 1.0-1
archlabs-obkey 1.0-1
archlabs-oblogout 0.2.5-1
archlabs-paranoid 1.2-1
archlabs-pipemenus 2.6.18-1
archlabs-polybar 3.2.0-1
archlabs-screenlock 2.10.3-1
archlabs-skippy-xd 1.0-1
archlabs-themes 1.5.1-1
archlabs-user-skel 1.7.21-1
archlabs-wallpapers 1.5.1-1
b43-firmware 6.30.163.46-1


While the default setup looked good, Openbox is for tweaking; I've changed a lot of things and added some of my favorite apps. A few shots of my rearranged ArchLabs desktop:




Overall, one of the best distros I've seen. A couple of links for ya:

ArchLabs home page - https://archlabslinux.com/
ArchLabs at DistroWatch - https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=archlabs

Monday, September 10, 2018

review and tweak

Here's a fairly detailed review of BunsenLabs 2.0 ("Helium"), done by Ordinatechnic: https://www.ordinatechnic.com/distro-reviews/BunsenLabs/bunsenlabs-helium-review

I have not yet installed Helium, but I'm still running BunsenLabs "Deuterium", which is like a point release of BunsenLabs "Hydrogen". Deuterium is based on Debian "Jessie" (now "oldstable"). I haven't tweaked the installation much. I'm using a left-side, vertical tint2 panel, of course:


The author of the review above talked a lot about the lack of a "dynamic" menu in BunsenLabs; I added the LXDE Activities menu (see http://monksblog-malspa.blogspot.com/2018/09/lxde-applications-menu-in-openbox.html) to Deuterium:


Ordinatechnic also described the dmenu app launcher (see: https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/). For more info about dmenu, here's an excellent article: http://www.adercon.com/ac/node/25. Also be sure to check man dmenu. dmenu can be installed in Debian as part of the suckless-tools package. Here's a shot of it in action in Deuterium, along the bottom edge:


That's a very cool app launcher. My entry for dmenu in the Openbox menu runs the dmenu_run -b command.

Later, I added a keystroke for dmenu by adding the following lines to ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:

    <!-- Added by Steve for dmenu -->
    <keybind key="W-space">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>dmenu_run -b</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>  
   

With that, Super(Winkey)+Space starts dmenu.

I'm not sure how long I'll keep Deuterium, but the current "oldstable"should be good thru mid-2020, I'm guessing. And BunsenLabs Deuterium definitely ain't broke, so... (lol).

Sunday, September 9, 2018

seventeen-point-one

After seeing the review of MX-17.1 mentioned in my previous post, I decided to download the latest snapshot, MX-17.1_August_x64.iso. Following are a few shots from the live session.

At first boot:


The empty desktop:


xfce4-terminal showing the output from a couple of commands (the distro info here doesn't quite match the name of the iso, though):


The Whisker menu is accessed from the panel:


But a traditional Xfce Applications menu can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop:


MX-17 ships with the nomacs image viewer, the featherpad text editor, and (of course) the thunar file manager:


The full package list for MX-17.1 can be found here: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx&pkglist=true&version=17.1#pkglist

"pleasant, easy-to-install"

A fairly detailed review of MX Linux 17.1: "Hands-on with MX Linux: A pleasant, easy-to-install Linux distribution"

lxde applications menu in openbox

In Openbox, I like to set up a "static" menu by editing the ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml file manually or by using the obmenu GUI. But I do like the "dynamic" LXDE Applications menu that's used in SalentOS (website: https://www.salentos.it/); I decided to try adding that  to a couple of my other Openbox desktops.

I found helpful information in post #2 of the "Dynamic menus on BunsenLabs - a comprehensive guide" thread at the BunsenLabs forums (here's a link: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=3387).

In the shot below, the LXDE Applications menu is added directly above the Debian menu; this is in my Openbox desktop on a Debian Stretch system that had KDE Plasma installed first (note the KDE apps in the menu):


I had to install the lxmenu-data and openbox-menu packages, then I edited ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml, adding the following just above the <menu id="/Debian"/> line:

<menu execute="openbox-menu lxde-applications.menu" id="apps" label="Applications"/>

Saved the file and did a "Reconfigure" in Openbox for the changes to take effect (might be necessary to Restart Openbox as well).

I followed the same steps for the Openbox desktop in another Stretch installation (this one has no desktop environment installed, though), except I also added the lxappearance and lxappearance-obconf packages in this case:


This gives me the "dynamic" Applications menu from LXDE as well as the "static" menu entries that I'd already set up myself (under the web browsers, file managers, utilities, etc., submenus). That's more of a menu than I really need; if I get around to it, I may trim things down and go with a simpler menu like what I'm using in SalentOS. Here's a shot of that Openbox desktop:



Sunday, September 2, 2018

devuan "ascii" live -- impresssive

A couple of shots from the live session of Devuan GNU/Linux 2.0 "ascii":



The live session is as nice as any I've ever seen, and I think it's actually better for my purposes than what has been up until now my favorite distro for live sessions: MX Linux. Ships with Xfce, Firefox ESR, the full LibreOffice suite, GParted, Synaptic, GNU Image Manipulation Program, VLC media player, and much more. I found that sudo works by default from the live session when I installed inxi with the sudo apt install inxi command. I even like the black and gray default theme! No problems accessing the partitions on my hard drive from the live session. Very quick and crisp with everything I tried on the desktop.

Looks like a very polished release. I'm impressed.

Devuan's home page: https://devuan.org/
And, a link to the Devuan page at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan

Monday, August 27, 2018

mccain

Today, the text of John McCain's posthumous farewell statement was posted at The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/us/politics/john-mccain-farewell-statement.html

Here's my favorite part:

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.

Thank you, Mr. McCain, and may you rest in peace.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

twenty-eight

Pale Moon 28.0 was released back on August 16. Release notes can be found here.

Linux users can get the Pale Moon web browser in a few different ways. Some distros have it in their default repos, and Steve Pusser has builds available for Debian and Ubuntu, for example. I see it in the Arch User Repository (AUR), too (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/palemoon/). For more info, see the Pale Moon for Linux page.

Some folks are disappointed that the much-loved installer for Pale Moon, called pminstaller, is no longer being maintained "and will not work for installing or updating any version of Pale Moon 28+", as noted here. The browser can now be updated via the internal updater (for the settings, navigate Preferences > Advanced > Update tab):


Or updates can be brought in from the repos, if those are being used.

I've successfully used the following steps to get Pale Moon 28.0 for my Linux systems here (YMMV, and many users will prefer not to do things this way):

First, I download the bzipped tarball, which can be found here, to my ~/Downloads directory. Then, using the Double Commander file manager, I extracted the tarball into the same directory.

Next, I did the following to delete the old /opt/palemoon directory:

$ cd /opt
$ sudo rm -Rv palemoon/

Then, from the ~/Downloads directory, I moved the new palemoon directory into /opt:

$ sudo mv palemoon /opt

I ran the following to change ownership of the /opt/palemoon directory, to allow Pale Moon's internal updater to work:

$ sudo chown -R "$USER:$USER" "/opt/palemoon"

After those steps, I've been able to start up Pale Moon 28.0.0 with no problems. Then I deleted the now unnecessary ~/pminstaller directory. Done.


Monday, August 13, 2018

excellent anthology

A few weeks ago, I finished reading The Multicultural Southwest: A Reader (Editors: A. Gabriel Melendez, M. Jane Young, Patricia Moore, and Patrick Pynes). Fascinating compilation of works, and one of the most interesting books I've ever read. Here's the blurb from the book's back cover:

As Americans debate what it means to be a multicultural society, one need only turn for lessons to the Southwest, where distinct peoples have coexisted over centuries. Here difference has not only survived but thrived in a melting pot of races and customs.

This book presents a montage of differing perspectives demonstrating that there is no single, definitive description of the Southwest. It brings together a host of writers, from early travelers and historians to contemporary commentators, who explore a region diverse in its people and ecology and show it to be not just a segment of the nation, but rather a border contact zone.

The editors have assembled an interdisciplinary composite, drawing on history, sociology, anthropology, and geography. Fiction, essays, poetry, newspaper articles, and interviews with local inhabitants add a colorful dimension to the coverage. All of the contributions reveal the tremendous impact that everyday occurrences can have and show how life in the Southwest is affected by the interweaving of social, cultural, and ecological forces.

For more, see: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-multicultural-southwest

helpers?

In the article "Yaourt is Dead! Use These Alternatives for AUR in Arch Linux" (https://itsfoss.com/best-aur-helpers/), Ambarish Kumar wrote:
So, how do you use AUR then? Well, you need a different tool to install software from AUR. Arch’s package manager pacman doesn’t support it directly. These ‘special tools’ are called AUR helpers.

Actually, it isn't really necessary to use "AUR helpers" to install software from the Arch User Repository (AUR). The manual build process is laid out at the Arch wiki's "Arch User Repository" page:
Installing packages from the AUR is a relatively simple process. Essentially:

    1. Acquire the build files, including the PKGBUILD and possibly other required files, like systemd units and patches (often not the actual code).
    2. Verify that the PKGBUILD and accompanying files are not malicious or untrustworthy.
    3. Run makepkg -si in the directory where the files are saved. This will download the code, resolve the dependencies with pacman, compile it, package it, and install the package.

However, many users enjoy the convenience of AUR helpers, which are discussed at the Arch wiki's "AUR helpers" page. Note the following warning highlighted and emphasized at the top of the page:
Warning: AUR helpers are not supported by Arch Linux. You should become familiar with the manual build process in order to be prepared to troubleshoot problems.

That page also has some important tables that users should check before choosing an AUR helper to use. Note that yaourt is listed in the "Discontinued or problematic" table.

I don't use much software from the AUR, but I've been using yaourt sometimes, when I don't go with the manual build process. I don't think that yaourt is actually "dead" because there's been some commit activity as recently as this past March (see: https://github.com/archlinuxfr/yaourt). Still, I decided to install aurman to use instead of yaourt, in Arch as well as in Antergos.

aurman is kinda cool in that it employs a lot of the same options as pacman. I didn't find a manpage for aurman, but usage info can be found with the aurman --help command (or with aurman -h).

aurman does seem to work fine here, but I prefer to use the manual build process for installing AUR packages, and for installing newer versions of those packages. I'll continue to use aurman for query operations, and maybe for checking for available updates (although it's no big deal to simply check a package's AUR page to see if a newer version is available).

Monday, August 6, 2018

invisible people

The United States of America, the Land of Plenty, supposedly the greatest nation on earth... Yet, there's so much that isn't right about this country. One heart-breaking example: All the people living in the streets, the people we see but try not to see... the homeless.

How-To
by Anders Carlson-Wee

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,
say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower
themselves to listen for the kick. People
passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee
funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely
to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know
you is. What they don’t know is what opens
a wallet, what stops em from counting
what they drop. If you’re young say younger.
Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t
flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough
Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,
say you sin. It’s about who they believe
they is. You hardly even there.



This poem sparked controversy -- of the wrong kind, in my opinion -- after it was published in The Nation last month (see The New York Times opinion piece by Grace Schulman, "The Nation Betrays a Poet — and Itself"). I decided to reprint the poem here anyway... because of what it says, about us.

Monday, July 30, 2018

another fluxbox trick

I don't know how to add a "Show Desktop" button to Fluxbox, but I found that it's possible to set up a keystroke that will do the same thing. I added the following line to my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

Mod4 d :ToggleCmd {ShowDesktop}

After saving the changes to that file, it was necessary to select either "Reconfigure" or "Restart" from the Fluxbox menu. Now, the Mod4 + D keystroke ("Mod4" being the "Windows" key on my keyboard) toggles the "ShowDesktop" command.

Friday, July 27, 2018

news from the lubuntu team

Posted at the Lubuntu blog:

Taking a new direction

During the transition to LXQt, we have received mixed feedback about Lubuntu's perceived direction going forward, so we decided it would be good to make a blog post explaining what's been happening during the transition, and where our focus will be.

Creating a Linux distribution which is specifically meant for older hardware is beginning to become a challenge. As time progresses, the definition of "older machines" has been changing. At one point, our rule of thumb was to support machines ten years old. If you look at computers that were released ten years ago, for example, a computer with the AMD Phenom X3 processor, you will note that computers, give or take, supported two gigabytes of RAM and two processor cores, and were also 64-bit at this time.
More Linux distributions today can run on the computer of ten years ago than Linux distributions made five years ago with a 15 year old computer.
As an example, on a fresh amd64 (64-bit) Kubuntu 18.04.1 install with two gigabytes of RAM and one CPU core (in QEMU), the idle usage with LibreOffice open and Firefox open to Lubuntu.me is about 1 GB of RAM and 6% idle CPU usage. With the same specifications/programs and an i386 (32-bit) install, 790 MB of RAM and 7% of idle CPU usage is used.
While there is something to be said about i386 resource usage and how much more efficient it can make a system, the point is that other distributions can now do what only Lubuntu was once able to do with ten year old hardware. You are welcome to also draw your own conclusions and leave them in the comments of this post.
Furthermore, imagine what these statistics will look like in 2021, when Lubuntu 18.04, which has kept our traditional focus, reaches its end of life phase.
These statistics brought much internal debate within the Lubuntu team, but we decided that going forward, we need to adapt for the current state of the market. Therefore, our main focus is shifting from providing a distribution for old hardware to a functional yet modular distribution focused on getting out of the way and letting users use their computer.
In essence, this is leveraging something we have always done with Lubuntu; providing an operating system which users can use to revive their old computers, but bringing this to the age of modern computing.
For the forseeable future, here are our core goals:
  • Lubuntu will leverage modern, Qt-based technologies and programs to give users a functional yet modular experience.
  • In collaboration with others, Lubuntu will continue to be a transparent and open distribution which makes it a priority to keep the community informed about the development when possible.
  • Lubuntu will create and maintain complete documentation which will be included by default in the operating system, and can guide anyone from beginner to expert on how to use Lubuntu to its full potential and contribute to the further development of it.
  • Lubuntu will keep a light experience by default but enable users to utilize more heavy and featureful components as desired.
  • Lubuntu will have the ability to be used in any language across the world, and enable contributors to easily translate all components of the operating system.
This means that Lubuntu will stay light, and for users with old systems, should still be usable. But we will no longer provide minimum system requirements and we will no longer primarily focus on older hardware.
This is a large endeavor as you might expect, and we're still working on catching up to other distributions in terms of feature parity, but with 18.10 being the first LXQt-only release and 20.04 being the first LTS LXQt-only release, we are confident that Lubuntu will be ready for whatever the future holds.

Link: https://lubuntu.me/taking-a-new-direction/

Thursday, July 26, 2018

could happen

A thought-provoking satirical piece, a warning, a call to action: "How Trump Won Re-election in 2020: A sneak peek at the Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020" by Bret Stephens, opinion columnist contributing to The New York Times.

Monday, July 23, 2018

lite

After seeing DistroWatch's review of Linux Lite 4.0, I decided to check it out. I downloaded linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso and used md5sum to check the download:

$ md5sum linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso
f4ff50524b7fb18fe97a6748db1318ec  linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso

I wanted to try booting the iso from the hard drive instead of booting from a flash drive like I normally do when I want to take a look at a live session of a distro release. My "test" computer is currently home to BunsenLabs Deuterium; booting into that system, I created the directory /isoimage, then copied the Linux Lite iso into that. Then I edited the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file so that it now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Linux Lite 4.0 (iso on /dev/sda1)" {
  set isofile="/isoimage/linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso"
  loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
  linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
  initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}


Then I ran sudo update-grub, then rebooted. That gave me a grub menu entry for Linux Lite 4.0. I booted into the live session.

Linux Lite 4.0 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS), and ships with Xfce 4.12.3. Here's what the system looks like at first boot:


The Welcome screen has a "Help Manual" button (there's also an icon for the manual on the desktop), so I clicked on that. The manual, which is stored in the /usr/share/docs/litemanual directory, opens up in Firefox. It can also be found at https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/. I haven't spent much time checking it out, but it seems to cover a good number of topics.

Some of the apps included in the release: firefox, gnome-calculator, gimp, hardinfo, inxi, htop, leafpad, libreoffice, xfce-terminal, qpdf, rsync, gparted, shotwell, synaptic, thunderbird, and vlc. Also included are several tools created specifically for Linux Lite that are supposed to make life easier for users. And, much more; Linux Lite 4.0 appears to be fully loaded and ready to use out-of-the-box.




Of course, I wanted to see the repo setup. The repos enabled by default in /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic partner

Also, I found some files in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxlite.list:

deb http://repo.linuxliteos.com/linuxlite/ diamond main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/otto-kesselgulasch-ubuntu-gimp-xenial.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/otto-kesselgulasch/gimp/ubuntu bionic main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teejee2008-ubuntu-ppa-bionic.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/teejee2008/ppa/ubuntu bionic main

So, a few PPA things going on, and some stuff from Linux Lite's own repos, and the rest from Bionic (Ubuntu 18.04).

To me, the live session of Linux Lite 4.0 looked about as good as anything else I've seen that ships with Xfce. I haven't quite decided whether I like it better than MX-17, which I keep on a flash drive for the occasional live session; might come down to a coin flip. Excellent job, from where I sit.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

from sea to shining sea

What is "America", anyway?

I don't know why, when we talk about America, that doesn't include all of the Americas. North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, all of it. The New World. When did "America" come to mean only the U.S.? What's up with that?

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

a nice site for testing distros

Here's a link to a site where users can try out various distros online, right from the web browser: https://distrotest.net/

And, here's a link to an article about the site: https://www.ostechnix.com/test-100-linux-and-unix-operating-systems-online-for-free/

I tested it out from my Debian Stretch (GNOME) system, using the Pale Moon browser. The site offers over 100 distros for testing.


I decided to have a look at Linux Lite after reading a DistroWatch review of that distro's latest release (https://www.distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180709#lite). After selecting Linux Lite (4.0), I was presented with the following screen:


I clicked on the "System start" button. Then I had to wait a long time; there was a message telling me that "You are on slot #49." This slowly counted down. Very slowly! Finally, I got down to slot #3, then slot #2.


Finally, I saw the following, with the message that "Pale Moon prevented this site from opening a pop-up window."


I clicked on "Preferences" and "Allow pop-ups for distrotest.net". Then I clicked the "Open VNC-Viewer" button. Linux Lite opened up in a new browser window. A few screenshots:





As the article linked above says, "If you don’t want to enable the pop-ups in DistroTest page, just use any locally installed VNC client applications in your system. The VNC client login details are given in the same page itself."

After I finished playing around in Linux Lite, I clicked on the "Disconnect" button in the sidebar to the left:


At the next screen, I found that I could quickly reconnect and get back to the session that I was in.

Clicking on the "System stop" button back at the site ended the session.

Trying out distros at DistroTest.net is kinda slow on my hardware, but that's okay, it's still nice for taking a quick look at a distro. Great tool to have available out there!

Monday, June 18, 2018

nice collection of bash tips

Nicely done! Article by Steve Ovens: "Bash tips for everyday at the command line"

Ovens posted the following at the end, for the "tl;dr" crowd:

Appendix 1. List of tips and tricks covered

# History related
ctrl + r (reverse search)
!! (rerun last command)
!* (reuse arguments from previous command)
!$ (use last argument of last command)
shopt -s histappend (allow multiple terminals to write to the history file)
history | awk 'BEGIN {FS="[ \t]+|\\|"} {print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head (list the most used history commands)

# File and navigation
cp /home/foo/realllylongname.cpp{,-old}
cd -
rename 's/text_to_find/been_renamed/' *.txt
export CDPATH='/var/log:~' (variable is used with the cd built-in.)

# Colourize bash

# enable colors
eval "`dircolors -b`"
# force ls to always use color and type indicators
alias ls='ls -hF --color=auto'
# make the dir command work kinda like in windows (long format)
alias dir='ls --color=auto --format=long'
# make grep highlight results using color
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'

export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[01;33m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m' # end the info box
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;42;30m' # begin the info box
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[01;36m'

# Bash shortcuts
    shopt -s cdspell (corrects typoos)
    ctrl + _ (undo)
    ctrl + arrow (move forward a word)
    ctrl + a (move cursor to start)
    ctrl + e (move cursor to end)
    ctrl + k (cuts everything after the cursor)
    ctrl + l (clears screen)
    ctrl + q (resume command that is in the foreground)
    ctrl + s (pause a long running command in the foreground)
    ctrl + t (swap two characters)
    ctrl + u (cuts everything before the cursor)
    ctrl + x + ctrl + e (opens the command string in an editor so that you can edit it before it runs)
    ctrl + x + * (expand glob/star)
    ctrl + xx (move to the opposite end of the line)
    ctrl + y (pastes from the buffer)
    ctrl + shift + c/v (copy/paste into terminal)

# Running commands in sequence
&& (run second command if the first is successful)
; (run second command regardless of success of first one)

# Redirecting I/O
2>&1 (redirect stdout and stderr to a file)

# check for open ports
echo > /dev/tcp//
`` (use back ticks to shell out)

# Examine executable
which
file
command -V (tells you whether is a built-in, binary or alias)

Thursday, June 7, 2018

overwhelmed by plastic

June 5 is marked by the United Nations as World Environment Day, a day set aside since 1974 to promote “worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment.” This year’s theme is “beat plastic pollution.”
-- from: World Environment Day 2018: ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’
   The Atlantic, June 5, 2018

Stunning photos. What are we doing to our world??

Monday, May 7, 2018

more bionic stuff

I copied this shot from the OMG! Ubuntu! website; looks like a live session of Ubuntu 18.04, with Nautilus opened up:



The modified GNOME Shell desktop they're using has a dock along the left side, and that includes an icon at the bottom left for the Apps Menu.

Note the Amazon web launcher on the panel. Bleh.

(See: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/04/ubuntu-18-04-download-release-features)


If I installed Ubuntu 18.04, I'd probably end up running

sudo apt install vanilla-gnome-desktop

and then logging into the vanilla GNOME session, since that's what I'm used to from Debian Stretch.

Also, I'd run:

sudo apt purge ubuntu-web-launchers

That gets rid of the Amazon launcher, and I think it should get rid of these associated files:

/usr/share/applications/com.canonical.launcher.amazon.desktop
/usr/share/applications/ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop
/usr/share/doc/ubuntu-web-launchers/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/ubuntu-web-launchers/copyright
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/52x52/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/ubuntu-web-launchers/amazon-launcher

See:
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-remove-the-gnome-amazon-launcher-package-from-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-desktop
https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/all/ubuntu-web-launchers/filelist

My understanding is that the ubuntu-web-launchers package is not installed if the Minimal Installation option is chosen. Good to know.

This Amazon crap bugged me enough that I decided to quit using Ubuntu, so I haven't installed the latest release. But I think that overall the LTS releases work out quite nicely, especially after the first point release. The ubuntu-web-launchers package isn't included by default in the 18.04 releases of Ubuntu "flavors" like Kubuntu and Lubuntu; one of those might be better options for users who want to take advantage of the Bionic repos but who don't want to run the main distro.

Sunday, May 6, 2018

quick glance at helium

The Stretch-based BunsenLabs "Helium" was finally released last week. I took the live session for a spin. I wrote the image (bl-Helium_amd64+build2.iso) to a flash drive and booted up my "test" computer with it. The boot menu presents the following options:

Live (amd64)
Live (amd64 failsafe)
Live system (load image to RAM)
Install
Text based install
Advanced Options >

Under that submenu at the bottom, I found:

   Expert installer (text)
   Expert installer (GUI)
   Rescue mode (text)
   Rescue mode (GUI)
   Hardware Detection Tool (HDT)
   Memory Diagnostics Tool (memtest86+)
   Back to main menu <

Interesting. Well, I went into the live session and browsed around. Things seemed okay. There's a Welcome window that pops up at first boot:



Helium's live session ships with Firefox, Thunar, Geany, Terminator, Catfish, Mirage, xfce4-screenshooter, scrot, VLC Media Player, Xfburn, LibreOffice Writer, Gnumeric, Galculator, Evince PDF Viewer, Synaptic, GParted, and lots more.



I could access my computer's partitions with no problem via Thunar. However, when I opened GParted, I got the following message:



I clicked "Cancel" and GParted came up, but I figured it would be a bad idea to use GParted, and wasn't sure if I should attempt an installation. I'll hold off on that thought for now.

I didn't much care for the new default theming, although it does look nice enough. I prefer the old CrunchBang-style black and white, like what we got with BunsenLabs "Deuterium":



Also, I don't like that (on the tint2 panel, at the far left) the launcher icons for the web browser, file manager, text editor, and terminal emulator don't match the taskbar icons of the running apps (Firefox, Thunar, Geany, and Terminator). And, here's an instance where, even though I've got all four of those apps running, the taskbar icon for Thunar is missing:



And I don't see the point in renaming those apps -- why "BL File Manager" and "BL Text Editor" instead of "Thunar" and "Geany", for example?



Well, I've been eagerly awaiting this release ever since Debian Stretch came out last year. Not so excited about it today. I still have BunsenLabs "Deuterium" and SalentOS "Neriton" installed on my "test" computer; I think I'll keep those for now and maybe install "Helium" sometime later. Or not.

For more info, see: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/