trying out some new (to me) software

A couple of apps I'm testing in Linux appear to be winners. Time will tell.

DeaDBeeF, which I mentioned in a post last month, seems to have quickly replaced Audacious as my favorite music player for Linux -- although it's a close call. DeaDBeeF might be the best fit for me, but I'm keeping Audacious installed, as it's definitely worth keeping as well.

I prefer a lightweight audio player over a media player (I don't normally bother with video, etc.). I've gone with Audacious for the past few years, and I think it's generally considered to be the better of the two music players. 

Today I'm taking my first look at the Brave web browser (https://brave.com/). Although I've used a few different web browsers in Linux, most of my time's been spent with Firefox. I can't see myself giving up Firefox anytime soon. But Brave brings an interesting approach, and it seems fine here so far. I added it in Debian Buster, using these commands found at https://brave.com/linux/:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install brave-browser

This adds the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list and installs the browser.

Brave does seem to be faster than Firefox, but scrolling web pages is slow and clunky. I found something that helped somewhat: I brought up the Flags menu by typing brave://flags/ in the search bar, and then enabled "Smooth Scrolling". Better, but still not quite as quick and smooth as scrolling in Firefox.

I haven't had any issues yet with Brave doing what I think of as "normal" stuff. Happy with it so far.

change can be good

I'm testing out the deb822-style format for control files used by apt, replacing the older one-line-style format used in the sources.list file. I couldn't find any "official" Debian documentation on this topic except for what's contained in man sources.list (see https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/sources.list.5.en.html).

I did find a couple of pages online that helped a bit:

"How to use the new DEB822 apt format on Ubuntu" - https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-the-new-deb822-apt-format-on-ubuntu/

"Explanation of the DEB822 Source Format" - https://repolib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/deb822-format.html


I tested the new format in Debian Buster. Here are the lines I was using in the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free

I renamed the sources.list file with the following command:

$ sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list-bkup

Then I created the new file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-sources:

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources

The contents of the debian-sources file:

Types: deb
URIs: http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/
Suites: buster buster-updates
Components: main contrib non-free

Types: deb
URIs: http://security.debian.org/debian-security
Suites: buster/updates
Components: main contrib non-free

Finally, I ran the following to make sure everything worked correctly:

$ sudo apt update


Users can decide for themselves if they like the newer format or prefer to stick with the older one. I think the deb822 format makes it a bit easier to see, at a glance, how things are set up.

 

as viewed from space

Screenshots from Bullseye GNOME. The desktop background is a beautiful shot of what's still the only home for Life that we know of.

 

soft freeze

Debian 11 (Bullseye) went into "Milestone 2 - Soft Freeze" status this month. The plan for Bullseye is a little bit different than for Buster.

The freeze timeline for Debian Buster:

* 2019-01-12 - Transition freeze
* 2019-02-12 - Soft-freeze
* 2019-03-12 - Full-freeze

(from: https://release.debian.org/buster/freeze_policy.html)

The freeze timeline for Debian Bullseye:

* 2021-01-12 - Milestone 1 - Transition and (build-)essential Freeze
* 2021-02-12 - Milestone 2 - Soft Freeze
* 2021-03-12 - Milestone 3 - Hard Freeze - for key packages and packages without autopkgtests
* TBA - Milestone 4 - Full Freeze

(from: https://release.debian.org/bullseye/freeze_policy.html)


I downloaded the Debian Bullseye GNOME live (w/ non-free firmware) image from https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/, put it on a flash drive, and booted into it. Things looked okay, so I decided to do an installation. From the Activities overview, there was an "Install Debian" icon, so I clicked on that. It started up the Calamares installer. The resulting system was quite loaded with apps and packages -- too "heavy" for my tastes, although the approach, with Calamares, would work out fine for many users, I'm sure.

I prefer a network installation for Debian, so I downloaded the firmware-testing-amd64-netinst.iso image from here and reinstalled using Debian's Graphical Installer. This gave me a lot more control over what went in.

It's best if users wait for the Debian Stable release rather than jumping in during "Testing" status, but there shouldn't be any major issues with Bullseye at this point. Things seem fine here, so far.

 

two from pragmatic

Found two nice articles from pragmaticlinux.com. First:

"Getting started with Double Commander" - https://www.pragmaticlinux.com/2020/06/getting-started-with-double-commander/

This article, from back in June, offers some tips on using the dual-paned, "orthodox" Double Commander file manager. As the author writes:

Double Commander is a free and open source dual pane file manager. It is an excellent file manager, especially for those who prefer a consistent file manager experience, while trying out different Linux desktop environments. This article assists you with getting Double Commander installed and configured on your Linux system.

Each desktop environment ships with its own file manager: Nautilus on Gnome, Dolphin on KDE, Thunar on XFCE, etc. Working in the file manager forms and integral part of my daily PC work flow. Therefore I do not enjoy being forced to switch to a different file manager, each time I try out a different desktop environment on Linux. Additionally, I really enjoy dual pane file managers. If you recognize yourself in these file manager preferences, then I can highly recommend giving Double Commander a try.

Kinda sums up why I use "DC".

Second:

"Install a minimal KDE on Debian 10 'buster'" - https://www.pragmaticlinux.com/2020/10/install-a-minimal-kde-on-debian-10-buster/

Good tips here. Basically, do a netinstall, choose only "standard system utilities", then run:

sudo apt -y install kde-plasma-desktop plasma-nm

After that, add whatever packages/apps desired.

asunder

Testing out the Asunder CD ripper and encoder. Project homepage: http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/

I installed Asunder in Debian Buster GNOME:

$ sudo apt install asunder

Optional dependencies include the lame and vorbis-tools packages, the latter of which was already installed here. I decided not to add lame.

I inserted a CD and started up Asunder. Asunder showed the found CDDB info.

For now, I left everything at the defaults. Asunder was set to encode to OGG Vorbis, which was exactly what I wanted.

I ripped the files and then opened them in the Audacious music player. Track information was picked up as expected, and the songs played perfectly.

I was planning to look at some other options for ripping CDs in GNOME. I took a quick look at ripperX, but then I tried Asunder and it seemed to give me what I wanted out-of-the-box. Good software, does what it's supposed to do. Sold.

 

i might keep this one

I wrote a little about Emmabuntüs back in June (post: "from france"). I ended up doing an installation, which took up a little over 8 GB on the hard drive. I used the 32-bit iso (emmabuntus-de3-i686-10.4-1.02.iso).

Emmabuntüs Debian Edition is basically Debian Stable underneath. I've purged a lot of packages, added a few of my favorites, tweaked some things, and turned off a bunch of things that were on by default. I'm finding my trimmed-down setup to be a pleasure to use. It certainly looks like a good option for older computers.

Emmabuntüs comes with Xfce and LXQt. LXQt can use other window managers besides Openbox; in this case, the window manager is Xfcwm4 (one way to show the current WM is with the wmctrl -m command). This is my first time using LXQt without having Openbox underneath; seems to be working out okay.

A few shots of my LXQt desktop:

 

And, a couple from the Xfce session:

 

Emmabuntüs seems to be an excellent project. I'd like some sort of minimal installation option. Can't find much else to complain about; one of the nicer distros I've seen.

 

simply stable plus openbox

From https://head-on-a-stick.github.io/: "SharpBang (♯!) GNU/Linux is a live ISO image that can be used to install a pre-configured Openbox/Tint2 desktop running on Debian stable."

I decided to take a look, and downloaded sharpbang-buster-backports-10.5.0-amd64.hybrid.iso. When I booted into the live system, I found a clean, simple Openbox setup:

 

Some of the apps/packages included: Thunar, Gparted, Synaptic, Galculator, Mousepad, Firefox ESR, mpv Media Player, gmrun, htop, ranger, tint2, UXTerm, rsync, and obmenu. Here's a shot showing the nicely-arranged right-click menu:

 

The SharpBang project appears to provide just about everything I want/need in a live session, without including too much other stuff. I think the idea was for something along the lines of the old CrunchBang project. I took a look at the /etc/apt/sources.list file; no surprises there:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free

Great job here by "Head-on-a-Stick"!! Here's the github page: https://github.com/Head-on-a-Stick/Sharpbang

 

 

worth the wait?

BunsenLabs Lithium was finally released yesterday, over one year after the release of Debian 10 ("Buster"), which Lithium is derived from. The release announcement can be found here at the BunsenLabs forums.

I downloaded the 32-bit iso (651 MB) -- instead of the full, 64-bit iso (2.1 GB) -- wrote the image to a flash drive, and booted up. I wanted to check out the live session from the smaller image even though a note at the installation page at the BunsenLabs website says, "Using the 64-bit ISO is recommended, as the CD-sized ISO has been surgically reduced in size."

Post #3 in the forum thread mentioned above contains package lists for the full image as well as for the smaller image. Some of the apps/packages included as defaults on the CD-sized image: Dillo web browser (no Firefox), Thunar file manager, GParted, Ristretto image viewer, Evince document viewer, Mousepad text editor, URxvt terminal emulator, and mpv media player. BunsenLabs, of course, ships with Openbox as the default window manager instead including one of the standard desktop environments.

I felt that the CD-sized image would be great for doing a Lithium installation, but its live session was not quite what I would have liked it to be. I'm guessing that the live session from the 64-bit image is more polished. The CD image booted fine on 3 out of 4 of my laptops; I'll keep it on my flash drive as it looks like it could certainly be used for emergency purposes, and for just playing around.

The default Welcome window contains some important information to read before proceeding:

The BunsenLabs website: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

And, the BunsenLabs page at DistroWatch: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bunsenlabs

from france

Fascinating distro. I downloaded the latest release of Emmabuntüs -- the download was about 3.3 GB -- and I've been running it in live sessions, from a flash drive. The Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 3 1.02 release announcement includes the following bit of information:

This distribution was originally designed to facilitate the reconditioning of computers donated to humanitarian organizations, starting with the Emmaüs communities (which is where the distribution's name obviously comes from), to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of computer hardware, thereby reducing the waste induced by the over-consumption of raw materials.

That sounds good to me. For more info, check out https://emmabuntus.org/.

The live session defaulted to an Xfce desktop, with an option to switch to LXQt. Here's a shot of the LXQt desktop, with the Welcome window:

Emmabuntüs ships loaded with applications, as noted in this Distrowatch review. I like that it's based on Debian Stable. I'll certainly be keeping it around for live sessions, although I don't think I'll be doing an installation. I think I'm better off with a system built from a Debian netinstall. Still, I'm impressed and intrigued by this distro, and I may end up changing my mind about installing it on one of my notebooks.

Here's Emmabuntüs DE3-1.02 with Xfce:

an excellent handbook

The latest edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook, now available (paperback, download, or online): https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/

Also see: https://debian-handbook.info/

dpigs

Just found out about dpigs, a Debian tool for finding out which packages are taking up the most space on the drive. Looks like dpigs can't be installed by itself; it's part of the debian-goodies package (see https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/debian-goodies for a complete list of the debian-goodies tools).

Installing debian-goodies also provides access to the dpigs man page, which has info on usage and options. A link to an older version of man dpigs: https://www.commandlinux.com/man-page/man1/dpigs.1.html

Here's what happened when I first ran dpigs here:

$ dpigs
270589 fonts-noto-extra
262512 linux-image-4.19.0-6-amd64
260714 linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64
204486 fonts-noto-cjk-extra
177044 firefox-esr
165839 openjdk-11-jre-headless
145747 libgl1-mesa-dri
132921 libreoffice-core
111246 papirus-icon-theme
86721 fonts-noto-cjk

I promptly did a sudo apt purge on some of that stuff.

an old favorite

Enjoyed the article by M. Hanny Sabbagh, "18 Years Ago, Linux’s Legendary Package Manager Synaptic was Released", which begins with these lines:

"What is the first thing you do after you install Ubuntu or Debian? For me, and literally for almost everybody I met in the Linux world, the first thing is to install Synaptic."

That's exactly what I'd been doing for years with any Debian-based distro I installed, unless the distro shipped with Synaptic by default! I've never really warmed up to any other GUI package manager; always felt that nothing I saw was any better than what I got with Synaptic.

In recent years, I've been doing all of my package management from the command line, so making sure that I've got Synaptic installed isn't the first thing I do anymore. I do like to have it on-hand, even if I don't really use it now; I've learned to get along fine without it. Still, Synaptic remains my favorite GUI package manager.

another nice mx release

I'm taking a look at the recently released MX-19 "patito feo" (odd codename choice -- translates into "ugly duckling"), which is based on Debian Buster and antiX-19:

MX-19 ships with the Xfce desktop environment and a nice selection of apps and tools, including Firefox, Galculator, FeatherPad, Thunar, Geany, GIMP, nomacs, inxi, the LibreOffice suite, VLC media player, qpdfview, GParted, Synaptic, and the excellent collection of MX Tools.

The official release announcement can be found here: https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-19-patito-feo-released/

the latest from antiX

antiX-19 "Marielle Franco" was released a few days ago. Here's a shot of the default IceWM desktop:

antiX-19, based on Debian Buster, ships without systemd (for those who want to avoid that init system). This very lightweight distro packs lots of great tools, and it's a great option for installations on low-spec computers, or even simply for running live sessions from a flash drive. It's one of the speediest distros I've tried.

Four different window managers (IceWM, fluxbox, jwm, and herbstluftwm) are included. Users can switch between a few different variations of IceWM, fluxbox, and jwm from within the current session (Desktop > Other Desktops), which is convenient:

I didn't see an easy way to switch to herbstluftwm. Here's a link to a tutorial, for those who are interested: https://herbstluftwm.org/tutorial.html

Among the items I found in the menu were Firefox ESR, Galculator, Geany, MPV Media Player, GParted, Leafpad,  the LibreOffice suite, Mirage, muPDF, nano, qpdfview, rox-filer file manager, roxterm, SpaceFM, Synaptic, and XMMS. I also found a handful of antiX's own special tools (Applications > antiX), like the very useful Live USB Maker:

I thought it was an interesting choice to give antiX-19 the codename "Marielle Franco". She was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist; check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

For more info about antiX-19, see the release announcement: https://antixlinux.com/antix-19-isos-available/

excellent xfce live session

The Debian Stable-based SolydXK 10 was released on September 27, 2019: https://solydxk.com/news/solydxk-10-released-based-on-debian-buster-1

SolydXK offers two isos: SolydX (with Xfce) and SolydK (with KDE Plasma). I took a look at the "SolydX 64-bit" version in live sessions from a flash drive, on a couple of different computers.

The SolydXK website recommends using the dd command to write the iso to media, but I used the cp command as shown here, from the ~/downloads directory:

$ cd downloads
$ sudo cp solydx_10_64_201909.iso /dev/sdb && sync

I had no problems booting either computer with the flash drive. SolydX presents a nice, basic Xfce setup with a customized theme.

SolydX ships with a nice collection of apps, inluding Firefox ESR, LibreOffice, VLC, Ristretto, USB Creator, Mousepad, Thunar, Synaptic, Galculator, GParted, xfce4-terminal, inxi, rsync, mc, and xfce4-terminal.

I like that SolydXK is so closely based on Buster, the current Debian Stable. Here's a look at the SolydXK soures.list file:

solydxk@solydxk:/etc/apt$ cat sources.list
deb https://repository.solydxk.com solydxk-10 main upstream import
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free

I haven't yet taken a look at the SolydK version of SolydXK 10, but the SolydX live session rates up there with the best I've seen.

SolydXK at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solydxk

SolydXK home page: https://solydxk.com/

buster lxqt w/ openbox

I've been running the Jessie-based BunsenLabs "Deuterium" on my "test" computer, patiently waiting for the Buster-based BL "Lithium" release. On a whim, I decided to take a look at Debian Buster LXQt to see how it might do on that computer.

I started out by downloading  debian-live-10.0.0-amd64-lxqt.iso and getting that onto a flash drive. The live session booted up on two of my machines, but I couldn't get into the live session using my "test" computer; booting with the Graphical Debian Installer option worked fine with that hardware, however.

Buster LXQt ships with a standard desktop setup and a nice collection of apps, including Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, PCManFM-qt, the LibreOffice suite, Audacious music player, qpdfview, LXImage, and QTerminal, among many others.

I found xfce4-screenshooter in the menu along with another screenshot tool, ScreenGrab, which seems to be a nice app. ScreenGrab gets the job done, and also it stays open between screenshots, unlike xfce4-screenshooter.

Here's a shot of PCManFM-qt, which offers a nice, commander-style split view. I found some items in the Trash. How they got there is a mystery; I didn't intentionally put them there!

I added Openbox, installed a handful of other packages, and did a heck of a lot of tinkering and tweaking -- so much, in fact, that I didn't do a good job of taking notes on everything that I did, which is something that I'm normally very meticulous about. Debian Stable doesn't really give the user a great out-of-the-box experience, but it's excellent for the "do-it-yourself" user who wants to put together a nice, customized system.

A couple more shots of my Openbox desktop, showing QTerminal, ScreenGrab, my tint2 setup, and my Openbox menu:

I like a vertical panel along the left side. For Openbox, tint2 gives me just what I need. For the LXQt sessions, I was able to get a decent left-side vertical panel -- not perfect (I wasn't satisfied with the config options available for the LXQt panel), but it'll do.

As a former CrunchBang user and fanboy, my original plan was to stick with BunsenLabs (perhaps the best Debian-based Openbox distro out there right now) for this computer, and to do a quick-and-easy installation of "Lithium" once it came out. As things have turned out, I'm happy with this Buster LXQt (with Openbox) setup, even though it took a lot of work to get things the way I like them. The thing is that while BunsenLabs is better than "straight" Debian for installing and getting to work right away, I'm never quite satisfied with the default BL setup (same goes for any distro, really!), so either way I was gonna spend a lot of time tinkering and tweaking.

Seems to me that LXQt still needs more polish, especially when it comes to GUI configuration options, but it isn't so bad, overall. It's a decent solution for those who need a light-weight desktop environment for low-performance hardware.

buster-updates

In the two Debian Buster installations I did while Buster was still in Testing, the /etc/apt/sources.list file does not contain the buster-updates (previously "volatile") lines. I don't think that suite comes into play until the Stable release.

The Debian Wiki's "SourcesList" page (https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList) shows example sources.list files for Buster, and they include the buster-updates suite. So I went ahead and added them here.

Here's my edited sources.list file in Buster Xfce, which I installed from Testing way back in April:

buster gnome

Debian 10 "Buster" review at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20190715#debian

My experiences with Buster GNOME, which I installed a few days ago, have been somewhat similar to what Jesse Smith saw, although I went with a few different installations options. I prefer a network install, so I downloaded debian-10.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso and used that instead of one of the CD/DVD iso images. Smith wrote:

I ended up downloading the DVD install media, which is 3.6GB in size. I also downloaded the official live GNOME edition which is 2.3GB. My observations in this review come from installing and running Debian based on the install DVD media, unless otherwise specified.

I stayed with gdm3 instead of switching to lightdm, but Smith said that he went with LightDM when the installer gave him the option of using that or GDM as the session manager.

I haven't looked at a GNOME Classic session because I prefer GNOME Shell over the "classic" look. Smith said:

For the most part, I used GNOME Classic during my trial, but I did occasionally use the GNOME Shell session too.

He also mentions that he included MATE during the installation, but he doesn't say anything in the review about actually using MATE in Buster.

I haven't tried a live session yet. Smith wrote:

...when booting from the live desktop disc, the distribution could not launch a graphical interface when loading in UEFI mode. I could boot to a text console, but the operating system could not display a desktop or launch an X.Org session. When booting from legacy BIOS mode, Debian's live disc booted into the GNOME desktop and ran smoothly.

And, regarding wireless:

The most common complaint I keep seeing about Debian 10 in user-supplied reviews and on forums is that wireless connections do not work. This is because people are downloading the official ISO files which do not include non-free firmware, meaning most wireless cards will not work. While Debian offers unofficial media with the non-free firmware, which would enable wi-fi to work, the unofficial media is hard to find and it's not clear from the download page that it even exists or why people would need to use it. This separation of free and non-free firmware media is not even mentioned in the release announcement. Which means a lot of people are giving up on using Debian from a combination of the free firmware only policy and unclear documentation.

I am not using wireless. However, one of the first thing I do with Debian, post-install, is to set up the repos; I like to do this by editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file with nano, and I add the contrib and non-free components on the relevant lines in that file.

As noted in the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide (see https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual), section "6.3.2.1. Set the Root Password":

In case you do not specify a password for the “root” user here, this account will be disabled but the sudo package will be installed later to enable administrative tasks to be carried out on the new system. By default, the first user created on the system will be allowed to use the sudo command to become root.

I didn't specify a root password there; I've been using sudo.

Anyway, I thought Smith did a good job with this review.

I've added a handful of my favorite apps to Buster GNOME and tweaked things according to my own tastes. Excellent release, from what I'm seeing.

Here's a link to the "Getting Debian" page: https://www.debian.org/distrib/

testing netinstall

I did my 2nd Debian Buster (Testing) netinstall (I was gonna hold off on doing that, but found myself with some time to kill), this time going with Openbox instead of a full DE:

I added Fluxbox; in those sessions, I'm using the tint2 panel instead of the Fluxbox toolbar, so the desktop looks very much like my Openbox desktoop:

From what I can tell, the move from Testing to Stable for Debian 10 ("Buster") could happen any day now; everything looks great!