Distro Review - Arch Linux

I have now given Arch Linux a "fair shake" and while I have not tried to use it as a substitute on my office workstation yet (I will be doing that in the coming week) I did spend a solid 4 days using it exclusively.

Verdict:

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I would install this on a non-production machine or older machine and be very happy with it.  I was completely impressed with it's speed which I blame on every bit of code being compiled on install.  I was moderately impressed that between official repos and the AUR I was able to find 99% of the software I was looking for.  I would not recommend this to any new Linux user but would happily recommend it to anyone with some Linux experience under their belt.  The Arch Wiki was truly impressive for content.

I need to preface my tone with the declaration that I completely expected to not enjoy Arch very much.  I am an Ubuntu user now for quite a few years and while that might upset some, it is my pragmatic step to ensure that I have ease of use, a vast repository, and an enormous community.  This article is just my opinion.  It is in layman's terms and isn't trying to be the technical digest of the Linux community.  

It was after a phone call with one of my friends that has fallen completely in love with Arch that I thought to give it another try.  I don't normally have a lot of time to review full blown distros just because to learn their quirks and getting to really know a system I feel takes more time than I normally have to spare for that kind of activity.

I like Arch, and that is my official declaration.  Official repos plus community maintained.  Automatic dependency resolution while compiling all apps in real time.  This is a great cross of the speed/performance increases you normally see with a Slackware (custom compiled) system but with the software management ease of apt-get or aptitude.

In fairness, the repo's aren't as large as Ubuntu.  But most of my needs were found in the official or community repos.  There were only a few apps where source installation was needed.  I also must give great credit to the Arch Wiki.  While not  the prettiest wiki I've ever seen, the documentation on it is accurate and complete.  Any reasonably experienced Linux user could follow the guides that are online at the wiki and have no issue using the system (command line time required).

The speed is insane.  On a VM using 1/4th of the system resources, large apps (i.e. OpenOffice.org) opened in order of magnitudes faster than on the native OS and hardware.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Command Line Time - tty-clock

I was playing around with Arch Linux (another blog post soon to follow) and I found a neat little cli application.  I should say "cute" instead of neat.  I should also put this application find in the context in which I use it.

The find is tty-clock, it is a simple digital clock with only a few options.  In my daily pattern I have terminator open with multiple screen sessions to multiple servers.  In each of the screen sessions I'm using the byobu (formerly known as screen-profiles) to give myself a "taskbar" for the screen sessions.  This app, is then just one horizontal and vertical split in a screen filled with terminator with many tabs and splits already.  and it just means that without squinting, I can actually see the time.

This is what tty-clock looks like in action.  With just large Atari 2600 generation 8-bit color and date display centered in the open terminator split it is simply understated and serves it's purpose.  ->

I did also find binclock.py which is an executable script and while it serves the same purpose is the binary clock version.  After downloading, just set the python script to executable and put it in your path (/usr/bin/ or so) and run it. So yet one more split with even more time telling fun.






I do want to give all the credit to the links I found these gems at, I was for the most part cruising and looking for Arch Linux stuff and I came across this stuff.  So I found these apps by looking through K.Mandla’s blog, and Yu-Jie Lin's feedburner got me some other stuff.  Seems they are cli junkies like me.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Gmail offers multiple account login

I know I am not the first one to report this and I don't feel like I have "scooped" anyone.  But, since I use Gmail quite a bit, and recommend it to many I found this new feature to be one of the most compelling in a while.

You are able to link 3 accounts to a single browser and switch between the 3 from the same browsing experience without closing the browser, playing with your cookies or any kind of hacking at all.

Here's what you do according to the Google Blog post.  You need to sign into your "default" account first at http://www.google.com/accounts  then you should click on the "Edit" link next to the "Multiple sign-in" feature listed in the first section.   By default it should say "off".   Then you need to read a few details and click checkboxes to make sure you understand and then you log into your second and 3rd.

I found this all worked, as advertized.  One disappointment, is that it is only for the default account and 2 additional.   I also, by chance discovered that it is information stored in the browser cookies.  So on my dual booting laptop,  multiple account sign on wasn't present in the second OS and I had to set it up again, which leads me to believe they are just managing this with a smarter cookie and it may even be on a per browser basis.  

Of note!!!!  I didn't find a way to remove one of the accounts, so choose your additional two wisely until that changes.

Happy Gmailing.

-- CafeNinja
 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Even a Geek - Happy 18th Anniversary

For those of you who didn't know that CafeNinja was married, it's true.  I can now officially acknowledge it since we seem to have gotten over the probation period, the lab testing phase, the second development cycle process, the planning phase, the initial deployment, integration procedure, the alpha and the beta tests and find ourselves in full-blown "production".

After a short 17yr development cycle I call it "official".   While I write this post with humor, I have the greatest respect for my wife, lover, confident, nurse, supporter, advisor, financial director, child bringer and best friend of 18yrs.  

Love you honey!!!  Happy Anniversary.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

sc - command line spreadsheet

No surprise to folks who read my blog, I really dig on command line apps.  Well, after another visit to my favorite web based list for cli apps (thanks Jared Lee) and started to play with sc (available even in Lucid 10.04 repos).  This app is for command line spreadsheets.

Command line spreadsheets, well, yes.  I actually have a few use cases where a sqlite database would be way over the top but there is some math I would prefer not to do by hand.  That's what spreadsheets are good for.  sc comes to the rescue.

While I'll confess there is no easy import/export via csv or some other stuff, it is very versatile and does offer a text export which calculates the formulas and shows the layout as if you were using the app.  Let me show you a few quick shots.

First, using the app:

Second,  the format of the file while being used by sc, bear in mind this is also clear text:

Lastly, this is what the text export of the same document looks like:

I hope this might give you some ideas on how to use this quick, simple and easy to use program in your personal workflow.

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CafeNinja

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Click to support

Our model isn't much different, it just for the right purpose.   I have seen, reviewed and supported the AdBard network, which I have to confess while not actually earning me money, is doing better than the google ads on this same blog.  I think it's like $2.00 vs. .36¢.   The point I'm making here is the AdBard network actually do generate revenue.  And by the two (very weak) metrics I have, it earns more faster than google ads.

Let's just take a moment to stop and think about how ad supported stuff works.  This thought occurred to me when listening to some of my IRC buddies talk about the scripts and apps they were using to interface with ideni.ca.  While I think the technical aspect of some of these apps are new, noteworthy and interesting, I'd just like to make sure that everyone takes the time to visit the identi.ca page, reload until they seen an interesting (or not) advertisement and click on it.

I remember when there was this new search engine out there.  And my wife enjoyed it so much that she would visit the page and JUST click on the advertising links on the side in order to support them...and they are google.   If service companies that we use like identi.ca don't get that revenue it means they must look for other ways, which could be invasive posts in your feed or could be the kind of stuff twitter (yuck) is doing.

Help your favorite open source movement, project, etc. by clicking on their ads to help them get the funding.  If you enjoy opensource software and see a chance to help out, not by donations, but clicks, you will actually be helping!  do it!

-- CafeNinja

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Discovered Nugget - nmon

 I have to confess that I picked up on this little command line gem as a result of my subscription to a paper magazine.   Linux Magazine had a feature written by Charly Kühnast describing the application "nmon".

This app was a simple "sudo apt-get install nmon" away and was in my Ubuntu 10.04 repos with no further setting changes required.  The application does need to be run in a terminal.  It does not require root permissions and has a great many monitors that are available for viewing in both a real-time and a collection mode depending on how geek your statistic and performance needs are.

I have a screen shot here of the application running in a tall 1/2 wide screen with just a few (not all) of the monitors activated.

I was quite impressed with the monitors/sensors available and if I read correctly there is even a "plugin" system by which monitoring scripts might be plugged in to display monitors that are not predefined.

In my set up I have activated all except memory and processes and run the "htop" command in the a terminal adjacent which then shows almost all possible performance real-time data available in one manageable and comprehensible screen.

Enjoy this app and add it to your list of favorites to use while embracing the command line.

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CafeNinja



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.