Distro Review: Crunchbang 9.04 + 10 Alpha 2

My review of Crunchbang Linux (herefore referred to as "#!" for ease of typing).  I did manage in the same 48 hour period try and use #! 9.04, 9.04-lite and 10-Alpha2.

The story begins with looking for a smaller footprint distro to put on my son's Asus eeepc 700 which has a dead SSD and is using a 4gb class 4 SD card as a hard drive.

Looked at a few and recalled "Crucheee" (I remembered the name being funny) so I went to look at the Crunchbang website.  Where I read that the old CrunchEEE distro was based on 8.10 (following the Ubuntu numbering scheme for which the distro was based) and that the current #! 9.04 had all the support for the EEE built in.  As I arrived at the download page I noticed the "lite" version and saw it was a smaller iso file.  So I grabbed that, put it on a usb key and installed it.

It runs great.  With the low memory footprint and smaller app selection the bottle neck of read/write speed to the SD card is not a huge issue once applications are open.  So the verdict:

✔ #! 9.04 Lite on eeepc 700 = Awesome, Fantastic and more.

Then I saw there was a "full" version and though, hey, I have VM space.  Let's take that for a spin.
I put it in, same experience with the wonder and grace of the full graphical install of Ubuntu, the software repo's available and a wonderful default configuration for Openbox I was very impressed.   So the verdict was:

✔ #! 9.04 Full in VirtualBox = Way Cool. Great Interface, a real treat.



So, I'm realizing that these versions are based on a distro nearly a year old and I think to myself, what would be better would be a newer version, with more current repo's and all the other updates.  So I return to the #! website to discover there is a "unstable" version.   Enter #! 10 Alpha 2 "Statler".  So I just did the sane thing and installed this over top of the #! 9.04 Full Vbox install.  Of great importance is to know that the new version of #1 (10) is based on Debian Testing (Squeezy).  This changed the rules for the installer (text and blah, but not impossible) and the first impression was the same as with #! 9.04, in fact the conky impression the menu's and most other things didn't change (in the Openbox version) from #! 9.04 -> 10.  The #! team has done well to make that experience so similar that the difference is almost unnoticeable.   Until you go to install chromium-browser from the repos which was removed 1 month ago from the "testing" branch of Debian.  If you can't tell by the tone, that's a fail.  There were 3 deb packages that I tried to install from the net (binary blob stuff) all failed on Debian that installed just fine under the Ubuntu 10.10 install I have right next to it.  Verdict of #! 10 Alpha 2:

× #! 10 Alpha 2 in VirtualBox = meh.

Total Summary,  I'm on a personal quest to install Ubuntu 10.10 add Openbox and "borrow" the default Openbox config files from a #! 9.04 Full install.  That way I get the awesome interface on the software/distro platform that offers me a large software repo, comfort zone (used since 2006) and keeps me on the distro that I recommend to folks (eating my own dog food).

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CafeNinja

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

Ubuntu Countdown to 10.10

With the impending release of the next version of Ubuntu come the normal countdown banners.  I'm no exception to the long list of folks who eagerly await each new release.

While at the moment I am not aware of any must have feature, I have been quite happy with the incremental improvements from version to version.  I must confess though that the 10.10.10 countdown to so many things commercial is starting to wear on my nerves, but this is one countdown that I think is worth watching out for.

While I won't do a pre-release distro review of Ubuntu 10.10, I will be doing a post release since I have to upgrade all the systems in my home at the same time, so please come back for the full write-up.

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CafeNinja

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

App Review (Update) : tty-clock - working on Ubuntu

Previously I mentioned an app called tty-clock.  I really do like it, but on Ubuntu it didn't quite compile nice so I thought I would give the quick "howto" get it working.

1.) Grab source code and unpack
2.) install the dependencies with "sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev ncurses-runtime ncurses-term"
3**.) Optional--Open the Makefile in the source code folder and change the $INSTALLPATH=/usr/bin/
4.) Terminal in the source code directory and do "make" (should have no errors) and then "sudo make install".

After that the tty-clock should be accessible.   For your information I use the flags to display seconds, center the time and set the color to blue.   Looks like "tty-clock -s -c -C 6" and I hope that might help you get it working on your Ubuntu system.   I've added a screen grab of my clock so you can see what the command does output.

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CafeNinja

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

Podcast: Guest appearance on Kernel Panic Oggcast eps. 14

I have been honored this last weekend to participate on the Kernel Panic Oggcast Episode 14.  This podcast is one of the forked oggcasts from the former Linux Cranks Oggcast which I have reviewed previously.  On the panel were Azimuth, threethirty, jlindsay, Dann, and the notorious Peter64.

The new Kernel Panic Oggcast keeps in a very similar vein as the old Linux Cranks Podcast by topics and discussions.  It has been and still remains safe for work.  I have to say that I have quite a bit of respect for everyone who was on the panel and I had a great time.

With most topics on the news and issues of the day there is good friendly banter with the nice mix of inter-cultural vocabulary and references to things being upside down in Australia.  All taken in good fun it is always a relaxing conversation with this crew and on more than one occasion they have caused me to open a browser and download and try some new software package.

The panel was in good form, we had some great discussions on there and I really do hope to visit with the guys again in the future, even though it meant I had to be up at 04:00 on a Sunday morning.  Tune in and listen for the hint of things to come. 

Listen, enjoy, tell me what you thought of the show or the podcast overall.

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CafeNinja

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

Tip: Googlemail -> Gmail

If you were one of the folks who signed up at Gmail when the domain assignment was "@googlemail.com" visit your settings page right away.  I found a link there that converted mine to a genuine "@gmail.com".   You can find that link under Settings->Accounts and Import->Send mail as..->hyperlink to the right that asks "switch to @gmail.com"

While most of us knew that if you wrote to the @gmail.com domain with your @googlemail.com user it would forward and work, but your official login was always with the complete domain name.  All of that get's fixed with this click and all the software and apps out there that aren't ready to read in the @googlemail.com domain will work for you.

Check your account and get your free upgrade to the @gmail.com domain today!

-- CafeNinja

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

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.