Signify

Been a long time since I blogged on serious stuff over here. So tonight I’ll give you an introduction on how to write good config files. Following is a valid sample from my production openSUSE 10.2 system:

## /etc/bash.bashrc.local
##
## System-wide aliases & env stuff that
## I've gotten used to while using Mdv...
##
## Ya better ask me whether I'm sure or not
## before ya delete, move or overwrite stuff
alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
##
## Haha, there are colors everywhere...
alias grep='grep --color'
##
## Root's ls is freaking moronish cuz it displays
## hidden files by default, so I'm killing that
## by first unaliasing and then putting a
## replacement highly super-geeky alias.
unalias ls
alias ls='ls -F --show-control-chars --color=auto'
##
## Hiya, this is what a prompt should look like!!
PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '
##
## I'm really smart you see. Yay!!

Notice how everything out there is sufficiently commented. Commenting stuff in these nifty config files is for helping yourself realize (in some future time) how smart you always have been when it came to writing good config files. Of course, the last comment on your smartness is real important too. Adios!!

P.S. –> The dashes (–) are supposed to be two hyphens (- -, w/o the space in between). WordPress thinks it’s too smart and interprets it as dashes. Some fecking SMARTASS it sure is…

Girl’s Got Rhythm

First she quotes IDC…

Linux server revenue exceeded $1.4 billion in quarterly factory revenue in 2Q05 as Linux server revenues showed 45.1% growth, the fastest rate of growth since 2Q04. Linux servers represented 11.5% of overall quarterly server revenue – reaching an all-time high.

Then she opines…

I tip my hat to any hardware vendor who can kiss off $1.4 billion of quarterly revenues as too trivial to bother with.

But, you say, those are servers. Everyone knows that Windows servers are teh suck, and Real Admins run Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD, Unix, or Solaris. Real Admins don’t need sissy stuff like fancy video or multimedia. That’s for dumb ole end lusers.

That’s Carla Schroder for us folks. I chance upon her stuff every now and then and I like her every time cuz she gives us a break from the bland stuff that tech writeups are otherwise. You can also read her recent Fedora 6 reviews: Part 1 & Part 2. Here’s quoting her again…

So I says to myself, I says <censored>. Ah well, that’s life on the bleeding edge.

So, that basically sums up a FC6 really. OK no, she has some nice things to say as well. Now shooh! Adios!!

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Oh Me, Oh My!

Came across this thingy that said: Torvalds takes bite of Mac mini. After it was all over some fella said the followin’…

Just a reminder: this is the same guy who said the iPod was never going to take off; that Apple was switching to Intel because they wanted to get out of the OS business and just use Windows; and he comes out nearly every other year to announce that ‘this year will see the death of Apple for sure’.
Honestly, how could someone be that biased against a computer manufacturer! I could swear he just bought Apple computers to somehow legitimize his constant cacophony of insults and nay-saying towards Apple.
He needs to just stop talking about Apple, it would really help him look less insane.

Interestingly, the comment was headlined: Who cares what Torvalds says! lol!! It’s funny. However, I didn’t know that Linus dude predicts so much about Apple’s future than anything else. Gosh! Some people have all the time in the world.Anyway, I wish the commenter wasn’t this humble and left a few references so that I could read Linus trashing Apple.

Meanwhile, while I’m in this Internet cafe thingy using a Windows computer I keep seeing these neato tricks all over the place. Like this one, a pop up from the taskbar, is very interesting as it says: Security Alert: NetWorm-i.Virus@fp. Pretty neat eh? Windows is so smart that nowadays it knows how to warn ya when it detects viruses and stuff. I bet Billy’s next move will be to have a tool that removes the virus auto.

Besides that I see every now and then a Norton AntiVirus pop-up in the center of the screen blocking my view of the naked chick I’m staring at. Generally, I’d be pissed if someone blocks my view when I’m busy lookin at naked chicks, but this one from Norton, as I see it, was important. I mean it did quash a virus, so it needs to report to me. Oh but Norton takes it a step further. When I click “OK”, it still pops up to report me the exact same thingy. Now, this is what I call good PR.

Man these are all such nifty features, why cant I have em in me box? Life sucks big time!! I really should get me the latest and the greatest from Intel and stick at least 2 GB of RAM along with it. Then get a GPU with another 512MB ram for itself and finally get me that Microsoft Vista thingy. They claim it’s even better.

On a not-so-related news, while flipping thru the channels last evening I saw Bush talk. He still hasn’t lost it, seriously. We love ya Bushy cuz your speeches always rock! Adios!!

And when your hand is on your heart…

So it begins! ‘Twas released on Tuesday and I had fired KTorrent to go grab it. The problem: too many leachers and too few seeders, thus resulting in an awfully slow d/l speed. Then over at Beranger’s I notice that FTP sites are already available for d/l. So today, located a Taiwan mirror to grab me my bite. Hopefully will install it in a couple of days to let you know of how it fairs. Meanwhile, you can read Beranger’s take here and here.

On related news, just noticed over at Umma’s that Gabriel Kelley of Gabriel Young fame has finally put up his Web site, and u can listen to some of his new stuff over there. In fact as soon as the home page loads it starts streaming stuff. Pretty good stuff indeed, tho a bit different than the Gabriel Young that I’m used to. You can also listen to the stuff over at Umma’s Radio Blog thingy here. Besides I’d recommend you go click that last linky cuz in the way u’ll end up noticing how I’m actually really famous and have me name showing up all over the Internet. OK, so on just this site. Damn! OK, just this weblog entry. Nonetheless I’m at least a bit more famous than u thought I actually am, eh? Adios!!

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Lemme just say a big hand for Tex, and the boys in the band they’re doin’ all the work!

Read an excellent history-type article on the Apple vs Microsofy lawsuit of the late 80s. At least Microsoft owns a lot of patents and has a lot of copyrighted stuff, but doesn’t go on suing it’s compititors, at least not yet — it does, however, bad-mount a lot. However, can we just assume then Apple was the one that started this whole ugly game of ownership rights? I dunno, and to an extent don’t care, cuz I’m not an expert and dont have the knowledge. At the end of the day if I’ve the “freedom” to do stuff with my computer without it insisting how I must use it, I’m a happy rider.

Meanwhile, the full version of PCLinuxOS 0.93a, code named “BigDaddy”, was released early this week, and I installed it over the PCLOS MineME base I was running and can’t be any more pleased with it. Like always, Texstar has made sure that all the plugins just work and made it even more of a for-the-lazy-bums-type operating system which just works. Texstar was an early 3rd party packager for Mandriva, then Mandrake, and forked away as he made more and more changes to his likings. Because Mandrake is GPLed software, it was possible, and I as an end-use have this excellent piece of sofware to work in me puter.

PCLOS is just brilliant! It was like when I first tried a computer I was on Windows and it was easy to learn. But over the years I didn’t have a clue on how to maintain it property without it disrupting the way I wanted to work — sorry I am still not a geek. As I looked for another option, GNU/Linux was as easily availble. It was definately tough to learn, but as I leaned the basics it became so freaking easy to maintain. And then… along came PCLOS into my life last year. It was like forget learning if u can’t be arsed by it and just use it. Initially based on Mandrake it comes with all the great GUI admin tools, however, without it’s bugs to hinder your work. Thats what I call “radically simple”.

Thank you Tex and the Ripper Gang! Adios!!

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It’s a Long Way to the Top…

What’s up with the Kate OS Web site? It isn’t loading since last night at my end. Tuxmachines.org put out a very impressive review of version 3.0, however,  DistroWatch.com still insists the latest version as 3.0 beta (live) and beta1. Thankfully, LinuxTracker.org has a BitTorrent tracker, though with only one person seeding currenty. When I tried it eary in the morning, the satus sat on unreacheable for an hour before I gave up. Now, the status has changed to an invalid response and seems it’s downloading the thingy. Like I care what the status is as long as it’s downloading somethin, though I would’ve preferred to see an OK instead.

But, what if I really like Kate OS? What’s gonna happen to Zenwalk then? I can’t keep two XFCE desktops over no big deal. The impressive thingy about both of these distros and their XFCE versions are that they provide the lastest 4.4 beta2 instead of the 4.2 stable thingy like Vector Linux. And another thingy I have been noting lately is all of these mini-distros, which default to an XFCE desktop, are all very beautiful. Likewise, I’m not surprised by their recent climbs in the DW hits-per-day rankings. Vector has always been popular and in the top 20 (currently at 15). However, Zenwalk all of a sudden is on 17 since version 2.8 was out last month. Lets see what happens to Kate once their Web site starts behaving alright. Adios!!

Update @ 0126hrs: Guess what? After having used KTorrent 2.0 betas and then RC1 since June, I was kinda feeling out of place with the stable 1.2 in PCLOS. So before heading off to the forum to bug tex to update it to RC and how I think it’s not really that unstable, I refreshed the repos data only to be surprised to notice this as the about dialog when I restated the application…

So, I headed off to the KTorrent Web site and seems they’ve finally released a stable 2.0. The interface did change a bit from the beta to RC, but on the surface I don’t notice any further change from RC to stable. And I know ya’ll are into that Azureus thingy for your BitTorrent needs, but I like KTorrent cuz firstly, it don’t depend on the shitty Java and thus very light-weight, and secondly, it has the search thingy integrated — which reduces the steps to save the .torrent file first and then loading it into the torrent client. Anyway, following is a screenshot of the status ‘invalid response’ thingy I was talking about earlier…

Any BitTorrent technology expert out there could tell me what the heck does an ‘invalid response’ mean when the tracker is working alright as seen from the fact that I’m connected to the seeder. Adios!!

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Everything Zen

So I finally installed this Zenwalk 2.8 desktop by replacing that Dapper Drake thingy in my spare partition. Installation went quick and easy, which was similar to a Slackware’s — only with lesser options. Likewise, it was all geeky command line shit. However, being an ubergeek myself, I didnt have a problem. Yep, I’m the kinda ubergeek you can actually trust. Like I downloaded the Gentoo CDs this one time, and after a week of going thru the online documentation still didn’t have a clue how the hell to get it to install. Henceforth I declared Gentoo is lame.

Now where was I? Yes, the installation took around 10-15 minutes — didn’t clock it, but it indeed was quick. And let’s see, this is a Celeron 850 Mhz box with only 128MB of RAM, so go figure — it’s ancient! Now lets see if Zenwalk and XFCE live up to their claims of being a responsive and usable desktop even on ancient hardware and all.

The default installation comes with only a few applications, but suffices a home user’s needs — hey, a lot more than a bare-bones Windoze gives us. Zenwalk also proves that something lightweight doesn’t have to be ugly. It’s actually quite sexy on the contrary. Also, the GNOME users would be more at home because of the similar file dialogs and GTK-based interface.

Hmm… What do I look for in a desktop again? An audio player (prefer an Amarok-like manager), a video player, an image viewer (which also does a bit of manipulation), a word processor, a pdf viewer, and all those Internet stuff — browser, BitTorrent, mail client, IM client, etc. Zenwalk fairs quite well in all of these categories. And even though it doesn’t provide all my favorite stuff, I certainly won’t drop dead or anything going with Zenwalk’s choices.

A surprise is it’s selection of GXine as the default audio-cum-video player. I would have preferred MPlayer, but GXine isn’t that bad at all. (Actually, I know shit about MPlayer as well. I just hear those not-so-ubergeek human beings out there in the wild think it’s quite rad — read who prefer not to use Amarok.) However, it doesn’t read the id3tags properly, except for when it does. Whether the proper library is missing, it doesn’t support the tags or it’s not configured properly, I can’t really tell, cuz never used GXine before.

Strangely, Zenwalk comes with win32 codecs out of the box. I tested some of these Creed wmv files and a couple of White Stripes real media (rm) files that I have and they all played to my satisfaction. Naturally, mp3 support is in-built as well. The css library for reading encrypted DVDs is missing, however. Though it didn’t have any problem playing Black Sabbath’s Last Supper, which somehow isn’t encrypted or somethin I guess, it started throwing all sorts of weirdo error messages when I tried out some of the other titles.

Anyway, sorry about all that fuss about the “sound and video” stuff. Well, simply put: A desktop without proper support for those is unusable for me. And don’t come lecture me about using oggs for both sound and video. I wouldn’t mind that in any way only if all those musicians out there started putting out stuff online in free formats.

So moving ahead with the rest of the stuff what did I find? Even though the version of XFCE desktop is 4.3.90.2 (or 4.4 beta1), it didn’t crash on me once. (Damn those people for faking stable stuff as beta to shun popularity.) It’s file manager, Thunar, is pretty cool too. I’ll also go as far as to say it’s interface, even though resembles GNOME’s Nautilus, makes better sense. I woulda put a screen shot here, but I couldn’t find an application for that. Go check ‘em out at their Web site or somethin will ya? Other applications I care about — like Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, AbiWord, pdf reader Evince and image viewer GQview — are the latest stable releases as of this release of Zenwalk. And those of you out there who care about stuff like The GIMP and Bluefish have nothing to worry about too.

So finally it was time for me to fire up that package manager tool. What the fuck is it called? Ah, did u know Zenwalk also has a pretty sexy guide available at their Web site? A quick glance through it revealed the package manager is called Netpkg. Aye, what the heck is wrong with it’s interface? (Read: It doesn’t resemble Synaptic at all. Bummer!!) Oh well, it’s alright and all, except for the packages are neither displayed group-wise nor in alphabetical order. Can we have something with a little more sex appeal in the near future? Only the developers could tell.

So I quickly checked BPM (Beep Media Player) and libdvdcss2. And boy was I surprised? This package tool is dead fast. Novell are u listening? Fix your software installers, will ya? So I was playing my music in BMP in no time at all, and I was rather happy. For all those XMMS fanboys, that’s also available. I chose BMP cuz that goes well with the overall GNOME (or in this case XFCE) interface — file dialogs, hello? Anyway, since I’ll try to go with Zenwalk’s one-application-per-task philosophy for a while, I closed the package manager quickly before the developers even noticed what I was up to.

That’s all for now I guess. Zenwalk and XFCE are just brilliant. Imagine a completely usable desktop taking only 1.3GB of hard drive space. On a related note, the packages are in tgz format. Anyone who cares to inform me whether it’s compatible with Slackware stuff will not be rewarded in any means. Adios!!

P.S. –> Everything Zen is a song by this band called Bush and is available in their live album Fucking Up.

Update: PDF viewer Evince crashes every time I try to select text. Note that Evince is not a part of XFCE, but GNOME. It works perfectly alright in my other GNOME installations. So I guess there’s some problem with Zenwalk here.

Disclaimer: Zenwalk is not in any way related to my friend JustZen, tho he might get a kick out of the name, especially when their Web site says: “Ever tried zen computing?” If you want clarifications about the zen philosophy, please go bug Zen. I’m only good with the madcap philosophy.

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Smack that bitch… up!

Goo Goo Dolls now playing on the Virgin UK radio. ‘Tis pretty cool! I’m using Rhythmbox on my newly installed Debian Sid. Guess I’m switching back to Debian and GNOME as my primary desktop for good after a year and a half of fiddling around with all sorts of operating systems. For a while I thought I might stick to SUSE/SLED, but it’s too fucking slow for my tastes.

Since long I’ve also lost my interest in Ubuntu — it’s too fucking popular, and I hate popular stuff. The version 6.06 LTS was a disaster to begin with. Also I hate what they do to KDE. Anyone who tries the Kubuntu default desktop will think KDE is so freaking deprived as a desktop. SUSE does an excellent job of integrating different KDE apps together — ’tis just perfect. But, wait! PCLinuxOS is even better! It’s just that the development is going rather slow because of some old dependency issues the devs may be facing with old libraries, especially the GCC. But I bet version 0.94 — the one to be rebuilt from scratch — will not just be awesome, but perfect.

Yesterday I installed a couple-of-months-old KANOTIX (RC2 I believe) I had and installed GNOME from there. It was easy cuz Debian has a GNOME meta package called gnome in the repository, which did the trick and saved a helluva lot of time selecting individual packages one by one. Just one request tho: I wish the Debian devs would get the Add Application package (courtesy Ubuntu) in the repos. It’s a great way to install and remove software quickly.

Anyway, I’m not that technically inclined. I was facing some issues with the display frame rates while playing videos. Thanks to beranger I was able to fix the issue. He took some time out of his schedule to reply to my emails. I also learned a new command called ‘dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg’ and that fixed those issues, once I knew what I was doing. I also removed all those extra diver packages — like ATI, synaptics touchpad, and stuff like that — that KANOTIX installed by default.

Adios!!

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Shoot to Thrill…

Installed SLED 10. Actually wanted to reinstall SUSE 10.1, but this DVD that I received with this magazine is so crappy that it takes forever to do stuff and then throws random error msgs at me and tells me to restart the process. Since I’d take none of that, I installed SLED 10 RC 3 and will take from here to go back to my KDE 3.5.3 environment.

I hope the binaries are compatible or Ima be pissed. So far so good! I went over to Guru’s blog to set up SMART for me package manager as per this post. This Guru guy claimed that rpm-python is the only dependency for SMART so I installed that, like he said, first. Then I copy pasted the command to install SMART and SMART started to act smart with me and threw an error msg like the following…

error: Failed dependencies:

python-elementtree is needed by smart-0.42-1.guru.suse101.i686

However, I am obviously much more smarter than SMART and I outsmarted it by installing an older version of SMART from Guru’s site dated way back from June 7 and I was alright. I knew that should work cuz it did work alright when I installed SUSE 10.1 back around June 7 last month.

Now, someone better assures me that openSUSE and the SLED thingys are compatible or as I said I’ll be really pissed, and I’m not even kidding this time. And that someone better tells me right now, before I do all the hard work of selecting the KDE packages I need and then it downloads em, and then while installing it shows me how the new packages can’t co-exist with the old SLED ones.

I hope I’ve selected everything I need. Why the fuck can’t they provide a default pkg, like say kubuntu-desktop, so that I can just click on that. They may as well call it SUSE-kde. Anyway, well, I gotta go catch the WC final, while this stuff installs whatever it needs. Adios!!

Futile

And I thought I was ignorant enough to not get how to install extra packages from the FC5 DVD once the sytem was installed. It’s certainly an ego boost that I’m not that ignorant after all when I read the following at Oz guy Ben’s

So, apparently their package manager can only install software from online repositories — not from the CDs. Same deal with Yum on the command line, apparently.

On a related, I need to install Drivel on this SUSE thingy, cuz I dont like logging into Blogger just to post stuff. Thats just more steps and clicks. Adios!