tensixtyone

A while ago I spotted a post about a new Ubuntu based distribution that had been released, called CrunchBang Linux, as i’m not a great fan of Ubuntu distros anymore I passed this one up and never look at it again. A few weeks had passed until I heard mention of it again, Dan from Linux Outlaws, mentioned that he is trying out the recent version for a review on the show and that Fab is a massive fan. I decided to take a second look at it, trying my hardest not to be critical due to it’s Ubuntu base.

I’ve now got CrunchBang installed on my main desktop machine and I’ve been using it for a day, Maybe it’s a short length of time to review a distribution but I feel with my past experiences with numerous distros will help me get to grips with a new one quite quickly. Some of you may know, after being a Ubuntu user for well over a year I decided to move back to Debian and became quite critical of Ubuntu for its rash decisions regarding design and key choices. My dislike is not centred purely on Ubuntu, I remember one time where I had a near fit at using a OpenSUSE KDE 4.0 Live CD as I couldn’t switch off the default sound scheme, but that’s for another post. Back to the review…

CrunchBang Linux promotes itself as a lightweight version of Ubuntu, unlike Xubuntu’s XFCE desktop they’ve decided on using OpenBox and a few key programs from other desktop environments, like Thunar and Lxpanel.

My previous experience of the *box window managers have been with Blackbox during the very early days, when Enlightenment was all the rage and most distros used FVWM95, so checking out Openbox will hopefully be a refreshing blast to the past. My main concern was compatability, a lot of applications out there depend on certain features of the desktop environment. I left all my expectations at the door and decided to grab the Live CD and have a 10-15 minute play to see if everything works as expected and that it actually works on my slightly quirky setup.

The Live CD / Installation media is mirrored on a few sites, as it’s only a “baby” distro it’s not been picked up by the mainstream mirrors, thankfully, a few people in the community had offered some space up to the project and finding a local, fast mirror isn’t that difficult. As with all Ubuntu style Live CDs, it was a simple case of burning the ISO to a disc and rebooting the machine. I’m not sure if this is a feature of all new Ubuntu discs now, but the ISOLINUX menu had a option to check the installation media for errors, this would save you quite a bit of time if you suspect dodgy media.

The boot was quick, quicker than I expected. Usually with Ubuntu CDs I pop the disc into the drive the slip off to make a cup of tea and head back in time to get the last second or so of the desktop booting. This wasn’t the case with CrunchBang, after returning from a delightful brew making trip I noticed that the desktop was loaded and the default conky panel on the right side informed me that it’s been booted for about 5 minutes. So, boot speed, even from the CD it’s nice and quick.

To a user who has been brought up on the GNOME or KDE environments the initial desktop may take a second to sink in, by default it comes with a minimal panel and system information pane on the right side of the screen and nothing more, no desktop icons or fluffy applications menu, just a basic desktop. Right clicking anywhere on the desktop brings up the system menu and the list of applications. The default install gives you a nice range of applications, some you’ll never use, others are dire essentials.The default includes a few keynote applications:

• Firefox 3.0.4
• Pidgin 2.5.2
• Rhythmbox 0.11.3
• Skype 2.0
• Gwibber 0.7.2
• GIMP 2.6

A few more are available, and a full list can be found on the CrunchBang wiki. Needless to say I was impressed, not only had they selected reasonable defaults but as the distribution is based off Intrepid it had the latest and greatest versions available. Skype is a interesting nugget in my opinion, possibly being the only QT application in the default installation. I do understand that lots of people use Skype for VOIP, but maybe they should consider including another application like Ekiga.

So, I have my desktop running as a Live CD, time to see how it fayred in real world usage. I can happly say, after a good hour or so usage I didn’t feel restricted by the choice of desktop environment, Openbox is low key but quick and powerful. I decided after just a few hours usage to commit to this distro, ditching my current Debian Lenny install.

The installation of CrunchBang was nothing really spectacular, It’s a standard Ubiquity installer which does it’s job very quickly. A few quick selections and the dreaded disc paritioner screens and you on your way. Installation took about 10 minutes on my machine and felt a little quicker than previous Ubuntu installs, but I put this down to a little bias on my part. Rebooting the machine brought up a standard GRUB menu and I happly noticed that it detected my existing Windows installation and put the relative entry in. Again, the boot was quick and my machine boots to the desktop in under a minute.

So, here comes the negatives. A few minor issues have bugged me since i’ve started using CrunchBang, but nothing show stopping. So to save time I’ll just put them down as bullet points:

• xcompmgr seems to have a “dicky-fit” after a few hours use, making all window focus go out of the window. Disable/enable of Compositing fixes that.
• Tray Icons are hit and miss to what actual colour they use for their background. In my case with the “Fawn” gtk theme you get either a brown or beige background, which looks a little messy. Not really a distribution problem but still annoying.
• Restarting Conky seems to paint over the entire desktop for no reason, causing the Windows-esq issue when you have to use an existing window to get the desktop to repaint.
• By default, the xserver won’t detect 1280×1024. Simple fix of modifying the Xorg configuration but initial boot of the Live CD can be annoying with a mishmash resolution.

As I said, the negatives are MINOR. Really, really minor. CrunchBang was designed as a “2nd - 3rd” distribution for users, so it targets the section that are more than happy to have a twiddle with the system configuration and the thought of text only configuration doesn’t phase them. If you fall into this category and you’re looking for a lightweight desktop distribution then i’d suggest you grab a copy of CrunchBang and give it a whirl.

Last night I learned about the Wordpress 2.7-RC2 release, the latest and greatest release with all new fangled features. My current install has been nagging me to upgrade for quite a while, so I decided to jump up to one of the test releases to give it a whirl. After all, If anything went wrong I can just roll it back no fuss.

The download package is the usual mixture of raw files and brief instructions, I roughly followed the extended guide on the website as I knew a few steps could be skipped on my install. I backed up the original directory and MySQL database, then grabbed the new install package and installed it in a similar directory to my current install, then slowly copied over the required files to the new folder. After about ten minutes I had a ready to go version of 2.7-RC2, with a quick “ln” command I had the site live. A quick run of the upgrade page and everything worked.

So, how is it? The admin interface is a complete change to the older 2.6 releases and it makes a lot more sense than the old version. No longer do you have to fight with a massive list of options in the setting pages, instead of being stretched across the top they’re in a nice, tidy sidebar. I’m sure I’ll hit some issues sooner or later, but all the plugins I use work fine and as fast as ever.

Here’s hoping to a successful 2.7 final release.

So, I finally got round to giving a talk at LivLUG, anyone who knows me will know i’m not the best public speaker in the world and I get quite nervous at the thought. It was time to grab the bull by the horns and actually do it!

My first talk was on the usage of the Wiimote within Linux, The Wiimote are very simple Bluetooth devices that can be accessed over the standard APIs with an additional library called CWiid. This allows the device to be used as a input device or as a general I/O device.

It’s quite hard to explain it in just text alone, So i’ve put my presentation on the LivLUG wiki everyone to have a look at. I recommend you grab it and give it a try yourself.

EDIT: Yes, It’s on the wiki now, but heres the direct link.

For quite a while now, commuters on the heavily loaded Liverpool to Norwich service have suffered with cramped conditions and late trains. Personally, I’ve been travelling this service for nearly four years and seen the highs and lows.

Originally the service was handled by Central Trains, who at their best used to run a terrible service, many people complained and nothing happened. November 2007 gave new hope, Central Trains were finally pushed to the sidelines and a new franchise took over the running of this critical route for Liverpool-Manchester commuters. At first many rejoiced at the sight of four carriages and a return to the level of service we expect. Trains ran on time, fully formed, and working well. Six months later, it’s a different story. What we saw was a reduction in service back to the good old Central Trains days. The issue now is that this service is worse than Central Trains ever was; four carriages are the oddity of the service, not the norm.

So enter Train Sardine, a new website for the disgruntled commuters who have to put up with this service. This group aims to give one voice for the the route and hopefully give some marked improvement, only time will tell but if your interested in helping out then check out the website.

This weekend (25th to 26th of October) CloudMade will be hosting a Open Street Map mapping party in Manchester at the Marbella Cafe. The weekend will consist of walking the streets on the east side of Manchester, friendly banter and a few pints. Everyone is welcome from hardcore experts to the complete newbies.

The day starts at 10:00am with a introduction and a simple overview of how to map your data, then we’ll head out and meet back at the Marbella Cafe for lunch, then head out again for the afternoon and concluding in drinks in a local watering hole.

Check out the wiki and Upcoming for more details. Hope to see you all there!

Marbella Café
2nd Floor
Sunshine Studios
52-54 Newton St
Manchester
M1 1ED

A little late, but still interesting. Google has announced that the source for Android is now available. Google have kept up their end of the bargain and the source is out there for all to view, it’s a interesting prospect with the G1 release just around the corner. I know that quite a few hackers out where will be tinkering with Android for the next couple of weeks, maybe even have some interesting developments for the G1 launch.

Now that the source is out there, I wonder what the response the other platform developers will have. I suspect Nokia/Symbian to play down Android’s place in the market and RIM to wave away the benefits of open source. I have to wonder, HTC are releasing the G1 and now Google has released the source. Will users be able to flash update their version of Android? Or will they be bound to the operators/HTCs distribution of the software? If users are allow to keep up with the latest and greatest developments for the platform I suspect the big players will start to sweat a little. Only time will tell, but it’s starting to look good.

People who use their Huawei E160G on Three will know that in the Windows client you can send and receive SMS, this will come at some minor cost of £0.10 per SMS, and you can add bundles onto your mobile broadband account to make this cheaper.

Similar functionality can be achieved in Linux, and it’s very useful if your like me and want to drop someone a message when you don’t have your phone around.

For this we’ll be using Gammu, which is a toolset for managing phones via the AT GSM command set. It was originally forked from Gnokii, which was a similar toolset for Nokia handsets. As the E160G opens a serial port with access to the AT command set this is a relatively easy tool to setup.

First of all, we need to grab the packages. As these are standard Debian packages you should have no issues.

# sudo apt-get install gammu

Next, we need to configure Gammu to pickup the correct device. Check your dmesg for the serial port:

$ dmesg|grep tty
[12321.308078] usb 5-3: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[12321.308275] usb 5-3: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1

Edit ~/.gammurc, or run gammu-config to change the device settings. Your ~/.gammurc file should look similar to:

[gammu]
port = /dev/ttyUSB0
model =
connection = at19200
synchronizetime = yes
logfile =
logformat = nothing
use_locking =
gammuloc =

Give it a test by getting all the SMS from the device:

# gammu getallsms

This should bring back all the SMS currently stored on the stick, which should include your login details for the Three website (unless you’ve deleted them). To send a SMS use the “sendsms” command:

$ gammu sendsms text 07874454543
Enter message text and press ^D:
Test Message!!!!!1!
Sending SMS 1/1....waiting for network answer..OK, message reference=2

Gammu has a lot more tools and options to explore, now you have the basic config you can setup a SMSD, which can expose the ability to send SMS to a network. Also, Gammu has a python interface so you can possibly build your own frontend client for sending SMS. For more details explore the Gammu Wiki.

My grand idea of experimenting with various distributions for the EeePC went wrong, by quite a bit as well. As mentioned in the last post I decided to have a play around with some of the distributions specifically built for the Asus EeePC 701, I was wondering if something out there can beat Debian on this little work horse.

Oh boy was I wrong.

First I attempted to install Zeee (Zenwalk for the EeePC), the installation “media” came as a compressed disk image, nothing that unusual as most of the distros come in their own little installation media package. It turns out that this image is a raw dump of a file system, so I had to create the installation media on a USB stick with the various handy tools, mke2fs, grub, you get the idea. After about 45 minutes of fiddling I called it a day, for some reason the GRUB installation wasn’t detecting the ext2 partition on the USB stick, and couldn’t find the menu.lst file. While this is probably a simple issue it’s a bit more than I could be arsed with, the Zeee guys are doing well but the installation method need a little work, maybe a prepackaged ext2 dump.

After the kerfuffle with Zeee I moved onto the latest Foresight Linux Mobile Edition, I’ve heard Dan & Fab mention Foresight on the Linux Outlaws podcast and I have downloaded a live CD previously, so I decided to get the image and have a go. This installation went a lot easier, the image was a precompiled usb installation so no hassle there, the installation took time but I put t hat down to the quality of the USB stick I was using. After about 30 minutes I had a working Foresight Linux install, and everything seemed to work out of the box, including the WIFI (which is the usual sticking point for most distros).

Foresight Mobile uses the clutter based launcher you can also find in the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the mainstream applications are pre-installed and are usable. Within a few minutes I hit my all time pet hate, touchpad clicking, ever since i’ve owned a laptop I’ve never been able to use touchpad click to any degree of success and I don’t see any reason why it should be enabled by default. In previous distribution I know the way to fix this issue is to simply changing the settings in gsynaptics or modify the Xorg config, as I was trying to operate from a user perspective I went the simple route of using gsynaptics. It wasn’t installed. I went digging around in the package manager (conary) and didn’t find a related package. After about ten minutes searching I found the “synaptics” package, which proved useless as I had no idea of what it does.

Three hours in and my experiment with Foresight was over, people may complain that it’s a simple issue but having the option enabled by default and then hiding the configuration in a non standard package doesn’t help matters. I have to give Foresight kudos for being one of the first distributions to have a full “netbook” version, but it still needs a little refinement.

So, now I’m back on Debian, tried and tested. This time I installed using the updated Lenny installation media for the EeePC and it was a breeze, and since I’ve done this “fresh install” a lot more of the features work consistently. In the process of configuring my machine again I’ve noticed that the older guide for the E160G using Network Manager is a little wrong, so I’ll have to update that sometime. For now I’ll be sticking on ol’ faithful. Maybe when the “next big distro” gets released I’ll give it a try.

I’ve been using Debian on my EeePC 701 since I got it, I think the original Xandros lasted a whole two hours or so. Over the last few days i’ve been bugged by 2.6.26 issues and various XServer issues, time for a change.

Over the next few weeks it’s my plan to experiment with a few EeePC tailored distributions, much in the same way Dan did. My first distro of choice is Zeee, which is a customised version of Zenwalk. I’ve heard good things about Zenwalk, so now is my time to experience it.

So, I’ll post a follow-up tomorrow.

It’s come to my attention recently that some people don’t understand what “The Hub” project is all about. So let me explain the details of the project.

“The Hub” was originally an idea born out of a talk given at Open Source City. James Wallbank from Access Space gave an insightful talk on the community benefits of a open computer cluster, along with their computer recycling scheme they are able to poliferate computer usage around the local community. As you would expect, with a increase in computer usage and access to a common area a community grew and evolved in the project.

After Open Source City, discussions between the members of The Art Organisation about a similar project being setup in the half empty building they have, Mello Mello. A few interested parties were approached and Vladimir from Liverpool LUG was one of these few. Discussions happened and plans made, but no decisive action was took.

Fast forward a few months, Liverpool LUG was holding its first couple of talks since it’s “rebirth”, stuck for a backup location for when FACT was unavailable the admin team approached The Art Organisation for space in Mello Mello. Greg, who is co-curator of The Art Organisation, talked about the community space project that started months before, and a few members of LivLUGs admin team (myself, Joanne, Graeme and Dan) offered to help out.

The overall plan is to setup four or five PCs in the space, with a common printer, internet connectivity, and a file server. In one of the storage areas we will keep old computer parts in a recycling capacity, but this will not happen until we’ve got the main hub in order. All the PCs will be networked and will be able to share out their media, along with the likes of a “pool” instant messaging system to allow quick transfers between individuals working on the PCs. Exact plans for software and incident tracking haven’t been worked out yet, we think that should be saved to when we have actual hardware on site. The only thing we know at the moment is that all the software will be Open Source.

At the moment we have the space and a load of old computing kit that has been scavenged from somewhere. The area has a lot of “junk”, well, I say “junk” but the items actually belong to a artist who was using the space as storage. We’ve organised the items as much as possible and are trying to organise PCs and desks for the area.

We need help, If you know somewhere we can get some old PCs, some desks, or other useful computing equipment, drop us a line. We’ll be approaching the FreeCycle lists sometime this week so keep your eyes out if your on there.