The dark art of removing the Flash plugin from Firefox in Ubuntu Linux

When I did my Xubuntu install (the same is true for Ubuntu), I immediately started Firefox and went to my first Web page with embedded Flash.

And then it happened.

Firefox asked me if I wanted to download and install the Flash plugin. Why say no? So I said yes.

Problem: Dailynews.com — the Web site from the newspaper I work for — is covered in Flash Addsads, content come-ons, etc., and it was dragging my old systems to a crawl. On a modern 3 GHz system, it’s OK to run a ton of flash. Not so on a 1 GHz converted thin client with questionable video and audio throughput.

But how to get rid of Flash? It’s not so easy. Mozilla’s help pages offer instructions on how to expunge Flash from Windows and Mac OS X, but nothing on getting rid of it in Linux. It’s not an installed package, so Synaptic doesn’t even know it’s there. Apt-get also knows nothing. Why? Because it’s hidden.

Finally, after a few sessions of Googling for an answer, this Adobe page provides the answer:

Removal instructions

Manual removal (for users who installed the plug-in via Install script):

Delete libflashplayer.so binary and flashplayer.xpt file in directory /home//.mozilla/plugins/

And for those with RPM package systems:

RPM removal:

As root, enter in terminal:
# rpm -e flash-plugin
Click Enter and follow prompts

On a related note, a commenter said I should try the Firefox extension Stop Autoplay. It didn’t work.

But the other method does. I’m Flash-less — and on my low-powered system, that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Update: After a half-hour, I can say definitively that my system is running much, much better. Flash is one of those things that’s great if you’ve got the power but a CPU-hogging nightmare if you don’t.

Bottom line, choosing applications that match your hardware (and needs) is the way to go. No matter the window manager (or “desktop environment”), some apps just need a lot of juice.

A laptop even YOU can’t kill

Consider the MIL-spec Panasonic Toughbook 30:

Out in the field or down in the dirt, the durable Panasonic Toughbook 30 is built to take a beating. MIL-STD-810F-tested for ruggedness, this brawny workhorse is encased in magnesium alloy, with durability designed into every seal, hinge and connector. Plus, as the industry’s fastest fully-rugged mobile PC, it’s built for lightening-quick processing and wireless connectivity. Communicate in real time from remote areas, access databases online and run sophisticated software applications even in the harshest environments.

Or get a really old one for $169.99.

What if you had $7,025.84 to spend on a PC?

Put together this primo system, The “Money No Object” desktop PC.

But for those with less money, ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes also spec’d out a $500 budget PC.

Scientific Linux — Like Red Hat … but more scientific (and free)

Scientific Linux has quite a pedigree, according to DesktopLinux.com. Developed by Fermilab, CERN and other heavy-science types, the distro is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux recompiled from source (which must be available according to the GPL license under which Linux is released) and is said to be mostly compatible with RHEL.

I’ve wanted to try CentOS, the other free “remix” of RHEL, but I would rather try a live CD first. Scientific Linux has it, and I’m downloading the ISO now. I’ll report later on how well it works.

Why Dell/Wal-Mart may work

By selling at retail, Dell will reach a different kind of consumer than it currently does with its direct-only channel.

While my current Dell box at the office (Optiplex GX520 with 3 GHz Pentium 4 and 512 MB RAM) was part of a big corporate order that numbered in the hundreds of units, it isn’t my first Dell.

Way back in the early ’90s, pre-Web, we bought a Dell at Price Club, the warehouse store now known as Costco. It was a 386sx 25 MHz model with something like 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB drive. It shipped with Windows 3.1, which was barely usable at the time. We mostly ran DOS (I think it was at 5.5 or 6), and that box got us on a bunch of local BBSes, plus the GEnie, Prodigy and AOL online services. Never mind that this PC couldn’t run much of everything today, but in its day, it was well-built and ultra-reliable. It gave me a good impression of Dell.

Today I’d be more inclined to assemble my own system, if only to facilitate easy upgrades of the various components, from motherboard to optical drives to video, sound and networking cards. While most of us don’t do all the upgrading we say we’re going to do, it’s nice to have the option. I still plan to replace the motherboard, drives and even power supply in the now-10-year-old This Old PC, if only to a) prove to myself that it can be done, and b) from an environmental and “simplicity” standpoint to save the case, keeping it from going into a landfill and eliminating the need for a new one. And I’m cheap.

But back to Dell. Selling through a mass-market retailer and offering customizable systems online are two very different businesses. To compete with HP/Compaq, Dell needs to be out there, side by side with its competitors.

A smarter bet for Dell would be its own mall-located, branded stores, like the Apple Store, and unlike the current Dell mall kiosks in that they’d have actual store space and actual inventory that customers could purchase and carry home. It didn’t work for Gateway, but it could work for Dell (or for HP).

Maroon 5 breaks iTunes record

Maroon 5 broke an iTunes record by selling more than 101,000 digital copies of new album “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” on the Apple music service during its first week of release, with many lured to pre-order the album before its May 22 release date by the promise of two extra tracks and the ability to get ahead in the virtual Ticketmaster line for concert tickets.

There were 50,000 preorders of the 13-track album, ArsTechnica reported.

Add to that 243,500 digital sales of the single “Makes Me Wonder” from iTunes and other download sites.

It almost brings the glamour back to the music business.

A month on the command line, Day 27: E-mail Valhalla, if not Nirvana

After a few weeks of wrangling with e-mail at the console, I now have a working setup that allows me to send and receive mail from two accounts, one personal, the other for work, on my Debian Etch box.

(For those who haven’t been following that closely, my hardware is a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with hard drive and CD-R drive connected to the single IDE header. The motherboard is by ECS, it’s sort-of mini-ITX sized, the processor is a VIA C3 Samuel at 1 GHz with VIA’s PC133 chipset, and memory is maxed out at 256 MB.)

I’m using mutt as the mail client and msmtp as the SMTP client for outgoing mail. And while real geeks use vi, I’ve become partial to nano of late, and that’s been my default editor for e-mail … and everything else.

My personal account is with freelinuxemail.com, which looks like, acts like and is provided by fastmail.fm, but which includes free use of their SMTP server. Linspire sponsors the service, and I think they’re picking up the tab. (Thanks, Linspire!) The service is IMAP only, which I prefer anyway, because I need to access my mail from a variety of places, programs and PCs.

However, my work account is on a POP server, and I really don’t want to pull all the mail off the server and onto a single PC — and I could never get the company’s outgoing SMTP server to work. Instead, I’m using the SMTP server from my broadband provider, DSL Extreme (who’s tech support department declined to help me with this project, since, as they told me, “You know we don’t support Linux.” I figured it out anyway, and I will keep trying to figure out my company’s SMTP server, even though everything is working just fine like it is.

The main sites that helped me get all of this working were the main mutt site (mutt.org), the msmtp site, an article from O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com titled How to Use mutt, FastMail, and Mail.app Together on Your Mac, even though I’m not using a Mac, and My First Mutt, and all are required reading before you embark on this yourself. That and about a hundred Google searches for sample configuration files and advice specific to these programs and my mail providers.

And before I continue, yes, I tried Pine, but I could never really get it to work, especially for the outgoing mail.

The key here is that mutt is configured to read e-mail from my IMAP account. To read my POP mail, I hit lower-case “c” to navigate to other folders, and instead of an IMAP or local folder, I go to my POP site and then log in. The e-mail comes up from my POP account, and I can read, delete and reply to messages, but what I don’t delete remains on the POP server, accessible by my Web-based client, Outlook on my Windows box and Thunderbird (or SeaMonkey) on my Linux boxes. (I got the lower-case “c” trick from My First Mutt. Works like buttah.

Here’s how I do it:

(type lower case letter) c
pop://pop.mypopaddress.com (note: use pops:// if it’s a secure server)
(at prompt for login, enter my e-mail address)
(at prompt for password, enter my password, then the mail appears)

As I said, I haven’t yet gotten msmtp to work with my company’s SMTP server yet, but I did get it to work with DSL Extreme’s (substituting my work e-mail address in the “From” category).

I can choose to send mail from three different accounts, freelinuxemail.com, my work account and dslextreme.com with key bindings I created with help from msmtp’s manual (the section on using msmtp with mutt).

Things I’m going to work on in the near future are shortcuts for frequently-used e-mail addresses and some kind of system for organizing saved mail in my /home directory.

Here are my config files:

.muttrc

set use_from=yes
set editor=nano
set imap_user=myaddress@freelinuxemail.com
set imap_pass=mypassword
set spoolfile=imaps://mail.messagingengine.com/INBOX
set folder=imaps://mail.messagingengine.com/INBOX
set record=+”Sent Items”
set postponed=+”Drafts”
set certificate_file=~mutt_certificates
set envelope_from=yes
set sendmail=”/usr/bin/msmtp”
set realname=”Steven Rosenberg”
macro generic “<esc>1” “:set
from=myaddress@freelinuxemail.com”
macro generic “<esc>2” “:set
from=myaddress@dailynews.com”

.msmtprc (make sure this is set to read/write ONLY by you. The command is: $ chmod go= .msmtprc )

account linux
host mail.messagingengine.com
from myaddress@freelinuxemail.com
auth on
tls on
user myaddress@freelinuxemail.com
password mypassword

account dsl
host smtp.dslextreme.com
from myaddress@dailynews.com
#for “user” in DSL Extreme, the @ and everything after it are not needed
user mydslextremelogin
password mypassword
#auth login is the only authentication that worked (I went through every one that msmtp offers before I tried this one)
auth login

It’s probably not a great idea to have passwords in the config files, but it does speed things up, and once I pull the CD-ROM drive, it’ll be pretty secure, especially because it doesn’t boot from USB either. That’s assuming anybody around here a) wants to read my terribly exciting e-mail and b) knows what Linux even is, let alone how to hack into it.

One of the things I’m going to try in the future is to remove the passwords and maybe even the user names and see how the setup works then. For now, it really speeds things up to have user names and passwords entered automatically.

Another must: getting the e-mails to display with the newest on top (they’re now on the bottom).

It’s taken a couple of weeks to get to this point, and I’d like to thank all the readers of this blog who wrote comments and told me about their console-based e-mail setups.

While on this project, I also set up all of my mail accounts in Thunderbird, but where’s the fun in that?

Again, the greatest thing about e-mail at the Linux console is the blinding speed with which e-mail can be read, replied to and deleted.

I’ve been keeping mutt running on tty1, with a text-based Web browser — either lynx or elinks — on tty2. Both browser have their good points — elinks has better CSS support, but sometimes looking at a page with no CSS in lynx is better. I’m sure I can turn off CSS in elinks, but it’s just as easy to start the other app.
I should probably start using a third virtual console with Midnight Commander running, but I haven’t been using mc that much lately. Still, if you’re using the Linux command line and not using at least two or three virtual consoles, switching between them with alt-F1/F2/F3/etc., you’re not really living.

As far as the e-mail setup goes, there are probably better ways to do it, and like all highly configurable applications at the console, it has the potential to grow, change and morph depending on my needs and skills.

While I cited many of the Web pages that helped me, I’d also like to acknowledge the books that have taught me much about the Linux command line. My main book, my bible if you will, is “The Linux Cookbook, Second Edition” by Michael Stutz (here’s the free online version of the first edition, but it’s well worth buying and having at hand). Stutz’s book is so well-written and complete that it’s an enjoyable read as well as a valuable reference. Even though it was published in 2004, it remains extremely useful, since the command line isn’t subject to the faddishness of the GUI … not that a new edition wouldn’t be welcome.

I’ve also been using “Linux in a Nutshell,” by Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins and Aaron Webber, another great O’Reilly book, and I’ve just gotten the other Linux cookbook, titled “Linux Cookbook,” by Carla Schroder, also from O’Reilly … also published in 2004 (and still plenty useful, although again, a new edition would be great.

Since this is Day 27 of A Month on the Command Line, here are the things I haven’t gotten done yet:

— Printing: I tried the trusty Apsfilter, which has worked for me on occasion in Damn Small Linux, but I couldn’t get it to find a network printer. I will try CUPS before this is all done, and I think that will work. But why didn’t Debian ask me about printers during the install?

— vi/Vim: I never got that good at running vi or Vim. I read somewhere that even when you’re running vi in Debian, it’s really Vim. I’ll have to look into that. But while I type fast and have to write stuff really fast, I didn’t crave the ease with which I could move around the page in vi. I grew attached very quickly to nano, which, with it’s F3 keystroke to save and F9 to delete a line, quickly became my favorite command-line app.

— Images without X: I didn’t do much with Imagemagick. Since I couldn’t actually view an image in that suite without X, I never got to the point of sizing a photo at the command line. Zgv was already installed in Debian, but it died while trying to display a photo. I checked the config file, and it should’ve worked but didn’t.

— Blogging from the command line: I never did try out the program that allows direct posting to Movable Type blogs. It’s something I’d still like to try, but once I had e-mail working, the will to continue wasn’t quite as strong. I did post from elinks to the blog, but it wasn’t easy (and for some reason the posts didn’t go live without “intervention” from a GUI browser).

But I did a lot of Web browsing with lynx and elinks — and both are extremely fast and enjoyable ways to read text on Web pages. I highly recommend trying them at the command line.

What separates Linux from Windows and Mac is the fact that Linux from the command line is made up of apps that are up to date (they have to be, given that they’re running production servers at very high levels in the enterprise) and extremely configurable. The fact that you can run the Linux command line on hardware that’s extremely old and underpowered, yet get all the modern security features that Linux has to offer, is a powerful incentive to use it, especially for older hardware. I’ve blogged extensively on how to keep older Macs running, on which browsers work, which e-mail programs support today’s servers (answers are few and Netscape Mail) and how a decade-old, unsupported OS can function in the modern computing world. But with Linux, all that fades away. Window managers go from full-featured and heavy to extremely light … and there’s always the shell. Linux developers care about users — and not about rendering old hardware obsolete so you’ll buy whatever’s new just so you’ll have apps that run.

And while the books I’ve mentioned above have been very, very helpful, I’d love to see a command-line book that walked the newbie through all the apps and setup of a Linux system, with specific instructions on how to set up e-mail, network connections, with even more information on all the current command-line apps. Kind of like what the “Cookbooks” do, but with more specific information on going from nothing to a full command line system. I guess there’s not quite the market that there is for Ubuntu/SUSE/Fedora books, or for books aimed at sysadmins, but it would be nice to see. The fact that you can easily set up even Ubuntu as a command-line-only system — and not just as a server — makes this something that I think more people would do, if they only knew how.

Is now the time to dump your laptop hard drive for flash media?

Back in the days before the Thin Puppy’s CF card died, I was running my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with flash memory instead of a conventional hard drive. And since Puppy Linux takes great care NOT to write to flash very often, the media is supposed to last virtually forever. Why mine died is a mystery, but it wasn’t due to wear (more likely I killed it with static electricity).

Now that I’m running Puppy 2.16 (new to me this week!), I’ve been thinking about going back to flash for this thin-client box — I’m booting from CD and also have a regular-sized 14 GB hard drive connected outside the box (yes, I truly am thinking outside the box — or my PC is).

But the conventional wisdom is that for “normal” operating systems that don’t use RAM disks, you’ll kill flash quickly with the constant writes required by the OS.

But today on Low End Mac, that question didn’t come up for these guys who are running their Mac laptops from flash memory. That link was to the letters about this original article, which, in turn, refers to this article about doing it with a Powerbook 1400 (one of which I have … but which is too frustrating at this point to even contemplate using for my everyday computing for reasons that have nothing to do with flash). This final article — filled with woe about flash cards that didn’t work with the 1400 — does address longevity of the flash media, saying it should work for “years and years.”

I’m going to try it again (maybe even with Debian), but I’m also going to back up all my data …

And again, if you want to boot from flash but are nervous, give the new Puppy 2.16 a try. I’m in my first full day of use, but so far all is going very, very well.

Dell’s Linux Forum is up and running

… it’s just a subset of the overall Dell forum, but it has a Linux logo, complete with Tux (that’s it above). And here’s the Dell Linux Engineering Web Site, where the project’s Wiki lives.

Dell to sell at Wal-Mart … and Ubuntu Linux makes its debut on Dell.com

Today’s debut of Dell PCs with Linux preinstalled threatened to be eclipsed by another Dell bombshell — the Round Rock, Texas, PC giant will supplement it’s direct-to-you sales method with a heaping helping of Middle American retail through Wal-Mart.

Dell told the Associated Press that June 10 will mark the debut of two Dimension E521 desktop models at 3,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

The deal “represents our first step” into global retail, Dell spokesman Dwayne Cox said, according to the AP report.

No prices were announced, but the cheapest Dimension E521 goes out the door for $359 at Dell.com.

It doesn’t look like Dell will offer Linux on its Wal-Mart boxes, and a check of Wal-Mart’s Web site shows that the company — today anyway — no longer offers the Linspire-based Linux desktops it had been quietly selling for some time.

Hmmmm … maybe it’s Dell and Wal-Mart’s way of giving Microsoft an open-mouthed kiss with extra tongue.

But back to Dell’s Linux offerings — prices for a single laptop and two desktops preloaded with Ubuntu 7.04 begin at $599 and are slightly lower than when equipped with Windows Vista. Oh … and Dell’s Ubuntu won’t be able to play .mp3’s, DVDs, Flash and a whole bunch of other stuff without the user going through the usual hoops, a kiss of death for the Dell-Ubuntu experiment, according to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blog.

And finding Dell’s Linux-equipped PCs at Dell.com isn’t easy. What’s more apparent is Dell begging its customers to stay with come-ons for Windows XP, which they really, really want you to know they’re still selling.

There are no links on the Dell home page, and the first thing you see is the ubiquitous “Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium.” Of course it does.

But in the dropdown menus for Desktops and Notebooks, there are links for “Open-Source PCs.” The headline is “Ubuntu has arrived by popular demand.” And there’s a handy link, right there in the middle, for Windows users who somehow navigated to the page as if by evil sorcery:

The main thing to note is that when you choose open source you don’t get a Windows® operating system. If you’re here by mistake and you are looking for a Dell PC with Windows, please use the following link.

But for those who do want an open-source box, you can get one from Dell with Ubuntu … or FreeDOS. Yep, nobody mentioned in this whole Ubuntu-Dell lovefest that the Texas computer giant will ship you a box with FreeDOS on it. What the hell? I’m sure there’s a reason for it …

Here’s how Ubuntu describes its FreeDOS offerings:

FreeDOS is a completely stripped down PC operating system for experts and people interested in working in a DOS environment. The main things that set FreeDOS apart from Windows and Ubuntu is that it doesn’t have a graphical interface (i.e., it’s typing only, no mouse) and it only supports DOS applications, such as classic DOS games, business software written for DOS and embedded DOS systems, such as retail cash registers. Generally, users who want FreeDOS know what it is and what they want to do with it. Other users should look to our Ubuntu and Windows platforms.

Embedded DOS systems? If they’re out there, I guess it makes sense … but again, what the hell?

Anyway, when you click through on the Ubuntu link, here’s what you get: A mid-level desktop, low- to -mid-level laptop and then a more upscale desktop

Not bad at all. As an exercise for this entry, I “built” a primo XPS 410 system with as many upgrades as made sense (i.e. nothing stupid), no extra warranties or support, and it came in at a hefty $1,964 with Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6700 (4MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1066 FSB), 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™, Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable, 19 inch Ultrasharp™ SP1908FP Digital Flat Panel, 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache, Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer, Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard and 13 in 1 Media Card Reader.

So you CAN spend a ton on a Linux box at Dell.

But here’s the kicker for Canonical. Although this disclaimer appears –” Dell provides hardware support only. Software support is available through Canonical and Linux Community” — there are options available with each system for “Starter Support” ($65), “Basic Support” ($125) or “Standard Support” ($275). That’s above and beyond any extra money you want to give Dell for “In-Home Service, Parts and Labor.”

Who’s providing this non-free support? Certainly the “Linux Community” means Ubuntuforums.org … but the others must be Canonical, which I hope is ready for what could be an onslaught. It’s an experiment, all right, in more ways than three, and it will be very exciting (and I hope not disheartening) to see how it plays out in the months ahead.