Heard at SCALE 6x: Damn Small Linux moving to Firefox 2

Damn Small Linux won’t add just any application to its 50 MB distribution. But when there’s a big hue and cry, things that users really need tend to get added. I thanked Robert Shingledecker for adding my favorite lightweight image editor, MtPaint, to DSL, and I’m anxiously awaiting another improvement:

Firefox in DSL will move from the current version 1 to the GTK 1 version of Firefox 2. That’s a big deal because a lot of Web sites require at least Firefox 1.5 for full functionality. It means, for one thing that it’ll be possible to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with Damn Small Linux.

Robert has two machines running DSL at the booth. One was that really, really small Sony laptop, on which DSL looked great. The other was one of those great little Damn Small Machine fanless Mini-ITX PC’s that are sold at the DSL Store. It had no hard drive. DSL booted off of a USB key, which was then pulled out of its jack.

I really, really want one of these little computers. I’m a huge fan of Mini-ITX and fanless machines in general. They save space as well as energy, and I really enjoy the quiet.

As far as the 3 series of Damn Small Linux, Robert is keeping its development going for at least the near future because it’s the version that the Damn Small Linux book is based on.

As far as competition among the smaller-footprint distros go, Robert said there’s no bad blood between DSL and Puppy Linux. “We’re doing our own thing — there’s no rivalry,” he said.

I mentioned the nascent Damn Small BSD project to Robert, and all he would say was that DSL’s John Andrews was looking into the situation. I took that to mean they’re not ecstatic about another project appropriating the “Damn Small” name.

OpenBSD: Getting X right

Hardware configuration in OpenBSD is better than I thought it would be. My optimism largely stems from the fact that OpenBSD boots at all on this computer, which won’t even get you to a boot prompt in NetBSD, FreeBSD, any variety of Red Hat past version 3, PCLinuxOS … it’s a long list.

Another good thing about the way OpenBSD installs is that while it begins in a minimal configuration, you do have the choice of running with or without X. I chose to install everything, which included X and the Fvwm window manger. While the 15-inch CRT monitor and video chip I have on this converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (with VIA C3 Samuel processor) can do 16-bit color and 1024 x 768 resolution, X autoconfigured at 800 x 600.

I tried “forcing” 1024 x768 and 16-bit color, but it kept reverting to 800 x 600. I got the same resolution on the OliveBSD live CD based on OpenBSD. I didn’t necessarily need to see another version of OpenBSD, but since I had one — Anonym.OS — that autoconfigured at 1024 x 768 and looked great in Fluxbox, I loaded it and looked at the xorg.conf.

What it had that my OpenBSD install didn’t was specified values for HorizSync and VertRefresh.

I entered those values:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “Monitor Model”
HorizSync 31.5 – 48.5
VertRefresh 50.0 – 90.0
EndSection

Then I restarted X and had 1024 x 768 resolution.

But … after only a few minutes, X crashed. I could ctrl-alt-backspace out of it and start X again, but it kept happening.

I had already turned on “screen blanking” in the console, so I turned it off. Still X crashed.

Then I rebooted and loaded Puppy Linux 3.01. In Puppy, you generally have to choose your color depth and monitor resolution, and I did so, started the system and looked at xorg.conf.

The HorizSync values were the same, but the VertRefresh was different. I made the following modification to OpenBSD’s xorg.conf, and now X has been running continuously for over 12 hours:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “Monitor Model”
HorizSync 31.5 – 48.5
VertRefresh 56.0 – 72.0
EndSection

Again, it pays to know what your monitor and video card is capable of before you start hacking into xorg.conf. It’s always a good idea to copy the original and each configuration that’s in any way promising so you won’t lose it.

OpenBSD: Getting X right

Hardware configuration in OpenBSD is better than I thought it would be. My optimism largely stems from the fact that OpenBSD boots at all on this computer, which won’t even get you to a boot prompt in NetBSD, FreeBSD, any variety of Red Hat past version 3, PCLinuxOS … it’s a long list.

Another good thing about the way OpenBSD installs is that while it begins in a minimal configuration, you do have the choice of running with or without X. I chose to install everything, which included X and the Fvwm window manger. While the 15-inch CRT monitor and video chip I have on this converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (with VIA C3 Samuel processor) can do 16-bit color and 1024 x 768 resolution, X autoconfigured at 800 x 600.

I tried “forcing” 1024 x768 and 16-bit color, but it kept reverting to 800 x 600. I got the same resolution on the OliveBSD live CD based on OpenBSD. I didn’t necessarily need to see another version of OpenBSD, but since I had one — Anonym.OS — that autoconfigured at 1024 x 768 and looked great in Fluxbox, I loaded it and looked at the xorg.conf.

What it had that my OpenBSD install didn’t was specified values for HorizSync and VertRefresh.

I entered those values:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “Monitor Model”
HorizSync 31.5 – 48.5
VertRefresh 50.0 – 90.0
EndSection

Then I restarted X and had 1024 x 768 resolution.

But … after only a few minutes, X crashed. I could ctrl-alt-backspace out of it and start X again, but it kept happening.

I had already turned on “screen blanking” in the console, so I turned it off. Still X crashed.

Then I rebooted and loaded Puppy Linux 3.01. In Puppy, you generally have to choose your color depth and monitor resolution, and I did so, started the system and looked at xorg.conf.

The HorizSync values were the same, but the VertRefresh was different. I made the following modification to OpenBSD’s xorg.conf, and now X has been running continuously for over 12 hours:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
VendorName “Monitor Vendor”
ModelName “Monitor Model”
HorizSync 31.5 – 48.5
VertRefresh 56.0 – 72.0
EndSection

Again, it pays to know what your monitor and video card is capable of before you start hacking into xorg.conf. It’s always a good idea to copy the original and each configuration that’s in any way promising so you won’t lose it.

Is the mini PC market dead — or more alive than ever?

That’s the question George Ou’s article is really answering. He hits VIA for charging a premium for its mini-ITX mainboards (which go for twice as much as the average micro-ATX board and, while often fanless and low in power consumption, don’t come anywhere near approaching the specs of the mainstream boards).

But he champions Intel for offering its own mini-ITX mainboard for the low, low price of $69.

Hell, I didn’t know about this … and I want one. Now.

I’m a huge mini-ITX fan — a huge fan of PCs that are small, consume little power and have no fans in general. And if Intel wants to take this market, I’m all for it.

Quad-boot overshoot

In my geeky haze, I forgot to blog about my triumph last week: I set up the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHZ Pentium II with a whopping 64 MB RAM) to triple-boot Windows 2000, Puppy Linux 2.14 and Damn Small Linux 3.3.

I managed to do them in order, so first Puppy (a traditional, not frugal install due to the low RAM) installed GRUB for me, and then when I added DSL (frugal install), a new GRUB bootloader was added, and that one did pick up Windows (and DSL, of course) but not Puppy. So I found /boot/grub/menu.lst in the Puppy install, copied the code over to DSL’s GRUB, and I was able to boot Windows, Puppy and DSL from the GRUB screen.

It was a geek-in-training triumph.

So yesterday I figure I can perform the same magic on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, the 1 GHz VIA C3 processor/256 MB RAM box that I use to test distros. I have three hard drives that I can switch in and out via a long IDE cable that allows the drives to sit on the desk next to the thin client box.

I had my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Windows 2000 drive hooked up. So first I add a frugal-istall of Puppy 2.14. I manage to get Ubuntu back into the new GRUB. And then I make yet another partition and try to add a frugal install of DSL. I figure that if I can do it WITHOUT a new GRUB, I can modify the Puppy Grub to account for DSL and have a quad-boot machine.

Long story short, DSL won’t alllow an automated install without GRUIB, and pretty soon I can only boot DSL and Windows — no Puppy, no Ubuntu.

I worked on if for a little while, but today I just decided to get rid of all the Linux partitions and start over.

For the first partition after Windows, I made a 512 MB Linux swap file. Then I made one big partition for Ubuntu and let the installer do its thing. The 140 updates I needed after the 6.06 install just finished.

I hadn’t made that many mods to my old Ubuntu, so it won’t take me too long to get this one where I want it. And I can start fresh with my Flash problem.

Bottom line: It’ll take me awhile before I become a GRUB master.

What I took away: Puppy and DSL are fast, but they run even faster when installed to the hard drive. My previous installs of both have been “traditional,” but the “frugal” install is better for both because it’s simpler. You have maybe 3 or 4 large files on the partition, allowing for a very easy upgrade — just drop in the new files to go to the next version.

You can even have a frugal install in a partition being used for something else, I think — as long as you know how to boot it, it can coexist with another distro.

My triple boot did work — Windows, Puppy and DSL. I should give up, but I probably won’t. I think install order is important (in lieu of really mastering GRUB).

And I’m almost through with needing to put Windows on these boxes, so it’ll be all Linux (and maybe some BSD) in the future. Next time I’ll try DSL first, then Puppy, and then Ubuntu/Mepis/what have you. Or I could just try to really, really understand GRUB and all things about the master boot record.

After five months of Linux, I do Windows

When was the last time you installed Windows NT 4.0? If your answer is “never,” I believe you. If you’ve done it countless times, do I have your sympathy? I need it.

My most recent major Windows upgrade (chronicled on my This Old PC blog) was taking a Win 98se box to Windows 2000. For those who think Windows has some kind of compatibility advantage over Linux, let me recount how in Windows 98 I didn’t have a prayer of getting my cheap Airlink 101 wireless card to work, USB was spotty, and the thing was painfully slow to boot and to run.

Once I did the upgrade to Windows 2000 and added all the service packs and upgrades to that old 333 MHz PC, I was able to get wireless to work, but it didn’t last long. Soon enough, the PC stopped recognizing the card (even though Puppy Linux always recognized it but could never make it work … but that’s another story).

So in the interests of comparing Windows performance with Linux on the same hardware — my test machine, a Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA Samuel processor, 256 MB RAM, mini-ITX motherboard (which I now know is called a “micro-mini-ITX, measuring 17 x 19 centimeters) with single IDE header, single RAM socket, built-in networking, graphics and sound) — I will endeavor to install a Windows system, download enough open-source applications to make it work and see how Windows does in my various desktop tests.

My Windows 2000 Professional disc is labeled as an upgrade, so I get out the only working Windows full-install disc I have — Windows NT Workstation 4.0, circa 1996. I have some trouble formatting the 14.4 GB IDE drive — the installer keeps saying the drive or partition is too big. So I keep making it smaller until I can continue. I end up with a 4 GB partition for the C: drive. I have the choice of a FAT or NTFS filesystem, and I opt for NTFS. The partition is initially formatted as FAT, but I decide to continue on, and it is converted to NTFS a little later in the install.

The process goes pretty well, except for my network controller, which isn’t detected — and I have no idea which driver to choose. Once I do select an alternate, I have to go on the install disc and look for it … nothing automatic or helpful there.

So I play around with Windows NT 4.0 for a few minutes. Among its stellar attributes are Internet Explorer for NT version 2.0 (and remember, I had no networking, so I couldn’t really try it out). And then there are the usual suspects — WordPad, NotePad, the calculator — all the exciting things a bare Windows system is known for.

My only chance is the upgrade to Windows 2000. In my unschooled opinion, Windows really only became useful in the world of wireless networking and USB with Windows 2000, and I’ve had pretty good luck with it on my Pentium II box, my wireless problem notwithstanding. And I’ve said many times how much I like Windows XP (for which I don’t have a disc, or I would install that).

And since I could only create a 4 GB partition for Windows, there’s plenty of room to dual-boot with the Linux of my choice.

I get a couple “spoolsv.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created” messages, but the “successfully installed” message does appear, and the system reboots. However, upon logging in, the message reappeared.

But I am able to continue.

The good news: Windows 2000 finds my network adapter.

The not-so-bad, but not-great: It doesn’t remember my static IP settings, so I re-enter them.

The nice thing about Windows 2000, as opposed to Windows 98, is that when you make a change to the network parameters, there’s no need to reboot.

The graphics look like total crap. For some reason, the highest resolution I can select is 800 by 600 with 16 colors (not 16-bit, but 16 COLORS). I haven’t seen graphics this bad since … we had Windows 98 (not even the “se” edition) here at the Daily News. Ah … fond memories of crap hardware. And I’m back in the wonderful world of Internet Explorer 5. I’m looking at the Dailynews.com home page, which is lousy with Flash, and now the browser is asking me whether or not I want to install the Adobe Flash Player. I accept, even though I’ve got to get IE 6 and Firefox on this box. Not to mention Open Office, the GIMP (for which I’ll need to also get the GTK+ runtime libraries), AbiWord, Irfanview, EditPad and so much more.

During the Flash install, IE crashes. Just like old times. Now I can’t run IE at all — it crashes upon launch every time. Thanks MS and Adobe! I reboot and regroup.

IE is still spotty, I can’t figure out how to remove Flash, but I’ve managed to keep it running. Now I’m going to do a Windows Update, which should take plenty of time. Right now it’s hanging — but that’s typical with Windows Update, something I do have experience with.

Windows Update hangs, IE crashes … I manage to find the Macromedia folder and move it to My Documents. I still can’t delete it — one of the files is “in use.” Remember files you can’t delete? It’s one of the many charms of Windows.

My “Windows Update” is hanging … literally … but now that I can actually use IE, I’m downloading all the open-source software I’ll need for my test. Compared to the average Linux distribution’s package management, this is brutal … a hanging Web page. I’ve encountered this in the past, and what I do is start the Windows Update process and then walk away from the computer for as many hours as it takes. I’m not all that confident at the moment.

AbiWord, the GIMP and the GTK+ runtime libraries, and Firefox all download in minutes. Open Office still has half an hour to go (much of this is due to a slow mirror). I begin to download the free Avast antivirus package and discover something: There’s a version for Linux. I’m no expert on viruses or antivirus programs, and I’ve heard that viruses are rare in Linux, even rarer for Mac’s OS X … but it’s nice to know that antivirus protection is available.

Back to the Windows install … now the system isn’t recognizing my USB flash drive … so much for transferring files that way. (Later it comes back in Windows 2000.)

After the Windows Update goes nowhere, I get an idea. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, probably changed the Web address. I go to Microsoft.com and navigate to the Windows 2000 home page. Now Windows Update starts working. You’d think MS would offer a “redirect,” but clearly they’re not paying much attention to the pre-XP crowd.

First I have to install Service Pack 4. Do I have to get IE 6 separately? I think so.

Application aside: I’m writing this entry in AbiWord for Windows. I love an application that’s small, loads fast and does what I want. Give me the option of “typographical” (aka “smart”) quotes, and I’ll go to the mat for you as best word-processor ever.

Installing the GIMP: The GTK+ runtime environment is a ZIP file … and with Windows, you can’t unzip without installing an unzipping program. So I have to download PKZIP.

PKZIP for Windows 9 asks for a license key. I opt for the “30 day trial.” After a few months of Linux, I forgot that Windows doesn’t even allow you to unzip a file without paying extra.

I get GIMP installed, and now I’m installing Open Office. My 4 GB of disk space is rapidly filling. I have space left to create a new partition … but can I make this partition bigger? Working with Windows disks is far from my strong point. And no, I don’t have Norton. It’s great that users of Windows need to keep paying for essential utilities.

1.8 GB of my 3.9 GB C: drive is full now.

Once I have Open Office installed, I can close it and relaunch in under 5 seconds in this Windows 2000 environment. I know that it only launches so quickly because most of it is preloaded in RAM, whether I’m running it or not — but it remains impressive, and if OO was that important to me, I’d appreciate the quick loading and tolerate the drain on system resources. That said, I’d like the preloading to be user-selectable, both in Windows and Linux (where OO doesn’t sit in RAM waiting to be launched, I believe).

Even in Windows 2000, my graphics remain at 800 x 600 at 16 colors, and everything looks terrible? On this monitor and with the built-in VGA in the thin client, I can do 1024 x 768 in Linux at 16-bit color, not just 16 colors.

AbiWord launches as quickly as it does in Linux.

I try to start GIMP. It won’t run. Too bad I dumped the install files. The much-smaller Irfanview does launch. The one thing I don’t like about Irfanview is that when I shrink a photo to, say, 200 pixels wide, and then add a 1-pixel black border, the photo is now 202 pixels wide. The GIMP (and most other programs) cut in on the photo with the border and retain the original dimensions. It’s something I can live with. But I wonder why the GIMP won’t run. I did install the GTK+ environment.

After another install, GIMP still won’t run. So I go down a version to 2.0.5. During the install of that version, I am told my GTK+ is too old … so I install THAT again, and finally get GIMP 2.0.5 to run. Now my graphics still look like hell — I can’t really see what any images really look like — it all looks like pixilated pop art — but I do have the GIMP. And it loads in 20 seconds. I had load times between 20 and 30 seconds with GIMP in Debian 4.0, and 60 seconds in Xubuntu on this same computer. But as far as selecting and editing photos, Win 2000 is useless with the current state of the display. I think I need a Super VGA driver. Hunting down video drivers is not something I’ve had to deal with in a long time.

Now that GIMP 2.0.5 did install, I retry 2.2, and it goes through. The new GIMP starts in a little over 20 seconds — same as the older version.

Firefox starts in about 10 seconds — pretty good. It’s a lot slower on my 333 MHz system.

The next day, I decided to try a clean install from the Windows 2000 disc. The disc detected my previous Windows install but still let me start over — and this time I could make the disc partitions of my choosing. So I made a 6 GB C: drive and a 2 GB D: drive, with with the rest left for future Linux partitions.

On this second install, I hope my VGA/Super VGA problem will be taken care of. Hopes dashed, I still have 800 x 600 with 16 colors.

Now I have the base Windows 2000 installed, so it’s time to install Service Pack 4 and then do all the updates — 55 of them.

And while these updates were downloading and now installing, I decided to lift the cover on the thin client’s box and once again try to identify the motherboard. I knew it wasn’t a VIA, even though that’s the maker of the CPU and chipset. I see the letters EVEM written in the middle, and do a Google search for that. Turns out it is an EVEm motherboard from ECS, with a PDF manual here and a page of BIOS and driver updates here.

The manual confirmed what I already knew from Maxspeed — the memory maxes out at 256 MB. I wish it weren’t so, because 512 MB would make things so much easier. The manual’s somewhat detailed info on BIOS settings will be helpful. And there is a video driver, which just might be very helpful in Windows, bringing my resolution past 800 x 600 (no driver needed for any Linux I’ve tried, of course).

After the Windows updates install, I download PKZIP again (all the downloads from yesterday’s install died with it), then download the ECS video driver for Windows 2000. I do the install, reboot and have 1024 x 768 video in 16-bit color. The 15-inch monitor looks better in 800 x 600, but most Web pages I’m using won’t fit comfortably in that space, so I’ll keep it cranked up for now. At least the colors look good.

I didn’t have to wipe the drive and do the Win 2K reinstall today, but I was able to create a bigger C: drive than with the NT 4.0 base, and I had to see if Windows 2000 as a base would take care of my driver problem (it didn’t). And in the meanwhile, I learned exactly what kind of motherboard I have and now possess a 40-page PDF manual describing it in some detail. But the big coup in learning where the motherboard came from was finding the video driver that enabled the display to look normal.

So I download the PDF manual on the thin client (I found it on my Dell box while the updates were rolling). … and I can’t open it. Windows 2000 doesn’t come with a PDF reader. … Gotta go to Adobe and download one. I’ve gotten used to not needing to do that — once again, every Linux distro I’ve tried has built-in PDF support, all for reading PDFs and most for creating them, too.

After the Windows 2000 install is done, there is plenty of space left. I have a Ubuntu 6.06 LTS disc, so I install that — and all goes perfectly. Ubuntu installs GRUB, detects my Windows partition and allows for dual-booting, all without heavy geeking of any kind. Why 6.06 and not 7.04? Since Windows 2000 is old and “stable,” I figured I’d put the most stable Ubuntu around on it.

Overall the Windows 2000 install process went OK. It was no harder than installing the many Linux distros I’ve tried (the ones that worked, anyway) and certainly no easier. And for the hardware I have, it is generally detected better in Linux than by Windows.

The biggest difference between Windows and Linux is that Microsoft’s OS comes to the desktop with very bare bones. There’s IE5, Wordpad, Notepad … and not much else. But the average Linux distribution contains dozens of utilities, full office suites, powerful graphics programs, multiple text editors,mail and FTP clients and much more. And all of that software is FOSS (free, open-source software) not shareware that compels you to pay if you want to keep using the program beyond a short trial period.

Since I already had the Windows 2000 disc, it cost me nothing to install it. But if I didn’t have it, I’d be hard pressed to fork over a couple hundred bucks for the privilege of using Windows. And the greatest thing about Linux, with its many distros, desktops and applications is that you can try and never have to buy. It’s a powerful thing, indeed.

Wrestling with Xubuntu Feisty

I spent the day upgrading my new Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) installation to Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty), and since Xubuntu is derived from Ubuntu, far and away the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, I expected — and still expect — a lot more from it.

During my nearly month-long Thin Puppy Torture Test (chronicled extensively in this blog), I managed to get quite a bit of work done with my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (1 GHz VIA processor, 256 MB RAM, no disk drives at all), most of it related to producing this and other Daily News blogs. From extensive Web surfing to light photo editing, heavy writing and use of Movable Type for Web publishing, Puppy Linux 2.14 performed admirably, even if, along the way, I lost the ability to mount external drives and couldn’t really deal with large audio files due to the lack of available memory. But for the basics, Puppy did the job, day in and day out.

With Xubuntu, I hooked up a 14.4 GB hard drive and a 32x CD-RW drive. And by the time I installed Xubuntu, I expected to get even more real work done. This time I seek to up the ante, doing work for Dailynews.com, which entails working with larger photo files (downloaded from services such as GettyImages.com and WireImage.com, although the latter offers a choice of smaller images to begin with).

And eventually, it means, installing some version of Wine (allowing use of Windows programs without the Windows OS installed), with Internet Explorer 6 running, because the Daily News Web publishing system requires IE. (And for the love of God, WHY??)

As far as text editors go, I can use just about anything. Even the anemic Mousepad editor that comes with Xubuntu would be OK, even though I prefer Geany, and even EditPad for Windows. And since Xubuntu’s word processor, AbiWord is so light on resources and quick-loading, that could really serve as a text editor for my purposes.

And when it came to image editing, Xubuntu offers the GIMP, which though part of the GNOME office suite (featuring the loosely tied-together AbiWord, Gnumeric for spreadsheets and the GIMP), is a true resource hog, taking a full minute to load in Xubuntu on my 1 GHz box. For my purposes at least, I’m very familiar with the GIMP, as I’ve been using the Windows version for at least a year (and never having used Photoshop, had nothing to “unlearn”). So already the GIMP is a mismatch for Xubuntu, if indeed one is running it on “low-spec” hardware. I missed mtPaint from Puppy (which I just might install for Xubuntu, if I can figure it out), but I didn’t miss the paint program that comes with Damn Small Linux, which doesn’t do nearly what I need.

Long story short, I did work on about five photos for Dailynews.com, but the times required to save them in the GIMP really had me thinking about whether or not Xubuntu on this platform could handle this level of work. But I had to stop myself. I don’t recall working with original images this big in Puppy 2.14. I mostly took images already sized for the Web and then made them even smaller. Even the GIMP in Xubuntu could make relatively quick work of that. And as far as general Web work with Firefox in Xubuntu, it went smoothly. I was even able to add the Flash plug-in for Firefox without working up a geekish sweat (translation: no command line needed, no Synaptic Package Manager, just clicking in the bar on Firefox to get the needed plug-in — it was positively Windows-like).

When I write my full-length review of Xubuntu, I’ll recount my odyssey of getting network printing working. Yes, it did take me most of the day, and yes, I’m surprised at how unintuitive Xubuntu’s printer-configuration utility actually is (I gave up and used the CUPS interface), and I’m shocked that I got printing working much, much easier in both Puppy and DSL (and MepisLite … and Slax and Knoppix and even standard Ubuntu Dapper). But that’s another battle to recount on another day.

Suffice it to say that my first full day with Xubuntu Feisty was maybe a bit less bumpy than expected, especially given the high expectations I have for something that’s billed as a speedier version of the hottest desktop Linux distribution on the planet — however dubious such a distinction may be.

But in my search for answers on whether or not Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop interface is truly ready for real work (or at least for what it is that I do to put out Web pages and newspapers), I’m going to have to compare it to Zenwalk 4.4.1, which features the same interface but is built upon Slackware, as opposed to Ubuntu/Xubuntu’s base of Debian. And I’ll have to do a traditional hard-drive install of Puppy to see how it performs in that kind of traditional install (and whether that kind of setup allows me to deal with the kinds of large files that I do, in fact, have to process during the course of my day).

And last … and only least if you think of it that way … I will do a standard Windows 2000 install on the 1 GHz thin client (because I’ve got a 2000 disc and not one with XP on it) … load it up with the requisite open-source apps (Open Office, AbiWord, the GIMP, Avast antivirus, Firefox, even SeaMonkey) to have a truly well-played field on the same hardware before drawing any definite conclusions in the battle for OS supremacy on my low-spec desktop. And honestly, as I work on this entry at home on an iBook G4 1 GHz/384MB laptop with OS X 10.3.9, and seeing how well it runs, I can’t leave Apple and its BSD-derived operating system out of the equation.

The next step for my thin client

As I wrote in the final Thin Puppy Torture Test entry, I wanted to try some other distributions with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, so I finally shut it down.

After that, I opened up the box, unplugged the CF-to-IDE adapter and plugged in a 14.4 GB IDE hard drive by IBM and a 32X TDK CD-RW drive. I had trouble before even booting many Debian-derived Linux distributions, and I’m not exactly well-versed in the jumper settings for a hard drive and CD drive chained to a single IDE interface (there’s only one IDE plug on this VIA-equipped Mini-ITX motherboard).

After leaving both drives as masters, nothing was happening, so I made the HD the master and the CD the slave, and then both were recognized by the BIOS.

And since this is a thin client, there’s nowhere to physically mount any drives, so the thin client box is on its side, with the power cable (I had to use a splitter to power both drives from the single power plug) and IDE ribbon cable poking out from the box and the drives stacked on top of it. Man, I didn’t know that a hard drive throws off so much heat. It’s a far cry from when the thin client was running Puppy 2.14 from a Compact Flash card.

So I had a bunch of discs ready to try. I had previously booted Zen Walk 4.2, so I didn’t want to try that one right away. The Fedora Core live CD wouldn’t boot — it kept rebooting the machine in a loop without actually doing anything. I tried to run the alternate install CD of Xubuntu 6.10, and the install went pretty far before I got repeated warnings like this:

Debootstrap Warning
Warning: Failure while installing base packages. This will be re-attempted up to 5 times.

I hit enter and kept going a bunch of times, but the install just wouldn’t happen. Previously, the Xubuntu live CD wouldn’t run, so I didn’t even try it.

I tried openSUSE’s net-install CD, and that wouldn’t boot either.

Now this box is pretty untypical and tempermental — when I first got it, the only thing that would run was Puppy Linux. DSL wouldn’t boot then, but I tried it again and it not only booted but installed on the hard drive. Near the end of the install, the installer script told me I’d have to reboot, and I figured the system would do it automatically. It didn’t, so I rebooted with ctrl-alt-del. The machine restarted and asked me to set root and user passwords (I elected multi-user during the install). I set the password and was off and running with the new DSL 3.3 on my hard drive!

The fact that of all the Linux distributions I’ve tried, I’ve only gotten Puppy, DSL and Zen Walk to boot is a testament to the people who put them together.

I should probably try to install Xubuntu again … or Zen Walk, possibly dual-booting with DSL (I selected Grub as the boot loader, not that I know how to tweak it yet).

But so far, DSL 3.3 is running great on the thin client. Configuration of static IP networking was easy — it’s pretty much the same as in Knoppix, with a terminal window opening and a standard script running. I haven’t checked the sound yet (gotta plug in the headphones), but I’ll do that soon.

And I’m writing this entry on Firefox 1.0.6, the main browser with DSL 3.3, which also offers the light Dillo that runs so great in Puppy (but which really can’t do Movable Type as well as a CSS-equipped browser).

As I wrap up this entry, I have no doubt that just about all of these distros mentioned would install on a “normal” system, and I acknowledge and understand that a thin client with a rare motherboard, non-Intel (or AMD) CPU and single IDE header might be far from normal, but the fact that some distros will boot on this somewhat exotic platform begs the question — why won’t they all?

Puppy Linux 2.15CE has a few new tricks

Given how similar Puppy 2.14 was to 2.13, I was wholly unprepared for how different the latest Puppy release, 2.15CE (community edition), is from its predecessors.

First of all, it looks completely different. That’s because IceWM is the default window manager for Puppy 2.15, although the old standby JWM (Joe’s Window Manager) is still available. And aside from the radical change in GUI, the desktop background is darker (and less “puppy” themed) than in distros past. Still, the Menu key on the bottom left does have a paw print.

Under Settings-Themes in the main Puppy menu (accessible, as always, by right-clicking anywhere on the screen), you can alter the look of your desktop very easily.

Under IceWM, Puppy remains lightning-fast — it sure was on my Dell 3 GHz Optiplex GX520 with 512 MB RAM.

All my configuration information from the previous Puppy version was picked up from my pup_save.2fs file when I booted 2.15 for the first time, so my networking, screen resolution and printing were already set up.

When I brought up a Web page, the fonts in the SeaMonkey browser looked “funny,” or at least different. The change was due to SeaMonkey being configured to use a serif font instead of the usual sans-serif. Pages looked strange to me, but everything is displaying normally enough. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, though, because it’s easy to change to sans-serif under the SeaMonkey Edit menu (go to Preferences, then Appearance, then Fonts, then pick sans-serif for whatever seems appropriate. I did just that, and everything then looked like it was “supposed to.”

Despite the SeaMonkey change, other apps in the new Puppy, like AbiWord, look terrific with the new window manager. The fonts appear crisper, and as I said, it’s just as quick in IceWM as in JWM.

But here’s the big “secret” in Puppy 2.15: Restart with JWM (from the Shutdown manager) and you are back in the old Puppy window manager — and when you do, it looks like you have about TWICE AS MANY APPS in the menus. Open Office, yep. Scribus, yes; the Gimp, Blender … but none of these apps actually run until you download the proper packages (I haven’t gotten to that yet). I assume that they will be accessible from both window managers at that point. (Note: these apps are characteristic of the GrafPup package.)

The Puppy Software Installer (a new utility) is where these packages seem to be, and it looks easy to use. The PETget package manager is still there, and it appears to duplicate the work of the PSI, albeit with fewer apps. I think the PETget packages are more “official,” while the PSI contains the old “dotpup” applications. I’ve heard about apps availabe as .SFS “squash files,” especially the ones that crop up in the JWM menus so that’s something else I’ll have to look into.

When you first load the SeaMonkey Web browser, it tells you all about 2.15CE’s downloadable Expansion Packs — just click on what you want (from Open Office to the GIMP, Opera, Audacity, even KDE, and follow the instructions (or at least that’s what I’m led to believe).

Also new — and on the Seamonkey home page — are “online applications” — things you can do via the browser for word processing, presentation, spreadsheets, image editing, office suite, chess and more. I plan to check these out, sinc I have a great insterest in apps delivered over the Web.

There is also 3DCC (under System) to “install drm-modules to enable accelleration for your kernel,” Open GL for 3d apps, and the Nvidia drivers for those who have monitors that require them.

The many configuration Wizards under the Setup menu are one of the best parts of Puppy. They make setting up a system easier than any other Linux distribution I’ve tried. A new Wizard — the Defaults Wizard — enables you to see the “default” program that will run for 15 separate tasks, from Web browsing to word processing, drawing, spreadsheet, contacts and more. And it makes it easy to change those apps. For instance, if you want your “write” icon on the desktop to load AbiWord, that’s the default, but if you have installed Ted or even Open Office Write, you can make those the go-to app when you click that “write” icon. A great tool.

For some reason, the “free ram” counter did not show up in JWM, as it does in previous Puppies. But it’s there in the default IceWM desktop environment.

Another new thing in Puppy 2.15: When you’re in ROX-Filer, photo-file icons now feature minature images (like in Windows XP) — a very welcome addition.

The Shutdown menu from 2.13/2.14 is missing in the IceWM version of Puppy 2.15. In the new GUI, i can quit X from the menu (or ctrl-alt-backspace from the keyboard), go down to a shell prompt and then poweroff or reboot (text instructions are on the screen), but I miss the elegance of directly rebooting and shutting down from the GUI. I know itn’s not Unix-geeky enolug, but I like the way it worked before.

Luckily when running JWM, the old Shutdown menu is right there. It all boils down to what you’re used to — and I’m the kind of peroson who doesn’t like to change things unless there’s a good reason … call me conservative, but hey, I’m running Linux, not Windows 2000 or XP, so I’ve got a little daredevil in me, right?

Curiously — at the prompt, xwin or startx will start IceWM. Some systems will only start a window manager with startx, and it’s nice to see Puppy allow for both commands.

Flash video still works great — Puppy being one of the select distros to provide Macromedia Flash right out of the box. Sure, it’s not open source, but Macromedia Flash has pretty much crushed Java and all the other streaming-video technologies in its YouTube-propelled wake. At least it’s better than Windows Media, right? (YES, right.)

At one point, I tried the “Change window manager” command in the menu, but instead of going from JWM to IceWM, I got a blank screen. Ctrl-alt-backspace wouldn’t kill X at this point, but ctrl-alt-del did shut it down. I didn’t do a whole lot of “change window manager” type stuff in 2.13 and 2.14, being a big JWM fan, so this could’ve been a problem in previous Puppies — I’ll have to look into it further.

Another thing that seemed to change in Puppy 2.15CE is the location of my SATA hard drive in the directory tree. In previous versions, it used to be under /mnt, but in 2.15 it is under /initrd/mnt and is called dev_save instead of sda1. It also was auto-mounted — something that didn’t happen in previous Puppies, in which you have to mount drives you’re not booting from. It’s an interesting change. Some people don’t like drives to be auto-mounted, but I’m on the fence with this one. Still, Puppy’s Mounting Utility Tool (a.k.a. MUT) remains easy to use if you want to check and change the status of other drives in your system.

And despite the different look, all the apps I’ve grown accustomed to using in Puppy are there: the AbiWord word processor, the Geany text editor, the SeaMonkey browser/e-mail/html editor suite, the light Dillo browser, the Gaim instant-messaging program, the ROX-Filer and the mtPaint image editor.

My overall impression of Puppy 2.15CE is a good one. But I wish all the packages I see on the JWM menus were included on the CD, along with clear instructions on how to either install or enable them. And from a quick perusal, it appears that adding the packages while using Puppy 2.15 as a live CD is one thing, but adding them to a hard-disk install is another. If it hasn’t been worked out already, I expect it will at some time soon. In Puppy, problems tend to get solved quickly, and the online community at the Puppy Forums is second to none in its ability to help users.

Still, I’m not prepared to give up Puppy 2.14, which I’ve been running for 22 days straight now on the Thin Puppy (a Maxspeed Maxterm 1 GHz thin client with 256 MB RAM and, since it died, no Compact Flash storage, nor a hard drive or CD drive). I’m used to it. And that’s the beauty of Puppy and other distros that are designed primarily to be used as live CDs. You can have a stack of them, with the option of booting any version that works for you — for your hardware and the work you’re trying to do.

The Puppy developers have been issuing new versions at a very quick pace. Looking at Distrowatch, between Sept. 14, 2006 (Puppy 2.10) and April 6, 2007 (Puppy 2.15), there have been six Puppy releases in under eight months — quite a pace.

One of the neatest features of Puppy is the pup_save.2fs file. When you are running from the live CD, you have the option of creating such a file when you shut down the system. I think it’s limited to 512 MB in size, but contained in that file are your downloaded applications and files. And when running from CD, you can keep the pup_save.2fs file on a USB flash drive. Or it can live on your system’s main hard drive, even if you’re not using that drive as a boot device. As for me, I like to keep a separate pup_save file on each box I run Puppy on. That way I have the settings unique to that computing environment saved.

As far as files go, I prefer to keep them on a USB flash drive so I can take them wherever I need them — and since Puppy plays well with both NTFS and FAT file systems, I generally format the drives as FAT so they can be read on a Windows system (and so I can work in any environment). The other advantage of keeping files on an external drive is that Puppy’s own file system, after booting, is contained entirely in RAM. That’s great for speed, but when you download anything large (like giant audio or video files), it all eats away at your free RAM and can really affect the system. But if you store your files on any other drive, be it flash or traditional hard disk, your memory stays fairly intact (except for things such as browser cache) and the whole computing experience under Puppy goes much better.

And if you do run Puppy with a traditional hard-drive install, it’s probably a good idea to either partition your drive and save your files on the partition, or use an external flash drive to keep those files portable. That’s because even when booting from hard disk, Puppy still keeps its file system in RAM. Again, it’s fast, but you run the risk of losing some of your work if you put the available RAM under too much stress. It’s not as much of a problem on machines with 512 MB or even 1 GB of RAM, but with 256 MB it’s essential, with 128 MB mandatory.

That said, if you’ve got some free memory left, saving standard text and image files (which is what I do generally) doesn’t even dent the free memory, and it’s OK to keep those in the RAM-based file system — Puppy even has a “My Documents” folder to make Windows types feel better. It’s probably a good idea, since in Puppy you’re always logged on as root, and there are no “user” files characteristic of a “normal” Linux system. There’s a bit of a debate about this on the Puppy forums, but those who program the system generally have a reason for it, and if I knew more about it, I’d delve further. As it is, I’m content to use the system as is.

And while many people do install Puppy to their hard drives, the majority probably run it from live CD with a pup_save file on the hard drive or an external USB flash drive. That’s probably the best-case use of Puppy. Your file system is easily backed up (just copy the pup_save.2fs file to another drive). And one of the benefits of Puppy running its file system in RAM is that writes to your flash media are kept to an absolute minimum, extending the life of your flash memory indefinitely.

But remember, if you want to download a 600 MB ISO file, you’re gonna have to put it on another drive or partition, or you’ll soon be in memory trouble. As long as you keep this in mind, Puppy is ultra-stable and is just so plain usable and fun, it remains my go-to distro.

Thin Puppy Torture Test — Days 17 and 18

Yesterday I took the Thin Puppy — the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client now running Puppy Linux 2.14 — to the brink. This thin client — with no storage other than RAM memory (I booted it from CD and then disconnected that drive; I lost the ability to mount the external USB flash drive on day 8), has been running with about 41 MB of free RAM for storage. And as I learned before the Thin Puppy Torture Test, when I only had 128 MB of RAM (I’m now at the maximum for this motherboard, 256 MB), Puppy doesn’t like it when you get really low on RAM.

I downloaded a podcast — about 35 MB, I think, and that took RAM very low. It was “Linux Action Show’s” interview with Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu (and I encourage you to listen to the show, since it’s very well-done).

Well, downloads to the RAM-based filesystem take away from … free RAM, and as I dipped below 8 MB free, the system didn’t exactly cooperate. I couldn’t run Gxine to listen to the podcast in OGG format — it just wouldn’t run, and there are two processes that I can’t seem to kill out of memory.

Eventually I downloaded the .mp3 version and played it with madplayer, which can’t be stopped or paused, but which does play .mp3s without skipping on this audio-challenged thin client.

So the Thin Puppy is now on its 18th day. I’ve been testing the new version of Puppy Linux (2.15CE) on my other box, and it’s quite a radical departure from previous versions. First of all, IceWM is the default desktop, and there are many other differences and enhancements. A full review is forthcoming.