Posts Tagged ‘gentoo’

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Screenshot October 09

Monday, October 5th, 2009

I update my system on a two-weekly basis. Apparently the last update I did something stupid like unmerging qt-*, which left me without a working KDE desktop for a good while (also killed most of the apps I use). Fluxbox is the WM I fall back to at this point, and so I was back letting it rip on mainly console apps. It so happens that it was Gentoo’s 10th Birthday too, and the lovely wallpaper that it comes with motivated me to redecorate my Fluxbox. Of course when I say “redecorate” I mean edit the theme a little and change the wallpaper. Anyway, here’s my little beauty (click for full res, of course):

2009-10-05-184023_1280x800_scrot

Happy (belated) birthday, Gentoo!

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Setting up FreeNX (nxserver-freenx) on Gentoo

Monday, September 28th, 2009

NX is, in laymans’ terms, some fancy technology that allows you to remote desktop control your computer. If you’ve used VNC before, where VNC simply works by sending screenshots over the internet, NX does cool stuff in between like compression that makes NX much faster and better.

NX is a pain to set up. Maybe it’s just my bad luck that something goes wrong every time I try to set it up, or perhaps I’m just plain stupid but I find it a pain and it normally makes me feel like chewing my ethernet cable after a while. A long while back I managed to get nxserver-freeedition working fine, but recently it stopped and in the process I decided to switch over to using FreeNX – an open-source implementation of NX. Here is how I got it up finally, mainly for archival purposes.

Before starting, you may want to clean your system. unmerge nxclient nxnode nxserver-freeedition nxserver-freenx, etc, rm -r /usr/NX (if freeedition), rm -r /etc/nxserver (if FreeNX), remove the nx user and the nx group, rm -r ~/.nx/ for all users.

  1. emerge nxclient
  2. emerge nxserver-freenx
  3. nxsetup --install --setup-nomachine-key --clean --purge (the –setup-no-machine key option means that you just need to use the default key that the nxclient comes with)
  4. Try to connect via nxclient, tail -f /var/log/messages, if it complains about the user being locked, do usermod -p foo nx, where foo is a password you’ll use.
  5. Start debugging why it doesn’t work.

When debugging I normally:

  • Make sure SSH works first. Refer to my sshd_config (obviously this is specific to my setup, but notice that PasswordAuthentication is set to yes, as that’s how you’ll authenticate with NX with nxclient)
  • Make sure you own your own authorized_keys(2) file, after a while of mucking about you might’ve screwed the permissions (600).
  • Check that you’re pointing at the right authorized_keys(2) file, though I didn’t need to bother about this with FreeNX, I know that this is a common mistake with nxserver-freeedition
  • I like to run SSH on port 443, so change to port 443 in /etc/nxserver/node.conf for FreeNX, and if using freeedition in /usr/NX/etc/server.cfg, node.cfg, whatever is specific to your setup.

As for my experience switching over to FreeNX from freeedition, honestly in terms of usability it’s no different at all, but personally in terms of installation procedure FreeNX wins by a mile. But for the moment I’m just happy I won’t be restricted by my school’s web filtering system and glitchy, laggy, virus-filled OS. Perhaps when NeatX stabilises a little I might check it out.

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You’re putting your mum on Gentoo? You’re mad.

Friday, August 21st, 2009

This is the second time I’m putting Gentoo on my mum’s computer. The first time was a good year or so ago – however my own old laptop got a hardware failure soon after and so I *ahem* took her computer. (I’m innocent I swear!) She’s decently computer illiterate and has always wanted to learn. She recently got a new laptop, an Acer Aspire 4535 (it comes without Windows pre-installed).

Had to install it using the SystemRescueCD as Gentoo’s minimal install didn’t have the module for my NIC. Xorg is compiling, the holidays are almost over, and it’s time to overload my schedule again.

To make this a bit more computer-relevant, I ask you: what do you suggest I do to help make it “easier” to use for someone like my mum? I am planning a cron-scheduled usual sync, update, revdep-rebuild. I don’t think I can automate the etc-update but that could pretty easy to train I think. Kernel updates is going to be a hassle. She wants KDE and so that means unstable packages.

Sounds fun.

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Lang-8: Learning languages the fun (and free) way.

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

logo_loggedinPeople that have known me for a while know three things. Firstly, they know me (well, duh). Secondly, they know that I know Chinese. Thirdly, they know that I just lied, I know how to pretend I know Chinese – actually I suck pretty darn bad at it. In fact, I suck at the whole pretending business too.

So the other day, I came across the original Chinese hacker dude who created the Shellex-overlay for running Chromium on Gentoo Linux. Unfortunately the blog post was in Chinese. I immediately enrolled myself in a chinese tuition class an-

No, I fired up Google translate and stole my brother’s Chinese girlfriend to properly translate sections that apparently read “building know not updated porridge“.

Well, I don’t really like languages. Not that I don’t think they’re really useful and stuff, I just don’t like them because 1) they suck, and 2) I suck at them. The reasoning I like to use for “they suck” is the theory behind natural languages, then moving on to mathematics and programming languages and showing how “look. 1=1 is 1=1″. However like a friend of mine, one of my pet peeves is people “who wan talk talk leik vely good you know wan liao!“. (a representative sample of the local accent and style of speaking here. (see Wikipedia entry on Manglish – it’s friggin’ made up of English, Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil – oh and you’d find “g’day mate” popping up once in a blue moon) – yeah, so I can’t exactly say being decent at a language is unimportant.

In fact language is really important. Especially when maintaining professionalism. You can’t argue – having good language skills are vital for…communicating well? Wow, that sounded bad.

…and for that reason when some Taiwanese guy lurking in the #gentoo-chat channel (sinsun) introduced me to the website Lang-8, I signed up. It’s a website where you can write journal entries (like a mini-blog) in another language, and other users who are native speakers of that language can come along and insult you.

So you know right away, I go allleady what lah and start correct the crap crap english udder people is writing wan.

No. I actually did start jocking up whatever was left of my 汉语 knowledge and now I’m learning that I sucked even worse than I thought I did. Well, it’s still an amazing website, and I’ve not seen one like it before. I would highly recommend it to anybody thinking to brush up on a foreign language. The correction system is pretty nifty (like crossing out stuff and highlighting) and it has one hell of an active community – you’d get responses literally minutes after you post it.

Feel free to add me as a friend, especially if you’re good at Chinese and can teach me how to say “Git repository” in Mandarin. My username there is “Moult”.

Note: I actually really do think having good knowledge of a language is very useful – up to the point where you start thinking “Here is a piece of paper” is some sort of symbolic metaphorical imagery for racism.

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rtm – a Command Line Tool for RememberTheMilk

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

2009-05-23-154648_1280x800_scrotBefore I begin my post, I’d like to apologise to all the Planet Larry readers for the 10 hours or so of downtime I caused sometime yesterday. I don’t always break things, and that borkage was, well – quite unintended. For the technically inclined, basically I had set some .htaccess restrictions on another domain which I forgot I was hotlinking files to. This carried over the .htaccess restrictions and as my blog was aggregated, this somehow carried over there too.

OK, back to what’s new and amazing. Some days ago I wrote an article on RememberTheMilk, a really awesome to-do list website (I have 60+ and counting tasks listed over there now!). However a main issue with it is that even though it’s extremely accessible through lots of mediums (phone, email, twitter, plasmoids, etc) – they are all graphical! We’re missing a command line interface for it!

Well, not quite so. With some Google-fu I found some French guy with a fetish for white rabbits (no, seriously this time I’m friggin’ sure he’s french) who made a command line tool. It’s not much more than a script, but that doesn’t stop me from me from putting it in the sunrise Portage overlay so Gentooer’s can get it! Actually, what did stop me was the fact that 1) I didn’t know how to write ebuilds, 2) I didn’t have an account to commit ebuilds to the sunrise-overlay, and 3) I didn’t have a GPG key (for part 2).

So, a while later learning about ebuild writing, getting a key and a commit-able account, babysat ever so generously by hwoarang and idl0r for the ebuild part and scarabeus for the key and account, I have today commited two ebuilds to the sunrise overlay (layman -a sunrise). The first is app-misc/rtm, which is the tool itself, and the second is dev-perl/WebService-RTMAgent, which is a Perl module (dependency for rtm). I’m not sure when it’ll get into the publicly approved sunrise overlay, but it’s definitely there in the developer checkout (Unless I borked up the commit).

So, install it, try it out on your architectures (I’m only ~amd64 dont’ forget), and enjoy! Hopefully this’ll mark the start of more Gentoo contribution. Or it will if I don’t get distracted and play this game about white rabbits. – or maybe this one, which is more related to rabbits – in more ways than one.

What the hell do rabbits and ebuilds have in common? :P Stupid French guy.

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Setting up SSH to work whilst at college.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Well, if you’re out and about quite a bit and you run a Linux computer at home, you should have a good relationship with SSH. If you’ve never felt the need to access your home computer remotely, this is what you should do.

For those that don’t know what SSH is, it is basically a network protocol (for example like FTP, SMTP, etc) that allows you to securely connect to another computer. For those that don’t speak jargon, it is some cool thing that allows me to use my computer remotely.

One of my well-visited locations is my college. I wonder why :P … and like most places, it runs Windows. Using a Windows computer leaves me feeling crippled and with a sense of repulsion at the most innocent of small creatures. Combined with my college’s restrictions, there is a lot of stuff I can’t do. For example, I can’t download a .doc file. Also, it is quite troublesome to constantly transfer files over with a memory stick, so I decided to set up SSH.

Little did I know how pathetically paranoid the IT technicians were.

Problem 1: setting up SSH and connecting to my dynamic IP.

The first step was to install (emerge openssh) and set up SSH. (I run Gentoo- the steps will be different for your distribution or if you are running Windows – say, you can set up SSH on Windows, can’t you?) This was simple. Now the problem here is that my IP keeps on changing. Especially because my ISP’s connection is quite volatile, my IP is dynamic and resets several times a day. The method to solve this was to set up a dynamic dns, available from dyndns.org. This is a free service, and allows me to connect to a sane domain name whilst a client running on my machine updates it regularly on the latest IP.

Problem 2: port 22 is blocked.

The next day I popped PuTTY on a thumb drive and tested it out – or at least tried to. I had a network connection refused error. Later that night I learned that most public networks blocked certain ports, for example port 22 which SSH normally uses.

The fix around this was to change the config in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to use Port 443. You see, whilst http:// defaults to port 80, https:// URLs default to port 443 – and are hence rarely blocked. Et Voila – you can now connect! However, I also run an Apache webserver. This clashes as it also tries to use port 443. As I don’t care to serve SSL webpages on my localhost, I decided it was a decent sacrifice, and I removed Apache’s HTTPS support by removing `-D SSL -D SSL_DEFAULT_VHOST` from /etc/conf.d/apache2. Tada. I can now access SSH at my college.

Problem 3: What about SCP? Surely you’d want to copy files over.

Well, transferring files over is another issue. It’s all good with your vast array of Command-Line-Interface applications for IRC, Vim text editing, file browsing, MSN, email, calendar and PIM, etc – but every so often you will have the need to transfer a file over. Sending yourself an email with a file doesn’t help, as my college blocks almost every single website out there aside from Google.com (note: Gmail is not Google.com – so it is blocked too). At the same time, it also blocks downloading every single file type aside from image files. The quick fix for this was to put the file on my Apache localhost, change the file extension to a .jpg or something then download it from there.

But no. Two problems occured. 1) My website was blocked – haha, and 2) the IT technicians filter it not by extension, but by actual file contents. To get past the website block, I run a proxy script on my webserver (there are plenty of free proxies out there too) to access my webserver. But then of course I’m stuck with the file filter. So looks as though it’s game over.

Not really, there’s always SCP. I couldn’t send files using my computer as I didn’t know the network information of my college network. So I decided to SCP using the college’s Windows computer. I hear there’s a program known as WinSCP which is pretty nifty, but at the time I only had PuTTY’s collection of tools and thus PSCP.EXE – which pretty much did the same thing – with one catch: it’s a CLI application. You see, they’ve also blocked the command prompt. OK – for understandable reasons.

To get myself a command prompt, I did the age old innocent command.com trick. This involves creating a plain text file (eg: .txt), putting the words `command.com` in it, and then saving it as cmd.bat. (Notice the changed file extension). This will give you a prompt to work with. Now – using that to run PSCP.EXE, I succesfully transferred my target file over – which was in this case a .doc file, which contained some homework.

What about the ethics of this?

Well. I personally feel as though these workarounds are anything but a way for me to do my work conveniently. The computer system is riddled enough with viruses as it is without my doing, and I doubt anybody will be motivated enough to have such a complicated setup unless they were either particularly vicious or needed a file really urgently (such as me at the time). But seriously – a learning centre blocking .doc files?

If you have more experience in networks than me and feel as though this article is innappropriate, feel free to contact me and I’ll willingly take it down.

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How to install Chromium (Google Chome) on Gentoo Linux

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Update: As of 27th August the buildbot now provides 64-bit builds. Thanks Jeff :)

The other day I was surfing the web and read an article about Google Chrome in some sort of hacking competition – this then prompted me to check out Google’s progress on porting Google Chrome to Linux and Mac. For those that don’t know Google Chrome is Google’s attempt at making a browser. So far it seems like a really good attempt.

It seems as though lately the Linux builds (I ignored the Mac stuff – but I hear it’s getting good too) seem to be getting to a usable state. Definitely not finished, definitely buggy, but usable. So, like any other Gentooer, I began trying to find out how to get it.

Step 1) Any ebuilds out there?

Why bother do hard work myself if somebody’s already put it in portage? With some google-fu it seems as though there are a couple ebuilds. One by the French, and another by the Chinese. The French one (have not tested) is available in the `THE` overlay, available by doing layman -a THE. The chinese one seems to be called “Shellex-overlay”, and can be accessed here. I’m not quite sure what the French one does as the ebuild didn’t really like my amd64 system (note: Google Chrome only supports 32-bit as of writing). However the Chinese one fared better and provided me with a binary. If you are on a 32-bit system (x86) you should try those ebuilds.

If you don’t want to compile from source, check the depencies list just a bit further down, then check out the build bot. Note: the build bot provides binaries for Windows, Linux AND Mac, so if you’re on a Mac, you’re in luck!

For more information, you should visit the Chromium Linux Building page.

Under `Prerequisites`, it lists down the dependencies as packaged by the Ubuntu system. Here is the list of dependencies as what Gentoo calls them:

  • Python >= 2.4
  • Perl >= 5.x
  • gcc >= 4.2
  • bison >= 2.3
  • flex >= 2.5.34
  • gperf >= 3.0.3
  • pkgconfig >= 0.20
  • nss >= 3.12
  • gconf
  • glib
  • gtk-engines-murrine
  • nspr
  • corefonts
  • freetype
  • cairo
  • dbus

Their version requirements are listed as needed.

Step 2) What about 64-bit systems?

There are several techniques of getting Chromium on a 64-bit system. However no matter what, I highly recommend that you create a 32-bit chroot. If you want to track each library individually and symlink your system to hell (as I first attempted), be my guest, but you’re wasting your time. So, first create a chroot by following this nifty guide.

Once you’ve got your chroot up, you can either try out the ebuilds I mentioned before, compile it yourself from source (via Google’s instructions) or be lazy and grab the binary from the Chromium build bot. I have tested the latter two techniques (can’t trust the French nor the Chinese!). To compile it yourself from source, follow the Chromium Linux Building page. Note: you will require quite a bit of HD space (the sources tarball itself is 640MB+), I also suggest you bootstrap from the tarball, the subversion checkout seems a lot longer and a waste of time really. Finally, if you’re just interested in getting the binary and running Chrome (not development), I would do use Release mode (see the building page for instructions). Of course, after making sure you have the dependencies I listed above, you should have Chrome compiled!

If you’re lazy and don’t want to compile, there is a build bot.

Step 3) Run Chromium on Linux!

At this stage, you should have the Chrome binary (either by compiling from source or ebuild, or getting the build bot binary). Now you just have to run the program and enjoy. If you’re running using the chroot, you should use the xhost hack. Do xhost local:localhost outside the chroot, then try run the binary again. Obviously you don’t want to waste time setting up X in the chroot.

Finally, here is a screenshot of Chromium running on Fluxbox! (I normally use KDE, but I wanted a more lightweight WM when compiling Chromium) You might also consider doing nice -n 10 when compiling if you want to continue doing your stuff. In fact, I’m running Chrome right now on KDE to write this post. It’s very fast, uses about 1% CPU, separates itself into different processes per tab, and so far seems pretty “stable”. However I have found that opening a file browse dialog (eg: in an upload form) makes Chromium jump up to about 50% CPU, which sucks.


Any thanks, issues or problems feel free to ask.

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kde-crazy: KDE Devs on Steroids!

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

I recently added the kde-crazy overlay to my portage. Aside from the rather nasty feeling in my gut (seriously, don’t put the word “crazy” when advertising unstable software, it scares people!), I also got access to the KDE snapshots. (What currently is version 4.1.80 – the stable is 4.1.3). Well, I don’t know about how it’s affected others, but though it’s definitely still glitchy and well … unstable … it’s already a huge improvement. Just wait until all the minor hitches are ironed out, then what we’ll have is KDE on steroids. The amount of noticable difference is amazing, it’s as though it’s catching up to a mature desktop already!

It’s hard to describe it all, so perhaps take a look at the screenshot below. In it you will see task grouping in the taskbar, more transparency in the taskbar, UI upgrades that make it look prettier (look at previous screenshots in my previous posts), desktop effects that work better, more plasma apps, a folder view as a desktop for traditionalists, custom glow colours around windows … well, here’s the screenshot: (click for higher resolution)

Of course, there are much more not shown in the screenshot, such as a prettier start menu (Oxygenised), Vim mode in Kate (woohoo!), upgrades to konqueror, a superb krunner, Strigi file indexing (seriously, I typed sc[rot] and it already popped up with loads of files), more desktop effects (with the almighty desktop cube), upgraded panel settings … wow, and I’m discovering new stuff all the time! I must say, it’s amazing how well the developers are doing! (It’s feature freeze now though).

I have been able to crash it though, the ZUI gives some nasty screen offsets if I use it too much, as well as plasma crashing every time I try to change back to a Desktop (instead of classic Folder View). The nepomuk thing lurking in my systray seems to have a habit of locking my X whenever I try to configure it too. Evil thing. Evil.

Aha, and as a final note, I’m finally using KDE without lag (or very very minimal lag)! Kudos to all the folks working on the nvidia-drivers, as installing the nvidia-drivers package (v180.11) from the berkano overlay significantly improved my graphics performance. Hurrah!

So anybody here still on a stable KDE, it’s time to get risky and install whatever kde snapshots your distro provides you with. It’s worth it (you can run both stable and unstable at the same time and choose which one to log into via kdm).

Finally, sorry for the lack of regular postage, as I’m somewhat busy with an upcoming exam (not to mention other things). However, I do believe I’ve got several posts in my drafts folder awaiting competition including a short (positive) rant about MVC frameworks in PHP, the ISSDC Aerospace competition, and another How to Use Your Computer part. So stay tuned.

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Gentoo, build it like Lego.

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

It seems as though I’m again too busy to come up with a proper long techy post. I decided to tackle an old problem that many people overlook: the ability to communicate the advantages of a project properly to potential customers.

Right now, I’m reffering to Gentoo. Gentoo is a Linux distribution which targets a very niche market of what normal people consider the geek elites. To put it in perspective, the #gentoo irc channel is a constant market of kernel builds, compilation issues, hardware discussion and other really geeky things. Why don’t you go in there and try take part, you’d find you’ll want to hide in a corner in shame. All your base are belong to us.

So what is the wonderful thing about Gentoo that makes people say “Yes! FUBAR is the way I like it!” Well, simply put, it’s maximum configuration. It’s pretty much the closest you can get before LFS takes over. You know everything you put into your system, where it is, why it’s there, when it’s going to go pop, how it upgrades, when it upgrades, how much space is taken, why your directory structure is like it is, why your sound works, why your printers work, how your internet works, how your LAMP setup works, what programs communicate with what, what packages are needed by desktop environments, what options each package has, what the source code of everything is … the list goes on … and on … (recurring)

So, how to communicate the ultimate build-it to break-it configuration to the average Joe? Let’s take a look at the steps I took to set-up the new laptop I’m now using over the past week.

  1. Download and burn Gentoo Minimal Install CD for amd64.
  2. Boot up, follow the Gentoo handbook, setting up Internet and compiling kernel as well as base system.
  3. Reboot and tada – Gentoo works. (I really didn’t type justice about that Gentoo installation stage, because if I did, I could write several essays)
  4. Emerge irssi (for IRC), links/lynx (for web-browsing), vim (because it is the meaning of life) and screen (for multitasking in console)
  5. Using screen, irssi and links simultaneously to follow the handbook and troubleshoot problems, set up the X server until you can run twm.
  6. emerge fluxbox and ratpoison, startx into fluxbox.
  7. Keyword ~arch for mozilla-firefox-bin, openoffice-bin, portage, gimp.
  8. Emerge portage, and get sets for KDE.
  9. Add xcomposite and opengl global useflags for special effects :)
  10. Emerge firefox, openoffice, gimp, and the entire @kde.
  11. Emerge kdeplasma-addons: can’t live without it.
  12. Emerge mplayer, alsa, cups.
  13. Configure alsa to work, configure cups for printing.
  14. Add appropriate useflags for a LAMP setup, then emerge apache, mysql, php, phpmyadmin.
  15. Configure LAMP setup.
  16. Configure sshd, and emerge pure-ftpd for ftp. Add them to boot-level.
  17. emerge scrot (of course!), cowsay (for hilarity!), x-sane (for scanners), then GVim (if you like the graphical version)
  18. Download Blender.
  19. Emerge libsdl – because Blender needs it.

Along the way, you’d probably want to emerge the necessary packages for slocate, lspci, lsof, etc. Well, that’s my general plan when setting up a system. I hope it helped somebody!

Sorry for the rush post, but I’ll probably add more detail in the future.

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Now with … 2.6.25-gentoo-r9!

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Being somewhat of a techy-related blog, I guess that should warrant a post on my recent battle with the Kernel gentoo-sources 2.6.25-gentoo-r9. The version I was running before was r7, which was sadly two revisions out of date. :( Even worse before that was I was using 2.6.24-r4. Which was a whole version out of date. To end with a climax, before that I was using 2.6.19-r5, which was FIVE versions out of date. This probablys shows I’m getting better at time management, or I’m getting more uncomfortable with the notion of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it“.

Using Gentoo, one is expected to be rather capable of compiling and configuring a linux kernel. Side effects include 1) a Gentoo user is therefore able to optimise a system for his/her hardware, and 2) the Gentoo Linux Distribution becomes one of the geekiest available. (trumped only by LFS). So there I was, poking around my list of packages when I noticed bah! I’m two revisions out of date. I woosh off in all glory to my /usr/src/linux, make menuconfig, zoom around enabling drivers and removing unnecessary crud (seriously, I thought reiserfs was dead? Even worse, it assumes I want OSS instead of ALSA?). Some minutes later, I save my configuration, quit, and compile make && make modules_install. Baah-dum-bah-bee. Flawless compile. Copy the bzImage to my /boot, (whoah, I’ve got a lot of old kernel builds there – I should remove them), name it something intelligent (like kernel-2.6.25-gentoo-r9), add a new entry into my grub.conf to boot to r9 as well as r7, then type in the magic word: “reboot”.

Oh, wait! – you say, where is the problem? No problem! (or so I thought) No kernel panics, no nothing fancy, no forgetting to add filesystem support … so I punch up startx, ratpoison, KDE loads, start surfing the web, chatting on Kopete, grooving along to my … wait, what? NO MUSIC? Panic. I check my mpc. It’s playing. I check my mpd, it’s on. Check alsamixer and whooooop-what? No alsamixer? Not good. Oh wait I said, I remember I removed it from runlevel to speed up boot-time. So I /etc/init.d/alsasound start. and then catastrophe strikes! No drivers detected?

Rush back to my kernel menuconfig, Device Drivers -> Sound -> ALSA (check OSS is disabled) -> PCI Devices -> hmm… Yes, I do have Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller enabled. Time to double check if that’s the right one. Read the doc on it, and yep – it’s snd-intel8×0 for sure. Perhaps it’s a module problem? Modprobe snd-intel8×0 gives me FATAL: NO MODULES FOUND. Oh no!

— Cut: I thought I could turn a very geeky issue into a dramatic story but apparently I was wrong —

Ok. So I ended up having to unmask alsa-driver and alsa-headers, then dump ALSA_CARDS=”intel8×0″ into my etc/make.conf, then emerge alsa-driver. How silly, in my opinion, that I should require a non-supported package after a kernel upgrade. I’ve sent the alsa-bugs guys an email asking them what’s going on, and hopefully I’ll get an answer soon about why the in-kernel driver no longer likes my computer.

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Gentoo installed (again).

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

My mum got a new laptop the other day and I’ve just put Gentoo Linux on it. *awaits exclamations of “WHAT!? … you cruel sick person.”*

Well, obviously I would hide everything that’s considered “complex” and keep her happy on a GUI all the time (KDE). That’s the great thing about Gentoo. You can make it exactly how you want it. So I can make it super user-friendly and people won’t tell the difference between it and something like Ubuntu. Or, I could even make it purposely crash randomly if I wanted to emulate The Windows Experience™.

The installation was flawless (I normally do something stupid and end up getting kernel panics), and took about 20 minutes (excluding time waiting for it to download source files and .isos at 5kb/s, and the time waiting for it to compile). Manual kernel config – flawless. No problems with setting up the xorg-server either. The Internet was pretty much plug and play.

Laptop is amd64, nvidia graphics card, 2gb RAM, 120GB HD space.

Congratulations to the Gentoo developers for creating such a great distribution!

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KDE 4.1.2 in main tree!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

For those who don’t know, KDE is a desktop environment (a GUI – graphical user interface) that can be used with Linux. In Linux, you choose what GUI you want, if you want one in the first place :)

The KDE v4.1.2 has moved from the overlay to the main portage tree on October the third. This should see a lot more people upgrading to the KDE 4 series. Quite shockingly, most of the screenshots you find of KDE 4 are for 4.0 and 4.1. I’ve decided to show you guys my desktop setup.

I am a KDE person, whenever I’m not using ratpoison, I use KDE. True, there is always Firefox, The GIMP, and OpenOffice, but Firefox can look great with Chromifox, The GIMP could use some gtk-engines, and OpenOffice knows well to look native everywhere. In my opinion. KDE looks pretty. Because I already have comfort zones with a large variety of console applications (irssi, mutt, vim, ncftp, devtodo, links, mplayer, etc), I’m not restricted to having to use a specific GUI because the majority of my programs use similar libraries. (Yes, you can run everything at once, but that’ll just take up unnecessary space). Therefore, the things that really sell a GUI to me (WM or DE – those stand for Window Managers and Desktop Environments), is their speed, beauty, and choice of inbuilt-apps. Ok, speed sounds reasonable, beauty also sounds reasonable (though ratpoison contradicts that sharply – it’s merely because, especially when rendering 3D images or watching movies, a bulky GUI just gets in your way), but what about inbuilt-apps? I love trying out new apps. If a DE includes applications that arouse my curiousity, I like it. I like seeing things packaged so that they can accomodate any purpose I have in mind. Such examples are when one day I look under the “Education” menu of my programs list and see cool things such as graph plotters, physics simulators, 3D globes and even a planetarium. Ooooh :D

Ok, here’s my current set up. It changes almost every couple of days, so this’ll quickly get out of date.

Plasmoids are folder view, post-it notes, dictionary, and picture frame. Desktop theme is Elegance (which I believe looks better than the default Oxygen). Plasmoids on my panel are KDE launcher, removable devices, desktops, task viewer, system tray, battery monitor, and the wonderful binary clock.

Wow, I’ve been giving some picture heavy posts lately. It’s time to write something interesting for a change.

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Some Linux/Gentoo Wallpapers

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Just some fun stuff I might share. There are a lot of them, but the majority of them in my opinion are really horrible. Here are some I picked out (Click on them for full size image). Note: I do not claim any credit for making any of them.

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10 Reasons to use Linux

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Useful information stuff:
Professionals who have done 156-215 and 1Y0-456 usually advise the same tips to all the 1z0-042 and 642-892 candidates. They also say, that had they done 70-272 or 70-528, they would not have needed these tips.

Edit: you might be looking for:

Should I Use Linux?

What is Linux? Some people use Windows, some use Mac, and the rest use Linux.

OK. Well I’ve never heard of it before. So it can’t be popular.

Darn correct you are. Linux is used by a tiny percentage of computer users. The main problems with that is that there are so many versions (distros) of Linux, it isn’t considered “easy to use”, and the blokes at Windows and Mac have money to advertise.

However, I would like to personally say that I love Linux. Not because I believe it’s better than Windows and Mac, but because Linux has proved to me almost daily that it truly is better than Windows and Mac. However, let’s skip my geeky recollections of how Linux has saved my life, and go straight to 10 reasons I believe it is better.

Linux is free.

Yeah. It doesn’t cost a single cent. Not like Windows and Mac where you have to break your bank just to buy it, then break it again to buy support, then break it again to upgrade, then … you get the idea. Even if you only spend 10 bucks at your neighborhoods pirating firm .. well, I wouldn’t even think Windows is worth 10 bucks.

Linux is open-source.

This means that the development isn’t confined to a bunch of nerdy folks in a company’s building. Everybody can contribute to it. Of course, that means that Linux gets its share of the crud that some people create, but those are generally just lost in the wave of the really good other stuff. However, the net result is that it gets improved at an astounding rate.

Linux is fast.

Yeah. It’s so speedy it makes Windows look like myself on a Monday morning at 3AM. Nobody can argue this point.

Linux is secure.

If you’re looking for vaccine to protect your Windows from the evil germs and viruses you get when browsing the web, downloading illegal content (yeah, don’t try to pretend you don’t), or opening a random disk you bought … Linux is the ultimate answer. So say good-bye to having to dump gigabytes of anti-virus software on your machine.

Linux is customisable.

With Windows and Mac, you’re limited to having your computer work the way you want it to by dialog boxes, wizards, third party apps and other sort of freakish registry editors, etc you can find on the flea market. With Linux, there’s no hassle. All the pieces of the puzzle are laid out for you, and its up to you how you want to arrange it.

Linux is easy to use.

OK, before half of you out there cough %$*!* at this, think again. Linux has many versions. Each of them are suited towards different purposes. So if you’re looking for an easy to use Linux, don’t pick something like Gentoo Linux. Pick Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux is so easy to use I swear the hardest thing I had to do in order to get everything working (eg: start working just like I would on a Windows or Mac) was open my CD Drive. Seriously.

Linux is pretty.

Aha! I caught you! Pretty is a relative term, that means what I find pretty might not be what you find pretty! Doesn’t matter. In Linux, you can make it look like anything you want. You can have the fanciest graphics and special effects in the world (search up compiz-fusion on youtube), or the most minimalist environment (google up ratpoison), or anything in between (google up Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment) … or even hybrid mixes of everything.

Linux does not stress your hardware.

Linux can be run on that old piece of junk you just threw out last month. Yes. You don’t needs hundreds of gigabytes of space or 10gb of RAM, it’ll work on your old machines. Now here’s the cue for the more Linux savvy people to say “wait a minute, with the development of modern desktop environments including more features, the hardware capabilities are severely tested by … ” Yeah. Use your brain. If you want something that has more visual effects than Vista and Mac put together, don’t expect it’ll work without lagging (if at all) on your stone-age computer.

Linux’s community is supportive.

There are hundreds of Linux users helping each other every day. Just hop onto the IRC channels #linux (or your distro-specific channel) and they will explain everything you need to know, and will help solve any problems you encounter.

Linux is stable.

Yes, I can leave my computer on for a year and use it constantly and it wouldn’t crash. If that isn’t awesome I don’t know what is.

And many more reasons too!

Just Google up reasons to use Linux. Or if you want the other side … why not to use Linux, there’s plenty of information here and also here. (Warning: sarcasm alert!)

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Should I use Linux?

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

A bit of an introduction.

If you just want the summaries, just read the bold text, and scroll down to “IS LINUX FOR YOU”

One day my 10 year old desktop crawling on Windows had broken down and so I was stuck with my 3 year old 256 megabyte RAM 30gb hard drive space laptop, and an afternoon full of nothing to do. So, why not try Linux out? The following is a written evaluation of how I found it.

Step 1: start easy. I borrowed a friends laptop and created a Ubuntu live CD to play with. I chose Ubuntu because it’s reputed to be the most user friendly, which meant it would be easy to work my way up to what Linux is capable of. Ubuntu is a Linux distro, or distribution, which you might call a version or flavour of Linux. It was pretty easy to start: plug and play. I inserted the CD into my friend’s computer (whose hardware was more recent) and booted up. The default wallpaper was trendy, and the icons definitely more visually appealing than windows.

Summary: Ubuntu provides me with a full working system just with a plug and play! It’s awesome!

My first objective was to find out how to start and use the Linux equivalent of Microsoft’s Notepad. There were three clear menus labeled Applications, Places and System. Clicking on Applications gave me a wonderfully categorized menu – categorised by application type, which is a lot more useful than Windows “group by brand”. This division also made it easier to quickly navigate to folders, apps or settings. This made it easy to find the app I needed – GEdit. It was not the notepad I remember. It started up pretty fast, and also featured tabs, and as I soon found out, code syntax highlighting, which is very useful for a programmer like me. File browsing was easy, though the filesystem took a bit of getting used to (what stuff shouldn’t i touch, and where my files are.) and the icons were definitely more attractive. I could easily connect online, as all I had to do was connect my LAN cable and open up Firefox.

Applications are categorised by type on Gnome and KDE, not brand name. This is very useful.

I then decided that it was too much like Windows, so I wanted to try something new. I also wanted to comment more on the system itself more than the GUI, because in Linux it is pretty easy to change between different GUIs. I therefore searched for another Linux distro and found Gentoo, which boasted fast speed and freedom. This is something I value in an operating system. I decided to try out the Gentoo live CD, but it failed to run. The blokes in the Gentoo IRC channel recommended me to use the minimal install live CD and follow the Gentoo handbook. Having not much prior Linux experience and command line usage, my first time configuring and compiling a kernel was filled with errors and humiliating moments in the IRC channel. However, without those helpful people in that channel, I would’ve failed horribly. Therefore, this is a rather negative image on Linux. However I cannot blame Linux as it all depends on the distro. Gentoo’s aims were not user friendliness, and hence targeted more experienced users. Ubuntu was meant for user friendliness, and was pretty much plug and play. However, I recently reinstalled Gentoo on another computer and it was a breeze, hardly any problems at all.

Gentoo took a long (quite difficult too for a newbie) time to install.

The install took a long time for my first time. Mainly because I was inexperienced, but also because I had to download all the files from the internet. In a way this was bad because you are helpless without your internet when installing, but it was good that you always get the latest files. Gentoo’s style and prmise of complete configuation was proved by the fact that I had to compile everything from source. This was bad because it took a long time to install things, but it allowed you to edit everything you wanted in the code. After the install, it seemed pretty dissapointing as all I was left with was something that looked like MS-DOS. If you are used to Windows,you’d probably wonder what can you do now. There are no windows, toolbars, no visible way to multitask, and no applications to work with. However, I soon learnt how to browse through files effectively, install my favourite programming editor (Vim) to edit text files with, and even start browsing the web.

Managing installed applications is easier with Linux.

One thing I noticed during the install of Vim was that all applications (well, most that I was going to be using) was part of a packaging system. This meant no broken downloads or unreliable links, and only one place to go to whe updating, installing, uninstalling or reinstalling any apps. However, yet again, everything had to be compiled so it took a long time to install programs. A very clever and useful feature of this packaging system was that before installing, it checked whether or not all dependencies for the program were installed. Whereas on windows you just have to have you have all the dlls and libraries.

I don’t know what “rm -rf /” means, but luckily I have the manual to work it out!

Another useful feature i noticed was that almost every coomand and application had a manual page describing its uses and functions in a uniform way. This made it exceptionally informative and efficient at teaching what is going on with those funny commands.

The people in the linux IRC channels are newbie friendly.

The online Gentoo handbook and tutorials were surprisingly newbie friendly for such a “thou shalt not hide anything from the user” system. The IRC fellows were also very kind and understanding, definitely not like the people in th #windows channel, who banned me for asking how to uninstall windows. Whenever I had errors whilst compiling they knew exactly how to fix it, and now I can say that i am decent at Gentoo and can overcome most of the problems i encounter.

It’s pretty difficult to run some Windows programs.

Some of the programs I used in Windows didn’t work, such as Macromedia Flash MX 2004, but that is probably because it’s a pretty old version.

How does one evaluate an OS for themselves? Simple, list out their needs and see how well it matches it. This is what i have done below, and ive also given a rating out of ten.

It’s easy to access and setup all the power tools i need for programming.

On Linux I could easily use vim, apache, ftp, php, mysql, perl, python, gtk and qt tools, ftp, ssh, svn, all following the same style of usage. Perfect. Windows has notepad but it is pretty useless for what I like to do.

Wow. The internets is fast. I get to choose whatever browser I want. I’m not forced upon one.

The internet was faster when running linux. I don’t know why, but it was. firefox was well supported, it had a console browser, and also allowed a list of other browsers that came with the guis gnome and kde such as epiphany and konqueror. I’ve never really found a use for them though. Luckily WINE didn’t come with IE. I hate IE so much. It’s slow, unsecure, no tabs, horrible at rendering pages…and is forced upon users.

File browsing for Linux and Windows are equal. The autocomplete for CLI is awesome, but I sometimes get lost between all my /opt /proc /bin, etc.

KDE came with konqueror. I didn’t like the fact that i needed to open such a huge program just to browse files. However, KDE 4 improved this by introducing dolphin. With gnome, the file browser was excellent, however the eog (eye of gnome) image viewer had problems viewing most of my images, and was a pain to fix. however, i found the name completion when in cli and the open with settings so much easier than windows. Another really useful feature i noticed in gnome was that when hovering over media files, it gave a preview without me even havo open the file. The thumbnail previews worked for videos too!

I can choose exactly how I want to use my computer. I have total customisation. I don’t have to learn something else

No complaints here. Super fast. My computer isn’t a total powerbox, but if I want to have a lot of eyecandy, Compiz-Fusion can make my computer look sexier than ever. Since I’m not the eyecandy type of person, I don’t need to use Gnome or KDE, I can try some of the minimalist GUIs like Fluxbox. It’s still a bit ugly, but I see why some people like it. It’s _fast_. Right now I’m using Ratpoison. It’s amazingly minimalist, but I love it.

I sometimes get errors and I’m totally stuck.

Yes, it happens. It’s happening less since I’m learning more, but I would recommend you get somebody who already knows Linux before you try Linux, (especially if you are using something like Gentoo). Ubuntu users should be fine.

For a newbie, I realise that what comes with linux is not what comes with Windows. On Gentoo, I don’t get sound, printer support, internet, etc just like that.

I’ve definitely had a bit of a problem when starting to use Gentoo to mount and unmount external devices. I had to setup sound, printing support, and configure my internet. This is something I’m not exactly used to, so I had to learn a bit to understand exactly what was going on.

Ok. I feel as though I’ve typed enough.

I’m not the person you should trust the most in the world, but I’ll give my honest opinion on whether or not you should use Linux.

IS LINUX FOR YOU?

I suck at computers: Don’t use it.

I suck at computers, but I have a friend who is awesome with them: Use Linux.

If you use the computer (on average) for about 15-30 minutes a day, and it’s because you have to, not because you want to, and you already use Windows or Mac: Do not use Linux. It’s probably not worth the learning curve.

If you are on a tight budget: Use Linux. It’s free.

You are a super hardcore gamer: Don’t use Linux. Unless you want to stop playing games as much as you do now.

You are a computer programmer: Definitely USE LINUX.

You like open source and are technologically-able and interested in stuff like IT Development: Yes, use Linux.

Your office wants you to use Windows: Don’t use it unless you use another computer pretty often at home for personal use.

All the programs I use are only for Windows: Then stick with Windows.

You already use Windows or Mac and only use your computer for web browsing and document editing: Probably not worth it to use Linux, but you should use Firefox as a web browser and you should try out OpenOffice.

I’m ready to use Linux, but I don’t know which distro to use:

You just want to use your computer. Try Ubuntu or Debian.

You are awesome at computers. You want to personalise it completely. Use Gentoo.

I don’t know. What’s a distro again? Join the linux IRC channel and ask all you want!

Which GUI should I choose? Try them all! You’ll find one that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and you’ll choose that one.

Wow! There are so many choices! You’ll thank me afterwards. Give it a go.

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