Dead Parrot

Just another reason to appreciate open source solutions.

Long Day’s Journey Into Breakage

Looking for the Ultimate in Ubuntu Linux experiences? Then simply install UltiBuntu! It has everything you could ever want or need. If that’s not enough, you can download the deb that will transform your UltiBuntu into Uberuntu! When things go awry simply reinstall. Be sure to have a very large hdd though, as Ulti/Uberuntu will install nearly everything. Just a bit more than a minimal install with openbox. A one TB drive should do nicely. Already the positive reviews are flowing in:

It debuted a few years ago, and got negative reviews from Ubuntu developers and experienced users due to the risk of breaking dependencies, but it offered an easy solution for beginners who weren’t familiar with the way deb packages worked.

Apt-get and aptitude are quite difficult for new users; simply typing ‘sudo apt-get install vrms’ is quite a chore, and the many variables all but insure that there will be a foul-up. Better to have a shiny pointy and clicky interface

Linux newcomers will be pleased to know that installation of Ultamatix is purely point-and-click.

Sadly, it looks as though the market will soon need a replacement, as some things are omitted:

There’s not much to dislike in Ultamatix. Yet, with thousands of great Linux applications out there, it goes without saying that it can’t possibly include all of them. A few noteworthy apps that are missing are the Opera web browser and Thunderbird email client.

The best test of whether something works is the installation procedure; if that goes off without a hitch then it is golden. This applies to Linux distributions, third-party scripts, and just about anything you can think up. So download this fine tool and get it going today; it is just a single click away. No thinking required. Kinetic energy not included.

Ultamatix and The Myth of OOTB

If you have been using Ubuntu for any length of time then you will remember Automatix, the automated installer that pulled in all of the codecs, apps and anything else you could imagine, all in the name of giving a perfect out of the box experience.

Perfect, that is, until the conflicts started piling up, leading to the complete borkage of your system. Automatix finally went away, and there was relative sanity in the Ubuntu world for a brief period of time. No more.

Ultamatix promises to do what Automatix did, for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Ultimate, and Debian (though it is still completely untested on Debian). Instead of relying on the sanity of the excellent package manager present in those distributions, one can download the deb, launch the script and fling all caution to the winds. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Where the idea of ootb originally came from is somewhat of a mystery; installing *any* system requires some tweaking, adding apps, and updating. Some Operating Systems more than others.

Perhaps Linux has acted as a sort of spoiler; on a recent re-install of Windows XP SP2 (not my own machine) due to contact with the internet (spyware, etc), it was a shock to see that even with a ethernet cable attached that one could not just connect to the internet. Never mind wireless, that was out of the question.

Using a Ubuntu Hardy livecd and a DreamLinux (Debian-based) livecd had not only ethernet, but wireless, and all the codecs one could ever want or need, as well a plethora of apps for every imaginable purpose in a matter of minutes.

You will need to tweak your install, whether it is Mac, Windows, or Linux; do so in a sane and responsible manner and the possibilities of conflicts, breakage, and complete system failure will be minimized, at least in the first and last instances. Quick fix is just another way of saying quickly needs to be fixed. Spend the extra bit of time in Synaptic, Software Update, or Random Website for Ubuntu, Mac, and Windows respectively.

Ruh Roh

This should be fun. NOT.

All Set

To make this the main blogsite; the linuxdiary site is severely compromised by bots or whatever–now so bad to the point of not being able to log in from anywhere. The fact that the site is based on WordPress 1.2.5 mu is the main determinant behind this, as it is quite vulnerable to comment spam, and now apparently bot attacks. The fact that I spent most of my time there adding ip addresses to the spam list and could not focus on just writing made it a liability of late. Nice to get a couple hundred hits a day, but when actually even getting into the site is a struggle, probably a good time to move out. Heh.

My 1923

Hand-crank scanner doesn’t work in Linux. Linux is broken. I’m sticking with Windows. Maybe you should re-think that; details here.

Fair Enough

After linking to a website from a very new Linux user, I thought it best to go over and leave a comment; one of the problems with just looking at a desktop environment for only a brief period and how smooth an install went is that there are a ton of other things that may (and likely will) go wrong once you have it installed.

First of all is the package management–how easy is it to install/remove packages, and what kind of dependency issues might you have? From personal experience, and again ymmv, Ubuntu is far ahead of the rest in this department, simply because of their dependence on Debian and the sheer number of mirrors as well as the simplicity of apt. I rarely, if ever, tell new users to go to Synaptic or Adept (Ubuntu and Kubuntu, respectively) because the command line is so much simpler and more informative, not to mention faster. Mandriva and PCLOS are not far behind, and Fedora gets high marks as well. OpenSuse, sad to say, is no favorite of mine when it comes to adding packages either in the command line or through the gui.

If all you care about is ‘ooh! the shiny!’, then Vixta (.org) is a superb liveCD; the level of support from their forum, and the installation itself is another matter entirely. And since this is Linux, things will break and go wrong (guaranteed), so that if you are using a much bigger distribution, you will have access to a much greater community to help you solve those problems. Case in point–eLive; very nice liveCD, enlightenment desktop, but my post to their support forum was left unanswered for several months (likely still is, I gave up on them a while ago).

I’m conversant enough with various distributions that if something goes really, really wrong, then I can normally sort it out in fairly short order, either by trolling the IRC channels or support forums, or googling for results. And as I regularly back up important data (not that I have much to speak of), should the smoking crater from hell appear where my computer once was, I can do a fresh install without much loss. Not so with someone new to Linux, and let’s face it, most converts are going to come from the Windows world, and all the problems associated with it.

Taking one’s own lack of knowledge about a distribution and/or simple computer techniques to label a system completely broken and awful is at best irresponsible; tons of people are looking for an alternative choice, and you having some (even limited) experience compared to their goose egg in that department means they are going to rely on your judgement as being gospel.

Trouble with an ISO file almost never means that the distributors are putting out a faulty ISO file, and almost always are on your burning speed, and the quality of media you use, provided that the checksum matches.

Getting to know the quirks and/or inadequacies of a particular distribution takes several weeks at the very least to understand; thinking that you can download the file, install it, and then have a clear understanding of it (without a fair amount of research involved beforehand) is just a faulty proposition all the way round.

Install a Tribe, or an Alpha, or a Test (depending on the system, even a Beta), and stick with it on a machine to see how fast the distributors come out with fixes, and how often things get overlooked, or shunted aside entirely. Then you will have a true picture of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a particular Linux distribution, and can helpfully advise others on its merits, or lack thereof.

WipeOut

The temptation to just buy a $60 external DVD writer got a little more impetus today; when trying to copy a file to an SD card and a USB stick, I was informed that this wasn’t allowed, because I was not root. And no mention of how to get into root–not that it is that tough, but if this is Asus/Xandros’ easy Linux setup, then no wonder tons of folks are thinking of trying to get either XP or another Linux distribution on it.

As the 3ePC comes with a restore DVD if you want to go back to Xandros (ha!), the only thing left to do is to wait for DVD writer prices to come down (unlikely), or just choose a distro to replace Xandros with. Was thinking of Fluxbuntu, but as they are in a state of..um..flux at the moment, will likely give PCLOS’ TinyME a shot. Whichever distribution gets wireless working the best is the winner, and stays.

Noob To Ube In Six Weeks

Linux is so easy to download, install, and set up these days that you can move from Noob to Uber-Leet Leenucks Jedi Master in just six weeks. Even less if you have a desktop; the bulk of that time is spent getting wireless to work on a laptop, particularly if you have an older one that does not have a card built-in–extra points for getting it to work with the Open Source (but imo) poorly designed Ralink chipset cards.

My own Linux trial by fire was a little over a year ago, using OpenSuse 10.1 (Gaah! Yast broken!) and a PCMCIA card for a laptop that was six years old without wireless built in; pretty much everything I have learned since then has been in Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva/PCLOS; the greater majority of that time was spent learning how to enable the forbidden repositories (media codecs, etc.); as that is all largely taken care of now, the only remaining hurdle is wireless–yes, you may have an exotic, ages-old peripheral that is not recognized, but then again with the prices of hardware being what they are, it’s best to just upgrade over driving yourself nuts trying to get it to work.

There are a number of channels to get help in, and with a little bit of patience and ingenuity, you can get pretty much everything you need in a simple cut and paste command that you put into the terminal–with enough repetition, it will become second nature when updating/upgrading or adding packages (apps), and tons faster than using the gui interfaces for the package management systems.

If you are going to go with one of the more traditional Linux distributions like Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, et al., then best get out your reading glasses, because you will have to educate yourself with their extensive documentation before trying them out. I did once manage to get a Gentoo install (after three failed efforts), but something like Slackware or Arch are beyond the amount of effort I wish to put into getting a system up and running.

The various forums (listed at Distrowatch.com under the various distributions) and IRC channels are an excellent source of information, provided you keep in mind that these are volunteers trying to help you enter a community, and not your paid-for technician running to help you when your touchpad doesn’t work.

A funny example of this happened when I was manning the Kubuntu IRC channel (#kubuntu), and a poster there was trying to get her touchpad to work, asking questions for several hours spanning two days–at one point she filed a bug report at launchpad.net (Ubuntu official bug station) and was going to write a bug report and submit it to Linus personally; turns out that she forgot to flick a switch on the outside of her laptop that enabled the touchpad, and once that was done, the so-called ‘kernel-level, crisis-showstopper bug of the century’ just mysteriously disappeared.

A handful of individuals patiently stuck with her for several of those hours, and at the end of that time, with nary a word of thanks, or even acknowledgement that we were trying to help her, she exclaimed ‘where are the experts around here? guess I’ll have to wait for them to show up.’. Needless to say, this did not engender much good will towards said poster, and I have to admit to a level of glee when it was discovered that she had merely forgotten to do something as simple as flip a switch on the front of her laptop. Priceless.

Vixta

Was trolling around the internets and came across this at LinuxTracker; while it is nice in the liveCD mode, upon installing it hung and was unresponsive for a couple of hours (away for a bit)–if they can get it going (it’s based on Fedora 8) then this will be my new system, or at least my new theme. Couldn’t be worse than Vista, which deactivates the system when you swap a video card or get a new driver. Schweet!