Gnome, Enlightenment and Ubuntu

I have been seeding the OpenGEU ISO for a few days now. No reason, I just grabbed it and added it as a test for my Pentium machine running as a torrent slave (which is doing quite well, by the way). Since I installed both Jaunty betas and gave one screenshot apiece, I figured I might as well round out the Ubuntu-based desktop frolic with one more.

I don’t have much to say about this one; if you know my tendencies toward software, you probably can predict my reaction. It’s pretty, that’s for sure. But it’s almost overdone — too much sugary sweetness. I have a hard time seeing a lot of the smaller animations and scrolling effects. I have no idea what some of the installed software is, because I get no tooltips and I don’t know the icons. Some of the fading effects and shadows obscure the menus, particularly in the default theme (which of course, is not what you see above ).

All of these things would probably be solved with a screen of lower resolution, or perhaps after adjusting them somewhat. And I know, and preach, that aesthetics are a myth that has very little bearing on function, since there will always be someone who dislikes it.

Englightenment, in my experience though, is all about desktop glitz, what with the animated wallpapers and throbber selection bars. That’s fine; there are plenty of people who subscribe to pretty. Enlightenment is great for them.

And I know from past experience that some versions of Enlightenment actually perform rather well on older machines, but this is thrashing away at my 1Ghz machine, to the point where I prefer not to keep it around.

Personally I blame it on Gnome. I blame everything on Gnome, though. Feeling cranky in the morning? Must be Gnome’s fault.

Anyway, I had a look and I moved on. A different machine, a different user and perhaps it’s something appealing. Not for me though. I demand performance over pretty, every day of the week.

Yet another Jaunty (Kubuntu) beta screenshot

Since everyone else has been throwing out Jaunty (Kubuntu) guides, Jaunty (Kubuntu) screenshot tours and Jaunty (Kubuntu) gossip columns, I figured one more screenshot couldn’t hurt.

And of course, that is not the default desktop. Everybody hates the default desktop no matter what distro, release or version it is, so just get over it, change it to what you like, and move forward in life.

I’ll reiterate the same points I made with the Gnome Ubuntu version: It sets up easily, with no hardware difficulties on a 1Ghz Pentium III with a few upgrades. I anticipated no less; this machine has been a gold standard for hardware since 2000 or so.

I feel odd saying this, but it seems like Kubuntu’s performance is a tiny, tiny bit slower than Gnome Ubuntu’s. I don’t really have any way of qualifying that or being more specific, in which case I probably oughtn’t mention it at all. But I’d be lying if I said the two seemed on par. It’s a tiny difference, but I can feel it.

On the other hand, I have to reiterate something I mentioned about three or four months ago, that for as many complaints as there are about Gnome Ubuntu’s brown appearance, or it’s lack of desktop gizmos, or its rather bland arrangement, you’d think more people would install Kubuntu. After all, the default KDE desktop is head-and-shoulders beyond anything Gnome offers out of the box.

All this being said, it’s time to move along. I always enjoy my little stopovers in KDE — never more so than with KDEmod — but it’s just too taxing, both on the machine and on me. As you can see in that screenshot, the processor spikes like crazy, the fans pulse on and off, and minor desktop effects seem to drag it down.

And from my own standpoint of usability, I much prefer a quick right-click to trigger a program, than the four or five nested clicks it takes to find a particular application. If I took the time to arrange KDE the way I liked, it would probably be just as fast and just as appealing, but I have too many other things awaiting my attention.

So I move on again. Jaunty looks good from all my perspectives. I give both K- and U- my blanket endorsement, which again is to say, “Use it if you prefer it.” But that should be the rule no matter what.

An Arch game machine

A long time ago I saw a screenshot where an enterprising Linux user had stranded three icons, via iDesk, smack in the center of the screen, with nothing else around and no particular wallpaper in place. I don’t recall much else in the way of the arrangement, but the icons were for his/her favorite games — the idea being, the machine was dedicated to just playing those three games, and everything else was on the periphery.

Not one to be outdone, I kind of put together the same thing on an Arch machine yesterday, using a few of the games I prefer within wbar, for an animated punch-and-run effect.

The wallpaper is the most “playful” I have on hand. Maybe next time something a little more sinister.

Originally this was arranged with Openbox as the window manager, but I don’t think it’s actually necessary. If you trigger wbar from your .xinitrc file and let it run until killed, you should be able to pop most of these applications open without the need for a window manager. (P.S.: It works, although it’s a little … creaky at times. Windowed games — like FreeCiv — don’t behave right without a window manager. Just so you know. …)

So why do this? Well, I guess the most obvious reason is an offline machine for solo-play games. Things like Wormux or Warzone2100 could reside on a dedicated gaming machine, and not be used for anything else (like browsing or e-mail).

And most Linux games I come across are well within the reach of a 1Ghz machine with a 64Mb graphics card, even when running at full resolution. Something in the Pentium 4 range with a proper video card would be a rock star.

This is such a blatant and pitifully obvious application for an outdated computer that I’m tempted to call it a “case in point.” But at the same time it’s such a blatant and pitifully obvious application for an outdated computer that it’s hardly instructive. Sad to think that it takes me so long to actually do these things though.

Yet another Jaunty beta screenshot

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

Since everyone else has been throwing out Jaunty guides, Jaunty screenshot tours and Jaunty gossip columns, I figured one more screenshot couldn’t hurt.

(Edit: That is not the default desktop.) I am nonplussed by Gnome Ubuntu on the whole, so I apologize if my opinion doesn’t bubble over like some I have seen elsewhere. It sets up easy on this machine, but that has been the case since Edgy really. Wireless networking is painless, but the last time I had a wireless networking issue was probably around 7.04. Same for proprietary video drivers; after Gutsy, I stopped worrying about *buntu’s ability to find and install the driver for my card.

I will say that it seems to start up and shut down faster. But I also notice the Windows-esque gimmick of showing the cursor and playing the startup sound long before the desktop elements ever appear. Tsk, tsk.

All in all I give it the same endorsement I give to any other Gnome Ubuntu beta release, which is to say, “Use it if you prefer it.” I’m more interested in Kubuntu really, because I prefer KDE over Gnome if I’m forced to suffer through a heavyweight desktop. Maybe I’ll download that next.

P.S.: As always, this is beta software and prone to breakage, etc., etc. If you have to ask if it’s stable enough to install, you shouldn’t install it.

Role reversal

This is going to sound really strange, but there are times when I don’t have enough computers.

Now that you’re finished laughing, let me explain. I have one machine that I rely on for day-to-day tasks — checking e-mails, chatting, keeping notes, scheduling my work day.

Another machine is a test bed, mostly because it’s sufficiently fast to allow for quick installations. But it’s also sufficiently slow as to not outstrip anything else in the house, and prove an unreliable subject.

Aside from that I also have one machine that I rely on as a network transfer client, a Crux ports server, an rtorrent slave, and an fttps client. It sounds like a lot, but all those things combined don’t require much muscle, except if they’re all happening at one time.

Ordinarily I have a battered laptop that lived some years at the top of a garbage heap to handle the task. It works because it doesn’t need much love, the network connection is fast, and it’s low on power consumption.

In recent days though, the idea of repairing that computer’s only flaw — a busted LCD — has become more appealing. I tried once already, but the leftover LCD I bought had different mounts and was impossible to connect. I think however, that with the proper replacement part, the machine would be a viable giveaway, or at least a secondary machine for someone else to enjoy.

And I only spent about US$80 total, shipping included, to try and fix it the first time. It’s been a year and I’m willing to spend another small sum to see it reborn. US$80 a year is about what I want to spend on computer repairs.

So here comes the role reversal — the last member of the family right now is really just a curiosity: that 100Mhz Pentium machine you probably heard about. I’ve already proven its ability in all three functions (most importantly as an rtorrent slave), and while network speeds are significantly slower through a wired PCMCIA card and occasional reboots are a possibility, it can do the job.

And so it is. Yesterday I rebuilt the entire system on another machine, transferred the hard drive, booted it up and it’s now downloading torrents, serving the house Crux machines and downloading files in the background. And if I want to transfer something between machines, it is available as an intermediary.

In the mean time the battered Thinkpad will be on the sidelines, awaiting an LCD replacement. If that goes well, its future may be with a new user. If it goes poorly, its future is likely to be a return to its former responsibilities. Either way, it will find work. And that’s the most important thing.

Idle time well spent

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I was absent-mindedly flipping through a screenshot thread today and came up with two programs that have turned out to be real gems — centerim and slurm. Neither one is particularly fresh, or terribly innovative, but on a terminal-based system I know of nothing better. (Until someone suggests alternatives, that is. )

slurm is probably the nicest network activity monitor I have seen for the terminal. I had been installing tcpdump just as a troubleshooting measure, but slurm makes tcpdump look primitive. The colors run nicely alongside htop‘s default, and this is, apparently, another console-based program that’s themeable. Horrors.

I know that development has apparently ceased on slurm, but that doesn’t keep it from being a very attractive, very useful program in my framebuffer/console arsenal.

centerim, on the other hand, is a very active project, and while I don’t have a screenshot for you (I don’t have any chit-chat I care to share online ) I can point you to the home page for examples of what it looks like. I already have irssi installed, but centerim seems to fill a gap I had thought unserviced.

And yes, it too is themeable. The good old days of one-color bland and cryptic console applications appear to be gone. Thank goodness.

And so kids, the moral of the story is that idle time spent sifting through screenshot threads … is not idle.

Translate this blog

Thanks to Cedric, for sending me on a short search for translation links. Google’s embedded script tool for translation is, of course, off limits on WordPress.com, like so many other useful and interesting gadgets.

On the other hand, there is a page that describes how to hard-link the sidebar widgets into Google’s translators. If you want to translate out of another language, you’ll want to search-and-replace through the links that are listed there. A little more HTML and you get something like what you see on the right.

No, it’s not technically a widget, but so long as strict HTML is still kosher, I suppose it’ll do. Enjoy.

P.S.: I don’t endorse or suggest relying on mechanical translations, in the case that you’re following instructions on how to set something up. Occasionally even the best translations are a bit … askew.

Offsite: NetBSD on 450Mhz K6, 256Mb

If you were at all amused, or shocked, or maybe even slightly traumatized by my weeklong adventure at 100Mhz, you might keep an eye on the Lightweight Linux blog, which is documenting a similar experiment: NetBSD on a K6 machine.

I have no experience with any of the *BSDs, although it is on my to-do list. If I find the time to uproot myself from Linux and try out Net- or Free- or Open-, I’ll probably take another look at that site, as an example.

The key words there being “if I find the time.” Lately, that seems to be the problem. …

screen and dvtm and screen and dvtm and

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I touched on an idea in the last post, of running a tabbed terminal emulator on a graphical desktop, and partitioning each emulator with dvtm. The idea was that it would allow an immense number of console-based programs to simultaneously co-exist, in a way that really has no impediment aside from your own needs and your ability to keep track of all those things.

The fact is though, that part of that idea stemmed from using both dvtm and screen in tandem on my Thinkpad, which is running completely without X and throwing everything against the framebuffer. And the amount of flexibility there is likewise staggering.

Maybe this screenshot (framebuffershot?) will give you an idea.

See, screen itself can do split screens, and you can bounce between applications individually, pane by pane. And as you can see there, dvtm is quite happy to further segment the available screen space into smaller and smaller areas.

It’s like those Russian dolls.

Perhaps its just me, because of the proximity of it all, and the immediacy of how flexible the two are together. But to know that screen itself is keeping everything neatly bundled together, and can show two or three at a time, and all that on an 800×600 screen … it’s staggering, and cool at the same time.

This is a clean installation of Crux, by the way. Start times at 550Mhz are just over 12 seconds, and I have .screenrc set up to spawn dvtm with elinks, calcurse and alpine all at once. moc is on one window, mc on another, and htop (in a much-customized state) is on the last.

And best of all, I have my customized version of MPlayer for watching my DVD rips on the framebuffer. What in the world was I bothering with X for?!

Back to Openbox

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I wrangled with a framebuffer system on my fastest machine for a few days, even going so far as to customize a PKGBUILD for mplayer that uses only framebuffer output, and relies on no dependencies aside from expat.

To be honest though, a framebuffer system on a faster machine is only partly interesting to me. I need it for my Thinkpad because the driver isn’t working, and I use it for my other Thinkpad because the screen is damaged and because that driver doesn’t work either.

But the video card in this Inspiron has more than enough muscle to run Compiz (or whatever it’s called these days), so a framebuffer-only system seems like … underkill.

So I reinstalled Openbox on Saturday night. The results are what you might expect.

In an effort to cross all boundaries I installed xcompmgr too, and coupled some of the finest in terminal applications with some fundamental eye candy. That should keep just about anybody happy.

I do see a small niche filled by running an oversized terminal like that with dvtm in it. There are enough high-quality console-based applications available to warrant a “palette” of three or four, running as a desktop window.

Of course, after a bit, the space and arrangement and convenience become a bit … overweening. After all, a tabbed terminal emulator running a tiling window manager which can run inside itself, filled with applications (some of them tabbed too) all on a graphical desktop. … You’d need to have your brain plugged directly into the Internet to need that much “space” at a time.

On the other hand, I’ve known some office techies who might find that useful. One tab per “node” and a clean arrangement of network and process monitors would help to keep an eye on their ducklings. It’s a little too much for me on my lowly home network, but I’m sure others could find it helpful.