Revisiting Windows 98

The rehabilitation of the Sotec PC-M260RW I received in exchange for the Thinkpad has gone well. The machine was in good shape in general, and after finding a decent ball mouse for only 300 yen in a recycling shop, I gave everything a good scrub, removed dust from the case, and reassembled it.

Systemwise, as I mentioned last month, the machine is licensed to run Windows 98. I found someone with a Win98 CD, and used the number on the case to install it.

It has been a very long time since I worked with Windows 98. The first true laptop I ever bought, if you don’t count an SX-64 , ran Windows 98, and most of my experiences were rather poor, in retrospect. I remember feeling quite exhilarated when I discovered Windows 2000, and that might be the last Microsoft operating system I thought functional.

Functional is the key word for this experience. Installation is quick enough — if you don’t count the 20 minutes it takes to format the hard drive, and there’s no way around that. But once it’s in place, there’s an amazingly slender amount of material to work with.

USB ports are useless. The network card, video card, monitor and audio subsystem can’t be identified. The modem has no driver either. With no way to connect and no way to import, it’s nothing short of crippled.

There is more than one way to skin a cat though, and I have a long list of cats I have skinned (metaphorically speaking, of course ). In this case, the obvious solution was to find drivers first for the network and the USB connector, and then move on to things like audio and video. I did, after all, have that lovely turquoise background, 8-bit color and a 640×480 screen. If only I could figure out why sometimes the wallpaper is the blue logo. …

Lucky for me, Sotec still has a web page with most of the drivers in place, although I did have to go straight to the Realtek site for Windows 98 drivers for the 8139-based card. Thanks, Realtek.

But getting them onto the machine was the difficult part. Or maybe not. I keep a Slitaz live CD on hand just for situations like this, and a quick boot and mount, and the files were on the host drive.

Of course, even from there, it wasn’t easy to deal with. Zip files were unopenable, which made the Realtek package only slightly useful. And even when it was finally opened and the driver in place, every obvious attempt to connect the machine to the internet through the ethernet card kicked out the MSN modem configuration wizard. Exceptionally annoying.

I finally managed to connect through the Internet Explorer options menu, but the irony didn’t stop there — the home page was set to msn.com, which caused IE to crash every time. I admit I laughed at that more than once.

There were many more mysteries to solve, but direct Internet access made things easier. At that point, however, my patience was running thin. After about 10 restarts just to get one or two things working, plus the two or three odd restarts for crashed programs, and I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I got the USB connector working and the network card, but left the rest for the new user to solve.

To complicate things, there’s no support for Windows 98 any longer, which means any updates or fixes that might have been released in the last 10 years are inaccessible. Windows Update just stops cold, and tells you to get lost. I looked around in hopes of finding a service pack or something elsewhere on the ‘net, but apparently it’s not available (officially, that is). If there’s a way around that, please tell me.

Same goes for other little things — opening a Web page in Japanese prompted me to install the Japanese font sets, which were likewise unavailable. It seems to be impossible to switch keyboard layouts or system language, because again, it appears that all those things were hooked in through the MS update services.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I have to admit that I am. I really thought that at least some of the core components to get a Windows 98 system up and running … would still be around. But aside from third-party sites, sketchy homegrown “service packs” and hardware manufacturers, Microsoft isn’t around.

Which in turn makes sense, since it goes against Redmond’s corporate goals. Sad, but not surprising.

In any case, this machine is destined for a split Windows 98-slash-Debian LXDE installation, and whatever the new owner decides to do after that is their responsibility. Hopefully they’ll pick an operating system that shows a little more sympathy.

GFDL 1.3 adopted

A quick note: I’ve reviewed the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3, and decided it’s acceptable to me. I’ve revised the About page to include the text of the license and references. Some of the downloadable items — like the Ubuntu setup pages, or the older versions — will still be listed as version 1.2, but only because I don’t see the need to adjust and repost all those ancient files. Version 1.2 will do fine.

Any software (and I laugh at the term, considering my programming skills) you find here will still be licensed under the GPL version 3, unless version 2 is listed. Again, I see no need to go through the effort of changing all those licenses to make the jump to v3. Version 2 is acceptable.

If you’re not familiar with the terms of the license, it basically states the narratives and software are free for your use and copying, but that adjustments or adaptations of what I’ve written have to be rereleased under similar terms. Translations, according to GDFL 1.3, are considered adjustments and must likewise reappear under v1.3. For details, please review the terms of the license; if you have questions, please e-mail me directly through the contact form on the About page.

And it’s true: You don’t have to credit me if you use something, but it would make me feel good if you did.

Firefox 3.5 and dbus-glib

Since I’m on the subject, I should mention that I prefer to use the precompiled binary for Linux over installing Firefox directly in either Crux or Arch. I don’t have any great insight as to why that’s preferable, except to say that I can still run a Crux system without hal and dbus, if I rely on a precompiled Firefox. (Running X in Crux does not require that I install those two.)

Or at least I could, until Firefox 3.5, which won’t run until dbus-glib is in place. The binary file was complaining that it couldn’t find a specific library, and I managed to track it back to dbus-glib. And of course, with that in place, all was fine.

Not as independent as I liked, but it works. I can’t say for sure that 3.5 is any better than 3.0.x for me, but I see no harm in keeping the browser up to date.

A little cheese, for your whine

Maybe lovinglinux has the right idea; that instead of smacking my head against the LCD repeatedly every time a new version of Firefox comes out, I should be lampooning the people who start thread after thread complaining that it’s not available for their particular distro, release or sub-sub-version.

I know everyone wants the latest and greatest software for their machine. And I know that nobody wants to do the work involved in packaging and disseminating Firefox X.X. But is the repeated whine, the incessant murmur, the inescapable sense of entitlement really doing anything to expedite the process?

I won’t complain about the complaining (metacomplain?) too much, since it’s something I described better, and in stronger terms, about a year ago. But I stand by all those comments — including the ones that painted some people as petulant or impudent — because a year later things are still the same.

One major release in a common application, and suddenly there is a weak-sauce revolution underway because there hasn’t been an update in the hours since it was announced. And the complaining, and the whining, and the threats to move to another distro … it’s all old news.

All of this, to me, goes back to the point I made last year — that Linux users are in a better position to upgrade things manually, on their own, and not rely at all on someone else’s benevolence to keep them up-to-date. Perhaps some people feel they lack the skills to do that, but they certainly don’t lack the tools. And really, considering you can download a precompiled Linux binary, uncompress and use it, the “I can’t” excuse doesn’t really hold water. You’ll get no sympathy from me.

But I don’t expect this weak little counter-complaint off in some corner of the Netiverse to change anything. As soon as KillerApp version 1.0.0.1a is announced, somebody, somewhere will start the whine again. …

The cloud is a lie

I’m not afraid to say it, mostly because I know I’m not alone in the matter. It may be appealing to some people to think they can store or access or perhaps even “process” with the Internet as the host, but it’s nothing I’ll ever rely on.

Privacy is my main concern. I know for a fact, from firsthand experience, that most of the “hosting services” — especially GMail, to pick on that example — regularly screen and/or access the information, and use it for their own purposes. That alone is enough to dispel any illusion I may have, personally, about privacy or respect for information. I acknowledged that in the terms of service when I opened the account though, so I don’t complain. I am just aware of the fact, and work around it when necessary.

But of equal concern to me is the idea that there is a longer string of hardware requirements for using “the cloud,” when compared to keeping my software and data locally. One hiccup in the chain between my computer and the Internet host, and the entire idea falls flat. I lived through the era of dumb terminals and trust me, nobody really liked it. I shudder at the idea of going back.

I suppose, as a Linux advocate, I should acknowledge the obvious fact that the gooey love-fest over cloud computing is really just an overture toward putting corporations in a better position to manhandle licensing and usage restrictions. It’s much easier, for example, for Microsoft to control who uses their software, if it’s not being managed at the individual level. But the point is tertiary at best for me, so I worry very little about that fact.

The sad truth is that the Internet loves its glossy, shiny new ideas, and the more hype I hear and see about any particular catchphrase, then less likely I am to embrace it. The push toward the cloud is just the latest in a long list of things I will probably avoid, until my personal concerns are met.

Light and efficient, at under 10Kb

One thing I’ve been wanting to mention for a while was a teeny-weeny text editor called e3 that I noticed a month or two ago, after seeing it on the Lightweight Linux blog. e3 takes the unusual step of offering a smattering of distinct keyboard commands all patterned after other editors, including bigshots like WordStar, Vim and Nedit.

So why not use one of those others instead? Because e3 is miniscule by comparison, with a code size under 10Kb, if Wikipedia is to be believed. But aside from that point and from the few documents you get when you download the source, there’s not much to be said about the software. Even the home page might be the sparest ever created.

All the same, if you prefer keystrokes and commands unique to one particular program, but need a very, very slim editor, this might be the one you’re looking for. At some point I’m going to use it on the Pentium because it’s an obvious choice. Unfortunately it lacks the option to screen-wrap in the manner of a word processor, which I happen to prefer.

And as a side note, if you haven’t taken a look at the Lightweight Linux blog, you’re missing out. Lots of useful stuff appears, particularly if you’re one of those people who needs to run exceptionally … lightweight.

At long last

Finally, after months of real-life issues encroaching on my free time, I finished a very large project and can relax a little. Once again I’ll apologize for stepping away from this blog for so long; looking back at June I made about five meaningful posts over the course of the month, which is not acceptable to me. Compare that with some other months, and you’ll see why.

So I intend to make up for it over the next three weeks or so, adding points and issues that I’ve collected in the few odd moments here or there, or added from stuff I’ve seen elsewhere.

The first is to note that the hand-me-down desktop system I inherited when I gave the rehabilitated Thinkpad a new home … is more or less in perfect working condition. I’ve done one or two test installs — mostly Arch and Crux — and found everything acceptable.

The video system is working well and can hit 1280×1024 on the included boat-anchor monitor. The DVD-ROM/CDRW burned a rewritable disc for me, and seemed successful. Network speeds are excellent, with rtorrent hitting well over 2.4Mbps on consistent, popular torrents (the Arch ISO is an excellent torrent speed checker, by the way).

The next step of course, is to tear the thing apart and clean it top to bottom. I’ll have to look for a proper keyboard since the one I have is kind of sketchy, and the old mouse was strictly unusable. But after that, I’ll start looking for potential recipients while I disassemble, clean and install. Timing is important here.

Dumping a screensaver to a text file

I am only days away from completing a rather large real-life project, and finally getting back some of the free time I have lost over the past few months. July is looking much more promising than June, and I already have a stack of things I need to make notes on, as well as an old-new desktop system that will need a rehaul.

In the mean time, I accidentally found a rather goofy stunt you can pull at the terminal. I was trying to get some information about cacaplas, one of the “screensavers” I mentioned for the terminal that comes with the caca libraries. I fat-fingered this line by mistake.

cacaplas > output.txt

I realized my mistake almost immediately afterward, but then started to wonder what was in the file. Leafpad showed it as a huge mess of escape codes, which makes sense, but the fun part was using cat to display the contents.

And of course, you get a sort of “recording” of what cacaplas spat out, for the few seconds it runs. (By the way, I wouldn’t let that run too long; the file gets very big, very fast. …)

Like I said, it’s just a quirky trick: not exceptionally functional, and not exceptionally interesting. Still, it’s vaguely cool.