What’re you looking at?

Judging by the outgoing clicks, it’s that screenshot from a few days ago, the one on the right with MyMan running in bitmapped mode while a DivX rip of “Throne of Blood” plays in the corner.

Yes, that is a framebuffer-only system running on Crux, and yes, that is a 550Mhz Celeron doing all the dirty work, on a meager 192Mb and a Silicon Motion Lynx video card.

There is a slight shear in the image where the framebuffer image grabber cause the redraw to skip, but otherwise, it’s a fun screenshot. Don’t feel guilty if you want to click on it.

To be honest though, and as you can see, the processor is pegged all the way to the right on the stress-o-meter. It may only take up 23Mb of memory to run a movie, and a torrent client, and a system monitor and an oversized Pac-Man clone, and a file manager and an analog clock, but I’d be lying if I said it was moving very quickly.

But I’d also be lying if I said it wasn’t fun to push this little Celeron to a practical maximum. A low-end Pentium 3, a system tuned for performance and suddenly a three-way split screen with a movie and a video game running at the same time is possible on a machine that was otherwise ineffectual within a year or two of its release.

This is why Linux is a great thing. Microsoft execs must be snapping pencils in fury right now.

Two somewhat important facts

I discovered two small things today, neither of which is particularly earth-shattering, but both have some bearing on working with out-of-date hardware.

First, and probably more impressive of the two, is the fact that it takes a 120Mhz Pentium 10 hours to compile tidy. You might know tidy as a venerable tool for arbitrarily cleaning up html code; it’s nothing fancy, has no dependencies, results in about a dozen files in the Crux package. Otherwise, it’s a rather plain program.

Building it took 599 minutes, done over the course of the day, while I was at work. Ordinarily I would compile it on another Crux machine and transplant the package to this one, but my attempt at that this time resulted in errors when I tried to run it on the Pentium. Since it’s a relatively small item, and didn’t seem like it would overwhelm things, I let it start on my way out the door.

And according to the time utility, which I had the foresight to use when I started building, it finished about 10 hours later. What a speed demon.

The other interesting tidbit is a little more specific to Arch Linux, which I’m using on the Inspiron while it undergoes some changes. Just out of curiosity, I installed both the gnome and the gnome-extra groups, which more or less equates to the minimum for a Gnome desktop. And I trust Arch to keep it very svelte.

Total space required for all those dependencies? Only 1,345Mb, according to pacman.

Maybe that’s not a surprising number, but it was to me. I didn’t really equate Gnome — and only Gnome, although that does include ancillary software and the login manager — as almost a gigabyte and a half. I knew it was chunky, but I didn’t realize it was obese.

But that’s only in my estimation, and I have been called insane about these things. I take it as a compliment.

Velocitized

That’s the word my instructor used a long time ago, when I was in driver education class. He was an old guy who repeatedly bored us with is long and overdramatic tales of woe, about “The War” and his injury he sustained in it. I remember that about him, and I remember his frequent use of the word “velocitized.”

Today I think I finally caught up with what he meant. Originally, the context was travelling too quickly for long periods of time, and being unable to gauge speed when moving into a slower speed zone. For example, after driving on an expressway at high speed for a couple of hours, the average driver generally travels too fast on an accessory road, where the speed limit is lower. Or so my instructor constantly told us.

You’re probably wondering what the point is in all that. Well, today I threw the Slitaz CD into my Thinkpad, partly as an experiment and partly just to be reminded of what the GUI looked like on that machine, before X went and scrambled the siliconmotion driver. (Who knows? Maybe it works now. I should probably check, except I don’t handle rejection well. )

Point being, I immediately overwhelmed the machine and brought it’s perky little 550Mhz heart to a crawl. Ordinarily I regale Slitaz as a masterpiece of ultralight software, comparing it speedwise to the fastest customized systems around. And I am still comfortable doing that.

But I found its limit today. Looking back I am not sure what possessed me to try and surf the web with Firefox and open six tabs and run Alsaplayer and mount the hard drive and start swapping Openbox themes, all from the live environment. But thinking about it now, the answer is obvious.

I was velocitized.

I was so used to working with that machine in a framebuffer-only, Crux-plus-screen-plus-console environment that just the thought of doing all those things at once didn’t even raise a warning flag. It wasn’t that I thought the machine was fast enough, it was that I was so comfortable with the speed that I see in it on a daily basis that I didn’t think twice about the demands that were being placed on it now, in a graphical environment. I had been moving so fast for so long, I didn’t consider the drag I was incurring doing the same things with a GUI.

So there is a downside to using the framebuffer and relying on things like screen and console programs to get your day-to-day chores done — you suddenly expect a machine to perform at the same level when you go back to a graphical environment.

Velocitized. So that’s what he meant. … Silly me.

Learning to love vim

It’s a slow and sometimes frustrating relationship, but slowly I’m learning to use and respect vim. Like a lot of people who were introduced to Linux through Ubuntu, I started out with nano. And while nano isn’t what I would call the “perfect” editor, it’s fairly obvious how it works, how to make changes to files, and how to get back out of it. That, I could appreciate at a time when I was more interested in getting my video card working than stumble-bumping through obscure keystrokes just to save a file.

And so originally vim was the editor I hated, because it seemed to be the complete opposite — unintuitive, cumbersome, cryptic, obtuse and arranged in such a way as to be difficult to learn.

And a lot of times it still is. I regularly wish for some sort of feature X, only to learn that feature X already exists — I had just been looking for it in the wrong place. Tabs are a good example of that. I was hoping to find a way to open multiple documents, started poking around with viewports and finally, a few hours later, realized that tabs were there and waiting … I just hadn’t taken the next step and actually found them.

I do that a lot though, and with simpler and more intuitive programs than vim, so I don’t hold that against it. It’s a flaw in my character — a tendency toward bumping around in the wrong places, looking for the wrong thing. I’ve learned to live with it. Perhaps one day I will also learn to love vim.

Howto: Pick out an old computer

I trade e-mails from time to time with people troubleshooting old computers; I suppose it comes with the territory. I got an unusual one the other day asking what to look for in a computer if seeking out an old one on purpose — in other words, “What’s the best way to pick out an old computer, if you’re intentionally looking for an old one?”

I should be so lucky. I usually just take whatever is given to me, and learn to cope with whatever hardware configuration or component condition it has. I don’t usually have the luxury of sifting through possibilities and selecting the best one.

But more and more these days, it’s possible to do that; I always think of an “old” computer as something 1996-1998-ish, but for most people, something as new as four years ago can be a dinosaur. Most thrift shops and secondhand stores have five or six machines in an aisle, plugged in and testable. I guess “selecting” the right old computer is not an impossibility.

So if it was me, and I was perusing the aisles in my favorite secondhand store, or digging through the garbage boxes in the recycling yard, here’s what I would do.

1. First, know thy enemy. Bring along a mini-CD of something like Slitaz or maybe even DSL or Puppy, and get a rundown on the guts. Before you go to the store, find out what the lspci, dmesg, cat /proc/cpuinfo and similar commands do, and why they’re helpful. Then start up a machine with the live CD, find a terminal and get a snapshot of what the innards are like.
2. After that, take your time. Don’t buy it right away. Write down the model number and any important information about it — the processor type, the memory amount, the BIOS type and version, and so forth. Information like that will tell you how well it will play with Linux, which is our ultimate goal anyway.
3. Do your homework. Go home and check on the Internet to see how much memory it should have, or what BIOS updates are available. (For example, Dell is great about keeping information on out-of-date models; if you can write down the serial code off the bottom of a Dell laptop, you can find out anything you ever wanted to know about it, in a matter of minutes. And service manuals are usually only a few clicks away. Say what you like about Dell, but I love that they make information like that available — makes repairs and disassemblies all the easier.)
4. Ask about it online. See if anyone has one, or if it’s possible to install recent versions of Linux on it. Find out if there are skeletons in its closet, or conversely, secret joys in using the machine. For example, I’ve always wanted an Inspiron 9300 mostly because the guts could be exchanged for most of the high-end XPS parts of that time frame. If I saw one in a store, I’d buy it for that reason alone.
5. Think long and hard about troublesome components. Things are better than they used to be, but I still make a point of avoiding things like Broadcom wireless cards, or components that require firmware to operate. I know it depends a lot upon the model, but the time it takes to learn a new network card could be spent using a computer. If you’re picking between, for example, a Broadcom wired port and an Intel wired port, go with Intel. It’s just been easier, in my experience.
6. USB and PCMCIA are your friends. In a worst-case scenario, you can rely on a PCMCIA card or USB-based wired adapter to at least connect you to the Internet, and get a struggling machine online. I keep a spare USB-to-ethernet adapter just for that reason. Of course, I also keep two or three PCMCIA wired cards, but that’s beside the point.
7. Batteries are pointless, AC adapters are critical. This might be overstating the obvious, but a laptop without an AC adapter is not a laptop, it’s a brick. I have cried out in agony more than once looking through boxes and boxes of junk, in hopes of finding the AC adapter for a decades-old laptop that would make it useful again. If you don’t have the adapter, think twice about buying the computer. I know for some models you can buy compatible adapters, but my luck with them has been hit-and-miss. And batteries? Well, no one expects a battery to survive long in the wild. If there is one, keep it. If there isn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s not a dealbreaker.
8. Sometimes flaky behavior is a sign of things to come. I feel obligated to mention that occasionally, damage in one area can lead to future issues. I was once sold a laptop that had a soft flickering band down the center of the screen. The owner promised that it was normal, and that everything was otherwise okay. Two weeks later that band had multiplied into three, and a month later there was no video to the LCD. I ended up relying on an external monitor for day-to-day use. While that’s an extreme example, experience suggests that a weakness in one area might be a sign of worse things to come.
9. Watch for physical wear-and-tear. Check laptop hinges. Pop CD trays and make sure they open properly. Rock laptops to listen for broken bits of plastic in the bezels. Check volume wheels, power switches, brightness controls, mouse buttons, eject buttons and power lights. Listen to POST tests, check BIOS defaults and CMOS battery power. Count scratches, twisted keys and cosmetic damage. Check for missing screws and busted laptop latches. Don’t be afraid to open a few drive bays or memory covers. Look for dust, dirt, grime, oil, crumbs and insects. No, really.
10. I work mostly with laptops, so specific to laptops, watch for a couple of extra things.
• First, make sure the drive tray and connection adapters are present.
• Be aware that some older machines have two PCMCIA slots, but don’t take double-height (slot 3?) cards.
• USB is like manna from heaven to any machine that predates the Pentium 3 generation, because it means you can move things on and off infinitely easier.
• Some early laptops don’t have CD players and rely on floppy drives; what you do with that is up to you.
• Some machines have CD players but won’t boot from CD, in which case a working floppy drive is darn-near critical.
• Remember that early CD players sometimes can’t read 700Mb CDs.
• Early BIOSes will freak if the hard drive size is beyond what they accept as a “limit”; the way around that is to set the boot partition small (like 64Mb) and let everything else spill out beyond that limit.
• Remember that laptops hold their value longer than desktops, but it also means that replacement parts are more expensive. If you can get one or two identical machines, it’s sometimes wise to keep a second as a source of parts, regardless of its condition.
• Burnt-out pixels are bad if they are one or two; a flock of them is sometimes not worth the inconvenience. And remember, LCDs can get burn-in too … sort of.
• Whenever possible, stock up on things like extra screws, rubber feet to raise the chassis off the desk (better air circulation) and floppy and/or CD drive cleaners.

That’s about all I can think of right now; if you have any suggestions for people looking specifically for older machines, feel free to chime in.

Everything in threes

Up front, of course, a quick apology for the lack of communication over the last few days. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays here, and I took a small but well-earned vacation.

So for that same reason I have little tell on the Linux front. Most of my time was spent sightseeing and very little time — in fact, no time at all — was spent in front of a computer. Very pleasant, in one way.

I can tell you though that the Sotec desktop I took in a few months ago has found a new home. The new owner is a young married couple starting out on The Road of Life, and looking for something to check e-mails and polish resumes while they get accustomed to a new home. No doubt in the future it will be replaced by a newer, flashier machine, but for now it should find some use.

I split the installation on that machine before I sent it out the door. If you recall, it relied on Windows 98 as a “legal” operating system, but I did little other than set up the screen resolution and get the network card going.

The other half is pure Ubuntu 9.04, which would be impossible to use on a 600Mhz machine except that I installed the LXDE desktop and triggered it on bootup. It at least links the person behind the keyboard to the applications available, without bogging down the system in the process. Is that so little to ask?

If Lubuntu had matured only a little more, I would have definitely used that instead.

In other, similar news, I made a deal with the coworker who owned the Pavilion, and agreed to swap if for the 600m. The Inspiron is lighter and needs less space, even if it’s nowhere near as fast, has less screen real estate and weaker speakers. The new owner says portability was something the Pavilion lacked, which I would definitely agree with now that it’s back and on my desk … weighing it down considerably.

The bad news in this development is that the Pavilion’s screen hinges have cracked, making the panel flop around like a dying fish. I already popped the bezel open and the plastic braces for the hinge are completely snapped. If I planned on keeping it I would probably buy new hinges and replace them; as it is, I doubt it will be around long enough to make a difference.

The good news — great news, really — is that the 600m’s new owner asked for an Ubuntu-only machine: no dual boot. That came about from knowing that the machine had some flaky behavior when the latest updates to XP were applied, but also because the new owner just wasn’t using Windows … with the only exception being the need to connect to a music player by way of special software (I don’t know what kind of player it is). And a new music player is supposedly on the agenda.

Personally I think that’s great. It’s one more nail in the coffin for Microsoft, and one more example for the Windows muckrakers who still insist, years after Ubuntu stormed the OS landscape, that casual desktop users can’t find a home with Linux. That argument is so tired, it doesn’t even bear refuting.

Otherwise, that’s the situation on the home front. I have the Pavilion on my desk again, the 600m is out of the house and so is the Sotec desktop. And apart from the ever-growing piles of technophiliac crud everywhere, there’s not much else to report. Stay tuned though.

20 percent is a nice surprise

I wouldn’t have thought running X-less would be quite so popular, but if you watch a poll on the Ubuntu forums, it seems around 20 percent of people replying lump themselves into the “I use Linux without X” category.

That number is likely to fluctuate, of course. And it may not be a fair indicator, since Ubuntu users tend to be more desktop users than “Linux geeks” … although the population in the cafe sometimes leans heavily in the Arch Linux direction. And that crowd can be considerably more “geeky” than others.

But still, 20 percent is a nice surprise. I was expecting something in the range of 5 to 10 percent, but it’s an encouraging result. Perhaps if more people give life without X a try, the number will spike a little bit. …

Haiku alpha: Wow. Just wow.

I got riled up about five months ago because ReactOS, the wannabe Windows mimic, was making strides toward actual usability. So you can imagine my excitement after trying the Haiku OS alpha, and getting this on my Inspiron.

I understand that this was built, sort of, from the remains of BeOS, and I will admit a very, very brief run-in with BeOS about 12 years ago, if memory serves. I had only an oblique interest in it and I quickly reinstalled Windows after tinkering for an hour or two.

This is a horse of a different color though. Exceptionally smooth. Native resolution, mouse support, hard drive access, reasonable 3D acceleration (in a manner of speaking), USB access, and so forth. Lightning fast too — boot times in under 20 seconds to the desktop, a number I can’t reach with Arch Linux and not far off what I get from a customized Crux system.

My only issue was with networking — Haiku found my Intel wired connection with no problem, and even managed to connect and get an address. But for whatever reason, ping and Firefox both couldn’t find the connection, and I didn’t have time enough to track down the issue and solve it.

For alpha release software, this is a very promising show. I like almost everything about this — the size of the installation, the desktop look, the clean way the system applications and desktop widgets handle themselves. If I can track down why the network was inaccessible I definitely plan on reinstalling it and giving it another whirl.

A Crux port for Musca, and a correction

I have (yet another) correction to report. A few days ago I offered a port for e3 but refused to share my port for Musca, because I regularly recompile Musca to adjust the commands and settings.

Fact is though, after a brief skim through a few wiki pages (not least of which the Arch wiki — still the best resource around for information on anything), I realize that I was wrong — there is a configuration file, at .musca_startup, and it’s much easier to use that than to recompile the thing over and over again.

Of course.

So in the way of an apology, here is the exceedingly brief configuration file I use, which adjusts the keystroke to spawn the terminal and the dmenu command to use the Terminus font.

bind on Mod4+t exec urxvtc
bind on Mod4+Control+Shift+Return exec sudo /sbin/halt
set dmenu dmenu -i -b -fa 'terminus-10'

The middle binding is a little something I add for my own amusement: a keystroke to bring everything to a halt. It’s just quicker than closing out whatever programs I’m running, closing Musca, waiting for X to halt, then typing in the command to shutdown. Call me lazy.

And since I failed to provide at the last opportunity …

# Description:	A simple dynamic window manager for X.
# URL:		http://aerosuidae.net/musca
# Maintainer:
# Depends on:	xorg

name=musca
version=0.9.23
release=1
source=(http://aerosuidae.net/$name-$version.tgz)

build() {
	cd $name-$version
	make DESTDIR=$PKG
	install -Dm755 musca $PKG/usr/bin/$name
	install -Dm644 musca.1 $PKG/usr/share/man/man1/musca.1
}

Of course, the important parts were stolen from the AUR version. Call me lazy. Again.

Best of both worlds: twin

I have mentioned a lot of console applications over the past few weeks, but usually either in conjunction with screen-vs, or with something running under X, like Musca.

There is a middle ground, so to speak. twin, when used in conjunction with gpm, makes for a kind of terminal window manager (hence the name “t-win” … not “twin”) complete with its own onboard emulator, resizable windows, overlapping and layered frames, shadow effects, color combinations, and so on.

It’s not a terribly popular thing, which is both surprising and unsurprising at the same time.

Surprising because it actually does quite a good job, and under the right conditions, could be a workable pacifier for people who like working in a terminal environment, but need something with manageable windows.

Unsurprising though, because it behaves a little odd for me. It might just be that I need more time with it to get used to it, and it might be that gpm needs to be adjusted to suit me. I can’t seem to get things to move in the way I want or like, but that’s my problem.

I will say that it seems a little … fragile too. A few terminal programs that I’m accustomed to — most notably htop, which I consider crucial — cause it to crash. I’m sure these are things that could be chased properly, considering that the mailing lists are still active.

In spite of that, Ubuntu users have to crawl all the way back to Hardy to install it via the repositories, because there is apparently no package maintainer for twin in Ubuntu any longer (or maybe we can blame this on Debian too). On the other hand, Arch has it in its repositories, and Crux users can piggyback off the PKGBUILD to set it up on their systems. And don’t forget it pretty much goes hand-in-glove with gpm.

But otherwise it’s another option. Set your framebuffer to its best setting, install the terminal applications you love most, trigger your favorite font, and cue it up as soon as you log in. It’ll be just like dvtm or screen-vs, but you’ll have a little more freedom to move around.

There’s that magic word again: “freedom.”