The worst best list ever

I’m disappointed. I managed to find my way to (what appears to me to be) one of the first “distro year in review” pages to appear for 2010, and found it less than satisfying.

Perhaps that’s because TechRadar’s list is really just a list of the heaviest and best-known distros available, arranged to suit dull, hackneyed categories.

Every big-name release, plus a few of their variants, is represented, and everyone got a nod in the same way everyone got a prize in your primary school’s sports day. Even if you lost, you took home a cheap plastic trophy.

What’s the point in that? I’ll concede that Puppy Linux deserves to be on there; Puppy is fantastic stuff and anyone with a 200Mhz machine or faster should at least try it out and see how it feels.

But four deviations from Ubuntu, a giveaway to PCLinuxOS as the best distro for “new converts,” and a couple of nods to Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse? How was that list made? By plucking the first ten names on Distrowatch’s hot list, and giving them obvious nicknames?

Tsk, tsk. And you call yourself a journalist. Time to get off Facebook and actually go outside the building. “Bright light! Bright light!“

Sorry. Media joke.

No, that list just makes me feel hollow and empty … like when I took home the cheap plastic trophy for my abysmal performance in the 100-meter sprint back in 1976. Even then I knew it was a pointless gesture. I didn’t win. I was just there.

What’s needed is for someone to actually take the time and think about 10 good distros. Someone who actually looked at more than 11 distros last year, and knows more about them than their default desktop colors.

Then maybe I’ll get the feeling that the list was actually made of interesting and influential Linux projects, instead of watching the open-source rendition of a one-room schoolhouse popularity contest. Or the Academy Awards.

Reaching back again: ByzantineOS

I’d like to strangle the forever nameless marketing executive who decided on this confounded Trident video card in the Mebius … rather than something a little more amenable to me, 14 years down the road.

So much about this little computer is fun and amazing, and yet so many things fall flat because of video limitations. For example:

Not on the Mebius. On the X60s, in an emulator of course. Which is sad and disappointing because ByzantineOS sounds like a natural for the little machine.

Not to be confused with Bonzai Linux, ByzantineOS is earmarked for i586 machines. It will supposedly run on 32Mb of memory. It takes up a meager 45Mb for the ISO. The home page suggests diskless machines.

Of course, it’s not really a full Linux desktop. And it’s using software from 2004, so there is a lot of space between here and there.

Not that old software is frightening at all. Some of my favorite software is as old as ByzantineOS.

But in an OS that is essentially an inverted Mozilla browser window (look closely at the desktop), it might be a little grating to go that far back in time.

In other words, no Flash for all you YouTube weenies.

As I said at the start, I can’t speak for ByzantineOS’s performance on an actual Pentium; I trip over video issues. On the other hand, in an emulator, it’s fun to explore even if it does run rather slow.

 

Most desktop conventions — or at least, desktop conventions circa 2004 — are here, to include clocks and calendars and file managers, games and emulators, and even a lovable blinking command prompt.

And personally, I find it rather innovative to see a full “desktop” sculpted out of a browser window. It’s something I hadn’t really thought of before.

But I don’t work much with “Internet appliances,” as ByzantineOS bills itself. I only tried out my first embedded distro a week ago. I’ll have to pay closer attention, and see if I can find one that is useful on the Mebius.

Or that will at least acquiesce to the video card. Curse you, forever nameless marketing executive. …

P.S.: Shorter this time. That last post should have been split into three. …

Three middleweights

It’s time for the bait-and-switch again. For anyone who came here today hoping to see a mysterious and esoteric console program, or a distro sculpted to fit on the head of a pin, I will disappoint thee.

Truth is, for every distro I find or that is suggested, I get two more suggestions for distros I wouldn’t put on a Pentium III, let alone on a lowly 120Mhz Pentium.

I mean that with no disrespect, and I certainly don’t turn down any suggestions I get. But it does mean that some people have different understandings of “lightweight” than I.

In that sense, here are three distros that I would call “middleweights:” Too big to compete with us lowly basement dwellers, but not necessarily in the same bracket as the juggernauts out there.

Fuduntu Linux

This one is pretty to look at, has a familiar feel and doesn’t seem to run any heavier or hotter than the distro it tries to look like.

I can’t really find anything to complain about with Fuduntu, a Fedora Gnome desktop arranged to look and feel like Ubuntu.

Nonetheless I can’t help but wonder if the distro will draw flak from either side of the Fedora/Ubuntu divide. After all, if there’s something you dislike about Ubuntu’s arrangement, you’ll probably dislike it in Fuduntu.

And if there’s something at the core of Fedora that you loathe, you’ll probably loathe it in Fuduntu too. So getting beyond package managers or desktop integration might take a little while.

On the other hand though — and this might be where the distro wins back some points — the converse of that is true too. If you happen to prefer one distro over the other, but like how one looks or works, it’ll be a winner.

So if you like Fedora’s mechanics, but prefer Ubuntu’s aesthetics, you’ll probably be in hog heaven for this. And my suggestion is to enjoy it as you can and will.

I see it is supposedly optimized for netbooks and portable machines; there may be a tool here that you find attractive and want to employ too. I had a few minutes of fun tipping the screen display on its side. Call me superficial.

Beyond that though, Gnome is Gnome to me, and there’s not much I care to do with it beyond twiddle with the screensavers or tap through a few themes. You might see more here you find attractive.

P.S.: A distro that actually offers a survey on its defaults and direction?! Infidels! Are you mad?! Never let the mob have their way!

Vatlator Linux

I am tempted to use the phrase “the future of computing” when I introduce this next one.

To that you might smirk or scoff, and you’d be well within your rights to do so. Truth is though, when I call it “the future of computing,” I’m not highlighting its technical achievements or post-modern urban desktop theme.

No, unfortunately it’s something completely different.

I try to remain as apolitical as possible on this site — I see no need for the whims and whimsy of real-life drama to intrude — but the fact of the matter is, the world is increasingly an oppressive place.

I fear there will come a time when you will need to take matters into your own hands, to guarantee your own privacy and security on the Internet. If you don’t already.

And probably — sadly — it won’t be the credit card thieves that are chasing you. It’ll be something that resembles Orwell’s fables. To some, life does already.

To that end there is Vatlator, which is certainly not the most paranoid distro out there, but is certainly a step in the right direction when it comes to security and privacy.

I say that while admitting a certain measure of naivete when it comes to online security (security on the whole isn’t interesting to me … I know, it should be ), but knowing enough to recognize a few things.

Tor support is in here, as well as a few add-ons for ease of use. Privoxy is installed. The home page is ixquick.com. Logos have been stripped. You start X from the console. And more.

On the whole, and to be fair to other “reviews” I’ve done, Vatlator does feel a little incomplete. Or perhaps like a “work in progress.”

Shutting down requires a root password. The GTK theme is stuck on Raleigh (or is it Redmond? I can’t tell the difference sometimes). And so forth.

On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I used fvwm-crystal, and it’s just as pretty as it ever was. Can’t complain about that.

Memory use, for a distro that is intended to run live, is good … although in my experience Ubuntu taxes memory more than other distros might.

It might be easy to remix Ubuntu, but you’re implying your audience work with at least Pentium III-era hardware. And the target audience might not have access to that. (Laugh if you must, spoiled first-world children. If you didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao.)

In fact, if I could suggest one thing to the Vatlator designers, it would be to build future versions on a distro that requires less memory to run. There are lots out there that would work, and on less memory.

But otherwise it will be interesting to see how this one matures. I can only hope I never have to rely on it.

aptosid

I really had no idea what to expect when I started up aptosid. I think I expected it to be something based on Debian’s hairy side, and I remember (but don’t think I ever tried) Sidux.

I probably should have though. For as much oohing and aahing as I am guilty of, when I talk about Linux Mint Debian, it’s important to remember that LMDE is not the only distro with its toes in Debian’s deep end.

This version is marked from September, which is a long time back in terms of Debian’s leading edge. Arch has the reputation for being the fresh-off-the-boat distro, but Debian is no bottom feeder, that’s for sure.

But all in all, aptosid — particularly this KDE version — reinforces two thoughts in my mind. Not new thoughts, but bear with me.

First, that no one in their right mind, with even the faintest faint strand of aesthetic appreciation, should be using Gnome. I use neither, so maybe I have no space to talk.

But for as clean and beautiful as a KDE desktop looks, and as droll and limited as the Gnome equivalent is, there should be no contest.

Second, that you can do things with Debian you never thought possible. You just have to get past the mental block that says it’s a fixed release distro with software frozen two years back.

In any case, and before this turns into a Debian love-fest, let me just say this is a very attractive KDE desktop, and you’re getting very fresh software out of Sid.

KDE doesn’t appeal to everyone — I like it, but I use it even less than Gnome — but considering how good it looks, and how easy it is to tinker with it, everyone probably should.

And that’s all I really have to say about that. These three are all unique in their own ways, and offer one slant or another on the greater Linux spectrum.

Repeat after me: Freedom of choice, freedom of choice. …

Three mediocre attempts

In the space of a few hours this morning I managed to put two or three more distros through the proverbial 150Mhz meat grinder. Results were mixed this time.

Sadly, my rush to install Alpine Linux on my Mebius failed catastrophically, with neither the CD booting nor an emulated system written across USB (in this fashion).

It’s not a kernel panic, it’s a full stop, with no boot action or CD access … sometimes for as long as 20 minutes, or until I get tired of waiting. No juice.

I’m not sure why. If I had to guess, I would suspect some sort of hardware conflict, even though I was fairly certain that I read on the site that Alpine was i586-friendly.

After all a lot of embedded machines are 586-based … or so I had thought. I have a tendency to imagine things though, so perhaps I dreamed I saw “5-8-6″ on the site.

It could be almost anything though, and I have too many distros to check to chase after nonbooting CDs for one or another. C’est la vie, I suppose I should say. Or perhaps, “Not everything works every time.“

And that would be very true.

V7/x86 was another somewhat fruitless effort, although this one was picked strictly out of curiosity and education, not out of any hope of actually adopting it as a working distro.

Really, a Unix 7 port for the PC is worth looking at, even if it’s probably not practical as a full and daily operating system. (Says the person who uses a Pentium for everyday tasks. … Yes, the irony isn’t lost on me. )

This time both the floppy versions and emulated systems proved too knuckle-whitening. The floppies wouldn’t boot, and the CD image in Qemu seemed to want a partition arrangement I couldn’t satisfy.

(If someone can cue me in on a “type 114″ partition, like the installation file suggests, I would appreciate it. I’ll try the ptdisk utility too, at some point. )

I suppose I could break down and burn a CD of the installation ISO and possibly get it going that way, but I think I’ll wait a little bit. After all, it was only done as a lark, in the name of science.

And curiously, some knob put together a GTK1.2-only version of Ubuntu Linux a few years ago, and I thought I should run it through its paces at 150Mhz.

Out of fairness, I am particularly harsh. After all, this is amateurish, incomplete and impractical really, even if it did work (mostly) on the first try.

Thirty-two megabytes of memory is probably too little to be functional for this; running more than one application at a time causes swapping and slowdowns.

On top of that, the processor is probably too slow for the core Ubuntu workload. Even after a fresh boot, the system is sluggish to start programs and slow to read from disk.

And on top of that, there is the issue of the trident driver, which doesn’t work well with that video card. The vesa driver worked fine though, which is why you get a screenshot at all.

Screen redraws are slow though, and programs take four or five seconds longer than natural to open. Closing them causes hiccups too, while X adjusts itself to the sudden change.

Networking was up on the first attempt with an orinoco-driven wireless card though, which is the way things should be. And I guess there is a somewhat usable array of programs here.

It definitely could use some refinement though, and considering even just the kernel is a couple of years old, while most of the software is two or three or five years older than that. At least.

So yeah, it worked, much of it without heavy configuration, but it’s still just a curiosity. Not really useful.

And that’s about all. I have a short list of other distros to try, as well as some that are aimed at faster, newer machines again. Stay tuned.

An audible improvement

I already mentioned how this machine, coupled with a tetchy network card, a vastly oversized hard drive and a right proper console-only installation of Debian is somehow a remarkable piece of work.

Add to that a decent pair of speakers, and suddenly it’s a work of art.

I mentioned that I planned to invest a little bit in speakers for sound — the old, beat-up secondhand radio I was using for years for music playback went southward not long before I moved. So a replacement was in order.

These are Sony SRS-M50 speakers, which were overpriced at around 4200 yen like-new, but fit my requirements for playback — small footprint, AC adapter, volume control and power switch at a reasonable location, and a standard TRS headphone plug.

Sound is very good though, and I mention that in part as a nod to a 13-year-old laptop, which has rotten on-board speakers, but has clear and clean sound through the headphone jack.

The moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to invest in a solid pair of speakers for a machine that would otherwise be at the bottom of a garbage dump. Ten-dollar computer, US$40 speakers.

Now the opposite of that would be a shame.

P.S.: Before the audiophiles in the audience go all sassy on me, yes, I know I commit heresy by placing the speakers that way. What you can’t see is the arrangement of the room, where the cabinet sits in relation to the corner and the … oh, never mind. I can’t win this one. …

P.P.S.: First album? Sketches of Spain, of course.

That’s why they call it a koan

Just a short note this morning: I have to admit I found this Unix koan particularly amusing.

I am a little disappointed in myself though. I spend pages and pages of digital real estate explaining the natural efficiency of text-based systems, and someone else can condense it into a brief and pointed story.

I have much to learn.

Take your time and skim through some of the other koans on that site. While I can’t vouch for their metaphysical value, they are at least an interesting way to look at the art of computing.

Thanks to cantrell for sending it along.

Also not a joke: XFCE on 39Mb

Since we’re on the subject of eyeball-popping lightweight desktops, here’s another one for you.

And no, your popped eyeballs do not deceive you: That is an XFCE desktop with the standard array of controls and gizmos, running on an astounding 39Mb of space.

Very little in the way of outside software is installed, but only htop is running. Plus scrot and xfce4-terminal, of course.

Not Debian this time — although Debian could probably put up a fight when compared to this. No, this time it’s Alpine Linux, which you may or may not have heard of. Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t.

As I understand it this is intended for embedded systems, which might be part of the reason why I hadn’t run across it sooner.

With much of the distro anchored in uClibc and BusyBox, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the desktop needs a paltry 39Mb to get started.

Having said that, actually putting this into place took a little effort, if typing a few commands can be called effort. Arch users will think it trivial; Ubuntu users will develop a look of shock and fear on their faces.

There is (was?) a skeletal tutorial on the Alpine Linux web site that got me started. I did run into a few obstacles.

After you boot the 2.1.2 ISO, you can arrange the system with setup-alpine and then install it to an internal disk with setup-disk.

But after reboot you need to add the online repositories to the /etc/apk/repositories file. In short,

echo "http://dl-3.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v2.1/packages/main" >> /etc/apk/repositories

or your attempts to install things via apk add will fall short. Use apk update to refresh your package lists, and then add xorg, xfce4, sudo and so forth, plus the xf86-video-vesa driver. And maybe even xf86-video-fbdev.

For the record, the xf86-video-intel driver wouldn’t run for me; X complained about kernel modesetting.

One more thing: Run X -configure to get a workable xorg.conf file, then edit it for the vesa driver. And I had to reach way, waaay back to 2008 for that AllowEmptyInput setting, or I got the infamous dead desktop that I hated so much.

That’s more or less everything you’d need, given that your hardware plays well with the Alpine superstructure. I’m lucky to have Intel-based network and video, so short of that video card problem I mentioned, everything was fine out of the box.

Start times are electric, jumping to the login prompt in a meager 13 seconds on my core duo. With Midori as a browser I rarely see the entire memory profile arc over 92Mb, even with two or three tabs open at a time. Firefox is overrated, you know.

But like I said, it shouldn’t surprise anyone — least of all me — that an embedded Linux does such a fantastic job keeping itself lean and trim. That is, after all, the point.

And even if this technically isn’t intended for ancient hardware, but you can probably guess what my plan is next. …

P.S.: PekWM is in the repos. Jump for joy!

No joke: A full Gnome desktop on 105Mb

Careful, this might make you spit out your breakfast cereal.

That’s a fully updated installation of Linux Mint Debian, after a cold boot and with nothing else running. No special tricks or shortcuts. Clean and default.

Amazing. This puts it within striking range of Pentium III machines, in terms of memory. Or at least machines with 128 or maybe 192Mb, like this one did. I almost wish I still had that computer, just so I could try it out.

True, you can get smaller desktops with very sparse installations, in other distros as well. But this comes with all the bells and whistles, from the word go.

If you haven’t played with Mint’s version of Debian yet, you really owe it to yourself to give it at least one short attempt. And if you’ve got a Pentium III lying around with about 128Mb in it, tell me how it works. How, not if.