Just been playing around with SliTaz, a tiny (and I mean tiny) distro.
Although ridiculously small (around 30Mb download), it is actually a really useable little distro.
I installed it onto a 1Gb USB stick for now to play around a little (as well as having a live version in a virtual machine) and have been updating it, adding Firefox 10, Flash etc to bring it up to the spec which my wife would want on her EeePC (she is pretty cheesed off with the Xandros install on her 701 and wants an alternative on a SD card). We have tried various other light and mini distros - LXDE versions of the main distros mostly, but they all need well over 1Gb of disk space to install in - which on a little 4Gb drive isn't really useful.
Check out SliTaz - I think you will be impressed!
http://www.slitaz.org/
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Blast from the past!
Downloading the latest Yoper Linux distro to see how my old mates there are getting on.
As I have probably mentioned, I used to be one of the development team on Yoper (back in the days of 2.1 and 2.2). Over time, with things changing to use a new package manager and various other changes - and with poor health, I dropped out of the team and moved on. I still watch the distro and download the current iso from time to time to see how things are going. Tobias and the guys are working hard, but with a small distro it is hard to keep up with the corporate might of the big three or four main distros.
One of the reasons I use PCLinuxOS as my main distro is because it follows the ethos of the old Yoper - and still uses Synaptic as the package manager with the rpms!
Anyway, off to play - I shall report back once I have given Yoper a run.
As I have probably mentioned, I used to be one of the development team on Yoper (back in the days of 2.1 and 2.2). Over time, with things changing to use a new package manager and various other changes - and with poor health, I dropped out of the team and moved on. I still watch the distro and download the current iso from time to time to see how things are going. Tobias and the guys are working hard, but with a small distro it is hard to keep up with the corporate might of the big three or four main distros.
One of the reasons I use PCLinuxOS as my main distro is because it follows the ethos of the old Yoper - and still uses Synaptic as the package manager with the rpms!
Anyway, off to play - I shall report back once I have given Yoper a run.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
4G has landed!
Well, the 4G is here. Two BT Openreach vans, two BT guys to simply hand me a router and check the speed via their laptop and dongle.... hmmm...
Ah well, they were not here long and no aerial needed. First impressions - well, I did expect something faster on the download side, but upload is 8meg! Download is coming on for 8meg actual measured speeds, so not terrible, but I had read a bit before about this and speeds of 40Meg were mentioned. The BT guys said that they thought the speeds had been capped since yesterday - when it was a lot faster. So either it was unstable or the trial doesn't need us all downloading the whole interwebs!
I shall post some speed readings in a day or two.
My only main issues at the moment are -
1 Websites think you are in Germany! But this is because the router has a German SIM card in it apparently. No real problem, but a bit odd going to Google.com and getting Google.de in German!
2 And I can't blame the 4G for this odd anomoly - my ethernet card on the main PC stops my machine booting into Linux when I enable it in the BIOS! Even a live cd (and I tried with a couple of live cds from different distros) won't boot with the ethernet enabled. Disable it and the machine is happy. So for now, I have a wireless dongle stuck in there.
Strange but true....
Ah well, they were not here long and no aerial needed. First impressions - well, I did expect something faster on the download side, but upload is 8meg! Download is coming on for 8meg actual measured speeds, so not terrible, but I had read a bit before about this and speeds of 40Meg were mentioned. The BT guys said that they thought the speeds had been capped since yesterday - when it was a lot faster. So either it was unstable or the trial doesn't need us all downloading the whole interwebs!
I shall post some speed readings in a day or two.
My only main issues at the moment are -
1 Websites think you are in Germany! But this is because the router has a German SIM card in it apparently. No real problem, but a bit odd going to Google.com and getting Google.de in German!
2 And I can't blame the 4G for this odd anomoly - my ethernet card on the main PC stops my machine booting into Linux when I enable it in the BIOS! Even a live cd (and I tried with a couple of live cds from different distros) won't boot with the ethernet enabled. Disable it and the machine is happy. So for now, I have a wireless dongle stuck in there.
Strange but true....
Thursday, April 21, 2011
All quiet
Not much has been happening of late. I finished the chemo in January, but have not been called back to see if there has been any recurrence of the tumours yet. I was told that I would be checked out in about 4 months, so I am not concerned - I expect to hear something in May.
Otherwise, health has been OK - a few chest pains on and off, for which I have been given a new medication - plus I was put on a different drug for my diabetes as the Metformin sucked and I had abdominal pains all the time. The new stuff seems better and, after they plonked me onto maximum dosage, seems to be controlling the diabetes fairly well. Hopefully that will avoid me having to inject insulin for a bit - I hate needles!
Distro wise, still using PCLOS in its KDE incarnation. Still fairly happy with it, although there are a few minor niggles (as with all distros of course!). For example, the root terminal which you can call from the user desktop fails - I know why and I can easily work around it, but it is something which really shouldn't happen. A new user would be completely stuck - which is a bad point. Also the disk editing tools - cfdisk for example - do not do as they should. These need fixing too.
Other than those niggles, pretty happy at the moment, but slightly concerned about the announcement that PCLOS intends to move from the Synaptic package managing system to a YUM based one. Not a fan of Yum myself - having used it years ago - but it is better than Smart or some of the other package managing tools. Apparently, Synaptic won't be compatible with the changes to the RPM system which PCLOS is introducing - hence the change. I will give the new version a good try out before making any decision - I like PCLOS and don't want to end up back with Ubuntu unless I am forced to.
Otherwise, health has been OK - a few chest pains on and off, for which I have been given a new medication - plus I was put on a different drug for my diabetes as the Metformin sucked and I had abdominal pains all the time. The new stuff seems better and, after they plonked me onto maximum dosage, seems to be controlling the diabetes fairly well. Hopefully that will avoid me having to inject insulin for a bit - I hate needles!
Distro wise, still using PCLOS in its KDE incarnation. Still fairly happy with it, although there are a few minor niggles (as with all distros of course!). For example, the root terminal which you can call from the user desktop fails - I know why and I can easily work around it, but it is something which really shouldn't happen. A new user would be completely stuck - which is a bad point. Also the disk editing tools - cfdisk for example - do not do as they should. These need fixing too.
Other than those niggles, pretty happy at the moment, but slightly concerned about the announcement that PCLOS intends to move from the Synaptic package managing system to a YUM based one. Not a fan of Yum myself - having used it years ago - but it is better than Smart or some of the other package managing tools. Apparently, Synaptic won't be compatible with the changes to the RPM system which PCLOS is introducing - hence the change. I will give the new version a good try out before making any decision - I like PCLOS and don't want to end up back with Ubuntu unless I am forced to.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Update
Well, still using the KDE version - which speaks for itself.
After downloading the iso and installing it, I still ended up getting another huge load of updates - which was a bit of a pain with my lousy interwebby speeds.
So far though, I haven't found any real issues. Wireless just works (which is much better than the Ubuntu version, which lost the connection regularly!) although I prefer wired.
The other problems which plagued the Gnome version of PCLOS don't seem to be present in the KDE one - presume this is because it is much more mature.
I think I shall install this to my main PC as well. It currently runs Ubuntu 10.04, but is rarely used anyway because it is upstairs and it gets cold in the daytime up there.
After downloading the iso and installing it, I still ended up getting another huge load of updates - which was a bit of a pain with my lousy interwebby speeds.
So far though, I haven't found any real issues. Wireless just works (which is much better than the Ubuntu version, which lost the connection regularly!) although I prefer wired.
The other problems which plagued the Gnome version of PCLOS don't seem to be present in the KDE one - presume this is because it is much more mature.
I think I shall install this to my main PC as well. It currently runs Ubuntu 10.04, but is rarely used anyway because it is upstairs and it gets cold in the daytime up there.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Yet more changes
Well, spent ages last night trying to get the volume to increase and decrease using the function key on my laptop with the appropriate up and down keys.
Despite being fairly familiar with Linux, I ended up very cheesed off with the things! I got the keycodes from xev, then tried an old trick I used in KDE 3 back in the day - basically setting up a shell script and assigning those keycodes to an unused F key etc (if desperate, you can find it on my main website somewhere - but ask and I will link to it). No joy.
This morning, I discovered that PCLOS 2010.11 in its Gnome incarnation doesn't actually have a functional way to format/partition drives. No fdisk, no cfdisk - even GParted, which is included on the GUI menu doesn't work! Arrrggggh!
In the end, I decided to install the KDE version. Yes, I know I have moaned about KDE4 but I reasoned it is likely to be more stable/featured in PCLOS as it is the default.
So, having a 2010.7 disk lying around, I installed that. Seemed good, so I went to update the system and found that it wanted to install nearly 800megs of updates! The new 2010.10 version is not even 700 meg, so I thought I might as well simply download that, install it and then update from there.
Currently downloading.... but with my crap internet, it will be some time yet!
Whilst waiting, I have been trying out a few of the problem areas with the Gnome version to see if the KDE one has problems. Scrolling with the touchpad button - fine! Partitioning tools - yep. Function button and sound up and down - whooo, working fine! And no stupid warnings about my battery which I *know* is old and doesn't hold a charge etc so why tell me?
Part of me is quite excited to be back with KDE - I loved Konqueror as my file manager and used it as a browser most of the time. I know that Dolphin is the default these days, but I am old and prefer what I am used to.
Again, the mail client is that awful Thunderbird, but I will see what it entails to get KMail back - I like Kmail!
And of course, KDE has the best burning software of the lot - K3b. Better than any of the other Linux burning tools and, IMHO, better than Nero etc on Windows.
I still think the move to KDE4 was a mistake by the KDE team, but it does seem to have matured a bit since the first version, which was really dreadful and crashed constantly.
Will blog some more about this PCLOS KDE version once I have the latest version installed and up to date.
Despite being fairly familiar with Linux, I ended up very cheesed off with the things! I got the keycodes from xev, then tried an old trick I used in KDE 3 back in the day - basically setting up a shell script and assigning those keycodes to an unused F key etc (if desperate, you can find it on my main website somewhere - but ask and I will link to it). No joy.
This morning, I discovered that PCLOS 2010.11 in its Gnome incarnation doesn't actually have a functional way to format/partition drives. No fdisk, no cfdisk - even GParted, which is included on the GUI menu doesn't work! Arrrggggh!
In the end, I decided to install the KDE version. Yes, I know I have moaned about KDE4 but I reasoned it is likely to be more stable/featured in PCLOS as it is the default.
So, having a 2010.7 disk lying around, I installed that. Seemed good, so I went to update the system and found that it wanted to install nearly 800megs of updates! The new 2010.10 version is not even 700 meg, so I thought I might as well simply download that, install it and then update from there.
Currently downloading.... but with my crap internet, it will be some time yet!
Whilst waiting, I have been trying out a few of the problem areas with the Gnome version to see if the KDE one has problems. Scrolling with the touchpad button - fine! Partitioning tools - yep. Function button and sound up and down - whooo, working fine! And no stupid warnings about my battery which I *know* is old and doesn't hold a charge etc so why tell me?
Part of me is quite excited to be back with KDE - I loved Konqueror as my file manager and used it as a browser most of the time. I know that Dolphin is the default these days, but I am old and prefer what I am used to.
Again, the mail client is that awful Thunderbird, but I will see what it entails to get KMail back - I like Kmail!
And of course, KDE has the best burning software of the lot - K3b. Better than any of the other Linux burning tools and, IMHO, better than Nero etc on Windows.
I still think the move to KDE4 was a mistake by the KDE team, but it does seem to have matured a bit since the first version, which was really dreadful and crashed constantly.
Will blog some more about this PCLOS KDE version once I have the latest version installed and up to date.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
PCLOS update
Well, discovered after installing the 2010.7 version mentioned in the earlier post, that there was a newer version (2010.11) released last week.
I have now replaced the earlier version with this one - and the two big problems (the warning about the battery and the scroll using the button thing) are sorted.
Initial thoughts - I like the fact that the problems I had with the previous release are now sorted, not so keen on the theme/icons used in this version (although I can of course change those), still don't like Thunderbird as an email client (personal thing - I just don't like it at all, never have and Ubuntu defaulted to Evolution, which is also not great, but better than TBird IMHO)
So, apart from a load of hassle setting up my email all over again, the things I mentioned above and the overall "greyness" of TBird and Firefox in this release, I am quite enjoying the change. As I mentioned last time, similar to my days with Yoper - I might even volunteer to do a few packages at some point, depending on time/health issues.
I have now replaced the earlier version with this one - and the two big problems (the warning about the battery and the scroll using the button thing) are sorted.
Initial thoughts - I like the fact that the problems I had with the previous release are now sorted, not so keen on the theme/icons used in this version (although I can of course change those), still don't like Thunderbird as an email client (personal thing - I just don't like it at all, never have and Ubuntu defaulted to Evolution, which is also not great, but better than TBird IMHO)
So, apart from a load of hassle setting up my email all over again, the things I mentioned above and the overall "greyness" of TBird and Firefox in this release, I am quite enjoying the change. As I mentioned last time, similar to my days with Yoper - I might even volunteer to do a few packages at some point, depending on time/health issues.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Trials and tribulations
Well, decided - based on my tests on a live disk - to install PCLinuxOS 2010.7 on the laptop.
As mentioned before, I was pretty fed up with the way Ubuntu was heading.
I have been trying both the KDE and Gnome versions, but went for Gnome as I still can't bring myself to like KDE4.x (I have tried several times but find it just too unstable and a little annoying to be honest - but YMMV!)
Anyway, once installed, I have discovered some snags. First of all the annoying warning about the battery being b0rked. I already know that - the laptop is pretty old and beat and the battery holds a charge for about 20 minutes at best. Now, in Ubuntu, to get rid of the stupid warning, it was a simple case of using gconf-editor to untick the warning notifications. However, in PCLOS, this didn't work! The boxes are unticked, but the warning still comes up each time I restart X. Frustrating bloody thing!
The second major annoyance is the scrolling. I like to use the middle button on my touchpad to scroll up and down and in the live cd it was working perfectly. Of course, now I have installed it to the hard drive, the scroll doesn't work! I can use the touchpad itself to scroll, but I like the button! So far, I haven't found out how to fix that - like all modern distros, the PCLOS xorg.conf is fairly minimal (although a billion times more info than the Ubuntu one!) and no mention of a section for mice etc. I guess I can write that section myself - I always used to edit the old XF86 and early xorg files by hand as they always get it wrong anyway....
Other than that, I am liking PCLOS so far. It isn't perfect - but what is? But it is pleasant, seems fairly quick and uses similar tweaked kernels to the old Yoper! IN fact, it quite reminds me of the old 2.2 Yoper - tweaked optimised kernel, the Mandrake control centre, rpm packaging, but with Synaptic.....
But also like Yoper 2.x, there is a slight air of "not quite finished" - and I don't mean that in a bad way. Just a lack of developers and funding I presume holding it back a little. Ubuntu has a lot of cash and plenty of devs, but they still turn out some pretty iffy packages at times and fail to deal with genuine concerns of users.
Anyway, I shall be experimenting more with PCLOS - I hope to keep it as my distro of choice for now at least.
As mentioned before, I was pretty fed up with the way Ubuntu was heading.
I have been trying both the KDE and Gnome versions, but went for Gnome as I still can't bring myself to like KDE4.x (I have tried several times but find it just too unstable and a little annoying to be honest - but YMMV!)
Anyway, once installed, I have discovered some snags. First of all the annoying warning about the battery being b0rked. I already know that - the laptop is pretty old and beat and the battery holds a charge for about 20 minutes at best. Now, in Ubuntu, to get rid of the stupid warning, it was a simple case of using gconf-editor to untick the warning notifications. However, in PCLOS, this didn't work! The boxes are unticked, but the warning still comes up each time I restart X. Frustrating bloody thing!
The second major annoyance is the scrolling. I like to use the middle button on my touchpad to scroll up and down and in the live cd it was working perfectly. Of course, now I have installed it to the hard drive, the scroll doesn't work! I can use the touchpad itself to scroll, but I like the button! So far, I haven't found out how to fix that - like all modern distros, the PCLOS xorg.conf is fairly minimal (although a billion times more info than the Ubuntu one!) and no mention of a section for mice etc. I guess I can write that section myself - I always used to edit the old XF86 and early xorg files by hand as they always get it wrong anyway....
Other than that, I am liking PCLOS so far. It isn't perfect - but what is? But it is pleasant, seems fairly quick and uses similar tweaked kernels to the old Yoper! IN fact, it quite reminds me of the old 2.2 Yoper - tweaked optimised kernel, the Mandrake control centre, rpm packaging, but with Synaptic.....
But also like Yoper 2.x, there is a slight air of "not quite finished" - and I don't mean that in a bad way. Just a lack of developers and funding I presume holding it back a little. Ubuntu has a lot of cash and plenty of devs, but they still turn out some pretty iffy packages at times and fail to deal with genuine concerns of users.
Anyway, I shall be experimenting more with PCLOS - I hope to keep it as my distro of choice for now at least.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wireless
Wireless in Linux is one of my pet hates. On my laptop (which doesn't have built in wireless) I have a choice of two external wireless connections - one a PCMCIA card, the other a USB wireless dongle. Both are pretty poor when it comes to remaining connected. Likewise, my EeePC 701 with Ubuntu installed is much less reliable when it comes to the wireless (Atheros) than the bog-standard Xandros cutesey interface.
I am currently trying to discover exactly why the wireless support in Ubuntu is so poor when it comes to my specific devices and I think I am slowly making inroads. Nothing certain as yet, but I have a few little ideas which seem to have improved my issues with the main laptop - fingers crossed!
Tonight, I am using a different laptop - this is a Lenovo machine and the wireless seems to be working fine with the live Ubuntu 10.04 disk. Which seems to suggest it is certain modules rather than a generic "wireless" issue....
But the problem of poor wireless connectivity is a very common problem on Launchpad - so the problem affects a lot of Linux users. It is a shame, because wireless is a very popular method of network connecting, yet Linux still struggles when it comes to many of the popular chipsets.
I am currently trying to discover exactly why the wireless support in Ubuntu is so poor when it comes to my specific devices and I think I am slowly making inroads. Nothing certain as yet, but I have a few little ideas which seem to have improved my issues with the main laptop - fingers crossed!
Tonight, I am using a different laptop - this is a Lenovo machine and the wireless seems to be working fine with the live Ubuntu 10.04 disk. Which seems to suggest it is certain modules rather than a generic "wireless" issue....
But the problem of poor wireless connectivity is a very common problem on Launchpad - so the problem affects a lot of Linux users. It is a shame, because wireless is a very popular method of network connecting, yet Linux still struggles when it comes to many of the popular chipsets.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
New Users and Linux
Below is a copy of a mail I sent to the Ubuntu team today, following some discussion last night with some prospective new Linux users who were having problems.
I am currently attending an evening course relating to computing and have had
the opportunity to discuss Linux with a few of my fellow students.
Last night, two of them both commented to me on the same subject - connection
to the web in Ubuntu.
It seems both have a USB Thomson (Alcatel) Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem -
commonly issued out in the UK by ISPs - which of course come with a nice
Windows driver CD.
Although I have set up the Speedtouch in the past under Yoper Linux and
Mandriva, I decided to see for myself how things looked in Ubuntu for the new
user.
Note: I am a fairly long time Linux user, so I have tried to look at this from
the perspective of a totally new user attempting to set up a connection,
based on the comments I received last night.
So, upon plugging in the Speedtouch, nothing much happens. Something occurs
because the HD activity light comes on for a few seconds - but no wizard or
other clue on the screen as to what is happening.
Now, the more experienced user - perhaps one who has not experimented with a
Speedtouch before- would perhaps turn to the command line and see what clues
dmesg or lsusb give - and indeed they would probably discover that the
speedtouch firmware is not present!
dmesg output -
[17184911.764000] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184912.800000] usb 1-2: reset full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184913.012000] usbcore: registered new driver speedtch
[17184913.132000] speedtch 1-2:1.0: no stage 1 firmware found!
But the dmesg command is not something a new user would know nor should be
expected to know!
Anyway, the new user is still faced with no sign of life from their modem. So
I guess they would look at System Settings if using Kubuntu (as I am on this
test). Under the network settings there is nothing to indicate the existence
of the Speedtouch modem.
If this is a second machine, or a dual boot (or maybe a live CD test), they
may decide to boot into Windows to check out the wiki and discover -
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UKSpeedtouchDSLHowTo
or
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsbAdslModem/SpeedTouch
which would point them in the right direction. However, the setting up of the
Speedtouch (or indeed many other connection devices - winmodems etc) is very
intimidating for the new user. No matter how well written (and believe me, it
is hard to write these kind of things - I have done it for the Yoper Linux
distro myself) - such things as downloading and unpacking firmware, editing
files called pap-secrets etc is not what a new user wants to do!
So the new user may end up deciding that Linux is not ready for the desktop
and resign themselves to Windows useage once again. Surely this is not what
the majority of us want?
Whilst I can appreciate that many of these "drivers" - the firmware etc for
these modems - is proprietary, it must be possible to speak to
Alcatel/Thomson about possibly including the firmware in later editions of
the Ubuntu family? I believe they do release the firmware and unofficially
sanction its use. Things have improved a lot on the winmodem front over the
last couple of years - I can remember the misery of getting those to work in
older distros, but they are now tending to be superceded by ADSL for many
users and here in the UK, the Speedtouch 330 and the BT Voyager are - I
presume - still the two modems of choice for ISPs to issue freely to their
customers.
I would be interested in any comments or views on this from the Ubuntu team. I
am happy to test/work with any moves to get the Speedtouch working in a "plug
and play" type manner for those users and have a Speedtouch available to test
if needed.
This is, I feel one of the major gripes for new users in Linux - the fact that many things simply do not "just work" . The fault lies of course with the hardware manufacturers, rather than the Linux distros - the drivers etc tend to be available only for Windows (and to a lesser degree, the Mac platforms). Yes, most of this hardware - including the Speedtouch mentioned above - can be made to work, but it does involve a lot of fiddling which may be difficult for the first time user of a non Windows platform.
Sadly, there are a small but very vocal number of Linux users who do not care. In recent weeks, I have been involved in discussions with some of the "zealots" of the community - the people who decry any "proprietary" software inclusion in Linux distros - e.g things like drivers for modems or graphics cards which are released as "closed source" binary packages by the hardware companies. Whilst in an ideal world we would all like to see totally free and open source software, this is simply not going to happen overnight. My view is that a proprietary driver for my graphics card, released free of charge by the manufacturer, is better than using the non-3d accelerated "totally free " version which these zealots would prefer me to use. Sorry - but if I wish to game for example, I need 3d acceleration!
During the discussion, I pointed out to one of these people that Linux would not become popular without these so called binary blobs (the proprietary software) and was told, and I quote -
"The purpose of the system is to be free software, the purpose of the
system is not to be popular."
That comment is one of several similar ones made during a discussion which went on for a few days on a mailing list.
I was surprised by it I must admit - but it shows that there are a number of people out there who would rather see Linux relegated to a tiny niche market than expand.
Ah well - I guess thats one of the joys of the Linux community - we can all have our views and I respect that, even if I disagree with that particular viewpoint myself.
I am currently attending an evening course relating to computing and have had
the opportunity to discuss Linux with a few of my fellow students.
Last night, two of them both commented to me on the same subject - connection
to the web in Ubuntu.
It seems both have a USB Thomson (Alcatel) Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem -
commonly issued out in the UK by ISPs - which of course come with a nice
Windows driver CD.
Although I have set up the Speedtouch in the past under Yoper Linux and
Mandriva, I decided to see for myself how things looked in Ubuntu for the new
user.
Note: I am a fairly long time Linux user, so I have tried to look at this from
the perspective of a totally new user attempting to set up a connection,
based on the comments I received last night.
So, upon plugging in the Speedtouch, nothing much happens. Something occurs
because the HD activity light comes on for a few seconds - but no wizard or
other clue on the screen as to what is happening.
Now, the more experienced user - perhaps one who has not experimented with a
Speedtouch before- would perhaps turn to the command line and see what clues
dmesg or lsusb give - and indeed they would probably discover that the
speedtouch firmware is not present!
dmesg output -
[17184911.764000] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184912.800000] usb 1-2: reset full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and
address 2
[17184913.012000] usbcore: registered new driver speedtch
[17184913.132000] speedtch 1-2:1.0: no stage 1 firmware found!
But the dmesg command is not something a new user would know nor should be
expected to know!
Anyway, the new user is still faced with no sign of life from their modem. So
I guess they would look at System Settings if using Kubuntu (as I am on this
test). Under the network settings there is nothing to indicate the existence
of the Speedtouch modem.
If this is a second machine, or a dual boot (or maybe a live CD test), they
may decide to boot into Windows to check out the wiki and discover -
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UKSpeedtouchDSLHowTo
or
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsbAdslModem/SpeedTouch
which would point them in the right direction. However, the setting up of the
Speedtouch (or indeed many other connection devices - winmodems etc) is very
intimidating for the new user. No matter how well written (and believe me, it
is hard to write these kind of things - I have done it for the Yoper Linux
distro myself) - such things as downloading and unpacking firmware, editing
files called pap-secrets etc is not what a new user wants to do!
So the new user may end up deciding that Linux is not ready for the desktop
and resign themselves to Windows useage once again. Surely this is not what
the majority of us want?
Whilst I can appreciate that many of these "drivers" - the firmware etc for
these modems - is proprietary, it must be possible to speak to
Alcatel/Thomson about possibly including the firmware in later editions of
the Ubuntu family? I believe they do release the firmware and unofficially
sanction its use. Things have improved a lot on the winmodem front over the
last couple of years - I can remember the misery of getting those to work in
older distros, but they are now tending to be superceded by ADSL for many
users and here in the UK, the Speedtouch 330 and the BT Voyager are - I
presume - still the two modems of choice for ISPs to issue freely to their
customers.
I would be interested in any comments or views on this from the Ubuntu team. I
am happy to test/work with any moves to get the Speedtouch working in a "plug
and play" type manner for those users and have a Speedtouch available to test
if needed.
This is, I feel one of the major gripes for new users in Linux - the fact that many things simply do not "just work" . The fault lies of course with the hardware manufacturers, rather than the Linux distros - the drivers etc tend to be available only for Windows (and to a lesser degree, the Mac platforms). Yes, most of this hardware - including the Speedtouch mentioned above - can be made to work, but it does involve a lot of fiddling which may be difficult for the first time user of a non Windows platform.
Sadly, there are a small but very vocal number of Linux users who do not care. In recent weeks, I have been involved in discussions with some of the "zealots" of the community - the people who decry any "proprietary" software inclusion in Linux distros - e.g things like drivers for modems or graphics cards which are released as "closed source" binary packages by the hardware companies. Whilst in an ideal world we would all like to see totally free and open source software, this is simply not going to happen overnight. My view is that a proprietary driver for my graphics card, released free of charge by the manufacturer, is better than using the non-3d accelerated "totally free " version which these zealots would prefer me to use. Sorry - but if I wish to game for example, I need 3d acceleration!
During the discussion, I pointed out to one of these people that Linux would not become popular without these so called binary blobs (the proprietary software) and was told, and I quote -
"The purpose of the system is to be free software, the purpose of the
system is not to be popular."
That comment is one of several similar ones made during a discussion which went on for a few days on a mailing list.
I was surprised by it I must admit - but it shows that there are a number of people out there who would rather see Linux relegated to a tiny niche market than expand.
Ah well - I guess thats one of the joys of the Linux community - we can all have our views and I respect that, even if I disagree with that particular viewpoint myself.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
...hello again!
Worry not - the title is a family "in-joke" ;)
Lately, I have been experimenting a lot with virtual machines.
What are they?
Well, essentially, they are software programs which allow you to run one operating system inside another. So, if you have Windows (why??), you can install the program which will set up a virtual PC for you. That creates a virtual hard drive and all the other things you need to make a PC. Then, inside your new virtual PC, you can install an operating system and use it as though it was running on a real computer. It helps if you have a fairly modern PC and generous memory, because the virtual PC will share your processor and ram.
Not being a Windows person, I am currently running several virtual PCs which are running Linux distros. As I may have mentioned before, I am running Kubuntu on my laptop. It is the current 6.06 version. However, there is a test version available of the next release. So, I downloaded the .iso image and created a virtual PC for it. Conveniently, you can use the .iso image as if it was a real CD, so it saves time having to burn it to a disk. Anyway, I installed the Kubuntu testing version of 6.10 Beta. I can then run both 6.06 and 6.10 at the same time and switch between them as I wish - unlike a dual boot type setup, where I would need to restart each time.
I will probably have more to say on 6.10 in a later blog, but for now, I will say that it seems to be quite similar to 6.06 - in that it is stable and works fine.
So I suggest virtual PCs are a useful way to experiment with other operating systems. Windows users can run Linux in a virtual machine to see what they think - and of course they can run both Windows and Linux at the same time, rather than messing with dual booting!
There are a lot of things I could comment on regarding virtual machines, but I would suggest a Google around at a couple of them and see which would be most useful to you. I have used Bochs, Qemu and VMWare Server. All these are available free of charge from the relevant websites. I understand that Microsoft also have a virtual machine, but of course I have not been able to test that out.
Lately, I have been experimenting a lot with virtual machines.
What are they?
Well, essentially, they are software programs which allow you to run one operating system inside another. So, if you have Windows (why??), you can install the program which will set up a virtual PC for you. That creates a virtual hard drive and all the other things you need to make a PC. Then, inside your new virtual PC, you can install an operating system and use it as though it was running on a real computer. It helps if you have a fairly modern PC and generous memory, because the virtual PC will share your processor and ram.
Not being a Windows person, I am currently running several virtual PCs which are running Linux distros. As I may have mentioned before, I am running Kubuntu on my laptop. It is the current 6.06 version. However, there is a test version available of the next release. So, I downloaded the .iso image and created a virtual PC for it. Conveniently, you can use the .iso image as if it was a real CD, so it saves time having to burn it to a disk. Anyway, I installed the Kubuntu testing version of 6.10 Beta. I can then run both 6.06 and 6.10 at the same time and switch between them as I wish - unlike a dual boot type setup, where I would need to restart each time.
I will probably have more to say on 6.10 in a later blog, but for now, I will say that it seems to be quite similar to 6.06 - in that it is stable and works fine.
So I suggest virtual PCs are a useful way to experiment with other operating systems. Windows users can run Linux in a virtual machine to see what they think - and of course they can run both Windows and Linux at the same time, rather than messing with dual booting!
There are a lot of things I could comment on regarding virtual machines, but I would suggest a Google around at a couple of them and see which would be most useful to you. I have used Bochs, Qemu and VMWare Server. All these are available free of charge from the relevant websites. I understand that Microsoft also have a virtual machine, but of course I have not been able to test that out.
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