So I’ve been thinking about creating my own Linux distribution, I didn’t want to start from scratch and wanted to have some sort of software repository I could use. What better than Debian! Yes, I do enjoy Debian… Anyway after a little Google research I discovered two handy applications for the remastering process. For Ubuntu there is Reconstructor which is extremely easy to use via its gui. Reconstructor allows you to customize the look and feel of your Ubuntu distribution and preinstall a few applications from the Reconstructor repository. It, however, does not have the depth of our next tool and it does not allow Debian remastering. Remastersys is a gui tool for Debian and Ubuntu remastering. I prefer this tool because you can fully customize the distribution however you like. Installed software, settings, and preferences can all be exported onto a happy little CD ready for your friends and co-workers to try.
It’s been one year since I switched over to using Linux as my primary operating system. Since then I have tried many different distributions, all of which have their low and high points, but I have not yet missed Windows. I have tried to convert as many users as possible over to the Linux world, most of whom have been people wanting a PC tune-up. To which request I would ask, “How do you feel about trying Linux?” Most people were wary and many asked what it was. I did find it interesting that the people who were most willing to try Linux were also the ones who were the least knowledgeable when it comes to computing. The experience for others and myself has been great so far with very few bugs and comparatively great security. I hope the Linux community continues to improve the open source Linux desktop.
Howtoforge user Falko posts how to create the perfect windows replacement with all the bells and whistles using the newly released Debian 5.0 Lenny.
The Perfect Desktop: Debian Lenny
- As many posts as I make about Debian, maybe I should just rename my blog “Ash’s Debian Blog.”
Wanting to become more comfortable with Linux I tried installing several different distributions most of which are supposed to be for the “Linux gurus.” I tried Fedora 10 and while that was great and I appreciated Fedora’s attention to being truly open source it still didn’t impress the Linux gurus. So next on my list was Arch which is supposed to be light, quick, and easier to setup than say Gentoo. Well Arch is too complicated for me! It’s not as simple as they make it out to be, even though I followed the official installation guide to the letter. Maybe my obscure hardware setup found yet another bug in yet another distribution. This appeared to be the case and yet another distribution didn’t like my hardware, Sabayon. Sabayon claims to be an easy to use distribution based on Gentoo, that being said it should be fast right? Not at all Sabayon includes so many things with the default installation that it can all be rather overwhelming. And yet again there were problems with hardware, but I was able to push past this issues and get things working. Almost! but not quite Sabayon, you are just too unstable for me. FireFox seemed to crash as often as I opened it among several other buggy occurrences. So yet again, Debian 5.0 (Lenny Stable!) has won me over with its ease of use and rock solid stability. There really is nothing like apt-get paired with this kind of stability. Some may argue there are better distributions, but for me its the simplicity and stability of Debian!
Well Debian Lenny is supposed to go stable any month now, so I decided to try out the newest release candidate. I installed Lenny on my main desktop and, coming from Ubuntu, the system seems so much more responsive. Booting probably takes less that half the time and things don’t come to a crawl when I have many applications running. Is Ubuntu really that bloated? Seems it probably is, but much of the bloat is scripting, making the user experience much more accessible than in regular Debian. For instance, you no longer have the automagically proprietary hardware installing gui. In Lenny you must know how to use synaptic or apt to get the latest and greatest in that area–which is not hard, just not intuitive for inexperienced users. If you haven’t tried Debian recently maybe you should give Lenny another go. It’s finally reaching stable classification and includes much newer software versions than Etch is allowed.
After getting rather frustrated with Puppy Linux on my old laptop I decided to try DSL again. This time I used a frugal installation as opposed to the Full I tried the first time around and, well, I love it! This is probably the fastest I have ever seen this computer work. My only problem has been getting wireless to work with my WPA encrypted access point, but DSL doesn’t mind automatically using other none encrypted networks. Well, actually one other small complaint is that I would prefer to use seamonkey or another browser other than the default FireFox and dillo. FireFox is rather slow especially when trying to scroll through large sites and Dillo doesn’t have support for flash or other plugins. I know DSL-N comes with seamonkey, so maybe there is a way for me to install it on regular DSL.
I’m so pleased with the results I will be migrating a desktop over to DSL. DSL may not be as user friendly as other distros, but it sure has them all beat in the performance area.
For my primary computing needs I use Ubuntu 8.10 on my athlon64 based machine, but I have several older machines that I would like to put to use as well. Two of them are easily taken care of by using them for a firewall and dedicated file server appliances They both work flawlessly using smoothwall and freeNAS for these two purposes, but I still have one more machine that needs an OS. Long ago a friend gave me an old laptop they were sure would never work again. Well after replacing the 3gb hard drive with a 8gb flash drive, the system was ready for use and use it I did for sometime. Problem is that the meager 333mhz cpu and 160mb of ram cannot handle newer operating systems without coming to a crawl or just completely giving up. So I began looking for a “lite” linux distro just for this purpose. Since then I have tried many many different distros and I am still not satisfied with the results. The distro that worked the best and served my needs best is Puppy, but it’s rather insecure in that you always are using the machine as root. Also, the system never seemed to be all that stable, dropping me from X randomly or deciding not to boot at all. Some other distros I have tried include DSL, DSL-N, Slitaz, Antix, Deli, Austrimi, CrunchBang, NimbleX, PUD, and others. What I really would like is the ability to install a minimal debian installation, but since the laptop is so old that it doesn’t have ethernet or wifi, I’m limited to what I can do with it. I guess I’ll just have to break down and buy an ethernet adapter for it!
Check out this great thread at the Ubuntu forums for such “lite” distros.
I’ve long been interested in alternative energy sources, especially solar energy. A friend of mine was living in their home without central heating for some time now, relying on a kerosene heater to heat their living space. So, being the good friend and curious creator I am, I researched several solar powered heaters. The general concept is simple: an airtight box with a window contains a heating element which gets hot in the sunlight, obviously! Opening two doors on the inside of the device allows cool air to enter and the natural convection forces the heated air out the other door and back into the room. Simple and effective, or so I thought. Problem is the panel heats up but the air doesn’t move through it as much as I would like. A simple solution would be to add a small fan to pull air back into the room.
PS: sorry for the bad pictures… Camera phones xD
I’m a big horror movie fan, so I always love this time of year because all the new horror flicks come out and your favorites, and then not so favorites, can be seen splattered all over television. Here are some that were new to me. One was great, one is a remake of that movie, another is decent, and one is just plain bad.
So first up we have Rec (as in the record button on a camera), a zombie meets blair witch horror flick in which the viewer follows the host of a Spanish TV show and her cameraman as they document and interview the inhabitants of the local fire station. The plot starts off fairly dull–so much so in fact, that even the characters are getting bored. Things then pick up when the alarm sounds and everyone rushes off to a distress call of unknown events. More than that and I will probably spoil the movie. The entire movie is shown in first person ala blair witch project and adds to the claustrophobic feel of the apartment complex that the rest of the movie takes place in.
Next we have Quaratine, which is the US remake of Rec! I have not seen this yet, but if its like The Ring (Ringu) remakes, then it is sure to be a flop. It amazes me how different two versions of the same story can be sometimes…
Third is The Strangers which I saw a while ago, but was good enough that I aquired the unrated version to watch again. The plot is a little hard to follow in the beginning of the movie as we join the young couple in the midst of a fight and some failed special evening. But things do pick up and the couple begins to hear knocks on the door and strange noises during the night. After a while the couple realizes they are not alone when objects start disappearing from the cabin.
Lastly is House and I don’t really know why I’m mentioning it. Oh yea to warn you to avoid this movie as if it were the plague! If you have ever watched those cheap horror flicks on SciFi then you have seen House. Badly written, badly executed, bad bad bad, and this is a horror flick.
Long ago I kinda sorta began collecting computers. Well, maybe not collecting as much as hording. Anyway, being as I had so many computers, it was no longer a simple matter of opening an mp3 on my local hard drive and playing it. So I decided to create a file server to store all of my files for easy access from any machine on the network.
So, back on topic. I wanted to be able to mount shares automatically so I wouldn’t have to enter cumbersome commands every time I wanted to play an mp3.
Step 1: Create a folder on your local hard drive to mount your share to.
Open a terminal as root/sudo and type:
mkdir foldername
This will create a folder in your current working directory called foldername. You may want to call it something else though.
Step 2: Open /etc/fstab
as root/sudo type:
nano /etc/fstab
This will open your fstab file in my favorite text editor, nano. You may use vi if you would rather or if there is something wrong with you.
Step 3: Edit /etc/fstab
Add the following line to the end of your fstab replacing the text where applicable. FYI the 0 0 are zeros.
//serverip/share/sharefolder /home/username/foldername smbfs 0 0
Now use ctrl O to write the changes you have made and then ctrl X to exit nano.
Step 4: You’re done wasn’t that easy?
The next time you reboot your shares should be mounted if you did everything right. If you want to mount the shares immediately you can always type:
mount -a
An Example: Here is what your fstab may look like after you have added your shares.
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=59916d5a-286f-41e3-b934-5e5ff7e600a1 / ext3 relatime,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=65a14b5b-49f5-40d5-abf3-663d4d548c85 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
# Samba Documents
//10.10.10.2/share/Private/ash /home/ash/Documents smbfs 0 0
# Samba Videos
//10.10.10.2/share/Public/Video /home/ash/Videos smbfs 0 0
Some things to think about:
This how-to did not cover mounting shares that require user names and passwords. You can simply add the user name and password to your /etc/fstab, but obviously this is highly insecure and using a password file is more advisable.
Unmounting at shutdown bug caused by Gnome Network Manager:
There is a nasty bug where during a shutdown or reboot your system will hang because the network manager has already disconnected your lan connection before smbfs could unmount your shares. There is, however, a work around. I have been using the work around for several weeks without adverse side effects.
