bobpeers -> blog

After writing about the new netbook craze and thinking of buying one I’ve been spending some time researching the options. If I do buy one I’m pretty certain that I’ll be installing a new distribution on the device since the Linux distributions they ship with seem a bit limiting for me.

It’s for this reason I’ve looked into how easy it is to replace the distros and one thing becomes very clear, Linux itself is immensely versatile and the community around Linux is incredibly productive and inventive.

Just looking at the Eee PC and Acer Aspire One there dozens of sites with modifications, hacks and plenty of resources being put into tailoring distros to work flawlessly with these computers. Both Ubuntu and Fedora have projects being worked on to the Eee PC while the Aspire One has the same

The openness offered by Linux and other open source projects allows users to re-spin existing Linux distributions to fit almost any hardware out there. Plus, from a technical perspective, I’m sure it’s much more rewarding to have complete freedom to create what you like.

Compare this to buying a netbook with Windows XP where you get a closed source OS that’s basically 7 years old and the only reason you’re allowed to get it in the first place is that Microsoft is scared to loose marked share to Linux while accepting that Vista is far too bloated to run on these netbooks.

On top of that Microsoft limit the netbook specifications to allow it to be licensed and there’s very limited possibilities for users to tweak XP for a specific netbook in the way one can for Linux.

Many people complain about the diversity in the Linux marketplace but as Linus Torvalds himself says, this diversity is good for the community and he future of Linux itself.

For when everything freezes totally it’s useful to know the commands on this Free Software Magazine page.

I notice that on Fedora these keys are not captured by default but this is easily fixed using the following command as root.

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

On my system this also opens gnome-screenshot but don’t worry as the kernel still gets the keys as well. My only problem is that the /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq file gets overwritten on boot so I need to make the change permanent, if I find a solution I’ll update the post.

Update - on Fedora it’s very easy to set the sysrq parameter to 1 permanently. Just open the file /etc/sysctl.conf as root and look for the following line, changing it from 0 to 1.

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

After posting that the Acer Aspire One netbook uses a modified version of Linpus Linux Lite I thought I’d download it and run it within Virtualbox just to take a look around.

For a website with iso files available to download it’s the slowest site I’ve come across in ages, even the regular site takes an age to load so you can forget trying to download it for yourself.

It would have taken about 25 hours to fully download the 673.61 MB iso file and I couldn’t find any mirrors with better bandwidth, so unless you’re very patient it’s out of the question.

With companies seemingly releasing a new netbook every week I must admit that I’m tempted to buy one. There’s few things that are very appealing:

• Price, they’re very cheap so can be used as a second computer.
• Very light and portable. My 15″ laptop is miles more powerful but you can’t just throw it in a bag and not notice, the new netbooks all weight around 1kg.
• Great to play around with using Linux. The default systems run by may of these is somewhat limited but there’s a whole slew of sites started up showing you how to install your favourite Linux distro on these machines. Hours of fun for people like me!
• Later machines have better keyboards and improved battery life so are comfortable to use on long trips and will last all day.

I’m looking at the Acer Aspire One right now but I’d rather wait until it’s available with the 6 cell battery as the 3 cells only gives 2.5 to 3 hours of battery life. It runs a Linux disro called Linpus Linux Lite which is a modified version of Fedora 8 but running XFCE as the desktop manager.

I tried one out in a shop over the weekend, it was the 512MB version with the 8GB SSD disk and running Linux. I thought it felt pretty snappy in use with very little lag when opening applications, of course opening a 100+ page pdf file took about 30 seconds but for everyday use it seemed good.

The Thunar file manager was very easy to use and files appeared instantly when browsing the drive. Even though by default it’s pretty locked down there’s plenty of sites explaining how to unlock the interface. Failing that I might just install a new distro, the only problem being that it will have to be from a usb drive since I don’t have an external DVD drive (and don’t intend to buy one).

Edit: there’s a really good review of the Aspire One here.

I try my best to use open source software wherever possible. This usually just means downloading and using software but I’m increasingly trying to buy from companies that actively advertise supporting Linux, for example.

In a recent post I described that I was looking to buy some HomePlug units. I eventually ordered some from a company called Devolo (you can see them here) and one of the main reasons was that on their website that have driver software available for Linux. The units are OS agnostic but it’s nice to see a company put in the effort to allow users of other operating systems to get the full functionality from a product.

In this case I also put my money where my mouth is since they are considerably more expensive than many others available, the Netgear HDXB101 units cost about 400 DKK (80 USD) less.

Since I use Linux so much finding products that support Linux is very important to me, it’s just a pity that so few companies provide accurate information regarding what OS their product supports. Pick up any box in a computer shop and it’s easy to see that Windows XP/Vista symbols along with the Mac icon but rarely do you see any mention of Linux, or any other system for that matter.

This even applies to routers when they simply act as a DHCP server and have a web interface, anyone knows these work fine with Linux but from the packaging you would never know. Even my Synology Diskstation which actually runs Linux doesn’t advertise Linux support!

Companies need to realise that some buying decisions are made on the basis of OS support. Even if Linux only makes up 1% of the OS market share I’m pretty sure those 1% spend well over the average on hardware. I have 1PC, 1 laptop, a network printer, router, NAS device, portable hard disk, plus many other devices, and I’m sure many other Linux users spend well over the average.

Here’s a very useful site on UNIX / Linux commands, pretty exhaustive list.

Unix Toolbox (xhtml)
Unix Toolbox (pdf)

I’ve tried a few times to create a bootable USB drive, usually from within Linux, and every time it’s failed. Lately I’ve started to put a bit more effort in as I think the need to have a portable sysadmin toolkit that I can run on any computer (if it will boot from USB) is invaluable.

How many times are you sitting in front of a friends computer trying to diagnose a problem wishing you had another computer available to use as an independent check. With a bootable USB containing a minimal Linux install this is exactly what you have.

Simply insert the stick, reboot and have all your favorite Linux tools available without touching the hard drive. And if you do need to access the hard drive you can, fixing a corrupted Windows MBR is one example that comes to mind.

Anyway the method that finally worked is documented here:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_to_a_USB_Flash_Drive#Method_I

It’s ironic that I needed to use Windows to get a Linux based USB drive to work, even using Linux tools in the process (syslinux). It’s a situation I’m not that happy about so I’ll keep trying other methods from within Linux.

But in the meantime I’m happy it worked and DSL seems fine, it boots pretty fast, even from USB, and is very snappy to use. My main gripe at first glance is lack of NTFS support.

Here’s a really helpfull guide to using .htaccess files with Apache, great for cut and paste examples for when mod_rewrite is giving you a headache.

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-htaccess.html

It seems that the well known system requirements for Vista have caused some confusion, even amongst IT professionals.

The other day at work I was sending a couple of 2-3 year old HP desktop PCs in to IT support to have Windows XP Professional installed along with Office 2003. These are not cutting edge machines but they have 3GHz Pentium 4’s and 512MB of RAM, more than enough for a business PC running office applications.

Their response was that they didn’t think they would run Windows XP without 1GB of RAM. My 4 year old laptop with a 1.3GHz processor and 512MB of RAM runs XP and office just fine and the last time I checked the requirements for Windows XP it said 128MB of RAM was required.

I know that new computers all have at least 1GB of RAM but the idea that you need this to do anything is just not true (at least if not using Vista). It seems that people have heard so much about how you need X MB of RAM or a dual core processor that the average processing power of a PC is far greater than most people require.

I often see adverts from high street computer stores describing quite high-spec machines as ‘good for basic text editing, email and browsing the internet’ when that’s the sort of thing that can be done on a mobile phone these days.

It’s one of the (many) reasons I use Linux, it does all I require and much more without making me feel like I need to upgrade my laptop every 6 months.