Episode 045 – Happy Birthday to Debian
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Total Running Time: 1:09:01
Un-edited Live session – http://youtu.be/kUhOguNwkKA
Contact Us:
show (at) smlr.us or the Contact us page
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 2:05
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 4:21
Mary Distro Review
Time: 13:09
Tech News:
Time: 27:05
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time: 44:09
Listener Feedback
Time: 51:11
Outtro Music
Time: 59:06
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Intro Sound bite by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 2:05
Kernel News
Release Candidate:
On Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:12:16 PDT
Linus Torvalds released kernel 3.6-rc2
“The diffstat looks pretty flat, apart from the tcm_vhost part (which was pending from the merge window). That is also a fairly good sign – although probably also a sign of my aggressive “no, I won’t pull that outside of the merge window” policy. Anyway, a flat diffstat means that there weren’t huge changes anywhere, just fairly small fixes all over. The most noticeable areas of change (again, with the exception of tcm_vhost) are the GPU/DRM updates and the tools/perf updates. But there are smaller changes pretty much all over.”
–Linus Torvalds
Mainline:
3.6-rc2
Stable Updates:
On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:20:50 PDT
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.4.9
With 73 files changed, 769 lines inserted, and 330 lines deleted
On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:08:29 PDT
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.0.41
With 52 files changed, 585 inserted, and 244 lines deleted
On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:19:58 PDT
Greg Kroah-Hartman released kernel 3.5.2
With 93 files changed, 926 lines inserted, and 390 lines deleted
Kernel Developer Quote:
Matthew Garrett thoughts on firmware vendors vs. hardware vendors.
“Anyway. This was my attempt to spend a few days doing something more relaxing than secure boot, and all I ended up with was eczema and liver pain. Lesson learned, hardware vendors hate you even more than firmware vendors do.”
–Matthew Garrett
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 4:21
- 8-13 – BackTrack 5 R3 – Offensive Security has released BackTrack 5 R3, an updated version of the project’s Ubuntu-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools
- 8-15 – Webconverger 14 – Debian-based speciality distribution designed for web kiosks
- 8-17 – AV Linux 6.0 – Debian-based distribution geared towards media production
- 8-17 – BlankOn 8.0 – ebian-based Indonesian distribution featuring the GNOME 3 desktop with a custom desktop shell called “Manokwari”
- 8-17 – SolusOS 1.2 – a beginner-friendly desktop Linux distribution based on the latest stable release of Debian GNU/Linux
- 8-17 – ROSA 2012 RP 1 – a Mandriva-based Linux distribution. Labelled as RP (Release Pack) 1, this is largely a bug-fix release with a handful of package updates.
- 8-17 – Calculate Linux 12.0.2 – a Gentoo-based distribution
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Fedora – 1172
- Slackware – 1284
- Ubuntu – 1572
- Mint – 2805
- Mageia – 2937
Mary Distro Review
Time: 13:09
CinnArch Review
This should probably be called a review of the CinnArch install process, interesting it was! Just the word Arch in the name of a distro should spark visions of configuration heaven (or hell). If you want to install the Cinnamon desktop on Arch, there’s instructions for that. If you want to check out the pre-arranged marriage of Cinnamon on an Arch base, you’ll want to give CinnArch a look—provided that it clears a few things up.
The Vitals:
Name: CinnArch
Maintainer: Alexandre Filgueira
Distro Latest Birthday: July 5, 2012 (submitted to Distrowatch)
Derivative: Arch (Rolling Release)
Kernel: 3.4.8 (uname -a)
Review Desktop: Cinnamon (based on Gnome 3.4.2)
Downloaded: Can be downloaded from http://www.cinnarch.com/. The iso was 593MB.
Live Environment:
Live version of CinnArch booted to the Cinnamon desktop in approximately 3 minutes. CinnArch’s Cinnamon desktop sports a single panel at the top of the screen, unlike a few other distros that run Cinnamon. To each their own. Either way, a very clean interface.
Browser: Chromium 21.0.1180.77
Office Suite: LibreOffice Installer
Mail Client: None was installed.
The missing GNOME Keyring proved to be an issue anytime I tried to connect to wireless, update packages, essentially any time a key was needed. is a collection of components in GNOME that store secrets, passwords, keys, certificates and make them available to applications.
The Install Process:
There is no install option on the boot menu.
You can only install it from the live environment. And the desktop icon is called Cinnarch Installer CLI. Those initials says it all. So I buckled my seatbelt and clicked the icon. Installing CinnArch was an adventure, requiring more involvement and choices than many other distros.
I’ll walk you through the install which was the most interesting part of my CinnArch experience.
The first thing the installer does is to check for updates, applies any it finds, and tells you to restart it.
You’re presented with a list of steps not too dissimilar from other installs. But the devil’s in the details as they say. I saw a few imps here and there…
Set Keyboard – consists of scanning for keymaps and present you with a list by file name. You’re on your own to select the correct keymap. I checked for ‘us’ versions and selected us.map.gz .
Set Time and Date – Found my location, answered a few questions about the time. Done!
Prepare the hard drive – The easy choice is “Auto-Prepare” but it commandeers your entire drive, erasing the content in the process.
The first surprise for me was the option to use GPT (GUID Partition Table) in addition to the MBR partition table. This is certainly helpful if you have a 2TB drive.
You then respond with the sizes of the partitions, one partition per screen. A little tedious.
The alternative is to manually partition the hard drive. CinnArch provides two options to handle this task: the parted shell–
or if you happened to remember the note all the way back on the install introduction, you’ll know you have Gparted available for use.
Call me lazy but I used Gparted from the live environment to set up my partitions. It would have been nice to have a link to GParted, but a lack of one didn’t hamper me in any way.
After identifying the mount points, CinnArch let me select the device name scheme I wanted to use: UUID, FSLabel, Kernelname.
Select Source – From here you can select the mirror for download. The list appears to be a subset of the Arch mirror set.
Install System – There are no pretty pictures, no beautiful music, no helpful hints—just row after row of compressed tar file names scrolling past your eyeballs. Nothing to look at here, please move along.
After the download and install finished, I was ready to configure the system. But first CinnArch wanted to know which text editor I wanted to use: vi or Nano. Nano, of course!
Configure System – From the CinnArch configuration menu you can create a non-root user, name the computer, set the root password. Also, you can set your DNS servers, Network hosts, or configure the initramfs, although I left these items alone. I was installing in Virtual Box and didn’t have to worry about networking for a change.
Install Bootloader – I found this step the most interesting of all, which may sound odd but it’s true. The first thing you do is determine whether you’ll use a BIOS bootloader or UEFI. If you plan to use UEFI, you need to have a few things in place, first.
I will admit to trying UEFI out but I bricked my install and had to start over. Needless to say, the next time around, I selected BIOS.
Wow! More choices. My BIOS bootloader choices were Grub2, Lilo, or SysLinux
I installed Grub2. Afterwards, you get to review the grub2 configuration file. Why is that, you ask?
Well, I asked that, too, because CinnArch opens the grub.cfg file–you know… the file that should not be manually edited. The file that explicitly tells you DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE at the top of it.
I found that a little humorous but it’s a flaw that should be fixed…right after adding the Gnome-Keyring.
After existing the install process, there wasn’t a prompt to reboot. The installer closed and that was it.
Installed Environment:
Since Cinnamon is based on Gnome, some of the same issues I’ve noted in the past exist within Cinnamon. For example the System Settings screen the window is smaller than the icon set used. So a a scroll bar appears on the right. Contrast that with KDE’s approach – it remembers the size of the window, the last time you used it.
I edited the panel to add the trash can. I also tried to add a shutdown applet to the panel but could not get it to appear on the list. I even followed the instructions. All other listed applets worked fine. What I discovered is that you will stay in panel edit mode unless you toggle it off. And that explains why some applets wouldn’t stay put. Once I figured that out, I liked that feature.
Interesting Programs
Hotot – an open source Twitter client.
Xnoise – Media player for music and video collections.
LibreOffice Installer – launch install utility for LibreOffice.
Files – Which turned out to be Nautilus.
7ZipFM – Archive Utility and one of my favorite
Dconf Editor – System configuration utility
QT V4L2 Test Utility – Allow testing Video4Linux devices
Package Management – CinnArch uses Pacman for package management and a fully stocked GUI for ease of management—PacmanXG. According to the Interwebs, PacmanXG doesn’t depend on either QT or GTK, just X11.
What I really liked about PacmanXG was the task list. The layout of tasks is very clean. Would one of the task options really let me “Find 3 fastest mirrors”?
PacmanXG Package Management Screen
Of course nothing is perfect. PacmanXG presents some confusing screens. For example, I decided to test the task: Find 3 fastest mirrors. A window appeared and prompted for a password but it appeared it wasn’t needed because at the same time, a progress indicator spun for a couple of seconds, then the word “=> Done” appeared.
And the Detail screen was no less confusing. A progress bar at 0% but also showed the word “Done” Did it really check? It was hard to know.
Other features include the supporting tasks when managing packages: Xterminal, file Navigator, and text editor.
I decided to test install a couple of softwares: Inkscape and Scribus. I mentioned earlier that the gnome-keyring was inadvertently excluded from this release of Cinn-Arch. It was very noticeable here because a key was needed and the keyring was not available. Ouch!
Rating: CinnArch earns 2 cups of dark roast. It has a lot of potential and if the distro’s maintainer, Alexandre Filgueira, gets some help, CinnArch should do quite well.
Tech News:
Time: 27:05
Happy 19th Birthday Debian
Debian turned 19 on August 16th, making it one fo the oldest Linux distributions out there. Ian Murdock, the Debian Project founder, announced the project on August 16th, 1993 with it’s first release. The projects goals have remained dead on target with what Ian had laid down originally despite regular leadership changes since his departure in 1996. From that first humble release it has grown into a staple distribution spawning many children. Stefano Zacchiroli, the current Debian project leader, has made it his focus to devlop better downstream relations with their spinoffs. He is also working towards getting Debian included in the FSF’s list of recommended distributions. The current major release of Debian is 6.X with 7.0 coming in the spring of 2013. the Debian 6.x version right now has around 29,000 packages available, this number has continuously risen with every major release.
Apple-Samsung Update Judge Asks Apple Attorney “Are You Smoking Crack”
Well that is according to Nick Wingfield a writer with NYT, here is his tweet.
“Judge Koh just accused Apple’s attorneys of “smoking crack.” “You’re Honor, I’m not smoking crack,” an Apple attny responded in earnest.”
The best part of this whole suit has been Judge Koh. She is a complete Alpha with a bit of humor. This particular comment was in response to the length of Apples witness list. Each side is limited to 25 hours in which to present their case. This type of comment is par for the course from Judge Koh. She has expressed great frustration with the intricacy and duration of the the trial. She has also made it known what a huge waste of taxpayers dollars she believes it to be, since both side seem intent on continuing litigation rather than reaching a conclusion.
Gnome OS, WTF
A lot of their devs have abandoned ship, their community is evaporating, so now they think it’s a goog time to venture into OS land. Are they effing insane? This is how Open Source works you piss off your community, and then don’t listen when they tell you that this is not what they want. The announcement was first made at GAUDEC in a presentation by Xan Lopex and Juan Jose Sanchez entitled “A Bright Future For GNOME.” Allan Day, a GNOME UX designer, clarified what exactly GnomeOS was intended to be in a blog post.
“The aspirations that are driving this process include things like providing a better experience for application developers, automated testing, sandboxed applications and broad hardware compatibility. While the creation of a standalone GNOME OS install does feature as a part of our plans, this is primarily intended as a platform for testing and development.”
It is my opinion that Gnome will be defunct in less than three years replaced by MATE or another Gnome2 fork.
KDE Korner
Calligra 2.5 released for Kubuntu
Packages for the release of KDE’s document suite Calligra 2.5 are available for Kubuntu 12.04. You can get it from the Kubuntu Backports PPA (alongside KDE SC 4.9). They are also in our development release.
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/calligra-2.5
Amarok 2.6 “In Dulci Jubilo” Released
A complete overhaul of the iPod, iPad and iPhone support including solid support for device playlists (however, underlying library, libgpod, still doesn’t support iOS 5 devices completely)
Transcoding for iPod-like and USB Mass Storage devices that complements transcoding for Local Collection
The Free Music Chart service is now activated by default
Embedded Cover support for Ogg and Flac files
Album Art support for tracks on the filesystem and USB Mass Storage devices
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Amarok-2-6-overhauls-support-for-iOS-devices-1666827.html
Krita 2.5 is out!
Krita, the full-featured painting application for digital artists, is now better than ever. Krita 2.5 offers many compelling new features for the professional artist, such as textured painting, layer compositions management and smoother smudging.
Muon Suite 1.4.0 Released
Jonathon Thomas’ blog announced the release of version 1.4.0 of the Muon Suite. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Due to a data center maintenance on Canonical’s part, PPA packages for Kubuntu 12.04 will be delayed. Once the data center move is completed, the packages will be in the QApt PPA. Sorry for the inconvenience. Packages are also available in the development release of Kubuntu 12.10, codename “Quantal Quetzal”.
http://jontheechidna.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/muon-suite-1-4-0-released/
How to Recover Deleted Files in Linux
Oops! You accidentally deleted files that you were supposed to submit in 2 hours! Trust me, even the smartest of geeks have been in such situations. And yes, it’s not the lack of technological savoir-faire that puts people in such tough spots; it’s just the general clumsiness and nervousness in certain situation that makes us make such blunders.
http://www.junauza.com/2012/06/how-to-recover-deleted-files-in-linux.html
Is it Alive?
Time: 44:09
Is It Alive (or is it the Son of Mandriva)?
During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? This week is twist week when I challenge Mat and Tony to decide whether the named entity is a Son of Mandriva. As is customary on twist week, extra credit is given if the alive/dead status is correctly guessed.
OK, let’s test this twist. Are you ready? Mageia. Mandriva-based or not? It’s Mandriva based!
The items for the August 18 show:
====================================
Pingo
Pingo Linux is a Slovenian distribution of Linux . It is a simple and user-friendly operating system based on the most popular open distribution company Red Hat and Project Fedora .
http://www.pingo.org/
MAT: Mandriva
TONY: Mandriva
VERDICT: Fedora based (DEAD)
====================================
ChameleonOS
a resource-light and skinnable desktop Linux operating system.
http://chameleonos.wordpress.com/
MAT: Mandriva Alive=2
TONY: Mandriva Alive=2
VERDICT Mandriva Alive
===================================
Ares Linux
Ares Desktop was a free operating system for people looking for a polished desktop environment for the educational, business desktop and home user fields.
MAT: Not Mandriva Dead=2
TONY: Mandriva =0
VERDICT: Fedora (Dead)
===================================
Ulteo
Ulteo was founded by veteran entrepreneurs Gaël Duval (founder of Mandrake Linux, a popular Linux distribution) and Thierry Koehrlen (co-founder of www.intalio.com, the leading Open Source BPMS
http://www.ulteo.com/home/
MAT: Mandriva=0
TONY: Not Mandriva Dead=0
VERDICT: Kubuntu based Alive
===================================
Kondara MNU/Linux Was a Japanese distribution based on Raw Hide. . The word “Kondara” is not a proper Japanese but a wordplay from an old Japanese TV animation, and indicates their resolution to devote to this distribution. Kondara lasted less than a year and had two releases per Distrowatch.
http://www.kondara.org/
MAT: Mandriva Dead=0
TONY: Mandriva Alive=0
VERDICT: Red Hat (Dead)
===================================
Annvix
Annvix was a free secure Linux-based operating system produced by the Annvix development team and Danen Consulting Services. Annvix has not been in development since March, 2008. The wiki was shut down on December 22, 2011.
http://linsec.ca/Annvix:Index.htm
MAT: Mandriva Alive=1
TONY: Not Mandriva Dead=2
VERDICT: Mandriva based (Dead)
===================================
Winner Mat
Listener Feedback show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time: 51:11
Voice mail – Mr Gadget – Basic
Brad – KDE – Maxamize button, and The Nemo’s name history
Easling – Do not move to feedburner
chattr – computer hardware for Curiosity: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/y6r8k/why_does_the_curiosity_rover_have_such_a_poor/
That Dude – Google Reader
George – update on his linux adventures
Denning – Perl Linux Distros – http://perllinux.sourceforge.net/
Outtro Music
Time: 59:06
Pim song macallan by artist The Maggie Whackers
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