Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 4, 2007
by sjvn01
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A first look at SimplyMEPIS 6.5

I have a nomination for the “Worst possible situation to review an operating system” award. Review it, SimplyMEPIS 6.5 release candidate 2, while stuck in a hotel room 2,000 miles from home with food-poisoning.

Trust me, in a situation like this, you are not in the mood to put up with any crap from your computer’s operating system. You’ve got enough going wrong with you without any thing else going wrong.

So, there I was in Salt Lake City, sick as a dog, with my faithful IBM T40 ThinkPad. This system uses a 1.5 GHz Pentium M processor with 1 MB of L2 cache, and a 400 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus). It has 512 MB of DDR SDRAM memory, and a built-in ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 AGP 4x with 32 MB of VRAM for graphics.

The T40s came from the factory with one of three different WiFi cards in a miniPCI slot; mine came equipped with an Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter. It also has a built-in 10/100 Ethernet port. In my case, I also use a NetGear RangeMax WPN511 WiFi card because of its faster — 802.11g — performance and that the card itself has better range than any Centrino-based laptop I’ve ever used

On this system, I had zero — nada — trouble installing the new distribution. Despite what you may read elsewhere about how hard installing Linux is, installing a modern Linux, like MEPIS, which is based on Ubuntu, is a snap on 95 out of 100 systems. I don’t even recall the last time I had to do anything more complicated than hitting the enter button when installing Linux. That’s a good thing, because I don’t think I could have done much more than that on this particular go-around.

SimplyMEPIS 6.5 is built on the 2.6.17 Linux kernel, based on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Service), aka “Dapper Drake,” by the way. Until version 6.0, MEPIS had been built on Debian, but MEPIS designer Warren Woodford found that Debian Stable was too far behind the curve, and Debian Testing/Unstable was advancing too quickly and breaking too often, so he switched to Ubuntu.

Unlike Ubuntu, which uses GNOME for its default desktop, MEPIS uses KDE 3.5.3. As a long-time KDE user, that’s fine by me. The last thing I needed in that hotel room was an interface that I didn’t know by heart.

I was also happy to see all the familiar application faces that I expect to see on a first-rate Linux desktop: Firefox 2.03, OpenOffice 2.02, Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, Gaim 1.5.1 CSV, and so on. The only missing program that I always require on any desktop was the world’s best email/groupware client, Evolution.

That wasn’t really a problem, though, because MEPIS uses the Synaptic 0.57.8 package manager as a front end to the software management apt utility. This is already set to look for new and updated programs on MEPIS’s and Ubuntu’s own repositories, so installing the program took little more than entering its name, and then waiting for the download and installation to complete.

That said, this kind of application installation is only truly easy for someone who already knows what program they’re looking for. Linspire’s forthcoming CNR (“Click ‘N Run”) download and software management service for desktop Linux will go a long way towards making it easy for anyone to download and install Linux applications. While MEPIS has not committed to this system, Ubuntu is joining forces with Linspire in the new CNR. Perhaps MEPIS will eventually follow suit.

Of course to upgrade any program, I needed to be connected to the Internet. Even stuck in a hotel room with a strange network, I had no trouble hooking into the net using either of my WiFi interfaces or the Ethernet connection.

Once home, MEPIS also did well with hooking into my home LAN’s Windows/Samba-based network. This LAN uses both NT domain style and AD (Active Directory) authentication, but MEPIS, armed with Samba 3.0.22, was able to find, authenticate, and use my network’s CIFS (Common Internet File Systems) hard drives and printers.

MEPIS 6.5 also comes with the ntfs-3g driver for reading and writing NTFS partitions from user space. This stable, open-source file system manager is invaluable on dual-boot systems. With it, you can both read and write files living on XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, and Vista file systems. I don’t tend to use dual-boot systems myself — desktop Linux is fine for me — but on those systems where I do run both Linux and Windows, I’ve already found this new functionality to be invaluable.

Back at my home office, I was also able to see how MEPIS did with its new 3D desktop support. MEPIS comes with Beryl 0.2.0 Final, which is a combined window manager and composite manager that uses OpenGL to provide graphics acceleration.

Thanks to this outstanding business network support, I wouldn’t hesitate to put MEPIS into a small business. While MEPIS certainly doesn’t have the corporate support that Novell can offer you with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), I think it would work well in offices that have a Linux expert around to help get users over any rough spots.

Since any kind of graphics magic is just asking for trouble on an older laptop, I tested MEPIS with Beryl on an HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7360n PC. That system has 2GB of RAM, a hyper-threaded 2.8 GHz Pentium D 920 dual-core processor, and an NVIDIA GeForce 6200SE video card that takes up 256 MB of the system’s main RAM. I figured this system would have no trouble with Beryl, although Vista Aero wants more resources before it will do its magic.

I was not disappointed. Beryl .20 worked well on this system. It was, however, a bit cranky to set up. While MEPIS goes the extra mile to help you with Beryl — for example, it provides a package, mepis-beryl, that implements a basic Beryl setup — you may still have to do a lot of manual tweaking to get it the way you want it.

For example, MEPIS and the Beryl Aquamarine windows decoration set simply do not work well together. You also need to keep your eye on what version of SimplyMEPIS, X.org, and AIGLX and NVIDIA display drivers you’re using, to make sure they’re all in sync. For example, I discovered the hard way that XGL with X.org 7.0, which is what Ubuntu Dapper and MEPIS 6.0 use, will not work with MEPIS 6.5. I made the mistake of doing a partial upgrade from 6.0 to 6.5 and spent far too much trying to get MEPIS 6.0’s X.org 7.0 to work with the MEPIS 6.5’s Beryl .20 and the NVIDIA 1.0.9746 driver. They don’t work together.

Instead, I needed to upgrade to MEPIS 6.5’s X.org 7.1. Since you’re going to need to replace all your existing Beryl files and setup if you upgrade from Ubuntu or MEPIS 6.0 to 6.5, you’ll be better off doing a clean install, rather then try to save time by preserving your existing 3D desktop setup. Otherwise, as I now know to my sorrow, you’ll only end up wasting time.

That said, I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on Beryl and its older brother, Compiz, and I’ve found that MEPIS has lots of good company in having trouble with 3D desktops. More often than not, it seems, getting 3D desktops up and running the first time on many distributions, can be a real pain in the neck.

For me, desktop eye candy is not a necessity. I can live very happily without Aero Glass, Beryl, Compiz, Looking Glass, or any of the other 3D, translucent, etc., desktops. If you really must have this kind of thing today, then you should be running Mac OS X Tiger’s Aqua interface. It’s the only fancy desktop that just flat-out runs out of the box.

But, if what you want is a solid, easy-to-use, fully-featured KDE-based Linux desktop that you can use to get work done even when you’re feeling half-dead, SimplyMEPIS 6.5 is the desktop for you. It certainly was for me!

Mepis has always include a few handy little utility programs, and 6.5 makes them easier to use then ever. Here, for example, is a utility to put entire directories, or your own Mepis desktop for that matter, on a USB drive. No fuss, no muss.

Since I completed this review, the final of MEPIS has appeared. The major changes include placing the SimplyMEPIS Assitant for Mactel on the CD; Amarok has been updated to support the MagnaTune music store; and Firefox and OpenOffice have been updated with their latest security patches.

The final of SimplyMEPIS 6.5 is now out. You can either buy a subscription to the distribution from the SimplyMEPIS store or download a copy from one of the MEPIS mirrors. If you elect to just download it, MEPIS, which could use your support, asks for contributions to keep building this outstanding desktop Linux distribution.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux,

March 28, 2007
by sjvn01
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Bye HP Digital Entertainment Center, Hi HP MediaSmart TV

According to a report in CEPro, a publication for people in the custom electronics installation and support business, Hewlett-Packard is dropping out of the DEC (Digital Entertainment Center) biz.

DECs, for those of you who haven’t met them, are computers that look like A/V (audio/video) equipment so you can put them right into your entertainment center. The latest and greatest of these was the HP DEC z565

It sounds like a good idea doesn’t it? Instead of fooling around with media extenders like the Apple TV or a D-Link DSM-520 MediaLounge Wireless HD Media Player, you can just put the whole PC nine-yards in your media room without it looking techno-shabby.

So, why is HP bringing it to a close? They’re not telling me, but I know I know the answer: Price.

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March 28, 2007
by sjvn01
0 comments

The GPL3 Draft 3 Arrives

The Free Software Foundation released the third discussion draft on the GNU General Public License on March 28. As expected, it contains language designed to prevent patent partnerships that extend protection from patent litigation to only the companies involved in such agreements.

Controversy over deals such as the patent partnership between Microsoft and Novell has greatly delayed the release of GPL Version 3.

In an explanatory note, the Free Software Foundation stated that, “We have also added new terms to stop distributors from colluding with third parties to offer selective patent protection, as Microsoft and Novell have recently done. The GPL is designed to ensure that all users receive the same rights; arrangements that circumvent this make a mockery of free software, and we must do everything in our power to stop them.”

What this means, according to the FSF, is that its strategy in the new GPL Version 3 will have two parts. First, any license that protects some recipients of GPL-licensed software must be extended to all recipients of the software. Second, it prohibits anyone who made such an agreement from distributing software released under GPL Version 3.

The FSF is also “considering whether or not this ban should apply when a deal was made before these terms were written, and we look forward to community input on this issue.” In other words, the FSF is considering trying to make it impossible for Novell to distribute GPL Version 3-licensed software because of its existing Microsoft patent agreement.

FSF is also trying, once again, to address the “Tivoization” of code covered by the GPL. The GPL code in the popular TiVo digital video recording device uses signature checks in hardware to prevent anyone from modifying its code. Since under the GPL a fundamental right is the right to read and re-use this code, this flies in the fact of the GPLs intent.

Previous drafts of the GPLv3 attempted to stop vendors from this course of action by defining “Corresponding Source” to include any encryption or authorization keys necessary to install new versions of the software. However, there has been doubt as to whether this would have the intended effect.

So, in this third discussion draft, the revision Section 6, according to the FSF explanation, requires that “parties distributing object code provide recipients with the source code through certain means. Now, when those distributors pass on the source, they are also required to pass on any information or data necessary to install modified software on the particular device that included it. We believe that this will more precisely accomplish our goals, and avoid potential problems with expanding the definition of source code.” This is a similar approach to the one already used in the GPL for enabling users to link proprietary programs to modified libraries.

In a sop to Tivo-style vendors, the scope of these requirements has also been narrowed. This draft introduces the concept of a “User Product,” which includes devices that are sold for personal, family or household use. Distributors are required to provide installation information only when they convey object code in a User Product.

At the same time, however, they provide the source code to the world on a public network server. This code can be hosted on different servers from the object code, the actual running program code, provided that the source is made available simultaneously with the object code.

The FSF has also modified its new license compatibility clause to make it both simpler and cheaper for developers to comply. The new discussion draft simplifies Section 7, in part by removing sections 7b4 and 7b5. Compatibility with the Affero GPL, which is meant to extend the GPL over software running on a network, is taken care of by an explicit upgrade clause in Section 13.

This draft includes a number of small improvements to help clarify particular requirements and make the license easier to use worldwide.

For example, the definition of System Libraries in Section 1 has been adjusted to more clearly include standard libraries in all programming languages. It also makes it clear that System Libraries do not have to be included with the program’s source.

The warranty disclaimer in Section 15 now includes an additional paragraph that should make the entire section more applicable worldwide. If desired, Section 7 also allows licensors to add their own warranty disclaimers that meet any relevant local requirements.

A version of this story first appeared in eWEEK. 

March 28, 2007
by sjvn01
0 comments

RIP: Community Linux (1991-2007)

The idea that Linux is primarily a community-based project based on the work of thousands of independent, idealist hackers died a quiet death at home on March 27.

The proximate cause of death was the Linux Foundation’s naming of its new board of directors. This leading non-profit Linux organization’s board included many Fortune 500 executives from around the world — but not one representative from a purely community-based Linux organization.

Linux, as a community project, had been in ill health for some time. One recent setback was the crippling of Debian. Rather than work together on releasing the next version, Etch, of this core community of Linux developers has seemingly slowed their work down to a crawl because of internal disputes.

As Debian’s father, Ian Murdock, observed, not long before moving to Sun, Debian had become a project where the process had run amok. Thus, Murdock said, “no leader feels empowered to make decisions unless everyone agrees with him. And since no one as the size of the organization grows ever agrees on anything, no decisions ever get made.”

Another Community Linux project, Fedora, was to be freed from Red Hat, its corporate sponsor. In the end, though, the company decided that the project would remain under Red Hat control. Fedora’s management was to have gone to the Fedora Foundation.

It wasn’t just ailing projects, however, that brought Community Linux to its untimely end. Linux distributors have long been turning away from the idealistic notions of a completely free software distribution.

Linspire took the biggest step by introducing its Freespire distribution, which aims to include legal support for every proprietary format and program that is available to Linux. Examples include: MP3, DVD, Windows Media, QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real media, ATI and NVIDA graphic drivers, Win-modem drivers, proprietary WiFi drivers, Bitstream fonts, and more.

Eric S. Raymond, Linux’s godfather with his important early support for the operating system, agreed whole-heartily with the concept of supporting necessary proprietary software in Linux and even joined Freespire’s Leadership Board. Raymond said, “If that means paying licensing fees to the Microsofts of the world so that people can watch Windows media files, then so be it.”

Ubuntu, the most popular of the Community Linuxes, remains directed by Mark Shuttleworth and his company, Canonical, and he too has conceded that Ubuntu must include “proprietary drivers [that]… are required to enable essential hardware functionality.”

Attempts to bring Community Linux back to free software ways have met with very limited success. There are only a handful of free-software-only Linux distributions such as gNewSense.

The Community Linux leaves behind a robust, successful family of Commercial Linux operating system children, including: oldest son, Red Hat; step-son, Novell; and desktop daughters, Linspire, Ubuntu, and Xandros. Corporate relatives, such as IBM, HP, and Oracle, aim to make certain that Commercial Linux, as opposed to Community Linux, will have a long, healthy life.

March 27, 2007
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Adding Apple TV Storage for Dummies

So you want more than 40GBs of storage in your Apple TV do you?

Well, I can’t blame you, especially when you consider that of that 40GBs, you only actually get 32GBs of storage. 8 gigs are used for the Apple TV’s operating system –essentially a stripped down Mac OS X 10.4.7.

So what can you do? Well, if you’re brave, have steady hands, a hex-bit screwdriver, and a spare 2.5″ hard drive you can pop open your Apple TV–bye, bye warranty–and do it yourself. AppleTVHacks has a nice little tutorial on how to upgrade your drive, which I highly recommend.

Let’s say though that, like me, when you try to hammer a nail into the wall, you’re going to hit your thumb nine times out of ten. Well, I may be a menace with power-tools, but I can wield a credit card with the best of them.

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March 26, 2007
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Apple TV Media Extender Revolution

The Apple TV makes a great media extender. But, “What the heck is a media extender?”

Good question. While they’ve been around for years, they’re not that well known because, well, they didn’t work that well. In fact, most of them were the kind of half-baked tech toys that even a video geek had trouble loving.

The media-extender idea was, and is, to make it possible to get the video and audio stored on your PC playing on your high-end media center. Yes, it is a neat trick to watch the latest episode of Lost on your 17″ ViewSonic monitor and your Sony Vaio speakers. It’s not, however, all that much fun after the gee-whiz shininess has rubbed off.

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