 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 341, 15 February 2010 |
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Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It's been a fun and exciting week in the Linux world with things like Jeremy Garcia's Linuxquestions.org Members Choice Awards and the announcement-opps-not-announcement of RMS GNU/Linux-libre distribution hitting the Webwaves. Mandriva won an impressive major deployment contract and Debian Squeeze is running late. Linux Mint released their community distributions for KDE64 and Fluxbox. I updated my stable and yummy Mandriva 2010 with the newly released KDE 4.4 and give one of my favorite Linux tips. Happy reading!
Content:
- Mandriva Linux 2010 and its KDE 4.4 Upgrade
- News: New Mandriva deployment, Squeeze freeze delays, No Freeze Rawhide, Miscellaneous Linux Goodness
- Questions and answers: Smbclient
- Released last week: NetBSD 5.0.2, Skolelinux 5.0, MINIX 3.1.6, Linux Mint 8 "Fluxbox" and "KDE64"
- Upcoming releases: openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 2, Mandriva Linux 2010.1 Alpha 3, Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3
- New distributions: Live Hacking CD, UST, CTKArchLive
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story |
Mandriva Linux 2010 and its KDE 4.4 Upgrade
 I've been happily using Mandriva 2010 as my desktop system since its release last November. The few issues I've had could be traced back to KDE 4.3.2. I had run the Update Manager a couple times at the beginning, but soon became lax and haven't updated since. Honestly, I just didn't want to risk an upgrade ruining what was essentially a completely enjoyable experience. But when Juan Luis Baptiste posted that KDE 4.4 packages were available for Mandriva 2010, it seemed worth risking a re-install. So, I girded my loins, drew my sword, and copied and pasted those fateful words:
urpmi.addmedia kde-4.4.0 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.0/Mandriva/i586
urpmi --auto-update --auto-select
Since I hadn't updated since last November, urpmi had its work cut out for itself. A total of 691 packages were needed to update my system and install the new KDE packages, but I let it do it to it. It didn't take long at all, but when it was finished I was advised to reboot due to the kernel upgrade. So I did. Once I moved my ~/.kde4 directory (just to be on the safe side) and ran XFdrake to install my preferred NVIDIA proprietary drivers for the new kernel, I was ready to take a gander. Behold, my default Mandriva 2010 KDE 4.4 desktop:
Mandriva Linux 2010 KDE 4.4
(full image size: 799kB, screen resolution 2960x1050 pixels)
As you can see, Mandriva replaced the new KDE background with one of theirs, but you can still see KDE's on the second monitor. In addition, Mandriva is still opting to use their own simplified menu as default, but the Kick-off menu is available in the Add Widgets dialog, as is Lancelot. I chose Lancelot because I don't like the all the clicking back and forth that comes with Kick-off.
When I logged in the first time, I saw the configuration output dialog state that there were issues with the Akonadi and possibly Nepomuk, but it went by too fast to fully read. What it amounts to, either on purpose or by bug, is that Nepomuk was disabled by default and Akonadi doesn't appear to be storing KDE PIM data in a database in Mandriva 2010. I know I'm not the only one who does not want to convert my email from its current maildir storage to a heavy, not-easily-moved-to-another-install database. Kmail operation is noticeably faster than in KDE 4.3.2 regardless. Of course, as a result of the disabled Nepomuk, the much touted Dolphin search feature is also inoperative.
There are a few new features listed for KDE 4.4. There's a new Netbook Form factor option in the Desktop configuration of System Settings. Improvements to the Social Desktop widget allow users to send messages and find friends right from the widget. The GetHotNewStuff interface has been updated and its capabilities have been added to more applications. Windows will snap into place depending upon where you drag and release them. If you drag and drop a window half off your screen, it will snap to precisely fill that half of your screen. If you drag windows of full screen height across your screen, it will snap to full-screen.
One feature I was looking forward to testing was the new window tabbing. But either I'm blind, looking in the wrong place, or it's not implemented in Mandriva's version. According to the very little information I found on that, there's supposed to be an entry in the right-click menu of a window's title bar for joining with another window. If that information is correct, then it is missing in Mandriva, at least for now. The most obvious slap-you-in-the-face change is the new Add Widgets to panel configuration. Now there's a horizontal parade of widget icons about four screens long requiring a mouse-over to pop-up the description instead of the previously used tidy list with descriptions.
Window effects were enabled by default in Mandriva's packages, but even with my 2 gigabytes of RAM, I could feel the lag in operation of everything. Either my other hardware is a bit too old or KDE is going to continue to need more and more RAM each release as new ideas are implemented. I don't really care for all those effects creating distractions anyway, so I'd probably disable it even if my machine were up to it.
Mandriva Linux 2010 KDE 4.4 Customized
(full image size: 418kB, screen resolution 2960x1050 pixels)
I've only been using this new desktop for a couple of days, but so far so good. The most annoying bug with Mandriva KDE 4.3.2 was crashing Akregator and Konqueror. While both were rarer in Mandriva than in any other distro, they still happened occasionally. So far, neither has crashed in 4.4. <crossing fingers> Basically, I'm of the opinion that Mandriva's upgrade process as well as their KDE 4.4 packages are working rather well. So, if you're running Mandriva 2010 and you want to upgrade to KDE 4.4, then it seems to be a safe bet. I'm sure I'll discover more new features and find some of the moved options in the coming weeks, but if someone could tell me how to disable this silly "snap the window to full-screen when moved" thing, I'd sure appreciate it.
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| Miscellaneous News |
New Mandriva deployment, Squeeze freeze delayed, No Freeze Rawhide, Miscellaneous Linux Goodness
 Mandriva Linux gained another feather for their cap this passed week. In a press released dated February 11, 2010, Mandriva announced that Delta Informatique, the company behind Delta Bank (an integrated banking solution), chose Mandriva Linux 2009 as its solution when setting up a new core banking system. "Amongst the operating systems we looked at, Mandriva was clearly the one best adapted to our needs. It is sound, easy to use and completely matches the bank servers' systems (AIX, IBM)," explained Sylvain PERCHAUD, Delta Informatique Project Manager. That full press releases is here.
In other Mandriva news, long-time developer and Cooker hacker Thierry Vignaud announced his resignation Monday, February 8 in a short post to the Cooker mailing list. Leaving a week before originally planned, he stated "real life issues" necessitated his early departure. No reason other than "on... to new adventures" was given for his resignation, but he did say he hoped he could still find time to volunteer.
Frederic Himpe published his semi-monthly list of notable Cooker changes ending February 14. Some include: GNOME is now at version 2.29.90, KDE has been updated to final version 4.4.0, and encrypted passwords in GRUB now supported. His post has more details.
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 Debian Release Team wizard, Marc Brockschmidt, sent a note to developers last week requesting they fix their critical bugs in the 6.0 branch or else the scheduled March freeze would likely be delayed. He said that the release team doesn't like to freeze unless the number of bugs falls below 300, however the current number is quite a bit higher than that at just under 800. Tolimar Reichle-Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesman, said in a blog post of February 11 that after applying some relevant filters in an alternative tracker, he finds the number of critical bugs somewhere around 260. See his post for a full explanation of his findings and breakdown of the numbers.
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 Jesse Keating, Release Engineer for Fedora Core, recently announced new development directories showing on their public mirrors. Of course this isn't as humdrum as it sounds because it is actually a result of the new No Freeze Rawhide initiative. The No Freeze Rawhide Proposal is Fedora's way of keeping bleeding-edge development going even after the current in-development branch is frozen. Instead of freezing the development repository, the distribution packages are copied to their own directory. This way developers can still upload changes for the next release without having to wait for Rawhide to open back up. For example the new Rawhide path is now pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/<arch> while the path for 13.0 will now be pub/fedora/linux/development/13/<arch>. This should save time allowing shorter development cycles in the future.
* * * * *
 There were some interesting Linux happenings reported around the Web this week. First up, The Open University in England announced "Linux - an introduction," a ten-week course on the open source operating system aimed at absolute beginners. The H Open has a nice summary of that.
Jeremy Garcia announced the winners of this year's annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. Ubuntu won the Desktop Distribution of the year with over 30% of the votes while Debian was crowned best of the servers with 24%. GNOME finally beat out KDE for Desktop Environment of the year with nearly 42% of the votes and Compiz got Window Manager of the Year. Despite the brouhaha over Oracle's acquisition of Sun, MySQL still won Database of the Year with over 60% of votes. OpenOffice.org won Office Suite of the Year hands-down with over 90% of the votes and Firefox got Browser of the Year with 65% of votes. See Jeremy's blog post for full details and links.
Jun Auza posted the results of his evaluation of the top Linux distributions of the decade. His results were based on Distrowatch.com's Page Hit Rankings and Google Trends results. His conclusion? Take a guess. Yes, that's right: Ubuntu was the top distribution from 2002-2009. Mandriva and openSUSE come in second and third. See his full post for details.
In a Houdini-like "now you see it, now you don't" manner, the Free Software Foundation announced a new 'free, totally free, all free all the time' distribution named after none other than the controversial father of free software, Richard M. Stallman. The next day the announcement was pulled. Whether this action was the result of Bruce Byfield's criticisms or because the announcement was pre-mature we don't know. Nothing more has been said about it at the FSF. The new distribution, named RMS GNU/Linux-libre, is based on the cleansed Linux-libre kernel 2.6.27.42 and features GNU Icecat and KDE 3.5. The RMS GNU/Linux-libre Website is still up and there is even a download available. The original announcement can be seen through Google Cache.
RMS GNU/Linux-libre Rose
And finally two other quick notes: ComputerWorld Australia reported that the annual Linux conference, Linux.conf.au, raised $33,000 for the Westpac Rescue Helicopter service. And an avid Linux user and multimedia enthusiast, known only as lefty.crupps, blogged that Linux users can watch ABC's (American Broadcasting Company) streaming media broadcasts just like any other first class netizen.
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| Questions and Answers |
Samba Client
This wasn't received as a question but I thought I might share one of my favorite little tricks (if I can call it that) when using Linux. In my work, I commonly need to transfer files from one home computer to another and I've found the quickest and easiest way to do this is to use Samba, or more specifically smbclient (which is sometimes a link to smbclient3). For me, typing a bit in a terminal is much easier than most other methods of transferring files locally.
In the past it could take a bit of effort to get Samba and the Samba tools to function properly, but today many distributions set it up to function almost out-of-the-box (albeit less secure). I've found that in most distributions all I need to do is set a password on my main work computer. This is easily done using the smbpasswd tool. As root (or for Ubuntu users, prefaced with sudo):
smbpasswd <username>, then type in the new password.
From then on, I can samba into my desktop and drop files as needed. If desired, one can list the IP addresses and hostnames for each machine in their /etc/hosts so that computer names can be used, but in my work, I'm installing new releases all the time. So, I just use my desktop's local IP address. So, say for example that I needed to transfer a couple of screenshots from my testing machine to my desktop, I merely samba into my desktop and drop the files into my home directory. To log in:
smbclient --user=s //192.168.0.100/s, then give the password.
Then to move those screenshots I use a simple command:
mput *png
This will transfer all files with the .png extension. Notice how Samba can use wildcards to make operations so much easier. In fact, you can even use auto-completion many times - and I do. Retrieving files is just as easy. For example:
mget opensuse-112_d <enter>, will finished the filename opensuse-112_desktop.jpg and transfer a copy to the current machine.
Using mput instead of put verifies the transfer of each file before actually doing it.
This isn't even a drop in the bucket of the things one can do with smbclient or other Samba tools. A quick peruse of the MAN pages can give you an idea. At home behind my Internet firewall, smbclient saves me lots of effort.
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| Released Last Week |
MINIX 3.1.6
MINIX 3.1.6, an updated version of the small, modular and open-source operating system, has been released: "The current stable MINIX release is 3.1.6. Major Features: new drivers - Atheros L2, Intel E1000, Realtek 8169, DEC Tulip; VirtualPC Network Support (DEC Tulip); PipeFS - removed pipe handling from file system drivers; HGFS - support for mounting VMware shared folders as file system; FPU support; System Event Framework (SEF); experimental APIC support (disabled by default); more ports - more recent QEMU, BSD utilities, benchmarks. Known issues: VirtualBox 3.1 cannot boot MINIX, please use VirtualBox 3.0 for now; QEMU/KVM 0.12 cannot boot MINIX, please use QEMU/KVM 0.11 for now; VirtualBox - MINIX 3.1.6 cannot be installed w/o hardware acceleration support (VT-x, AMD-V)." Visit the project's release page to read the brief release note.
PC/OS 10a "Open64 Workstation", 8.5 "OpenServer"
Roberto Dohnert has announced the availability of two special editions of PC/OS, a Xubuntu-based distribution - "Open64 Workstation" and "OpenServer": "We are very pleased to announce the delivery of PC/OS Open64 Workstation 10a, as well as PC/OS OpenServer System 8.5. PC/OS Open64 Workstation 10a is our release of PC/OS for the 64-bit platform. This release is targeted at the end user and is geared towards simplicity. Some of the differences from the first offering include: all applications and core system bug fixes have been applied; we now bundle Google Chrome as the default browser; full multimedia codec support is included; user interface for the 32-bit and 64-bit releases are now common. For PC/OS OpenServer System 8.5, which is our release targeting small business and home office users, we have made incremental changes." Here is the complete release announcement.
Skolelinux 5.0
Holger Levsen has announced the release of Skolelinux 5.0, a Debian-based distribution for schools also known as "Debian Edu": "The Debian Edu team is proud to take the next step in making free software suitable for educational purposes by releasing Skolelinux 5.0. Skolelinux is based on Debian 5.0 'Lenny'. As usual, it comes with predefined installation profiles ranging from the main server to workstations and thin clients. It is supported and used by many regional and national projects, the most active ones being in Norway, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Taiwan and Japan. Skolelinux 5.0 uses kernel 2.6.26, KDE 3.5.10, and GNOME 2.22.2. This is first Debian Edu release which has been merged with the highly successful LinEx GNU/Linux educational project from the region of Extremadura in Spain." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
Linux Mint 8 "Fluxbox" and "KDE64"
Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 8 "Fluxbox" edition: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 'Helena' Fluxbox Community Edition. This release has been built with the emphasis on a lightweight and yet fully functional desktop centered on the Fluxbox window manager. Even though we strive to provide out-of-the-box readiness for all your hardware and common computing tasks, Linux Mint Fluxbox CE is easily configurable to run on lower-spec hardware with the tools needed for doing so readily available." See the release announcement, what's new page, and the release notes.
Linux Mint 8 "Fluxbox" - a Mint variant for those who prefer the light-weight Fluxbox desktop
(full image size: 718kB, screen resolution 1152x864 pixels)
NetBSD 5.0.2
NetBSD 5.0.2, the second critical/security update of the NetBSD 5.0 branch, was released today: "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that version 5.0.2 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons. Please note that all fixes in critical/security updates (i.e., NetBSD 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc.) are cumulative, so the latest update contains all such fixes since the corresponding minor release. These fixes will also appear in future minor releases (i.e., NetBSD 5.1, 5.2, etc.), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements." See the detailed release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- CTKArchLive is an Arch-based live CD designed to run on lower resource machines, complete with a nice stack of applications.
- UST is an Ubuntu-based distribution with a goal of providing a Linux with sophistication, quality and performance.
- Live Hacking CD is an Ubuntu-based live CD packed with tools and utilities for ethical hacking, penetration testing and countermeasure verification.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next installment will be published on Monday, 22 February 2010.
Thanks so much,
Susan Linton
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • I was hoping for some 64studio news (by Jay Wilson at 2010-02-15 12:11:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
nevermind, there's usually next week
2 • RMS GNU/Linux-libre (by megadriver at 2010-02-15 12:25:18 GMT from Spain)
Apparently "RMS" stands for "RMS' Mostly Slax" (yet another recursive acronym, in the GNU tradition), as this distro is (was?) based on SLAX.
I kinda like the idea of the linux-libre kernel, not for ideological reasons, but for size and complexity ones (I don't need any of those firmwares). Still, naming a distro after RMS... Talk about "cult of personality", heh.
3 • But... (by megadriver at 2010-02-15 12:29:28 GMT from Spain)
... I suddenly realized that "Linux" itself could also be criticized on the same basis.
Linus wasn't famous when he released Linux 0.1, though.
4 • windows tabbing (by shamaz at 2010-02-15 12:30:08 GMT from United States)
"One feature I was looking forward to testing was the new window tabbing. But either I'm blind, looking in the wrong place, or it's not implemented in Mandriva's version."
this feature needs to be supported by the windeco. AFAIK, only oxygen and aurora (svg based windeco) support this at the moment.
5 • widgets in KDE 4.4 (by gumb at 2010-02-15 12:52:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
"The most obvious slap-you-in-the-face change is the new Add Widgets to panel configuration. Now there's a horizontal parade of widget icons about four screens long requiring a mouse-over to pop-up the description instead of the previously used tidy list with descriptions."
I've not given 4.4 a spin yet and am running 4.3, but AFAIK the refactoring of the Add Widgets dialog had to take several things into consideration, one being that the old list cut off the descriptions of each widget, which I myself found irritating. It is also designed to dock either horizontally or vertically depending on your panel alignment, and finding a solution that fits all these scenarios isn't easy.
With the increasing uptake of KDE4 and recent initiatives like the Javascript plasmoid sessions, there's probably going to be an explosion of new widgets, and there has to be some way of grouping them, which I think the new dialog is taking into account, else you'll one day end up with a scrolling box containing hundreds of items.
Regarding the window snapping effects, I watched a screencast at the weekend from one of the developers which seems to indicate that the snap-to-full-screen effect occurs only when you move a window against the top edge of the screen, so since you're moving full-height windows around that's probably why it keeps happening.
6 • Distrowatch motto (by Alexandru on 2010-02-15 12:58:04 GMT from Germany)
Hello,
it was already discussed, but the motto "Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD", is outdated.
AFAIK, version: "Put the fun back into computing. Use Open Source" isn't suitable because this site doesn't monitor not Unix-like projects as Haiku, FreeDOS, etc. However, it includes Solarises, Minix and others. Suppose when/if Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and/or Debian GNU/Hurd appear they will be included.
So, how about: "Put the fun back into computing. Use UNIX Heritage"?
7 • RMS GNU/Linux-libre (by srinivas.v on 2010-02-15 12:58:49 GMT from India)
Well, this is bull shit. How can a single distro be taken up and named after RMS. If they were so much interested then they would have forked slax and named it something else like GNU/Slax which would have made RMS happy and the strict ethics set up can still be continued. The choice of the name is very bad. I would like to see RMS's name in one of the practical distro featuring the hurd kernel.
8 • KDE4.4 (by Untitled at 2010-02-15 13:23:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
1. I'm not a Mandriva user so don't know if they included it in their 4.4 packages, but if it is included then when you right click on the window's title bar the menu should have an entry saying "Move window to group". Additionally, dragging a window's title bar using middle click on to another window's title bar adds the two into one tabbed group. There are more settings in System Settings under Window Behaviour
2. The tiling option is activated when the mouse pointer is pushed against the edge of the screen, not the title bar. Therefore it's easy moving around windows without having them maximised or tiled, or at least it's easy for me.
3. Compositing is quite smooth here without any lag at all. From my experience having an ATI GPU using the fglrx drivers causes a slight problem, but it works perfectly with the open source drivers. I don't know about any other graphic cards.
9 • KDE 4.4 (by Reuben at 2010-02-15 13:40:46 GMT from United States)
I've been using KDE 4.4 on Arch for about a week. KDE has come a long way in the last year. However, Konqueror feels rather clunky in this release. I really like the new add widgets thingy.
10 • No subject (by Anonymous at 2010-02-15 13:44:14 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (spam).
11 • #6 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-15 13:44:51 GMT from France)
But Debian GNU/kFreeBSD exists! I suppose it's not included because it's Debian, or they would have to include Debian/GNOME/Firefox, Debian/KDE/Apache, Ubuntu, etc ...
Wait ... including Ubuntu is ok, please don't beat me.
I suppose the problem with Haiku is that nobody use it?
Oops, did I say that? Obviously some people do?
I believe ReactOS is tracked, is it not?
12 • Well expressed (by Jesse at 2010-02-15 13:51:54 GMT from Canada)
"So, I girded my loins, drew my sword, and copied and pasted those fateful words:"
This is why I enjoy Susan's writing. No matter how many tests have been run and no matter how many fall-backs are in place, I always have *that* feeling right before a production upgrade/switch-over.
13 • Mandriva 2010 KDE (by Bill Julian on 2010-02-15 14:13:09 GMT from United States)
My thanks to Susan, who always has interesting things to say. I tend to prefer Debian-based distros, but I have been very pleasantly surprised by Mandriva 2010 in both its KDE and Gnome versions.
Mandriva's repos seem quite slow and if I had to do that monstrous upgrade (and I suppose I do!) I'd not only take a deep breath and dance around the moon for protection, I'd open a good book!!
Mandy, if you could give us some time estimates on your downloads that would help a bunch! Other distros do that.
14 • Mandriva/MCNLive (by Elder V. LaCoste at 2010-02-15 14:37:25 GMT from United States)
Are there any Mandriva based distros for older computers? There was the excellent MCNLive but that has been discontinued. I would be nice to see a Fluxbox version.
15 • #14 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-15 14:44:50 GMT from France)
You can install the proper Mandriva from command line and then install fluxbox. You mean a live CD for older computer, right?
16 • @11: ReactOS (by Jesse at 2010-02-15 15:02:52 GMT from Canada)
I don't think ReactOS is tracked. Nor Haiku, nor FreeDOS. But, of all of those, only FreeDOS has hit a stable release.
Though in response to #6, I don't see how you can list Haiku as not being UNIX-like. Most of the commands and file system structure of Haiku are the same as you'd find on a Unix/Linux/BSD box. It may not be in quite the same family, but it's close.
17 • RMS GNU/Linux (by Yon at 2010-02-15 15:43:37 GMT from United States)
the announcement is still up in Italian at fsf.org
http://www.fsf.org/translations/it/rms-mostly-slax-ita/view
18 • KDE 4.4 (by Jared on 2010-02-15 15:45:10 GMT from United States)
I installed the Kubuntu PPA for KDE 4.4 and love it. Tabbed windowing is awesome, using the middle mouse button (just like in fluxbox). The resizing by dragging to the side is very handy. My favorite feature is when you press ctrl+F8 KDE zooms out all desktops. Other neat features include:
*Improved show devices notifier plasma
*New Krunner plugins - can find wikipedia and firefox bookmarks
*multimedia keyboard support through Kmix
*timeline:/ grouping in dolphin
*improved folder view
*middle click directory in dolphin to open in new tab
*Save searches in dolphin
*edit meta tags in dolphin
some cool new apps:
*rekonq - konqueror build on webkit
*webslice plasmoid
I think everyone should give it a try.
19 • RMS (by Johannes on 2010-02-15 16:29:26 GMT from Germany)
"the Free Software Foundation announced a new 'free, totally free, all free all the time' distribution named after none other than the controversial father of free software, Richard M. Stallman. The next day the announcement was pulled."
Sometimes I wonder what the FSF does.
Gnash: not showing much progress. Still unusable daily.
Evince: good, but stagnating
Skype equivalent: ...
etc.
20 • @19 (by mister on 2010-02-15 16:48:35 GMT from United States)
The problem is, that those projects need more developers that are interested in them. Why don't you consider spending a couple of hours each week developing for one of the projects you just mentioned?
21 • Not everyone is a programmer with free time. (by Jesse at 2010-02-15 17:16:19 GMT from Canada)
In response to @20.
This is one of the more unfortunate mind-sets we keep seeing in the open source community. Someone will bring up an app or feature they'd like to see and often the response is, "Why don't you do something about it?"
Most people aren't developers. Most developers don't have a lot of spare time (often due to other projects they contribute to). There are a LOT of things I'd like to see fixed or developed in the open source ecosystem, but I don't have infinite time/money to make it happen, no one does.
22 • Calculate Linux (by stuckinoregon on 2010-02-15 17:46:42 GMT from United States)
Recently switched a laptop and my main desktop over to CLD and have to say they've opened the interesting world of Gentoo up for me. I've never been satisfied with my Gentoo-from-scratch installs and felt that Sabayon was just too bloated. Calculate, and to a lesser degree toorox, has made me rethink some of that. I now get some of the complexity/beauty of the portage system and have to say I'm impressed. Yes, it takes quite a while to build all of these things from source, but it's been worth it and in a way liberating so far. It's really worth a look for those that are willing to put in a little extra effort and stick to it. I'm thinking about doing some volunteering for them as it gets to be a wee bit humorous at times with trying to follow their website and what seems to be some failing in the google translate service.
Still waiting on that SalixOS review, also!
Also of note, my main server has been migrated from ubuntu-server-lts to FreeBSD 8. The migration went remarkably smoothly. Almost suspiciously so. If it wasn't for the fact that I can access everything on it via ssh (it's a headless server after all) and the nfs shares, I would swear something must have gone awry. It's not supposed to be that easy. ;-@
23 • KWin Effects (by zak89 at 2010-02-15 17:56:04 GMT from United States)
In my experience, enabling KWin compositing while disabling all/most effects brings the best GUI performance. The compositing actually uses less CPU (than no compositing) for normal windowing operations, it's the effects (minimize animations, fading/exploding windows, translucency etc) that consume CPU. Of course, this assumes that your hardware supports compositing at all; some hardware will not.
I'm running KDE 4.4 with compositing enabled but nearly all effects disabled (I can't live without Desktop Grid and Present Windows).
24 • Kwin KDE4.4 (by Dutchy at 2010-02-15 18:18:40 GMT from Netherlands)
I use kde4.4 now (have been using it since beta) and while there are still issues that need addressing, I have to agree with the above, it's certainly worth a try, it will take some getting used to, so don't just use it for 10 minutes and complain the whole time, give yourself a week or so....
On that note, I did that with Gnome and never could find a like for it (note, I know this can be flamebait for some, but remember, linux is all about choice and some people choose their DE or distro that others dislike, that's just the way it is)
25 • A few RE's and stuff (by Landor at 2010-02-15 18:50:30 GMT from Canada)
#20
That is unfair to just generally spit out to people. A possible way to change it is, "Yes, those projects definitely could use some help, maybe if you're available in some fashion you might be able to." The other way you put it is very similar to telling someone to write an article when you don't like their opinion of one.
# 22
I haven't as of yet tried Calculate. Wait, maybe I have. I'm getting old. I will though now for sure. I still prefer a person build of Gentoo over someone making decisions for me. Also, a big factor for me is the make.conf file and what's inside, or more accurately what they haven't left out..lol I'll take a look though.
Toorox is probably the nicest looking KDE 4 implementation thus far and they're doing great things with it. In relation to the article though, in a sense, Toorox just confirms a lot of things about KDE 4 having too much focus on eye-candy.
------
One point about FSF and this other distribution named after RMS. It could be named WTH GNU/Linux or the like and it wouldn't matter. The great thing about this is simply the fact that there is another Libre distribution that adheres to FSF Gudelines.
I Love to read Susan's writing. She has to be one of the best in my personal opinion. With no lack at all of the technical, Susan has the ability to make the reader feel like they're sitting down with her, shooting the shit over a smoke and something to drink, or while breaking bread. She rolls that all up into a very well written and small amount of space.
Oh, I read Bruce Byfield has criticisms yet again. That's one writer I simply can't stand and even in Linux Pro Magazine I will not read any of his articles. He seems to always have some cross to bear or some flag to burn. Get over it Bruce.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
26 • i probably already know the answer but... (by shady on 2010-02-15 19:00:18 GMT from United States)
I use Fedora as my primary distro, and I want KDE 4.4 without going to rawhide for everything. Rawhide pretty much always breaks my system somehow and I dont have quite the skills to fix it every time. Any suggestions on how to get KDE 4.4 on my Fedora system? Thx guys.
27 • RE: 26 (by Landor at 2010-02-15 19:11:17 GMT from Canada)
Here's a link for you that should get what you want.
http://www.manast.com/2010/02/01/how-to-upgrade-to-kde-4-4-on-fedora-12/
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
28 • @3 - Linux vs RMS Linux (by Gnobuddy on 2010-02-15 19:13:08 GMT from United States)
... I suddenly realized that "Linux" itself could also be criticized on the same basis.
Linus wasn't famous when he released Linux 0.1, though.
=================================================
Linus actually considered calling his creation "Freax", to rhyme with "freaks". Wikipedia says Linus friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds' directory Linux.
Supposedly Linus was reluctant to publicly call his kernel Linux, since that is very closely based on his name. His family's Swedish cultural background probably influenced that reluctance, as it is considered very poor taste to call attention to oneself in Swedish culture.
For the Free Software Foundation to go as far as calling their stillborn creation RMS *Linux* is actually a concession on their part; for the better part of two decades, Stallman has entirely refused to use the term "Linux", feeling that his Gnu project was not getting the fame it deserved for its contributions to every working Linux distribution. RMS at first insisted on using the incredibly ugly term "Lugnux", then on "Gnu-Linux".
I can only imagine what Linux would be named if every major contributor to the software in a contemporary distribution insisted on including part of their name. LinKdeGnomeQtGtkXorgPerlPython, perhaps?
To be clear, I am extremely grateful for Stallman's original vision and his energy in creating the Free Software movement, which led to the creation of Linux which I use every day as my sole operating system. I still think RMS is a nutball fanatic, though, as so many other evangelists also are.
-Gnobuddy
29 • @13 - distro update time/size of download (by Gnobuddy on 2010-02-15 19:21:25 GMT from United States)
Mandy, if you could give us some time estimates on your downloads that would help a bunch! Other distros do that.
========================================================
I recently installed OpenSuse 11.2 for a friend, using the KDE Live CD as the installation medium. The machine had an Nvidia 9100 video card, so after installation I Googled for "OpenSuse Nvidia" and found their online one-click Nvidia driver installation.
Clicking on the install link triggered *697 MB* of updates, with no warning, no estimate of the size of the download, and no progress bar to inform me how far along it was. Several times I wondered if the OS had locked up - in the end I left the machine on overnight, and it was done updating by the next morning. I have about 0.8 - 1.0 MB/S download rates via cable on good days, by the way, so the very long update time had more to do with the servers supplying the OpenSuse packages than my 'net connection.
-Gnobuddy
30 • Printer Drivers (by Terry on 2010-02-15 19:21:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
What is wrong with you Linux programmers, don’t you want people to use Linux. I have just installed Mandriva on my computer, when it came time to install my printer driver it turned into a nightmare, I downloaded my printer driver ok (Brother DCP-350C) with six pages of instructions on how to install it. Now I don’t mind studying how to use a new application that will be useful to me in the months and maybe years to come. But no way am I going to learn Linux command line commands just to install a printer. For god’s sake wakeup this is the year 2010, the command line should have been buried with DOS 6.22 in that dark ages. Needless to say I returned to XP, will maybe try Linux again in 2 or 3 years to see if you have your act together. But I won’t hold my breath.
31 • Thanks Landor (by shady on 2010-02-15 19:24:46 GMT from United States)
That looks like what I need. Ill try it after work. On a side note, I like the 'ppa' approach Ubuntu is taking with their repos. I wish there were more 3rd party Fedora repos to choose from. Not quite sure I'm saying exactly what Im thinking...
32 • @28 (by megadriver at 2010-02-15 19:26:46 GMT from Spain)
Very interesting piece of Linux history. Thank you!
33 • re:19 (by dopher at 2010-02-15 19:46:35 GMT from France)
if you are looking for a skype equivalent you should try a sip client. There are many.
I use ekiga, and i'm happy with the quality and functionality. You can talk, video call, chat, etc.
Skype is pure spyware. It touches files/folders on the pc where it shouldn't . Can be checked with strace (on linux) or filemon (on winXP.
34 • @30 (by Nnyan on 2010-02-15 19:58:11 GMT from United States)
@30
While I can see where you are coming from (as I am often frustrated at too many F/OSS projects for their less then welcoming attitudes), I do think that as users/consumers we need to be more vocal and proactive. One example is that I've guided my purchasing of tech based on how well the company supports Linux (via drivers mostly). And I took the time to email those companies that did not win my purchase. I may have lost on a few FPS or some feature or other but I was trying to make a point. I understand that this is not always possible but I try as much as I can
Now it's debatable or not whether I had any impact but if most of us that cared about F/OSS would do something like that I believe more companies would take greater efforts to support linux.
now for your DCP-350C driver I'm not sure where you went that gave you six pages of install instructions but with a simple search I found this:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html#DCP-350C
Which seemed pretty easy to install, they have RPM and DEB packages and support LPR and CUPS.
35 • @27 - Fedora 12 64bit (by ghostdawg on 2010-02-15 21:48:49 GMT from United States)
Do you know if the repos work with kde 64bit now?
Thnx.
36 • @13 (KDE 4.4 packages for Mandriva 2010.0) (by gfranken on 2010-02-15 22:26:27 GMT from United States)
Took about 40 minutes on my desktop with about 500 packages updated.
I don't think these KDE 4.4 packages mentioned by Susan are *official* from Mandriva. I installed the 64-bit versions, and like Susan's, they seem to work very well with Mandriva's 2010.0 Fall release.
37 • Samba and smbclient (by Wouter on 2010-02-15 22:45:07 GMT from Finland)
Why not use ssh, scp and sftp instead? Even more secure and convenient, especially with RSA/DSA keys and a key-caching daemon. This also works from the GUI in most file managers that use the Gnome or KDE libraries.
38 • Transfering files (by Jesse at 2010-02-16 00:55:28 GMT from Canada)
As Wouter said, there is something to be said for ssh and sftp. Especially if you have a tool like File Uploader or Konqueror to make it drag-n-drop easy. But, hey, Samba can be useful in a lot of places. For example, if you work in an office with Windows machines.
39 • Ubuntu's apparent lack of progress (by ken on 2010-02-16 01:43:12 GMT from United States)
I try to keep up with all distros, but mainly concentrate on ubuntu or mint because they are a little easier for new converts. Ubuntu is doing the "two steps forward, one step back" thing too much and I can't really stand behind this logic. I was hoping for the new theme idea to go ahead ( yes, looks do count), and now they are saying that it won't be in Lynx. Too many promises from Canonical, and not enough delivery. The packages are blazing to the next build and they aren't even stable yet. I want Ubuntu to come out of this a winner. Well, actually I want Linux in all flavors to come out on top. Just stick to a few new ideas, polish them to perfection, and then not re-build the WHOLE OS. Not to much to ask, is it?
40 • Health Check: Moonlight (by Anonymous at 2010-02-16 02:56:57 GMT from Canada)
Mono lovers might read this:
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Health-Check-Moonlight-904464.html
41 • @40 (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-16 05:12:30 GMT from United States)
Excellent article.
I hope everyone reads it.
I'm convinced that Miguel de Icaza is being payed by ms.
I see Fedora with a new respect now as well.
42 • DWW 341 & @14 & @31 & @40 (by D1Knight at 2010-02-16 08:23:37 GMT from United States)
Thank you for another great DWW. An excellent feature story and I can relate to a lot of it. "I chose Lancelot because I don't like the all the clicking back and forth that comes with Kick-off." Yes, I prefer Lancelot over Kick-off as well. I had used Kick-off for about an hour, that was it (back and forth was annoying after a while) it had to go.
"When I logged in the first time, I saw the configuration output dialog state that there were issues with the Akonadi and possibly Nepomuk, but it went by too fast to fully read. What it amounts to, either on purpose or by bug, is that Nepomuk was disabled by default and Akonadi doesn't appear to be storing KDE PIM data in a database in Mandriva 2010." This is still a problem? Ugh! That is too bad, hopefully this shall be fixed soon, oh well at least no "Mono" in KDE.
I am glad to read that Mandriva is a solution for Delta Informatique, good for them both. :)
@40 Thank you for the link to the article. There was a great point in the article that the issue with Mono/Moonlight, should have been settled in the very beginning under a FOSS license (would have saved a lot grief, for everyone). I do believe the bigger question is 'Why they wouldn't have settled it from the get-go?' Mmmmh.....food for thought.
@14 I hope this helps. I seem to remember about 2-3 months back in DWW there was a link for a Mandriva Community LXDE Edition, not Fluxbox, but maybe "lite" enough. Cheers. :)
@31 I think I get you. Yes it would be great, if say Fedora had their own version of launchpad.net, to pick "other/extra" apps (not necessarily restricted) to install to Fedora. Peace. :)
Have a great week everyone. :)
43 • @14-again (by D1Knight at 2010-02-16 08:37:02 GMT from United States)
@14 Here is the DWW 331 link http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20091130#news
Here is Mandriva LXDE Community Edition link http://www.mandrivauser.de/wordpress/?p=454
Cheers and Peace. :)
44 • @40 + 41 (by Joe Mama at 2010-02-16 09:37:55 GMT from United States)
Could you try harder in your libelous attempts at attacking someone that has provided Unix users with a way to watch streaming video that we would otherwise not be able to view?
I don't think that it is asking too much for you to explain in a polite and concise manner why we should give up watching streaming video of Olympics Curling on Linux just because you dislike Microsoft.
45 • @42,43 (by Elder V. LaCoste at 2010-02-16 09:57:40 GMT from United States)
Thanks for those links. I will give it a try. LXDE should be better.
46 • KDE review (by silent at 2010-02-16 12:18:16 GMT from France)
It is a strange review. I don't think that 2GB of RAM wouldn't be enough for KDE4.4. I have read somewhere that KDE 4.4 uses only some 25 MB more RAM than 4.3, so even 512MB RAM should be OK for the basic applications. For me, the review should have answered some simple questions, like "Is KDE 4.4 good enough for a production system?" "What are the advantages or disadvantages as compared to other DE's? "What is the recommended minimum hardware (CPU,GPU, RAM)?" I mean, for me the GUI is very nice and also it is generally quite fast, no real stability problems; but still some glitches (some styles have bugs, some fonts/applications that are OK with other DE's are not displayed correctly) or lack of features (like hiding the panel manually).
47 • I agree with #46 (by mythus on 2010-02-16 13:08:35 GMT from United States)
Greetings,
I concure with silent in regards to #46. On my system, running Arch Linux x86_64, KDE 4.4 running kopete, amarok, konqueror, and some fun plasmoids, I am only using 513.6 MB. I should also note that I have full compositing effects enabled and in use. The system for me feals faster and smoother than KDE 4.3 did but I suppose results may vary.
I would have liked Susan to have spent more time trying out the different aspects of the KDE 4.4 environment before writing her review. Whyile the review was good, had she tried out the other window decorations instead of sticking to her previous set, she would have learned that window grouping is only supported by two windecs so far, oxygen and aurorae. I do understand that many people would prefer using their own set up desktop, but for writing a review she should have taken a look at everything.
I also noticed that she forgot to mention other neat aspects such as certain plasmoids being abled to be docked in systray. Just right click on systray, configure, and click on the plasmoid button. There you can set the plasmoids that systray supports to be in systray. I currently have added yawp and device notifier in my systray, it makes things look more complete and cohesive.
Also I saw that the ability to add a right click menu was also not mentioned. Nor was the fact of plasma theme settings now being in System Settings -> Appearance -> Style -> Workspace. Even the fact that now ever part of your desktop, incuding your widgets, can be shared with the sharing feature in each app menu.
48 • KDE 4.4 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-16 15:04:43 GMT from Canada)
some of the numbers are way beyond my understanding.
They have integrated a total of 1,433 user requests into KDE SC 4.4. However, this was not done at the expense of bug fixing: The KDE team lists 7,293 fixed bugs.
The above from the article:
KDE SC 4.4: Fresh breeze for KDE
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/KDE-SC-4-4-Fresh-breeze-for-KDE-926340.html
Does this mean that kde4.3 had 0ver 7000 bugs?
49 • @48 KDE Bugs (by Jesse at 2010-02-16 15:27:36 GMT from Canada)
I think the 7,293 bugs include duplicates and problems which may not really be bugs. Keep in mind that KDE has a semi-automated bug reporting system. So, if 1,000 people all report the same bug and each bug gets its own entry, the developers will end up closing 1,000 bugs by fixing one problem.
50 • @48 & 49 -- KDE Bugs (by Jon Iverson at 2010-02-16 20:28:46 GMT from United States)
I think Jesse is spot on with his explanation. Many people reporting the same problem may be logged as separate bug reports, but these all refer to a single problem that a single fix cures. Equating 7,293 bug reports to an equal number of actual problems is clearly not warranted.
51 • #12, 13, 25, (by susan at 2010-02-16 21:04:53 GMT from United States)
Thanks for your kind words.
Thanks to everyone else for your comments and advice.
52 • #46, 47 (by susan at 2010-02-16 21:09:01 GMT from United States)
This wasn't intended to be a full KDE 4.4 review. This was a report on the Mandriva packages - if they installed, any errors, any major issues. Perhaps on a more fundamental level - given how nice Mandriva 2010 is at install, how does their upgrade/update process fair this release?
Thanks.
53 • RE: 44, Unix users? Libelous? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-02-16 21:17:54 GMT from United States)
"Could you try harder in your libelous attempts at attacking someone that has provided Unix users with a way to watch streaming video that we would otherwise not be able to view?"
Who are you talking to? I don't really believe you really know what you are talking about. For your information most of us here do not use Unix and furthermore we do not need MONO or MOONLIGHT in order to watch streaming video. It has nothing to do with liking MS. It has to do with trusting MS. Please read the article.
Anyway it's libellous not libeious.
54 • RE: 53, Boy I'm a sharp one. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-02-16 21:21:42 GMT from United States)
I misspelled the misspelling.
55 • RMS GNU-Linux (by Justin Whitaker on 2010-02-16 21:52:58 GMT from United States)
Shouldn't a RMS named distribution just be a blob gutted kernel and Emacs? Just asking.....
56 • No subject (by Bilbo at 2010-02-17 00:10:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
hey, blob gutted kernel? I know he's carrying a few extra pounds, but RMS is a legend, leave him be. He wouldn't be the same if he worked out regularly.
oops, its that libelous culture re-appearing again, mybad :)
57 • @45 (by D1Knight at 2010-02-17 00:54:27 GMT from United States)
@45- You are welcome. Glad to help. :) Have a good one.
58 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-17 01:06:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #53
EW, just a word to the wise...if it was, "talking libel", then it would be "slander". (Rule of thumb is: Slander is Said, ie alliterative. Libel is pubLished, sort of alliterative, lol).
59 • @30 Oh, Brother (Multi-function) (by David Queen on 2010-02-17 02:01:11 GMT from United States)
Maybe just ask for help. I've installed a Brother Multi-Function Printer/Scanner/Fax in both Mandriva 2009.1 and 2010.0 without the command line. This is what I do:
Download the rpms for lpr driver and cupswrapper driver. Select and right-click the both of them and choose Open With -> Software Installer and install them. There will be packages to be downloaded from Mandriva's software repositories - go with the flow here. For your ease I'll say go ahead and reboot at this point (sounds familiar) to make sure the printing service (called "cups") is started. Plug in your printer and set it up in Mandriva's Control Center. Same deal goes for the scanner function, with Brother's brscan2 rpms, and works fine in Mandriva. I've never sent a fax from other than right at the machine so I've nothing to say on that at this time. Brother's instructions are generic and not meant to speak to any particular distribution's GUI tools. The tools that are available are likely to have designs unique to their distribution. Only take a little time to become familiar with Mandriva and, even if it is not a Windows XP clone, you may find it to be at least as easy to use.
60 • No subject (by Frodo Hobit at 2010-02-17 02:25:24 GMT from United States)
Why are there so many betas for Mepis?
Are they ever going to have a release?
It seems their in continuous beta status.
61 • @30 Oh, Brother (Multi-function) (by David Queen on 2010-02-17 05:32:35 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (duplicate post).
62 • long time reader, first time poster (by David Queen on 2010-02-17 05:35:49 GMT from United States)
Please forgive and delete my double post. Sorry.
63 • No subject (by zygmunt on 2010-02-17 09:46:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
64 • Re #60 Why are there so many betas for Mepis? (by Brooko at 2010-02-17 11:46:22 GMT from New Zealand)
Warren has same philosophy as Debian devs - release the final when it's ready, and not before. Would be sometimes nice if other distros did same. One thing is for sure (IMHO) - when it is released, it will be up to his usual very high standards. That is worth waiting for!
65 • RE:58, Thanks (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-02-17 12:34:33 GMT from United States)
Thanks forest. It's always good to get educated every once in a while.:)
66 • RE: A Few :) (by Landor at 2010-02-17 18:09:53 GMT from Canada)
#31
It was no effort at all. Since I've been fooling around with Fedora I sniffed out the ability to do so already. I understand, I believe, what you meant. Not to say Fedora is not as popular as Ubuntu, but I see that as a factor. Canonical just doesn't push their distribution, they push the community aspect of it for adoption as well. They have done it on a major scale (just like everything else they do). It would be nice to see a leader like RH do the same for their community project as well. I know I would definitely enjoy seeing a few packages made easier to install for Fedora.
#35
I went back and re-checked and they said that you "may" have to enable "both" i386 and x64 repositories, for x64 users. I found that kind of funny, But more seriously, maybe when written it was dependent upon what release you were running, who knows.
#48
Anything posted here about the bugs is pure speculation. I wouldn't find it that hard to believe it had so many bugs. Distribution releases hit the 1000's, KDE is a massive project, encompassing so many programs, 7000+ isn't that much of a shocker in my opinion. The only way to know for sure is to ask someone that takes care of the bug tracking/reporting aspect of KDE.
-----
The whole Libel/Libelous topic:
The "assumption" on whether it's libel or slander is wrong here. The letter of the law is explicit and meant to be, so that (hopefully) there is no misinterpretation of the law. On the internet you often see people wrongly assume they are speaking. When you are posting something online it is not considered "speaking" by the word of the law, so it cannot be slander. It is published, thus Libel. Such Libelous comments could even get Ladislav in trouble if someone really wanted to pursue a judicial means of resolving the problem since he allowed said statement to be published, or continued to be published. Whether or not the comment was Libelous or not is up to the courts, but Libelous is the correct term for anything published that is not "physically and actually" spoken.
Brother Printers:
I have an old MFC-210C and it is literally a pain to get going in most distributions. I decided to leave it setup for an old computer since I rarely use it now. I now have a Samsung laser that works flawlessly.
But to note, if there's one area in Linux that is still in the dark ages, it's printing. It's one of the biggest hit and miss aspects of hardware for Linux. Just ask anyone who's installed such and such printer, or ask people that actually really know what they're doing. Sometimes it involves a definite hack-fest just to see some results.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
67 • RE: 66 (by Landor at 2010-02-17 18:19:09 GMT from Canada)
Just an addition. I was only using the fact that Ladislav/Distrowatch.com could have legal difficulties over such and issue as a point to prove the distinction, the distinction of publication over vocally expressed.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
68 • To Gnome and back (by Jesse at 2010-02-17 18:27:17 GMT from Canada)
I'm usually a KDE user, but I've spent the last few weeks using Gnome. Mostly because I was testing distributions which defaulted to Gnome and I decided to give it a fair shot on my production machine too.
After two weeks I finally gave up and went back to KDE. While at first glance, they both perform really well, there are just so many little things that bug me about Gnome. I'm not saying it's inferior, it just doesn't operate the way I think. I kept searching for ways to change settings to fit my work flow better and sometimes the option is there and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the option is buried in the Gconf tool, which is too much like using the Windows registry editor for my taste. There are things I like about Gnome, but I find that KDE not only generally works the way I think, but it also gives me the ability to easily change the things that I want to work different. I haven't tried 4.4 yet, but (for now) 4.3 is working really well and trouble-free for me.
69 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-17 22:49:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #66
Ref libel thread:
Ed Wilson was being facetious in #53, as were the following remarks.
I have no doubt EW can use google as well as any...and is in possession of a dry sense of humour. EW acknowledged the witticism in #65.
You were the only one who got it wrong when you when on about "assumption"...nobody else gave an arse.
Here in UK we usually just add, "allegedly", so that the item can be reported.
This generally causes no end of merriment, especially when reference is made to "Private Eye".
Otherwise we would all be in jail.
However, in internet terms...who would have jurisdiction were LB to publish libelous statements, or if a comment was posted on his site?
There is no right answer...that is for the lawyers to argue over, how else could they earn a crust?
70 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-17 22:57:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Something to think about, along the lines of Linux is not "Linux" (to borrow from the article):
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/linux_unix/article.php/3865576/Stop+Fighting+Linux+and+Learn+Your+Distro.htm
71 • Call for a LEAN KDE4 (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-18 05:15:57 GMT from United States)
I have been trying most of the other desktops, and just can't find satisfaction.
The main thing kde has, that others don't, is the ability to remember window size and location. Like Jesse, kde generally works the way I think.
Many older computer are limited to 512 MB ram, or the owners can't afford more memory.
The objective here is to get KDE4 to run well with 512 MB of ram.
Remember that kde3 prompted you at first run, for the type of system you had. With a slider you could
minimize the eye candy according to the processor speed.
Using a "debian testing" base, I have installed kde4 one package at a time to minimize the bloat.
Packages installed so far: kde-window-manager, kdebase-workspace-bin, kdm, kwrite, and systemsettings.
I have disabled nepomuk* and a few others with #chmod 600 /usr/bin/nepomuk*, preventing their execution at all.
Turned off all unnecessary 'services', like monitoring the network, timezone, powerdevil, etc.
I can run iceweasel(firefox), icedove(thunderbird), pcmanfm, mousepad, and x-terminal without using swap.
It would be a great project for some kde4 developers to create a lean kde4. Maybe call it LKDE4?
I don't know if kde can be compiled without nepomuk*, if not it should be.
I'm sure developers could create a lean version without all the frills like fadeing windows etc.
This might also find a home on the next generation of mobile devices like touchpads, netbooks and such.
End of wishful dreaming.
72 • Ms. Linton (by splat at 2010-02-18 09:47:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ah yes, the reclusive Susan. Once tried to send her an innocuous, but hopefully helpful, email and failed. Is she is Texas, US or Oxford, UK? Well hidden behind endless links! She runs an excellent website and her reviews are comprehensive. Shame I don't like Mandriva in this case...
73 • small, tiny, miniscule (by bob on 2010-02-18 11:57:59 GMT from United States)
where in the search engine can i find *nix distros that are rated on footprint, with the idea smaller being better?
74 • Really small Linux distros (by Jesse at 2010-02-18 12:28:34 GMT from Canada)
@73
If you're looking for small Linux distros, you might want to look at the list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Linux#Desktop_or_CD-distributions_with_installation_option
Most of the projects on that list are still maintained and the sizes range from about 10MB up to around 128MB.
75 • Mandriva Linux 2010 and its KDE 4.4 Upgrade (by Anonymous at 2010-02-18 14:04:28 GMT from Italy)
Your how to doesn't work.
This one does:
http://not403.blogspot.com/2010/02/kde-44-available-for-mandriva-2010.html
76 • RE: 71 & 72 (by Landor at 2010-02-18 17:21:31 GMT from Canada)
#71
The first distribution along those lines that popped into my head was sidux. They usually build and strip down a minimal iso that's fairly resource friendly, as I'm sure you're already away. I don't know what their road map is but maybe we'll be seeing another one soon (their last was December 2009 I believe) that will have a 4.4 release. The only problem with that is you're running sid.
A lot of people are jumping on the 4.4 bandwagon already and that's what we saw with pretty well every 4.XX release while for the most part each one of them was ripe with problems. I have a feeling this one won't be that much different. I'd even go as far to say that a point release like .2 or .3, or .4 might be better suited waiting on. That's based on the fact that the 3.XX series wasn't really polished (in my opinion) until the 3.5.7+ point release(s). KDE even took longer between releases then. Right now it seems like they're just pumping out code left and right which scares the hell out of me and should anyone who's had programming experience.
#72
I found your comment on contacting her odd. I've had no problem contacting Susan Linton at all, her e-mail is in plain sight if I recall correctly, and if it's not, it was extremely simple to get a hold of. I've also found she's more than happy to respond in a timely manner, especially given how busy she must be.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
77 • kde 4.4 (by Reuben at 2010-02-18 19:44:38 GMT from United States)
I'm starting to think that avoiding kde 4.x.0 releases is a good idea. KDE 4.3 had a bug in window transparency that was resolved in 4.3.2. It seems that in KDE 4.4.0, the LCD Weather station is sometimes invisible.
@31,66: I like how fedora provides a single updates repo. It takes away from the granularity offered by ppas, but I'm a fan of it.
78 • antiX-M8.5-rc3 available (by anticapitalista on 2010-02-18 21:52:46 GMT from Greece)
Shameless promotion.
antiX-M8.5-rc3 is now available for download.
This version has a lot of new features compared to 8.2 release including persistence and running as a frugal install option like Puppy linux does.
A full desktop distro using icewm/fluxbox/Rox, low RAM usage and quick boot.
For those interested in testing, post comments, bugs etc at antiX forum.
79 • KDE4.4 (by pfb on 2010-02-19 00:20:26 GMT from United States)
Is it faster?
I have been using Mandriva, Fedora, and Opensuse with their latest version of KDE. I also use the game Sauerbraten to make sure the video cards work. I haven't done this in some time as Sauerbraten can get old after a bit. But the latest tests show that KDE(64bit) as provided by Opensuse and Mandriva are inadequate to run the game. Fedora (surprise!) works just fine. KDE(32bit) Mandriva is marginal but usable. Gnome, on the other hand works just fine.
Since KDE is becoming more gnome-like, I could probably just switch to Gnome. But, Gnome in Opensuse has login/logout permission difficulties. And in Mandriva I cannot get sound working without prolonged heroics. Then, once I stumble across the combination that recognizes my creative card and ignores the on-board sound system, nothing is saved. On the next boot, I have to wrestle with it all over again. (Because it defaults to something outside of the real world.)
I suppose I could just use Fedora. But I have Fedora loaded onto an external hard drive. It would be best to have it mounted on the drive in one of my computers? No?
Yet if KDE4.4 is faster... Does anyone know?
My video card is nVidia GE6200. Processor is AMD Athlon64 3200. 1.0Gb memory. ASUS mb (K8V SE, I think). Yeah, I know, ASUS and Linux don't get along. It is a hand-me-down, and I'm cheap.
80 • Posting 79 (by Barnabyh at 2010-02-19 01:45:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi,
you've got to create an alias for your sound cards (two aliases then) and specify the one you want to load first. Your problem is created by modules loading in the (for you) wrong order, usually the onboard sound module loads first.
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/MultipleCards#Multiple_Sound_Cards_--_Example_on_Debian_GNU.2FLinux
or for a shorter, less confusing explanation
http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=4888.0
If your Mandriva or openSuse does not keep this but overwrites on reboot then you found out exactly why people switch to and love Slackware so much.
Re ASUS mb, I've got one too, A8V DEluxe, and have never had any problems so I don't understand what people are saying. In fact this is my main work horse now for almost 5 years and I'm regularly testing live CD's on it as well (just now openSuse 11.3 Kde4.4). Guess there's no rule of thumb.
81 • RE:71 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-19 04:27:57 GMT from United States)
Knoppix
System Requirements
* Intel/AMD-compatible CPU (i486 and up),
* RAM: at least 120 MB for the graphical desktop. Recommended for working with various office applications: 500MB RAM,
* a bootable CD-ROM/DVD drive (IDE/ATAPI/SATA, Firewire, USB), or USB flash disk,
* a standard SVGA-compatible graphics chipset,
* PS/2 or USB Mouse.
Copied from knopper.net website.
82 • #81 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-19 04:35:06 GMT from United States)
Ooops, that was for v6.2 using LXDE.
Looks like v5.3.1 was still using KDE with optional KDE v4.
I have used many different versions as live cd's with 128M machines.
Usually waiting a while for the KDE to come up, but they did function ok.
256M does run better.
I personally avoid KDE & Gnome for my main desktop, mostly for the speed.
83 • @82 (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-19 04:56:42 GMT from United States)
Knoppix is a good compromise. The DVD has the full gnome and kde4 desktops, but defaults to LXDE. The LXDE desktop has all the gnome and kde4 applications available from the menu.
Unfortunately, LXDE does not have a means to remember window size and location. Each window opens too small and centered on the screen. This is very frustrating to me, and time consuming. Each widow I open has to be resized and relocated, every time it is opened.
That is why I yearn for a lean kde4.
84 • RE:83 (by Anonymous at 2010-02-19 05:27:33 GMT from United States)
What happens if you select KDE at boot?
Is LXDE the only desktop (with KDE,Gnome apps)?
I myself have not tried to start 6.2 with any other desktop, just default.
85 • @84 (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-19 06:23:41 GMT from United States)
You can select kde (or gnome) desktop at boot, and run a full blown kde4 desktop, with all the bloat. It will not run in 512 mb ram, without a lot of swapping, and slows to a crawl.
86 • @84 (by Untitled at 2010-02-19 08:02:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
1. Ubuntu has a package called minimal-kde which is a leaner alternative to kubuntu-desktop. Other distributions might have something similar as well.
2. On a Dell laptop which is about two years old, a stock Kubuntu 9.10 install runs using less than 512mb. With compositing turned on. And running Firefox. Streaming music in Firefox brings it over 512 though (but it has 1GB ram).
3. On my ThinkPad laptop if I use the fglrx drivers, my ram use is over 1GB almost immediately after startup, doesn't matter if I don't do anything, and eventually will reach 3GB+ when running things.
When using the open source drivers my memory usage is less than a half, starting at just below 500mb and rising to over 1 -1.5GB as I open more things.
My point is that it's not always KDEs fault.
Finally, I don't think that KDE can really be called bloated, because it's what your distribution decides to give you. Actually [health warning: Ubuntu praise ahead], Kubuntu can be seen a lighter KDE. Since they have to fit it all on one CD, the Kubuntu devs are ruthless about what they remove and leave what I (and probably they) think is basic. No games, no development tools, no education software, but if you want it, there's an aptitude for that.
87 • RE: 85 (by Landor at 2010-02-19 08:36:28 GMT from Canada)
When I was first testing KDE4 I was using one of my old P4 test boxes. A 2.8 Ghz 478 socket, you know, one of the instant ovens. Anyway, it had 1 gig of ram at that point and I sarcastically looked at my son and said, "Whoa Mule, Mule Whoa!!!!", from Yosemite Sam fame, mocking how fast it "wasn't" going.
People might be able to tweak it down, cut off the extra fat, but it will still be a resource hog forcing us into a like mindset from MS, upgrade early and upgrade often.
I've tried my best to wrap my mind around lightweight window managers and such, to no avail. The functionality I grew accustomed to with the KDE 3 series just can't be matched by any other WM or DE. Even at the 4.4 stage of the game there's still functionality not present that was in the 3 series. All of the above is why I've been messing with building 3.5.10 on Debian Testing and also looking at doing what a couple people say can't be done, building it on Fedora 12, or 13/Rawhide. Supposedly a KDE maintainer for Fedora is one of those people if I read correctly. We'll see how it all works in the end I guess. Churchill said, " Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
I plan on continuing to find ways to use the KDE 3 series on newer distribution releases.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
88 • KDE4 (by Jesse at 2010-02-19 13:35:12 GMT from Canada)
I suppose each distro and computer combination gives slightly different results. But right now I'm running KDE 4.3 and the entire system is using 300MB of memory. Now, I've got all the effects turned off, but I've also got 152 processes running (including Firefox and an e-mail client). I agree that KDE is a heavy desktop by Linux standards, but I consider 300MB for the desktop environment, apps and services to be pretty good by modern standards.
89 • Unity Linux and KDE 4.4 (by JMiahMan on 2010-02-19 16:01:06 GMT from United States)
For all of those who enjoy KDE 4.4 on Mandriva I would just lie to point out just recently Unity Linux (a Mandriva derivative) also has a KDE 4.4.0 version and not only has been keeping in sync with Mandriva butting adding patches from other distributions, for added features and (hopefully) stability. Might be worth some time for more advanced users to play with.
90 • Correction for 89 (by JMiahMan on 2010-02-19 16:02:59 GMT from United States)
By version, meaning their own rpms, not a physical version. 4.4.0 must be installed by a task rpm ie task-kde4. Sorry for the confusion.
91 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-19 17:41:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
Only in America?
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/84761852.html
So much for the laptop for every child scheme. I imagine this is just what US parents wanted to read. A spy in their own home. Big brother really is alive and well in Philly'.
By what "right" has some member of the school staff to accuse a child of "improper behaviour" in the child's own home?
(I have no doubt if you folk who reside in the US look at the very small print in your Patriot Act, this sort of surveillance is NOT illegal. Almost certainly it will be couched in obscure legalese, but it will be there.)
What were the school and education authorities thinking of? All very well to have such a feature to track down would be thieves, but it seems the system was wide open to abuse...who would/could/did authorise a "trackback" or whatever they call it? By the sound of it "anyone" could...and did.
My heart sank when I saw the headlines (UK's DT, todays issue) and I hoped it was not Open Source.
"Fortunately" it was Apple kit...but it begs the question...how many other schools/colleges have similar schemes? I would very surprised if this was the only example.
I've gone on about China wanting to install "Green Dam", but it seems in Philly they went one further...they don't just look at your hard drive...they look at "YOU".
It begs another question...if the technology exists to switch on a camera remotely, and it surely does, did Mac have any hand in this? And far worse how many other laptops (and PCs?) can be controlled thus? And MS too?
Hmm, something tells me we won't be seeing any full scale take up GNULinux equipped kit in the near future...certainly not in the US.
92 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-19 17:54:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #91
Oops, closed too soon.
Continuing the open source take up...can you imagine the authorities being happy with open source code...bit tricky to hide the Big Brother switch...
93 • RE: 91 -- Spying laptops (by Jesse at 2010-02-19 18:19:42 GMT from Canada)
I saw this article too, but I didn't see what kind of computers they were. When I first read the story, I was reminded of an article that came out a few years back where someone had figured out how to turn on a Mac's webcam without an notification to the user. At the time, I thought Apple had released an update to prevent people from being spied on.
The situation in PA is disturbing, not just because some officials decided to do this, but because of the number of people who had to have been involved. When you think about it, you'd need a board member or two, a few IT guys, the school principal, VP and probably some others. From my experiencing working with schools, I figure at least a dozen people must have known this was happening/possible and no one raised the alarm. I could understand one person thinking it was a good idea to spy on children using the laptops, but it scares me that so many people must have known and kept it quiet.
94 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-19 20:17:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #93
A sort of "ring" then Jesse?
Hmm, in UK we uncovered a "ring" involved with minors and pictures...we jailed them.
95 • Laptops as spy tools (by Jesse at 2010-02-19 21:05:04 GMT from Canada)
@94:
I didn't mean exactly a "ring" as in a conspiracy. More like a mob mentality where no one is willing to stand up and speak out. I don't think there are lots of board members or admin staff sitting around and plotting to spy on kids. Rather, I think one or two people came up with the idea, but they would have needed to have help and to let certain school officials know about it.
I'm disturbed because no one raised the alarm. Not the principal, not the IT guy who set it up, not the board members who approved it. Apparently no one who should have know this was happening raised a fuss over it. That bothers me. Maybe they were afraid for their jobs, or maybe they didn't think it would be used for spying... but I think someone should have spoken out before it got this far.
96 • Re: #80 Mandriva64 Sound (by pfb on 2010-02-19 22:16:47 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the tip. I tried it and had no success. I went back to KDE and found the same problem. Mandriva 64 does not recognize that the on-board sound system has been disabled in the BIOS. Kinda-sorta. It will channel audio output through the SBLive card, but will not provide 5.1 surround capability. It thinks the sound card is the ASUS system, and the ASUS is the creative card. I am a bit astounded that this is happening in KDE, as I am certain I had it working properly at one time.
I did have some good advice to replace it with Fedora. I may do that. But I am curious to know what sort of strangeness is happening. I have Opensuse (and Fedora via external hard drive) on the same machine, and there, both KDE and Gnome handle the sound setup just fine.
97 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-19 22:34:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #96
Despite your comments Jesse, what reason would an "official", who had access to the app and passwords, to want to "spy" on a pupil apropos nothing at all. Prurience? Voyeurism?
You can't accidentally fire up an app, then randomly select a "target" and randomly key in a password. If the official suspected theft then he must have realised that was not the case when the pupil was observed by the camera.
I suspect the truth will beggar belief...even the spin that is being engineered by the lawyers for the no doubt soon to be accused, allegedly.
98 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-19 22:36:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
oops, should now be ref #95.
99 • Mandriva64 Gnome Sound (by pfb on 2010-02-19 23:37:18 GMT from United States)
Cancel #96. I can set up KDE and logout and login to Gnome and everything works as expected. It is only when I leave the system in Gnome and start up from a cold boot that the sound gets horribly complicated. So, I assume, the problem may be very specific to my set up. I can stay with KDE.
If I really want to play Sauerbraten, I still have Fedora. Thanks for the sounding board.
100 • Laptops as spy tools.. (by Jon Iverson at 2010-02-20 00:05:14 GMT from United States)
Read the complete lawsuit, together with the school administration's response. If half of what's alleged is held to be true then I hope they drop the hammer on those responsible sending a no nonsense message to others who may be on the verge of doing something similar. In the meantime kids using those school issued Apple laptops at the very least need to block the web cams so images cannot be recorded and transmitted.
101 • # 87 - KDE4 refuseniks (by gnomic at 2010-02-20 02:05:30 GMT from New Zealand)
KDE4 - hmmm, not quite there yet in the eyes of many - and what was the question to be answered anyway? 3.5.10 seemed quite a sweet spot. Still can't understand why Konqueror and Dolphin have to coexist in v4. There was this - http://thekiarablog.blogspot.com/ - some chap wanting to keep KDE 3.5.10 going on Slackware. Haven't tried it, network here refuses to download it. I think Pardus is the most convincing KDE4 version I've seen so far.
102 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-20 02:13:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #100
Just a thought...I wonder if the mic was enabled at the same time as the webcam?
Now that really would be bad news...
And, for those of us that did not know, there is an app by the name of "computrace", which is mature technology and, as an example, helped to locate and eventually recover machines stolen in UK and found 4000miles away in India:
http://www.absolute.com/resource_center/casestudies/laleham-gap-school
You'd have thought the IT people involved in Philly might have done a bit more research...
103 • KDE 4 (by fernbap at 2010-02-20 04:55:06 GMT from Portugal)
From time to time, i decide to give KDE4 a try, and end up turning back to gnome.
I boot a live CD, KDE starts, usually with some hideous blueish wallpaper (forgive me, but i hate seeing a blueish wallpaper in my computer screen, perhaps because of Microsoft abused blue for so long). So, first thing i want to do is replace the wallpaper, even in the live CD, so that i can have an idea on how KDE will look with the kind of wallpaper i like.
WHERE THE HECK DO YOU REPLACE THE WALLPAPER???? Sheesh! I always forget and have to spend 15 minutes until i manage to figure out how to do it.
User friendly? pfff.... Under gnome, you right-click on the desktop, and there it is...
104 • Debian kfreeBSD installed (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-20 06:14:00 GMT from United States)
Debian with a freeBSD kernel.
Took me 3 tries to get it installed. Mostly problems with grub2, the only bootloader available.
I used the mini.iso, a 13 MB live boot, net install CD.
Basically the install is debian. I'm using apt-get and synaptic for packages.
The file system, however, is ufs (BSD). I'm still confused for what works like linux and what works like BSD. Just my ignorance, I'm always confused.
Using the stable repos, Gnome and XFCE work. LXDE and KDE4 have broken dependencies. Haven't found out how to install nvidia, or if it is possible.
I switched to the sid (unstable repos), with 116 pkgs upgraded. No help. LXDE and KDE4 have the same broken dependencies. There are over 24,000 pkgs listed, so a lot of work is going on. Gkrellm is the only pkg I've looked for that is missing. That may not be compatible with ufs and the BSD kernel?
Debian's stated goal is to release kfreeBSD along with their next stable linux release. Hope they reach that goal. It will bring much needed competition for the rampant linux kernel. Remember when that fit on a 1.4 MB floppy?
A quick web search for 'kfreebsd' will get the info should anyone be interested.
105 • typo error (by bill thomson on 2010-02-20 07:30:41 GMT from United States)
Mandriva Linux gained another feather for their cap this passed week.
should be:
Mandriva Linux gained another feather for their cap this past week.
106 • @ 103 KDE wallpaper (by Untitled at 2010-02-20 09:05:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
1. To change the wallpaper on KDE you need to right click on the desktop, choose the last option on the menu ('Desktop Activity Settings' in 4.4, don't remember what it was before 4.4 but it was still the last option) and choose a new wallpaper. A few months ago I installed Kubuntu to a 11 years old girl who never used any linux before. The first thing she did (without my instructions) was to change the wallpaper. I guess it's not that hard after all.
2. If blue is what's bugging you try OpenSuse since their default wallpaper is green.
107 • Laptops and wallpaper (by Jesse at 2010-02-20 13:13:31 GMT from Canada)
@97:
I don't think you understood my comment at all. I think the people who were actively spying on children and watching video feeds are sick, twisted individuals. I can't think of any good reason for them to do so and I hope they're brought to justice. What I was saying in my previous comment is that I don't think that everyone involved was out to spy on children and cover it up. I don't think there's a giant "ring" of perverts here. Rather, a few twisted people who managed to talk others into accepting it. Let's say Board Member A wants to spy on kids, he needs to get their IT guy to install the software. The IT guy might not be a pervert, he might just be trying to keep his job. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm hoping it's just a few sick people driving this thing and a larger group of people who were along for the ride.
@103:
In my KDE environment, I right-click on the desktop, select Settings and Wallpaper is one of the options that comes up. I don't see how that's easier or harder than the Gnome way of doing things.
108 • Element (by Bananna Head at 2010-02-20 13:58:59 GMT from United States)
Element is cool. It is a real distro contrary to what I read here a few weeks ago. It looks fantastic on a large flat panel t.v. XBMC is very impressive as well. If you are thinking about a way to integrate your computer, music, movies, and t.v., this would be good to check out.
109 • Follow up on school story (by Ed on 2010-02-20 15:24:47 GMT from United States)
The Philly paper states that the Feds have started a grand jury investigation, the installed software was meant to be used only to recover stolen computers. Only two administrators at the school had rights to use it.
110 • Follow up on school story (by Ed on 2010-02-20 15:34:31 GMT from United States)
The Philly paper states that the Feds have started a grand jury investigation, the installed software was meant to be used only to recover stolen computers. Only two IT administrators at the school had rights to use it.
The student involved was called into school office and allegedly accused of taking drugs and image from camera was shown as proof. Student claims he was eating Mike & Ike candy. The students computer was not reported stolen at the time, so it was a clear misuse of system.
My guess is that at least one of the IT administrators will loose their job.
111 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-20 16:06:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #107.
Then that makes it worse Jesse, far worse...the spying WAS covered up. If these people allowed themselves to be talked into a cover up they are are as guilty as the people who did spy on the children, especially as they had a moral duty to do so to protect the children and their privacy.
You may not have read the copy about students reporting the "green LED" being on from time to time, only to be told it was a glitch in the system by the IT dept!
Does anyone really think the IT dept thought it was a glitch?
So, that makes a few people in the IT dept guilty of dereliction of moral duty, not to mention outright lying to "explain" away the "green led" being on.
Until the silly person accused the student of "taking drugs", nobody outside of the administrators appears to have fully understood the secret spying thing.
If the machine was not stolen then it STILL begs the question of why the student was spied on. Again, I'm guessing it was prurience and voyeurism. If any images appear on the internet, you may be sure this will be investigated too.
As for only two people having the "rights" to access the cameras...nobody can be sure how many IT staff could access them too, possibly from other computers not in the school.
It looks, from the reported "facts" as if some people have a great deal of explaining to do...I would hazard a guess rather more than one person will lose their job...and their liberty too.
112 • KDE vs GNOME, and spying with Apple Laptops (by Jon Iverson at 2010-02-20 16:22:50 GMT from United States)
----------------------------------------------------
KDE vs GNOME:
Last I regularly used a KDE desktop was with PCLinuxOS 2007. At the time it seemed quite a mature system. Running on top of what was then an advanced version of PCLOS, KDE 3.5 provided a level of polish, control and sophistication that vaulted PCLOS to the very top of the DW charts for an extended period of time.
When PCLOS moved into the lost months of the "Big Update," and things began to go south with Tex's project to the point that even trying to do the update was often a disaster in the making, I moved on to more stable platforms beginning with SUSE, on through Ubuntu, and finally migrating to Linux Mint.
Now that I have considerable experience under my belt with a personalized GNOME desktop running on Linux Mint, I often find myself questioning why I felt such an attraction to KDE in the first place. Truth be told I've played with various iterations of the KDE 4 desktop from its early introduction on, but I've found none of them even mildly on a par with the feature set and raw usability that GNOME provides. Now comes KDE 4.4, and once again I'll 'give it a go,' if for no other reason than to stay current with KDE's level of development. Should this prove to be a breakthrough upgrade I'll readily admit as much. However I'm no longer holding my breath waiting for that to happen!
---------------------------------------------------------
Spying with Apple Laptops:
Ed's follow up on the Apple Laptops spying story is informative. With a federal grand jury investigation now underway, it would appear that we'll finally get to the truth in this matter. If Jesse is right and only one or two real culprits exist, with others involved simply trailing along in their wake without being aware of possible implications, then at least let's hope to see the culprit(s) themselves are punished in accord with their actions. Such things as this must never go unchallenged if we are to retain any similance of personal freedom.
113 • Spys (by Anonymous at 2010-02-20 19:58:03 GMT from United States)
The First Thing They Should Teach After Basic Computing Is Computer Security!
Problem is that schools would rather teach application usage only, I.E. Office,etc.
If schools taught computer security then issues like the Philly case would be far fewer, and probaly the people selling security would have less business or need more effort to keep in business.
Why would you teach someone computer security and then put spyware on their computer? If you taught them well, they could find or stop it.
Also if it was not to monitor the end user then the end user should have open notification of its' use and presence on the machine (as in finding stolen equipment).
Obviously proper computer hygene is not high on the teaching list in most schools.
Fix the system. Stop abusing the system. Teach proper skills.
What else can I say?
114 • Security (by pfb on 2010-02-20 22:04:28 GMT from United States)
As a firearms freak, I know to treat every gun as though it were loaded.
As a computer aficionado, I believe that any computer connected to the web is public information. At a Nuclear Power Plant, security information is on separate computers that are not allowed connections to LANs, WANs, or the Internet. Information transferred to and from them must use rewritable media (floppies when I was working -- probably rewritable CDs by now) only. And that media must be screened.
This isn't rocket science, is it?
115 • Security (by jake at 2010-02-21 00:19:15 GMT from United States)
The problem is cultural inertia, coupled with the Nintendo generation's "I want it NOW! And I'm willing to cheat to get it!" and a little of Apple's "ease of use" myth.
An example: About a dozen years ago, I was hired by an un-named San Francisco Bay area college to give a class on "Security and Administration of a TCP/IP Network". I'm sure most of you can guess which of the classic text books I was using to supplement lecture and lab.
As an experiment, I brought in my old cluster of vaxen running BSD, and enough terminals to put one on each student's desk. This gear all came out of my own private stock, and didn't cost the school anything. Several friends helped with the setup, so that didn't cost anything either (well, I bought 'em pizza and beer when we were done).
Several students complained to the administration. All of the complainers were either middle-aged management "taking a course", or early 20s kids with a liberal arts degree looking to make a fast buck from the then new to the general public Internet. Word came down from on-high that my teaching platform was "archaic, and irrelevant in today's world", and that I had to shut it down and use something more modern.
Keep in mind that I was supposed to be teaching TCP/IP security administration concepts, not applications.
I tried to explain that the platform that I had brought in was the very hardware that a lot of TCP/IP was written on in the early days, so what better tool to teach it from? But they weren't having it ... They couldn't see past the text-only screens, nor understand that the same TCP/IP stack that Microsoft includes *IS* the BSD TCP/IP stack ... When I brought that up, I thought I was going to lose the job. They looked at me like I had suddenly grown green hair with pink spots all over my body ... but I could see it was a lost cause.
I asked for money to comply, they said "there is no money, teach out of the textbooks". So I hauled out the vax stuff and replaced it with Slackware on PCs. Now there was one PC per three students, and the other two had text terminals plugged into the same box. Again, it cost the school nothing. The same group complained, with the same result from the administration. I asked them if I could bring a Professer over from Berkeley to help me argue my case, they agreed. Time was set for the following Tuesday morning (it was the prior Thursday, Lab was on Wednesday from 5PM until we all left).
Tuesday came around, when we arrived at the school, we discovered that all my Slackware stuff was piled up in one corner, and a shiny new Windows box was on each desk, with a couple of Windows servers in one corner. The administration rep was nervously standing off to one side. I asked how they managed to get the money together for all that gear, red-faced administration replied "discretionary fund".
The Berkeley Professor, knowing the back story, kinda snickered and asked why the school had wasted all that money, when jake had provided two perfectly viable teaching platforms at no cost to the school? He replied that "some of the students had complained, and the administration agrees that the old stuff is not relevant in today's world". The Professor pointed out that the Slackware system I had provided actually had a more up-to-date TCP/IP stack than the Windows network, and doesn't that kind of make the administration look stupid? Admin-guy went from red to white ... and sputtered that the decision was final, Windows was my new teaching platform.
Long story short, I quit on the spot. The Professor kept getting little digs into the admin folks about how the inmates were running the asylum ... and how it was a darn good thing that the students understood so much about the subject that they could inform the instructor what tools to use for their instruction ... and he was going to audit a Chemistry class on the campus, should be good for a giggle ... as the administration folks loaded all my Slackware kit into the back of my truck during their lunch hour. I honestly think he was hoping one of the dim-bulbs would take a swing at him.
116 • A shake of my head and RE: 115 (by Landor at 2010-02-21 00:43:46 GMT from Canada)
I find the latter part of this week's discussion amusing, and not for the topic. Amusing simply because unless I miss my guess I commented here a couple weeks ago about just this. Now I see a couple who actually couldn't understand my comments echoing exactly what I said, or up in arms over the debacle.
Give up your freedoms to closed source and you're to blame for people/corporations being able to take liberties. That's the complete and only message people should get from all of this. Sadly though, messages have difficulty in penetration.
RE: 115
Not the same, but reminded me of a man I met recently, A Professor. A few people were discussing computers, the Professor was looking through books on a shelf, otherwise occupied, or so you though. :) He would occasionally interject regarding such and such a comment from the group, then happily go back to his canvassing the shelves. The main topic they were discussing was easier solutions regarding security. Mainly GUIs and how to teach stuidents to be current. They were all older than me, and though I don't know, maybe even professors, or more aptly some type of instructor for sure. The Professor was a lot older than all of us and I'll date myself at 44. He finally asked, would you teach someone to use a microwave only or every tool in a kitchen to perform the great art of constructing a meal. He then paused for a moment, pulled out a book and said, it's not about the lesson at hand, it's about what your students leave knowing.
I didn't know any of these people from Adam, I walked by the professor and said, that's why I use Linux and prefer the command-line. That's how I spent the better part of an hour afterward being boggled by what this man knew and coming away the better for it.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
117 • RE: 29, 30 (by Aristotle at 2010-02-21 03:27:34 GMT from Canada)
i fully agree with the complaints in #29 about suse. when i tried it i had hundreds of MB's to download, i think mine was in the 400 or 500 range, and that was after downloading the release that was just days old. i don't have a very fast connection, i max out at about 32kb/s and so to download the whole gnome iso took quite a while in and of itself. when i install ubuntu i have maybe 150 to 200mb of updates when that release is nearing 6 months old and the new one is about to be released. that's fine, i expect there to be that much. but for a brand new release, to have that much? i flat out refuse to run something that is created so stupidly.
as for #30 and the printer drivers, again, i agree. it might be easy, as a later poster said, to find .deb or .rpm files with the drivers, but the reason i love linux so much is because for the most part it works out of the box. i can install it, update it, and begin working right away, no tinkering with video card, sound card, printer, networking etc. everything (in ubuntu at least) works out of the box. so why can't other distro's be the same? i dislike ubuntu for the same reasons as a lot of people do, there are no shortage of articles online telling people the perils of running a *buntu system. but i have to run it because no other distro seems to be capable of including basic drivers. i run an acer aspire 3620, a 5 or 6 year old laptop, and still half the distro's out there don't have proper drivers for it. that sickens me.
118 • Q/A Samba Client (by Tom Russell on 2010-02-21 08:06:59 GMT from Australia)
I'd rather be known as a fool, so at least I get to know what I need to know, in order to survive. (My Two Bits)
I do all my work on a Ubuntu Karmic workstation and I can drag and drop files in Nautilus to and from Windows machines by supplying an initial Windows client password. What I can't seem to do is the same to and from other Linux boxes on the LAN through Nautilus.
I can use the Firefox FTP extension but the Samba Nautilus connection is so easy and the LAN doesn't need to be real secure. I'd like to know if it can be done in the same ease of use way. I'd like to see all the setup scripts if it can be done, I'm sure other Linux home/LAN users would appreciate the help.
119 • #118 Line 1 (by zygmunt on 2010-02-21 08:58:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Exactly!
120 • Spying laptops (by Anonymous at 2010-02-21 14:07:16 GMT from Brazil)
Just a silly question:
Could a hacker (or a school censor) make a remote connection to a webcam trojan on a PC that's using the "Tor" network?
A friend of mine told me that "Tor" prevents anybody from hacking my PC, even if a trojan is installed.
I don't think so, but who knows... Have some of you ever used BSDanywhere? Is it really effective against malicious sites?
121 • Laptop spying and tor (by Jesse at 2010-02-21 15:01:11 GMT from Canada)
@116
While open source is great, especially for security, I don't think giving the students laptops with open source software would have prevented the spying. Two reasons:
1. It's just as easy to install spyware on an open source platform as a closed one.
2. The end-user would have to know how to audit source code to detect the spyware.
@120:
The friend who thinks they can't be hacked because they use Tor is suffering from a false sense of security. They should probably read this warning from the Tor website.
http://www.torproject.org/download.html.en#Warning
122 • Comment on #102 (by Glenn on 2010-02-21 15:16:59 GMT from Canada)
Hi Forest
Looking at your comment Quote:Just a thought...I wonder if the mic was enabled at the same time as the webcam?:endquote gave me a chuckle. Immediately springing to my mind was; what if the Speakers were enabled at the same time as the webcam?
I can hear it now.
Quote
Hey Johnny, yes I am talking to you. Wash behind your ears. Stop Picking your nose. Is that your homework I see over there untouched? Wanna know what I saw your parents doing with that can of whipped cream and bottle of Cherries over there on the counter? endquote ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Orwell would feel vindicated.
This type of thing has been around a long time. I remember back in the 90's when you could wake up in the night and hear your PC dialing out on the modem. Nice little Trojan in there phoning home.
Now, when a lot of us have permanent HS connection to the internet it is harder to detect, even with firewalls. Welcome to the global fishbowl.
My solution. When not in use, disconnect from the internet.
Of course something in your system may continue to gather info and be waiting for the next time you are connected but you can minimize that with judicious firewall permissions. There is another problem. How many computer users even know what a firewall is? Most think it is to prevent hackers from getting in whereas (to me) the most important is to prevent stuff from getting out. Who is to say the Firewall software is not also phoning home? (one was reputed to do about 5 years ago?).
I appreciate the stories above re trying to teach security. Most people cannot comprehend that there are cyber-voyeurs out there and they should take reasonable precautions. I have 2 friends who are now victims of Identity theft and their Bank accounts were raided amongst other intrusions on their personal affairs.
I had tried reasonably hard, in laymans terms, to tell them to exercise caution on what they communicate online but it seems the message did not get through until now. They failed their finals. heh heh heh
Funny, they look upon me as a computer expert, seek advice, then ignore it.
Thats human nature and not much we can do about it I guess. Nor would I want to. Ilike himan nature, warts and all. Keeps life really interesting.
Glenn
Flames go here (______________________________________). Coffee roasting is my lot today so I need the heat. :-)
123 • More on school story (by Ed on 2010-02-21 16:07:15 GMT from United States)
School Board claims system only activated 42 times this school year, recovering 18 lost or stolen computers, and has been shut down pending investigation.
Local law officials had not been contacted by parents of student and only found out about alleged criminal activity when lawsuit made the news. Same thing with Federal law enforcement. Parents went straight to the lawyers.
No mention yet of what software was used to conduct remote access.
124 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-21 16:34:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #116
Quote:
Give up your freedoms to closed source and you're to blame for people/corporations being able to take liberties. That's the complete and only message people should get from all of this. Sadly though, messages have difficulty in penetration.
Utter rot, see Jesse #121.
The thrust of the Philly issue was that there was a "Big Brother" presence in a private home via a student's laptop; sanctioned by some education authority...the OS is not relevant to the point made.
125 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-21 17:08:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #122
The business of remote switching of a microphone is not new(s) anyway Glenn, lol:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html
The reference to the US wiretap laws (from link in article) are "broad enough to allow the evidence" (my paraphrasing).
The wonderful thing about such laws is the old "probable cause" get out (of jail free card for the authorities). I would suggest this really means, "plausible cause".
Whoever came up with that one has my admiration...it means the authorities can do just about anything they want with impunity...pure genius.
I would laff my socks off if the school official came up with (via her lawyers) she had probable cause to believe the pupil was involved in drug abuse...allegedly, hence her determination to steer the pupil back to the straight and narrow.
It might actually BE the case the pupil was engaged in drug abuse and his quick thinking parents/lawyers came up with the counter claim about Big Brother...allegedly.
I believe this news item will prove to be fascinating as it unfolds, better than a soap opera and as they say you couldn't make it up anyway.
Number of Comments: 125
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