I'm curious. Is anyone actually reading this, or am I talking (typing) to myself?
While I have joked that I talk to myself sometimes because I'm the only one that will listen.... It doesn't seem like that much of a joke anymore. My thoughts and opinions are not even considered, which makes me wonder why some even bother to ask for my opinions and ideas, when they brush them off as soon as I say them, if they even heard me in the first place.
I don't claim to be "The Authority" on any topic, but there are things I know, and what I know I use to guess or form ideas from. And yet someone I know doesn't know what they are talking about, everyone pays attention to because they say it with such authority. And the saying "You can argue with a fool" is true more often than not. Even if I can find proof they are incorrect, they still know better than me. I don't mind being wrong, IF I actually am, and they can make it a learning experience for me. But if they rub my face in it, I don't care if they are right or not, if they can't pass on the information in a useful manner, and effectively call me stupid. Google is wonderful tool, and is usually gives more useful info than those kind of people ever would. But it seems like people rarely take the time to listen when I try to pass it along to them.
Granted, some of what I say in my blog is me venting, but it's MY blog. Other people vent on theirs, so I'm not doing anything different.
So, it begs the question, is anyone reading my blog, and do they find anything of interest? I'd like like to know.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Linux Desktops
What I'm about to talk about might leave a confused look on some people's faces that are not familiar with linux in the least. So I'll attempt to lay a little foundation, using windows as a visual comparison.
Under Linux, you don't just have a "Desktop" like you do under windows, which is mostly handled by explorer.exe. Under linux there is 2 major pieces. The DE (Desktop Environment), and the WM (Window Manager), and together they make up your "Linux Desktop".
Now possibly you already have an impression of what the 2 pieces do. Basically DE handles your backgrounds and icons, sometimes some other visual type items.
The WM, as the name suggests, handles your program windows... there size, location, and sometimes special effects when you move the windows. It effectively goes over the top of the DE, and in some cases with an added program to handle your "taskbar", makes your your desktop. When all is said and done, you often can't tell were one starts and the other ends.
With that said, there are a number of DE's and WM's, some combine both effectively into one package (Gnome, KDE, and XFCE). The lighter desktops (LXDE, Openbox, IceWM, and sometimes XFCE again) are sometimes easier to see the DE and WM separation. LXDE and Openbox are a common combo of DE/WM, and in many cases is my preferred desktop. It's better for older computers, or for those that like a light, snappy desktop that stays out of the way when you have work to do, and both parts can be customized to your liking. Sometimes the Openbox WM is run by itself, making an even leaner desktop with no icons cluttering up the screen. Crunchbang linux for one, is setup like this. The only real problem is that Openbox does not update the program menus when you install a program, you have to edit the menus yourself. Once you get the hang of it, it's not hard to do, and there is a graphical menu editor available that helps a great deal.
My next choices for desktops are XFCE, and Gnome. While KDE does look nice, it's speed and glitches (for my experience anyway) make it seem too much like windows, which linux is not, nor is it meant to be. XFCE can get kind of bloated if you add a bunch of the plugins and widgets, but clean it is pretty nice. Gnome version 3.x, they tried to turn the desktop screen into a tablet screen (icons for everything), and seems slower and awkward to use. If you can stay with Gnome 2, or one of the Gnome 3 projects that make an effort to make it look/feel like Gnome 2, it's pretty nice, and feels enough like windows to be comfortable. SolusOS is of the nicest examples of this. The menus resemble that of WindowsXP/Windows7, and is pretty straight forward to navigate. If you want to try a Linux disrto for the first time, pass on the Ubuntu's, and try out SolusOS. It's toted as being user-friendly, and they definitely did a good job with it. It's based on one of the older parent distros, Debian linux, so there is plenty of reference material and community help available if needed. It will run as LiveCD, so you can try it out without installing anything computer.
There are a number of other WM's out there, most common you will see is probably IceWM (Anti-X linux is a decent example), Fluxbox, Enlightenment, and JWM (what Puppy Linux uses). These are mostly light jobs, usually used in a bit more specialty distros. You need some knowledge if you want to change them beyond what the given distro has, as customizing is done by plain text editor. But if you want to make it the way you want it, one of these is definitely the way to go.
Under Linux, you don't just have a "Desktop" like you do under windows, which is mostly handled by explorer.exe. Under linux there is 2 major pieces. The DE (Desktop Environment), and the WM (Window Manager), and together they make up your "Linux Desktop".
Now possibly you already have an impression of what the 2 pieces do. Basically DE handles your backgrounds and icons, sometimes some other visual type items.
The WM, as the name suggests, handles your program windows... there size, location, and sometimes special effects when you move the windows. It effectively goes over the top of the DE, and in some cases with an added program to handle your "taskbar", makes your your desktop. When all is said and done, you often can't tell were one starts and the other ends.
With that said, there are a number of DE's and WM's, some combine both effectively into one package (Gnome, KDE, and XFCE). The lighter desktops (LXDE, Openbox, IceWM, and sometimes XFCE again) are sometimes easier to see the DE and WM separation. LXDE and Openbox are a common combo of DE/WM, and in many cases is my preferred desktop. It's better for older computers, or for those that like a light, snappy desktop that stays out of the way when you have work to do, and both parts can be customized to your liking. Sometimes the Openbox WM is run by itself, making an even leaner desktop with no icons cluttering up the screen. Crunchbang linux for one, is setup like this. The only real problem is that Openbox does not update the program menus when you install a program, you have to edit the menus yourself. Once you get the hang of it, it's not hard to do, and there is a graphical menu editor available that helps a great deal.
My next choices for desktops are XFCE, and Gnome. While KDE does look nice, it's speed and glitches (for my experience anyway) make it seem too much like windows, which linux is not, nor is it meant to be. XFCE can get kind of bloated if you add a bunch of the plugins and widgets, but clean it is pretty nice. Gnome version 3.x, they tried to turn the desktop screen into a tablet screen (icons for everything), and seems slower and awkward to use. If you can stay with Gnome 2, or one of the Gnome 3 projects that make an effort to make it look/feel like Gnome 2, it's pretty nice, and feels enough like windows to be comfortable. SolusOS is of the nicest examples of this. The menus resemble that of WindowsXP/Windows7, and is pretty straight forward to navigate. If you want to try a Linux disrto for the first time, pass on the Ubuntu's, and try out SolusOS. It's toted as being user-friendly, and they definitely did a good job with it. It's based on one of the older parent distros, Debian linux, so there is plenty of reference material and community help available if needed. It will run as LiveCD, so you can try it out without installing anything computer.
There are a number of other WM's out there, most common you will see is probably IceWM (Anti-X linux is a decent example), Fluxbox, Enlightenment, and JWM (what Puppy Linux uses). These are mostly light jobs, usually used in a bit more specialty distros. You need some knowledge if you want to change them beyond what the given distro has, as customizing is done by plain text editor. But if you want to make it the way you want it, one of these is definitely the way to go.
Monday, October 1, 2012
My Linuxes
I've mentioned some of my favorite Linux distributions before. I've gotten away from PCLinuxOS, mainly because I didn't like them changing things related to package management and updating, and not making such news easy to find on their site.
I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, since they have taken on the attitude that "We don't care about the user base, we are going to do things the way WE want". The Xubuntu and Lubuntu still look decent, I think partly because they are community supported. While ubuntu was debian based, they are only debian based on the surface now, and are pretty much there own animal.
I've messed with OpenSUSE, and while I like the look of it, I don't use it enough to be comfortable with it, so I find it clumsy to work with. The lack of command line commands that I use regularly under debian is a bit irritating as well. It just didn't click with me.
My preferred linux distros are Crunchbang Linux, and SolusOS, both of which are based on Debian Linux, which I am most familiar and comfortable with.
SolusOS is toted as a user-friendly distro, and so far that seems to be the case, and I have put it on a computer at church.
Crunchbang is a clean, minimalist desktop linux, in that it doesn't have a desktop for icons, everything is excessable from menus and/or hot keys (using the "windows" key). It is aimed at the bit more tech savvy, and my dad and I both prefer it. I have even "remastered" it to my own preferences, removing programs I don't use, adding stuff I do use, and making minor tweaks to the way it looks. I have my remastered Crunchbang on a thumb drive I carry around with me, making it easy for me to walk up to a computer, plug it in and use it, and not care or worry about what is on the computer. It's basically a Live CD on my usb drive.
I've messed with a number of Linux Distros over the years, mostly as LiveCDs, which I nice for test driving. I keep falling back to the tried and true Debian based distros.
For my "Tool box", Parted Magic, Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), and on occasion Puppy Linux. Parted Magic is kind of a play on words of the old Norton Partition Magic, and provides drive partitioning tools, cloning/imaging tools. It has a handful of other useful utilities, and is helpful for rescuing files when windows dies, all from a LiveCD.
UBCD is not linux, but a LiveCD or diagnostics tools and other utilities. It can test harddrives, memory, video cards, reset windows passwords, give hardware info, etc. It is for the tech savvy, and you need to know what you are doing, or it won't mean anything to you.
Puppy Linux is a LiveCD linux that is kind of different. In terms of looks, it resembles windows95/98, and is made to run on older computers, down to Pentium classic & Pentuim2 computers. Some people like to use it as a base to make there own linux. It lacks the package availability of the bigger distros, but has most of the common programs you would use on a daily basis, and can bring an old computer back to useful life, even if it's just to check email, simple word-processing, etc. Works well of a usb thumb drive as well, and is pretty snappy.
I use Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi), or Unetbootin to put and cd iso on a thumb drive. 95% of the time one or the other will work, occasionally there is a different method needed for a specific distro to get in on a thumb drive, but they are few and fare between. Usually they make a "hybrid" ISO that will burn to cd or go on a thumb drive.
I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, since they have taken on the attitude that "We don't care about the user base, we are going to do things the way WE want". The Xubuntu and Lubuntu still look decent, I think partly because they are community supported. While ubuntu was debian based, they are only debian based on the surface now, and are pretty much there own animal.
I've messed with OpenSUSE, and while I like the look of it, I don't use it enough to be comfortable with it, so I find it clumsy to work with. The lack of command line commands that I use regularly under debian is a bit irritating as well. It just didn't click with me.
My preferred linux distros are Crunchbang Linux, and SolusOS, both of which are based on Debian Linux, which I am most familiar and comfortable with.
SolusOS is toted as a user-friendly distro, and so far that seems to be the case, and I have put it on a computer at church.
Crunchbang is a clean, minimalist desktop linux, in that it doesn't have a desktop for icons, everything is excessable from menus and/or hot keys (using the "windows" key). It is aimed at the bit more tech savvy, and my dad and I both prefer it. I have even "remastered" it to my own preferences, removing programs I don't use, adding stuff I do use, and making minor tweaks to the way it looks. I have my remastered Crunchbang on a thumb drive I carry around with me, making it easy for me to walk up to a computer, plug it in and use it, and not care or worry about what is on the computer. It's basically a Live CD on my usb drive.
I've messed with a number of Linux Distros over the years, mostly as LiveCDs, which I nice for test driving. I keep falling back to the tried and true Debian based distros.
For my "Tool box", Parted Magic, Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), and on occasion Puppy Linux. Parted Magic is kind of a play on words of the old Norton Partition Magic, and provides drive partitioning tools, cloning/imaging tools. It has a handful of other useful utilities, and is helpful for rescuing files when windows dies, all from a LiveCD.
UBCD is not linux, but a LiveCD or diagnostics tools and other utilities. It can test harddrives, memory, video cards, reset windows passwords, give hardware info, etc. It is for the tech savvy, and you need to know what you are doing, or it won't mean anything to you.
Puppy Linux is a LiveCD linux that is kind of different. In terms of looks, it resembles windows95/98, and is made to run on older computers, down to Pentium classic & Pentuim2 computers. Some people like to use it as a base to make there own linux. It lacks the package availability of the bigger distros, but has most of the common programs you would use on a daily basis, and can bring an old computer back to useful life, even if it's just to check email, simple word-processing, etc. Works well of a usb thumb drive as well, and is pretty snappy.
I use Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi), or Unetbootin to put and cd iso on a thumb drive. 95% of the time one or the other will work, occasionally there is a different method needed for a specific distro to get in on a thumb drive, but they are few and fare between. Usually they make a "hybrid" ISO that will burn to cd or go on a thumb drive.
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