Debian's path is already lit by the Luddite

A couple readers have asked me to write a Debian Install guide, but there is no need.  There is already a great guide in existence from our close friend Dan the PPC Luddite.  Dan is a Debian chef of master class levels, and his guide can help you turn your install into a gourmet dish.

If you just want Debian as the only OS on the hardware in question, then you can easily install it without help in most situations.  You don't need to know any commands unless you tell it not to install a GUI.  If you want to tinker with other OS and such on the same machine, and other more specific things, then Dan's guide is for you.

The best reason to use Dan's guide is all the PowerPC-specific configuration help it gives.  Proper configuration is key to having a great Linux install when you're done.


Here are all five parts of his install guide, which he updates continually:

Part I - Pre-Installation

Part II - Installing the Base System

Part III - Installing the GUI 

Part IV - Configuring Stuff 

Part V - Bugs & Quirks 


The only real thing I would change is installing LXDE, rather than just Openbox as Dan does.  With LXDE you still get Openbox, along with all the added LXDE greatness.  Openbox comes totally raw out of the box.  It takes a lot of config to get it just right.  LXDE is more of a personal choice, but I can promise that a lot of Linux newbies will adapt far better to it.  I also recommend Fluxbox.  It's kind of a middle ground between LXDE and Openbox in terms of pre-configured things. 

I am working on more Debian content of my own, but I don't like redundancy in the community, so there will be no Debian install guide here, at least for now.  The Luddite's guide is very well done, and has a very capable user with legitimate experience behind every word.  You can trust Dan as much as us to look out for your computing well-being.

All Apologies

Dr. Dave here, it's been a month since my last post so I thought I'd apologize for the big break. This is not due to a lack of interest in PowerPC! It is in part due to a very hectic and full work schedule, but also due to yet another video chip failure on my ibook G4 1.07 ghz. This is now the third ibook (one G3 and two G4's) that has gone south due to the video chip becoming unseated from the board. I could of course try and "flame it" back down as others have famously done, but at this point I really want to move away from the ibook line as a whole. In part I kept with ibooks so I could use one machine as a parts mule for the other, but that is clearly a flawed plan when the video chips keep failing. I was debating my next PowerPC step when...

...A retired University professor I've known forever called. He was about to toss a Power Mac G4 he hadn't turned on in three years into a dumpster, after removing the hard drive of course. The specs? A 1.4 ghz (Giga Designs) upgraded Sawtooth (AGP graphics), 2 GB of RAM with a ATI Radeon 9200 with 128 MB of VRAM. I think everyone who reads this blog would sensibly do what I did, and throw themselves between the dumpster and the Power Mac.

Inspired by Zen's recent post  I decided to skip Lubuntu PPC or MintPPC and just go the the heart of the matter, ie the shiny new Debian 7. As with Zen, I'm happy to report the install was utterly painless, just a click or two here and there. In fact, I'd have to say it was one of the least painful Linux or Mac OS X installs I've ever done. Hat's off to the Debian PowerPC team, whoever and wherever you are! It's early days for me and Debian 7, but so far it is hella impressive. Debian 7 PowerPC is stable, secure and sweet. There are a few things to learn and do differently if you are more familiar with 'buntu land, but nothing major.

After 25 years I now no longer have any working Mac OS installs, PowerPC or Intel. It's my intention to use Linux exclusively in the future, as I don't really do any content creation that would require OS X, and find VLC and Mplayer wholly adequate for my media playback needs. With Debian 7 I've got Firefox 17.0.7 and luakit for my web browsing, and a host of audio players to choose from. Who needs OS X Maverick, anyway?

Near future posts will cover youtube playback, office suites and other neat things.

New policy on Mac OS content

As of this post we will no longer be covering Mac OS PowerPC when it comes to any internet related activities.  With it being 4 years since the last meaningful security update, Leopard or older versions of Mac OS simply cannot cut it anymore to keep you and your system/data safe.

When it comes to internet based activity we will only be covering Linux and maybe even a bit of BSD.

My (our) stance is even if you truly do prefer Mac OS on your PowerPC system, you should still use Linux for internet based tasks.  Mac OS is still fine for browsing trusted sites where you know 100% there is nothing to worry about but other than that and email I don't recommend using it any longer.

Just because your hardware is several years old doesn't mean it needs to be stuck in a prison of old non-secure software.  I will keep using OS X PowerPC for offline tasks like content creation and video playback for years or even decades to come.  Having my small army of PowerPC hardware helps.

Use each OS for it's strength.  Linux dominates on security so use it online.  Mac OS X PowerPC dominates with content creation, multimedia playback and gaming.

We will do all we can to help ease the transition for those who are awake to the reality and take the plunge.  If you're in denial, and many are, we can't help you.

Remember, adopting Linux does not equal abandoning Mac OS.

Debian: Unrelenting Quality

I have mentioned before that I chose to cover Lubuntu, because Dan at PPC Luddite did such an amazing job writing about Debian.  I don't like to leave good software unwritten about, but if Lubuntu is good, then Debian is great.  I can no longer contain my unrelenting love for Debian, and its unrelenting quality standards for its software, and anything they package with it.

Debian is the poster child for what software standards should be, which is why so many distros are based on it.  The Ubuntu's, Mint, Crunchbang and Finnix (just to name a few) are all born from Debian code.  Debian have been setting the benchmark for quality, clean, reliable code since the mid 90's, and continue to do so today.  In 20 years there have only been 7 stable releases.  It's because when they release a stable build, they truly stand behind that.  The gap between 6 and 7 was quite short by their standards.  The project actually has about 1000 official developers overall.


This is pretty much how Debian developers operate:

1. Test
2. Test some more
3. Test some more
4. Test some more
5. Test some more
6. Check everything over again and again then test some more
7. Test some more
8. Test one last time just to be really really certain.


While these practices keep the stable build a good mile from the bleeding edge, the end result is stable, secure, never fail you code.  There is a reason Debian is usually a top choice for servers.   If you really desire the bleeding edge kernel and default apps then you can simply install Debian testing.  I honestly have more faith in their testing builds than the finals of pretty much every other distro.

Debian PowerPC is also about the last Linux distro with official support on the architecture still, and there are no signs of it ever stopping. Another thing Debain PowerPC does is allow apt to work perfectly.  In my experiences the Ubuntu's and other distros mess this up at some level.  As someone who prefers some command line on a daily basis this is a big selling point for me and I know it is for Dr.Dave also. 

I have been doing a lot of playing around and testing the newest stable release of Wheezy (7.1 currently) and several different GUI.  The memory usage difference between the various environments is quite significant.


Here are the memory usage totals for each GUI after simply logging in, and with nothing else running:

GNOME 3 - 188 MB

XFCE - 167 MB

Openbox - 101 MB (a bit higher than usual)

Fluxbox - 93 MB

LXDE - 81 MB (I have gotten it down to 69.8 MB now thanks to some trimming)

The system has 1.5 GB (1536 MB) RAM


LXDE is the reining champ, and is so much easier to use for Linux newbs than Openbox or Fluxbox, which use more memory.  I started with the Debian LXDE image and then installed the other enviroments.  LXDE, Fluxbox and Openbox fly while GNOME and XFCE sputter a bit on my G4 1.0GHz Sawtooth testing system.  GNOME and XFCE are still very usable but they simply can't compare performance-wise.  There is also a KDE offering but I have never used it with Deb7.  While KDE is very capable it's one of the most bloated GUI.  It's almost as bad as Unity in terms of system resource consumption.

I will be writing a lot more about Debian 7 soon but I wanted to get out some early observations on Wheezy stable which is only about a month old.  


A couple screens:

They all use the standard Debian installer, which is not a GUI like Lubuntu.  Don't worry though, there are no commands you need to know.  All you ever have to type are usernames and passwords you want.  Tab selects actions, arrows move selections, space makes selections and return/enter executes.  It's actually quite simple to use and should only take a person one use to learn.


It's good.  It's great.  It's all it should be.  It's all any OS should be.  It's free in every sense.

I put Debian on equal ground with BSD.  It's one of only 3 Linux distros I would say that about.  The other two would be Arch and Gentoo, but even they can't touch Debian in my mind.

The twitter situation

Using twitter the last few days has been moderately interesting, but for the most part I have been reminded why I never used my personal account.  I'm pretty much officially over Twitter (again) already.

Another thing of note is that the amount of visitors we get is at least 300-500 unique ip hits per day, yet we only have gotten 21 followers in the first week.  This tells me that the regular readers here are pretty much as crotchety about social networking as I am.  After all, it does take a specific kind of person to appreciate the angle this blog comes from.  People who think like the Dr. and myself have no time for trends of any type.  While Twitter is one of the better parts of the social networking world, it's still part of a culture that I really cannot relate to.

I can't speak for Dr. Dave, but I am over Twitter already.  I may post something now and then or we may just agree to delete the account.

All I really care to spend free tech time on is writing for this blog and using Linux more.  That is what I shall continue doing.

I tried...  140 characters just isn't for me.  Far too limiting and I also tend to hate popular things by default.

This blog will not make any other attempts at social networking.  All that matters is the forward motion of PowerPC and you can get that right here.

Note:  The twitter account has now been deactivated as of June 21.  


Side note

Debian 7 LXDE is amazingly good BTW.  The stable release was introduced in the recent past.  It puts Lubuntu to shame in terms of pure functionality and reliability.  Debian is not as bleeding edge with the kernel and default app versions as Lubuntu is but it's as rock solid as you can get. 

More on that soon.

The devolution of computing

I have been reflecting a lot lately about the state of computing today.  The state of both the development and the users, along with what drives the majority of people from both groups.  For myself, and anyone who prefers to compute from the drivers seat, the state of things is bad on almost all fronts; at least in terms of mainstream computing.

Computing at a high level in the 70's, 80's, and even the early 90's was much better, because any other users around you were at a high level also.  Almost everyone had real capability to compute far beyond pointing and clicking.  Before the GUI existed you literally had to know command lines, and have a catalog of them in your head at your disposal whenever needed.  There were no guides on websites to copy/paste commands from, which is the peak of text computing skills these days for the pointy clicky imprisoned types.  Even with how far the GUI has come, there are still many capabilities that even the most robust OS's UI would lack.  I have mentioned before that only about 60-70% of the full OS X capability is found in its GUI.  Everything else is accessed from the command line.  It is based on BSD after all.  Text/terminal use is the actual human language of computing, not pointy clicky.  A GUI can only do what it gives you options to click on.  A GUI is essentially just an OS hand holder.  All you need is basic hand-eye coordination, and all it's doing is typing the commands for you while you click away.

The user friendly obsession of MS and Apple software over the last couple decades has truly dumbed down the average user a great deal.  The sad truth is that most people only have the capability to point a mouse, and type in whatever language(s) they're literate in.  The even sadder truth is that some actually mistake this for having computer skills.  Some even go as far as to think such skills qualify them to "help" someone else by sharing their "experience".  Experience based on nothing.  When you can only compute at the level of a person that many would consider computer illiterate, then you have no experience to give. 

I'm sorry, but moving a pointing device around, and being literate in your language, is no type of computer "skill".  People who compute at that level need to keep their devolved computing culture to themselves, and focus on learning new ability, rather than trying to spread devolution.

The devolved ones are on some insane mission to spread their 'newer/faster hardware is always better' illogic, and follow Apple or MS blindly.  No one needs help to do such things, because all it requires is no thought.  Anyone can do that.  Give people true technical insight, not what they can get from a wikipedia or google visit.  If that is where you're getting your "experience" from, then you've turned yourself into a fake, and a redundant fake at that.  Pretty shameful.  I assume the goal was never to be a double negative, but that is the end result for some of you.

The people who spread such things know who they are and they need to stop.  Your blind follower no skill thinking is a cancer to anything that resembles good information.  Stop it please.


Lastly

I am sorry if some of this sounds mean, but every word I have written here is nothing but true.  The truth shall set you free, as the saying goes, is as apt with computing as it is with anything else.

Anyone who feels the desire to help others, needs to first do it with something they can help with.  Something you have legitimate experience, knowledge and insight with.  Not something you wish to, but don't yet have, those qualities with.

Don't pretend or devolve.  Learn.

Stop letting billionaires control how you compute, and keeping most of you in a limited and fearful of evolving type of state.  The very reason most of you don't want to evolve your computing skills is that you've been conditioned to think that computing and real brain work don't go together.  Essentially a mainstream/self-induced computer user lobotomy.  That is the true end result of decades of user friendly obsession by the mainstream.