The truth about Linux
A lot of people have always claimed that Linux isn't very good. They have also claimed that PowerPC Linux is buggy. This is all very wrong for the most part.
Ubuntu is really the only distro that is overly buggy, and on x86 as well. It's the curse of the constant release cycle that is to blame for this. For those that don't know, every 6 months they release a new version, whether it's ready for the masses or not. No matter how many bugs exist, they just keep pushing them out.
With Debian, this is not the case at all. The Debian developer team doesn't promote their testing builds to stable until they are truly ready. The testing builds (currently Jessie) spend at least 2 years in that state.
The downfall for most people is that Debian is aimed at the intermediate to advanced level users. The ones that don't need their hand held. It comes a lot more raw out of the box compared to Ubuntu, and thats the point. Most Linux users like to configure everything themselves. They don't want a bloated and eye candy rich experience, because that defeats the whole purpose of running Linux in the first place.
Linux is very much a DIY OS. It is what you make it. Nothing more, nothing less.
There are even some people that use Mac OS who have the balls to say Linux is dead on PowerPC. What are these people smoking? It is Mac OS that is dead on PowerPC, not Linux. Linux is still very actively developed for PowerPC. When it comes to Debian it is still officially supported. That means it's not a community development project like Ubuntu/Lubuntu PowerPC, and it's not just limited to PowerPC and x86. There are a total of 13 CPU types with official support, including ARM and SPARC. All 13 of these chip types get full support from the official development team.
In the end, any OS is only going to be as capable as the person using it. Period. That is an indisputable stone cold fact. If the user has limited ability, then so will the OS.
Don't blame Linux because you don't have the ability to make it do all you desire. If you cannot bend it to your will, then you need to gain more skills so you can. Again, it will not hold your hand like Mac OS. You need real ability that goes far beyond pointing and clicking, and you need to learn most of it yourself, or it will never sink in. These are not things you can have spoon fed to you. You need to learn the theory behind what you're trying to do first, and then learn the steps you need to take. People who say that Linux isn't good are really saying that they lack ability; whether they realize that or not.
I learned all that I know on my own. I didn't have anyone to spoon feed me all these things. You can do the same. If all you want to do forever is point and click, and put as little thought as possible into your computing, then you'll be stuck in that rut forever.
I understand that most of you come from the Mac OS world. A place where you can point and click your way out of any issue or task. This is not at all what Linux is, and it never will be.
Linux allows the freedom to do anything you desire. All you need is the ability to use it properly; this takes time. If you put in the effort, I can promise that you will get great returns from it. If you just want to compute at the lowest common denominator level, then I'm not even sure why you would visit this blog in the first place.
Linux and BSD = total control, and ongoing skill advancement.
Mac OS and Windows = very little control, and ongoing skill decline.
Choose wisely!
Our first birthday!
I started this blog a year ago today, and a lot has happened in that time. I have taken on everything from the greatness of the PowerPC architecture, to the backward immorality of Low End Mac.
In January of this year, the blog was made even better with the addition of Dr.Dave. A veterinarian, and a man of many skills, Dave has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to this blog. Together we have made this place a lightning rod for progressive ideas on how to move this amazing architecture forward, and keep those PowerPC Macs the healthiest and most secure they can be.
We have fought against the backward thinking ignoramuses that try to convince people to use only outdated and non-secure MacOS. The good news is that this group is shrinking all the time. Almost on a daily basis, in fact. To those that were in denial, but have now seen the light, that is what this blog is all about. There are now a lot less people pushing this backward thinking, so this has given the Dr. and myself a lot more time to concentrate on what is important, security and computing skill advancement.
Looking forward, we will continue on the same path we have always taken. A path of advancement, with a big dose of unfiltered truth to munch on along the journey.
A big thanks to all our readers also. Without you guys there would be no one to read what we write.
To help us celebrate our first birthday, we ask you to share what this blog has meant to you, and how it has helped you not only learn, but understand things you already knew in a different light.
Long live PowerPC, skill advancement, Debian, BSD, and this blog.
Three boring weeks with Debian 7
Debian 7.1 is boring. There, I said it and I meant it. Now, you have to understand that in my day job I do surgery, taking animals to a plane of existence not far from death, and boring is good. Very good. Sudden and unexplained jumps or drops in heart rate, drops in blood pressure, crashes of any kind are bad, very bad. Boring is what I want in the surgery suite, and, thanks to Debian I am discovering it is also what I want from my computing experience. In three weeks with Debian 7.1 I have yet to experience a crash, an application lock up, anything....it just works. Boring may just be the highest compliment any Linux distro or any OS can receive.
The Universal Operating System indeed.
I liked my boring Debian PowerPC experience so much that I decided to put Debian 7.1 on a old Dell laptop I had a end of life version of Linux Mint on, and discovered Debian can be all exciting and crashy, if you have a weird exotic hardware configuration, as the Dell does. This is a PowerPC blog so I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say early 2000 Dells with Pentium M's present some unique challenges.
Now....for the ultimate question, can it play youtube? It's still amazing to me that now, above all else watching funny cat videos is the litmus test for any computer in 2013. I am happy to report that yes, I can play youtube on this old Powermac. Firstly, all of the cross platform alternatives detailed so eloquently by the ppcluddite here work. My preferred method he describes is the Youtube EZ Download/Open With method. Why? Well, you can hand the video off to mplayer, and in the preferences for Open With you can add some of the luddites' mplayer arguments and thereby get good playback without issue. For some people however this seems to be a right click to far, and they have to be able to watch youtube inside the bloody browser. I am happy to say even that is easy peasy, with the Greasemonkey script Viewtube. Now, in the past I've tried using Totem and mplayers mozilla plugins with this method on other PowerPC Linux distros and it does not work, period. But VLC's plugin works well for me, and has a couple advantages to boot.
If you haven't already done so, install Greasemonkey in Iceweasel from the add ons (under tools, just like Firefox, cause it is Firefox) and head over to userscripts.org. You have two options there, either plain old vanilla Viewtube or Viewtube_VLC. In regular Viewtube you select the VLC plugin from the drop down menu at the top of the player window that says "Auto". Viewtube_VLC will only use VLC's plugin, so that step is already done for you. You of course need to install the VLC plugin by firing up a terminal and typing at the prompt (assuming you have added yourself to the sudoers file, otherwise you will need to do this as root):
sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-vlc
I have not bothered with mplayer or Totem's plugin due to past experience, but if you are willing to install them and report back in the comments I'd appreciate knowing if the past issues are sorted and they work for you.
Advantages? Unlike Totem and mplayer plugins which, if they work, insist on loading upwards of 20% of the video into cache before they play, VLC's pretty much starts playing the video immediately. Also, search ahead works (doesn't in either of the above plugins, on any platform), which is quite nice. The VLC plugin controls are limited, but with Viewtube's controls you have all of the control you need over the video. The fake fullscreen feature (it's the plus button on the right hand side) in viewtube also works well. Basically its all good.
Other options for youtube playback on Debian are minitube or smtube. Current versions of both are in the experimental (Sid) repositories. I have not tried either as I personally have no desire to descend into the fires of dependency hell. Minitube uses ffmpeg and gstreamer, and in my experience loading experimental versions of both will absolutely, positvely break something. Recall that I want my Debian boring. Speaking of which, below are some incredibly boring screenshots of applications on Debian 7.1 in action on my Powermac G4.
Next up for the dr., loading Debian 7 onto a Tangerine ibook with a couple compact flash cards to replace the ancient, tiny and loud stock HD. I suspect that this endeavour will not be boring, at all.
7448 chip is ready for space
Running at 1267 MHz, and with Altivec to assist it, this radiation hardened version of the G4 based 7448 will be a big boost over the G3 chips in the 200-300 MHz range that are currently being used.
I wonder if the next Mars Rover will be 7448 powered. It takes at least a few years to implement new chips into hardware that will go to space, simply because of how deep the engineering and testing has to go.
Read more about it here:
e2v Release Space Qualified GHz-Class Microprocessor
Ubuntu forum has been compromised
For those of you with accounts on the Ubuntu forum, I wanted to let you know it has been compromised.
I received this email from the forum sysadmin:
Hello,
You are receiving this message because you have an account registered with this address on ubuntuforums.org.
The Ubuntu forums software was compromised by an external attacker. As a result, the attacker has gained access to read your username, email address and an encrypted copy of your password from the forum database.
If you have used this password and email address to authenticate at any other website, you are urged to reset the password on those accounts immediately as the attacker may be able to use the compromised personal information to access these other accounts. It is important to have a distinct password for different accounts.
The ubuntuforums.org website is currently offline and we are working to restore this service. Please take the time to change your ubuntuforums.org account password when service is restored.
We apologize for any inconvenience to the Ubuntu community, thank you for your understanding.
The Canonical Sysadmins.
You are receiving this message because you have an account registered with this address on ubuntuforums.org.
The Ubuntu forums software was compromised by an external attacker. As a result, the attacker has gained access to read your username, email address and an encrypted copy of your password from the forum database.
If you have used this password and email address to authenticate at any other website, you are urged to reset the password on those accounts immediately as the attacker may be able to use the compromised personal information to access these other accounts. It is important to have a distinct password for different accounts.
The ubuntuforums.org website is currently offline and we are working to restore this service. Please take the time to change your ubuntuforums.org account password when service is restored.
We apologize for any inconvenience to the Ubuntu community, thank you for your understanding.
The Canonical Sysadmins.
I doubt that Debian would ever suffer such an exploit on their forum. Canonical has become more sloppy as the days, months and years go by.
Shame on you, Canonical.
Quick and dirty; light and fast
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About three days ago, a reader asked me to just write a short Debian install guide for a PowerPC system with a very small hard drive. A guide isn't even needed. All you need to know are a couple basic steps and you'll have a nice lightweight Debian install, with a very small drive footprint.
The light and small footprint factors are very complimentary indeed. The PowerPC systems with the smallest drives are generally the slowest ones. Their small drive actually forces you to make the right OS choice if you want any semblance of performance.
While this type of install is most beneficial to the slowest of PowerPC hardware, it can also have a good benefit on productivity with the fastest of hardware. I keep it light no matter what OS or hardware I use, and I see the benefits all round with everything I use. If you have any G3 or a slower G4, then you should at least give this method a test drive on your machine.
Here are the very simple steps to getting an ultra-light Debian install. One that is actually lighter than Puppy Linux, and just about any Linux with a GUI. For PowerPC users, this is the absolute best method to get the most out of your hardware on Linux. This is easily the best route to take for a slower machine you want to dedicate to internet use.
I am going to use Debian stable (Jessie) in this install.
Step 1:
Download the Netinstall ISO image
Step 2:
Burn the image to a CD and boot it by holding down C. At the Yaboot prompt, press enter or return to start the install.
Step 3:
When shown the options of what to install, deselect everything (even the GUI) but utilities at the very bottom. Laptop users will also see a preselected option called "Laptop"; you will obviously want this selected for best hardware support.
The reason I say to deselect the GUI, even though these options are extended in the Jessie installer, is that installing a GUI from the Debian installer adds a lot of extra software packages that you may not want. Installing the GUI manually afterward gives you just the GUI itself, without all the extras like LibreOffice, Gimp etc. Remember, this is supposed to be a light install.
Step 4:
Once it reboots you need to login as root with root/root pass you chose at install.
Step 5:
Once you have logged in as root, simply type the following:
It will default to getting it from the same mirror you chose for the Debian install.
When the LXDE install is done type:
It will then boot to a GUI login screen for LXDE. Login with your user account.
Step 6:
Install whatever else you desire once logged into LXDE with your user account. When you install this way you get no extra apps at all; not even Iceweasel, which is Debian's fork of Firefox. It's not exactly lightweight, but is needed for the times when you need a heavily standardized experience. It just works when the lightweight browsers need config.
Fire up the "LXTerminal" and type su to give install privileges to your user account. After you enter your root password type:
Then simply keep using apt-get to install whatever else you desire. Once the terminal is done an install you can simply tap the up arrow and get your last command. Then you simply just replace the package name to keep installing everything else. Jennifer didn't want office software or anything, just the OS and browser.
Other things I recommend installing for basic internet and system use:
If you also want some music on the system, I would try either 'rhythmbox' or 'audacious'.
Thats about it. If you want LibreOffice, GIMP and all the other stuff that installs with the other Debian images then just use one of them. The purpose of this install method is to stay light. You could easily get by on 128 MB RAM with the install I just took a brisk pace through.
You also get Openbox with LXDE, so you can still take advantage of all the configuration possibilities that Dan the PPC Luddite offers on his blog, along with Urukrama's guide.
If you need any other details about the install then just ask in comments and I will add them. I wrote this quickly without much time to spare. Debian is very easy to install. Just follow the onscreen instructions and you'll be fine.
Keep in mind that this install is designed around the idea of Debian being the only OS for a dedicated, lightweight and secure system. I made this as simple and direct as possible. Use your oldest/slowest PowerPC hardware first to see the true value of light.
When I do the exact above type of install, I am left with a Debian LXDE setup that only uses about 49-54 MB RAM after login. You really can't beat that for a modern OS. It would even be hard to beat that if you went back 5-10 years.
About three days ago, a reader asked me to just write a short Debian install guide for a PowerPC system with a very small hard drive. A guide isn't even needed. All you need to know are a couple basic steps and you'll have a nice lightweight Debian install, with a very small drive footprint.
The light and small footprint factors are very complimentary indeed. The PowerPC systems with the smallest drives are generally the slowest ones. Their small drive actually forces you to make the right OS choice if you want any semblance of performance.
While this type of install is most beneficial to the slowest of PowerPC hardware, it can also have a good benefit on productivity with the fastest of hardware. I keep it light no matter what OS or hardware I use, and I see the benefits all round with everything I use. If you have any G3 or a slower G4, then you should at least give this method a test drive on your machine.
Here are the very simple steps to getting an ultra-light Debian install. One that is actually lighter than Puppy Linux, and just about any Linux with a GUI. For PowerPC users, this is the absolute best method to get the most out of your hardware on Linux. This is easily the best route to take for a slower machine you want to dedicate to internet use.
I am going to use Debian stable (Jessie) in this install.
Step 1:
Download the Netinstall ISO image
Step 2:
Burn the image to a CD and boot it by holding down C. At the Yaboot prompt, press enter or return to start the install.
Step 3:
When shown the options of what to install, deselect everything (even the GUI) but utilities at the very bottom. Laptop users will also see a preselected option called "Laptop"; you will obviously want this selected for best hardware support.
The reason I say to deselect the GUI, even though these options are extended in the Jessie installer, is that installing a GUI from the Debian installer adds a lot of extra software packages that you may not want. Installing the GUI manually afterward gives you just the GUI itself, without all the extras like LibreOffice, Gimp etc. Remember, this is supposed to be a light install.
Step 4:
Once it reboots you need to login as root with root/root pass you chose at install.
Step 5:
Once you have logged in as root, simply type the following:
apt-get install lxde
It will default to getting it from the same mirror you chose for the Debian install.
When the LXDE install is done type:
reboot
It will then boot to a GUI login screen for LXDE. Login with your user account.
Step 6:
Install whatever else you desire once logged into LXDE with your user account. When you install this way you get no extra apps at all; not even Iceweasel, which is Debian's fork of Firefox. It's not exactly lightweight, but is needed for the times when you need a heavily standardized experience. It just works when the lightweight browsers need config.
Fire up the "LXTerminal" and type su to give install privileges to your user account. After you enter your root password type:
apt-get install iceweasel
Then simply keep using apt-get to install whatever else you desire. Once the terminal is done an install you can simply tap the up arrow and get your last command. Then you simply just replace the package name to keep installing everything else. Jennifer didn't want office software or anything, just the OS and browser.
Other things I recommend installing for basic internet and system use:
- sylpheed (lightweight email client)
- luakit (lightweight webkit based browser)
- xxxterm (lightweight webkit based browser)
- transmission (lightweight bit torrent client)
- pidgin (multi-protocol instant messenger)
- netatalk (package for networking with Mac OS systems)
- synaptic (gui for apt) (useful when you have a need but don't know package names)
- hardinfo (system profiler-like app with benchmarks)
- kupfer (very powerful but light app/document launcher)
If you also want some music on the system, I would try either 'rhythmbox' or 'audacious'.
Thats about it. If you want LibreOffice, GIMP and all the other stuff that installs with the other Debian images then just use one of them. The purpose of this install method is to stay light. You could easily get by on 128 MB RAM with the install I just took a brisk pace through.
You also get Openbox with LXDE, so you can still take advantage of all the configuration possibilities that Dan the PPC Luddite offers on his blog, along with Urukrama's guide.
If you need any other details about the install then just ask in comments and I will add them. I wrote this quickly without much time to spare. Debian is very easy to install. Just follow the onscreen instructions and you'll be fine.
Keep in mind that this install is designed around the idea of Debian being the only OS for a dedicated, lightweight and secure system. I made this as simple and direct as possible. Use your oldest/slowest PowerPC hardware first to see the true value of light.
When I do the exact above type of install, I am left with a Debian LXDE setup that only uses about 49-54 MB RAM after login. You really can't beat that for a modern OS. It would even be hard to beat that if you went back 5-10 years.
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