Posts Tagged: Linux

Technology — 1 Comment
12
Jul 09

Android Screenshots

I just got done taking some screenshots of my snazzy Android phone. I ran into a bit of difficulty getting the DDMS (Dalvik Debug Monitor Service) tool running in Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit, but post #2 on this thread helped. To summarize:

  1. Use the package manager of your choice to install ia32-sun-java6-bin.
  2. Download the Android SDK for Linux, then extract the zip file.
  3. In the SDK tools folder, open up the ddms file in your favorite text editor.
  4. Modify line #72 to the following: java_cmd=”/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/bin/java”

Here are the screenshots I took:

As you can see, I’m running a clone of the theme on HTC’s Hero Android phone. This theme can be downloaded here. All the install took was downloading the theme, putting it on my phone’s SD card as update.zip, booting into recovery mode and flashing the update. Of course, you’ll need a rooted G1 for this to work. I’m running JesusFreke’s wonderful 1.5 build. Read this guide for instructions for rooting your G1.

Technology — 15 Comments
10
May 09

Does High Price Attract Mac Users?

I was on the #ubuntu-us-fl IRC channel recently, when one of my fellow geeks put forward an interesting theory: People are attracted to Apple products by a high price. The theory assumes that in our society people usually equate price with quality, and not always accurately. Today I decided to do a little price comparison. I gladly admit that I have a bias towards the Linux operating system, specifically the Ubuntu distribution. However, in this post I will try to let hopefully unbiased numbers speak for themselves, with the exception of my summary at the end.

Below I have the configurations and prices for four machines: an Apple Mac Pro, a Dell XPS 630, The Wild Dog performance desktop from System76, and finally a custom built machine with parts from Newegg (thanks to excid3 for the build specs). Though the machines are from four different OEMs (aka companies that build computers), I configured each to be as close as possible in specifications and performance.

Apple Mac Pro, $2,849.00

  • Processor: One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  • RAM: 8GB (4×2GB)
  • Hard drive: 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
  • Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
  • DVD burner: One 18x SuperDrive

Dell XPS 630, $1,679

  • Processor: Intel® Core™2 Q9550 (12MB,2.83GHz, 1333FSB) (Also a quad core)
  • RAM: 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz (4 DIMM)
  • Hard drive: 1TB Performance RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM HDDs)
  • Graphics card: SLi, Dual nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB
  • DVD burner: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability

System76 Wild Dog Performance Desktop, $1,089.00

  • Processor: Quad Core Q6600 2.40 GHz FSB 1066 MHz L2 8 MB
  • RAM: 8 GB – 4 x 2 GB – DDR3 – 1333 MHz
  • Hard Drive:  1 TB SATA II 300Mbps – 7200 rpm 32 MB Buffer
  • Graphics card: 512 MB ATI Radeon 4550 PCI-Express x16 GDDR3 (DVI, VGA, S-Video, DVI to HDMI, DVI to VGA)
  • DVD burner: CD-RW / DVD-RW

Custom built machine, $608.90

Note: If you wanted Windows Vista on this machine (not recommended), just add $179.99 to the price. Also, the links to all the parts are listed below, seeing as there is a lot more customization that goes into a custom build.

Biased Summary

I’ll start off with the most obvious and least controversial conclusion: you’d be crazy not to get a custom built machine. Due to the geeky tendencies of this blog, most people reading this are likely to be fellow geeks. Any geek worth their weight in old CRT monitors can put that machine together. If however you are not a geek, surely you know someone who is. For $200 and a few hours to play with all the shiny parts, any geek would be glad to put this machine together for you, and you’d still be saving a huge amount of money.

Now for the slightly more controversial conclusions. I believe that a higher price does play a role in a person’s decision to buy a Mac. It is certainly not the only factor, since as far as OEM equipment goes, Apple is fairly nice. I agree that Apple has some very high quality hardware. However, the hardware in each of these machines is very similar, and all high quality, and yet the Apple machine is $1,170 more expensive than the second most expensive and yet very similar machine. You could even get any one of these machines and put OSX on it yourself if Apple would let you (or you felt like using The Pirate Bay).

Given the fact that all four machines are very similar, lets assume for a moment that the custom built machine represents the price each manufacturer pays to build their computer (not quite accurate, as the OEM’s save money by buying parts in bulk). This would mean that what you are really buying from an OEM is the convenience of having someone else put a computer together for you. That convenience costs you $2,240 if Apple builds it and $1,070 if Dell builds it. The lowest OEM service price is from System76, at $480, which is just over twice my recommended build price from the friendly neighborhood geek.

My numbers are certianly not perfect, especially since it is impossible to get an exactly identical machine from two OEMs. However, even after doing tweaking for any innacuracies in my calculations or configurations, I think your findings will be the same: all OEMs are expensive, but Apple is by far the most expensive.

Technology — 1 Comment
25
Mar 09

Boot Performance In Ubuntu 9.04

Inspired by a meme making it’s rounds on Planet Ubuntu and elsewhere on the interwebs, I decided to profile my boot. For several weeks now I have been running the development version of Ubuntu 9.04, and reporting the occasional bug. So far everything has been very stable.

I have 9.04 installed on my Inspiron 1420, using the ext4 filesystem (also quite stable in my experience), with noatime set in /etc/fstab. My CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.5 GHz, 4GB of ram and a very average 80GB SATA hard drive.

Profiling a boot with bootchart was as simple as “sudo apt-get install bootchart”. With that done, I just rebooted my machine. Once I was back up, there was a .png file in /var/log/bootchart containing the details of my boot process.

Boot time == 20.27 seconds!

And now for the gory details…

bootchart

Technology — 38 Comments
4
Jan 09

Keryx Tutorial: Bringing Updates Home

Update 20/2/09: Keryx 0.92 has been released, with several new features and a few important bug fixes. If you are using the previous version, please upgrade now. Check out the release notes for a list of what has changed. For a screenshot walk-through of the changes, check out this blog post.

Translations:

Though in most North American cities one cannot find a spot without at least a weak WiFi signal, many of us Linux geeks still live in rural areas with less Internet connectivity. Also, in various non-Westernized nations, there is a growing number of Linux users who may have a computer at home, but cannot afford a decent connection. For both groups, software updates typically demand an Internet connection, which can make updating difficult if not impossible. There is now a solution though, a new program called Keryx.

Keryx was written by Southern Illinois University computer science student Chris Oliver, who wanted a way  to download software and updates for Ubuntu systems that had little or no connectivity. Simply put Keryx on your pen drive, use it to create a new project file which retains a copy of your software sources and other system details, then take the pen drive to a computer with a better connection. Via it’s Synaptic like interface, users can then select all updates for download, plus select any other software they may want to install, complete with dependency resolution.

Because it is written in Python, and utilizes wxWidgets for it’s interface, Keryx can run on Linux, OSX and Windows. Pre-compiled binaries for Windows are included in the download (meaning you don’t need to install Python and wxWidgets first), and similar binaries for OSX and Linux are in the development road-map, along with Debian/Ubuntu packages.

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This tutorial will walk you through the simple process of using Keryx to get updates and new software. Keryx currently only works for Debian based distros, but there are plans for adding support for a number of other package management systems. The system being updated is running Ubuntu 8.10, with no network connectivity. The system that will be grabbing the updates is running Windows XP, though it could just as easily be Windows 95 through Vista, OSX, or another Linux box.

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Extract the zip file
Go to the Keryx website and click the download link. Once the download is complete, put it on a USB pen drive that has a decent amount of free space, and unzip it.

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Starting a project from the CLI
Keryx uses wxWidgets for it’s graphical interface, and a default Ubuntu install does not have wxWidgets installed. Therefore you must create your project file in a terminal window. Fear not, as it is really quite quick and painless.

Simply open up your terminal, and then navigate into the “linux” directory inside the Keryx folder. On my computer this was “/media/disk/keryx/linux” but it will look a little different for you, depending upon what your pen drive is called. Once you are in that directory, enter in the following, making sure to replace <project> for whatever you want to call your project and <plugin> for they type of system you are updating, in this case debian.

python keryx.py –create <project> <plugin>

note: the above is two dashes, but my font makes it look like one.

In a few moments the project will be made. When this happens, close out of the terminal and safely remove your pen drive, to take to another computer.

Note: For some people, Keryx may experience difficulty fetching the package list files in the next step, if their repository mirror is set to the regional default. If you experience this, consider selecting a different mirror in System/Administration/Software_Sources and then repeating step #2.

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In this tutorial I am using a computer running Windows XP as the computer with a high speed connection. However, this could just as easily be done on any Linux or OSX computer, so long as they both had Python and wxWidgets installed.

The Keryx main window
On your Windows computer, plug in the pen drive and open up the Keryx folder. In this folder you will see a “win32″ folder containing prepackaged binaries for Keryx. Using these you can run Keryx without having to first install Python and wxWidgets, making Keryx a very portable application. The file you need to run is called “keryx.exe,” though Windows may hide the .exe part from you. When Keryx opens, click “Open Project” and find the project file you created a few minutes ago.

Downloading package lists
When you open Keryx, go ahead and let it download the latest package list.

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The package list
Once the package lists have been downloaded, you’ll see the full Synaptic-like package list in Keryx. This list can be sorted by package name, status (not installed, installed, needs updating, etc.), etc. The first thing you’ll want to do is click “Get Updates” near the top of the window.

Snarfing 210 updates...
When I started the download, Keryx had 210 files to download. Your number will vary, but you are likely to have a lot of updates if you have a fresh install. Keryx will tell you when it is finished, so you might want to go get some coffee.

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Searching for a package
You probably want to be able to install wxWidgets on your Ubuntu system, so that you can run the Keryx graphical interface on it. Near the top of the window, start typing “wxversion” in the search field. Because the Keryx package search tool is so amazingly fast, you’ll only need to type the first few letters before you see python-wxversion. Right-click this package and then click download. It has several dependencies that Keryx will tell you about, so go ahead and let the program download those as well.

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Installing updates via dpkg
With all your packages downloaded, close Keryx, safely remove your pen drive, and go back to your Ubuntu machine. When you plug the pen drive back into your Ubuntu machine, you’ll notice that the package are stored in projects/<project>/packages (where <project> is the name you gave the project). You’ll need to open up your terminal again, and navigate to this directory. Once there, run the following:

sudo dpkg -i –force-depends *.deb

Running updates
This line will install and/or update all the packages in that directory. The “force-depends” parameter is necessary in this case, as we are installing the wxWidgets packages, which have a circular dependency. Without this parameter, dpkg will start whining at you. If you have as many packages as I had, this may take a while. Go refill your coffee, and by the time you get back, the install might be done. Thats all there is to it!

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Despite already being a rather useful tool, there are a lot of enhancements planed for the near future with Keryx. Most of it’s features, including it’s package management support, are implemented via a very flexible plugin infrastructure. So if you are a Python hacker and would like to help implement some of the new features, or have some ideas of your own, feel free to check out the code and dive in!

If you run into any problems using Keryx, or would like to report a bug, check out the friendly forums.

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  • Support for more distributions, such as Fedora, Red Hat, Mandriva et al.
  • Package management like support for downloading and installing useful Open Source Windows software.
  • Built-in installation of downloaded packages, so the user need not mess with the CLI
  • Pre-compiled self contained binaries for Linux and OSX (like what already exists in the win32 folder), so that no matter what OS a user is running, they will be able to simply plug in their USB drive and run the graphical interface.
  • Improved documentation
Technology — 48 Comments
12
Aug 08

Comcast Gives Cold-Shoulder To Non-Profit School Running Linux

Lake City, Florida USA is the home of a rather unconventional school, New Generation. It is a non-profit, private school for students grade 6th through 12th that are at risk of dropping out of school due to educational difficulties. With a maximum population of 60 students, New Generation has an astounding success rate amongst a category of students that most of society has given up on. However, this is not the only unique property of this school. A visitor would be hard pressed to find a Microsoft operating system in use on campus.

Since I am the geek son of the school’s founder, Paula Gorman, I help out with their technology whenever I am in town. For the first year of it’s existence, New Generation was running Windows XP. Since this resulted in a computer lab that was unusable more often than not, it was an easy sell to convince Mrs. Gorman to switch to Ubuntu Linux.

This morning, the school was having problems with it’s Comcast cable Internet connection, so Mrs. Gorman decided to call Comcast tech support. During the course of the of the phone conversation, the tech support agent requested that Mrs. Gorman click various buttons to try to open up the Windows XP graphical interface for ping, at which point she informed them that she was not running Windows, but Ubuntu. Mrs. Gorman is no geek, but she does know how to use the ping command in the terminal, so she offered to do just that. However, the Comcast tech support agent at that point would not help further, due to his inexperience with Linux.

Mrs. Gorman decided to obtain a case number, so that I could call later on her behalf, to determine the issue. However, the support agent refused to give her the case number, restating the fact that Comcast does not support Linux. He even went as far to say that the company supports Windows, Mac OSX, and even Unix (note that both Linux and OSX are a form of Unix), but not Linux. Needless to say, Mrs. Gorman was not pleased with this response. I would not want to have been the Comcast employee during the resulting conversation. For the next several minutes, she chastised the employee about the evils of discriminating against a customer due to their choice in operating system. Once thoroughly chastised, the employee was more forthcoming with the case number. The funny thing was, the Internet was working again just a few hours later, without me touching any of the networking equipment and without Comcast fixing anything

The teachers at New Generation school have enjoyed using Ubuntu Linux over the past several years, and do not take kindly to being discriminated against by a telecom company. Therefore, they are looking at switching to T1 Internet service via AT&T. Perhaps AT&T will be more friendly to Linux users.

I think it would be rather fun to make the displeasure of Comcast’s Linux customers loudly known. If you would like to spend a few minutes letting Comcast know that is wrong to discriminate against customers due to their choice of operating system, the phone number to the Lake City, Fl. office is (386) 752-6161.

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