Lightweight Linux

Play Tetris in Emacs!

2009-11-09T20:57:00.003+02:00

One finds every now and then something surprising in any installed Linux system. For several years I have known that with Emacs one can do just about everything one really needs to do with a computer. Well, at least if you don't want to edit video clips or compose music with it.

Today I realized that it is possible to play Tetris using the XEmacs of my Debian box. Just type ESC x tetris and you are ready to forget coding or writing your next article for the top journal of your field!

Uncompress files using CLI

2009-11-08T11:52:00.006+02:00

I usually uncompress all kinds of packaged files from the command line. Unfortunately, I rarely remember which command line tool I should use for some specific packaging format. It is even more difficult to remember all the options needed for the appropriate tool.

Now that I found a cool hack in the ArchWiki, I never need to look for more information about how to uncompress a .tbz2, .tgz or .bz2 file -- I just use extract filename.

Add the following snippet of code to your .bashrc and you are ready to extract any file (if your system has the corresponding tool installed).


extract () {
  if [ -f $1 ] ; then
      case $1 in
          *.tar.bz2)   tar xvjf $1    ;;
          *.tar.gz)    tar xvzf $1    ;;
          *.tar.xz)    tar xvJf $1    ;;
          *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1     ;;
          *.rar)       unrar x $1     ;;
          *.gz)        gunzip $1      ;;
          *.tar)       tar xvf $1     ;;
          *.tbz2)      tar xvjf $1    ;;
          *.tgz)       tar xvzf $1    ;;
          *.zip)       unzip $1       ;;
          *.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;
          *.7z)        7z x $1        ;;
          *.xz)        unxz $1        ;;
          *.exe)       cabextract $1  ;;
          *)           echo "\`$1': unrecognized file compression" ;;
      esac
  else
      echo "\`$1' is not a valid file"
  fi
}

Less time spent hacking means more time for studies!

2009-11-03T19:48:00.004+02:00

It's been a while since my last blog posting. During the last two months I've spent most of my hours awake studying economics and finance with little time left for following the open source news or testing distributions and applications.

At the moment I use two desktop systems simultaneously. One of them is an old Pentium box running Debian stable and the other is an eMac with OS X. During the last two months I've become more and more OS agnostic, the OS itself is not as important as the fact that I get things done using whatever system and software I use either because I chose it or because the school policy forces me to use the software.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that using a couple of years old version of Excel for OS X is not a substitute for Excel 2007. But unfortunately for me, I cannot learn to write Visual Basic macros using OpenOffice.

During the last two months, most of my "real" computing was done with GNU Octave. It was really helpful for checking the solutions for some of the trickier problems in linear algebra. I hope I'll have time to learn more Octave during the spring when I'll take an advanced course in finance. Of course, we are expected to use Excel and VB for the coursework, but I think learning to solve the problems using Octave could not do any harm. On the other hand, it was a pleasant surprise to see that R will be used for advanced econometrics. I looking forward to participating in the course!

Using a mixed environment - OS X and Debian

2009-09-08T22:22:00.008+03:00

Some time ago, I wrote about my first experiences with an old eMac I got from my parents. I've been pretty happy with the system, even if the OS X 10.3.9 is not as fancy as the latest incarnations of this extremely user friendly OS.

I decided to keep the best of two worlds: I kept the OS X installed (no Debian or NetBSD on this system!). Thus I can still use Excel that is unfortunately absolutely necessary for anyone studying economics and business administration. Of course one can probably calculate everything with OpenOffice Calc, but using OpenOffice at home just does not help me in learning for the spreadsheet exam I have to pass using Excel in the computer lab at the school.

For word processing and some occasional hacking, I decided to install Aquamacs. For typesetting the texts, I installed MacTeX.

As I have too much old boxes in my room in the dorm, I decided not to install more open source apps in the eMac. At the moment I mostly use the Debian box (eVectra 1 GHz, 256 Mb RAM) in the console mode using a ssh connection. The box is not connected to a monitor or to a keyboard, but it does have a pair of loadspeakers for playing my collection of ogg files ripped with ripit. In addition, the Debian box is used for doing some math with GNU Octave.

I am sure, there are many readers who would just "liberate" the eMac but, alas, we are not living in a perfect world where we could freely decide which software to use. The world is a dirty place, just like Ivo Welch writes in Corporate Finance: An Introduction after a discussion of finance in perfect markets:

The real world is definitely dirtier than our perfect one, and you can't just close your eyes and wish you were still in Kansas.

Lubuntu test release

2009-09-05T20:26:00.004+03:00

Lubuntu (download) is Ubuntu 9.10 with LXDE desktop environment. FA quote from the LXDE blog:

The lubuntu project is advancing. lynxis just published a lubuntu test iso based on the seeds by David Sugar and additional patches. It is just 381 MB and a second one only 292 MB.

Lubuntu is probably interesting especially for the Ubuntu users who have been looking for a lightweight Ubuntu derivative to use on some old box.

Wordgrinder -- Word Processor for the Linux Console

2009-08-31T20:26:00.005+03:00

One of the few things I miss from the years when I used MS-DOS is WordPerfect 5.1. It was a perfect application for writing and few WYSIWYG word processors if any have been as userfriendly as WP was. For the last seven or eight years I've been constantly looking for a perfect word processor. I have used KWord, Abiword, OpenOffice, LyX and even Emacs for writing. Sometimes, I have planned to install a copy of WordPerfect under FreeDOS just to recreate the simple desktop with no distractions like Firefox. But there were, of course, things like Tetris and Civilization that sometimes kept me from writing for days.

Today I decided to test yet another Linux word processor -- WordGrinder is probably the one and only console mode word processor that exists for Linux. It is as simple as it gets, but not too simple. WordGrinder uses a binary format for its files, which makes them unreadable for ordinary text editors. It can, however, export the files to plain text and html. The latest version (0.3) should even export the text to LaTeX and troff for the geekiest users. Unfortunately, my Debian still has the version 0.2 that does not support all of the fancy stuff mentioned in the web site for WordGrinder.

Slackware 13.0 Released!

2009-08-28T09:54:00.002+03:00

Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution. Now Patrick Volkerding has released version 13.0 of this distribution that aims to keep things simple.

The biggest news in the release announcement is the addition of the official 64-bit port. Of course, this should not be very exciting for the readers of Lightweight Linux as we are happy to continue using our 32-bit hardware. In addition to the KDE4.2.4, Slackware 13.0 provides the users with XFCE 4.6.1. And of course, you can always choose to install some of the lightweight window managers if you intend to use Slack with an old computer.

WolframAlpha is a Computational Knowledge Engine

2009-08-24T19:20:00.003+03:00

Just a short notice today.

WolframAlpha is a computational knowledge engine that seems to be able to compute an answer to many of my problems. For example, it can compare stocks and do all kinds of fancy math.

Frankenstein's Laptop

2009-08-23T17:26:00.004+03:00

As you are reading this blog, I believe you have at least one or two spare computers you cannot find any real use at the moment. If you are not interested in following K. Mandla's footsteps and use Crux and Awesome with an ancient laptop of 120 MHz & 16 Mb, you might try this "Frankenstein hack" and build a cool slim desktop out of your old laptop!

Or maybe you could combine the two ideas?

Beginning the Linux Command Line

2009-08-21T11:59:00.007+03:00

I finally got my hands on a copy of Sander van Vugt's Beginning the Linux Command Line. It really is a book can warmly recommend to those of my readers who want to learn the basics of administering a Linux system using command line only. This is, of course, a necessary skill for anyone who intends to use Linux with an old computer that cannot comfortably run the modern desktop distributions that provide the users with point-and-click setup tools for almost every imaginable configuration option.

The author Sander van Vugt is a consultant specialized in Linux high availability, storage solutions, and performance problems. This is not his first book, as he has published several books about Linux-related subjects before Beginning the Linux Command Line. In addition to the books about Linux servers, he has written articles for several web sites and magazines such as Linux Journal and Linux Magazine.

According to the author, the book was written for anyone who wants to master Linux using the command line. This includes system administrators, software developers and enthusiastic users who are interested in getting things going from the command line.

The audience of the book is not limited to any specific distro, as the book is distribution agnostic -- everything in the book has been checked against Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE. This means that the book should be useful with most of the main stream distributions. Only users of some of the more exotic distributions like Gentoo, Arch, and to some extent Slackware might be worried about the selection of the three distributions. On the other hand, the users of Gentoo and Arch probably do not need a book written for command line newbies.

In fact, the book could well be read by anyone who is not familiar with the concepts of open source and different Linux distributions as the first chapter of the book begins with the introduction of these concepts before even logging into an installed Linux system. After logging into a running system, the author starts by explaining the structure of commands and their options, piping and redirection and how to get more help with the man command and --help option.

Only after explaining the very basics, the author moves forward to system administration beginning from changing the password, working with virtual consoles and becoming another user. After this, the command line newbie learns about how to obtain information about other users, how to communicate with them and and how to move around the file system. Unlike most of the command line books, this one really does not expect any previous familiarity with the command line!

Reading the next chapters, the command line newbie will learn about administering the file system: mounting the disks, checking file system integrity, creating backups and working with links. Even the more experienced Linux users might learn something new -- for example I have never used a LVM and the fifth chapter gave me an overview of logical volumes.

The sixth chapter is dedicated to managing users and groups. More experienced Linux users might find the discussion of user quotas and authentication methods the most interesting parts of the chapter.

In the seventh chapter, the newbie learns to manage permissions. The eight chapter teaches him/her to manage software, using either .deb or .rpm packages and respective package management tools. The next chapter is about process and system management and the tenth chapter about system logs -- both are interesting reading for anyone willing to learn about basic system administering.

The next chapters are a quick introduction in using Linux as server. The eleventh chapter is about configuring the network and the twelfth chapter teaches us how to configure a file server. And if this is not enough, in the final two chapters you will learn about tuning the kernel and about basic shell scripting.

I can only recommend this book warmly for anyone who has used Linux as desktop but never bothered to look at the command line and the rich possibilities provided by it.

Even a basic knowledge of the command line is essential for those who want to use an old computer with a custom lightweight Linux installation. After reading this book, you are one step closer to being a power user who can install and use the more exotic distributions on old computers. If you belong to the target group of the book, you will certainly learn a lot from it. If you are more experienced Linux user, you might still find the chapters about servers and kernel useful.

Order the book directly from Amazon.

Less is more

2009-08-13T12:50:00.004+03:00

Links for Thursday: Minima | Minimal Mac | The Minimalist

Rip CDs on the command line: ripit

2009-08-10T20:40:00.002+03:00

I try to use simple command line tools for many tasks that most readers probably accomplish with the default tools provided by GNOME or KDE. Thus I like to listen to the ogg vorbis music files using ogg123 and I rip my CDs using ripit.

Ripit is a command line tool written in Perl. It is a front-end to several other command line tools and provides them an easy to use interface that is as simple as it can be. It can fetch the CD title and track information from CDDB, rip the CD, tag the songs, create a playlist and edit the CDDB information, if necessary. Usually I just accept the defaults provided by the application.

Simple and effective.

Random Thoughts: Backing Up and More

2009-08-09T21:13:00.003+03:00

It is August again, and it seems I have less time for blogging every week. At the moment I have to devote most of my time to studying economics and business administration. Hence I rarely have time to test new applications, not to speak about testing new distributions. I need operating systems, applications and distributions that just work.

Unfortunately, this means that I just cannot spend an evening or a weekend with configuring some of the more interesting distributions I have really tried to use. Crux and Arch are two distros that I most probably would enjoy using, but at the moment I'm going to continue using distributions that I've used since the beginning of my geek years: openSUSE and Debian. SuSE 7.1 or 7.2 was the first Linux I installed to be used as my main desktop in 2001 at the University where I worked as a researcher. Since then, I've tried and used most of the mainstream distros at least for a year or two on desktop either at work or home.

At home, I use openSUSE 11.1 as my main desktop. It is supported by a Debian box that at the moment serves me as a quick & dirty backup for my files. I have not had time to build anything fancy: I did a command line only installation on the box that can be used only over ssh in the LAN.

I back up my desktop simply by first turning the Debian box on, and then I execute a very simple script that basically rsyncs the /home partition on openSUSE with the remote /home/backups/ on the Debian box. So I have not yet built any automated backup system with incremental or differential backups, I just mirror the files of the ordinary users on another computer.

The backups can "easily" be restored by sftp or by mounting the Samba share provided by the Debian box. I decided to use Samba instead of a purely Linux solution, because I wanted to be able to copy the backups even to a XP laptop and my eMac. I would love to have a fully functioning system that can sync the files between several computers in different locations, but at the moment the project has to rest for some time.

Problems with open source on OS X

2009-07-31T23:13:00.004+03:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got an old eMac (1 GHz, 640 MB RAM) that is a wonderful addition to my collection of hardware. I've been pretty happy using OS X, and at the moment I don't plan to install Debian on this box. After all, I use Debian already now on an old iBook (600 MHz, 384 MB RAM). Furthermore, using OS X makes it possible for me to edit the Excel and Word documents when necessary for my studies.

I just would love to install more open source applications on this system to make the computing experience even better than it is now. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it is with Linux. It is probably easier even with Windows than with this box.

The problem is caused by the fact that this computer has OS X 10.3.9 installed. Most of the open source projects do not consider it necessary to support a few years old version of OS X - even the Firefox cannot be installed on this old version. Fink project should provide a great selection of open source applications ported to OS X. Unfortunately, Fink has ended the support for 10.3 more than a year ago. MacPorts targets the latest OS X versions, as well.

I am not going to invest in a new version of the OS X just in order to install a few open source applications. It seems that I have to learn to use the OS in the way it is most probably not meant to be used - that is, the hard way.

Building a backup box

2009-07-26T12:02:00.002+03:00

A week ago, I wrote about my almost disastrous experience with a LaCie external hard drive. As I realized my data is not at all secured at the moment, I decided to build me a dedicated box for backups.

I've been pretty busy during the last week, and my project has been slow in progress. The hardware chosen for my backup server is almost overkill for this use: it is a box with Asus A7V8X-MX SE motherboard, 1.99 GHz CPU, 256 megabytes RAM and a 500 GB hard disk.

I used this box for years as my main desktop and it would certainly be more than adequate for most of my computing needs even today. Unfortunately the 1 GHz box I own is in another town and the physical distance between these two locations forces me to use this machine for my backups and the HP box as a desktop at least for some time.

Building the backups system is not quite as easy as I thought. My hardware collection keeps growing and the hardware is distributed in three locations in two cities. Furthermore, in addition to the several Linux boxes I use, my wife uses sometimes a laptop with XP. And the latest addition to my hardware is a eMac running OS X 10.3.9. Probably I will only automatize backing up my main desktop.

Unfortunately, the constant growing of my hardware collection means that it becomes more and more difficult to keep all the files in sync between different computers. A dedicated file server would of course be a possible solution, but I don't like the idea of having yet another box running 24/7 even when I'm in another town because of my studies.

In addition, the file server should be accessible over Internet, which I find at least scary as I cannot trust my own abilities in building a system secure enough for my level of paranoia. I don't want my life to be rwx or even r-- for the whole world in case I cannot keep the server secure enough.

dc - A Text Mode Calculator

2009-07-19T18:10:00.006+03:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about bc. It can be used as a simple arbitrary precision calculator text mode and for executing mathematical programs written in bc programming language.

Today I noticed that I have yet another simple text mode calculator installed in my desktop system: dc. It is similar to bc but differs from its cousin as dc uses reverse Polish notation instead of normal mathematical notation.

For example, to add two numbers in dc you first push the numbers into stack, then enter the aritmetic operation which pops the numbers out of stack, adds them and pushes the result in stack. Finally p prints the result:

10 2.2 + p 12.2

More information about dc is provided, as usual, by info dc and man dc.

dc is a real oldie in the GNU - it predates even the C programming language. Learning dc is a way to travel back in time to an era when nobody thought computers and operating systems should be user friendly.

You should at least give dc a try, as you can always jump back to the present and continue using GNOME calculator or OpenOffice.Org calc if you really want to!

Backup - Articles and Applications

2009-07-18T16:41:00.009+03:00

In this posting, I collect some of the links about backing up a Linux system or at least the /home directory.

The articles and applications mentioned here might be useful for some of my readers - but I wrote this basically to act as a reminder for my own backup project.

Bacula - is a network based open source backup program. Supports many different operating systems.

FreeNAS - is a network attached storage server based on FreeBSD. Good documentation.

Backups to the Future: Eliminate Tape Backups with FreeNAS and Bacula - how to combine FreeNAS and Bacula.

Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync - by Mike Rubel.

Time Machine for every Unix out there.

A simple Linux backup method - Steven J. Rosen in DesktopLinux.com.

Automatic Backups with rsync and Anacron - by Barry O'Donovan.

BackupPC -- a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.

Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO - by Charles Curley

Backing up Linux and other Unix(-like) systems - by Wiebe Cazemier

Geek to Live: Mirror files across systems with rsync - Gina Trapani / Lifehacker

Debian backup configuration tutorials - Debianhelp

Linux Links - Software - Backup. Links to many different backup apps for Linux.

FlyBack - Apple's Time Machine for Linux.

Creating Incremental Snapshot-style Backups With rSync And SSH - Stephan Jau in HowtoForge.

LuckyBackup - LuckyBackup is an application for data back-up and synchronization powered by the rsync tool.

Duplicity - Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server.

This article is updated at random intervals. Please suggest more links in the comment box!

Rescuing LaCie - thinking about backups again

2009-07-17T21:40:00.005+03:00

Today in the morning, I turned my computer on and plugged my LaCie external hard drive on. Nothing happened. No icon appeared on the desktop. Soon I noticed that the led was blinking orange and green light and I heard the hard drive slowly click.

Not again! Only last summer I lost one hard disk drive, and now the rather expensive external hard disk was dead. Fortunately, I had mostly backups on the hard disk and only a few hundred photos that I probably did not have elsewhere.

After some googling around I learned how to open the case by using a thin kitchen knife. What I found was a basic Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive. It turned out to be a fully functioning hard disk that was easy to mount as an internal hard disk in my desktop computer.

Now I have something I should probably call an internal external hard disk :-)

Tomorrow I have to buy yet another hard disk for building some kind of automatic backup system using some old box I have under my desk.

Any suggestions?

Fit-PC Slim from Amazon

2009-07-16T13:14:00.006+03:00

I just noticed Amazon sells a cool tiny and noiseless PC for USD 199. The computer even comes with Ubuntu 8.04 and Gentoo 2008.0 preinstalled for dual boot use!

The computer uses an AMD Geode LX800 CPU, has 512 MB RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. For the graphics it uses an Integrated Geode LX display controller that is able to show screen resolutions up to 1920x1440 pixels.

Its size is miniature 4.3 x 4 x 1.2 inches and like the popular netbooks it weighs only about two pounds.

This computer looks like the ultimate Linux desktop computer that would satisfy all my computing needs. Does any of my readers have any personal experience with it?

Text Mode Linux Applications

2009-07-15T11:00:00.010+03:00

During the first year of blogging for Lightweight Linux, I have written about many useful text mode applications. Some of them might be considered obsolete by modern standards, but they might well be enough to satisfy the needs of a command line junkie.

Here is a short overview of the applications I have written about.

Twyt is a command line Twitter client. It is a lot more sophisticated than my own simple three-line Twitter script that can only update the status.
e3 is a very lightweight text mode editor that can emulate the keyboard shortcuts of several better known editors like Emacs and vi.
wtf deciphers acronyms.
Adventure is an old text mode adventure game - a classic early example of interactive fiction.
Nethack is another golden oldie. It is even installed on some of the proprietary Unix systems at the University where I used to study.
Alpine is a simple and easy to use email client. The article shows also how to configure it to for gmail.
If you are looking for a text mode contact manager, take a look at abook.
Midnight commander, a.k.a. mc is a text mode file manager.
Burn your CDs and DVDs with cdw.
Create postscript calendars on the command line with pcal.
Text mode reminders can be handled by remind .
Catdoc and antiword are useful for reading Microsoft office formats.
What about reading pdf files in text mode? No problem!
Htop is better than top.
I use wget for downloads.
One can even browse the net with some of the text mode web browsers.
And finally, bc is a command line calculator.

Any suggestions for future articles? What are your favourite text mode Linux applications?

Crunchbang 9.04.1 Released

2009-07-09T19:24:00.002+03:00

Crunchbang is an Ubuntu derivative distribution that defaults to lightweight alternatives of the pretty heavy GNOME desktop systems and GNOME applications provided by the default Ubuntu install. Crunchbang is not lightweight enough to be installed on very old computers, but it might be just what you need to be able to comfortably use your single core hardware from around ten years ago.

The latest release is 9.04.01, based on the latest stable Ubuntu release. Downloads availble here.

Absolute Linux 13.0 rc1

2009-06-27T16:41:00.004+03:00

From the Absolute Linux home page:

Absolute is a x86 Linux distribution based upon Slackware. It concentrates on "desktop" use so that it is ready for internet, multimedia, document and general home use as much as possible. Absolute is lightweight -- meaning 2 things: that it can run on on older hardware and that the OS interface stays out of your way.
It is version-compatible with Slackware so you can use almost any package from the same version of Slack on Absolute. It is what I use all da y, every day, and I am very thankful for Linux and Slackware and I hope others find benefit from my work on Absolute.

About the new RC:

Pre-release that includes fixes for slapt-get and wicd, addition of a control panel, centralizing control and eliminating the sometimes-confusing utilities menus. Big updates to Midori and inkscape on repositories (under /CD2). New theme, new logon, QT4 up and running several new applications along with QT4-based K3B. Overall a more cohesive look and simpler navigation. Wanted a release candidate so that 13.0 will not necessitate updates -- also wanted to have feedback on whether Midori is functional enough to become the default browser. (It uses about 1/3 the memory of Firefox in my tests.)

Download the ISO image.

bc is a command line calculator

2009-06-22T15:11:00.004+03:00

Very often I need a simple command line calculator to do some simple math for my accounting or economics classes. Usually I don't need anything more complicated than the simple arbitrary precision calculator bc. The bc is very intuitive to use, after you learn to set the precision used in calculations:

scale=5

This sets the precision to five digits. Unless you define the precision bc will default to integer results which would not provide especially precise results. After setting the precision, bc is very intuitive to use. For example:

mjp@oikos:~$ bc bc 1.06.94 Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. scale=5 10/3 3.33333
A lot more information can be found with man bc, as usual.

twyt for CLI tweets

2009-06-21T12:50:00.003+03:00

For a couple of days, I thought I would write some more scripts for using Twitter on command line. After some googling, I discovered there was already a command line twitter client available that would completely satisfy my needs.

Twyt is available as a source package from Andrew Price's home page. Download first the tar.gz package from the download page and unpack it with tar -xvf twyt-0.2.2.tar.gz. Install the package with ./setup.py install.

Twyt is written in Python, so you need to have Python installed, as well. In addition, twyt depends on the python-simplejson. I was able to install it directly from the Ubuntu repositories.

Next, create your Twitter user with:

twyt user -u username -p password

After this, you can tweet with

twyt tweet "#twyt is a nice command line twitter client"

You can read the updates by friends with:

twyt friendstl

More information is provided, of course, by man twyt.

Officially geek

2009-06-17T14:14:00.004+03:00

The very simple Twitter script I published yesterday has received more attention than I expected. It was even linked to in the article "10+ super geeky ways to use Twitter" in Downloadsquad!