KDE versus XFCE

Perhaps no surprise, but KDE, billed as a fully-featured desktop environment, comes out on top in my comparison with XFCE. My test was not intentional, but just happened.

Experimenting with the seriously "not-for-noobs" Arch Linux distro, when I first installed it, I chose XFCE, since I am using Gnome (Ubuntu & Mint) on other PCs, and wanted to try something different. The notion that XFCE was "lightweight" also seemed to be interesting.

I installed Arch without tremendous difficulty; the wiki and Beginners' Guide are very good and I was able to get help in the forum when needed. If you RTFM and are not afraid of the command line, Arch is quite manageable.

Using XFCE as a desktop, I found several challenges:

1) I could not shutdown the PC from the desktop environment. That is a root privilege, and I had already learned the CL syntax "sudo shutdown (-r) now" quite well. With XFCE, I had to change my sudoers file to permit myself, as a mere desktop user, to perform this important administrative chore. I did my "visudo sudoers," added the necessary line, and chalked it up to The Arch Way - by which I mean that every goddam thing can only happen with all sorts of under-the-hood tinkering.

2) Logging into XFCE at bootup required an extra tool, a so-called "Desktop Manager" or more accurately, a login manager. In keeping with a minimalist approach, I chose SLIM. Once again, with some tweaking of rc.conf and .xinitrc, SLIM was enabled, handled my login smoothly and transparently handed off the session to XFCE.

3) Fonts in XFCE are not as smooth and pretty as I was used to in Gnome/Ubuntu. Per the XFCE wiki:

Fonts play a huge part in GUI performance. With all of the font smoothing, hinting and rendering turned on, you may notice significant latency when menus or dialog boxes appear. When you turn all of these off, menus and dialog boxes will appear much faster (snappy in fact). Scrolling will also improve in web browsers, text editors, and terminal emulators.

In other words, one should not expect pretty fonts in XFCE. I think that's what that means. Fair enough.

A digression here on "lightweight desktop." Just what does that mean? It certainly means a smaller size to the package. XFCE is about 15MB, while KDE is 210MB. That is a factual Wikipedia comparison. And if room on one's hard drive (or relevant partition) is an issue, okay. But, XFCE claims that "lightweight" also means "faster." Sorry, I don't see it, in comparison with KDE on the same machine.

4) Menu Favorites. Mint spoiled me with a one-click way to put favorite applications up front in a Favorite section of the menu. I followed the XFCE wiki on this, asked in the forum, and just could not make it happen. Not a deal-breaker, but I just couldn't do something I liked.

5) Mouse-ability. Im XFCE, I was forever clicking and snapping and trying vainly to grab the corner of a window to re-size. It would take me 4 or 5 tries.

6) Conky. I discovered a neat desktop add-on called Conky. It runs in the background and displays all sorts of neat stuff (customizable, of course): Time, Weather, and lots of geeky system-status items. It's very cool. But was always flaky in XFCE, and would not auto-start when the desktop launched. I ultimately resorted to a clunky workaround script that started it after a 5 second delay.

ENTER KDE

After the Menu Favorites fiasco, I decided to continue my learning and experimentation with Arch, and I tore down the XFCE desktop. I went back to every file: sudoers, .xinitrc, rc.conf, that I had changed to run XFCE, and deleted all references to it, essentially bringing the PC back to a plain-vanilla command-line state. (Not quite, the X environment was still functioning and needed no changes. In fact, my applications like Conky and Firefox were still installed too.)

I used pacman to install KDE, which took some time, as it's a bulky package. (Actually I installed a "full" package which had over 700MB worth of files, so I am not sure what the earlier size comparison, per Wikipedia, is based on.)

What happened?

1) I could shut down from KDE without any under-the-hood, CL tinkering.

2) Login was automatically handled by KDM without any fuss.

3) The KDE fonts, menus, and desktop look smooth, pretty, and modern.

4) Menu Favorites are a one-click option.

5) Mouse-ability. Whatever quirkiness that was afflicting my mouse has disappeared, and it now operates as I intuitively expect it to.

6) Conky runs on startup.

All of this should be taken in perspective. That is, I am not a highly-skilled user. I was able to install Arch Linux in one day (several hours), but I am surely in the least-skilled quartile of the Arch Linux community. That means that some things on XFCE that I could not figure out (Menu Favorites) and other things that I found tricky (setting up SLIM as a daemon), many other, skilled Linux users might not have a problem with. Also, since XFCE bills itself as lightweight, and explicitly tells the user that there's a trade-off with fonts and prettiness, that's fair too.

I am not sure what to make of the performance issue. All the apps, and Firefox in particular, seemed to drag. I just opened up FF here on KDE, and it ran fine. An obvious possibility for the sluggish performance I perceived on XFCE is "user error." I don't know, but the same user got KDE running along quite snappily.

So there it is, for this user, and other users of comparable skill level, embark on XFCE as a learning exercise if you like, on a spare PC or whatever. But as a primary work environment, if the PC is to used daily, then I would recommend KDE or Gnome. (Much more has been written about Gnome vs. KDE, but all would agree that both are fully-featured desktops. Right now, at this moment, I am a little more excited about KDE, but that comparison would be a different post.)

Not Enough PCs

My old Dell laptop, an Inspiron B130, is running Linux Mint 7, all set up with my Firefox bookmarks and passwords. The desktop (i.e. the 'desktop' appearance of the laptop, not to be confused with the larger PC workstation of the same name) is customized just to my liking, and I can share files with the other PC. I need this one, and don't want to change it all the time.

The other PC, a Dell "desktop," 530S, with its larger (250GB) hard drive, sits in the family room, is running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), and stores bulky files, like the movies I have been downloading from BitTorrent. At the moment, Elaine is also using that computer because our last remaining Windows-based PC is FUBAR'd. So this second PC is our 'family media' box.

The plan is to re-install Windows on that machine, since the recovery disks are still in a drawer. Then, that virus-free Windows box can run Turbo Tax and sync more smoothly with Elaine's Palm Pilot. This third one, is, in theory, our "important Windows software" box.

There are also the kids' two laptops, and the very old PC in the basement. That makes six PC's in the household.

But, you see, I need another one, to serve just as a testbed for new Linux distros. Something reasonably modern and reasonably moveable. The very old box in the basement probably has enough RAM and is otherwise modern enough, but it has a big old CRT-type monitor and an unsupported wireless card. So, to use that machine as a Linux testbed, I'd have to haul it upstairs and plug it into the ethernet cable. Sounds ugly.

Yes, there is no doubt about it. Six PCs are just not enough. I need a seventh one to play around with all these new distros that come out every week,

Home partition and Debian

In playing around with different Linux distros, many forums recommended keeping the /home folder in its own partition, so that, as one installed different distros or OS's, the /home folder, with all of its data would remain intact.

So I tried that. And, of course, there was learning involved.

I had set up a 32GB /home partition, leaving 8GB for / (root) and swap areas. Then I installed Debian, which worked just fine. The only hiccup was that it required a specific, non-FOSS, driver for my wireless card. But when installed, it had crammed itself into the 8GB, leaving the 32GB unmounted, and unavailable.

A helpful tech on ##Linux IRC channel gave me these commands to run, which made the /home partition available:

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda3 /mnt (This mounts the /home folder to /mnt.)

umount /mnt (Releases the filesystem.)

/dev/hda3 /home ext3 defaults 0 2 (This is the proper entry for the /etc/fstab file. Edit and add this line to the file.)

shutdown -rF (Performs an important check on reboot.)

But not all was well.

While Linux/Debian still worked, the Gnome desktop was totally blank. Apparently, when I installed Debian, it had its own 'new' /home folder (somewhere in the 8GB). While I had not saved any user documents or files to it, it apparently did contain some settings, preferences, set ups, etc.

It was fairly easy, and interesting, as a learning exercise to rebuild the Gnome desktop, which, since I had to add everything myself, was the bare minimum of stuff, and exactly those items I wanted. "GUI without the cute."

Not necessarily an easy way to go about this, but useful learning.

Installing Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 530s Desktop

Just a few notes, to go along with my previous Linux/Ubuntu posts.

The PC in question, a Dell Inspiron 530S is a 2006 desktop with 3GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive, good enough to hold a whole lot of BitTorrent movies. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) on an older, less powerful Dell laptop, and it works fine. I'm anxious to try out 9.10 (Karmic Koala) because its IM client, Empathy, supports voice over Gtalk. As 9.10 is still in Alpha, I don't want to install it on this laptop, my primary computer at the moment. But the 530S is unclaimed for now.

With two Ubuntu installs behind me, I've found out that not all hardware is compatible and not all installs are seamless. I love Linux, but that's been my experience. While the 530S is not being used, it seemed better to try a dual boot first, dedicating just 30GB to Linux. If that worked out well, then I could re-install right over the Windows OS.

Once again, the wireless network card was an issue. I've learned to install Linux while connected via an ethernet cable; if it has that internet connection, it can find drivers, etc. So, I installed Ubuntu fairly easily, but it couldn't find the wireless network card, nor, of course, any wireless network connection (a requirement, in my view). Some Ubuntu Forum contributors said to try System --> Admin --> Hardware Drivers, to find a driver for the Broadcom 802.11g card. (BCM43xx). It found a driver, but repeatedly hung when trying to activate/install it. I even began the ndiswrapper process. But when I tried to install the driver again, it worked (unrelated, I think, to Windows driver tar.gz I had downloaded to my desktop). Not sure if a re-boot or two made the difference.

But, in short, eventually the System --> Admin --> Hardware Drivers process found a driver and activated it. Then the machine could see the wireless card and all the networks in the neighborhood, too. I clicked on my own wireless network, provided the WEP key, and was all set. I removed the ethernet cable, re-booted and, of course, the wireless connection was still present.

Now, I have to re-install, using the entire 250 GB and nuking Windows. Apparently to reformat the disk entirely is easier than trying to fiddle with the two partitions.

Update:

When I re-installed, using the entire HD, Ubuntu found the needed BCM43xx driver much more easily. I don't know if the dual-boot installation contributed to the earlier difficulties, or not.

One thing seems clear: Installation with a live ethernet connection is a good idea. Not always necessary, but can make life a lot easier, if "Linux-unfriendly" wireless cards or other hardware are involved.

65 Jumps - Camping on Eagle Island

As summer of 2009 approached, our lives were a little different: I was unemployed, so economizing was more important; some of the Manhunt kids were in college, or on their way, so they had other priorities; Elaine's new job at the local YWCA only gave her one week off during our desired time, and the Ampersand was continuing to replace the worn-out little old cabins with modern, well-appointed, spacious, and therefore pricier, units.

Seeking to embrace change, we planned our August vacation accordingly. Anna and I would go up the first week and camp on Eagle Island, while Elaine and Nate would join us for the second week, when we would stay in our usual unit, the Sunset. Another change in our lives was our wonderful new young dog, Halle, an Australian Cattle Dog mix we had acquired in the spring. Halle would go with us campers.

But that plan mutated even more. A few days before departure, Janet called, "Could David go with you for the camping week?" Anna and I consulted and agreed that a third human would be a good addition, if only to mitigate the boredom of she and I staring at each other for a week. So the four of us (Me, Anna, David, Halle the dog) set off early on Saturday morning. When we arrived early that afternoon, we were informed that the Sunset was not available and we were to be upgraded to the new Maples next week.

We motored out to Eagle Island, secured the boat, and commenced hauling our substantial stack of supplies up the hill to Tom's Rock Camp. 120 paces - I counted them. One tent, three sleeping bags, one large air mattress (guilty!), two boxes of cooking & cleaning supplies, a case of bottled Nestea, five gallons of water, one bag of charcoal, four bags of groceries, three chairs, a Coleman stove, and various axes, knives, saws, matches, rope, flashlights, backpacks, toilet paper, soap, etc. Dave and I took the "lean-to," (a very solid, substantial shelter with a wooden floor, stone walls on three sides, and a good roof) while Anna set up her small tent. Halle's crate went in the lean-to.

The Clog

Tucked away on a flat stone shelf in the rear of the lean-to was a "clog," or "camp log," started by Jim & Lynda in late June. Their entry in the clog explained that they had been camping at Tom's Rock for many years and invited others to share their experiences in the clog. They planned to return at the end of summer and hoped to find it intact. I obliged and wrote many pages in the log, including maps, diagrams, and crude sketches. I left a few bookmarks as well as my street address, with a note asking them to mail me copies of my entries. We'll see.

Camping Non-Activities

To me, it seems that camping consists of not doing anything, but taking all day to do it. That is to say, just surviving (cooking, eating, cleaning the utensils, using the outhouse, arranging sleeping bags, washing up in the lake, gathering firewood, making a fire, drying out clothes, etc.) takes the whole day. Maybe we work in a hike or David goes fishing, maybe some reading. But that's about it. We're doing nothing, but we're doing it in a wonderful place.

I sure enjoyed getting up at dawn, using the outhouse, letting Halle out, feeding her, brewing coffee, and sitting down to drink the coffee while reading my Greek book. Nothing better in life! In a couple hours, the others would get up, maybe we'd eat something together, and then, usually we'd take a hike to the Sister Islands or go back to the Ampersand or go into town. We typically returned to camp for dinner: hot dogs, hamburgers, or boneless chicken breast grilled over the fire. And a can of beans on the coals. Lots of beans. One evening I grilled peppers and onions. For lunch, tuna salad and PB&J were staples.

The Full Moon

65 Jumps - Eagle Island

Around the shore of Eagle Island, where 3 of us camped in 2009, stands of conifers predominate in a band about 30 meters wide; farther inland, it is more of a mixed deciduous forest. This pattern seems common in the Saranac Lake area.

The two kinds of forest are quite distinct. You can walk along the transition, and see the different forests on either side. The coniferous areas are easy to walk through, with little understory and a fairly level, drier surface. The interior is full of saplings and brush, is wet and insect-ridden, with many depressions and crevices. Hemlocks, pines, birch, and cedar predominate in the coniferous. The same species, plus abundant Striped Maple saplings, occur in the mixed deciduous zone. While the same species occur, Hemlocks are relatively much more common in the coniferous, and their dense shade gives it its characteristic dark, but open, appearance. Cedars are most visible right at the water's edge, where the deer preferably browse them in the winter. Eastern White Pines are the tallest trees in both areas, and from any distance, a casual observer can only see an undifferentiated pine forest.

Downed birch trees are all over the coniferous area. Presumably, they are able to get started quite easily, but as they grow larger, they are more likely to fall down than the hemlocks and pines. They rot fairly quickly, so they must fall down very frequently. In the interior, the downed trees are quite various, including birches, but relatively fewer of them.

The coastal coniferous areas are also sloped, and well-drained. Any flat area or any depression looks quite different, with moss all over the rocks and logs. The interior tends to be more of a plateau, and therefore poorly drained and wet. Crevices surround many boulders; presumably the soil just hasn't built up between them. In other words, while there are lots of saplings, brush, and a litter layer, it is all a fairly thin carpet over the uneven boulders.

I guess that in the coniferous areas, the evergreen needles, being relatively rot-resistant, build up a thicker, but less-nutritious litter layer. This would account for the fairly level footing found here, as the crevices between the boulders has filled up. In the wetter, deciduous areas, while the litter layer may be more rich in nutrients, it seems like it continually washes or leeches away, as the moist conditions permit the deciduous leaves and wood to rot more quickly.

The last glacier came through the Adirondacks about 12,000 years ago, so at that time, it was all bare rock and boulders with some glacial till and sand. Also, the Adirondacks was heavily logged (cleared) in the 19th Century, so it's possible that the present forest conditions reflect some re-growth of cleared areas, and thus some transitional forest types.

Names

We had a lot of fun naming rocks and other landmarks: Mossy Brook Avenue, Boatview Rock, Dad's Rock, North Rock, Little Tom's Rock, Slippery Rock, Heartstop Rock, Beaver Rock, Anna's Harbor, Bouncing Root Ledge, Fungus Rock, Beaver Woods, etc. I hope to add some pictures of distinctive rocks to Panoramio, so the names will be accessible via Google Maps.

How to Sync a Palm Pilot on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04)

Once again, the actual steps to make this work are fairly simple, but for me, there was a lot of learning and a number of false starts. Here's what worked:

1. Add 'visor' to /etc/modules. Use a text editor like su or nano to edit /etc/modules, just adding the word 'visor' at the end. If you Google this topic, (on useful forums like this) you'll see a suggestion like: Type "sudo modprobe visor" at the command line and then try to sync. It should work at that point.

Okay, maybe it will, but that command is only good for your current session; next time you restart, you'll have to type it again. Might as well fix /etc/modules.

2. Add a custom rule, per this site. What that rule does is a little beyond me, but it seems to resolve the discrepancy between /dev/pilot and /dev/ttyUSB1 (or /dev/ttyUSB0). These things seem to be called "devices," which confuses me, because I think of the actual Palm Pilot Z22 itself as a device. One site called these things (/dev/pilot. etc.) as nodes where the device can exist.

After making those two changes, the Palm Pilot Z22 still did not sync with my Ubuntu 9.04 laptop (Dell Inspiron B130). I ran the GUI (System --> Preferences ---> Palm OS Devices) many times, trying different choices.

3. Run the sync app from the command line, using the command 'gpilotd' Bang! It sync'd immediately. From there, enabling the conduits worked easily.

Frankly, I can't be 100% sure that the first two steps noted above are necessary. I'm certainly not going to undo them and try it all over. But, for someone starting from scratch, first thing, if the GUI didn't work, then I'd try to run 'gpilotd' from the command line. Then, if that didnt work, I'd make the changes noted in 1 and 2. Another possibility would be to specify /dev/ttyUSB1 in the GUI, then run gpilotd; just guessing.

Other Notes:

There is a lot to Google on this. Beware of old forum posts from 2003 that have become outdated. The concepts and issues may still apply, but typically there is an easier way to do it.

While trying to get this to work, I like informational commands that don't DO anything, but just report statuses. From the command line, 'dmesg' gives some good info. Also 'udevadm info xxx' also gives some good info. If you Google this stuff, you might find a lot of references to "udevinfo xxx." The newer syntax is "udevadm info xxx."

Sync settings: USB, /dev/pilot, 57600. These were all the default settings, except for USB. (I think the net effect of that custom rule permits you to leave /dev/pilot here, while other parts of the OS need to identify the Palm as device /dev/ttyUSB1. As far as I can tell, this is the only way that works.)

After running 'gpilotd' at the command line, for the first sync, the Palm OS GUI app works just fine, and there is no need for you (or another user) to resort to the command line for routine use of the Palm Pilot.

Lastly, there is NO dedicated, separate Palm app to see your Calendar, Contacts, etc. The way it works is through sync'ing with the Evolution mail client. After the first, successful setup sync, and enabling some conduits, I struggled briefly, thinking "Okay, it is nice to be sync'd up, but where do I see this stuff?" On the Evolution mail client. Quite simple, actually,