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What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jul '15

14 Jul '15

'Eric Griffith at Phoronix has provided a fresh perspective on the KDE vs. GNOME desktop debate after exclusively using GNOME for the past week while being a longtime KDE user. He concluded his five-page editorial (which raises some valid points throughout) by saying, "Gnome feels like a product. It feels like a singular experience. When you use it, it feels like it is complete and that everything you need is at your fingertips. It feels like the Linux desktop. ... In KDE, it's just some random-looking window popup that any application could have created. ... KDE doesn't feel like cohesive experience. KDE doesn't feel like it has a direction its moving in, it doesn't feel like a full experience. KDE feels like its a bunch of pieces that are moving in a bunch of different directions, that just happen to have a shared toolkit beneath them." However, with the week over and despite his criticism, he's back to using KDE.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/13/1548237 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Speed-Ups, Small Fixes Earn Good Marks From Ars For Mint 17.2
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jul '15

13 Jul '15

'Ars Technica reviews the newest release from Linux MInt -- version 17.2, offered with either the Cinnamon desktop, or the lighter-weight MATE, which feels like what Gnome 2 might feel in an alternate universe where Gnome 3 never happened. Reviewer Scott Gilbertson has mostly good things to say about either variety, and notes a few small drawbacks, too. The nits seem to be minor ones, though they might bite some people more than others: Mint, based on Ubuntu deep down, is almost perfectly compatible with Ubuntu packages, but not every one, and this newest version of Mint ships with the 3.16 kernel of Ubuntu 14.04, which means slightly less advanced hardware support. (Gilbertson notes, though, that going with 3.16 means Mint may be the ideal distro if you want to avoid systemd.) "This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making it a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game." More "paper cut" fixes include improved multi-panel options, graphics-refresh tweaks, a way to restart the Cinnamon desktop without killing the contents of a session, graphics-refresh tweaks, and other speed-ups that make this release "noticeably snappier than its predecessor on the same hardware."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/07/12/1720236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Question - ping -f
by Eric Light 13 Jul '15

13 Jul '15

Hi guys I'm investigating a flaky printer, and was running ping -f to see when it went down. I got the following: PING prn37.forlongs.local (10.7.140.37) 56(84) bytes of data. ..................................................... ..................................................... ..................................................... .......E............................................. ... what the heck is the 'E'? I can't find it in the man pages. Eric -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es

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Automatically enabling numlock in an X11 session, *without* a window manager
by Eric Light 12 Jul '15

12 Jul '15

I just spent a whole day on this, so I wanted to share it with some people who would understand the struggle. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The Scenario:You have some remote users who need to securely access your application, delivered in plaintext over SSH. To do this, they get a thin client delivered to them, fully set up. However, most of these users have very limited computer knowledge, so they need the application to be as simple and responsive as possible. The Solution: The thin client needn’t have Windows on it. Also Windows is slow (wimpy thin clients), prone to fickleness (“have you tried turning it off and on again?”), and insecure (no antivirus or even security updates are installed on the thin clients). In fact, these users are so limited they shouldn’t even have a window manager at all. No need to resize, copy & paste, or multitask – a single application window would be ample. So let’s install just a plain edition of Debian, then run sudo apt-get install xinit, to get the barest of essential graphical libraries. The Challenge: Set up our thin clients, based on a Linux install, such that it boots quietly and quickly, automatically logs in as the user, waits for the network, and launches a Putty window. When the user quits Putty, they should only have two options: launch a new Putty session, or shutdown the computer. The Yak: Because there’s no window manager, every Putty window is launched in its’ own session. A new X11 session has number lock disabled by default. The standard answer for controlling numlock, a program named “numlockx”, works just fine – however, because there’s no window manager, you can only send a single command to the X11 session. Thus, you can *either* turn on NumLock, *or *you can launch Putty. Shaving the Yak: 1) Create the file ~/putty This file contains the lines: numlockx on & putty -load {your saved session} 2) Launch the file with: xinit ~/putty $* -- The End: Now you can set up your silent boot (/etc/sysctl.conf -> kernel.printk), your automatic login (/etc/system/system/getty(a)tty1.service.d/autologin.conf), and your auto-start locked-down profile (~/.profile) with other tutorials available on the internet. (PS they boot in about ten seconds, and our guinea pig testers love them) Eric

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Quote Of The Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

“I have the greatest respect for mathematicians, but we need a national conversation about their claims about the division by zero problem.” -- Matt Blaze >From this report <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/08/crap_crypto_enforcement_laws_coming…> on how various sectors of the US Government seem intent on re-fighting the “crypto wars” of the 1990s. Tip to those in power: the laws of nature haven’t changed since then. (And if it isn’t clear, Matt Blaze is one of those who is fully aware of that!)

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Customizing The Compose Key
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Jul '15

09 Jul '15

The Compose key <http://wiki.wlug.org.nz/ComposeKey> is probably the best way of typing less common characters available on any OS. It lets you use mnemonic sequences that actually bear some relationship to the character you are trying to enter, instead of having to remember numeric codes. You will find there a list of the characters that I found most useful, though the complete set will be in the Compose file for your chosen locale. You can even add your own compose sequences. This tutorial for KDE <https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey/en> covers the procedure. Basically, you create a file “.XCompose” in your home directory, include a system Compose file to inherit the standard sequences, and put in extra compose-key definitions using the same syntax as the system Compose files. I had got this far, but then was baffled as to why KDE seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to my custom compose-key sequences. It turns out you need to define additional environment variables to get Qt/KDE- and GTK-based apps to use the X11 input method that actually reads the .XCompose file. Put these in your .bashrc: export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim export QT_IM_MODULE=xim and when you logout and login again, it should all work. For example, in my .XCompose, I have the line <Multi_key> <p> <i> which lets me type compose-p-i to produce “π”.

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Ah, The Memories...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Jul '15

09 Jul '15

In the wake of the latest round of Microsoft’s layoffs, it seems apropos to remember the time they held a mock funeral for their competition at the time of the Windows Phone 7 launch: <http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/10/microsoft_employees_hold_funeral_…>. “Research firm Gartner predicted ... Nokia Symbian and Google Android [would be] first and second with 30.2 percent and 29.6 percent [market share] respectively [in 2014].” Did anybody notice any Symbian phones still on sale? Android had more like 80%...

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Debian To Switch From Libav Back To ffmpeg
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Jul '15

09 Jul '15

I’ve been using FFmpeg for years. I always built it from source, because I was aware that prebuilt distro packages were 1) well behind the latest development tree, and 2) likely to leave out features because of patent issues. So I hardly noticed the whole Libav fork issue <https://lwn.net/Articles/433347/>. I was dimly aware that my Debian system had these “libav” packages on it, that looked and behaved just like FFmpeg in everything but name. But I hardly ever used them—not directly. Then, last year, I found out a bit more about what really happened <https://lwn.net/Articles/607591/>, and why Debian went with the fork. Can you say “conflict of interest”? (Well, that’s how it looks like to me.) So now, Debian has officially decided to return to the original FFmpeg project <http://lwn.net/Articles/650495/>.

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your dishwasher is starting to discuss Sartre with you
by Ian Young 08 Jul '15

08 Jul '15

OK, vague relevance but it is Linus speaking, my excuse. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2416607/linux-founder-says-you-mus…

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BBC Micro Bit
by Ian Young 07 Jul '15

07 Jul '15

Stop me if you already are fully briefed on this -- I'd never heard of it. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33409311

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