20021209 Lockergnome Penguin Shell

12.09.2002 PenguinREPORT

We're diving from the weekend back into the work week. I hope your weekend was restful and relaxed.

I spent part of my weekend continuing to dig into the distro of the moment, Lindows. To tell you the truth, I was ready to bail on this review after the install. The licensing seems to separate Lindows from Linux and open source pretty clearly. Creating only a root account by default has the same effect. I was interested, though, in the prepackaged set of applications Lindows, and the process of installing and upgrading called Click 'n' Run. So, I persevered.

I think I can make the bottom line pretty short. Lindows is very thin on applications in the default configuration. It covers the basics with a single app for each task type; text editing, web browsing, email, etc. However, most of the meaty Linux apps for Lindows are tucked away in the Click 'n' Run (CNR) warehouse, an application in and of itself. CNR runs immediately on boot, updating your system with the online store. If you've taken the prudent course of action during your install and created a normal user account, you'll know exactly when CNR jumps out to the 'Net up update the database. You're required to enter your root password for CNR to run in "no gui" mode. In other words, if you've logged in as a normal user, the first thing you'll do at the desktop is enter your root password.

CNR is organized to resemble a real warehouse with aisles, showrooms and, of course, a warehouse area. Users can add applications to aisles and choose to make those aisles public. Aisles are also the means for a user to select multiple applications and install them en masse. The showroom is reserved for the newest and hottest Lindows applications. Evolution, StarOffice, Grip, GnuCash - all currently occupy the Lindows showroom.

I peeked into a couple of the public aisles set up by other users. One was a full development aisle, complete with compilers and other development tools. I checked my system, wondering if these core tools had been left out of the default Lindows. In fact, most had. Many were tools that are nearly taken for granted in other Linux distros. I looked through the aisle listing with a distinct feeling that these core Linux tools had been stripped out in order to drive users to CNR, of course at a fee.

But, I plunged onward, creating a private aisle and populating it with several apps. The process of downloading and installing the programs was nearly seamless and flawless. These apps were easy enough to find, as well, with a nicely designed organizational structure that breaks the apps out by type. However, as I perused the CNR Warehouse, I couldn't help but think of synaptic, a GUI tool for apt-getting in Debian. All the programs available to synaptic are free, and the install is as easy as from the CNR Warehouse.

Finally, after installing the selected programs from CNR, I closed the window, though the animated icon in the task bar continued to move, leaving me to wonder if CNR had actually shut down. To my surprise, I found that icons for nearly every installed app were nestled comfortably on my desktop. A full quarter of my desktop was occupied by icons that I hadn't intentionally put there.

Honestly, I think I've seen enough of Lindows to make some qualified remarks and recommendations. Lindows is clearly aiming for the transitional Windows to Linux user. Everything indicates that, from the licensing to the root user accounts to the icons on the desktop. While the install is the fastest and easiest I've ever seen, bar none, it also leaves out many of the apps considered by most to be at the core of Linux. Instead, a standalone app called Click 'n' Run is installed. If you've not chosen to pay the $99 annual subscription to CNR, you're left with a mighty thin distro.

Here are my recommendations. If you're concerned about the complexity of the Linux install, get SuSE, Mandrake or Red Hat. If you're looking for a strong contender in the Debian mold, get a copy of Libranet and add the free synaptic program for graphical upgrades.

There are just too many concerns to recommend Lindows. The $129 price tag. The $99 annual CNR subscription fee. Core applications that appear to have been stripped out of the distro to drive users to CNR. The licensing scheme. This doesn't even take into account the Lindows insider program, a way for consumers to pay a $299 fee to become, in effect, beta testers.

After having tilted at the Windows windmill for the past year, Michael Robertson now seems ready to separate himself and his company even from Linux and open source. In his latest Michael's Minutes, he publishes two unedited emails from satisfied customers. The second of these notes takes great pains to talk about how much better Lindows is than other Linux distributions. The customer talks at length about his bad experiences with other Linux distributions and his good experience with Lindows. The inclusion of this email can, in my mind, only indicate the next great battle to be undertaken by Lindows: to cast itself as the only viable Linux distribution for transitioning Windows users. I'd beg to differ.

In the end, Lindows parallels Windows in too many ways to be comfortable. The licensing and recurring revenue models were part of what I gladly left behind when I reformatted the last NTFS partition on my machine to ext2. On the power of personality and vision of Michael Robertson alone, Lindows could easily become that magic drain on the Microsoft monopoly. It's a shame that it's been channeled into a business that so closely resembles the very entity against which he regularly rails.

Next up in the queue: Mandrake's 9.0 ProSuite edition. As is custom in our Distro Review series, I'll install on Sunday, December 15 with a full blogcast of the process.

Have a great Monday.

Tony Steidler-Dennison

GnomeTWEAK

Newsful

We've talked about the value of the Linux community on many occasions in the past. One of the traditional sources for that community support over the years has been Usenet, the newsgroups provided by most ISPs. In fact, you can now find archives of those newsgroups at groups.google.com, a legacy of the old DejaNews site. The articles on Google Groups are archived daily, with a lag time of roughly 2 days between posting and archives.

Understanding the hierarchy and etiquette of the newsgroups is important for utilizing them to the fullest. It's also important to understand what newsgroups can and cannot provide in the way of help. Many a new Linux user has quit using the newsgroups altogether, believing that there's really no support to be found there. In fact, the tone and specificity of the questions has much to do with the number and quality of the responses. Be succinct, ask direct questions, and provide any available output from your programs where possible.

Linux occupies an entire tier of newsgroups in the comp.os level. Included in these groups are hardware, questions, networking, security, x. All are appended to the comp.os.linux newsgroup names. It's safe to say that if you have a Linux question, you'll find an answer in the newsgroups.

As for newsgroup readers, the open source world offers several that should do the trick for tweaking your Linux news reading capabilities. Pan is my choice for a graphical newsreader. It's lightweight and provides all the functions you'd expect in a robust newsreader; filtering and sorting, searching, full customization, and many more. Knode, GFetchNews, Newsx, Slrn, and XRN provide a similar level of functionality. If you're looking for a simple text-based newsreader, my favorite email program, Pine includes Usenet functionality.

It almost takes you back to the early days of the Internet, but Usenet can be a great tool in learning and understanding your Linux system. Tweaking your system with the right newsreader for your purposes is always a great idea. It can save hours of frustration.

Recommend It!
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GnomeCORE

Interrupt Requests

The processor in your machine is working constantly to handle requests from different subsystems for processor time. These requests may come from user space such as the keyboard, mouse, or user initiated program, or they may come from the hardware itself. When one of these processes needs CPU time, it sends the processor an interrupt request, asking for a slice of processor time.

An interrupt request (IRQ) is an actual input that causes the processor to initiate an interrupt handler. The interrupt handler serves to mask the incoming request until processor time is available, and to avoid process conflicts. The handler generally splits the process that initiated the request into tow halves. The upper half is comprised of those things that are required to be completed immediately in order to accomplish the interrupt; reading from the hardware and scheduling the task. The task completion is handled in the lower half. In the lower half the handler masks the interrupt until the current process is completed, checks to assure that the interrupting process has been completed, and re-enables the interrupt process.

Linux handles interrupts by evaluating them as either short or long. A short interrupt will take very little processor time and will prevent other interrupts from being loaded. Long interrupts, as you'd expect, require more processor time. Consequently, the interrupt handler that processes a long request must also provide a means for other interrupts to occur, though not from the same device.

The Linux method for handling interrupts tends to make the OS faster. Linux is better at prioritizing, writing to the stack and re-initiating the interrupt process than other OSs.

Recommend It!
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GnomeFILE

gimp-print 4.2.5-pre1

http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/

"Gimp-Print is a collection of very high quality printer drivers for UNIX/Linux. The goal of this project is uncompromising print quality and robustness. Included with this package is the Print plugin for the GIMP (hence the name), a CUPS driver, and two drivers (traditional and IJS-based) for Ghostscript that may be compiled into that package. This driver package is Foomatic-compatible and provides Foomatic data to enable plug and play with many print spoolers. In addition, various printer maintenance utilities are included. Many users report that the quality of Gimp-Print on high end Epson Stylus printers matches or exceeds the quality of the drivers supplied for Windows and Macintosh."

Recommend It!
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GnomeVOICE

More Light Linux
Scribbled by Jim Morgan

"I sent you an email a few days ago about installing Linux as a minimal distribution on dinosaur machines. The email was prompted by comments in a previous Penguin Shell, and also my own experiences trying to install RedHat onto a notebook with 64Mb RAM and a 333MHz processor. Actually on that spec of machine, Linux itself runs fine, and Red Hat has all the drivers to make my PCMCIA network card, and onboard graphics and sound chips function perfectly. However when you type 'startx', that's when things slow down, so I guess my original email should really have focused on getting a graphical installation onto a dinosaur laptop.

"Anyway, the point of this email is to bring your attention to Blackbox Window manager [ here ] which has pretty much solved the problem for me. Its fast and minimal, and although it takes a bit of work to install, it is now doing exactly what I wanted. I particularly liked the comment from one of its users "it takes one second to boot up, and another second for the smoke to clear".

"I'll be tweaking it around to see what I can get out of it. As always, the work has just started: now I need a lightweight browser, and a lightweight Word Processor, as Konqueror, Mozilla, Koffice, and OpenOffice.org are way too sluggish.

"I hope this is some use to you, and I hope you get the chance to check it out for yourself."

Recommend It!
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GnomeCLICK

Linux Financials

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5669&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Today's GnomeCLICK is a review on Linux Journal of open source financial packages available for Linux. This is often a stumbling block that prevents users from migrating to the Linux world. As the reviews by Machtelt Garrels prove, it shouldn't be a stumbling block at all. The four reviewed programs are fully capable of stepping up to fill the gap left when you leave Quicken or Microsoft Money behind. By taking the perspective of the home user, the author provides insightful and interesting reviews that should be of great value to anyone needing to manage finances in Linux.

Recommend It!
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