Manjaro Linux: No Assembly Required

by Dietrich Schmitz

So, okay, I've known about Manjaro for quite some time.  I put it on a pen drive and took a look at it and at the time last year it was using a Ncurses installer.  There were niggling issues with it so I aborted the installation.

Yet, it still intrigued me mainly because it uses Arch and AUR and given all of the talk about how fast and light Arch Linux is, it was interesting to see someone attempting to take advantage and fill what I feel is an unmet need.

Many would like to try Arch, but the technical expertise required is a barrier.  Arch isn't user-friendly and one cannot simply press a button to start an install GUI and have all the 'black magic' taken care of for them.

The Arch purists do love that aspect and I understand that need to get under the hood and get grease under one's fingernails.  Only, it's not for me and I've mentioned this many times to my Arch Friends -- it will never gain broad adoption because major assembly and technical expertise is required to put Arch on your Desktop.

So, today, I gave Manjaro 0.8.7 a try.

The install process now includes options for either CLI or GUI.  Naturally, I chose GUI.

The install could not have been easier and routine, I thought.  This will work for the majority of newcomers to Linux for sure.

The notorious Broadcom wireless on my Acer Aspire One D260 was detected and worked straight up from the live installer.  It wasn't more than 20 minutes before the process completed and asked me to reboot.  That I did and noted that reaching the login screen took no more than 15 seconds.

I chose the OpenBox version (verses Xfce) simply because it would use the least ram in my experience.

The desktop sports conky and the setup includes compton compositor effects which are used judiciously and the muted gray with light green is pleasant to the eye with a design that approaches minimalism.

The appearance immediately reminded me of CrunchBang.  Only I would estimate Crunch still is speed king and ram sipping extraordinaire.  The Desktop in Manjaro despite being OpenBox shows 200mb ram used.  I would have expected lower but okay, it's still lightweight as far as I am concerned.

The terminal is LXTerminal and the file manager is Thunar.

In the systray was an octopi update reminder which when run shows the updates to be installed in a graphical window (see below) yet when I commit to doing the update, octopi simply opens a terminal window and launches a pacman script -- I guess that is 'doable' but I'd have expected the gui to do all of the presentation.

Running Octopi software updates on Manjaro 0.8.7

So this is Manjaro.  I am reserving judgment and will see how far I get using it.  Out of the box it comes with Firefox and Adobe Flash 11.2.x preinstalled, which is a plus.  The kernel is 3.10.x which means it 'should' support seccomp-bpf applications like Chrome and ssh.

Regretfully, I was unsuccessful in installing Chrome stable using Manjaro Forum supplied directions -- makepkg returned a dependency error.  Good Friend +Cirrus McMinor has offered to dial up and get it working, but, it would be nice if one could download Chrome directly and install from the Google website but that appears not to be the case for Arch and derivatives like Manjaro.  That would place pacman-based Distros (Arch) on equal footing with DEB and RPM Distro Google supplied versions.  So, I'll settle for Firefox and see how far I can get with it.


If you have used OpenBox, it's pretty basic and there isn't much to say other than Manjaro at least updates OB's menu to reflect the addition of an application, unlike other Distros using OpenBox.

So, if you yearn for Arch but don't have the intestinal fortitude to deal with the technicalities, then I would strongly suggest you have a look at Manjaro Linux.  It's biggest plus: No Assemby Required.  Good Luck.

-- Dietrich

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Notable Ubuntu Derivatives

by Dietrich Schmitz

So, you may or may not know that I am not a fan of Ubuntu. Let's leave the reasons out. It has become tedious and the topic of why is painfully boring at this stage of the game.

But despite what is or isn't happening with Ubuntu, depending on your point of view, much is happening elsewhere and that is fortunately a 'good thing' for the prospective Linux user.

I have spent much time discussing how I feel about the plethora of choices in the Linux ecosystem which is to the point of creating confusion and many inconsistencies across the spectrum.

But that doesn't keep me from seeing value in a narrower segment and if we look at core Distributions close to the base Distros, there is good work being put forth by Developers which in the case of Ubuntu is fostering a thriving Derivative environment.

Those who seek value know that anchoring to the Ubuntu application repository is perhaps their highest criterion for choosing one Distro over another.  On the other hand, those who are avoiding Ubuntu, are likely motivated to find an alternative GUI which let's them feel most comfortable in terms of usability and provides the best balance of functionality.

Let's look at some of what I see as being notable Ubuntu core derivative Distros:

Lubuntu

Now, I list Lubuntu first, not by accident.  It is truly as lean a Distribution as one can get yet still enjoy a good GUI feature set on top of the Ubuntu repo system.  It also happens to be the Distro of my choice.  I stray from it sampling others but keep returning to it.  But my preferences are subjective, since I am using a Netbook.  Yours will likely differ.  If you want a clean and spartan Desktop, which is straight forward and gets out of your way so you can do work, then Lubuntu succeeds.  I've made only minor tweaks turning off the power saver deamon and update notifier and arrive at the Desktop after login with about 130mb ram footprint.  And by virtue of the fact that LXDE in this implementation is using OpenBox as its window (stacking) manager, it is perhaps the fastest Desktop.  (CrunchBangers hold your fire -- this is strictly Ubuntu Derivatives being discussed).

Bodhi Linux

This is perhaps one of the most minimal (ram usage) yet nicest in terms of compositing Distros that I've come across.  Bodhi Linux uses Enlightenment E17 as its GUI.  I am amazed at how much breadth and depth there is to its configurability, yet it weighs in at a mere 70 MB ram footprint.  If you are in love with E17, then this Distro is for you.  This is a capable, nimble derivative, offers much eye candy, yet keeps you in the Ubuntu repo.

Xubuntu

If it weren't for Lubuntu with the OpenBox window manager, I think I'd be using Xubuntu.  Really, the polish of Xfce is a cut above LXDE, and yet, isn't greedy in ram use.  It has its own compositor, the system is spritely and will satisfy by getting the job done with little fanfare.  It and LXDE 'side-step' the XMir/Mir kerfuffle, both using Gtk2/3 and so give that Gnome 'feel' yet are less demanding of the cpu.  As Wayland approaches a stable plateau, expect to see both Lubuntu and Xubuntu transition from X.org to Wayland.  For now, X.org continues to be supported, which is 'peace of mind' for many.

Kubuntu

Many Windows users will find Kubuntu's similarities most to their liking.  Kubuntu uses KDE, of course, and is considered 'Top Dog' to which others Desktop GUIs are compared.  The KDE team fully intend to support X.org going forward and will offer an on-ramp to Wayland in future releases.  You can expect that your 'Apple cart won't be upset' using the strategy of employing a KDE-based Distro.  And, given that Kubuntu is an Ubuntu derivative with commercial support, places you strategically 'in the game' and makes it a safe bet.  The plethora of feature options boggles the mind, but most users will be satisfied with how Kubuntu works out of the box.  While demands placed on ram requirements is a bit higher, one can easily trim away some of the fancier features such as compositing with one setting change to reclaim ram and some additional speed on older PCs or Netbooks.  Kubuntu's aesthetics please and reliability gets the job done -- overall, a nice implementation.

Netrunner-OS

In July 2013, I wrote that Netrunner-OS offers the best out of the box KDE experience of all Linux Distributions.  The Distro coincidentally is produced by Blue Systems whose team is also directly responsible for doing key development for KDE.  Blue Systems contributes also to Kubuntu and Linux Mint KDE edition.

Peppermint OS

Just this weekend, I was spurred by a story about Peppermint OS that wrote how this Distro was a Lubuntu derivative.  It turns out, that is not exactly true -- while it does use LXDE components, it uses the Xfwm4 window manager and many of its supporting components.  So while it sports an lxpanel, I would qualify this as weighted to the Xfce side of things.  Still, I found the implementation to be spritely, clean, professional in its presentation and as good as Xubuntu in terms of overall characteristics and performance.  This is somewhat hybrid but it works well.  Kudos to the Peppermint OS team for a good job and offering real value.

Conclusions

When thinking about notable Ubuntu derivatives, I considered whether or not to include Mint.  I think to include Mint would be wrong.

Mint is in its own league and, as such, given top ranking at Distrowatch (#1), and not what I would qualify as an Ubuntu derivative.

To some extent, it can be argued that their package management system is different, including service packs.  I haven't really heard complaints about Mint.  Most everybody likes it.  But that's why I chose not to list it.  They are a cut above Ubuntu.  So really, that's a hat tip to the Mint Developer Team.

Well, there it is -- a few notable Ubuntu derivatives.  It's hard to get me to say nice things about Linux Distros and when I do, you know it's sincere.  These are good alternatives for you to try.

-- Dietrich

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A Delightful Surprise: Lubuntu Extra Life Extension (LXLE) 12.04.3

by Dietrich Schmitz

Delight.  It's that feeling you get when you stumble upon something new that you had no idea existed.

You may know that I've got a penchant for lean minimalist Distributions and using an Acer Aspire One Netbook with 2 GB ram can be demanding.  So, naturally, I want to ring all the power I can get out of  a given Distro, whatever that may be.  I try not to Distro-hop, but in the recent past have moved from Netrunner 13.04 Enigma, the best out of the box KDE experience, to Lubuntu 13.04,  a lean, but good performance value proposition for older PCs and Netbooks.

In my view, Lubuntu really has the best mix of features for older PCs and Atom-based Netbooks of any Distro I can think of.

While spartan Lubuntu may be, it is by no means a slouch in terms of performance characteristics, as you'll find it uses OpenBox window manager combined with LXDE.   I've found it most appealing that Lubuntu covers all the basics with little fanfare and doesn't get 'in your way'.  It meets the 'good enough' benchmark, get's the job done, and, most of all, 'sips memory' qualifying it as fast and nimble.

Alright you get the idea.  So, I went to Distrowatch a few days ago and discovered that there was a Distro, LXLE, that had just released a new version on August 23, 2013.   Hmmmm.  Lubuntu Extra Life Extension?  My curiosity was peaked.  I made a note of it and downloaded a copy of their 64-bit edition (32-bit available also) and installed it last evening.

I've spent several weeks using Lubuntu and quickly reached a comfort level using it.  So, getting up to speed on LXLE wasn't difficult and it furnishes the same installation process as most of the other *buntu derivates with its own branding, of course.  That process ran smoothly as expected.

Upon completion of the install, I pulled out the usb pen drive and rebooted.  When I reached the login menu it showed a nice clean login screen with a Lubuntu/LXLE logo emblazoned.  Below the login name and password was XP Paradigm.  What? Paradigm?  I clicked the drop-down list to see there were four paradigm options including Lubuntu Netbook.  Interesting, I thought.  I left it on XP for now.

Lubuntu Extra Life Extension Desktop - XP Paradigm

The above is a screenshot of the LXLE desktop.

What is it?

LXLE is simply a respun Lubuntu with different goals.

• Sticks with LTS only releases of Ubuntu to ensure hardware & software support.
• Based on Lubuntu Linux to ensure a fast capable desktop for aging computers.
• No rebranding of the OS to ensure no confusion when looking for help/tutorials.
• Stays with Ubuntu at the core of the system to ensure plentiful support options.
• Keeps desktop and other major software updated to the latest current version.
• Provides a complete drop in and go replacement for XP, Vista, 7 Starter/Basic.
• Covers most users everyday needs by providing an excellent set of default apps.
• Adds useful necessary mods and tweaks, to improve performance & functions.
• Develops a beautiful modern looking intuitive desktop for anyone to use easily.

New Version! 12 .04.3 Paradigm

• Light on resources; Heavy on functions.
• Always based on Ubuntu/Lubuntu LTS.
• Uses an optimized LXDE user interface.
• Four familar desktop layout paradigms.
• Prudent full featured Apps preinstalled.
• The latest versions of all major software.
• Added PPA's extends available software.
• Updated Openbox, PCmanfm, OpenJDK
• Fast Forecast, Aero Snap, Quick Launch
• Random Wallpaper, Panel Trash access
• Theme consistency throughout system.
• 50 gorgeous wallpapers preinstalled.
• Numerous other tweaks/additions.
• Stable and rock solid performance.
• 32 and 64 bit OS versions available.
• Boots & is online in less than 1 minute.

LXLE is reasonable and not over-done in my opinion.  It's all subject to your tweaking and personal preferences, of course, but what you gain over Lubuntu is an LTS advantage and the default application set is larger and more robust than Lubuntu.

LXLE's being a 'cut above' in performance and features makes it an excellent candidate for staying resident on my Netbook for a long time to come.

I can't think of anything else to add.  Clearly, the LXLE folks have recognized an 'unmet need' and are filling the niche, and do it very well.

This fine lightweight Distribution gets my strong recommendation.  Give it a spin and judge for yourself.

-- Dietrich

  

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Fedora 19 Desktop Edition: Pleasantly Surprised by Gnome 3.8.3

by Dietrich Schmitz

No, this isn't an act of contrition.  It is a confession.  How so?  Let me explain.

Life is experiential as they say.  And with experience comes wisdom--hopefully, gradually, learning accretes.

Gradually, what was important yesterday is no longer important today as we reach new plateaus and learn what is truely meaningful and cast aside things which do not accrue to our general well-being and happiness.

Some days, you discover things you never imagined would happen.

Take for example Gnome's GUI.

In the past, I have been quite clear on how I have felt about this project's decision making along with my displeasure with Canonical's Unity GUI.  Neither was my cup of tea.  And, fortunately, alternatives have been around which have made possible avoiding their use entirely.  I am not unique on that count.

So, without apology, I will confess that today I decided to do:

$sudo yum groupinstall "Gnome Desktop"

into my already tweaked Fedora 19 Xfce Spin, which as you might have guessed I am quite happy with, given its meager system requirements and given that I am writing this story on an Acer Aspire One D260 Netbook sporting 2GB ram.  I've also installed OpenBox and found it makes the machine perform with near CrunchBang 11 Waldorf-like speed.  All well and good.

So, the groupinstall finished in minutes and I then dispatched to doing a logout, select GNOME from the session manager, and logged back in.

Now, mind you, there are still issues in my mind concerning Gnome, but this time around, I will tell you that Gnome 3.8.3 is what I call 'minimally functional' in its 'out of the box' default form.

Prior to Fedora 19 Desktop Edition, I could not recommend Gnome.

Today, I can say:

I like Gnome 3.8.3.

But, it took some tweaks coming from the Gnome Extensions Website to make it provide equivalence to what I have set up in the Xfce spin.  I will live with Gnome for the time being and share information with you in updates when and where I can as warranted.

Here are the extensions which I have installed thus far:

Installed Extensions

ONOFF

 Drop Down Terminal

 by zzrough

Drop down terminal toggled by a keystroke (the key above tab by default) for advanced users.

ONOFF

 Gno-Menu

 by Panacier

Gno-Menu is a traditional styled full featured Gnome-Shell apps menu, that aims to offer all the essentials in a simple uncluttered intuitive interface.

ONOFF

 Impatience

 by gfxmonk

Speed up the gnome-shell animation speed

ONOFF

 Notifications Alert

 by hackedbellini

Whenever there is an unread notification (e.g. chat messages), blinks the message in the user's menu with a color chosen by the user.

ONOFF

 Pidgin Persistent Notification

 by nemo

Adds a persistent notification if a new message in Pidgin arrives. The notification is reset if the conversation window is focussed. Works best with the pidgin status integration extension.

ONOFF

 Show Desktop Button

 by l300lvl

Places a button to the left of the Window List to hide all windows, and the overview when active, and show the current desktop(credit: MGSE, erguille, madkristoff, mbokil).

ONOFF

 Status Area Horizontal Spacing

 by mathematical.coffee

Reduce the horizontal spacing between icons in the top-right status area

ONOFF

 TopIcons

 by ag

Shows legacy tray icons on top

With these tweaks, this puts Gnome on a footing where I can honestly say, that everything is working satisfactorily.

Your preferences will be different, naturally, but I tend to be minimalist by nature, so that means 'nothing more, nothing less' style of configuration.

I especially like pressing the backtick/tilde key to get a drop-down terminal, Quake-like style.

I added GnoMenu, but decided to toggle it 'off' for now and see if I can live without using it as a 'crutch'.  My concern is and will be as time goes by, usability of Gnome in its default form.

As for ram use, this wouldn't be an issue if I had a Desktop system with 4GB so I discount its importance using this Netbook, in terms of any perceived latency or swapping.  My swappiness is set to 10, which means swapping will be 'aggressive' and do as much as it can with existing free ram.

Chrome, my preferred browser, is notorious for gobbling up ram, and I don't fault it for that, but it does at times put a strain on this Netbook.  It's a non-issue as I said with most of today's machines, so enough on ram.

Well, there you have it.  I am liking Gnome 3.8.3, Fedora 19 Desktop Edition's default GUI.

People can change.  I have and do, every day.  So can you.  Grow. :)

-- Dietrich

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The Unwitting Linux Saboteurs

by Dietrich Schmitz

I spend time in my Google Plus private Linux Advocates community sharing ideas and trends with colleagues.

Occasionally, we hit on nuggets of gold and when you least expect it, someone comments and really helps put things into perspective.

Last evening, a dear colleague and friend +Shane Keene was sharing his thoughts about Distro-hopping.  We've jokingly coined the term 'Distroholics' for the uncontrollable tendency to not be satisfied with settling down and using one Distro.

It's easy to understand.  It can turn into a real hobby and is admittedly 'fun' to switch Distros and experiment.  And that's a good thing for those who enjoy doing it.

As for +Shane Keene and myself, and a few others in the LA community, we've reached the point where Distro-hopping has lost its luster.  Shane writes in his post:

"I've long since quit my evil distro hopping ways and settled permanently on Arch as the only one that is exactly what I want it to be, but I have discovered another bad habit of mine: I'm a three-timing, DE/WM slut who is constantly bouncing between Awesome WM, Openbox and KDE. But these days, instead of constantly uninstalling/reinstalling/reconfiguring my environment I just keep all three installed full time and use KDM to manage them."

And, that kicked off a series of comments, which is how we 'chew the fat', so to speak.

But, what I didn't expect was such a insightful exchange from +Aaron Seigo.  Don't misunderstand, Aaron is a regular participant in these exchanges--he's quite 'The Thinker', naturally and we all appreciate when he participates--it's just that I didn't expect his off-topic thought to be relevant, but it actually aligns with a series of posts of mine.  So, really, we are in complete agreement.

It's a good read and here's what he wrote as regards Linux Server and Desktop markets in response to participant +Tim Sparrow's comment - "Maybe if we had only 1 or 2 big names in 2008 around the Vista fiasco time" (emphasis added: mine):

"Looking at the server side, I'm not sure this is true. Despite the wide range of options there, including new comers and deaths in the family, server side Linux took off nicely.
Aside from the demographic differences of the target audiences, there are some striking differences between the two markets: 

* there is a general emphasis on stable transition among server side tools
* there is far less 'fork cause i feel like it' behaviour
* there are far fewer significant differences between using distro X for a web server (e.g.)and distro Y than there is between even the same distros on the desktop

I don't think it is the number of distributions; in theory, more distribution channels should mean more opportunities for marketing and a variety of vertically attuned support offerings. 

I think it comes down to the lack of continuity and an emphasis on infighting rather than gathering market. 

This is a deeply embedded cultural norm in Free software on the desktop. GNOME's early days were soaked in this thinking and it just never really stopped. Now we have a further splintering of the desktops with dangerously little thought to the strategic implications and large %s of the Free software desktop using population putting their support behind things that are new despite having untenable futures and being technically deficient relative to the more mature offerings. 

Desktop Linux's own worst enemy has been the desktop Linux community. 

With one or two environments and a focus on application development (a critical matter) rather than getting all excited about which panel looks better on the left side of the screen (which does not gain more market share, people), even with 10x the number of distributions, we would be much further along. Much further. 

Instead, we engaged in a years long battle of mutual tearing down for no benefit, and it continues today. 

With regret, I consider the various new desktop environments, those who enthusiastically support them and all the distributions and environments drifting towards distro/environment specific applications to be unintentional traitors to the goal of spreading Free software on the desktop. 

Short sighted behaviour is sabotaging things, not the number of distros."

Thank you to all the commentators and especially Aaron.  I hope the readership will reflect long and hard on the above.

-- Dietrich

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OpenBox: When You Want Minimalism, Speed.

by Dietrich Schmitz

I've settled for largely avoiding Unity and Gnome3.x entirely.  Most of you know that.  No need to go over why.

But lately, I've been wondering why Fedora doesn't offer a Spin of OpenBox.  So, my curiosity got the best of me and I installed it into Fedora 19 Xfce Spin.

The following files were installed:

openbox, obmenu, obconf, tint2, xfce4-mixer, xfce4-power-manager, clipit, and gmrun.

Then, create the following directory:

$mkdir ~/.config/openbox

and

$gedit ~/.config/openbox/autostart

and paste the following into it, save and close the file:

## Openbox autostart

## ====================

## Note*: some programs, such as 'nm-applet' are run via XDG auto-start.

## Run '/usr/lib/openbox/openbox-xdg-autostart --list' to list any

## XDG autostarted programs.



## GNOME PolicyKit and Keyring

#/usr/lib/polkit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 &

#eval $(gnome-keyring-daemon -s --components=pkcs11,secrets,ssh,gpg) &





#Starts Nitogen and restore wallpaper from previous session

#nitrogen --restore &



# start up the tint2 task bar

tint2 &



# Start up power management

xfce4-power-manager &



# Start the Clipboard manager after 3 seconds wait

(sleep 3s && clipit) &



# start volume manager after 3 seconds

#(sleep 3s && volti) &

The parts in autostart for policykit, nitrogen, and volti have been commented out as they don't currently work, or weren't found in the Fedora repo.

Logging out of Xfce, I selected the openbox window manager and logged back into Fedora 19.

Immediately, I was presented with a familiar (from my CrunchBang experiences) spartan grey screen and a panel on the bottom (tint2).

Utterly minimal, but exceedingly fast, OpenBox on Fedora 19

Autostart was able to load the power-manager, chrome and the clipboard.  nm-applet loaded and connected to wireless automatically also without need for configuration.

Currently, there is no volume icon in the tray (not a crisis as I can launch pavucontrol or xfce4-mixer to adjust settings if need be).

Probably, I'll figure out what to do about volti and nitrogen tomorrow and add maybe a few other tweeks like conky, but this is quite doable for now.

OpenBox is a stacking window manager.  On a Netbook, you need to ring out all of the resources and mine has 2GB ram.  Reaching the Desktop, opening a terminal and checking free returns about 140MB ram used.  That really can't be beat, unless maybe you install Bodhi Linux or Puppy Linux or DSL.  The speed improvement is quite marked.

I am sure there will be comments from those getting less ram usage.  Still you get the point.

I'll use this for a while and see how it goes.

So Folks, when you want minimalism and speed, check out OpenBox.  It never disappoints.

-- Dietrich

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