Linux Cookbook

Keyboards and Another Resource for Linux Wins, and More

I tripped over the Who is switching to Linux? blog the other day, but not for a Linux switch story--it was a story about keyboards.

Now, I may not permit any Microsoft software products in the house, but Microsoft also sells hardware: keyboards and mice. I don't like mice myself, and prefer the Logitech Trackman Wheel device for all my mousing needs.

However, Microsoft sells the only usable widely-available, mass market, ergonomic keyboard (you know, the kind that looks as if it was broken in half and glued together with the halves slightly tilted). The problem is that they also sell a lot of versions of this keyboard: some really cheap and poorly laid-out; some expensive and wireless. And over time, they tinker with the layout, which really messes you up if you've gotten accustomed to one particular layout and they change it.

Which is why the "Who is switching to Linux?" blogger complains about Microsoft - The Anti-Linux Keyboard. It really struck a chord with me, because despite paying top dollar for these keyboards, they keep flaking out on me in some way, and need replacing. At which point I'm forced to try the demo keyboards at Staples and hope that they haven't changed too much since the last time I bought one.

Could Microsoft be plotting against Linux users by moving the Insert key to become inaccessible? I don't know, but at least the latest version of the keyboard I got (just last month) is still "correct" more or less.

We put a man on the moon (well, 40 years or so ago), why can't someone (besides Microsoft) bring a high-quality ergonomic keyboard to market for a reasonable price?

Emulation with QEMU

Once you start falling in love with Linux, you may find yourself installing distribution after distribution as you search for the perfect one. That can be a drag if you also re-format your drive every time you install a new distro: it kind of kills the thrill if you have to go back and reconfigure all your stuff (and lose data that you forgot to backup).

But it doesn't have to be that way. Author and bon vivant Marcel Gagné writes great stuff, including this article, Cooking with Linux - Still Searching for the Ultimate Linux Distro? in Linux Journal. It's about how you can use QEMU, "a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer" to set up virtual disk partitions on virtual machines (that may be different from the non-virtual hardware you're running it on), and install all the different Linux distributions (or other OSes, including Windows) you like.

What's nice about running virtualized instances of different Linux distros (or other OSes) instead of using LiveCDs is that you've got your primary desktop Linux running underneath. So not only can you do things like take screenshots of the guest OS, but you can switch back and forth from the guest OS to your underlying desktop any time you like.

Thanks for another great article, Marcel!

Ever Wondered about the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy?

The Linux filesystem hierarchy (link to Wikipedia/Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) can be confusing: just what is all that stuff, and how does it work? Making things even more confusing are the slight (or not so slight) variations in the hierarchy that you may encounter with different Linux distributions.

It's one of those things that just, apparently, are, and that don't seem to call for explanation. It's not often you come across any articles or discussions of them, in the normal course of things, but here's an article that got me started on thinking about it: /usr is flawed.

Even before getting into the details of the flaws, though, the author gives us two gifts: first, a rough summary of the major components of the Linux filesystem hierarchy, and a link to a specification for the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

No, I don't have any more to say about the question of whether or not /usr is flawed, but I do think it's worth spending some time studying up on just what the Linux filesystem hierarchy is.

Walmart's Ubuntu PC: Bait and Switch?

With all the attention Linux has been getting recently, especially in the form of attention from major hardware vendors, the impact of Walmart's decision to bring to market a $200 Linux PC (Everex TC2502 Green gPC w/ Via C7-D Processor) should be surprising.

The customers seem to love this computer, if you go by the product reviews: 56 reviewers gave it an overall 4-star rating. There were only two buyers who left one-star reviews, complaining about lack of performance or inability to run Windows XP (not true, since the hardware was certified as XP-compliant).

But what really surprised me was the fact that the item is listed as "out of stock", with a note explaining how you can "Step up to the Everex GC3502 for Double the Memory and Windows Vista Basic" instead. For an extra $100, you get: the exact same computer, but with an extra 1/2 gig of RAM and              Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic.

Which is kind of funny, because you wouldn't be able to run Vista on a PC with only a half-gigabyte of RAM.

Anyway, RAM's pretty cheap these days. You can buy a full gigabyte from Walmart online for $40 or so. Which means you'd be paying roughly $60 for that low-end edition of Vista. In other words, you pay a 25% "Vista tax" on a $240 PC.

The big question is this: does Walmart make any money selling a $200 PC for $200, or is it just a loss-leader to get people in the store and sell them $240 PCs for $300?

Linux Toys

Linux Devices is a great website for news about new things that run Linux; unfortunately, it's less great if you're actually looking for links to those great new toys.

But they recently posted an article: Open source, Lego-like computer modules run Linux about this really cool new toy thing that's not available yet (yeah, that's another thing you can read a lot about on Linux Devices). But then I Googled the company name to see if I could find more, and I did!

Check out Bug Labs. They aren't shipping their BUG platform products yet, but they do claim they will ship in Q4 2007, which has got to be soon. And it sounds really cool:

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use, open source hardware modules, each capable of producing one or more Web services. These modules snap together physically and the services connect together logically to enable users to easily build, program and share innovative devices and applications. With BUG, we don't define the final products - you do.

So far, the product line consists of the base, as well as hardware modules for GPS, digital camera/videocam, color LCD touchscreen, and accelerometer/motion sensor. I don't know what this stuff is likely to cost, nor do I want to know (at least not yet) if only because my guess is it'll be priced too high.

What's too high? Well, for what is essentially a plastic toy with a computer inside, I'd want to pay less than I would pay for a full-sized desktop computer (and I've heard that Walmart's started selling Linux boxes for $200). OLPC, originally intended to cost $100 is coming in at about $200. And you can get the Asus Eee micro-laptop for $400. So, for me, the right price would be under $200 for the platform plus enough at least one plug-in module. My guess is that the actual price will be closer to $400 for the base platform unit, and the add-in modules running anywhere from $100-300 each.

Oh well, time will tell. This would make a killer holiday gift for the geek and his/her spawn.

Distros, and Tracking New Ones

Linux isn't like Windows in a lot of ways. One big one is that almost every Linux distribution--and actually almost all open source software--gets upgraded, frequently. So the poky little Linux distro you tried and didn't like much a couple of years ago could be the greatest thing going, this year.

One place I like to go to check up on (and search for) the hottest Linux distributions is Distrowatch. Online since 2001, this is the place to go to get the latest on all Linux distributions, and to see what's hot and what's not.

But I stumbled over another good source: Tux Enclave, a WordPress newcomer. I'll be adding this one to my links section (look to the left of the screen), if only so there's a good place to keep track of new releases. Not just distributions, but also news about major open source projects like KDE and Compiz--as well as various other editorial goodies like reviews and how-to's.

Red Hat Magazine

Who better to have a great Linux/open source software oriented web magazine than Red Hat: it's called Red Hat Magazine and it's got some pretty good articles and news items. Not a super-high volume site, the better to keep up with things.

Here are some of the recent articles I found particularly interesting:

• How to touch-up portraits with GIMP should be useful if you're trying to do typical photography stuff but don't have Photoshop.
• Sharing a keyboard and mouse with Synergy is one I'm going to have to study; Synergy is a software-only solution for sharing keyboard/mouse across two or more computers (each with its own monitor, though). That's something I'd like to be able to do, in fact, inasmuch as I've got two systems that I'd like to be able to work with at the same time, but don't like to mess with any more input devices than necessary.
• Here's another GIMP article: GIMP 2.4 preview gives a preview of the latest update to GIMP.
• A guide to GNU Screen introduces GNU Screen. software that lets you run one or more command line interfaces in tabbed windows on your X desktop. This one's nice because while GNU software can be excellent, the documentation can sometimes be less than excellent--and it's a nice introduction to Screen with explanation of just why it's so handy and how you can use it.
• This one's nice for the hobbyist/educator demographic. Arduino is "...an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments." So, if you're interested in that kind of thing, check out this article: Arduino: One board, many projects. It's not so much an article as a collection of links to projects that you can do with an Arduino board.