Happy Holidays

I haven't updated this blog in a while mainly because my wife has recently given birth to our son. Also because I haven't been trying out new Linux distributions in a while. My desktop computer has been running on Antergos Cinnamon for quite some time now and my laptop is on Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 LTS.

I've got my hands full with the baby at the moment but I am playing around with Docker containerization shit so I will probably post some stuff about that in the future. Most likely early 2015. There are other plans I am finalizing on so...

                 __________________________________
                < Merry Christmas, Happy New Year! >
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                   \
                    \
                        .--.
                       |o_o |
                       |:_/ |
                      //   \ \
                     (|     | )
                    /'\_   _/`\
                    \___)=(___/

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. See you next year! And as always, happy Linuxing.

Thoughts on OS X

I've recently just started on a new job as a web developer doing Python/Django type of stuff. I'm very new to this web development industry, as I previously worked with SAP ABAP, so it is rather exciting. The companies I've worked for doing ABAP work all used Microsoft Windows; and that's not surprising because Windows is ubiquitous in enterprise work environments. Personally, I use Linux, primarily because I can't afford a legit copy of Windows nor can I afford the high premium of Apple computers. But my current employer has given me the opportunity to work with an Apple Mac mini in the office. I've been using it for close to a month now and here are some of my thoughts about it.

Linux Distribution Usage History

A little over a year ago, I assembled my first desktop computer all by myself. I've been using computers for a very long time but it was only until that point in my life where I felt the inspiration to try and build one myself. After much reading and YouTube watching, especially the part about inserting the CPU into the motherboard, I bought all the parts and started assembling.

PC Build Components (May 8, 2013)

But this post isn't about that. When I successfully completed that build, I already decided to boot only Linux on the machine. And so I made a running file in Google Drive to log all the Linux distributions I've used since May 8, 2013. (I felt really stupid for not thinking of doing this earlier, when I started using Linux in 2008...but oh, well.)

Making Arch Linux Simple With Antergos

Antergos caught my attention because it claims to be the easiest and fastest way to get an Arch Linux machine up and running. So I gave it a try and right now, it's my main OS (because I did something stupid and my Fedora install b0rked...and just as I was beginning to like Fedora...). I don't consider this a review per se, but here's my experience with Antergos since I installed it last Feb 20, 2014.

A Basic CentOS LAMP Server Build in VirtualBox

I've been using Fedora for more than a month now and I wanted to create a virtual machine (VM) in VirtualBox which I can use for learning web development. I usually go for a Debian based VM but this time, since I'm on Fedora, then I decided to go with CentOS.

I have used CentOS before so I knew that it took a bit of effort to get it up and running. In this post, I put down my notes into how I built a CentOS VM for a basic LAMP server.

Creating the CentOS guest

The CentOS OS is easy enough to install. Just download the ISO image from their site; I chose to use the CentOS-6.5-x86_64-minimal.iso image. It's just a matter of using the downloaded image as the DVD media for the VM. Installation is straightforward and fast and finishes in under 30 minutes.

NOTE: In my setup, I have set 2 network interfaces -- one for Host-only adapter and another for NAT adapter. At this time of posting, I suggest to set Host-only as adapter 1 and NAT as adapter 2 because I've run into some issues with the network interfaces. Host-only interface is for accessing the VM from the host machine while the NAT interface takes care of the connection to the Internets.

Enable networking in the CentOS guest

Network interfaces are down by default in CentOS ^[1]. So there is a need to do some manual configuration. To show the interfaces, use command ip addr show. Since my setup has 2 network adapters set in VirtualBox, the result of that command shows eth0 and eth2, for the Host-only adapter and the NAT adapter, respectively. The configuration files for these are located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX where X is the interface number.

A note on VirtualBox installation in Fedora

I use VirtualBox ^[1] a lot. It's actually one of the first few applications I install after doing a fresh install of a Linux distribution. As I am currently using Fedora, I noted that it's best to do it like so:

    $ sudo yum install VirtualBox kmod-VirtualBox

kmod-VirtualBox is the kernel module for VirtualBox. If for instance, when logged in using, say, for example kernel 3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64 and doing sudo yum install VirtualBox, then the kmod-VirtualBox-3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64... will be installed along as a dependency. Now this is fine, as long as you are using the 3.12.8-300.fc20.x86_64 kernel, the kernel module for VirtualBox is useable. But then a new kernel update comes along, say kernel 3.12.9-301.fc20.x86_64 and you log out, reboot the computer and choose this shiny new kernel. Then once logged in, you run (assuming you do things from a terminal emulator, like I do) VBoxManage startvm 'my-virtual-machine' --type headless and the STDOUT spews forth an error telling you that kernel modules haven't been installed for the current kernel (or something like that).

That's where the meta-package kmod-VirtualBox comes in. So when there's a kernel update in Fedora, the specific VirtualBox kernel module will automatically be installed for that kernel. Then you can happily continue using VirtualBox in Fedora.

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^[1] VirtualBox package I used are in the RPMFusion third-party repository which needs to be activated before it can be used.

Fedora 20 Heisenbug Experience

Updated Jan 21 2014

I haven’t touched Fedora for a long time. Perhaps the last version I cared to try out was Fedora 16. Using it again has showed me why it's been that long — adding 3rd party repos was a bit cumbersome for me, coming from mostly an Ubuntu and Debian background.

For the last quarter of 2013, I was hell bent on using only Debian and its derivatives (except Ubuntu and its derivatives) as my main OS. The last I had installed was a rolling release based on Debian Sid, Semplice 5.1. Unfortunately, I only used it for a day because my mind kept nagging me that if I were to "roll", Arch Linux is the way to do it.

I succumbed and installed Arch Linux. I was using it for close to 15 days, too, until I broke my system attempting to dual-boot with, wait for it, Fedora 20! I didn’t want to go through installing Arch from scratch again so I decided to go with Fedora 20. And here we are.

The end of my Debian madness?

Earlier this year, I had decided to go exclusively for Debian (or Debian-based, but not Ubuntu-based) distributions. But this happened:

After 2 days of installing (and re-installing), I finally settled. Hopefully this will stick for a long time.

Merry Christmas!

Knoppix 7.2 Experience

In my search for a viable distro to use as my main OS that's either vanilla Debian or Debian-based (and not Ubuntu-based), I stumbled on Knoppix. I know that I've heard of this distro before but never really checked it out for reasons unknown. But this distro usually gets mentioned in online forums where the question is about PC troubleshooting. Most suggest the use of Knoppix for times when the main OS doesn't boot or is infested with viruses, etc.

I decided to give it a go. Besides, it's always useful to have a bootable Linux distro in case my main OS does decide to falter.

Debian: From CLI to GUI

Debian's latest stable release has been out since last May 2013 and I'm very eager to make it the main OS on my computer.

I have used Arch Linux in the past and I liked its K.I.S.S. approach where everything is built from the ground up. But since I decided to limit my Linux explorations to Debian-based distros for now, Arch will have to wait. That's where I got the idea to do a minimal install of Debian and build it up from there.

USB Thumb Drives: Mounting, Unmounting and Re-mounting

One of my hobbies is Linux distribution hopping. If you don't know what that means, it's that I regularly browse DistroWatch for news about new Linux releases. If something catches my interest, then I download the ISO, try out its live session in VirtualBox, and then finally, if impressed, install it to one of the partitions in my PC. And if it's that good, then I use it as my main OS.

The medium I use most when creating the installation media is a USB thumb drive. It's usually a no-brainer; just plug-in the thumb drive and the OS does its thing and auto-mounts it. The next part involves unmounting the thumb drive so that I can use the dd command to write the ISO to the thumb drive. I don't use the right-click » "Unmount" via the File manager because I just like typing in the command line

    $ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

and unmounted goes my thumb drive. Now I can proceed with

    $ sudo dd if=/path/to/file.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync

and after some time, it finishes and I know that the distributions installation media is freshly baked. But sometimes I want to check the contents of the USB thumb drive, so I usually pull-out the drive, put it back in again and let the OS auto-mount it. So I thought to myself, "Isn't there a way to mount the USB thumb drive via the command line after dd command finishes without me pulling out and plugging back in the drive?" Apparently there is. And the command, in Ubuntu, is udisks. And using it is easy, it's just

    $ udisks --mount /dev/sdb1

and the USB thumb drive is remounted. Apparently, this same command can also be used to unmount the USB thumb drive

    $ udisks --unmount /dev/sdb1

Note that there is no need for the sudo superpowers to use the command.

That's it! Hopefully this will be useful for somebody out there

elementary OS 0.2 Luna Experience

elementary OS 0.2 Luna announced the stable release on Aug 11, 2013. I heard about this Linux distribution (distro) when happened upon InfinitelyGalactic's Pear OS 7 review on YouTube and read the video description. So I downloaded the beta 2 ISO image for elementary OS 0.2 Luna and fired it up on VirtualBox. I played around with it a bit but dismissed it, saying too bad it's still in beta...it would have been a great main OS replacement for me (well, sort of). But since a stable version is out, then I immediately backed-up all my data and installed it on my desktop computer.

In Search of a Main Operating System

I've been using the Linux operating system for close to 5 years now. My first foray was with Ubuntu 8.04 and ever since, I've been switching between distributions (a.k.a. distros) but I have always used Ubuntu as my fallback, and starting 2012, it was Mageia. But recently, I decided to just stick with Debian-based distros so I don't need to memorize a whole lot of troubleshooting and CLI commands.

Here's a list of the distros I wanted to use, in order of my preference:

1. Debian 7 (Wheezy)
2. CrunchBang 11 (Waldorf)
3. Linux Mint 13 (Maya)
4. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
5. (Tied) elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) or Pear OS 7

And here are some of my personal thoughts about said distros.

Debian 7 (Wheezy)

I really wanted to use this as my main OS as I feel it is very flexible in terms of total user control. Similar to what I felt when I used Arch Linux in the past, building a customized setup with the 'net install' ISO of Debian 7 was very empowering to me as a user. But I had to look elsewhere because the boot process of my system was rather inconsistent. Most times it would boot up. But sometimes, it just freezes, and I have to do a hard-reset just so it can reboot and finally continue to an up and running OS. Also, I get sound issues with PulseAudio. I don't know if both issues are because of hardware incompatibilities, I guess I need to investigate it further in the future. But I needed a working computer so I moved on.


CrunchBang 11 (Waldorf)

Hell bent on using a Debian-based (except Ubuntu) system, I landed on the web pages of CrunchBang. I have heard of this distro before but never really considered it because I thought it was based on Arch Linux (which I also like). And when I read that it's a customized Debian-based distro using Openbox, I had to give it a go.  My preferred desktop GUI when I used Debian was LXDE and, if I wanted to go lighter, Openbox (with tint2 as the panel); CrunchBang fit the bill. Using virtualization technology to test it, I fell in love with CrunchBang immediately! With all my data backed-up, I installed it on my physical machine. And it worked fine for a couple of days, until after unmounting a USB device caused a kernel panic! I thought it to be a one-off event, but it started happening more. Also, the inconsistent boot up I experienced with Debian 7, I was experiencing them again in CrunchBang 11. So again, I said goodbye to it, and moved on.


Linux Mint 13 (Maya)

Out of personal options with pure Debian-based (except Ubuntu) distros (note: I say personal options, because there are a plethora of Debian-based distros out there, like Trisquel, etc. but those didn't make it to my personal list), I came back to Ubuntu-based distros. Now, there's nothing wrong with Ubuntu. In fact, I owe it all to Ubuntu as it paved the way for me to using Linux. But I don't like their decision with using Unity (more on this later). Good thing Linux Mint was there to pick up the torch. And it isn't the no. 1 distro in Distrowatch for nothing. It's what I would consider to be a n00b distro as everything (except for the kitchen sink) is thrown in there by default. Adobe Flash player works by default, codecs to play MP3s and M4Vs and other proprietary formats are there. I probably would consider it to be a distro that works out-of-the-box. Not much tweaking and such. I really didn't have any issues with the distro itself. It booted up reliably 99% of the time, sound issues were gone, etc. I guess the issue was with myself, I got bored! I got bored because I wasn't tinkering with the command-line to get things to work. Come to think about it, I think Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE would be my new fallback distro if others don't work out well for me.

NOTE: I could have used Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) to satiate my hunder for using a Debian-based (and not Ubuntu-based) distro, and I would have used LMDE, but it's a (semi) rolling-release distro (not that there's something wrong with that...I like Arch Linux) and it didn't fit my needs. If you haven't gleaned already from my list, my main requirement is a long-term release distro, so...


Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

Ubuntu is what got me started using Linux. I got my first laptop in 2008 and it had Windows Vista pre-installed. I've read all the flak and dissing regarding said OS received. So I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), wiped off Windows Vista, and the rest, as they say, is history. Now, when I got my new desktop rig setup earlier this year, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was the first OS I installed into it. And like Linux Mint, I really didn't have any critical issues. It booted properly 99% of the time, sound worked alright, non-free drivers/codecs/plugins were easy enough to install. What killed it for me was Unity. What I really didn't like about it was the application panel was stuck to the left side of the screen and it couldn't be moved somewhere else. Also, the integration of the context menus to the top panel was annoying -- use case: I have some 80x24 terminal windows running during a typical session which I like to put on the lower-right corner of my 1920x1080 resolution screen. Now, I want to access the context menu, like 'Preferences' for the terminal emulator. So, I'd have to drag the mouse from the lower-right corner all the way to the upper-left corner just so I can click the 'File' menu. I know I can use keyboard shortcuts, but still, it can be annoying for non-maximized windows. But this doesn't mean I will never use Ubuntu again...but then again, with them ads popping up from Dash searches, BY DEFAULT, gets into your nerves quickly.


elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) or Pear OS 7

Both these distros struck me as what I would describe as a 'Mac OSX'-ish looking OSes. I haven't had extensive experience with Mac OSX (except for times when I walk into an iStore -- Apple products resellers where I'm located -- and tinker with their MacBooks on display) so I can't comment much if these 2 OSes indeed work as close as how a Mac OSX machine would work. And I've only tried running both on virtualized environments so I don't have much to comment on with regard to how they would kick it when installed on my physical machine. Both are Ubuntu based, elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) uses 12.04 LTS and Pear OS 7 uses 12.10 (a cue that I will most likely not go with Pear OS 7).

Pear OS 7 is what I would consider to be the closest resemblance to Mac OSX as far as I can say. The dock houses icons which are very, very similar to Mac OSX. I can probably surmise that Pear OS 7 was created as some of distro to be used by transitioning Mac OSX users to Linux (similar to what Zorin OS is to Windows users). It's aesthetically pleasing graphically and it totally screams 'MAC OSX!' to me. And similar to Linux Mint, Pear OS 7 comes with pretty much everything; Quote. "And it comes with thousands of free applications. Pear OS 7 does everything you need it to. It’ll work with your existing PC files, printers, cameras and MP3 players." Unquote. This will probably go very well with new Linux users as well.

elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) is also another distro that looks like Mac OSX at first glance. But what it really is is something simpler. I don't know what's so appealing about it, but I would say the closest adjective I can pin on it is elegant. Like Pear OS 7 (and Mac OSX), it is also dock-centric. What's probably great about this distro is that it follows the "a new version will be released when it's ready" philisophy, similar to that of Debian. That means that you are not "pressured" to update every 6 months to the next release of the distro which makes it somewhat stable in a way. Of course, it's based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) so it will be supported until 2017. Unlike Pear OS 7 which throws everything into the fold, elementary OS has a much more minimalistic approach. It doesn't come with proprietary plugins and modules installed. That makes it somewhat harder for Linux n00bs to use out-of-the-box. It also comes with it's own desktop environment called Pantheon (a port of Gnome 3, I suppose) and it's own applications written from scratch like Scratch text editor.


Conclusion

So, what am I using now? Inasmuch as I'd hoped to use pure Debian, or pure Debian-based (except Ubuntu), distro, I have to say that the Ubuntu-based distros I mentioned above are what's giving me better experiences. As I mentioned, my first fallback right now would be Linux Mint 13 (Maya) but since discovering elementary OS 0.2 (Luna), I decided to give the latter a go. So as of this posting, I am using elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) as my main OS.

External Links:

• Debian (http://www.debian.org)
• CrunchBang (http://www.crunchbang.org)
• Linux Mint (http://www.linuxmint.com)
• Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com)
• Pear OS (http://pearlinux.fr)
• elementary OS (http://elementaryos.org)

Back to Mageia 2

I'm using Mageia 2 again on my primary personal laptop after using Centos 5.8 for more than a month.

The decision was somewhat accidental. I came across this post and I wanted to try it out because I am using a laptop with a 1024x768 resolution. So I installed Debian Wheezy to try that out. Long story short, I was too lazy to configure Xmonad so I decided to just install an out-of-the-box distro.

I was choosing between Mageia and openSUSE. But since I like Mageia (and I have it working on a virtual machine on my work laptop), I decided to go with it. What I have installed now is a vanilla installation of the Mageia KDE and so far, it's working nicely.

It's really awesome that Mageia got my D-Link DWA-125 USB wireless dongle working out of the box which is impressive and helpful since I don't need to install/compile the driver myself.

Mageia 2 and Razor-qt

Well, well, well...I finally managed to get Razor-qt desktop environment on my virtual Mageia 2 box!

After reading this post by user Linux and seeing the screenshots over at Razor-qt website I felt I just had to try it out.

Above is a sample screenshot with a few tweaks done to the panel.

Setting up a wireless nework connection via command line

Update: These commands only works for unsecured SSIDs, apparently (and obviously).

Having set up a working wireless connection to the network, it was time to get it connected. I decided to use the command line way to connect to the network.

[usr@host ~]$ su -
Password:
[usr@host ~]# ifconfig <interface> down
[usr@host ~]# dhclient -r <interface>
[usr@host ~]# ifconfig <interface> up
[usr@host ~]# iwconfig <interface> essid "<essid_in_quotes>"
[usr@host ~]# iwconfig <interface> mode Managed
[usr@host ~]# dhclient <interface>

Getting the DWA-125 Wireless Dongle to Work in CentOS 5.8

I use an old IBM Thinkpad X32 which doesn't come with a built-in wireless networking card. Fortunately, I still have my D-Link DWA-125 wireless USB adapter lying around. I used this on a previous computer before and it didn't let me down. I was hoping that this time around, it wouldn't let me down either; and I can say that it didn't as I am typing this post using the successful setup of a wireless connection. This time around, I am using CentOS 5.8 as my operating system. Here's how I got it working.

Clean Up the GRUB2 Menu

I'm on my Christmas break and so I get to use my personal computer most of the time. I am currently using an Ubuntu run netbook and lately I did a kernel upgrade as per advice of the update manager.

I noticed that the Grub menu at the boot screen is presenting me with way too many choices of the different kernels installed and it looks messy (for me). So today, since I am on vacay and I don't have much to do, I decided to try and clean up the Grub menu. This will not only make the Grub menu look cleaner, it will also remove the unused kernels and recover some disk space.

First up, I had to make sure which is the latest kernel installed so I don't accidentally remove that one. So I went to the command line, issued an command and got a result of the latest kernel installed.

ric@ubuntu-nb:~$ uname -r
2.6.32-27-generic

Dual-Boot Ubuntu and PC-BSD - Part 3: Post Installation and Final Thoughts

So it's early in the morning and finally everything is installed. I don't know exactly if they will work as expected, though.

First boot - Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
The first boot for Ubuntu was as I expected it to be having installed it 2 times prior to this feat. On a fresh install, after setting up the WiFi connection, the Update Manager instantly kicked in presenting me with a whooping 224MB worth of updates. It took close to an hour to get all these updates to install before I went about and did the routine checking if sound worked, setting the display resolution, installing packages, etc. Since I am fairly familiar with Ubuntu, I didn't have a hard time navigating around the system.

Dual-Boot Ubuntu and PC-BSD - Part 2: Installation

After creating the necessary partitions for the 2 *nix OSes, Ubuntu 10.04LTS and PC-BSD 8.0, I proceed with the installation.

Installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
As I am more experienced in installing Ubuntu, having done so many times in the past, it was not really hard to get it installed to the first primary partition on the disk. I ran the live USB I created and clicked the install to hard disk option in the desktop. I subdivided the 1st primary partition further to different mounts, namely: /, /home and swap as is my practice when I install Ubuntu (and I don't exactly know why). The installation took about 20 - 30 minutes for it to get installed in my laptop.