Gnaw

Ok, so I’ve walked a mile in Kubuntu shoes and overall I am mostly impressed with it…

If your main uses for your computer are browsing, Email, some word processing, some spreadsheets, photos, and music, then Kubuntu 8.04 is ready for prime time.

If you are involved in heavy writing and number-crunching, development, GIS, large file operations directly with NTFS and Samba, and other CPU-intensive operations then Kubuntu 8.04 needs some help in the stability department. Reliability of services, error recovery, and file/file archive operations (especially across my mixed wired/wireless network) were revealed to be the Achilles’ heel of Kubuntu 8.04 for me.

Additional problems encountered (that would affect GUI-oriented users especially) are system integration issues between Konqueror and Ark, as well as smb4k.  With Samba set to “share” level access, it still (within KDE on Kubuntu) creates file sharing problems that the average user would be ill-suited to remedy without getting really greasy with the command line and vi (or joe).

The bottom line? For my day-to-day work, I’m not going to be able to use Kubuntu 8.04. But, I am now watching it more closely than ever before. I’d be willing to bet that by the end of the first 18 months of its support life it will be much closer to something I’d be willing to use on my production machine, but this whole sudo thing (even though you can “undo” it) is a real pain…many menu items need to be changed, some things get broken when doing away with sudo, and overall, the one-password-fits-all model continues to make me insane (it simply should NOT be that way!). Time will tell, and I’ll wait and see.

Personally, I’m sticking with SimplyMEPIS 7 for now.

I will happily admit to being a geek. I routinely (daily) scour no less than four logs related to my savagehamsters domain (I also scour my system logs on my Linux boxes on a regular basis, as well as my router, etc.). But, there is a madness to my methods, and that actually has an innate innocuousity of +20. I routinely revise my entries based upon the search referrals I see so that the information more closely matches the majority of the searches I see.

As an example, I recently noticed that my entry on compact fluorescent light bulbs was being linked to, and that more and more searches included the words “smoke” and “mercury.” Seeing those search terms prompted me to do some more research, talk to some of the folks at the companies that make compact fluorescent bulbs, grab an MSDS (Material Data Safety Sheet) on a typical bulb, and generally start a folder of updated info for another entry (all this week). People are looking for information, and I’m certainly up to the task of getting that information and putting it forth (soon, but not today).

Hopefully, that helps illustrate my primary use of my Weblogs. I think more folks could do the same thing and help provide the types of information for which folks are really digging via the various search engines.

I will also admit to occasionally searching for my name on the Internet. Not to see what people are saying about me, however… No, I want to see if someone is posting precious bits of personal information about me that might ease someone else’s path to identity theft. I have actually suffered a minor bout of identity theft (when someone stole my truck, took it for a joyride, and then removed everything from it — they even had a key for The Club on my steering wheel). Since then I have formulated a proactive set of policies to keep up on things, contravene other things, and to head many other things off at the pass (so-to-speak).

So, you can imagine my utter surprise (if not outright revulsion) at finding the following referring Google search in my logs:

“i hate barbilee?” Ohmygawd…and it logged Barbilee’s own little IP address as the searcher.  I would never search the InterTubes to see who hates me…I mean, you are all just a bunch of robots who were sent here to trip me up, and to top all of that, when I go to bed at night the totality of reality simply STOPS. Blame it on the Sarvastivada view of reality that I espouse…It directly relates to the first three laws of thermodynamics and quantum physics as far as my view of the world goes. Weird, I can appreciate, but it is (nevertheless) how I see things.

Besides, it is everyone’s innate right to hate me if they so choose, and I’m not interested in knowing who those folks are, nor am I interested in knowing anything about them.  BMH (Better Mental Health) is not achieved by obsessing about and then google-hunting those who might hate me (or like me, for that matter).

So (and in spite of trying otherwise, I still have to start at least ONE paragraph with “so”), the fact is that I don’t “hate” anyone at all. It is physically and emotionally impossible for me to create and sustain that kind of energy…I can’t do it! (I also hate exclamation points, but am using one right now)

So (again with that “SO”), I checked the IP for the search and found this:

Now, never in my life can I imagine ever even entertaining the thought of searching the InterTubes to see who hates me. I mean, you are all SO robots! Well, except for those of you who are not robots (and you know who you are). The rest of you are all sheeplebots, obviously. Imagine the state of mind that might find itself worrying about who hated it (and its physical container) on the InterTubes… Ok, I can model a few scenarios, but all of them either revolve around self-esteem issues, or extreme paranoia/OCD. It is my basic rule that I assume everyone is doing the absolute best that they are able to do, and I had so hoped that the Famous Barbilee was above this sort of thing, but there is her IP, her search, and on the third page of Google’s response to her search is my site…and she clicked on that link…

I so wanted to believe better about Barbilee. I will keep trying, but this does actually amount to abuse in one sense, and I resent the implications (the presupposition…look that up) of such a search. Moreover, I will continue to forgive her. This kind of thing really hurts me, because I initially give everyone the benefit of the doubt, yet this situation is clearly manifesting itself in a somewhat threatening, if not completely malignant manner.

Good grief, now I have to create two more categories/tags: Drama, and E-drama…

LOLz? Not me.

When I’m installing an operating system on my laptop I usually install it first, and after it is running I set up the wireless. This has always worked for me…in fact, it has made me such a creature of habit to the point of having to re-learn one of those out-of-the-box geek lessons.

I initially installed Kubuntu without being plugged into the network and the only indication that something was wrong during wireless setup was a brief flash of some dialogue saying something about an Adept “batch” job. Getting the Broadcom BCM4318 AirForce One (wireless) to work on Kubuntu turned out to be an elusive (but ultimately resolvable) pain in the arse.

I decided to do some reinstallations and see what was happening, and what wasn’t.

It turns out that when your computer/laptop is plugged into the Internet that it downloads extra packages during the configuration process. There is also an Adept batch job that installs and configures the Broadcom firmware utilities (hence, that briefest flash of a dialogue box).

It is unfortunate that someone did not think to include an error message for the failed Adept batch process, as that would greatly improve the average user’s ability to figure out what went wrong, and where. I have always (personally) hated K/Ubuntu for its “dumbing down” approach to things, but in this case they did their users a very poor service.

Upon further inspection, I found several other things of wonder and amazement…

Surprise, surprise! The built-in ENE Technology Inc SD/MMC card reader now works, which is something I never, ever would have expected. The blue “Fn” volume, screen brightness, mute, touch-pad on/off, screen blank, and sleep buttons work, along with the on-screen displays for those that would typically show that type of info. I don’t make use of sleep, so my laptop was not set up for such a thing and could not properly restart from standby (no standby image/partition, no doubt).

Another pleasant surprise was when I realized that Kubuntu 8.04 saved and restored my screen brightness settings from one session to another.

So, before you install Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (especially on a laptop), plug in that network cable!

Another thing to consider if you are having installation problems while Kubuntu is trying to create the installation partition. I typically partition my disk for / (ext3), /swap (Linux-swap), and /home (ext3). Turns out that Kubuntu did not know how to deal with that (even though I clearly told it) and decided to install everything in / and then complain about a shortage of disk space in /home.

I figured, Ok, I’ll just create /swap (Linux-swap) and / (ext3), and install that way. Kubuntu coughed out an error at the “creating ext3″ step (both automagic and manual installs). I deleted the partitions and all went as advertised (it went well). Just some notes that might be helpful to someone.

If you are interested in seeing what Spring has brought, I’ve put up photos of some of the things that are doing their things in the yard. You know, flowers and plants and stuff…

http://www.savagehamsters.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=319

I still have to edit the photos to add descriptions.

Like clockwork, from approximately 13:00 to 14:45 PDT, three to five days each work week I am treated to a spectacle that nearly banishes me from the north side of my house. It wouldn’t be so bad if I lived at street level, but I live on a bit of a hill, so I am witness to entirely too much.

To really rub my nose in the matter, they seem to have the uncanny ability to park within inches of a single spot every time…so the view does not change (nor do the characters). First the jeep pulls up and parks, then a little Kia pulls up and parks. Then the Jeep person talks to the Kia person, then gets into the Kia, then they begin…hot, Hot, HOT action ensues. I can no longer do the lunch dishes, and I wish I had blinds or curtains on that side of the house.

I left a little postit note on the window exhorting the “coolness” of doing “it” somewhere else, but they didn’t see me (that was weeks ago, mind you), and they didn’t even notice me walk out there to put it on the jeep. I figured another note on the window with a couple extra “really, really’s” on it, and “COOL” instead of “cool.” They didn’t even notice. They aren’t even 50-feet away from the school…and today as I went from one room to another I could NOT miss that oh-so-familiar movement of forearms… Good grief, guys, take it somewhere else, I am tired of part of my yard being held hostage by hot action nearly every day.

I am a live, and let-live kind of guy, but this is so obvious, so frequent, and SO in the middle of a very active neighborhood…can’t they take their day-loving somewhere a bit more private? Am I being unreasonable? It certainly isn’t that I’m too nosy, because they put it right in front of two of my windows on the north side of my house — it cannot be avoided if I want to do anything outside or in the kitchen (and you have to walk through the kitchen to get to either side of the house).

Is street sex normal in your neighborhood?

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dp

The machine in question is an Acer Aspire 5315-2122. It comes with the Mobile Intel (965, I believe) Media Accelerator x3100, a 2.0 GHz Celeryon 550 CPU, 1gig of DDR2 RAM, an 80gig HDD, and (drum-roll) an Atheros ar242x-based 802.11g (and b) wireless card. I had been setting it up for a friend… It appears they don’t want it now (gosh, what will I do?).

I got the little beastie and did what I always do… I deleted EVERY virus-absorbing partition on the hard disk and then created a Linux Swap partition and an EXT3 partition. Then I installed my primary distro of choice for laptops (Xandros 4.1).

It was pretty sad. It was your typical intel-hda sound, but this had an extra “H” in the model number, and nothing would make it happy. Sound is one of my prerequisites, and this was the first time Xandros ever failed me with such extreme prejudice. So, I moved on to my secondary distro of choice (SimplyMEPIS), but this turned out to be more of the same, and then some.

Truth be told, I mostly use MEPIS everywhere, now.

Considering that the two distros that never fail me had become intractable pains on this Aspire 5315 (-2122), I opted to try some of the distros I absolutely hate (Fedora and SuSE). The Redhat kernel still pisses me off with its flighty temperament, RPM management still sucks sour owl doodie, and SuSE never could get through a complete install without spontaneously rebooting. People crow and laud YAST, but to me it is Yet Another Silly Try at something that Debian has had right for a long, long time.

I searched my soul about my next move, and decided to give the evil stepsister to the even more Evile Ubuntu a try…that would be Kubuntu…

Since I’d already tried the hoary roadkill and all of its predecessors, I decided it was time to give the Hardly Heron, or Kubuntu 8.04, a try.

Now, I know that the Holy Church of the OS Faithful™ are going to descend upon me like a hoard of locusts, and the People’s Republic of Linux™ henchboiz will be in full ridiculosity, but I have some fair gripes with the K/X/Edu/Mythu/Buzillib/Ubuntu offshoot of Debian. Aside from the fact that none of them have ever gotten my hardware right (even when I configured them in precisely the manner required), the reliance of ONE password to use AND administer a computer goes against every fiber in my security-geek soul. Worse, the reliance on sudo to be the PRIMARY (single-password) admin gatekeeper is utterly whacked.

People can say what they want, but my concerns are valid and well beyond proof-of-concept (additionally, I’ve got 21+ some-odd years of using POSIX-compliant operating systems — UNIX, XENIX, AIX, and MINIX — under my belt, and I’ve been computing for 30 years). I don’t care that I can’t log in to a window manager session as root, because I NEVER do that. I do care that all administration happens through sudo, and with the same password as the user logon…

That password situation is completely unacceptable to me. Sure, I’ve read all the forums, the pundits, the Ubuntu faithful, and they have yet to actually prove that their security model is better than a totally separate root account with a totally different password and totally kicking sudo out of the sole admin middleman position. Nothing they can say will change the reality here. I mean NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, ZED, ZIPPO, DEGIL BU! They say “you’ll get used to it and then you’ll never want to go back.” BAH! FEH! PUH! I know what I like and I know why I like it, and I’m not budging.

Now, with that out and in the open (just so everyone knows where I’m coming from…not that I’m opinionated, mind you), I burned the Kubuntu…oh, wait…there’s one more thing…

GNOME SUCKS! (just so you know how I really feel about it) It is like computing with dark glasses in a room without windows (and with flickering, overhead fluorescent lighting) whilst wearing arctic mittens. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some great ideas in Gnome, it just means that, overall, I think it sucks. I keep checking it out, and it just keeps on sucking (but it does have some little sparklies-of-goodness inside of it, and it is clear that the developers have it thoroughly thought-out…just not for me). Some people really LOVE Gnome, and I’m glad it exists for them (honestly, I am). The freedom to choose is good!

Now, back to that new Kubuntu 8.04 (beta, I believe) CD… Fresh off the burner, and newly labelled, I popped that puppy into the Aspire 5315 (-2122), selected “Install,” and let it rip. And, for the first time ever (make that EVER), it not only found everything, it configured 94ish% of it. The unconfigured 6% was the Atheros ar242x wireless. It made a valiant try with madwifi, but it couldn’t do it.

I downloaded madwifi 0.9.4 and compiled it and that failed as well. I believe that someone in the SimplyMEPIS forum has patched 0.9.4, but I left all those tabs in Firefox when I closed its window. Either way, madwifi needs to be patched before the ar242x (5007) wifi card will work.

So, I installed ndiswrapper and found three different XP drivers for the Atheros 5007ish wireless card. Only one of them worked well, and it worked (works) very, very well (one of them locked up Kubuntu so harshly that I had to give it the ten-second-finger-of-death. I don’t remember the last time I had to do that for something like ndiswrapper. It didn’t dump the core, and I haven’t checked to see if the kernel in Kubuntu is set to do that. I was especially grateful to see the knetwork manager kicker applet make a kwallet request for privs (and it continues to ask every time I boot it, which is a definite plus in my book).

With a minor amount of hacking I got sudo to accept a password that is not my user password, so I can live with this situation (but with a bad taste in my mouth). My level of snark on this matter will not be diminished!!!!11!!!one!!

What to say about Kubunut 8.04? I mean, I guess that really is the crux of all this nonsense here, so I need to come clean…

Damn, I think Ubuntu finally got it right, nearly all of it! Kubuntu 8.04 really rocks the desktop. Adept is a little bit quirky to me, but it is clear enough about most of the things it is doing, and the deb packaging system is nearly perfect (especially compared to rpm). I have some minor concern about stability with the newer kernel, but time will tell, and that is easy enough to correct as more people start using it. I will say that if you are installing Kubuntu on a machine with built-in wireless you should leave the network cable connected long enough to install ndiswrapper. I also think that the average K/Ubuntu user will benefit from the installation of the GTK frontend for ndiswrapper (it eliminates the command line entirely, which I believe most people will appreciate). I saw the GTK frontend listed when I searched Adept for “ndiswrapper,” so I know it is there for 8.04.

I am happy (surprised, actually) to say that I have finally made peace with the K/ubuntu family, and I am thoroughly enjoying using Kubuntu 8.04 on the laptop that my friend no longer wants (so sad).

I now feel that Kubuntu is mature enough to become a Linux Desktop superhero, and I have no qualms about recommending release 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to anyone. Just don’t tell my friends that I said that. Bravo Zulu, Ubuntu Folks!

Kubuntu:
http://www.kubuntu.org/

That XP driver that worked for me with ndiswrapper:
Atheros_5007EG_wlan_drivers.zip

madwifi:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82936

EDIT: 02 May 2008

So far, so good. I’m going to spend a couple months giving it a thorough workout and see how it goes.

EDIT: 05 May 2008

Items to check out and cover with Kubuntu 8.04 and my Acer Aspire 5315-2122:

• NIC
• Wireless
• Modem
• Video
• Audio
• DVD/CD writing/reading
• DVD playing
• Codecs
• PDBV listing
• MIME file types supported, or that can be supported with additional install
• Performance
• Battery life
• Stability/recovery
• Miscellaneous stuff that only I would likely care about

No sooner I’d said it,
Hell had to be paid;
Sanctimonious bombastics,
Via Email relayed;

Computing as religion,
More rancid with age;
Bleating fanboy derision,
Affecting smug envisage;

In thirty, short years,
Not one thing has changed;
The names and the rancor,
Flames from the deranged;

PET versus Trash-80,
VIC-20 and more;
Amiga, Atari ST,
Commodore 64;

MINIX, X, Motif,
Sixteen-bit, twenty-four;
Bitmap, JPEG, GIF,
PC standards and lore;

Win3 and its Workgroups,
DOS stole CP/M;
WinME…a big-whoops,
68k from Big-M;

AMD and Cyrix,
IBM, Motorola;
Intel chip hysterics,
My chipset will floor’ya;

Not Vista, but XP,
KDE, but not Gnome;
MacOS is so EZ,
Linux ain’t for the home;

The flames they are not new,
The arguments — so old;
Posturing ’til they turn blue,
The keyboard makes bold;

They’ll deride and abuse you,
OS-Gods rip you to tatters;
They miss what is most true,
It just doesn’t matter!


Wally Wilson
06April2008 @ 1629 - First Draft
06April2008 @ 1817 - Second Draft

P.S. - This is my response to the Emails from a few fanboi flamers