Linux on a Compaq Contura Aero!

Left: HP 200LX

There have been many greats in the palmtop/subnotebook/ultralight world. The Toshiba Libretto, with its videocassette footprint, was one. The HP 200LX was another, with its extensive DOS compatibility and twenty-plus hour lifespan on two double AA batteries. The IBM Thinkpad X series, with their tiny size yet superior power, and, of course, OpenBSD compatibility, as the machines most compatible with this
operating system, was another. The svelte NEC Ultralite, the first of the "notebooks", also was one, as it was on the first of these tiny laptops. However, like the NEC, one of the first "notebooks," perhaps on of the first inexpensive, color, Windows ones, was the Compaq Contura Aero. Though a 25-33 MHz 486 :P, the Aero is very thin and light for a notebook. It has a teeny VGA screen that is usually color but may be grayscale. And, even better, it will run Linux! Slackware, Debian, and (early?) versions of RedHat, apparently. Also early versions of NetBSD (1.5.2, etc.) may work. I don't know exactly what the compatibility is, but I think NetBSD would likely run it. Here are some sites with more information:

http://www.alvestrand.no/linux/aero-faq.html#TOC

FAQ on Aero Linux (Slackware)

http://hamsterrepublic.com/james/linux/contura-aero.php

More stuff on installing Linux (Debian) on the Aero. Also some basic facts on the Contura Aero.
Here is a picture from the site comparing a Thinkpad 600, JetBook, and a Contura Aero:


















http://www.xmission.com/~bgeer/laptop_aero.html
An experience of installing RedHat on an Aero.

The Return

I'll begin intensely (hopefully) blogging again tommorrow. I have gotten through four exams at school and have one to go, in Geometry. Things are going well, and I still working with my NetBSD machine. I think I may upgrade it 3.0.1. I am also continuing to use gcc. I also may get a Toshiba Libretto or HP 200LX for Christmas, so I will tell you about that if I get it. As for Harry, he is doing well, and, in fact, has installed iPodlinux on his 5G iPod. He is happily playing DOOM on it today. I still use SDF, although I have started to use it more recently. In fact, I am logged in as guofu right now. Overall, everything is well. I look forward to more posting. Maybe Harry will talk a little bit about his iPod, too.

xatapu

Notice

I am so sorry for not updating the blog in so long. But I will be able to soon. Unfortunately over the next week and a half, I will have to prepare for and take final semester exams at school. This will hamper my blogging and Harry's. I will have a couple of articles today, but probably not many until winter break. Just remember this when you see little updating on the blog. Hopefully I will find sometime later to keep posting.

Sincerely,
xatapu

Update

Sorry I never updated the blog last week. I was gone in Chicago, where it costs 10 dollars per IP address you visit with a hotel's ethernet connection ;) . So I couldn't update the blog there. I will cover what I wanted to last week and also will find some photos, finally, to put into a post. Expect fewer posts in the next three weeks because of final semester exams.

Regards,
xatapu

The 7th Edition, Updates

I am sorry that I haven't updated the blog for so long. I have been very sick with a high fever. I am getting over it now, fortunately. I will continue to work on it this week, hopefully on the road as well as I will be in Chicago for the rest of the week on a trip. I will go back to what I was posting about and will probably include more images. Harry pointed that out last Tuesday. Next, I will begin the 7th edition of the blog on Sundays instead of Wednesdays to align writing it with my schedule and make it more convenient to look through the archives. Wow. More than a month of posting :)

The 100th Post....finally!

Finally, after a month of writing, I have hit 100 posts. I remember when I hit 20 posts sometime ago. I have covered C to commands to ports and even to desktop environments. I am also glad that I have had such a great coauthor as Harry is to contribute to the blog as well. He has added numerous useful reviews and bits of information. Insmod, still, however, has not added a single post since he joined me. I look forward to more writing and learning and (with hope) more development of my Unix skills. Maybe some inetd, httpd, and dhclient experiences in the future.................

xatapu

The df command

Do you want to see how much stupid space you have chucked full of lard since you first partitioned your hard drive? Do you not like stat's strange responses? Then use the df command. Short for disk-free, this command shows how large your Unix partition is and how much space is left within it. This is one of the simplest Unix commands.

Cool UBUNTU Image

Haha, I feel like I'm becoming the multimedia person for this blog...

Well here is a cool ubuntu picture/poster thing I found on the 'net.

Very nice!



-Harry

Another new blog......

Today I will be founding a new blog about my Palm III. It will be update once a week at most. I look forward to writing it. When I have created it and started posting on it I will add its address to the sidebar or in a post. I will still keep updating this blog, though............

Distributions

Also over the next month I will talk about distributions. I have only talked about Knoppix and NetBSD, generally, but soon I will talk about others. The first I plan to discuss is Debian, which I believe I will today, if not tommorrow. I will also describe other types of Unix and Linux. Among these will be FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Ubuntu. I will likely get to use Xfce with Xubuntu soon. I also might try out FreeBSD and/or OpenBSD. Stay tuned for more details.

Command posts

For sometime I will be focusing on particular commands and utilities that can be used at the shell prompt. I have already began an article on mt, and plan to add ones on tcopy, rndctl, wsconsctl (I think that's the right spelling), df, gzip, cron, inetd, motd, rmail, etc. Mt and tcopy, specifically, are very interesting because they are tape drive commands. Anyway, posts on those commands and others will come up soon.

xatapu

Archives

If you are new to this blog, feel free to look through the archives. I have plenty of posts on every thing from Apple machines to vi to zsh (well, not yet zsh). Also please subscribe to the blog's feed. I think the one on the main page doesn't work, so go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/unixcomputing and subscribe there. I will also have that link up in the sidebar very soon.

Almost to the 100th post......

Wow. It has been more than four weeks since I began this blog. You may remember the time I put up the 20th post. Now I am reaching to one hundred. Probably by this Friday I will reach that goal. I am looking forward to it. So far I believe we have 91 posts.

Cool packages: bb

bb is a library for creating very advanced ASCII-based graphics. I learned this from insmod. I have also done a bit more research about it, and apparently looks like a demo of the AA library. AA is an "ASCII-art" library, and it is portable to many different platforms. I don't know much about it, so hopefully insmod will get a chance to put something up about it. For more information go to: http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/. This is the library's project page and has lots of info about it. It, of course, also provides a source download and describes the library.

News

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to post to the blog much this week. I will not have access to the Internet that often. I will try to continue next week.

Edition 6

Yes, the sixth edition of the blog. I have now decided to start on Sundays instead of Wednesdays, so today is the first day of the new edition. I also plan to have even more output each week than before. Also there will be more "hands-on" use coverage as I have started getting more time to use my Gateway machine and am getting a very cheap modem to login to SDF with my Palm Pilot.

A few Palm Photos

Okay, these are not mine, but they are of a Palm III.

The mt command

As I told you earlier, just yesterday I discovered the mt command. I know mv, but mt? Well, I then did a man on it. Mt........what the...........magnetic tape control?! I don't believe this! I can control a tape drive from a PC! I can send commands to it! The last time I did this was with a really old Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Hmmm......I might explore this........

Anyway, let's get back to mt. Its syntax is mt [ -f tapename ] command [ count ]. Command and count will be explained shortly. The tape selecting option is -f, which selects the raw tape device. I believe /dev/rmt is the /dev folder for this. There are also a number of operands for mt. Here are some of them from http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?mt+1, a online copy of the UNIX man pages:

count - The number of times that the requested operation is to be performed. By default, mt performs command once. Multiple operations of command may be performed by specifying count.

command - Available commands that can be sent to a magnetic tape drive. Only as many characters as are required to uniquely identify a command need be specified.

eof, weof - Write count EOF marks at the current position on the tape.

fsf - Forward space over count EOF marks. The tape is positioned on the first block of the file.

fsr - Forward space count records.

bsf - Back space over count EOF marks. The tape is positioned on the beginning-of-tape side of the EOF mark.

bsr - Back space count records.

nbsf - Back space count files. The tape is positioned on the first block of the file. This is equivalent to count+1. bsf's followed by one fsf.

asf - Absolute space to count file number. This is equivalent to a rewind followed by a fsf count.

(the next section is from http://www.computerhope.com/unix/umt.htm)

If count is specified with any of the following commands, the count is ignored and the command is performed only once.

eom - Space to the end of recorded media on the tape. This is useful for appending files onto previously written tapes.

rewind - Rewind the tape.

offline, rewoffl - Rewind the tape and, if appropriate, take the drive unit off-line by unloading the tape. It cycles through all four tapes.

status - Print status information about the tape unit.

retension - Rewind the cartridge tape completely, then wind it forward to the end of the reel and back to beginning-of-tape to smooth out tape tension.

reserve - Allow the tape drive to remain reserved after closing the device. The drive must then be explicitly released.

release - Re-establish the default behavior of releasing at close.

forcereserve - Break the reservation of the tape drive held by another host and then reserve the tape drive. This command can be executed only with super-user privileges.

erase - Erase the entire tape. Erasing a tape may take a long time depending on the device and/or tape. Refer to the device specific manual for time details.

Good, but a bit complicated and technical, as far as explanations. I guess an example (for those of you with tape drives out there) might be:

mt erase - erase the tape in the drive found at /dev/rmt0.

mt -f $RMT_NR eof 1 - Mark the end of the tape.

Very cool. Again, these are just probable examples of mt.

For more info, you can go to that man page I mentioned earlier. Another good place for learning about tapes and Unix is http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/tapes.html. Also you can go to http://www.computerhope.com/unix/umt.htm for more info on use and syntax. That link also provides a link to a page on tcopy, a command I will be discussing soon. Enjoy!

Explorations in /bin and /sbin

Well, after being bored at the # prompt for sometime, I decided to look through the /bin and /sbin folders and find out what some of the stuff in those places do. Well, hmmm....theres mt, rndctl, wsconsctl, echo, rmail, and lots of other stuff. Let's man mt...........WHAT? magnetic tape control? Cool.......Hey, maybe I'll describe mt in the next command post.

My Palm III

All is well so far with my Palm III. I am getting used to Graffiti, and now I have a few games, a Logo interpreter, a Scheme compiler, and a Tcl console on my Palm. Pretty weird, huh? The games are Palm's own HardBall and SubHunt. I especially like its great battery life. Just two AAAs for weeks. I will have a photo of it next week, along, hopefully, with the PC photos I keep forgetting. I also plan to add a modem to it and...............login to a Unix server! Yes, I can do that, too! Unfortunately, I can't install Linux on it. I just need one of those little plastic sheets to keep my Palm from getting scratched..........

Cool packages: Gnuchess

Do you like to play chess? Do you want to learn to play chess? Are you sick of staring at the #, %, $, or > prompt? Then Gnuchess may be for you. This is Gnu's own version of chess. It is pretty simple, and can have both simple graphics and can be totally text based. I have not used this package much but I have gotten this through pkgsrc with several variations included. I plan to use this to play chess and as a break after I type. Overall, a nice, simple game package.

Desktop Environments: KDE

Of all desktop environments, KDE, by far is the most simple and intuitive. It has an resemblance to Windows. However, it is also fairly ugly and inefficient. However, other than X, which I once used with twm, it is about the only desktop environment that I have used. I plan to try out GNOME and Xfce, which I have seen running once in a Xubuntu distribution, fairly soon.

This brings me to another point. I have begun a new article for the blog called Desktop Environments. Later will be reviews of other environments, including Xfce and GNOME. I will probably begin with Xfce, but I don't know for sure. I will also go into depth about particular packages and features of each of the next environments.

Spotlight: OpenBSD

Among the major branches of the BSD group of Unixes is OpenBSD, which, according to a April 2006 survey conducted by the BSD Certification Group among 4330 BSD users on various mailing lists, is the second most popular type of BSD (from OpenBSD Wikipedia article). I may, in fact, install this on my new laptop. But I am still thinking. After all, it did take me hours to finally install NetBSD, and that was NetBSD. Anyway. OpenBSD is highly portable, but not quite as portable as NetBSD. What OpenBSD is famous for is security. It is highly encryptable and has many features to help with securing servers and web pages. It is a simple and spartan but secure operating system. I will think about it........tell me what you think of it as well............
If you want to get it, there are a number of places to download it on iso images and through BitTorrent. Have fun and be safe. :)

Unix today: NetBSD update!

As of November 4, NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.1 have been released. Earlier I told you about the beta version 3.1RC4. Now 3.1 was has been released as an update. For details on the new update, go to this webpage: http://www.netbsd.org/Releases/formal-3/NetBSD-3.1.html.

xatapu

Election Results

Okay, again this is not a political blog. But just today I have learned that the Democrats lead the Republicans in the House with more than 30 seats! Wow. That has never happened in Congress since the year I was born (1994). Also, more importantly, Sherrod Brown has defeated incumbent Mike DeWine! Congratulations Sherrod!

Edition 5: Big Changes

Let's see. Already this blog has been updated for four weeks, with nearly 80 posts. We're now on the fifth, beginning this Wednesday, November 8. As for insmod, I am still waiting for a few columns from him. Harry has had some good ones, though. Although my blog has always changed rapidly, there are some large ones today. First, I will not be having particular 'themes' any more asthey are more constrained. Second, I am going to increase publishing and posting. Last week had the lowest on record, with only 11 posts. Third, I will try to dig a bit deeper and maybe get more "reader's responses" now.

Packages: Lynx

Okay. Picture this: You have just fallen into a dumpster near a university, when suddenly you feel a hard metal object slap you. You dig through the trash, and fined that is a DECstation from the early 1990s. Well, cool find, you think, but there's no internet with it! Wrong! With the help of Lynx, NetBSD/pmax, and perhaps a telnet connection, you can use the internet. Lynx itself is a text-based internet browser for Unix and many other operating systems. It is totally free and can also be downloaded through pkgsrc.

Guestbook and Banner Ads

I hope to get an update from Harry about the banner ads. I will also be adding a guestbook to the blog very, very, soon. Perhaps a tagboard also.............well, space is already pretty much filled in already.

Election Day

Okay, this is not a political blog. I am pretty much apolitical myself. However, I happen to live in Ohio, where there are several highly competitive races, including the Senate race. I have been watching these races fairly closely over the last month or so. Particularly I hope that Sherrod Brown wins over Mike DeWine in the senatorial race.

Ports: Debian on a m68k Mac!

Hello again. I have just found out about the coolest thing. It is possible to put Linux on a Mac. Okay, an older Mac. Go here for more details: http://www.jagshouse.com/Linux68k.html.
I will have more details on m68k Linux and Unix later on.

Palm devices

I got a Palm III about a year ago and didn't use it much then, but now I am getting back to it. I always had hated Grafitti, but then again I never practiced it. I know am starting to get Grafitti better. I also have found a few compilers (!) and interpreters for programming on it. They are LispMe, PtCon, and TinyLogo. The first and second are Lisp (Scheme) and Tcl interpreters. I also have put a few games on it. If only there was PalmBSD!

New digs: g++

Well, I haven't done much with C for some time now, so I guess I should be getting back to it. I have started again with base conversion now. I have experimented with an example interest-rate program which uses loops to print the interest on a sum over a period of time according to simple interest, or I=prt. I am now writing a base-conversion program and also plan to write a program for finding the viscosity of a fluid based on the fluid's shear stress and shear rate or velocity gradient as in a laminar shear experiment. Simple for now, but more will come.

Morphing Animation

Hey guys,
This is pretty off topic but it is really puzzling me. I use Photoshop pretty frequently and I have been noticing something around the 'net and I can't figure out how to do it. The topic is basically morphing photo animation, I will give 2 examples here:




So there they are. You could take those into Photoshop (or Gimp ;) ) and see whats happening. If you figure out how to do this please post a comment or leave me a message or something. I would really like to know how to do this.

Thanks so much in advance,
Harry

P.S.
Sorry if the second picture offends you, its nothing personal, it was just one of the only pictures like these I could find :)

Update: Notebooks

Good news! I have found a good notebook. My aunt happened to have a HP Pavilion zt1000 with a dim TFT which she was giving up for this reason. Although I really hate HPs, I still took it because I needed a basic notebook. Now I have nearly fixed it thanks to a new CCFL tube. I will have updates about installing Ubuntu, Gnoppix, NetBSD, or maybe Debian on it. Also more posts on Unix use will be coming up.

Blog Update

I have added some new stuff to the blog. I have updated the layout formatting thingy, for one thing, and I have added and changed other stuff with the blog. I have added a few more links, some ads, a list of my labels (for each post) and a new background. Enjoy!

Spotlight: pkgsrc

The main package distibution system for NetBSD and many other (free) operating systems is pkgsrc. Before it existed, packages were not standardized and much less organized. However, today pkgsrc has standardized and distributed packages for more than 10 operating systems and has more than 5000 packages. It has standardized both binary and source distributions for many operating systems. For more information, go to http://www.netbsd.org where there is more info about pkgsrc.

Gnoppix

Hello again. I have searched for some time on Google and have found a distribution of Knoppix that uses GNOME. I think I might install this on a laptop if I find one. I understand from a reader's comment that GNOME is much cleaner than KDE.

Programming: gcc

Three reasons to install Linux or Unix on a PC: first, hear no Microsoft, smell no Microsoft, see no Microsoft; second, GNOME; third, gcc. Gcc is the GNU Compiler Collection, a universal Unix compiler that can compile just about everything from C to Fortran to Ada to Assembly to 00010111010100. It ships with most, if not all, Unix and Linux distros. I have been using to learn C, which is much easier under Unix. But you can still use it for many other things. In fact, I can compile machine-independent code with it. Later I will tell you more about personal experiences and programs I have compiled with gcc and g++.

Update: Photos

Sorry that I still haven't added some photos of my PC. I will really try to get them soon, though.

Ports: NetBSD/hpcmips

Are you sick of Windows CE? Do you want a tiny Linux machine? Do you like rubbery, plasticky keyboards? Then this port is for you. NetBSD/hpcmips is a port of NetBSD for MIPS-based WinCE palmtops. About the only model which I saw it running on that is worth getting is the NEC MobilePro 790. But, still, it looks pretty cool. You get X with that little platter, too.

Hmmm....notebooks

Let's see........A computer, no outlet, a car, a Gnoppix CD, a floppy with Turbo Pascal and Turbo C...a couple of AA batteries....hmmmm.......AH! I know a possible solution to this problem - a notebook or a laptop. I think a notebook, though; I carry way too much each day in my backpack. Let's see...ooh...Fujitsu LifeBook.....too expensive.....HP 200LX....nice, but still a bit pricey....Ah, NEC Mobilepro.....Windows CE, yuck! Wait, yes! The Fujitsu Poqet PC Plus! This place called California Digital still has a bunch of them for 159 bucks. Well, that's about as much as my entire life's savings ;) but still.... A PCMCIA slot, nice little keyboard, hmmmm... Maybe this will be a good choice.

Programming: libcdaudio

Have you ever wanted to use the CD-ROM or -RW drive of your computer for audio in a program? Do you want to write a CD player program for your Unix machine? Then I have the library for you. Libcdaudio is a general purpose library for using audio cds in your programs. To get it through pkgsrc, go here:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/README-all.html

.....although it seems to not be working right now and search for libcdaudio.

Blogger Beta Problems

Sorry, but I couldn't update the blog yesterday. I couldn't login. Now, however, I will be able to update the blog. Does anyone else share these experiences?

Unix today: SGI emerges from bankruptcy!

I know this is sort of old news, but on October 17th, Silicon Graphics emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company's market share was being eaten by Apple and other companies that were strongly competing with SGI. SGI plans to end its mips line this December, and will use a new platform next year.

Programming: Java and jdk/NetBSD

I am sure that many of you have heard of the language Java. It is an object-oriented programming language first introduced by Sun Microsystems. It is often used for scripting in applets online. I don't know much of it, but we learn it each week at the WHHS Computer Club. A good tutorial for Java that I use and the Computer Club as well uses can be found at http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSjav. Now, for NetBSD and pkgsrc compatibility.

The pkgsrc/NetBSD page for jdk does not work. However, after doing some googling, I have found another link for downloading jdk, located here: http://www.duh.org/NetBSD/java2/.

This is a download page for the Java 2 SDK (Software Development Kit). It is big, though (44 MB, I think). And that's compressed. Make sure you have space for it.

Edition 4: November

Yes! I have kept this blog going into November. Next week the theme will be programming and libraries. However, I will have one postponed Java article published tomorrow.

Desktop Environments

The thing that finally got Linux off the ground was not sash :) but a GUI called GNOME created by a young programmer named Miguel de Icaza. GNOME is an example of a desktop environment or GUI. They make computing more fun but, as I say, slower. X is also a desktop environment. I personally prefer Xfce, but I also think KDE is cool. What environment do you use? Why? Tell us about it.

New Stuff; Return to Computing with Unix

Hello, this is xatapu. I apologize for not posting for several days, and thankfully Harry covered that. I am back, ready to discuss Unix and Sun and Java and whatever else you want. I will have a new post about Java and another one about Debian and another one on....um....well.......you'll see.

Command of the week: tar

Sorry I haven't gotten back to posting in sometimes. Anyway, this week's command is tar. Tar, course, stands for TApe aRchive. It is used to compress files into an archive. Its basic syntax goes like this:

tar file.tar file1 file2 file3

What to me is amazing about tar is its vast expanse of options. You can dump directly to a disk in a drive (-cvfz) and do many other interesting things with tar. For the most part, some basic tar functions are -x, extract, -c, create (new archive), -f, file (set tarfile name), -u, update, -t, which leaves a table of contents, and -r, replace. Here are some examples:

tar -xf /foo/capio.tar /foo

Extract the contents of capio.tar into the folder foo.

tar -cvfz /dev/rfd0a prog1.c newstuff.vi httpd.conf

Tar takes over the floppy drive (in NetBSD in this case) and directly writes the following three files to the floppy. It can be change to burn a CD, though, I think.

Still, this is only a basic tutorial. For more, try this site - http://www.computerhope.com/unix/utar.htm

xatapu

Banner Ads

I am in the process of creating some banner ads for the blog. So once I'm done I'm hoping people will be able to post them everywhere they can!



-Harry

Another Microsoft Joke

I have been finding some really funny Microsoft jokes. This might just be a frequent section...

What is the difference between Jurassic Park and Microsoft? One is an over-rated high tech theme park based on prehistoric information and populated mostly by dinosaurs, the other is a Steven Spielberg movie.

Funny Microsoft Joke

I heard this joke and I thought it was funny. So I decided to post it:

One man said "Have you heard that if someone plays the Windows disc backwards it plays satanic messages. Scary, eh."
The other man says "Thats nothing, I heard that if someone plays it forward they actually intentionally install Windows! Now thats scary!"

Ok, not so funny but whatever...

-Harry

"NetBSD for a Linux guy"

Hello. I have found an interesting article about a Linux user's experience with NetBSD. It is located here: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/21/2215207&mode=thread. It highlights some of NetBSD's features and describes its compatibility and installation fairly well. Good read overall.

StatCounter

For those wondering about the little number lying at the lower right hand corner of the sidebar, it is a hit counter provided by StatCounter. So far the blog has been seen 52 times since I added it.

Using KDE, GNOME and X with NetBSD

Okay, so you probably understand that I only use the shell. Just bash, that's right. Now I have decided to install X and, especially, KDE on my machine. To install X, I believe that you simply install it as is comes distributed on the cd (the i386/Amnesiac port). X is required for KDE, I think. So install it as sysinst will tell you. For me, it messed up my installation of 2.1, so I just forgot about it and stuck with the shell. Maybe 3.0.1 or, sometime soon, 3.1, will handle it. Next, for KDE.

I know that you can download KDE from the pkgsrc collection on the NetBSD website. However, I am still reading about how I might want to install it. Let's see.........Google Groups........pkgsrc.org..................ah.......NetBSD's package collection. I guess that you just have to install it according to a makefile in the package. The same I think is true for GNOME.

Cool packages: Audacity

Audacity is a sound recorder, editor and player for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix. It is open source and can be freely downloaded through SourceForge. It can do a number of things with sounds, and can handle a great number of formats. I have not used Audacity, but I plan to. For more info, go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net.

Sun Workstations

I also like Sun machines very much. Sun has been building workstations for over twenty years, and they have developed greatly over the years. My father as well like the once he used at the time of the SPARCstation. Today the Ultra, Blade, Fire, and Enterprise have been released. My favorite machines are the Ultra series ones. On the left is a Sun Ultra 5. It is running Debian in the photo. (Source: http://freeio.org/pix/valentine.jpg)

Dot TK

Just a quick post:

I have secured us the name Computing With Unix on .tk

It may not be up yet but here's the link http://www.computingwithunix.tk/

I made it so it is a little easier to get to the blog.

Cya,
Harry

News From Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Today my dad went to a seminar thing featuring the chairman of Sun Microsystems. This is what my dad told me:

• Apparently Java will be open source next week!
• "Sun" wants to bring all textbooks to the 'net. Eliminating all textbook costs for schools and also taking pounds of students backs!
• Apparently they are releasing a Wiki site that will have lots of textbook stuff. I'm not totally sure about details.
• They also want all textbooks on cell phone like devices or something like that.
• What did the chairman say when my dad asked him what he thought was problem the biggest problem with education today? He said he did not like the fact that college was 4 years (or more) straight. He thought people should do a year of college, work in a job, go to college, work in job etc. etc. etc.

Thats about all I can remember right now. If I get more info I will be sure to post it.

Edition 3

Yes! Today we will begin the third edition of the blog. So far we have had 48 posts and 2 comments. Still not at 50! The other contributors and I will continue to improve the blog, but still keep the qualities the blog has now.

New to the Blog?

Hello, xatapu of "Computing with Unix" here. Today I would like to introduce the blog and tell you a little bit about what the other contributors, Harry and insmod, and I have worked on here.
First, I will tell you that this is a blog about Unix and Linux in general. It is updated daily, with new editions coming out weekly. We now are on our third edition, since the blog's debut on October 11. The next edition will come out on November 1. We talk about various specific areas from time to time, but we stick mainly to this topic. We are also strong open source supporters. I specialize in Unix, as in shell Unix, and programming, insmod is a Linux expert, and Harry is Mac person with a little experience with Linux. As far as catagories of topics, we talk about distributions, programming, general use, news, ports of Unix, software reviews, different operating systems and movements, specific commands, and much more. As far as columns, there's "Command of the week," "Unix today," "Cool packages," "Spotlight," (coming soon) "Distributions," "New digs," and "Ports." I also have decided to have "themes" on some weeks about different things, such as operating systems or companies. This week I will be covering Sun and Java as a theme. Next week KDE, GNOME and other desktop environments might be discussed as a theme. In general, this is a blog concerning most Unix, Linux, and open source.

Again, to start, check out our archives and read some of our articles. There you can learn more about the blog and know more about Unix at the same time. Feel free to comment or email us on different concepts or with questions.

Regards,
xatapu

Spotlight: Solaris

Many of you may have heard of the operating system Solaris. It is the operating system that Sun Microsystems introduced in the early 1990s. It replaced Sun's earlier Unix-based operating system. Today Solaris is open source, and you can get Solaris 10 for free. It is very innovative, and among its innovations is Sun's own file system, ZFS, which is an advanced 128-bit file system. Solaris also comes with a GNOME-like desktop environment, the Java Desktop System. There are releases for both PC and SPARC platforms. And, of course, jdk runs on it. To learn more, go to http://sun.com/solaris/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Operating_Environment.

Cool Website: MyDreamApp.com

I just wanted to make a quick post about this website because I thought it was pretty cool. It is basically a place where some people came up with ideas for cool Mac apps and developers brang them to life. Now you can vote on your favorite idea. COOL!

MyDreamApp

-Harry K.A.

Blog News

Hello again, this is xatapu. I am here with some news about this blog's plans and status. First off, we have nearly published for two weeks now, with nearly 50 posts. That is great. I feel that I have definitely broken my "one-week-barrier" for how long I am interested in a particular topic I study on my own. Second, I have begun to standardize the categories I make posts about. First, there's "Spotlight", next there is "Command of the week", and so on. I will explain that later. Third, we, the blog authors, plan to make some new "columns". Insmod may write an "Ask insmod" column for Unix help, and I may write a "New digs" column about my new experience with Unix. Lastly, in the future Harry and insmod will make some new posts to the blog.

New stuff: My Discovery of Ubuntu!

Let's see......today I discovered Ubuntu. I had heard of Xubuntu, Ubuntu with Xfce (the mini, mousey Unix desktop environment) from a friend at the Computer Club, and, after asking a few questions, decided to learn more about Ubuntu. So I googled it and went to Ubuntu's homepage, www.ubuntu.org (I could have guessed that url). I learned there that Ubuntu is a free, simple ("Linux for Humans") distro of Linux that normally comes with GNOME, but can also come with either KDE or XFCE. It also is available as either a server or a desktop package. Hmmm........a bit of a better interface than sash :) . Maybe I will consider using this on a small notebook......
Still, I think NetBSD suits me well and I will stick with that system for now.

Mac OSX Application Review- MacOSaiX

MacOSaiX

What is it?
It is an application for Mac OSX that basically takes any picture and attempts to create a mosaic out out it using you own picture collections, glyphs and Google Image search terms.

Pros:
Good idea. Sometimes works. I do give the creators credit because this is a very hard thing to pull off. Fun to use.

Cons:
Slows down computer, A LOT! Mosaics don't always seem right to me. Takes a while to create.

Price:
Free!! (I think)

Here is a picture of it in action:


Final Verdict:
Its free so what the heck, download it. Its definitely worth a try.

-Harry K.A.

WHHS Computer Club

Oh, by the way I am a member of the Walnut Hills Computer Club. It is a club for improving students' knowledge of computing at Walnut Hills High School. Right now we are not doing much, but we are still trying to come up with ideas. Several of us, including myself, try to aim toward Open Source-related stuff. For more information (although a bit outdated) go here:

http://whhs.cps-k12.org/Clubs/Computer_Club/info.htm

Command of the week: ! ls

Yes, this week's command is (gasp!) ls. This seemingly simple Unix command actually is very useful and efficient (especially compared to its DOS counterpart, dir). Ls simply shows the contents of a present directory (list to ls), but with options it can be very adjustable and "pliant." For example, ls -l lists files in the directory and their accessibiltiy conditions, like this:


drwx------ 2 users 4096 Nov 2 19:51 mail/
drwxr-s--- 35 www 32768 Jan 20 22:39 public_html/
-rw------- 1 users 3 Nov 25 02:58 test.txt

(example from http://www.computerhope.com/unix/uls.htm)

Or, for another example, ls -a will show all hidden system files, like this:

$ (or % or >) ls -a
.cshrc .history .bash coolstuff.vi HelloWorld.c a.out
$

While........

$ ls
coolstuff.vi HelloWorld.c a.out
$

There are many other ls options. For more info. about them, do man ls at your shell prompt or go to these other sites:

Linux and UNIX ls command help / Concise chart of ls options / http://www.computerhope.com/unix/uls.htm
Ls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Wiki article about ls / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ls
Unix ls command / Technical details about ls and explanation of its useage / http://www.scism.sbu.ac.uk/law/UnixStuff/ls.html
Unix man pages : ls () / the technical man explanation of ls / http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?ls

OpenBSD turns eleven!

Yes! The BSD operating system has turned eleven on 10-19-2006. Congratulations OpenBSD!

hpcsh

Here are some pics of NetBSD's hpcsh port running.

http://snark.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/netbsd/jornada/photo/BIG/xhpc.jpg

http://www.coins.tsukuba.ac.jp/~hdk/diary/20030705-netbsd.jpeg

Screen text in Japanese.

Unix today - New NetBSD Release

As of the 12th of October, a new beta distribution of NetBSD, NetBSD 3.1RC4, has been released. It is available for download, but is not stable. The next planned edition of NetBSD, either 3.0.2 or 3.1, is supposed to come out sometime late this fall. Info from other blogs and http://distrowatch.com.

Shells

No, I'm not talking about seashells. I'm talking about Unix shells. You know, tcsh, bash, csh, ksh, sh, etc. Maybe you change shells regularly, or maybe you just stick to one shell. I personally like the bash shell, or the GNU Born Again shell. I use bash 3.1. Shells differ in syntax, in style, in purpose, and in quality (of course). What shell(s) do you like? What shell(s) do you like to hate?

Edition 2

Oh, yes. Today begins edition 2. Now we have two new authors who contribute to the blog. There were 25 posts in edition one, I believe. There is also one comment. I have a pkgsrc article planned. I am looking forward to more posting and improving the blog with the two other authors, insmod and Harry K.A.

KNOPPIX

Need Linux? Don't want to sacrifice Windows? Using a parent's or someone else's computer? Just want to try out KDE and the shell? Then I have something for you. KNOPPIX. Knoppix is a live-CD distribution of Linux. This means you can directly boot into Linux from the CD. Very useful if you must run from the CD-ROM drive or don't want to mess with tedious partitioning. I tried 4.0.2, I and I was very satisfied with it. It is very easy to set up. Just be careful not to download the German version, though. If you do, type knoppix lang=us at the boot: prompt when the system starts up. Also, if you want to write to a CD-RW drive, I believe you will need 5.0.1. Finally, to make the CD, you will need a PC or Mac and some sort of CD-image burner (Roxio Easy-CD creator works). Just download the 600-some MB image file and burn a blank CD-R. In fact, it was through this that I got my first got experience with Linux. Overall it is a great and friendly distro.

Cool packages: lammps

Lammps is a molecular structure simulator package for Unix. I first heard of lammps when I was looking for a tool for my science project about viscosity and molecular structure. Anyway, the lammps site is http://lammps.sandia.gov/. The package must be compiled from source. For information on this and compiling lammps, go here: http://lammps.sandia.gov/doc/Manual.html. This will explain compiling the package source and editing Makefile.foo, where foo is your platform. Hopefully this package will prove useful to some of you.

Second New Author

Sorry, I made a mistake. In an earlier post, I said I was inviting a "Linux expert" to author the blog. However, I forgot to mention another author I planned to add. He is Harry, who introduced himself yesterday. He is mainly a Mac user, but he has a little experience with Linux as well. And, as well, he can speak about Unix from the "Mac perspective." After all, Mac OS X is Unix-based.

What I Work With (by Harry K.A.)

Machines at my Disposal,

• A Dell running a pretty up to date version of Suse
• A Dell that we never use because it crashed (was running Windows so what do you expect?) but that could be used for somthing more usefull if needed.
  
• iBook G4 (my baby)
• Then there are 3 other laptops in out house but those are my family members and they would kill me if I messed them up. (even though I am helping them with them all the time )

Meet you in the next life,
Harry


P.S.
Here is a comic I thought you all might enjoy.

Introducing.... ME, Harry that is...

Hello Computing With Unix people. xatapu asked me to join (I know him from school) so... here I am! I don't think I am the "linux expert" he was talking about in one of his earlier blogs but... I'm me. I specialize in Mac computing, I know some about PC (yuck!) and a little about linux. If I can help anybody with anything I will be glad to do so. I am gunna post some pics sooof my linux setup. So until then (or my next post) this is Harry signing off...

See You Guys Later...
-Harry K.A.-

Photos

I have gotten a few photos of my computer and I will post them here soon. They are of the old Pentium I machine.

"cat" command

I finally now understand the cat command. It links files together or "concatenates" them. Sometimes a dictionary can be really useful for something. :)

New Plans for the Blog

I have made a decision to add an author to this blog in order to improve it some and make it a little more comprehensive. The new (co)author is a Linux expert who is very knowledgeable with most issues relating to Unix. He should be able to help you with many of your problems. I will try to get him ready to post to it by next Tuesday.

New Stuff

Hello again. I have had a good weekend and am now getting back to school. I have done some new stuff with my Pentium I machine, one of which was realizing you can't mount a CD (cd9660 format) as ffs. I knew I couldn't, but for some reason I put mount /dev/cd0a /cd9660 instead of mount -t cd966o /dev/cd0a /cd9660. Well, at least I know now. I still did some other stuff on that day with the machine. I started to figure out cat (you'll hear more about this command later) and have continued to work with gcc/g++ and my C programming. I also plan to use emacs really soon. I have learned about many of its cool features, and look forward to using it. I also updated my website at http://guofu.freeshell.org. Finally I have some new plans for this blog, which I will tell you about very soon...... In addition, if you have any tips, ideas, or suggestions for my Unix work (sometimes troubles, but usually fun times) or this blog, feel free to comment.

Passed the 20th Post!

Yes! I have posted to Computing with Unix more than twenty times. Finally I am regularly updating something online :) . I will work to improve and shorten the posts after today. I will begin "edition 2" on Wednesday.

Learning vi....

Okay................I think I am starting to get vi. So, when you start, to put in new text, you press a and then start typing. To switch between the command and typing modes, you press . But then, to delete a line, you type dd, and if you type in 10dd, well, then 10 lines are deleted. To delete the character the cursor is on you press x........then to quit, in the command mode :q is typed. To save :w is typed. Hmmmmm................I am starting to get this. However, for now I am sticking to pico or nano for general purpose stuff.

Emacs and Vim

Hmmm............after using vi and pico, I am going to try out emacs and vimon my PC. I hear emacs is a really great customizable editor. I also understand that vim is a nice, improved vi clone. We'll see how this goes. Watch for updates relating to this in the next few weeks.

SGI

I forgot to tell you. SGI machines are my favorite computers. Fast, efficient, mips-based IRIX workstations. My particular favorite is the O2, but the Indigo, Octane, Iris, Onyx, Tezro and Origin are also cool. Unlike beige i386-based PCs, like my Gateway, SGIs are blue and magenta and purple and turquoise.
Here are some photos:
The Origin

The O2

GCC - gcc power.c -o power.o -lm

Recently I was writing a C program that involes the pow(x, y) function in math.h. However, gcc could not compile the program, it said "undefined reference to pow". As usual, I got angry and compiled the program again. It still didn't work. So I read a little bit on Usenet and found that you have to tell gcc to link the program, like this:

gcc power.c -o power.o -lm

Hopefully that will help some of you.
However, I got around this later by using g++ or c++.

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Telnet server plans

I have been thinking about setting up my Gateway 2000 as a public access SSH/SSH2 or Telnet server. However, I am a bit bewildered by the plethora of technical information covering the subject. I am especially not sure about setting up a network connection. If you know more about the subject, e-mail me when you can.

Unix on a PS2 (or another console)

I don't believe this. You can now use gcc on a PS2 (or a Dreamcast, for that matter). That's right, you can use NetBSD/Linux/Unix on a PlayStation 2. I have learned of a NetBSD port, and I am guessing there is probably a Linux one. Finally, a good use for a video game console. For me, anyways, not being very much into gaming. I know there is are directions for installing on a Sega Dreamcast under the NetBSD/dreamcast port of it. I think there are also directions for a PS2 on that site. Hmmm.......maybe the PSP will be next?

After all, there is already iPodLinux. Cool. Maybe I will get into gaming in the process...........

Article Problems

If you were wondering why part of the "grep" post looked teeny a few minutes ago, it was a problem with publication. Fortunately, through a little fixing and fiddling it should be fine now. I don't know: is it Blogger beta or something I did or an other thing. If you have experienced this problem and/or know what causes it, please respond.

FeedBurner

I now have an RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/unixcomputing. You can use it in addition to this blog.

NetBSD

My favorite type of Unix is NetBSD. It is extremely portable and efficient. For more info about it, go to http://www.netbsd.org. Here you can learn more about it and find out what you need to install it and what you can do with it.

The vi editor

Once, or maybe twice or more, all of us have had to use vi at some point. Maybe we used it to edit rc.conf, or maybe it was used to write our first document, or maybe it was the first application we ever used from the prompt. To many of us (including me) it is an extremely rigid, hard to use, and counter-intuitive editor. But vi, in general, stands as the most well-known and ubiquitous editor for Unix or Linux, although later Emacs took this position. vi (for visual inter face :) ) was created originally in 1976 by the UC-Berkeley student Bill Joy, who later worked at Sun Microsystems. It replaced ed (ex), Unix's first editor. For those of you who have heard of or used DOS'S EDLIN.EXE, know what this editor is like. Vi was sort of an update of this for Unix. It became very commonly used as an "all-for-one" editor, and it is especially typist and ASCII-friendly. While rather archaic, vi is very efficient, and, once you get used to it, it starts getting easier to work with. Overall, vi was one of the first all-purpose Unix editor to be commonly known and well distributed.

Why Unix? Why Open Source?

Okay, I have to admit, from now, that I am starkly for open source, and that means GNU and FSF and Linux and every other open source organization. Not freeware, not free trials of shareware which last 45 hours, not shareware............open source. GNU. Linux. NetBSD. That penguin guy. (Tux.) I strongly try to keep away from Windows, unless I need to send e-mails or update this blog. Oh...and that also means keeping away from a GUI. I only use my favorite shell - bash. Well, still I often use csh and ksh. This keeps me focused on programming, typing, scripting, thinking, and not games, wasting time surfing the web, and doing careless stuff. In addition, GUIs are slow, "point-and-click" (aaaarrrgh.....that's what people think computing is now), unreliable, buggy (you do not want to see how often I have to press ctrl+alt+del), and involves lots of hard work to write applications on. Not that its easy in Unix, but, you know, I don't like VB, and, in addition, I hate trying to use all those windowSize(), etc. functions in C programs. You could guess why my NetBSD box starts up in about 10 to 20 seconds (from fresh boot to dmesg to login), while a brand new Dell machine takes over a minute to get working. Just makes me wonder why we need so much faster processors when we can go faster with an efficient operating system (you know, efficient in Latin means they will bring about). Also, interestingly, due to my experience with Unix, Windows seems so slllllooooooowww in comparison. However, the most important aspect of Unix, to me, is its programming compatibility. No operating system is more easy to learn to program with and to program with in general. Why do you think the open source programming community is one of the largest ones that exist.

Next, I support open source for several reasons. First, I am on a budget. I can't afford a new computer. That's why I bought a $12 dollar garage sale Gateway 2000 and put NetBSD on it. Second, open source promotes spontaneous improvement. For example, say I was a programmer and recently downloaded some miscellaneous package for my workstation. However, it has some fatal bugs. Well, thanks to the handy source code included, I can fix it and give it to others. Third, I love free software :) .

If you disagree with my opinions, I will not argue with you. You are entitled to your own opinion.

Command of the week: grep

I have decided to post a short article each week on a particular Unix command. This will be helpful to you readers out there, as you may review on your Unix scripting and shell commands (maybe for those of you users out there who stick to X and KDE for most of your work;) ), and it may also teach you new things that you didn't know about the command. It will also teach me new commands (I am not that "well versed", but I can get by pretty easily when I use the shell) and Unix techniques. Usually there will be a description of the command, but for today you can refer to my grep post.

The grep command

So far, since I first used DOS, and later Unix, there have been many commands I have used, such as dmesg, cp, ls, cat, cd, df, fsck, mount, echo, mv, mount, tar (-x -f), gzip, man, and others. However, both my and my father's favorite command is grep. The command grep is used to find strings (with)in a file. Ex. dmesg grep "fd0a", grep foo *. The first example finds the string fd0a in the system initialization test, and the second one finds "foo" in all the files in the current directory. This command was first used in AT&T's Unix, and remains in BSD-based (based on x.xBSD, Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating systems; ex. OpenBSD, or my favorite ;), NetBSD) and in Linux. For more info, go to these pages:

Grep - Wikipedia / Wikipedia article about grep / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep
GNU grep / GNU's grep software / http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/
GREP / Cool info about grep and thorough description of its usage /http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/grep.html
UNIX man pages : grep () / Technical (sort of boring) explanation of unix grep usage / http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?grep
GREP for Windows / For those of you stuck with Microsoft's bloated operating system / http://pages.interlog.com/~tcharron/grep.html

All links work as of October 2006.

Lisp

Does anyone know about Unix Lisp and Tcl programming? I was thinking that Lisp might be interesting to learn. Also, do you know of a good compiler for those languages? Please respond if you do.

C programming

Fairly recently (about two months) ago I started programming in C. I have really enjoyed it, and have started to get more advanced. Finally, after so much waiting, I am getting good in programming in general. I can't wait to get into arrays, memory allocation, and pointers soon. :)

eSnips

I also plan to distribute some NetBSD packages online. If you want to download some of them, go to http://www.esnips.com/web/prologmore. I plan to include some more that I will program myself. later on. All packages work on NetBSD/i386 (Amnesiac) version 2.1 or better.

GCC

Ever since I started programming, I loved compilers with IDEs. I never thought I could do without those syntax checkers. However, I hated trying to write GUI applications in Pascal or C. But, now, I have started using gcc, GNU's compiler collection. Despite all my fears and hopes about it, one of which was a lack of an IDE-syntax checker environment, I love using gcc. I find it very easy to work with and extremely flexible and efficient. I don't need any fancy procedures for GUI-related things. It has helped me get fairly good at C, although I am still generally a beginner.

My Website

Also, on SDF I have a website at http://guofu.freeshell.org. It is under construction, but it tells a little bit about me. I will work to update it soon.

E-mail

By the way, you can e-mail me at molleraj@gmail.com or guofu@sdf.lonestar.org.

SDF

By the way, I am also a validated member of SDF, a public access Unix system that (yes!) still exists. I use it occasionally, and almost always from 3-4 pm. It got me interested in Unix so much that I decided to make a cheap workstation, which took some work, but was successful. It is the Pentium that I use now.

First Post!

Hello! Welcome to my Computing with Unix weblog! In it I will later discuss things I have been doing with my Intel Pentium Unix (NetBSD 2.1) machine. I hope to also discuss programming.