New digs: Gnoppix and Repartitioning - or NetBSD

Well, I decided to go ahead with Gnoppix. I am through with NetBSD for now. Gnoppix, if you do not know, is Knoppix with a GNOME desktop environment. Now it is basically a modified version of Ubuntu, but I am using an older distribution. My plan to repartition my hard drive will take several steps. First, I will partition the hard drive under DOS (oh, well.........) and quickly install a CD-ROM driver for booting of the Gateway's CD-ROM drive. It is a Mitsumi drive, so I easily fetched a driver. Second, I may or may not upgrade the hard drive. I think I will put in a 6 GB one, since 1 GB is certainly not enough. After all, 449 MB is compressed on the CD. Third, I will test to make sure the CD is good first. Last time with NetBSD I messed up on installation twice. That eliminated X. Overall, I am glad this is possible, but it is too bad that NetBSD is acting in a bad way. Still, I may just try working more with NetBSD. I would rather be persistent than conceding.

New digs: NetBSD 3 and X

Well, recently I tried to install NetBSD 3 (3.0.1) on my Gateway. I wanted to try X on it as I have not had X ever on my Linux box. Well, things have not gone swimmingly. First, the sysinst utility did not work properly near the end of installation. Then X, which was said to have been installed, did not start up properly due to bad configuration. Hmmm. I am really confused about this one. I think I will need to repartition the hard drive and install some other distribution. Currently I am thinking about using Gnoppix.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.