Second brother: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu...
Maynard: Skip a bit, Brother.
link
No one underlying theme for today, just a bunch of smaller ones, including how best to keep your system up to date, some exciting new releases, an alternative way to get a new kind of distro, and a bit more.
One of the reasons that Linux distros are such lean, mean computing machines is that they avoid a lot of the bloat in the way they add software to your computer's operating system. If you are a Windows user, then that is likely Windows XP, and if you are a Mac user, then it is undoubtedly Mac OS X (Tiger).
When you add a program to either of those operating systems, then you download the package (application) with every redundant bit of software associated with and needed to run that program, for each and every program that you download. In Windows, that would likely be an installer ending with the exe suffix, and in Mac OS X that would be an installer ending with the dmg suffix.
The great majority of Linux distros (with the possible exception of Slackware) have something called a package management system; this is a system that checks the exact minimum needed to support that particular package, in addition to the package itself.
The support packages, i.e., the ones needed to support running that particular program, are called dependencies, and a good package management system will calculate the dependencies for you sight unseen, both in the graphical menu and in the command line environment.
If you are not some kind of genius/Linux guru, then this is a very necessary requirement for a usable Linux computing experience; calculating dependencies on your own can lead to a broken system if you are not careful, the dreaded 'dependency hell'.
The truly superior package management systems out there today are largely those used by Debian, and Debian-based distros, such as LinuxMint, DreamLinux, Ubuntu (etc.); other excellent package management systems are used by Mandriva, and OpenSuse. The absolute deity of package management systems is used by Gentoo.
For beginners, you are probably going to want to avoid Gentoo for now, as it is quite difficult to get going for the uninitiated; if you are absolutely set on a Gentoo system right off the bat, it would be safer to use something like SabayonLinux, which is a precompiled system based on Gentoo.
Debian, and Debian-based distros use the apt-get package management system (alternatively you can install aptitude for the command line), or its front end equivalent Synaptic Package Manager.
OpenSuse uses Yast to configure packages, and since it was fixed in release 10.2, it truly is superior. You can also install the Smart Package Manager, another graphical menu tool to get (mostly) the same results.
Mandriva uses the rpm system, but with a slight twist of their own, they call it the urpmi system, and while I have less experience using Mandriva for any length of time, I am told by many Mandriva users that it is easy to use and configure.
Gentoo uses the Portage system, and its power is unrivaled by any other system; if you want to get every last little bit of speed and power out of your system (plus don't mind waiting while everything is compiled from source), then Gentoo is the ticket for you. By far the best support documentation of any existing Linux distro out there.
While Red Hat, and its descendants use the rpm system, it's not always easy or intuitive to use; a best bet is to install apt to handle rpms and allow it to handle all your dependency needs. Another alternative for package management, at least for CentOS and Fedora Core, is the Yellow Dog package manager; OpenSuse recently began to allow updates using YUM repositories as well.
While this may seem overly technically, even head-scratchingly so, once you start installing packages it will become like second nature, and you'll wonder what all the fuss was.
Some exciting new releases this week: LinuxMint has a new release (iso) DreamLinux has just released their multimedia edition (iso) and Ubuntu has released its long-awaited Ubuntu Studio.
drag0n found a way to install all the repositories for Ubuntu Studio (from Ubuntu Forums) on a regular Ubuntu install; why would want to do this? Well, you can get all the ugly (i.e., non-free codecs) more easily on the initial installation of a regular Ubuntu, whereas Ubuntu Studio is a GNU/Linux install, one that avoids anything proprietary. Might be hard to get that wireless card working otherwise (at least in my case, thanks drag0n!).
The way to do it is like this: in the terminal, type the following:
sudo su -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/... feisty main >> etcapt/sources.list'
wget q http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/... O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
Ugh! That entering code in blockquotes never works! It always truncates the code and strikes through some of the rest. At any rate, the link for the exact code is here; enter that in the terminal, and then you can add a bunch of really nifty audio and video apps right from your own repository. Update: still can't get the code working..Updated my own system using the code at the link above, and if you are using a restricted driver (for example for your wireless, then be sure to download the restricted modules as well for the kernel; more on that tomorrow).
One last bit on why I choose Debian and Debian-based distros over others; the repositories (places where they keep the main software) are so legion and spread throughout the entire world, that it makes updating your system fast, easy, and painless. No disrespect towards the other fine distros, they all have something nice going for them. And yeah, *BSDs are great, too! Oh, and Solaris!
Yesterday's project was installing Truecrypt, and learning a bit on how to use it; today, it will be on how to use ktorrent. Installing ktorrent is one of those nightmarish endeavors whose learning curve makes Mt. Everest look like that slight bump in your driveway; since it was found to have a remote exploit in it that led to the possibility of an attack, coders have been working overtime to get it fixed; oh well, may as well start now. In the terminal, type the following:
sudo apt-get update
followed by your password, then
sudo apt-get upgrade
And you have a new, up to date version (2.14) of ktorrent. Whew! That was hard!
Now what to do with ktorrent, now that it's all ready to go? Well, first, direct your browsers to this site; then when you see an album you like (after to listening to a bit of the stream they offer), click on download the full album, which will bring up a dialog box, allowing you to choose either Ogg Vorbis or MP3 formats (you'll likely want MP3, as that's what iPods support).
Then choose bit torrent; this will open another browser window that asks whether you want to save it to disk, or open it using bittorrent or similar (you can choose either one); once you've done that, you can configure ktorrent as to where to save the data (I created a new folder) and which songs to download (I chose all). Sit back, and within a short while you will have a free, legal full album to listen to, no restrictions, no DRM, just a lot of musical goodness. Enjoy!
Seeing as to how most of the discussion yesterday was about anything but the topic (encryption), if you are having trouble/questions unrelated to today's topic, please don't feel constrained to relate them; if it's tech/computer related, then it's welcome.
Here's an interesting aside; an article about why Microsoft doesn't have a cult following (here) and what a lovely outburst in the comments there.
Because the night's still young, let's install something in the command line, something that's totally useless, retro and fun, all at the same time. In the command line type the following:
sudo apt-get install dosbox
and you should see something like this:
sudo apt-get install dosbox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libmikmod2 libsdl-net1.2 libsdl-sound1.2 libsmpeg0
The following NEW packages will be installed:
dosbox libmikmod2 libsdl-net1.2 libsdl-sound1.2 libsmpeg0
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 872kB of archives.
After unpacking 2392kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Wait about five seconds, and then at the prompt, type:
dosbox
which will launch the familiar MS-DOS window. But wait! We don't have any games! Before we can launch dosbox, we need to get some games.
My favorite site for Abandonware is Abandonia; remember it's not the high crime of piracycopying a few bits of digital information if the game makers have abandoned their games.
Some of these old DOS games are great; my all-time favorite is an RPG called The Dark Queen of Krynn. They just don't make games like that anymore; I don't care if you do have activeX99 and a video card from the next millennium, you just can't beat the imagination and the fun of those games. This particular game I used to play on an old Mac Classic II with a ten-inch screen (color, no less!), and it was a blast.
OK, we've now got a game, still zipped though. Take it to your home folder and extract the contents there. Right clicking on the file with your mouse and choosing 'Extract Here' should do it. After you unzip the archive, there is another folder nested inside that one, take it out and put it in your home folder. Now back to DosBox.
First, you need to mount the imaginary C drive, so in the MS-DOS window, type mount ~c/dqok (or whatever folder name that contains your game, mine is dqok), then dir, then typically start.
Some of these old DOS games have a rudimentary password protection scheme, often contained in the manuals that came with them; luckily, I still have the original manual that came with the floppy diskettes, and can peruse at my leisure. Those of you who were less forward-planning can download the appropriate manual at Abandonia's website.
If you are interested in emulation of older games, then this is an invaluable link; not only DosBox, but also MAME, and ZSNES, as well as WINE, CEDEGA, and Crossover Office. Nice to have them all in one place (h/t drag0n). Game On!