Notes from the Mousepad

I ambled about outside yesterday for a little while, enjoying the freakness of a 70+ degree day at the end of March in Chicago. I didn’t just wander about aimlessly, though. I had my backpack on, and I had a mission.

My mission was to go to a coffee shop and read up on an ebook that I have that delves into shell scripting. At this point in my evolution of Linux-geek related knowledge, shell scripting is for me.

See, it builds off of what I already know, and moves onto what I don’t know without too much of a leap. For example, if you’re using the bash shell, just type “history” and hit enter. What happens?

That’s right, you see a list of the commands that you’ve entered. Now, let’s say you look through the list, and you see a prior command that you’ve entered that you want to enter again. For me, let’s say I want to use command number 283, “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.” All I have to do to make that shell command run again is enter

!283

press the enter key, and I’m off to the races. (Oh, wait, I guess I also have to enter my password for that command to work, but you get the idea.)

There is a lot more to shell scripting than what I’ve just described, but it is neat to start to learn some of the tricks of the shell.

Before I close, apparently I have been “tagged,” by a fellow ubuntu-chicago member, and I need to tag a few other people back. Ok, so here goes. I’ve been tagged by Kubuntu/KDE diehard Richard Johnson (aka nixternal), and I’m going to tag fellow Chicago-Ubuntu member Andrew Bassett, who helped me to get my wifi working on Xubuntu at our Chi-Ubuntu meeting, and Michael Stemle (aka manchicken), who is a nice guy and who knows a lot about AJAX.

So, Andrew, Michael . . . you’re it. Now you have to tag two other people.

I went to the organizational meeting for Free Geek Chicago last Wednesday night, and got pretty inspired about what the group doing.

Free Geek Chicago is kind of like Habitat for Humanity, but for computers. Basically, people can work at the facility for 20 hours (over several weeks), and then earn a free computer. People can also buy computers from us, but for the most part it is kind of like a work-study program because your 20 hours of volunteering is spent learning about computers. You learn how to do an initial test of a computer, take a computer apart, test the individual components, put the computer back together, install an OS, and then do a final test of everything to make sure it works. We also test all RAM, and use a drive-wiping program to remove all data from the hard drives that people have donated.

Because we’re working with computers that have been donated by people, the computers are usually at least a few years old, and aren’t exactly super powerful. Still, we usually get decent PII’s and PIII’s, which certainly have enough horsepower to do most day-to-day tasks. Our distro of choice is currently Xubuntu, so it’s nice to see Xubuntu being used to benefit others.

If anyone in the Chicago area has a computer that they’d like to donate, or would like to volunteer at Free Geek Chicago, please visit the Free Geek website via the link above. We’d be glad to have your help and support.

There’s been a lot of changes going on with x/k/ed/ubuntu ISO testing lately, and a lot of the action is being coordinated in the forums. Check it out if you’re interested.

There’s also a relatively new irc channel for ISO testing discussions, #ubuntu-iso on irc.freenode.net. If you see someone in there with the nick “j1mc,” be cool to him. He’s nice.

In regards to Dell’s explorations/websites/surveys regarding Linux on the desktop… I think it’s good they’re asking, but I don’t expect something soon. And if it happens, I don’t think that we’ll see any discount on computers because of them having Linux on the desktop. And I don’t expect any support from Dell (or anyone else) if they (or another major PC builder) puts Linux on the desktop.

For me, the cost item isn’t a big issue because you can already get a computer for $500-$600 that is plenty powerful to do anything you need (except for maybe gaming). And the lack of Dell (or whatever company) support isn’t a big deal to me because we all know how to get on IRC or go to a forum for our support. That’s where the best support comes from, anyway.

To me, the issues are hardware compatibility, having a free-as-in-freedom OS, and getting another option other than Microsoft, and I would actually be willing to pay a bit more for those things. Maybe $50 more for a $600 computer. After all, if I spend two hours trying to set up a wifi connection because the wifi hardware isn’t totally compatible, isn’t that worth at least $20? If I have to do some tricky work to get suspend / resume working, isn’t that worth another $20-$25? And being able to completely wipe my drive and take off Novell’s Suse Linux because I want to put on Xubuntu, but still have everything work . . . Isn’t that worth a few more bucks?

If it takes a few more dollars to make Linux on the desktop financially viable for the hardware vendors, then I’d be willing to pay it.

Ubuntu Illinois / Chicago member Freddy Martinez had given me some brief pointers on filing bugs during one of our more recent Ubuntu-Chicago loco meetings, but my involvement with the ISO testing has really started to give me a taste for what bug reporting and triaging involves. Now that Xubuntu ISO testing is at a decent state, and we have enough testers to keep things moving, it seems like bug-related work will make for a natural progression from what I’m currently doing.

The “Helping With Bugs” wiki page looks like a good-enough place to get started.

I’m starting to better understand the role of ISO testing, and how it differs from bug reporting. ISO testing looks at successes and failures from a big picture – is this release stable enough to get out the door? ISO testing seeks out the show-stopper bugs that would prevent a milestone build from being released. Bug reporting works in a similar way, but on a smaller scale – does this package work as intended?

That’s how I kind of see it, anyway. They are different, but they compliment each other.

Oh, and apparently QA is a whole other ballgame, but I don’t know much about how it differs yet.

After Herd 5′s release, I’ve been playing catch up with other parts of my life. One bit of good news is that my new HP AMD64 computer arrived, and so I’ve been de-commissioning my old computer, and preparing the new machine. Part of getting rid of the old computer has also involved attempts to prepare a Samba file and print server, so it’s a big mess of computer parts around my place right now.

My file server is going to be an old Compaq desktop, which I’m outfitting with the 80gb drive that was the master drive in my prior primary desktop computer. Prior to making the swap, I made a couple of changes:

• I backed up my data,
• Modified the grub and fstab entries,
• Removed the 80gb drive, and set the jumpers on the 40gb drive so that it would be the new master drive,
• Modified the BIOS to indicate that there’s only one hard drive now
• Hoped for the best

It all worked. I know that an 80gb drive might not seem like a lot for a file server in this day and age, but it’s plenty good enough for my needs at this time. Right now, my backup data fills up less than 25gb.

I’ve got to make some quick modifications to the Xubuntu testing pages, so I better get on that. It’s nice to know that I’m making good progress on my machines, though.

it’s been a heck of a past two weeks. Just two weeks ago i knew pretty much nothing about how to edit wiki pages, and then i found myself setting them up so that we’d have an organized platform for testing xubuntu. It turns out that what i set up wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a start.  We’ll have to revamp our testing process going forward, but i’m looking forward to it.

one thing i’ve seen is just how much smaller the xubuntu community is compared to ubuntu and kubuntu communities. there’s just not as many people involved.  still, it’s up to us to continue to make things work. xubuntu is a good project – helping ubuntu linux to run on machines that it wouldn’t otherwise be able to. and xfce is a great window environment in it’s own right, even if it doesn’t have all of the bling of gnome or kde.

if anything, these past two weeks have reinforced in me the notion that, the more i learn about something, the more i realize how little i really know. it seems like there’s so much to learn, but if i look back at my skills and abilities from last year, i’ve come a long way.