Fedora 12, the latest version of the popular open-source operating systems for desktops and servers, has been released: “The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced the availability of Fedora 12, the latest version of its free, open-source operating system distribution. Fedora 12 includes a robust feature set for desktop users, administrators, developers and open source enthusiasts alike. New enhancements available in Fedora 12 include next-generation Ogg Theora video, virtualization improvements and advancements to NetworkManager, among numerous others.” See the press release, release announcement and release notes for further information.

DOWNLOADS

Download (mirrors, torrents): Fedora-12-i686-Live.iso (654MB, SHA1, torrent), Fedora-12-i686-Live-KDE.iso (681MB, SHA1, torrent), Fedora-12-x86_64-Live.iso (656MB, SHA1, torrent), Fedora-12-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (685MB, SHA1, torrent).

Novell has announced the immediate availability of openSUSE 11.2, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution for desktops and servers: “The openSUSE Project announced today that openSUSE 11.2 is immediately available for download. openSUSE is a secure and stable Linux-based operating system that is easy to use and includes everything needed to get started with Linux on the desktop or server. Some of the new and interesting features of this release include: KDE 4.3, a major update to the KDE platform, which offers improved networking support, and better integration of Firefox and OpenOffice.org with the KDE environment; GNOME 2.28, the latest release of the popular GNOME desktop, which includes a brand new theme, improved software update application

Read the press release and visit the openSUSE 11.2 page for further information. Download (mirrors): openSUSE-11.2-KDE4-LiveCD-i686.isoMD5, torrent), openSUSE-11.2-GNOME-LiveCD-i686.iso (693MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-11.2-KDE4-LiveCD-x86_64.iso (689MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-11.2-GNOME-LiveCD-x86_64.iso (692MB, MD5, torrent). (678MB,

I’ve been tinkering with Linux a lot, since soon after I took my first steps out of WinXP seven months ago. I started in Ubuntu Linux but ran into minor glitches when I tried to customize it and lighten it up a bit for my old Dell hardware.  My search brought me through Crunchbang Linux (which is still a favorite), and it was great. But on a computer that is shared with others still in bondage to Windblows, Crunchbang is not a great choice. No desktop environment at all. Just the awesome Openbox window manager. Stark beauty, sleek and powerful, I looked for a way to give Crunchbang a “newbie friendly” desktop.

That desktop was to be LXDE, the ultralight, super-simple desktop environment that threatens to displace Xfce from it’s lofty status as the “lightweight” environment of choice. I had no reason to think that I couldn’t add LXDE to Crunchbang, since they both use the Openbox window manager, and Crunchbang (8.10) uses many LXDE components by default. But the two just didn’t play nice together. The sound was always muted on bootup, and normal shutdown was impossible. Every shutdown had to be forced. That’s no fun.

I experimented with PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, U-Lite (an Ubuntu/LXDE mixture), and Masonux all with similar results. Sound issues, and/or printer not working, and/or network problems, etc. have plagued my every effort to integrate LXDE with them and create a newbie-friendly lightweight Linux. My last effort, which I simply called “Robin’s Remix,” also fails me in the same way. They all work okay, but they’re buggy. And I hate bugs.

Several weeks back I arrogantly posted a “why wait” blog entry in which I complained that a minimal Debian or minimal Ubuntu install could be whatever one wanted. “Build your own,” I wrote. Why let some developer choose what applications you use and what package manager you prefer?

Well, now I know why. And now I know why these things stay in testing for so long, and why Alpha and Beta releases take so much time. To do it right, one has to know a lot more than I do and have plenty of time to devote to trial and error. It takes more expertise and patience than I have given them credit for with my simplistic “just build your own from the minimal install – what’s the big deal” approach.  So this post is my apology to all the Linux developers who I thought were taking too much time and making too much of what I imagined to be a simple little thing. I know better now. Hats off to any developer who can pull it off.

The popularity of Linux has increased considerably in the last decade or so, so much so that certain distributions have even began to rival Windows in the bid for the affection of home users. While Vista’s ravenous attitude towards my system resources almost drove me into the arms of one such competitor, namely Ubuntu, the return to grace that has been brought forth by Windows 7 has convinced me not to jump ship on Microsoft just yet.

The term “Linux” was coined in 1991 when a Finnish software engineer by the name of Linus Torvalds developed the first Linux kernel. “Linux” essentially means “Linus’ Unix”. Since then, there have been countless distributions emerge, both commercial and open source, the most popular of which I will now look at briefly in an effort to help us all decide; which Linux is for me?

Ubuntu

One of the most popular Linux distributions currently available, Ubuntu’s success stems from its intuitiveness and usability. Ubuntu distributions come with a host of software packages installed, and the availability of further applications is constantly increasing. Its latest release is 9.04, and sports a GNOME interface that has been accredited with much of the operating system’s popularity. The number of people using Ubuntu has also led to the distribution having a high quality level of support. Information and resource exchange between Ubuntuans is incredibly high on the net, and so anyone looking for a distribution with an active community off which they can bounce ideas and problems needn’t look farther than this open source gem.

And the icing on the cake? 100% free Ubuntu CDs can be ordered direct from the developers. There’s one for you Mr Gates.

Kubuntu / Xubuntu

Kubuntu is Ubuntu’s KDE counterpart, and essentially retains all the usability of its GNOME sister, just with the appearance that so many Linux converts have become quite affectionate toward. KDE is pretty much a Windows look-a-like, and has in turn, resulted in Kubuntu becoming quite popular amongst Linux first-timers. Xubuntu uses yet another GUI, this time Xfce, an environment which users of Solaris will be familiar with.

CentOS

Open source users partial to Red Hat Enterprise should look at CentOS. 100% binary compatible with RHE, CentOS has proved largely successful due to its similarity to the commercial leader, and, like Ubuntu, its large community. However, CentOS does not support SPARC architecture as far as I am aware, though with the prominence of AMD and Intel these days, this has not been a major stumbling block for the distribution.

Debian

Debian offers its users the chance to operate in either the GNOME, KDE or Xfce GUI, making it equally popular amongst all breeds of Linux user. It can also be used with servers – effectively. Debian’s high level of security, and strict adherence to the ethos of the open source community have contributed to its success. Its latest stable release is 4.0, and according to its home site, debian.org, comes with an impressive 18,733 packages.

Fedora

Users looking for something pretty will be happy with what they encounter here. Fedora 10, the distribution’s latest release, is certainly pleasing to the eye, and like many of its counterparts, offers users a selection of GUIs. Fedora’s community doesn’t quite stand up to that of other distributions, making it difficult for users to get support and share knowledge. Fedora has developed itself a fairly intuitive and content rich Wiki, but this distribution’s community still pales compared to the likes of Ubuntu.

openSUSE

Another extremely popular Linux distribution, openSUSE is often the first port of call for those who have converted to Linux from Windows environments. With a huge community, the option of commercial additions and support, and a reputation for stability and usability, SUSE is undoubtedly a market heavyweight.

RHE Linux

A commercial distribution, Red Hat has proved popular amongst enterprises looking for a commercially supported Linux. Many VMware products, as we will be using in class, are based on RHE. Primarily targeting business customers, RHE provides virtual, desktop and server solutions.

Live Distributions

Some live distributions of Linux include BackTrack, often used as tool in the deployment of security in an environment, and Knoppix. Live distributions do not install onto the system’s HDD, and boot directly from the CD or media. Live distributions have various benefits, including testing, maintenance, security and academic.

Other Distributions

Other distributions of Linux, just to name a few, include Mandriva Linux, Slackware and Linspire. Users with something more “specific” in mind may find some value in the Gentoo distribution. Gentoo is designed with increased performance in mind, and so allows users an incredible amount of freedom when it comes to configuration. A more comprehensive list of available distributions can be found anywhere on the net, such as;
http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

A Linux distribution (also called GNU/Linux distribution by some vendors and users) is a member of the family of Unix-likesoftware distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions (often called distros for short) consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications. The operating system will consist of the Linux kernel and, usually, a set of libraries and utilities from the GNU project, with graphics support from the X Window System. Distributions optimized for size may not contain X, and tend to use more compact alternatives to the GNU utilities such as busybox, uclibc or dietlibc. There are currently over three hundred Linux distributions. Most of those are in active development, constantly being revised and improved.

Because most of the kernel and supporting packages are some combination of free software and open source, Linux distributions have taken a wide variety of forms — from fully featured desktop and server operating systems to minimal environments (typically for use in embedded systems, or for booting from a floppy disk). Aside from certain custom software (such as installers and configuration tools) a distribution simply refers to a particular assortment of applications installed on top of a set of libraries married with a version of the kernel, such that its “out-of-the-box” capabilities meets most of the needs of its particular end-user base.

One can distinguish between commercially backed distributions, such as Fedora (Red Hat), openSUSE (Novell), Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd.), and Mandriva Linux and community distributions such as Debian and Gentoo, though there are other distributions that are driven neither by a corporation nor a community; perhaps most famously, Slackware.

Popular distributions

Well-known Linux distributions include:

• Arch Linux, a distribution based on the KISS principle with a rolling release system
• CentOS, a distribution derived from the same sources used by Red Hat, maintained by a dedicated volunteer community of developers with both 100% Red Hat – compatible versions and an upgraded version that is not always 100% upstream compatible
• Debian, a non-commercial distribution maintained by a volunteer developer community with a strong commitment to free software principles
• Fedora which is a community distribution sponsored by Red Hat
• Gentoo, a distribution targeted at power users, known for its FreeBSD Ports-like automated system for compiling applications from source code
• gOS and other netbook operating systems
• Knoppix, The first Live CD distribution to run completely from removable media without installation to a hard disk. Derived from Debian
• Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu
• Linux Mint, a popular distribution based on and compatible with Ubuntu
• Mandriva, a Red Hat derivative popular in France and Brazil, today maintained by the French company of the same name
• OpenGEU, derived from Ubuntu: The project’s goal is to combine the power of GNOME desktop with the eye-candy of Enlightenment 17.
• openSUSE, originally derived from Slackware, sponsored by the company Novell .
• Pardus, developed in Turkey, as a product of the Pardus Project. It was named after the Anatolian Leopard.
• PCLinuxOS, a derivative of Mandriva, grew from a group of packages into a popular, community-spawned desktop distribution.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is a derivative of Fedora maintained and commercially supported by Red Hat
• Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, founded in 1993, and since then actively maintained by Patrick J. Volkerding
• Ubuntu, a popular desktop distribution derived from Debian, maintained by Canonical

DistroWatch maintains a popularity ranking of distribution information on its web site (using primarily page views), but this is not considered to be a reliable measure of distribution popularity.

Niche distributions

Other distributions are targeted at other specific niches such as the tiny embedded router distribution OpenWrt, the Ubuntu project to create Edubuntu for educational users, and KnoppMyth which wraps Knoppix around MythTV to ease building Linux-powered DVRs. Still others targeted the Apple Inc. Macintosh platform, including mkLinux, Yellow Dog Linux, and Black Lab Linux. Karoshi Linux is a server system based on PCLinuxOS aimed at educational users.

First, the weak disclaimer.  I’m hard to please, granted.  But I’m just trying to do something perfectly normal.

• Install as /dev/sda1
• Don’t use a swap, or use my 8MB fake-swap-partition
• Don’t overwrite my MBR (please!)
• Don’t suck.

I had no intentions of doing any kind of in-depth review, nor of doing any shred of troubleshooting.

What I wanted to do is pick some other base so that I could do some window management compiling and testing.

On with the freakshow..

VectorLinux

http://www.vectorlinux.com/

• Lets me use /dev/sda1 as root, good.
• Talks about requiring a swap, but I’m not using one.
• Doesn’t detect my network card.  FAIL
• Booted into it, it gave me the congratulations screen and froze.  FAIL.

NimbleX

http://nimblex.net/

• Laughably fancy bootup.  Pressing escape gives a cute little box with the text in it.
• Has Firefox2, ouch.
• gslapt package manager
  • Trying to update just sits there.  gslapt hangs.  FAIL.

I didn’t give this one much of a chance, now that I look back on things.  But at this point I honestly thought that some other distro would actually boot up.

Zenwalk

http://www.zenwalk.org/

• It saw my swaps, but VectorLinux didn’t.  Odd, since both are Slackware.
• No package selection, it just goes.
• Insanely slow install.  But that’s Slackware for ya.
• I formatted as xfs for this one.  That was the default recommendation.  On bootup, I got VFS: Can’t find ext3 filesystem on sda1. etc etc, and then it fails to find its partitions.  FAIL.

I should have just reinstalled as ext3, but again I thought that some other distro would work.

Slax

http://www.slax.org/

• KDE boots into a black screen and my monitor turns off.
• I see it accessing my HDD periodically.  I don’t trust it.  FAIL.

Crux

http://crux.nu/

• fb1280 – gives a simple console.  I see no way to install it, rebooting.
• Pressing enter also goes into a LiveCD.  Hrm.  Rebooting.
• Typing CRUX again gives me a console.  How is it installed?!  FAIL.

Maybe if I tried harder, this one could have worked.

Foresight Linux

http://www.foresightlinux.org/

• I see no way to select sda1.  I don’t want to nuke everything on my drive!  FAIL.

CAOS Linux

http://www.caoslinux.org/

• Booting as the default “test”.  Uh, it passed.  It says I should autoinstall.  But it won’t tell me the parameters to use.  It gives me a URL, assuming I have net access.  Why not give docs on the CD?  Why not have the docs easily available right there after passing the test?  FAIL
• Trying ‘demo’.  Uh, I hope this is a LiveCD.  “Creating working copy of the core filesystem…” takes forever.  The CDROM is spinning and the device shows that it’s reading, but there’s no actual activity that I can hear.  I give up.  FAIL.
• Oh, it worked, now it says:

Extracting kernel from corefs...
...
Loading kernel and initramfs into memory, and booting...
Killed

Then it gives me the debug shell prompt.  FAIL.

Pardus

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/index.html

I’ll admit that I saved this one for last, because I figured it was a shoe-in.  I also just realized that I don’t really know what “shoe-in” means.  Hrm.

• F2 for language selection.  Maybe this was the issue I had with my previous LiveCD test.
• wow, fast bootup!
• wow, really professional feel.
• Good install options, lets me pick sda1 and not install Grub.
• Some funny-awkward English in places.
• No package selection for install.  It just goes.
• I can’t believe they actually put some ozgurlukizen.com URL and expected people to be able to remember that in the short time it was flashed up.
• Uh, the installer wrapped past 100% and restarted counting from 1%.
• At 127% the CD-drive stopped spinning.  It kept trying to install.
• Oh!  It says it’s configuring, that’s why.  Not obvious…
• The release notes are viewable while I wait, but it has links in it which do nothing.
• Boots fine, but it can’t use my keyboard and mouse.  FAIL.

Conclusion

I wasn’t forgiving enough for some of these distributions, and it really does look like I could have re-tried things to get them going.

For some issues, I could have probably looked for a solution online.  But to me, if a distribution doesn’t have the decency to work with an average situation, then there’s no way I want it. What happens when something really hits the fan?

Maybe I’ll re-try some of these distributions when next i have the urge to harm my faith in Linux. But I’m just as likely to pick another set of distributions.

Well, so much for testing window managers.  Maybe some distro will work some day.  I hope to Zeus I don’t ever have to try Ubuntu..

About two days ago I installed CrunchBang Linux and I am pretty much amazed. I haven’t really investigated why yet, but it runs SO fast. By that I mean considerably faster than anything else I’ve tried on this computer.

CrunchBang has conky running by default, which is a nice touch and also means that I can keep watching how stuff pulls on system resources as it goes. Generally speaking the processors average at about 5% each… which is nothing(!) and means that it responds very quickly when told to run a program. My RAM seems to sit at around 100-200 MB, which helps too. I guess that’s because there’s no hefty desktop environment running and eating resources. The desktop running by default is based around Openbox, and uses the file manager, panel and theme switcher from LXDE.

I haven’t had any crashes (yet) and I’ve updated the xorg-video-intel package as mentioned in part 4. I’m going to update the rest of the system tonight, so I’ll post again if that screws anything up. Webcam is up and running with a quick compile of the development driver.

Back on the subject of speed, boot time is down to 45 seconds from off to desktop. This isn’t outstanding, but it’s a full 15 seconds quicker than when I was using Fedora 10. Further advantages of this low memory and processor footprint are that the fan isn’t working half as hard as it was before, battery life is improved by about 20 minutes and Virtual Machines appear to be running a fair bit snappier, which are all really nice things.

The only thing left for me to comment on is the keyboard shortcuts. 10 minutes is and I was thinking “how did I ever use a computer without them?!”. I know, it sounds stupid… but the desktop is all rigged with two-button shortcuts for frequently used programs, screenshots and even system update. This is one of those things that I really could do myself but never would have spent the time doing…

Crunch, Bang, Brilliant.

So I’ve been using Slackware for about a week now… As I approach the end of week two I have to admit that I’m not all that satisfied with progress on this experiment.

Slackware is definately faster than Ubuntu was. Though the same could be said for Fedora 10. I now know that to make the webcam work I just need to compile the latest kernel module for uvcvideo. VirtualBox is the same with each distro and that guarentees that I can get all of my work done. I have determined that the improvement in performance from my wireless card comes from using a 32-bit OS rather than 64-bit, and so that makes the choice of distro less relevent provided I stick to 32-bit. So… what now?

Well… as it happens I was running some updates on my desktop computer, which runs LinuxMint and I noticed that there is an update for the xorg-video-intel package. I read through the changelog and happened to notice that this included two patches that combat and fix the blank-screen-hard-crash issue that is associated with Intel G45 or x4500 graphics cards. As far as I can tell one is the one that happens at boot (which has happened a few times with Slackware and did happen a lot with Ubuntu) and the other is during normal use, which is the trouble I was having in Fedora that prevented me from using Compiz.

I don’t have a problem making the decision of whether or not to wipe what I’ve built so far using Slackware because that’s what this week is about, and I’ve learnt a bit about my system in the last week with the work I’ve done. However, what I don’t want to do on a whim is install Ubuntu or LinuxMint straight away because I know that Ubuntu isn’t quite as responsive as some other distros and I probably wont have the system I want.

I’m going to consider CrunchBang… and I’m also going to siphon through some ArchLinux package updates and see if they’re up to speed on these new patches….

I have set myself the challenge of making my laptop work better. I’m off of work for 3 weeks and so that is my time limit… I figured that if it’s not completely usable in 3 weeks time then I’ll just put Fedora 10 back on it and wait for things to improve over time.

I spent a couple days browsing through Distrowatch to decide what to base my install on. I didn’t want anything Debian-based to start with because my wireless wasn’t working so well with Ubuntu and I’ve had trouble with wireless on Debian on my old laptop. I wanted something kinda raw so that it would be a learning experience as much as anything. After a few days of messing around I figured that I’d just roll with Slackware and the customise the hell out of it… I mean, that’s what Slackware is all about right?

I installed Slackware last night and added a user, got X up and played about just making sure that the system basically functions. Although boot time as been pretty slow the overall responsiveness is fast and there weren’t any problems. I figured that at some point in the next few weeks I’d want to compile my own kernel, so that’s what I did.

Baring in mind that I haven’t compiled a kernel for a couple of years I knew this would be ropey and my first attempt can only be described as lame. I forgot to include support for ReiserFS… which is the FS I’d chosen for my root partition… what an idiot! Needless to say my second attempt was a little more careful and it booted just fine. I’ve been using that kernel all day and I’ve had no trouble with it. (The kernel I compiled was a vanilla 2.6.29 from linuxhq.com)

The next thing I tested was sound, and most importantly input of sound. Already an improvement on Fedora and Ubuntu, I can make it feed the input from both the internal mic and the mic jack out through the speakers. Nice. I then went for the webcam, I knew I’d compiled the uvcvideo module with my kernel so it should just work (it didn’t work on Ubuntu, but did on Fedora). I compiled wxcam and it worked straight away. The resolution is 1024×768, which is cool. This program allowed me to record sound (from the mic jack) and video, and it works nicely.

Today I’ve been playing to make a nice desktop using Fluxbox, and I’ve been trying to get a virtual machine going so that I can do my work, This is proving to be a little challenging so I’ll come back to it.

That’s all for now.

For someone who in the past has wasted a lot of time hopping between different GNU/Linux distributions in the past I now have to think of a number of reasons before changing again, just so that I know I’m not just slipping into old habits.

Buying a brand new laptop can be a fairly problematic process when you intend only using open source software on it just because the latest and greatest hardware may not have drivers available yet. Indeed it was almost a year after buying my previous laptop that I could confidently install a Linux distro on it and know that the sound card would work. When I bought my most recent laptop I did a fair amount of research into what I could get for my money that would most-likely work first time and when I first stuck a 64-bit Ubuntu Live CD in the drive I was pleased to find that everything seemed to be in order. 3D desktop, wireless, no dead keys, sound…. hip to go! The webcam didn’t work, but I looked it up on the net and found that if I wanted it to then I could jsut complile the gspca kernel modules and it’d all be fine.

So a few weeks down the line and I begin to feel that I’m not getting all I could be out of my laptop. I thought for a while and came up with the following reasons to try a different distribution:

• The possibility of improved power management. (Something I’ve failed to mention until now is that so far I have not successfully suspended or hibernated this laptop yet)
• Improved performance. (I’ve noticed in the past that Ubuntu appears less responsive that other distros like Debian, PCLinuxOS and Slackware, so there is a good chance I could get more out it)
• I was sometimes getting a black screen when starting the computer which meant that I’d have to reboot, wasting time.

There were other reasons such as my preference for a rolling upgrade and the desire for a system that feels more raw and customisable… but they’re not so relevent really…

So now I’m done with my excuses I can get on to the process itself:

At first I wanted to stick Archlinux on it. I’ve liked Arch in the past and it’s fairly hands-on so I downloaded an ISO and off I went. And shortly after I stopped… The last time I tried Archlinux on my desktop computer there were problems with the xorg package and the newer NVIDIA drivers. I had figured that this would have been solved a while back and wouldn’t affect me anyway as this laptop has Intel-based graphics. TBH I don’t know what the problem was but basically every time I started X it crashed, hard. I first thought it could have been the mouse and keyboard not being detected and as I result I just couldn’t shut the X server down with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace or switch to another getty but besides the fact that X probably wouldn’t have started without mouse or keyboard detected I installed links from the console, had a little play on google and found that others were having similar problems. I need this laptop for work… I don’t have time to mess around like this… time for another distro…

I only had a day to get this re-install done because I was back at work the next day. Rather than beginning to download another ISO I started looking through what I had on different cover discs from magazines and found a copy of 32-bit Fedora 10. I didn’t really want to put a 32-bit distro on here as the CPUs are 64-bit compatible but I was on a time scale so just did it anyway…

I’d like to say that the install process was smooth. I didn’t actually have any problems as such except that it took 2 and a half hours! I was stupid enough to tell it to install updates as it goes and so the majority of over 1000 packages were downloaded rather than read off the CD… I’ll remember this if there’s a next time…

And everything just works?

The system definately feels a little quicker, although boot-up time takes just as long – about a minute, which is no faster than my older computers.
The default compiz setup is quite pleasing to the eye.
The webcam works (great!).
A major plus is that Wireless works better. I was having trouble connecting to the school’s wireless network and the IT tech guy said that it’s probably because my hardware was a lot newer than their routers. I took this answer on board, but I wasn’t 100% convinced because my last laptop wouldn’t connect properly either when using Linux but worked fine on Windows XP. With Fedora installed on here the wireless works significantly better both at work and at home… I don’t know why… but it’s nice.
…and I no-longer get the black screen.

On the negative side:
I get hard crashes when using anything remotely graphical… bye bye compiz. It happens randomly and I don’t know why. I can’t play any games… I’m actually assuming that this is the same problem that I was having with Archlinux so I should feel lucky just being in X at all… I was having trouble with X crashing when trying to play Nexuiz on Ubuntu, but it didn’t take the whole system out. I suppose there’s just more work to be done on the newer Intel drivers…
Also… still no suspend or hibernate.

So will I stick with Fedora 10? Well the wireless working better is a big bonus and I haven’t had a real good go with Fedora since FC4 so I’ll probably stay for a while. I think it boils down to stability: if I keep making it crash then I may as well have a slightly slower machine that is more stable… lets just see.

Multiple Linux distributions a local privilege-escalation vulnerability because of an error in the ‘login’ program.

Local attackers in the UTMP group could exploit this issue to take ownership of arbitrary files on the vulnerable system. This may lead to a complete compromise of the system.

REFERENCIA DE LA VULNERABILIDAD

EXPLOIT

fuente: securityfocus.com

So I gave Debian Lenny a fair shot. There were ups, there were downs, but all said I’m moving on. I already gave Fedora 10 a spin and was under impressed with its sluggardness (no doubt this has more to do with my hardware than the OS, but still). Tried to install Zenwalk, but something was screwed up with the cd so it got about 1/4 installed and gave up the ghost. I am going to try again with that distribution though. Also tried CentOS, but the live cd gave no visible install option so I put that one aside for now. And I attempted an install of Vector Linux, but got lost because the partitioning process was way more complicated than anything I was used to.

So, just needing to slap something on easily that I could use to download more distributions and burn them to disk, I installed Ubuntu 8.10. It’s really not that bad and I suppose if all else fails I’ll come back to it. Still, I’d rather find something else first. I’m going to try Zenwalk and CentOS again, and I’ve got the PCLinuxOS iso ready to be burned, plus Mandriva and BLAG Linux torrents still downloading. I used BLAG for awhile last year and  I like it enough to try it again. I suppose I could always try Open SuSe too, but I’m justnot abig fan of Novell since they got in bed with Microsoft.

Eventually I’ll find something to use for awhile. And one of the great things about Linux is I can always count on something even better being released, for free, every six months to a year.

So last night I got it in me to give Fedora 9 spin. I downloaded the DVD iso, but since it was such a large file I didn’t have time to install. Thus, today after I back up some recent files I’m going to try it out. I’ve had some experience with a Fedora derivative, BLAG Linux, but I’ve never actually tried out Fedora itself.

So wish me luck.

Installing software in Linux is nothing like it used to be, but there are still some pitfalls to watch out for. If you follow this little guide, your Linux life will be made simpler and safer.

#1: Installing from source when your system is primarily an .rpm or .deb system

Many new Linux users don’t understand that both rpm and apt (or dkpg) keep track of everything installed on the system. However, those systems (rpm, apt, and dkpg) can keep track only of packages they install. So when you find that obscure package that comes only in source and you compile it yourself, your package management system will not know what to do with it. Instead, create either an .rpm or .deb file from the source and install the package with the package management system so that system will be aware of everything you have installed.

#2: Neglecting the many graphical front-end package management applications

Most people don’t even realize that there are graphical front ends that take a lot of the guesswork out of installing packages in Linux. For yum (the command-line package management system for rpm), you can use Yumex for yum (installed with yum install yumex); you can use Synaptic or Adept for apt (installed with apt-get install synaptic or apt-get install adept).

#3: Forgetting to update the list of available packages

When using apt-get or yum, make sure you’re updating the list of available packages. Otherwise, your system will not remain updated with the latest releases of installed packages. To update with apt-get, you issue the command apt-get update. To update with yum, issue yum check-update.

#4: Not adding repositories for yum or apt-get

Both yum and apt-get use a listing of repositories that tell them where to locate available packages. But the default repositories (often called “repos”) do not include every Linux package known to Linuxkind. So if you run the command to install an application, and yum (or apt-get) can’t find the package, most likely you’ll have to add a repo to your sources listing. For yum, the sources are in /etc/yum.conf. For apt-get, they are placed in /etc/apt/sources.list. Once you have added a new repo, make sure you run the update so either apt or rpm is made aware of the new source.

5#: Not taking advantage of installing from a browser

Just as with Windows, when your system sees you are attempting to download an installable application, you’ll be asked whether you would like the package management system to attempt to install the file or just save it to disk. In both instances, you will be asked for the root password (so you must have access to said password for this to even work). One thing I’ve always like about this method (be it in a yum-based or dpkg-based system) is that it has almost always been good about locating and adding dependencies.

Naturally, this method works only when you are downloading a file that’s applicable to your system. If you attempt to download an rpm file on a Debian-based system, you won’t have the option of installing the file.

You can take this one step further and select the Always Do This… check box in the Firefox popup so that every time you download a file associated with your package management system, it will automatically prompt you for your root password and continue to install the package. This streamlines the process quite a bit.

#6: Forgetting the command line

Let’s say you’ve installed a headless server using Ubuntu or Debian (a common setup for Linux servers) and haven’t installed any of the graphical interfaces or desktops. To do any maintenance, you have to log in via ssh (because no admin would log in via telnet) and are limited to the command line only. Even so, your ability to keep your system updated or install new applications is not limited. You can still use yum or apt-get to manage your packages.

With a Debian-based system, you have another option: Aptitude. From the command line, issue the command aptitude and you will be greeted with a nice curses-based interface for apt. This system is easy to use and gives you an outstanding option for maintaining a gui-less server without losing functionality. Aptitude lists Security Updates, Upgradeable Packages, New Packages, Not Installed Packages, Obsolete Packages, Virtual Packages, and Tasks. As you scroll through the list, you will not only get the installed vs. the new package release numbers but also a description of the package. After using Aptitude, you will quickly see how simple updating Linux packages can be, even from the command line.

#7: Blindly unpacking tar files

I can’t tell you how many times I have downloaded a source package and without thinking, untarred the package not knowing its contents. Most times this works out fine. But there are a few times when the package creator/maintainer has failed to mention that the entire contents of the package are not housed in a parent directory. So instead of having a newly created directory housing the contents of the tar file (which can contain hundreds of files/directories), those files are blown up into the directory you unpacked them into.

To avoid this, I always create a temporary directory and move the tar file into it. Then, when I unpack the tar file, it doesn’t matter if the contents are contained within their own directory or not. Using this method will save you a LOT of cleanup in those cases where the creator didn’t pack everything in its own neat directory.

#8: Deleting those make files

When you’re installing from source, you’ll probably run make clean to get rid of all of those unneeded source files. But if you get rid of the Makefile, uninstalling will be a hassle. If you keep it, you can usually uninstall the program simply by issuing make uninstall from the directory housing the Makefile. A word of warning: Don’t dump all your Makefiles into one directory. First rename them so you know which application they belong to. When you want to uninstall the application, move the Makefile to another directory, rename it to its original name, and then run the uninstall command. Once you’ve uninstalled the application, you can delete the Makefile.

#9: Installing for the wrong architecture

You might notice that many rpm files will have an i386, i586, i686, PPC, 64, etc. There is a reason for this. Unless the rpm file has noarch included in the filename, that rpm file was created for a specific architecture. And when those files were created for that architecture, they were optimized for it, so they’ll will run better. Does that mean you can’t install an i586 on a standard 386 machine? Of course not. But it will not run as efficiently as it will on the indicated architecture. Now, you can’t install a PPC rpm on an x86 architecture. The PPC architecture is for the Motorola chipset. Nor can you install the 64 bit on a 32 bit. You can, however, install the 32 bit on a 64 bit (as in the case when you want to get Firefox running with Flash on a 64-bit machine).

#10: Failing to address problems with kernel updates

It used to be that updating kernels was a task left to the silverback geeks. No more. With the new package management systems, anyone can update a kernel. But there are some gotchas you should know about. One issue is that of space. With every update of a kernel, your old kernel is retained. If you continually update kernels, your system storage can quickly fill up. It’s always a good idea to check to see what older kernels you can get rid of. If you’re using rpm, issue the command rpm -qa | grep kernel to see what you have installed. You can remove all but the last two installed. It’s always best to keep two in case the one you are running gets fubar’d.

So guys who are using Ubuntu or any other distros please keep this things in mind while installing anything in your distros and you will never be in any problem.

Are you tierd of windows? Do you want to try something new? Something with no “blue screen of death” and no crashes, a cool system that just works! Try UBUNTU!

What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a linux distribution that is currently rated as the best distro on Distrowatch.

Why Ubuntu/Linux?

Apart from the fact that ubuntu is the best linux distro it is very stable and easy to use. Linux has been improving a lot in the past years and now it is at a point where it could be used as desktop system. Long back linux was only used as servers and still is because of its stability and security. It is very secure and stable. A lot of you have experienced whats called the “blue screen of death” when your computer just goes blue and restarts. You can find out more about it here. If you haven’t already you might sometime in the future. It doesn’t mean you will but you might. It occurs when a hardware or software error occurs and to prevent further damage it gives you a blue screen and restarts your computer. This is very annoying and happens a lot on Microsoft Windows OS such as Vista. Why not use something that is easier to use, more stable, and more secure. What more can you ask for in an operating system.

A lot of people complain that it is not as easy to use as it is said. Look again when these were posted. Years ago! Now, linux systems are very useable and give a very good performace. One of the biggest issues people run into is installing programs. It has now become easier than ever and so easy you that you can’t complain. If you want to find out more on how to easily install applications on linux click here. Applications are also called packages in linux systems.

The reason I suggested ubuntu is because it is designed for new comers to easily get used to. But don’t get fooled by the ease. It is just as powerful as the any other distribution such as Novel SUSE or Redhat.

How Do I Get Started With Ubuntu?

First you need to go download a copy of the OS which is completely free because it is an open source distro and you can customize it as much as you want. To download a copy click on the following link. Download Now!
Ubuntu gives you the option of downloading a Live CD or a text based install. Using the live cd you can just pop it in your drive and try it out without even installing. To install just click on the install icon on the desktop. A text based install is where you don’t get to try out the OS but it is used to only install the OS. Just follow the simple steps and you will have a running Ubuntu Desktop in no time!

Why is it not very visually appealing?

Ubuntu is based on a human theme and so brown is its theme. You will be seeing different themes on the next version. The current version is 8.04 codenamed Hardy Heron. This is where you options get very wide. Ubuntu is so customizable you can make it look exactly like you want. Finally you get to feel a desktop of your own! You can download more themes at art.gnome.org or www.gnome-look.org. I forgot to mention there are two desktop enviornments. KDE and Gnome. You can also have both but only use one at a time. Click here to learn more about desktop environment. There are a lot more desktop managers but gnome and kde are the most widely used ones.

Once you are done installing and setting it up with your favorite themes you can install more applications. Your desktop is then finally ready for everyday use. Believe me you are going to have an amazing experience with it. If you want to add more eye candy with desktop effects you can enable compiz which comes installed by default on ubuntu. You think Mac OSX looks cool, try compiz. There are plugins you can install to get more effects.

Enjoy your Ubuntu installs!

Cheers,

Aslam

That’s one you often hear, right? There are too many Linux distributions, and that’s a problem. To some people, who then feel compelled to blog about it. Most of the times, the reasons stated are confusion for new Linux users, and lack of a unified install method for all Linuxes.

Let’s start with that confusion. Apparently, the new Linux user won’t know what to choose when faced with all the (over 300) possibilities, but be honest here, to the “outside world”, Linux has become synonymous with “Ubuntu”. I’m not saying Ubuntu is the best, but when I see Linux mentioned in PC magazines in Belgium, it’s always Ubuntu. That’s not a bad thing…Ubuntu’s pretty easy, so that hypothetical new Linux user shouldn’t have too many problems with it.
In any case, installing an OS is not something you should do without preparation. Someone who searches for a Linux distribution to replace Windows, and decides on Devil Linux (just an example), should have known better.

Then, the different package managers. Yes, there’s rpm, and deb, and tar.gz, and pacman and pisi etc. But why should this matter to end-users? It doesn’t. Yes, it creates extra work for the packagers of each distribution, but the user doesn’t notice that. He’s using the front-end provided by his or her distribution. It doesn’t matter if that piece of software is called Yast, or synaptic, or adept or whatever…it’s always easy. Search for a package. Click. Installed. No hassle.

Are there any real advantages to having so many distributions around? Perhaps not, but I won’t deny anyone the pleasure of releasing his own distro, just because he can. Or her, of course. That’s the fun of it. And every now and then, there’s a new distribution that really makes an impact, like Ubuntu.

In the end, there isn’t any advantage to having only one dominant Linux distribution either. Yes, new users wouldn’t be confused and there would be only one way to install software, making it easier for package maintainers. But what would be the point? To lure in new users? To take on Windows and OS X? Why? There’s this feeling among some people that Linux HAS to grow, that it HAS to become the dominant OS, because it’s (arguably) so much better. I don’t agree. It would be nice if some people knew that the answer to their virus-ridden problems is freely available, but that’s all. Otherwise, let people use what they’re happy with.

Plus, a little competition never hurt anybody. It improves quality. You want to write a CD-burner? You better make it as good as K3b. A music manager? Amarok’s your target there. The same goes for distributions. I believe that Ubuntu gave the other distributions a good kick in the rear. It came on the scene being the best. These days, OpenSuse, Mandriva, even Pardus…are (almost?) as good.
So let Linux users and developers tinker, and write new programs, and create new distributions, and try stuff with their PC, and find new ways to do the same stuff. It’s just Linux way. It’s FUN.

San

This week my boredom has lead me to install Linux on a flash drive.
Generally speaking this should be a fairly straight forward process. I thought I’d try it out because I was playing with Puppy Linux on qemu and found that it is in an option on their installer. Unfortunately for a reason unknown to me qemu on my laptop; which has been running Debian Sid for a while now (not because I like it, but because I haven’t been using my laptop much and can’t be bothered to change it!); wont pass access to usb drives to the virtual machine and so I couldn’t do the install without burning it to CD first, which seems a little pointless, not to mention a complete waste of a CD. I followed some instructions that told me to loop-mount the Puppy ISO and copy the files manually onto the flash drive and alter the syslinux.cfg to boot from the drive but for one reason or another my laptop refused to boot this botch-job and I started looking for other options. I feel the need to mention that the few people I spoke with on #puppylinux (freenode IRC) were not particularly friendly or helpful.
The next thing I tried, which I am using right now, is SLAX. SLAX is a live distro based on Slackware that you can download and easily install directly onto a flash drive. Installation was simply a matter of untarring file onto the drive then running a script to install lilo. Job’s a goodun. Before doing that I had already formatted the drive to VFAT and labelled it bootable when I was playing with Puppy, I’m not sure if this was neccessary, but the important thing is that it worked!

So here I am in SLAX. I have a fully-functioning KDE desktop (Version 3.5.9), which to be honest I think is a little over the top for a distro that runs off a usb-drive, but here we have it, and it all seems to function fine. There are a few apps that have been cut out, like Kedit for example, leaving just one option for each task. (There is also the option of fluxbox, which I found out later on, but the only way I could find of using it was to write a .xinitrc file. Inexperienced users would not know how to do this…) Kword is the word processor. Mplayer is installed with the Kplayer GUI. Also, juK for music playback. Kmail for email, which was easy to configure for my googlemail account. Konqueror is the web browser of choice and I was surprised to find that Adobe Flash 9 is installed by default, which is nice. Konqueror doesn’t really like all the Javascript on Facebook and Hotmail doesn’t work at all for the same reason. I like Konqueror and it’s a real shame that it sometimes lets itself down in this way (Something I’ve noted on Slackware 12.0 is that Konqueror is unstable… I may try recompiling kdebase to see if that solves it…).

SLAX, like most Linux distributions, boasts about it’s package management capabilities. They have designed a modular system whereby programs can be added to your system by placing lzm files in a particular folder on the flash drive and it unzips them appropriately in the filesystem making the program available. This is quite clever and it is pretty fast too. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of dependency resolution so I’m curious about if each package includes all the dependent files required… It reminds me of PC-BSD’s package manager, as described well on wikipedia… CLICK… over time there is potentially a lot of space wasted; not something I want considering I’m running this on a 1GB flash drive!
System stability is fairly good. I have managed to make it crash twice and when that happens you have to switch off and on again, I don’t know what the cause of the problem is… I did leave the SLAX running for about 12 hours so it could do some Folding@Home work and in that time klancher crashed. I could not solve this issue without rebooting.

There are two things that irritate me about SLAX. The first is that by default you do everything as the root user, which is unsafe, but also very un-linux-like. People are just too good at breaking things to be the root user all the time. Although the useradd command is available, and I experimented with this, there are no instructions for things like which groups the user needs to be added to etc. which makes it impossible for inexperienced users. The root password by default is toor, which it tells you on the screen every time you boot up. It doesn’t tell you how to change this, and so there’s no sort of security for if you’ve saved any passwords or browsing history on the disk. I can see how all this has come from basically making a flash copy of a live CD, but there are definitely different requirements that the SLAX team needs to consider for their flash-drive version simply because being root all the time is unsafe.
The second thing I don’t like is probably also a result of the way this system was developed is that although the file system exists when you are running the OS, it is only present in the compressed modular format on the disk itself. There is then a second filesystem, which is set out properly for all of the changes that you’ve made. This could be purely for space-saving reasons, or whatever, but if the filesystem were layed out properly on the disk as though it were a permanent drive then it would be easy to chroot into the system and fix things should they go wrong. With things this way I am not in a position whereby I cannot make my own updates or change the programs that are installed. I cannot simply remove Mplayer and install VLC, for example because Mplayer is in one of the bigger “modules” (packages).

In all I just don’t see what kind of service the creators of SLAX are trying to create, the more I play with it the more unfinished it appears to be and the website really doesn’t have a lot of information on it. I may continue playing with this and see where I get… alternatively I may try creating something myself, maybe based on Archlinux or T2. Watch this space…

I kinda neglected to mention on here that I’ve been using Slackware 12.1 recently. Actually…since it was released. At first my intention was to install it on a separate partition from Archlinux and dual boot; I even considered leaving one of them as a “free” distro and the other with “non-free” packages installed but the way it worked out is that I couldn’t be bothered to re-configure LILO and I haven’t looked back in over four weeks! (It’s not that I had any problem at all with Archlinux; in fact I found it one of the best Linux distributions that I’ve used.)

I first stopped using Slackware shortly after the release of version 11.0 because I was a tad wound up by the default kernel option, which in turn resulted in there being no HAL available without considerable messing about. I didn’t turn completely away from Slackware at this point though, my new love became Zenwalk. Zenwalk, which was named mini-slack in previous versions, is basically a cut-down version of Slackware that has been optimised for i686 processors. It featured a custom-written auto-mount tool for handling devices and there was also a package management tool which handled dependencies as well (I’m not sure which program it was based on, but didn’t really care either, it worked really well and was capable of a full system-upgrade when a new version came out).
I did use Slackware 11.0 for a while on my laptop because at the time it was the only distro I could force to make my sound card work. The sound card in my laptop has a Realtek ALC883 chipset that was only supported in versions of alsa later than 1.0.13.

I think I went a bit off-topic there… The laptop sound card story is actually quite a long one…

I was really curious about trying out Slackware 12.1 after listening to a podcast from Linux Reality in which Chess talks for half an hour about how much he likes Slackware… as you can tell, I’m not at all influenced by the media… …it’s episode 99 if you’re interested… Well it wasn’t just the fact that he likes it that swayed me, more specifically I was intrigued by the idea of Slackbuilds. Slackbuilds are something that I hadn’t heard of in the days of Slack 9/10 and it seemed like a great system for building packages from source. For more info read about it all on the Slackbuilds.org (clicky) website. I have used this system to build a lot of packages and it’s never failed.

Anyway… gonna wrap this up now… I don’t remember where I was going with this post.

Slackware rocks! XD …and it’s really fast…