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Thursday, July 16th, 2009
I should maybe start out by stating that I am always more than a little hesitant to post on any Ubuntu planets about CrunchBang Linux, however, in this case I was persuaded to do so by Dave Walker. I guess I feel somewhat hesitant because there is a conflict of interest and I really do not want to distract from any of the excellent work going on around Ubuntu. Are these feelings rational?
Anyhow, the reason I am writing this post is because the CrunchBang project could really do with some help. For anyone not aware, I released a new version of CrunchBang last week. The new the release went well, a little too well in fact and the shared host which I was using to distribute the ISO files went into meltdown within hours of publicising the release. The meltdown was caused purely by a lack of planning on my behalf, I really had not expected so much interest.
Luckily, the CrunchBang community pulled together to save the day. Users on the forums managed to provide some BitTorrent downloads and others provided ad hoc mirrors. We eventually managed to get the files out, albeit rather slowly. Meanwhile, within the #crunchbang IRC channel, Ciemon Dunville suggested I speak to Dave Walker about the mirroring/load balancing scripts which he uses to help distribute the Ubuntu UK Podcast. A short while later, after letting me bug him with questions over the phone, Daviey very kindly offered to help out.
The following day I took out a lease on new dedicated server and Daviey set about working his black magic. As a result of Daviey's know-how and generosity, the CrunchBang project now has much more reliable means of distributing itself. The only things lacking now are volunteers willing to help by creating mirrors. If this is something you think you can help out with, please see the mirror set-up guide.
A HUGE THANK YOU is due to everyone who is helping out and providing mirrors, including; Andrew Williams, Marty Cannon, Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Ciemon Dunville and Stas Sushkov. You are all stars! Hopefully, we can get some more stars involved to help lessen the load! :)
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Last night I uploaded and released the final CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 build. I am really quite pleased with this release and it seems to be working well on my own systems. I will keep this post short as I have already written about the release on the new CrunchBang Linux blog. All I wanted to say here is, I have really enjoyed working on this release; all the feedback, help and support has been quite overwhelming. It has also been fun to meet and chat with lots of like-minded Linux enthusiasts and geeks :)
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Over the last few days I have been busy beavering away creating a new project site for CrunchBang Linux. I had been thinking about creating a separate site for the project for a while, mainly because my personal site was never built with the intention of hosting any such project. Also, I figure that now the project has its own page on DistroWatch, I should really start taking the whole thing a little more seriously.
On the subject of developing websites, I have created a fair few in my time, some commercial, some not. Nearly all the sites I have developed have been custom coded to some extent, but this new project site is not. Apart from the front page, the rest of site has been constructed using entirely free and open source web applications.
Forums
The new forums are powered by PunBB, which is described as being a lightweight PHP discussion board. This is the first time I have had any experience of working with this software, and I have to say, I have been thoroughly impressed; the installation was a painless affair and customising the look 'n' feel was also fairly easy. In fact, I only had one real issue; for some reason, the RSS and Atom feed generator did not parse any BBCode, which meant the resulting output was not overly attractive or easy to read. Having said that, I did manage to implement a quick fix without too much hassle. I will post the fix at some point in the future. Anyhow, PunBB, very impressive.
Wiki
The new wiki is powered by the fabulous DokuWiki. Again, I had not had any experience of using the software previous to the installation, although I had read good things about it and I have been subscribed to authors feed for a while, so I was somewhat familiar with it.
For anyone who has not tried it, DokuWiki is an easy to use, standard compliant wiki. It is also fairly unusual in the fact that it does not use an SQL database backend, using flat files instead. I have not been using it long enough to give an opinion on whether or not this provides any advantages, but I think it makes for a refreshing change at the least.
Regarding usage, it is a breeze. Creating new pages, uploading media and modifying access control lists could not be easier, it really is a pleasure to use, that is to say, as pleasurable as using a web application can be :p
Weblog
The new weblog is powered by WordPress. I am sure I do not have to say much about WordPress, only I have not actually used it since about the time of version 1.5.x. Wow! WordPress is definitely one of the most polished web applications I have used in a while. It might be somewhat bloated compared to what I am used to, but I think I can endure a little bloat if it means I get ease of use and rapid development. Nothing more to say about WordPress, other than it is good stuff.
Cleaning up
Apparently, cool URIs do not change. So, with this is mind I have been attempting to migrate as much information as I can to the new site without causing too much disruption to existing project data. I have implemented as few server-side redirects as possible. The old forums will remain archived in a read-only state and the mailing list will stay put for the time being as I have yet to set-up Mailman on my VPS.
Future focus
Overall, I am really pleased with the new site and I am hoping it will provide for some positive discussions and improvements to the distribution. I am also hoping the new easy to use web applications will mean I can spend less time administering and more time developing. Which reminds me…
…CrunchBang Linux uses many packages which are not in the standard Ubuntu desktop. Due to this, some of these packages are possibly not as well maintained as they could be — just an observation, not really a criticism. Anyway, if CrunchBang Linux does nothing else, it would be good if the future focus of the distribution could be to improve these packages and feed any improvements back upstream.
Anyhow, I am sure I have rambled for far too long :S If you have any feedback, comments or suggestions for improvements to the new site, please feel free to post them, all are welcome and greatly appreciated!
Friday, July 25th, 2008
Update: CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 is out now!
See: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/release-notes/8.10.01
I have released a couple of new images for my CrunchBang Linux project. This new release brings CrunchBang Linux up-to-date with packages available from the 8.04.01 point release of Ubuntu. The new images have been completely rebuilt from scratch and feature a whole bunch of changes.
What's new?
As stated above, all packages from the Ubuntu repositories have been updated to bring them in-line with Ubuntu 8.04.01. Most notably, Firefox 3 is no-longer beta software and a couple of well-known security vulnerabilities have been patched.
Openbox has been updated to the latest version. See Openbox:Changelog for more information.
An alternative XFCE4 desktop environment is available from the GDM login screen. It has been set-up to behave identically [well, near enough] to the default Openbox session. e.g. right-click menus, shortcut keys etc. This new feature is currently being guinea pigged by Becky the Linux user.
Both the Openbox and XFCE4 sessions use the XFCE4 Settings Manager. This adds some overhead to the Openbox session, but also provides a solution to the problem of gnome-settings-daemon overriding users settings when invoked by accident — there are a surprising number of applications which invoke gnome-settings-daemon for no obvious reason.
ROX-Filer has been replaced by Thunar as the default file manager; the thunar-volman package now handles auto mounting of devices. This is a huge improvement over the previous release, which used Ivman.
A new "Lite" image has been made available. This image features the same Openbox and XFCE4 environments, but does not have the plethora of applications available in the full image. Hopefully, this new image will go a long way to satisfying requests to remove applications. The Lite image comes in at approximately 403M, making it significantly
smaller than the standard image at approximately 633M.
An alternative installation method. CrunchBang Linux can now be built from a minimal "CLI" installation of Ubuntu.
Numerous other tweaks and changes, including but not limited to:
- A new Usplash theme.
- New GDM theme.
- Xarchiver replaced by File Roller.
- GnomeBaker removed in favour of Brasero.
- Terminator now set as the default terminal emulator.
- RealPlayer plugins enabled by default.
- OSMO replaced by Orage.
- Et cetera.
Download locations
As always, CrunchBang Linux has been developed for my personal use; however, everyone is free to download and use as they see fit. If you do decide to download, please pay special attention to the disclaimer, which basically states, "if you brick your system, do not come running to me."
For download locations, see: CrunchBang Linux 8.04.02 Download Locations. For the alternative installation instructions, see: CrunchBang Linux 8.04.02 Alternative Installation.
Screenshots
Some screenshots of CrunchBang Linux 8.04.02 in action, click on the thumbnails for larger images.
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
I have been using Twitter on and off for several months. Some of the time the service works, the remainder of the time I am reliably informed that "Something is technically wrong." Currently, Twitter is the only web based application I use on a regular basis which breaks just as regularly as I use it.
If Twitter provided an important service, email for example, I would have stopped using it in favour of something more reliable; however, arguably, Twitter does not provide an important service, so I have persevered with its less than reliable service, though I have to admit, my patience is wearing thin.
Should not the Twitter experience be fun?
For me, Twitter has stopped being a fun distraction and has become something which I like to do, but more often than not, I end up feeling frustrated when I do. Problem is, I have become comfortable with keeping a virtual diary of day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute distractions. I also enjoy the sporadic conversations which occur between mutual followers.
Do not misunderstand me, I think the basis of the Twitter service, "What are you doing?", is valid and simple enough to remain being a great idea; however, for fear of stating the obvious, I do not think the Twitter service is currently scaling well enough to cope with the digital populace. And more worryingly [at least for the Twitter developers], I am not sure it ever will, not in its current guise and regardless of the underlying technologies.
Ah b∗ll∗cks!
Also, there is something which has been bugging me about Twitter, the fact that it is hosting my data. The data in question, may on the surface seem unimportant, and for the large part it is; however, on occasion I have found myself wanting needing to refer to my backlog of tweets, only to find the Twitter service lacking, again.
As an example, only the other day, Becky and I wanted to watch an episode of a certain serial drama and neither of us could remember the last episode we had watched. Ah ha! I thought, I will search my Twitter history, I am sure to have tweeted about it. The following conversation went something like:
me: Ah b∗ll∗cks!
Becky: What's wrong?
me: Something technical!
If I was hosting the tweets myself, I feel certain the above short conversation would never have taken place. I would have been able to search my data, find the information I needed and carry on with my otherwise happy existence.
What are you doing?
I am feeling all Twittered out, not with the concept, but with the service. I am going to rectify this by developing my own mini Twitteresque application. The application will provide similar functionality to Twitter, but obviously it will be served from my own hosting account. The application will store my tweets within its own database as well as pushing them to Twitter. Ideally, once the application is running, nobody, apart from myself, should notice any difference as it will appear as though I am Twittering as normal.
Thank you Twitter
Twitter got me hooked on keeping a diary of meaningless events, but then left me wanting. So, thank you Twitter, I now have a new project to keep me amused for a while.
End rant. Start project.
Saturday, May 10th, 2008
"A consonant please Carol, and another, and another, and another, and another." — actually, this post is not about Carol Vorderman or Countdown, it is about some interesting[?] script output I came across when attempting to write a new spam filter. I will explain…
Just lately my website has been receiving some rather odd junk comments. The comments make no sense and they have quite obviously been sent by some automated junk flinging robot. The reason the comments make no sense is because they seem to be constructed from random characters. Apart from making no sense, these comments were also becoming a nuisance as they were easily slipping past my existing keyword filters.
So, the other night I decided to sit down and write a new filter to try and catch these random character junk comments. I started by analysing some previously submitted comments to try and find any common patterns. One such pattern I found was multiple strings containing 5 or more consecutive consonants. Thinking this to be unusual, I ran some tests against a flat file containing 21110 common English words. I thought the results were interesting. Here is what I found:
- 85 unique strings containing 5 or more consecutive consonants.
- 113 words containing 5 or more consecutive consonants.
- 9 words containing 5 or more consecutive consonants and no vowels: crypt, lymph, lynch, myrrh, nymph, pygmy, rhythm, sylph, tryst
- 10 words containing 6 or more consecutive consonants: latchstring, metempsychosis, polysyllabic, polysyllable, porphyry, rhythm, skyscraper, strychnine, synchronize, synchronous
- 1 word containing 6 consecutive consonants and no vowels: rhythm
- 1 word containing 7 consecutive consonants: strychnine
I should state that the above results are in no way definitive. I know this because I also ran the same test against another file containing 311141 words found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Still, by using the results of the initial test I was able to construct a list of safe words to use with my new spam filter.
Finally, yes, I did consider not writing this post; however, I am sure my publishing of these results will not change anything. Besides, Arthur, my 80 year old neighbour, is the biggest Countdown fan on the planet, he is also quite Internet savvy and definitely thinks Carol Vorderman is hot — he may find these results quite useful in increasing his daily Countdown score!
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Looking at my project page for Whird, I can see I have somewhat neglected the project recently. Actually, this is not entirely true, I have been testing Whird extensively for about 7 months. As things stand at the moment, Whird could be considered as either, a working prototype, or, classic vaporware. I prefer to think of it as a working prototype; however, I am not one of the many people who, over the last few months, have contacted me, asking questions about the project.
Why the neglect?
There are several reasons for my recent lack of commitment to Whird:
I have spent a large amount of time [probably too much] working on other projects; since the beginning of the year, CrunchBang Linux has consumed most of my free time.
Now that I have a working copy of Whird, I seem to have become far too comfortable simply using it, instead of developing it. Since starting this blog, in September last year, I have written 165 posts [not including this one.] Maybe I should have spent more time developing, instead of writing?! Hang on a minute, I am doing it again now. Doh!
Related to the last point; now that I have test driven Whird, I pretty much know what is wrong, what needs fixing and what works. Knowing this, I would ideally like to perform a complete rewrite. A daunting thought!
I have no self-imposed deadlines. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing, because it means any work I put into Whird remains a fun activity, something I can perform at my leisure. It is a curse, because I may not actually touch the project for months on end.
Will Whird ever be released?
Answer; maybe, probably, I hope so. Having said that, I would not hold your breath. It has occurred to me that Whird is in danger of becoming [if it hasn't done so already] "that" project, the project that provides endless hours of fun, without actually resulting in anything tangible.
Anyhow, that pretty much sums up the current status of Whird. Time to crack on and have a bit more fun :) In the meantime, if you are reading this and you are looking to start a new blog, why not try Steve Kemp's Chronicle. I have not actually tried it myself, but from what I have read, it looks like an interesting piece of software, something I could see myself using.
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Update: CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 is out now!
See: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/release-notes/8.10.01
This is the third release of CrunchBang Linux. This release is based on the current development version of Ubuntu, "Hardy Heron". As with the previous releases, I have developed CrunchBang Linux for personal use; however, I have released it as a download on the off chance that others may find it useful.
I have been running this release on my own systems for a number of weeks and it seems to be quite stable. Having said that, this release is based on a "development" release of Ubuntu and therefore is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage.
What's new?
I am really quite happy with how CrunchBang Linux is developing. This release sees numerous improvements and when installed makes for a really usable, fast and attractive system. I would really like to thank the users on the forums for all their suggestions and feedback; I have implemented many improvements based solely on their input. See below for a list of changes.
Major updates:
- CrunchBang Linux is now based on Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron". This brings many new improvements and package updates; most notably an updated 2.6.24.15 Linux Kernel, and Xorg 7.3.
- Openbox 3.4.7-pre2, this release includes many improvements including the GDM control mentioned here.
- CrunchBang Linux repositories are now enabled by default. The repositories include CrunchBang Linux specific packages and fixes, plus Openbox related updates etc.
- A new default theme based on Clearlooks, "Darkness Returns". See the screenshots.
Other changes:
Download
The CrunchBang Linux ISO image is approximately 614MB. It can be downloaded from the following locations:
MD5: 90c83bac8ec4411fea422b439bfbcc65
Screenshots
Disclaimer
CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
I've set-up an APT repository for CrunchBang Linux. This is something I've been meaning to do for sometime and I'm pleased that I've finally created it; being able to offer new packages and update existing ones should make life a bit easier, not to mention more fun.
I'm planning of using the new repository to issue updates for CrunchBang Linux, as well offering packages that are not available in the Ubuntu repositories. A couple of package updates which I've already uploaded include, Openbox 3.4.7-pre2 and obconf 2.0.3-0.
I've also uploaded a few other packages which I'm planning on using in the next release, see the wiki page for a list of available packages. All of the packages in the repository should be compatible with Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon", so if you're running with the Gibbon you're more than welcome to use it/browse the packages.
Adding the repository
Below are the instructions to add the CrunchBang Linux repository to your system's list of APT repositories. A shorter version of these instructions is available on the wiki, see: http://www.crunchbang.org/wiki/CrunchBangLinuxRepository
1. Open a terminal and enter the following to edit your APT sources:
gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Add the following line to the end of the file, save and exit:
deb http://crunchbang.net/packages-7.10.xx 7.10.xx main
3. Back in the terminal, add the GPG Key with the following command:
wget -q http://crunchbang.net/crunchbang.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
4. Update APT:
sudo apt-get update
Enjoy :)
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Update: CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 is out now!
See: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/release-notes/8.10.01
I've released another version of CrunchBang Linux, my remastered version of Ubuntu featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager. Version 7.10.02 is the version that was never meant to be; however, as soon as people started downloading and using the original [I'm still finding it hard to believe that anyone would actually do that] I realised I'd better try to clean up the distribution and start to attempt to fix any issues/problems.
One of the biggest issues with the original release was the dark GTK theme. While the dark theme worked well with all the default applications, it would render some other applications, installed via the repositories, next to useless. Therefore, the dark theme has been replaced by a new more usable/reliable light theme. I know some users [including myself] are quite fond of the dark theme, don't worry, it's still available and I'll post information on the forums and wiki about how to get it back.
Also, before I get on to the list of changes, I'd like to thank all the brave pioneers who downloaded and tried CrunchBang Linux 7.10.01. I've been overwhelmed by all the support and positive feedback on the distro, you guys rock!
Changes to 7.10.02
Below is a list of changes I've made for the new version. I've compiled the list from my TODO file and so it's fairly complete, though I did make some adjustments on-the-fly and I'm sure to have missed out some stuff.
I've compiled a list of installed applications, it can be found on the wiki. See: CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02 Applications List
Download
The CrunchBang Linux ISO image is approximately 580MB. It can be downloaded from the following locations:
MD5: f59aa9ba1cca475762e115ffc95a8f8e
User forums
Don't forget to visit the forums, register and join in with discussions and feedback regarding CrunchBang Linux. All feedback is really appreciated and helps to improve CrunchBang Linux. Forums are located at: http//crunchbang.org/forums/
Screenshots
Some screenshots of CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02 in action, more screenshots are available on the wiki.
Disclaimer
CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
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