Arch Linux Server Install

This is not so much like a lot of other reviews/reports I have done in the past, just a sort of quick and dirty, because unless someone out there wants to discuss any of this, I am kind of done with this. That is to say, I
As many of you are well aware, I am a tried and true Linux Mint advocate.  However, as some of you are aware, I believe in using the right tool for the job.

I have been using Zen Server for my file server for years and years. It has been good to me. It is still good. I may well use it again at some point. I like it a lot. No hard feelings.
Recently, however, Dad and I decided it was time to build something better.
So, new, good hardware should mean that we can run whatever distro we want, right? It can take it. But why waste cycles that could be going to BOINC? Why have a fancy DE on a system that may as well be headless?

Okay, well it will not really be headless, but it will be mostly used as such.

So I wanted to get down to basics and Dad and I liked the looks of Arch Linux.

Chose NET for the installation method.  Basically, you can chose a “core” and then do an update, or do the NET install and just get the update during the install.

Got the net ISO on USB stick and booted.
Logged in and started the setup.
Chose my install source (FTP)
Then it prompted me to start up networking.  Cool.
Next was setting the date/time configuration
- region and timezone
- UTC
- Check that it is correct, then back to the main menu
Setup file system.  Choosing manual so I can define my /home volume
Picking packages. done
Installing packages. Well now here is where I am really biting the bullet with this, so to speak. This is going out on a rather slow connection.  This (NET Install) is not really the recommended method, in this day and age, given the connectivity that I have because I will have to wait for the packages to be FTP’d to me.  As mentioned earlier, I could have downloaded the CD-install method, but then, what would be the point, really.  I can wait.  I am not in a hurry.  I have a book.
Oh, mercy, the package installation failed because of a connection timeout. Gee, what a surprise there, eh?  Clever little installer just picked right back up from there.
Now on to the configuration, daemons, bootloader.
Note: This text-based installation was cool. It had just enough pre-done, without having to go back in and remove a bunch of stuff, but still be very user friendly, as long as the user does not need to ask a bunch of questions. -- Or, if they do have to ask a bunch of questions, they ought to have another computer on the standby.

Reboot and setup my user. Done
Add sudo. Done
Installing xorg... little trouble getting the packages... Hmmm... Okay, just need to remove that failing mirror from my mirror list.
Configing video, X and fonts. Done.

Here is gets interesting. I did a bit of pre-install planning and whatnot. I have (I thing) not really been too naive to know that there is a lot about *nix that I do not know.  There is plenty. I knew there were lot of different desktop environments and window managers and stuff, but I had not understood the relationship between them. For the most part, I have dealt with systems that came with something (gnome, KDE, xfce, lxde) and I could install another, or whatever. And I would, and that would determine what sort of gui tools I would have, or what lib’s would load, etc. So, I had played around with some bare WM’s. It was really cool. I had (on another machine) tested out Window Maker, and Fluxbox (which I had played around with before, but now understand it better) and several others before settling on Openbox.  Openbox is perfect for this. Window Maker was my second choice. When you run Openbox, all you get is your apps. There is nothing else in the way. Also, running just a wm and not a de, it is natural to run at init3 unless there is something in there you need to do.

So, set up the proxys, nfs, rsync and all our LAMP stuff.

The verdict? ArchLinux is great for this kind of down to basics server.  

The installation was easy, but precise.
The configuration was straight forward.
So far, the maint and upkeep seems simple enough. I am rather impressed.

And, ArchLinux is not just good for servers. It is good for basically any stripped, purpose built system. Take a netbook, for example. Cloud computing, etc. One could build a basic wardriver with just your wireless tools and chromium, and run all the google app you need. Or, build a media machine with an HDMI to the telly. Watch all the web content, pop in your blu-ray, music through the home theater.  Yeah, I know, you can do all that stuff with other systems, but then, where is the fun in that.  (Yes, you can build it up for a great, multipurpose, general use system, but it you are doing that, unless you are just starting from the ground up for the fun of it, there are other out-of-the-box options that get you there faster in a just-because-you-can-doesn’t-mean-you-should-start-from-scratch sort of way. Linux Mint, for example.)

Granted, I am not giving up my Linux Mint Debian with LXDE for my day-to-day usage.

Book Report: Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie

Well, the writing is nice, characters have some depth and are more or less believable, the concept a little tired and the plot is maybe a bit thin.

This is Lewis Lowery meets Scott Westerfield in a H.G. Wells sort of way.

In general, it is not a problem for me when concepts in one work are similar in nature, or influenced by, or even out-right borrowed from other works.  All the better when a new twist or different spin on the same scenario give life and excitement to an old interpretation. Sometimes though, I just feel like there is a lack of originality. All-in-all though, for having thrown all these into a blender, what came out was nicely done here, Ms Condie. Nicely done.

So lets take a look-see at what we have here.

Protagonists:

Cassia Reyes

Xander Carrow

Ky Markham

Well, those are the /main/ ones, I suppose.

Antagonists:

The Society.  Ha! Go figure.

So, in this world, ambiguously far in the future, the society (aka government) is in charge of everything.  Where we live, what we eat, what we do, who we marry, etc.  There are only few approved songs they are aloud to hear, only a few approved poems, paintings, etc - everything else was destroyed.  Matched starts out with Cassia readying herself for her matching ceremony.  Well, apparently, the norm is for people to be matched with someone from elsewhere in the ... from another place.  The rare is to be paired up with a local person, but shocking to be match with your childhood best friend.  What are the odds, right?  So, then there is a... glitch that implies to Cassia that she may have been alternatively matched to someone else from her childhood.  Coincidence? I put no stock in coincidence.

I am not giving away much there actually - you get almost that much from the jacket.  Well, except for the my-opinion part.

The thing about how well written this is, is that Condie provides a tremendous amount of insight into their world, culture etc. in the very beginning while also letting us know a lot about Cassia without boring us to tears. (You listening to this Ms Meyer?)

Ever read The Giver?  Or Uglies? ... or The Time Machine?  The idea is that in this society, everyone is calm and relaxed because the governing collective is always looking out for everyone and never does anything wrong.  Everyone agrees that it is good, or risk being wished away into a cornfield.  That was a subtle Twilight Zone reference, hopefully setting the mood.  As we the reader ride along with Cassia, we collectively start to realize that more and more people are apparently looking out for themselves for fear of the society, not trust in it.  They are careful what they say and do because they do not want to stand out.  Everyone is careful of offending anyone because their culture dictates that it is not nice to offend anyone, true, but doing so has repercussions greater than simply hurting someone's feeling.

She sees that there is one commonality that makes people rebel.  One thing fires individuals up to fight the system they fear, and that is when injustice occurs against someone they love.

There are three pills that everyone is supposed to have.

1) Nutrition supplement. This is to help them out if they ever are lost/stranded or whatever where they are in a position where they could suffer if not for adequate nutrition. I spent a lot of time thinking about what, within the scope of their perfect little society, would ever put them in need of such things.  I mean, to the point that the Eloi - er, sorry, the members of the society - are required to always have one with them at all times.  I pondered the psychological impact of such a thing and here is what I came up with: If They provide my food, three times a day, and I can get food no other way, nutrition is so important that if I ever fail to come to the feeding trough when called, I need an emergency supplement, then I my life is completely dependent on Them. And, they care enough about me that they give me the means to survive if I would ever to make such a mistake.  We do take a bit of a trip into the nutrition processing center and I half expected Morlocks running the place.

2) Sedative. Like somewhere between a super Alprazolam and a short-term chemical lobotomy. Again, something that /should/ not be needed in a utopia.

3) The enigmatic RED PILL.  They are always supposed to have them, but only supposed to take them when told to do so.  Some fear it is a suicide pill, some have no imagination, others... who knows.  Well, I know, but I am withholding /some/ spoilers so I am not going to tell you is like like the MIB Flashie-thing.  Oh, wait.

I am at a point now where I feel if I continue, I will:

- give away too much

- convey an inaccurate picture of my assessment of the book

- drive away potential readers, or something like that.

I have a number of issues - technical ones - that are too big to ignore, but not big enough to ruin the book.  Here is an example: They have /lost/ the ability to write.  They can type, but not write.  And not just in the sense "gee, this would be so much easier to type and my handwriting will be hard to read" but in the "I know the words to a lost, forbidden poem. I cannot type them, because then the Morlocks will see it! If only there was a way I could put these words onto something!" sort of way. Now, I understand that this was a plot device to get some things done.  And for one thing, it is a real sense of rebellion to break such a serious rule as to learn something the the Society did not teach.  But seriously, they know how to draw, they /could/ just draw the characters.  It is little things like that that do not sit well with me - and not just in a not-how-I-would-have-done-it sort of way.

One thing that was not conveyed - or I missed it, or whatever - was a sense of scale.  Sometimes it feels like they talk in the scope of cities and boroughs, other times, it seems like towns and divisions, or states and countries.  It bugged me, but I am over it now.

All in all, a good book that I am happy to have read - and eagerly await the next part.  Now that the base is set, I am hoping book two will be more... substantial.  I think this book could easily become more popular most.  That does not sound right... I hypothetically score it 10 of 15, but would understand that the populous gives it more of a 12 to 13 of 15.

Kubuntu 11.04 (64bit)

As some of you know, I like KDE. I like it a lot, but starting with 4.x, I was very limited on using it. I like lightweight desktop environments. For me, personally, using a computer is rather utilitarian. The machine and OS should be there to let me do what I want to do on it, not get in the way. Yet I like KDE for a number of reasons, though I do not use it an dhave not really done so in some time. So, when /someone/ said, "Hey, how about you review this distro because you have been a fan of KDE," a certain part of me was jumping up and down with excitement to play around with KDE.

Kubuntu, as the name implies, is a Ubuntu based distribution, focusing on KDE.
Now, my "test" environments are somewhat limited. There is the machine on which I run virtual machines. Typically, this is where I do most testing. Sometimes, I will grab an old machine that is good for little else. (Note: old machines with big volumes and fast NIC's make really good file servers, but are not so good at checking out this sort of distribution.) Because this is KDE and Unbuntu that we are talking about, I did not want to use a low-resource machine, or a virtual machine because I want to see what the OS can do, not see what it can do with chains and shackles.
This leaves me testing this out on my "standard system" - my netbook. AMD 64, dual core, blah, blah, stat this, stat that. So, okay, here was my experience.
1) Download the ISO (CD)
There were a few options for downloading Kubuntu 11.04. Reading the differences, it seemed that the CD one was the best for me as I did not need extensive language packs.
2) UNetBootIN to flash
Okay, for all of you out there what are not "Linux users" - you want to get unetbootin. It is available for Win (patui) Mac and Linux. It is a tool that will make bootable USB sticks for, like, whatever OS. It can pull distro's off the interwebz, or in this case, from a local ISO. I used a 1G stick for this operation, so obviously there is not a huge investment required here.
3) Backup
Duh.
4) Boot and test live
So, I booted and took a look at the "Live" boot. (This means that I have booted off and am running from the ISO image on the USB stick. Nothing on my HDD was changed, but I still get to check out Kubuntu. This is a great way to sample Linux OS's - hint hint.)
What can I say - it is KDE. Big, pretty icons, applets and widgets all over the place. Everything that is "there" in Linux is there is one way or another. There is the panel - up top by default. More little applets and launchers can be added to it. The "Menu" though is (a la Mac) in the context of the focussed app. Also, and this may be because of the netbook-ness of things, it wants to run everything maximized - even otherwise small dialogs.
5) Reboot and choose to install.
This is not a requirement. I /could/ have installed from the running Live, but I chose instead to just run the installer, as I was not sure what I was in for.
6) "Prepare"
Plugged in to power - check
4 GB HDD - check
Internet connection - check
3rd pty Software prompt - yeah, sure, give'em to me.
Download updates during installation. Yep... gonna have to do updates anyway.
7) "Disk Setup"
Well, I /could/ use the entire disk for Kubuntu - just let it have it.
Or - I /could/ set it all up manually.
Or - Take the prompted side-by-side installation where it wants to resize the partition and make a new one with Kubuntu. Hmmm... I think this is the option I want because then I can just blow away the partition I do not want when all is said and done and fix the bootloader.
Taking a quick peak at the "Manual" options. Okay, they look pretty standard - I can make new partitions, resize, format / and leave /home alone.
Next step it install. Did I mention that I had already backed up?
8) "Timezone"
(After the spinning cursor...)
Okay, there was a list to pick from.
9) "Keyboard"
USA
10) "Install"
Well, it had been working on that since it finished setting up the partitions.
And, installing the updates... zzzz..... (Slow connection, not the distro's fault.)
11) Okay, done installing and rebooting. Yes, it looks very KDEy. (Kay-Dee-Eee-ee) This much KDE-ness may be a little much for a netbook.
12) The user experience:
Out of the box, this feels a lot like "Here, this is what you want to do... it is all right here, in your face... games, interwebz AND office productivity." So, I have a lot of things to turn off, but at least the system settings app it right there on top with my e-mail, because, you know, right aft I check my e-mail, I am always going to adjust my system settings.
Oh, and having a "menu" with one item - "Close" - makes me really want to use it, but that is me.
So, there are "pages" instead of "workspaces"
I have to give it "props" for defaulting the theme to "Air - for netbooks"
Oh, and I should go on to say that for pretty, KDE has always done it well.
Also, KDE has done settings rather well. They are easy to find and fix, you know? Even the one that I am resisting much - Put away the toys and just gimme a desktop.
Also, also, is the "Live" really does represent the installed product quite well. If you have unfamiliar with KDE, PLEASE play with the "Live" for a while first.
And look - there is Amarok. Hi, Amarok - how is it going?
Oh-Kay... "Page One" is not a desktop/workspace... it is ... a widget? Yeah, well, it seems like that sidebar that Vista likes so much, but full-screen. I /could/ set this up with toys and apps... It does get out of the way fairly well; just sitting there in the background.
It (the desktop manager) seems rather keen on a cloud-type desktop. There was this login-thing that just said "You need to log in to access this site" - What site? Really, I would like to know. Maybe later.
Whoa! I was looking for like, the apps, and not finding them, clicked on "search and launch" - presto - back to that first screen I got. It was a bit of a face-palm moment. Let me just get out to the interwebz for a moment.
Got distracted again. You know what I do not like about having this, "search and launch" thing for all my launching needs? I have to go to it to use is. I want to just click on my launcher. Okay, but so it has "apt" but it cannot find my online backup package... will have to "go get" it. Sigh... going to look around a little bit more before I do that.
Installing sshfs - mounting my lan mounts. No, that is not something dirty.
This is _so_ Mac-like that it is a little creepy. I think I have a one-button mouse around here somewhere.
So, I was, then, adding some things to the panel, task-swapping, setting up backgrounds and whatnot, and I seem to have dragged my mouse somewhere I should not have. It gave me that little "tab" to adjust the applet and ... well, so my DESKTOP MANAGER was not responding. I could not clear the thing, and could not put focus back on the taskbar or anything. It finally said - hey, that thing is not responding, wanna close it. I said "sure, it is not like it is doing anything." Then I lost it all. Had to use the power button.
Okay, back up and playing around again... stripping things back down - removing widgets, etc.
13) Wrapping things up
I have more apps to install, and more playing around to do. As for right now, this thing is cool - fun and pretty as expected. Yes, I am going to see how "thin" I can get it, but I am not going to hold up this review for that.
14) Another thing on the positive side:
No extra drivers to install afterward. Worked fine with wireless and display and figured out that it was a netbook all on its own.
15) Final assessment:
This is an excellent distribution for someone who wants a nice, good-looking system handed to them with what they need to get going. There is a lot there to get news and information at your fingertips straight away.
The Live bootup provides an excellent preview of exactly what to expect with the desktop. And, like one would expect from a Live boot with installation, the system is available for use during the installation. (Not that I took that option - but I /could/have.)
The installation package is one I have seen before, nice, up-to-date and working well; but not the only place to get it.
Not the thinnest running system out there today - KDE was never meant for that - so it will not replace my standard system distro, but I think this is right there, good as any, for one of those entertainment-system setups.
I highly recommend this distribution for human usage. In particular for humans who plan on interacting socially via the interwebz, watching movies and listening to music. (It will, of course, do way more than that, mind you. Way more.)

Take Care
LQ