CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

WTF, no WTFPL?

I have been thinking about starting a little project. It is only a trivial project and I really do not think anyone will ever benefit from it, but out of curiosity and because I can, I am thinking of doing it anyway.

So, last night I was looking at different open-source licenses with the intention of selecting one for my new project. Now, considering what I have already stated, I came to the conclusion that the WTFPL was probably the best license to opt for. The WTFPL is extremely permissive and therefore it is ideal for a throwaway project. By using the WTFPL, I can effectively build and release my project and never have to worry about anyone ever contacting me about using it. Or for that matter, any crazy stuff happening, not that it would, but anyway…

…with a decision made on which license to use, I then considered where I would like to host the project. I have recently been following a few projects that are hosted on the Google Code service, so I decided that the Google Code service might make a good home.

I set about creating a new project using the web form provided. I started filling in the details, describing what my project was about and then I arrived at a dropdown menu where I was given a choice of open-source licenses. I had not considered that the WTFPL would not be listed — I mean, it is recognised by the FSF!

So, not being too sure what to think about this, I performed a quick web search and found that Rémy Sanchez had recently raised this as an issue on Google Code:

I'd like to submit a project using the WTFPL license ( http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ ). I have seen how much licenses are a trouble (oh, is this license GPL compatible ?), and I think that unless you have reasons (like a big project, or something made by a company, etc), you generally don't care about the exact details of what is possible or not with the license. This is why I put most of my code under WTFPL, and that I'd like to host a WTFPL project here.

And the response from Chris DiBona:

No. The wtfpl is cute, but if you want to use it, you'll need to go to another host.

Initially I was somewhat perplexed with the response given by Chris and I asked myself why a FSF recognised license would not be suitable for use by projects on Google Code? I decided to do a little more digging and whilst I was watching the video of Chris DiBona's talk, "Open Source is Magic", I got my answer. Basically, the Google Code service only supports the major open-source licenses because there is a greater chance that lawyers will already have come across these licenses and know about the attached compliance issues. Funny thing is, I am definitely not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure I understand the WTFPL!

TerminatorToo

The Terminator is great. Terminator 2 is arguable greater. This Terminator is also great, as is this Terminator, probably, although I have never tried it.

2 projects, 1 name, an annoying issue which I would not wish on anyone. Unfortunately though, for Chris Jones of this Terminator project, it is an issue; an annoying issue which is probably compounded due to the fact that the other Terminator project is also a terminal emulator.

I feel for Chris as he is faced with 2 options, leave the name as is [and forever field questions from muppets like myself], or, change the project name. To be honest, I would not imagine either option is overly appealing; still, if I were to put myself in Chris' shoes, I think I would be inclined to change the name sooner, rather than later. I would do it for the following reasons:

• Respect for what came before, after all, is it not the Ubuntu way?
• Firebirdfox did it, although ultimately the project failed.
• My mum's mum's mum used to say, "A change is as good as a rest."

Having now committed to letting Chris know what to do, it would be remiss of me to spout all this nonsense without coming up a serious contender for a suitably catchy alternative name. So, I was thinking, what about TerminatorToo? Disregarding the silly pun, it would have the advantage of users not having to mentally relearn keystrokes when typing into any tab-completion enabled environments. Just a thought.

Finally, all testiculating aside, I am interested to know what you would do if you found yourself in this situation? Of course, I am speculating, but I think Chris would be interested too.

Terminator Terminal Emulator

There has been a lot of talk over the last month or so about Terminator. This week I have finally managed to pull my finger out and have a play with it. I had not bothered before now due to the fact that previous releases had depended on gnome-terminal; however, the latest release has dropped the gnome-terminal dependency and can now be configured via a simple config file located at ~/.config/terminator/config

I am totally impressed with Terminator. For anyone who has not heard [is there anyone?], the main advantage to using Terminator is its ability to split the screen into multiple terminals. The advantages this brings were made immediately obvious to me as I attempted to customise the look and feel of my new terminal window; in this screenshot I have the manual page open for terminator_config while editing my new config file. Good stuff.

The latests 0.9 release can be grabbed from the PPA for Terminator on Launchpad.

rpl - A Find & Replace Terminal Tool

Tonight I have mainly been working on Whird. I have been rewriting large chunks of code in an effort to optimise a bunch of functions. As a result of this, I had to change a series of strings in a number of files. As per normal when it comes to fiddly grep, sed and awk commands, I fired up Google and searched for some pointers. Whilst refreshing my memory, I came across a comment by an anonymous reader who suggested using the rpl command.

I had not previously come across rpl before, so I investigated. Turns out that rpl is a really handy text replacement tool — it makes recursive text replacement commands really simple; as simple as:

rpl [options] old_string new_string target_file(s)

Available options are:

--version          show program's version number and exit
-h, --help         show this help message and exit
-L, --license      show the software license
-x SUFFIX          specify file suffix to match
-i, --ignore-case  do a case insensitive match
-w, --whole-words  whole words (old_string matches on word boundaries only)
-b, --backup       make a backup before overwriting files
-q, --quiet        quiet mode
-v, --verbose      verbose mode
-s, --dry-run      simulation mode
-R, --recursive    recurse into subdirectories
-e, --escape       expand escapes in old_string and new_string
-p, --prompt       prompt before modifying each file
-f, --force        ignore errors when trying to preserve permissions
-d, --keep-times   keep the modification times on modified files
-t, --use-tmpdir   use $TMPDIR for storing temporary files
-a, --all          do not ignore files and directories starting with .

rpl is available to install from the Ubuntu repositories, install with the following command:

sudo apt-get install rpl

For more information about rpl, see: http://www.laffeycomputer.com/rpl.html

Xpad Sticky Notes

Xpad is a sticky notes application written in GTK+ 2.0. It is a simple little application which can be used to help you remember important stuff. I really like Xpad, mainly because it does exactly what I would expect it to do, without suffering from feature bloat; it is an ideal utility for my Openbox based systems.

The current version of Xpad available from the Ubuntu Hardy repositories [2.13] suffers from a rather drastic 100% CPU bug; therefore, I have updated the package to the latest 2.14 release and uploaded it to the CrunchBang Linux repositories. I have also filed a small bug report on Launchpad and I am looking for a mentor to help me update the package; I understand it is a busy/hectic time for Ubuntu developers at the moment, so I will not hold my breath while I wait for a reply :)

GNOME & Glipper Sitting in a Tree

Last night I set about upgrading one of my Openbox systems from Gutsy to Hardy. So far all seems to be good, apart from Glipper, which is now a GNOME only application. Quote from the Glipper developers:

After a very long time without any news, we are proud to present you the new released version 1.0. A lot of things did change, in fact, it is a complete rewrite of the whole application. We now use python instead of C, which also makes the code much smaller and simpler to understand. Unlike the previous versions, Glipper is now a GNOME only application, because it makes heavily use of different GNOME techniques, like being a GNOME panel applet and using gconf for storing the configurations. If you are not a GNOME user, but want to use Glipper anyway, we feel sorry for you, but the older version are still available of course ;) .

This is great news for GNOME users, but not so great for others like myself :( I use Glipper all the time and it's an integral part of my Openbox desktop. I've had a quick look for alternative clipboard managers, but I've not found anything suitable, yet.

I'm not quite sure of the best course of action to take — it shouldn't be too difficult to grab the Glipper sources from Gutsy and rebuild the package using a different package name - 'glipper-pre1', 'glipper-old', or 'glipper-pre-gnome-love-affair'. Is this an acceptable practice? I can't think of any reason why not.

tablaunch Application Launch Bar

Over the last few days I've been testing different application launchers under Openbox. It's funny, but I was managing just fine without an application launcher until I started playing, now I'm hooked. I've experimented with a few different applications and I've finally found one that I'm really happy with, tablaunch.

tablaunch is an application launch bar that sits at the top of my screen and displays user defined applications as tabs. What I really love about tablaunch is how it neatly hides itself away when I'm not using it — providing a clean unobtrusive way to quickly launch my favourite applications. Watch this short video of tablaunch in action.

tablaunch can be configured to display both icons and text, but personally I prefer to use the "text only" option. It can also be set-up, via the command line, to display a variety of mouse-over effects etc. I've uploaded a copy of tablaunch to the CrunchBang Linux repository and I 've also written a wiki page, "tablaunch Application Launch Bar" for anyone interested in giving it a try.

Conduit Available via PPA

I'm torn on the idea of Conduit. I really like the concept of an all-in-one synchronisation tool for the desktop; however, whenever I've tried it I've found that I would typically use less than 10% of its features/data providers. Also, being fairly adept at scripting, I tend to Bash my way through my syncing needs.

Having said that, Conduit is still an interesting and impressive application and I'm glad to see that John Carr has set-up a PPA on Launchpad for Conduit releases. The PPA should make it much easier to test the most up to date versions with Ubuntu based Linux distributions.

Also, John Stowers has just released Conduit 0.3.8. If you've not done so already, go check it out.

URL: http://www.conduit-project.org/

Wikka Wakka Wiki

Over the last couple of days I have mainly been playing with WikkaWiki, a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP. I've toyed with the idea of creating a personal wiki for sometime, but, I've been reluctant to start one for fear of it becoming just another thing to update and maintain. Anyhow, I now seem to have conquered this fear and I've created my first wiki.

Now, being a new wiki it naturally doesn't contain much of any content, but, at this moment that's not too important, the important thing is that I've started it, the content will come later. I'm planning on using the wiki to document my Ubuntu/CrunchBang Linux projects. I'll also be using it to privide supporting supporting material for my blog. For example, stuff like this crontab howto, and these GIMP brushes would be better suited to the wiki.

Regarding the WikkaWiki software, it's quite impressive and fairly easy to work with. I looked at several other PHP based wiki projects, but IMHO WikkaWiki was the best — apart from maybe MediaWiki, but then I considered that to be overkill for my needs. If you're starting a new wiki then I'd certainly recommend at least looking into the possibility of using WikkaWiki. It has many great features, some that I noticed include:

• a super easy installation process
• a nice default design and easy to customise CSS
• code base is very hackable, including actions/plugins
• RSS feeds for recently updated content, comments etc
• syntax highlighting of published code, courtesy of the GeSHi plugin
• it's super scary fast

All-in-all WikkaWiki has impressed me a lot; besides, if it's good enough for Puppy Linux, it's good enough for me ;)

CrunchBang Linux Forums

It was suggested on IRC that it might be useful to set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. So, I've set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. This wasn't an easy decision to make and personally I'm still not sure that the forums are needed; however, I do agree that it might be nice to have somewhere other than this blog for people to leave feedback and suggestions.

Please feel free to visit the forums and register, get in quick before all the good usernames disappear :P There isn't much in the way of content yet, but hopefully the posts will start trickling in.

Regarding the forum software, it's bbPress. I did toy with the idea of using Cruciforum; however, while I really like the Cruciforum concept, I'm not convinced it's quite ready — and I don't have the time to help out and do any coding on the project :| Anyhow, I'm really quite impressed with bbPress. It reminds me of how Wordpress used to be, before it went all Web two point zero. It's simple and lightweight, just the way I like things. Looking back at how Wordpress developed, maybe now would be a good time grab a copy of this GPL'd forum software?!

Twitter, Twitux, gTwitter & Mono

Twitter, I guess it's one of those web applications where you either "get" it or you don't. For a long time I stood firmly in the don't "get" it camp. My history with Twitter is somewhat scattered, I posted my first couple of tweets on December 21, 2006. It was a while until I tweeted again, when I did it took the following form:

Testing twitter on my Nokia N95 06:15 AM January 22, 2008 from web

And then 7 days later I tweeted again:

Once again playing with twitter, still not sure that I "get" it! Hmm. 02:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web

And then just a few hours later:

Testing gTwitter on Ubuntu. Looks good but uses mono and therefore comes in at a rather large 20MB+, hmm. 07:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web

And then today I tweeted this:

Testing Twitux twitter client, looks good and doesn't use mono like gtwitter. This I could use, will leave it running. about 14 hours ago from web

By George, I think I'm beginning to "get" it!

It's only taken me a couple of years, but I think I'm beginning to understand what Twitter is all about. Twitter is a simple little application, at least from a user's standpoint, where you input up-to 140 character messages. These messages can then be viewed by anyone who wishes to follow along. It's quite simple really and I'm now confused by why it took me so long to come to terms with such a simple concept. Why didn't I get the hint from Twitter's front page?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Anyhow, as you might have read, I've now started using Twitux. The application was introduced to me by Gabriel D. W. Wollenburg. I've only had it running for day, but I like it, and it beats having to keep another tab open in Epiphany. Unfortunately the application isn't available in the Ubuntu repositories, but you can grab a copy from getdeb.net. It's a small download at about 66.8 KB and only takes seconds to install using gdebi.

Regarding gTwitter, it crashed on first use, this didn't leave a good first impression. Secondly, it uses Mono. I have nothing against Mono, but so far CrunchBang Linux remains a Mono free system, at least it does for me. So, installing gTwitter, which is available from the Ubuntu repositories, gave me an apt-get output something along the lines of:

corenominal@misspiggy:~$ sudo apt-get install gtwitter
[sudo] password for corenominal:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
 libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
 libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
 libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
 libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
 libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
 mono-runtime
Suggested packages:
 libgtkhtml3.8-dbg libgda2-3 libgdiplus
Recommended packages:
 binfmt-support cli-common
The following NEW packages will be installed
 gtwitter libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
 libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
 libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
 libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
 libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
 mono-runtime
0 upgraded, 25 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
Need to get 6173kB of archives.
After unpacking 22.0MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

While I'm not short of disk space, 22MB for a Twitter client is somewhat extreme. Besides, I prefer Twitux.

Finally, I'd just like to publicly thank Gouki for encouraging me to explore Twitter some more. Gouki is without a doubt the main cause of all my time wasting experiences. BTW Gouki, I've still not forgiven you for this ;)

You can follow along with my pointless twittering at: http://twitter.com/corenominal

Tinkering & Secret Software

I've just finished listening to the latest LugRadio podcast, Episode 9 of Season 5. I've always enjoyed the podcast and this season the guys have produced some of their best shows to date.

I found today's show especially interesting as Stuart Langridge openly discussed his thoughts and ideas on the subject of software tinkering [listen to a 2 minute excerpt]. Much of what Stuart said sounded strangely familiar, I also write lots of personal scripts to perform specific tasks. I'm also guilty of hard-coding paths and producing code that'll probably only run on my own Ubuntu based systems. I tend to class these scripts as secret software, probably because they really aren't fit for general consumption, not to mention that they're embarrassingly bad :)

Anyway, Stuart's New Year resolution is to post more of his personal scripts and software on his blog, and not worry too much about whether the software is fit for general consumption. I think this is a brilliant idea and I'm going to follow suit, so look out for some of my shockingly bad secret software, it'll be appearing on a blog near you soon.

Apache, MySQL & PHP on Ubuntu

Lately I've been performing lots of fresh system installs, a result of testing my Ubuntu respin. Restoring my personal data after such an install is simple enough, but having to reinstall my Apache, MySQL & PHP set-up requires a little more effort. So, for future reference I've decided to record the process. By following the instructions below I should be able to get my development server up and running within minutes.

AMP install instructions

1. Open a terminal and issue the following command to install the three main packages:

sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server php5

This will install the following packages:
apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5
libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libpq5 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-5.0
php5 php5-common

2. Get some additional packages:

sudo apt-get install php-pear php5-gd php5-mysql php5-imagick phpmyadmin

This will install:
libgd2-xpm libmcrypt4 libt1-5 php-pear php5-cli php5-gd php5-imagick php5-mcrypt
php5-mysql phpmyadmin

3. Enable URL rewriting:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

gksudo gedit  /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Edit line 12 to read, "AllowOverride All". Save and exit.

4. Create a symbolic link to my working directory:

sudo ln -s /home/username/htdocs /var/www/htdocs

5. Finally, restart Apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Epiphany & Firefox on Ubuntu

I've not noticed before, but Epiphany is dependent on Firefox. I know the two browsers both use the same Gecko rendering engine, however I still wasn't expecting to get both when I installed the epiphany-browser package. Is Firefox really needed in its entirety?

While on the subject of Epiphany, contrary to some bug reports, Epiphany's inline spell checking feature was not on by default. To turn it on:

1. Enter "about:config" into the address bar and hit enter

2. Enter "spell" in the filter box and change settings to:

Preference Name                                   Status     Type       Value
---------------------------------------------     --------   -------    -----
extensions.spellcheck.inline.max-misspellings     default    integer    500
layout.spellcheckDefault                          user set   integer    1
spellchecker.dictionary                           user set   string     en_GB

Also, the inline spell checking doesn't seem to offer suggestions for misspelled words. Is there a fix for this?

Cruciforum - Crucially Simple

Stuart Langridge has updated his really simple forum software, Cruciforum.

Cruciforum is really, really simple. There's no database required to run it — you don't need MySQL or anything — it doesn't have user accounts, it doesn't need an administrator. It's really low-impact on your server because all the pages are plain HTML — if someone's browsing the forum then they don't even use PHP! Just fire it up and go; all you need on the server is PHP support, which most things have.

Cruciforum is built with Joel Spolsky's thoughts on forum design in mind, and a few other tweaks that might be interesting. It's designed to be crucially simple.

I really like simple web software [the simpler the better if you ask me] and Cruciforum is about as simple as it gets. I really like the fact that there is no need to create an account before you can post a message.

Cruciforum also features built in support for Akismet spam protection [which I guess is a must when there's no account system.] Textile is used for converting user input and Gravatar support is also a nice touch.

The only thing missing at the moment is support for RSS — this has been recognised and there's a bug report here.

I can see many uses for Cruciforum, it has a lot of potential. Check it out here: http://www.kryogenix.org/code/cruciforum/

Howto Boot After a Failed Linux Install

Installing Ubuntu [and most other Linux distros] isn't too difficult. In fact with the latest liveCD installs it has become easier than ever before. However, it is still possible for the installation process will go wrong and fail. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions and it has left me with a system that is incapable of booting.

The first time this happened there was a power outage mid-installation. On the second occasion the installation shut down after finding a hardware fault [the heatsink had pinged off my coprocessor!] On both instances the installation had created new partitions and edited my disk structure, but crucially, had not installed Grub. Again, this caused my system to choke and die when it came to booting.

Enter the Super Grub Disk

The Super Grub Disk is a bootable floppy, CD or USB that can help you to fix and deal with boot problems. You can use it to automatically restore Grub and Microsoft's Windows bootloader [if you're that way inclined] to your disk's MBR.

The Super Grub Disk is one of those tools every Linux enthusiast should have. It can be a real time-saver when things go a little tits up.

You can get more details about the Super Grub Disk at: http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

Editing Disk Partitions with GParted LiveCD

I've answered a couple of Ubuntu questions today where I've suggested using the GParted LiveCD. I like GParted, it's one of those tools that once you've used it you never forget it. This is probably because you'll normally first encounter it when you have a problem with one of your hard drives!

I think Microsoft Windows users could also benefit from knowing about GParted, not least because it could save them from forking out for commercial options such as Norton PartitionMagic.

More information about the GParted LiveCD can be found at: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

My Big Linux Software List

I'm currently running Ubuntu 7.04 [Feisty Fawn] on both my desktop and my laptop systems. Sometime in October [the 18th?] I'll be updating to Ubuntu 7.10 [Gutsy Gibbon]. I've been on the Ubuntu upgrade path ever since I first installed version 4.10 [Warty Warthog]. I've seen Ubuntu go from strength-to-strength and I'm pretty certain that Gutsy will be another successful release. However, seeing as there's only a few weeks to go before Gutsy is released I thought it might be good to experience a different Linux distribution.

Enter openSUSE 10.3 RC1. I first experienced using SUSE Linux back when it was at version 6.3. It'll be interesting to see how it has developed over the years. I'll be installing it on my desktop system either tomorrow or the day after and I'll use it until Gutsy is released. I don't think it's possible to get a good understanding of how a system operates until you have used it for at least a couple of weeks — so now is a prime opportunity to give openSUSE a try!

Anyhow, before I remove Ubuntu and install openSUSE I wanted to make a list of the software I'm currently using on a day-to-day basis. I can then refer back to the list once I've got the openSUSE base system installed. So with no more ado, here's the list:

• GNOME — I'm a GNOME user, so I'll be installing the openSUSE GNOME version. I'm currently running version 2.18.1
• gedit — GNOME's default text editor, should be installed by default. I use gedit for most [if not all] coding tasks
• Apache — I run a development environment on my systems and being a web developer it makes sense that I'm going to need a local web server
• MySQL — Again because of the reason given above
• phpMyAdmin — A web based client for MySQL database server
• PHP — My current web development language of choice
• OpenSSH — So I can control my desktop when I'm away from home
• Firefox — My web browser of choice, seems to be installed by default by most Linux distros
• Macromedia Flash — I'm not a big Flash fan but it's needed to watch web based movies and some screencasts
• gFTP — A graphical FTP client
• Gimp — For graphical work, again seems to be installed by default by most Linux distros. Currently running version 2.2.13
• OpenOffice — I don't actually use it much but I do occasionally crack open Writer to bash out the odd report
• KSnapshot — The only KDE based application that I have installed. Simply because it's better than GNOME's default screen capture effort
• Agave — A nice little application for selecting colour schemes
• GnomeBaker — For burning data to CD/DVD
• XChat — An IRC [internet relay chat] client
• Totem — For playing movies, should be installed by default
• Rhythmbox — For listening to my music collection, again should be installed by default
• Non Free Multimedia Codecs — For MP3 and DVD playback
• Audacity — I'm in the process of transferring my partners old vinyl records into digital format. Audacity has been working nicely for this.

And that completes my list for now. It's a fairly standard list and there is nothing out of the ordinary on it. Hopefully it shouldn't take me too long to get openSUSE up and running.