On Keryx, Xfce and Puppeee
Posted: November 1, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: debian, gnome, keryx, puppy linux, xfce Leave a comment »I have mentioned Keryx before. In case you’re late to the party, Keryx is a cross-platform application meant to ease offline installation of packages for Debian systems (that includes Ubuntu).
It’s marvellous. It’s wonderful. It’s manna from heaven.
Provided it works, of course, which it didn’t on Maverick. First, I found out that Maverick mounts FAT32 partitions with the noexec flag. Meaning you can’t run applications from them. So I had to copy the whole keryx/ folder from my USB drive to the desktop, then do my work, and then merge the 2 folders. Fortunately, it was relatively quick.
Now I just have to
dpkg -i --force-depends /mnt/usb0/keryx/projects/eee0/packages/*.deb
and all will be right with the Debian world. Hopefully.
“But what are you trying to do?” you ask. Well, I’m giving up on Puppeee and installing Debian on the Eee PC. I’m too enamoured with apt-get to give up on it and use plain “./configure && make && make install”. Yes, Puppeee has PetGet, but it doesn’t really cut it.
I’ve also switched back to GNOME on the main laptop. Why? Because GNOME Just Works (TM). Xfce has a few integration problems that I can’t seem to get past. I’ve also switched to the classic Human look (think Intrepid Ibex) and I have to say it doesn’t look bad at all.
To some of you, that’s ugly and/or evil. To me, it’s a memory of the good old times when I first experienced Ubuntu. Well, actually, the second time; the first time I destroyed a fakeRAID array with Vista and a lot of personal files on it. Thank goodness for backups.
So now I have Debian installed on the Eee PC. Tomorrow: setting up ~/.bashrc, /etc/sudoers and X. Probably with IceWM or Awesome, depending on what I dream tonight.
Wait, is that Windows 2000?
Posted: October 29, 2010 Filed under: Puppy Linux | Tags: icewm, puppy linux, windows 2000 Leave a comment »“Huh, forgot about that theme. I wish I could give it a try… Oh, hey, I’m using IceWM right now!”
If you don’t feel like clicking the link above, the theme I’m talking about is a Windows XP Classic look-alike put together by K.Mandla and based on IceWM, iDesk and Xfe.
Well, I’m using IceWM and Rox here, but the effect is similar.
Not exactly, but close. I tried using PCManFM as it resembles Windows Explorer, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to add icons to the desktop.
That’s Puppeee running on my Eee PC 701, for the record.
Feel free to unleash your feelings about this blasphemy against Linux in the comment section below. 
Also, I hope I haven’t written any broken HTML in this post. Charm doesn’t exactly have a “preview” option.
Hello from Seamonkey Mail & Newsgroups!
Posted: October 29, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: puppy linux, seamonkey 1 Comment »Today I decided to abandon the WordPress web interface and write my posts using a blogging client like the aforementioned Charm. I was able to install it and it worked perfectly, but I need a way to post links. I know Charm probably does that, but I haven’t figured out how.
So I decided to go with the WordPress Post by Email feature, and I’m now using Seamonkey as the mail client (Claws doesn’t support HTML).
Also, I have a Puppeee screenshot for you.
That’s Seamonkey in a custom configuration. Did I mention it absolutely rocks in full screen?
Edit: I’ve figured out how I can create links in Charm: using HTML. 
So now I’m editing this post from Charm and NicoEdit. Fast and convenient.
Taking Puppeee out for a walk
Posted: October 28, 2010 Filed under: Eee PC, Puppy Linux | Tags: eee pc, puppeee, puppy linux, seamonkey Leave a comment »You might have heard about Puppy Linux, a really nice lightweight Linux distro for older PCs and netbooks. A couple of days ago I decided to leave the ProBook for a while, take the Eee PC (a 701) out of the closet and install the latest version of Puppeee on it.
Installing didn’t exactly go as planned (because of a leftover install of GRUB), but I managed to get a fully working system after two tries. The default browser is Chrome 5: old version, AdBlock is incompatible with it and it doesn’t even display pages properly on the Eee’s small screen, so I installed Seamonkey, NetSurf and trusty old links. I’m posting from Seamonkey right now, but I think I’ll switch to a blogging tool like Charm because WordPress’ web interface looks like it’s designed for 1920×1080 screens, not 800×480 ones. The fonts have to be reduced to something unreadable to be able to properly write a post.
All in all, I recommend Puppeee for netbooks and regular Puppy for everyone who has a relatively old PC that Ubuntu can’t properly run on. My only complaint about Puppy (actually, about most distros nowadays) is that it’s getting more and more bloated with every new version: the last one that would properly boot, run and be usable on my Gericom laptop (a 2000-ish Celeron) was 4.1.2. Also, I really hated the Pwidgets thing in 4.2.
