AntiX 8 test release reviewed

antiX has been around for some time but I have never installed or even used it. The goal of antiX is to provide a light, but fully functional desktop system for both newbies and experienced users of Linux. It does not require much from the hardware and it should run on most computers, ranging from 64MB old PII 266 systems with 128MB RAM to the latest hardware. At least 128MB RAM is recommended for antiX and 1.2GB is required for a hard disk installation.

Having already used several lightweight Linux distributions, I wanted to see how antiX would perform on my secondary desktop. This computer is an old e-Vectra (1 GHz, 256 Mb) that should be a perfectly good computer to be used with antiX. Some years ago, it was a popular corporate desktop and it was used a lot as Internet kiosks and desktops for examples in universities and libraries.



AntiX must be installed using a live CD which makes it cumbersome to be installed in the oldest computers. With my e-Vectra the installation took about 25 minutes. Quite acceptable, but I wonder how the GUI installer would succeed when used on an even older box with less memory.

Edit: I forgot to mention that antiX did not correctly recognize the graphic chip of my computer which means that the screen resolution offered was completely unusable. I copied the xorg.conf from another system.

AntiX uses IceWM as the default window manager which was of course a pleasant surprise for me. Nowadays, more and more lightweight distributions use either JWM or LXDE but IceWM can look just as nice as any other window manager. In fact, AntiX provides the user with a nice selection of installed themes.

The first test I usually do with any distro is to see how it handles the most common web site for multimedia, that is the YouTube. In fact, AntiX has no problems in showing any of the YouTube videos I wanted to see. This is certainly a something a newbie expects even from a lightweight distribution as flash animations, Java games and YouTube videos are an important part of web experience for most users. These of course demand a lot from the hardware and the experience might not be exactly great with the oldest computers, but it was good enough for me.



Second test: what happens when I insert an audio cd in the cd drive? - Nothing.

In fact, that is exactly what I was hoping for. I started xmms and clicked Play directory, then chose the directory /media/cdrom to be played. For a total newbie this might not be the most obvious way to play a music cd but I have no problems with this.

A third test: what happens when I try to use an USB memory stick? - As far as I see, nothing. At least nothing appears in the directory /media.

First I thought I should just mount the pendrive by hand, but I finally found the solution. Start the Control center, select the tab Peripherals, click Mount connected Devices and give the root password. Now the memory is mounted as /media/sda1. But I still don't know how to umount the memory except as root on the command line with umount /media/sda1. Rox filer cannot handle it as the ordinary user is of course not allowed to umount a device that was mounted by the root.

AntiX is based on MEPIS that in turn is based on Debian. This means that the system beneath the desktop is (or should be) familiar to any user of Ubuntu or Debian. This in itself is a strong point in favor of antiX for anyone coming from the Ubuntu land. I can warmly recommend AntiX for anyone who is looking for a lightweight alternative to Ubuntu. AntiX provides a good selection of lightweight applications and an even wider selection of applications is available in the Debian stable repositories. The default installation provides the applications that most people need: a media player, web browsers, a word processor (Abiword), a spreadsheet application (Gnumeric), DVD player and even some games.

AntiX 8 is still a release under development. I have, however, not encountered any problems with the system during these two days I have used antiX. I can recommend antiX to anyone who is looking for a lightweight distribution to be used on an old computer.


Links:

1. antiX discussion forum
2. download antiX test release from Mepisimo or Tuxfamily.org
   

Ubuntu 8.10 - first impressions

It must be a year or two since I last used Ubuntu on a regular basis. Today I decided to install the Intrepid Ibex on my high end desktop (CPU 2.8 GHz, 512 Mb RAM, Asus P4PE mother board, Geforce 7600GS) as the openSUSE 11.0 would anyway soon be replaced by 11.1. Now I'm not so sure about installing openSUSE even if DHL should deliver the box sometime next Monday.

The installation went without problems as is usual with all mainstream distros today. In fact I have not encountered any big problems since 2001 when I had a brand new desktop at the university. My own desktops are always old and cheap hardware so usually there is no problem with hardware drivers. Even the sound device is nowadays not usually muted by default. Seven years ago it took me some weeks or months of reading about Linux before I learned how to turn the sound on.



After reboot I installed the driver for the graphic card I just added to the computer. Some old card made by Ati was replaced by an almost modern Geforce 7600GS that can even cope with Compiz desktop effects. I am not a great fan of desktop effects but I must admit that the effect for changing the virtual desktop is cool! Furthermore, Ubuntu does not overdo the effects: transparency and shadows are kept to the minimum and they are not disturbing. I only needed to turn on the subpixel smoothing to get nicer fonts on my LCD monitor (System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Fonts tab).

One small thing was missing from the GNOME menu, namely Firefox web browser. I tried to add an application starter for FF in the panel, but even then the system seems not to find an icon for Firefox.

I encountered one more small annoyance when I tried to add a second user to the system. Ubuntu did not accept a user name that already had a home directory under /home (created by the old openSUSE system). There was no problem in continuing to use the old home directory for the first user created - the problem seems to exist only for further users. I could of course have tried to add the second user with command line but I decided just to use another username for the second user and consequently also another home directory. Then I copied the files and changed the owner, group and permissions to match the new user name.

There should be a more obvious solution but this quick and dirty solution is always available regardless of the distribution. It is quite possible that all the problems I encountered are caused by the fact that I wanted to continue using the old /home partition and the old configuration files for each user. Usually there are no problems when one just upgrades the distribution but there are always some slight hiccups when one changes the distribution as well.

Next I installed the ubuntu-restricted-extras and some other packages like Emacs to be able to edit text files comfortably. It is true that Emacs is not the lightest editor available, but I like the way it can be configured for editing text files with longlines-mode. It is almost like writing with a word processor I've been looking for Linux console for many years with no luck. It seems I'm the only person on this planet who would like to write with a text mode word processor with Linux...

One thing I like in Ubuntu is that the default applications are pretty well chosen for an ordinary desktop system. My non-geek partner has no difficulties in using either GNOME or KDE as long as she can easily find the icons for Firefox and OpenOffice.org. She needs terminal only for a ssh session to the university's Unix system where she receives her email. So Ubuntu seems to be a rather good system for someone who just needs the ordinary office applications. I myself prefer to use some more lightweight applications even with this pretty fast computer. Usually Abiword is good enough for my needs, sometimes I stay with Emacs or use LyX if I want to get a decent printout that is typeset with LaTeX.

I've been quite happy with the latest incarnation of the most famous and popular distribution today. Of course, it should have come as no surprise to me or most of my readers! It remains to be seen whether there will be any problems later or not. But I like what I've seen now and I will certainly be able to recommend Ubuntu 8.10 to any newbie who is looking for a distribution to be used with a computer that has at least 512 Mb RAM, a decent processor and a good graphics card.

On the other hand, I am not going to install either Ubuntu or openSUSE on my 1 GHz desktop. I just think that the amount of time needed for tweaking and optimizing either distro to be run with a computer that has a 1 GHz CPU and 256 Mb RAM can be better spent doing something else. I might, for example, write another blog posting or study some economics.

I will, however, try to have time for testing some lightweight distribution on that old box during the next week. Just for fun.

But I would like to read about your experiences with Ubuntu on old computers. Is it worth the trouble?

Review: Xubuntu 8.04.1 on HP eVectra

Some weeks ago, I got a "new" eVectra produced by HP around seven, eight years ago. It's specs are nothing special, it has a 1 GHz CPU and 256 MB RAM. The previous owner had, however, changed the original disk drive to something more useful. Now this old computer has a hard drive with about 280 GB disk space! These specs make the computer unusable with modern versions of Windows, but it is very well usable with even the latest Linux distributions. In the recycling room of my dorm, I was able to find an old 17" CRT monitor and a PS/2 keyboard that were exactly what I needed to be able use this computer!

Unfortunately I don't yet have Internet connection in the dorm where I live during the weekdays, so I had to bring the computer to my home town for installing a usable system and updating it. I had previously tried to install Slacware on this computer using the set of three CDs, but I could not get xorg configured as I had no idea about the exact specs (especially the graphics card) of this old computer. Without a working Internet connection, it seemed to be too much of trouble to try to configure Slackware's xorg.conf.



This time, I decided to try the latest stable version of Xubuntu. Installation went without problems, even though it took some time as the hard drive is not especially fast. And Xorg was correctly configured, as one would expect with a distro based on Ubuntu. Next I installed 88 updates (122.6 MB download size). Fortunately my broadband at home is pretty fast, and the download took only a few minutes.

After the updates, the CPU is idling between 95% and 97%. After some simplification of the default desktop, CPU is idle 97-98% of time. Most of the CPU usage seems to be caused by Xorg. Pretty good performance by XFCE and an old computer like this.



In my opinion there is no need for a lightweight distribution to use this kind of computer, any modern distribution should run fine, as long as one does not want to all kinds of useless 3d desktop effects. A usable desktop for normal office and scientific tasks does not need any wobbling windows in fire! Instead, I added to the default installation these applications:

* LyX, Emacs
* Remind, irssi, bum
* Octave, Scilab
* build-essential

Next I decided to invoke the boot-up-manager bum in order to turn some unnecessary system services off. This way I can further reduce the demands my system sets on the hardware.



Bum is a runlevel configuration editor which allows to configure init services when the system boots up or reboots. It displays a list of every service which can be started at boot. With the help of bum, user can enable or disable services after her wish. I decided to turn off bluetooth services, avahi and CUPS. You might want to keep them, but I don't have any bluetooth devices, no other computers in my LAN, and I don't have a printer in my dorm. So I could well get rid of these unnecessary services. I also turned off everything that is useful only with laptops. Now the computer is idling between 97% and 99%. Not bad.

Next I had to make some changes in Grub. I changed some default Grub options:
# defoptions=quiet nosplash

And ran the update-grub.

If your computer is older than mine, you might want to check out K. Mandla's great collection of tweaks for Ubuntu Hardy for making your Xubuntu even faster.

I'm pretty happy with the performance I got out of the box. It is true, that 8.10 will be released soon, but I'll stay with the released that will be supported for an extended period. I don't need the latest software, as long as the system is useful for my daily computing needs.

LXDE - Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment

Openbox is one of the most popular lightweight window managers. Unfortunately, it is not very newbie friendly. It is true that there are some very good tutorials for customizing a desktop based on the Openbox but most newbies want to install something that is easy to use and offers everything one needs out of the box. This is exactly what LXDE does.

It is used by several lightweight distributions, including Ubuntulite and VectorLinux lite. Soon it will be on even more desktops, as also gOS has adopted the desktop to be used in the cheap NetBooks and NetTops for sale in US and elsewhere.



In the FAQ of the project, the developers give five reasons for designing yet another desktop environment. I liked two of reasons especially:

Not everyone on this earth is rich. There must be a nice desktop environment for those who can't afford new fancy hardware, and we have the ability to help them.

And another one:

If Windows 98 and xp work quite well on old machines, why my Linux desktop needs a 1.0 GHz CPU + 1GB RAM? We don't believe building such a usable desktop environment requires that much resource usage, so we try it ourselves.

These are reasons I symphatize with! But for the developers, the best reason was:

Because reinventing the wheel is cool, and we love it!

LXDE combines several lightweight software together to produce a nice desktop. It includes a panel with taskbar and start buttons, a wallpaper, a file manager that provides also desktop icons, a session manager, an image viewer, a lightweight text editor, a terminal emulater and a file archiver. Some of the components are part of the LXDE project, some of them are delevoped independently and suggested by LXDE developers to be used as default applications for LXDE.

Components included in LXDE are:
- PCManFM (a file manager)
- LXPanel (a panel with taskbar)
- LXSession / LXSession_Lite (a session manager)
- LXAppearance (a theme switcher)
- Openbox (a window manager)
- GPicView (a picture viewer)
- Leafpad (a text editor)
- LXTerminal (a terminal emulator)
- XArchiver (a file archiver)
- LXNM (a network connection helper application)



Hardware requirements for LXDE are moderate. The developers suggest using at least a Pentium II class CPU. LXDE and X themselves require only 45 MB but the user should have some memory left for other applications. For using applications like OpenOffice.org and Firefox, they suggest having more than 128 MB RAM. I would, however, suggest using lighter alternatives for those memory-hungry applications. Anyway, LXDE should run fine on any computer built in this decade.

It is based on gtk+2 which is not the lightest possible toolkit. On the other hand, it offers everything needed for internationalized user interface including writing from right to left. This may not be important for users preferring English, but for the rest of the world it is an important and thoughtful decision. In fact, before writing this review I decided to help in translating parts of the user interface to the language I prefer to use on my desktop.

LXDE is packaged for most of the popular distributions even if in some cases the packages must be downloaded from community repositories. In my case, the installation for openSUSE was painless and everything worked well. The desktop loads almost instantly unlike GNOME or KDE and it is nicely put together.

LXDE functions just like new users expect a desktop environment to function. Thus, right clicking the root window opens a menu letting the user sort the icons, create new folders and text files (but not start buttons) and change desktop settings including the size of icons and choose the wallpaper from three different wallpapers branded for LXDE.



In my opinion, LXDE is the best lightweight solution for newbies not interested in searching the right combination of lightweight applications to produce a nice user experience nor configuring window managers and panels by editing text files. LXDE might be the right one even for more experienced users as it gives everything one needs. But those users seeking a desktop for hardware build before 1999 should try something else.

My rating: **** (out of *****)

Links:
- LXDE Home page
- LXDE Wiki, including installation guides

Damn Small Linux: First Impressions

Damn Small Linux (DSL) is one of the minuscule Linux distributions. Its newest version 4.4.2 was released a few weeks ago.

Since the beginning, the DSL has been small enough to be burned on a 50 MB live CD. An nowadays incredible amount of software has been squeezed in this minimal space. It reminds me of the time when I thought I would never be able to fill my new 20 MB hard drive with my texts. Little did I know then...

New DSL is able to play music with XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG). It can download files using FTP. One can browse the Internet with Dillo, Netrik and FireFox. You can edit rtf files with a a word-processor (Ted), do some calculations with a spreadsheet, use three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano) for plain text files. Even pdf files can be viewed with Xpdf.

One great feature of DSL is its ability to download more software from the distributions own repository and install them on the fly. This way the user can add many more programs to the system and enhance its usability.

DSL does not require a lot from your hardware: processor should be at least a 486, and the box should have at least 16 MB to run X-Windows. In text mode only 8 MB are enough. In addition, you should have a CD-ROM-drive. In order to have a usable system, a Pentium 200 MHz and 64 MB RAM are recommended. In 2008, it should be difficult to find a computer that cannot run DSL.

I encountered only small problems while I tested DSL for a few hours. I had to change the screen resolution manually, but it was extremely easy. Likewise, changing the keyboard to correct Finnish keyboard was easy with the system settings panel. I could not, however, get my sound card configured. I'm pretty sure I will anyway get it fixed next time.

Summary: DSL is a damn good distro for 50 megabytes.