Interesting discoveries

Maybe that would be better represented as "Inadvertant discoveries" but anyway...

I was simply trying to check off one of my goals tonight. I did some googling about to find what might be workable and I learned that, once I take the time to do it, my scanner should work no problem, and also that my printer works better than I thought. (Some of the problems I had were my not paying attention to configuration details; for example having the default page size as A4 instead of Letter... no wonder things were going off the page. Duh!)

Then I thought I'd look for making my scroll wheel mouse working properly. This sounded like it might be "simple" and scrolling is something I miss desperately. So I stumbled onto a very interesting site. It's not quite a newbie site, but it has some great tips and ideas for configuring Slackware. Here's the link: How To Properly Set Up Slackware Linux. I'll be referring to it again soon, I'm sure.

Anyway, I found some simple instructions on how to get my mouse to scroll again (which I cannot confirm yet, since I haven't logged in -- or rebooted -- with the new settings in place) but then I wandered off into the guy's thoughts on window managers and his recommend of Gnome (which I noticed yesterday didn't come with Slackware :( I always used to like switching back and forth depending on what games I wanted to play! ;)) which lead me to "Freerock GNOME" which I had never heard of before. Since there sound like a number of advantages to having Freerock specifically, and I also was planning to download GNOME anyway, I thought I'd go ahead with the download.

The site offered a "simple", one-click install ... well not really one-click, but one-step. I typed in a single line on the command line and let it do this "simple" install do it's magic. (Especially since I had a failed Wine installation earlier on today ... I'll have to try downloading and installing the Windows emulating software from another interesting site: LinuxPackages.net

WELL...
I didn't read closely enough, but somehow I get away with that fact this time.

Turns out that this magic all-in-one installing thing is really just that... not only is it downloading and installing Freerock GNOME, it's also downloading and installing EVERY out of date Slackware dependency. I believe this is because of some magical, wonderful thing called slapt-get which appears to enjoy maintaining Slackware installs. Methinks that Mr. Slapt-Get and I might just become close friends.

Meanwhile, this entire updating process is taking a LONG time. I had NO idea what I was getting myself into! But it's still happening much quicker than me manually doing it all, etc. Right now it's downloading more stuff specifically for installing Freerock.

Elsewhere, I read today that Slackware 11.0 is being released soon. That's just like me going to all this trouble when a whole new version is on the way. I'll probably stick with 10.2 for a little while, unless I learn that 11.0 has something amazing that I simply cannot live without.

Well, I'm trying to read about XML while I'm waiting for this thing to finish up, so I can find out if my mouse works and if GNOME was installed, etc. So I take my leave for now.

More installing, devel & design

First before I jump into my goals, let me just amaze you with what all I've done since my last post. Actually, last night after posting, I decided to go ahead and try to install/upgrade/update/whatever! some more applications.

I had already downloaded the latest Thunderbird version so I decided to tackle it next. I just followed a similar scheme to my grand experiences installing Firefox. I approached this install with more confidence and also did a little experimenting in the process. All in all, it ended up working out just the same.

Then, I installed my first package. I wanted to update Gaim because it seemed that there were issues with the version that came pre-installed. So I hoped that the latest version would help. For Gaim, the downloads were either source (bleck!) or RPM type packages. I thought I'd go the package route, thus I downloaded and let KPackage do it's thing.

At first, I wasn't even sure if it did anything. I launched Gaim and discovered that it still worked -- although I really figured it was still the old version. But once it was up and running, the version info told me that this was indeed what I had just installed. And it works better too. Rah!

This brings us to today -- a day I chose to keep Windows XP on, quite honestly. If I left Linux up I would tinker all day (I did enough of that as it was) and I really have a lot of other things in life going on right now so I needed to lessen the temptation. I must admit, I did login to Slackware once today. And guess what I did in that time? (Besides playing Spider....) I downloaded and installed Apache HTTP server. Whoo! :)

With that said, now I will talk about more goals!

One of the reasons I decided to get back into Linux is having a stable and responsive system to do nearly any kind of design or development stuff that I want. I have a number of outstanding and/or upcoming projects that I need a better, more friendly environment to work within.

So I'm all happy about being able to attempt website design (no matter the size or intent) all in a single system. I can use one of the awesome development tools available via Open Source or stick to a simple text editor. I can have a server or two running, utilise different languages, have as many databases I need, and see how it all looks and works without having to upload anything. Can this be done in Windows? Yes I think so, to an extent. But Windows is so messed up right now, and so sluggish and, yah, I'd rather develop in Linux. So I'm going to.

Also, I'm looking forward to getting thicker into visual design work, using nifty tools like The Gimp and whatever else I can find -- without having them crash and burn in Windows every so many minutes.

And, I don't know, somehow, it just makes me feel just a little bit smarter again. Silly to some, but quite nice right now. Even if I am just a noob.

Some goals... while I'm thinking of it.

So far, right off the bat from my install, I have managed to get networking and sound up and running.

Here's what's currently on my hit list:
- figuring out why my internet connection can be slow or delayed
- getting my printer (Canon S750) to work PROPERLY, not just somewhat (I know it worked under Red Hat 7.3 *argh*)
- getting the scroll button/wheel on my mouse to work (I miss scrolling *sniff*) [UPDATE: Mission Accomplished!! See: It's the little things]
- being able to use my scanner (HP scanjet 2200c)
- being able to use my webcam (a Logitech something...)
- being able to access my new external DVD burner (Sony DRX-810UL)
- being able to access my photos/videos on my digital camera (Sony Cybershot DSC-P52)

There are a ba-zillion things to figure out. All sorts of software to update. I'm also planning to install the latest kernel to see if it improves on any hardware compability issues. We'll take that one very slowly, methinks.

I don't even know what software is on here, to be honest! So I'm just going on trying to use this "as normal" and try to figure out how to make something work if I need it (or switching to Windows XP if I'm short on time, patience, or otherwise know that it won't work).

Sounds like a long-term goal, this get comfy with Slackware thing, doesn't it?

"Installing" my first application

Well, really, all I was wanting to do was upgrade. Go from Firefox 1.0.6 (that came with the linux installation) allllllll the way up to Firefox 1.5.0.4. Simple right? Well, yah, I guess it is if you know what you're doing! Or, no, not so simple if you really just want to go 'click, click, ok' like in some other OSes, or if you get to use a "package". Well, I'm sort of somewhere in between, but still not really confident about knowing what I'm doing!

I logged in as "root" and downloaded the tarball to my home directory. Then I found a little (and I mean little) blurb on the Firefox site about untarring the download where you want the app installed within linux, which is (sort of) great, except: (a) I didn't know where it ought to be installed; and (b) I was hoping that I was upgrading, not really installing. I know how to untar something... I'm not a complete Linux n00b, but in Linux I've only ever done what I've had to do. It's a whole other ballgame to do the things I want to do, as well.

Anyway, I did some googling and poked around my filesystem trying to figure out what's up. Things started coming back to me, things long lost since my school-related linuxing days. I managed to track down where all the application files seem to be. A mysterious place called: /usr/lib/ -- this place contained a directory full of Firefox 1.0.6 files, so I know I was on to something, no matter how small that something was.

I tried to "install" 1.5.0.4 by untarring into /usr/lib/ but all that did was attempt (and fail) to overwrite the symbolic link called "firefox" with a directory full of stuff also called "firefox". OK, fine. I get that... well kind of. What the heck is a symbolic link, anyway?

Actually, I knew I used them all the time. I knew they were handy little pointers to big ugly long pathnames, making life much easier in general. But I had never actually had to create or destroy them. I'm sure any experienced linuxer reading this (I'm sorry!) is laughing at me by now, since symbolically linking files is absolutely no big deal. But isn't it quite normal to be afraid of the unknown? ;)

Anyway, I deleted the old Firefox directory and the symbolic link that linked to the "firefox-bin" file within in... after taking careful note of what it was linking too. After all, I want to be like all the cool kids who use symbolic links to run Firefox. Then, it was time to start fresh. The idea of simply upgrading -- as I had always thought of it, I mean -- had totally flown out the window by this point. This was essentially a fresh install... only my settings saved elsewhere were safe. (I hoped.)

Here's what I tried, from within /usr/lib/:

mkdir firefox-1.5.0.4
cd firefox-1.5.0.4
tar -xvzf ~/firefox-1.5.0.4.tar.gz
cd ..
ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.4/firefox/firefox-bin firefox

By the end of all that, I had myself the new Firefox files all laid out AND a symbolic link to firefox-bin, just like I saw was there before. Now it should work, right??

WRONG!

Ouch. With the old version completely deleted and the new version not being happy with me I had no working Firefox anymore. :( Now what? Open up one of the other million browsers that got installed (I chose Mozilla) and do some more googling, that's what! That in itself didn't solve my problem, but having my Google powers back made me feel better.

I poked around the filesystem a little while longer. IF I had been brilliant, I would have typed: whereis firefox and learned where all "firefox"-es lived. Instead I kept poking until something finally felt sorry for me and told me that there was also something I should be looking at in /usr/bin/. Off to /usr/bin/ I went, called up the directory listing and scrolled WAY up to find a very firey red looking "firefox" ... a symbolic link that got busted when I did my rash of deletions, no doubt.

I put my new symbolic linking skills to work, first examing what the broken link was supposed to be. Then deleting it completely. Time to link again! Wuhhoo!

ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.4/firefox/firefox firefox

Although that just looks like I keep repeating myself, having acquired some kind of repetitive word typing disorder during this time of Firefox-less stress, I bravely called on Firefox to load up again... and...

IT ACTUALLY WORKED!!

Amazing how little things (that seem so huge at the time) can be so rewarding. So steps similar to these will I follow to "upgrade" Thunderbird and Gaim. And I'm sure they'll come in useful for first time installs too! That is, unless I'm missing something and don't know it yet. But, guess what? I'm typing up this blog post using Firefox 1.5 within Slackware 10.2 and so far it goes quite well. :)

It's amazing what a little time and determination can accomplish.

Inaugural entry

Yesterday I went through the daunting task of installing Slackware 10.2, a linux distribution known for it's non-user-friendliness.

Why did I do it? Why bother since Red Hat 7.3 has sat almost untouched on my linux partition for the last two years? What do I hope to acheive by "slacking off"? And what little things am I learning along the way, that I want to share, but also want to remember!?

This is the place to find out. My regular blog readers won't particularly care, so I am sending all such important things to this very spot.

Linux for everyday? Let's find out how that goes!