Twenty years exclusively using GNU/linux

 WOW, let me hear that again: WOW!!!

In short. I started dual-booting in 2004 and switched to linux full time in 2005. This means that I have been using GNU/linux for two decades!!!

The word "exclusively" is used for emphasis, since I have also been playing and using other operating systems. Mainly BSD and occasionally Solaris (or some sort of derivative). 

But somehow I always come back to debian, do not ask me why. Call it what you want, maybe because I am too used to it or who knows. Maybe it is just love at first sight (which is very likely)

Keep on rockin'

Axyl, an OS with i3 by default

Last night I discovered Axyl. An operating system based on ARCH linux and focused on window managers. 

It works well with i3, bspwm, dwm, XMonad, Spectrwm and others, but the default one is i3.

I must say that I only tried it live. But it runs fast and it is pretty cool. I have not installed it because I am too lazy to learn ARCH. I tried ARCH once but only for a little while.

Their official website is https://axyl-os.github.io

As a curiosity. It was developed in Republic of the Philippines. But I do not know anything else about it apart from what I read on Wikipedia.

New lappy

Birthday present to self :P
Codename: jean
OS: buster

Dillo: like a bat out of hell

I love text browsers. My favourite ones are lynx and elinks.
I love graphical browsers. My favourite ones are chromium and firefox.
I love browsers that somehow are in the middle like w3m-img or links2.

This is to say that I spend a lot of time surfing the web in different ways depending on what I need to achieve or the hardware I am using at the moment. It is not the same being connected to a powerful remote server or connected using an eeepc of 512mb of ram.

So instead of saying that I love them, it would be more accurate to say that I make an extensive use of all kinds of web browsers.

Among the graphical browsers I used to like was midori, it allowed me to do almost anything I could do with chromium but it needed less resources which was fine. The problem I have always had with midori is that I have often have to face one or other bug. In my eeepc everytime I scrolled down it opened a new tab and switched to it (oh man so annoying).

But thank god I discovered dillo. It is an incredibly fast graphical web browser that works like a charm in all my machines, especially in my less powerful ones, like the eeepc or any other old laptop/desktop machines.

Dillo has a certain number of limitations, that is true. It does not interpret javascript and therefore you lose a bit of some sites functionality. But this is a trade-off I am willing to accept.

Dillo has a number of configuration files under ~/.dillo that once tweaked will make your life way better. This is a list of the files you need to have in there:

* dillorc This is the actual config file. You can set many options here like the homepage, the colours you like...

* domainrc Dillo cross-domain request rules file. In this file you can configure which sites are allowed to retrieve data from third party domains.

* bm.txt The bookmarks file. You can add any bookmarks from the browser using its graphical interface, however the syntax is very easy and it is quicker to add your bookmarks directly to this file. For example:

:s1: Super cool sites
s1 http://www.chalsattack.com chalsattack
s1 http://blog.chalsattack.com/ chals' blog


* cookiesrc How to handle cookies. The syntax is also plain easy.
DEFAULT DENY
chalsattack.com ACCEPT
blog.chalsattack.com ACCEPT_SESSION

Note: Accepting cookies will create an additional cookies.txt file in ~/.dillo

Once everything is in place prepare to surf at full speed, be careful, you might get a ticket for speeding ;)

Now you can visit most sites on the web, check your mail and do almost anything you can do with other browsers. But you will not be able to for example watch videos or visit sites that exclusively depend on javascript.

Conclusion: The chalsattack.com version which was active from 2015 and 2016 made an extensive use of javascript, since I couldn't visit it with dillo, I re-wrote the site from scratch as you can read here

Next installment: a screenshot of dillo in action.

raspi 3.5 inch touch screen

I got a 3.5 inch touch screen for my raspi. Loading the driver is pretty straightforward if you use raspbian:

git clone https://github.com/goodtft/LCD-show.git
chmod -R 755 LCD-show
cd LCD-show/
sudo ./LCD35-show

Awesome!!!

Debian GNU/Hurd successfully installed

I have successfully installed the 2013 version of the debian GNU/Hurd port. So far it is only inside a virtual machine but I may install it in a partition once I get more used to how it works.

A default installation does not include a lot of software. That's where the power of debian comes in handy. You know the drill apt-get install...

(Credits go to MrFrood for finding the gnu ascii art below, and showing me how to include it.)

  ,           , 
 /             \ 
((__-^^-,-^^-__)) 
 `-_---' `---_-' 
  `--|o` 'o|--' 
     \  `  / 
      ): :( 
      :o_o: 
       "-" 

Debian GNU/Hurd

The Debian GNU/Hurd team announced the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013.

I downloaded the image last night. I need to remember to login as root without a password. This is a screenshot of the OS in action.

raspi at work

I must admit that I am really, really excited about my raspi (raspberry pi). I ordered it three months ago and during all this time I have spent a lot of time thinking about the endless possibilities that such an amazing piece of machinery could offer.

I have installed a lot of applications from the debian archive, perhaps the most outstanding ones are the servers: ssh, ftp, http and gopher.

In the screenshot you can see the result of:

 $ lynx gopher://localhost

and the moment of writing this post.

Hacker's keyboard for android

Yeah, an absolute must have if you need a real keyboard on your android device. I had been looking for such a keyboard for a long time since I bought my phone. And I tried several of them but none comes closer to Hacker's Keyboard.

Some other keyboards have additional keys like Alt, Tab or Esc but they do not work very well. They are useless, so to speak. This one has them all, function keys and even Pgup and Pgdn. Now I simply can't imagine using my android devices without it. Thank you guys.

Their website is here

RasPi

Yesterday I ordered my first Raspberry Pi. I say my first because ever since I discovered this cute little invention I said I'd (and I intend to) buy two. But for the time being, and also with the idea in mind of running some tests to see how it works and how many things I can do with it, I just bought one.

It is going to be powered by debian. I read there is a debian derivative called Raspbian which was especially designed to work with the RasPi. So I'll have to give it a try. Besides it is the recommended operating system by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

But to tell you the truth, even though Raspbian might be ok to begin with, I will replace it by a pure debian installation. I do not need the graphical interface provided by Raspbian. I just need a basic debian system with some servers installed.

I intend to use the little RasPi as a micro server of several things, gopher, http, an irc bouncer... but who knows? I still need to see how far one can get with such a tiny machine. To begin with its low power consumption makes it ideal to run 24/7.

The downside is that it costs a little bit more than expected (even though this should be expected) It costs 27€ but once you have paid for the case, the power supply and the expenses you need to spend 52€ (more than that if you have to buy some extra stuff like cables, memory card...) but well, I think it is worth it. The worst thing is having to wait for 13 weeks until the order is processed plus one more week (own estimation) to arrive home.

Note: I'll publish some pictures when I finally get it.

haiku (BeOS replacement)

This week I finally fulfilled one of my "easy-to-achieve" dreams of long ago which consisted in trying BeOS (discontinued since 2001) or almost.

The story goes back to 2004-2005 when I spent long hours reading and thus learning about operating systems. I read Neal Stephenson's In the beginning ... was the command line He enhances linux (of course) but makes a special praise of BeOS. I wanted to try it ever since then but unfortunately I never got the chance to do that.

On my quest for BeOS I heard about Haiku but at first I looked down on it as being a mere second hand imitation of the real thing. However now that I finally decided to try it I must admit how wrong I was. Haiku is a really good operating system. Nice and clean user interface focused on usability and simplicity but stuffed with a bunch of really useful and easy to use software. Besides it is free and open source and has a powerful terminal

You can download it in three formats: anyboot (images for usb devices), iso (for cd's) or VM (images for virtual machines). At the moment of writing this it is in alpha 2 state but I found it very stable. It woks great. I have not installed it on a hard disk but tried it with qemu and with a live cd as well.

One more to my list ... of favourites.