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.

Installing Debian Squeeze 6.0 on Asus eeepc 701 using a usb stick and Debian-live

In this short tutorial I explain how I installed Debian Squeeze 6.0 on my Asus eeepc 701 4G using a usb stick and Debian-live.

FOREWORD: Formatting drives destroys all data contained there. Before proceeding make sure to backup all important data!!!

In order to follow this tutorial you need:
- A USB stick with Debian Live installed. In order to properly install it you can follow the procedure as explained in the official live-manual
IN SHORT: Download a pre-built image from http://live.debian.net or alternatively build your own. And image it on the usb key using dd.

- An Asus eeepc 701 4G to faithfully reproduce every step. Other models will possibly work much alike.

- Some overall knowledge of how a Debian system works.

STEPS:
1. First plug the usb key in the machine :P

2. Boot the image pressing ESC at the bios splash screen and selecting the usb device from the menu.
3. The first thing to do is to wipe out the contents of the default SSD flash disk as 4G is not enough to dual boot other operating systems. Alternatively you can install this new OS on a memory card (There is a memory card slot on the right side of the computer)
4. Once the default desktop is loaded go to System/Aministration/Synaptic Package Manager

5. Search for and install gparted.

6. Open a terminal. Type sudo su. Start gparted and delete any partitions. BE WARNED that this will erase ALL data. If there is something important in the drive make a backup before proceeding. Have you? Good for you!!! Create a new partition and format it if you want (Formatting is not really necessary at this point since the installer can do it later. What is important here is to prepare a clean partition as a starting point).

7. Once the new partition is ready. Double click the debian installer launcher on  the desktop.

8. Install.
9. Reboot the machine when done and boot into your brand new Debian Squeeze Operating System.
10. ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

Now, as you can see this is really NOT complicated. If you have ever installed a Debian system following d-i steps is a blast.

Creating a Debian live USB flash drive with persistence for non-techies

Foreword: "for non-techies" should perhaps be "for dummies" but it sounds better.

This tutorial aims at showing a fast, straightforward way of creating a  USB flash drive with Debian live installed using the persistence feature. It means that you can save changes back to the usb flash drive after you reboot your machine. It is written and carried out on a linux box, that is why I recommend using linux. There are many more options not covered in this article which are explained in detail in Debian-live's manual. You can find it here:

http://live.debian.net/manual/en/html/live-manual.html


In order to follow this tutorial you need:

-A machine with linux installed.
-A FAT  formatted usb flash drive of 4 GB (2GB will do since the image is 1.1 GB but this leaves little free space for persistence)
-A good internet connection to download an image of 1.1 GB.
-A basic knowledge of the command line.
-Sudo access to your machine. You must be in the sudoers file.
-Software/commands: bash, wget, mount, dd, gparted or alternatively fdisk (fdisk usage is not explained here)

1. Download a usb-hdd image from live.debian.net  A direct link to the latest stable release is here
In order to achieve that, open a terminal. Type:

$ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current-live/i386/usb-hdd/debian-live-6.0.0-i386-gnome-desktop.img

With a fairly good connection it should not take longer than 20 or 30 minutes.

2. Plug in the flash drive and open a terminal. Type:

$ mount (In order to know the device name of your flash drive).

There should be an entry similar to this one:


/dev/sdc1 on /media/Kingston DataTraveler G2: 4.0 GB Filesystem type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush)

Here is important to remember /dev/sdc (your device name can be different like for example /dev/sdb) Just make sure that the name belongs to the usb you want to copy the live image to. Otherwise you risk losing important data.

3. Once the download is finished. Copy the image to the usb flash drive. In order to do that open a terminal and type:

$  dd if=debian-live-6.0.0-i386-gnome-desktop.img of=/dev/sdc (Remember to replace sdc with the actual name of your device.)

4. Wait for it to finish. (It might take a while)

5. It is time to make a new partition to use the space left on the flash drive to save changes. Then type:

$ sudo gparted

gparted interface looks like this:

6. Select the device from the drop down menu. Remember in this tutorial it is /dev/sdc

You must unmount the device. So first right click on it and select unmount.

7. Right click on the device and select new. A new window opens.

8. Complete:

-Primary partition

-ext2

-label: live-rw

Select Add and then apply changes. Unplug. Now you can boot from the usb flash drive using persistence.

9. In order to use persistence you have to boot a machine from the usb. You must first ensure that your bios is capable of booting from usb. Enter the bios and check that.

First thing you will be presented with the splash screen:

10. Press ESC to see the boot prompt and type "live persistent" (Without quotes)

You are done. You can now use the system as you like and all the changes that you make will be saved in the partition you've created.

Only one thing left to say: ENJOY!!!!