Drcouzelis's Arch Linux Blog

I recently made post number 1500 on the Arch Linux forums. I thought it’d be nice to take a moment and reflect on Arch Linux and its community.

So, let me tell you about MMORPGs. They scare me. I’ve never played them, but I’e watched, and lost, friends that do. They look boring to me. They look like mindless grinding for the simple purpose of making a number increase that resides on a computer somewhere that could get erased at any moment. How ridiculous.

And then one day I suddenly realized: I do play an MMORPG. It’s called the Arch Linux forums. I log in every day for at least an hour. I play with other people from around the world. I monitor my stats as they increase. I don’t think I’ve fought any battles, unless you count Vim vs EMACS. Anyway, it was a harsh realization.

I’m more active on the Arch Linux forums than anywhere else on the Internet by far. It’s my hobby. It’s enjoyable. It doesn’t feel like a chore. Sometimes I ponder what it would be like to become a moderator, but I quickly remember how much I enjoy not having any responsibilities there. Plus, I’d probably abuse my powers. “You have violated forum etiquette by recommending EMACS. Closed. Binned. For deletion.”

The Arch Linux forums and wiki are kind of a big deal on the Internet. As some of the best technical resources for Linux, users from all types of distributions find their way to them for help. And it’s so easy to contribute to. Anyone can create an account and start answering quesions and posting information.

I think it’s neat the way Arch Linux doen’t do any “advertising”. The developers have no desire to promote Arch Linux. Instead, they make the best operating system they can, and people interested in its features end up finding it (like I did). Arch Linux is one of the most popular Linux distributions, all based on its technical merit and community.

It’s been over three and a half years since I started using Arch Linux. I have no reason or desire to switch to anything else. Except maybe to get rid of systemd.

I had a strange conversation with my classmate today in my Red Had System Administration class. It kind of left me speechless. The conversation wasn’t very well guided, but the main topics were software freedom and user control.

I brought up the topic of smart phones, and why having something like Linux on a phone would be so desirable. With my Nokia N900 and Maemo, I pretty much have just that. I also have control. Every Nokia N900 comes unlocked (I can use it with any SIM card), with root privileges (I have admin control anywhere in the filesystem), able to be rooted (any OS can be installed or reinstalled), and any application can be installed on it using the default package manager, apt (the same that is used by Debian GNU / Linux).

I brought up this topic so my classmate could help me think of reasons why Linux on a phone would be great. Instead, I discovered that his opinion is the exact opposite of mine: It’s much much better for the owner of the phone to have less control. This will prevent the user from breaking it.

He went on and on with this point. I wish I could describe it better, but the problem is I have a really hard time understanding it.

Here is my point: There’s no difference in stability between an iPhone that is locked down (like it currently is) and an iPhone that gives me complete control (to install applications from any source, access to the filesystem…). If I choose to do something with my phone that is not supported by Apple, then yes, I may break it, but at least it’s my choice. Instead, Apple worked very hard to add extra software and extra hardware that will prevent me from doing anything of the sort. They did extra work to give me less control of the electronic device that I own.

My classmate’s opinion surprised me. I mean, it really surprised me. I’m used to talking to people who care about software freedom, at least a little bit. I’m also used to talking to people who don’t know or don’t care about software freedom. But I can’t think of a time I’ve ever met someone who was so much against the idea of software freedom.

I was also extremely surprised to find out how little he and my other classmates understood about free software, as described by the Free Software Foundation. I mean, we’re in a Red Hat class, so I just kind of assumed everyone knew. I think I assumed incorrectly.

I had four days off from work this week thanks to Thanksgiving, and I decided to spend a lot of that time trying out some operating systems. Here are my extremely simple, quick, superficial experiences.

Slackware

I used to be a Slackware user, as can be seen in my Linux history. I appreciate that the outstanding installation program hasn’t changed since the last time I used it in 2003. I was excited to use a very stable and nicely setup system with KDE.

Well, I was reminded why I don’t like KDE. First of all, I find the default appearance to be incredible ugly. Second, there are so many little applications working together that make up KDE, and one of them always seems to be either crashing or causing a graphical glitch. So, I erased Slackware.

Fedora

I was interested in trying GNOME 3. After looking around a bit, I realized Fedora was the only major distribution that comes with the standard GNOME 3 Shell by default.

I realized I don’t like GNOME 3. Everything just took so much mouse movement and so much clicking. Maybe I was using it incorrectly. Anyway, I erased Fedora.

Frugalware

I wanted to try Frugalware because it’s one of the only distributions that comes with the Etoile Desktop Environment, based on GNUStep. Frugalware didn’t like it when I told it not to install the boot loader into the MBR. I couldn’t get it to boot after that, so I gave up trying to get it to load.

MenuetOS

I love MenuetOS. I love the story of MenuetOS. A programmer is fed up with people always saying “Sure, assembly language is incredibly fast, but it’s impossible to write any big or serious application with it”, and so he decides to write an entire operating system in assembly language. That includes both the kernel and the GUI (with transparency effects!). It has a text editor, web browser, image editor, music / video / DVD player, Doom, and Quake.

I was able to run it from a live CD. Unfortunately my USB mouse was not detected, but I was able to move the mouse cursor around with some keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl – Meta – arrows / space). If it had worked, I would have installed it onto a partition, just for the geek cred.

openSUSE

My wife liked openSUSE from her experience from a few years ago, so I decided to give it a try. What a beautiful and polished experience openSUSE is! The installer is amazing and the default setup is gorgeous (even with KDE!). So I decided to keep it as another platform to compile and test the video game I’m making on.

…until I discovered two simple packages I need (Allegro and GNUStep) are not in the openSUSE repositories. I’m going kind of crazy. These are pretty basic packages. Does openSUSE really not provide them? I searched and searched on the Internet, but I don’t think I care enough to look into it much further. So, I’ll probably erase openSUSE.

And this is the point when I started to realize something about package managers: they don’t provide any useful information. The first thing I do when installing a new OS is apply updates. These new GUI package managers don’t tell me what is being downloaded or how much is left. It’s like a window that says “Click here to update”, then “Updating…”, then “Done.”. I’m sure it’s possible to see the details somehow, but it sure wasn’t obvious to me.

FreeBSD

I plan on keeping FreeBSD for two reasons: to tinker with and learn on, and to test the video game I’m making on another operating system. It’ll become one of my primary three operating systems.

So, in the end, I end up triple booting Arch Linux, Haiku, and FreeeBSD. I’d still like to have some sort of popular fancy Linux distribution installed, so I might try out Linux Mint with Cinnamon if I have some more time.

I had fun trying out some new operating systems. It’s been three years since I started using Arch Linux and lost any desire to do any more distro hopping. But trying them out again has made me realize how thankful I am for Arch Linux.

I have a software pet peeve. Have you ever seen something like this:

1 update(s)

or, even worse, this?

1 updates

Well, I think this is ridiculous. Do you know why I think this is ridiculous? Because it’s 2012, and programmers have really good “if” statements available to them!

My friend in college (2000) introduced me to Linux. Windows 98 was having a lot of trouble on my laptop, so, in my days of dial-up Internet, I drove an hour to a computer store to buy a boxes copy of Mandrake for (I think) $30.

When that laptop died I decided to buy a Fujitsu Lifebook (I cannot tell you how much I loved that laptop). Unfortunately, there was a bug in the Linux kernel at the time which prevented it from booting correctly on a Transmeta Crusoe processor. I found an tutorial describing how to patch and compile my own Linux kernel for the Crusoe using Slackware, and I began using that.

At that point point in time, Slackware had no package manager. Instead, when new software came out (and I love trying new software!) I would download and compile it myself, including all of it’s newly required libraries (GTK2, Pango, Atk…). I had heard about the popularity of Debian and gave it a try. The feeling of using a package manager again to automatically install and update everything felt so incredibly wonderful.

I became tired of the cycle of Debian stable being fresh and new and being tired and old, so I tried Ubuntu. I didn’t want to like it because it was “too easy”, but my gosh, it was just so easy. My favorite version is still 8.04 Hardy Heron, which I still consider the pinnacle of Ubuntu development.

At this point I began to really learn about the Free Software Foundation, and decided that I agree with many of their beliefs. So, I installed a new FSF approved version of Hardy Heron called gNewSense and used only free and open source software on my computer for almost a year. You might be surprised how much Linux software is “open source” but not FSF “free”. Anyway, it was a great experience.

gNewSense became old, and I didn’t like the direction the distribution was going. I wanted the latest versions of software, but I was tired of always formatting and installing new operating systems. I then discovered Arch Linux and the concept of a rolling release distribution. In addition to that, I was really getting into contributing to the Linux community, and the Arch Linux community provides outstanding outlets for that: a strong forum, a highly regarded wiki, and the AUR (allowing anyone to contribute new software packages to the distribution), all of which can be contributed to almost instantly by anyone.

In summary:

I was introduced to Linux using Mandrake.

I learned Linux using Slackware.

I discovered package management using Debian.

I took a break and used the user friendly Ubuntu.

I became passionate about software freedom using gNewSense.

I keep current and in control using Arch Linux.

I used each of those distributions for at least about a year. I’ve been using the same 64-bit Arch Linux installation for three years now and am very happy with it. I dual boot the Haiku operating system. And I still consider myself a freetard.

More information: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:drcouzelis

I recently did some major software updates on my computer.

Arch Linux has changed a lot in recent months. These are not small updates. These are updates that, if I mess up, may result in my computer not booting, losing personal data files, or me not being able to watch Doctor Who. Spoiler: Everything went perfectly smoothly, my computer runs much better now, and I’m in the middle of watching episodes of the fifth Doctor.

Configuration Files

The first thing I did was update the Arch Linux configuration files. In the past, configuration was done almost entirely in /etc/rc.conf. Now it’s done in separate files. For example, the hostname is now set in the /etc/hostname file (SUCH AN EASY OPERATING SYSTEM).

I really enjoyed updating the configuration files. Everything is documented very simply in the man page for “archlinux”. And the best part is, now my computer runs so much more smoothly, especially the Firefox startup time.

systemd

A couple days later, I replaced my init system, sysvinit, with systemd. After learning more about each, I find systemd to be quite simple and easy to use. The upgrade process is very clearly documented on the Arch Linux wiki. I haven’t done any formal tests, but it seems like my computer now boots much more quickly.

Ext4

Next, I decided it was time to change the file system on my two Linux partitions from Ext3 to Ext4. Why? Because Ext4 is newer! I don’t really understand the technical reasons why Ext4 is better, but whatever. It takes a lot less time now to run fsck, so that’s nice.

My other two partitions still have the Be File System on them.

GRUB

Finally, I updated my bootloader from GRUB legacy to GRUB2. Doing this one made my palms sweat. Once again I used the information in the Arch Linux wiki. Unfortunately, it was a little confusing, and required me to make some choices about how to install it. I decided to go with a very simple traditional BIOS installation to the MBR. So now I use GRUB2, which works fine, instead of GRUB legacy, which worked fine. But now my Arch Linux installation is little more future proof.

…And that’s it! My computer is running quite well. My next goal is to cleanup any files scattered around the operating system. I’ll do this by running the script that tells me about any files that aren’t owned by the package manager. The ones that are unused I’ll delete, and the ones that are used I’ll add documentation for. You know, things like what the file does and which application uses it.

I also need to do some things to cleanup my webserver. My iptables configuration works, but I don’t really understand why, and that scares me. I also need to clean up my webserver software.

It’s been three years since I installed Arch Linux, and it’s been a great experience. Going through the occasional big Arch Linux updates sure beats my old method of updating Linux, by reinstalling the entire operating system every few months.

I decided that my Arch Linux installation was getting a bit crufty, so I decided to do a sort of “refresh”. It went OK. I mean, nothing bad happened. I just haven’t decided if any good came out of it.

You see, an Arch Linux user never really has to reinstall Arch Linux. pacman does a great job of keeping track of packages. My idea was to remove all packages and then install stuff I specifically want to use. This way, I won’t have any unused packages on my computer.

The first thing I should have done was make a quick backup of “/etc” and other important system files. Fortunately, like any responsibel computer user, I made a full backup about a week ago and just used those files when needed.

I editted “pacman.conf” commented out all repositories besides [core]. I then told pacman to remove all foreign packages. I was left with pretty much what I would have had if I just finished installing Arch Linux. I then reenabled the other repositories and went to work adding applications I like to use.

I ran into some snags when it came time to setup my web server. I installed Linux (of course), Apache, MySQL, and PHP, but back when I had removed those packages they took my configuration files with them! I struggled for a bit, rereading the Arch Linux wiki page on setting up a LAMP web server. It’s running fine again now.

I started with about 850 packages installed. After my little refresh, I have about 650. That’s nice, but, you know, those extra couple hundred of packages really weren’t hurting anyone. I think the best thing about this experience was relearning how to setup a web server. (Apache seems to be needlessly complicated in my opinion!)

In conclusion, I’d say it was worth the hassle, but only if I was really bored and wanted a relatively relaxing nerdy project to work on. I don’t plan on refreshing my Arch Linux installation again any time soon.

I think one of the biggest differences between Linux and Haiku is that of having a standard way of doing things. I probably be talking about this difference a lot in the future.

Disclaimer: I’m very new to Haiku programming, so I may make mistakes or not do something the Haiku way. Please correct me if you see any errors. Thank you!

I worked on my RSS feed aggregator a bit over the weekend. I began implementing saved settings.

Linux

There are many ways to save settings in Linux. You can save settings by using GConf (which I just found out is being deprecated in favor of Gsettings). You can use a text file (please make sure to ask xdg where to save it, and not just throw it into the home directory!). Text files can be XML or Lua or old-timey-X-style (whatever that’s called) or made up just for your application. This is probably an over simplified representation of settings files in Linux, but my point is that there’s no single standard way of doing it.

Haiku

The Haiku Human Interface Guidelines explain the standard way of saving settings in Haiku. It involved saving data into a BMessage and then flattening the BMessage into a file. Later, the file can loaded (unflattened) into a BMessage and the settings can be taken out of it.

The Haiku API includes a simple way to get the user’s settings directory:

BPath settingsPath;
find_directory(B_USER_SETTINGS_DIRECTORY, &settingsPath);

The current default user settings directory is “/boot/home/config/settings”. Use the Append method to add a nice name for your settings file:

settingsPath.Append("MyHaikuApplication");

This will make your settings file “/boot/home/config/settings/MyHaikuApplication”.

Messages

BMessage objects are integral to the Haiku API. Here’s a concrete example of what a BMessage looks like. For a BMessage object named “msg”, it has a “what” type (an integer) that can be used to determine the type of BMessage:

msg->what

I don’t use this for saving settings. It has another (very important) purpose that I’ll talk about some other time.

The other thing it has is a whole mess of named data. Here’s a quick example. I’ll save a number into a BMessage:

msg->AddFloat("Pi", 3.141592654);

I can also retrieve it:

float value;
msg->FindFloat("Pi", &value);

As you can see from the documentation, a BMessage can store all sorts of data, include any object or structure. It can even store more that one copy of named data. For example, all of these values will get stored:

msg->AddString("Address", "123 Business Drive");
msg->AddString("Address", "386 Computer Street");
msg->AddString("Address", "7 Internet Superhighway");

They can likewise be pulled out again by using the FindString method. BMessage objects can also store other BMessages. In summary, BMessage objects can allow you to easily store and retrieve data.

Flatten It

To save a BMessage object to file, “flatten” it using the Flatten method. Just send it a pointer to a BFile:

BFile file(settingsPath.Path(), B_CREATE_FILE | B_ERASE_FILE | B_WRITE_ONLY);
if (file.InitCheck() == B_OK)
    msg.Flatten(&file);

Unflattening a file is just as easy:

BFile file(settingsPath.Path(), B_READ_ONLY);
if (file.InitCheck() == B_OK)
    msg.Unflatten(&file);

Changes

Java has a way of serializing objects. This allows you to save an object to a file and then open it again. It sure can be handy, but if you make a change to the class then you can’t open the saved object anymore (as far as I know). The Haiku way of using a BMessage with named values in it doesn’t have this problem. You can always open it and try to read values from it. If the name of a value has changed or is new, then the find will fail and you can simply use a default value. Then, when application quits, you can overwrite the old settings file with the new one.

I WANT PLAIN TEXT FILES RARR!

I’m a Linux user, and I know the benefits of having settings saved in a plain text file. I don’t know of an easy way to extract information from a flattened BMessage besides loading it in an application. Even so, the benefit is that it makes the application responsible for controlling the settings file, even if it means creating a GUI that allows the user to change some settings. Haiku is a desktop operating system. It was designed to be used with a GUI and a mouse. It was also designed to be easy to use. A plain text settings file might be as easy to use as a GUI, but a GUI can allow settinsg to be more discoverable.

An Advanced Case

My RSS feed aggregator has some numerical settings, but it also has more advanced settings. I need to keep track of every “Feed” that the user wants to follow, and every news “Item” in that feed. That’s a list of Item objects inside a list of Feed objects.

I got advice from An Evil Yak, a nice Haiku developer. I decided to create one BMessage for every Feed and one BMessage for every Item. I’ll then add the Item message objects to their corresponding Feed message objects, and all of the Feed message objects to the main settings message object. I’ll then flatten that message to a file.

I recently realized something about the progress of the Haiku operating system. I think it’s ready for a large increase in users, but something is holding it back. That something is an itch. Haiku is missing the right itch to scratch.

There’s an annoying little problem any new operating system must face, whether it’s mobile, desktop, or other: People don’t want to use an operating system that doesn’t have the applications they need, and people won’t create applications until there are people using the operating system. Non-kernel-developers won’t even considering using an operating system until it is far enough along to allow a person to feel like they can do something with it, besides just being a beta tester. Well, I think Haiku is at that point.

Haiku is ready to be used by many people. It’s quite stable and contains many features that many people are looking for in an operating system, such as a nice web browser, chat, and a media player. It comes with great tools for developers. It can mount flash drives, it can be used to download torrents, and it can be used to connect to wifi. It has a pleasing appearance and is very consistant. Of course it’s not ready for everyone, but it certainly is ready to be used by some.

But…

Mass adoption isn’t happening. There is talk on the Haiku forums about that being because of infrequent releases and the lack of focus on implementing single imortant pieces of the operating system. I briefly considered the idea that Haiku isn’t being used more because more people don’t know about it, in regards to there being a lack of some sort of marketing. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t think that’s the case.

I enjoy watching people post to the Community Contributions section on the Arch Linux forums. I like watching new applications flourish. Not all of them flourish, but the ones that do seem to have something in common: They were made by someone who was scratching an itch, and a large group of others had the same itch that needed scratching. One of my favorite relatively recent examples is for a fast and powerful file manager, SpaceFM.

I understand that SpaceFM is a relatively small application compared to something as large as an operating system, but even large pieces of software such as GNOME or the Linux kernel started out small. Haiku has been in development for over a decade, but still people aren’t swarming to it. Why is that?

I think the reason is that Haiku is missing an itch.

Microsoft Windows is the most used desktop operating system today. BeOS, which Haiku is based on, was designed to be a nicer, better, easier to use competitor to Windows. It may be, but things have changed a lot since then.

Windows has become easier to use. Mac OS has become much more popular. And people who want the most simplicity in a computing device will use a tablet or just stick with their mobile phone.

People who enjoy writing software and being their own system administrator have the option of using one of the many GNU/Linux distributions or similar operating systems. Haiku would benefit the most if these types of people would start using it and developing for it more. But why would they?

Haiku was designed to be a easy to use desktop operating system. It has one primary API, one GUI toolkit, and one user interface with relatively little customability. Why would a person who uses GNU/Linux with all of the great options and configurations that it provides want to use something so seemingly limiting?

There are people, like me, who love GNU/Linux but are tired of the fragmentation in distributions, user interfaces, GUI toolkits, sound servers, and so on. I wanted an operating system that was cohesive, designed to be easy to use, was free and open source software, and looked good by default. In my search for something with those features I found Haiku. But I think I’m in the minority.

If the needs of free and open source software developers can better be met by GNU/Linux, why would they use and develop software for Haiku? If they don’t, that only leaves professional software developers, and it would take someone who really likes gambling to take a bet on being able to make money by developing their software for Haiku.

If the needs of people who want an easy to use and cohesive operating system can be met by Mac OS and even Windows nowadays, why would they use Haiku? They would if free and open source software was important to them, but that hasn’t really happened with the general public. They want something that just works.

Who is left to use Haiku? People who miss the days of BeOS are interested in Haiku, but those numbers are dwindling. I’m certainly not one of them. I’d never even heard of BeOS until after learning about Haiku.

What can be done to bring software developers to Haiku? I don’t believe there’s really any great technical reasons to use Haiku instead of another modern operating system. Any technical benefit of Haiku, such as pervasive multithreading, is met with a drawback, such as it might not even boot on your current hardware.

I think stressing what Haiku does offer will help find people who are searching for something like Haiku but didn’t really know it. The more people that are informed about Haiku, the higher the chance of finding someone that is interested in using and developing for it.

What are the benefits of using and writing software for Haiku? I’m in the middle of writing my second piece of software for Haiku, and am learning a lot about why someone would want to use and develop for it. I plan on detailing these points over the next many posts. Maybe it’ll spark some interest in the next generation of Haiku developers. Maybe it’ll cause Haiku to jump into the mainstream! Most likely it’ll just allow me a place to blabber on about an operating system I love to blabber on about.

I’ve been spending a lot of time using Haiku recently. I had a particularly fun night recently.

I’ve been itching to contribute some nice software to Haiku for a while. Last year I made my first piece of Haiku software: a screensaver of pretty falling leaves. It seemed like a good place to start for me since I like making video games, and screensavers are pretty much just video games without any user input.

http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/utilities/screensavers/fallleaves

My plan for my next piece of software is to pick a nice library, compile in on Haiku, and then write a native GUI to interact with it. I decided to start by writing an RSS client. It’s coming along slowly but fine.

It’s funny, there’s “no software applications for Haiku”, but at the same time, every time I think I have a great idea to fill in some functionality gap, I find out there already is an application for it in Haiku that works fine. Combine that with the WebPositive web browser and you now have a ton of functionality that’s provided by websites (RSS feed readers, email, document creation…) Probably the biggest application gap I see is that there’s no native word processor, but it’s really hard for me to care. I don’t really use word processors in any operating systems.

Lastly, here’s my usual list of some of the stuff I did in Haiku recently:

• Log in to my MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and Gmail chat accounts using Caya
• Download YouTube videos using youtube-dl and watch them using MediaPlayer
• Listen to music while I program using a playlist in MediaPlayer
• Host a simple static web page using PoorMan (a “poor man’s” web server)
• Create a new software project with the Paladin IDE, setup a new project on SourceForge, and sync my work using git
• Check my email and visit various websites using WebPositive
• Use BePDF to view some documents that were emailed to me
• I had some fun trying out and voting on some of the new software releases on Haikuware.

In the past I’ve downloaded files through bittorrent using Transmission, but for some reason it wasn’t working last week. I didn’t really look into it, but I think I was trying to use a crummy seeds.

I plan on spending more time in Vision, the native IRC client, to learn more about software development in Haiku.

Oh, I almost forgot! I resized my partitions and gave myself a new Haiku native partition. So I now have a partition for the Arch Linux operating system, the Haiku operating system, my Linux personal data, and my Haiku personal data. This way I don’t have to fret when upgrading.