Saturday, March 16, 2024

Popcorn, UNIX brain storming, System V, BSD, then Linux!

 Glad there are a few people who can see my blog. Maybe it’s time to write something recent and current on it.

As far as writing, not only have I written a few blogs, over twenty years ago I was published a few times. Extreme Tech had a Linux distribution review series for a while back in the early 2000s and I wrote for them twice. I think I also wrote a few articles in Linux Review and maybe one or two elsewhere.

My longtime friend, dating clear back to 1985 in Merrimack, NH, Jon “maddog” Hall used to write books and magazine articles about Linux. The most recent article I read from him was only four years ago, so it’s possible that he STILL writes – this one was called “Maddog’s Doghouse @LinuxProMagazine.com. In fact, Jon specifically mentions “In 1986, I took a VAX computer with Ultrix-32 down to Richard Stallman so the GNU project could port its software to Ultrix”.

Around that same time, Jon and I ran into one another several times in the afternoon next to the popcorn maker near a coffee station. There, we’d share our ideas. I happened to be a member of Digital’s Telecommunications Systems Engineering Group, and we would sponsor development groups to write device drivers for new PDP and VAX systems in order that AT&T divisions and spin-off companies could run genuine UNIX System V on Digital Equipment computers. John wanted to go further than that: he wanted to unify features from BSD based UNIX systems, which Ultrix-16, Ultrix-32m and Ultrix-32 were at the time; that vision resulted in Digital UNIX; we both worked in that organization in the middle nineties, but by that time, both of us realized that large server systems were on the way out, to be replaced by Intel and AMD hardware running Linux! Naturally that was NOT a popular point of view, because about $200-300 Million per year was invested in each of Digital’s operating system groups; layered software products also had significant product investments.

It didn’t take very long; by the end of the first decade in 2000s, while UNIX wasn’t gone, it certainly was no longer bringing in a 20-30% or greater market. Even by 2000, many major companies, particularly IBM and Hewlett Packard, and later Dell, were bringing in 20-39% of their total server revenue from their Linux server business; desktop Linux never exceeded 1-2% ever, but when Google released Chrome at the beginning of the next decade, after making huge strides with their search engines in the early 2000s, that put Linux software squarely in both server and desktop configurations, though not always directly; Google stuff used Linux KERNEL components, not Linux-based window or desktop configurations.

Today, we have all kinds of stuff that has either a UNIX or Linux derived kernel; Apple products use system kernels derived from BSD-based UNIX kernels. Google still uses parts of the Linux kernel in many of their products. Automation manufacturers and automotive applications often put UNIX or Linux derived components into their software firmware that goes into many of their devices. Software from both UNIX and Linux communities, and also Linux-like code even in real time systems, is much more common than it was twenty or more years ago. Why completely reinvent something when you can use or reuse it? Some companies that want to copy WITHOUT acknowledging or recognizing the original source CAN sometimes do that with a BSD-based license, whereas that is never possible with Linux – you CAN use it, but you MUST cite the Linux license, which is the sticking point and why it’s not used even more.

I bring up the past and this history because all that is going on has evolved from the work that has taken place. The contested software licensing between 1984 and the period between 1989 and 1991 led to at LEAST four distinct branches that sought to protect themselves from AT&T or other expensive kernel licenses, which could be $3000 (on an individual small computer), or much more on larger servers at that time. With the cost of hardware plummeting, that was a major incentive to develop cooperative free licensed software. FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD were three BSD-based free approaches. Apple poached from parts of these; Linux, at nearly the same time, was written because those non-Microsoft licenses were prohibitive, as was Microsoft Xenix (the Unix license they once sold themselves). Torvolds couldn’t afford buying one; that’s what led him to write his initial simple kernel and share it.

Hall became familiar with all of these activities and sought to get Digital much more involved; he pretty much did so without much help and it eventually happened; once HP bought Digital some of the big companies finally realized that Linux in almost any form could be profitable; the servers were still definitely the main money makers, but as Google helped others see, there are MANY different ways to make money; the best way is to get into as many of them as possible, which has clearly taken place.

As for what we do, we carve our own niche; it’s not a money maker; it’s a money saver for those who are keeping old hardware alive.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Ungoogled Chromium

  Ungoogled Chromium

"A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency"

Objectives

In descending order of significance (i.e. most important objective first):

  1. ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services.
  2. ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible. Unlike other Chromium forks that have their own visions of a web browser, ungoogled-chromium is essentially a drop-in replacement for Chromium.
  3. ungoogled-chromium features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled.

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

antiX 23 releases

 The antiX project continues to grow and offer a variety of choices.

For the antiX 23 release, there are four distinct release choices:

1) antiX-full (c1.7GB) – 4 windows managers – IceWM (default), fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm plus full libreoffice suite. x64 versions come with 2 kernels. Legacy 5.10 and Modern 6.1.

2) antiX-base (c1GB) – 4 windows managers – IceWM (default), fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm.

3) antiX-core (c520MB) – no X, but should support most wireless.

4) antiX-net (c220MB)- no X. Just enough to get you connected (wired) and ready to build.

These four choices have iso files for sysVinit or runit.

They are also available for 32-bit or 64-bit systems, so there are a total of sixteen images available.

Known issues.

IMPORTANT IF INSTALLING GRUB TO UEFI/ESP

Before installing
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
This will update the gui and cli installers and bring in missing efivar and efibootmgr

Alternatively,
sudo apt update && sudo apt install efivar efibootmgr

antiX-23.1 will have this fixed

On antiX-base versions:

1. the browser may not open from the menu or toolbar/taskbar.
Fix: Open Control Centre > Preferred Applications > Web-browser > Select first SeaMonkey option > Apply

2. ps_mem.py tool doesn’t open
Fix: sudo apt install python-is-python3

Also, The default repos for antiX and Debian are reported to be extremely slow.
Use Repo-Manager in full versions or manually edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list to a more reliable one.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

antiX 23 update

 The antiX 23 distribution was originally planned to be released in August.  The primary developer, anticapitalista works in education, and the months of August and September have been particularly busy for him personally, and there were also a few issues that he wanted to resolve before prematurely releasing antiX 23.

The "relative", MX Linux, had also experienced difficulties with the boot loader configuration, but their development team is larger and they overcame their issues and released Version 23.

I have no problems with either of these distributions.  Both of them emphasize reliability over other concerns and are excellent examples of what freely available software can accomplish.

Both operate using Debian software packages for the majority of their programs, and they build their own configuration management and appearance tools, as well as their own packaged images.  The results are predictable, stable software like Debian, with the added value of better appearance, forum support, and distinctive distribution "use cases" - specific things that work well.  For MX Linux, it is the desktop, for antiX it is the leanest possible stable software.

It's well worth the wait!


Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Distro: antiX-23-beta2-runit_x64-full Arditi del Popolo 11 June 2023

 I'm now using the next update to the antiX 23 test image;

if all works out as expected, this version will be upgradeable to the final antiX 23 Arditi del Popolo release.

I've had no trouble at all during the testing cycle so I look forward to the release with patience and positive expectations.

Saturday, April 22, 2023

Distro: antiX-23-beta1-runit_x64-full Grup Yorum 21 March 2023

 I've been testing the upcoming antiX 23 release for a few months.

Typically this distribution puts out a new release when there is a
Debian release - definitely when there is a major Debian release change,
for example from Bullseye (Release 11) to Bookworm (Release 12).

While the upcoming Debian release effort is going well, in typical
Debian style, though they have a release planned, and it's been on
their calendar for at least a year, the last I looked, they STILL did
not provide a projected final release date, so I'm not 100% certain if
the antiX 23 release will WAIT for Debian's eventual release, or if
it'll release as the functionality freeze sufficiently stabilizes the
software enough to make it practical for antiX to finalize their own
release, with or without a final Bookworm release date.  Time will tell.
There are still minor issues to work out in both releases; I'm not sure
if any of them are considered release blockers for either release or
not.  If I see anything definitive about those matters, I may get an
opportunity to write about it and check into it.

Saturday, February 18, 2023

antiX 22 wtih updater and icon manager

 I've been working with a couple of different antiX distributions.  My main one is antiX 22.  The others are Legacy OS 2023 and antiX 23 Alpha 1.

Legacy OS 2023 is a stable, good looking, minimal and useful antiX alternative for older systems.  As such it doesn't work with my newest system, my HP-14 laptop, but it's especially good on my old Lenovo X201 and my Dell Inspiron 5558.

As for the updater, PPC, an antiX contributor, has written several useful tools using yad with either Bash, Python, or a combination of both.  yad-updater, icewm-toolbar-manager, icewm-quick-personal-menu-manager, yad-touchpad, and FT10 are several of the tools written by PPC.