Using antiX M11.0

Since 2006, antiX has been one of my favorite distributions. There are several reasons for this. 1. I have, for many years, preferred to use Debian based software on my favorite systems. The antiX distribution is based on Debian Testing repositories and MEPIS installation and configuration tools. 2. I like flexible, configurable systems. The antiX configuration tools are among the very best available. 3. I like the MEPIS project, and when the antiX project emerged, I found I liked antiX as well, maybe even better, than the main MEPIS project, which I also like quite a bit.

I used antiX a bit once I installed the new version and now I am using it a bit more today. I did find one thing that represents somewhat of an issue: the default Web browser, Iceape, is prone to oscillate, using high percentages of CPU time, then back off, returning to normal.

Running my own instance of Firefox in my own directory, it has some CPU bursts as well, but they are not as prominent, and do not seem to affect the user interface - such as typing in a Web based text widget, such as this one, as much as with the default Iceape.

I will do some more experimenting, installing my own versions of browsers and see how they behave here. The only things chewing up CPU and memory here are the browsers, so it could be that the version of Iceape in Debian Testing is a bit suspect. More research will tell.

That's a nit for me; I run lots of stuff anyway, and with the great flexibility inherent in antiX, I have no problem at all getting what I want and configuring it the way that I want.

Slackware, circa 1995 versus 13.37

I got my "Linux start" with Slackware way back in 1995. I even bought my first home computer in order to do it. Before that time, I figured any computer use at home was probably going to be for work, so I figured that my employer should - and did - provide something, usually a terminal and a modem.

In the Fall of 1995, I started researching Linux distributions, found Slackware to be - at least at that time - the most highly regarded distribution, and the UNIX developers at the company I worked at seemed to use it more than anything else, too. So I looked for a computer system. Back then, I felt that computers were still pretty expensive - doesn't $2500 - $3000 for a home computer seem expensive now? I got a Micron P100, which was at least well built and a solid performer for the price.

Then I had to decide what I wanted to have with it. Windows 95 was available by then, but I couldn't tell if I could "dual boot" with 95 yet or not. Turned out you could, but I did not know that, so I bought the system with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 instead of Windows 95. Then I bought a book containing a CD with Slackware on it, and an explanation of how to install it, configure it, and use it.

I did not know anything about installing Linux, so I did a lot of reading before attempting it. My very first installation was a success, but I discovered that the Diamond Stealth graphics card in my Micron was not yet included in the version of Slackware that I installed, so the best video I could get was eight color VGA, not very impressive. So I got on the news groups at work and found out that the Diamond Stealth card now had a Linux driver. Using the Internet, I downloaded a copy onto my workstation at work, then used my own 3 1/2" floppy to bring the image home. I copied it onto the PC, researching as much of this in advance as possible, and Voila, 256 colors and better resolution - good for its generation.

Fast forward to today. The Slackware 13.37 distribution has been under development for a while now, and last night I saw the announcement that it has been released. As soon as I can get an ISO image of it, I will download it and try it out. It looks to be very well tested according to the announcement, so it should be worthwhile.

Android and Chrome OS are moving forward!

Android and Chrome OS are moving forward!

Web Browser "Kracken" Mozilla Benchmarks

Chrome 10.0 and Seamonkey 2.1b2 lead this set of tests, with Firefox 4.0 very close behind. Everything except Seamonkey 2.0.12, which still uses an older generation of page rendering libraries is really good at something, including Opera 11.01, which manages to "win" one or two tests.

Chrome has a very slight edge over Firefox 4.0 and Seamonkey 2.1b2, but not by much at all.

Chrome 10.0
===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 17160.7ms +/- 1.4%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 574.5ms +/- 5.4%
astar: 574.5ms +/- 5.4%

audio: 10643.4ms +/- 1.9%
beat-detection: 3747.5ms +/- 1.7%
dft: 2516.7ms +/- 5.2%
fft: 3762.8ms +/- 1.2%
oscillator: 616.4ms +/- 2.1%

imaging: 3934.5ms +/- 1.0%
gaussian-blur: 881.7ms +/- 1.1%
darkroom: 1553.7ms +/- 2.0%
desaturate: 1499.1ms +/- 0.9%

json: 687.4ms +/- 1.1%
parse-financial: 509.7ms +/- 1.3%
stringify-tinderbox: 177.7ms +/- 0.7%

stanford: 1320.9ms +/- 1.1%
crypto-aes: 331.3ms +/- 1.0%
crypto-ccm: 322.3ms +/- 3.0%
crypto-pbkdf2: 425.7ms +/- 2.7%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 241.6ms +/- 2.4%

Firefox 4.0
===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 19151.2ms +/- 2.3%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 6710.1ms +/- 5.0%
astar: 6710.1ms +/- 5.0%

audio: 6387.3ms +/- 1.9%
beat-detection: 1905.1ms +/- 1.9%
dft: 1619.9ms +/- 3.7%
fft: 1789.2ms +/- 1.3%
oscillator: 1073.1ms +/- 1.7%

imaging: 3649.3ms +/- 0.5%
gaussian-blur: 1482.0ms +/- 1.0%
darkroom: 698.2ms +/- 0.8%
desaturate: 1469.1ms +/- 0.5%

json: 516.5ms +/- 1.0%
parse-financial: 329.1ms +/- 1.0%
stringify-tinderbox: 187.4ms +/- 1.2%

stanford: 1888.0ms +/- 1.8%
crypto-aes: 518.3ms +/- 1.3%
crypto-ccm: 370.4ms +/- 4.0%
crypto-pbkdf2: 700.3ms +/- 1.9%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 299.0ms +/- 2.6%

Seamonkey 2.1b2
===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 17600.1ms +/- 2.9%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 5513.1ms +/- 9.2%
astar: 5513.1ms +/- 9.2%

audio: 6206.5ms +/- 0.2%
beat-detection: 1903.3ms +/- 0.5%
dft: 1501.3ms +/- 0.8%
fft: 1806.2ms +/- 1.1%
oscillator: 995.7ms +/- 0.5%

imaging: 3586.4ms +/- 0.1%
gaussian-blur: 1461.4ms +/- 0.1%
darkroom: 669.9ms +/- 0.1%
desaturate: 1455.1ms +/- 0.1%

json: 467.9ms +/- 0.3%
parse-financial: 294.8ms +/- 0.4%
stringify-tinderbox: 173.1ms +/- 1.1%

stanford: 1826.2ms +/- 1.9%
crypto-aes: 489.5ms +/- 0.4%
crypto-ccm: 380.8ms +/- 0.8%
crypto-pbkdf2: 685.9ms +/- 5.0%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 270.0ms +/- 5.9%

Seamonkey 2.0.12

===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 67684.1ms +/- 0.8%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 8871.1ms +/- 5.8%
astar: 8871.1ms +/- 5.8%

audio: 18338.2ms +/- 0.2%
beat-detection: 4712.4ms +/- 0.4%
dft: 4465.2ms +/- 0.5%
fft: 4334.1ms +/- 0.6%
oscillator: 4826.5ms +/- 0.5%

imaging: 23028.0ms +/- 0.1%
gaussian-blur: 11065.0ms +/- 0.1%
darkroom: 2488.4ms +/- 0.2%
desaturate: 9474.6ms +/- 0.3%

json: 1121.9ms +/- 0.1%
parse-financial: 561.9ms +/- 0.1%
stringify-tinderbox: 560.0ms +/- 0.1%

stanford: 16324.9ms +/- 1.7%
crypto-aes: 2392.0ms +/- 0.7%
crypto-ccm: 1699.9ms +/- 0.3%
crypto-pbkdf2: 9088.8ms +/- 3.3%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 3144.2ms +/- 1.0%

Opera 11.01
Total: 30360.4ms +/- 0.5%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 7588.7ms +/- 1.5%
astar: 7588.7ms +/- 1.5%

audio: 8006.8ms +/- 0.5%
beat-detection: 1511.3ms +/- 1.4%
dft: 3297.5ms +/- 0.7%
fft: 1408.1ms +/- 0.6%
oscillator: 1789.9ms +/- 0.7%

imaging: 9015.5ms +/- 1.1%
gaussian-blur: 5836.1ms +/- 0.3%
darkroom: 1364.5ms +/- 0.4%
desaturate: 1814.9ms +/- 5.6%

json: 432.7ms +/- 0.5%
parse-financial: 173.1ms +/- 0.7%
stringify-tinderbox: 259.6ms +/- 0.7%

stanford: 5316.7ms +/- 0.6%
crypto-aes: 424.5ms +/- 2.7%
crypto-ccm: 532.6ms +/- 0.6%
crypto-pbkdf2: 3329.0ms +/- 0.8%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 1030.6ms +/- 0.4%

Using Debian Sid; installing PC-BSD 8.2 in Virtualbox OSE from Sid

Tonight I have a couple of things going on. I downloaded a couple of distributions today: PC-BSD 8.2, a 3.3 GB DVD ISO image, which I copied to my external USB drive, then the debian-testing-kfreebsd-i386-netinst.iso, which is an interesting twist: it is a daily build of Debian Testing, except it does not have the usual Debian GNU/Linux kernel; it uses a FreeBSD kernel, which is why it is labeled kfreebsd – a FreeBSD kernel and some core libraries to go with it that allow the FreeBSD kernel to work with the rest of a Debian based infrastructure. I do not believe that I have ever installed this before, so I want to give it a look too.

The hour is late though, so for tonight, the two systems have been downloaded, but I am finishing up the PC-BSD 8.2 installation in Virtualbox OSE, thereby allowing me to test PC-BSD from a virtual instance on my Debian Sid system.

I will probably do the same with kfreebsd so that I find out whether it uses a BSD file system or the usual Linux file system. BSD file systems, as far as I know, still require the use of a primary disk partition, because their file organization uses “slices”, rather than the usual notion of disk partitions. The collection of slices, from the vantage point of a Linux or Windows system, and from the perspective of fdisk and other partition handling tools, resides within a single primary partition. I will be examining how this implementation works soon, perhaps tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I am about ready to examine the result of the PC-BSD 8.2 installation.

Using Jolicloud tonight

I have been experimenting quite a bit with a variety of computing technologies over the past six or seven months. Beginning with Peppermint OS One and antiX core, I started to look a fast, lightweight technologies that could be used on the desktop, but definitely had a higher than usual ratio of Internet-based applications.

Not long after using Peppermint OS One and antiX core, I set up Easy Peasy, a Ubuntu based distribution originally branded as eeeUbuntu, but renamed at the request of Canonical, the owners of the Ubuntu brand. When Easy Peasy changed the brand and came out with their next release, it was not only built for the eeePC, it was built to work with a variety of systems, especially with a high ratio of Internet to local applications, again like Peppermint and antiX.

None of these systems, however, are true, 100% Web based or Cloud based systems, but there are a few systems that are. Of course, we hear about one of them often, Chrome OS, which has still not been officially released, but it has been distributed to about 60,000 users on a non-branded Google Cr-48 pilot project notebook, and I have one of them.

Before I really got my hands on the Cr-48, which I am also evaluating, I tried out a preview release of Jolicloud V1.0, which I first tried on a DVD that came with a magazine. I liked it enough to run it in Virtualbox, and later, when the first release came out, I got a copy of it, liked it enough to install it. But when Version 1.1 came out, it had really been built up even more, and it is, without question, the most social media savvy implementation of a Cloud based system out there. What is nice about it is that you can access their web site, MyJolicloud - http://my.jolicloud.com/#!/dashboard from any Web browser on any system, or you can run it as a distribution, and when you login using the distribution, you get that same dashboard - quite an interesting concept.

You do not have to be a social media junkie to like Jolicloud. It is useful for blogging, forum and Wiki use, Email, chat, and all of the other things you usually do on the Web. It's all at your fingertips. Just in case you want some local applications, it provides a few of them for you, and it has access to the Ubuntu repositories, so if you really want, you can create a hybrid distribution with both cloud and local apps. But if you do a lot of that, you may be better off going the other way, using something like antiX or Peppermint, which have the local apps and the ability to work in the Cloud as well.

I like Jolicloud as it is; the distribution is fast, booting quickly; it has a nice default appearance, but like many other distributions, you can easily modify the default appearance. I changed mine. I like water scenes, so I changed my Jolicloud look to have a sea harbor appearance near dusk; muted, mid to dark blues and greens, quite nice.

So it's flexible, fast, easily modified, and based on solid technology. It clearly sticks to what it does best, but allows you plenty of liberty to make it what you want it to be. Those are marks of a solid distribution, at least in my mind.

What Are You Here With... and Whatever: Lucid Puppy 5.2

On a couple of my favorite Beehive based web forums, we have a topic entitled simply, "What Are You Here With... and Whatever?" The purpose of the topic is to discuss whatever software and systems we are using, but the title of the topic deliberately gives us plenty of latitude to run off on tangents, discussing nearly anything... whatever, as the title clearly states.

This weekend, I have gone off into running a couple of distributions in Live mode. Today, I downloaded the newest test version of antiX M11.0 pt2, which is, according to anticapitalista, very close to final form, so we could be seeing a Version 11.0 release of antiX M11.0 very soon, and that's good. It is a solid release and I have had very good test results with it.

After running antiX for a while, I decided to come over and run the Lucid Puppy 5.2 release. It is even smaller and simpler than antiX. It runs pretty well, but I did find one thing about Puppy that I do not like as well as antiX - the default fonts.

With antiX, when I ran the browser I was able to get a pretty decent set of default fonts. Turns out I could get them with Puppy, but the default fonts were pretty light and fuzzy. If you find yourself with a similar issue, try using the "Liberation" font series for your Serif, Sans Serif, and Monospace fonts and you may be pleasantly surprised. Those are the default fonts that at least I prefer.