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I have been wanting to try out Sidux Linux for a long time.  I have tested it but since it only comes with the KDE and XFCE window managers, I never used beyond the testing phase.  I am a fan of the Gnome desktop but it is not stable with Sidux.  Then about two weeks ago, Mario Behling, who I met through FOSS Bridge here in Vietnam, introduced me to LXDE.  Here are my first impressions using Sidux with LXDE.

Sidux is a Linux distribution based on Debian’s unstable branch known as ‘sid‘.  It is one of the geek distros along the line with Arch Linux, Gentoo, and Slackware.  It is not a distribution for those new to Linux, especially those who are not familiar, or comfortable, with the command line.  And since Sidux is based on sid, things will break if you are not careful.  Those who really want a bleeding edge system may like Sidux.

Installation

Sidux was quite easy to install.  I downloaded the latest version, sidux-2008-04 Πόντος, and created a LiveCD.  I decided to whip out my Ubuntu install on my Thinkpad T60 and start from scratch.  I originally wanted Sidux to run on my Thinkpad but I hated XFCE at the time.

Installing is rather easy and quick.  The most difficult part was figuring out how to partition.  Sidux includes a nice, easy to use, graphic user interface (GUI) to help with the installation.  After I finished configuring the GUI, it took less than 7 minutes to install Sidux on my Thinkpad.  That was one of the fastest installs ever.

After you reboot, Sidux will check the hard drives (since you are using ext3).  Do not worry if it reboots after Sidux notices the time is off.  It will reboot and boot up no problem.  The only error I dealt with Sidux not being able to load the modules for VirtualBox.  Despite this, you will be amazed at how fast Sidux boots up.  Less than 30 seconds for me which makes it the second fastest Linux bootup for me (Arch Linux can boot up in about 19 seconds).

Everything worked out of the box including wifi.  One nice thing about Sidux is that it includes ‘hints‘ with each release cycle so you can get everything working right.  You do not have to search through forums and wikis which is nice to troubleshoot.

One of the first things you will after you finishing installing Sidux is read the Sidux  Qucikstart Manual.  It is one of the best manuals for a distro out there.

Updating/Upgrading Software

With Debian or Ubuntu, you normally used apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to update your system.  With Sidux, you cannot, you have to use apt-get dist-upgrade in a Runlevel 3.  This is where you have to be comfortable working in the command line.  Once you are in init 3, Sidux provides a very good tool that helps you update your system.  It is called smxi which is used to manage packages in the sid repository.

smxi is relatively easy to use.  Just read and enter the options.  I used smxi to install openoffice, apache2, mysql, php, python, perl, etc.  It is really a great tool.  You can even configure and install the latest kernel and get your graphics card configured, properly, through smxi.

Once you have updated your system, you can go back to init 5 (Runlevel 5) and install packages by using apt-get install <package> relatively easily.  You just got to remember to use apt-get dist-upgrade in init 3 once  week to keep your system updated.

ceni

One nice tool that Sidux provides to configure your network connections is ceni.  ceni is by far one of the best network configuration tools out there.  It is a command line tool but a powerful one.  It can detect and configure wifi networks easily.

LXDE

LXDE has the looks of KDE, the feel of Gnome and the simplicty of XFCE.  It is nice windows manager for a laptop.  Not too bloated, not too simple.  It took me less than 5 minutes to get a feel for it.  I still have much to learn about LXDE but I fell in love with it instantly.  There are still features that I want to add, such as a dock, since I got used to it in Gnome.  I read somewhere I can add one but I will need to research it more.

Though it is only in beta, it is still stable enough to use on a laptop.  Together with Sidux, it mades a great distro combination (Hint hint Sidux developers).  Many of use like the Gnome desktop but I think we will settle for LXDE for Sidux.  Read more about LXDE at their website: http://www.lxde.org.

Conclusions

I am still new to Sidux and LXDE but I will give it a throrough test.  I use my Thinkpad for much of my work when I travel Saigon by motorbike.  Ubuntu kept locking up on my Thinkpad and Debian Lenny was just not ready yet (though I will probably install it at another time).  Thinkpads in general can be finicky in regards to Linux but the Debian variants seem to work well on them.

Pictures

(LXDE on Sidux Screenshot)

(PCmanFM file manager)

(Filezilla on Sidux)

(ceni network managing tool for Sidux)

(LXDE Panel Preferences)

(Sidux online manual - a great resource)

Sidux website: http://www.sidux.org
LXDE website: http://www.lxde.org

As the majority of BSD/Linux users, I use X.org for my X Window System.  I have a preference to edit my own xorg.conf to ensure that X runs properly on any of my system.  To this date, I have never failed to get X configured.  It is actually not that difficult.  Today, distros such as Debian Lenny, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Sabayon, to name a few, can automatically create a working xorg.conf for users during installs.  With the distros like Gentoo and Arch Linux, users are required to configure their own xorg.conf.  Regardless of the configuration type you choose, you are eventually going to have to choose whether you want to use a propriety driver or open source driver.  This can be a nightmare in itself if you are not careful.

Regardless of which distro I use, I have a preference to start out with the open source drivers.  vesa is a common open source driver that I tend to start out with.  It ends to work with most video cards.  On my desktop, I have an Nvidia card so I decided to use the nv open source driver.  Both vesa and nv work on my desktop.

I decided to try the nvidia driver on my Arch Linux desktop.  Arch has a good wiki to get nvidia with 3D rendering to work. I got it to work and was quite happy, for about a month at least.  So what happened?

The nvidia drivers, like it’s propriety counterpart, ati, have a tendency to break.  For some computer users, it breaks a lot.  With Gentoo, I never install the latest nvidia drivers.  It breaks X forcing me to either revert to an older driver or switch to nv or vesa.  With Arch, an update to the Gnome desktop broke X with the cause attributed to my nvidia driver.  In Ubuntu, yes Ubuntu systems do break, an update to the kernel caused X to break as well.  In PC-BSD, I was forced to rebuild X.Org.  In all cases, I was either using the nvidia or ati propriety drivers.

When X broke earlier this week on my Arch system, I first had to find out what was the culprit (I mentioned above that I upgraded my Gnome desktop).  X was working but I was getting a low resolution with the nvidia drivers.  It did not matter if I set the Modes to reflect the resolution of my monitor, the lower resolution remained default.

Finally I decided to switch to vesa and the higher resolution (1440X900) returned.  I made some more configurations to xorg.conf and I got the open source nvidia drivers, nv, to work at the higher resolution as well.  The nvidia driver still do not work.  No problem, I will not use them on my desktop again, I will stick to open source drivers which, from my experience, have never broke on me.  Save the headache, stick with nv

I am eagerly waiting for an open source graphics card.  There is one available but the price is quite expensive, $1500 US, higher than many custom-built desktops!  Prices should drop in the future though.

Edit: This is a blog posting, not a news article, Beginner Howto, etc.  The above posting mentioned that I preferred to use open source drivers on my DESKTOP, it does not mention that I use them on my other laptops and systems.  I am also not denying anyone’s RIGHT to use propriety drivers, I use them as well.

See my latest blog posting and response to ‘Two New Software Freedoms’.

I just converted from Portage to Paludis about 30 minutes ago on my Gentoo system.  Paludis is an alternative package manager for the very buggy Portage maintained by Gentoo.  This new package manager is supposed to make it easier to add new packages.

In past, Gentoo had a reputation for being bleeding edge.  You could install the latest packages straight from Portage even with unmasking them.  The developers in the past were great in adding ’stable’ new packages for Gentoo users.  Now, with a large number of Gentoo developers leaving, or some would say, defecting, Portage cannot be maintained as it used to be in the past.  This, in turn, has created many problems sometimes resulting in broken systems.

Ironically, many of the ex-Gentoo developers seem to be the ones behind creating alternative package managers for Portage.  Sabayon Linux, a bleeding edge derivative of Gentoo, has developed Entropy, a binary package management system.  Entropy will be a great replacement for those who are just tired of compiling packages on their system.

Another group of Gentoo developers created Paludis.  I have a strong feeling that they will win over a large number of converts.  Converting from Portage to Paludis can be done with a simple bash script.  Paludis functionality in consoles is similar to Portage.  I am still trying to get a feel for it.  Thank God all the pertinent files are stored in /etc/paludis.  It will take a couple days to get used to the commands in updating my system.  I still need to figure out how the USE flags will be used in Paludis though I heard it has been simplified.

I am curious the next stages of development for Paludis.  This project seems to be working hand-in-hand with, Exherbo, a new Linux distro currently being developed by ex-Gentoo developers.  Something tells me that a future Exherbo just might be the fork many Gentoo users have been waiting for since the departure of Daniel Robbins.

Let’s just wait and see

Due to my busy schedule of the previous week, it actually took me roughly a week to finally get my Gentoo 2008.0 Desktop and configured.  This is the first time in over two years that I actually got a fully functional Gentoo system.  I even got 3D direct rendering working with nvidia and xorg which in the past I was too lazy to set up

Installing Gentoo this time took longer than expected since I had some SATA2 drive problems.  Turns out I needed to enable AHCI in bios to get the SATA2 hard drives (I use two of them now)  to work properly.  The Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook has been updated making the installation process go a little more faster (A Newbie should have no problems installing Gentoo now if they are willing to spend some time reading).

As in the past, I decided to use Daniel Robbin’s stage 3 tarbells.  It took me a couple hours to actually complete the installation due to poor bandwidth here in Vietnam last Sunday.  I did have some USE flags problems in the beginning but I was able to fix them and compile the kernel for this system.  I spent some time researching online on the various kernel options I would need before compiling.  In the end, it worked out and I got a working kernel.  My .config was an edited version of a .config created by Linux Mint that worked on my system (it also worked with Ubuntu).

After I finished my initial Gentoo system and got it working, I had several kernel panics before I realized I needed to enable AHCI in bios as I mentioned above.  Then I booted into Gentoo BUT I could not log which forced me to reboot with the Gentoo LiveCD and chroot into my system so I could change the password.  After that I had little problem.

xorgX11 was easy to install.  Again I just edited a previous xorg.conf that was generated by Linux Mint.  I booted up into X and then started to emerge and compile all the programs I wanted.  I chose the Gnome desktop this time around.  This will be my first time using Gnome on a Gentoo system.  I did not want to deal with the qt3 qt4 library problems I had in the past.

I did not finish configuring my system until late Friday night.  Along the way I had many, yes many, USE flag problems.  I never really paid attention to the USE flags documentation so I decided to give it a read for once.  Wow, it is highly recommended.  It turned out that I could not get some gtk programs to run since I disabled the gtk USE flag by adding -gtk in /etc/make.conf.  I spent part of yesterday reviewing it and now, I am happy to say, I finally got Gentoo stable enough to even watch DVDs, a feat I was never successful in the past year.

Before I went to sleep last night, I was able to get 3D direct rendering to work with xorg.  I crossed my fingers, restarted X and did not get the same crash that I was expecting.

So for now, I am happy.  I already compiled all the software that I normally use in a Linux system.  I will add some web apps this week to start my development work again with Plone and Django.

Since I have resolved my battery problem, I hope that this Gentoo system will last longer than in the past

My Gentoo System Specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHx Processor CPU
• Gigabyte Intel P35 (P35-D3P)  Motherboard
• Kingmax 1GB DDR2 Memory (Total 4 GB)
• Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT 16X, 256DDR2 Graphics Card
• Western Digital SATA II 250 GB Hard Drive (main)
• Samsung Plus SATA II 250 GB Hard Drive (backup)
• Asus DRW-2014LIT DVD-RW
• Creative Blaster Audigy Sound Card
• Cooler Master Power Supply - 460W
• Cooler Master Elite Case
• .config
• /etc/make.conf
• xorg.conf

Edit:

• LAMP with PHP, Perl and Python installed with little problems

• oscommerce installed

• Zope installed but I cannot add a Plone site

Well, I have been running Ubuntu on my desktop for over a month.  In that short period of time, I found that Ubuntu is just not for me.  I love it on my Thinkpad, do not get me wrong but on my desktop, I need something different.

I miss not having to edit something, really.  I even stopped developing on my desktop.  Weird since many developers gave up Gentoo or other distros so they could have a stable system.

Isn’t is strange that I could get a server to run on Gentoo, Arch, or FreeBSD, but not on Ubuntu.  Seriously, this is not right.  Ubuntu is supposed to make things easier for me.  That’s what all the Ubuntu users tell me.

To be honest, I got a lot of things done when I was running Gentoo and FreeBSD systems.  Arch Linux opened up a new world to me as well though I preferred to do things the Gentoo/BSD way.  If it wasn’t for that bad battery in my motherboard, I would probably still be running either PC-BSD or Gentoo now.

Right now I need a stable system to get Django to run properly.  For me, that means doing it with Gentoo, possibly with FreeBSD.

Will I give up on Ubuntu, no way.  As I mentioned many times, Ubuntu is the choice of users in Vietnam. I still need to use it but if I want to go back to my geek roots, I got to use Gentoo again.

I am not a distro hopper, I am just a Gentoo ‘jump back and forth-er’