MIE Live CD and Digital Surveillance

No doubt you noticed the "Sponsor" section on the right there. Juan Arenas from Digital Surveillance saw my blog, and is a fan. He was kind enough to offer the use of a server he isn't currently using. So I jumped on the offer. I did want to put a link to Digital Surveillance up here just to thank him for the use of his server. I did let him know that I and not he would be responsible for any content on his server. So now to the hopefully good news. I have used CrunchBang Lite to add Harbour Launcher and my themes in to a Live CD. This is nothing more than a just for fun kind of thing, and am not looking into creating a new distro. If you want to join in the fun feel free to download MIE Live CD.

HP MIE for Everyone! CrunchBang MIE

I was browsing around LXer and Linux Today, so I don't even remember where I read an article stating that HP had removed HP Mini MIE downloads on the same day that Windows 7 was launched. So I panicked and started thinking about an idea i had a while back, HP Mini MIE on a Live CD. Now I had no clue how to start, but my encounter with CrunchBang left a sweet taste in my mouth. To make a very long story relatively short, I spent last night installing CrunchBang mini edition in VirtualBox and following the instructions here to get Harbour Launcher and all the other HP Mini MIE interface running. I did also have to install some gnome stuff, because the interface is tied into gnome. Any way the result was a 590MB iso that looks like so, mind you this is in virtualbox, so resolution was off a bit. I'm new to all this, so at the moment it starts off in openbox, and i have to execute "harbour-launcher" in the command line. After Harbour Launcher loads, I have to go into "Settings", select "Appearance", and select "Glassy-Bleu". I tested this in virtualbox, on my desktop, and on my HP dv2125nr. Everything is working, but I am experiencing random crashes. I do still have to load my alternate themes, and I hope to be able to script this auto launch correctly. I did create this iso with remastersys and used the dist option, so you should be able to install this on a pretty low end system, but my virtual machine has 512 MB of ram. If any one is interested in this project please let me know I'm not too sure of the legality of it all, but I don't want to see this awesome UI just left to die.

[Update]

I was able to create a MIE Live CD with my themes pre-installed. I am still not sure how to get it to automagically launch Harbour Launcher upon boot up, but i'm not sure if this isn't a blessing in disguise. If i leave it as is the disc could serve as a multipurpose disc. Come on we all know it's good to have a rescue disc around. Maybe I'll just add harbour launcher to the menu, and a person could choose to launch it. If anyone has ideas of what else i should include please let me know. I think this last build was 606 MB big.

[Update 2]

I came across that blog again people it can be found here

Side Note

Everyone I am sorry to say that I have been very uninspired lately, and I have been a bit busy. Anyhow the HP Mini MIE is built on top of the Ubuntu Linux Operating System. Due out in about a week is the new and improved Ubuntu 9.10. I have been Beta testing Ubuntu 9.10 and let me tell you I am very unhappy. I started using Ubuntu 7.04 on my HP dv2125nr and let me tell you I thought it was great. Ubuntu 7.10 came along and it was not very different than 7.04, but since then i have had problems with little things that are just a pain in the ass. Ok so Ubuntu's latest incarnation has left my speakers clicking every 60 seconds. My suspend and hybernate no longer work, I no longer have access to my Windows shares. Now i understand that the OS is free both in cost to me and in code. I am willing to deal with that, but i have a problem with a large number of articles that preach that Ubuntu 9.10 is the Windows 7 killer. It's not. I think it's really cool that Ubuntu's developers want to keep a 6 month release cycle, but how about we take a two year hiatus from that rule, and fix these little glitches that are bothering everyday users. I am using my same dv2125nr and I don't see how things just keep on not working or work worst than they did 2 years ago. Samba went from unstoppable networking beast to blind crap shoot. Sound went from breaking once in a while after an update to clicking annoyingly every 60 seconds. Let's be honest what's a laptop without suspend and hibernate, a low battery life small profile desktop. Come on Ubuntu I am willing to stick around for a little longer. I installed the Beta last night and just now the Release candidate finished downloading. I am first going to update my current Ubuntu 9.10 beta with all the current updates. If this proves to be fruitless, i will install the release candidate. If this doesn't fix any of my problems, I'll be looking to get my Linux jollies elsewhere. Maybe I'll even give BSD a shot.

[UPDATE]
Well it appears that the clicking sound coming from my speakers was Ubuntu 9.10 trying to save power from sound, so I disabled that, and no more clicks. I found an article stating that SD cards being mounted on netbooks was causing Suspend and Hibernate to fail. So i took a chance and unmounted my SD card before attempting a suspend and hibernate. My results were mixed. Suspend worked, and Hibernate sort of worked. I had to still hold the power button to turn off my laptop, but on power up it woke up from its hibernation. As far as being able to access Windows shares, I did come across an article stating Windows 7 broke something in the way it allegedly shares files, but I can't access the same share under Windows XP so something is going on. I do want to also mention that I tried Linux Mint, and Suspend and Hibernate worked out of the box. I still could not get access to my Windows shares though. For some reason I dont like Linux Mint as much as Ubuntu, but I'm willing to stick with Ubuntu as long as i can suspend. The way i see it i can just carry some music files on my laptop. I freed up 20 gigs by finally removing Windows XP. All in all not too shabby. Also this version of Ubuntu 9.10 is still just a Release Candidate, maybe the system will get better still.

[UPDATE 2]

I'm not sure why this happened, but i guess Samba and Windows 7 have some issue with one another. I was able to mount my Windows 7 shares using the "Connect to Server" option in Ubuntu 9.10. I hit "Connect to server", chose "Windows Share", typed in the IP address of my Windows 7 machine in the "Server" box, typed the name of my shared folder, and entered my user name in "User Name", this is my Windows 7 username. I did check book mark, but you don't have to. Now when i hit connect I had to enter my password. This password is the password to your Windows 7 machine, not the password to your Windows 7 home group. I hope this works for you.

[UPDATE3]

Bluetooth has become easy to manage in Ubuntu 9.10. I was ready to create a blog dedicated to just this feature. Bluetooth on linux has been so terrible that i forgot all about it. I have a Kensington Bluetooth dongle, and a Plantronics 220 ear piece. Now for some crazy reason i have never been able to stream music to this ear piece. I tried under Windows XP and every linux distro i have played with. There were plenty of how to's on the subject, and i tried following them as close as possible, but nothing seemed to work. I installed a beta of Windows 7 a while back, and it was able to stream music to my headset with no problem. So i tried to stream again under Ubuntu 9.04, and nothing. So just now i was trying to think of things that i wish worked under Ubuntu 9.10 and I remebered my bluetooth headset that gets absolutely no use. So I figured lets plug it in and see what happens. So it discovered just fine, and I chose it as my input output for sound, and Tupac's rendition of "Changes" played in my ear. Changes in deed my frineds. I hope this is one feature of Ubuntu Linux that is not lost as time goes by.

A Word of Caution: Creating Your Custom Ubuntu Disk

I have the unfortunate title of PC repair man in my family. As all of you might have immediately assumed correctly, these are Windows systems. So to try and make my miserable job easier I figured 'Why not load a bunch of tools onto Ubuntu and respin the son of a bitch?' Now i have just started dabbling into respinning. So let me tell you all how it went, it was stupid. I tried Reconstructor and Ubuntu Customization Kit in just about every way conceivable. I was served with divorce papers because i neglected my kid trying to get this thing to happen. I first thought maybe its my CrunchBang iso, maybe for some reason these programs don't like CrunchBang 9.04. So i tried Xubuntu 9.04 with no luck. I tried Ubuntu 8.04, see i was in it for the Long Term, no luck. I kept getting a login prompt that i had not set, so only God knows the password, maybe Jesus and the Holy Ghost too, but that's for scholars to decide. By this time I was sleeping in the car because my wife had enough of my crying. I used my best friend Google to guide me to the answer. I threw my laptop into the Gulf of Mexico, and that didn't work. All hope was lost. Suddenly there was a glimmer in a post i just happen to pass by. It said that some program called remastersys existed. What is remastersys? I googled to it while in my first session with the marriage counselor. I swear i love my wife and kid, but this is important. So after reading up on remastersys it was slowly beginning to spin a wheel somewhere in that lump of fat i call a brain. Where had i seen 'remastersys' before. Oh well I'm sure it's nothing. So I booted my CrunchBang virtual machine because I was going to figure out how to install it and make it work, and i was probably going to need vacation time from work, to get it done. I hadn't bathed all weekend but that's not important because even if remastersys wasn't in the repos i was going to figure it out, i will recompile this program with my own bare hands out of mud and sticks if i had to. And then suddenly while i browsed through my CrunchBang 9.04 virtual machine I happened to see a program entry named remastersys. Some idiot made remastersys a default program and didn't mention anything to me about it. What is going on? Needless to say not only was it pre-installed, but i was able to create a live iso of the programs i wanted. Now i was just testing remastersys, my iso ended up being 741MB which is too big for a cd, and i am unsure if livecd iso can be booted from a dvd. See I'm not bright at all, but i installed LXDE and i'mm sure that takes up some space, there was other stuff i could do without. All in all it was an awesome learning experience. I highly recommend remastersys to anyone wanting to do something similar. Thanks to the developers, and thanks also to the team that creates CrunchBang Linux it was genius to include remastersys on it. In case anyone is curious i wanted to add antivirus programs onto CrunchBang. So I installed ClamAv, AVG8, and F-Prot. I wanted to also add Avira and Antivir, but couldn't get them to go. For Malware i wanted to use BotHunter, but I couldn't get it to go, not a huge deal though that one came with a livecd of its own. If anyone has any advice on additional Antivirus or Anti-Spyware/Malware tools that i could use, please feel free to let me know I could really use the advice.

Things that make you go hmmm!

Well some of the younglings out there might not remember that 80's catch phrase, but i do. Well as you all know by now Virtualbox 3.0 is out and like the bee to the honey i just had to install it. There is actually a whole lot more to the story of stupid things I do, but that's to far off the subject. So I moved my HP Mini MIE Virtual Machine into Virtualbox 3.0 and did an update. Well something rather odd occured. My splash screen went all Compaq. I don't know if anyone else reported it, but might there be a Compaq Linux Machine coming out? I took the screen shot during boot up. The strange thing is that when i shut it down it still says HP. In case you don't know Compaq is also owned by HP but as far as I know there isn't any Compaq Linux out there. Stranger still is why this splash screen is in there repo. Well as we say in the Linux world, "the more the merrier". I hope there is a new MIE like interface for Compaq, it'll give us more to play around with. Maybe it's just an ant hill, but how i hope it is a mountain. What can i say i get easily excited.

Golden Slumbers

I know that it has been a little while but what can I say, sometimes i have things to do. I found this really nice HP wallpaper, and decided to go with it. I named it "Golden Slumbers" because my daughter loves that Beatles song. There are still little things to do, like change the color of welcome but its complete enough. I hope you all like it. I know that i said i was working on a port of Mint, but I really don't like that theme. Maybe the Ubuntu port and the Mint theme are different, but i couldn't stand looking at it. If anyone else is working on themes please let me know, i would love to see other peoples work.

Linux in the Future

If anyone has read my profile, I claim to be "an escaped test monkey from the future". It's not too far off, but the truth is I'm not from the future. I've been thinking for a while about the "Year of Linux". Quite frankly, I think we missed it. There were articles in the late 90's that the future of computers was not in a boring office, but rather in the dynamic corner of the home known as the "living room". Both Microsoft and Apple took a shot at conquering your living room, but it didn't work. I think Apple still has the itv thing, but I have never seen one in anyone's living room. The strange thing is that Linux pulled a Houdini on us all. I signed up for a cable subscription, and suddenly Linux was in my "living room". Not only did it suddenly show up, but it managed to attach itself to my first true love, my television. Now i know it is only Linux in an embedded form, in my DVR, but Linux all the same. There are a new generation of televisions on the market that have all the capabilities of a DVR already built in to them. So that means even more linux devices will be out there. Now since we have all of the troops already in the trojan horse, maybe its time to spring the trap. In the very near future I see a new network emerging that will give us an ability to connect all of these devices, and use them right from our desktops. How awesome would it be to start a pot of coffee right from your desktop. Manage your DVR, from anywhere. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I know that there are techno geeks that would love more options in there lives. Our current main focus maybe desktop computing, but I have a feeling that new devices and appliances will be the inroad for linux dominance.