The Linux Experiment

Quite a few new Listener Feedback podcast episodes have been released in case you missed them:

• Episode 25: Crazed Outlook – Double Talk (Indie, Alternative, Rock)
• Episode 26: 4eyedfish – Right in Time (Funk, Progressive Rock)
• Episode 27: Bonus Tracks – The Easton Ellises – Ersatz (Dance, Rock)
• Episode 28: Bonus Tracks – Josh Woodward – Insomnia (Acoustic Rock)
• Episode 29: Dead Relic – Dead Relic EP (Metal, Progressive Rock)
• Episode 30: LukHash – Falling Apart (Instrumental, Electronic, Chiptune, 8bit)
• Episode 31: Marker Beacon – Dead Frequencies (Metal, Rock)
• Episode 32: Amity in Fame – Dinner for One (Metal, Rock, Alternative)
• Episode 33: La Olla Express – Panic (Ska)

There is also now a dedicated Ogg Vorbis podcast feed (containing all released episodes) for those of you who prefer that.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

If you’re like me you’ve been suffering through a crazy high-pitched sound emanating from your laptop speakers. Apparently this is a common issue with certain types of audio devices. Thankfully via the power of the Internet I’ve been able to finally find a solution!

It turns out that the issue actually stems from some power saving features (of all things) in the Intel HDA driver. So I simply turned it off and guess what? It worked.

1) Open up (using root) /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave

2) Replace or comment out the line:

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=${INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE:-true}

3) In its place put the line:

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false

4) Reboot

Hopefully this also works for you but if not check out the site I found the solution at for some additional tips/things to try.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

I recently upgraded my laptop to a brand new Lenovo Y410P and promptly replaced Windows 8 with a Linux install. Unfortunately I immediately ran into a very strange driver(?) issue where, on boot, the computer would default to the absolute lowest screen brightness level. This meant that I would need to manually adjust the screen brightness up just to see the login screen. Thankfully after some help from the excellent people over on the Ubuntu Forums I managed to find a very easy work around.

1) As root open up /etc/default/grub

I did this by simply issuing the following command:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

2) Find the line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= and add “acpi_backlight=vendor” to the list of options.

3) From a terminal run this command to update GRUB

sudo update-grub

4) Reboot!

That’s pretty much it. My computer now boots with the correct screen brightness as one would expect.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

So you want to host an open source project using one of the many free services available but can’t decide which one to use? If only someone would put together a quick summary of each of the major offerings…

Hosting providers covered in this post:

• Bitbucket
• CodePlex
• GitHub
• Gitorious
• Google Code
• Launchpad
• SourceForge

Bitbucket

Bitbucket is a hosting site for the distributed version control systems (DVCS) Git and Mercurial. The service offering includes an issue tracker and wiki, as well as integration with a number of popular services such as Basecamp, Flowdock, and Twitter.

Features:

• Supports both Git and Mercurial
• Allows private repositories for free, up to 5 users
• Unlimited repositories
• Has JIRA integration for issue tracking
• Has its own REST API

Downsides:

• Only allows up to 5 users for free (a user defined as someone with read or write access)

CodePlex

CodePlex is Microsoft’s free open source project hosting site. You can create projects to share with the world, collaborate with others on their projects, and download open source software.

Features:

• Supports both Git & Mercurial
• Integrated Wiki that allows to add rich documentation and nice looking pages
• Bug Tracker and Discussion Forums included

Downsides:

• Often times feels more like a code publishing platform than a collaboration site
• Primarily geared toward .NET projects

GitHub

Build software better, together. Powerful collaboration, code review, and code management for open source and private projects.

Features:

• Supports Git
• Powerful and easy to use graphical tools
• Easy team management
• Integrated wiki, issue tracker and code review

Downsides:

• Only supports Git
• Quite a few ‘dead’ projects on the site

Gitorious

The Git hosting software that you can install yourself. Gitorious.org provides free hosting for open source projects that use Git.

Features:

• Supports Git
• Free project hosting
• Integrated wiki
• Can download the software and install it on your own server

Downsides:

• Only supports Git

Google Code

Project Hosting on Google Code provides a free collaborative development environment for open source projects.

Features:

• Supports Subversion, Mercurial Git
• Integrated wiki

Downsides:

• Not very pretty

Launchpad

Launchpad is a software collaboration platform.

Features:

• Supports Bazaar
• Integrated bug tracking and code reviews
• Ubuntu package building and hosting
• Mailing lists

Downsides:

• Only supports Bazaar
• Geared toward Ubuntu (which can be a downside depending on your project)

SourceForge

Find, Create, and Publish Open Source software for free.

Features:

• Supports Git, Mercurial, Subversion
• Integrated issue tracking, wiki, discussion forums
• Stat tracking

Downsides:

• Ads
• A lot of ‘dead’ projects

 

Now obviously I’ve missed some things and glossed over others but my goal here was to provide a quick ‘at a glance’ summary of each. Check the individual websites for more. Thanks to the people over at Stack Exchange for doing a lot of the legwork.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

Lately I’ve been taking a look at the various open source software licenses in an attempt to better understand the differences between them. Here is my five minute summary of the most popular licenses:

GNU Public License (GPL)

Requires that any project using a GPL-licensed component must also be made available under the GPL. Basically once you go GPL you can’t go back.

Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL)

Basically the same as the GPL except that if something uses software licensed as LGPL it also doesn’t need to be licensed the same. So if you write a program that uses an LGPL library, say a program with a GTK+ user interface, it doesn’t need to be licensed LGPL. This is useful for commercial applications that rely on open source technology.

v2 vs v3

There are a number of differences between version 2 and version 3 of the GPL and LGPL licenses. Version 3 attempts to clarify a number of issues in version 2 including how patents, DRM, etc. are handled but a number of developers don’t seem to like the differences so version 2 is still quite popular.

MIT

This license allows for almost anything as long as a copy of the license and copyright are included in any distribution of the code. It can be used in commercial software without issue.

BSD3

Similar to the MIT, this license basically only requires that a copy of the license and copyright are included in any distribution of the code. The major difference between this and the MIT is that the BSD3 prohibits the use of the copyright holder’s name in any promotion of derivative work.

Apache

Apache is similar to the BSD license in that you have to provide a copy of the license in any derivative works. In addition there are a number of extra safeguards, such as patent grants, that set it apart from BSD.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

Elementary OS is the latest darling for the Linux community at large and with some good reason. It isn’t that Elementary OS is The. Best. Distro. Ever. In fact being only version 0.2 I doubt its own authors would try to make that claim. It does however bring something poorly needed to the Linux desktop – application focus.

Focus?

Most distributions are put together in such a way as to make sure it works well enough for everyone that will end up using it. This is an admirable goal but one that often ends up falling short of greatness. Elementary OS seems to take a different approach, one that focuses on selecting applications that do the basics extremely well even if they don’t support all of those extra features. Take the aptly named (Maya) Calendar application. You know what it does? That’s right, calendar things.

Or the Geary e-mail client, another example of a beautiful application that just does the basics. So what if it doesn’t have all of the plugins that an application like Thunderbird does? It still lets you read and send e-mail in style.

Probably the best example of how far this refinement goes is in the music application Noise. Noise looks a lot like your standard iTunes-ish media player but that familiarity betrays the simplicity that Noise brings. As you may have guessed by now, it simply plays music and plays it well.

But what about feature X?

OK I understand that this approach to application development isn’t for everyone. In fact it is something that larger players, such as Apple, get called out over all the time over. Personally though I think there is a fine balance between streamlined simplicity and refinement. The Linux desktop has come a long way in the past few years but one thing that is still missing from a large portion of it is that refined user experience that you do get with something like an Apple product, or the applications selected for inclusion in Elementary OS. Too often open source projects happily jump ahead with new feature development long before the existing feature set is refined. To be clear I don’t blame them, programming new exciting features is always more fun than fixing the old broken or cumbersome ones, although this is definitely one area where improvements could be made.

Perhaps other projects can (or will) take the approach that Elementary has and dedicate one release, every so often, to making these refinements reality. I’m thinking something like Ubuntu’s One Hundred Paper Cuts but on a smaller scale. In the meantime I will continue to enjoy the simplicity that Elementary OS is currently bringing my desktop Linux computing life.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

Every since we announced the start of the third Linux Experiment I’ve been trying to think of a way in which I could contribute that would be different from the excellent ideas the others have come up with so far. After batting around some ideas over the past week I think I’ve finally come up with how I want to contribute back to the community. But first a little back story.

During the day I develop commercial software. An unfortunate result of this is that my personal hobby projects often get put on the back burner because in all honesty when I get home I’d rather be doing something else. As a result I’ve developed, pun intended, quite a catalogue of projects which are currently on hold until I can find time/motivation to actually make something of them. These projects run the gamut of little helper scripts, written to make my life more convenient, all the way up to desktop applications, designed to take on bigger tasks. The sad thing is that while a lot of these projects have potential I simply haven’t been able to finish them, and I know that if I just could they would be of use to others as well. So for this Experiment I’ve decided to finally do something with them.

Open source software is made up of many different components. It is simultaneously one part idea, perhaps a different way to accomplish X would be better, one part ideal, belief that sometimes it is best to give code away for free, one part execution, often times a developer just “scratching an itch” or trying a new technology, and one part delivery, someone enthusiastically giving it away and building a community around it. In fact that’s the wonderful thing about all of the projects we all know and love; they all started because someone somewhere thought they had something to share with the world. And that’s what I plan to do. For this Linux Experiment I plan on giving back by setting one of my hobby projects free.

Now obviously this is not only ambitious but perhaps quite naive as well especially given the framework of The Linux Experiment – I fully recognize that I have quite a bit of work ahead of me before any of my hobby code is ready to be viewed, let alone be used, by anyone else. I also understand that, given my own personal commitments and available time, it may be quite a while before anything actually comes of this plan. All of this isn’t exactly well suited for something like The Linux Experiment, which thrives on fresh content; there’s no point in me taking part in the Experiment if I won’t be ready to make a new post until months from now. That is why for my Experiment contributions I won’t be only relying on the open sourcing of my code, but rather I will be posting about the thought process and research that I am doing in order to start an open source project.

Topics that I intend to cover are things relevant to people wishing to free their own creations and will include things such as:

• weighing the pros and cons as well as discussing the differences between the various open source licenses
• the best place to host code
• how to structure the project in order to (hopefully) get good community involvement
• etc.

An interesting side effect of this approach will be somewhat of a new look into the process of open sourcing a project as it is written piece by piece, step by step, rather than in retrospect.

Coincidentally as I write this post the excellent website tuxmachines.org has put together a group of links discussing the pros of starting open source projects. I’ll be sure to read up on those after I first commit to this

I hope that by the end of this Experiment I’ll have at least provided enough information for others to take their own back burner projects to the point where they too can share their ideas and creations with the world… even if I never actually get to that point myself.

P.S. If anyone out there has experience in starting an open source project from scratch or has any helpful insights or suggestions please post in the comments below, I would really love to hear them.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

While I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to be doing for this round of The Linux Experiment, I have decided that now is a good time to try something I’ve been meaning to try for a while: get Linux to boot off of an external hard drive. This was actually such a straight forward process, simply install like normal but choose the external drive for the location of all files, that I won’t bother you with the details. The only special thing I did was decide to install GRUB on the external drive making the whole install essentially a completely isolated thing – that way if I turn off the external drive then the computer boots up off of the internal drive like normal, if I boot with the external drive on then GRUB asks me what to do.

The only downside to a setup like this is that I am using USB 2.0 as my connection to the hard drive which means the disk I/O and throughput will be theoretically lower than normal. Arguably I could get around this by using something like USB 3.0 or eSATA but so far in my experience this hasn’t really been an issue. Besides once the OS boots up almost everything is running and/or cached within RAM anyway. In fact that only problems I have run into with running Linux on this desktop were, ironically, driver issues.

First up is the wireless drivers. Yes, it is 2013 and I am still having Linux WiFi driver issues… This issue was unlike any I had seen before – the wireless card was automatically detected, the Broadcom proprietary driver was automatically selected and enabled, it even appeared to work but no matter what I tried it simply would not make a lasting connection to the wireless network. On a whim I decided to just turn off the device driver and, even though the dialog window told me that I would no longer be using the device, things suddenly started working like magic. I have to assume that buried deep within the Linux kernel is already an open source implementation for my wireless driver and that is what is actually working right now. Whatever the actual cause, the device is now working flawlessly.

The other driver issue I had was again related to a proprietary driver, this time for my graphics card. By default the install used the open source driver and this worked fine. However I have had a long battle with AMD/ATI cards working on Linux without using the proprietary driver and so I decided to enable it in order to avoid any future problems.

One reboot later and not only was my colour and resolution completed screwed up but I also got this “awesome” overlay on my desktop that said “Hardware not supported”. I tried to take a screenshot of it but apparently it is drawn onto the screen post-display or something (the screenshot did not show the overlay). So for now I am back to using strictly open source drivers for everything and amazingly it is all just working. That’s probably the first time I’ve ever been able to say that about Linux before.

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

Some of you may have noticed some previously working links going to 404 (page not found) pages. This is due to a change we’ve made in order to make permalinks more consistent among different authors and topics. Sorry for any inconvinence this may cause. On the plus side the website has a search bar that you can use to find what you were looking for

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.

That’s right, time for round three!

If you’ve been following this website in the past you know what this means. This time around our rules are simple: give back to the community. With this idea in mind the participants, known as guinea pigs, will attempt to use their unique passions, interests and talents to give something back to the world of Linux and open source software. The goal is purposely designed to be generic and open ended – we want each guinea pig to interpret the rule in their own way and let their creativity determine how they will give back.

Some ideas we’ve tossed around to accomplish this goal have been:

• Writing about a unique way to setup open source software to accomplish something
• Trying out and writing about a new distribution that offers a different experience
• Giving back to a distribution you use or like
• Helping a project by submitting code patches, documentation updates, artwork, UX design or simply spreading the word
• Starting your own project to accomplish something
• Etc.

So join us dear reader as we chronicle giving back to the community. Oh and don’t be afraid to take part in your own way either

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I am currently running a variety of distributions, primarily Ubuntu 14.04.
Previously I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (for the first experiment) and KDE 4.6.5 on top of Gentoo (for the second experiment).
Check out my profile for more information.