ProductiveLinux Podcast Episode 11 - Absolute Linux (MP3 Format)
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by nathan
In this week’s podcast, we review Absolute Linux, a really cool project that may need to change few things to become a real productivity help. Plus, we talk about the solution to crazy file system problem in Ubuntu, and we discuss many reasons why Gedit and Vim are both awesome editors…how to combine the two?
- Absolute Linux - Official Website
- 100% Disk Usage Error on Ubuntu - from the Ubuntu Forums
- Sweet Plugins - for Gedit
- Gvim - a possible solution to my desire to combine Gedit & Vim
Did you like this week’s podcast, or was it completely useless? Leave a comment and let me know!
MP3 Dowload
Filed under: Reviews, Ubuntu-specific, Text Editing, Podcast, MP3
The “tune2fs -m”, mentioned in in Ep. 11, sets the percentage margin of reserved blocks.
[redintray on Twitter]
I see you already mentioned gvim as a way for combining vim and gedit. In ubuntu, there are different ‘flavours’ of ‘gvim’, and I guess the package vim-gnome will be the closed to gedit.
FYI: vim supports tabs, just enter
:tabnew
in command mode, and a new tab opens.
:tabclose
closes it again.
Tabs also work in the text-mode vim, you can use
:tabnext
and
:tabprevious
to navigate through the tabs
Cool…I love that text mode supports tabs as well!
I’m very sorry to read about your family emergency and the updates in the margin via Twitter.
I wrote a harsh review of this particular podcast this morning. You have it completely wrong about Slackware and binary packaging. Slackware has had binary packaging for a long time — it doesn’t track dependencies like other package management systems, but binary packages are available. Absolute’s home page very clearly says that it uses Slackware’s repositories per release version number (so Absolute 12.1 uses Slackware 12.1 repos, etc.). I haven’t tried Absolute but I suspect it uses slapt-get and gslapt like other Slack derivatives. These are similar to apt-get and synaptic in Debian and its derivatives and work in pretty much the same way. Slackware’s pkgtools is akin to Debian’s dpkg. IOW, you’re not limited to compiling source.
Finally, I didn’t touch on the subject of your recommending Puppy. Puppy runs exclusively as root, just like Windows 95 did! That’s a bad idea in Windows, Linux, Mac, BeOS, or whatever operating system you want to discuss. Accordingly, I don’t think Puppy is comparable in any way to distros that use proper Unix permissions — it’s a step back to an era of bad default practices that weren’t the defaults in Linux or other Unix-like OSes of the circa 1995 era. Again, see the Absolute Linux front page about this particular issue. Absolute does it right, Puppy doesn’t.
@lucky13 I asked for feedback, and I got it! :) Seriously, I appreciate your comment(s), and I agree I could have perhaps added some more depth to my review. If you will, though, allow me to respond to a few of your thoughts.
You said I had it wrong about Absolute’s package management paradigm, and I think I may have been unclear. I completely realize that it accepts Slackware’s repositories and is 100% compatible with Slackware binaries. That being said, a lot still needs to be compiled from source, because even after adding the main Slack repos, there were several apps that I need that just weren’t present. That’s not a huge problem, as i stated, because it’s a great build environment. So I meant my tone to be mostly positive, with just a few reservations if you didn’t really feel like compiling some essential apps for you that aren’t in the repos.
You also seemed to think that my choice of a gtk switcher for my first compile and and thoughts on themes weren’t very productive choices. As far as gtk switcher is concerned, it was an easy compile with few dependencies, which is one reason why it was one of my first tests. Also, the version of Absolute I tried did not have an easy way to customize the GTK theme, which is frustrating when you want to customize the aesthetic tone of a distro. That sort of task should be quick and easy, and not subtract from my productivity—which this did, hence the mention. Aesthetics truly does affect my productivity, because I want to *enjoy* what I stare at for hours at a time. It makes work less dreary, and gives me more motivation to get stuff done! This may not be the case for you and many others, and that’s fine, but I think many people feel similarly to me as well.
Regarding my comments on the packages included: As a subjective reviewer, I review the distro to see how it meets *my* needs, primarily. Of course I include information I hope will be universally useful, but naturally the review will be subjective. And as I stated, for me a good sound recorder is essential to *my* productive workflow. If that’s not an issue for others, i think that’s fantastic. But please also realize that the absence of audacity or other simple recorder wasn’t my only caveat from productivity standpoint. I also thought the calendering software was too simple, and I would have liked a better selection of office software. I agree that we should judge distros primarily on their philosophy and way of doing things, however, not having to install lots of packages after loading a distro is big productivity boon. I think it’s worth mentioning so that listeners will be better informed about tasks they may have to perform after the installation.
Puppy’s root policy is definitely up for debate, and could be the subject of a podcast in and of itself. Still, my general feeling is that for non-mission critical installations, Puppy is a good choice that remains more secure than many Windows installs, and for an end (desktop) user, it’s still pretty hard to mess up!
I’m sorry you didn’t find the contents of this podcast to be more helpful, however, I’m glad it stimulated this discussion. I’d love to know specifically what you’d like to hear in a distro review from a personal productivity standpoint.
Hi Nathan. Thanks for replying both here and on my blog.
I think where we see things most differently is in one of the remaining distinctions between Slackware (and its derivatives like Vector and Absolute) and most other distros. Slackware is much easier to use as a clean slate while most other distros give you a ton of stuff whether you want it or not.
One man’s junk is another’s treasure. What you see as a limitation in sparse selection of default apps I see as a selling point in that it allows me to choose which apps *I* want. You want Sunbird or whatever, I want calcurse — either way, whomever gets our ics files won’t know if your app took much longer to load than mine or that I exported mine from a command line. You want amarok and audacity, I want mocp or mpg321 and lame/paranoia or sox. You want the latest version of Open Office (with all the add-ons you mentioned in one of your posts) and I’m content with more lowly offerings like Abiword, Open Office 1.x (half the size and about 90% of the function as 2.x), Ted, or just using vim and oleo without even running X.
I think the crowd Slackware attracts already has ideas about preferred applications and those users are savvy enough to not need choices to be made for them. Dittos for Slack derivatives, although I’ve become much less enthusiastic about Vector than I was when I installed it late last year — my productivity has waned from having to remove and recompile apps to suit my own tastes and needs.
I won’t get into the debate about what you’re doing with a computer that requires “eye candy.” One’s eye candy is another’s clutter. As I wrote yesterday, I edited several jwm themes for DSL to reduce the noise about that and deflect criticism. What did I learn? That no matter what you offer, SOMEONE won’t like it and will let you know — as I did when the most recent version was released with a noisy wallpaper and very dark theme. Not everyone shares the same tastes. If I were a developer, you would get a very spartan desktop with a clear, simple theme and a single color background and a README that invites any criticism about how boring and plain it is to be mailed to /dev/null. I won’t judge books by covers — I’ll use my own wallpaper or set my own colors if I don’t like defaults. I just want to know that it’s stable and easy to run and maintain.
I don’t see having (or wanting) to do “little” things like that as barriers to productivity. I’ve borrowed butt ugly brown Ubuntu themed laptops and still managed to get to my e-mail and edit files and spreadsheets. Didn’t slow me down a bit. If anything, it made me hurry up so I could give them back.
I don’t think productivity is a distro-based thing unless you’re looking at distros oriented specifically for certain tasks — such as one with a graphics bent like grafpup or something geared for audio editing, etc. I appreciate you might want something that comes with a load of software. I don’t mind that as long as it’s the software *I* actually want, not software I have to replace with what I want. General distros, though, are generic. They don’t fit niches. Niche distros do that.
That’s why I wrote what I did about paradigms. It comes down to comparing apples and oranges. Slackware isn’t just like Ubuntu, and neither is just like Gentoo or Source Mage or DSL. Each is Linux-based, but each has its unique way of doing things. None is inherently more or less productive, especially from the standpoint of having a system you not only can use effectively but that contains the applications and dependencies you want it to have. If one or another requires a greater initial investment of time, can that balance out in the long run by reduced maintenance, fewer issues with extraneous or buggy libs, etc.? While you may not object to installing a load of unrelated dependencies to use a certain application from a binary repository, others probably will object (I certainly have on more than one occasion). A distro isn’t a sum total of default apps or aesthetics, it’s the underlying structure which allows apps to be added and/or removed and how stable it is and easy to maintain. It can look like crap and be stable or it can be beautiful but a pain in the ___ because it overreaches the abilities of its developers or assumes too much or too little its user.
That’s one of the beauties of being able to choose between myriad distros and it takes me right back where I started. With so many choices, it really boils down to what any user wants. I like things that don’t make decisions for me. Other users want choices to be made for them. If you’re in the latter group, a distro that gives you a clean slate is going to be a problem because you have to make your own decisions; if you’re in the former group with me, one that comes with stuff you don’t want or won’t use only gets in your way.