Internetling

I like to use my Nokia e71 to check my blog and read the comments every once in a while, but it is annoying having to scroll around with this layout and waiting for the site to load, even on Wi-Fi.

So I stumbled upon this neat WordPress Mobile plugin which modifies your page for handheld devices. It is pretty neat, the only thing that bothers me is the restrictions made by the author, Andy Moore: that you cannot remove his sponshorship, even though the plugin is GPL-licensed (I will be looking into this).

I am one of those people who try to give credit where credit is due and I think Moore should switch to donations. However, this is probably the fault of our mentality and not Andy’s fault.

Anyway, the mobile version works fine and you can check it out with your handheld device, be it a Nokia, iPhone, Android Phone, or any other device using a mobile browser. The format is much better and loading times are crazy low.

So enjoy.

Internetling.com on the Nokia e71

An article on Netbook Review compares the battery life of numerous popular netbooks, e.g. the Asus Eee, MSI Wind, Dell Mini (Inspiron 9 and 12).

What I found quite impressive was the long battery life of the MSI Wind (almost 7 hours!). On the other hand Dell’s mini laptops proved to be a great disappointment, with the Mini 9 somewhere in the middle and the 12 inch model completely on the bottom of the list (though let us not forget that the big screen is also a factor).

This test was conducted using a benchmark program the author of the article developed. Also, looks like the biggest factor in battery life is the number of cells, I quote:

“This obviously isn’t an exhaustive test but it does show that six-cell battery netbooks should last well over three hours while those with three-cell batteries will struggle, on average, to deliver better than two hours.”

You can find lots of detailed information about this comparison, along with the list in the original article.

I’d also like to hear from netbook owners: how long does your netbook battery last?

Looks like MSI has the longest battery life.

At the moment there is a lot of talk on the Internet about the micro-blogging site Twitter, but I see less love for its open source counterpart, Identi.ca.

The laconi.ca micro-blogging platform, created by Evan Prodromou, is free as in freedom. There is the “original” laconi.ca installation on identi.ca, but you can also download laconi.ca, install it on your own server and your users can talk with every site where a laconi.ca install is present.

Due to Twitters immense popularity, there are far more desktop clients available for it than for identi.ca, especially for Linux. However, this time Linux has it all covered, from simple methods to “ident” your message (still looking for an equivalent to “tweet”) to full-fledged desktop clients, which bring all the functionality of the website to the desktop.

To be more correct, these article features software you can run in GNU/Linux that supports identi.ca. Gwibber and Twhirl also support Twitter and a multitude of other sites/protocols/whatever.

Gwibber

Probably one you would first want to go for. Built in GTK using Python, Gwibber certainly has the “shiny” factor. It is very popular amongst Linux users because it’s easy to use, open source and built using open source and aside from the main website available for download directly from most distributions’ repositories. Gwibber sports two curious features: you can apply a separate banner color for each service and support for RSS feeds (which I find very useful).

Arch Linux users may encounter problems installing the pywebkitgtk-svn dependency from the Arch Users’ Repository.

UPDATE: a working howto for Arch is available here. Many thanks to the author.

Twhirl

Twihrl is the client I use at the moment. So yeah, this is an Adobe AIR application and I personally find it quite good. Still, the lack of interest from Adobe’s side is  sadly very apparent. Installing AIR is not difficult, your distribution should enable you to easily obtain it from a repository. After you have got Air installed you download the Twhirl binary from the project’s website and run it using “adobe-air /path/to/file.air”

Problems:

• at the moment there is no comfortable way of updating Adobe AIR, which is quite a pain, especially when I see those OS X users with their smug smiles when they use the AIR auto-update.
• I can’t figure out how to make a command out of it, but I saw it somewhere. I’m too lazy anyway, just made a quick-launch icon with the command in the gnome toolbar
• Twhirl will want access to the default keyring for your stored identi.ca password, which is a weird bug GNOME has to fix. And no, don’t erase the keyring file, it will screw GNOME up.
• I hate them for not showing the Linux logo on their site alongside Mac OS X’ apple and the Windows “flag”
• You will need a compositing manager or else the app will have ugly black borders. You can use xcompmgr if you don’t want to hog your system.

identibash (marshall’s mod)

Using the terminal is sometimes much faster. So why not use it to communicate with your identi.ca friends? Linc from TLLTS, a good Linux podcast, made a little script which can act as a sort of a client for identi.ca.

You have all the basic functions, posting and reading new stuff. The client has also been covered by the LV podcast, where we discussed marshall’s mod, which improves upon Linc’s code.

Here is Marshall’s post on the Linux Outlaws forums which will double as a good guide to setting up and using identibash. Don’t be afraid, it’s really simple and takes less than 5 minutes.

Posting only:

Gnome Deskbar

Since Gnome 2.24, the Search field in the Deskbar applet enables you to post your ramblings to identi.ca.

Gnome Do identi.ca plugin

Install the Gnome Do plugins pack and enable the identi.ca plugin in the Settings. Then invoke Do, type what you want to send and Do will suggest you post it to identi.ca!

Well, that will do for today!

Do you know any other identi.ca clients for Linux?

I got some very interesting comments on my post about Linux projects that need more attention, so I decided to feature a few of the readers’ recommendations. They have mentioned very interesting and useful applications, some of which I have never heard of. A warning though: this is a very mixed bunch, some of the apps are just little tools while others are heavy-duty software projects.

Have fun reading, maybe you will find some new and interesting software!

fsniper is a cool app that monitors a certain directory for changes. You can then tell fsniper to run a script when a certain file name or file type is changed.

“Common uses include making a single drop directory for all things from a webbrowser etc, and having semi-intelligent scripts figure

out what to do with those files. You write the scripts yourself.”

Coccinella is a “communication and collaboration tool” with a whiteboard. Many people might just yawn and say it is just another Pidgin competitor, since it features multi-protocol messaging, but I suggest you try it out first and then decide whether you should throw it into the same basket.

Cairo Dock is a cool alternatice to AWN or Gnome Do’s Docky. It is basically a launcher bar with plug-in and compositing support. Read more about it in this article I wrote last year.

Kexi

KDE and KOffice are evolving at a steady pace, so it is about time we mention Kexi, the alternative to Ooo’s Database tool and Microsoft Access et al. An excellent and intuitive interface, python support plus Kugar, the report generator are only two of a number of great features.

Gscrot / Shutter

Scrot is cool, so why not have an interface

Liferea

Do you follow many RSS feeds? I am subscribed to a ton of feeds. I spend 30 minutes a day reading through my daily dose of Linux and I need a good RSS feed reader. Liferea does the job well, is stable, and looks good (the layout reminds me of an e-mail client).

Gobby, the collaborative text editor

Apps that enable you to collaborate with people through an internet connections are extremely important for Linux. With Gobby, you can collaborate using a text editor. Gobby even features Sobby, an extension which helps you make your own collaboration server. Also, there is a chat window if you want to talk to your co-worker(s).

“Gobby is fully Unicode-aware, provides syntax highlighting for most programming languages and has basic Zeroconf support.”

These are all the applications mentioned by the readers that I’ve found worth writing about. I may do another article like this in the future, so if you liked it, suggest an app!

Hi there! Have you already jumped onto the netbook bandwagon? I currently own a MEDION PC, a MacBook and a Nokia E71, but my inner-geek still craves for a cool little Linux netbook. Sub-notebooks are great stuff: they are, like Linus Torvalds said in a recent interview, “laptops done right”. You can carry them around, they are light, small and cheap so you do not have to worry as much if you lose, or break them. At the same time though, you can do some serious work with thee mini laptops.

Linux is for now, alongside Mac OS X (a warning though, installing the latter is supposed to be illegal) one of the best operating system choices for a netbook. Windows 7 does have a smaller memory print in comparison to Vista, but many sub-notebooks are still too weak to run anything more by Microsoft than XP, which you will probably have to settle for if you are not thinking of installing Linux.

Some of the advantages of running Linux on a sub-notebook are a smaller memory footprint, better security and tons of free applications right out of the box. If you decide to install it by yourself, you may encounter some compatibility problems here and there, therefore it is wiser to buy one of the more widely-sold netbooks such as the Eee PC or the Acer Aspire One.

Although, with a little tweaking, you should have better chances at installing Linux than Windows. So here are some Linux distributions I recommend you try out, because they are modified to work well with small screens and modest hardware.

Disclaimer: I have not tested all of these Linux distributions and I am not guaranteeing they will work, let alone install – these are simply my suggestions based on people’s reports and opinions and my own messing around with the Eee PC and, briefly, the MSI Wind. I am not going to talk a lot about the software included, if you’re interested in knowing more about the recommended distros, please visit their respective sites.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Sporting a very interesting windowing interface, Ubuntu Netbook Remix is Canonical’s bold foray into the netbook business. They have done a great job at tailoring their flagship distribution for mini laptops. I’m only worried that GNOME and Ubuntu as a whole may not be light enough for every sub-notebook. Nevertheless, all the stuff you’d expect in Ubuntu is there, so if you find it to work well with your system, this is probably the fastest way to get you up and running with a stable and feature-rich operating system.

Cruncheee

Ubuntu’s elegant little brother, a spin-off of the Crunchbang distro, does away with GNOME. There is only a window manager, namely Openbox and a sleek black background with a neat Conky setup. A lot of fat has also been trimmed in the application department, if you want Openoffice you will have to download it yourself. By default you get Firefox, VLC, Skype, Flash and a lot of other useful programs for your everyday computing needs. I understand the decision of not including Openoffice, it is a big app and I myself use only the most basic functions of a word processor, the only problem are compatibility issues with documents you get from other people. Always a big pain. Give Cruncheee a try. It is much lighter than UNR.

SLAX

Slax, a KDE3-based distribution built on top of Slackware Linux, is primarily meant for use as a Live distribution. It seems to have become fairly popular among netbook owners, and I was pleasantly surprised because I like SLAX very much. You can customize your ISO image from the website for your needs, to get a simple, fast, stable and user-friendly distribution, perfect for running off a thumb-drive or Flash memory, which is always a big plus for netbooks since they normally have less storage space than normal PC’s. By the way, version 6.0.9 is supposed to have fixed some previous netbook issues, so one more point for SLAX there

Debian

If you read my blog often, you will know I am a strong supporter of Debian. And I have good reasons: the sheer number of packages, users and documentation is overwhelming. Debian is extremely compatible and easy to install, works on many different architectures and is mostly rock-solid. Sometimes Debian will simply work where most distros fail. That is why you may want to install Debian on your netbook:

- you can find all the necessary documentation

- more than 20,000 packages waiting for you in the repositories

- tested for stability and reliability

Mandriva

As much as I am paranoid about distros that use the RPM format or an enhancement of it, I’ll admit RPM has evolved a lot and is now very mature so no need to worry about dependency hell any more than on DEB-based distros. Even though Mandriva has prepared a special, currently unavailable netbook respin, the standard free version of Mandriva should now have full support for the most popular netbooks, such as the Eee. We’ve been discussing Mandriva in July on the Linux Void podcast and my co-host Peter was pleasantly surprised. As you may know already, Mandriva is a uRPMi-based French distribution that competes with Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuse and other desktop and new-user-oriented Linux distros. Mandriva prefers the KDE4 desktop, but it also features other desktop environments (GNOME and Xfce).

Runners-up:

Arch Linux – I love Arch. Many Arch users on the Arch BBS use their favorite distros on their netbooks, too. Takes some time to setup, though.

Puppy and Pupeee – Puppeee and Puppy are extremely light. My problem with Puppy is that it gives you root permissions all the time so I do not really recommend it that often, even if it is a great little distribution. This one also tends to work on some exotic hardware.

What about you? What do you run on your netbook?

Disclaimer: I haven’t tested all of these Linux distribution and I am not guaranteeing they will work, let alone install – these are simply my suggestions based on people’s reports and opinions and my own messing around with the Eee PC and, briefly, the MSI Wind.