Just a few weeks after rebuilding my small 600MHz Celeron it started making strange noises.

She was on her original disk which had been spinning, on and off, for the last ten years!

Although I was confident that she was being backed up correctly I couldn’t take the noise any more (I think it was coming from the power supply – being small form factor I would find it difficult to replace) and so I decided to retire her gracefully rather than get stressed when she finally died.

Rather than add another machine to the network I though it might be a good idea to utilise the Server as a writing machine.

After doing a full back up of the server (an old dual Xeon Dell Graphics Workstation with 2GB of ECC Ram and a 72GB SCSI hard drive) I started off by installing Debian Squeeze.

Actually, that’s a lie!

I first had a good play around with the latest version of Crunchbang and was very, very impressed!

There and then I decided that Openbox was going to be the window manager that I’d use on my eventual Writing Machine/Server!

Seriously, Crunchbang is extremely fast and very simple to use – it’s a candidate for my main PC already!

]]> http://www.thefridayblog.com/linux/the-writers-pc-revisited/feed/ 0 http://www.thefridayblog.com/linux/the-perfect-pc/ http://www.thefridayblog.com/linux/the-perfect-pc/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:00:12 +0000 Keith Eckstein http://www.thefridayblog.com/?p=361 Building the perfect PC

A couple of weeks ago I rebuilt my writing PC using Debian Squeeze and lxde. I wrote about it here and mentioned that I was so impressed with the performance that I was thinking about rebuilding my current main PC in the same way.

Planning

I used the rebuild as an opportunity to have a good think about what applications I used on a daily basis and a chance to see if any of the current applications could be replaced with better ones.

After a week of thinking I determined that the following would be the primary applications on my rebuilt PC….

Office

Open Office – I need this as a means of opening wordprocessed documents and spreadsheets that I receive from time to time.  Maybe I will change to Libre Office when it is stable but for the moment Open Office will do.  It’s what I’m used to, anyway.

PyRoom – I use PyRoom on my writing PC – it makes sense to install it on my main PC as well in case I get a flash of inspiration whilst I’m working on other things.

Abiword – I used to use this as my main wordprocessor. I still have many document sin AbiWord format.

Gnumeric – As with AbiWord

Internet

Chrome – My browser of choice.  Blisteringly fast and now with enough extensions to make it a compete replacement to FireFox.

Transmission – For downloading ISO images of operating systems – I’ve not come across anything that does the job better.

Thunderbird – My current email client.  Seems to me to be slower than it used to be?

Claws – I am planning to migrate many of my email accounts to Claws.  It’s very fast and has all the functionality that I need.  here are plenty of plug-ins as well.

Pidgin – I don’t do much instant messaging but, when I do, Pidgin works well enough for me.

Pan – The only Newsreader that I’ve ever felt comfortable with.

Accessories

Calibre – For converting ebooks into .mobi format so that I can read them on my Kindle.

Gedit – My test editor of choice.  I’ve tried other but I keep coming back to Gedit; it does everything that I want and doesn’t attempt to do any more.

Nautilus – A great File Manager – I love the scripts that really enhance it.

pcManFm – Much faster than Nautilus – if only it were extensible by scripts as Nautilus is (I like to be able to resize images from the file manager; I can do that in Nautis but not in pdManFM.)

Sound and Image

gThumb – For importing images from my camera and for browsing them.

Gimp – I’m by no mean a Gimp expert but I find that it does pretty much everything I’ll ever need to do image wise.

Songbird – It’s a shame but it’s the only music player that I feel comfortable with.  I’ll stick with this old version until the Nightingale project comes of age.  I like the skins and, as all my music listening is by playlists I find that Songbird does everything I need.  I do wish there was an applet to allow me to control fromthe panel (as I used to with RythmnBox) -that would be the icing on the cake!

ImageMagik – Needed for the Nautilus scripts and the od time when I need to edit/resize loads of images at the same time.

VLC – Alright, Gnome MPlayer will play most of my movies by VLC will play them all!

System

VMWare Player – I have decided to standardise on VMWare’s Player as my virtualisation tool.  For me it works better than VirtualBox and is less fiddly than KVM.  Hey, it just works!

Guake – I’m often launching a terminal to do bits and pieces.  When I know that it’s going to be more than a 1 mintue job, it’s Guake that I’ll launch (by pressing F12.)

Synaptic – Whilst I’ll generally use apt-get to install new applications Synaptic does give me an idea of what applications are available.  For me, Synaptic works better than some of the software selection tools that are available in Mint/Ubuntu/Suse.

mc – When working on the command line I find mc a godsend.

gnome-schedule –  A simple way to manage cron jobs.  I could do it all manually but gnome-schedule gives me an easy interface.

sendemail – I use this as part of my backup processes; for sending zipped files to a gmail account and also for sending the backup log to my gmail account.

Rebuilding the PC

Having carefully backed up my hard drive to the server and also to an external USB I banged in a Debian Squeeze Beta 2 CD and hit the big red button.

I did a basic install of Debian (with no software selection checked) and then installed LXDE as I detailed in The Writer’s PC and started installing applications and restoring the backed up data.

Whilst lxde looked beautiful on my PC I did find a few niggling problems….

Not mater what I tried, Chrome didn’t look right.  I can’t really be more specific than that but it was as if the fonts didn’t fit.

Also, Gedit was excruciatingly slow and kept stuttering whilst I was working on large documents.

Furthermore, the panel at the bottom of the screen, although it looked lovely, was far more difficult to configure than the Gnome panel.

The system certainly was very, very fast though!

Conclusion

I persevered with the basic Debian/LXDE installation for just over a day.

Then I decided to call it quits.

I think that the final straw was that it locked up three times in a row without any warning. When I’m busy I even resent the time a reboot takes!

It wasn’t working for me and, although I’m sure I could have found way to sort out all the niggles, I just didn’t have the time.

It was back to Mint then?

Or should I take a detour and try out Mint Debian instead?

Well, that’s another story but I’ll close this one by saying that if you want a really fast (as in so fast you wouldn’t believe) PC, try installing Debian minial and then puting lxde on top of it.

Just don’t expect an out of the box experience like the sort you would get form installing Ubuntu, Suse or Mint.

I just didn’t have the time to sort out all of the niggling little problems that I encountered and, although none of them were exactly major, the all added up to a working environment that I was unhappy with.

I’ll certainly go back and try the same installation again, when I’ve got more time, but for now I’m off down a different track.

More news next week.

All the best

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Because the PC is rather old and not very high powered this has restricted the options available to me.

None the less, I was confident that I could build a working machine from an 11 year old 600MHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM.

I started by downloading the latest Debian Squeeze Beta from here.

I should say here that even though it’s officially a Testing release, it is , I have found, more stable than many final distributions.

The objective was to build a machine that would allow me to write efficiently but not offer any distractions to the writing process.

Thus, I decided just to install the base version of Squeeze and add then only those components that I needed.

Installing the Operating System…

I started off by inserting the CD and rebooting.

From the Installer boot menu I chose the Install option (I find this less complicated than the Graphical Install.)

After choosing the language, the location and  the keyboard language the installation kicked off with the hardware scan.

I let it chug away.

When it got to the point of asking me for a hostname (about 30 seconds into the install) I clicked on the Go Back link so that I could configure the network manually.

I set a fixed IP address of 192.168.1.5 and let the installed set the Netmask, the Gateway and the Name Server Address.

Back at the Hostname option I called the machine Elgar (all of my machines are named after classical music composers) and then set a domain name of mydomain.

I set the root password (and re-entered it to verify) and then set up a default user.

The installation then asked me to partition the hard drive.

I chose to use Guided – use the whole disk as it is sufficient for the purposes of this machine.

I chose the internal hard drive (I have an external USB drive connected to Elgar – I’ll talk about this later) and selected the All files in one partition option.

I then clicked on the Finish partitioning and write changes to disk option and verified this.

The partitions and file systems were created.

The installation chugged away for a few minutes and then I was asked to select an FTP mirror.  I chose United Kingdom.

I then chose the FTP mirror at the top of the list and left the HTTP Proxy field blank.

The installation started to download files.

After about 20 minutes, I was asked if I wanted to participate in the Usage Survey.  I declined.

Then the Software Selection screen appeared.

I deselected all options and pressed Continue.

The installation started downloading retrieving files.

Finally, the machine rebooted and I was at the login prompt.

I logged in as the default user I had created earlier and became root by typing su and entering the root password.

Installing the Desktop…

Now it was time to install a graphical desktop.

I had chosen LXDE as the preferred desktop as I’d used it before and knew that it wouldn’t be too heavy for my poor old PC.

To install all I had to do was type apt-get install lxde and hit Enter.

A little while later the machine was back at the prompt and a simple startx brought up the desktop.

So far so good.  Now it was time to configure the machine prior to installing any applications.

I installed Synaptic.  Now, this might not be the proper way to do things bit it is what I’m used to on my main machine, so in it goes.

I then decided to install Gparted.  The external USB hard drive that is going to be my backup drive came out of an old laptop that I upgraded; it was formated as NTFS and I wanted to wipe it and start again from scratch.  It is going to be my backup drive and I can’t afford anything to go wrong!

I deleted the old partition (very carefully checking that I was performing the operation on the right drive – and, alas, I’m speaking from experience there!) and then created a new ext4 partition.

So far, so good.

Open Office

The next task was to install Open Office.  I only use this for the final part of the writing process and, to be honest, Open Office Writer is probably too heavy for my needs but, as I have many documents in that format, it made sense to stay with what I know.

Abiword and PyRoom

I then installed Abiword and PyRoom via Synaptic.

I used to love Abiword but I’ve found that it’s not as good at the final formatting as Open Office Writer.

Still, I do have many files in Abiword format so it makes sense to install it.

PyRoom is another matter.

This is my fundamental word processor.

Everything I write using pen and paper gets put onto the computer using Pyroom.

On the rare occasions I write directly on the computer, It’s always PyRoom that I’ll use to perform that task.

Connecting to the network

In order to get onto my server I installed smbfs using the command apt-get install smbfs

I tested this by creating a directory in /mnt using the command mkdir /mnt/mozart

I then typed in the command mount -t smbfs //192.168.1.2/data /mnt/mozart and, lo and behold, I had access to the data share on Mozart.

I then edited the /etc/fstab to make this mount permanent….

I added the following line (the password isn’t the real one, by the way …

//192.168.1.2  /mnt/mozart smbfs username-keckstein,password=password 0 0

And a quick reboot later I found that I had a permanent mount for my network share.

Tidying up

From synaptic I completely removed Iceweasel (the Debian version of Firefox.)

This is my writing machine and the last thing I want is the temptation to check out what’s happening on Facebook etc.

I deleted all the applets from the panel and added the applications that I would be using most often to the panel.

These are file manager, terminal, leafpad (editor), abiword, open office calc, open office writer, PyRoom and music player.

Finally I set up a directory structure that makes sense to me.

Backup Systems

I dived into Synaptic and installed sendemail, rsync and gnome-schedule.

I wrote a quick and dirty script to run my backups.  I tested it a few times and then used gnome-schedule to automatically run it at 2 am every morning.

The script that I am using is….

#!/bin/sh

I have written about this sort of backup script in far more detail in Backing up to Gmail on my IT blog at  www.kmeckstein.com

Preseeded installation

Although it’s outside the scope of today’s blog post, I intend to setup a pre-seeded installation of all of the above.

With that you’ll just need to download the Debian Squeeze image, burn it to a disk, boot up and type in one command and then most, if not all, of the above will be done for you.

Please let me know if you’d like to try this out (in other words, be a guinea pig) and I’ll get right back to you.

Conclusion

I’ve now got a dedicated writing machine running on a PC you couldn’t actually buy today!

I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed with the speed and response of that 11 year old 600 MHz Celeron with only 256 MB of RAM.

Could I use it as my day to day machine?

To be honest, it’s a bit of a shock to me how good LXDE is on top of plain Debian.

As a writing machine, it’s perfect!

In fact, I thinking of rebuilding my main machine in exactly the same way!

All the best

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As a writer, albeit a writer who has to squeeze in his writing in between web design and website update duties, I tend to be quite passionate about the technology that I use to assist myself in my creative efforts.

I’ve already mentioned (in Q10 – a minimalistic word processor) that my personal writing process tends to involve writing the original draft longhand, then transcribing the draft using a distraction free text editor (I’m currently using PyRoom – it does all that I need) during which, the word count tends to double. Finally, I import that text into a proper word processor (such as Open Office Writer) for the final printable draft.

These notes and messages might be as follows…. “Make this more fluid. It’s all stop/start!”

“He would never say something like that! Put yourself into his shoes and say it as he would!”

“Need to develop this. This nasty habit could come in useful later on?”

The editor in me can be quite critical (and often very rude) to the writer side of my personality!

I do, however, spend a lot of time wondering if this is the best way for me to get my words down on paper – where they belong.

It seems to me to be rather a long, drawn out process with me handling the words more times than perhaps I need to.

So, going about it in reverse order, lets take a look at what I actually do…..

Human Editing

For some reason, I personally don’t see the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors easily unless I’m reading printed copy. I’m not sure why this is but I do feel that I’m not totally alone in this.

During this stage of the process, even with the additions, the word count tends to drop by about 10%.  Whilst this is a somewhat arbitrary figure, if the word count doesn’t drop by that amount, I go back and have another look – 10% seems to be the right amount here.

I must also help that I can (or perhaps need to) take the printed copy into the garden and do the editing away from the distractions of my ofice with the ever incoming emails and feedreader updates.

I don’t think that there’s much to be done to be able to improve of streamline this stage of the process.

I could, of course, print my manuscripts single spaced with smaller margins; this would save on paper but it’s the ink that really costs. In any case, I need all that additional space for making corrections and leaving all those messages to myself!

So, with no realistic changes to be made here, lets take a step back and review the previous stage…

Word Processing

I use Open Office Writer. To be honest, I’d be just as happy to use Microsoft Word. That’s a fine wordprocessor but it would require me to use a Microsoft operating system and I’d have to pay for it (the OS and the program.) As a long time Linux user, both those things go against the grain!

There are, of course, other word processing alternatives. I like AbiWord but Open Office does more and allows me to read and write a wider range of formats. I’ve also tried SoftMaker’s TextMaker and enjoyed using it but it didn’t do anything significantly better for me to want to make the change.

I could, and this makes some kind of sense, cut out the PyRoom text editing stage and type my hand written prose directly into Open Office Writer.

For me though, the text editing stage is vital and I’ve found no better tool than the one that I use.

I’ll explain why…

PyRoom

For getting my hand written scribbles onto the computer I need a distraction free program that assists in the process but doesn’t get in the way.

At this stage of the process I don’t want to be worried about formatting or wordcount; the editor side of me can deal with those things later on.

PyRoom does all that.  If I were running Windows I’d be quite happy with Q10 in its place.

During this part of the process, the word count doubles.

I seem to take what I have written by hand and automatically add in all the bits that I missed out.

Scribbling

I need just a certain type of pen (it doesn’t have to be expensive) and a spiral bound notebook (17cm x 22cm) is the best size for me.

Peace and quiet is, of course, important but, I can work very well sat in the beer garden at my local bar.

I don’t get interrupted and the words seems to flow better outside than they do indoors.

Being away from home and being away from the computer both combine to let the words flow more freely.

Summing up….

So, each stage of the process seems to have its own role to play.

I’m fairly sure I couldn’t merge two stages into one and write at the same level (and I’m always aware that even that level isn’t good enough!)

You know, I started this article hoping that I’d come across a technical solution that I could try out.

Perhaps something like installing a minimal OS on a netbook and combining the Scribbling and Pyroom stages (perhaps even adding markup code at this stage to make the Word Processing stage easier.)

But, you know, whereas I can quite happily sit undisturbed scribbling away with a pen and paper, I don’t think it would be the same if I were typing away on a netbook.

Friends (who allow me my privacy whilst I’m writing) might wander over to say… “I was thinking about getting one of those – could you recommend one?” or… “I’ve got one of those but it doesn’t work any more – could you pop round and take a look at it?”

And there’s always the… “if it works, why dick around with it?” point of view.

If I did get a netbook, would the keyboard really be big enough to write on?

And if I got a desktop PC replacement laptop, would I really want to cart it around?

I do have a worrying feeling that the current method of writing is not going to change; unless I can find some sort of creative way of combining it all into one.

All the best

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I seem to have started off here, at The Friday Blog, nattering on about minimalistic word processors and how the desktop layer of my computer (Gnome in my case) is more important to me than the underlying operating system.

However, I meant The Friday Blog to be a discussion area for using technology to help with the creative process; in my case, writing.

Often I find myself doing my day job, designing websites and updating my various blogs, when I discover a few minutes to spare to update a story that I’m working on.

Now, although I have a dedicated “writing machine” it is often easier to stay on my main machine and write on that.

Virtual Desktops

To enable me to do this, I use virtual desktops.  I have three set up on my machine.

In Linux language, these are called Workspaces.

I have one for my day to day work and another for the work I do updating my Life in France blog review site, A Taste of Garlic.

The third runs just one application, PyRoom (of which I spoke about a few weeks ago), the word processor that I use these days.

It often surprises me that more Linux users don’t take advantage of the Workspaces to streamline their workflow.

Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve doubled my productivity as a result of splitting my workflow across three workspaces.

I’m not sure if the same functionality is available under Winodws.  There used to be, back in the bad old days of Windows for Workgroups 3.11), a Norton Desktop for Windows which I uses to use all the time (maybe 15 years ago!)

But I don’t spend enough time in a Windows environment these days to need similar functionality there.  I’m happy working on a Linux machine and, with that, the functionality is there by default.

I believe that OSX provides similar functionality using their – know as Spaces in OSX speak.

VirtualBox

I can, and often do, also run virtual machines on my workstation.

I started off by using VirtualBox from Sun (now Oracle.)  This worked fine for me apart from occasional problems accessing external USB drives and and an infrequent problem with the buttons on my USB mouse being reversed when I returned to the host OS (Linux Mint in my case.)

Both these problems could be resolved by rebooting the virtual machine.

VMware Player

Perhaps I should have spent more time trying to resolve these problems once and for all but instead, partly due to downloading a free VMware image, I tried out a copy of VMware’s excellent competitor to VirtualBox… Player.

VMware’s Player has worked perfectly for me with the only slight niggle that, recently, I’ve noticed a dramatic slowdown in my host OS whilst installing a new OS under Player.

As this is something that I do an awful lot of, under normal circumstances I would put in the effort to work out what was going on and implement a fix.

KVM

For some strange reason, however, a few days ago, when I found myself about to install Puppy Linux for an article that I was writing for www.kmeckstein.com (And they call it Puppy Love…), I decided to give KVM a go.

Now, I’d always thought that KVM was complicated to install, set  up and use.  I imagined that I’d have to recompile the kernel and spend an eternity in a terminal.  I thought that it would be too geeky even for me!

Then again, I realised that as KVM is now built into the kernel, perhaps all that nastiness could be avoided and I also suspected that it might just prove to be the most efficient method of virtualisation (for my requirements, on a desktop machine) as a result.

I have to admit that I was absolutely shocked by how easy it was to install and set up KVM!

As KVM is in the Mint Linux repository, all that was required was to fire up Synaptic, select KVM and virt-manager and hit the big red button!

All that was left to do was to add myself to the KVM and virt-manager user groups and log out and then log back in.

Installing a guest OS under KVM is also a doddle (I’ve only installed Linux based Operating systems so far; I’ll let you know if I hit problems with Windows.)

I started off by installing Puppy Linux 5.0 (Lucid Puppy) for the article that I was writing and, it was there, waiting for me just 2 mintues later.

Now, I know that Puppy is a very fast beast when it comes to installation (and this has improved with the latest version but… I do have to say that I was very impressed.)

I’ve been using Puppy for a few days now and there  have been no problems at all.  I’ve still got some things to sort out with regards to KVM.  I’d like to run guest operating systems in seamless mode (so that they use the whole screen as though they were the only installed operating system) and then somehow tab between them and the host OS.

I’ll need to work on that.

For  the moment my thoughts are that it was no more hassle installing an OS under KVM than under VirtualBox or VMware Player.  Perhaps even a little bit easier?

Performance seems to be slightly faster but, it’s early days and, to be honest, all three virtualisation platforms were more than fast enough for me.

I do get the feeling that KVM uses less system resources than the two other products; difficult to be precise – more of a feeling than something that I can quantify.  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who could say yea or nay to that.

But, overall, I’m more than happy with the ease of use of KVM.

It wasn’t the nightmare that I’d expected.

In fact, it was a bit of a shock how easy it was to install and use!

Summary

I don’t suppose that it really matters if you use Workspaces (under a Linux environment) or if you run Virtual Machines.

Having multiple desktops, however you choose to do it, each of them perfectly configured for the job in hand, can’t help but make you more productive.

For me, virtual machines have a slight edge as they allow me to run multiple instances of Thunderbird (my email client of choice.  I have a number of Thunderbird profiles; each accessing a number of mail files – it is nice to be able to run these concurrently rather than having to log out of one profile and log back in to another. )

Using Workspaces, I am only able to run one instance of Thunderbird.  There may be a solution to this; if there is, I’d be interested to know what it is.

I also like the idea of being able to perform granular backups of my guest operating systems (and, of course, their data.)  I’ve got the disk space to maintain a number of backups for each guest machine so, I guess, that’s what I’ll be looking at next.

From a Green perspective, it’s got to be more efficient running just one machine (perhaps having another purely for contingency purposes) rather than having a whole host of them?

And, whilst I do have to admit that I’m not too evangelistic about saving the planet (I try, I really do!) but, if reducing my energy consumption also reduces my expenditure… Well, I’m all for saving my pocket and, if it helps the planet as well…..

Adendum

OK – SO, I installed Windows XP under KVM whilst I was writing this article (and this article didn’t take that long to write!) with really no problems at all. The install stopped at the point of the first Windows reboot and I had to click on the Run menu option to kick it into play again but, really that’s it! I should say that the installation took a while longer than the Puppy Linux and Debian Linux installs that I’d already done but, that’s just Windows for you!

All the best

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When I started The Friday Blog I wanted to have an outlet for my varied ponderings that didn’t seem to fit in anywhere else.

In fact, initially the blog was going to be called Ponderings for Ponderers.

I prefer The Friday Blog as a name though, as it does encourge me to publish on a regular basis.

Anyway, I write about my life as an expat living in rural Brittany, France over at  www.BretonDiary.com and I waffle on, in my amateurish way, about IT at www.kmeckstein.com.

I detail my mushrooming forays at www.MushroomDiary.com and I also review other people’s Life in France blogs at www.aTasteOfGarlic.com.

The Friday Blog is more of a place where I can investigate the creative process and, perhaps more importantly, the layers of technology that sit (sometimes uncomfortably) between me and the desired aim – a few words, good and true.

Last week I spoke briefly about how, for me, Gnome is my effective operating system.

I mentioned that I have changed from being a “my flavour of Linux is better than your flavour of Linux” evangelist (and maybe, to be honest, a bore), to someone who just needs a strong and stable underlying operating system that allows me to run Gnome, my desktop environment of choice.

This week I intend to delve a little bit deeper and to try and explain how and why I set up my main computer in the way I do.

As The Friday Blog is largely about the creative writing process, I won’t go too deeply into the web design aspects of my PC.  They are better dealt with elsewhere.  In fact, yesterday I posted on kmeckstein.com why I think that Chrome is the new Firefox.

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So, where to begin? I’ll start off with a standard installation of Linux Mint.  I’m still on Mint 8.0 Helena but, for the sake of this article, I’ll install Mint 9.0 Isadora in a virtual machine using VMWare’s Player – it’ll be a good opportunity for me to have a look round prior to my upgrading. For the install I accept all the default options.  The 7 step install process is so easy it’s almost embarrassing! And yes, I can still remember those early days (way back in 1997) when I used to like Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva) purely because the install process was the easiest! And everything else was pretty horrible to install!

As you can see from the screenshot of my current installation, I like to keep the desktop as clear as possible with only links to drives and connections to servers on it.  All apps (or all the ones I use on a day to day basic) have icons on the taskbar.  I use three workplaces (since I’ve started to use Workplaces my productivity has skyrocketed.)  The taskbar might look a bit messy but, if I tidied it up – I’d never find anything!  And, you know, I think I’ve been using that last phrase as an excuse since I was about six years old!

Note to myself… For the first part of the install process, the computer ground to a halt.  I was unable to change tabs in Chrome and Firefox took about 2 minutes to load.  I’ve never noticed this before with VMWare Player so perhaps it’s a one off?  When I do upgrade to Mint 9.0 I’ll make sure I’m running the most up to date version of Player.  The machine sped up significantly once Mint 9.0 was 60% installed.

Once the install is complete I do an apt-get update and then start with the customisation.

The customisation consists of…

1).  First, the desktop wallpaper gets changed.  I like apocalyptic backgrounds.  Although this probably doesn’t have any direct effect on my creativity, I would possibly be more easily distracted if I had a picture of a pretty girl or a beautiful Breton harbour scene as my wallpaper.  Besides, if I want to look at a pretty girl, the Girlie uses the same office as me and for beautiful Brittany, I just need to look out of the window!

2).  Then, the panel gets moved to the bottom of the screen. It’s always seemed more logically positioned here.  In fact, I use two panels; one as a holder for application icons and the other to indicate running applications.

3).  Launchers for my must have apps are then placed on the bottom panel.  These always get ordered in a particular way. Originally there was some sort of logic to this (in other words, internet apps together, office apps together and so forth) but as Ive deleted icons and added new ones there is now very little logic to the placement of icons, other than it being logical for me to place the icons where I expect them to be.

Currently, I have icons for the following applications…. Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird, Transmission, Pan, Rhythmbox, Calculator, Pyroom, OO Calc, OOWriter, Nautilus, Gedit & Terminal.  I also have a Music Applet, A Network Manager Applet, a Clock and System Monitor.  Believe it or not, that covers pretty much everything I do (and Firefox will be going soon!)

4).  The panels backgrounds are then set to transparent.  Whilst this makes it a little hard to read (the text elements of it, anyway),  it does reduce the distraction factor.

I need to have a clock on my panel but (and this is a big but…) I don’t want to be able to see it all the time; only when I place the mouse pointer over it.  If the clock were always visible then I may write too fast (if I were running out of time, for example) and, for me, writing too fast means writing too badly.  And I write badly enough without any help, thank you very much!

5).  I delete  the Mint menu from the taskbar and replace it with the standard one.  I have no real problems with the default Mint menu (and it may well be an improvement for new users) but, having all those launchers on the taskbar means that I rarely need to use the menu and I certainly prefer to stick with what I know.

6).  I then set up the data structure on the /home partition.  I always keep my Data in the same directory structure and rigorously prune it so that it stays under 700MB.

7).  I edit .bashrc to suit me.

I started out in IT back in the DOS days (and I still sometimes miss the simplicity of those systems.  Web browsing apart, I was just as efficient back then; I could write just as well using Informix Smartware as I can now – even with the arrival of Windows, I felt more comfortable with all those .INI files than I do now with the registry.)

Thus, I still type MD to create a directory and CLS to clear the screen.  By putting in aliases for these commands I save a little time (more of which later) and reduce the frustration factor by an awful lot.

I speak more about my .bashrc over at www.InternetAccelerationAppliance.com (horrible URL, I know!) where I also describe how I built my caching proxy server (and set up a preseeded install script so that you can do the same without all that faffing about), that is so necessary here in rural France.

However, here is my current .bashrc…..

8).  I then set up my backup scripts.  As I’ve already detailed these over at www.kmeckstein.com (Backing up to Gmail) I won’t go into any detail here.  I’ll just mention that I use sendemail to send tarred and zipped archives to a Gmail account at 2am every morning.

This granular backup system works fine for me, especially in my writing if, for example, I kill off one of my characters and then find that I need him to still be around.  I can always go back to the relevant backup to resuscitate him!

9).  I then copy over my Nautilus scripts and, using Synaptic, I install Gedit plugins and pyroom and I’m pretty much ready to go.

All that’s left to do is to set up the web design functionality side of the machine.

This involves creating virtual machines (I’m currently using VMWare Player but VirtualBox did a fine job as well) so that I can view my websites using a variety of browsers running on different operating systems.

Of course, I need to install Chrome and the few extensions that I can’t live without.

And why do I do all this?

Why do I go to so much bother getting my system “just right”?

Well, I like to have exactly the same environment no matter what machine I’m using.

When Anthony Bourdain (in Kitchen Confidential) spoke about chefs needing their personal Mise en Place to be just so, well that struck a nerve with me.  I’m like that in the kitchen and I’m doubly like that with my PC.

The environment that I’m using is one that I’ve customised over a period of time and it works well for me.

I don’t have to think about where the icons are; I can work under a sort of autopilot.  And that saves me time.

And, of course, time is of the essence.

With so many sites to maintain and with the writing that I try to do, a few seconds saved here and a few moments saved there all add up.

And it’s not just quantitative element either.  The breaks in my working process (waiting for GIMP to load, for example, just to resize an image) are also breaks in the creative process.

And I find being creative hard enough as it is, without any distractions from my computer  which, when all is said and done, is supposed to be my tool!

That’s what it’s about,really. When Michael Schumacher gets in his formula one racing car (I know that he doesn’t do that any more but I’m not really into F1 and I can’t think of any other drivers!), it is a car that is entirely customised to his requirements. No added weight, no distractions, everything where it should be, all of the controls in the right place.  For him. Not for the designer, not for the engineer, not even for any of the other drivers on the team. Michael Schumacher’s F1 car is designed to be the perfect tool for him.  And, in a way, my PC is configured so that it is the perfect tool for me. Now, if only I could learn to write as well as Michael Schumacher drives a racing car! Oh, and by the way, I do apologise for the gratuitous use of a gnome image to the right.  I just couldn’t resist it!

All the best

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I touched briefly upon OS independence when I wrote a little bit about the Q10 minimalistic word processor a few weeks ago and PyRoom, another minimalistic word processor, last week.

Or, if I didn’t, then I certainly should have done.

The point that I’m trying to make is that as both of those applications save their data as straight unmodified text files; those file are obviously readable on pretty much any system out there, from computers to word processors, tablet devices to  mobile phones – hell, I think that even my Microwave displays text files.

Perhaps I exaggerate slightly?

I was wondering about this the other day as I am desperately trying to simplify my systems, partly in order to make them easier to use and partly to make them more fault tolerant.

I currently run Linux Mint 8.0 (Gloria) on my main machine and was pondering whether to upgrade to Mint 9.0, change to OpenSolaris (I like the idea of ZFS) or revert to core Debian.

I was also wondering if I should bite the bullet and take a look at BSD.

I looked at the applications that I use on a daily basis and was shocked to find that my current can’t live withouts are as follows…..

Gedit (with add ons) – for taking notes and web development.  I tend to do an awful lot in Gedit.   A lot of my WordPress posts are written in gedit and then cut and pasted into WordPress (I like the control using HTML gives me and, also, I have a very slow internet connection!)

Nautilus (with scripts) – for file management, resizing images, sftp and renaming files.  When tabs came to Nautilus it was like and angel had come down to earth and personally re-filled my beer fridge!

Thunderbird – mail

Chrome – internet access

Rhythmbox – music

GIMP – for graphics manipulation

And… well, that’s about it!  I do use Open Office but, to be honest, would be just as happy with Gnumeric and Abiword.

Even Google docs (or similar) would be good enough for my limited office application requirements.

I also use Pyroom but that will run on pretty much anything.

In other words, I was using Gnome (and its default applications) sat upon a Debian based operating system.

To be blunt about it, Gnome is my Operating System; it just happens to require a real OS to sit upon.

I like the austere feel to Gnome; On my system I don’t have any icons on the desktop other than pointers to external shares and drives.

Everything on my system (and I mean everything) is launched off the panel.

If I don’t use it, it doesn’t get added to the panel – if it’s not on the panel, it doesn’t get used!

I’ve left the menu in place but, to be honest, I use it so little, I forget where to find things in it!

Which kind of brings me to my point…

I’m running a web design/support business, I maintain some successful blogs and I write.

I’m not particularly bothered what Operating System I use (as long as it’s fast, easy to manage and secure) but… don’t take Gnome away from me – I can’t live without Gedit and Nautilus!

Having learnt to just about cope with the complexities of GIMP and Rhythmbox (I kid you not!), I wouldn’t want to have to change to alternatives; having developed my working style around Gedit and Nautilus, I COULDN’T change those.

But, why should I?

I can get Gnome on top of Solaris, Open Solaris, BSD, Debian based Linux, Red Hat based Linux, Suse Linux, Slackware Linux… in fact pretty much every type of operating system that I’d want to use!

I can’t run Gnome on top a Windows machine  or on a Mac (unless install an alternative OS), so… I guess I’m never be a convert to either of those systems.

What I don’t think I’ll be so much of in the future is… A Debian/Mint fanatic.

Don’t get me wrong….

For a desktop operating system, I personally believe that Linux Mint is the best blend of functionality, eye candy, performance and security.

For a server, I can’t envisage using anything other than plain vanilla Debian.

But, in the real world, I could cope on any system that supported Gnome.

When someone next asks me what operating system I use, I’ll truthfully tell them…

I use Gnome on top of Linux Mint (or whatever!)

You can keep your OS wars, just don’t take away my gnome! But what I’ve found it that… Given a stable underlying operating system, what matters to me (and a lots of users, I suspect), is the functionality of a small handful of desktop applications. We learn how to live with those; they become part of our working structure and…. We don’t like to change! And why should we? And now for a totally gratuitous picture of a garden gnome! Or, a pair of them…. A pair that, I do have to say, looks remarkably like…. The girlfriend and me!.

All the best

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Wow, first I find one good writer’s editor and then I trip over another.

Last week I wrote a little bit about Q10, a minimalistic word processor for Windows users that can also be used on Linux machines using Wine emulation.

This week I would like to talk a little bit about the word processor that has taken my fancy and replaced Q10 on the desktop of my main machine.

And, with no further ado, I’d like to say….

Welcome to PyRoom

PyRoom, is functionally very similar to Q10in that it provides the minimum of screen clutter an just lets you get on with the job of writing.

Please click on the screenshot to see it larger.

PyRoom is described (by its authors) as a fullscreen simple text editor, without a toolbar, a menubar or anything that would distract the user from the most important task: writing. It is more configurable than Q10 and it comes with a bunch of good looking themes which are easy to modify (you could use one as a base from which to create your own), and has, if possible, an even more minimalistic interface. It doesn’t have the scrollbar on the side and I find this makes me less likely to stop concentrating on the job in hand.

I ran the setup script (as detailed in the readme) python setup.py but it didn’t work on my machine (Running Mint 8.0 -Helena.) The problem apears to be that the files are copied over to /usr/share/pyroom but the script expects pyroom to be at /usr/bin This was easy enough to fix though. I just renamed a text file to a .kme extension and then, in Nautilus, highlighted the file – went to Properties and then Open With and then scrolled down to the pyroom icon to indicate that files with a .kme should always be opened with pyroom. This threw up an error (as pyroom was registered at /usr/bin) but, upon editing the path to pyroom to /usr/share/pyroom/pyroom it worked fine.

Please click on the screenshot to see it larger.

Pyroom is available in the Mint Repository (and I would assume the current Ubuntu one) where it is described as… “PyRoom is a free editor that stays out your way – and keeps other things out of your way, too. As a fullscreen editor without buttons, widgets, formatting options, menus and with only the minimum of required dialog windows, it doesn’t have any distractions and lets you focus on writing and only writing.”

It is also available for download from http://pyroom.org/ where it is available in a variety of Linux flavours.

It is not currently available with a Windows installer and, you know, that actually makes me quite happy!

I suppose that if anyone was technical enough to be able to install Python on a Windows machine just to run PyRoom…..

They probably be running some kind of Linux anyway!

Conclusion

I suppose that I have come to this evaluation with some firm ideas about how the process of composition should be done (at least for me.) I believe that writing should be done in plain text via a minimal interface (the nearest thing there is to a computerised typewriter), and only made print-ready after (or at), the editing point (I like to edit printed manuscripts.)

Q10 impressed the hell out of me and I started last week’s article expecting to rave about Q10 (and rave, I suppose, I have) but, the real shocker has been pyroom.

This simple python application is, for me, more attractive on my Linux machine than Q10 (purely because of that silly scrollbar – how petty can I get?)

It integrates better into my machine than Q10 and aleviates the requirement to run Wine (currently Q10 is the one of only two applications that I run under Wine, the other is Palm Desktop so that I can read my e-books.

All the best

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Over the last 10 years, I must have googled linux console wordprocessor at least a dozen times.  You’d think there would be loads about – after all, I first installed Linux in 1994 – that’s 16 years ago – surely someone would have written or ported something by now?

I’ve played around with DOS versions of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word under DosBox and I’ve tried to streamline AbiWord, Writer and TextMaker to suit my needs.  Nothing but nothing made the grade.

To put it simply, all I wanted was a simple wordprocessor that would allow me to write and not get in the way of that writing.  Of course, if it used a simple file format that didn’t tie me to any particular operating system or software provider, all the better.

Looking back at it, most of what I have written over the last 15 years (and certainly the best of what I’ve written over that period), has been written by pen on paper or on an electric typewriter.

I know that there’s a certain psychology at work here.  The words come the most freely when using a cheap ink pen and a lined A4 pad; there’s nothing to get in the way, you see.  On the other hand, with a typewriter the words come out slowly but ordered, under control and, one hopes, conforming to the rules of grammar.

Sooner or later though, the words have to go onto a computer and most of mine have done so via AbiWord.

It does what most of us require from a word processor, it runs fast and, best of all, is free.

And then I discovered Q10

Q10 is a minimal Windows word processor much like the other lightweight wordprocessors that I had tried in the past.

Applications such as WriteRoom, JDarkRoom, Writer and WordGrinder.

None of them really rang all the bells for me.

What about the cloud?

Also, I didn’t like the idea of using a word processor that stored its data on the net/in the cloud.

I’m not being paranoid but, what happens if I one day want to write a novel about a sexual relationship between a middle aged man and his underage step daughter.

Or worse, about a terrorist group that was planning to fly airplanes into tall buildings?

Luckily for Nabakov, he knocked out his masterpiece on a typewriter and interested parties couldn’t hack into his manuscript.

I wonder what sort of novelist he would have been had he had to swap his Geneva hotel room for a cell in the local sex offender’s prison; spending his days trying not to get caught in the showers by Big Vic and the Boys?

I know that our freedom needs to be protected the the anti-terrorism laws that aim to stop us getting blown up or burnt to death but I think I’d be a little bit uncomfortable keeping my notes and work in progress in the cloud, should I be writing

I’m sure that one day we’ll all be relying on the cloud for our applications and data storage. It’s just, for me, that it’s not quite ready; and I do have concerns about the privacy issues.

Tell me that Google doesn’t read our Gmail; try to convince me Area 51 doesn’t exist. Hey, you might even want to try and persuade me that Neil Armstrong didn’t have to kick away cigarette butts and empty coke cans when he was the first man on the moon!

But all cool people run Linux (or use a Mac)?

Of course, you’ve got to be a bit kinky not to be running Linux or OSX on your own machine.

I have got a few machines that run a cut down version of XP but these are temporary replacement machines for clients, so that those clients can continue to work if I have to take their machines away to do some work on them.

I also run XP and Windows 7 in virtual machines (using VirtualBox on a Debian machine) but these are there really only to test websites using various versions of Internet Exploder.

But, you know what, Q10 runs fine under Wine.

Using Q10

It looks cool. There, I’ve said it. It just bloody looks good – inviting, almost. It’s almost the perfect writer’s screen – no distractions. It takes over your whole screen – no distractions, no menu – nothing Of course, you can alt-tab to get back to your desktop to check your mail/facebook etc. but, I find that I am doing this less and less. Ideally, I would like to install Q10 on a machine with a minimal desktop – perhaps just a file manager and some sort of backup system.

I’m not too keen on the scrollbar that pops up after you’ve filled a screen, perhaps there’s a way to get rid of it but, if there is, I haven’t found it yet (and yes, I have looked at editing the .EXE with a text editor – no joy!) Weirdly, this only happens on my Linux box – under a Windows virtual machine the scrollbar doesn’t appear. At the bottom of the screen are two statistics panels. I find that these don’t intrude and, anyway, they can be turned off.

Pressing Crtl-P loads the config screen. Not very much to configure really, and that’s probably a good thing. Of course, you need to bear in mind that VirtualBox also uses right Ctrl-P to pause the virtual machine – for most people, though, this won’t be an issue. For creative writing, I don’t think that it really matters if you can’t justify and format your text so that it is print-ready – in fact, once again, that’s probably a good thing.

I don’t think that Hemingway ever bothered about getting his text perfectly justified when he was writing “Up in Michigan.”

Now, I’m not saying that using Q10 will make you write as well as Hemingway but, I do see some slight improvements over my, admittedly poor, output.

There’s also no option to print your texts. A missing feature? Perhaps, but not in my eyes.

Print when you are finished (or ready to edit), and not before.

If you’re like me and need to put some simple formatting commands into your text, do so – HTML or simple BB code would work (or you could invent your own codes).

Q10 won’t understand them but, when you import your text (hopefully completed) into a wordprocessor to print out, you can always use your codes as a reminder to implement the formatting then.

Pressing F1 brings up a help screen. But really it doesn’t take too long to get used to the keystrokes. You’ll not be needing a lot of help with this simple program. I suppose that, apart from the minimalistic view, I also like my writing being created and stored as plain text.

As long as you are backing up your manuscripts, you will feel comfortable that you will be able to recover and work on your writing no matter what happens.

Where to get it

Q10 can be found at the author’s site… www.baara.com/q10

Q10 is freeware.

The installation under any flavour of Microsoft Windows is trivial.

However, Windows users might just want to read the next section to find out about the customisation options.

How to install it (Linux users)

I’ve installed it under Ubuntu, Debian (Lenny – very barebones – just base and then minimal Gnome as described somewhere on www.kmeckstein.com), Puppy and my current desktop system… Mint (obviously a Ubuntu derivative.)

It’s worked flawlessly under all systems.

For me, it worked fine if I let it install in the default directory (C:/Program files/Q10 – under the .wine directory) but I thought it would be better installing it directly in my writing directory.

It’s a single .EXE file (it does create an .ini file the first time you use it. As I didn’t want to use it in any language other than English, I deleted all the .lang files.

I didn’t want the spellchecker so I installed the version that didn’t have one.

It’s possible to have multiple copies of Q10 in the same directory (all with different names, of course.)

Each copy creates its own .ini file. This might be useful if you are working on several projects at the same time (and want different configurations for each.)

On my screen, it looks good with the default colours but I did prefer the font set to 15px.

Summary

Overall, I can see Q10 massively improving my writing experience.

The lack of distractions will keep me focussed and the portability of the output (you can’t beat plain text) means that the files I have to backup will be small and will be readable on pretty much every device I own.

It works fine under Linux (the scrollbar aside) and is a dream under Windows.

Why not give it a try.  Q10 is freeware and can be found at the author’s site… www.baara.com/q10

All the best

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Well, this is that place. It’s here that I’ll be talking about writing and reading and all those things that don’t fit in elsewhere. I do hope that you enjoy your time looking round here; you may even want to take a look at some of my other sites.

All the best

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