CrunchBang Installation

So you decide one day that you want to use Linux. Thats Awesome! You already have my respect. My post could help you decide which one you want to dive into. Doesn’t matter if you want to go with Ubuntu or Linux Mint or more lightweight ones like Xubuntu, Bodhi or CrunchBang(#!). What you need now is some step by step tutorial to guide you through the process. The installation procedure for most distros is the same more or less.

I stumbled upon http://www.distrogeeks.com/ and they seem to have a huge list of how-tos for most of the linux flavors that you might be exploring. I read though this and realized that it is a really simple, straightforward, well explained guide to installing Crunchbang.

Go ahead start probing for the install instructions for your favorite distro.

Coming back to the Crunchbang installation, I am simply trying to list some observations here while I go through the steps explained in the post.
i. You might want to boot from USB rather than writing the ISO to a dvd. After installation is successful the dvd is as good as a coaster, so why waste one!
ii. For pt 12 of the tutorial, the installer is asking to use the entire disk for #! installation. Although this is good for newbies, more advanced users can opt for Manual option and select the partitions where they would like to install the OS.
iii. Pt 14 mentions partitioning scheme. Installing everything in one partition is good for starters but going ahead, you could manage your partitions differently.

That brings me to two things you need to know before or during any installation.

1) Booting from USB
Its very easy to convert ISO to a bootable USB. Precise instructions found on this page will help you do that.

Of course this needs your machine to have the boot from USB option. What!? Your machine does not have a Boot from USB option since its quite old? Fret not. I found a work around for this. The answer is PLOP Boot manager by Elmar Hanlhofer. Download the manager from here

I have tried the version 5.0.14 since the newer one seems to be still under test. But no harm. 5.0.14 works just fine. Unzip the contents. You will find a tiny iso ~500 kb. Write that to a cd and use that to boot your machine. After booting the PLOP manager from cd, it will let you choose “Boot from USB” and like magic the linux installation from your USB will start loading. Sweet!

2) Partitioning Disk for Linux installation
During setup, you can choose to remove existing partitions and create new ones to suit your installation need. Here is what i did.
a. Created a  partition of about 12 GB which will be mounted as root “/”. This is where the system files will get installed.
b. Another partition of about 60 GB to be mounted as “/home” which will house all my data, music, videos etc
c. And a small 2.5 GB for linux swap. Roughly about the same size as my RAM.

This way if I need to reinstall linux or install Ubuntu, i could choose to install the system onto the first partition mounted as root “/” and leave the /home untouched. That way the data is intact.

As you can see, the specs of my machine are fairly low and CrunchBang installation is truly justified. I plan to cover gparted in a separate post. So stay tuned for that!

I suppose with that you will be better equipped when you do you Linux installation. Happy tinkering!

Linux isn’t just for “Geeks”

I was chatting online with my friend. He liked the blog and was curious about Linux in general. We got chatting and I found myself answering his newbie questions and trying to explain that Linux isn’t all that geeky. Its pretty simple even for daily use. Curious already? Read on…

(10:26:16 IST) Amit : hmm kaustubh nice article and inspiring one for those using Linux.. u should have shown something to me when I was ur home.
(10:27:04 IST) Amit : I find even apple desktop screen similar to linux
(10:27:21 IST) Amit : does Apple OS too uses linux?
(10:27:33 IST) Kaustubh: no no. apple is Mac OS
(10:28:02 IST) Amit : ya I know but there should b some common platform isn’t?
(10:28:17 IST) Kaustubh: depends…
(10:28:24 IST) Kaustubh: some apps work on all OSs
(10:28:28 IST) Amit : I have zero knowledge in softwares so pls don’t mind my Q?
(10:28:43 IST) Kaustubh: haha never mind
(10:28:54 IST) Kaustubh: linux means free software
(10:29:10 IST) Kaustubh: so you will always find something or the other which suits your need
(10:29:18 IST) Kaustubh: and the things will be free
(10:29:25 IST) Kaustubh: just download and install
(10:29:32 IST) Amit : thats good
(10:29:38 IST) Amit : great
(10:30:03 IST) Amit : then why its not widely used?
(10:30:24 IST) Kaustubh: many people see linux as “geeks only”
(10:30:32 IST) Kaustubh: and that you need deep knowledge for using it
(10:30:52 IST) Kaustubh: but many linux installations are very user friendly
(10:31:07 IST) Kaustubh: if my dad can use it any one can.
(10:31:25 IST) Kaustubh: and for him it doesnt matter if he is on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Crunchbang
(10:31:47 IST) Amit : hmm
(10:32:00 IST) Kaustubh: as long as he is able to find his regular apps
(10:32:11 IST) Kaustubh: like firefox, libre office suite etc
(10:32:22 IST) Kaustubh: he just needs net and office apps
(10:32:33 IST) Amit : nice to see that
(10:33:01 IST) Kaustubh: though he may not find something that he just downloaded… thats coz he may not be able to find his way with the linux file system
(10:33:19 IST) Kaustubh: but that also he is getting used to
(10:33:20 IST) Amit : well I am happy to use Mac .. for linux I need to reborn again…
(10:33:47 IST) Kaustubh: hmm…
(10:34:14 IST) Kaustubh: all it takes is some effort initially… but once you get a hang of it… its pretty easy to use
(10:34:28 IST) Kaustubh: like whats the chat app that you are using on your side for this?
(10:34:41 IST) Kaustubh: or are you on facebook webpage?
(10:35:13 IST) Amit : yes I m on Facebook webpage.. why?
(10:35:48 IST) Kaustubh: ok. nothing. just that i have Pidgin installed on my side. which is a free multi service chat client
(10:36:02 IST) Kaustubh: one shop stop for my gmail, facebook and yahoo contacts for chat
(10:36:12 IST) Amit : wow
(10:36:22 IST) Amit : all at same time!!!
(10:36:41 IST) Kaustubh: so what you type on web is seen on my side in a native app
(10:36:47 IST) Kaustubh: and works seamlessly
(10:37:09 IST) Kaustubh: so why bother with whats installed… as long as it serves the functionality
(10:38:06 IST) Kaustubh: linux aims to give that functionality
(10:38:13 IST) Kaustubh: and for free!!
(10:38:15 IST) Kaustubh: 🙂
(10:38:38 IST) Amit : can linux install on mobiles ?
(10:38:52 IST) Kaustubh: !!! android is linux at its core 😛
(10:39:10 IST) Kaustubh: also you have ubuntu coming for phones
(10:39:13 IST) Amit : oh is it???
(10:39:27 IST) Amit : hmm
(10:39:47 IST) Amit : thats why androids are more free apps isn’t?
(10:40:18 IST) Kaustubh: android has a large community. so people can develop and make apps available
(10:40:30 IST) Kaustubh: some may charge for it. some will give it for free
(10:40:31 IST) Amit : but I heard android is not safe as OS mobiles?
(10:40:49 IST) Kaustubh: that i am not sure of
(10:41:08 IST) Amit : is linux safe against viruses?
(10:41:19 IST) Kaustubh: most sure about that.
(10:41:53 IST) Kaustubh: there are almost no viruses designed for linux
(10:41:58 IST) Kaustubh: they are mostly for windows.
(10:42:08 IST) Kaustubh: which can exploit OS loopholes

And the chat drifted onto other topics that we got busy with. I thought I could put it up here just so that anyone who is willing to learn a bit about Linux can easily adopt to things and get a hang of it soon. You dont have to be “geeky” about it. If my dad can use it, so can everyone else.

Eye Candy For CrunchBang #!

Since my latest linux installation is CrunchBang and that is what I intend to keep for a near foreseeable future, most of my blog posts will be based on it. Snapshots, tips and tricks, hacks that I will add here are all based on my setup of CrunchBang but can just as easily be added onto other distros.

The Desktop

CrunchBang installation has a very dark theme and the default wallpapers are not that exciting. So the first activity might as well be to change them to something more interesting, colorful that suits you. I came across these wonderful images on DeviantArt and have come to believe that these are some of the best wallpapers that I have ever seen and used. Visit http://pyr0sky.deviantart.com/gallery/ for some really beautiful wallpapers for your desktop. You can use the Nitrogen application in Openbox to change the wallpapers.

Conky

The default conky settings are good but who really likes the information put up in a mundane way. I came across a wonderful conky manager application which has excellent themes preinstalled and are quite configurable. Conky manager can be found here. This makes it very easy to switch between themes and customize them to your hearts content. For those bold enough to dive into the conky configuration files, you would always tweak the config file as per your requirements. Detailed understanding of what you are doing would be expected here.

Openbox themes and Icons

Once again the default openbox themes are bland and very dark which do not suit my taste. Head over to box-look.org for many open box themes which you can install. Also flat themes are very popular nowadays. Check flatstudio and shaven two. I find these two themes to compliment each other very well. The widgets from flatstudio give a very modern look to the linux installation and the open box theme shaven two go well with the application windows. Check out these images from my machine.

Along with the themes, another eye candy is of course the icons. A lot can be found online. I have searched and finally settled down for few of these icon sets – Flattr, FS Icons and Faenza for crunchbang. Installing them is fairly simple and has a huge impact on the look and feel of #!

Also take a peek at my other post about LXLE. I came across couple more openbox themes and icons sets which will look great on Crunchbang as well.

Dockbar for launching applications

Cairo Dock is a very popular dock but on Crunchbang we’d like to keep things lightweight. And so a worthy alternative here is the AdeskBar which is a less flashy but very customizable dock bar for openbox. It is very easy to configure and add effect on mouse over for some extra eye candy. Edit : After using ADeskBar for some time, I switched to Cairo Dock, for a more eye pleasing experience.

Openbox menu

Openbox is designed to have all the applications in a menu which can be invoked by a right click. This menu and its sub menus are highly configurable and can be edited to suit your needs. You could add your application in here, browse disk contents from here, access the open box settings, conky settings.. all at the click of the right button. The open box menu file is an xml and someone with decent understanding of xml can work their by tweaking it as required. Right Click >> Settings >> Openbox >> Edit menu.xml. Restart Openbox from the same menu after making required changes.

That’s about it. A quick primer into converting an otherwise dull and boring Crunchbang desktop into something more vibrant and shiny. It makes using Crunchbang even more fun.

Tweak these options some more and you get a totally new desktop like this

So go ahead try these out and tweak #! to your hearts content!

Another screenshot showing few changes to icons and conky display font colors.

EDIT: Check out my other post about LXLE as well. While exploring open box themes for LXLE, I found few others which completely overhaul the look and feel. These would look excellent on Crunchbang as well. Check it out!

apt-get is your friend

No sooner have you installed your distro, you have to get to the terminal and start typing some cli command for installing new packages etc. CLI can be intimidating for newbies. But it is nothing to fret about or be afraid. Befriending the CLI environment will help you cruise the linux landscapes with good measure of confidence.

APT is the default package management tool available for debian. APT or the Advanced Packaging Tool is what will install/remove new packages onto your system. One can also install directly from a deb package using the dpkg command. We will come to that later.

All the apt commands are run using the superuser privileges and thus have to be preceded by ‘sudo’. The commonly used ones are discussed here –

• sudo apt-get install <package_name> – will install the mentioned package and its dependencies from the repositories.
• sudo apt-get remove <package_name> – will remove the package and other dependencies from the current installation>
• sudo apt-get autoremove – will find and remove unused packages from the system. Please use with extreme care as it can remove something which is otherwise important. In my case, I had managed to uninstall the network-manager and thus could not get online unless I had fixed this issue. More on that in another post.
• sudo apt-get update – will reload all package information from the repositories. Useful command to run when you have recently added some repository url and want to install some package from the new repository.
• sudo apt-get check – used for diagnostics and checks if any dependencies are missing.
• sudo apt-get autoclean – removes .deb files for unused packages from the archives. This can help you reclaim some precious space on hard drive.

These are handy commands which any one can use to get by with installing/managing/removing packages from the terminal. Another worthy command here is the ‘dpkg’. Say you managed to get a .deb file downloaded from some location and want to install it. Its dpkg command to the rescue. Simply run it as ‘sudo dpkg -i <deb file>’. It will prompt you for any missing dependencies, version mismatches. If so, try installing the dependencies first and retry the deb file again. Also something like ‘sudo dpkg -i *.deb’ will install all deb files from the current directory. Thats a faster way to get packages installed in bulk.

This is just a small quick ref guide to the apt-get command. If you are still afraid to venture onto the terminal, try the Synaptic package manager or any other manager with UI to help to install packages.

The Distro Hopping Story

Ubuntu 9.10 was the first ever Linux distribution I attempted to install and got it running on my laptop without much hassle. The window to exploring Linux was thrown wide open. (Get the pun!?). So the promise, that its easy for noobs to start working with, was well-kept. I also got hold of a pocket guide to ubuntu to get me started on day-to-day things. The ebook can be found here . What you read and learn from this book is pretty much applicable to any debian based distro you use.

For an average user, you are probably only interested in checking mails, browsing the web, listening to music, watching movies. Thats about it. Linux caters to these needs perfectly and once you get a hang of it, you can say goodbye to Windows.

No sooner I had made myself comfortable with Ubuntu, the next release was out. The 10.04 which was a LTS. LTS stands for long-term support. Though I didn’t care to understand what that really meant, I upgraded nonetheless and was happy with a new shiny installation. And I did the same for next release 10.10 as well.

What I was doing here was mindlessly jumping onto the next version without much thought. Getting carried away with the excitement of installing something latest and almost always starting from a clean swipe of my hard disk, which led to a painstakingly lengthy process of installing all my favorite software back onto the new system. Now I wonder was it really necessary? You will find discussion and debate over this topic in abundance on the net. Check this one.

When Ubuntu came out with the unity interface, it just killed my enthusiasm and I started looking around for something better but just as familiar as Ubuntu. Linux Mint was the obvious choice. It also came with many codecs pre-installed so flash or mp3 would play out of the box. I liked that and stuck with Mint 11 for quite come time.

Mint also has had its share of controversies mainly because of the desktop environments it wanted to use. Over time you will see that the DE they have, forked in to Gnome3, Mate and Cinnamon. Each one having its pros and cons. But all the fuss over a fancy desktop experience didn’t excite me. Cinnamon was good, but drove me nuts with errors like a frozen screen or a frozen mouse. I never got to a work around with it and decided that it was time to move on, try something new.

By then, the buzz over lightweight distros had caught my eye. My laptop was already getting old. I bought it back on 2006 and had no plans of upgrading it anytime soon. So a Linux system which was light on resources would have been ideal for me. I looked around. Found Puppy and Bodhi which fit the bill. Although they installed well and ran fast on my machine, they did not have enough software to get me by my daily computing needs. I found myself adding more and more software onto the base installation and bloating my setup. Finally decided to chuck them for Xubuntu. Xubuntu seemed to balance the software needs and still make the machine nifty fast.

The Xubuntu version that I installed was 12.04. It did what it promised. Gave me the stability, was pretty light on the system thanks to the xfce desktop environment. Thus I was back on ubuntu with xfce installed. I was happy with it until the day when things crashed. I was trying package upgrades for the distro and the laptop lost power when the upgrades were being applied. I powered up again but it was too late. The damage was done. Xubuntu simply refused to start up and had lot of inconsistencies in the setup.

But that’s the beauty of things I guess. This mishap couldn’t have come at a better time. I started looking around again for a worthy release which was as stable and didn’t require frequent updates. Maybe a rolling release would also suit my needs, so that I don’t have to re-install newer version of a distro every time. Thats how I landed onto the crunchbang homepage. It’s an uber cool name for a distro and the reviews I read convinced me that this is what I can use for a forseeable future.

Thats how my distro hopping has come to a brief halt, I would say. Its been a crazy ride from Ubuntu to Linux Mint to Puppy to Bodhi to Xubuntu. I even tried Fedora. But it was pretty much a forgettable experience. After all the experimentation, Crunchbang is here to stay. Its stable, its nimble, its amazingly customizable, its fun!

In retrospect, here is what I think can be someones road map to the Linux world. Get to know any debian based distro. Xubuntu in particular will be more welcoming to Windows users. Learn the way a linux os works. So that once you are comfortable with it and feel like advancing ahead, make a switch to something more exciting like Crunchbang. Keep things like Puppy handy. I have that nifty little thing as a rescue disk. Does the job and keeps me happy.

Ubuntu! I am going to learn Ubuntu!

I ventured into the Linux world about 4 years ago. It was actually a spoof video by the College Humor guys on YouTube that made me all the more curious to check Ubuntu out! XP had done its fair share to drive me nuts already. The blue screen of death was soon becoming second nature and part of everyday computing experience.

Just then this viral video surprised me with its crisp humor, apt adaptation and a very likable spoof of my favorite movie – The Matrix. Check out the video for yourself.

In the end when Neo says  “Ubuntu! I am going to learn Ubuntu!”, I said to myself “Why not?” and soon found myself on the homepage of ubuntu.com

Its been four years since, and I havent turned back to Windows. Am happy tinkering with Linux and all its flavors.