Archive for debian

My personal email setup

16/01/2009 at 06:31 · Filed under debian, evolution, linux ·Tagged

Unix has various powerful email tools. Unfortunately for me, most of it forces you to use command line or edit configuration files, which sounds unnecessary for a mere desktop user like me.

However, I find that I am using those tools because the weaknesses of my GUI email client, Evolution. It is a nice app, but it is very slow and often get unresponsive when handling IMAP. Combined to the fact that I often have slow ‘net connection, using it to read email sometimes is quite painful. Console email clients like mutt or even (Al)pine are perhaps faster, but I like the integration of evolution to PIM functions and the rest of GNOME desktop.

My first solution is using fetchmail, which is quite fast and capable to handle slow connections. The mail then delivered to local mailbox, which then read by Evolution. Because access to local mailboxes is fast, Evolution is behaving nicely. Fetchmail cannot handle IMAP folders though. I think fetchmail is more suited to POP accounts, although the original author of the software seems to hate POP.

Next solution is offlineimap, which copies and synchronises IMAP folders to Maildir mailboxes, which then can be handled by Evolution. Unlike fetchmail, offlineimap doesn’t support IMAP IDLE, but it can be worked around by put it into crontab.

I also learned to configure exim4 to treat Gmail SMTP server as smarthost relay. Now, on my iBook laptop I set Evolution up to send emails to SendmailExim. Fire and forget. Evolution doesn’t need to know whether Gmail SMTP server is up or not, because it is Exim’s job now. The result: I can close Evolution right after sending emails.

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Notes on Debian PPC installation

12/01/2009 at 19:00 · Filed under debian

I have been using Debian Lenny on my iBook for a few weeks already. It is great so far. It took some time to configure, but after that it is largely smooth sailing. Here is some notes about my experience with it.

I used Debian PPC netinstall for installation. That means command line interface only at first stage, no GNOME, or KDE. The rest was downloaded later through internet connection.

The iBook G4 only has 30 GB hard disk capacity. That is too small for dual boot for me. So I moved all important data on previous Mac OS X installation, readied it for Linux-only installation. Then I wiped out all the space on the hard disk.

The installation process ran with little problems. I decide to defer system updates (which can be done at installation time), to save time. After the installation finished I was greeted with bare, black screen of command line console.

Next step was to chose a desktop environment. I had experimented with KDE before, and didn’t really like it. So I installed GNOME. I only selected the core components (gnome-core), and picked the rest as needed. It took quite long time to stop fiddling with the applications and components. In the end, I am left with a nearly standard GNOME desktop, with some small modification. For instance, I choose Firefox, er, Iceweasel as default browser (not epiphany). I also don’t install gnome-games. The only game that exists on my iBook is Battle of Wesnoth.

Lenny uses GNOME 2.22, not the newest version (which is 2.24). This might be a minus for some people which wanted the latest and greatest. But I have been using it for a time (with Fedora 9), and I am quite content with it.

Problems

Debian Lenny itself is still yet to be formally released. But it is quite usable, and stable. There are some problems, but not too critical.

The first problem is NetworkManager, that, you guess it, manage networks automatically. I use it with my Fedora installation on my other laptop. I quite like it. The killer feature for me is the ability to handle 3G modem connections. Unfortunately this feature is only found at later versions of NetworkManager, that is, in 0.7. Debian Lenny includes version 0.6.6, which might be stable but already outdated. The solution is to enable experimental repository, and install the 0.7 NetworkManager from there. This forced me to learn about running mixed systems, and the art of apt-pinning.

Another problem is power management. GNOME power manager apparently work without problems in x86 architecture. But it has problems with PPC, at least on Debian. Lenny with gnome-power-manager failed to suspend on this iBook. After some googling I decided to uninstall gnome-power-manager and use powernowd and powerprefs for power management.

There is also lack of decent Flash plugin. Adobe don’t have their proprietary plugin for PPC Linux, and both swfdec and gnash don’t really cover much flash sites that well. Fortunately, Flash isn’t that critical for me.

Overall Debian Lenny on the iBook is quite a pleasure. It is very stable, and I am yet to crash it (unlike Fedora 9 on my other laptop). It feels faster and responsive than Mac OS X Tiger. It handles my ZTE 3G modem adequately (but better than OS X).

Unlike before, I think I will keep on using this Debian installation on my iBook.

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Installing Debian on an iBook

28/01/2008 at 13:59 · Filed under debian, laptop, linux

MacOS X is shiny, elegant and all, but it is excruciatingly slow on the iBook. Dog slow. Slow as molasses. It is barely usable. I think the culprit is the lack of RAM (it is only 256 MB). I know I should upgrade, but I am loath to spend money right now.

So I decided to install Debian Etch on this iBook.

What, another Linux?

Well, perhaps I will switch again to MacOS X after upgrading memory. Later. Right now I want an usable laptop. “Usable” and “Linux” sounds like oxymoron, but I am quite comfortable with Linux than with Mac OS X. Besides, I am curious about using Linux on other platform than x86.

I downloaded the network installer, burned it on a CD. I copied some data I already accumulated in the laptop to a flash disk. Then I begin the net install.

It was surprisingly easy. The iBook booted from the installer disc without problems. I let the installer wiped out the Mac OS X installation and put a minimal Debian system. I edited sources.list to use the University of Indonesia Debian mirror, then I installed a minimal KDE system by typing aptitude install kde-core.

The problems: hotkeys were not recognised, and the wi-fi was not working. The first was easy to solve, just install pbbutton package. The latter is rather difficult. Apple use Broadcom chipset for the Airport Express card. The driver is included in 2.6.18 kernel, but the firmware is not distributed. After some googling found the solution is to install the bcm4xx-fwcutter package. I did just that but it failed to download the firmware, so I have to install the firmware manually.

Unfortunately, KNetworkManager seems unable to detect the access point at work. Back to the command line. I run iwlist command which detected one of the office’s access points. But it cannot associate with the Broadcom chipset.

Another difficulty is right clicking. In Mac OS X I can emulate it with Ctrl + click, but it doesn’t work in Linux.

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Switching (again)

08/11/2007 at 07:33 · Filed under debian, linux

The Fedora installation only lasted days. The new features are nice, but I hate some of the annoying bugs. It couldn’t detect my SD card (again). And yum is really slow.

I burned Debian testing net install iso to a CD, rebooted, and wiped out the Fedora installation. I chose minimal install(meaning: no X, no gnome). I ran out time and only chose to add basic networking software needed to work with my cellular PC card modem. Last night I spent time surfing with lynx :D

Today I continue the installation. Hopefully I will get a minimal gnome desktop with Abiword, Tomboy and Evolution installed.

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