On Thursday September 14, 2006 I purchased a used IBM ThinkPad T23 laptop. This blog is for notes about that laptop.
This part of the blog is for Gentoo Linux running on the T23.
There's a T23 Blog for the T23 in general and the Ubuntu 6.10 7.04 distribution I'm running while I learn Gentoo.
It seems to me that Gentoo is the ideal Linux for a laptop. "Why," you might ask, "would you want to have to do all that compiling on your laptop?"
Consider that fact that you end up with an optimized OS (important if your laptop is less powerful than other PCs you may have access to), and that your laptop is likely used only sporadically, leaving plenty of time for "all that compiling." Sounds perfect to me!
Today I got non-trivial action out of each step in the update process. I was a little surprised that, considering the number of packages that were upgraded, the kernel wasn't touched.
# emerge portage
# emerge system
# emerge world
# emerge --update --deep --newuse world
# emerge --depclean
# revdep-rebuildWhen all was said and done Gentoo continued to work just fine.
Both Gentoo and Ubuntu are now happily running on vmlinuz-2.6.22-gentoo-r9, and have been, actually, since 31-Oct.
I built linux-2.6.22-gentoo-r2 and it runs just fine, thank you very much. I'm not sure if I messed up the config file on 2.6.21 or not, but I used my .config file from 2.6.20, ran make oldconfig, answered the questions sensibly (it seemed to me), and when I booted the new kernel, /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/ was back!
It did throw some error messages about the wireless adapter, when I booted with that PC Card installed, but wireless worked just fine. I suppose I should pay attention to the error messages and chase the issue a little.
I've yet to boot Ubuntu using the new kernel. When I do that successfully I guess I can yard out 2.6.20. And 2.6.21 can go any time.
Running Ubuntu under 2.6.22-gentoo-r2 now.
A recent emerge brought down kernel source for linux-2.6.22-gentoo-r2. I'm still running 2.6.20 because when I built 2.6.21, /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/ disappeared, and that's critical for me to know what's going on with the battery when I'm using the T23 on my commute (which I do nearly every morning and evening).
If I get a chance either this evening at home or tomorrow at work I'll build 2.6.22 and see if /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/ reappears.
Today I was offered kernel source for 2.6.21-gentoo-r4. I emerged and built it and lost /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0. I did the obvious things, looking for and resolving differences between the .config files, but so far, no luck. For the time being I've gone back to 2.6.20-gentoo-r8.
One thing I did notice is that I don't seem to be able to turn off PNP support in the new kernel config. At least not using make menuconfig. I suppose I could try make config and make xconfig and see if either of those works.
make config only provides the opions Y/?, and I don't know how to access the help.
I've got the second drive installed in the UltraBay and decided to try copying the Xubuntu partition from /dev/hda4 to /dev/hdc6 and then touching up /etc/fstab on hdc6 and /boot/grub/grub.conf on the Gentoo partition, and see if I could boot the hdc version of Xubuntu.
My memory could use some assistance. I seem to remember using pax for this sort of thing and it's not installed. I also seem to remember some alternatives in the Linux How-To, but it's not installed either.
Without pax I used cp -a for the /etc/ subdirectory and it worked. Symbolic links have new dates. I wonder if that happens with any of the methods?
emerge app-arch/pax
emerge app-doc/howto-htmlInterestingly enough, the Hard Disk Upgrade Mini How-To only describes using cp -a to do the copy. They do mention that they used to show a method using tar, but that it had a bug. I recall a method using cpio and, of course, the aforementioned pax. The cp -a method seems to work fine.
emerge conky conky-syntax
emerge --unmerge jwm dfm idesk emelfm gentootkdiff (it's no longer masked).emerge virtual/pcmcia (I think this is sensible. It's tied to sys-apps/pcmciautils)idesk.gimageview? How do I view movies?mpd and pympd, and I need to get them set up.bplaycdplay and madplayrealplayer?abcde and (if one doesn't come with) an ID3 tag editor.sc working.$HOME, made a couple of edits, built sc and put it in /usr/local/bin.conky? yesslrn? Do I ever read usenet news anymore? If only occasionally, I should probably use Google Groups.minicom./etc/X11/xorg.conf.jwm and some of the X file managers I've auditioned. I'm going to keep xfe.jwmdfmideskemelfmgentooxtdesk (compiled from source, just remove /usr/local/bin/xtdesk)pann@t23 ~ $ sudo /usr/bin/mpd --create-db
pann@t23 ~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/mpd start
* Starting Music Player Daemon ...emerge ghostscript
emerge --unmerge ssmtp
emerge esmtp
emerge urlview
emerge xfce4
emerge jwm
emerge dnsmasq
emerge DateTime-TimeZone
emerge TimeDate
emerge gqview
emerge netkit-telnetd
emerge mpd pympdIf I'm going to use IceWM for Grandma Linux, I'll need some sort of desktop icon manager and/or file manager. From the dark recesses of memory:
emerge dfm
dfm gives me both worlds all right, but no way is it Grandma-friendly.
The more I look at xfce and thunar, the more inclined I am to go in that direction. I certainly haven't found xfce configuration to be intuitive, but that can be overcome. I now have both Vector Linux and Xubuntu installed on the T23, so I can certainly explore.
javaI'm not really sure what I'm doing with java. I read something on the Gentoo website and decided to get current.
emerge =virtual/jdk-1.4* emerge virtual/jdk $ java -version java version "1.5.0_11" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_11-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_11-b03, mixed mode)
I guess the older version is being kept around in case it's needed by some other application.
I'm not happy with idesk, rox, or xtdesktop. I guess I should try some panels next.
x11-misc/fbpanelx11-misc/fspanelx11-misc/perlpanelx11-misc/pypanelx11-misc/suxpanelOnly perlpanel brings in a boatload of dependencies.
xtdesktopGoogle helped me find the error that was preventing xtdestop from compiling, so now I have it installed and can try it out. I also decided to audition a couple of file managers in addition to xfe. While I was at it I decided to have a look at the lua scripting language.
emerge lua
emerge emelfm
emerge gentooI'm pretty sure that under Damn Small Linux a single click launches a program from the desktop. I wonder if that's a patched version of xtdesk or a configuration option in fluxbox?
Well, idesk is broken (the docs don't match the source) and doesn't have many features. There is no Gentoo package for xtdesktop (and it won't compile out of the box). I installed rox, but it makes no more sense to me than the last time I played with it several years ago.
I'm back to ground zero. I did find out about Xdialog which is very cool. I built a script at work to copy a boatload of CDs one at a time, prompting the user to remove and replace the CD at the appropriate time. Works a treat!
I did get a bunch of nice icons with the idesktop-extras tarball, but I don't know what I'm going to do with them.
I guess I'll look at lua and that mount tool from Damn Small Linux.
I like xfe OK, and emelfm is available for Gentoo. I'll probably audition that.
emerge xfe
emerge app-arch/rar app-arch/lha
emerge idesk
emerge xdialog
emerge rox
I'm playing with some desktop apps in anticipation of building Grandma Linux.
I also added imlib to my USE variable in make.conf prior to the emerge -auDN world command pursuant to my regular weekly update.
I needed to emerge x11-misc/xdialog for the idesk demo to work.
I'm using subversion on SourceForge.net, so I've settled on a GUI client.
emerge rapidsvn
I also added truetype to my USE flags in /etc/make.conf and after rebuilding the packages impacted by that addition, decided to give rxvt-unicode another try. I'd like to get terminal appearance similar to that available to me under Ubuntu (while still supporting utf-8).
emerge rxvt-unicode
So far, I haven't figured out how to tell either xterm or rxvt to use the Bitstream Vera font set, and rxvt is butt-ugly if I give it the same options I give xterm.