17apr13

= 17 April 2013 LUG meeting notes =

We held our first GNU/Linux User group meeting of the year 2013 on 17April from 17:30 to 19:00 in room 253 at EUMETSAT.

My notes for this meeting is below.

Administrative
We decided that we would defer the review of administrative matters (obtaining a consensus for appointing club executive for the year) to the next meeting. I’ve been looking after this task since club inception, but I also note I am happy for someone else to fulfil this administrative role. Because we do not have financial requirements/tracking and because the club membership is small, we have president/secretary/treasurer (for non-existent funds) rolled into the one position.

We also had a couple of ESOC members attend our meeting for the 1st time, so we spent a bit of time chatting about our various GNU/Linux backgrounds. At this session we had Ubuntu, Linux Mint and openSUSE GNU/Linux users present.

Android GNU/Linux Smart phones
A few of our club membership have purchased Chinese Android Smart phones, in part based on research the club did on Chinese smart phone suppliers in Oct/Nov last year. Specifically we briefly looked at these two phones:
 * Newman N1 Smart Phone http://www.etotalk.com/newman-n1-gorilla-glass-ecompass-android40-dual-core10ghz-3g-dual-sim-43qhd-ips_p3115.html
 * Zopo ZP500+ Smart Phones http://www.zopomobileshop.com/en/51-zopo-500-libero-plus-mtk6577-dual-core-ics-smartphone.html

Both smart phones have been rooted, providing administrator permissions to the phone owners.

The advantage of Chinese Android Smart phones is they tend to be less expensive and have significantly superior performance than slightly more expensive western Android Smart phones. The disadvantage of Chinese smart phones is if they fail/break, the shipping back to China (under warrantee) can be relatively very expensive. It was noted that for some of the Chinese Smart phones, European suppliers are starting to appear and that could n the future help mitigate this warrantee shipping risk.

The Chinese Smart Phones noted above (Newman/Zopo) have relatively similar functionality, with both being quad band, dual sim, dual core, running Android-4.0.4 (I believe). The main difference is the Newman N1 has 1GB RAM (instead of the 512MB RAM in the Zopo ZP500+) and the ZP500+ has 850/2100 MHz data frequencies (for some North American data coverage and some European/Asian data coverage) while the Newman N1 has 900/2100 MHz frequencies (for better European/Asian data coverage, but no North American data coverage). The Newman N1 also has the stronger Gorilla glass, while the ZP500+ does not. Both phones have a 16GB micro SD card added by their owners. I noted I had previous a 32GB micro SD card in the phone, but after 4 months of use that 32GB micro SD card failed. There have been Internet posts that Android-4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) may not be 100% compatible with 32GB SD cards and that incompatibility can lead to premature 32GB micro SD card failures. But both 16GB micro SD cards work well.

The GPS and Bluetooth in the ZP500+ works well. The Newman N1’s GPS/Bluetooth was not yet tested by the owner.

Some of the research for the Chinese suppliers of Android Smart phones was sent out last year in the Nov/December time frame (just in time for Christmas). The club research on Android Smart phones and applications is in part (but not yet completely) copied to our new club website:
 * http://lug.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Android-smartphone-page-01
 * http://lug.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Android-smartphone-page-02

Android GNU/Linux Applications
We chatted about some applications, where I noted the application that I use a lot (since I do not own an automobile) is Öffi Stations: (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.oeffi&hl=en ) which provides good German bus schedules (for many German cities, including Darmstadt). It can use a 3G connection and the GPS in one’s Android to provide one an indication of the closest bus stops and constant updates as to the bus arrival times.

Eugenio noted he has his Newman N1 Android GNU/Linux smart phone setup as a bit of a multimedia control station, albeit I confess the details of this were lost on me. Perhaps when he has time Eugenio could reply with a summary description as to what he has setup.

There were also some Android / vnc discussions, but I missed most of what was discussed there.

Live-fat-stick (USB .iso file boot)
We then looked at the live-fat-stick application ( https://github.com/cyberorg/live-fat-stick ), and demonstrated a laptop a boot to a 64-bit Ubuntu iso, a 64-bit Linux Mint .iso (MATED version) and openSUSE 12.3 KDE iso. [presentation is attached].

This was demonstrated on a USB-3.0 memory stick to a Dell laptop (Core2Duo P8400 with 4GB RAM and Radeon HD3450 hardware) where for the demo the .iso files on the USB stick are booted, similar to how they would be booted from a liveCD. Any application installed during the live USB boot session in fact goes in to RAM (similar to when using a liveCD) and upon shutdown/reboot such an application is lost. Hence such a USB stick is more useful for installing GNU/Linux on a PC/laptop that has no CD drive. Or useful for playing with a GNU/Linux variant without installing on one’s hard drive.

During the meeting I attempted to setup a similar setup on a smaller/older USB-2.0 memory stick, from this openSUSE laptop, but rather have Ubuntu as the grub boot manager on the USB stick (instead of openSUSE). This is the legacy grub (and not grub2). I failed to succeed with setting up a Ubuntu grub boot manager configured USB stick during the meeting. I believe this is due to one needing to setup the Ubuntu grub boot manager implementation (on the USB stick) from an existing Ubuntu install, and not from an existing openSUSE install.

I also tried to add a Knoppix .iso boot to the liveUSB stick. I succeeded in adding the Knoppix iso to the grub boot menu, but I failed to get the Knoppix iso to boot from the USB stick. It was observed that the likely reason is that Knoppix specific grub menu boot options needed to be added to the openSUSE grub boot manager options line, and likely if some time was spent trialling the different boot codes (and specify the kernel location within the knoppix .iso) that this would have been possible. But we did not pursue that further in the meeting.

See also below in Post Meeting Notes for further investigation into the Live-fat-stick

MS-Windows applications under GNU/Linux
We also had some chats about Photoshop, wine, and Virtual Box (https://www.virtualbox.org/ ), wrt the email exchange we had previous about running MS-Windows applications in GNU/Linux. I started up Virtual Box (running winXP) on a Dell laptop (Core2Duo P8400 with 4GB RAM and Radeon HD3450 hardware) illustrating that it runs fine in Virtual Box. Hence one has full access to all MS-Windows applications via Virtual box if desired. My view on this is while Virtual Box with WinXP (or other Windows OS) typically provides superb compatibility with the MS-Windows application, there can be a performance hit which is not always desirable. It also either adds extra steps to start up the application, or to setup the application.

What I did not note in the meeting, is it is possible to setup Virtual Box (and VMWare) such that one simply clicks on an MS-Windows application icon on one’s desktop, and that in turn automatically launches the application running inside Virtual Box/WinXP (where no further ‘clicks’ are needed for startup and that can be mostly user transparent). The advantage here is one does not need to reboot one’s PC to MS-Windows to run the MS-Windows app, but rather can run it directly.

My experience with MS-Windows applications running in GNU/Linux under wine (based on ‘autostitch’ and ‘VirtualDub’ applications) is that if their functionality works under wine, they they run as fast if not faster than under MS-Windows. But compatibility / functionality is a big issue. Typically one can visit the wineHQ site (http://www.winehq.org/ ) by visiting their application database (http://appdb.winehq.org/ ) to obtain information on the compatibility of an MS-Windows app with wine. For example, Adobe Photoshop: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17

Canon Scanner under GNU/Linux
We also had discussions on a specific Canon Scanner belonging to one of our club members, which only functions under MS-Windows and not under GNU/Linux. I noted it is possible to setup Virtual Box running under GNU/Linux (with the important additional Virtual Box extension pack installed) such that Virtual Box will access a USB device directly. I noted that with such a setup in place GNU/Linux will not in fact then see the USB device and I believe MS-Windows in Virtual Box will have direct access. ie Only the hosted operating system in Virtual Box (such as WinXP) would see the device. I proposed that this could be a way to have the Scanner accessible (from WinXP within Virtual Box) while GNU/Linux is running without having to reboot to MS-Windows to use the scanner (but rather clicking on the scanner icon within GNU/Linux could launch Virtual Box/WinXP and the scanning application within a single window). This was noted to be untested and speculative and would need to be investigated to see if it would work.

Upcoming EUMETSAT clubs general assembly and Next Club Meeting
I noted on Monday 22-April, there will be a General Assembly at EUMETSAT over the lunch break timeframe, where EUMETSAT and ESOC social club representatives would be present to chat about their clubs and provide a pamphlet, etc ....

I would thus like to have our second EUMETSAT GNU/Linux group meeting within 2 to 3 weeks of that 22-April EUMETSAT general assembly, so as to take advantage of anyone who may express interest in joining the club. I will send out the typical doodle poll (http://www.doodle.com/ ) to try and select a good meeting date for this second year 2013 meeting.

I also noted that any member can call/arrange a club GNU/Linux meeting, and it does NOT have to be the Club Executive-president doing so. I’ve simply taken the lead in the past as part of an effort to keep the club alive/and keep the information exchange (on GNU/Linux) flowing/continuing. But I’ll also happily attend any meeting arranged by anyone else. 

If I missed summarizing some points that we think useful to record, please reply to this email with details. In the next week or two I’ll endeavour to post a version of the meeting summary on our GNU/Linux user group web site: http://lug.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Lee

. . = Post Meeting Notes =

Further live-fat-stick attempts
During the last LUG meeting I tried to setup the live-fat-stick with a Ubuntu USB grub boot, using an openSUSE installation on my laptop to create the USB contents. I did not succeed during the LUG meeting and I believe this is because live-fat-stick uses the installed OS information when setting up the live-fat-stick. I was fairly certain that the case, although I note now there may be some other 32-bit limitation with other GNU/Linux distributions.

This weekend, in an attempt to prove to myself that live-fat-stick application had no 32-bit installation limitations, using the EUMETSAT ancient laptop (which is successfully running openSUSE-12.3 Tumbleweed version with the 3.8.x kernel) I installed on a USB stick the live-fat-stick application with openSUSE legacy grub implementation. Then I successfully booted to both openSUSE-12.3 XFCE (rescue) liveUSB .iso file and also successfully booted to the openSUSE-12.3 KDE liveUSB .iso file (both .iso files on the USB stick). I note though that the folks at SuSE-GmbH have done something different wrt their kernel implementation than Ubuntu/Linux Mint, as when I tried to boot to the Ubuntu-12.10 and also to the Linux Mint 14.1-Mate 32-bit ISO files I obtained this error with Ubuntu and Mint:

"This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae. Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for you CPU."

A boot with Mint and Ubuntu thus failed.

LUG laptop specs
Our LUG laptop has a 1.6 GHz CPU (Intel Pentium M Processor 725) (on a HP Compaq NC4010 notebook with 500MB RAM and 4xAGP Radeon IGP 350M [1002:4337] graphic hardware).

subsequent research on non-PAE kernels
Subsequent research indicated to me that Ubuntu-12.10 and GNU/Linux distributions based on that Ubuntu version do not support 32-bit non-PAE CPU's in their offered kernels.

I confirmed that assessment when reading a comment in the the thread https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2012-May/035176.html where for Ubuntu versions after version 12.04, the thread notes that : "The folks in case 2 are simply out of luck (and no longer supported)." ie reference this case-2, if the user's own an old PC with a 32-bit CPU that does not support PAE (such as our old EUMETSAT LUG test laptop) then they are out of luck wrt the latest Ubuntu versions and also out of luck with other distributions which are built on Ubuntu-12.10 (such as Linux Mint 14.1).

Some more Ubuntu information on the PAE kernel: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnablingPAE

One work around for such old hardware, for Ubuntu/Linux-Mint fans is to not go for the latest Ubuntu/Mint but instead use the LTS version of those distributions. In particular Linx Mint for the Linux Mint 13 LTS release provided a non-PAE kernel on the the 32-bit ISOs with support until April 2017. Linux Mint reference: http://www.linuxmint.com/oldreleases.php. wrt Ubuntu I believe (not sure) that the Ubuntu-12.04.2 LTS functions with non-PAE kernels, where 12.04.2 will be supported until April-2017.

If one does want the latest kernel with latest apps, then currently SuSE-GmbH in their latest openSUSE releases still support 32-bit non-pae kernels. I do not know how long that will last for (I don't think SuSE-GmbH have decided yet either how long they will support old hardware in their latest kernels).

I believe PAE has been around since the mid-1990s so this Ubuntu/Linux-Mint limitation should not affect all old PCs. I note my ancient 32-bit athlon-1100 CPU (PC w/2GB RAM) at home does not get that non-PAE kernel error when booting with Ubuntu-12.10 (it does thou have other major problems when booting to Ubuntu-12.10 giving only a black screen on my old PC with nVidia FX5200 graphics and is not useable with Ubuntu (this is likely a nouveau graphic driver issue where Ubuntu-12.10 kernel has a broken nouveau driver for this graphic hardware)). My ancient 32-bit athlon-1100 CPU (PC w/2GB RAM) at home does not get that non-PAE kernel error when booting with Linux Mint-14.1 (but I note it also has other problems with Linux Mint-14.1, having a kernel panic around the time it should be loading the graphic driver).

The difficult of both Ubuntu and Mint (both very popular distributions) with two examples of moderately older hardware makes me think a future GNU/Linux LUG topic may be the status of GNU/Linux distributions on moderately old hardware.

Lee