The Brain Boy Blog

RFC: Package Management System

2011-04-01T15:05:00.001-04:00

A package management system is a program that manages archives of software to be automatically installed on your system. PMSes automate installation and deinstallation, and often also support automatic downloading of dependencies, listing of software from repositories, and in some cases compiling software for you.

PMSes are most commonly found in free and open source UNIX-like operating systems, such as the various GNU/Linux distributions and free BSDs. There are also a few for Mac OS X, but very few, if any, can be found for Windows.

I will not be going too far into the details of package management in this article, because that is not its point. This article is about a package manager that I am developing. Code name (and possibly normal name in the future): CANDY.

For more information on PMSes, please visit Wikipedia.

I am developing a package management systems inspired by the Slackware and MacPorts package management systems. It will be able to install two types of packages: Source and Binary packages (as with the RPM Package Manager). Source packages will function similarly to MacPorts Portfiles and RPM Specfiles. They will contain instructions on fetching, verifying, extracting, installing, and then later uninstalling software.

Source Package Format #1

Each package will get its own directory. In this directory, there will be a series of files:

static.yml: This file will contain static (non-scripted) information about the package, such as metadata (title, description, etc.) and dependencies.
features.lst: (Produced by Candy, deleted if --dont-save-features is specified.) See below: Compile-Time Features.
fetch.sh: This file is a Bourne Shell script that will download and verify (via WHIRLPOOL, SHA512, and RMD160 checksums) the source code. This script should not re-download archives unless the checksums do not match. If the downloaded archive still does not match, then it should exit with code 1.
build.sh: This file will compile and install the files. It will compile the files to install to locations that are specified by Candy's configuration file, but will actually install the files into a temporary directory via a DESTROOT (i.e. make install DESTROOT=/tmp/blah).
preinstall.sh: (Optional) this file will be executed before files are installed into the root directory.
postinstall.sh: (Optional) this file will be executed after files are installed into the root directory.
predeinstall.sh: (Optional) this file will be executed before files are uninstalled.
postdeinstall.sh: (Optional) this file will be executed after files are uninstalled.
patches/*.patch: (Optional) patch files to be applied to the source archive post-extraction.
source/: Unextracted sources. This will be produced by fetch.sh. This directory will be deletable with the clean command.
source-archive.*: May be an archive or a directory checked out with a version control system. If it was a VCS checkout, source/ will be a symbolic link, and the directory should have the .vcs extension. This will be produced by fetch.sh.

During any form of build procedure, build.sh will be called. However, there are two things that may happen after build.sh executes, depending on the command specified to Candy. The two commands are:

install: This command will run preinstall.sh, move the files into the root directory, and then run postinstall.sh. The predeinstall.sh and postdeinstall.sh files will be saved for whenever the program gets deinstalled.
build-binary: This command will create an archive from the temporary files which will also include the pre- and post-scripts. This package is faster to install, does not require any development utilities in most cases, but is not configurable and less portable.

Source Package Format #2

Another format that will be supported is an archive that contains the files static.yml, build.sh, preinstall.sh, postinstall.sh, predeinstall.sh, and postdeinstall.sh (all files but fetch.sh and features.lst). Along with these files will be the downloaded source files. This is more similar to RPM, while the previous format is more similar to MacPorts.

Binary Package Format

Yet another format that will be supported is an archive that contains the files static.yml, features.lst, preinstall.sh, postinstall.sh, predeinstall.sh, and postdeinstall.sh (all files but fetch.sh and build.sh). It will also contain the built program binaries (produced by build.sh) which will be extracted into the root directory.

Compile-Time Features

Like MacPorts and Portage, Candy will support Compile-Time Features (in Portage talk, USE flags). They can be enabled with -f and disabled with -F, and all features are enabled by default. static.yml will contain summaries/descriptions of these features, and information about which features are enabled/disabled will be saved in features.lst. The various scripts will use features.lst, a list of enabled features separated by newlines, to determine which features to include.

Initially, I was planning to have static.yml truncated in Binary Package Format, but I decided that it was useful for users to have information about which features were enabled/disabled by the binary package author.

Dialogs

Packages will be passed the variable $DIALOG, which will evaluate to a program compatible with dialog which will vary between the original program or a graphical replica.

Amendment 1: File Selection and Multi-Package Output

This is an amendment to the previous section. It was added after the original article was written but before the article was published. I found that it would cause inconsistencies in the article to edit this in, so I decided to add it in this section. Further amendments will be posted in separate posts and linked to from here.

In the original design specified in this document, all of the files installed into a temporary directory are installed or archived in Source Package Format #2 or Binary Package Format. This amendment changes this: static.yml will contain globs (a.k.a. wildcards) specifying which files in the temporary directory are to be installed or archived (where /**/* would specify all files recursively). All files are excluded by default, since certain files such as the GNU Info dir file should be excluded.

Furthermore, the globs may be specified to specific Binary Packages, meaning that although both Source Packages will see them all as one tree, multiple Binary Packages may be generated. By standard, architecture-specific files, non-architecture-specific files, documentation, and development files (headers and static libraries) will be in separate packages. All of them will share the same package root name, but have the following mechanism for distinguishing them (by standard):

packagerootname: Architecture-specific files.
packagerootname-share: Non-architecture-specific files (will be stored in just packagerootname if there are no architecture-specific files.
packagerootname-doc: Documentation files (man pages will be stored in packagerootname-share or packagerootname if there are no non-architecture-specific files).
packagerootname-devel: Development header files.
packagerootname-static: Static object files (if it is a library, that is).

Furthermore, while I am describing conventions, libraries will be prefixed with lib.

Conclusion

As you can see I have a lot of plans for this program, and I hope you have become interested in them. The RFC in the title of this post stands for Request For Comments, which means that I want you to tell me what you think. I am interested in knowing what others think of my ideas, and since this is really, really early in development, Candy can be subjected to radical changes (although I would prefer to avoid them).

How to Retrieve Files from a Broken Fedora Linux System

2010-10-29T13:31:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago I installed the Fedora Core 13 GNU/Linux operating system onto my computer. A month in, I turned it on and it would not boot. It would get to the point in the loading screen when the loading bar was complete then it would just stop. I waited for half an hour, hoping that it was just trying to resolve some sort of issue, but no such luck. The day before I had been installing and uninstalling a lot of software, and apparently, I ended up corrupting the operating system. I could not retrieve my files.

Generally, you use a Linux system's Live CD to retrieve files and even repair a broken system; however, I had lost Fedora's Live CD. So instead, I used Ubuntu Linux 10.04's Live CD, which I found in my collection of Live CDs. I inserted the disk, rebooted the computer, and came upon the Live CD's instance of the GNOME desktop environment. The hard drive was listed as a readable entity, but when I clicked on it, I got an error message saying that the disk could not be read (a very indescript message, yes).

I fumbled through my disks and found a fairly old openSUSE 11.2 Live CD. I was really excited, because openSUSE has an automated system repair program on it. It was sure to figure out what was wrong. Well, wrong. It could not read the disk, and it seems that means it cannot help at all. How disappointing.

Searching through the disks again, I came upon an Arch Linux Live CD (yes, I have a lot of Live CDs). I booted it up and came upon the infamous command-line. I tried to mount the hard drive with mkdir /mnt/hd; mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/hd, and it said it could not recognize the filesystem.

I finally knuckled down and burnt another Fedora Live CD, and guess what? I was able to read off the hard drive no problems at all! I was able to retrieve my files. What did Fedora do to make it so that no other Linux could read its filesystem? What? I still do not know, but I do know that openSUSE never had that problem, so I installed that instead.

The moral of the story is that if you want to retrieve your files from a Linux, you should probably use that distribution's Live CD.

Microkernels: The Next Generation of Operating System Kernels

2010-09-06T18:50:00.001-04:00

Microkernels are epic. Why? Because they hold the possibility to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, among other things.

The most popular kernel design family today is the Monolithic kernel design. Monolithic kernels have huge number of features integrated into the kernel. These features include user multiplexing, executable loading, drivers, and filesystems.

This design has two fatal flaws:

When any of these services fail, the entire kernel fails, and everything is lost.
Only one implementation of certain features, such as user multiplexing, may be implemented at a time, since the kernel's built-in features will get in the way.

Microkernels solve both of these problems. Here is how.

Microkernels aim to implement the minimal requirements of a kernel and to move as much as possible into the user space, as in processes that you would see in a task manager. These processes are known as "servers". They provide the operating system with user multiplexing, executable loading, drivers, filesystems, and all of the other features most programmers expect from the kernel. This has a few major advantages over the Monolithic kernel design.

For one thing, each server is its own process separate from the kernel, if a server crashes, the kernel remains functional and can even restart the server, thus massively decreasing the chances of error. Along with this, each server has the least privilege possible, meaning that, for instance, a driver server is unable to accidentally delete files.

The increased modularity of the operating system is often much easier to manage, because each server may be assigned to a different programmer task force, may be coded in a different programming language, or even compiled into a different executable file format.

Each server may be interchanged with other servers, should a different server be more efficient or secure for your purposes. In some cases you may even have two servers providing the same function (such as executable loading) at the same time, allowing the individual processes to decide which server they would like to use.

In some operating systems, you must rebuild the operating system in order to add new device drivers, filesystems, etc. Microkernels simply need you to run new servers. (This is not nearly as much of a problem now with Hybrid Kernels, in which much functionality remains in the kernel but it may be extended with user space programs. In both Microkernels and Hybrid Kernels, a computer restart may be required depending on the operating system.)

Issues with the Microkernel Design

Microkernel design has one major issue--efficiency. In order for a Microkernel to function, processes must communicate with each other through the kernel, as opposed to directly with the kernel. For instance, a text editor must communicate with a filesystem server in order to load a file.

This entails "bouncing" your message from the kernel to another process. This is a method of inter-process communication, or IPC. In first generation Microkernels like Mach, the message would have to be copied from the sending process to the kernel, then copied again to the receiving process. This turns out to be considerably less efficient then directly communicating with the kernel.

This inefficiency was not good at all. While IPC took 400μs (microseconds) to send the average message, it took Monolithic kernels less than 1μs. This issue led to noticeably slower operating systems and a dying design philosophy.

Furthermore, the fact that the servers are their own processes means that you must switch contexts more often, which also causes noticeable slowdown.

However, there is now a second generation of Microkernels that now run 400 times faster then the first generation Microkernels. They have done this through various optimizations, and are just as fast, if not faster, than most Monolithic kernels.

Each kernel takes a different approach to this.

L4

The L4 microkernel implements the philosophy that Microkernels are inherently non-portable between processors and must take advantage of every optimization the processor has to offer.

L4, unlike Mach, only copies the message once, initially sharing memory with the sender then copying it to the receiver, leading to a two-fold speed improvement. Another thing L4 does is when messages are small enough, it uses the processor registers (small but EXTREMELY quick-to-access memory zones), leading to a considerable amount of speed improvement.

In total, L4 only takes ~1.4μs to send the average IPC message.

MIT Exokernel

MIT's Exokernel has a different approach. Its philosophy is that the kernel's purpose is only to section out resources to the processes, and that is it, letting the processes manage memory how they see fit and to talk to the hardware directly, reminiscent of DOS. This is contrary to most kernels, which try to abstract the hardware in a portable manner.

This philosophy is inspired by another philosophy; the program knows better than the operating system. The kernel is general. The program is specific.

Essentially, this means that Exokernel will simply say "this part of memory is yours and this part of memory is yours, and you get to talk to the computer screen and you get to talk to the speakers". Thus, the functionality of the operating system is implemented in libraries that abstract the hardware, however if the abstractions are unsuitable the program may simply bypass the operating system and talk directly through the kernel to the hardware, as long as it has acquired permission to do so.

Processes may also upload code to the Exokernel to help it decide what to do with the information it receives, which can be used, for example, in network package filtering. The code uploaded is in a type-safe programming language that can quickly be dynamically compiled and sandboxed to prevent any harm to the kernel. This can also be used to move intensive operations to the kernel so that the processor does not have to switch context as often.

In total, Exokernel only takes ~1.3μs to send the average IPC message.

SPIN

SPIN takes a radically different approach from the entire IPC concept itself (though it still supports IPC, as most kernels of all forms do). It allows programs to upload code to be executed directly in the kernel. This leads to massive speed improvement. Since SPIN sandboxes the code, and the code is uploaded in the type-safe Modula-3 programming language, it retains the ability to continue running upon failure of the uploaded code.

One major advantage of this is that code executed by the kernel itself is much more efficient, since processes communicate directly with the kernel to access the uploaded code and context switches occur a lot less.

In total, SPIN takes 400μs to send the average IPC message (due to roots in Mach), but its alternative method of extension theoretically removes this issue.

Now, for the part you have all been waiting for...

The Ability to Run Multiple Operating Systems Simultaneously

This is the greatest ability that Microkernels have. Because there is nothing getting in the way of implementing alternative user multiplexers, executable loaders, etc., one is fully capable of implementing two operating systems on the same Microkernel and having them run at the same time.

For instance, you could have a UNIX-like server series in which you have a UNIX-like user multiplexer, UNIX-like executable loader, etc., allowing any program that runs on UNIX-like systems to run fully. Then you could also have a BeOS-like server series, implementing a BeOS-like user multiplexer, and a BeOS-like executable loader, and have it run programs that run on BeOS-like systems, and both servers may run simultaneously. This means that you could have both UNIX and BeOS programs running on the same computer without use of an emulator!

This feature is why I am personally interested in Microkernels. For a long time I have wanted to run Windows-only Notepad++ using UNIX-only GNOME.

Have you ever wanted to use two programs from different operating systems at the same time? What are they?

Resources:
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/exo/
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/ulfar/ukernel/ukernel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=L4_microkernel_family&oldid=383231412
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exokernel&oldid=379188198

No Sub for a Sub!

2010-05-14T16:52:00.000-04:00

I would like to state here that I do not do the sub for a sub. I will only subscribe to a channel if I like it.

Continuing on this though, don't send me YouTube PMs saying that you will subscribe to me if I subscribe to you. You may send a "check out my channel" message, but a sub4sub request is not acceptable.

If you are wondering why I post this today, it is because of this message:
From: PetesMobileChannel
Title: okay.
Attached Video: "Prank Call to Consolidated Credit Counseling"
Content:
hiiiiiii i will sub u if u sub me. please sub me

Of course, researching this user led me to find one of his/her channels is called Hemi Jeep. Same person.

I have blocked this person and reported the messages as spam, and I shall do this to all other sub4subbers.

Thank you and good night.

Alex the Alligator 4

2010-05-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

Alex the Alligator 4 is an open-source computer game very similar in style to the old GameBoy games. In its four-color, pixellated glory, Alex 4 is a fun game to play on your free time. It has 12 levels and, if you collect all of the cherries and stars from every level, a bonus game in which you guide a space ship through space to find Alex.

The story is simple. It starts out with Alex and his girlfriend, Lola (both alligators), hanging out with each other in the forest. After a little conversing, a helicopter owned by ACME, Inc. flies over and kidnaps Lola, planning to turn her into a pair of shoes!

After eating human after human in the 12 tedious levels, beating two bosses on the way, Alex finally frees his girlfriend, Lola, from her imprisonment after defeating the Ground Pounder (similar to the Bowser from Super Mario Brothers 3).

They are happy to see each other, but a few seconds of fun and Alex gets abducted by aliens! Lola climbs into her spaceship and flies away, ending the game with a nice "The End?".

The bonus game consists of Lola flying through the tedious void of space in search of Alex. At the end you fight the alien spaceship. Once you beat it, the level restarts with all of your power-ups retained.

You can also created, edit, submit, and download Alex 4 custom maps. The levels that I have personally tried out, however, have not gone near the quality of the official levels.

It's a fun game and I recommend it. It can be downloaded at: http://allegator.sourceforge.net/.

For a let's play series that I made, see the first video at YouTube.

FeedBurner

2010-05-11T12:40:00.001-04:00

Let me start this out with EVERY WEBMASTER IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE NEEDS TO USE FEEDBURNER!!!

Ahem, let me explain this a little better.

FeedBurner is a server that was bought two years ago by Google. It pulls feeds that your website provides and improves them, after which you can redirect your feed links to FeedBurner. Such improvements include tracking subscribers, adding links to feed readers, feed compatibility cleanup, and monetization (adding advertisements).

You can track many things, such as how many users view your feed, how many subscribe, what services they use, what browsers they use, and (if enabled) how many click on the links back to your website. The only problem with tracking clicks back to your website is that you must enable FeedBurner to redirect the links through it so that it can track page hits.

Theres an entire tab for optimizations you can enable, including optimization for compatability, optimization for podcasts, optimization for interactivity, etc. They are all highly configurable and really useful. For instance, I use the FeedFlare optimizer to add "share this" links to websites such as Google Buzz and Facebook.

There is also a publicity tab with features such as a headline animation generator, a tool to automatically notify the different feed reading services when a change happens, and a tool to post summaries of new posts to Twitter.

This service also registers your feed with them. For instance, my Brain Boy Blogger feed can be accessed from http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrainBoyBlogger. This gives your website major publicity, as FeedBurner has a large number of users.

Overnight both of my blogs got two feed subscribers, and after a couple days I have ten for the Brain
Boy Blog and two for Haiku On You. As you can see, creating a FeedBurner feed can drastically increase the viewers of your website.

If you would like to get started with FeedBurner, go to http://feedburner.google.com/.

Weird YouTube Message

2010-05-10T17:43:00.001-04:00

Sender: HemiJeep19Responds
Title: funny funny funny!!! lol
Content:

hahaha you like Ray William Johnson too??? yeah hes 1 of my favorites... what did you think of my videos? were they funny 2 u? subscribe if u liked them, i'll be making more... oh by the way my name is pete, but people call me hemi, whats your name???

Questions:

Who the #### is Ray William Johnson? I've never mentioned that name before, so why would this guy think I like him? Did I reference something that this guy made?
I thought I made it known that I didn't like sharing personal information, including my name. I should probably post this in my About Me zone.
as a message, do u agree it would be worthwhilez to use propersh writting, i.e. begginning sentenses with capital letterz, using "you" instead of "u", spelling corectlly, and writing only one question mark??? (for this one i'm just joking around)
Is it just me or does this seem like spam to get me to view this guys channel?

Readers, please give me something to work with. This message just seems like random spam to me. I need reassurance.

Michael J. Hardy: Evil Maniac Among Software Developers

2010-04-14T11:24:00.000-04:00

It didn't take long for Michael to become one of the most famous people among open source software developers. Although he claims to be innocent, much evidence shows otherwise.

Michael is known for providing much software, some provided as open source, some provided as commercial pay for, and crediting himself as the major developer for this software. Well...

Michael has not created any of the software that he provides. It is all free open source GPL software that has been created by other people. Michael, is a rip-off artist.

Some of the software he has ripped off includes Doomworld and Secret Maryo Chronicles. He has made an undetermined but seemingly high amount of money from these rip-offs.

He has claimed that he is innocent, and that he thought the GPL provided him the ability to credit himself with the software. Although the GPL does give him the ability to sell the software, he must always provide the source code (which he does not always do) and he must not take credit for it (which he never does).

He has recently launched a compaign where he has been trying to buy the rights to the software. An example is Secret Maryo Chronicles. You can find the forum topic here containing an e-mail claiming to be somebody else to the lead developer and a link to Michael's website claiming to already own SMC.

Multiple lawsuits are being planned against Michael, so he should probably watch his steps. Breaking software licensing, copyrights, and trademarks is a large legal offense, especially if it has been done multiple times. The fact that the websites still claim rights to the software will not do well in the court room.

Check back here for more information about the Michael J. Hardy case.

Winners of Luiji's Frustration

2010-04-11T17:48:00.001-04:00

Here are the winners for Luiji's Frustration!

Submission Date	Name	Website/E-Mail
Feb 16, 2010	Crabmaster	http://secretmaryo.org/
Feb 17, 2010	mlthmp	-

That's right, only two people beat it! Trust me, there were many more contestants, all of whom supposedly had to cheat to get past the final stretch.

Thanks for playing!

Why Scripting Languages are Problematic and Freeze is Awesome

2010-03-04T17:53:00.003-05:00

Scripting languages are program source codes that do not get compiled before running, and are instead ran through an interpretation program such as Python, Perl, or Ruby. This removes the requirement for compilation while producing minimal speed limitations. However, as I have done more and more script programming, I have noticed some major problems with the system.

1: Process name system breaks.
If you start up your process manager, you will see a list of processes by name. The process name is based on its program name. You can acquire processes by name on many operating systems, which is quite useful. You can use it to list how many instances of your text editor are currently running, kill all processes of a certain name, but most of all it helps you figure out which process you have to kill in order to stop a broken program. Scripting languages all go through a single interpretation process, therefore all Python programs are listed under the name "python", and all Perl scripts under "perl". This defeats some of the main purposes of having a process manager.

2: One program with all permissions.
The best way to explain this is using a Windows example. Servers require you to give them firewall permissions. If you have a python-oriented server, then you have to give python.exe proper permissions. By doing this, you give all python programs such permissions. This opens up many security holes, since any program now has the ability to serve outside sources with data, a feature usually utilized by viruses.

3: Open-source is forced upon you.
Scripting languages cannot be compiled, therefore their source is often shown. Closed-source applications become obsolete. This is bad, since other companies can see your coding style if they purchase your software. A certain exception is python, which allows you to compile .pyc files and distribute them. However, this removes certain abilities such as the ability to insert a shebang header for Un*x systems to figure out what interpreter is used for your program.

All of these problems can be extremely bad. They can all, however, be fixed if the constructors of the programs put some extra features into their scripts.

A separate process manager for each interpreter that enables you to see the script name or some way to list the script name in the main process manager.
An internal permissions system based on scripts that way you can give the interpreter all permissions and simply limit that of the scripts.
For all scripting languages to produce some sort of compiled format like Python's .pyc file.

All of these solutions require the interpreters to change, and it will be awhile before these ideas get implemented by any of them. Of course, there are ways to fix these problems currently using external programs. An example for Python is Freeze.

Freeze is a program used to create .pyc files and embed them into an executable program, using the Python/C library to interpret the document. The process gets its own name in the process manager, the single executable gets different permissions instead of a single interpreter, and the .pyc file cannot be easily decompiled and the decompiled version is not exactly like the original source, especially if you enable optimizations.

There are such programs for many of the other interpreters, so it is all a matter of finding one that you like for your scripting language.

Why I Use Linux and So Should You

2010-03-01T14:10:00.028-05:00

Many people think that Linux is hard to use, slow, plain, and sometimes even scary. A couple years ago, that was completely true.

Today, Linux is an extremely advanced operating system that is easy to use for average users, yet has much to offer developers.

Linux is a Unix-based kernel on top of which many modern operating systems have been built, such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora. Therefore, all of these operating systems follow the Unix idea of "modularity".

The idea of modularity is that an operating system should not be one large program that you have to stick with, but instead a series of smaller programs linked together likes organs in the human body. The only difference is that these programs can be easily switched out for one another, enabling high configurability.

An example of this system is the desktop. Other operating systems such as Windows and Macintosh force their idea of a good desktop onto you. Linux lets you choose which desktop you want, and most of these desktops let you choose how they function. You can install Gnome, KDE, Xfce, or whatever other desktop you want. You can even install them side by side and choose which one you can choose from!

Don't want a desktop? With a little configuration you can work with nothing more then a console! What do you think of that?

Linux also has a super secure user-oriented architecture. It defines many different users that do not show up on your log-in screen. These users have very different abilities when it comes to modifying your computer. For example, a game program installs under the user group "Games" and gains the ability to modify only your home directory and your global games settings directory for a computer-wide high scores system. Want a program to have all the permissions of the system? Just give it root user permissions.

Still feel insecure? Install the free Clam Anti-Virus Library and easily integrate it into your operating system. There are Clam file-systems that auto-check all of the files and Clam file manager extensions which let you right-click and press "Scan for Viruses".

One of the best features of Linux is its standard concept of a "Software Repository". A "Software Repository" is an online source that has software checked by the same companies that gave you your Linux distribution. "Software Managers" list all of this software in a searchable, categorized view. All you have to do is press "Install" and you have safe software at your disposal. Hate the software? Press the "Uninstall" button and it will be removed without error. Easy, right?

People say Linux desktop environments are plain and lame, which means they have never used Gnome with Compiz Fusion. This combination enables fully configurable window decorations more beautiful then that of even Macintosh, you can even make it look like a Macintosh. You can enable a 3-D environment called "Desktop Cube", which takes Gnome's multiple workspace system and turns it into a 3-D cube, cylinder, or sphere. Sounds like they stole it from Macintosh? Macintosh stole it from Linux! You can see YouTube videos of that go back years before that of Macintosh.

What's a workspace? Another great idea that Linux uses all of the time. It has multiple desktop views which can contain different sets of windows that you switch back and forth between by using a desktop switcher or the desktop cube. Want a window to be on all workspaces at all times? Most desktop systems support that, too.

Linux also has some of the best driver support. There are drivers all over the internet for it, a lot of which are in the Software Repositories I mentioned. There is support from mice to electronic flutes, and QWERTY keyboards to AZERTY keyboards.

One of the best features of Linux is that it works on many, many platforms. Intel, AMD, PSP, XBOX, and even phones chip-sets. Almost all chip-sets are supported by Linux. Windows and Macintosh cannot compare.

Linux doesn't limit you because the company wants to make more money, it gives you the ability to do anything. You can modify the kernel, you can switch the desktop environment, you can tear it down and build it back up again. The possibilities are limitless.

What's the best thing about Linux? It's free! You can even get its source code and modify it. Literally millions of people from all over the world are making sure Linux is squeaky-clean.

There are so many great things about Linux, can you name some good ones?

Tux the Penguin, Linux's mascot, was created by lewing@isc.tamu.edu on The GIMP.

Luiji's Frustration Contest!

2010-02-16T18:53:00.004-05:00

Go to http://www.secretmaryo.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=3284 in order to join my contest, and get a chance to have your name and website mentioned on my blog!

Private message me secretmaryo.org a screencast of you beating the level without cheating (saving counts as cheating in this contest), then I will include your name and website on my "Winners" list on both my blog and my next level!

It's that easy! Not! This level is insanely hard. One mistake, and your dead. Don't be afraid, it's possible!

Have fun!

I Finally Have a YouTube Account

2010-01-17T19:20:00.001-05:00

I finally decided to create a YouTube account titled Luiji99. You can visit my channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Luiji99. My first video is a commercial-like demo of Secret Maryo Chronicles (see my blog post).

Theres only one video up as of this post. I am going to edit the Secret Maryo Chronicles blog post and insert the video.

Hopefully I will get some really good stuff online!

Google Chrome

2010-01-13T19:59:00.002-05:00

Google Chrome is a web browser by Google Inc. It is fast and simple, and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It implements a great multi-processing scheme so that when a tab crashes, the web browser just says "Oops! The web page crashed!" and the rest of your browser remains in tact. The tabs integrate into the top bar and the windows can be styled to themes from the computer default to a stylish green window with little black vines covering the top.

One of my personal favorite features is that if you have two Chrome windows open, you can drag a tab from one window into the other window. In all of the other tabbed web browsers I have used (Firefox, Internet Explorer, and some others) I have had to copy and paste the URL to the other windows then reload the page.

It has all of the good features of Internet Explorer and Firefox, such as full-screen mode, spell-checking, an advanced new tabs page.

The downside to Google Chrome is that it is not fully compatable with all web pages. Sometimes I will run in to weird little quirks on the web pages, such as collapsable menus that fail to hide. These are rare enough to ignore.

Now I have Google Chrome on all of my computers and it is awesome. It makes my life on the web much easier. I highly recommend it.

Google Chrome is free and you can learn more at http://www.google.com/chrome.

Domains in the Taxonomy Mnemonic

2009-12-14T18:33:00.001-05:00

There is a useful mnemonic that many people use to remember the Order of Classification. It is "King Philip of Germany decided to walk to America. What do you think happened?" The helpful part is the answer. King Philip Came Over From Germany Soaked. This translates as Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species.

Recently, a level above Kingdom has been added called Domain. So far I have not been able to find an alternative mnemonic, so I created my own addition. The answer is now Dumb King Philip Came Over From Germany Soaked. Dumb for Domain.

Note that I am not insulating King Philip, that was just a joke.

Agave Color Scheme Designer

2009-12-13T15:21:00.012-05:00

Recently I discovered a useful tool called Agave, a color scheme designer. All you have to do is set the color and scheme type and it will generate a color scheme in a split-second. I find it to be much simpler then calculating the scheme myself.

The scheme types it supports are:

Complements
Split-Complements
Triads
Tetrads
Analogous
Monochromatic

People who have taken art 101 may get confused using this program, as it uses the Red Green Blue color wheel as supposed to the Red Yellow Blue color wheel.

Agave has a randomization button to create random color selection based on your scheme type and darken, lighten, saturate, and desaturated buttons to help you modify your base color without opening up the color dialog.

It also has some features like the back and forward buttons that navigate your history of color schemes along with a favorites system so that you do not have to write down your color schemes into a text file.

You can export your favorites to a GIMP color palette file. This is useful because it simplifies the application of color schemes onto an image.

An alternative is to right click on the outputted colors and click "Copy", then going to the GIMP, opening up either the foreground or background color selection dialogs, and pasting the color into the "HTML notation" box. Note that when copying the color it puts a "#" followed by a hexadecimal color value representing the copied color.

You can download Agave at "http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/".

Secret Maryo Chronicles

2009-12-05T16:01:00.006-05:00

A while back I installed a game called "Secret Maryo Chronicles" (SMC). Of all the side-scrollers in the Ubuntu respository, SMC has the best graphics, music, and overall fun capacity.

The latest version is v1.9, although the repository is limited to v1.8. I beat all of the levels in v1.7 in a month. A month afterwards when I upgraded I played it again and beat it in two weeks.

It is very addictive, and unlike other Mario tributes it is more original. For instance, the character Maryo is a much younger character that does not seem to be a plumber. Another example is how they changed the Goomba character to something called a Furball.

It does not have everything that the Mario series has. It lacks, for example, a working war whistle. From what I understand, in the Mario series the war whistle is used to give Mario the ability to fly. Maryo has the ability to fly, but only when you enter SMC's debug mode and configure the debug options. This massively slows down the program.

Nonetheless, SMC is almost as good as Super Mario Brothers. I cannot wait until v1.9 gets added to the repository.

The SMC website can be found at: http://www.secretmaryo.org/
Or you could use the Ubuntu command-line call "apt-get install smc smc-music".
SMC works on all sorts of operating systems, such as Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and BSD.

Here is a little demo video I made:

Warriors Book Series

2009-12-05T06:18:00.007-05:00

The first three or four books in the series were wonderful. It had cats going to war, what more do you need? Plot, of course, which the series also had. I loved it. Emphasis on the -ed.

By the fifth book, "A Dangerous Path", I lost interest. It turned from a gory childrens book to the lamest war drama ever written. Bluestar (the leading cat of the main character's clan) gave up on StarClan (the clan that the cats believes lives in the sky), and then the book went down the drain from there. It got to the point in which I started thinking "just kill Bluestar off already". I already knew eventually Fireheart (the main character) would eventually become the leader. I just could not get passed the drama. It was just too lame.

I mean, Bluestar just kept on lying lonely in her room, snapping at people and started frivolous wars. She was insane but everybody kept on following their stupid code that told them to never doubt their leader. Who the heck came up with that in the first place?!

Anyway, I do not recommend this book unless you like drama. If you like drama, you will love this book the whole way through. Tell me how it ends, if you have gotten all the way through. Actually, I do not care. The book sucks and it lost my interest entirely.

Ubuntu/XTux is a Bad Mix

2009-12-05T05:14:00.006-05:00

I love Linux. I love Ubuntu. I wanted to try XTux. I hate XTux. I think Ubuntu's package management system is susceptible to massive error. I am angry.

Today I was browsing through the Synaptic Package Manager on the Ubuntu Linux Distrobution when I stumbled upon a game known as "XTux". I was suspicious at first, as it required a server and client system where you start the server on your localhost and hook the client up. It was from the Ubuntu repository, though, so it was supposedly as non-viral as Ubuntu itself.

I played it a little, and I decided to uninstall it. Guess what happened? It could not uninstall.

I got the following error:
dpkg: error processing xtux-client (--remove)
dpkg: error processing xtux-server (--remove)
sub-process installed post-removal script returned error status 1

Something like that. It wrote a lot of other stuff that meant the same thing, too.
I tried restarting my computer. Then I tried reinstalling the program then uninstalling it, which gave me a little more progress. I finally knuckled down and used Google. The Ubuntu community posted a page at "https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xtux/+bug/454115" exactly about this error.

As it turns out, the way to do it was to:

1) Reinstall the program so that all of the corruption is overwritten.
2) Start up the terminal and execute the following code:

$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/ggz/games /etc/ggz/rooms
$ sudo apt-get purge xtux-server
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/ggz/clients
$ sudo apt-get purge xtux-client xtux-levels xtux-common

3) And then the programs were gone.

Thank you very much, Oliver Treichel, for your post that helped me with the most frustrating problem I encountered this month.

After some thinking, I realized that Ubuntu does not have the best package management system. It has shell scripts for post installation and post uninstallation. If these scripts fail, there is no way to tell Ubuntu to just uninstall them. These scripts should not exist. Sure, they allow installed applications to configure the computer by doing stuff like setting up SQLite databases and configuring its own code, but it also enables hideous errors to occur.

The problem with XTux's post-uninstallation script is that it wanted to remove directories that did not even exist. /etc/ggz was not a directory. It probably was on the programmer's system, but not on mine, nor many other user's, for that matter.

I personally think that post-installation code should occur when you first start up the program and that programs should be built without the need for post-uninstallation scripts. Its just inane and frustrating for users like me. I am a program developer, and it took me 15 minutes to half an hour to find a solution to this mess. I cannot imagine the pain a normal user would have had to face. They might even have to pay someone to fix the issue, or they might give up on uninstalling the annoying game that required an unneeded client-server system that they promptly call XTux.

I just hope that by the next version of Ubuntu coming in 2010 will have this bug fixed. Until then, my frustration continues.