2003 July

If you’re into desktop publishing and are frustrated that you
can’t find any packages for Linux that do the job, you can now try
Scribus,
which recently came out of beta. You have to compile this program
from source, but I did so under Red Hat Linux 9 and had no
problems. It’s a simple ./configure,
make, make install… if you’ve […]

I’ve got an article about the following on LinuxPlanet, if you don’t feel like poring through the whole thing
here.
Bill Nottingham released the following to the Red Hat community on
Monday, July 21:

Announcing a beta release of Red Hat Linux: Severn
Thank you gentlemen. This is rumor control. Here are the facts. As
some of you know, […]

Compiling Software from Source, Part V

Last week, I finally got that fussy GTK+ package compiled. My
whole purpose for working on GTK+ was that I was trying to compile
the entire GNOME 2.2.1 beta from source, and was starting with the
gnome-desktop package since it is likely the core program I’ll
need. When I tried to compile it, I […]

Learning about Commands, Part I

There are a number of ways to learn about the commands available
in Linux. First, I’ll show you how to find out more through your
own system, and then we’ll get to external online and print
resources. Let’s start with the main commands for getting help:
man, info, apropos,
and whatis. You can find
information about most […]

Another week, another Penguin Shell. I’m getting a lot of requests
for more basic information on commands, so this week the EGGS
section starts a series about the commands you have available to
you, and what third-party sites and books can help you here as
well.
As far as conforming to the Lockergnome newsletter standards of 80
characters or so […]

Author Morris Rosenthal has taken the boot failure diagnosis flow
charts from his latest book, Computer Repair with Diagnostic
Flowcharts - ISBN 0972380116 ($14.95). You can get the free
poster through the book’s main page

Introduction to DocBook, Part III

So far, I have the file:

<?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=”no”?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC “-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN”     “http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd”>
<article class=”journalarticle”>
<articleinfo>
<author>
<firstname>Dee-Ann</firstname>
<surname>LeBlanc</surname>
</author>
</articleinfo>
<para>This is my very first DocBook article.</para>
</article>

As usual, markup languages are really easier to follow if things
are indented within their container tags, so I’ll change this to:

<articleinfo>
<author>
[…]

Compiling Software from Source, Part IV

So, I grabbed the latest non-beta TIFF libraries from ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/pub/libtiff (tiff-v3.5.7.tar.gz), the latest PNG
libraries from ftp://swrinde.nde.swri.edu/pub/png/src/ (libpng-1.2.5.tar.bz2) and the latest
JPEG libraries from ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/ (jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz).
I start with tiff, uncompressing and unpackaging it. It’s an
Autoconf setup so I type ./configure and I’m off to the races. Then it’s make, then I […]

Finding Out What You’re Running

Brad B. asks:

“When I look for software online and they list requirements like
‘must have Python x.xx,’ how does one find out if their
distribution came with ‘Python x.xx’ or some other such library?
Is it a Find File thing, or do I need to go to the dreaded
Console?”
Dee-Ann responds:

I’m such a geek. I […]

For one thing, I want to let folks know that I haven’t forgotten
the distribution coverage for the EGGS section, but I’m having a
hard time getting some companies to either send me the products
they promised, or answer my e-mails. I’ll add more distribution
coverage once I’ve got some new items to cover.
The Lockergnome staff is in […]

I’ve got two items of interest this time. First, Linux
Journal is running its annual Readers’ Choice Awards.
Participate by going to http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6967.
Second, warning! Activism
alert! From time to time, I will include relevant
activist links with an explanation so you can decide whether you
care to click on them or not. These will always have a related
angle to […]

Introduction to DocBook, Part II

So far, I have the file:

<?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=”no”?>
<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC “-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN”      “http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd”>
<article class=”journalarticle”>

</article>

Except that since we’re doing an article, I have to change !DOCTYPE book to !DOCTYPE article.
However, this isn’t actually going to output any documents if I
feed it into the DocBook parsers. Or, more accurately, it […]

Compiling Software from Source, Part III

There’s no point in doing an example that’s too easy, right? Being
the masochist I am, I think I’ll try to compile the GNOME 2.2.1
source. This is a sprawling piece of work since it has all kinds
of dependency issues. Nice and complicated. I want to make sure
you realize that this isn’t […]

Many Ways to See Numeric Permissions

Chanan Oren (among others) writes:
“You can see octal permissions by using stat. For example, ‘stat testfile‘ outputs something
like this:

File: ‘testfile’
Size: 0 Blocks: 0 […]

Well, there’s no lack of talent among the Penguin Shell subscriber
base! When I was unable to find a quick command for looking up
file permissions by number, I received an impressive number of
solutions that were each completely different. That’s one of the
great things about Linux: so many ways to accomplish the same
thing. I’ll include the solutions […]

Kevin Christley posts a great resource to the Lockergnome Updates page. Here is an excerpt from
the site
he found:
“One of the largest difficulties in migrating away
from Windows to Linux is the lack of comparable software. Newbies
usually search for analogs of Windows software for Linux, and
advanced Linux-users cannot answer their questions since they
often don’t know too […]

Introduction to DocBook,
Part I
I’ve had a request to cover DocBook, and I figured that you
PENGUINS are the kinds of folks who could easily contribute to the
Linux Documentation Project.
Since DocBook is the format they use, covering it sounds like a
pretty good idea. So, here we go.
DocBook is both an XML and SGML DTD, but I’m […]

Compiling Software from Source, Part II: Compiling with GNU
Autoconf
Many programmers today are using GNU Autoconf instead of the make build manager. You can tell if this is the case
by looking in the main source directory for the package. If
there’s no Makefile and there is a “configure” file… be careful.
If make’s being used, there
might be […]

I’ve got a collection of EGG questions piling up, so I’m going to
take a break from the series and do a Q&A with those instead. I’m
not going to name names here, so I hope that doesn’t bug anyone.
:)
Q: What are the Xconfigurator names in RH, Mandrake, SuSE,
et al? Will Xconfigurator always put LILO in […]

I’m knee-deep in updating one of my books for its next edition
(phew!), and working on a few others as well. I feel like I’m
eating, breathing, and sleeping Linux right now. Any moment I’m
going to get a craving for herring and swimming in icy water…
then I’ll know I’m done for!
Right now I’ve got a distribution […]