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... now, on with the rambling blog!

Sunday 20 February 2011

scrambling for scrotwm on slitaz again

intro: it's been a while coming, fatigue n lethargy have been robbing me of the peef to get on with this, and having learned things are so much better when documented... i'm documenting this. what is "this"... slitaz & scrotwm, round 3. ... or 4 or 5... idk, it's hard to tell/remember. anyways, i now have learned more of the wonders and ways of "tazpkg convert", and am ready for another bout, and am far more confident than ever... certainly more confident when i was messing around with bsd compilers n stuff.


ok,

here goes, an attempt at getting scrotwm to work on slitaz. a "very sexy combo", as more people than just me, has said.

so first i find the deb file from packages.debian.at/squeeze/scrotwm.

it didnt like the 64bit, of course, silly me. lol.

so, i do:
wget http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/scrotwm/scrotwm_0.9.20-1_i386.deb
in my virtual machine with a tester slitaz justx iso loaded.

then run:
tazpkg convert scrotwm_0.9.20-1_i386.deb

(and oh thankgoodness for tabkey autocompletion, so i dont have to type all those silly filenames out. ~ like i'm having to do for this blog entry, so excuse the errors. lol.)

and it says it managed it. (heh, and this is where i'd cross my fingers if i thought it would help, because it told me the same thing after i tried tazpkg convert on a arch-pacman of tmux... but it failed to run for more than the first frame before freezing.)
ls
confirms that the file is indeed there...


ok, so now we just do:
tazpkg install scrotwm-0.9.20-1.tazpkg
no need for "get-install" like you would do if installing from the slitaz repository, because it's already been "got", and is sat right infront of you in your working directory.

ok so... it says that worked! great!

but now to find out if it did actually work...

well, before i go run it, i want to just check a few things,

if the system recognises it
whatis scrotwm
whereis scrotwm
and, oh woops. looks like whatis and whereis dont work in slitaz-justx.

if the config is there.
ls /etc
... and yup, scrotwm.conf is there.

so now to try it out.

er... now, lets see, there's no login manager in slitaz, so, it's probably loading the window manager (currently openbox of course) from a xinit type file somewhere... a-ha...
ls -a
run from the home directory reveals the likely suspect. ".xinitrc"
and it's a rather interesting and somewhat robust configuration they've opted for. i know i'm not really going to need any of this... so, i'm going to delete it all (saving the openbox line, and then commenting it out. ... and then of course, add a line for scrotwm.

~woops i just about choked on my saliva there... got a little excited.

ok, so i close openbox
killall openbox
thinking that was the easiest way to drop me back out to a command line or have x restart, n it would then load scrowm, with my newly forumlated .xinitrc.

no joy...
oh dear.

seems there is a login manager (i'm guessing it's slim)

and now it wont let me login. seems i've borked it.

pressing f1 in slim, lets me cycle through to see the choices... e17, openbox, and jwm. :/

had i known slim was there, i would have edited it's config instead of /as well as, the .xinitrc


...

... ...


... ... ...

ok.
i knew this was just a tester anyways. i had planned on testing it to the point of seeing that it actually works... but it is enough to know that it at least converts and installs.

so i might as well take my ass to the apropriate "prewitch" virtual machine, and run my wget, convert and install on it... and be more careful about editing the wm launcher this time.


...

... to be continued...

..
.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

mare freedomware!

where do we go to get hardware not encumbered by planned obselecense?

it's surely starting to exist now right?

i mean, there is a "open-source" hardware movement, right?

so surely, it's a freedomware movement too... right?

...

i mean, i just started to notice the button on my laptop starting to get a bit wobbly... and i'm almost out of my extended warranty...

so it makes me think... i cant be fucked with my hardware being encumbered with the same problems that drove me away from proprietary software anymore. i want my next hardware, to be genuinely more future-proofed.

it doesnt seem enough anymore that "yay, i'm using free software now, so i have the freedom to take not just my data, but my software, with me, wherever i go, and do with it whatever i want.", typically, taking it from obselete or broken hardware, and onto the new machine.... that's just gonna be expensive.

i still have my first pc's case... and have plans for a nice lil hack job to put some working guts of a pc back in there again.... but i am reluctant to buy something that's likely to fail....

it's a troubling prospect, that due to the relatively, disproportionately, stageringly high rate of turn out of new advancement (relative to the magnitude of those actual advancves) and obselecense in computing hardware technology, that it may be one of the hardest areas of material tools/items to have overcome this flaw in our system, to take out of the obselecense cycle, despite it being taken out of the elevated consumption "economic" paradigm.

we dont really have emancipation technology while we are on the recieving (/milked) end of the separationist hardware manufacturers, intent on having us come back to them to buy new hardware soon.

free software, as defined by the free software foundation (fsf.org), is true freedomware, which enables us to overcome any limitations, flaws, shortcomings, imposed by the manufacturer, for whatever reason it may have been so, incompetence, neglect, or intent*, and allows us to make the apropriate amendmends, and share that with others, and share in the amendments others have made and shared too.

that's basically the fundamental principle by which i understood free software to be inevitably and inescapably the better choice over any of the offerings of proprietary software.

and why not have that same idea for all our hardware too, right?

and for all ideas... like our political modalities, and our legal systems...

no to hardware because of the energy costs of production?

but you see, that high prohibitive cost, is part of the proprietary protectionism? we can freedomware our way out of that problem. there are already the jigsaw pieces to facilitate our emancipations through technological means... we just need to put them together and apply.

no to political modalities and legal systems because of ideological siezures?

but you see, there can be many co-existing systems/projects, and they can all be forked, and undergo refining. same could even be done for economica paradigms and religions... or at least ecconomic systems and codes of living well.

but i digress...

hardware... right...

um... nope... i think i was done. ^_^

anyways, you see... the existence of this idea, now makes the old / current system untenable... just why would i ever want to subject myself to it now that i've seen the better way? it's just so completly unfeasable, without some kind of grosse coersion... and that's the kind of shit that breeds uprisings... n the elite dont want that... they've learned, covert tyranny is the way... not rocking the boat ncreating uprisings is the way... and so... "the market" damn well better start catering for this newfound unshifting preference for non-obsolete'ing 'wares. n that may indeed mean, those of us who realise this, need to take matters into our own hands....

... can u imagine it... a new computer system coming out, that's not only backwards and forwards compatable with the existing systems, but even more modularised to to be even more universally compatible, interchangeable, upgradeable... and when i say upgradeable, i mean like... adaptable, while everything being re-useable, or at least, easy-recycle-ready. so that next time you buy a piece of hardware, it's warranty is not just one year, not just three years, not just ten years, not just for life... but forever! ... so that, you can buy it thinking "my great great great great great great great great grandson will be able to enjoy this."

free software developers dont make software to be crap, because they most of the time, are making it for themselves too. same can be true of our hardware.

k, now i'm done. ^_^

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