Archives for December, 2010
Why Iceweasel?
Dec 26, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
The question was posted on the CrunchBang forums:
Why Iceweasel?
I don’t understand why all Debian based distros choose Iceweasel as the browser…
It is a valid question. Iceweasel/Firefox is fantastic software, but when compared to some of the newer WebKit based browsers, it begins to look somewhat stale. This lack of freshness is often compounded on Debian systems where the Iceweasel packages can lag some way behind Mozilla’s official Firefox releases.
Enter Google Chrome. I have been wanting to switch to using Chrome for a while. I have tried it on numerous occasions in the past, but rendering problems and a lack of extensions meant that I did not use it for very long. However, when I did use it, I was super impressed by how quick it started up and by the speed at which it rendered pages.
Last week, I installed Chrome again and I have been using it constantly since. I have not experienced any rendering issues and I have been able to install the extensions I need. At this point in time, I cannot think of any reason why I would want to start using Iceweasel again.
This makes me feel a little sad. I have been using Mozilla’s browsers for many years and even though I know it is illogical, I do feel somewhat emotionally attached to them. I hope Firefox 4 is a huge success and it tempts me back, but meanwhile I will be browsing the web with Google Chrome.
Google Public DNS service
Dec 17, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
Earlier tonight, my ISP’s DNS died. I am not sure why it died as my ISP does not seem to make public any system status reports. I figure this is because they are really a mobile phone service provider and mobile internet access is not their core business.
Anyhow, I could connect to my ISP without any trouble and I could see that my system was being issued with an IP address, but I could not browse the web or doing anything that required the use of DNS. I was about to give up for the night, but then I remembered reading about the Google Public DNS and I decided to give it a try.
Luckily, I had the IP address of one of the CrunchBang servers, so I started an SSH session and installed ELinks on the server. I then browsed to the Google Public DNS site and made a mental note of the DNS IP addresses, which was easy due them being 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. I then closed the SSH session and disconnected from my poorly ISP, before modifying my dongle’s connection settings via Network Manager to point to Google’s DNS servers and reconnecting to my ISP.
This is the first time I have tried Google’s DNS service. I have no real metrics to compare, but browsing the web does feel snappier. I think I will continue to use the service for a while and see if I notice any difference in the long-term.
Plymouth on Statler
Dec 13, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
I have recently been playing around with implementing Plymouth on CrunchBang Statler. I have managed to get it working without too much bother, but now that it is working, I am not sure if I like it.
My uncertainty is not about the Plymouth theme, but whether Plymouth takes away more than it provides. For sure, it is superficially nice to have a graphical boot, but at the same time, it is probably more useful to not have one.
Honestly, I do not know why I am concerning myself with this, the boot process only lasts for a very short amount of time and how it looks is hardly mission critical. Still, I am feeling torn about it and I would be interested to know what others think. Also, I wonder how many users actually disable their system’s graphical boot on distributions where it is enabled by default?
P.S. I took a look at the new Debian Squeeze Plymouth theme whilst I was playing around, it is the mutt’s nuts! Squeeze is shaping up very nicely.
opentracker and seedboxes for CrunchBang
Dec 5, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
I have recently set-up a BitTorrent tracker and some seedboxes for CrunchBang. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time. In fact, I really wish I had done it long before now as it probably would have reduced the amount of bandwidth that Piggy, Hogthrob and Strangepork have been eating.
Anyhow, regarding the tracker, I opted to use opentracker. It looks like a really good lightweight tracker, so it should be ideal. Its set-up was fairly straightforward, thanks in large to some easy to follow build instructions on its homepage. At the moment I have configured it as an open tracker, meaning anyone can use it to announce their torrents. I am not sure this was an overly good idea, so I will keep an eye on it. If I find it is getting abused, I will reconfigure it to be a closed tracker. Boo. I am not going to publish its address here, but if anyone would like it, ping me.
As for the seedboxes, I opted to use rtorrent on CrunchBang’s existing file servers. I have set-up the rtorrent instances to run as services with GNU Screen. I have not fully tested the set-up yet, but I think I have it all configured correctly — I guess I will found out when the next Statler images are ready, which should be within a couple of days.
P.S. I noticed that opentracker is considered beerware and that Dirk Engling has put a Flattr button on its homepage. I really should start using Flattr so that I can buy this guy a beer.
Moving Dr. Bunsen
Dec 4, 2010 (about 1 year ago)
Yesterday, I set about moving Dr. Bunsen from a data center in Dallas to a data center in London. The move went well and only took a few hours to complete. It would have took less time, but apparently there was some heavy network traffic yesterday and so it took slightly longer than expected.
I decided to move Dr. Bunsen closer to home in the hope that I will be able to maintain a stable SSH connection whilst using my mobile dongle. I do not really get a good connection with my dongle at the best of times, so I figure fewer hops will help.
Regarding the technicalities of the move, I really would not know about them. Dr. Bunsen is a VPS on the Linode network, so all I had to do was send a support ticket request and click a couple of buttons. The people at Linode took care of the rest. Linode rock!