The Ringtail

Well, I’ve been edging around it for a while - slowly trying to get a bit more independent of Ubuntu, trying not to settle for the default install and making Linux work for me. It has been largely unsatisfying though, mainly because there are a lot of things I don’t like about Ubuntu, but all tempered with the fact that it does a lot of stuff well; and it really does ‘just work’. However, I hanker after a distribution that lets me have the same DIY experience that made me love Linux in the first place. Getting Linux up and running really was a triumph when I first started messing around with Suse, Mandrake and Red Hat back in the day. I miss the challenge, but I still need a system that has the potential to do everything I need.

Enter Arch Linux.

I had tried a VM install of this a while ago but decided to go all the way and do a clean install of it at the weekend. As I am writing this on that system, all geared up to use for work, it obviously has worked. But is it what I had hoped for? Yes it is! The install was actually relatively painless, if time consuming. Ubuntu 9.10 took about an hour from finishing my backup to having a completely clean install running, with all the packages I wanted installed and configured. Arch took more like three or four hours, but I really feel like I’ve built the system I want and, more importantly, I feel like I know how it all fits together. For my money Ubuntu is getting increasingly large-OS-like in its approach — and I’m including Windows and Mac in that — hiding a lot of detail from the user and changing some configuration to be more user-friendly ( for ‘user-friendly’ read ‘hard to understand and different to the way everyone else does it’).

Arch values simplicity in its best form — not meaning ‘dumbed-down’ or ’simplistic’ but meaning that everything works in a consistent way, and that your basic install is minimal but functional. You then add in the components you need to make the system you want to work with. It could be seen as a great distro for beginners, if that beginner is wanting to understand Linux and how to put a truly great and reliable system together, rather than beginning to use Linux because it is an OS that will let them ‘not use Windows’. No snobbery intended here — these are both equally legitimate paths into and through the Linux world. I think of it as being lord of the manor in both cases; with Arch you know where the wiring is, how the plumbing works, and more than a little about the structural stresses and strains of your manor. The Ubuntu manor is just as sturdy and impressive, its just you may need to call in an expert when you want to start making structural changes.

And with that almost supernatural straining of the art of simile, I’ll get back to my work…

Getting the code and installing

Grab the code from here and follow the instructions (they’re in French but pretty easy to follow if you’ve compiled your own software before). Out of the box it recognises .mdtxt files as Markdown files, but I like all my .txt files to be recognised as Markdown too, so I did a bit extra behind my scenes to get this to work.

Setting the association

First thing to do is add the “txt” extension to be recognised as markdown format. Open the file to edit:

gedit ~/.local/share/mime/packages/x-markdown.xml

then add in the glob pattern for txt files under the current pattern for files so that the file has two lines like this:

<glob pattern="*.mdtxt"/>
<glob pattern="*.txt"/>

Next, remove the txt extension association with plain text. Open the main mime types file (you will probably need to do this as root):

gedit /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml

and search for the line

<glob pattern="*.txt"/>

This should only appear once and will be in the section for ‘plain/text’. Delete this line.

Once you’ve done these steps, run the following two lines of code (the second may need you to be root):

update-mime-database ~/.local/share/mime/
update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

then restart Gedit and you’ll be all set!

A comment on my previous post has inspired me to put fingers to keys and mention that I have recently discovered Openbox - a rather wonderful window manager that is working very well for me on Linux.

Openbox does one thing only - manages windows - without giving you all the frippery that, say, Gnome does. That means no panel, no desktop icons, no all-pervading Nautilus, nothing. Moving from Gnome to Openbox is a bit like the difference between going swimming by going to a ‘pool’ at Center Parcs and jumping out of a boat straight into the middle of the ocean. This requires a steep learning curve, but the rewards are great. There are plenty of applications you can use to provide the functionality you may miss, but they are all very nicely self-contained, light, with very few dependencies, and nicely customisable.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the analogy police - Openbox is a bit like watching a film at home rather than at the cinema. You can set the screen, snacks and seating up how you like, start the fiolm when you want, stop it if you need a wee, and talk all over the best bits if you so please. You also need to shop ahead for the snacks, live with your own choices if you miss the best bits by talking over them, and realise you can’t complain if you don’t like the service you give yourself. In other words, you can get a much richer experience but you have to put in a bit more work to get it.

This post is not about Google Wave, but the arrival of the hype around it is what’s prompted me to write. I’m not sure how I feel about the move to get my data online and in the cloud, but a voice in my head needs to vent some ideas and thoughts.

I feel increasingly resistant to services that want to introduce new ways to communicate, new ways to aggregate more and more types of communications, or new ways to move my data online and into someone else’s care. My data is important to me and I don’t trust many people to see it, let alone look after it. This applies to stuff that needs to go online at some point in its life (email, IM, tweets) as well as other stuff (documents, photos, writing) that I feel I am being a luddite by refusing to take online.

Take task management. There are a slew of online services (or services that sync with an online component), but there are still pitifully few task managers that do a good job of managing my tasks offline. Give me that first and then move it online, don’t give me a product that is shitty both on- and offline because you’re trying to address too many needs. I can’t believe that I’m the only person who, when I really consider my needs, doesn’t need 24/7 contact with my task list. With access what it is, I find there are more places where a service being online is a hindrance to me rather than a bonus (a data connection on my train journey is, at best, only about 50% but my local data is available for the whole journey).

Take document creation. I find the idea of working on a document on an online word processor abhorrent. It’s like writing the first draft of your novel on a whiteboard instead of a notepad - too visible and too likely to make you try and get it right first time so others don’t see your errors. I reserve my right to make a Shitty First Draft of anything I work on, and I want to know where that is at all times to contain the risk that someone might see it and judge me thoughts that I don’t know if even I agree with yet, rather than my considered opinion.

Even email I prefer to download and consume offline. I love the idea of being able to get my mail everywhere I go, but I don’t like most browser-based clients, and I’ve yet to find a mail client that doesn’t make dealing with IMAP anything other than a wrist-slitting exercise in trashed user preferences.

Am I a luddite? I don’t think so. I embrace new technology and I admire things that push in the right direction. I just think that some things are a problem solved that didn’t really exist. I’d be considerably less reticent to embrace the “everything goes online” revolution if the desktop apps I used all worked perfectly and had no room for improvement, but they don’t.

Perhaps my biggest issue is that I don’t want someone to own my data in the way that it being online dictates. Sure, I’m probably a bit naive to assume that Apple don’t know a lot more about me than I think they do, but I have all my data on the machine that is on my lap, and I have the right to unplug it and never give anyone a chance to see any of it if I so choose. I can’t work with an online service in that way. Moving online and ‘freeing’ your data is a fallacy - your data being online enslaves you to whoever is holding the key. We trust our money to the bank in return for the benefit of interest and security, but I don’t see a similar benefit for having my data online rather than keeping it metaphorically under my mattress. “It’s with you wherever you need it” - so’s my laptop. “It’s available 24/7″ - who needs the pressure of their work crying out to be done wherever (and whenever) they are? “It aids collaboration” - email and phone conversations do this more efficiently than I will ever need right now.

Reading back, I find myself agreeing with a lot more of what I have said above than I thought I would…

Things have been quite busy, but I haven’t really had much to write about either, so things have been a bit quiet from me. A couple of little titbits to throw out for anyone who reads this regularly:

• I am back using my Mac after a brief sojourn into Linux, and am getting to grips with learning Objective-C as I think I need a ‘proper’ language under my belt to give me a better understanding of the internals of how to code properly.

• I have not gone lure fishing for an age and am starting to think that it will be a good long while before I do again. I am enjoying float fishing on the canal and the river - catching more fish, but also having more time to sit back, relax and get to know more about the water and the wildlife. Also, my daughter has been with me one and was very keen on “boring fishing” (as opposed to “exciting” lure fishing) so I am hoping that I will get a good few trips out with her while the weather is good.

• A new project starts up next week so I will probably be working in London two days a week for a little while. Not really looking forward to the travel as I am not really a big fan of The City, but the job will be exciting I think.