Mark Stosberg

Richmond Schools: Consider Thin Clients

2009-02-08T02:44:12Z

Richmond High School student Jonathan Ulrich helped to set up and test a thin client lab.

This is an open letter to the Richmond, Indiana Community School system. There is a school board meeting coming up to discuss how to fund technology upgrades with a dwindling budget. I strongly suggest the school system consider Linux thin client labs as part of the solution. Thin client labs are made with low-cost, low-power, low-maintenance stations and have many advantages.

A Linux thin client lab is already being used successfully in the area. Four years ago in Brookville, Indiana a thirty-seat thin client lab was set up at St. Michael’s School. Initial costs were kept low through low hardware requirements and the use of free, open source software. The lab is still in use four years later. Minimal maintenance has been required, including zero virus/spyware/malware infections due to the use of Linux.

Thin clients don’t need a hard drive, which are at the top of the list of the common parts to fail in a computer. Instead, every workstation pulls all the software it needs from a single server, meaning there is a one computer to maintain software on in the lab, not thirty. So St. Michael’s unplugged the hard drives in their machines, cutting down on noise in the lab, and well as reducing the energy consumed by the lab.

I recommend checking for yourself on this success story. For the administrator perspective, contact the Principal, Ken Saxon at (765) 647-4961. For the IT perspective, contact Mike Heins, who set up the system and maintains it: (765) 328 4479, (also at mikeh@perusion.net).

The use of Linux in Indiana schools is not new, either. In 2005 the state of Indiana launched a state-wide initiative to put Linux on the the desktop of 300,000 Indiana high school students. Locally, Northeastern High School has made significant use of Linux.

I’ve already hinted that thin clients have lower power requirements and can be lower maintenance. The hardware needed for thin client workstations is not special. In fact, old desktop hardware that would otherwise be discarded for being slow is ideal. In a thin client system, the performance is determined by the server, and the workstation needs just a minimal amount of resources to connect to it.

With these principles, I built a four-seat demonstration lab at my church, using three computers so old that a local computer store gave them to me. I paid only $50 for a memory upgrade for the server. As a thin client lab, these old computers came back to life and performed like modern desktops, although they ran Windows 98 in their former lives.

Because a school lab setting is ideal place to deploy a thin client network, there are several projects that focus on exactly this, and give away the required software. These include K12Linux and Edubuntu. Both are exceptionally easy to try out and install, from personal experience.

Pursuing thin client now is a strategic move that works towards the goal of the City’s Comprehensive Plan to be a “Sustainable City”. The plan is fiscally conservative and technologically advanced, with low impact on the environment and energy bills.

My town runs Linux

2008-11-22T18:42:56Z

Many of the key organizations I deal with in my daily life now run Linux on the desktop. First, let’s taken as given that I run it home and work and my wife runs it, too. Many other organizations in Richmond, Indiana have switched over to Linux on the desktop as well:

My church has three computers, one for the pastor, one for the office manager and one for the hardware recycling program. They all independently chose to run Linux. It’s a popular choice in the congregation as well, as with more than a dozen systems in use by members ranging from 4 years old past 64 years old.
My doctor, Kurt Ritchie, runs his business exclusively on Linux
My lawyer, Thomas Kemp, runs his law practice primary on a Linux-based groupware solution now, and travels with a Linux laptop
My grocery store, The Clear Creek Coop, runs exclusively Linux on the desktop. They bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed.
My bike shop, Ike’s Bikes, now runs exclusively Linux on the desktop.
A local high school, North Eastern, runs primary Linux on the desktop, as part of trend of over 20,000 Indiana students running Linux.
A local college, Earlham, features Linux labs
Local graduate schools, Earlham School of Religion and Bethany Seminary, also use and promote Linux on the desktop
A local computer store, System Solutions, has had a stack of Linux install disks to give out, and pledges interest to support Linux more in the future, citing frustrations with Windows Vista and Windows malware problems in general.

Those are the commercial desktop Linux desktop uses I can think of off the top of my head. Among home users, I’ve found that a number of people are installing Linux themselves now, from farmers to bloggers.

Microsoft may still have majority share on the desktop here, but in my world they are losing ground fast to the benefits of open source software.

Who has switched in your world?

Processing Digital Camera videos for Flickr with Ubuntu Linux

2008-08-06T16:00:00Z

Here's how I processed some digital camera videos for uploading to Flickr. The things I wanted to adjust were:

Shortening the length
Removing the original Audio track
Adding new music, using a sound loop

Nothing particularly that seems like it should be hard. (Details after the break)

First, I found a sound loop from SoundSnap.com.

By installing Audacity and using "Effect: Repeat", I was easily able to make the sound loop repeat enough times to cover the video.

Next, I stripped out the original audio using ffmpeg, while converting the file to the the MPEG format, and preserving the quality:

ffmpeg -i MVI_3876.AVI -an -sameq out.mpg

Finally, I added in my new music, while also truncating the video to be 16 seconds:

ffmpeg -i out.mpg -i my.mp3 -sameq -t 16 final.mpg

While I would happy to know about graphical ways to accomplish what ffmpeg was doing, it wasn't particularly hard to read the documentation for ffmpeg and come up with these commands.

Windows and Linux dual-boot failure story

2008-05-27T00:38:24Z

0x0000007B. This was the error code nestled in a blue screen of death when trying to boot Windows XP after an install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron. The screen flashes so quickly I had to boot to it once just notice there was an error code and then two more times to transcribe the hexidecimal error code.

Skipping the details of the hours of research and troubleshooting, the end result was a determination that to make Windows work again, the hard drive would need to be wiped clean of both Windows and Ubuntu Linux.

I generally recommend against dual-boot systems except as a transitional solution. It at least doubles the complexity of the system, creating two paradigms each with their own maintenance and gotchas.

This experience left me disappointed in both Microsoft and Ubuntu, but it's hard to blame either more than the other for the serious flaw, as it only came up when the complexity of both systems was combined.

I am disappointed in Microsoft for being closed-- Closed to helping legitimate users recover from serious problems with their systems. It became clear that I should try to use the "Windows XP Recovery Console" for this, along with the "CHKDSK", "FIXMBR" and "FIXBOOT" commands. But Microsoft does not make these tools easily available. They expect users to have a "Recovery CD", which a legitimate owner of a used system could easily not have.

Windows XP is closed to dual-booting Linux. Its tools assume Windows is the only operating system installed and Linux does not exist. Microsoft is also of course closed with their technologies and source code, so that it seems no one even claims to have alternative tools that work in perfectly compatible ways with the black-box tool "CHKDSK". So Microsoft failed me when I needed it most to repair their operating system. Their penalty was severe. The laptop users, already happy with Ubuntu decided not to re-install Windows, and instead will continue using just Ubuntu, at least for now.

I am disappointed with Ubuntu for seemingly being able to get into problems with NTFS partitions that it can get out of by itself. At some point the Ubuntu prescribed the solution of using "CHKDSK /F"...from Windows. Ubuntu was telling me to use Windows to solve a problem it had a hand in creating. Not cool, even if the developers are handicapped by reverse-engineering a closed system.

My take away: Seek openness and simplicity in technology. I will continue to avoid Windows as a closed platform and at this point would only use or recommend read/write NTFS access from Linux if it is considered mission-critical.

Browse, E-mail and launch applications faster with Deskbar

2008-05-04T01:21:32Z

Deskbar is feature built-in to Ubuntu Linux that speeds up common tasks by letting my type just a word and having it "do what I mean". Some examples:

If I want to use my chat program, I don't no longer have to think about whether it is already running or not, to decide whether to use a "task launcher" or a "task switcher". I just type "chat", and Deskbar will do the right thing-- Switch to it if it is open, or launch it if it is not.

The ability to "just think of the application" is the core elegance of the Mac OS X Dock, yet so many imitations of it get it wrong and continue to separate the concepts of task switching and launching. Deskbar thankfully allows you to just think of an application without being concerned about whether or not it is already open. But that said Deskbar is not a dock and the similarity with the OS X Dock ends there.

Other common tasks are also sped up. If I want to e-mail Chris, I don't have to think

Check to see if e-mail program is already running, and launch it if is not.
Switch to e-mail program
Open up new message
Type "Chris@summersault.com".

With Deskbar, I just think "email chris" and type "Chris@summersault.com". It takes of launching or switching to a mail program and launching the "new message" function with Chris as the recipient.

Likewise, if I want to open a website, I don't have to think:

Switch to browser
Start typing URL

With Deskbar, I just think "go to website" and start typing the URL.

Because these are common tasks that I do several times a day, I appreciate the small but frequest speed-ups that Deskbar offers. Perhaps more importantly, I appreciate that Deskbar eliminates boring busy work related to which applications are already running.

Installing Deskbar in Ubuntu Hardy Heron is easy. Just right click on the panel and and use "Add to Panel" and then Search for "Deskbar". Once it's in the panel, right click the icon to open the preferences. You'll find in the "General" tab that you can set or use a global keyboard shortcut to launch it. I use "Space", so in my examples above I would actually just be typing "Space chat" while using any application, and then Deskbar would appear present me possible actions it could take based on the word "chat". In the preferences also review the "Searches". Make sure "Window Switcher" is enabled and move to the top of the list! You may want to enable other possible matches, like the dictionary, or disable other searches options you don't use that might clutter results. I also suggest being intentional about the ordering of the search results to get the most of Deskbar. Put the most frequently used features at the top of the list. So for example, if I type "chat", I want the first match to be "Switch to my chat program". The option to "Look up Chat in the dictionary" may also be a possible match next in the search results but would require an extra keystroke or mouse action to select.

Use F11 for Full Screen in Ubuntu

2008-03-06T02:30:05Z

With the increasing popularity of laptops, getting the most out of small screen sizes has become a priority for computer users.

Ubuntu Linux helps with this by providing a consistent keyboard shortcut for a "Full Screen" mode. Pressing "F11" in many standard Ubuntu applications allows you to to toggle the application in and out of a full screen mode. Today I tested that the following key applications support this:

Firefox
Gimp Image Editor
Eye of Gnome Image Viewer
Evince Document Viewer
Totem Movie Player
Rhythmbox Music Player
Terminal

Now that I realize the shortcut exists and is widely supported I use it regularly to get the most out of my 14" laptop screen. I did find one key application had a full screen model and used a different shortcut. Open Office mysteriously uses "Ctrl-Shift-J". I have filed a bug to suggest that Ubuntu make this consistent as well.

Ubuntu tip: Automatically turn off streaming music at night

2007-12-22T02:25:22Z

I've been known to accidentally leave a stream of music running all night when I'm not there to listen to it anymore. That wastes bandwidth and energy.

Here's a quick tip to prevent from happening, by causing any music playing to be turned off at 7:00 pm each night.

On Ubuntu Linux, add these lines to "/etc/crontab". You can edit this file with "gksudo gedit /etc/crontab":

Note that "rhythmbox" is the name of the music players I use. Change as needed.

# stop streams from playing all night.
0 19 * * Mon-Fri killall --quiet rhythmbox

If you need to adjust the time, the first two columns of numbers are the minutes and hour columns.

Have fun!

Microsoft Windows helpfully protects user from accessing the internet. At all.

2007-07-28T16:00:00Z

Restricting freedoms in the name of safety and security can go too far.

Take this recent tech support call from a family member. She hadn't been able to get on the internet for days. She called Comcast, which provides her cable modem. Things looked fine on their side, they said. They suggested something on her computer wasn't working right. Using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as the web browser might be the problem, they offered.

Having used this Windows XP computer myself, I'm familiar with all the popups that the ZoneAlarm security utility generates. "Someone is trying to attack your computer on Port 80. Do you want to allow it? [YES] [NO]".

]]> You shouldn't have to answer questions like this. On Mac and Linux you generally don't have to worry about security.

The questions are technical and irritating and easy to guess wrong at.

Apparently, my relative choose the wrong answer once. The answer apparently meant "Please, completely protect me from the internet by disallowing me access to it." Once she turned off ZoneAlarm, the internet connection started working again.

Not only did this issue have nothing to do with Internet Explorer vs. Firefox, but it is Internet Explorer that has such a reputation for letting through viruses and spyware in the first place, causing people to turn to solutions like the paranoid ZoneAlarm application.

For a real alternative to this mess, I recommend Linux, which I have used for the last several years. It works well. Yes, it has some quirks of its own, but overall it is a more pleasant experience compared, and it not nearly so likely to protect you from the internet like this.

Five Immediate Customizations for Ubuntu

2007-05-07T16:00:00Z

This was written for the Ubuntu release code named Feisty Fawn, but may apply to later releases as well.

Ubuntu is a great operating system, and I've already helped install it on a number of systems. Here are five customizations I make right away to make it a more pleasant system to suit my taste:

Install the Flash and Java plugins. Ubuntu already has packages for these, but I believe they turned on by default for licensing reasons. Go to Applications: Add & Remove Applications and search for "ubuntu-restricted-extras". This will install Flash and Java plugins, as well MP3 support and some nice free Microsoft fonts. Check the boxes next to the listing and click "Apply" to finish the job. The Java plugin installs some things into the menu system that I think I'll never use, so I remove the entries for them. To edit the menu, right-click on "Applications" and select "Edit Menu". The menu editor should be fairly intuitive, and allowing you to remove "Java Web Start" and anything else you want. (Note: removing the menu items doesn't un-install these applications).
Turn off Google Suggest. I find the "Google Suggest" feature in Firefox to be annoying. To turn it off, enter about:config in the Location bar and press enter. In the resulting interface that comes up, search for "suggest". The preference for disabling this feature will be displayed. Right click on "true" and select "Toggle". That's it!
Enter fewer passwords. The following tips make the computer less security, but more convenient. Perhaps this trade-off isn't for you. First, you can skip the initial password screen at a boot and go straight to a particular account. To enable Auto-login of a user, go to System: Administration: Login Window: Security. Check the box for Enable Automatic Login and select a user to login automatically. On laptops, I also like to turn off the default of having a password appear automatically when the computer is resumed. To do that, launch the preference editor with Alt-F2 and then gconf-editor in the Run box. Once this program launches navigation to apps / gnome-power-manager. Check the box next to lock_use_screensaver_settings. Now this password will be disabled whenever the password for the screensavers are disabled.
Play DVDs. Ubuntu can't play some encrypted DVDs by default due to legal restrictions in some countries. Go ahead and try to play a DVD. It will pleasantly notice that you don't have the all the codecs you need installed, and offer to install some helper software for you. However, for an encrypted DVD, this still won't be enough. After checking any possible legal restrictions that may apply to your area, you can run a simple command to install support for playing encrypted DVDs. Use Alt-F2 to open the Run box. Copy and paste this into the box: sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh. Be sure to check the "Run in Terminal" box and then press OK. You'll need to enter your administrator password, and then wait briefly for the installation process to complete.
Use F-Spot for importing digital photos. I think F-Spot is a nicer photo manager than the default gThumbs application. F-spot comes installed by default is easy to set to have it open to import your photos when you plug in a digital camera. Go to System: Preferences: Removable Drives and Media: Cameras. The importing command you need to enter is: f-spot-import %h.

Puppy Linux gives new life to Windows 95 Laptop

2007-05-01T16:00:00Z

Recently I was asked to help revive a Windows 95-era laptop by installing Linux on it. Windows 95 didn't seem to have functional USB support on the laptop, and modern web browsers like Firefox weren't easily available for it.

My first attempt was to try Xubuntu Linux, which seemed to still be too resource intensive for this 96Mg RAM, 150Mhz processor laptop.

My second attempt, Puppy Linux seems to be working rather well. Except for some files I needed to copy by hand, the install went very smoothly, and the system does indeed run with low requirements, idling well below the 96 Megs of memory the system has.

It was very easy to connect to my home wireless network with the machine, and a USB drive that was plugged into the machine was immediately recognized. Further, the system now has Firefox installed as a web-browser, and good options for e-mail and word processing as well.

Now, Linux is not magical pixie dust, even when it's tailored to older hardware. With only 150Mhz under the hood, the system is noticeably slow for a lot of operations. While the Flash plugin is installed, I doubt it has horsepower to do much with sound or video.

Still, of the options available to extend the life of a decade-old laptop, Puppy Linux seems to be an excellent choice.

(A little more search engine fodder: The laptop was a Gateway Solo 2000, model "9100")

Improvements Contributed to Mandriva, Ubuntu laptop sound

2007-02-24T17:00:00Z

As part of my switch from Mandriva Linux to Ubuntu Linux, I had the opportunity today to contribute some improvements back to both operating systems.

Having just used Mandriva on this laptop, I knew it was possible for the sound to keep working after a suspend/resume cycle, but it quit working after the Ubuntu switch.

Since Mandriva's solution was made available under an open source license, I was able to review it adapt to work with Ubuntu, and Ubuntu can easily and legally accept this solution, if they choose.

]]> In the process of the code review, I found a bug in Mandriva's code, so that the new and nice Exaile music player wouldn't automatically launch after a resume.

I submitted a bug report to Mandriva with a solution for that, and some other minor sound/suspend issues.

Once the Ubuntu integration was complete, I submitted the patches through this existing bug report from someone else having the same issue. The solution should help many other people who are stuck with broken sound after suspending their Linux laptops as well.

To Mandriva's credit, they've had this solution for at least a couple of years, it seems, and it hash always been available to Ubuntu to re-use like this.

The PM-Utils project is trying to fix this duplication of effort, by creating a system to handle laptop suspending that many distributions would adopt.

The irony is that the pm-utils doesn't yet include this solution for fixing sound-after-suspend problems. If it continues to miss features that one distribution or the other already offer, they certainly be slow to switch to it as a standard replacement!

Thunderbird Email Productivity Tip: Sending without Checking

2007-02-10T17:00:00Z

Checking E-mail can be a big distraction when I'm involved in a task and just want to send an email and move on. Sometimes if I have new e-mail, I just don't even want to know.

Sure, I could close my eyes while the Inbox opens and I press "Control-N" for the new message window, but I've found a method for opening just the "Compose Message" window without first opening the Inbox.

I tested this with Thunderbird on Linux, but I suspect that at least the Mac can suppor something like this as well.

The "trick" is open the program as if an email address had been clicked on a web page. Many e-mail programs support this kind of integration. With Thunderbird, the following can be entered in the "Run Box" on Linux, usually invoked with "Alt-F2"

mozilla-thunderbird 'mailto:'

That directly opens the "Compose New Message" window, without loading the rest of the application.

My eyes have been opened to new productivity.

Open Source Totem Beats RealPlayer with RealAudio stream

2006-12-21T17:00:00Z

I was disappointed that Realplayer 10 wouldn't play this RealAudio stream I made several years ago, using official Real-branded tools as I recall. Instead, the message returned is:

The content you are trying to play uses an audio codec that is obsolete and no longer supported. Please contact the content provider about using a supported codec.

It appears Real quit supporting their own format. However, the open source totem player had no problem with it.

It's unfortunate when properiety vendors abandon their own formats, but this is a case when there is an option to upgrade to an open source solution.

LyX: An excellent tool for math notation

2006-05-05T16:00:00Z

Math teachers need software than can efficiently produce a lot of mathmatical notation. It's possible to use math formulas directly in word processors like OpenOffice. OpenOffice is fine when you need an occassional math formula, but it requires too many clicks to be efficient for math heavy documents.

For math-intense documents, the free, open source LyX is an excellent choice.
Available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, LyX excels at working with math formulas. The edge it provides is direct shortcuts to enter common math notations, as well as beautiful output.

This way, math formulas can typed out in a natural work flow. The difference like typing on a computer keyboard compared to trying to compose a sentence on a cell phone. Lyx is faster.

Hopi, a local math teacher quickly taught herself the basics of LyX and uses it to produce math handouts with complex fractions and other math notations.

You can examples of Lyx being used for math notation, or follow the links above for further information.

Easy labels on Ubuntu Linux with Glabels

2006-04-29T01:04:50Z

Glabels 2 is an an excellent, free, open source Linux program for creating labels and business cards.

It was a snap to use it to create business cards. Without having used the software before, I was able to create what I wanted in just a few minutes. Not only does Glabels provide tools to design labels, it has built-in templates for hundreds of standard label-type designs, such as the business card sheets you can buy for home label printing.

]]> Yesterday I had a more challenging tasks for Glabels. The labels we had from the store weren't known to Glabels, and had rather odd dimensions. The sheet itself was only half the width of a standard page. Further, their was a gap in the middle each page with no labels on it!

Glabels was ready for this. It lead me through a graphical wizard, asking me various dimensions of the custom label sheet I had. As I entered the numbers, it updated a graphical sketch representing the page. This allowed me to instantly reality-check my work.

A few minutes later, the test print was complete. The output had lined up perfectly on the sheet! Glabels saved the custom template I'd just created so it would be easy to select it as an option in the future.

My next challenge was to merge the design with a data set, so each label would be different. Since I can't remember the last time I did a mail-merge, I was afraid this would be hard.

Glabels had clear buttons and icons that made it simple to insert merge fields into the design and select a data file to use. It's hard to imagine how it could have been much easier.

As a one-time independent book publisher, I appreciate that Glabel can also create bar codes. At that time, there was no viable software to create the ISBN barcode I needed for the back of the book. I had to have a friend-of-a-friend make one in exchange for a copy of the book! Now Glabels would do that for free.

Glabels is a pleasure to use, and I heartily recommend it for your LInux label making needs.