Debian 5.0 Lenny was released on 14th this month. 22 months of development, I knew the exact release date long time upfront, but I didn’t plan that right on that day FoolControl will go through some downtime :/

Nevertheless, Lenny is out, and out of sudden I don’t have much stuff left to talk about on this very topic now :) I find Lenny to be one of the best releases Debian releases yet, I too contributed to this release as much as I could. Didin’t make into package maintainers, but it’s all matter of free time, and dedication really.

I’ve been with Lenny, well pretty much since Etch was released, I moved to Lenny. Since Lenny is stable now, and new testing is Squeeze, don’t jump on Squeeze right about now, since there aren’t security updates at the moment, since security team for Squeeze isn’t formed yet.

However, Lenny has been great for very long time, and I’d really enjoying sticking to it, but I believe I’ll move to next testing in no time, life on stable … it’s boring :)

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if wouldn’t include some hate into this release itself :) Lenny was originally scheduled for September, it’s ~5 months late … now it’s time to start hating of course. After release of Etch, it as said that Debian release cycle will hold its stance, that is “it’s going to be released when it’s ready” but there was some sort of agreement that after Etch, every new stable will be released when it’s ready, but if there has to be some time cycle it should be around year and half (1.5 years).

Now, you can “defend” Debian on many different ways for being late for 5 months, but let me just say one thing. IMO Lenny is absolutely stable for last year or so, but why isn’t it used or even reffered as “mainstream/stable” release. Mostly because of it’s name … “testing”. It scareds people away, just as “unstable” or “experimental” creeps fear into my spine … but when packages from those same two repositories(unstable and exerimental) are put into Ubuntu and labeled as Ubuntu x.xx it’s considered to be stable release right away.

Yea … excatly, there’s support part as well, but it’s name that’s … freaking you all out if you ask me.

I really find Debian (after all possible distro I tried and hopped from) to be just perfect from your server system to your desktop system … but. I find that Debian stable (doesn’t matter codename/version is your pick) is just too stale and too stable. For servers, perfect pick, for so many reasons! From being incredibly stable to incredibly secure and just working, there’s that support part.

But on Desktop, I really believe you should go for testing, now you may be dismayed when it comes to this option, mostly since it prolly stands for developers, hackers and other creepy bunch. This is how and why I came up with Havoc idea. I really believe that even Debian Havoc, is less scarier and acceptable then Debian Testing …

Furthermore, there’s even a thing called Sidux, it’s based on unstable branch but it work perfectly on your desktop … why not? There’s even this most popular distro Ubuntu, but I do believe that Ubuntu is kind of going the wrong way when it comes to what I’d want, Ubuntu is awesome and it has its target audience and all but …

All I’m saying is that Debian Testing in future should be more throughly or nicely if you want to put that way presented to all the users. I talked to Gustavo Franco (stratus) about this, and the idea is to reswamp the Debian on Desktop page and try “bringing” it to people like you and I.

Goal what needs to be done is completely clear, how to acomplish this task is another topic.

Feb 22 – update | Problems

System slow down, sound breaking up

I’ve noticed that after some time, Lenny just starts … going crazy, it usually happens on my other “non-default” machine, when after certain uptime sound starts breaking up and whole system basically slows down. This is a dual core system, and both cores get a load of almost 100% and what’s even worse there isn’t any process that makes it obvious why this is happening.

Sometimes it will just happen after not even half an hour of uptime, I have a friend with same problem on Lenny and we both have “high definition” sound card, which is btw definitely the worst sound card ever.

absinthe@havoc:~$ lspci | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)

I first thought it was a kernel issue, then I thought it was flash (non-free) or samba problem, but what I’ve figured out is that, it’s most certainly xorg problem, since once I had my xorg configured propely (moved from vesa) it all works fine. Below you can see how my current xorg.conf looks like for this machine:

absinthe@havoc:~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Files"
# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "i2c"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
Load "dbe"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
#key board section
Option "XkbOptions" "altwin:super_win"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
VideoRam 131072
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "true"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024×768" "1152×870" "1280×800"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
Option "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection
absinthe@havoc:~$

After I had my xorg.conf configured I haven’t ran into any problems with either my sound breaking up or anything slowing down, both cores running at normal speeds/load. Also under “Device” section you can use either “i810” or “intel” as your driver, see which one suits you better.

Google Earth problem

This is not a Debian problem, this is solely GoogleEarth problem. Google Earth is incredibly slow! After my xorg.conf configuration it still remained slow, also there was a problem with

./googleearth-bin: relocation error: /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8: symbol BIO_test_flags,
version OPENSSL_0.9.8 not defined in file libcrypto.so.0.9.8 with link time reference

This problem would occur when on this same machine another user would try to run GoogleEarth. Really rookie mistakes Google, way to go, I see Microsoft has been your rolemodel for awhile ;)

I even tried installing it both from making my own .deb package to installing it via loki installer, same results.

Resolution: Open your GoogleEarth > View > Athmosphere (uncheck) and that’s it, now it works fine.

Another user cannot run GoogleEarth from same machine?

Resolution: If you used .deb to install your GoogleEarth then your googleearth is in “/usr/lib/googleearth/“, if you used loki then it’s in “/opt/googleearth/

Now cd either of those where you put your googleearth under and:

# mv libcrypto.so.0.9.8 libcrypto.so.0.9.8.old
# ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.0.9.8

That’s all when it comes to problems I’ve encountered with Lenny so far.