Michael Joyce asked about e-book readers for the webbook, specifically for reading Project Gutenburg texts, it turns out there is indeed a great reader for them, GutenBrowser. This can be installed from the Synaptic package manager, just look down the list for gutenbrowser and install it. It does not appear to have added an icon to the menu but you can start it from alt-F2 then type gutenbrowser and hit the run button. The first thing you have to do is go to Settings-Server Settings and point it at a Gutenburg mirror. I had some problems with the UK mirrors so I am now pointing at the project Gutenburg reading room at the bottom of the list. Once you have selected a server you can go to Library-update to collect the list of titles available, then just browse the list and it will download books on demand. Currently I am reading “A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees” and contemplating the possibility of having Free Honey to go with my Free Eggs.
Settle down with 26611 good books
January 4th, 2009Merry Xmas
December 27th, 2008webbookblog.com wishes all readers a very “Merry Xmas” and a “Happy New Year”.
The webbook
At this point, it’s normally considered good to reflect on the past year, and make resolutions for the coming 12 months. So, what do you think is really good about the webbook? What needs a little bit of work? What could be changed for the better?
Leave Alan some comments, and maybe he can look at things. Or if you’ve got any unsolved problems, welcome to the fastest-growing webbook community where everybody is happy to help anybody else they can!
The blog
And what have we been doing here? Well, the core ideas behind the blog have not changed (much) – it went from Alan keeping the world up-to-date with webbook developments to being a forum where Alan (and other “experts”) answer any webbook-related problems. On the blog, this is what we’ve done:
- Gave you threaded comments, so that solutions to problems appear right there under the problem
- Allowed you to register, so that (like me) you can add your own posts if you feel brave enough
- Added a recent comments box, so that you can see what people are talking about straight away
- Changed the colours, so that it’s really obvious when Alan (or other post authors) are talking to you
- Super-Cached the blog, to cope with the massive increase in traffic (we’ve had more than 10,000 unique visits so far)
- Used Gravatars, so you can see the person you’re talking to (or a monster-style representation of them)
And we want to do more – so why don’t you leave a couple of comments telling me how to make this blog even better? Anything you ask for, I can normally figure out how to do, because WordPress is a very open platform and there are hundreds of websites dedicated to providing tutorials!
Free as in really really Free
December 3rd, 2008Earlier today Jai Harrison mentioned an application called vrms, this is a virtual Richard M. Stallman and it’s function is to tell you what packages you have installed that are not completely Free software. It is a command line tool, you can install it with sudo apt-get install vrms, or through Synaptic if you like. After installing just type vrms at a command line and you should get results like this:
alan@webbook:~$ vrms Non-free packages installed on webbook fglrx-modaliases Identifiers supported by the ATI graphics driver human-icon-theme Human Icon theme linux-generic Complete Generic Linux kernel linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.27 modules helper script linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels nvidia-173-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver nvidia-177-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver nvidia-71-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver nvidia-96-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver tangerine-icon-theme Tangerine Icon theme Contrib packages installed on webbook flashplugin-nonfree Adobe Flash Player plugin installer nvidia-common Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers 10 non-free packages, 0.7% of 1345 installed packages. 2 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1345 installed packages.
so that is a bunch of things for the nvidia and ATI graphics cards which we don’t need, flash which I can live without for a few minutes, plus some icons and some scary looking kernel bits and bobs. including the two packages with truncated names starting linux-restricted-modules-, lets find out what their real names are by looking at the vrms manual
alan@webbook:~$ man vrms
it turns out that there is a –sparse option to vrms which just prints the package names, lets give that a go
alan@webbook:~$ vrms --sparse fglrx-modaliases human-icon-theme linux-generic linux-restricted-modules-common linux-restricted-modules-generic nvidia-173-modaliases nvidia-177-modaliases nvidia-71-modaliases nvidia-96-modaliases tangerine-icon-theme flashplugin-nonfree nvidia-common
OK, so it was linux-restricted-modules-common and linux-restricted-modules-generic. Now lets strip things out using apt-get remove –purge which is the equivalent to selecting “mark for complete removal” against each package in Synaptic, it gets rid of any configuration files that might be left hanging about.
alan@webbook:~$ sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx-modaliases human-icon-theme linux-generic linux-restricted-modules-common linux-restricted-modules-generic nvidia-173-modaliases nvidia-177-modaliases nvidia-71-modaliases nvidia-96-modaliases tangerine-icon-theme flashplugin-nonfree nvidia-common [sudo] password for alan: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: linux-headers-2.6.27-7 linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic binutils-static hsolink Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED fglrx-modaliases* flashplugin-nonfree* human-icon-theme* human-theme* linux-generic* linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic* linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic* linux-restricted-modules-common* linux-restricted-modules-generic* nvidia-173-modaliases* nvidia-177-modaliases* nvidia-71-modaliases* nvidia-96-modaliases* nvidia-common* tangerine-icon-theme* ubuntu-artwork* ubuntu-desktop* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 17 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 13.4MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y (Reading database ... 150075 files and directories currently installed.) Removing fglrx-modaliases ... Removing flashplugin-nonfree ... Purging configuration files for flashplugin-nonfree ... Removing ubuntu-desktop ... Removing ubuntu-artwork ... Purging configuration files for ubuntu-artwork ... Removing human-theme ... Removing human-icon-theme ... Purging configuration files for human-icon-theme ... Removing linux-generic ... Removing linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic ... Removing linux-restricted-modules-generic ... Removing linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic ... Removing linux-restricted-modules-common ... Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-common ... Removing nvidia-common ... Purging configuration files for nvidia-common ... Removing nvidia-173-modaliases ... Removing nvidia-177-modaliases ... Removing nvidia-71-modaliases ... Removing nvidia-96-modaliases ... Removing tangerine-icon-theme ... Purging configuration files for tangerine-icon-theme ...
so now lets see what vrms thinks of my webbook
alan@webbook:~$ vrms No non-free or contrib packages installed on webbook! rms would be proud.
Excellent, and it even boots up still!
Now I am going to spoil it all by putting Flash back on.
It is worth noting that this might not fully meet the standards of the real rms, and there are projects like gNewSense which try a lot harder to get to pure Software Freedom than I can be bothered to do. I had the simple objective of getting to an empty vrms output starting from a standard Intrepid desktop install and it turned out to be easier than I expected.
Creative Commons
December 2nd, 2008I just added a license to the footer of the blog, it is a creative commons license which means you can take the stuff I have written and copy it and modify it if you like. Click on the little image below to see the full details
webbook blog by Alan Bell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
One of the reasons I was prompted to do this was a post yesterday on Barack Obama’s blog (well I don’t think he types it all himself but I am sure he approves each post) where they moved their content to a Creative Commons license. He also has a Creative Commons licensed Flickr photostream.
If you want to find other stuff (text, photos, music, videos etc) freely licensed so you can use it in presentations and whatever you like then you can search for it with Firefox using the creative commons search tool
What totally rocks about buying laptops?
November 27th, 2008So you have had a think about the things you don’t like about buying things such as laptops. Now lets talk about the positive things. What have you seen that really impressed you? What made you thing “wow, that’s good service”. Again the scope is pretty open, talk about your shopping experience for any laptop purchase online or offline and any online purchase at all. What impresses you pre-sales, during the sales process, waiting for delivery, after-sales, the product, packaging, documentation etc. Talk about purchases from any vendor at all (you don’t have to name names, but you can if you like).
What sucks about buying laptops?
November 26th, 2008If I am going to be involved in an online store I want to make certain that it doesn’t suck in any way. In fact I want to have happier customers than all the other vendors. So here is your opportunity to rant about poor shopping experiences either online or offline. The scope is wide open, moan about anything, store layout, product information, pricing, customer service, support, returns, product quality, delivery times etc.
This isn’t just about your experience with the webbook from Carphone Warehouse (in fact I would rather steer clear of that subject) it covers any laptop purchase, and any online purchase (laptop or otherwise).
I will do a followup post capturing all the really great ideas you have seen, or would like to see, but for now I want a stream of vitriol about things bad vendors do that good vendors should avoid.
I think the Ubuntu webbooks are coming back . . .
November 25th, 2008Not through Carphone Warehouse, but though a new online store. I don’t have a launch date to share yet, but we will be charging 15% VAT and might well be shipping some to Santa’s elves for a Christmas delivery.
Go Social
November 25th, 2008Paul Holt set up a facebook group for webbook owners. Facebook is a very popular social networking site, and one of the key sites we had to check worked on the webbook while it was in development. If you are on Facebook then do join the group, if you are not yet a Facebook fan then research and contemplate the privacy issues first to make sure online social networking is your kind of thing.
I would also like to bring you news of a new social networking site launched just yesterday, it is quite exclusive – you have to be called Alan to join! This site is based on Elgg which is kind of like Facebook but anyone can run their own server. A company wanting to use social networking as an internal business tool might want this. Even if you are not called Alan you can join up and have a look round, we just might delete your profile after a few weeks 
webbooks in the news
November 13th, 2008You may have seen a flurry of webbook related articles appear over the last couple of days. As with pretty much all news stories some of it is true, some of it not so true, and it certainly doesn’t tell the full story. I will try and find out what I am allowed to say to enhance the truthiness of the situation.
The USB Recovery in detail
November 6th, 2008So the USB “nuke my webbook” restore process is quite handy but it is always nice to know how things work so here goes. . .
The USB stick is FAT formatted and has the syslinux bootloader on the master boot record, on the filesystem are the following files
ldlinux.sys something to do with the syslinux bootloader
isolinux.bin something to do with the syslinux bootloader
kernel this is the linux kernel that the bootloader starts
initrd.gz this is the initial ram disk, the filesystem that contains all the partimage programs and everything the kernel needs to run
syslinux.cfg the configuration file for the bootloader with some important parameters that get passed through to partimage
there is a folder containing the full backed up image of the webbook
bios this contains backed up bios settings, I am not sure this actually works or does anything useful. In theory it might be possible to reset the boot sequence back to boot from the hard drive.
hda this contains the very first bit of the drive, the master boot record and partition table
hda1.first_sectors this contains the start of partition 1
hda2.first_sectors partition 2 just exists to contain the extended partition
hda5.first_sectors partition 5 is the swap partition, we only need to recover the first sectors with the partition information, the contents don’t matter.
hda1.000 this is the biggie a Gzipped partition image of the contents of partition 1.
Making a restore
To turn the Intrepid USB stick into a backup of whatever is on your webbook you need to edit the syslinux.cfg
DEFAULT rescue
LABEL rescue
KERNEL kernel
APPEND vga=normal devfs=nomount pxe ramdisk_size=33000 load_ramdisk=1 init=/linuxrc prompt_ramdisk=0 initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw noapic lba After_Completion=Shutdown Replace_BIOS=N AUTO=Y Server=/dev/sda1 Directory=/ Image_To_Restore=intrepid1
Edit the APPEND line so it reads:
APPEND vga=normal devfs=nomount pxe ramdisk_size=33000 load_ramdisk=1 init=/linuxrc prompt_ramdisk=0 initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw noapic lba
and you can delete the folder with the webbook image in it. If you boot from the USB stick you will now be able to go to a root shell or do a backup (or restore) from the partimage menus. There is an extra irritating little detail which took me days to figure out, when you back up an image this way it splits it into two files, the restores then don’t work (most of the time). I do the backup from the menus then delete the hda1.000 and hda1.001 files then go to the shell and run partimage from the command line which lets me back up the partition to a single unsplit file. (I will do some screenshots of that at some stage).
There are pros and cons to this method, it might be better to have a separate /home partition and have an option on startup to leave the home alone. The advantage is that it is a hands off rebuild that anyone can use, including the factory.