spiralofhope | Page 239

Slackware is almost a go. I’ve been spending a significant amount of time with it.
- I’ve learned that all the universality I’ve been cooking into my installation, configuration and use of all the distributions I’ve played with over the years pays off so well that I’m pretty much sliding into any distribution as soon as I can get my main tools working:
  – Btrfs
  – eCryptfs
  – Openbox (and LXPanel until I replace it)
  – KeePassX
  While I have other things I really want (Pale Moon, Geany, SpaceFM, etc), these are less essential to a “working” distribution. Of course, my goal would be to get almost all of /tag/linux-software+live working. I’ll be updating those pages as I figure all of them out. Yay, a backlog of documentation! No really, I like documentation.
- Moved reviews into Slackware reviews to make room for proper/current notes.
  – It was back-dated so it’s alongside it’s parent.

Comment

Five Things – 2016-03-25

2016-03-26

five things

Five Things >

Since I was playing with distributions on USB sticks, I, once again, looked into getting new/more USB sticks.
- I updated dd with a way to test read speeds.
  – Write speeds are something similar, but I’d have to explore disabling the system write cache for that instance of dd.
- Oh god, my existing USB sticks are mostly garbage. I’ll buy something new.
- MultiBootUSB should let me get multiple ISOs/distributions on a single quality USB stick. Yay, saving money! And space! And organization! Simplicity. See also Booting multiple distributions from a USB stick.
Slackware (14.1 32bit) is a go.
- Updated that page with my complete experiences. I’m left with an install that works, but lacks some essential tools.
- I need to figure some things out before I can bootstrap into a usable mostly-default Slackware install. Then I can switch to it full-time and get the rest figured out as and when I need to.
- The fact that it’s 32bit will let me take some things out of deep archives, to process then intern them properly.
Good gods GIMP transparent backgrounds took a long time to create.
- .. but now there’s an awesome tutorial.
Created /tag/image-software and edited various posts.
Created /tag/screenshot-software for that new class of programs.

Comment

Creating a community documentation project

2016-03-25

documentation, HOWTO, my writing, writing

Documentation is important.

However, many mature projects have part-time or overworked staff, or are built of a loose collection of volunteers. Whatever the case may be, there are times when documentation is old and broken, or poorly-designed and hard to use.

This document goes over some basic ideas for creating a new “better” project.

Do note that such a project is just as vulnerable as all of those old ones. Community participation is by far the most important element.

Comment

isohybrid

2016-03-25

commandline software, freeware, glances, Linux software, loved, open-source software, software, syslinux, the kit, utilities, zombie

https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Isohybrid

Though it can do other stuff, I use this to edit ISO images meant to be burned to a CD or DVD, to make them appropriate for copying to, and booting from, a USB stick.

Phenomenal. I wish I knew about this a long time ago. I’ve ignored many Linux distributions because of the very issue this tool solves.

Comment

Authoritarian solutions to the wage gap

2016-03-25

females, freedom, intelligence, males, my writing, writing

Some additional thoughts on “the wage gap“. There is probably duplication, but I thought I’d be more directly blunt this time around. This seems to be a decently-complete set of thoughts, for once.

Problem – On average, “females earn less money than males“.

Comment

GIMP transparent backgrounds

2016-03-25

GIMP, HOWTO, try harder

GIMP >

Problem: Given an image with a solid (or selectable) background, make that area transparent.

“Alpha” means “Transparent”.
You can also have your transparency be partial. For example, only 80% transparent. With partial transparency, some of the image’s background will still show through a little bit.

2 comments