Ever since I first heard of Bradley Kuhn, formerly of the Software Freedom Law Center and now the [Software Freedom Conservancy], on Linux Outlaws, I’ve been interested in what he has to say about (did you guess it?) software freedom. I try to listen semi-regularly to his Free as in Freedom oggcast.

Here is an article from Bradley’s blog on why he returned to Debian recently after years running everything from Red Hat to Ubuntu.

Blosxom, PyBlosxom, Nanoblogger — hell, even WordPress and Movable Type are available as Debian packages.

I wondered, was I missing other blogging platforms, both flat-file and database-driven?

I went to Debian’s web software archive and took a look.

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The 2.6.37 kernel I got from Liquorix has made Debian Squeeze a nearly perfect distribution. The stock 2.6.32 kernel works great, except for sound, where plugging in my headphones doesn’t mute the speakers. This muting works with no configuration change in 2.6.37 from Liquorix.

I also finally have suspend/resume working for pretty much the first time ever in Linux, and I really like using it. The success of suspend/resume might be due to my installing the Debian nonfree firmware, which enabled DRI, which somehow factors into kernel mode setting. My understanding of the whole thing is a little vague, but what I do know is that suspend/resume works great, and this Debian Squeeze installation is running as well as anything I’ve ever used in the world of Linux and BSD.

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I wondered why the official FlatPress blog shows the number of views per post, and mine did not.

The “xx views” at the end of every post is enabled by the PostViews plugin.

To enable the PostViews plugin, go to the Admin Area, click on plugins, then go down to PostViews and click enable.

The per-post counter starts when you enable the plugin.

I’m on the lookout for more small blogging systems, and via Planet Debian and a post by Debian Developer Kai Wasserbäch, I just found Steve Kemp’s Chronicle.

You can see the system at work in Kai’s Chronicle blog and Steve’s Chronicle blog. Like many of these smaller (and larger) blogging systems, it’s packaged for Debian.

This is another one I’m going to look at.

I’ve been experimenting with other flat-file blogging systems, including Blosxom and Ode.

Both Blosxom and Ode are based on Perl scripts, while FlatPress is written in PHP.

Blosxom is pretty much dead, though there are many offshoots, including the Python clone PyBlosxom, the above-mentioned Ode and more, the list of which you can see at Blosxom’s Wikipedia page.

Ode has in its favor an excellent default design/theme, its mission of teaching the user Perl (since it was developed with the now-classic “Learning Perl” O’Reilly book in mind and includes two extensively annotated extra versions of the main Perl script), good documentation and an enthusiastic and inclusive lead developer in Rob Reed (Ode has its own Twitter feed as well).

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I got an OpenBSD shell account on devio.us. Here’s what I have in my web directory.

It won’t be long before I drop a FlatPress install in there.

FlatPress has been working great, but I’m still exploring other blogging/CMS systems. I already have one WordPress install on my Hostgator shared-hosting account, and I used Hostgator’s automatic system to install another WordPress instance in a different domain.

That all went well, but what I really wanted was the ability to manage multiple blogs from a single WordPress instance. I made the first configuration change needed, but I couldn’t go further.

Why didn’t it work? I think that as part of the automatic installation of WordPress in Hostgator, it used the same database as my other WordPress instance, and due to that bit of database sharing, somehow I couldn’t get the “networked” blog feature to work.

The automatic installs, whether with Fantastico or Hostgator’s newer tool, are great because you click, click, click and have a service installed, but you then have no idea about how things were done unless you dig into the configuration files.

My database knowledge isn’t exactly broad, and I think the way to learn more is to create the database myself and install and configure the blog/CMS software the traditional way.

That’s what I like about FlatPress — besides not needing a database, you drop your files on the server via FTP, make a few changes, do some configuration (it’s not all text files; there’s a lot GUI in it) and you’re going. You can move it easily, back it up easily and look at the text files that hold your individual entries.

But I still want the multiblog, and I could do it with WordPress, Drupal, or even Movable Type, which I know very well. However, I don’t think that WordPress or Movable Type will allow me to do the one thing I really do want: the ability to write an entry and than target it to my choice blogs, moving it from one to the other (or running it in more than one) at will. That’s what I want.

I got a deal on an Epson Perfection V330 scanner. It runs great in Windows 7 with the voluminous amount of software on the install CD. I hoped that it would work out of the box with Debian Squeeze. No such luck. Sane/Xsane doesn’t recognize it (although it's in the dmesg).

I Googled for and found a few packages that got me going. (Here's a report of this method working in Ubuntu.)

I downloaded, unpacked and installed the driver and scanning software from Avasys, and with a reboot I was able to scan from my Debian Squeeze laptop.

It all works great. Thus far I've only used the Image Scan! software (yep, the name has an ! in it), which does work fairly well by the way.

I imagine these same packages would work for Ubuntu. There are also packages for Mint, Mandriva, CentOS, Fedora, PCLinuxOS and a few others.

You would think that scanners, especially those by companies such as Epson, would either work out of the box or have packages within the Debian (or Ubuntu) repos, if only in non-free. Guess not.

But since the solution was fairly easy to come by, I'm accepting (and now using) it.

I’ve been using the Liquorix kernels on my Debian Squeeze laptop almost since I installed Squeeze in its late-testing phase, and while the GNOME Update Manager doesn’t seem to want to update those kernels from Liquorix, I run Aptitude in a terminal and am able to keep up with the latest kernels.

I’m not exactly sure why Synaptic won’t perform this upgrade. Whenever there’s a new Liquorix kernel in its repository, I get an update icon in my upper GNOME panel (most things on this installation are vanilla Debian). When I run the Update Manager, I get a dialog box asking me whether or not I wish to perform a “safe upgrade.” It seems that whether I answer yes or no, I don’t get the new kernel.

I prefer to update with aptitude anyway, so I run it in the terminal:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude upgrade

That brings in the new kernels and updates the GRUB bootloader.

Here is the output of sudo aptitude upgrade:

steven@lenovo:~$ sudo aptitude upgrade
Resolving dependencies...                
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64{a} 
  linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64{a} 
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64{u} 
The following packages will be upgraded:
  linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64 
2 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 38.6 MB of archives. After unpacking 128 MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Get:1 http://liquorix.net/debian/ sid/main linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 amd64 2.6.37-10 [5,215 kB]
Get:2 http://liquorix.net/debian/ sid/main linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64 amd64 2.6.37-10 [129 kB]
Get:3 http://liquorix.net/debian/ sid/main linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 amd64 2.6.37-10 [33.1 MB]
Get:4 http://liquorix.net/debian/ sid/main linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64 amd64 2.6.37-10 [129 kB]
Fetched 38.6 MB in 56s (687 kB/s)                                               
Reading changelogs... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64.
(Reading database ... 157978 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 (from .../linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64_2.6.37-10_amd64.deb) ...
Preparing to replace linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64 2.6.37-9 (using .../linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64_2.6.37-10_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64 ...
(Reading database ... 169099 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64 ...
Selecting previously deselected package linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64.
(Reading database ... 157981 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 (from .../linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64_2.6.37-10_amd64.deb) ...
Preparing to replace linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64 2.6.37-9 (using .../linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64_2.6.37-10_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64 ...
Setting up linux-headers-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 (2.6.37-10) ...
Setting up linux-headers-2.6-liquorix-amd64 (2.6.37-10) ...
Setting up linux-image-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 (2.6.37-10) ...
Running depmod.
Running update-initramfs.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub 2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.37-1.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-1.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.37-1.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-0.dmz.7-liquorix-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.37-0.dmz.7-liquorix-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-0.dmz.6-liquorix-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.37-0.dmz.6-liquorix-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
done
Setting up linux-image-2.6-liquorix-amd64 (2.6.37-10) ...

Current status: 0 updates [-2], 906 new [-1].
steven@lenovo:~$

I’m not the type to run off-distro kernels. While it’s generally not something I’m comfortable with, Liquorix packages these kernels specifically for Debian and optimizes them for desktop use. I have never had a problem.

The reason I’m using Liquorix kernels is that my hardware runs better on the 2.6.37 Linux kernel than it does on the stock 2.6.32 kernel that ships with Debian.

The big difference (and the only one that matters to me) is that the weak sound module (Conexant 5069) in my Lenovo G555 laptop. With the ALSA 1.0.23 driver (many distros ship 1.0.23 ALSA with the 1.0.21 driver in the kernel), I’ve been able to plug in headphones, get audio through them and have the speakers mute. Sounds like a given, but on some distros with the 1.0.23 ALSA driver I can do this with a configuration-file change. In Debian with 2.6.37, this works out of the box.

I’m not crazy about new kernels every few days (or even every few weeks if it’s not absolutely necessary), and I hope to try the Debian Sid kernel when it finally goes past 2.6.32.

But the whole idea of running Debian Stable, in which the apps aren’t yet completely ancient with selected newer bits like the kernel and maybe a few packages from Debian Backports (web browsers and such) is very appealing to me due to the fact that Squeeze is working well on my hardware and for my workflow.