The "fast" pace of Iceweasel/Firefox and Icedove/Thunderbird releases over the past couple of years has really thrown longer-term Linux distributions for a loop.

The Mozilla-coded apps quickly get very old, and it's harder and harder for Debian developers to patch those older versions with the latest security fixes when the upstream code leaves the distro's original version further and further behind.

And enterprises, educational institutions and people who like things to stay the same aren't terribly excited by applications that change versions from month to month, regardless of what actual changes are happening in the code. Never mind that those changes are often significant enough to break things built for a platform that is moving too quickly for many tastes.

Enter the Extended Support Release version of Firefox and Thunderbird. After seeing its Mozilla applications get really old really fast in Squeeze, Debian picked up on the ESR releases of Iceweasel and Icedove for Wheezy. That's what I see in CentOS, Scientific Linux and Stella as well, so it appears that even Red Hat Enterprise Linux has opted for ESR.

Sure there are features in the "consumer" version of Firefox (which Ubuntu follows even for its LTS release) that users of ESR will miss, but between stability in terms of functionality and knowing that these web-connected applications are fully patched, the peace of mind is well worth it.

Iceweasel 10.0.09esr just rolled onto my Debian Wheezy box. I'm glad to see it.

Paul Tagliamonte writes a short post I found via Planet Debian titled Stuff that's bothering me about Ubuntu right now.

Many have complained about the Amazon results that pop up when you search even your local drive, but I haven't seen much reaction to Ubuntu's solicitation of donations in the boot screen for the live disc.

Paul is not in favor, and he frames it in an interesting way:

... begging for a handout when people Download Ubuntu — without an option to donate to Debian, which  composes over 70% of the Desktop, I get upset.

I feel cheated, and I’m not even involved on a day-to-day anymore.

I’m ashamed of what’s going on now, and I hope we find a better way to serve our users.

Quite a few updates moved for Debian's Wheezy testing branch today. I got a lot of GNOME bits and, for some reason, qemu-kvm.

The Debian Project is pushing Wheezy ever closer to release. The way things are going, counting the number of release-critical bugs and comparing it to roughly the same period before the release of Squeeze (the current Stable release), there are now 243 release-critical bugs remaining to be solved before Wheezy's release can happen. In September 2010, there were 126 RC bugs remaining to be solved.

Squeeze was released in February 2011, and if the RC-bug count is any indication, we won't see Wheezy go Stable this year, even though that was an early goal of the project.

Read the rest of this post

I bit the bullet and did some repartitioning of my Debian Wheezy-running laptop to give myself more space on the Linux side by taking it from the seldom-used Windows side of my dual-boot system.

I had wanted to make my existing Debian partitions bigger, but due to the fact that modifying LVM -- especially with some partitions encrypted -- is a bit too mysterious and difficult, I decided to work with the Windows 7 partitions on the drive instead. Once I shrunk Windows, I planned to use the freed-up space for a new Linux partition. After that I would configure my Debian system to use it.

When I set up this laptop back in 2010, I did a fresh, crapware-free Windows 7 Home Premium installation at the very end of the drive. Windows dumped its main partition and small boot partition right there. At the time I gave something like 100 GB (out of the 320 GB drive) to Windows.

That's where I got my "extra" space for Linux.

Read the rest of this post

I write a lot about encryption. I'm not trying so much to keep the government out of my business but to give myself peace of mind in the event my machine is lost or stolen.

I want to know that it would be way too much trouble for anybody to try to get any data out of the machine so I can confidently carry around a laptop and know that nobody else can get to that data if it leaves my possession.

But there's one problem with the kind of encryption provided by the installers for Debian and Fedora: The global (or individual) passphrase(s).

Read the rest of this post

Remember my recent problem with doubled icons in the Applications view in GNOME 3 on my Debian Wheezy system?

Running the command update-menus every time you boot takes care of the problem, but that's no solution.

It turns out that getting rid of the menus package fixes the problem permanently:

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge menu

This will most likely accomplish the same thing (though I didn't try it):

$ sudo aptitude purge menu

I know that on my system the menu package came along with the fluxbox window manager. Since I was losing the menu package, I opted to get rid of fluxbox at the same time.

Note on Xfce: Removal of the menu package did not affect Xfce, which I also have installed on this Debian Wheezy system.

Note on menu and Debian: I suppose this should be classfied as a bug, because menu and GNOME Shell should be able to co-exist, but I don't see a bug that addresses this issue filed against menu. Maybe the bug should be filed against GNOME Shell. This is one of those (many) situations where I'm at a loss.

Note on menu: If you reinstall menu, will the problem with GNOME 3 return? Yes, it will.

While there's always a pack of geeks telling me how they've been running the same Debian system since Potato, I've found that most desktop systems under any kind of heavy use by those of us who do a lot of experimenting and install a lot of software don't last forever.

Or they won't last a long time without a great deal of maintenance and fixing mistakes made along the way.

My current, main Debian desktop system -- running on the Lenovo G555 laptop I bought in early 2010 -- has been in place since late 2010, after Fedora 13/14 died a quick yet painful death and I had a brief flirtation with Ubuntu 10.04. I started with Debian Squeeze while it was still the Testing distribution but well after the freeze that would lead it to becoming Stable the following February.

I upgraded to Wheezy -- the current Testing release that is now frozen -- with very little pain at all and am pretty happy with GNOME 3/Shell. I've installed Xfce for comparison's sake. I'm not using it much, preferring GNOME Shell even though it seems like I'm in some kind of silent minority and in threat of using my geek credibility because I not only don't hate the Shell but actually like it and find that it boosts my productivity on the desktop.

So here's the old and crusty part: You (really I) never know how much disk space you'll need when you set up a system. And since I chose to use Logical Volume Management with a couple of encrypted volumes, I really can't mess with them. Go ahead and send me links about how you shrink and expand LVM partitions. With encryption. It's just too hard. There's not enough real information out there. And for the non-super-geeks out there, attempts to modify encrypted LVM partitions are likely to go pear-shaped damn quickly.

Read the rest of this post

My current Debian Wheezy installation is an upgrade from Squeeze, so I was unprepared for what just happened: I'm doing a bunch of installs in between my other work, and I just got around to a traditional Wheezy desktop installation with the GNOME desktop using netinstall image.

I was unprepared for the only GUI package manager to be GNOME Package Kit. No Synaptic Package Manager. Not even the "Sofware Center" ported from Ubuntu that shipped in Squeeze.

Debian Developers, you think GNOME Package Kit is anywhere near as good as Synaptic? It's certainly RHEL-like, as Package Kit is the GUI package manager in RHEL/CentOS.

At least Debian is still shipping Aptitude, unlike Ubuntu.

But no Synaptic? In Debian? Are they kidding? Not counting these five paragraphs, I'm speechless.

Later: The Xfce install of Debian Wheezy DOES include Synaptic. So does the KDE install. I did another GNOME install and confirmed that Synaptic is NOT included. This is quite an omission. The LXDE install of Debian also does not include Synaptic, but that is very much expected.

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, Debian's default installs of Xfce and KDE include the Synaptic Package Manager, but the GNOME install does not. That is crazy.

Given the rumor that Debian is looking at Xfce as the default desktop environment for the Wheezy release, that Xfce seems more "complete" in regard to package management is, in a way, encouraging.

More Debian GNOME install weirdness: Debian has always included the full office suite in just about every default desktop installation. GNOME, Xfce and even LXDE installs have included OpenOffice and now LibreOffice.

What's strange about the current GNOME installation of Debian Wheezy is that it includes not only LibreOffice but also the Abiword word processor and Gnumeric spreadsheet. That's like a double office suite. It's strange to have both.

Debian with KDE: I've done quite a few installs in the last week, and while I'm not sure I could get used to KDE, the desktop in its default installation in Debian Wheezy is very nice. It works great, doesn't require 3D acceleration (like GNOME 3 does), and generally has a lot (a whole lot) of polish.

It's nice to say that the very-very-very-long-term-support releases in the Linux world that won't cost you arms and legs -- the RHEL-source-fed CentOS and Scientific Linux -- are there if you want to run the same distribution for years and years.

But that's only true if you can stick with the relatively anemic selection of desktop packages available in the CentOS, Scientific Linux and, by extension, Red Hat repositories.

You soon hit a wall. Applications you use every day in Debian, Ubuntu and even Fedora are just not there.

For me those include the Audacity and Ardour audio editors and the OpenShot video editor (or ANY video editor, for that matter). For others -- and maybe for you -- it could mean Skype (if that's your thing, and it very well might be) or the VLC media player.

And then there's a buttload of codecs and other various (and) naughty multimedia bits that are available but often hard to find.

Read the rest of this post

If you're running LibreOffice in Debian Wheezy, you've probably already seen the approximately 30 updates associated with the office suite present themselves on your system.

It's not a major version update, just a newer version of 3.5.4.2 (3.5.4-6 in Debian's package-numbering scheme).

Just moving from Squeeze to Wheezy (and from the squeeze-backports version of LibreOffice to the Wheezy version) fixed my problem with the libreoffice-pdfimport not working. Prior to Wheezy I needed to uninstall that package and manually download the pdfimport extension from an OpenOffice site.

Now Debian's libreoffice-pdfimport package works perfectly and allows me to open and edit PDFs in LibreOffice Draw application.

Not that I understand it, but here is the changelog for this particular update of LibreOffice:

• debian/patches/CVE-2012-2334-clip-max-entries.diff: add additional fix for CVE-2012-2334 from Florian Weimer which we missed to apply so far..

• debian/templates/soffice-template.desktop.in: fix Icon= (remove obsolete 3), thanks Miros◈aw Zalewski (closes: #678313)

• debian/control.in: make -filter-mobiledev Break libreoffice-core (<< 1:3.5~) (closes: #633929)
• debian/control.mediawiki.in: add missing epoch to -core dependency
• debian/rules: re-enable -gcj