just call me horchata

April Fool's Day fun at debian.org. Nice cat graphic. Notice the hacker text.

Below:

• cat graphic
• mobile view of website

I've had a nice spot of free time lately due to weather and other issues. I haven't been able to go too far due to coincidentally getting the flu, or sumpin'. All I've wanted to do is sleep.

What to do to break up and small amounts of non-sleeping time? Why....f*** with the Linux! That's what.

I did some reinstalls, not because they were needed, but just to have some fun play time and try some tricks all while under the stupor inducing effects of Zyrtec. All Debian machines stayed Debian, but the desktop environment on one was swapped from LXDE to Xfce. Why not. It's pretty. We now have one big-machine Debian with Xfce and one Debian netbook with LXDE.

Brian's laptop was swapped from Ubuntu to Xubuntu, which is really just a change from Gnome to Xfce, but the Ubuntu on there had been through multiple upgrades, so I wanted to do a nice relaxing, refreshing, reinstall. We don't do none of the damned Unity around here. lol.

So, when you feel like hell, and don't know what to do, I recommend f*****g with the Linux. Debian and the *buntus are especially receptive to it.

The Zyrtec I took to relieve head/chest flu symptoms made me half crazy, so messing with the Linux helped me to hang on.

I was relaxing this evening, a nice summer Saturday evening, by watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua on DVD, and for some reason when the movie ended, I decided I couldn't stand my Gnome3 desktop anymore. I run it in fallback mode, but still, it's kind of a PITA like KDE. It might even be a RFPITA.

Next time I get a day off or two, I'm switching everything to LXDE. I've run it on my netbook for a long time now. I think I will now switch the big tower boxes to it, too.

What did those Chihuahuas do to me? Something may have snapped inside. ¡NO MÁS!

This is a screenshot of my netbook LXDE desktop running on Debian Wheezy.

Screenshots are meaningless, I suppose. They all look about the same, and they don't represent the core of the system anyway. I do enjoy looking at them, however, and as I was leisurely eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich tonight, I decided to take one.

I just swapped out Lubuntu for Debian "testing", AKA Wheezy (amd64 with LXDE desktop) on my Acer Aspire One netbook. Both systems feature the LXDE desktop. The Debian with LXDE runs a little faster and lighter than the Lubuntu did, which is what I was looking for. Plus, it feels nice! It feels GOOD! It's just so right! It runs like a frickin' dream!

I needed just a few tweaks to get Debian looking and running right on the netbook:

• I needed to enable the "non-free" repository to get some Broadcom firmware for the wifi.
• I like the GDM3 (display manager) better than the included XDM, so I swapped that.
• I also like the gnome-power-manager and the gnome-network-manager, so I put those in.
• On netbooks I like to install maximus and set it to autostart with the GUI. Maximus auto-maximizes and undecorates application windows, thus reclaiming desktop space.
• I set syndaemon to start with the desktop. This disables the touchpad as I type so I don't have to hold my thumbs up in the air to avoid that non-recessed touchpad bouncing the cursor all over the place.

LXDE is a simple, pretty, fast, and a very usable desktop. The main thing, it's NOT Unity. OMG, Unity, gag me with a spoon.

Screenshot below. Click to enlarge on flickr.

I've been having some problems with my entire desktop GUI crashing when coming out of the screensaver. My first attempt to stop this will be to try a different screensaver application. I just want a quick fix. Don't want to really learn nuttin' right now.

• Disable autostart of gnome-screensaver
• Install xscreensaver, xscreensaver-gl, xscreensaver-gl-extra, xscreensaver-data, xscreensaver-data-extra (I like to have a big selection of screensavers to choose from)
• Set xscreensaver to autostart instead of gnome-screensaver
• See what happens

There are various ways of setting apps to autostart or not, plus one must decide if xscreensaver will handle the power management or if it will remain with gnome-power-manager. I'm leaving that part with gnome for now.