AUSTIN ADVOCATE

Linux Becoming Viable Resource for Individuals,
Non-Profits
SuSE Linux 10 Review
By Kirk Becker

It wasn't always like this, where you could download thousands of great songs and movies without paying for the middlemen distributors who promoted you into buying the songs and movies, the middlemen who mass-burned the songs onto CD's or DVD's, or even the authors and performers of the songs and movies. It wasn't always like this, where there were real enforceable laws against doing so, or at least against enabling others to do so. At one time, there was honor, and an honor system.

In the early days of personal computers, circa 1985-1995, it was so hard to get the damn things to do anything that people tended to collaborate, to work together rather than to compete. Computer programmers copyrighted the way they wrote their programs, but nobody tried to patent the idea of a program and insist that everybody do things their way just so that they could earn money by insisting that everybody was doing things their way.

Computers were so expensive that most people couldn't afford them, and much of the early work was done at universities by low-paid college students who had jobs as teaching assistants. Much of the early work was funded by public universities rather than private venture capitalists. Computer programs were sold on disks that were easily (and freely) copied. People learned to use the programs, which involved typing the commands and inserting the codes rather than just clicking on icons and buttons, and trained themselves to become employable for companies that actually paid for the programs, thereby making the programs worth paying for in the first place. Copying the programs from work became kind of a fringe benefit for jobs that hardly paid well enough to afford an old second hand computer. People didn't teach, they shared, and the industry as a whole progressed.

Occasionally, the authors of programs would complain about all the money they were losing by people who couldn't afford the programs not paying for the programs that they were using, but then somebody would come along and write a better program so it didn't matter all that much anyways.

And there was honor. Viruses tended to be jokes (your computer has been stoned) rather than criminal endeavors used to steal identities; spam was a nuisance minimized by everybody knowing not to respond to it, rather than mini-billboards on computer screens or ruses directed at untrained users who bought a computer at a store and took a two-hour class.

Nowadays, computers are cheap, but the programs are expensive and effectively copy-protected. Which is almost a great thing for poor people and budget strapped non-profits who can acquire second hand or donated computers that have had their hard drives wiped for security purposes. Almost. Sometimes that's the most discouraging word that there is, sometimes it's the most promising word that there is.

Open-source programs are starting to fill the almost abyss. The programs are nearly free -- people just have to burn them to a CD and learn to install and use them. Fortunately, the learning curve is getting shallower, and the abyss is close enough to being full that it's no longer terrifying.

I've been using SuSE Linux 9.3 with Open Office and an Apache Web server as my primary desktop computer for a couple of years now and it's got some really cool features. I've become addicted to being able to open an internet browser, a word processing document, and email each in their own virtual screens, and then switch between the programs just by switching between the screens. No more overlap.

I've only had one really messed up created-by-a-newbie Word Document that I could read but not edit, and only one program (FileMaker Pro) that I missed. Acrobat for Linux hasn't been updated in a while, and so I can't directly edit the IRS forms using my Linuxbox. Other than that, and the sound system locking up (which is even less work-related than email and internet browsing), the computer has been working well enough that I tend to forget my password.

I got a borrowed purchased-from-Wall-Mart computer that had never run very well under Windows even after replacing the motherboard, and I don't want to purchase an anti-virus program, so I thought I'd try out Linux from a newbie perspective.

SuSE is now owned by Novell, so I went to Novell's Web site and downloaded the latest 5-CD set. Click, click, top of the list, click, save, download three CD's at a time, that seems to be as much as my broadband connection wants to do. Look, ok, I'm downloading from Argentina – typical newbie mistake. Compare CD checksums with those from a U.S. site, they're different, but I can always start over, so I might as well give the Argentina distro a try. I need to work on my Spanish anyways.

After downloading and burning the CD's, I try installing them on old WalMart. The installation program boots up in English (that's a minor relief, though maybe not to somebody in Argentina) but it quickly allows me to choose my language (which is probably a minor relief to people in Argentina).

Sorry, some things just need to be customized. I set up the 20 Gig Hard Drive with four primary partitions for /boot (¼ Gig), /swap (1 Gig, since I have more hard disk space that working memory, and I might get more memory with the money I save on the anti-virus program), /windows (4 Gigs formatted as VFAT – old habits die hard), and the rest for SuSE Linux as /. For the boot and linux partitions, I choose the new and improved Reiser File System over the more traditional Ext2 or Ext3.

I choose the basic installation for the rest of it, select the Gnome Desktop instead of the default KDE Desktop suggested by Novell-SuSE. For the review, I ought to just Click-on-Next all the way through the installation, but I'm going to be using this computer and I prefer Gnome. I've had KDE text editor programs crash, which is ridiculous, but there have been other times (modem, CD-burning) when KDE programs were the only ones that I could get to work. It usually doesn't matter anyways – Gnome programs will generally run under KDE, and KDE programs will generally run under Gnome. The only real problem that I have with KDE is that it looks too Windowsy.

The installation program starts whirring the CD, so I go off and do something else for awhile. When I come back, the computer had either crashed or rebooted, and was stuck not being able to read the Reiser File System on the boot partition of the hard drive. Oooops, I guess that maybe I should have started out reading the directions.

I redo the installation, choosing Ext2 for the boot partition file system, but keeping ReiserFS as the main root partition, and let it run. It reboots successfully after that, asks for the second CD, and then spends a couple more hours running through the rest of the 5 CD's.

Finally, the installation program asks for a root (Administrator) password and a user password, and then reboots into a log-in screen and a splash screen with a ugliest butterfly-headed lizard I've ever seen and a working computer that looks just like Windows only with bigger icons. I almost cried.

But at least is said it was Linux, so I determined to give it a try. I popped a music CD into the CD player, and started hunting through the menus for a music program. A program popped up and started playing the music CD. Wow, that was pretty windowsy, and I couldn't help but be impressed. Found the Volume Adjust, but no equalizer. The menus didn't work very well either, they opened very slowly, took a long time to load their icons, and sometimes closed before I could click on them. The hard drive light was flashing so much that it seemed to be a power light, and I could hear the hard drive spinning constantly. I looked inside the menus for an Xterm (command line) program and finally found one buried several levels deep inside the SuSE list. I opened it up and ran the trusty top program to see what was going on.

The Top program shows what's running and how much time and memory each program is using. It told me that I was running the Nautilus file manager and that I had 128 Mg RAM working memory, plus another 128 Mg overflow working memory stored on the hard disk drive – the system was using 256 Mgs RAM at startup! It looks like Tux the Linux Penguin needs to lay off the tarter sauce for awhile – he's getting as fat!!!

Next I ran SuSE Help, which took an hour to build it's index because it had to keep swapping the index out to the hard disk as it built it. When that was done, I remembered that SuSE Help is basically worthless because it's mostly about the default KDE environment, which I don't use.

Within SuSE Linux, all the good information is in the YAST2 Yet-Another-Software-Tool software install program, which is where it needs to be in order to decide what to install. So I ran YAST2 and was pleasantly surprised that it didn't need to read the CD's just to show the available software – well worth the hard drive space to avoid that!

I did a search for window managers – the GUI part of Linux. One of the available choices was Blackbox – described as a light, fast window manager that depends only upon the X Display Server. That looked like what I needed, so I installed that, rebooted, and it came back up in Nautilus. Drats.

I looked through the startup files to try to find how to select the Window Manager, but I couldn't find it – I'm still a bit of a newbie myself. Finally I just edited the run level so that it would boot up in text/command mode, so that I could just log in at the command line and run 'startx blackbox'.

As the computer was booting up, I noticed that it had a first-generation Celeron chip, widely disparaged because it was designed with a tiny internal cache memory for the consumer market using Windows 98. Under Win2K, it ran at 1+ Ghz with an effective speed of around 0.1 Ghz, which explains why the computer ran so slow under Windows even after replacing the motherboard. (I guess if you buy a computer at Wal-Mart, you ought to expect what you get, but at least they sold it as a custom Linux System instead of a Windows system.)

The computer booted up with a moderately offensive fortune and a command prompt. I ran 'startx blackbox', and the computer came up with a black screen, a mouse pointer and a little bar at the bottom of the screen. It looked like Linux to me.

I right clicked the mouse, and there was a whole menu tree, starting out with an XTerm and all the basic SuSE installed programs. No red light on the hard disk drive, no constant hard disk spinning, it works! Clicked on the little bar, and moved it to the top of the screen. Checked top again, it was using all the RAM working memory, but at least not a lot more than that. I tried playing a music CD, that worked, and the sound didn't stutter and choke whenever I opened a program, either.

Created a couple of different workspaces, set up the web and database servers so I could do some work, connected with Firefox, and was able to edit and view files with music running in the background.

Somewhat later, I opened another workspace to run Open Office and started typing this review. About the second page, it started to get slow. Checked top again, was back to using 250 Mgs RAM. Shut down the browser and Office started running faster than I could type again, even while playing a CD in the background. OK, one program at a time on this computer, either browsing the web or typing in Linux/Open Office, until I get more memory for the computer. I can live with that.

I did notice that Open Office has come out with a new file format. I don't want to upgrade my other machine, so I changed the default to use the old file format. Also, it's doing that annoying edit as I type thing, changing XTerm to Xterm, but at least it lets me go back and change it, then eventually learns not to change it anymore. (It also would have been a nice touch if they had added “SuSE” to the dictionary.)

Tried installing SuSE on another computer at the Advocate, an old 333 MHz machine with, again, 128 Mgs RAM. Got it up and running, killed off Nautilus, and installed blackbox, and wrote up directions to boot into blackbox. Clicked on the automatic upgrade button, and it spent a half-hour downloading more files and reconfiguring the system. Had a little trouble reconfiguring the firewall to connect to the Windows Network, but now that I have that going, we have a web-enabled computer protected by a NAT router (well worth $80 – if your computer salesman doesn't know what it is, find another store) without needing to purchase the separate anti-virus program that we can't afford! (At least for awhile, until the virus writers start to focus on Linux – maybe they'll go pick on Apple Mac's and Ipods.) I also set up the Office Program to save documents in MS Word formats so that they're compatible with the rest of the universe.

So at the Advocate, we've got a working computer that can be used for listening to CD's and either research on the Internet or typing up documents (one or the other at a time), without any copy-protected software that we can't afford. That's all that we needed, and it works.

Conclusions:

1) GET MORE RAM memory! That applies to everything these days.

SuSE's basic installation seems to go beyond everything that a user needs to the point of everything that a Windows user might possibly miss and complain about. They really ought to come up with several levels of installation, including a minimal GUI for old, slow computers.

2) Other available Linux distributions are Red_Hat/Fedora (thoroughly corporate), Debian (which some people swear by), SlackWare (if you can get that to work, you're a whiz, but some of the real whizzes really like it), and something called Ubuntu/Gentoo (which is getting all the buzz on the internet these days.

For my skill level, I still like SuSE's YAST installation tool. It has great program descriptions, it installs programs reliably, and then it gets out of the way and stays out of the way once I start reconfiguring the config files. The older version (9.3) had trouble automagically installing two network cards in one machine on separate subnets and routing between them, but that was asking a lot anyways. At least it installed and setup the network cards, which is the hard part. All I had to do myself was the routing.

3) Overall, the installation probably would have been foolproof on a new, fast computer, though probably not damn foolproof. SuSE Linux and a little bit of reconfiguring did save at least two marginal computers that ran OK under Win98 but were too slow for Windows 2000. Realistically, some tech support (or a geek-minded volunteer/employee) is probably still required.

Open Office needs to stop auto-numbering my conclusions. At least it will let me delete the auto-numbers without insisting on putting them back, unlike a certain program that thinks it can write better than I can – all I have to do is supply the words.

In the World of Windows, Microsoft sells the programs and gives away the documentation. With Linux, companies give away the programs and sell the documentation. You might need 10 books, but at least you don't need to buy a set of books for each computer or each computer user.

4) It doesn't hurt to buy Linux – somebody needs to keep those companies going, and it isn't going to be people using second-hand computers or cash-strapped non-profits.

The new Macs (OS X, et. seq.) run on top of BSD Unix, which is rather similar to Linux, and are really, really impressive. I wouldn't be surprised if Linux kills off Windows and then the Macs kill off Linux. Time will tell.

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Homer and Hazel III Adopted
By Lori C. Renteria

Homer the Homeless Goose and Hazel III were adopted by the Austin Avian Rescue and Rehabilitation progam in a ceremony held on Sunday, May 14th (Mothers Day). The rescue program is a non-profit located at the J & M Aviary in Oak Hill. Homer's Adoption Selection Committee received 36 inquires to adopt Homer and after a site visit this week, the Committee unanimously agreed this was the best place for the famous goose. An official signing of a custody agreement between Homer's godmother, Lori C-Renteria, and his new godmother, Linda Scheumack, a bird-lover extraordinaire and employee at the Aviary took place.

Homer will not be forced into early retirement as was anticipated. Instead, he will continue to be an ambassador for homeless people but his new job includes advocacy for homeless birds who have been rescued, abandoned or neglected. The facility conducts educational tours Wednesdays - Sundays for schools, church groups and eco-tourists.

For info about the Austin Avian Rescue and Rehabilitation program go to: http://www.austinavianrr.com

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NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITION

Great Life-Giving Spirit

Great Spirit of love, come to me with the power of the North.
Make me courageous when the cold winds of life fall upon me.

Give me strength and endurance for everything
that is harsh, everything that hurts,
everything that makes me squint.
Make me move through life
ready to take what comes from the North.

Spirit who comes out of the East,
come to me with the power of the rising sun.
Let there be light in my word.
Let there be light on the path that I walk.
Let me remember always that you give the gift of a new day.
Never let me be burdened with sorrow by not starting over.

Great Spirit of creation,
send me the warm and soothing winds from the South.
Comfort me caress me when I am tired and cold.
Enfold me as your gentle breezes enfold your leaves
on the trees.
And as you give to all the earth your warm, loving wind,
give to me so that I may grow closer to you in warmth.

Great life-giving Spirit,
I face the West,
the direction of the sundown.
Let me remember every day that the moment will come
when my sun will go down.
Never let me forget that I must fade into you.
Give me beautiful color.
Give me a great sky for setting,
and when it is time to meet you,
I will come with glory.

And Giver of all life, I pray to you from the earth,
help me to remember as I touch the earth
that I am little and need your pity.
Help me to be thankful for the gift of the earth
and never to walk hurtfully on the world.
Bless me to love what comes from mother earth
and teach me how to love your gifts.

Great Spirit of the heavens,
lift me up to you
that my heart may worship you
and come to you in glory.
Hold in my memory that you are my Creator,
greater than I,
eager for my good life.
Let everything that is in the world
lift my mind,
and my heart,
and my life to you
so that we may come always to you
in truth and in heart.

Love is Eternal
Chief Blackowl lost his beloved
Brenda Diane Blackowl 4-18-1962 - 5-16-2006

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"BEHIND THE SIGN"

8 yrs sober, homeless, unemployed. No training, broken family history, 22 years invested in a 10 yr T.D.C. suspended prison sentence. Before I returned to prison in 1998 I was homeless trying to chew my ankle off as I did for 12 years before. I was drinking and drugging heavily, missing parole appointments. I was surviving best I could with fear of holding a job for fear of being caught. Jailed in 1998 and let go in 2006.

I've been sober eight years now with no desire to drink. I'm back where I left off, on the streets of Austin. With eight years sobriety on the street I see these same friends in another light. I haven't quite figured many it out yet but I surprise myself with how clear things are. I am looking for a future for myself through pieces of my past.

I have been "flying a sign" sober for about three months with old drunken friends .The things that I see are a majority of selfish people (society) in a selfish, self-centered, ignorant society. These people drink to kill the fear of society and their shame of doing this to survive since they are dependant on society for survival and do not have their desired independence. Day to day they have to become actors in order to bring cheer to people; be noticed, not ignored. In order to do this they have to handle the fear, rejection and stress of life behind the sign. What better way to deaden pain than,” alcohol". Most of them are probably like me, without training in technically advanced world without abilities or facilities to care for themselves in order to make time for training.

It is a never ending vicious cycle. Every day, wake up, drink and fly a sign hoping to get enough to eat a good meal a day while the carbohydrates in beer will be enough to fuel energy for the day, while alcohol cures hunger and miseries. Without proper nourishment there's no hope for an energy level to do more than the same thing over. Like society there is good & bad who try to blend in here just as society there are fewer bad than good. A feeling of hopelessness from the daily contact with the commuting society through looks and ignorance.

The people who show there ignorance toward signers are showing there anger and spite towards a selfish society, while others look with hope wishing that they could help. The few that do give,” BLESS THEM", they appear to be thankful and content with the society in which they live and some how they understand the miseries that the homeless signers face each day.

It's not the givers that help the signers keep their motivation, it's the non giver that won't even smile, they give motivation and willpower to get up and go fight for another day of survival. There are so many people here who are hell bent for more, more, but if they had it all they would still have to work. But then that would make them hate their lives for not factoring this in. Work does make life easier, depending on your efforts. If your work is to help another to help you, then work is even easier. A society in harmony is good, it's the"MORE"ons that ruin it.

C.O. ROBERT TANZINI (HOMELESS),
Austin Advocate vendor

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Faith
By Flora Bryant

What is faith?
Faith is trust
Faith is substance
of things hoped for
and evidence of thing not
seen

By faith God will deliver
us from all wrong doings
If we only trust him

By faith Moses calmed the
Red Sea
By faith Daniel was delivered
out of the lions den

As long as we keep the
faith and trust in God
then everything will be
allright

Cocain
By Flaora Bryant

There is a little fellow
who lives out on the streets
He is out to destroy
Everyone he meets

His name is cocain
He will make you high
Nothing will be the same
Then you'll ask yourself why

Just one hit of me
You will be allright
I'll make sure of that
Keep you up all night

I will control your mind
Until you are very lost
When you're dealing with me
You have to pay the cost

Trust God
By Flora Bryant

When you're lonely
Trust God

When you're depressed
Trust God

When you're in turmoil
Trust God

When friends turn their backs on you
Trust God

When you're alone
Trust God

But most off all when you're confussed
Trust God and everything will be okay

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What is real?
By Derrick P. Clark

Calm sky, easy breezy sunny days,
Blissful butterfly's bright blossom blended beauty,
Dynamic dancing daisies playing in their sway,
Song sparrow sings sweet sounding sensuality,
Day after day to obey God's ways.

Admire wisdom inspire spiritual fire,
Spin from within, disciplines to win,
A divine mind shine fine with proper desire.
Goodwill fulfill again and again without an end.
Altruistic simplistic words will feed the soul,
Behold, be bold becomes spiritual whole.

The world, so cold, when I don't feed the soul
By Derrick P. Clark

Waiting for victory to come,
So I can stop fighting from within.
Where's my joy coming from,
When all my thoughts are fueled by sin.

Here's cry from God's child.
Looking back at his lifestyle.
Seeing how free will can kill,
When spiritual principles are not fulfilled.

I'm tired of losing my fire.
The world, so cold, when I don't feed the soul.

It's so hard being society’s puppet.
These vacant eyes tell many stories of war,
About a fulltime dreamer with empty pockets.
Abandoning hope, and turning from heaven's door.

Dumbfounded, because it happened again.
Pondering, wondering, for selling the family another tale.
Sad, mad, and despair with the same sins,
Looking at all four walls of a personal hell.

I'm tired of losing my fire.
The world, so cold, when I don't feed the soul.

With this heart of ethical seeds,
And a focused mind, lucid from misery,
Watching for disastrous weeds,
So my life will show God's glory.

I'm tired of losing my fire.
The world, so cold, when I don't feed the soul.

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Needless Pain
By Tumen Soliz

I will learn respect
if my parents teach respect
what do you expect...

...for me to be born
wanting cold and destruction?
I learned it from you!

Moon dies every night.
Snake is God for shedding skin,
bull is sacrificed.

Keep it ignorant
from learning answer to why
volcanoes happen.

Fear centered culture
drilled into our parents brains,
heaven versus hell.

Self interest leaders
abuse spirit of the law,
cherry pick bible.

Year 2006.
Fuel economy standards,
sex for earth kings.

Next generation
F-22 fighter jet,
160 mil. each.

Beware the hunter
service and security
for self-interest.

Unconscionable,
when freedom is on the march
we are most secure.

Unfettered free trade,
while free market not free from
corporate corruption.

Decrepid freedom
drown out the bad with the good.
Define the word good?

Teaching our young to
compete and excell in the
world economy.

Sons and daughters die
to preserve parents lifestyle.
End war begin life.

Stop the bullying.
We must win their hearts and minds
by our example.

Usefull less stress rules
give the clinically depressed
opportunity.

Corn and sugar cane
is not good enough. I vote
for hemp ethonal.

Fix poverty now.
Space program is premature,
all comes in due time.

Well guess what god-kings,
time to pay for parents crime,
your ways history.

Millions in the street
demanding fair and just laws.
No more war taxes.

Young minds to be shaped,
children must respect future.
Live strong or extinct.

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