I've noticed something about my Microsoft Digital Media keyboard.
A lot of the buttons go unused.
I'm not talking about the big three that very few people use (PrtScn/SysRq, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break). For me, the Print Screen button actually gets a workout, because I like to document stuff (especially when something breaks). So does the Windows/Super/Start button. Heck, even the quick start button for the Calculator gets into the act -- even if the other program quick-keys don't.
I do miss the media player control buttons, though I suppose with a little tweaking in Debian or actually loading the drivers in Windows, I could set the ominous 1-5 buttons that sit unused to actually do something. But at least my volume controls and mute button work. The zoom lever's function is a mystery to me, though I haven't tried it out in GIMP or IE yet.
But in designing this keyboard, Microsoft added 12 new keys. But the problem was, they didn't actually add them to the keyboard. That would imply a new block of keys to ignore. No... they took a cue from laptop designers and overlayed the function keys with new functions.
Adding new keys to a keyboard -- especially mutlimedia keys and quick start keys -- is not a new thing. Heck, I've got an old IBM-branded keyboard with a quick-start button hand-labeled Lotus 1-2-3. Overwriting -- more accurately modifying keys so the original function now requires a meta-keystroke (i.e. Alt+, Ctrl+, or Win+) -- is a bit harder to get used to.
So I have a new favorite button: the "F Lock" button. The F Lock button's purpose is simple: toggle between the traditional F1-F12 keys and the new ... Office-related? ... keys. Truthfully, the keyboard reminds me of that chipboard keyboard template that used to come with WordPerfect and flight sims, that described what each key did. Because now, instead of F4, you get "New". F10 is Spell, which I assume is spell checker.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with these functions being mapped to their own buttons. And on this keyboard, it's easy enough to treat it like I have the Number Pad for years: make sure NumLock is on when I sit down, and go like normal. Even better, the new key behaviour is clearly marked, with the new function names printed on top of the button, and the traditional F Keys on the side as fits the demoted status. The F Lock key makes it possible for touch-typists to continue to use the keyboard unimpeded -- especially those of us used to using keyboard shortcuts that included the Function Keys. So kudos to Microsoft: you extended the functionality of a design while leaving legacy functionality accessible to power users.
So why am I praising Microsoft in this; even if it is a bit backhandedly? My wife just (past 6 months) bought an HP Pavilion laptop, and I had to use it to look something up for her right quick -- specifically needing to refresh the page to check the information. Being a touch-typist, I set up on home row and hit the F5 key. Which promptly took me back to the browser's home page.
The keyboard on her laptop has also overwritten the function keys; and the F5 is now a globe, which is really my second complaint with the design: I know there's limited space, but why the icons instead of
words? On my keyboard, there is a browser launch button: it's icon mirrors the "Home" button from IE, but it's still labeled "Web/Home". In fact, the only buttons without an explicit label are the big silver 1-5 buttons, which I still assume are programmable; and the volume control buttons. But the globe button -- which is a good representation of "start a browser", not so much "return to the home page" -- being where the Refresh button should be? For anyone not already familiar with the way HP designed their keyboard, they're going to be frustrated and upset.
And it doesn't have an F-Lock (or, with their labeling convention, an "fn-Lock") key. [In fairness, the MSFT keyboard doesn't have a single-use key; so you can't easily switch between functions.] So now, a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) is a three-finger salute (fn+Ctrl+F5). Same with closing (fn+Alt+F4) or maximizing (fn+Alt+F10) a window. I would wager that while this point was raised with someone on the design team at some point, the response was "But who actually uses the function keys?" And truthfully, they're probably right. For the rest of us, though; instead of Ctrl+S, Alt-F4, I may go back to ":wq" instead.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Installing Debian Wheezy (testing) w/GNOME 3
Debian (currently available in Squeeze (stable), Wheezy (testing) and Sid (unstable) branches) is one of the most basic Linux distributions at the moment. Not basic as in simple, but basic as in the foundation of a bunch of others. Debian is also available with FreeBSD and Hurd, but this will be based on the Linux kernel version. Without Debian, there'd be no Ubuntu, at least not in its current form. I am also a major fan of the APT package management (compared to both RedHat's RPM and Gentoo's Portage systems).
This walkthrough / review is for installing the Testing version from USB. I downloaded the Mini ISO image from my Ubuntu machine and (following the easy directions from here) I made a bootable USB drive from a 64MB flash memory stick.
One quick F12 (to give the USB stick priority for this boot) on restart, and I was presented with the Installer boot menu. Now, a couple of things. First, since we're booting from the mini image, you need a network connection (preferably wired).
Second, if you want to start with Wheezy, instead of getting Squeeze and "upgrading", then you're going to have to use the Expert Install option. The mini iso also has options to install KDE, LXDE, and XFCE desktops instead of GNOME. Really, there's not much difference between the Expert Install and the standard; just a few more options here and there.
Answer your standard questions (country, language, keyboard type, which network interface to use) and where to download your packages from to get some packages downloading. Then we'll input a root password and a primary user; and time zone. When you're asked which version, go with Testing. After this, if you've installed Ubuntu, you know what to expect; not surprising since Ubuntu's installer is based on the Debian one. What you will notice if you are installing from the mini.iso like me is a much longer setup time. The reason is simple, and it actually ends up being less of a time sink than a time shift; from when you download the iso (16MB vs 720-ish for a standard ISO) to the actual install process. Depending on the time difference between when the ISO was released and now, this will save you time on updates after you finish the install. That said, if you're doing multiple machines rather than a single one; definitely grab the full install disk rather than a net-install or mini iso; the time difference will thank you.
The mini-iso's partition manager does not have NTFS capabilities; so you are going to have to futz around a bit after installation to read-write from your windows partition if you choose to dual-boot. Otherwise, the partition manager is partman; if you're setting up manually be sure to choose the file system you want from the list; and note that the EXT file system versions are in no particular order.* Also, make note of your hard drive device name in the partition editor, depending on what name , you may have to specify which drive to put GRUB on.
And really; that's all you're going to see out that's "Debian". One of the things that people tend to gloss over is that when done right, the distro you choose is going to be fairly invisible. Outside of a treatise on the differences between apt, rpm, portage, and the various front-ends of each, pretty much the only thing left to talk about is the default loadout.
The one thing you'll probably notice for Debian is Iceweasel vs Firefox. Their built from the same code; Iceweasel doesn't have Firefox branding because of a difference in licensing philosophy. So, let's take a look at the default GNOME 3.
After entering your login information, you'll be presented with GNOME 3.2's desktop with a Debian wallpaper. Across the top are the Activity menu, Calendar, accessibility menu, volume manager, network manager, battery life (this is on a laptop), and your user menu. I'll get to that user menu in a few minutes.
This is the Activities menu; open it by either hitting the top left hot corner, clicking on Activities, or pressing the Super key (Win-logo). On the right are virtual desktops; if you use them, great, if not, it stays out of the way.
Virtual desktops spawn when all the existing desktops have windows open on them; and self-destruct when everything closes on them. In other words, you'll always have a clean workspace to choose from, as long as your processor and memory can handle them.
On the left are your "Favorites", basically a quick launch bar. You'll start out with Epipahny (web browser), Evolution (mail and calendar), Empathy (a messenger), LibreOffice Write, Nautilus (file manager), and Gnome Help already pinned.You can add any program from the application pane to the Favorites bar, and any running program can be pinned as well.
I will give Gnome props for one of the better all-in-one setups I've found. Under the User Menu, there's a option for Online Accounts (You can also get to it through the settings menu). If you have a Google account, enter your account information, check the appropriate permissions, and it will automatically set up both your gmail and google calendar. The next time you open Evolution, you'll be asked to OK a security certificate from Google, and you're done.
The best part is, this is optional; and can be removed easily at any time through either Evolution or the Online Accounts menu. I haven't tried the Windows Live nor the Facebook integration, but if it works anything like the Google, I'll be impressed.
It's a pretty lean lineup of apps for the standard install. That's not a bad thing; and it falls under the philosophy of letting the user choose their tools. In addition to the aforementioned favorites, it's actually a short list of graphical tools:
With its full-screen "Start" menu, hot corner menu, and online account integration, you could be forgiven for thinking GNOME 3 was trying to copy parts of Windows 8... if it hadn't come out over a year ago. And I'll have to say, the virtual desktop system seems to work better for the way I like to work than MetroUI did.
So what are the good points, what are the problems?
The full screen Activities menu is still a bit of a put-off, and for the same reasons that the Metro's full screen Start Menu was. It also works in the same way that Win8 did; hitting Super (Win-logo) then typing the name of a document, program, or someone in your contact list filters the list quickly. Gnome adds two buttons at the bottom of the screen for Google and Wikipedia search. The major difference I see is in how "busy" the screen is when you open the menu. Metro presents a wall of information with your applications in the mix. You can arrange it however you want, but it's designed to be a lot of big boxes of info on screen at once. Gnome divides the screen into "What you usually do" (the favorites menu), "Stuff you've set aside" (the virtual desktops), and either "What you're doing now" (open windows on this desktop) or "What you want to do" (the applications menu). It's cleaner, and it works as expected.
The biggest difference I see between the two system seems to be where they expect you to spend the majority of your time. In Win8, the impression I got was the Start Screen was intended to be your "home base", where you rest between short bursts of activity. Gnome, uses the Activities screen more as the road to get where you're going; while still going away from the older folder-style menu so maligned these days. On the other hand, the top-left and bottom-right are both hot corners, which is a technology I was really hoping would fade away.
Still the biggest complaint I have about look and feel of Gnome3 are the large title bars and the lack of built-in theme support; the gnome package mentioned earlier includes gnome-tweak-tool, which is able to change the look of the UI.
The thing I like about the command line/NCURSES program Aptitude (# aptitude) is the ability to look at meta-packages -- packages of packages -- and choose what you want to install. Take the "gnome" metapackage. It has a lot of programs available, but I don't necessarily want all of them on my machine. For example, I don't have a webcam or a scanner for my laptop, so programs like Cheese (a webcam controller/viewer) and Simple-Scan would be useless. I selected applications for document viewing (gnome-documents), network tools (gnome-nettool), photo management (shotwell), bittorrent (transmission-gtk), the aforementioned gnome-tweak-tool, and a tool to let me install local deb files without going to the command line (gdebi).
I did install one game, as well. Einstein is both a clone of the old DOS game Sherlock, and an implementation of the "Einstein's Puzzle" style of logic puzzle; something I did a lot when I was younger, and still enjoy.
* This is probably a lie. I imagine that they are listed in order of Preferred (Ext3), Usable (Ext4), and Legacy (Ext2); then all the other choices.
This walkthrough / review is for installing the Testing version from USB. I downloaded the Mini ISO image from my Ubuntu machine and (following the easy directions from here) I made a bootable USB drive from a 64MB flash memory stick.
One quick F12 (to give the USB stick priority for this boot) on restart, and I was presented with the Installer boot menu. Now, a couple of things. First, since we're booting from the mini image, you need a network connection (preferably wired).
Second, if you want to start with Wheezy, instead of getting Squeeze and "upgrading", then you're going to have to use the Expert Install option. The mini iso also has options to install KDE, LXDE, and XFCE desktops instead of GNOME. Really, there's not much difference between the Expert Install and the standard; just a few more options here and there.
Answer your standard questions (country, language, keyboard type, which network interface to use) and where to download your packages from to get some packages downloading. Then we'll input a root password and a primary user; and time zone. When you're asked which version, go with Testing. After this, if you've installed Ubuntu, you know what to expect; not surprising since Ubuntu's installer is based on the Debian one. What you will notice if you are installing from the mini.iso like me is a much longer setup time. The reason is simple, and it actually ends up being less of a time sink than a time shift; from when you download the iso (16MB vs 720-ish for a standard ISO) to the actual install process. Depending on the time difference between when the ISO was released and now, this will save you time on updates after you finish the install. That said, if you're doing multiple machines rather than a single one; definitely grab the full install disk rather than a net-install or mini iso; the time difference will thank you.
The mini-iso's partition manager does not have NTFS capabilities; so you are going to have to futz around a bit after installation to read-write from your windows partition if you choose to dual-boot. Otherwise, the partition manager is partman; if you're setting up manually be sure to choose the file system you want from the list; and note that the EXT file system versions are in no particular order.* Also, make note of your hard drive device name in the partition editor, depending on what name , you may have to specify which drive to put GRUB on.
And really; that's all you're going to see out that's "Debian". One of the things that people tend to gloss over is that when done right, the distro you choose is going to be fairly invisible. Outside of a treatise on the differences between apt, rpm, portage, and the various front-ends of each, pretty much the only thing left to talk about is the default loadout.
The one thing you'll probably notice for Debian is Iceweasel vs Firefox. Their built from the same code; Iceweasel doesn't have Firefox branding because of a difference in licensing philosophy. So, let's take a look at the default GNOME 3.
After entering your login information, you'll be presented with GNOME 3.2's desktop with a Debian wallpaper. Across the top are the Activity menu, Calendar, accessibility menu, volume manager, network manager, battery life (this is on a laptop), and your user menu. I'll get to that user menu in a few minutes.
Virtual desktops spawn when all the existing desktops have windows open on them; and self-destruct when everything closes on them. In other words, you'll always have a clean workspace to choose from, as long as your processor and memory can handle them.
On the left are your "Favorites", basically a quick launch bar. You'll start out with Epipahny (web browser), Evolution (mail and calendar), Empathy (a messenger), LibreOffice Write, Nautilus (file manager), and Gnome Help already pinned.You can add any program from the application pane to the Favorites bar, and any running program can be pinned as well.
I will give Gnome props for one of the better all-in-one setups I've found. Under the User Menu, there's a option for Online Accounts (You can also get to it through the settings menu). If you have a Google account, enter your account information, check the appropriate permissions, and it will automatically set up both your gmail and google calendar. The next time you open Evolution, you'll be asked to OK a security certificate from Google, and you're done.The best part is, this is optional; and can be removed easily at any time through either Evolution or the Online Accounts menu. I haven't tried the Windows Live nor the Facebook integration, but if it works anything like the Google, I'll be impressed.
It's a pretty lean lineup of apps for the standard install. That's not a bad thing; and it falls under the philosophy of letting the user choose their tools. In addition to the aforementioned favorites, it's actually a short list of graphical tools:
- Add/Remove Software (along with Software Sources, Synaptic, and Update Manager)
- Eye of Gnome, Evince, and the GIMP
- Desktop Sharing and a Remote Desktop Viewer
- Totem movie player
- Calculator, Character Map, Brasero to burn discs, Find File, Screenshot utility
- Command line, Contact Manager and a bunch of settings.
For me, the most glaring omissions are a graphical text editor, a file compression utility, and a dedicated music player. The third isn't a big deal for me, but can be for others. That said, installing the "gnome" package (# apt-get install gnome) will fix all three omissions, as well as add in a VoIP program, a CD ripper, scanner software, photo management software, webcam software, games, and a host of other stuff.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
With its full-screen "Start" menu, hot corner menu, and online account integration, you could be forgiven for thinking GNOME 3 was trying to copy parts of Windows 8... if it hadn't come out over a year ago. And I'll have to say, the virtual desktop system seems to work better for the way I like to work than MetroUI did.
So what are the good points, what are the problems?
The full screen Activities menu is still a bit of a put-off, and for the same reasons that the Metro's full screen Start Menu was. It also works in the same way that Win8 did; hitting Super (Win-logo) then typing the name of a document, program, or someone in your contact list filters the list quickly. Gnome adds two buttons at the bottom of the screen for Google and Wikipedia search. The major difference I see is in how "busy" the screen is when you open the menu. Metro presents a wall of information with your applications in the mix. You can arrange it however you want, but it's designed to be a lot of big boxes of info on screen at once. Gnome divides the screen into "What you usually do" (the favorites menu), "Stuff you've set aside" (the virtual desktops), and either "What you're doing now" (open windows on this desktop) or "What you want to do" (the applications menu). It's cleaner, and it works as expected.
The biggest difference I see between the two system seems to be where they expect you to spend the majority of your time. In Win8, the impression I got was the Start Screen was intended to be your "home base", where you rest between short bursts of activity. Gnome, uses the Activities screen more as the road to get where you're going; while still going away from the older folder-style menu so maligned these days. On the other hand, the top-left and bottom-right are both hot corners, which is a technology I was really hoping would fade away.
Still the biggest complaint I have about look and feel of Gnome3 are the large title bars and the lack of built-in theme support; the gnome package mentioned earlier includes gnome-tweak-tool, which is able to change the look of the UI.
What I Added
First, I picked up the Google Chrome package from http://chrome.google.com. I could have used the Chromium-Browser package already in Debian, but I'll take the branding this time. Nautilus did not want to install via double-click -- probably a permissions problem -- so I used the command line (# dpkg -i ./filename) and after a single dependency error (fixed with # apt-get install libcurl3 libxss1), I had Chrome up and running.The thing I like about the command line/NCURSES program Aptitude (# aptitude) is the ability to look at meta-packages -- packages of packages -- and choose what you want to install. Take the "gnome" metapackage. It has a lot of programs available, but I don't necessarily want all of them on my machine. For example, I don't have a webcam or a scanner for my laptop, so programs like Cheese (a webcam controller/viewer) and Simple-Scan would be useless. I selected applications for document viewing (gnome-documents), network tools (gnome-nettool), photo management (shotwell), bittorrent (transmission-gtk), the aforementioned gnome-tweak-tool, and a tool to let me install local deb files without going to the command line (gdebi).
I did install one game, as well. Einstein is both a clone of the old DOS game Sherlock, and an implementation of the "Einstein's Puzzle" style of logic puzzle; something I did a lot when I was younger, and still enjoy.
* This is probably a lie. I imagine that they are listed in order of Preferred (Ext3), Usable (Ext4), and Legacy (Ext2); then all the other choices.
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