Have Fedora and Ubuntu Left You Stranded? Here's Some Guidance

I use a removable "drawer" system on my home lab computer - one drawer contains Fedora 14 and the other contains Ubuntu 11. Both are behaving badly, though in different ways. Ubuntu 11 will not allow me to install ANY software - whether it be through the graphical software manager or via the command line "apt-get" utility. This happened after another partially failed automatic update. Fedora WAS working OK, except my Kdenlive video editor got irrevocably corrupted with the recent Firefox update debacle I wrote about a while back. See my posts during July-September 2011 for more details on recent LINUX and GNOME 3 issues. Yesterday, when attempting to burn a data DVD, the Brasero DVD burning utility crashed. No amount of re-booting or cajoling will make it work. I believe this also happened due to a software update, as it DID work shortly before Fedora issued a bunch of updates a couple days ago.

Thoroughly fed up, I am shopping for a new LINUX distro. I had planned to buy a Red Hat Enterprise LINUX (RHEL) or a Novel SuSE subscription to get away from the instability of what I have been using. I figure that what is geared for the corporate user would meet higher quality standards; at least I would have a phone number to call rather than spending hours online trying to find answers. As a grad student on a very tight budget, I find the $180+ price tag for a one year subscription a bit steep right now. And so I started looking anew for a suitable free replacement.

The following two sites were very helpful for doing a quick comparison of different distributions:

tuxradar.com
http://tuxradar.com/content/best-distro-2011

distrowatch.com
http://distrowatch.com/

After reading these sites and visiting a number of online forums, I have picked out the following three for closer evaluation and testing:
CentOS 6.0, Debian 6.0.1, LINUX Mint 11

My criteria were stability, security, availability of the applications I regularly use, AND last but not least a conservative approach to development and updates. Here's a quick rundown of the choices I narrowed the field to:

CentOS 6.0: CentOS is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise LINUX (RHEL). It is supposedly intended for "business users who don't want to pay a business price." From what the guy at Red Hat told me on the telephone a couple weeks ago, if I bought RHEL and needed software that wasn't in the RHEL repository I still could get it from the Fedora repositories. The Fedora repositories are a riskier bet, but at least they are available if needed. RHEL 6.0 still uses GNOME 2.0.x desktop - I would ASSUME CentOS does also, but I don't really know one way or the other. I'll deal with that in a future post about CentOS.

Debian 6.0.1: Debian is well known for being "tested 'till destruction", to quote a couple sources I've read. It IS more difficult for the average person to install, but from everything I read it is robust, secure, and reliable. Many different distributions are derived from it and there is a huge software library for it. Debian still uses GNOME 2.0.x desktop, according to what I've read.

LINUX Mint 11 LINUX Mint is in many ways like Ubuntu, but it is also a competitor. Like Ubuntu, it is a Debian-derived distro. Mint 11 uses GNOME 2.x, though this might change next year when Mint 12 or 13 arrives. There is discussion on their site about either using GNOME 3 or maybe forking GNOME 2.x to something called "Mate" desktop that would (hopefully) retain compatibility with GNOME 2. We shall have to wait and see. Mint 11 comes "out of the box" with Java and Flash plugins installed so you can watch you-tube videos and access Java applications online. VERY COOL. I have already started initial tests on this one - more to come in my upcoming MINT post.

All I can say about the eventual use of GNOME 3 is I hope the above-mentioned distros clean it up before foisting it upon us as did Fedora and others.

Even the US Air Force has developed its very own LINUX distribution! Called "LPS" for "Lightweight Portable Security", it is intended to be kept on a bootable USB thumb drive and uses an encrypted file system. It can also be installed to a hard drive as with any other distro. It is also designed to prevent corruption of the essential operating system and software files, even if an online session does get hacked. It comes with Open Office and some other goodies pre-installed. I'll likely check this one out, too - I rather like the rationale on which it was based. Below is the link for more info and downloads:

Air Force's Secure LINUX Distro:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-air-forces-secure-linux-distribution/9618

Stay tuned for results of my testing of the above-mentioned distributions.

Meanwhile, here are some links to articles I thought were useful for securing your LINUX system:

Some inside scoop on security
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/73061.html

How to secure your LINUX system:
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/how-to-secure-your-linux-system-915651

Test of Ubuntu 10.10 "live" CD

Yesterday I tested Ubuntu 10.10 - Maverick Meerkat "live" CD release.

After downloading the iso file and burning it to CD, I booted my dual core 1.8 MHz machine to it. It took about 2.5 minutes to boot from the P.O.S.T. screen to the desktop. As I said in my last post, this is about typical of my experience with a "live" CD boot.

Ubuntu 10.10 auto-detected my HP printer and prompted me to install the HPLIP utility and drivers. Very cool!

Other observations:

1) This distribution has Open Office
2) Screen capture applet shows in the screen captures here - I suspect this is a bug
3) NO Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
4) The gcc compiler does come with the "live" CD
5) The buttons to close, expand, or reduce active windows have been moved to the upper left-hand side of the windows. Why Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, decided to do this, I don't know. I'm used to these functions being in the upper right hand corner of the window and prefer it that way.
6) Still the same GNOME desktop - the "Unity" desktop we've been hearing about lately is to occur in an upcoming "11" release.
7) As with Fedora 14, setting up my broadband access was a snap. A browser window may be seen in the following screenshot



I did not bother to try it on my 800 MHz Pentium III machine due to hardware issues.

You can get your own copy of Ubuntu 10.10 here:
www.ubuntu.com

HP Printer Support in LINUX

Last week I got around to fixing my printer issues on my Fedora box. As mentioned in a recent post, I had problems getting the HP printing software installed and working. As I also mentioned in a recent post, before trying to install applications or plugins, one should first apply ALL available and relevant system updates. Waiting until later to do this cost me much time and aggravation. There were updates to the CUPS printing software and other parts that were needed for the Laserjet printer or Open Office to install successfully. Once those updates were in place, I was able to quickly install the HP printing software and Open Office and get on with life.

Herein I will detail how I got printing enabled on my LINUX system, including hard-to-find but critical information on getting it to work on Fedora SE LINUX.

For those of us who own HP printers, there is a third party application called "HPLIP". This stands for "HP LINUX Imaging and Printing" and allows support for both printing and scanning. The following link will take you to the page where you may download HPLIP and also verify that your printer is supported:

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html

The download link will take you to another page where you will select your LINUX distribution and version, the printer type and model. Once you do this you will be given the correct version for your setup.

The following link tells you in excellent detail through words and screenshots how to run the HPLIP installer and what you will see on your screen at each step.

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html

BEFORE Installation:
BEFORE installing HPLIP, make sure your printer is DISCONNECTED from the computer!! The installer will prompt you when to connect the printer.
You need to be connected to the Internet during the entire installation, as your system will likely need to download other stuff to resolve dependencies. You will run the installer from the command line as detailed in the installation instructions.

Ubuntu:
Since the install instructions page shows a Ubuntu installation, things should proceed as in the pictures.

Installing on SE LINUX:
Fedora is quite similar to a Ubuntu installation EXCEPT you FIRST must disable the "SE" or "security enhanced" functionality in order to carry out the installation. [Your system will give you a message on the command line to this effect - this is NOT detailed in the step-by-step procedure shown in the above link]

Do the following:
1) Select the "SYSTEM" menu at the upper left-hand corner of your screen.
2) Select "Administration" ,
3) Choose "SE LINUX Management" from the drop-down menu that appears. You will be prompted for the root, or superuser password.
4) A window entitled "SE LINUX Administration" will appear within a few seconds.
Under "Status", you will see "system Default Enforcing mode", "Current Enforcing mode", and "system Default Policy type". Under "Current Enforcing Mode", select "Permissive".
5) Under "File" menu, select "quit" to log out of "SE LINUX Administration".

Once this is done, follow the instructions at the link above. The installer should do its thing.

Completing the Installation:
You should notice a blue "HP" logo in the upper right-hand portion of your screen.

You MAY be prompted to reboot or log out, then log back in.
If that is the case, you will need to run a "hp-setup" command from the command line to finish the installation. If you are running Fedora, you may need to disable SE functionality again as you did above. At this point, a dialog window will appear. This is the configuration window for setting up your printer. You will see a form to enter the printer name, description, and location [office, lab, ...]. Your system will search for a driver and should automatically download what it needs.

Select the "Print Test Page" button - if all has gone right you should be rewarded with a printout of the HPLIP test page.

IMPORTANT Fedora SE LINUX settings for Printing
After installing HPLIP, you should go back into the "SE LINUX Administration" menu and reset the "Current Enforcing Mode" to "Enforcing". Failure to do this will leave your system vulnerable to attacks!

In order to keep SE LINUX's "Current Enforcing Mode" set to "Enforcing" and STILL BE ABLE TO PRINT, do the following:
1) In the "SE LINUX Administration" menu, select "Process Domain"
2) Find "cupsd", cupsd_lpd", and "cups_pdf" - mark those "permissive" by clicking on each one and selecting the yellow "permissive" triangle symbol right above the list.
3) Click on the "file" menu, slect "close" so that the settings are saved and you are logged out of the "SE LINUX Management" menu.
4) Open a text file on your system and try printing it - it should print now even with "Current Enforcing Mode" set to "Enforcing".

Downloading Fedora and Ubuntu LINUX: Verifying Checksums

For the last couple weeks I have had severe problems with my internet provider, and have not been able to post here. As you may have read in one of my earlier posts, this is not the first time. This week, I finally switched to a new ISP with broadband. Hopefully these folks will provide better and more reliable service. Thus far, it certainly promises to be faster than the other one.

Now that I have reasonably fast access, I decided to update my LINUX boxen to the latest releases. Since I run both Ubuntu and Fedora, I downloaded the current releases of both.

Checking File Integrity
When you download a LINUX distribution, or other software for that matter, it is good practice to use the checksum data, if supplied, to verify that your file is intact. This helps make sure the file wasn't corrupted during the download and that hopefully it hasn't been tampered with.

As a service to my fellow Ubuntu and Fedora users, I decided to post some instructions for doing this. Hopefully it will help someone.

For Ubuntu:

The following link offers helpful information:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

In summary, here's what I did to check mine:

1) For the MD5SUM file, go to http://releases.ubuntu.com/, select the release you are interested in, then scroll down to the bottom of that page to find the MD5SUMS file. You can also find cd .iso files there to download.

2) Download the appropriate checksum file to the directory where you downloaded the cd .iso file to.

3) After downloading the md5 file [for Ubuntu 10.04 in this case], run the following from the command prompt:
md5sum ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

You will (should) get an output such as this:
d044a2a0c8103fc3e5b7e18b0f7de1c8 ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso
Check this against the checksum file and make sure all the digits match.

Note that this also matches this line from the checksum file I downloaded:
d044a2a0c8103fc3e5b7e18b0f7de1c8 *ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

This shows the .iso file matches the md5 checksum and so is probably not corrupted or been tampered with.

What I like to do is copy and paste these sets of numbers into a text file like this:
d044a2a0c8103fc3e5b7e18b0f7de1c8 *ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso
d044a2a0c8103fc3e5b7e18b0f7de1c8 ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

This makes it easy to visually compare the two strings WITHOUT making yourself cross-eyed :)

If the strings match, you're good to go!! If not, then either your downloaded .iso is corrupted, or else you may be using the wrong checksum file.


For Fedora:

Fedora now does something different from the traditional md5sums command. They use something called sha256sum.
Here's how to do it:

First, you will need the appropriate checksum file for your .iso file.

For Fedora 13 checksums, go to
For 32 Bit, go to https://fedoraproject.org/static/checksums/Fedora-13-i386-CHECKSUM

For 64 bit, go to https://fedoraproject.org/static/checksums/Fedora-13-x86_64-CHECKSUM

For "Live" 32-bit desktop cd, go to https://fedoraproject.org/static/checksums/Fedora-13-i686-Live-CHECKSUM

For "Live" 64-bit desktop cd, go to https://fedoraproject.org/static/checksums/Fedora-13-x86_64-Live-CHECKSUM

Download and save the appropriate file to the same directory you downloaded your cd or DVD iso file to.


To check your downloaded iso, go to the command prompt and do the following:

1) Import the gpg keys by doing:

$ curl https://fedoraproject.org/static/fedora.gpg | gpg --import

2) Go to the directory you downloaded your iso file to.

3) Type the following command:
sha256sum -c Fedora-13-i686-Live-CHECKSUM if you are doing a "live" desktop cd, or
sha256sum -c Fedora-13-i386-CHECKSUM if you are doing the DVD or the several CD set.

You SHOULD get something like the following output if everything is OK:
Fedora-13-i686-Live.iso: OK

If you don't, then either your downloaded .iso is corrupted, or else you may be using the wrong checksum file.

Hope this helps someone.

Have fun!