The End of the CentOS Netbook Experiment

I no longer have CentOS running on my netbook. It won't be back. At the moment I am not recommending CentOS for anything, not even servers. On my netbook and on desktops in general it has very little to do with the overhyped and exaggerated claims that miscommunication between the developers would lead to the death of CentOS. I have a story I'm writing forO'Reilly Broadcast about that CentOS misadventure, a combination of self-inflicted pain when the developers aired their dirty laundry in public and some in the tech press sensationalizing a story. On servers that story actually does play a significant part in my decision making. Before the CentOS fans out there get all angry at me and start with the inevitable flames let me explain my decisions.

I've decided that RHEL/CentOS just isn't for the typical desktop. The repositories are sparse compared to other distros and I would have had to compile quite a number of apps and dependencies for things I use every day. It was just plain too much work. Yes, I am aware of and tried RPMForge and EPEL and Odiecolon Repo and CentOS Extras. ELRepo proved tremendously useful for firmware and drivers. All of these repos provided useful packages. I tried using yum-priorities to keep all the repos from conflicting with one another and for a time that even seemed to work. With all of those third party repos I still was missing way too many things I use all the time.

I also abhor depending on third party repositories of variable quality. Yes, most of the packages I ended up using were quite good. Some had issues. The fact is that I just do NOT want to rely on multiple sources of packages which I may or may not truly trust. I want the distributor to provide a decent selection of software which they maintain with a decent level of quality assurance. CentOS just doesn't provide that for desktop applications. This was one of my main complaints when I reviewed Slackware 12.1. As much as Slackware fans berated me for this complaint I still don't trust that multiple repos will always play nicely together. They don't. I also do not want to have to build my own packages all the time. I write reviews and write about Linux professionally nowadays. I have to try new things all the time. CentOS is just not well suited for that.

Speaking of new things, I had to go to a third party repo and to compile a webcam app (as there is none worth having in any of the repos) just to make all of my netbook hardware work. My choice of apps was further complicated by the old libraries and tools included with CentOS. Older code makes perfect sense for a stable server environment which, after all, is what CentOS and the upstream Enterprise Linux are designed for. If I want to compile a newer desktop app which depends on newer libraries it may simply mean that the app isn't going to build.

Next comes the performance issue, or more correctly the lack of performance issue. After much tweaking and shutting off of unnecessary services I still found CentOS to be slower than any other distro on the netbook. (This also applies to my aging Toshiba laptop which has hardware fully supported by CentOS.) Even allegedly bloated distros running KDE 4 were faster than CentOS running Xfce. CentOS was and is the only distro I've tried on the netbook that was sluggish at all. Might I have found more stuff to rip out and more performance tuning to do? Sure! I probably could have made it better. The big question is this: Why bother? Was I really getting that much advantage running a business environment on my netbook? I decided the answer was no.

So, between lack of apps, multiple sources and old code CentOS was pretty well doomed on my netbook anyway. The coup de grace came with my last update. After rebooting the system would hang when the ACPI module was loaded. Sure, I could go into single user mode and troubleshoot and fix the problem. I have no doubt about that. I just decided I couldn't be bothered.

OK, so CentOS isn't for netboooks or desktops. You've undoubtedly noted that I said I'm not recommending it on servers either. None of the above really applies to servers, of course. The issue, of late, is the speed, or should I say slowness, of CentOS security patches. This is of vital concern to business and organizational users. When Mozilla released Firefox 3.0.12, a security patch which closed five vulnerabilities identified as "critical", Red Hat had an updated package the very same day. That's what a professional enterprise distro has to do. Downstream Sceintific Linux had a package ready the next day. It took CentOS over a week. This isn't the first such case, either. CentOS has been erratic at best about getting security patches out. The Firefox package was simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

The net result is that I am now recommending Scientific Linux for people who need a RHEL clone for their business or organization. The story about Lance Davis, the developer that went missing for a time, while overhyped and exaggerated in terms of the impact on the future of CentOS, is relevant here. Scientific Linux is backed by Fermilab, CERN and other major labs and universities. As a result it has a level of funding and stability that an independent project like CentOS does not have. One of the reasons Red Hat does such a good job selling their Enterprise Linux offerings is the support they offer and the strength of the company behind the distro. Scientific Linux may not offer the support or charge for the subscriptions, but the organizational backing insures its future and makes it a stronger choice than CentOS. The recent news forced me to take a long, hard look at Scientific Linux and I decided it was a better choice.

So, for me, CentOS is gone. I do wish the project well. I just hope they find a way to reassure their user community that they can be stable and reliable. The recent bad press has hurt them in that regard.

The Ongoing "CentOS 5.3 On A Netbook" Saga

Last week I wrote a feature for DistroWatch Weekly on the trials and tribulations of installing CentOS 5.3 on my Sylvania g Netbook Meso. I was very pleased when Dag Wieërs, a CentOS developer and long time packager and maintainer of an excellent repository of additional packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, posted in the comments section with some useful suggestions and a request that I document how to get the netbook completely functional in the CentOS wiki. That's a project I'll take on when I have everything working to my satisfaction. In the meanwhile I thought it might be useful to report my progress here. That's the kind of thing blogs are for, right?

Anyway, following Dag's suggestion I ripped out the wireless driver I compiled from source and tried to use what CentOS provides. As before that simply didn't work. Then I installed the rt73usb-firmware package from ELRepo. This worked after a fashion. CentOS did recognize my wireless card and, three passwords later (for the keyring and twice for my own WPA2 protected network) I actually was able to connect. I did have one instance since yesterday when NetworkManager locked up, something I used to see in Ubuntu all the time. That, plus the relatively slow performance and all the GNOME dependencies are just a few of the reasons why I tend to truly hate NetworkManager. Unfortunately nobody has a wicd package for CentOS. If I stick with CentOS I will definitely have to package wicd and write a how-to documenting replacing NetworkManager with it.

I also followed Dag's suggestion for installing the kmod-video4linux package from ELRepo in the hope that it may contain drivers for my webcam. No distro supports the webcam out of the box so far as I can tell. Only the factory preinstalled Ubuntu Netbook Remix 8.04 worked without significant effort. Testing with the video conferencing software is a royal pain and possibly not a fair test so I decided to install either wxcam or cheese or both. Guess what? None of the CentOS repos have packages for those either. Grrr!

I did install Xfce 4.4.2 from the CentOS Extras repository and, as expected, it's a bit faster and less resource intensive than GNOME. I'd have liked a somewhat newer version but I'm happy with the results.

I also received an e-mail from Radu-Cristian Fotescu, who writes the Planète Béranger blog, asking me to test his recently rebuilt Odiecolon repository for RHEL/CentOS 5. He has some more up-to-date multimedia packages than other repos so I decided to give it a go. His repo is also known to conflict with the much larger and definitely necessary RPMForge repository. In order to avoid "rpm hell" I am trying to keep things in order with yum priorities. So far it's doing a good job of excluding conflicting packages.

If all this sounds overly complex, well... it is. Back when I wrote my somewhat controversial review of Slackware 12.1 one of the things I complained about was the dependency on third party repositories of variable quality. RHEL/CentOS as a desktop distribution definitely suffers from the same shortcoming. Getting all the repos to play nicely together, even with yum-priorities, appears to be an arcane art. Only time will tell whether or not I've mastered it. I will also need to compile a bunch of apps from source and will probably end up building and contributing significant numbers of packages if I intend to stick with CentOS.

I should also add the performance is still nowhere near as good as my favorite desktop distro, VectorLinux or even as good as Ubuntu Netbook Remix. With further tweaking and streamlining I'm fairly certain I can improve things enough to be reasonably happy.

If it weren't for the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the absolutely dominant business distribution I honestly wouldn't bother with all of this. The main reason for the effort is to be able to use the netbook for business related demonstrations and to have a fairly uniform operating environment for my systems. Check back for further progress reports.

Hotel WiFi Disservice

Last weekend my housemate went to Atlanta for an event she wanted to attend. She stayed at what is generally considered a moderately priced hotel chain which caters mainly to business travelers. After a nearly nine hour drive she wanted to unwind on Friday night and, being very much the geek, chose to go online. The hotel, like most major chains, offers free WiFi service. Perhaps more relevant to my point, they advertise free WiFi service.

Well, she could connect to their wireless network but couldn't get to the internet or connect to any websites. The hotel staff was neither helpful nor knowledgable when she reported the problem. She could ping their router so she suspected a DNS issue. She called me and I gave her the IP addresses for the OpenDNS nameservers. That solved the problem. It turns out the hotel did have free WiFi provided you are technically competent enough to troubleshoot a DNS problem and have alternate nameserver IP addresses on hand for DNS resolution. I somehow think that for most of their guests WiFi was effectively down.

A few years ago I traveled extensively for business. I found that hotels which had wired internet service were generally reliable. Hotels which offered WiFi services had problems far too often. I can't expect a hotel clerk or even a hotel manager to know how to solve wireless networking issues. I can expect them to care if the service is down as much as they would care if telephone service or TV was down throughout the hotel. In my experience they just don't.

In one place without working WiFi I was told they hoped to have the service provider in to check the system the following week. I had reservations for four nights. I checked out after one night and went to a different hotel. My work depends on my remaining connected. That is one hotel, a fairly expensive one at that, where I would never stay again. I would think, in this day and age, hotels would begin to realize just how important connectivity is to their guests. Sadly it often isn't the case.

Deceptive Pricing At CompUSA

On Friday my housemate and I went down to what used to be the Tiger Direct retail store in Raleigh. It turns out that Tiger Direct bought out what was left of CompUSA and has renamed their stores. I guess the CompUSA name is better known as a brick and mortar retail computer store.

The main reasons for the visit were for my housemate to upgrade the RAM in her Dell laptop from 1GB to 2GB and for me to buy an SD card to use in my Sylvania netbook. Some of you may have already noticed that I am now writing regularly for DistroWatch Weekly which means I am trying out different Linux distributions on a regular basis. It might be nice (not to mention less risky and somewhat easier) to install to the SD card rather than my hard drive when first checking things out. Anyway, Tiger Direct has always had very good prices on such things.

The good news is that my housemate did find the memory she wanted for the very nice price of $14. She also pointed me to an 8GB SD card priced at $9.99. Just what the doctor ordered! I also picked up a spindle of LightScribe CDrs which were way less expensive than anywhere else. I went to the register where the SD card rang up for $29.99. It turns out that the $9.99 price is after a rebate.

Here's the issue: the only way you'd know there was a rebate was to read some microscopic print on the price tag. I mean really, really tiny print. This is in the "bring your magnifying glass" category of tiny. I kid you not. There are price tags all over the store that have rebates. Most have the words "Final Price" in big, bold, red letters so that you know there is a rebate involved. This one didn't. It also wasn't the only tag like this.

My housemate immediately called this "deceptive pricing". I have to agree. So do some of our state legislators. A few years back some tried to pass a bill to ban this sort of pricing. I guess it never passed because the practice continues.

Look, I would have had no complaint if the price tag made it clear that a rebate was involved. As it is I decided I didn't want to lay out over $30 with tax and wait months for a check in the mail. Since a 4GB SD card is really all I need I decided to choose one of those instead. In that case the price on the tag was all I paid.

Will I still go to CompUSA? Yes, so long as they have really good prices. I'm not organizing a boycott or anything. However, I did voice my displeasure in the store. Maybe if enough of us complain they can be convinced that they'd do better to make it clear what you pay up front and what will be returned in the form of a rebate.

New Websites For Me and For the Ferrets

Nowadays it seems you can get free web hosting and a free domain without annoying ads. How did I miss out on that up until now? See what I get for not paying attention to such things!

Anyway... my personal website now has its own domain and has been separated from other stuff that isn't me. It still looks archaic, like the 1990s design that it is. The content sorely needs updating as well. All of the will happen as time permits so you can visit now and again and watch me struggle through web design until I get something that's worthwhile :)

The new website is at http://www.caitlynmartin.co.cc.

I've also decided that my pet ferrets rate their own website. Considering the impact they have on my budget (recent vet bills for Chin Soon, especially) I obviously place a high value on the little weasels. If you aren't a pet owner you probably won't understand and think that this is all insanity. You may be right but it is an insanity that responsible pet owners all share. Our pets become like four legged family members.

The ferrets' website is at http://www.ferretsofdisorder.co.cc.

There is a good, sane reason for splitting the site into two or three pieces. More bandwidth. Free hosts have bandwidth limitations. OK, I probably will never reach them but you never know. I also get more gigs of storage I'll probably never use up.

So... feel free to visit.

President Obama Hosting Passover Seder

NOTE: This is a rare cross post from my Zionism & Aliya blog.

Barack Obama will become the first American President ever to host a Passover seder at the White House.

While the story has received minimal mainstream media coverage here in the U.S. it was much bigger news in the Jewish and Israeli press. The historical significance was not lost on The Jerusalem Post:

'I'm really happy to hear about it,' said Steve Rabinowitz, who once led a staff Seder in the Clinton White House but didn't know of any White House Seder in which the president had personally taken part before now. 'It's been an extremely open White House to all faith communities, certainly including ours.'

William Daroff, who runs the United Jewish Communities' Washington office, recalled that former president Franklin D. Roosevelt snuck out the back door of the White House in 1943 to avoid seeing rabbis marching out front to demand US action to save European Jews from the Nazis.

'Sixty-six years later the President of the United States is spending Thursday evening with his friends and family celebrating the liberation and survival of the Jewish people,' Daroff noted, calling the event 'a testament to how far we have come as a Jewish people in America.'

In a bit of irony former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) chose today to declare that the Obama administration is "anti-religious". He was referring to the appointment of Harry Knox, a former Methodist minister and an outspoken gay rights advocate to the White House advisory council on faith-based initiatives. Apparently Mr. Gingrich believes anything other than right-wing evangelical Christianity isn't worthy of consideration as a religion. There are any number of liberal and tolerant Christian denominations. Reform Judaism is openly supportive of gay rights as are many in the Conservative (Masorti) movement.

I'm often asked why Jews tend to vote Democratic by conservative friends who see liberals as insufficiently supportive of Israel. While many European leaders were issuing warnings and thinly veiled threats to the new Israeli government even before Prime Minister Netanyahu officially took office President Obama chose that day to declare America's "unwavering support" for Israel. Support for Israel among Democratic leaders is not lacking.

Many right-wing Republicans, on the other hand, are very tied to Christian fundamentalism. Mr. Gingrich also accused President Obama of being "intensely secular". As a Jewish woman and a member of a religious minority in this country I am more comfortable with a secular government than an intolerant fundamentalist Christian one. My mainstream Jewish values are very different than those of the American Christian religious right.

I, for one, am grateful to President Obama's support for Israel even if I have some reservations about specific elements of his foreign policy. I think Mr. Gingrich's comments on the day before the President is taking part in a truly historic Jewish religious observance illustrate very well why I can't support his views.

To President Obama, and to all my readers:

Hag Sameach! Happy Passover!

Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg's Testimony Doesn't Pass The Smell Test

There's an odor that's more than a little rotten around former AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg's congressional testimony. Mr. Greenberg stated that his leadership team had "nothing to do" with the company's failures. He added, "When I left the company, it was a healthy company.” Really?

In the fall of 2004 I interviewed for a position with American Financial Group. Here is what Mr. Greenberg has to say about AFG at the time and what the MSNBC article has to say about their business:

“AIG’s business model did not fail; its management did,” Greenberg said. He went on to criticize their handling of the financial products division, which he said “functioned quite well” under his leadership.

That division wrote the notorious credit-default swaps that have forced the company to pay more than $50 billion to U.S. and foreign banks.

AFG was the division now blamed for the catastrophic losses and near failure of the company that led to the huge government bailouts. According to Mr.Greenberg all was well in March, 2005 when he left and all the problems came later. Funny, that isn't what I remember.

The AFG position required me to move to Cincinnati, something I had doubts about doing particularly for a contract position. The job was a 90 day contract-to-hire position and the interviewers did all they could to reassure me that the permanent position was mine so long as I did a good job for them. I was repeatedly told that AIG has never had any layoffs during the company's 176 year history. That was a major selling point and it helped crystallize my decision to join AFG.

Fast forward three months after I moved to Cincinnati and started on the job. My manager informed me that my contract was going to be extended. Bringing me on board permanently was delayed, I was told, by internal politics. They wanted to keep me as a contractor until the issues could be resolved and then I could be hired permanently. I had all the normal benefits including health insurance through the consulting firm I was working for so I had no problem with this and I continued as a contractor.

In March, 2005, the same month Mr. Greenberg left AIG, the first layoffs in the company's history were announced. There were reports of financial troubles and losses even then. Someone from another group which was being closed, an AIG employee, was going to fill my spot as a Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator. I was told I would not be hired after all. This was after I had moved to and lived in Cincinnati for five months. The consulting firm I was working for placed me with Red Hat so things worked out OK for me, but... AIG was strong and profitable in March, 2005 according to Mr. Greenberg. If so, why the layoffs? Why the reported losses and financial problems at the time?

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) has his own doubts about Mr. Greenberg's testimony:

"I'm convinced that the systemic problems at AIG go far deeper than mistakes made in the four years since you left the company," Cummings said. "What you failed to mention was that a good portion of those risky (bets) were written" before Greenberg's 2005 departure.

Cummings asked multiple times how many of the credit-default swaps were written while Greenberg was in charge.

"The amount we wrote was for European banks," Greenberg replied. "As far as I know, there was never a loss on any of that."

Hmmm... I certainly had no access to AFG's books or to the particulars about the financial problems that raised alarm bells and forced layoffs in March, 2005 so I can't say if Mr. Greenberg was truthful in his response or not. I, like Rep. Cummings, have my doubts. "As far as I know..." is a hole you can drive a Mack truck through. Those are the kind of weasel words that guarantee that Mr. Greenberg isn't lying or perjuring himself even if his account isn't exactly accurate.

As I've already noted I have and had no access to the company's finances now or then. I do know for a fact that things weren't nearly as rosy as the picture that Mr. Greenberg paints.