Installing RedHat RPM packages on VectorLinux (and possibly other distros) using Midnight Commander

Okay, my posts seem to get shorter and simpler by the day, but this comment by user lighans on my last post prompted me to write another quickie about installing stuff in VectorLinux.

Sometimes I’m a bit disappointed, because very few apps offer Slackware-ready (not to sepack of VL-ready) packages on their websites for download. Thanks to the great community over at VectorLinux.com, more and more packages become available for VL on a daily basis, but some won’t be (possibly for good reasons).

However, a lot of times, RPM packages are available, as RPM is the standard package format under the Linux Standard Base. Fair enough, you might think, but how would that help me? Well, being a standard, of course there are options provided to be able to install RPM packages on other systems than RedHat or RH-based distributions. In VectorLinux (and quite possibly in all Slackware and even still possibly in most other distros), you have exactly two tools for installing RPM packages to your non-RedHat system:

1. rpm2tgz (as described in my last post) converts rpm files to tgz files (d’uh!). The output files can then be processed as usual (e.g., installed with installpkg).
   Example:
   root:# rpm2tgz package-version.rpm
root:# installpkg package-version.tgz
2. Midnight Commander (a file manager similar to Dos Shell (remember that?)) can install RPM packages!
   Example:
   harpocrates://opt/OOo3/RPMS/
root:# mc
   

   Then, simply select the rpm you want to install and press F2:

   The package installs as if it was being installed from command line, and you don’t have to convert (and risk data loss / package corruption) first:

Thanks to user lighans for this great tip!

Installing OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 (or indeed any other version) in VectorLinux Light 6.0

Okay, I still haven’t given any final comments about why VectorLinux is the best Linux distribution for me, but this time I wanna dive deep into the midst of things for a very newbie-specific little how-to.

As I believe in Linux’ capability to be a “middle-of-the-road” OS for “average” users, I want to focus on something *really* average today, which will hopefully be of use for some newcomer to VectorLinux with average needs, just like myself: how to install OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 on VectorLinux Light 6.0.

Why such a very basic tutorial? Well, installing new applications in Linux isn’t always a piece of cake, at least not in comparison to Windows, where you download an installer / .exe file, double-click on it and off you go with a graphical installation interface (well, more or less graphical in some cases) which guides you through the whole installation process. In Linux you often have several choices (ranging from easy to “you got to know how”): a) installing binary packages with a package management system, b) installing binary packages via console input, c) compiling and installing from source, etc…

The main reason why I write this wee tutorial is because there are no official packages for OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 for VectorLinux in the repositories AND there are no VectorLinux or even Slackware packages available for download via the OO.o website, so if you want to be state-of-the-art now, you have to install it “by hand”. Thankfully, by hand in this case doesn’t mean “compiling from source”, it means, pressing a few buttons and you are there.

So, first of all, what you need to do is go over to http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US and download the latest version of OO.o. If you are running VectorLinux Light 6.0 on older hardware (like I do), make sure to choose the Linux 32-bit RPM version in your language.

Next, you will have to choose where to install OO.o. If you have installed other applications, you might already know where they usually go. For my own system I chose to create a /opt/ directory, according to the File Hierarchy Standard, but I didn’t go quite as far as to hierarchize applications according to manufacturer LANANA names (as suggested by the FHS). For ex-Windows users, /opt/ is simply what used to be C:/Program Files/ in Windows.

So, you’ve downloaded a file called something along the lines of OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US.tar.gz, hence, an archive. You will have to unpack the archive first of all, and you do this by opening a console window (e.g., Menu > xterm) and make yourself superuser, then create an /opt/ directory, then “unpack” the archive to /opt/ (actual commands in bold):

harpocrates:/~
user:$ su
Password: **********
You are working as root
Frequently used programs:
Configuration  : vasm
Package manager: slapt-get, pkg
Network tools  : ifconfig, host, ping, nmap, iptables
File manager   : mc (press F2 for useful menu)
Editor         : mcedit, nano, vi
Multimedia     : alsamixer, play
harpocrates://home/user
root:# mkdir /opt/
harpocrates://home/user
root:# cd /home/user/downloads/ {or wherever you saved the tar.gz file to}
harpocrates://home/user/downloads/
root:# tar xzvf OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US.tar.gz -C /opt/

Now you have a newly created directory /opt/ and within it a directory called OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US (or similar, but you will recognize it, I trust!). This directory again has 3 subdirectories, one of which is called RPMS (/opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/) which you now switch to. If you list the contents of this directory, you will find a number of .rpm files as well as another directory called desktop-integration/. desktop-integration/ includes packages for different Linux distros, which we will use later to include the OO.o applications in the start menu of our WM. But first of all, we have to make use of the .rpm files somehow to install the apps in the first place.

While RPM was developed by RedHat originally, it is now used for many Linux distributions and in fact was made the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base (see Wikipedia for more info). The problem is: VL Light (and Slackware) cannot make direct use of .rpm files. Hence, they have to be converted to .tgz files (tarballs of the .tar.gz or .tgz format, the standard Slackware package format). Fortunately, VL comes with the converter rpm2tgz, so conversion is straightforward:

harpocrates://home/user/downloads/
root:# cd /opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/
harpocrates://opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/
root:# rpm2tgz *.rpm

This will take a wee while, and once you’re finished, you should have one corresponding .tgz file for each existing .rpm file. You may now delete the .rpm files to free more hd space (rm *.rpm).

The next step will already install the whole OpenOffice suite to your system. To do this, you can use the basic package installation command for Slackware and Slackware-based distros: installpkg.

harpocrates://opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/
root:# installpkg *.tgz

Again this will take a wee while (all in all, 49 packages are installed if I remember correctly). After this has been finished, you could now simply go to /opt/openoffice.org3/program/ and start the OO.o suite by typing soffice, but we want to go the whole way and add all OO.o apps to the program menu as well. This is done by installing the respective package file in the above-mentioned /desktop-integration/ directory, and refreshing the menu (in my case, IceWM’s menu). Additionally, you may delete all packages you don’t need for desktop-integration.

harpocrates://opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/
root:# cd desktop-integration/
harpocrates://opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/desktop-integration
root:# installpkg openoffice.org3.1-slackware-menus-3.1-noarch-9420.tgz
harpocrates://opt/OOo_3.1.1_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US/RPMS/desktop-integration
root:# ~/.icewm/update-icewm-menu.sh

And you’re finished! Check the “Office” section of your menu and you will find all the fine office applications from OpenOffice.org. Enjoy!

VectorLinux Light vs. Zenwalk: Benchmarks [updated version 29 Sep 09]

Have you heard the news? There will be another Ubuntu derivative, this time based on LXDE and hence called Lubuntu. LXDE is a lightweight desktop environment, and this added to the generally high profile of *ubuntu distributions might make for an interesting lightweight distro indeed, and perhaps fresh competition to VectorLinux.

So I wandered over to the LXDE blog post and downloaded both ISOs, planning on testing them against my favourite VectorLinux Light 6.0. These are live CD isos and they proved to be un-installable, so they’re nothing I’m interested in for the moment. Will have to wait till the first installable ISO is out.

However, I was reading up about testing distros against one another for this purpose after being pointed at benchmarking on the VectorLinux forum. In the course of my search I found an interesting post on benchmarking Arch Linux vs. Ubuntu, and I figured I could do a little benchmarking myself

Cognitive prerequisites for running Linux on old hardware

Okay, I know the title is very big-headed, but I have thought about how finding the right Linux distribution for your old hardware isn’t simply determined by the hardware itself, but equally by how much you know or are willing to learn about Linux. Which is why I want to write about a few things that I think might be helpful to know before you attempt to install Linux (hopefully VectorLinux Light) on your old machine. Please keep in mind that all of this is from my own, a distinctly newbie, perspective and will probably not be d’accord with the experiences, ideas or opinions of more estimated users of Linux or indeed “users” in general. In the light of the latest Win vs. Linux scandal, and coming from years of using Windows myself, I guess this post would be first and foremost addressed to any Windows user who wants to try Linux on their old machine in order to raise it from the dead.

So what in Linus Torvalds’ name, then, are the “cognitive prerequisites” of running Linux on an old laptop?

Spoilt for choice – spoiled choice: Finding the right Linux distribution for my old laptop

So, there I was, with a new old complimentary laptop. Great, because I’ve never owned one. Not so great, because it was running W*****s 2k and sluggish. As I had to do a little MySQL and PHP and needed to svn stuff, I thought it was a great idea to install Linux.

So far so good, I g**gled, and minutes later was downloading a Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibis ISO. Burnt that, and flew through the user-friendly install routines. “Great”, I thought, “so Linux has changed a lot since I last used it.”

Hardware Check

Before I dive deep into the quest for the right Linux distribution (a matter obviously solved, but undescribed as of yet), I would like to accustom the dear reader with some technical specifications & requirements, i.e. my old laptop. This is just so that the dear reader can approximate whether any solutions provided here may work for her/himself as well.

“There is no such thing as a free breakfast”? Yes, there is! I got a laptop for free. I guess it was state-of-the-art when it was produced and issued, and I must say it still isn’t so bad,

Mission Statement

Perhaps I should really start out with saying something about the ‘why’ of running such a blog as this.

There are already quite a few websites around which deal with running Linux on old laptops (try this G**gle search). However, everybody has different needs, and hence I should probably say a little about what I was personally looking for.

YALOOLB: Yet Another Linux on Old Laptop Blog

So, I’ve got this old Laptop for free (btw: I recently had a discussion with my neighbour about what the word geek actually means, so be prepared for what follows). It’s old, i.e. slow. It had W*****s 2000 as its original OS, and that basically sucked. What I wanted was a laptop I can actually use for stuff (e.g., for writing, surfing, a bit of DTP (L^AT_EX) and whatever might come to my mind I want to do with it, not going berserk of course).

I have a few friends and acquaintances of the geek-ish type, and I ran into Linux when I had to use it on my then flatmate’s desktop pc. Found it interesting then, but never kept track. But now it became an option again.