Episode: 2
Title: HPR0002: Customization the Lost Reason
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0002/hpr0002.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 09:59:47

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Welcome to today's hacker public radio I will be I will be your host Deep Geek.
Today's topic is customization the lost reason for switching to Linux from Windows.
Now we've all heard the mantra I'm sure that Linux is the free alternative to Windows.
It is faster and more secure and as hackers and geeks we all know about the faster part.
And the more secure part has been generally conceded by the public and yet Windows dominates.
So this must not be the driving factor and what makes people choose their operating system.
So you know I mean it wasn't for me either I used Windows 95 and then Windows 2000 for the longest time.
Having known about Linux and heard about it and being curious about it but never having gone through with it going through with changing to it until I encountered software registration.
I was actually doing my annual reinstall of Windows to make it go faster at the time and could not get free access to the Norton database and had to go out and buy a copy and register it in short form.
Because as we all know Windows just needs antivirus.
And that the fact that some web page out there could just turn a part of my computer off left such a sour taste in my mouth that I went ahead and became a Linux person.
So you know when we talk about advocacy of Linux first of all no one says you have to try to to advocate Linux.
You can just if you want it's very cool to just be a Linux person and not try to advocate Linux to your friends and coworkers etc.
And Windows 2000 is a solid operating system although because of software activation I never followed through with any of the post Windows 2000 Microsoft operating systems.
But for those of us who are asked why or want to advocate it I think we should work out more than just having you know what what sounds like a party line after a while.
So I'd like to talk to you about customization as a reason to switch.
I mean like I said I switch was a software registration but what keeps me in Linux is customization.
Now it used to be that the Linux did not have a GUI and then after that it used the Unix style X Windows system GUIs which were not quite the same.
You know they were a little bit more scientifically oriented than the home user GUI that Windows users have grown to love.
But now modern day and age and this is recorded in 2008 you know with the advent of desktop environments like KDE and GNOME.
It's very Windows-like you know it's there's something that functions as a start for on a menu.
It brings up a menuing system and you choose your application and for people who either have a tech support guy or have a big geek in the family who sets up their computer for them what would be the difference.
You know if they're using a desktop environment but the thing I advocate the reason I come back to customization is because Windows
it's something GUI customization Windows has theme ability in other words you know background colors wallpapers font selection you know windows and Linux has them both.
But Linux customization goes much much deeper and I want to tell you guys a story you guys listening a story about a friend I have who used to be more deeply into computers and he is now and back in me and my buddies windows 95 days.
We were a big fan of what they called the power tools suite in those days which was a series of small programs that allowed you to customize different aspects of Windows 95.
And when he went as time went on he went to XP Windows 2000 XP and I went Windows 2000 Linux I was looking to buy him a gift a Christmas present and I said gee we both like that that power tools.
So I went to the to my ultimate source for computer software bonds in Noble and I found a book and it was something it was called something different I want you.
The term power tools was no longer in Vogue but I found something that had a disk with a with a similar amount of programs years later my friend said to me you know I still use that book you gave me not for the software disk.
But in the back is an appendix that lists all the windows services and what they do and I can go into XP and disable the services that I don't use and make my computer go faster and further than it would otherwise.
And you know I was impressed with the statement you know this is windows strength I believe and I'm talking you know personally here is its standardization in other words people who are institutionalized in employment or education you know by compelling the members of the institution to use windows.
They get forced onto the same software suite and to the same issues as the computer management group within that institution want them to be on.
This is windows true strength you know the most compelling reason not to switch is because everybody at work or everybody at school has to use it.
Okay but you know I'd like to my answer to that is to remind people that the name of the device is no longer the main frame the main frame error is behind us.
We call them now personal computers personal computers not the boss is computer not build gates is system the idea is to have a computer for you you as a person set up the way you wanted to and if you are compelled to use windows.
You can only go so far like I said wallpapers plants you know but but still you open up your you knew out of the box computer and it's up a certain way certain services or demons as we call them in Linux start and you know they're all the same they are not personalized in any way.
They are not personalized in any way and then people some usually just change the wallpaper well Linux is different Linux is different.
If you don't want to use the standard GUI you can just change your GUI and they're you know the big two arcade and gnom and for those who don't know Linux these offer a windows like experiences you can put folders and bookmarks on your desktop as well as background wallpapers but you can get away from that those facilities actually run you know use resources.
If you're a speed hacker like me like anything and circumventing any limit and speed you know you want to get my attention talk to me about that I'm into it whereas a lot of people talk about hacker there think about people who are looking to circumvent the limits and security I'm a guy who wants to push the computer to the edge and so I don't want folders on my on my desktop.
To tell the truth I don't want a desktop because it's constantly being used sometimes I want to turn off the graphical user interface and just use the command line you know it's a personal thing for me.
In Linux you can you can you have your window manager which is what's responsible for you know allowing you to shift between different applications is sharing your desktop.
Then you can have a desktop environment which integrates everything and provides you things like you know files virtual files trash cans file shredders on your desktop drag and drop stuff.
And you can customize you can customize by not having a regular GUI. I for instance prefer to use as my window manager I SWM I SWM is a lightweight window manager it puts a task bar on your screen it does not support folders on the desktop does support wallpaper does support.
Click the start button and hit the menu and I can elect to use I SWM white which doesn't have the task bar and I find this to be a fantastic thing for me personally not only because it's faster which I like but because when I purchased my first laptop I discovered that I hate mouse pads.
I despise the mouse pad it is trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole and sometimes I feel like carrying around a spare wireless mouse and I SWM also has nearly every function of the window manager is mapped to a control key.
So I can open a closed windows by like pushing alt f 10 or something you know if I want to so that's great for me some other examples you know for people really much older computers that they want to keep alive and we all know that Linux is great for keeping alive and older piece of software.
There's fast lightweight window manager F L W M and this thing is boss you you you log in you type in your password and click log in and boom it's on you know that's because there's nothing nothing
nothing running in the background and with these kinds of window managers you usually typically take your mouse and push you know the right click button and your menu pops up that way.
But you know there's there's things that go further than that there is for instance a very obscure but used by a small clique of people window manager called rat poison.
And yeah it sounds bad you know it's like the old skull and cross bones you know image you know rat poison but rat poison is specifically a window manager for people who hate using the mouse device you know and they're used to the word rat and rat poison is actually a derogatory reference to the mouse.
So I have not used this one personally but you know I think it speaks volumes to the mentality of Linux community that they have a window manager just for people who hate their mice you know that speaks an incredible level of care you know for small groups within the Linux community.
Now for those of you who don't want the full window and experience but do like you know a fast and lightweight solution but want more than a bare bones thing a very popular alternative is flux box which is very popular especially in the hacker community.
There have been a huge variety of themes written for flux box there have been got themes hacker themes you know all kinds of things like that you know it allows very interesting use such as a fonts fading grad graduations and colors and menus stuff like that.
But flux box is based on black box which was a light white alternative I believe to window maker and window maker is interesting because it allows it allows what's called applet boxes which means you could actually say you want a clock something mind your disc usage and something
mind your internet bandwidth usage you can actually pull up and run in the background these little applets which show up as boxes in the bottom of the screen and flux box or wherever you like on the screen and open in window maker and they will be running constantly in the background.
I believe I'm 100% sure that this was the predecessor to what windows people sometimes call active active desktop.
One of my favorite applets I've used is myself one of my favorite applets is called is a fish monitor is a ducky fish monitor believe it was cold and this thing had a icon it would run constantly that had a water level.
Bubbles in the water and a duck floating on it and the more memory you use the higher the water level went up if you used all your memory the water went up to the top and the duck flipped upside down.
And if you used a lot of CPU time the water would boil to different amounts of of rapidity as you used more and more CPU resources I got such a kick out of that thing.
Fluxbox is really a cool thing for your artistic moods and on your login screen in Linux and it's normally called the desktop manager like kdm or typical defaults.
There's usually an options button for your graphical login that you open up and it's a session type and if you install several of these in your Linux system you can go in there and as you log in you type in your username and password or click it or click your username if you like and you can choose what kind of window manager you'll use for that session and log in and you're right in it.
It's a beautiful system that customize itself extremely to your individual tastes. Now the other thing I mentioned earlier about customization is background processes and you know I'm not a gnome or kve guy these are the big heavy windows like desktop environments and white windows they take a long time to boot when you have them fully installed.
So in Linux if you use you know I'm a Debian centric so in Linux is perfectly okay for you to never install a Damon process that you don't want.
Now for instance there's a new background thing called ever high client and it's supposed to be some alternative to sitting up a stack network at home.
I normally use only one box on my home network I don't need this I kind of resent you know if I have to install an application and it automatically loads this.
So on my laptop I'm developed I'm trying different things of software and I am learning what things install a lot of background processes and choosing light more lightweight alternatives to those things.
So you know I've chosen for instance not to load Katie at all not to load Katie includes a web browser called conquerer which is also a file manager which causes a lot of this heavy stuff in the background to load.
So I'm learning to use links to on my laptop so I don't have to install that heavy heavy thing on my thing. Now this has side effects you know because of this I don't have a file manager I'm used to.
So I'm learning to use what's more like a midnight command a kind of file manager you know and it works for me.
Now I'm not saying because you know you hear this kind of podcast or this kind of internet radio program that you have to be like me and enjoy customization for this level but I want to submit it out there to you in listeners as an alternative reason to switch from windows to Linux because I think the more reasons we find that windows doesn't have.
The more persuasive those of us who advocate Linux can be and that's the that's the beginning of the end of this episode of hacker public radio.
One thing and format that I deep geek your host for today want to have for my contributions is I want to have I want to close out with a geek tidbit I'm going to call it and you know it's just going to be food for further.
For further thought kind of thing a geek you should you should look into to learn about historically perhaps a geek high coup yes there are people who write poetry about the geek experience out there and it's open ended I can extend this in the future if I like.
So today's geek tidbit from the deep geek is a historical geek you guys really ought to know about his name is Seymour Cray S-E-Y-M-O-U-R space C-R-A-Y.
Seymour Cray is was born in 1925 and passed away in 1996 there's a wonderful Wikipedia article on him you can use as a jumping off point and he is the father of the supercomputer that's right big iron fast processes all that stuff that they don't really do anymore because there's so little demand for it and the market has been changed.
And the market has been changed so much people who want super computers now even even the company that is his legacy really supports clusters at this point but this is a guy who squeezed every bit of speed out of a computer he could.
It was a maniacal madness in the days when the mainframe died the mainframe had about as much power as a pentium and now we're up to pentium force and beyond and some of us are going on to 64 bit processing.
Back in the day before the personal computer was a business reality they needed faster and faster and Seymour Cray built computers with this company that was so fast that IBM had to say we can't compete on the basis of speed.
IBM owned a Cray they used for benchmarks but IBM strength you know it was kind of like you know the Microsoft has become the IBM of today they really you know were a sales and support organization more so than you know a high speed computer company.
You know one of the Cray computers one of his innovations was when you use supercomputing and you compute that fast you generate a lot of heat and one of his big innovations was the use of Florent for cooling and Florent was a liquid developed by 3M for medical uses and it was a non-conductive liquid that was meant to have medical applications for filling and gaps.
When they did organ transplants I believe but what he did was he submerged the insides of the computer was actually a water type tank and filled with Florent and used a circulation of Florent to pull the heat out of the computer when it ran fast and the fast the computer ran the more the Florent bubbles.
And that's how come many of the Cray's were nicknamed by their computer operators as bubbles and excellent book and I read it and got a lot of my background information about Seymour Cray and the big computers was called Superman the story of Seymour Cray and the technical wizards behind the supercomputer.
Author Charles J. Mary M. U. R. A. Y. Pubbier 1997.
A excellent and fast read for those of you who are looking for book reviews and that concludes this episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening. This is the Deep Geek Signing Off.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all your hosting here.
Thank you.
