World: r3wp

I would like to ask - should I install including X Windows? Will 
it make REBOL life easier? (e.g. will it allow to run rebcmdview, 
so that some gfx operations will be available to cgi?)

The question also is - will it consume much more resources (memory, 
cpu) to have it installed including X-Windows?

Tested with a simple "view layout [box]" on Ubuntu Hardy with the 
wmii window manager, View does not crash when using xrandr to change 
resolution.

Seems likely other setups also wouldn't crash, but I wouldn't put 
it past Gnome to do something strange

So I just installed glorious UBUNTU Server edition. Installation 
went OK, but after 15 minutes of usege, I have big WTF? Are those 
ppl crazy? This is total piece of crap. You can't have X-Windows 
easily running there. There is NO visual administrative tool intalled 
by default. No webmin, but Ebox. At least Docs state how to install/run 
Ebox. It does NOT work, it is missing some packages. I am also left 
with my user name, and the SUDO. But - can you do everything by SUDO? 
How do I find out my real root password? I am really not an experienced 
Linux user, but I could manage that stuff with old Fedora in 2004. 
Why Ubuntu gets so much attention?

I've tried ubuntu many times with the latest trying ubuntu server 
edition. I installed webmin (not too hard). I ended up installing 
a low-end desktop environment...

But as usual I hit too many walls...

It also ran like a dog on this low end PC. It was a slow 800mhz but 
should have been fast enougg..I probably need more memory as I thing 
there was alot of disk swaping going on..


Now, I'm using ms server 2003...Atleast now I can go to my brother 
if I have a problem...He does not know linux.
I want to support Linux but I'm never happy with it in the end.

Perhaps, Syllable can one day be my server of choice ..

I will try other distributions - most probably CentOS, SuseLinux 
and maybe even Fedora once again ...

Don't know anything about the server questions, but Ubuntu by default 
doesn't have a root password - use "sudo su" to get a root terminal, 
then passwd if you want to give root a password

sudo su - yes, I found out that already. I wanted to get Ebox installed, 
but failed, even if I followed the documentation - I hate it .... 
this simply is NOT server which si ready to go to production. This 
is total crap ...

do you mean setup documentation?

Ah, it says the one in Intrepid is broken

Hardy is the LTS release, though, and works

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/serverguide/C/ebox.html- I followed 
those instructions, but it says it can't be installed ...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/eBox- this page says Gutsy version 
has bugs, Hardy version is stable, and Intrepid version can't be 
installed

well, the server "works" somehow, as I can reach its web. But I am 
not hardcore linux guru to go with pure console. So I wanted to add 
webmin, but noticed there is Ebox equivalent, but was not able to 
install it. The package mechanism is strange too - too much packages. 
I liked "yum update" with Fedora - it simply installed needed patches. 
Here I tried aptitude but how do I know from so many packages, what 
I need to install. I need very simple mechanism to just apply security 
patches, nothing more, like with Windows :-)

OK, so you are saying that I need to use some older Ubuntu version? 
They officially release 8.10 version and some main packages don't 
even work? I thought that by going Ubuntu I would be more safe from 
such a hassle. I probably need to go with LTS version then?

apt-get upgrade

 or "aptitude upgrade" for just the updates.. (I've been using apt-get 
 instead of aptitude, and they don't interact well when it comes time 
 to remove packages)

LTS - Long Term Support - versions are designed to be as stable as 
possible

For example, Hardy works on my laptop no problems, but Intrepid never 
has.  Don't know about Jaunty yet.

Petr, on Ubuntu there's no root password, unless you set that manually. 
On a server, this is debatable, but on workstations/desktops (which 
is Ubuntu's focus) it makes no sense to have two passwords for what 
is basically the same user.

what do i need to install
 - that is automatic. sudo apt-get install package-name

I use root on ubuntu without logging off.

For servers I'm just using CLI based Debian. No fancy stuff installed. 
Keep things simple...

I just upgraded my Debian Etch distribution to Lenny. This works 
flawlesly. Very amazing.

I now have several entries in Grub to boot different Kernel versions. 
Can someone explain to me how this works with all the rest of the 
applications and libraries?


I can imagine that you just use a different boot image to get a different 
kernel. But how does Linux handle all the "kernel dependent" libraries?

IIRC VMS had a very cool method to handle different version if the 
same file in a transparent way.

I don't think there are any api changes between minor linux versions. 
so you can use the exact same system with different minor versions 
of the kernel.

But I have 2.18 and 2.26 Versions. Which IMO are quite different.

Gabriele, they switched to the gradual change model with the 2.6.x 
series.

Robert, no, you have 2.6.18 and 2.6.26. The same libc will work on 
both.

Brian: still, distributions would not send out a kernel update that 
would break the userland. If there's an incompatible kernel, it simply 
never gets into that distribution, until next version of the whole 
distro

the only case when i had problems upgrading a kernel was when i was 
on Gentoo, and the new kernel would use different names for my hd 
partitions (switched from /dev/hdX to /dev/sdX), which meant that 
I had to fix the /etc/fstab for it to boot. these things don't happen 
on normal distributions, and even on Gentoo I could have avoided 
it if I paid attention I guess.

Glad to hear that the gradual change is being managed so well.

Gab, ah, sorry I didn't mean going from 2.6.a to 2.6.b

I mean having 2.4.x and 2.6.y on one system.

IIRC this is possible as well.

2.4 / 2.6 - I don't know if anything special is needed to do that. 
you can very likely compile both kernels in order to make them compatible 
with each other, and it's also possible to handle this in the userland.

i don't know if it's worth doing something like that though :)

It's not, but it looks like using dist-upgrade on Debian ADDs a new 
kernel and release without removing the old kernel (and maybe old 
apps). At least you get a new entry in Grub.

That's why I was wondering.

even when going from 2.4 to 2.6? I guess that if they do that, they 
must have tested it. i'm not aware of debian being able to keep multiple 
versions of programs though, so if it's installing a new version 
of a program, most likely it will remove the old one. (it can keep 
multiple versions of the same library, but not always)

I am interested in improving the display of fonts by R2 on Kubuntu 
Gutsy 7.10.

I am not yet aware of what font rendering systems are used by Kubuntu, 
but I can see lots of True Type Font (.ttf) files anyway.

I can get R2 View to display a font (eg. gentium), but the scaling 
looks pretty bad. eg.
	view layout [text "Hello" font-name "gentium" font-size 16]

Actually, what I'm primarily after is a fixed-sized font that looks 
nice at different scales.

But I wonder if anyone knows where Rebol looks for fonts?

What font system(s) does it use?

'lo. Pinged Cyphre on ICQ. He told me:


1) fonts, which are rendered in face/text
2) fonts, which are rendered in DRAW (AGG)


re 1) IIRC, REBOL uses some X-Windows function, an old method, which 
should work on all distros

re 2) REBOL uses FreeType2 library to get vector data, which are 
then rendered via AGG

Thankyou Pekr and Cyphre, it's useful.

Last two weeks I installed two times Ubuntu server, made webmin working 
instead of ebox, which is crap, installed horde, etc., but I have 
to note, that I really thought, that after all those years, Linux 
gurus got educated, and was successfull in hiding linux architecture 
complexity from the eyes of mortal man. I have to say, that the system 
is still the same idiotic Linux underneath. This is really rudiculous 
- we are living in 2009, and instead of getting things done easily, 
you have to follow stupid instructions of where to edit something, 
to get some stuff running.

Yep, true. Maybe FreeBSD is better in this (at least good documentaiton) 
or use OSX. Simple for the normal man, full access for the guru.

Hmm.. I seem to have figured out how to prevent window flicker on 
resizing R2 windows. :)

(Not sure exactly how it works yet... but I can now sleep peacefully.)