Monday, 18 August 2025

Bunsen Labs in use

 I was impressed by by Bunsen Labs Linux running on a VM, so much so I decided to try it on a real machine.

The only machine I had to hand was my old desk laptop that had been gathering dust for about nine  months since I'd upgraded to Windows 11  - not by choice but sometimes you have to stay compatible with the world.

Anyway, long story short, it's an AMD Ryzen based Lenovo laptop, and even now after some six years of use, a pretty meaty machine.

Installation was easy, it just flew and it gave me a working system in around 45 minutes. I probably spent longer trying to get it to boot from install USB. (Just to be different AMD based laptop didn't use a magic function key combination to get into the boot menu. instead you needed to use a sim ejector (or a bent paperclip) to poke a special recessed magic button on the case when the machine was powered off. This caused the machine to boot into the boot menu - and yes I did have to track down the manual online to find this out)


In use, and I havn't used it seriously as yet, it's quite impressive, and pretty capable.

Memory and cpu use is minimal as is disk use, and the machine simply feels fast. My plan is to use it as an alternative to the Windows 11 laptop on my desk and see how it compares, as well as using for a couple of projects ...


Sunday, 17 August 2025

Bunsen Labs Linux

 For the last twenty or so years I've been reusing old computer hardware for various of my projects, something that has invariably involved installing Linux as often software bloat on both Windows and OS X has reduced the usefulness of the hardware (and which is why I've been able to pick up some pretty good machines for not a lot from hardware recyclers and refurbishers.)

I've played with quite a few distributions over the years, but these days  the two I feel most comfortable with are Crunchbang++ and Ubuntu.

Crunchbang ++ I tend to install on resource limited hardware - which is why I used it when installing Linux on a Chromebook, and Ubuntu on anything else.

Crunchbang started out as a custom Linux distribution designed to use fewer resources than most mainstream distributions.

Development of the original project halted in 2015, but it spawned two successor projects, Crunchbang++ and BunsenLabs linux.

For a long time both projects were very similar as regards installation and the user experience and I did run BunsenLabs linux on an old netbook for a number of years, but for the last few years Crunchbang++ has been my go to lightweight distribution.

However, when I was working out what I could use in my Linux on Chromebook project I came across quite a few reviews that mentioned Boron, the latest Bunsenlabs distribution as being quite slick and resource efficient, though not quite as minimal in its disk usage as Crunchbang++.

So, I thought I'd take a look, and this morning I built a BunsenLabs VM using VirtualBox on my Dell Latitude.

Like CrunchBang++ installation was via the standard Debian installer and once booted and logged in you are presented with a customised OpenBox desktop not that different from the standard Crunchbang desktop, albeit in a nice blue green shade and with the time and connection status on the bottom left rather than on the top right


Like Crunchbang there is an option to install additional software


but unlike with Crunchbang++ AbiWord and Gnumeric are not installed and there's no option to skip the installation of LibreOffice, and to be fair, if you have LibreOffice there's no real need to install AbiWord and Gnumeric.

Now, when I installed Crunchbang++ on my old Chromebook, I deliberately went for AbiWord and Gnumeric rather than LibreOffice in the expectation that I would save a bit of disk space - remember that the Asus C202 Chromebook only had 16GB of eMMC storage - so what is the disk usage under Bunsen Labs?



and it's not that bad  - around 6GB, about the same Crunchbang++ without LibreOffice


making BunsenLabs a realistic option on resource constrained hardware.

Personally, I'm comfortable with CrunchBang++ and in no hurry to change, but I certainly would be happy to suggest BunsenLabs as an alternative to other lightweight distributions such as Lubuntu, especially in a situation where the user experience was important - the current BunsenLabs desktop feels a little more slick and modern that the current Lubuntu or Crunchbang++ desktops...



Wednesday, 6 August 2025

Linux on an old Chromebook

 Some time ago, for what seemed entirely sensible reasons, I bought myself an old Chromebook.


In practice, it has turned out not to be quite as useful as it might be. However, the screen’s in good condition and the keyboard is nice to type on, so I wondered, could I install Linux on it?


When I say install, I mean replace ChromeOS (which is a barebones quasi-linux under the hood) with another version of Linux entirely.


The machine is an Asus C202SA, which means it comes with an Intel Celeron N3060 processor, 16GB of eMMC storage and 4GB of RAM. Not the fastest device on the planet, but by no means the slowest.


The original Linux based EEEPc 701SD had an even slower Celeron processor, only half as much in the way of storage, and far less in the way of RAM – a measly 512MB – but I successfully installed Crunchbang Linux on it way back in 2014.


Using my previous experience with the Eee, I reckoned that it should be able to  run a current distribution of Crunchbang++ successfully.


The Crunchbang install image size is typically a little less than 6GB, and when idle it only uses around 512MB RAM so it should work. The install process has a breakpoint to avoid installing large applications such as LibreOffice, so with a bit of luck minimal install should be smaller than the typical 6GB.


A web browser, a lighter weight word processor such as AbiWord, a text editor and a lightweight spreadsheet such as Gnumeric should give me most of the functionality I’d need.


So, how to install?


Chromebooks are designed to run ChromeOS and have a number of features to prevent people installing alternative operating systems.


However, for a few years there was a project, GalliumOS, to develop an alternative to ChromeOS for Chromebooks.


The project’s now been discontinued, but the project wiki has a wealth of information about installing alternative operating systems on older ChromeBooks.


In the case of my Asus, you need to replace the startup firmware (the BIOS if you are old school), with an alternative firmware image. 


Chromebooks typically have a write protect setting on the firmware and this needs to be disabled.


Mr ChromeBook Tech supply replacement firmware for Chromebooks and have a pretty comprehensive list of models and how to disable write protection.


In the case of ‘my’ Chromebook it comes up with





meaning that you need to crack the case and remove a screw from the motherboard.


Fortunately the C202 and variants are designed for easy repair, and opening up the machine is straightforward with no nasty glue or anything like that involved, and there are a number of videos on YouTube, mostly featuring intense young men explaining exactly how to take one apart.


So, first things first.


It’s a 64-bit machine so I downloaded the latest 64bit ISO image of Crunchbang ++ (aka Cbpp), and using Rufus, made a  dd style boot volume. The latest image is only available as a torrent, meaning I needed to install µtorrent to download the image.


µtorrent is a paid for application these days, but there is still a basic free version, but you need to be resolute and ensure you select the free version, which comes with some mildly annoying ads.


Then the first slightly scary bit – cracking the case and then using a prying tool (a standard mobile phone and case separator to separate the two halves of the case. Mine came from ebay for less than five bucks.)



and then it was simply a matter of removing the write protect screw - helpfully marked with a big arrow, putting the box back together and following the instructions about getting into developer mode, and downloading the firmware update script


and executing it


Once the firmware had been flashed it was simply a matter of rebooting and running the install script.

There were a couple of  oddities during the install process - despite being the standard Debian 12 graphical installer and very standard hardware the mousepad didn't work, and more alarmingly, the first time around the disk partitioner didn't work.

In the latter case, I backed out and rebooted the machine and reran the install routine, and this time the disk, well a 16GB eMMC unit partitioned properly.

After the installation script had completed the machine rebooted and after logging in I was greeted by the standard Crunchbang updates and additional software screen


as planned I ran the software updates, but didn't install either Libre Office and other optional software to save disk space.

I then shut it down, powered it back up and checked that everything was normal and that the mousepad worked.

Everything looked good so here's a final image of the machine with AbiWord open


I'm quietly pleased with the result - I now have a fairly tough Linux laptop that, being based or hardware designed for the education market place, should stand a reasonable amount of abuse and have half decent battery life.

Installed, Crunchbang++ and the minimal application set takes up a bit less than 6GB - not quite as good as I hoped but something I can certainly live with, as it gives me roughly another 6GB free space plus something for swap.

For comparison, my two other Crunchbang++ machines which have a full software install including LibreOffice and a few extra programs such as Focuswriter and Notable come out closer to 13GB, but then they are not so constrained for disk space, both having 128GB SSD’s.

I am no technical genius, the last time I played seriously with hardware and firmware was over twenty years ago, so while I had the skills to open up the machine and remove the write protect screw, and some understanding of what was going on when I flashed the UEFI firmware, to a large extent I was simply following the bouncing ball.

Standing on the shoulders of giants I think it's called and I couldn't have done this without some very clever people making their work freely available.

While this might not be for everyone, given the right hardware, the actual installation of Linux was no more difficult than on a standard laptop, and it certainly got me out of the 'no more updates' Chromebook trap ...










Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Fanny Stepniak and the 1907 RSLDP congress

 I've written before that Fanny Stepniak, Sergei Stepniak's wife, was a bit of a mystery to me.

There's evidence that she worked with Constance Garnett on Russian translations after Sergei's death, but very little to suggest she continued to be politically active.

Well, that's possibly not the case.

I've just finished Robert Henderson's book on the pre 1917 Russian exile community in London, and in his description of the 1907 party congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party - the pre revolutionary underground political party that eventually became the CPSU - he mentions that Fanny Stepniak was personally included by Lenin in the vote of thanks to the organisers at the end of the  party congress.

The party congress was held in exile in London and is notable for being where the Bolshevik faction under Lenin gained control of the political direction of the party.

Strangely, the congress was held in the Brotherhood Church, the christian anarchist group that gave rise to various Tolstoyan communes in England, including Purleigh, from which Tom Ferris and Bertie Rowe travelled to meet with Tolstoy in the winter of 1902-3, and the communes at Whiteway and Stapleton just outside of Leeds.

I'm guessing, and it is only a guess, that as well as being in contact with Constance Garnett, she was also in contact with the Maudes, and used her contacts to help arrange the use of the Brotherhood Church by the RSDLP...


Saturday, 19 July 2025

Field postcards

 I've written both about the use of indelible pencil and more generally about the use of ordinary pencil on postcards in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

I've recently acquired two examples of first world war British field postcards, one written in pencil, the other in indelible pencil

The pencil example is addressed to a Miss N Abel in Clifton Road in Aberdeen and dates from 1917



Simply signed 'Jack', it confirms the receipt of a parcel.

I did have a go at tracing Ms Abel using Scotland's People. There's exactly two female N Abel's in the 1911 census, one of whom is only 9 months old and the other aged 21 at the time of the census, which would make her 26 or 27 in 1917 when Jack sent the card acknowledging his parcel.

Unfortunately the N Abel who was in the 1911 census was a jute worker living in Dundee, not Aberdeen, so it's more than possible that the person the card was sent to was not jute winder in Dundee, or perhaps by 1917 she had moved to Aberdeen.

The second example is written in indelible pencil and was sent to a Miss E Webb in South Cerney outside of Cirencester


While the address is clear enough time has not been kind to the back of the postcard making it almost completely illegible, but playing with contrast and a few other tricks provides an almost legible image


and suggests that the author of the post card is both well and will be sending a letter at the first opportunity and it is signed by a Cliff(?) Hunt.

Unfortunately a search does not show a Cliff or Clifford Hunt with the British Army in 1917. I've almost certainly misread the name and need to do some more work on this.

However I've had a little more success in tentatively identifying the addressee.

In the 1911 census of England and Wales there's an E Webb who was born in roughly the correct area in 1896, which would make her 21 or 22 when the postcard was sent to her in November 1917. It's possible they were sweethearts and one hopes that if Cliff survived the war they married and had a long and happy life together








A most impressive array of bottles...


Ever since I documented the contents of Dow's Pharmacy in Chiltern for the National Trust, I've been fascinated by nineteeth century medicine bottles. 

When we were in Melbourne recently, I noticed an impressive display of nineteenth century medicine bottles in a pharmacy on Wellington Parade in East Melbourne.

To try and give an impression of the size and range of the collection I've used an online jpeg stitcher to combine my images. 

It's not ideal, but it does give an impression of the collection.

I'm happy for you to right click and download the images, but for a more detailed view here are the individual images in left to right order


If you do want to take a look yourself, remember it's a working pharmacy, not a museum, the staff have a job to do and customers to serve, so it's best to go at a quiet time and it would probably be appreciated if you bought a couple of things when you visited.




Sunday, 13 July 2025

LibraryThing and the Athenaeum

 Maybe I have a new project.

Up at the Athenaeum, we have a heritage book collection – basically all the books they bought between 1862 and the early 1970s when it ceased to function as a library and reading room.

As far as we can tell they never threw anything out, only replacing books if they remained popular, which gives us a picture of reading tastes, and how they changed from the Goldrush era onwards.

Now we have an excel spreadsheet listing the roughly three thousand or so books but data quality is not great.

Publishers and authors names mis-spelled, different abbreviations  for the same publisher, etc etc.

I’ve spent the last few weeks checking publishers’ names to see if it was fixable, but really it’s not, the simplest solution is to recatalogue the entire collection.

This of course is a problem in itself, we’re not a library, we don’t have a catalogue system as such, all we want to do is catalogue the collection as accurately as possible, and then load the data into Victorian Collections for long term preservation.

Well, I think we have a solution - LibraryThing.

Originally designed to help people catalogue their personal libraries, it’s been used successfully  to catalogue small research libraries.

While is does have add on modules to give it the functionality of a larger scale OPAC, we only need its cataloguing capabilities. After all we are not going to add, lend, or deaccession material.

Data can be exported in both excel and MARC format, which means that not only could be load the data into Victorian Collections, we could potentially load it into a Library Management system, such as our local library’s Sirsi Dynix system, if desired.

But the real killer is that we can validate entries against both the British Library and the National Library of Australia, meaning we don’t need to create every entry from scratch.

The British Library link is especially valuable as in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century about 90% of the books in the collection were imported from the UK, with the remainder coming from the US, especially after the first world war when there seems to have been an interest in Westerns and crime novels – the original pulp fiction.

Legal deposit rules mean that the British Library should have a copy, and hence a catalogue record of every book published in the UK in the nineteenth century.

(It’s not quite perfect sometimes when I check entries manually I find there are minor inconsistencies in entries between the BL’s catalogue and the National Library of Scotland’s catalogue entries for the same book, but they are probably not significant enough to cause a problem).

Nineteenth century Australian publications might be more of a problem.

Not all are in the NLA’s catalogue, but the State Libraries of NSW and Victoria respectively are fairly comprehensive.

The only problem is that LibraryThing does not link to them, meaning that in these cases we would have to create a manual entry.

The other problems that I’ve come across are Book Club editions, and books published in Australia in the second world war.

Due to the shortages of materials in Britain book exports to Australia almost stopped, but a few UK publishers entered into licensing agreements to have local editions produced here in Australia by Australian publishers, and not all of them seem to have made it into the NLA catalogue.

Likewise, there are some post world war II pulp fiction reprints that were produced locally but don’t seem to be in the NLA catalogue. Again these would have to be investigated on a case by case basis.

However I’m confident that we can use LibraryThing to automagically ingest in excess of 90% of our holdings.

Probably the next step would be a trial run of a couple of shelves worth of books and see how it goes.

That should allow us to refine and document our methodology and perhaps come up with a more realistic estimate of the number of person hours involved.