Catbird Linux: Packed, stacked, and ready to roll.

2024/10/28: Update system to version 2.7.0. Upgraded kernel to Linux 6.11.4
Xanmod. Added Sigil ebook editor, moreutils package, updated apps, fixed minor
bugs.

2024/09/24: Update system to version 2.6.0. Upgraded kernel to Linux 6.10.7
Xanmod. Fixed a bug in the Wireguard menu and a few other minor items.

2024/07/22: Update system to version 2.5.0. Upgraded kernel to Linux 6.9.6
Xanmod, switching to x64v2 for older equipment compatibility. Trimmed some
user configs to reduce iso size.

Introduction

Welcome to Catbird Linux, an operating system built for media creation, web scraping, and software coding. It is the daily driver you want for retrieving data, making videos or podcasts, and making software tools to automate the repetitive tasks. It is ready for work in Python, Lua, and Go languages, with numerous packages for web scraping or downloading data via API calls. Using Catbird Linux, it is possible to accomplish in depth stock market analysis, track weather trends, follow social media sentiment, or do other tasks in data science. The system is programmer friendly, ready for creating and running the tools you use to measure and understand your world.

Catbird Linux v2 live username:  user    password:  live

The Catbird Linux 2.0 wallpaper, app launcher,
and status bar.

JupyterLab and LibreOffice for code
and prose.

Checking an audiobook against ACX
upload standards.

Radio Streamers and Python in the
terminal. Enjoy the Neovim and fzf.

Content Creation Tools

Start creating content by developing your ideas and writing them down. Obsidian is a premier application for note-taking in markdown format. Neovim also works great with markdown. Write books and export them to multiple formats using LibreOffice. Creating ebooks for the Kindle or other readers can be tricky; use Sigil to open up ebooks and edit them as HTML projects.

Aside from writing text, creating content involves working with audio, video, and images. Catbird Linux is ready to work for you with these applications:

• Audacity, for audio editing. Plenty of processing and analysis plugins are installed.
• GIMP, for image editing in a gui.
• Imagemagick, for image editing on the command line.
• Inkscape, for vector graphic image editing.
• OBS-Studio, for video streaming and screen recording.
• Shotcut, for video editing. Processing plugins included.

Data Science

Here are some of the main Python packages integrated into the system:

• Python 3.12, pure and simple. It is the base upon which capabilities are extended with extra custom modules.
• Requests, a simple, yet elegant, HTTP library.
• Ipython, a command shell for interactive computing in Python.
• JupyterLab, an application for creating, testing, and sharing documents containing live code. Jupyter Notebooks are configured for Python, Go, Lua, Javascript, Typescript, and Bash kernels.
• Pandas-Datareader, a library for managing and formatting for display or input to other applications.
• Matplotlib, a 2D mathematical plotting library.
• Scipy, a core Python library for computations in science and engineering.
• Sympy, the Python library for symbolic mathematics.
• Numpy, a core Python library for advanced mathematical computations.
• Astropy, containing essential computational tools for astronomy and astrophysics.
• MetPy, a Python library for reading, visualizing, and performing calculations with weather data.
• WorldWeather is the largest three-dimensional web-based interactive browser of satellite, weather, climate, and other publicly available time-aware geospatial data, built upon NASA's revolutionary World Wind technology.

For web scraping, these specialized packages are installed:

• Beautiful Soup, a library for exreacting data from HTML and XML documents.
• Selenium, a suite of tools automating web browsing.
• Scrapy, a powerful and extensible web scraping and crawling framework. It is not especially user friendly, but once set up, it really brings in the data you need.

Sentiment of scraped social media or news content can be measured with natural language processing (nlp) software tools. Whether favorable, neutral, unfavorable, or perhaps outright love and hate, populations can be evaluated by by what they say. Bots and trolls can be found and evaluated too! The Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is the main language processing tool in Catbird Linux. It has numerous components which parse, tokenize, classify, and evaluate the semantics of written language. Catbird Linux is configured for English, but it is possible to install modules for other languages. VADER Sentiment Analysis is a valence-aware dictionary and rules-based analysis tool crafted for social media analysis. WordNet is effective on groups of words, adept at assigning values based on phrases built on synonyms, antonyms, or neutral with respect to other words.

TextBlob is a package which your scripts will use to examine blocks of text - breaking phrases into parts, then tagging, evaluating, and quantifying sentiment. It is powerful, but easy to use: collect your text, with programmatic instructions, feed it to the processor for evaluation.

Catbird Linux includes a wide variety of python packages ready to work on start-up. If you have your own scripts or Jypyter Notebooks, copy them into the system and run them. Additional packages may be easily added with the pip install or other commands. It is suggested to set up separate Python virtual environments built around specific packages and tasks.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Artificial Intelligence has quickly proven itself to be an essential element of data collection, interpretation, and content creation. It seems that each week, creative people are finding new ways to use ChatGPT, Bard, Midjourney, and other intelligent tools to reimagine their workflows and be super productive. Catbird Linux is now incorporating some of those tools. Several are bookmarked in the web browser for quick access, while others are included as stand alone apps or browser plugins.

Use Terminal GPT (tgpt) to engage the Bai Chatbot, which may be used anonymously and for free - with no API keys. Look for the Google Bard web browser plugin or HuggingChat sidebar accessory to enhance your experience in Firefox.

Go and Lua: Elegant - Efficient - Fast

Go and Lua are open source programming languages focused on simplicity, reliability, and efficiency. Writing either Go or Lua to create your applications, you work in a more direct manner, without the bloat and clutter of other programming languages. Golang code is compiled into lightweight, efficient binaries, while Lua is interpreted and executed quickly and reliably.

Gather an analyze data with Python, but use Go to do the heavy work with your refined data. It is 40x faster than Python, similar to Java or C++ but more probrammer-friendly.

Javascript and Typescript: Dynamic Web Content

Neovim and JupyterLab are both configured with syntax and formatting support for Javascript and Typescript. In fact, you can test your code incrementally in JupyterLab. Of course, Firefox is a web browser which will run Javascript or Typescript right out of the box.

Office, Programming, and Multimedia Applications

In addition to data science applications, Catbird Linux is equipped with the full LibreOffice productivity suite. For code writers, there is the Neovim editor, with included plugins supporting Python, Go, Lua, Java / Javascript, HTML, Markdown, and other languages. Multimedia files and data streams are available in the MPV Media Player. Internet accessible software defined radio servers are indexed in, SDR-Map and SDR-Bookmarks for accessing live, off-the-air broadcasts from around the world.

Command Line Tools

Catbird Linux contains a plethora of efficient and fast command line tools.

• Terminal GPT (tgpt) provides acces to the Bai Chatbot. Open it and send some prompts to accomplish interesting things.
• Neovim and Nano are a pleasure to program in, in part, because they are so fast.
• Newsboat is an RSS / Atom feed reader.
• Castero is a lightweight podcast player.
• Browsing the web is a breeze in text mode with W3M.Navigate pages with Vim-like keys and enjoy cleaner, stripped text using the Readability utility.
• Surfraw is a search tool providing well over a hundred different websites to access for information not easy to find on the major portals. You can look for aircraft in flight by registration or ADSB hex code, find answers to computing or math problems, or even do lookups of slang phrases or rumors appearing in the news.
• TwitGrid pulls multiple topically related X / Twitter feeds and displays them as a broadsheet in Firefox. Temporarily running as a multi-tabber as the X page formats keep changing, breaking the broadsheet.
• Irssi is a terminal based internet relay chat (irc) application for anyone wanting to go "old school" in text based communication.
• lf is a fast and efficient terminal file manager. Navigate with Vim-like keys, with previews and user configurable management commands.
• fzf, ripgrep, and fd are tiny yet very effective tools for searching and organizing files or text. With these, you can reach into dozens or hundreds of files to recursively find words, phrases, code, or even terminal command history.

Network Accessibility and Security

Catbird Linux contains applications promoting a decentralised, content neutral, and censorship free internet. For evading national censorship barriers, Wireguard VPN, OpenVPN, and Sshuttle are effective tools. Tor-Remote is for discretely acessing the Tor network by ssh tunneling first to an intermediate server, which is connected to a Tor entry node. DNS privacy and authenticity, are protected with DNS over HTTPS, ensuring that censors cannot monitor or poison domain name lookups.

Local files need protection too! VeraCrypt provides strong cryptographic protection in the form of storage volumes which resist tampering or unauthorised access. Bleachbit is a powerful system cleaner which can also eliminate traces of deleted files by wiping free disk space.

Usage and Installation Options

Catbird Linux is built primarily to run as a live environment you boot from a flash drive. However, it is now easily installable with the Calamares application! Write this great Linux system to your desktop or laptop hardware and go forth to do great things. It is lightning fast on bare metal.

To create a bootable flashdrive, consider using Etcher or Rufus. Ventoy may be used to set up a portable multiboot drive you can use for USB booting as many live Linux environments as you can fit on the device.

The live iso is packaged as a DVD image, but it is not recommended to burn an actual DVD to run any live computing environment. DVDs are far, far too slow! Use a flash drive or SSD for a portable set up; install to bare metal for top performance.

Technical Notes

Catbird Linux is a 64 bit system. As of Version 2.0, it is based on Debian's Sid branch of GNU/Linux. Catbird Linux uses the Dynamic window Manager (DWM), with a great set of patches, to provide an efficient workflow light on resources and fast. The system builds on and extends the capabilities of its parent distros: easy software updating, great graphics, system resource management, and adaptability to user needs. The system runs quite well on modest hardware, and is blazingly fast on strong multi-Core CPUs with abundant memory.

Integrity and Authenticity of Catbird Linux

Great effort goes into making Catbird Linux safe and free of malware. To verify that your copy of the iso image file is authentic, undamaged, and unaltered, check the sha256sum against the official authentication document and verify the digital signature of Catbird Linux. The authentication document is available by the download link at Catbirdlinux.com. Use the Passwords and Keys or Seahorse application to check the signature. Import the Catbird Linux public key from pool.sks-keyservers.net or keyserver.ubuntu.com.

Disclaimer

Catbird Linux is provided as-is. No guarantees or warranties are applicable to Catbird Linux. Catbird Linux is an independent distribution derived from Debian GNU/Linux, but not endorsed by or affiliated with Debian or any other organizations. End users bear all responsibility for access and use of data obtained with Catbird Linux and any works created with it.

Special Notes and Bug Fixes

See the bugfixes page.

Integrated Changes for this Version of Catbird Linux

For older changes, visit the DOWNLOADS page.