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

Written and curated by WebDev Philip C.
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2024/02/24: Update system to version 2.3.0. Upgraded kernel to Linux 6.6
Xanmod, fixed bug causing crashes during boot on flashdrives or multiboot
devices created with Etcher, Ventoy, or Rufus. See this blog post for
more details about booting.

2024/01/31: Update system to version 2.2.0. Updated GIMP, Audacity plugins
and plugin GUI works. Other small tweaks and upgrades.

2023/12/12: Catbird Linux version 2.1 to be released in a matter of hours!
It is now based on rolling Debian (Sid), with the Dynamic Window Manager (DWM).
Expect a fresh kernel plus minor updates and fixes from version 2.0.
Introduction to Catbird Linux
Content Creation Tools
Data Science
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Go and Lua: Elegant - Efficient - Fast
Javascript and Typescript: Dynamic Web Content
Office, Programming, and Multimedia Applications
Command Line Tools
For An Accessible and Secure Internet
Usage and Installation Options
Technical Notes
System Integrity and Authenticity
Disclaimer
Special Notes and Bug Fixes
Apps in this Version of Catbird Linux

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
catbirdlinux-2.3.0.iso (Release Date 2024/02/24):
sha256sum: 9f117784a0fd955923ea65d9ab94a54d0e77bf478d4de15be1403c24f0a0a7b3
authentication.txt
The Catbird Linux Desktop and Rofi menu.
The Catbird Linux 2.0 wallpaper and
status bar.
JupyterLab and LibreOffice for code and prose.
JupyterLab and LibreOffice for code
and prose.
Checking an audiobook against ACX upload standards
Checking an audiobook against ACX
upload standards.
Radio Streamers and Python in the terminal.
Radio Streamers and Python in the
terminal. Enjoy the Neovim and fzf.

Content Creation Tools

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

Data Science

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

For web scraping, these specialized packages are installed:

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 to enhance your searches or use direct prompts.

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. Web accessible software defined radio servers are bookmarked in Firefox, 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.

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

Version 2.3.0:
Base System: Debian Linux (Sid / Unstable)
Linux Kernel 6.6.16-x64v3-xanmod1
Alacritty 0.12.2
Astropy 6.0.0
Audacity 3.4.2
BeautifulSoup4 4.12.3
Bleachbit 4.6.0
Cartopy 0.22.0
Castero 0.9.5
Chromium 121.0
Chromedriver 121.0
Dynamic Window Manager (DWM) 6.4
Firefox 122.0
Firefox Geckodriver 0.33.0
Gimp 2.99.16
Go 1.21.1
Imagemagick 6.9.12
Inkscape 1.2.2
Ipython 8.20.0
Jq 1.7.1
JupyterLab 4.0.6
LibreOffice 7.6.4
Lua 5.4
Matplotlib 3.6.3
MetPy 1.5.1
Neovim 0.10.0
Newsboat 2.32
Nltk 3.8.1
Node.js 20.11.1
OBS-Studio 30.0.2
Obsidian 1.4.13
Openjdk-17-jre 17.0.10
Pandas 2.1.4
Pandas-Datareader 0.10.0
Python 3.11.6
Requests-HTML 0.10.0
Scipy 1.10.4
Scrapy 2.11.0
Selenium 4.17.2
Shotcut 24.01.31
Smplayer 23.6.0
Sympad 1.1.6
Sympy 1.12
Textblob 0.17.1
Tgpt 1.8.0 (OpenAI GPT-3.x)
Tmux 3.3a
Vader Sentiment 3.3.2
VeraCrypt 1.25.9
W3M 0.5.3
Wezterm 20240203
Zathura 0.5.4

For older changes, visit the DOWNLOADS page.




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