openSUSE 12.1 Part 2

I got the wifi + bluetooth combo card made by Intel, and it only seems to work like the AzureWave one where I only can get wifi. Except I can only get wifi in 12.1. Looks like I'm going to have to RMA this one as well... Dammit.

Well, I did find one thing out. The wireless defaulting to off problem is the same problem I experienced a couple months ago. Just had to blacklist acer-wmi and it's on upon boot.

Computer Cluster 2

So after digging a bit, I found a different HPC Linux distro that seems a little closer to what I want to use for a cluster. I was going to comment on the previous entry, but I couldn't for some reason.

Anyway, it's called KestrelHPC, and if I read it right, I only need one install of Debian/Ubuntu to run it. Which means I won't need a disk for every node, and just for the frontend node.

One of the nice things I found is that it's not a dead distro. Last update was back in October, so It's still being worked on.

Again, I still need a USB wireless stick to get anywhere with it, and I won't download /burn it until I'm ready to start experimenting with computer clusters again.

Anyway, thought I'd post the HPC distro so I don't forget about it (and don't have to make a bookmark for it).

Mei Ren 2

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but after unlocking the other cores, there was a bit of voltage leak to the CPU (I'm assuming that's what it was) which caused a digital ticking noise (which I lost a bit of sleep due to it that night). I stepped up the frequency level from -2% to 0% to see if it changed anything, but it didn't seem like it.

Anyway, I left it on last night to see if anything would happen, and I didn't hear anything at all. There's only a slight digital "screeching" noise now, but I actually have to put my ear next to the case to hear it.

Cool! Now I don't have to switch the PSU off to kill the voltage leak.

It was a bit annoying, since I had to boot into openSUSE, then reboot for it to pick up my Wifi card. Now that I don't have to switch the PSU off, I don't have to do the boot-reboot thing now.

Awesome!

Just need to test 12.1 on it somehow before making it an official install. Wish I had a... Wait... I think I can borrow an unstable SATA drive from my friend... I'll have to remember that later.

openSUSE 12.1 Part 1

Well, I checked the site about 8 minutes ago and it was there. Seems like it was officially released at 06:12 this morning (UTC-7). I'm downloading it now, and will burn it and stuff it in the laptop bag. I'll do all the testing later.

(edit 1)

Okay, I haven't really found anything different from RC2, but I did find a couple things.

To get my Bluetooth to work, the wireless has to be turned on. And I can use the function key for turning the wireless on and off to do so. And for some reason, I can't use my Bluetooth mouse on boot until sometime after wireless is turned on. For some weird reason, my trackpad got permanently disabled which didn't help the situation beforehand.

12.1 also did not ship with GRUB2 as I read somewhere in the openSUSE pages (either in the news or Wiki), but I can't find it and I don't feel like finding it. I really wonder why, since GRUB2 is so much easier to use.

I installed GRUB2 (the package in openSUSE), and then did an install of it. I guess I forgot to update-grub and when I rebooted, I was left at the CLI for GRUB2. Seeing how I'm not an expert at it, I can't get back into 12.1 to do so. My only two options are to either (1) reinstall 12.1 and re-update or (2) attempt to fix it with 12.1 live. I think the first option is the more viable one, since it doesn't really take too long.

Anyway, good thing I used a spare hard drive, since I would not have been happy to not be able to boot into anything. More to come.

(edit 2)

As I've thought about it, I don't really want to deal with the troubles of installing GRUB2 (at least for the computers that have multiple OSs on it anyway. I may just reinstall it on the testing drive for Triela, and see what happens, but I will need to test it on Mei Ren to see if I can flip the top screen upside down... Then again, I really don't want to enable wireless on every single boot, so I might just do this testing out of curiosity (and boredom).

Lie-chan is really the only viable (and "partial") install of 12.1 I could do, provided that I keep Ubuntu for GRUB2, since Lie-chan is hard-wired to the wireless bridge.

Anyway, off to finish a few things and continuing the experimentation.

(edit 3)

So I got done with all the experimentation.... Turns out I can't use update-grub (in any format) to properly populate the grub.cfg file... So definitely a no on GRUB2 in 12.1

Screen orientation still works just fine. One thing I noticed with the window previewer is that each screen has its own space, and you can move the windows between screens. Cool! I'm pretty sure it was already there, but I didn't really think much about it and didn't really test it out then.

One of the other things I noticed is that the "menu bar" only resides on one of the screens (main screen) when in a side-by-side configuration (and I'm assuming the same for the notifications bar).

Okay, here comes the weird part. When I booted into 12.1 on Mei Ren, wireless was automatically on. WTF? I'm going to safely assume that it has either has something to do with Triela or laptops in general (so either it's something with Triela+12.1 or 12.1 disables it by default for laptops).

Which means I can easily migrate to 12.1 for openSUSE only computers (Mei Ren and the jukebox). I could also migrate for Lie-chan, but I'm still very disappointed that 12.1 did not have GRUB2 as default.

I realized that I completely spaced the HDD from my friend, so I'm actually gonna have to wait longer to do the installation test for both Mei Ren and the jukebox, since I don't want to kill the existing 11.3 install if I don't have to.

I also tested 1080p on Mei Ren with 12.1 and VLC again. Nothing different in quality... Well, I did forget to turn the "GPU acceleration" on again, but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

Well, I think that's it until I get the HDD for easier testing (well... easier roll-back).

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 7

Well, I have about 16.25 hours left before the official release of 12.1.

I was hoping for midnight UTC time, but when it became that time, a new countdown graphic of "17 hours left" replaced the "1 day left". I feel like I was very, very mislead.

So I gotta wait until 10am until I can download and burn it (I'm gonna have to take a blank CD with me so I have something to burn on).

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 6

Hmm... It looks a bit funny, but it works I guess.

I think I might have tried Chrome with M3 or RC1, I can't remember, but I should test it just in case. Probably last test since there's not a whole lot I can think of that I need.

Now that I think about it, I am going to miss gkrelm (maybe two "l"s?) a bit. I might be able to install it, but I'm not sure if it's going to work. I only used it for CPU temps, though I didn't really pay too much attention to it; it's just something that's nice to know every so often. Since I don't really do a whole lot with Triela (a few old games, but that's in W7), I'm not horribly concerned.

Anyway, probably won't say if Chrome works or not... I don't think there's a real reason to, since I'm quite sure it'll work.

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 5

Nope. Still have to turn wireless on manually... It's not going to deter me from 12.1, but I'd have to see what exactly happens in a desktop environment... Which may take a bit.. I don't exactly have a desktop to install and test it on at the moment... The jukebox is probably the best candidate, but I don't really feel like messing with it.

When I get a hold of 12.1, I'll probably use it on Triela instead of 11.3...

OH! Which reminds me, I would be able to get rid of Ubuntu, since I only needed Ubuntu for GRUB2 and since 12.1 ships with GRUB2, I won't need Ubuntu. YAY!!!

So Triela will be a dual boot between W7 and 12.1 with the small test-bed space. Looks like I'll be merging the leftover space from Ubuntu into the "Storage" space since there's not a whole lot else I can do with it.

One thing I just noticed is that the cursor changes depending on something... In most cases it's white with a black outline, but in Firefox it's black with a white outline. At first I thought it maybe changed based on the background, but after opening a new tab (which is white) it didn't change to the white/black outline.

Gonna test out to see if Firefox themes work. Be right back.

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 4

Bah, can't stay away for a second. So the easier way to switch windows is the old Alt-Tab trick. I'm not quite used to using it (I prefer to click on the window/application instead), but it seems like I may have to when I'm single-screening.

Om nom nom nom! (For real this time lol)

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 3

Okay, so Network Manager actually works... Weird. My hypothesis is that it didn't load right... It could also be that it came broken and an update fixed it. Hard to say. Luckily, ifup isn't horrible to use as long as you're hard-lined to the router.

Oh, so apparently, 12.1 Goldmaster was released on the 11th... So that makes it a day after I installed and tested it... So I guess I should have waited a couple days. Oh well. I'm not going to make an effort to download and burn it at this point due to the fact that it comes out Wednesday (16th).

One of the things I didn't get to talk about with 12.1 is the battery monitor. It seems a lot more accurate than the old version. Triela's battery is only really able to stay running for about an hour (and maybe fifteen minutes), which the old version of the battery applet said 3 something hours... Right...

A bug I found is when it goes to an hour, it displays 0 minutes remaining (x%)... I'm assuming it meant 60 minutes and somehow the 6 was left off... Oops. The charge and time remaining is also shown in the power settings, so if anything I can hop over there to double check if the applet isn't being truthful.

OH! I just remembered about having to turn the wireless on after every boot. Obviously, I'm not quite sure if this still applies, but I can test it after I eat dinner.

We'll see what happens in about 45 minutes.

Om nom nom nom!

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 2

Okay, I forgot about the favourites bar. If you hold onto the icon too long, you pretty much lose the trashcan icon. So pretty much, they made it common sense. You grab the icon and immediately head toward the bottom of the favourite bar to get the trash icon to appear. No need to do the awkward curve-ball to get rid of the icon.

I haven't gotten a chance to test out network manager, but so far I haven't been able to get it to work with eth0. When I was still plugged in, I couldn't access the internet. I had to switch to ifup to get anything done. I'll try again at some point with wireless when I'm at home to see if I can't get it to work.

Oh, so the power button puts the computer to sleep. I tested it out when I partially crashed GNOME3. So now the power button does something.

Well, there's 6 days and one more pre-release (maybe) left before the full release.

Looks like I'll just stick with this until the final release date, then I'll test that one out to see if it's something I'll be "upgrading" to.

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 1

Well, downloaded it last night, installed it earlier and got everything updated. Installed VLC as well.

So a few changes. Finally can shutdown/reboot the computer without having to logout first, and VLC actually works (sadly it works better than in 11.3).

So it seems that I might move onto 12.1... as long as network manager is fixed, since it's not easy or fun to use ifup.

Haven't really seen a whole lot else changed... or at least, that's all I've noticed so far.

OS Installation Counts

I got bored and thought I'd make a short post of OS installation counts.

An installation is a current installation, not the number of times I've installed (which would just get ridiculous).

• Windows: 2 Installs (Triela and Lie-chan)
• Mac OS X: 2 Installs (Shizuma and Momiji-chan)
• Linux (any distro): 7 Installs (Triela:2, Lie-chan:2, Mei-Ren:1, Momiji-chan:1, Jukebox:1)

*Note that the testbed space on Triela does not count.

I would bring Triela and Lie-chan down to 1 install each, but the fact that openSUSE uses GRUB 1 bugs me. Everytime I do an install of openSUSE, the bootloader section always tells me that the boot partition doesn't entirely lie below the 128gb mark and the system might not boot. I don't know if this has something to do with GRUB 1, but it's sure annoying to see. That's really the only reason why I have an installation of Ubuntu. I read that openSUSE 12.1 is going to ship with GRUB 2 (finally!), but I need the VLC problem solved before I can migrate to it.

Hard Drive Price Hike 2

Well, so much for Samsung... Newegg raised the prices on those too. It makes sense though, if you understand the law of supply and demand. Looks like it's time to wait it out. (LOL)

Gentoo 11.2 Live

It keeps giving me a firmware bug when I try it on Triela... So as far as I'm concerned, it only works on Mei Ren for now.

I was able to use it a bit, but my Wifi card wasn't on and I didn't feel like doing the reboot trick to turn it on.

The settings (at least the monitor/screen one) was different than I'm used to.... Oh yeah, that's right, it was KDE and not GNOME. KDE tends to stretch the entire wallpaper across both screens (eww) while GNOME just duplicates it... The fix is pretty easy, since all it really requires is to make the wallpaper the full size and then tile the original wallpaper in them. I couldn't find a settings thing to change the wallpaper anyway... Though I did find the wallpaper folder (~/.wallpapers).

But I think my main turn off is KDE. I don't mind it, but I honestly prefer GNOME since I think it's a bit more friendly and customizable. The little desktop thingy that stays in the top right corner annoys me, even in its translucent form.

Pretty sure there's a way to install GNOME for it, but that requires me to install Gentoo... Which I don't have any hard drive space for (if only it didn't have a problem with Triela...).

Since I wasn't really connect it to the internet, I didn't really have a whole lot of motivation to test it any further. And so I wasn't really able to test out the package manager (if there is one) or anything else.

For now, I'm just gonna give my best friend the disk and let him tinker with it if he pleases... Well, he's gonna have to find that short USB A to B cord first... (LOL)

Hard Drive Price Hike 1

Yep. So the price for hard drives is going up because of the Thailand plant getting flooded.

Well, it seems that it may only affect brands that are located there, I think mainly Western Digital (maybe Seagate?). Seems like Samsung is unaffected seeing how they are Korean (what actually matters is where their plants are located, but I have no idea at the moment).

Well, I was going to get some hard drives for the jukebox... But unless I go with Samsung (which I don't mind), I'm better off waiting.

openSUSE 12.1 RC1 Part 3

Nope. The power button is completely ignored when pressed. So it seems like logging out then shutting down is the only way to do it besides attempting a "su halt" which crashed 12.1 when I tried it once.

Well, maybe they'll fix it, can't say. Off to install the Blackfox theme for Firefox on my other installations since I forgot about it and it's rather hard to find my scrollbar sometimes with the custom theme that I found and modified.

openSUSE 12.1 RC1 Part 2

Okay, so I remembered wrong. The messages on a feed are just like OS X from under the title bar.



Also it comes up as the wrong size when I add a repository with an untrusted GPG key, but it's re-sizable so the buttons are still accessible.

I also found the slightly easier way to remove the icons from the favourites bar. If you hold onto an icon long enough, the trash can appears at the bottom of the favourites bar. Unfortunately, the easiest way to do this is to drag the icon off to the right of the favourites bar (almost like you want to open it) and while still hanging onto it, it'll appear. Slightly easier than right-clicking the icon and selecting the remove from favourites on the menu.

I have yet to test the power button to shut down. Right now I'm in 12.1, so I'll have to test that out and comment again when I get into 11.3.

Oh, one of the things I didn't mention is that I have to switch on the Wifi every boot. Dunno why, but a tad annoying. I thought it was the acer-wmi problem I had before, but blacklisting it in 50-blacklist.conf didn't do anything about it.

I think it was just me doing a lot of stuff when the fan kicked on higher, seeing that it hasn't done so yet.

I found the way to kick-up the notification bar, it's the bottom right corner, but kinda pointless to do so when there aren't any notifications.

Oh, one of the nice things about the notification bar is that it has a spot for mounted volumes (I think mainly for flash drives and not internal hard drive partitions), so you can click on it to dismount volumes. Particularly useful when Nautilus is not managing the desktop.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll comment again when I test out what the power button does since I haven't seen an option anywhere for it.

openSUSE 12.1 RC1 Part 1

Well, was able to tinker with it more and it's actually a little better. I tested it out on Lie-chan and the notification bar problem back in Milestone 3 is gone. The notification bar is now forced to the bottom of the combined screen, so that makes it better.

I installed VLC and got the video driver problem described in 11.4. So I thought to try the FGLRX driver instead and that actually broke 12.1 into an almost unusable state... That is, unless I need to do some file management of course.

Basically, what happened was that GNOME 3 didn't load completely (I don't get it either) and so I wasn't really able to do a whole lot. Nautilus ran, but that doesn't help me much.

But before I broke it, GNOME 3 doesn't seem too bad honestly. It's just hard to get used to not having a panel with windows and you actually have to use the left corner to get to the other windows.

Some of the programs (like AisleRiot, don't think I spelled that right, but I'm hoping you know what program I'm talking about) don't fully load (I'm assuming something broke between it and GNOME 3), but it seems like the main programs like Firefox, YaST and such load, so the smaller programs aren't too much of a problem.

It doesn't seem like you can open gedit with "sudo" or as "su" and so you're forced to log out and log into root to do your root stuff. I didn't try nano, but I'm not very fond of nano, so I try not to use it unless I'm in runlevel 3.

Oh... So to shut down... I didn't try just pressing the power button, but I may if I reinstall 12.1 since I can't get GNOME 3 to fully load since FGLRX broke it. Anyway, to shut down, you have to log out and then from the login screen you're able to shut down. WTF?! WHY?! Well, since there's still time for improvement, they may fix that. And again, it may also be doable by just hitting the power button.

There's some interesting new things... So in the window management/application launcher area (after you click the top left thingy or hit corner with the cursor) there's quite a few ways to do the same thing (good for people that like to do things the way they think is logical).

Oh, one of the neat things that you can do with the applications list is that you can grab the empty space and use it in a "flick" motion to page up/page down. This is something I discovered accidentally, but I think it's kinda cool since it makes use of the empty space between program icons.

To add a program to the favourites bar, you can drag the icon from the applications list, or if the application is already open, you can drag the window to the favourites bar.

To open a program, you can either click the icon in the favourites bar (if it's there) or the applications list. OR you can drag the icon (either from the favourites bar or applications list) into the workspace bar. You can also open a program by dragging its icon from the favourites bar into the window preview (the blank space between the favourites bar and the workspaces bar when the applications list is not open).

Unfortunately, the only way to remove applications from the favourites bar is to right-click them and select "remove from favourites".

The window preview area shows you all the windows that are open in the selected workspace, regardless of how big the window is. It's great when you need to find a window that's hidden below another one.

You can drag windows from workspace to workspace and you can even launch programs in a different workspace by dragging the icon into the workspace you want it to open in.

As you can see in one of the images, there's no limit on workspaces... So I'm assuming it's whenever the amount is too much for your RAM/CPU to handle.... Or maybe when GNOME 3 can't handle it and crashes. I don't know, I didn't feel like trying and it would probably take a while for me especially with 8GB of RAM.

It may have just been me using it, but it seems that kernel 3.1.x (I don't remember which exact kernel it is) and/or GNOME 3 use more of my CPU/GPU since the fan for Triela kicked up higher than the usual in 11.3. Can't say it's a good thing, can't say it's a bad thing, but it's something I noticed while using it.

Since it was running the 3.1.x kernel, I wish I still had that AzureWave combo card to see if I'd be able to use the Bluetooth portion of that card, but I don't so oh well.

So my thoughts have changed since Milestone 3. I'm just hoping for an easier way to switch between windows, since it's very annoying to hit the left-corner hotspot every time.

Oh, almost forgot about the notification bar. So the bar still spans the screen width at the bottom (well the gradient part of it anyway) and the notification is in a little part of it. When you hover over the notification window, it "feeds" up and gives you the whole notification window.

Um... The messages that are application specific, like when Install/Remove Software reviews the changes with you and asks you to apply/cancel is fed from the top of the window (kinda like some cases in Mac OS X, but from on top of the title bar instead of below it). Unfortunately, I didn't get a screen shot of that. sorry.

Oh, you can turn the notification messages off as well, after hitting your user in the top right corner, there's a switch for notifications, which will turn off all notifications, so the notification bar won't appear and you won't see any of the notifications that appear.

Well, I think that's enough for now. I may download and try RC2 when it comes out.... We'll see what happens.

People like this...

Click the picture to enlarge.

Also, I know this is a bit dated, but when I was looking for a solution, I read this and was very infuriated.

I have no response to the first line, since I've never experienced it myself; my only hypothesis is something else broke, since changing from ifup to network manager shouldn't break it so badly that it can't start x.

Second line: "I can't change the panel color" I'm assuming the color of the panel... which is quite easy, right click on the panel, click properties, click the background tab, select solid color, click the color button, select desired color, press okay, select desired transparency, click close, and done. If it doesn't update, then try logging out and back in. Otherwise, there's not enough info to know exactly what the problem is.

Third line: Enable (not enalble) desktop effects was probably refused because of the graphics driver/graphics chip combination used. I've had this happen once minus the message.

Fourth line: Explain how what happens? The panel color? The desktop effects refusal? Why did they even bother installing 11.3 if 11.2 worked just fine? That's why I leave a test space partition to test out a distribution before I destroy something that works just fine or use a live version.

Fifth line: I've never experienced the problem with the SSID ending in a number and not being able to connect to it or whatever. Business? What "business" is openSUSE in? More or less, these are all volunteers that pour their own time and effort into something they aren't even getting paid for. As far as I know, openSUSE is free, and SUSE is not.

Sixth line: Um, yes the developers actually do know that people want a system that "always" works. And are they trying to say that Windows ALWAYS works? From my experience I beg to differ.

Seventh line: "Windows connects to wireless connections in a user friendly way." Okay, I do agree with that to a point. But explain why to me that every time I connect to my phone's wifi hotspot that Windows asks what type of network it is even though I've told it time and time again? It also keeps duplicating as "Yellowboze_Racaseal 2", "Yellowboze_Racaseal 3", "Yellowboze_Racaseal 5", so on and so forth. When I tell network manager to connect to it, it connects, no repetitive questions, no silly duplicate entries, quick and f*ing simple. And again, how are the developers horsing around? I've yet to see this. Also, I don't think this person understands that network manager is not developed by openSUSE developers directly, it's developed by the network manager team. Big f*ing difference.

Eighth line: WTF is this guy even talking about? I select the network, a window pops up asking the key and the type of key, I enter the info and I'm connected (there's also the keyring window that pops up, but I close that). For my convenience, I cancel the keyring, edit the network manager wireless connection, type the password again if needed, select the apply to all users box, hit apply, type my root password, and now I don't have to ever enter the Wifi key again.

Ninth line: Apparently this person doesn't understand that you use the "Install/Remove Software" program to install/uninstall things programs that is not needed. But in most cases, these programs don't take a whole lot of space anyway, unless this is a tiny partition they installed 11.3 on.

Tenth line: Things change because it can be improved. I've never used 11.2, but I kind of understand the woes that things can get really broken from one version to another. Sure I had a problem in 11.4 with VLC crashing, but that doesn't mean that I should bash openSUSE or VLC for changing something. "without bothering to test it properly?" WOW... What a f*ing idiot. This person clearly doesn't understand that openSUSE goes through several development stages before it's final release. But it is, in fact, tested properly. The developers have a limited number of setups that they can test on, so it's not 100% perfect (hell, look at Windows for f*k sake); therefore, not every single computer is going to be covered. Maybe none of the developers/volunteer testers have the specific Sony laptop that this person has, so it's part of the gray area that is never officially tested.

Also, keep in mind there's a few grammatical mistakes in their post. This person is so "angry" that they couldn't even take some time to proofread before posting. The question I really would like to ask them is why they even bothered with openSUSE if they don't understand what it is and what it's not. As you may know (or might have guessed), I have more peeves with using Windows than I do Linux. And also, why couldn't this person use the internet to try to fix their problems? I fixed almost all of my problems just by searching, and when I couldn't find the right answer, I asked. Really. It wasn't that hard, but this person just couldn't do it. What? Was that laptop the ONLY computer they had? Why not search in Windows (since it worked for them), search for a viable answer, print it, reboot and try it?

It's people like this that perplex and aggravate me. If you can't take the time to learn or tinker around with a new OS, then don't bother with it. Simple as that. I tried 11.4, tinkered with it, found that I can't use it like 11.3, put it to the side, and moved on. No hard feelings, no aggravation, no need to flame openSUSE for no reason.

Not to mention, when the KMS issue was permanent in LMDE with Ziggy, I looked for a solution instead of spending my time flaming the LMDE developers that their s*t is broken.

This person needs to "sudo zypper rm brain" on himself. (LOL) This also seems like the type of person that probably has hundreds of toolbars in Internet Explorer just because he keeps clicking on everything and wonders why Windows is so slow.

Oh by the way, the post itself was ignored by the other users of that forum since no one wanted to bother with someone who can't ask for help correctly.

2014 update: I don't rant very often, but when I do, it's until I run out of rant fuel. (XP)

openSUSE 11.4 Part 4

Well, I got it all updated and got VLC installed and it started to do the weird crash thing it did a long while ago on Ziggy. Basically it crashes because it can't get the video driver? I dunno. I think it's fixable by doing a fresh install of 11.4, but I'm not gonna go through the trouble with that.

Yep. 11.3 it is then. I was gonna test something else in that test-bed space next, but I can't remember what it is at the moment.

Ridiculous computer build

I got bored and decided to make something with the ASUS MARS II in SLI (which is way overkill) and because of the price, I also decided to max it out and make it as expensive as possible. I stuck with air cooling due to the fact I didn't feel like attempting to build a water cooling setup.

Normally I don't do Intel builds (read the Bias post if you don't know what I'm talking about), but remember I did what I could to make it expensive.

Well, I think enough is said, take a look for yourself. (2014 update: I turned the PDF into images and edited out the unnecessary space)

Click the picture to view to enlarge.

openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 3 and 5

Well, it's a bit late for this considering the first beta (?) is out. Anyway, just remembered about them.

12.1 ships with kernel 3 and GNOME 3.

I downloaded the live GNOME disks since I really didn't want to sit around for the install DVDs.

Well, I didn't really like GNOME 3 since I tried it on Lie-chan. All of my dual screens are digitally configured like this, regardless of the physical monitor location:

Monitor 1
Monitor 2

GNOME 3 focuses on minimal distractions which is fine with me, but a couple things irked me away (one more than the other).

There is a static bar at the top of the screen which gives it a very similar feel to the whole Mac OS line, with a few changes. The left side of this static "menu" is where you go to access programs (whether running or not running), next to that is what program you have focus on. In the centre is the time (clicking on it gives you the calendar and any appointments you've set up in whatever the program's called), and the right side is the network/Bluetooth/user/logout stuff.

Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much, but...

At the bottom of the main screen is the notification bar. Yep a whole f*ing bar for notifications. It auto-hides itself which is kind of nice, but remember how my monitors are set up. Since the bottom of screen 1 is the top of screen 2, the notification bar blocks the top of screen 2. Note: the notification bar is not movable! I can't maximize anything on screen 2 without having to play a speed game with the notification bar to access the window title bar.

That's where GNOME 3 fails me. I refuseto deal with the crap notification bar location. But I wouldn't really mind it for a single-screen instance like with Triela.

Milestone 5 wouldn't automatically start X on Triela (I didn't bother testing it on Lie-chan due to the notification bar problem) since the stock driver doesn't like the AMD Radeon HD 6450M that Triela has. Oh well.

I may test the beta if I get bored enough. Not quite sure. Still need to work on 11.4 first...

openSUSE 11.4 Part 3

Oh. I did forget to mention the 1GB update would be a pain in the friggin' arse to do for the three installations... Make that four... I vaguely remember a way to create a "service pack" disk to avoid having to download the same updates multiple times... But I'd still have to zypper FGLRX, Xorg, and the kernel update by CLI manually since... maybe I'd be able to install the "service pack" by CLI...

I'll have to find that service pack thingy again and read about it.

openSUSE 11.4 Part 2

Well, was going to upgrade all the packages for 11.4 at my best friend's house... Yeah.. Booted into it and, bam, the good old Xorg permission problem showed up. So I attempted to use zypper to update but I wasn't automatically connected to eth0... So I gave up and just logged into root and used startx and was gonna update that way. Nope... My network manager applet was missing so I still couldn't connect. I went the way to connect through ifup and it worked minus the fact that a package needed to be installed and the package manager was already running. I said screw it since it worked well enough.

About 10 or so minutes in I got bored since there was a little over a gigabyte of updates so I aborted and restarted the package manager. I looked at the list of updates and only updated the Xorg packages. Took a few seconds and I rebooted.

Success! I was able to get into GNOME without any problem. So now I just have to remember on a fresh install of 11.4 to zypper FGLRX and Xorg (maybe along with the kernel)....

Hmm... At this point, it seems like it may just be a better idea (ideer) to just stick with 11.3 since it's starting to seem like a pain for all this. BUT! I now do know what I need to do to get it working decently... I'm in a mixed basket right now about it.

Parted Magic/Short Rant

Awesome distribution! Minus the fact that every time I boot into it, it gives me a French keyboard layout... I think it may be because I used MultiSystem to stuff the ISO onto my USB Linux stick of doom (16GB flash drive with nothing but Linux distributions, 32 and 64 bit versions). So if I have to label a partition in GParted within Parted Magic, I have to change the keyboard layout before doing so.

Anyway, the two things I use Parted Magic for is partitioning a hard drive (or the flushing the partition map) or looking at the SMART results from the hard drive.

The program for the SMART status is called GSmartControl. I believe it was originally meant for Debian, but I found it in the openSUSE repository for use with openSUSE.

I've been able to install GParted on openSUSE before, but I think that was the 32 bit version of openSUSE. I might have done it once with 64 bit, but I don't remember clearly. I'd like to though, since the parted tool in YaST doesn't allow me to label a partition (unless I am totally missing something).

Now that I'm moving further away from the original topic...

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I remembered reading someone complaining that openSUSE has "two" control panels... The standard one and YaST. What they don't understand is that the standard control panel is for the user (and doesn't require a password) and that YaST is root level controls (you have to type in the root password to get into YaST. They either need to suck it up or find another distribution - stop complaining because you don't understand the reasoning behind it.

Sabayon 6

So a couple weeks ago I gave Sabayon 6 a "try" and I kinda lost motivation in it.

I installed it to my test-bed partition on Triela and sudo update-grub in Ubuntu and went to try to boot into Sabayon... "Could not find /dev/disk/md0" Yeah... Wasted some of my time as I tried it twice...

I cleaned out the stock HD from Shizuma (it was replaced with a larger one a long while ago) and proceeded to install Sabayon 6 all by itself on it's own drive since I'd be able to let it install the bootloader.

I was actually able to boot in, but I didn't poke around in it much before I gave up on it again. I gave my friend the install disk since he wanted Gentoo (Gentoo-based good enough for you?).

Yeah... Still sticking with what works for me.

(Self) Bias (Resistor)

Yes, the title is in reference to the Fear Factory song, but has no connection to the rest of the blog. Just felt like adding something else to the title besides the obvious.

So as I've may have said elsewhere, I'm a bit biased with computer parts... After building Ziggy and finding that Ziggy ran at 46C (115F) idle (IDLE for f*k sake!), I decided to never buy Intel again. Okay, the Prescott core P4's had a bad thermal sensor or incorrectly placed or something like that, but I think it just had a bad thermal design seeing that it honestly should have lasted a bit longer. Bah, whatever. The netbook had an Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics. That thing was okay, but it was annoying to use.

If I get a free Intel-based computer, I'm not gonna complain, free is free after all. But I will never build another Intel system.

Sure Intel makes powerful CPU's but I have no use for it's ridiculous power. I do a bit of photo editing from time to time, watch videos, listen to music, and surf the net. I hardly play PC games, so why build something overpowered if I'm hardly going to even use more than 25% (if even that) of the computer's ability?

Not to mention AMD spends less money making CPU dies for each type of processor. As you may know (if you've at least read my post on Mei Ren) AMD stamped out a Phenom II x4 and locked two of it's cores to make it a dual core instead of making a whole new die for it. Why? because it's much cheaper to lock two cores than to make a set of dual-core dies.

AMD is cheaper than Intel anyway, which is good when you are trying to build a good rig for cheap. And for all the Intel vs. AMD crap out there... For f*k sake people shut your hole and stop bickering! A proc's a proc and just stick with what you like best. Bash the other company all you want, but what good is it going to do to flame each other? I post my opinion and experience of why I like AMD and don't really like Intel, but I'm not going to force you to go AMD. Your opinion is yours and yours alone.

Anyway... I do like AMD's Fusion line of CPUs APUs from what I've read, they really blow the Intel Atom line out of the water. Sure Intel may have the cutting edge stuff, but AMD usually has the more refined stuff it seems. Even look at the Bulldozer FX chips that were just released - under liquid helium cooling, the FX proc was able to be OCd to 8.429 GHz (which was done by AMD and a team of expert overclockers). Sure a liquid nitrogen cooled i7 may do 6.x GHz, but is it able to be OCd past that under liquid helium? I sure as heck don't know, and someone's gotta spend that money to find out.

Well, the other reason I don't really like Intel is that I continually see it when I read MaxPC. I do understand why, but I see more Intel mobos than AMD mobos get reviewed, and that's a bit annoying.

Anyway, I think I'm done for this rant. As a last word, if you don't like what someone else says, don't flame them, just stop reading/listening and go your own way.

(2014 update: Ziggy's CPU is not dead, I will never build another Intel system for myself, I also occasionally do CPU-intensive tasks from time to time, and AMD locks unstable/dead cores then sells them accordingly.)

Triela 1

I bought a Habey Wifi+Bluetooth combo card (along with the RAM upgrade) from Newegg and tried it out to see if I was able to get Bluetooth. I couldn't get the Bluetooth to work no matter what I tried. After searching around, I read that the firmware (for the Bluetooth side of the card) is written to announce itself as a USB even though it's a Mini-PCIe, and there wasn't really any way to fix it. It only appears in the hardware list only for Linux kernel 3.0+ and I think someone was able to get it to work (in spite of the firmware) with 3.1.x. I decided then to keep it and wait for something maybe, but I RMA'd it since I found something else. Oh, the card was actually made by AzureWave, and Habey just re-sells it or something like that...

The one I found is an Intel brand. Now there's only two problems I may have with it. I've read that it may not compatible with AMD processors, but I don't think that will really happen anyway (not to mention the on-board audio is listed as an Intel when I'm watching the messages as I'm booting into openSUSE). The other problem I may have is that the Wifi may not work, the only reason I'm partially sceptical of this is because I only found one instance of it in Ubuntu and didn't find any other instances of it (in either Ubuntu or openSUSE).

Of course the only problem is that I had to spend a bit over $9 to RMA the card, and with the refund from it I needed to get the HD 6770 for Mei Ren (I actually lost a few dollars in total, but oh well). So I haven't been able to buy Intel combo card yet. I'm honestly hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

Sim Cards / Google Voice

Oh what a joyous day it has been. At some point when I was working on this blog, my service for my cell phone went out. I rebooted the phone which didn't do anything, then tried it in my old phone, nothing still. So I decided to wait and see what would happen at work (maybe the cell tower is down?).

At work, absolutely nothing changed. So after a kind of long shift, I get home, eat and called up T-Mobile. After getting to technical support from customer support, the guy said that it the SIM card I was using was a legacy card that has a limit on how many times it can register (to a cell tower) and that I would need to stop by a T-Mobile store to get a new one.

So after heading over there (and waiting about 20 minutes), the guy set up the new SIM card and gave it to me. I stuck it in and booted up the phone, and I instantly got service (the tech guy said it would take two hours or I just heard him wrong and he could have said that it could take up to two hours) double checked the connection and everything and went on my merry way home.

So there's got to be some kind of catch right? Yep. Supposedly I have a new voice mail, but I don't have one in my T-Mobile voicemail box, and the one in my Google Voice is an old one (I actually don't use my T-Mobile one since I can't get service in my friend's basement).

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Well, since I'm on the issue. Google Voice is two (maybe actually three) things essentially, which is a "phone" provider and voicemail provider (with the latter being free); I obviously use the voicemail feature.

It has a similar style to Gmail, and it has it's own listing for each voicemail that you get. It also (attempts to) transcribe each voicemail, so you actually don't have to listen to it. But this is based on how clearly the person speaks, and I'm also assuming it can't transcribe non-English languages at the moment.

So why am I using this over my provider's? Because of my service as I previously mentioned. Since I don't get service in his basement, I can't get voicemails or calls. This is where Google voice shines. Since my friend has internet, I can keep a tab open for Google Voice and check it every so often to make sure I don't have a voice mail.

Another great feature I use is that you can have different greetings for each group. So for your work group, you can have an ultra-professional greeting; for family, you can have something something relaxed; for friends, something upbeat; and for anyone not in a group (say unknown numbers), you can have a greeting that in incomprehensible. Of course the catch is that you need to make sure you add new contacts into the corresponding group or they might hear that incomprehensible greeting.

Linux/Unix Distributions

Well, as the "experienced" Linux user knows, most distros have an original base to it. Linux Mint (normal version) is based off of Ubuntu which is based off of Debian (LMDE is also directly based off of Debian).

Anyway we have are major bases: Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat.

Why wasn't SUSE in the list of bases? because as you can see in this graphic, SUSE (and openSUSE) is actually based off Slackware (interesting huh?).

Now according to that graphic, there's plenty of original bases, but besides the three I mentioned above, none of them has as large number of branches. The only one that has the most of the smaller bases is the Enoch base which essentially could be called the Gentoo base.

Anyway, time to get to my point of all this. I've tried at least one or more distributions from these 3 major bases plus the Gentoo base. Oh yeah, there's the Arch Linux base that probably follows after Gentoo... (sorry for my stream of consciousness type of writing).

I could list all the distributions I've tried, but that would take a while and I'd have to fish my spindle of distributionss out, which I really don't want to do. Anyway, onward!

Originally when I was curious about Linux, a friend of mine stared me with Knoppix 4.x (can't remember which version of 4 it was). And it was okay, I got it to run on the Half-top which was a laptop that was missing the main screen (it had a VGA port, so I just hooked it up to the kinda crappy LCD TV I had. It was okay, and I kinda used it to watch some videos on it, but it just didn't fit my bill quite right (after all, Knoppix is live).

I dropped it for a while and then eventually looked for a out-of-the-box distribution, since all my parents had was dial-up and that doesn't go too well with Linux. I found Sabayon 4.x and downloaded it bit by bit from the local library's free internet. At the time I had Lie-chan and Ziggy, and Ziggy was where Linux was going (Lie-chan had XP installed at that time). Sabayon was okay.... Until I couldn't access my DVD drive to watch something. I wasn't happy about that and started looking again (at the library of course). I found Linux Mint 8 and it worked great. I even upgraded to LM9 and then to LMDE. Sometime between Sabayon and LM8 my parents finally got real internet, so I was able to download LM8 at home instead of awkwardly trying to do it at the library....

I forgot to mention that between Knoppix and Sabayon, I borrowed Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 (the big books with the "free" disk) from the library and made a copy of the live CDs and the DL-DVDs. I tried the live CD's on Lie-chan, and installed Fedora 9 on her, but it didn't give me the "out of the box" experience I was looking for, so I set it aside.

LMDE is when I stared to have the Kernel Mode Set problem... Well, sometime during my usage of it, since I was upgrading when I was supposed to... But it was getting very tough to getting it to boot even with the nomodeset option at boot. I'd have to hold the power switch in to shut it off, boot it back up and hope it didn't KMS again (I turned it into a verb back then lol). Oh, Ziggy did have a reset button, but it was such a sliver of a button that it was pretty much worthless to try to use - a paperclip or a fingernail (assuming your fingernail was long enough) would suffice to hit the reset switch - so I decided to remove it instead.

One day, the KMS problem was so bad that I couldn't even boot into LMDE. So I had to find something else that was not of a Debian base, since that's what I assumed was causing the issue. After a tad bit of research, I learned that Fedora was just as bad with the KMS and decided to skip that. That's when I "learned" about openSUSE. Since it was not based off of Debian or Red Hat, it shouldn't give me the KMS problem right?

After installing it, the monitors were in mirrored mode and I couldn't "extend" my desktop like I wanted. After a bit more research, I learned that Xorg's radeon hd driver package were crap and that the radeon driver that was more up to date was in the "bundled" drivers package. I couldn't find exactly how I was supposed to switch to it, so I opened up the package manager and removed the radeon hd driver, rebooted, and held my breath. Hey it worked! I was happy. And with the lizard I stayed for a long, long while.

Okay, so I said I tried a lot of distributions right? And now you're wondering where the rest of them play out.

So when I got the netbook (which I dubbed Triela because I couldn't really think of anything), that's when I really tested the heck out of a lot of these Linux distributions.

Attempting Debian on it left me with no X at all... just a freaking command line...

Vine Linux (can't remember the base, but was from Japan) worked for a bit.... and then for some reason, it broke itself... Yep. Stayed away from that one after that...

Oh, by the way, these are in order of when I remember them.

Momonga was very slow to load initrd, I gave up the three times trying to wait for it... (this was the 32-bit version) I tried it on Lie-chan and got to the installer and quit since I didn't want to install it. Weird... Momonga is based off of Fedora by the way.

Chakra (Arch base?) was still in alpha so there was very little to it.

Salix (I don't remember what base) was okay I think... but I think it also automatically broke itself like Vine.

Swift Linux (based off of Puppy I believe) wasn't all that great.

WattOS didn't play nice (I think I didn't get an X session)

FreeBSD (Unix) had some sort of weird install, so I quit before anything was written... I think I tried it twice...

Blah, I can't really remember right now... My phone can't pick up a signal for some reason... Either I have to do a factory data reset or the cell tower needs to be reset... I don't want to factory data reset my phone... at least not right now when I'm relatively tired.

I also tried some other small distributions on the Half-top: Puppy Linux. CentOS and a few others, but they were pretty much nothing I liked or didn't work or whatever...


So basically what it came down to for my use was:

• openSUSE for standard usage
• Ubuntu for GRUB-2 and testing

It seems it's just easiest to stick with the large distributions just because of the larger support "ring". I tend to easily find the answers I'm looking for for either openSUSE or Ubuntu, and in most cases, I can translate an Ubuntu answer to a openSUSE answer with some fiddling around.

Yep. Blah time. I think I'm done for the night.

Ubuntu 11.04

Okay, so I have 2 instances of 11.04. One of them is on Momiji and I don't have much of a problem with it beside that one of the kernel upgrades actually used more of the processor than the kernel before it so downgrading wasn't really fun because of the weird yaboot boot loader configuration stuff (I'm used to GRUB).

Anyway, to the meat of the matter. The other installation is on Lie-chan. And while it works decently enough, I only installed it for GRUB2 since openSUSE 11.3 (and I think 11.4 as well) only offer GRUB1 as the "stable" version (and I don't want to even attempt LILO). Blah, anyway...

Apparently, the ATI Radeon X1650 Pro is not compatible with the default Unity desktop that 11.04 ships with, so it forces classic instead. While it does work, I've had the panel applets' configuration files "corrupt" and GNOME asking if I want to keep the applet in the panel or delete it. Never had anything like it happen with any other installations anywhere else... At first I kept it, but then it would duplicate my applets upon next boot. After that, I just deleted it and it stays permanently gone. Whatever.

Beside that, it seems for some reason Nautilus (in 11.04 and 10.10) doesn't like FTPs and has a very hard time downloading/staying connected to the FTP (the FTP by the way is Shizuma).

Tthe PPA Launchpad "repository" thing is a little awkward seeing how I'm used to the YaST package/repository manager and zypper now that I know how to use zypper well. It's just weird that the PPA thing is a separate command from the apt-get... With zypper I can easily add a new repository and install programs with one command, but PPA is essentially quicker since there's less to type, but it gets a bit confusing what exactly I need to type for it...

 Don't get me wrong though. I think Ubuntu is a great distribution, but for how I use it, it's a bit too broken for me.

Otherwise, I really don't use Ubuntu much, seeing how I can do everything I want to do in openSUSE 11.3 and some of the tricks I learn with Ubuntu I can apply to openSUSE (with a bit of tweaking).

Mei Ren 1

Oh god... I usually enjoy building computers, but the case just took away so much of my enjoyment to make it feel a little more menial than anything.

The case is a Raidmax Thunder case, which seemed decent on Newegg for $25, but totally was way cheaper than that. Honestly, I think the case is worth $10-15 max. Three fans are included, and that's probably why it's $25.

The metal used is some really crappy sheet metal and it's quite sad when the plastic parts of the case is much sturdier than the metal.

The side panel window is not clear plastic, but a transparent cyan which is pretty WTF worthy.

The whole back panel is misaligned so the PSU doesn't sit flush against the metal like it should and my PCIe Wifi card sits a smidge crooked in the port (luckily it doesn't affect it too much, just sometimes isn't detected, but easily fixed by a simple reboot).

The front panel is held in by six screws. That's right! Six f*ing screws! Most companies just use clips which work quite well and makes it easy to take off. Not this case. I had to remove the front panel twice, once to get the card reader into the 3.5" bay and the second to reorient the front fan (I think I still need to point that fan to blow in, but I REALLY don't feel like doing it because of how annoying it is).

The tool-less holding things for the hard drives and such weren't really satisfactory. It held my card reader just fine (I still replaced it with screws), but it didn't hold the hard drives securely enough. It did keep them from leaving the hard drive bay, but there was plenty of wiggle room, which doesn't matter when the computer is stationary, but I had to build the computer in a different room, and I don't like my hard drives having a slight wiggle, especially when being transported.

Okay, so in all this negativity, there's got to be something positive right? Well, I suppose so. It DOES hold everything decently enough, so I can't really complain there.

Ok, I think that's enough about the case, I'm sick of talking about it. Well, this upcoming tax season or earlier, I'm gonna get a $50 Cooler Master (or Antec, I can't remember) case that is a lot sturdier from other Newegg reviewers.

Anyway, moving on.

I found that the RAM still crashes openSUSE randomly at full DDR2 800 speeds. Luckily these crashes aren't too bad, one time it force closed Firefox, and not too long after that it crashed Xorg (forced a log-out), and the other couple times after that it caused the package manager within openSUSE to hang... I could've sworn there's a time or two where I had to reboot... Bah, whatever.

Luckily, there's a option in my BIOS to force RAM "compatibility". I don't exactly understand how it works, but I know for one thing is that it halves my ram speed (it brings it to DDR2 400 speeds), and I have no issues with the RAM afterwards.

I've ran Memtest86 4.1 a few times (both with the option on and off), but I can't get a solid answer from it. One of the times when the option was off, and I let it run from test 0 to 7, I got a whole lot of errors within 3 of the modules. Turned the option on, and had no problems in test 7. Turned it off, and got no errors in the first pass of 7 and then got one error in the second pass of 7. WTF?

So I'm torn between emailing Corsair and getting new modules or just running it at half speed since it seems to work just as fine. Not to mention the downtime I'll have, which is not really important. But it's a tough decision, especially when I can't pinpoint the module(s) that are unstable.

Moving on...

So the Phenom II x2 555 BE that's in there.... Yeah... Forgot that AMD stamps out quad-cores and locks two of them and brands them as x2. Actually, when I first read about it, it was before the Phenoms, and was the Athlons. I kinda disregarded it a bit after reading it, since I didn't really care too much about it. But when I was reading a review for an XCLIO case, one of the reviewers posted their specs as an unlocked x2 555 BE, and I stopped and re-read that line again. "Unlocked x2 555 BE? WTF?" Searched it up, and there was the answers. Decided to give it a try since the worst thing that could happen is nothing.

Played with the ACC (Active Core Control, if I remember correctly) setting and in seconds, the core % settings for all 4 cores showed up. It was so quick that I was in disbelief and decided to keep moving by saving and rebooting. Got into openSUSE and verified all four cores. Opened up the system monitor and watched the cores while I was doing my thing (whatever I was doing). Core 4 stayed at 0.0% use and I was concerned, but after watching it a little longer, I saw it jump up to 3% and back down to 0. Luckily, core 4 is being a team member now.

The Zalman 9700 I put on top of it works pretty well, I actually haven't ran the processor any higher than 38C yet. It stays a cozy 34 if I keep the 5.25" bay cover off to allow better airflow into the case. These are all idle temps I'm talking about here. Even after playing 1080p video for 20 minutes, it was still around 34-35, and I'm pretty sure I had the cover off as well. The fan for it stays around 2900-3000 RPM (usually around 2960), and it's audible, but not annoying (like the Vantec Tornado series...) enough to use a fan controller to scale it down.

I originally had a EVGA GTS 450, but I couldn't figure out how to get the second monitor to turn on or enabled or whatever, so I RMA'd it for a Radeon HD 6770. I had thought that nVidia GPUs were a little more Linux friendly, but I suppose I was wrong. I wouldn't mind on a single screen setup, but I need the second monitor. The bottom screen I use for the main video, and the top screen for the controller (VLC with the video split from the main window) to quickly control the video without bringing it out of full screen or using the partially obtrusive full screen controls (also which the seek bar is a bit small for my tastes). I wish I didn't make the mistake of trying something new when I should have stayed with the tried and true method. Oh well, I lost about $10 for the RMA.

Well, I think I feel that this is pretty complete... I really can't think of anything else to say... Oh! The reason whey I named her Mei Ren is because of the crap I went through. Her character in Dance in the Vampire Bund (anime) is kind of sad. She's used as an assassin to (try to) kill the main character (later in the series), but she is unloved/unwanted from what it seemed like. That's kinda how I felt with this build. I want to love what I put into it, but it was hard to with what I had to go through with the case.

openSUSE 11.4 Part 1

Well, I originally installed it back in March and had some Xorg permission problems on my AMD Athlon 64 x2 (which has a ATI Radeon X1650 Pro), but I got it to work enough, but decided to not stick with it since I had to login via command line and then startx every time.

Well, after learning a lot more, I reinstalled it on my laptop in the 25GB partition on my hard drive (test-bed space) and proceeded to zypper the FGLRX driver via command line. After several hours later (because of an unreliable internet connection) I finally was successful and got into GNOME without having to do anything special (minus using zypper to install FGLRX, which is pretty minor).

The only problem is that Xorg lagged considerably, but after updating the kernel, it went away by itself.

I still need to update and install everything that I have installed in 11.3 to do some further testing to see if it really is any different and if it's worth upgrading/fresh installing.