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.