19 October 2011

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)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGRkiiwLkeNgtOKtZjkdzNgZPlnEXhy_472q00_fbuHhncIacfmr7AvgM_lj3XT3E9R102QxnjyXCsdszNJJPZlF3HOCgzbGH5tBf0AFFqWUiSl7qV5_Hk28UPj2fxRbLN6rOs9uXA9MA/w807-h487-no/ https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXOnmRCCSzkMUOQThDL_ljnIq22EcZ8F8YV26PeMgR4L9wKYy6qgUtx9jLLGXz_UFDfA_B8tgv_dbKGA9GDCiFR5q31jurIQ1G4zxhISv3XAElDwhejZvPO1xpUEJkXXkEpPnSGYudx-4/w807-h447-no/ https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbtRqx_a_u4Rt8nChSf3n5RpMtgUpEy4E5Rftm3tSvnJluKCivfXuhNaVMZbKi3Wz37atvLNrb1_m4i7oO-gLdyPgvRjFSLNmRMv6Lp8lCCVlBm07iTimYLZv4RLBaTHbJ36Lx4NM-ThM/w807-h469-no/
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.