Skype Translations

The article I read is: Skype Can Now Do Spanish/English Translation in (Almost) Real Time.

Well, this isn't anything new to me, as I've read about the "alpha" testing earlier this year. Some other articles compares it with universal translator in the Star Trek series, and while it kind of is, at the same time, the universal translator is just a fictional device - which is what I actually wanted to talk about. I apologise ahead of time of ripping apart a device in the Star Trek universe, but it's the one that's not very logical to me, though I'm a "trekkie".

The universal translator supposedly works in real-time, in other words: as the other person speaks, the translator translates exactly what they're saying. The problem with this is that languages are not structured the same way, so for something to translate in real-time is impossible unless the two languages have the same structure. The only way real-time translation would be possible, is that something knows exactly what you're saying before you even finish saying it. Otherwise, there's going to be a delay between when the person speaks and when the translator starts translating.

If you "study" languages (not necessarily learning them), it eventually becomes obvious that the structures are much different and doesn't (usually) carry over to a different language. For this example, I will use Japanese and English.

私はご飯をたべています。 translates to "I am eating rice."
私 is "I", は tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is the main subject, ご飯 is "rice", を tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is related to the verb following it, 食べています is "eating" (simply put). The "am" in the English translation is inferred (though います can be considered the actual source of "am" and "ing"). So if we directly translate this without changing the language structure, it would become "I rice eating." which doesn't make much sense.

Some languages might have the same structure - while I'm not entirely sure about Korean compared with Japanese, I do know at least that Korean follows the same "noun-verb" structure.

 Though a real-time translation is impossible, what we have now is definitely is a step toward breaking the language barriers.

Samsung SSDs

The article I read is: Samsung Brings 3D NAND to Mainstream with 850 Evo SSD Line.

This is something that's pretty exciting for computer and/or storage enthusiasts, as solid-state drives have been sort of a mixed bag for a number of years, at least from my point of view. From what I remember seeing, SSDs with higher reliability or storage space has always been quite pricey, the cheaper ones are usually pretty decent in terms of reliability but not with space, and the cheapest ones are the ones that you would feel uneasy about buying.

I only own a couple of SSDs, and have only been using them to store video files; I've never really had the want or need to use SSDs in place of traditional HDDs mainly because of the price. Back then, I didn't really quite understand the reliability of SSDs, so I wanted to use them in such a way to keep the writes as low as possible, which is storage. However, things are different now that this article breaks down the reliability into something a lot easier to understand than "1,000,000 hours" for the mean time between failures.

The price points of the 850 Evo line seem about the same as other SSDs of the same capacity in terms of retail price, which will let the SSD line have a nice start once released.

I will still be doing what I have been doing with SSDs until the prices are low enough to where I can viably switch to SSD without being gouged in the wallet.

Tablets

The article I read is: Tablets Are Broken. Here's How to Fix Them.

While I've wanted a tablet for a while, the main thing that kept me away was my lack of money, but I suppose the other thing that kept me away was the interface itself (I didn't really realize it until I read the article).

The article makes very valid points about everything that is wrong with the interface with tablets, which I agree with - tablets are supposed to be the in-between device when we want something larger than our phones but handier than our laptops. And as the article said, the problem is that Android and iOS were designed for phones more than tablets, along with that tablets are mostly going to be used in a landscape orientation rather than portrait.

While a proper rendition of Android and iOS (and their applications) would improve the usage of tablets, there is another solution that the author is probably unaware of that would be the "quick fix": Linux. Both GNOME 3 and Unity were meant to support touchscreens, and would work well on a tablet, but there's a couple problems: it's not easy to install Linux on a tablet (I'm not entirely sure of this, as I've never looked, but I can't exactly figure out how it'd be done with the knowledge I have), and that ARM support really is iffy depending on the distribution. Some tablets use x86 or x86_64 architecture processors, which would have a higher compatibility with Linux distributions than ARM, and will be what I'm referencing to from now on.

Unity is really more geared toward touchscreen use, though it's easily used for a normal desktop environment (mouse and keyboard). One of the things I don't like about Unity is that it forces you to type the application you want to launch - it's faster in most cases, but there are some (like me) who would rather not have to.

GNOME 3 is geared a bit more towards touchscreens, but is a lot closer to the neutral point than Unity is. The applications are listed in a flow, which allows the user to scroll through it all to look for what they're looking for (assuming it's not in the recent applications list), and they're also able to click on the search box and type the application name if they wish to do so. What I'm not sure about is how the notification bar would work, as it was something I didn't test, but I'm assuming long-pressing the bottom of the screen would bring it up

While I haven't tried the other desktop interfaces with a touchscreen, the interfaces aren't much different than Windows, so it's usable, but probably awkward at times.

Assuming there's a way to install Linux onto a tablet, it'd still be pretty awkward because of the lack of keyboard - how would one type anything in during installation? Maybe it would detect the touchscreen and enable the on-screen keyboard?

While Linux is a viable alternative for tablets, it voids the warranty of a new device (or one within warranty), requiring you to restore the factory image onto the device before sending it in for repair. Once I get a hold of a tablet, I'll eventually tinker with installing openSUSE onto it (I may also try Ubuntu as well), but for now I can only really speculate on how well Linux is on a tablet as an alternative to Android and iOS.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 6

A few days ago, I initiated an install for h264enc on Triela to see if the dependency problem still existed, and I was surprised to see that it didn't, so I then canceled the install and went ahead with following caf4926's guide (of which they modified the 13.1 guide by changing "13.1" to "13.2") to completely install the multimedia and restricted formats packages. After installation, I immediately tested VLC with the MKV file that I always use for testing, and was able to watch the video; the day after, I upgraded both Mei-chan and Lie-chan.

I figured it would eventually be fixed and that I just had to wait it out to when it did. While the window shade feature no longer works properly (or was changed?), I've found a very viable alternative to replace it that I've partially adapted to - the "lower" option, which lowers the window beneath all the other windows.

With how much Firefox is crashing on Mei-chan, I may have to do a clean install, since I can't pinpoint the problem with what I've tried so far. Rhythmbox still randomly crashes when playing, though it actually just stops responding instead of closing itself, and perhaps it's just me, but it seems to be worse than it used to - maybe even more of a reason for a clean install. While I still need to get used to the new button placement on the dialogues, I still prefer 13.2 over 13.1, as GNOME 3 responds quicker after a cold boot.

Redoing Lie-chan

A few days ago, I thought about how much I actually used Lie-chan (which is hardly), and so I decided to remove Windows from her.

When I looked at the her partitioning scheme, I decided I should actually just completely redo the scheme, since it would be quicker to do so than to move/resize partitions. I also poked around the BIOS a lot, since I knew Lie-chan is technically able to boot from USB, but just never was able to successfully do it. I figured it out and was able to utilize the USB flash drive with Linux distributions for installation.

Once I got to the partitioner step in openSUSE (13.1) installation, I realized it wasn't going to be easy to change the partition map to GPT with YaST2's partitioner, so I decided to reboot into Parted Magic(though I should have just aborted the installation and used GParted, but I was cold and slightly tired). When trying to boot Parted Magic, it was unable to find the necessary file, so I tried MultiSystem Live instead, which worked.

After setting up a basic partition scheme and installing openSUSE 13.1, I was then met with the right side of the audio not outputting sound at all. I decided to wait after setting up the repositories, the distribution upgrade, and updating to see if it's a package glitch of some sort - which it wasn't.

I tried a couple things and decided to head to bed, since I was too cold and tired to want to continue to figure it out. After lunch the next day (I woke up a bit before lunch), I went to tinker around with it some more, first trying alsamixer before pavucontrol.

In pavucontrol, I found that the right side of the audio was muted, and just had to increase the volume until both sides were at maximum. After exiting, I went into the sound settings and tested the sounds, which worked normally (besides that it was a lot louder than I was expecting); I then adjusted the volume in YaST2's sound setting and finished setting everything to how it used to be.

Definitely was one of the weirder glitches that I've had happen, but luckily I didn't have to fix it with a reinstall (the openSUSE 13.1 DVD isn't supported in MultySystem Live yet).

Heating homes with clouds

The article I read is: Heat your house for free by storing this cloud company’s servers.

I like this idea quite a bit - the home-owner hosts the servers' physical location in exchange for the heat that can be used to heat the home, and internet service. Also, if you consider an entire neighbourhood doing this, it (essentially) improves the reliability and/or overall storage space (depending on how it's set up).

This article reminded me of a parody advertisement I made a few years ago, where there would be a program to use 100% of the CPU (such as a loop that can be broken) and would heat a room - turning the computer into a space-heater.

During the cold winter days, I prefer to spend time in my bedroom with Mei-chan, since she can heat up my bedroom to a more comfortable temperature than what the second floor usually is (I obviously have my door closed).

I don't really like space heaters, since they only have one function (heat an area), and can use around the same amount of power as a computer. Mei-chan's power supply is 500 watts (though I doubt she actually uses all 500 watts), and the two oil-filled space heaters in the basement (which aren't really used any more) have 3 modes: 600W, 900W, and 1500W.

Of course the only problem is that the computer is only going to be an effective space heater if it puts out enough heat. In Lie-chan's case, she doesn't put out enough heat to be able to heat my entertainment room as I found out the other day. I was redoing Lie-chan's partitioning scheme and removing Windows, finding out that Lie-chan didn't get over 25C from BIOS; the entire time I was working with her, I was cold. I'm sure Ziggy would've done a lot better job (LOL).

OS X Loses Third-party TRIM Support

The article I read is: Apple removes TRIM support for third-party SSDs with OS X update.

The article title says it all, and the article itself just gives further details. I'm not horribly surprised that Apple did this, but it's just another thing that makes my appreciation for Apple drop more than it already has.

I don't really have anything to say besides that another workaround option is to install Linux over OS X.

Groupon Removes Tradmark Filings

The article I read is: Groupon Abandons “Gnome” Trademark Filings!

As the article itself said, that was a quick response; it's nice that things finally smoothed out correctly. Besides that the Gnome Foundation now has some $22,000 (USD), there's not really much I have to say about it.

I did read a very small snippet of the Twitter posts on Trek Glowacki's page (I guess that's what it's called?), and some of them I'm not sure how to feel.

naw, @grayj_ @jedgar we're going with Virtual Inventory Manager (VIM). Everyone loves it.
— Trek Glowacki (@trek) November 11, 2014

I have a slight problem with this, as there's the Vi Improved (VIM) text editor. Technically, there's no infringement, since VIM in Groupon's case is an acronym for "Virtual Inventory Manager" as previously stated, and VIM in the application sense is a contraction of Vi Improved. The only reason why I have a slight problem with it is that Groupon was already walking on broken glass with GNOME and this just makes it seem like they haven't learned their lesson that well. But as I said, there's no real trademark infringement since (if I remember correctly) trademarks are based off of the "full name" and not the acronym.

@trek @grayj_ @jedgar Not as good as the Extended Merchant Access and Control System
— Jason Yanowitz (@yanowitz) November 11, 2014

Once I put this one together, I got a good laugh out of it.

@williampietri the original naming mixup was an honest mistake. Marketers are not linux gurus.
— Trek Glowacki (@trek) November 11, 2014

This is the one I have a hard time believing. As far as I'm concerned, marketers are supposed to research thoroughly to make sure there's no copyright and/or trademark infringements. You don't need to be a Linux guru to find that GNOME is already a registered trademark - what I mean is a simple search in Google for "gnome" [sic] yields the GNOME homepage with the first result. I might not have any degrees in marketing, but for f*k's sake, keep it simple and use a search engine - it's not that hard!

Anyway, seems like the posts that follow is just some weird argument thing between Trek and some other guy, so I didn't care enough to scroll down more than that.

It would've been nicer if Groupon was a bit more responsive initially instead of making a bad move to file the trademarks, but at the least the matter is now resolved.

Groupon Hijacks GNOME Trademark

The article I read is: Gnome Foundation accuses Groupon of trademark hijacking, pleads for help

In my "GNU/Linux" section of my Play Newsstand feed, this article was at the top (being the newest, if I assume that's how it works), and it immediately caught my attention; I was relatively exasperated after fishing reading the article. When I was trying to continue through the feeds like I normally do, I first saw two more articles about this before losing the ability to focus on anything else.

If you've read enough of my blog, you know well that I love GNOME - which I've been using since 2.x since Linux Mint 8 - so you know know you didn't before. For something like this, I'm seriously at a loss of words on the stupidity of Groupon. I seriously don't know what to say besides that I'm pretty outraged.

I suppose I can start with Groupon in general from what I know and have experienced...

I first learned about Groupon while working at my old job, since there'd be a few  people complaining that their Groupon car wash code didn't work, to which I told them that we weren't part of it, being ridiculed back with something similar to "You're a Circle K, you're supposed to take Groupon." Eventually, I learned it was actually the "actual" Circle K catty-corner from us that was part of the Groupon deal (the "actual" Circle Ks are the ones with Shell petroleum, the one I worked at sold Conoco petroleum and was only a franchise), so I was able to properly redirect the customers to the correct location so that their Groupon code would work.

I never really got into Groupon at all (never mind the experience with the customers who did), and never really understood it that much - I knew it was like a "coupon" but what exactly was the "group" part of it?

Well, I can say I'm glad I didn't really get into it, since they're pulling crap like this now, and I definitely never will now, because I don't support anything that goes against what I believe.

If I had the money to, I would certainly donate what I'm able, to help the Gnome Foundation fight this battle, but I have to keep what I have left, so that I'm able to find employment.

I won't beg you to donate or see things my way, but if you believe in the basic ideas of GNU Project, please do what you can to help the Gnome Foundation to win this battle.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 5

I decided to upgrade Triela from openSUSE 13.1 to 13.2 instead of Tumbleweed, so that I'd stay stable. After rebooting, I was met with a maintenance console, and after looking toward the end of the log, it couldn't mount my other partition for some reason, so I ended up removing the entry from fstab and rebooting again. After getting into GNOME, I checked to make sure the pieces to the entry were there (the path to the disk and the mount point I specified), and they were, so I added the line back into fstab, and rebooted yet again. Since I got into GNOME just fine, it seemed like it was some sort of temporary glitch. (Two things I could have done is to reboot from the maintenance console and see what happens, and/or comment the line out in fstab, which I didn't remember how to do.)

A couple things new with 13.2 that I missed with the other test:

• The side bar play queue (when enabled) in Rhythmbox (3.1) will have a horizontal scroll bar
• "Shading" a window no longer rolls the window up into the title bar, and makes the window invisible, even in the window preview.

The horizontal scroll in the play queue isn't that big of a deal, as I hardly scroll there anyway; however, the way the window shades is something I don't like, as it's not any different from minimizing the window. I'm hoping it's some sort of bug, but if not, I suppose I'll change the title bar actions around to something else.

I don't think I'll discover anything else, but I won't hesitate to post if I do.

(edit)

Oh right, the new GRUB2 menu colours are actually green (though I don't think it's openSUSE green), and the cyan-doped colouring on the Dell was because of the monitor - I'll have to fix that if I can.

openSUSE Tumbleweed Part 3

After a bit of thinking earlier, I decided to test MP3 playback in Tumbleweed, though I was quite sure results were going to be positive - which they were.

When I thought about how I actually use Triela, I realized I don't really use her for video playback all that much (if at all), and so it's not deathly important that she does.

I suppose somewhere along all this testing over the last couple years, I lost sight of the importance of the installation purpose, or in other words, asking yourself "What/how do I use this installation?". I'm not sure when I started using Triela as the basis for being able to install a new version of openSUSE on Mei-chan and Melty, but it's where I lost purpose.

For testing, it's okay to make sure Triela can play back video, so I know whether or not to spend my time installing it on Mei-chan and Melty (and also Lie-chan); for actual use, Triela doesn't really need to be able to play back video.

Sorry for the sentimentality, but it's something that sort of happens when you realise you've lost focus on what really matters.

At this point, there's not a whole lot of difference between Tumbleweed and 13.2 in terms of video playback, so it doesn't matter much on which I install over 13.1 on Triela, but I will need to decide, as it's a long wait to do an upgrade/downgrade via repository.

Migration Complete!

Earlier, I finished migrating all the posts from version 1 as best as I can, and from now on, this will be the place I will be posting, as it's a lot easier to navigate, manage and such. It was quite a bit of work to do, but I can now relax now that I'm done.


Let us now step forward with version 2!

On a side note, while migrating posts today, Google started giving me Captchas  for every single post, thinking that I was some sort of blog-bot. Just something that I found amusing.

Swiftech H220-X Liquid CPU Cooler

The article I read is: Swiftech H220-X All-In-One CPU Cooler Review

My best friend sent me the article this morning, and I hadn't had time to read or write about it until now. All the computers I've built so far have all been air-cooled, and I've never dared to dabble in liquid cooling, even closed-loop systems; I've never wanted to run the risk of possibly shorting out the motherboard or something, but by no means am I against liquid cooling.

Swiftech's H220-X definitely is nice all around, and if I had the money to, it'd be a possibly feasible upgrade for Melty if I ever wanted to upgrade her to liquid cooling.

The block has plates to change the glow colour, which is quite nice, as I'd definitely want to match the black/red theme that Melty has. The reservoir light colour wasn't really specified in the review, but I'm sure I could probably hack something together if it's not modifiable.

The temperature comparison charts didn't include Zalman's CNPS9900 Max, which didn't really help me see approximately how much more heat it dissipates, but I can at least imagine that it'd be roughly 10C cooler. From what I remember, I've never really gone over 50C for CPU temperature, and since the CPU temperature is usually around 35-40C, liquid cooling doesn't seem horribly necessary for Melty.

Mounting would be another problem for me; there's some screw holes in the top of the case that allows for a radiator, but I'm not sure if it's the right pattern for the H220-X (which is 2x120mm fans). If it is, then it's pretty easy to mount, but if not, then I'd have to get an external bracket and run the radiator outside of the case.

As far as noise goes, the H220-X probably isn't all that bad (even at full blast), but Melty isn't bad herself, as the loudest fan is probably the fan of the 9900 Max - which is very tolerable at the normal speeds (about 1100-1200 RPM).

It's also quite nice that there's room for expandability, since most closed-loop liquid coolers usually don't give that option - locking you into their specific configuration.

Price seems pretty decent, even though the numbers are limited to Swiftech's stock.

While I probably won't buy this myself, I'd definitely would recommend it.

Google's Japanese IME For Android

The article I "read" is: Google Japanese input app updated with Material Design.

While I was eating dinner, I was scrolling through Google Play Newsstand, as I usually do, and saw the article. I was slightly dumbfounded, as I was always wanting a Japanese IME from Google, but when I initially looked for it (this was back in the days of Froyo/Gingerbread), there wasn't such a thing. I just skimmed through the article and then went to the Google Play Store to look for it.

I downloaded it, set it up, then went to poke around with it a bit in a text editor; it's different than I'm used to, but I like it better than Multiling O Keyboard. While Multiling O may be smaller than Google's IME, the way Google's IME works a bit more intuitively - showing you on a popup where your finger is. More specifically, the popup changes to the character you slide to, which reduces a bit of input errors (e.g. hitting the key next to the one you wanted and "flicking" a different character), and as far as I know, Multiling O does not have this. Also, you're also not "penalised" if you slide back to the centre of the key, which is good for those new or unfamiliar with the "flick" entry method; with Multiling O, it will continually input the characters that you slide over, so it requires the user to be more careful with input.

Themed Multiling O Keyboard, Google's Japanese IME (Blue/Dark-gray theme), Google's Japanese IME popup (Material Design [Dark] theme).

While it's nice that Multiling O is very customisable with it's aesthetics, it's a bit lacking with how it works - not to mention the word selection is very weird to operate, and I've mistakenly selected something I didn't want to while I was trying to browse through the options.

Another annoying thing about Multiling O that I didn't like is that changing back to the English keyboard, I had to hold the space key (which has 日本語 on it), slide to the "Keyboards" button, then select the keyboard I wanted; since Google's Japanese IME is made by Google (duh.), it follows the normal schema of holding the space key then selecting the desired keyboard.

The other annoying thing is that the keyboards are plugins to Multiling O, so after installing the base application, you have to download the keyboards you want (and I think it forces you to install the English keyboard [possibly the language you've set your Android menus to]). Luckily, the plugins aren't large at all, but it's still a bit annoying have to sift through the list on the Play Store to find the ones you want.

Multiling O is okay, but its reign in my life is over.

---

A bit of my history with Multiling O Keyboard:

 When I was using the Google Nexus 1 as my phone, I was looking for a Japanese IME, since Google didn't have their own. I first found Kaede IME (I don't remember the exact name), and it was okay, but really large (the Nexus 1 doesn't have a lot of space, and "move to SD" wasn't an option yet) - I think it was also a bit laggy. Eventually I found Multiling Keyboard (not the "O"), and liked it better since it wasn't as laggy or as large.

Eventually I got my Google Galaxy Nexus, and stayed with Multiling Keyboard for a Japanese IME, until about the middle of last year when I ended up without my Galaxy Nexus for a time, and I had to use my Nexus 1 until I finally received the Galaxy Nexus back.

Since I had stripped my N1 of a lot of the applications that I use, I had to reinstall a few things, and while searching for the Multiling Keyboard, I found Multiling O Keyboard, which is smaller, and more customizable. It didn't hurt to try, so I went with it, eventually installing it on my Galaxy Nexus when I received it back and awkwardly transferring over the theme I made.

The "flick" entry method was new to me, and I actually took a sort of a liking to it, even though my ability to read Hiragana is relatively slow - it's definitely nicer than trying to press tiny alphabetical keys when in portrait mode.

---

Afterthoughts/More Ranting:

So far, it seems like when I have something to talk about "with" an article, it turns out to include a rant of some sort... I was hoping to make this post short, as a sort of a break from migrating posts from version 1, but that didn't happen. (LOL)

On the migration, it's running relatively smoothly, though earlier, I found that I used to lazily add content to posts by commenting on the post, so I had to go back through all that I've migrated to see if there was any comments that I missed - I only had a few posts luckily, but had one with about 6 comments.

I started with the "Miscellany", "Computer Projects", and "Computer Builds" tabs before tackling the "Linux" tab because I knew the "Linux" tab would have the most content - along with the most chaos of edits (and comments). With the "Linux" tab, I've been working from the oldest post to the newest, and I'm at the third page (in normal viewing order); my plan is to finish the third page so that I'll only have two pages left.

I better stop ranting so that I can get the last few posts on that page migrated.

Cluster Node Part 2 / openSUSE 13.2 Part 4

After a few hours of doing a net-install of openSUSE 13.1 Xfce on the cluster node, I was met with a broken power-saved screen when I came back; I was able to get to command-line to give the node a proper reboot and finally got into Xfce afterwards.

Speed-wise, it didn't seem much different than Debian Xfce live; the only real difference being the included applications and panel applets - both of which made Xfce feel different in openSUSE. Thinking about it though, since I'm so used to using Xfce with Debian, it's not an experience that's easily transferable to other systems because my usage of it isn't very heavy compared with GNOME 3; GNOME 3 is a little more transferable - since I've used it for quite some time now - but when I use it on a different system (Ubuntu or Debian), I can feel a bit of a difference, but it doesn't bother me as much as Xfce.

I'll have to see if I can get the other panel applets installed (I really like the cpu/mem/swap applet), and if not, I'll do an install of Debian Xfce instead.

I also suspended the node as a test, finding out that it only responded to the power button to bring it back and that the integrated graphics didn't like the suspend (the cursor was either glitched or missing, and the picture was either moving or stable based on the cursor's position). If I do find a use for the node before resuming the cluster project, I'll have to be weary on the graphics.

---

I tested openSUSE 13.2 on Ziggy like I said I would (I skipped the VAIO, as I remembered it doesn't have any optical drives), but during my sleeping hours, I forgot what I was supposed to test specifically.

I poked around a bit, and 13.2 behaved no different on Ziggy than on the Dell (though probably slightly slower), so there isn't really much to say besides reiterating that it works to breathe new life into any old single-core, multi-threaded CPU system.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 3

Well, since I had forgotten to try the VLC repository when testing 13.2, I had to install it again just for the test, since it's not that hard.

And as surmised, using the VLC repository didn't change anything. With that, I'm officially finished with 13.2 x86_64 for now; I will do further testing in a month or two, and I'll see what happens then. At the worst, I'll be moving to Evergreen, and at best, I'll be on 13.2.

I will test 13.2 on Ziggy tomorrow probably.

openSUSE Tumbleweed Part 2

With the release of openSUSE 13.2, the Factory and Tumbleweed repositories have officially merged, and is now different than how it was before. What this means for me is another round of testing for Tumbleweed the proper way (using the test-bed partition on Triela). Now that I've gotten the results for 13.2, I can finally begin testing Tumbleweed again (though I'm starting from a base-installation of 13.1 instead of 13.2)

Unfortunately, the result is worse than 13.2 - VLC dependencies aren't fixable. According to caf4926's multi-media/restricted formats guide for 13.1, h264enc and x264 are to be installed for h264 playback, and in the guide for 13.2, only x264 is installed - h264 being uninstallable because of a missing dependency. In the case for Tumbleweed, both are uninstallable because of missing dependencies, regardless of VLC or Packman repositories.

I first tried Pacman's repository first before remembering about VLC's, but in both cases, VLC said the h264 decoder was missing; while I remembered about VLC for Tumblweed, I completely forgot about it for 13.2. Though I'm sure there won't be any difference, I'll give it a try anyway.

Cluster Node Part 1

While waiting all 2001 packages to download for openSUSE Tumbleweed, I decided to test Debian Xfce live on the cluster node (I had already downloaded the ISO and stuck it onto a USB drive earlier).

It booted a lot faster than openSUSE 13.2 GNOME live did, but it's not all that surprising. Between the time when run level 2 was started and when Xfce actually showed up, the screen was black and I was slightly worried, but eventually Xfce popped up onto the screen so quick, it was like a punch to the eyes.

What was really surprising was how smooth it was, especially for a single-threaded CPU, and the CPU usage was much better than 13.2 (again, GNOME was eating the CPU). LibreOffice was slow to start, but once it was loaded, it was smooth and used hardly any CPU.

I didn't do much testing after that, since it was only a quick test to see how much better Xfce was (although I used Debian and not openSUSE); I'll most likely be doing a test install of openSUSE 13.1 Xfce to see how that is, since there's no live version.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 2

Since Triela is where I've done the bulk of the testing, this will be where I post some of the new things I've found.

One of the first things I noticed was the minimality of the applications in the list, being only 3 pages - then again, I'm used to having roughly 5-7 pages of applications - with the third page only having one entry in my case. The next thing I noticed was an application called "Software", and after opening it, I remembered that the development team was making something similar in concept to Ubuntu's Software Centre. I disregarded it for that time being, as I was only poking around to see if anything else had changed.

Another thing I noticed was that the YaST2 modules are now in its own folder (labelled as "YaST2 Modules" LOL), and thought that it was nice to have them grouped into a folder, since it used to be mixed into the other applications.

The tweak tool still resides in the Settings window, like it did with the Beta (I think?), but instead of it being under the "System" section, it is now under the "Personal" section.

After that, I went ahead and installed it onto the test-bed partition, opting for ext4 instead of BTRFS, and opting out of GRUB 2 installation (I'd rather have GRUB 2 from 13.1 handle the entries). Once installation was done, I gave the disk to the Dell for testing.

I began setting up the installation for testing by installing programs (k3b, Filezilla, etc) that I normally would have installed, and once I thought I had everything installed, I went to set up the input methods. I then realized I had to re-log, but I decided to opt for a reboot instead.

Before I forget, I had also installed the unico and murrine theme engines and then put my standard GTK theme to use, having to close all the windows for the changes to appear correctly, and I was surprised to see that it also applied in a different way to the GNOME 3 windows that have the title bar integrated into the window (certain buttons became smaller).

Once rebooted, I tried to open Filezilla, but it refused to open, so I used terminal instead and was met with dependency errors. After fixing the first error, I was met with a second error, and while fixing that, zypper told me nothing provides "Firefox- .noarch", and after a bit of searching in zypper, I couldn't find what it was referring to, so I went with the solution to deinstall "Firefox-.noarch". I was then met with a bunch of other packages that needed to be installed, which was probably all the other dependencies that somehow got locked by "Firefox-.noarch", and let zypper run its installation course; afterwards, I was able to open Filezilla just fine, and Firefox (MozillaFirefox is the package name) opened just fine, so "Firefox-.noarch" is just a mystery to me. Upon further searching, I found that it belongs to a program "Firefox", which doesn't exist and is not removable because of that.

The application animation when pressing the "Show Applications" button began to work properly afterwards, so something was installed from the repository that wasn't originally part of the live disk.

The next thing I did was add the repositories for Packman and libdvdcss and install the corresponding packages for multi-media and restricted formats, preforming the distribution upgrade to the Packman repository afterwards. Unfortunately, following the guide at opensuse-guide.org didn't work, as I couldn't play my test MKV file in VLC. I've also tried the one-click solution from opensuse-community.org, but now that I think about it, it didn't do anything different compared to the opensuse-guide.org option. I'm gonna have to just hope that caf4926 from the official openSUSE forums releases a guide for 13.2, since their guides are flawless when I follow them.

That said, I'm actually not going to do any testing with Mei-chan, since the outcome was a bit disappointing with VLC. For now, I'll keep an eye out for caf4926's guide (if/when it comes out) and stick with 13.1 as the stable install.

One thing that came to mind is that with the 12 series of openSUSE, the first version (12.1) I didn't install, but the second and third versions I installed, but in this case, 13.1 works quite well for me, and 13.2 doesn't work that well for me, so it's certainly different than it used to be.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 1

I've done a bit of testing with Triela, the Dell, and the cluster, but I won't write about Triela until I'm done testing on her.

When I went to test 13.2 live GNOME on the 1GB cluster node, I wasn't able to read from the DVD+RW since the DVD drive (from the Half-top) didn't seem to want to read it, and so I was forced to make a bootable USB drive, which worked fine (once I got it to work). It was mostly laggy, but upon further inspection with System Monitor, the processor was also almost always at 100% because of the GNOME shell - I'm sure a lightweight environment like Xfce would be a better choice. If I care enough to, I may do a test installation on it, but for now I'll resume testing with Debian Xfce live (when I'm able to LOL).

Running 13.2 in the live GNOME environment from a DVD+RW seems to be slower than running 13.1's live GNOME environment off of DVD+RW; I'm not sure exactly where the problem lies, but it wasn't bad enough to where I forced to install to actually do the testing.

On the Dell, there wasn't a whole lot to test, seeing that the main focus of the testing is going to be on Triela and Mei-chan. The live test didn't really tell me anything that I needed to know, so after some slight poking around, I went ahead and started the installation.

Once I got to the partitioner, I realised that the hard drive still had an MSDOS partition table and changed it to GPT instead (GPT allows more than four partitions without having to make an extended partition first - while Triela is the only machine that has more than four partitions, I'd prefer to just move along with GPT when I'm able to). Once I got to the last installation screen, the installer failed to make partitions, so I had to reboot into PartedMagic to fix that.

After recreating the partition table, and making a couple basic partitions (ext4 partition, and 2GB swap), I rebooted into the 13.2 installer and let the partitioner carry out the suggested changes (BTRFS for /, XFS for /home, and a little 7MB partition for legacy boot); installation carried out just fine.

Once rebooted (and escaping the live DVD's GRUB 2 menu), I was met with the refreshed GRUB 2 screen: the full openSUSE logo (the chameleon with "openSUSE" underneath it) at the top centre; the booting choices in white text, the head-portion of the openSUSE chameleon to the left of the main options; and the highlighted option in black text, with the highlight bar the same colour as the full logo - some sort of cyan-doped green. I can't comment on the green colour used, but I'll at least say that I hope the monitor's colours are off.

The screen of the second part of the installation came up, but then quickly went away, replacing itself with terminal. Since I never paid attention to it when installing 13.2 Beta or RC1, I can't say when they actually took the graphical screen away when the installer was performing automatic configuration. Anyway, this is a nice bonus, as there wasn't ever a point to be in the graphical installer during the automatic configuration.

The response of the Activities button/hot corner was instant which was surprising, as I was used to the slight lag (1-2 seconds) with RC1's GNOME live. Afer clicking the "Show Applications" button, the application names showed up instantly, but the system had to load the icons; however, once the icons were loaded, there wasn't much of a lag at all.

Besides poking at System Monitor to see the RAM usage (about 400MB of 2GB - about 22%), I loaded up LibreOffice Writer to see how quick it loaded, and I certainly wasn't disappointed, as it loaded pretty quickly (about 5-10 seconds if I remember right).

Overall, it is easily feasible to use 13.2 to breathe new life into an old system (provided the CPU has Hyper-threading/Hyper-transport if it's only a single-core). I may test 13.2 with Ziggy and/or the VAIO, but that will have to be quite some time later, as Triela/Mei-chan are my main concerns at this point.

openSUSE Release Time

Yesterday, at about 00:45, I looked to see how long I had to wait for openSUSE 13.2 to be released, and the picture said "5 hours left". I then looked at the time zone chart on Wikipedia and realized that the time they use to release openSUSE versions is UTC-12 (I live in UTC-7, so -7-5 =-12). While I want to think that they use the UTC-12 time zone for some sort of fairness, at the same time I think it'd be better if they'd specify the time zone with the date, so some people aren't left wondering why it's not out yet.

I remember when I was waiting for one of the releases, and at some point I gave up trying to stay up for it, only to find that it still wasn't available for download when I woke the next morning. I think that was also the same release when I thought it'd be out by 16:00 UTC-7 (0:00 UTC+1) since that's Germany's time zone, but that wasn't the case, as I was checking their FTP server almost incessantly.

Well, now that I know it's [release date] UTC-12, I'll just wait until the day after to download it.

Theme Updated

Just a minor theme tweak - flipped the colours for the links and sidebar headings; should be easier to tell where the links are now. XP

I just have the "Linux" tab left to migrate from version 1, which is quite a bit of posts and the majority of the content. Once that's done, my Google+ feed won't be flooded as I write all these. XD

Inquisitor

I was going to write about Inquisitor again after finishing writing about the cluster, but I forgot until now.

Since I had more patience this time to fiddle around with it, I found that it actually Actually, it seems like I never wrote about it before today.

I found Inquisitor on DistroWatch, and even though it's discontinued, I decided to give it a try to see if it helped me get info about a machine pretty quickly.

When I initially tested it, I found that it had the ability to test the system, and since I didn't have a lot of patience, I didn't see that it had the ability to pull hardware info, so I put it aside.

I decided to give it another try this morning when trying to find out specifics about the processor of the cluster nodes. Eventually I found an action called "Detects" and, unfortunately, the description for it just says "Detects only". I figured it probably detected the hardware, and ran it, which then let me know that it was finished detecting hardware (controller, cpu, etc) and to press enter to return to the main menu.

I then went to view the logs (having known about that part before) and saw "lshw.log", "lspci.log", and a few other logs. I checked lspci first, which told me that the cluster had a gigabit ethernet controller, which surprised me, and afterwards, I checked lshw for the processor.

Now that understand how to use Inquisitor to check a machine's hardware, I'll keep it with me as part of my toolkit, even though it's a discontinued distribution.

Cluster

Last night, I got the model number off of the cluster nodes and tried to use that too look up the specifications, but it didn't get me anywhere, so I had to pull the nodes themselves.

By opening the case, I found that each node has 512MB of ram - which is enough - and no PCI slot, making me wonder where I got the notion for using a low-profile PCI wireless card from.

After getting into the BIOS, I was able to find that the processor is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz Northwood core (533MHz bus, 512KB L2 cache), but unable to figure out if it has HT or not.

One of the CMOS batteries for the nodes died, so I decided to check the voltages - the dead one was jumping between 0.022 and 0.000, while the other two read 2.78 and 2.8 - and tossed the dead battery.

I then booted back into BIOS, and the node with the 2.78v CMOS battery refused to POST, and after some extensive digging around on the internet, I went and looked at the capacitors inside the node. Sure enough, one of them was bulging. Of all the times it could've vented, it decided to do it right after checking the CMOS battery. I transferred the CMOS battery and CD-ROM drive into the other node (the one that had the dead battery), and gave the "dead" node the floppy drive; I gave the stick of RAM to the node with the 2.8v battery. I was hoping I had a 16-volt 680µF capacitor in my collection of salvaged capacitors, but when I checked this morning, I certainly didn't.

Looking online, it seems like I technically can substitute with a capacitor with higher capacitance (µF), however since computers are sensitive components, it may cause a longer boot time or some sort of instability - I'll definitely pass on the notion in that case.

I also found that each node has the ability to boot from USB, which was surprising and nice, seeing that I'm not limited to using a 2.5-inch IDE hard drive for installation. It took a bit of digging around on the internet, but I eventually gave up and poked through the BIOS option very thoroughly, finding the USB option under the hard drive order; I test booted into the Linux stick and it worked just fine.

This morning, I grabbed Inquisitor and looked through my capacitor collection before plugging a node in to boot Inquisitor. Since I had more time, I figured out how to use Inquisitor properly for my intentions (hardware probing), and found out that the ethernet port is actually gigabit! I was quite surprised, but as I thought about it, it made sense since (1) it was built to be a business machine, and (2) the switch that connected the three nodes (when they were being used at my old work) was upgraded to a gigabit switch.

I didn't find out anything more about the processor though, which sucks, so I'll probably have to get the processor from the "dead" node to get the actual specifics.

I was thinking to maybe make one node as a summer computer, as it probably puts out less heat compared to any of the other desktops, but the problem is the lack of a hard drive. The options are to either use the 30GB hard drive from Sae-chan and to keep the drive usage light, or to run it as a fully live environment. I suppose using the hard drive wouldn't be that bad, but the lack of the drive cover is a bit unnerving.

My main point is to find out the exact processor in one way or another before I go digging around for a Linux distribution to test with - last thing I need is to have a kernel limitation like I did with the Half-top.

Lie-chan 3 and Melty 5

A few months ago, I decided to use the PCIe card in Melty again, plugging it into a PCIe x16 slot that wasn't "tied" to the one that the video card is in, and unfortunately, the two PCIe x16 slots that fit that description was either already blocked off by the GPU heat-sink or the one directly underneath the Vantec fan card. With the sound card underneath the fan card, the temperatures weren't bad, but it definitely couldn't stay there forever.

Since Lie-chan was using the switch-box as an extension cord, I had to just live without sound when I was using openSUSE on Melty. I eventually got a couple composite cable couplers and was able to find some spare RCA cables to extend the headphone to RCA cable to the receiver/amplifier, giving the switch-box back to Melty.

Eventually I got a PCIe x1 to PCIe x16 riser "card" which allowed me to drop the sound card to the bottom PCI slot of the case (the Cooler Master HAF X has 9 slots) and plug it into the PCIe x1 slot above the video card. At first, I read that I didn't have to use the power cord, but when I tried it, the sound card wasn't detected; after some wire management, I plugged the power into the x16 side of the riser card and the sound card was detected afterwards.

Melty 4

I think it was roughly the middle of this year when I decided to flip the side fan to draw the hot air from the GPU out, and although it doesn't seem to make much of a difference, at least the hot air has somewhere to go now.

iBook G4 and Debian PPC 5

A few days ago, I decided to look into the open-source Radeon driver more, and found a way to check for it and install it.

I first tested it out with Sae-chan, since it was easier to do so, and found that one package out of three wasn't installed, and after installing, nothing happened (well, technically, I cleared up an error message for the driver).

I was thinking about using the 30GB hard drive to test Taiga out, but after running the check, Taiga wasn't any different from Sae-chan (missing that same package), so I decided to just do a blind install.

I shut Taiga off and spent a few minutes reconnecting the connector (the thing was annoying to try to plug back in), booted her up and tested out the power save after enabling the screen. Unfortunately, it changed nothing in that aspect, so I shut her down again to unplug the screen again.

It's kind of a shame it didn't make a difference, but I really prefer using the monitor since I get more screen space (although the monitor takes up that much more space). I'm not exactly sure what could possibly be wrong, but I don't care too much, since I still solved the problem in a different way.

Raspi 2

A couple months or so ago, I decided to try openSUSE ARM on the Raspi, but only got to a command line, so I gave up on that.

The other thing that happened was that the fan controller no longer worked properly, and the fan was much too loud at full speed. I decided to use USB power instead of Firewire (5v instead of 12v) to slow the fan down, but the fan didn't want to spin after that, so I had to use a different fan and redo the mount.

I had to play around with a bit, but I got it to work, mounting the fan to two of the brackets, then using the other two brackets to keep one bracket from sliding around. While I could've properly mounted the fan, I didn't feel like doing any extra drilling, so this was the easier solution. I also used a zip-tie (blue) to secure the cord to the case where the fan controller used to be.

Dell 2

About a week after putting the X1950 into the Dell, I noticed the X1950 was running quite hot - almost scalding hot - and decided to remove the cover to the heat-sink:


Yep, It was pretty much clogged with dust. I cleaned it out and put it back in, and it was running a lot cooler afterwards.

Recently, the Dell's been taking time to boot again, like when the X300 was in it, so maybe it is the power supply? Then again, I also did remove the PCI wireless card to put into the G5, so that my best friend can connect it to the internet to install stuff, and it's after that when it started doing it, so maybe that's it (as weird as it would be). I'll find out once I get the wireless card back.

One of the other things I've done is attached a couple of the tear-off 5.25" bay covers to the hard drive to elevate it, positioned the front stock fan at the back to blow onto the hard drive, and attached another fan (from the retired ASUS Triton 77) to the front to blow the air out. I haven't really checked the temperature, but I'm sure it keeps it under 60C.

Articles 2 / Apple Products Poster

I suppose it would be less restricting if I find an article that allows me to share my thoughts and feelings, rather than just talking about something interesting.

---

The article I read today is a short article about an infographic: 534 Apple Products On One Giant Poster

About the article itself, there's nothing to talk about, but the article did remind me of my history with Apple computers.

The earliest Mac I used was some purple-cased Apple that had a 5.25-inch floppy drive (unfortunately, I can't remember what it was called, and I don't have enough info to search for it... maybe the case wasn't purple, but it's been at least 20 years, so maybe I'm remembering wrong) back in elementary school; I also used some other Macintosh that was a little more modern at the time.

In middle school, it was the early iMacs (the translucent, aqua-colored ones).

At home, I grew up with the Performa 550, which was replaced in 1998 with some HP computer. After moving into a new house in 2000, I still used the Performa 550 for some of the games and to sort of mess around with, but once I broke the registry with too much tinkering, I decided to retire it. I was also going to reinstall Mac OS 7 to see what was on some old floppies, but the monitor wouldn't turn on - wouldn't doubt if a spider died in the power supply and shorted the power for the monitor, or if it was just old age - so it finally went to get recycled.

Sae-chan was the next Apple I owned, followed by Shizuma.

What I'm getting at is that I used to be quite the Apple fan (I excluded the iPods, since they're not proper computers), but after Shizuma, that began to fade. After the PowerMac G5 and iBook G4 Debian PPC projects, I've really lost the appreciation for Apple that I used to have, because of a few reasons.

The first reason is that old architectures that are no longer supported. Sure I can update Mac OS X 10.4 to the final version of 10.4.11, but that's as far as the updates will go. Even major software (like Firefox) has officially stopped supporting the PPC architecture (it's unofficially supported with TenFourFox for OS X or in any PPC Linux).

Another reason is that some of the up-front quality is nice, but some of the lesser parts (namely the built-in FTP service) isn't as quality. I'm sure Apple never meant the file-sharing service to be used as an actual FTP or to transfer gigabytes of information, and I'm sure they never imagined it being used in that way either. It was a feature that was just quietly in the settings that (probably) not too many people used. In 10.7 (Lion), the graphical way to toggle the FTP service on/off was removed, but still accessible via command line. Again, I'm sure it's because not too many people used it, so they (Apple) figured it'd be better to remove the graphical option.

I used 10.6 for quite a bit of time, but it wasn't all that great. The 64-bit kernel did make most things a bit faster, but the cost was that certain 32-bit support was finicky - I had to switch between the 32 and 64-bit kernels until I gave up and just used the 32-bit kernel. I think that was the only time I saw something "broken" of Apple's, even though their products are usually quite fluid - the result of fine-tuned code for a small pool of hardware.

The prices are another reason, but I probably don't need to really explain it all that much.

And I turned this into a rant (LOL), but again, my point is that I've lost quite the appreciation for Apple even though I've pretty much grown up with Apple.

Network Attached Storage 2

As I'm going through all the old posts on EDBv1, I'm realizing that there are things I just haven't updated about - my NAS being one of them.

Earlier this year (2014) Synology released DSM 5.0 for most of their NAS products (some of their products did not fit the DSM 5.0 requirements), and while there were quite a few changes, there is one main one that I was pretty ecstatic about after reading it.

The update was the "QuickConnect" feature that was added, which allows an even easier set-up to access the NAS from the internet. Basically, you register for a MyDS account (which is free) then register a QuickConnect ID (also free), then use the link of "http://QuickConnect.to/[QuickConnect ID]" to connect to the NAS.

The only problem with QuickConnect is that it is based off of the NAS's external IP address, so if your modem's external IP is DHCP and is leased a new IP address after a reboot or disconnect (like I used to have), the QuickConnect link will stop working until you reset the QuickConnect link. So after testing it out, I turned it off, since I didn't really need to access my stuff outside of my house.

It was about mid-September when the phone company came to fix the phone and also fixed the internet connection as well (supposedly, the wires for the internet was loose), and so I decided to turn QuickConnect back on, since it's nice to be able to get files when I'm at my best friend's place (provided the files are on the NAS XD).

QuickConnect is very nice and so much easier than the alternative way - thank Synology for their hard work.

Trying something new / HP Sprout

While reading Forbes article on HP's Sprout computer, I decided I would give writing my thoughts and feelings on any technology articles that I find interesting enough to talk about. It's something to try out, but it should make my blog a bit more active, seeing that the only active part would be Linux testing/tinkering.

Without further ado, let's begin!

---

The article I've read is Forbes' "If Da Vinci Had A Desktop, It Would Be HP's $1,899 Sprout".

While I was scrolling through articles on Google Play Newsstand, the image caught my eye, as it depicts (presumably) an artist writing in cursive with his finger on a white mat (I later found out that it was an artist while viewing the article on the desktop). The article title was probably next to capture my attention, as I was wondering what the author meant.

I got a better understanding of the Srout as I began to read the article - the Sprout is an all-in-one computer that uses a combination of touch-screen and a special mat. The mat sits in front of the Sprout and has sensors inside it to capture input (fingers/styli), while also being the area for the embedded projector to project the digital workspace.

Above the monitor is a fixture that houses the camera and projector that scans and displays the workspace, respectively.

The two main sources of input for any digital artist is a mouse and/or graphics tablet (using either or both); I, myself, have a graphics tablet made by Wacom, so I'm pretty familiar with how it feels to use the graphics tablet as a source of input.

I thought it is a pretty interesting concept, and thought the price was a bit steep for something of that sort, but now that I think about it, it doesn't seem that bad of a price. More specifically, it has a touch-screen all-in-one computer, a "scanner", a projector, a "graphics tablet", and a customized version of Windows 8.1 (presumably) all into one package (technically two counting the mat); I'm sure building something similar would come out to around the same price, which is why I call it a fair price.

I don't particularly like the fact that the projected display and the monitor is a mirrored view, although I do understand why it is, and while most of the things can be done with the touch-screen, the touch-screen doesn't have the pressure sensitivity that the mat does.

While I do like the ideas, I feel that I'd rather stick with a graphics tablet (most of Wacom's tablets have touch capability) and all-in-one, as it pretty much would be the same thing. I'd definitely like to play with it, but I wouldn't buy it and probably wouldn't recommend it either.

It's impossible to say how the sales will go, but I think it'll be a niche market - artists looking for a new computer and technology-collectors being the presumed main buyers.

The video (as stated in the article) shows the system in action, and is why I think it's not much different from using a graphics tablet (that accepts touch input), though the "scanner" is something different from the usual flat-bed scanners that can only scan 2D objects.

Again, it's an interesting idea, but I think it could definitely be improved to become "truly new", but it just seems slightly gimmicky to me.

Triela 2

I found that I never wrote about the Intel Wifi+Bluetooth card that I talked about a while ago. I did order it and tested it out, but was still unable to get the wifi to work. I think the Mini-PCIe slot for the Wifi is just locked to two modes - on and off - since I remember reading something about having to use the function key to toggle the Bluetooth on, which never happened.

Another thing I never wrote about was the Mini-PCIe to USB 3.0 converter that I wanted to use to hide the Logitech USB dongle and free up one of the USB ports. After getting it, I was unable to get it to work at all, and since I was at my best friend's house, I didn't feel like doing any extensive testing (along with the fact that I was already tired from the testing I already did).

After getting home, I used an Intel Wifi+Bluetooth card that he gave me (it didn't work in his Lenovo, and it was too late for him to RMA it) to test out the extra Mini-PCIe slot. It didn't appear, even with taking the stock Wifi card out of it's slot; I even tried the stock Wifi card in that extra slot, which still didn't work. I'm guessing the slot is disabled by the firmware or by the controller, seeing as that it doesn't work; the only other possibility is that it's actually a mSATA port, but I did quite a bit of research to disprove that, so I highly doubt it.

While I wanted to RMA it, I had already broken off part of the adapter so that it would fit into the slot, and I don't think Amazon would like me returning it in that condition. I'm sure the card works, but I just don't have anything to test it with. For now it'll just occupy that extra Mini-PCIe slot in Triela.

Success!

I think the problem was the "Add CSS" field in the template customiser; I think it's actually meant for appending CSS instead of replacing it, so I replaced the CSS in the "View HTML" field instead.

I learned a bit of CSS while spending time editing it, so I can read it a lot easier now than when I originally started. Defintiely thankful for W3Schools and Liveweave (it's the first editor I found), as without those, I'd probably still be horribly lost.

Now that the blog's themed, I can finally work on the content.

(Edit) Oh right... I was supposed to put in a custom font... I'll do that later.

(Edit 2) Had to fiddle with the CSS again once the fonts were in place, but I think it looks decent enough (plus, font sizes are wonkier the CSS way than the old HTML way).

Ugh...

I really was trying to mod one of the stock templates to make it how I like it, but apparently CSS works differently on Blogger than it should... I don't even know how that's even possible, but it somehow just is...

Specifically, "border-radius: 10px;" should round all four corners of the appropriate widget, but in Blogger, it only rounds the top and not the bottom. Again, how this works, I haven't a damn clue. What it seems like I'm going to have to do is to do the editing elsewhere and then copy it all over and pray that it works.

By no means am I going to give up on Blogger, but this is one of the things that frustrate me a lot - when the built-in tools are making it much more complicated than it should. Considering the nature of CSS and the fact that I don't know any CSS, I expected the theme-customising process to be slow, but it's ridiculous when it's slowed to a crawl.

I was really hoping that I can just modify a theme I liked and then go to bed, but I spent a lot more time than I wanted trying to get the CSS to work right.

Oh right, and in technicality, if I remove a property, then it shouldn't apply (as I noticed with Liveweave and Firefox's inspector, but apparently that's not the case, as I have to do something to nullify the property (e.g. changing a border from 1px to 0px to remove it).

Anyway, I need some sleep. Hopefully I can get the theme properly made and working right tomorrow.

First Official Post!

Testing is over, yay! Now this post will sit here as the "site" is under construction. :x (Posts dated before this are old posts from version 1.)

openSUSE Tumbleweed Part 1

Last night, I had an huge itching to tinker around, and decided to upgrade Mei-chan to Tumbleweed, seeing that she was already on. After upgrading, X broke, so I went and downgraded the packages back to 13.1. The downgrade was pretty much fine, however, the text decided to become boxes with any GNOME 3 window, which was not exactly good (luckily text inside Firefox was fine, and there wasn't any problems with the system itself).


First time in a long time that I had to ask for help, since I wasn't able to find it anywhere (especially with how tired I was), and I got an answer that the pango cache just needed to be updated with either of the commands:

sudo pango-querymodules --update-cache
sudo pango-querymodules-64 --update-cache

It worked, and I was saved the hassle of having to reinstall (or upgrade). I'm slightly upset that I can't use Tumbleweed, but there are a couple rolling distros I can try when I feel like it.

Things I've learned:

• Definitely test in a testing environment to avoid complications.
• I can't use Tumbleweed. ☹
• Downgrading causes the textual glitch.
• Update pango's cache when the above happens.

openSUSE 13.2 RC1

While I wasn't exactly thorough with the beta, I did notice quite a bit of changes this time (either they were there in the beta and I didn't notice them or it wasn't in the beta).

One thing I'll mention is that hitting the "Activities" after a cold boot is still just as fast (if not a bit faster) as the beta, but "Show Applications" is now faster than it was in the beta or before it (even 13.1). On the Dell, the "Show Applications" problem I had is fixed.

While I'm here, I might as well point out the new graphical effect when you click on "Show Applications" (assuming hardware is able to support it). The icons and labels for each application floats outward from the "Show Applications" button in a similar way as the "Genie" minimize/restore effect in Mac OSX; the attached screenshot only shows the beginning part of it, as the graphical effect is pretty fast and isn't easy to capture, but I'm sure it helps make the effect a bit more understandable.


In the top-right menu, another button is added (presumably for laptops, as it did not appear on the Dell), which I haven't any clue what it's for, besides that it changes to have a lock on it when you click on it. With it being only for laptops, it doesn't really help to figure out what it is or is for. I'll see if I can find something on it later.


Confirmation dialogues are a bit different now: the pop-up greys the corresponding window (which I don't really remember from 13.1), but the most noticeable aspects is the pop-up itself - which now has no window decorations (the "x" for the close or a grab-able title bar is no longer present), and the buttons are much larger. It looks much cleaner and simple, which is a nice change.


YaST2's Software Manager also got a pretty large graphical update, which now has several tabs instead of the drop-down menu. The package info section also has tabs, which makes it easier to get to the respective section (say you're trying to get to the versions to install a specific version from a different repository). With how it's changed, the layout seems a bit more aesthetically pleasing than Synaptic.


As I had mentioned in the beta, some of the buttons have been moved to the top of the dialogue instead of being on the bottom. This was done (presumably) to utilize the extra space in the title bar, which makes the windows that much smaller.


Gedit was really graphically overhauled - some buttons placed into the title bar. Tabs appear when you click the new tab button, though there might be a preference to have tabs always shown (I didn't really look at the preferences). The "Save" button is decently large, which is nice, though I'm sure most of these changes were to accommodate touchscreen-based users. As you can see with the save dialogue, the "Cancel" and "Save" buttons are in the title bar and make the window smaller vertically. The menu button has the rest of the other functions and has the same look as Firefox's menu button. Gedit's menu on the GNOME bar is very desolate, seeing that it's something that's not going to be accessed very often.


YaST2's Boot Loader also was revamped graphically (this change can also be seen when installing RC1).


Also, the theme I've been using for 13.1 is now broken and incompatible. Mainly the radio buttons, checkboxes do not appear correctly when selected, rather they just show up empty. Luckily the "Oxygen Neon" cursor I've been using isn't broken, so that's at least something. The default dark theme isn't bad, but I prefer pink instead of blue - I may have to go looking for another dark/pink theme.

It certainly looks like everything is moving in the right directions and I can't wait to see how things turn out for the release.

openSUSE 13.1 and Touchscreen Part 3

Was able to do the test and the OSK glitch I experienced with YaST on the Dell wasn't there, and long-pressing also worked naturally (no jitter problems).

Not much else I can really say or do, since there isn't really all that much to test that would be different than the usual mouse/keyboard input methods.

Ubuntu GNOME 14.10

Compared to what I remember of Ubuntu GNOME 13.10, it's a lot smoother.

Testing went pretty fast, as there wasn't a whole lot.

The Iris icon set doesn't work, which was partially expected.

The "When Laptop Lid is Closed" seems to appear correctly, but the options don't work.

Synaptic Package Manager isn't installed by default, as I'm sure Ubuntu is pushing Ubuntu Software Manager.

It's feasible for a backup distribution, but I really know how to use openSUSE a lot better - namely searching for packages with terminal.

Debian GNOME Part 2

I installed Debian again on Triela, trying to make a custom Xfce colour scheme to use for Taiga and Sae, but ended up with GNOME instead.

Installing FGLRX just broke the system, so I had to manually install the open-source Radeon driver, which did work.

GNOME 3.4.2 was installed, so it definitely isn't viable yet, though GNOME 3.14.0 is in testing, so it'll be the next stable when it does, and so I may do some actual testing then.

openSUSE 13.1 and Touchscreen Part 2

My best friend recently won a laptop with a touchscreen, so I was able to test some of the stuff again.

Not much is different, besides the touchscreen being more accurate. I also found that selecting text looks like Android a lot, but instead of long-pressing the highlighted text to copy/cut/paste, it pops up after a couple seconds.

I forgot to test the long-press and the on-screen keyboard with YaST. If I get a chance to today, I'll test these.

Though the cursor doesn't appear, the last key on the virtual keyboard stays in the depressed state, so again, it's not much different than before.

iBook G4 and Debian PPC 4

I verified roughly 230 more files (bringing the total to about 10% of the files), and all of the checksums matched exactly. I'm decently certain that all the other files copied fine, and I don't feel like taking the time to check them all, especially when OS X (technically BSD) prints one space between the checksum and file name while Linux prints two spaces between the checksum and the file name (in Mac OSX, it's "md5", and in Linux, it's "md5sum", so it's not that surprising with the differences.

I found that I can turn off the Bluetooth mouse and back on while the system is running without any problems - I actually found this out sometime before I went to sleep, but I had forgotten. I think it's just a fresh-installation glitch that's fixed after a reboot, so now I can just treat the mouse like I usually do.

What's very nice is the on-screen keyboard that I installed (Taiga's original keyboard became unusable, since it would either print partial gibberish or not respond at all), so now I don't need to manually plug in a keyboard when I actually need to type something into the computer (albeit a virtual keyboard is much slower to type with).

I've confirmed that sound works just fine on Sae-chan by partially playing a song from my music library. I've also confirmed that the LCD removes the image from the screen when the screen is shut off (I used my phone's flash to put light into the screen), so the abnormal picture fade that Taiga exhibits with Debian is some sort of driver glitch (which I don't care to fix).

Taiga also seems to handle multiple tabs in Iceweasel a lot better than in TenFourFox (OS X), which is nice when I actually need it, since I don't have to be on-edge about how many tabs I have open.

I think that's honestly everything - I can't think of anything else to write about.

Things I've learned:

• The 8GB CF card is useless for test installations
• The 30GB IDE disk is best for test installations
• The Mac OS X FTP service is most likely crap (I'm not willing to spend time to test this)
• Reading files from an external HFS+ volume is most reliable with Mac OS X
• Use md5 -r in Mac OS X terminal to print a Linux-style file checksum line (though I probably won't ever generate checksums in Mac OS X again)
• My appreciation for Mac OS X has really depreciated (due to past and current events)

iBook G4 and Debian PPC 3

Well... That was definitely something else...

Since I had the 30GB IDE drive in Sae-chan (and had the Debian installation on it), I didn't want to use that drive for Taiga (for whatever reason that I can't remember). My other options were Sae-chan's actual drive (160GB IDE), Taiga's drive (32GB CF card in an IDE adapter), or and 8GB CF card. I opted for the latter, seeing as the other two were big "no-nos".

Debian failed to install to the 8GB CF card in the IDE adapter (for reasons still unknown) four or five times (I didn't keep a proper count), and I tried a couple different things... From using Sae-chan's combo drive, to using the net-install disk.

Eventually, I snapped and just used the 30GB drive and it worked first time without a problem (I believe I was also using the [recently released] 7.7.0 Xfce disk as well), so I tried once more on the 8GB CF card, making the swap size larger since I thought that was the problem.

And I was wrong, as it still failed. I went for a semi-blind install on the 32GB CF card, seeing that was my only real option to for proper testing, and it also installed without any problems. Again, I have no idea why the installation kept failing on the 8GB CF card (I even tried using GParted to make the partition map as "Apple" - "mac" as GParted has it - while I was in the 30GB installation), and the best I can say is that 8GB is just not enough for Debian (the drive size itself, not the space used).

I thought I was clear after that, but I was certainly wrong. The next problem was the power management for the display... Under the right circumstances, it works as it technically should, but for whatever reason, doesn't work correctly. Instead of a proper black-screen or turning the display off, the back-light stays on (when it clearly shouldn't) and the picture fades from the LCD in a weird way - the colours fade away (usually green is the slightly faster one) and leaves a weird patch of "blocks" which was the image. Maybe the picture fade from the LCD is normal, but since I've always seen the back-light shut off when it's supposed to, I can't say if it is normal or not.

While installing Debian on Sae-chan on the 160GB drive, I played around with the power management settings a lot to try to get the back-light to turn off properly, which never did; I also tried some video settings (trying to disable framebuffer or KMS), which also didn't work. The option I reached - an alternative I didn't want to use - was to pull the plug on the display and use an external monitor. I shut Taiga off and focused on getting Bluetooth and Wifi for Sae-chan, so that I can remove the 15 metre Cat6 cable running to the other side of the house (I didn't think I was going to spend as long I did with Taiga, so I thought I only needed the Cat6 for a couple hours). I then finished up installing what I needed on Sae-chan and went to bed after a 20-hour day.

This morning, I left the bed at roughly eleven (even though I wanted to sleep more) and grabbed one of the monitors that I used to use for Mei-chan, since it had speakers. After slightly rearranging the table and setting the monitor up, I booted Taiga and went to the display settings to disable Taiga's screen. I was quite displeased to see that the back-light did not turn off, and, before shutting Taiga down to unplug the cable to the screen, I decided to see what sort of resolutions I could use with the monitor.

My displeasure was counteracted when I saw that I could use the proper resolution of the monitor - 1440x900. While I had to slightly fix the video position on the monitor (third time I had to do so), it was nice to see that I'll have a lot more screen real estate for the windows (Transmission at its narrowest width takes almost half the screen at 1024x768). Needless to say, I shut Taiga down and unplugged the cable to the screen.

I then tried to get sound to work with Taiga (though on Sae-chan it's just a beep when, say, you try to backspace a text file with nothing in it), but couldn't get anything to work, so I just gave up on it, seeing as it was hardly important to have sound.

The only thing that's wonky is the Bluetooth mouse - if I turn the mouse off and back on while Debian is running, the input service (which makes the mouse move the cursor) doesn't reconnect properly with the mouse and I'm forced to add the device as a "new device". While I'm used to turning the mouse off when I'm not using it, I guess I'm just going to have to leave it on or maybe not use it at all, I'll have to see what happens.

Despite wasting so much time, things still turned out quite well - all the MD5 checksums that I used to spot-check the file transfers checked out exactly (though it's only about 7% of the files); I have a nice, large resolution to work with on Taiga (albeit Taiga's more like a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ oven); updated programs (more updated than ones on OS X 10.4.11); a more stable FTP service (when I install it); and finally no major problems which would force me to revert to OS X 10.4.11 (heck, installing Debian solely from the disk still is faster than installing 10.4 from its disks).

iBook G4 and Debian PPC 2

Debian seems to run a bit better than OS X 10.4.11, but I haven't done extensive testing - mainly just testing LibreOffice out, since it's what I usually use Sae-chan for. Other than LibreOffice, most of the programs seem to start up a bit faster.

I had a horrible time getting the wifi to work with the first installation, and it was because I was installing pretty much anything that seemed to have to do with wifi, so the kernel was probably confused when I installed the b43 driver; I reinstalled Debian and then followed the instructions on Debian's wiki, and it worked after that.

Bluetooth took some work, and it was that I was installing a lot of Bluetooth programs/drivers - that wasn't the actual problem though, it was that connecting the mouse was weird. When I reinstalled, I just installed the GUI configuration program thing and then went to set it up, which got slightly weird again. What it was doing was connecting but not working as a mouse, even though I hit "always accept" when it asked me to connect the device. I actually have to connect the mouse as a new device, so that it registers it as an input device (and cycle the power to the mouse if I reboot).

Transferring files over ethernet seemed to be better having the host computer (Taiga in this case) send the files with Filezilla to the client computer (Sae-chan) instead of the client computer requesting the files from the host computer. I can't exactly say if OS X's built-in FTP's to fault, but when the initial batch of files I sent checked out fine, it's hard not to say so.

I realized why I wanted to keep OS X: to play most of the games I used to play on the Performa 550 with the Mac OS Classic emulator, so I'll be having a dual-boot environment for Sae-chan, but I'll probably have Debian be the default OS to boot to.

Right now, I'm waiting for the rest of the files to transfer before I can begin testing the Wifi/Bluetooth in Debian with Taiga, but it's taking a while. I'm expecting things to go well, since I've already done enough preliminary testing with Sae-chan, and I know what to install now.

I'll be back with the results.

Debian GNOME Part 1

Seeing how nice Debian was on the G5, I decided to test it out on Triela.

After installing, I was met with GNOME fallback, as GNOME 3 was not able to load because of hardware issues - in other words: I need to install FGLRX (Debian decided to use some "random" VESA" driver instead...)

Needless to say, I didn't really test anything past there, as I couldn't exactly remember how to install FGLRX, nor did I want to have to fiddle around with it again, knowing that the open-source Radeon driver covers all the GPUs I own (the highest being the AMD Radeon HD 6770).

I might test again on a desktop, but I'm sure if I want to.

iBook G4 and Debian PPC 1

I was pondering yesterday to put Debian on Sae-chan and Taiga (my best friend's iBook G4 that he's having me use), and I went with testing it on Sae-chan today (albeit, on Sae-chan's original 30GB HDD).

Works better than Ubuntu 10.10/11.04 from what I remember of those, and I remember that 11.04 ran Sae-chan hot and with the fan on most of the time.

Since I didn't want to completely reassemble Sae-chan, I had to plug in a spare mouse to use to get the Bluetooth to work. The Bluetooth is a bit glitchy, and I had to spend a bit of time to get it to work right, but every reboot, I need another HID to accept the Bluetooth mouse's connection before I can use it.

I tested LibreOffice and one of the large stories I'm writing (140 some odd pages), and it seemed to work quite well, though the auto-save seemed to be about the same speed as Mac OSX 10.4 or slightly slower.

I didn't test much else, but I will have to manually install the driver/firmware for the Airport Extreme card (this is where my strong dislike of Broadcom comes from) before I can connect wirelessly to the internet.

The test I'd really like to run is copying files from an external USB drive over ethernet. I remember doing it with Taiga once, and it turned out kinda horribly, either because OSX's built in FTP isn't made for large transfers, or HFS/HFS+ isn't the best file system to use for an external drive (with OSX, I'm pretty limited to what I can use). I think it's because of HFS/HFS+, since when I plug the external into Mei-chan and copy the files that way, I still have a bit of problems; yesterday I had 1 file miscalculate the MD5 from the external, and two bad copies out of 80-100 some odd files, while that doesn't seem bad, it should be a lot rarer. The only problem with testing it is that the files I'd like to copy to test with are on the HFS/HFS+ external drive, so if I copy to an ext4 external drive, it'd have to be in Debian, since using FUSE is a big no-no because that's just extra, unnecessary CPU work. I suppose I could transfer over ethernet to keep the file systems with their respective OS's (ext4 external with Debian, HFS/HFS+ external with OSX) - I'd just need to set up vsftpd to do that.

I will probably do this project soon, I'm just not sure exactly when. I may also migrate Sae-chan to Debian if things seem to be better that way.

Apple PowerMac G5 2

I reburned Fedora at x1 speed, and still wasn't able to boot from it, then tried the net install version, which worked, up until I had to type in the root (or maybe user) password, where it asked me to double-click "Done" when using a weak password - it froze.

I then looked at the list of PPC-based Linux/Unix distributions, and was left with Debian, Free/Open/Net BSD, Vine, and Descent|OS (there's also RHLE, and T2 SDE, both of did not sound like a good idea).

I've touched Vine Linux once before, but since it's Japanese-only text (from what I saw for screenshots), I decided to steer away from it.

Descent|OS sounded okay, but with MATE as the desktop environment, I decided against it (I remember having problems with Cinnamon and MATE when testing them a long while ago).

Free/Open/Net BSD I decided to put off, since I think the installation was a bit more complicated than most standard distributions (Debian, etc).

Debian is what I was left with, and I was decently sceptical, since I remembered booting to a command line after installing on the netbook I used to have, but I went with it anyway, since I didn't have much option. At first I was going to download the DVD version, but was off-put by the 4-hour download - during which, I was reading through the documentation. I then moved to downloading the three install CDs, since it equated to under 2GB, compared with the full DVD-sized download of roughly 4.6GB. After reading a bit more of the documentation, I found there was the Xfce desktop environment, and a separate CD-sized disk 1 for it, so I stopped the regular disk 1 download and started Xfce disk 1 instead. The documentation also said that I'd need disks 2 and 3 along with it, so I downloaded them.

The initial test installation passed the test, not breaking/freezing at any point. What I found really strange was that the installation never asked for disks 2 or 3, especially when the documentation said it would, but it did install all the necessary items with just Xfce disk 1, so I wasn't that concerned with it.

I tried to used Aptitude to update the system, but it got weird and I had to eventually kill the process, since it didn't seem to be getting me anywhere (the process was running just fine); Synaptic worked just fine, minus the "Quick search" box being missing. After installing, setting up, and testing vsftpd, I began writing some of the necessities down, along with a bit of instructions before I did a reinstallation to write instructions for the installation process. I reinstalled again (I believe) to mimic the actual set up/use and wrote more of the installation.

My best friend needed a podcast recording from me (I forgot to give it to him before I left on Saturday), and I took it all to his place to finish up and whatnot. I ran a mock test, transferring a large amount of files (55 files), with one of them being quite large) from my laptop to the G5 then back to my laptop. I had 4 sets of MD5 sums (the original source, the copy on my laptop from the original source, the copy on the G5, and the copy from the G5) and they all came out the same, meaning that there wasn't any problems during transfer over gigabit LAN; the speeds were also acceptable.

One thing I noticed was that sudo didn't seem to work at all - I actually had to use su instead (as in logging into root in terminal). I suppose I could've tried su -c, but it didn't strike me at the time; plus, with some of the things that I needed to do, it seemed faster to just use su and stay in it.

After 4 days of working with it, I'm satisfied with the results; it also makes me tempted to migrate towards using Debian instead of openSUSE because of the rolling-type distribution, but I probably won't.