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.
05 November 2014
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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