openSUSE 12.3 Part 1

I finally got around to installing it on the test partition on Triela. I like a lot of the changes, but for some reason, I can't get access the internet... not even ifup is working to get me online :/

Instead of there being two tabs under activities for windows and applications, they moved the additional programs in the favourites bar at the bottom. This accomplishes two things, (1) it gets rid of the trash can to remove as favourites, and (2) it removes the lag when loading the list of applications after the first time (I guess this was fixed for 12.2 as well, I just never noticed; 12.3's version is a bit cleaner IMO).

The lock screen is different, you have to drag the time up before you can type your password in, I'm assuming this is for tablet/touchscreen users.

The "advanced settings" tool is renamed as "tweak tool" and features more options. there's more options in the trackpad/mouse section as well, including a switch to turn the trackpad on/off.

That's about all for now, I'll have to test it with Melty later in live mode and see if I can use the internet. If not, I might have to wait :/

(edit)

I tested the live version on Melty and the ethernet worked just fine :D

Looks like my old GTK 2.x window bar theme doesn't work in 12.3... I guess the compatibility for anything pre-GTK 3.x is dropped, so I gotta poke around for something that might work better... or maybe find a way around it XD (perhaps the latter)

Everything else seemed fine, so I think I can install it on at least Melty for now (I'd have to do the Wifi-testing with Mei-chan to see if it's something with the laptop's hardware, or if 12.3 is just being weird. I'm going to tinker with the theme first before installing on Melty... Not to mention, I need to stuff Rhythmbox's preferences before I lose it (there's also the need to Firefox sync afterwards too :/)

(edit)

I download the full install DVD and the ethernet and wireless worked on the laptop after reboot; must have been some sort of glitch or something I dunno. I tried some GTK 3.x themes and none of the window bars worked, so something's not working right; the default one, Adawatta or something like that, looks fine, but is just larger than i like my window bars (I like it at about 24px). I'm just gonna have to deal with it I think.

(edit)

I found a nice theme I like (called Mire for future reference), and while searching for themes, I learned that I'm supposed to put them in /usr/share/themes and not ~/.themes like back in the day with GTK2. I tried this out on the Dell (which is my test-bed now), and the window bar came up for my custom theme! Even though it works now, I like the theme I found better, even though the window bar is the same size as the default one. I could use my custom one, but it doesn't look as good (not to mention the highlight colours don't match either).

Upgrades (Round 2) Part 2

I upgraded the sound card for Melty, since I thought that's what was causing an audible choppiness every now and then... and turns out it's Sound Blaster's surround engine just failing for that particular case...

Anyway, the new sound card isn't compatible in openSUSE, so I made a switch box to switch between the sound card and the onboard audio.



I might have returned the card had I known it was the surround engine at fault... Though there's a fun piece to the sound card where it can modify your voice to sound much different, which works pretty well, and in most cases is quite uncanny.

Network Attached Storage 1

I got my NAS a couple weeks ago, and it's nice having it, now that have a redundant copy of my files in a centralized location.

It was a roller-coaster learning it though... After the initial setup, I did the quick setup which I couldn't figure out how to set up RAID1 and it ended up setting it up with the "Synology Hybrid RAID" whatever that is. After that I figured it out and deleted the hybrid RAID and set up RAID 1 like I wanted. It had to do some sort of disk/parity check even though it was RAID1... took a few hours to complete, but luckily, I was setting it up before work, so I just let it do it's thing while I went to work.

I attempted to fiddle with the settings to try to make it accessible over the internet, but to no luck. I'm not horribly concerned about it, since I mainly want to access it via LAN.

I had also set up the blocking feature, where I thought would just block IPs with bad logins.... but it turns out that it also blocks a login with a different IP/OS combo... In other words, the first instance I was making users for each of the computers (since you can't log "user a" on multiple computers at the same time), from Mei-chan. After making the first one, I got booted out and couldn't log back in as the admin... So I had to boot Melty back on to get into it and make a secondary admin account and unblock Mei-chan. Second time it happened, I was in openSUSE with Melty, and was trying to access the files and it locked me out, both admin accounts. Rebooting to windows didn't help, so I had to boot up Mei-chan and clear out the block and turn the feature off. If it had worked like I wanted, it would've been nice, but it was more of a hassle than it was worth. (By the way, I had it set to 1 login attempt within a 10 hour period with a 1 day lockout)

The on/off schedule is nice as well, I set it to be off while I'm at work, since there's no point for me to have it on when I'm not accessing it.

Raspi 1

Note: Raspi = Raspberry Pi

I'm surprised I haven't even posted a thing about my Raspi... Anyway....

It's not horribly powerful, though it's supposed to be able to stream 1080p video... Chrome kicks the SoC to 100%... so yeah, idk :/

I plan on doing a few tests with Transmission (BitTorrent program) to see how it works out... Otherwise, I'll have to drop the idea of holding openSUSE torrents, which would be a bit of a bummer.

I made a "case" for the Raspi... it's quite crude and actually doesn't hold the Raspi 100% securly. BUT! It does have a fan! XDDDD

Just a fan that blows on the ARM chip, none of the funny heat-sinks that I've seen... too much drilling XD

The case is made from a optical disk drive shell, a 5.25" bay tear-off cover, and some tear-off PCI covers XP



You can see the SD card sticking out and the anti-static foam that the Raspi sits on (rather have any ESD from the case go to the Raspi power cable that's not plugged in for the picture, not to mention, it needs to sit on something anyway). The fan is on, it was the stock fan from Ziggy's CPU cooler, and you can also see the fan controller I added so it's not blasting at full speed. All the "case" parts are from computer parts as previously stated XP

The ARM chip stays relatively cool even though I keep the fan speed at lowest. Funny thing is that when I plug the fan in, I have to kinda turn the knob a smidge higher (enough to where it "bounces" back like when you turn the key of a car to start the engine, which is about 1-2 degrees on the knob) spin the fan with a finger and then let go. At worst though, I just turn it up and then ease it down.

The "shroud" has a spring underneath with some rubber pads and mounts to the case with a couple motherboard stand-off screws.

There are three screws in a triangular formation that make up the feet (since the motherboard stand-off screws protrude from the bottom).

Two of the fan's mounting brackets are screwed into the case to make sure it doesn't decide to fly away or something XD

I think I'm done now.

Upgrades (Round 2) Part 1

I realized yesterday that I haven't written about some of things that happened recently.

I was going to upgrade the Dell computer I acquired to a dual core, but after ordering the parts, I found out that the BIOS is locked to certain processors (which is one of the main reasons why I never buy desktops and build them instead). So I ended up doing a build for it, which I'm not really going to go into.

I found that the Zalman CNPS9700 that I installed for Lie-chan was not plugged in... Oops. Luckily, it wasn't a problem, and I just plugged it in and toyed with some settings in BIOS to spin it down some.

After the Intel build, I decided to poke around Mei-chan a bit and I found the reason why she was loud was the 9700, so I ordered a Zalman CNPS9900 Max and put in the old fan controller that was originally for Ziggy (back when I had the 92mm Vantec Tornado in the case) while I was waiting for it to arrive. Installation was a bit difficult, since the tool supplied with that specific one was a bit short in the nib and lacking the bevel, which ended up stripping enough of the screw head to make it annoying... I had to use the short end to finish mounting it. It also warped the motherboard slightly, but not nearly as much as the stock 775 cooler on the Intel build...

For the Intel build, I removed the stock cooler and put in the 9700 from Mei-chan, along with Zalman's Fan Mate 2 fan-controller on the front of the case, which cooled the processor down about 10C compared to the stock cooler.

Mei-chan isn't nearly as loud as she used to be, but she's not dead silent either.

Oh, I found that if I discharge a large amount of electro-static to Mei-chan's case, the voltage leak noise stops until I turn her off after booting, but it's less annoying than the PSU power switch I think *shrugs*

I also cut the mouse from the VAIO in half to use the scroll wheel since the Marble Mouse doesn't have a scroll wheel and the scroll ring on the Wacom tablet is too far when I need a quick scroll. I just need to get used to it now.

I recently upgraded Melty from the AMD FX 8120 to the AMD FX 8320 and noticed the improvement that the other Newegg reviewers noticed that did the same upgrade. I'm also going to upgrade the keyboard for Melty as well from the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard to the G710+ mechanical gaming keyboard.

I technically don't need the extra gaming features on the G710+ (in fact, a mechanical keyboard would have worked just fine, but I'm a Logitech loyalist), but hey, I can't really complain about more macro buttons XP

Main reason why I'm replacing the keyboard is that it's getting annoying to use sometimes... I think I pressed pause/play when I didn't press it down enough... and sometimes if I want it to go to the next song, it'll ghost press it for me, so it skips a song -_-;; not to mention that sometimes when I hit say Shift+F5, it doesn't respond, so either I have to hit it again or I have to hold it down -_-;;

I'm sure the contact sheets just need a cleaning, but I don't want to turn it into a periodic maintenance when I can get a keyboard that I won't have to worry about for a long, long while.

Well, within a couple months I'll have my own internet, so hopefully that works out better than the internet my parents are using... and have my own computer network complete with NAS! I'm so stoked!

Well, I think I'm done for now - building computers that is. There won't be a need to replace/upgrade any of the compies for a long while... Well, the BD-RW drive upgrade maybe, but that's pretty minor. I don't use Triela all that much, so she works well as a laptop (sometimes I use Momiji Sae-chan, but that's a bit different).

Ziggy 1

So I decided to dig Ziggy out as a refresher that the CPU was dead and not the PSU...

After plugging him in and turning him on... Ziggy booted!

There was some sort of CMOS error that popped up, so I guess that's all it was... Something probably happened to the CMOS, which caused it to lock up on boot.

Good news is that Ziggy's not dead, bad news is that I dunno what to use Ziggy for now :/

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 5

I guess there was an update that fixed it, so the theme doesn't disappear. Yay!