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.