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.

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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.

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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.

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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.