To the Darkside

So, to recap my previous two postings (1, 2) on my search for a new desktop OS - PC-BSD was too buggy and unsupported (plus the install CD wouldn't boot), Xandros's install CD also wouldn't boot, Ubuntu behaved flaky after a few days, SimplyMEPIS didn't integrate well, and PCLinuxOS wasn't an easy dual monitor setup. Plus, the latter two also had broken virtual terminals. Ctrl-Alt-F2 would either get me to a scrambled screen or just hang the computer immediately. I like my virtual terminals, and often do root commandline stuff from one. Plus, someone mentioned adding a Ctrl-Alt-F8 display terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F7 is the normal one under Linux), which seems cool - run both GNOME & KDE!

But I was pretty happy with PCLinuxOS. It looked nice, was easy to configure, showed me my local disks and even seemed to work with my Visor. I was starting to play the usual xorg.conf games in order to get my dual monitor setup working, when my torrent of the OpenSUSE 10.2 DVD finally finished. I remembered that from before - SUSE is one gigantic distro! So I burned it to a DVD and rebooted from it.

And immediately fell in love. The install went smoothly, although I did miss the part in the advanced section where I could choose where to install the boot loader, so I had to follow these instructions to get GRUB set up correctly once I rebooted into the OS on the hard drive. But otherwise it went smoothly, and I booted up into GNOME OpenSUSE 10.2.

And the love affair continued. I was especially blown away when I was actually able to run SaX2, the SUSE X Config program, to select my dual monitor setup, tell it to use the two as a single display, and it just worked! I had to make a few adjustments to the sync rates, as my tube display (a Samsung SyncMaster 997DF) shimmies and shakes if it uses a vertical refresh of anything but 60, so I just pretend it is a standard VESA 1280x1024 60hz display and it works like a charm. Wow, how cool was that?

And the good stuff continued. I was able to sync to my Palm Pilot (actually Visor), although I haven't had as much luck since I made the move back to KDE (very easy to switch around window managers in SUSE), but then again, I haven't worked on that yet. It saw all my Windows and DOS partitions and even mounted them for me in /windows/c, d and e. It saw my BSD disks, but didn't try to do anything with them. Amarok works like a charm with my CDs, although I'm disappointed it isn't a better ripper. I start the other one (Helix) to actually do the ripping.

I was able to find an install package for Teamspeak and it works great. It seems to notice my second CD drive, but there actually looks like there is a hardware problem, as Windows is having a problem reading things on it too. I've gotten printing to work, and it easily sees my Windows network. YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) works great for software packages, with plenty of options. You do have to take the time to add the recommended repositories, as mentioned here, to get the best choices. I'm sure it is only a matter of time before my voracious software package habits start confusing it, but so far so good!

The updates seem to work pretty well, although a couple of pages suggested turning off the new ZenWorks stuff and go back to YaST, so I did that. It may have been premature in 10.2, as the new Zen stuff seems to be better. The KVM switch works well, heck even better than on Windows, as lately every time I boot into Windows, I have to reboot as the keyboard isn't recognized, and I don't have that problem with OpenSUSE. The virtual terminals work like a champ and I finally got printing to work.

So life is good and I've settled on a distro. It's funny, as I was reading this review of 10.2 on Software in Review and I couldn't disagree more with most of his complaints. He even said to remove SaX, which is ridiculous, as it's the only X config tool I've found worth anything. And he's complaining about app bloat in KDE - big deal. That's another selling point to me for SUSE - it is a complete distro out of the box and works very well. Once you start adding packages, it tends to destabilize things, so working with a basic, yet hefty, initial install is a pretty good way to go about things. Ditto with the additional YaST repositories. First he complains about too hard to keep up, and then wants more. Funny, because his Hacking OpenSUSE 10.2 is well worth the read.

Now some have problems with Novell and its fingers all over the SUSE pie and for crawling into bed with Microsoft. But to me, if that's what it takes to put together a rock solid distro, then I'm all for it. The OpenSUSE community doesn't seem to be as well knit and centralized as other distros like Ubuntu, but I'm finding my niches. Opensuseforums.net works well, as do the mailing lists. Count me in as a happy OpenSUSE camper! Notice I've changed the subtitle of the blog to searching for Open OS nirvana, a more general term.

My server will continue to be a FreeBSD box, and my comments here are likely to be of interest to both BSD and Linux folks, although it will lean more towards Linux, I'm sorry to say. Plus ça change, I guess...

Suse OpenOffice Update links

Here is a list of the OpenOffice links to add if you want to get the latest updates to SUSE. Pick the one that matches up with your version.

Index of /download/OpenOffice.org

Powered by ScribeFire.

Come Out Please, Panel

A seemingly common KDE bug is that the panel, after hiding, never comes back. Sometimes I found just logging out and logging back in will make it come back, but that isn't always true. Here's some methods I've come across to fix this problem, something that is even more common in dual monitor setups like mine:

• $ rm ~/.kde/share/config/kickerr

  , then logout and back in.


• Toggle the autohide mode



• $ killall kicker

  , then restart kicker

See these bugs for more info:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118551

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80469

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39307

Dizzy Distro Dailies

To continue my story, after I had become a little frustrated with various inconsistencies with Ubuntu, I decided to check out some other choices. It's not that Ubuntu wasn't fixable, it just was going to take some work, and before I invested the time and energy into settling down permanently, I figured I might as well date some other distros to see if there was a better match.

Actually, I first decided to try a fresh install of PC-BSD. I was hoping that a brand new install of PC-BSD would clean up the various annoying problems I was having with my upgraded one. So I downloaded the latest install CD, burned it and tried to get it to boot on my main machine. I tried three different burn speeds, as in the past, the PC-BSD install ISO has been sensitive to that setting. But none of 40x, 16x or 8x would even boot. It go along a bit, but then I would get the "READ_BIG" error I'd seen in prior installation attempts and then it would have problems mounting various bits, finally deciding on a ttys complaint. So that wouldn't do.

So I moved on to Xandros. I used to recommend this distro, as my first experience with it was wonderful - easy install, easy Windows integration and just a nice experience. But my next experience wasn't quite so smooth, but I figured I would try it again. Another Xandros drawback is that the real version isn't free but rather costs anywhere from US$40 to US$80. But I thought that if it actually worked, it would be worth the money.

But, alas, it failed in a similar fashion to PC-BSD, only even earlier in the CD boot process. A couple lines of text, a blank screen, then nothing. And there's even a dozen or so boot options you can pick from, and none of them went any farther. Sigh. Back to the DistroWatch popular list.

Next up was MEPIS (meep-iss?). Finally, a CD installation that went smoothly! A very nice looking Live CD setup, I tried the SimplyMEPIS 6.5RC2, although I had been trying to avoid cutting edge. This looked pretty solid so I went ahead and installed it. I particularly loved how it let me choose where to install GRUB (I chose the root install in my hdc drive). Very nice. Lots of good options and it went on without a scratch. A quick tweak to my BootIT NG installation (I wish it picked up changes automatically like System Commander did), and I was off and running.

I liked the X Config, although it didn't quite work. I was scared off by the warning when I tried to add fglrx option for my ATI card, so I held off a bit. But it didn't seem to install correctly and I couldn't quite get my dual monitor setup working. Nor did it show any of my local Windows, Linux & BSD partitions, although by now I knew the magical command to mount a BSD partition:

$ sudo mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2 -ro/dev/hdg1 /bsd 

You need to tell it what type of UFS it is, as I guess it has a hard time figuring it out. So SimplyMEPIS was a pretty good install, but I wanted more.

Next up was PCLinuxOS. What a very pretty boot up, LiveCD this was! I enjoyed the little bouncy balls. Once again I tempted fate by using the "Test Release 3", but again it was very solid (even if its 'livecd-TR3.iso' name is too generic!). The install went very nicely, including a very nice partition editing program which, if you go into the Expert mode, lets you pick where to install GRUB (again, a very important feature for me).

After installation, it went very well. The control center is nice, the screens are very pretty and it even listed all my local partitions in /etc/fstab. It, of course, didn't have the correct ufstype option for my bsd partitions, but it did know they were UFS, which is cool. But it still didn't do my dual monitor setup "out of the box", so I began my usual xorg.conf tweaking odyssey. Before I got too far, my download of the DVD OpenSUSE finally finished, so I figured I would try one last distro before settling down. More next time...

Dizzy Dizzy

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here at Daemon Dancing World Headquarters. I finally made the big internal office move, setting up all the way downstairs in the forlorn hope of getting a quieter work place. One where I can actually close a door to shut out some of the kid noise. The girls are actually very good in general, but they are only 7 and 6, so can be expected to be only so quiet. So I've been planning this office move for quite some time, and finally pulled it off. While I am by no means completely settled in, I do have two of the computers set up and running. Now to get the bookshelves restocked.

Another big time sink has been the effort to find a new OS. PC-BSD just wasn't working out. Ever since the 3.x upgrade and, I believe, the move to HAL, my hardware has been kinda screwed up. I no longer saw my local disks, the syslog was getting filled with a warning messages about some device, sound wasn't working, and the list went on and on. These problems, plus the fact that I just don't think FreeBSD is a good client machine. It is still a great server OS, but its lack of basic amenities like Flash and solid multimedia apps means it is too much ofa fight to use as a personal workstation.

So I went back to looking at Linux distros. Tired of playing with the lost stepchild of OSes in FreeBSD, I began looking at the most popular distros on Distrowatch. I wrote up a short list of things I wanted my OS to do for me:

• Install, with extra credit given for those that understand I'm using my own boot loader and to give me an easy option for picking where and what to install for a boot. Installing from a LiveCD is also a plus.


• Play audio CDs. I should just be able pop a CD into the player and listen to music, with an easy way to rip it.


• Show me my local partitions. And I make it difficult, by having five different kinds of partitions - DOS, FAT-32, NTFS, ext3 and ufs2 (the BSD one). The latter one is vitally important, as I have six months of living done on it.


• Dual monitor support. As I've documented in the past, dual monitor support is a real pain with X and I wanted a better way. I never could get it to work in PC-BSD with more than 16 bit color. And by using Linux, I could even go with an "official" driver from ATI, as I don't mind using proprietary stuff if it "just works".


• Palm Pilot connectivity. Another thing I was never entirely successful in doing with BSD, getting my Palm Pilot (actually, an old Handspring Visor) to sync.


• Teamspeak. This is a voice communications app I like to use and even had it working for a bit on PC-BSD. But the mic stopped working, just one of many things.


• See both of my CD drives. I have a DVD writer and a plain old 50x CD-ROM drive, which was another device that disappeared in the HAL days of PC-BSD.


• Connects to my Windows network. This is especially true in order to get to my printers, both of which are hooked off of Windows boxes.


• Easily add apps. I'm a real glutton for apps, and I need to easily get at new ones.


• Automatic OS updates. I just don't want to think about it. Make my updates happen.


• Work with my KVM switch. It's been a little on the flakey side, as machines just miss out seeing the keyboard, but it has to easily work with my KVM switch.


• Get to the text terminals, ones that work. I like to have a root login on one of the alternate ttys that you get to via Ctrl-Alt-Fn. I spent way too much time trying to get more resolution than 80x25 on the PC-BSD text terminals.


• As mentioned in an earlier one, let me easily add a networked printer.

Seems like a pretty basic list, one that nearly anyone would need. Only the dual monitor support is pushing the limits, and even that isn't so strange these days. So I began my quest with the most popular Linux distro these days, Ubuntu. For some reason, I was bound and determined to go with a GNOME desktop this time. I'm not sure why I was being such a glutton for punishment, as I was pretty satisfied with PC-BSD's KDE desktop, and that's all I needed was Yet Another Thing to learn, but I just couldn't resist. So I stuck with the main Ubuntu line, as opposed to Kubuntu, which does the KDE desktop. It also had the added benefit of matching up with Edubuntu, which is a Ubuntu-based distro target at the educational market, which I hoped to install on the girls' computer.

So I downloaded the 6.10 "Edgy Eft" release and got busy installing. I resized an NTFS partition to give it 60gb to work with and installed pretty much the basic set. I've installed Ubuntu before and its LiveCD install is very nice. It's still annoying in how you tell it where to install the boot loader. There's a mysterious

(hd0)

in the middle of the last window that you are somehow supposed to know what to type in. This time I was ready though and knew I had to type in (hd1,6) to use the sixth partiion (second extended) of the second hard drive. It should do better, even though I realize most people will be happy with the default. The problem is, if they aren't it can be a pretty mysterious problem.

And so I settled in for the long haul. I figured if Ubuntu was good enough for so many people, it was probably good enough for me. But I only lasted about three days with it. The dual monitor setup was painful. Not quite so bad as for PC-BSD, but still a drag, and I could only get the "two displays" mode running, not the "one big display" (Xinerama or MergedFB) mode going. It wasn't too painful, as your mouse can go from one display to the other, just not windows. I don't know why the defaults are so weird. The basic setup has the displays in "Clone" mode, where one merely mimics the other - virtually useless. The next default is this one, with two displays. Slightly more useful, but still not what you want out of the box - just one big dislay.

But the gradually things started going awry. I couldn't get Teamspeak to work. It wasn't in any repository, and the installer from the website (GoTeamspeak.com also wouldn't work. The media players gave me headaches. It took me far too long to get the mixer settings correct so that CD playing worked. Amarok only worked intermittently, crashing or disappearing at startup. I had some problems getting the fglrx (ATI) driver to build without errors, although it seemed to work. But if I wanted these problems, I'd go back to Windows!-)

So I started looking around some more. Heck, much to the surprise of my Mac friend, I even checked out Mac prices, but I wasn't ready to go there yet! I list more distros that I tried in my next post.