29 January 2009 | Jason
I installed VMware Workstation 6.5 with my new Windows 7 install in the hopes that I would still have linux on my machine somehow. I gave up on OpenSUSE trying to work properly after a few weeks of trying to get everything working properly on my hardware and went back to Windows. I should have tried to install again with a new properly burned install disk, but was too lazy. VMware installed easily in Windows, and I started it up. I got an install disk for OpenSUSE and installed that. Read More
16 January 2009 | Jason
I watch as my files copy over to the second computer. 12 megs a second. Why won’t it go any faster? I’m on gigabit ethernet! Maybe I shouldn’t have used bittorrent to copy my files over. As my files finish, I quickly restart my computer with my freshly burned Windows 7 beta, build 7000 DVD in my drive. Crap! I forgot to change the bios settings to boot off the disk drive. Another restart later, I make it to the install screen. This looks oddly like the Vista install screen. Oh well, I guess they’ve been working on adding new features rather than another installer. I wipe my entire harddrive and install what I hope to be a good Windows. After about half an hour, I am able to play around. It’s quite a beautiful setup and a good deal of my hardware works out of the box. So far I think only my fingerprint reader doesn’t work. My sound did get broken later though, but it did work. A great deal snappier than the Vista I had just removed. I play around a bit and have fun with the new titleless taskbar. Visually, a lot of Windows 7 looks like Vista with many upgrades. This next link will show you the new features and much of the eye candy.
Deep inside the Windows 7 Public Beta: an in-depth tour
I cleared my entire hard drive for Windows 7. This means I removed my linux(es) and Vista partitions completely. I wondered if I would regret my decision of not having linux running natively on my machine, but so far, Windows 7 has not disappointed (much). The only problem so far has been getting internet working with VMware, but that has been partially solved. I have also only had 1 BSoD so far.
Windows 7 as “Linux killer”? How times have changed!
Windows has finally released another good operating system, but that actually is pretty and I might use. Everyone go get Windows 7 beta now, before the trial period closes.
7 January 2009 | Jason
I have been using the new distro for a week or two by now and an sadly less pleased with this version than the previous one. I keep having random kernel panics forcing me to hard reboot. NetworkManager also doesn’t work quite as well as I would have hoped. Pidgin was also not working until I deleted my ~/.purple and redid the configuration. Flash 10 randomly crashes or audio gets corrupted. The battery meter is not functioning correctly. The machine turns itself off automatically after about 20 minutes of being unplugged. The battery should last at least a few hours if not more. VLC skips frames while trying to play an HD picture although the same file plays perfectly in Kaffeine. There was a time I could not log into my account from the KDM. I had to create a new user account and copy over config files.
Overall, I am fairly displeased with the number of problems in this version. Many problems are probably because of incompatibilities in the config files from different versions. So, since I need to clean my machine anyway. I am going to nuke my entire machine and start fresh. Install Vista with a smaller partition. Install a clean OpenSUSE 11.1. Leave some space for Gentoo. Install VMware and install XP with hardware 3d acceleration so I can still play games like Age of Empires 2 which won’t run under Vista.
Nuke everything before trying new software. Being clean is good.
21 December 2008 | Jason
I remember as I wake up for the first time in four months in my own bed that OpenSUSE finally has its new release out. I quickly head over to OpenSUSE and download the KDE4 Live CD. I let this download as I visit friends for the day. I get home and burn the ISO and commence installation. I generally accept that everything will work just as it did in 11.0 so I am looking forward to the new features. The installation finishes quickly and it pulls in most of my previous settings. I excitedly reboot for the installation to finish and it finishes doing its automatic configuration. I log into my account and am at first slightly disappointed, it did not autodetect my monitor resolution and was at an ugly 1280×768 resolution. I quickly load up Yast (where all system configuration is) and start Sax2 (X config util) to reconfigure my xorg.conf to be full 1680×1050. Okay, that was a little disappointing, just a little hiccup. In Yast I add the usual repositories and update everything and install missing software. 2 GB to install. Okay, I’m just going to let this run overnight.
I wake up and reboot the machine. The first time I booted it hung for a while. I thought it was just fsck-ing but I went from the pretty framebuffered screen to the terminal and saw it hung on something. HAL (Hardware abstraction layer) crashed somewhere and was displaying a stack trace. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with this error (should have sent a bug error), and hit ctrl+c to get out of it and try to start the system. At least it wasn’t a fatal kernel crash. My /home wasn’t mounted so none of my settings could be loaded. Ahh crap. I already broke something. I rebooted everything hoping somehow it would all be better. It was. Weird… two hiccups, I never had this before.
I boot up and everything is running smoothly. KDE4 compositing is on and everything is pretty looking. I try to get online and realize I’m not connected. I try to connect to the wireless with knetworkmanager/kde3 but nothing happens. Why doesn’t this work?! Wireless was working fine on the live cd. I eventually go into Yast again and change it so the network is not managed by networkmanager. It works. This could be a slight problem trying to connect to obscure wireless networks that I’m not familiar with. For the moment it works. I try to search around on the wiki about how it normally uses networkmanager but find nothing. After a bit of searching, I find a widget for Networkmanager and try that. I eventually get it to work after a few restarts and a few setting changes. Maybe this is a remanant of having an old ~/.kde4. Three hiccups. This is a little disappointing, but at least I was able to get past them. It is a slight disappointment how there are these small problems, but I know it will be better.
The desktop itself is very pretty. Compositing is enabled by default and my machine takes advantage of this. Transparencies and rotating cubes and more eye candy everywhere. I still love OpenSUSE even with the few problems I ran into. My only disappointment is the networkmanager widget. It is less straightforward than the kde3 version, but that version doesn’t work anymore as far as I can tell. I have yet to test the suspend to disk/ram, but they should work. Will report back when I do. I still recommend OpenSUSE to everyone who wants a good linux distro.
New releases of software will have slight problems. Work through them and everything will hopefully work.