An Update on OpenSUSE 11.1

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.

Laundry

23 November 2008 | Jason

So it is 4:30AM and I am doing my laundry.  You may ask why I’m doing it so late, I could actually ask myself that same exact question.  I think it is because I actually have run out of clothes to wear, so I do have wash my clothes.  I was down at 3:50 to put my clothes in the washers and all was well.  My clothes were in the washer and the laundry machine took my techcash.  Water ran through the place you put detergent and all was good.  I headed back upstairs to my room to do random nothings until they were done washing.

At 4:20 my timer went off telling me to put the clothes in the dryers.  I head downstairs to put them in.  I open the first washer, and to my surprise, there was water still.  Had it not spun out any of the water?  I check the screen.  It says: reselect cycle.  I do so and have to frustratingly wait another 40 minutes for those clothes to finish washing before I can dry them.  The clothes in the second washer are better, so I take them to the dryer.  Everything is good.  I go to the techcash machine and I swipe my card.  “Please try again”  I swipe and swipe, and it finally reads my card after about 40 swipes.  Frustrating, but at least it works.

Don’t depend on laundry to follow a tight time schedule.  There will be problems.