Problem Solving and Not Installing GoblinX

I did not use my Kubuntu computer for over a week until my previous post on Tuesday. I booted it up and updated it and since there was an update to the kernel I decided to restart the computer. I logged in as usual and the KDE was going through its logging routine and low and behold I am back at the logging screen. I logging again same thing, what the hell? I change sessions to KDE 4.0.1 and I log in properly. I search the Internet to find out if I am the only one with this problem. I find nothing. I have a headache and must go to work. I start downloading GoblinX to try and to have something to write about in this post. I leave everything until I get back from work.

GoblinX is done downloading. I decide to search for a solution to my problem and decide that if I can’t fix it I would try GoblinX. I find a solution. Apparently using Kubuntu is not recommended for English Canadians. The en-ca language pack is what was screwing up my Kubuntu logging. To fix this I had to remove the English Canadian language pack from my computer and everything now works fine.

Now my adventure with my OpenGEU computer. Last week I had lost sound on this box and after 30 minutes of searching I find out that I had to reinstall emodule-mixer and alsa, remove the mixer from the shelf it was one, restart the computer and when the computer was back on put the mixer back on the shelf. The sound was back. After an update on Wednesday I had no sound again. I repeat what I did last week and I have sound again. I hope I don’t have to do this after every updates. I decided that if I have to do this I’ll install GoblinX on this computer.

GoblinX will be installed on a virtual machine this weekend because I am intrigued with it. I’ll let you know about it in a future posting.

Nothing Going On

Why did I promise to write 4 posts a month one one blog and at least a post a week on another? Damn myself! I have written anything on this blog for so long because I have nothing new to write about. I still have four posts to write. I haven’t really tried anything new since the last time. KDE 4.0.1 is slowly evolving but to be honest with you I haven’t even touched KDE for over a week.

I did reformat the computer that I had elive installed on. Now it has OpenGEU, which for those of you that don’t know is the re-vamped version of Geubuntu. This computer I have been using on a daily base. It is a fine environment for a computer with limited resources. Everything else is the same.

KDE The Next Generation

Yesterday KDE 4.0 Was unleashed to the world. I got home from work late last evening so all I did was install it using this guide from Kubuntu. I checked if it was working, it was. I decided to rest and keep my adventurous soul in check and wait until this evening to check it out. After trying it out for the last hour or so I like the look of it and I have a lot of forgetting how KDE 3.5.8 works and learn a new way of doing things if I am going to use KDE 4.0. I find it harder than Enlightenment at the moment and Enlightenment is very different than anything else out there.

I won’t get rid of my trusty KDE 3.5.8 yet but I’ll use KDE 4.0 from now on to get used to it because KDE 3.5.8 will be forgotten by next year? Maybe, maybe not, only time will tell.

The Geubuntu Failure

In Geubuntu, for one reason or another, the repositories for Geubuntu and Enlightenment are not there. Last night I added them and updated my system. I also screwed up my system. The Gnome panel at the top of the desktop was hiding but not coming back. I was pissed off because I could not get it back so the simplest thing to do was to re-install and start over. I am used to this so I decided to give Elive another chase. I shouldn’t says another chance, I should say a fair chance. I installed it and low and behold the screen resolution was perfect. I followed the same instructions as with Geubuntu to get the Thunar File Manager able to view the other computers in my network.

I’ll continue to “play” around with Elive and keep you up to date.

The Elive Failure

Thank goodness one of my resolutions for this year was not to run Elive for six month. Yesterday I got rid of it and replaced it with geubuntu. This was all the Thunar file manager’s fault. Thunar has no native network ability. As you regular readers know I have several computers and I want to be able to use any file from any computer no matter which computer I am using at the time. With Thunar I could not do it, at first. I found a helpful guide that explained how to do this for Xubuntu. I wanted a quick fix to this situation and when after about 15 minutes of trying to change my previlege I simply gave up and said to myself “self, this guide is for Xubuntu it should work for Geubuntu,” I did not have to twist my arm within 20 minutes I had Geubuntu installed. After another half hour, I had to install all the updates and nvidia driver, I had the same problem.

At this point I should mention that I had another situation with elive that at first I was going to live with but with the “non”-file sharing between computers made this unacceptable. For one reason or another I could not get the screen resolution to work with elive. On this computer I am using a LCD monitor that has a resolution of 1440×900. In elive when I set this as my resolution my monitor was to small, what I mean is that I was not seeing the complete screen. As I moved my cursor to the edge of the screen I would see that part of the screen. I had tried changing the video driver but to no avail so I set it up to 1280×800 and only at this resolution was I able to see the complete desktop on my screen. It looked distorted of course. In Geubuntu after installing the “resricted” nvidia driver I could see the desktop as it should be in wonderful wide screen 1440×900 resolution. Just this has made it worth while to switch to Geubuntu. Now back to the Thunar situation.

I followed the instructions that I had found for Xubuntu, until it says to go in the Users and Group. Geubuntu has no Users and Group in the system menu. I screwed around a bit and figured how to change my previlege so that I could use the fuse file system. I haven’t figured out how to auto start fusesmb yet, all I have to do is run the command: “fusesmb /media/network” and it works. I have to remember to do this when I start up the computer.

Fully Enlightened

As previously reported I was trying Geubuntu and Elive-Gem on virtual machines. Now I decided to take a bigger step: I have just installed Elive 1.2.4 on one of my computers. Why did I choose Elive over Geubuntu? I must say that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are my operating system of choice and that is the reason that decided to go with Elive, Geubuntu would have been another Ubuntu flavour. I know that Elive is based on Debian as is Ubuntu but Elive does not depend on Ubuntu as Geubuntu does. So the next few weeks I will be learning to do things slightly differently and I shall keep you updated.

Installing Elive on the computer was very easy even an amateur could do it. It is as simple as pooping in the install CD in the tray, rebooting the computer from the CD ROM/DVD ROM a few clicks to choose language video driver and you have the live desktop working. Clicking on the install icon will get you to partition your hard drive and decide where to install the root directory and if you want to create other file directories. You then choose passwords for root and users when all this is done you have to restart the computer. As with all Linux systems you have to log in the system when it starts and you will be asked to enter the root password to “tweak” the system and voila it is done. Now let the fun begin.

I don’t know if the previous paragraph constitute educating you, the reader, something about Linux as mandated in my previous post, for now it will have to do. I have not broken any of my new year resolutions yet but the new year is only 13 hours and 33 minutes old at the time I am writing this.

I have to mention that every time I try a new Linux distribution it takes less time to install than ever, pretty soon we will find that waiting more than five minutes for an installation a tedious affair.

I will call this post, the first of many for 2008, done. So I’ll keep you updated in my computing affairs.

I Have Seen the Light with Enlightenment

I have been experimenting with both Geubuntu and Elive-Gem the last few days and I am quite intrigued. I have been using Virtualbox trying them out and I like what I have seen so far. Yesterday I was off from work and played around with both and I was so impressed with Geubuntu that I was one mouse click away from installing it one my laptop. I was to lazy to back up the files from my /home directory to my /storage one, so I did not install it. I wait a bit before I decide to take the plunge. I can’t install Elive-Gem on the laptop because it won’t support my wifi or audio card.

Both these operating systems use Enlightenment as there windows manager and it is different from everything I have seen so far. Maybe I’ll install it on my eldest desktop, but not now, I wanted to try KDE 4.0 first when it comes out in January.

In the last two post I mentioned that I have been trying out other web browsers than the top two. Here are my finding. On the laptop I am using Epiphany with a bunch of there extensions. On this computer I am not missing Firefox at all, to tell you the truth I prefer Epiphany. On my Kubuntu box I have been using Konqueror which I find slow but I still enjoy it. I would choose Firefox over it. On my Ubuntu 64bit computer I have kept Firefox but I installed the 32bit version so that the flash player plug in could work. I might switch over to Epiphany on this computer. On this same computer I have XP with which I tried Maxthon and since I don’t use XP often I find alright but I haven’t used it to its full potential. At work I now use Opera and I am very impressed with it, it is very fast I would recommend it to anybody wanting to get rid of bloated browsers.

I guess my time is up for today.