Getting You Up To Date

I have gone missing for over two weeks, I was on vacation and I sort of took some time off of working on my computers.  I have now returned and my post will be more frequent.  The first thing on my agenda  is the Dell RAM situation I told you about in my last post.  Last week when I got home I called the Dell service line to get them to ship me the replacement RAM for my Vostro laptop.  They told me that I would get the 1 Gb RAM card within 10 business days.  The courier tried to deliver it to me 18 hours after I hung up with Dell.  I was not at home so I called them and got it delivered to my place of work the following day.  I still have to return the defective part.

Before I had the problem with my Vostro 1500 laptop, I was thinking of getting a MSI Wind netbook.  My eeePC is still working fine but I find the keyboard painfully tiny, it is hard to type with accuracy since I have normal adult hands.  I think the keyboard was designed for child.  The service that I got from Dell was great so I might wait until the release their mini Inspiron which wil be release, hopefully, in the near future.  I have a suspicion that when it is releases it will have ubuntu’s netbook OEM pre-installed.

I have also read  somewhere on the Internet that Apple will have a true netbook in 2009.  I used to have an Apple Macintosh which I really liked at the time.  I would keep OS X but I would have a dual boot with Ubuntu as my main OS.

I am not sure what I will do but I will keep you in touch.  Tomorrow is m day off so I intend to remove OpenSuse and Install Kubuntu on one of my computer I want try KDE 4.1.  I am sure They have made improvements to 4.0.

This evening I tried to get Goblinx on my eeePC but I could not get X to start.  I think that the screen resolution is what is preventing X to work.  I am tired so after an hour I have decided to take a break.

I guess that is it for today I sit back and watch the Olympics on television

Goodbye Kubuntu, Hello OpenSUSE

I removed Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 remix and installed openSUSE with KDE 4.  My first impression was:  Wow this looks great.  OpenSUSE looks very polished compared with Kubuntu.  Everything works as it should,  I am impressed.  I have been using it for a few days and I was thinking off going back to Kubuntu because I know it better and can get things done faster with it until today.  On my Kubuntu box with KDE 3.5.8 I can’t get my Kafeine player to do anything.  This bug only affects Kubuntu, why?  I tried every fix I could find on the net, nothing works.  OpenSUSE works, why not Kubuntu?

I decided to keep openSUSE 11 KDE 4 on one box, Ubuntu on the laptop, Ubuntu on the eeePC and on the last box I’ll be getting rid of Kubuntu 3.5.9 and going with something else.  I am debating between GoblinX and Elive.  Both of them have new releases this week and I have been waiting for both of them to try them out.  One of them will be left on a computer for longer than a few days, I don’t know which one yet but I will find out pretty soon.

I really like Ubuntu they have a fine product but I cannot use Kubuntu anymore or until Canonical decides to put more resources towards it.

eeePC Video With Compiz-Fusion

Last time when I left you I still had to figure out how to get my video working on the eeePC when with either the Metisse or Compiz-Fusion activated in the Mandriva 2008.1 operating system.  I am glad to say that after a bid of searching I figure it out thanks to the Compiz-Fusion forum and google.  I should really say that I got it working with Compiz-Fusion not Metisse yet.  After using it for a little while I turned of the 3D effects because it was slowing down the eeePC.  I’ll only use it to impress friends, family and people that I`ll try to convert to GNU/Linux from Windows.

I’ll never go back to Windows in its present form.  Next Month will mark two full years with a GNU/Linux operating system as my personal choice.  I’ve tried a few distribution, starting with openSUSE and at the moment using Ubuntu and Kubuntu and Mandriva.  I’ve tried Fedora, Elive, GoblniX, openGEU, linux mint and Foresight.  I even tried the Xandros on my eeePC.  I have tried a few BSD Unix distributions.  All these “alternative” operating systems are a lot more secure than Windows.  They are cheaper than Windows.  Almost every applications in Linux are free, well the ones I use are.  No anti virus to install.  Computers that are older than five years are still usable. With that said I can safely say that their is no way that I’ll return to Windows in its present form.

The main reason that a lot of people hate Windows Vista so much is that it is different from Windows XP and a lot of computer users do not want to learn how to do things differently.  They want to use the path with the least resistance.  This is also the major reason that GNU/Linux is still a marginal operating system.   It is great that eeePC comes with Linux.  Dell comes with Ubuntu pre-install.  I think that if Windows does come out with Windows 7 next year it will get a lot of people switching to Linux. 

The time is now to switch to a GNU/Linux operating system.  If you are on the fence trying to decide just go for it, and stick with it for a few months and you will be glad you did.  It does not matter which one you choose they are all fine distributions.  With the money you save by not buying software you can buy a Video Console for all your gaming needs.  This is the only shortfall Linux has in my opinion.  It is getting better but it is not there yet.

Re-Arranging My Computers

Last week I installed GoblinX on one of my computer and after a few hours experimenting with it I decided that it was not for me.  The only time I could get things done I had to run it as root.  I did not like the fact that I had to run it with this lack of security.  I’ll be using the live Cd thought it has some interesting features like HDremaster.  I also like that I can use what ever desktop environment I want.  I think that GoblinX is designed to be used as a live CD.

I installed Foresight 2.0 for another few hours.  I like the new features in Gnome 2.22, but since I am already using Gnome in Ubuntu I decided to remove Foresight and wait for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron to try out Gnome 2.22, only a bit more than a month to wait.

I settled with the installation of Kubuntu 7.10. So I now have KDE 4.0.2 with Kubuntu 8.04 Alpha, I am going to use both new releases of Kubuntu when they come out until I can truly say that KDE 4 meets all my requirement.  Well that is it for this installment.

Trying Hardy Heron KDE 4.0 Style and GoblinX Replace OpenGEU

What have I been doing since my last outburst? Well I formated my Kubuntu komputer with the Hardy Heron alpha KDE 4. I might as well immerse myself in this new desktop environment because in a years time KDE 3.5 should not exist anymore. I know that everything does not work properly since it is still in Alpha release, but all I have to do is wait a few days and the developers will fix what has been broken, thanks guys and gals. Case in point this weekend I updated the system and I lost the sound. I found out that it was the new kernel’s fault and they recommended to boot with the earlier version of the kernel. In my case I got back sound but could not run Konqueror. So I decide to live without sound. On tuesday I updated the komputer and the sound was fixed, Woopie! KDE 4.0.2 is growing on me, like a strange fungus and this will be a great desktop environment in the near future.

Today I updated my OpenGEU computer and this broke two packages. This is the second time that I have broken packages with this Operating System once when it was call GEUbuntu and today. I restarted the computed and now I can’t log on! I don’t have the time to fool around with this so I try to install GoblinX on this computer, the gtkHDIstall is broken so it does not install unless we edit it there is a typo in the code. I fix this and I am installing as I am writing this.

If you have read my last post you will know that I was very pissed off that some schmuck copied my blog without giving me credit for writing it. Now I don’t mind that it was copied and I will allow anybody to copy this blog just as long as I am credited in writing the blog and you must have a link to this blog.

GoblinX is done installing I am booting up, it works! I’ll explore it and tell you about it in a future post because I have a ton of things to do.

Blogging While Pissed Off

Yesterday I was reading posts on Planet Ubuntu and Stephan Hermann‘s two post about the plagiarism of his blog on linuxindex.com just got two quick glances from me. I did not really think it was important but this afternoon I was searching for a few tips on installing GoblinX on a virtual machine and in my search I found my complete post “Problem Solving and Not Installing GoblinX” on linukx.com and it was not mentioned anywhere that I was the writer of this post, apparently it was written by linux guy. My first reaction was “You fucking bastard”. This was also my second reaction and third and fourth reaction. I am bit pissed off, no I am a livid. If linux guy was in front of me right now, he’d be laying down in a pool of his blood.

How do we protect ourselves from these no good cocksucking sons of a bitches? I think that there is no way we really can. I know that my posts are not the best there is, and that should be protection enough. No one would really want to plagiarize an average blog. All these rip off artists are what is wrong with the internet today.

I guess I have vented enough for today, I sure hope that linux guy (AKA Motherfucking Bastard) sees this post and chokes on it, but before he does I want him to remove all my post that he copied and all other post that he has stolen and that he can choke on this post and dies a long painful death.

p.s. I apologize to all of you reading this expecting no swear words but I could not express the way I feel at this moment without them. Maybe when I calm down, if I calm down, I’ll edit out the nasty word.

VirtualBox Bug in Ubuntu and GoblinX

As you know, being a faithful reader of Adventures in Computing, last weekend I wanted to try GoblinX but the CD I burned was corrupt and I did not have anymore at home. Well after writing the last post I tried GoblinX in a virtual cd drive in VirtualBox and VirtualBox could not capture my mouse. After googling it, I found out that their is a bug in the latest version of VirtualBox when it is used in Ubuntu with desktop effects and according to VirtualBox there is no solution to this critical problem. I have a very simple solution: turn off desktop effects and it works fine.

I have tried GolblinX as a liveCD and I like what I saw and what it did. I did try to install it using the HDinstaller that comes on the disc and I could not I did not have root privileges. I did not feel like work hard that night so I did not fool with it like I should have. I will work on it this weekend when I have more time. GoblinX looks good no matter which desktop environment you prefer. I have never used fluxbox so this is what I am going to try.

I am going to cut this post short because my supper is ready and I am hungry, hungry like the wolf as some would say.

Bad CD Changes Plan

This weekend I tried to install GoblinX on Virtualbox and it did not work out. I think that the CD I burned was corrupt. I am out of discs so I couldn’t burn another one and try this one. I’ll try again when I get the chance to buy some discs. I’ll keep you posted on the GoblinX front. Maybe I’ll try again tonight because I am intrigued by GoblinX.

On my OpenGEU box I installed some updates this weekend and I did not lose sound, whoopee! OpenGeu will live to see another day. Unless I decide to install GoblinX on this computer. The next time I format my computers I’ll set them up so that I can install more than one GNU/Linux OS so that I can try more than a few distro at the time.

That is it for this short post. I only have one more to write before the end of the month and I hope it is about installing GoblinX on a virtual machine.

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.