Adventures in openSUSE Linux

Review of Fluendo Codec Pack and DVD Player in openSUSE with Gnome

2013-05-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

+Fluendo aims at improving the global multimedia experience in the Free Software world by funding, developing and maintaining the +GStreamer media framework and providing a wide range of commercial and free products on top of it.

For this test I did a clean install of +openSUSE 12.2 with the +GNOME 3 environment. I endeavored where possible to only use the multimedia applications included as part of our Gnome 3 pattern. So for most things I've used either Totem or +Banshee which both use the GStreamer framework, which is what the Fluendo Codec pack is for, and what their DVD Player is based on.

The Fluendo codec pack promises superior playback capability with hardware acceleration. It certainly delivers an overall better multimedia experience. As I mentioned I have endeavored to keep a minimal install. Typically I have found Banshee to be glitchy and unpredictable. Though I knew Banshee was a darling media player for many, I hadn't the least idea why. However, after installing the Fluendo Codec Pack the way Banshee works is inexplicably better, and I to have become a fan. Also Totem (which is usually a steaming pile of $%!^) behaved much better with the Fluendo Codec Pack. Overall, my opinion on purchasing this would be this; whether you need it or not, the refined playback and compatibility make for a more enjoyable multimedia experience under Linux with less fuss than other means.

Unlike their Codec Pack, the Fluendo DVD Player was disappointing. Now, it does play DVD's, and plays them beautifully. However, I have found a few cases where disks that should have played, simply didn't. The interface leaves much to be desired. It is not suitable to new users since in order to use this software properly you'd need to have at least an elementary understanding of how devices are depicted in the Linux filesystem. I found that most of the configuration options that were shown either were unresponsive, or broken to the point of being unintelligible. There has been an update fixing that now, though the usage of the software is still ridiculously complicated. Bottom line is this; get it if you watch a lot of DVD movies, and know how devices are shown in a Linux filesystem.

Interesting sidenote: +Novell holds a license to redistribute these. I think they were going to include them in +SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, or maybe try making a home desktop.

Easily install Steam for Linux in openSUSE

2013-02-15T21:32:00.002-08:00

Gamers and Linux enthusiasts have been all abuzz about +Steam for +Linux since it was announced by +Valve . On Valentines Day +Valve Linux celebrated its official release with an update and a spectacular sale of Linux titles at 50-75% off regular retail price. This sale is good through the 21st of February.

Thanks to the hard work of our community members, our very own installer has been added to the Games community repository. This installer primarily fetches the archived binary provided by Valve and installs it transparently without any needed user interaction. It installs like any other package in openSUSE. This link will take you straight to the page in +Open Build Service ; Steam for openSUSE. Simply use the "One-Click Install" and get ready for an amazing gaming experience.

I've been playing with the Steam client in beta for a while and had previously been unimpressed by its frequent freezes and failures to launch my games (I acquired the keys through my +Humble Bundle purchases). However, as of the 14th (Valentines Day) the update pushed by valve fixed all these complaints, and i'm very pleasantly surprised and can see myself being a very happy Steam user for years to come. I would certainly recommend to anybody to go ahead and give Steam for Linux a try. My only complaint to date is how very few of my Linux titles I purchased (and have Steam Keys to) have been ported to Steam. I hate having a myriad of installers putting things in odd places, and would prefer to use Steam for all of my proprietary games. Hopefully this will only be a brief matter of time until it is resolved.

My "commercial" showing how easy it is to get Steam for openSUSE

For those of you whom are less familiar what Steam is, it is far more than a mere marketplace for games. It provides DRM (bear with me) for the games, allowing you to run the games on any device you own (I assume they are willing to allow that due to the way Steam DRM works). It also provides integrated forums, guides, and social elements making it easy to connect with your friends and find people to play with. Of course, there are also the famous Steam sales, where you can get amazing titles for a fraction of normal retail. If you are worried about the freedom implications of Steam and its games and DRM, you may be interested in this article with musings from Richard Stallman.

Run over by a truck.

2013-01-24T19:53:00.000-08:00

As promised I got back in to writing, and pumped out a few articles. You might have noticed a lull in my posting recently. Well, I got hit by a truck. Seriously, not joking. On the 13th I was visiting with friends and went to go get something from the nearby grocery. I crossed one half of the street, then waited on the median to see how the traffic was so I could cross the rest of the way. As typical I step out a bit to make sure drivers can see me, and the two approaching cars slow down. I proceed to cross, and suddenly notice the SUV hasn't stopped and it was too close and too fast to react. After tumbling through the air for some while I landed on my back, in the middle of the street. Assessing the damage I realize that I wasn't too badly hurt... except for the bones protruding from my right leg.

I spent a little over a week in the hospital. They implanted metal rods into the fibula and tibia as opposed to casting it. I prefer the rods since I think that'll make things more usable quicker. So now I have to be pushed around in a wheelchair, or hobble about with a walker. The latter I can't do very much of at this point. I imagine I'll be more mobile in about a week.

I've had some articles brewing. Among them you can anticipate the following:

How to make Gnome 3 act more like Gnome 2 simply using extensions.
Crossover for Linux vs. WINE, is it worth it?
Fluendo DVD player review.
Fluendo Codec Pack review.
Steam on Linux beta review.

openSUSE 12.2 Review: an Immaculate Conception

2012-12-31T17:09:00.004-08:00

When I first updated my computer to 12.2 I wasn't all that impressed, but that was apparently due to having used the live upgrade via 'zypper dup.' Earlier today (December 20th) I got fed up with some of the anomalies and accumulated mess of my system, and decided to reinstall. Quite frankly, though the 'dup' process had (for once) gone without any real problems, this was clearly the right decision to get a proper impression of our latest release. In short, I'm quite impressed.

This may very well be the most polished experience I've had since I used Macintosh OSX. Refinements and polish show all throughout the system, from the moment you turn it on up to doing your work. For that matter there is even a couple of notable changes to the installation process itself. Besides the freakishly fast loading of the installer (or live environment) enabled by the transition to systemd, there is the nice fact that writing a DVD image to USB flash media (via ImageWriter or using the 'dd' method on the CLI) no longer requires you to run isohybrid on the ISO any longer. One annoyance though, is that a bug I had experienced in 12.1 persisted into this release also. That being where it fails to select kernel-firmware package for installation, which is vital to the functioning of my Broadcom WiFi card using the brcmsmac driver. If I recall though, that is a problem with udev.

Upon boot we are greeted by the much prettier interface of the new Grub 2 bootloader, giving us the option of booting openSUSE normally (or Windows if you dual boot) and 'advanced options' for openSUSE, which leads to another page with the usual failsafe booting option. However, I've yet to discover how to manually enter boot options and at this time assume that it can't be done. The YaST Bootloader module has been refined and support for Grub 2 is fully present.

Once we are past Grub 2 we are promptly greeted by Plymouth, the elegant successor to Splashy the splash screen. An elegant green background with the openSUSE logo superimposed in the center stand solidly while the animated activity of white whisps meander about the logo. These whisps gently float about drifting gradually towards the center of the screen before suddenly converging just below the logo into one orb of light, indicating the transition to your login screen or desktop in the case of autologin.

With autologin disabled, Plymouth gently segues us into the login screen. Very little has changed here, excepting the slightly improved graphical performance. Above the user selections within the window, the openSUSE logo has been placed. I've found this looks a bit garish on smaller displays, but is a nice touch for those with larger displays than my little netbook provides.

In similar fashion, the transition from login to desktop is gently handled and has a more elegant temperament than previously. Gnome shell has not changed in appearance at all, but has however become a bit more responsive. The graphical effects, such as the transition to the activities dashboard or the ripple effect of the upper left hand corner are noticeably smoother. As I've used the Gnome system and its application suite, everything feels quicker and more responsive though there aren't too many major changes to the applications that are immediately noticeable. One notable change to the shell however is the inclusion of more options to set up in the 'Online Accounts.' Now, we have Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live. Setting up your Google account works as before, and the only functionality so far of the other options is setting your IM accounts in the Empathy framework. Below I shall elaborate upon the more notable changes of the system with emphasis on the Gnome application suite and the shell.

Shell
- Identity Menu?
  - Does not set status as online upon login. However when you open the menu it would indicate that you actually are online. This looks to be half a bug, with the other a deliberate design choice. Toggling your status as unavailable then back to available fixes this.
  - Windows Live completely broken. So there is still no MSN access. Not a big deal to me though.
Evolution
- Correctly set up by Online Accounts, whereas before it was unstable unless Gmail was set up manually and disabled in Online Accounts.
- Imap noticeably faster and smoother. In fact the performance change is dramatic.
- Emails load faster, and are not seriously slowed by downloading or synchronizing.
LibreOffice
- Startup is significantly faster, quick enough that I am not annoyed by waiting anymore.
- Overall behavior is smoother, more responsive, and more predictable than ever. In short time, LibreOffice since forking from OpenOffice has shown massive improvements and could reach a level where it can contend with MS Office on purely technical merits.
Extensions
- Many extensions are deprecated by the newer shell. However, most of them have more advanced successors. The Gnome extensions gallery is getting quite nice.
Kernel
- Performance increase
  - The newer kernel shows off its optimizations for filesystem I/O. One of the bigger reasons for performance increases is the much updated compiling stack we use now.
- Improved hardware support
  - On my netbook I have an uncommon model of touchpad, that up until this version of openSUSE had never been identified correctly. Thus, upto now I wasn't able to toggle things such as “tap to click.” Also, my webcam now works with any app that uses a webcam.
- Heating issue
  - My netbook and another AMD laptop a client of mine had would overheat fairly easily, shutting off. This issue has noticeably improved as has power consumption. We now have longer bath life.
- Nouveau
  - Were it not for games, I would probably not have bothered to install the NVidia proprietary drivers. The behavior of the system running nouveau was nearly indistinguishable from the proprietary. In fact, the desktop with its compositing was smoother than before.

Thousands of signatures still needed by January 16th to push the US government to embrace FOSS in our schools.

2012-12-30T19:16:00.002-08:00

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/promote-use-free-software-our-schools-libre-office-gimp-gnu-cash-and-other-gpl-software-which-cost/T1xGw1fZ

A petition posted to the Whitehouse's website still has many signatures to go before the administration will be required to address it. Which is frankly surprising considering the size and connection of our community, and the importance of the petition.

We in the Free Software communities know how important Free Software is. It is not merely an abstract freedom, but the various side effects as well. Before I became acquainted with FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) computers were still obscured to me, and esoteric mystery. Granted, I had a more advanced understanding than most, hence why I came to Linux. But it was not until I dove in that I came to really understand computers. Everything from the Object Oriented paradigm to user interface principals finally made sense. The amazing resource of learning that FOSS provides cannot be underestimated, but only underappreciated.

Our schools in particular stand to benefit from FOSS. The enormous savings to taxpayers, both from the software being free of cost, and not being subject to the faults of Windows and its insecurity is staggering. Further, there is an enormous library of educational software as well as software made for the administration of learning spaces and libraries... all readily available and free of any cost. Finally, as computers continue to become pivotal to our society and the future, it behooves us to make sure that children are learning these technologies. Particularly, the availability of high grade development tools would greatly aide in making affordable programming classes for our children.

In the words of the petition:

"Each year our educational system wastes billions of dollars for the purchase and support of proprietary operating systems and application software in our schools. The software is rigid and inflexible, opaque in its design and mysterious to our children.

We advocate and propose the gradual replacement of privately owned software with restrictive licensing in favor of open source alternatives with GPL type licenses. In as much as possible we should have our students using software that complies with the definition of free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation.

The GNU/Linux operating system, underlying source code, tools and documentation are readily available to students already. Their use should be encouraged as the tools and code are available cost free."

I feel very strongly that we should not stand idly by, but should at the least sign and advocate this petition.

Easily install Dropbox, Skype, and Google Music Manager in openSUSE 12.2

2012-12-25T17:10:00.001-08:00

Quite frankly, the instructions we can usually find on how to install +Skype, +Dropbox, and Google Music Manager tends to be obfuscated and unusually complicated. No clue why this is seeing as it is actually drop dead simple. The methods I show here are equally applicable to 32 bit and 64 bit openSUSE 12.2. Due to this simplicity I have decided to include all three pieces of software in one tutorial.

Skype

Skype is stupidly simple to install. Simply navigate to their website, download the RPM and install. There is not a 64 bit version, just use the 32 bit one. Our package management will resolve all the dependencies. You should not have to do any prep work at all. On my systems, the PackageKit installation works fine... that is simply select the default action to Install Package from Firefox. If however this does not work, you can simply use Zypper to do the job:

cd ./Downloads

zypper in skype-4.1.0.20-suse.i586.rpm

Boom, that is it.

Dropbox

The easiest way to install +Dropbox for +GNOME is to use 'Direct Install' from http://www.software.opensuse.org. Here is a nice link straight to the package. Though it says it is the Nautilus extension, it pulls in all of Dropbox as well.

Google Music Manager

Installing Google Music Manager is slightly less straightforward, but still very simple. Due to a dependency issue we will have to use Zypper to install it. Simply follow this link to find and download the appropriate package for your system. Save the file, do not use the PackageKit installer. Now open up a terminal and do the following.

cd ./Downloads

sudo zypper in google-musicmanager*

Zypper will complain about supposedly missing a dependency. It is not actually missing and will work anyway. Choose option 2, ignoring the problem and installing anyway:

Problem: nothing provides qtwebkit needed by google-musicmanager-beta-1.0.54.4672-0.x86_64
Solution 1: do not install google-musicmanager-beta-1.0.54.4672-0.x86_64
Solution 2: break google-musicmanager-beta-1.0.54.4672-0.x86_64 by ignoring some of its dependencies

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/c] (c):

Fully integrate Firefox with elegant new Gnome 3 theme

2012-12-25T15:12:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about Gnome 3 is the clean and elegant theme throughout the system. It is unfortunate then that +Mozilla Firefox has not been consistently themeable to look like it belongs. In the past there was the 'Adwaita' theme for Firefox, but it lacked in a few areas and consistently wasn't updated to keep pace with the version changes of Firefox itself. Now we have ' +GNOME 17.1' by the GNOME Integration Team. This theme not only delivers a consistent appearance like its Adwaita predecessor, but far exceeds it making +Mozilla Firefox look like a truly native application within the Gnome environment. Rather than ramble on about it though, I'll simply show you. You can get it by following this link to the Mozilla site.

Getting the most of your Gnome Shell with Extensions

2012-05-13T17:49:00.001-07:00

Its no secret that I have become something of a fan of Gnome 3. That being said however there are certainly some legitimate concerns regarding functionality. One unfortunate thing, is that in order to really understand how best to use your desktop actually requires you to do some reading... its not always immediately obvious. I personally don't find this terribly troubling, but I can certainly see how this can frustrate newer users. The other criticism is that Gnome 3 is inflexible and not extensible with applets the way Gnome 2 was. Though this is a legitimate concern it is not an entirely legitimate criticism, simply because it isn't true. On the contrary, Gnome 3 offers an elegant and easy to use extension framework that is more versatile than what applets provide. It should be noted that Gnome 3 being new may not have the extension you had hoped for, but it most probably will given enough time.

So now I present to you my personal favorite Gnome Shell extensions to address a number of these concerns. I frankly like Gnome Shell, and am thus not terribly interested in trying to alter the appearance or behavior of the environment to ape Gnome 2 or any other desktops. That being said, there are a few things that probably should have been included. You must be using Gnome 3.2 or higher to be able to use the Gnome Shell extensions.

1.Alt-Tab switcher
Knowing to use the Alt-Tab application switcher is a quick way to speed up your workflow. However, the switcher in Gnome Shell is just a bit counter-intuitive since it is hybridized a bit. Check the Gnome Cheat Sheet to see if you like the original. If you don't like being unable to switch between windows in the older fashion (the new fashion by default simply lists open applications, then offers what is essentially a dropdown to get to the individual windows) then this extension is for you. A plus with this one, is that switches the behavior to a slick and attractive coverflow design.

2.Alternative Status Menu, or how the hell do I reboot!?!?!
With the Alternative Status Menu, the need for holding the Alt key is removed. Now you have access to powering off and rebooting in the normal way you would expect.

3.Network Connections.
So, often I have had to remove a connection in order to reconnect to a network that has changed in some way. Granted this is probably a flaw with my hardware or the router in question. Nonetheless, getting quickly to network connections isn't as obvious as it used to be. This extension fixes that by adding a shortcut in the networking menu.

4.Remove the Accesibility Icon.
Many people have no use for the accessibility options, and thus don't want the clutter in the panel. This extension removes it.

5.Notifications.
I like the new way of handling notifications, but if I step away from my computer I may miss them if I don't check that little auto-hiding tray in the lower right. This extension adds a little notifier icon to the panel to let you know you have new notifications and allows you to access them.

6.Calculator.
This isn't a lack from Gnome 2, but I like it. Simply start tapping in a math problem in the dashboard overview and see an instantly calculated result.

7.Media Player Indicator.
This extension adds an elegant little controller to your panel when there is an open media player that uses the correct interface(MPRIS2), which is most. This allows you to quickly control your media playback from such programs as Banshee or Rythymbox.

8.Advanced Settings
Add Advanced Settings to your status menu. This will allow you to instantly open the gnome-tweak-tool which is installed by default on openSUSE.

9.Places Status Indicator
This adds your home folder into a neat drop down. Its rather like a stackfolder, or the legacy gnome menu Places. Very convenient.

KDE vs. Gnome

2012-04-17T00:10:00.003-07:00

For geeks like us, it can be hard not to get caught up in the over-enthusiasm and fanboyism of our favorite technologies. One of the biggest, and perhaps oldest in the GNU/Linux world is the contest between KDE and Gnome. Now, back in the long long ago KDE reigned supreme having the lion's share of usership. Then along came KDE 4, and people ran screaming to Gnome. Now, Gnome 3 has arrived and many people have ran screaming to KDE. This can tell us a couple of things, the most obvious being that no desktop environment is perfect. Secondly, as so many of us have moved from our beloved old to something different and perhaps not beloved, we have had to come to terms with the idea that ultimately what we once thought solid fact was really just a matter of taste.

Since I started using Linux I preferred KDE. I started with KDE 4.0, which was bloody rough... but I saw the potential and the beauty and stood in awe. Now with the KDE that shipped in 12.1, I ran screaming. Now, I knew fully well that KDE is a constantly evolving beast and I was okay with that. I found it was stable enough to meet my needs and expectations. For me though, I ran into so many bugs that I had to use something else if I wanted to stay sane and productive. Not to say that KDE (I believe the version that shipped in openSUSE 12.1 was 4.7) has gotten worse, but it isn't unusual for me to run into an awful lot of bugs that are rare for other people. Indeed, the reports from friends and on forums was that our KDE was incredible and stable. It seems God thinks I should be a QA tester.

Right now, I use Gnome 2 and 3 on my two systems. When I upgraded my 11.4 netbook to 12.1, it was a bad experience with KDE. I wound up rolling back my system to 11.4. Now, I saw some serious improvements in some areas that I would certainly miss, (especially since performance improvements are very noticeable on a netbook) so when I rolled back, I decided to use Gnome. I figured also, that I needed to get reacquainted with Gnome anyway in order to be able to help others who use it instead of KDE. Also, it had an odd power regression so I wanted the older kernel from 11.4 to address that issue.

Recently I acquired another laptop. I bought it off a friend who had a messed up Windows installation, and hadn't used it in a long time. Part of why I bought it was to have a machine I could be more risky with, to experiment more with. The other reason is that it had a 64-bit AMD processor and an ATI Radeon GPU. These are all unfamiliar territory, so this was a good chance to become acquainted with AMD, ATI, and the 64 bit openSUSE. Frankly, I didn't want to go so risky since the hardware is beefier than my netbook so I opted to use Gnome 3 instead of the KDE that had been so problematic for me before.

I was a bit reticent about using Gnome 3. I had tried the preview of it in openSUSE 11.4, and found it comfortable enough to use on my netbook. In fact, it was very comfortable on my netbook. The final clencher on it, and the explanation for my reluctance was its trouble with resuming the desktop environment after suspending the system to RAM. Since I had rolled the netbook back I got pretty cozy with the Gnome way of doing things, and figured Gnome 3 was worth another chance. I'm not going to go too much into that since I have done so in another blog posting. Suffice to say, I was pleasantly surprised... though not entirely without some frustration.

So, KDE vs. Gnome; who will win? Its irrelevant, in my opinion. Each has their respective strengths and weaknesses. If you want configurability, you go with KDE. If you want your DE to get out of your way, you use Gnome 3. Honestly, I'm personally torn between them. I love the amazing configurability and the power and flexibility of the KDE environment and its application ecosystem. On the other hand, I love the clean interfaces and ease of use of Gnome. Quite frankly though, the configurability of KDE means that I can easily recreate the Gnome 2 or 3 experience with it. So, in essence once I feel my issues have been mostly addressed in KDE then I will go back. But not without having learned a lot, and picking up many fresh ideas from the world of Gnome.

A small note. Since I have clients that I do conversions and maintenance from Windows to openSUSE, I put them on Gnome. Gnome tends to be a bit more predictable and solid, as well as slightly lighter on system resources. Though the default KDE interface looks a lot like Windows, some of its rough edges spook users and cause me to use more time in maintenance. Plus its complexity in the options it gives the user can be very intimidating and confusing to someone coming fresh from Windows.

openSUSE guide for Ubuntu users

2012-04-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

So since the advent of Gnome 3 and the Ubuntu spin of that – Unity – a lot of people have been frantically seeking a familiar refuge. Now as I stated in another blog I like Gnome 3, but it was a long time coming and I can certainly understand the reluctance towards it... not to mention legitimate issues pertaining to your peculiar hardware. As for Unity, I briefly installed the newest Ubuntu. And I hated it. I can see it may be good someday, but for now it is alpha level. Sluggish, unresponsive, not something I would have pushed on possibly paying users. So now a lot of people are fleeing for KDE or some other more familiar desktop paradigm. So in this post, I want to basically give a guideline for those who have landed in our community. One thing I do recommend is RTFM, please read a little bit of the documentation. You'll learn so much more quickly, and learn some nice tricks along the way.

Documentation; We do of course have other sources of documentation, but these three are more than enough to get you where you want to go. OpenSUSE is simple enough you should be able to get along without the documentation, but I personally would prefer to avoid any potential headaches.
1. An excellent guide for beginners is the Unofficial openSUSE Guide. This guide is KDE oriented, but still touches on many of the important things in openSUSE regardless of your preferred desktop environment. Www.opensuse-guide.org
2. The manuals should be installed already, and if not can be easily found in YaST. If they are installed, you'll be able to find them in the location file:///usr/share/doc/manual/opensuse-manuals_en/index.html which you can simply open in your web-browser. I suggest making a bookmark so its quickly handy when you need it. I keep mine as an 'app-tab' in Firefox.
3. Gnome and KDE both have help viewers. In KDE you'll be able to get to it from the desktop link. In Gnome 3 you'll need to open the help browser from the activities dashboard, or when on the desktop (not within a particular application) press F1. Here you'll find plenty of tips and information so you can get the most out of your new Gnome 3 desktop.
Installer
1. The Ubuntu installer excels at simplicity... and that is part of its downfall. That and its instability. Our installer is actually part of our YaST graphical system utility suite. It is old, but always updated, and offers many highly advanced options for your installation. However, it is still simple and attractive enough for anybody with a smidgen of experience. We have a Live CD, and a DVD for openSUSE. The installer differs slightly on the two platforms. If you know your hardware well, use the DVD since it has some more options you may appreciate. I want to point out a few things you may miss, and that I think are particularly nifty.
  1. Additional software and desktop environments are available when using the DVD instead of the Live CD. On the DVD we ship four environments easily selectable; LXDE, XFCE, KDE, and Gnome. Rumor has it that in 12.2 we will also be offering Qt-Razor. You may simply select one of these, or by using the software management module you may choose to install the environments side by side. In order to do the latter, you merely need select for example, the XFCE 'pattern' and it will install. I will write more on how to use YaST software management from within the installer in a later section. If you are looking for an experience more like Gnome 2 with all its comfortable old programs, I HIGHLY recommend using our XFCE desktop.
  2. The partitioner in the installer is the same as used by the openSUSE desktop itself. This is thanks to the modular design of YaST and that the installer is itself a module of YaST. Thus, you get all the options of a full enterprise ready partitioner so you can cater your installation exactly. This includes such advanced options as being able to select a variety of file systems to format with (including btrfs), use Logical Volume Management (LVM), or even to encrypt your partitions for security purposes and be able to edit the fstab to graphically toggle special features of the filesystems.
  3. Getting into the software manager from the DVD installer is very simple. On the final page of the installer 'Installation Settings,' you'll see a button labeled 'change' below the textual summary of the changes to be made for your installation. Click there and you'll see a myriad of options, including 'Software.' There it is that you may select other patterns and packages, as well as other desktop environments. I personally will always select the 'Console Tools' pattern.
YaST2 is a tool for administering and maintaining a openSUSE installation. It allows administrators to install software, configure hardware, set up networks and servers, and more.
1. I made mention that our installer is part of something called YaST. Yet another Setup Tool (YaST) is in my opinion the heart of what makes openSUSE unique. Mandriva and Mageia have a similar tool, but it wasn't built with an Enterprise distribution in mind. And though YaST was built with the enterprise user in mind, it still manages to be excellent even for a naïve home user. Part of that is simply the help button. If you go clicking through the modules in YaST, you'll always see a help button. And lo and behold it is in fact actually helpful! It clearly explains what each module and each page of a module does. YaST is ideal for the new user learning about Linux due largely to this. YaST is immensely powerful despite being user friendly, and once again I recommend reading the documentation so that you can truly grasp the GUI goodness and power that is YaST. What more, is that YaST gives you a graphical tool to help you manage and fix issues that Ubuntu would always require you fiddle on a command line terminal, which is something even I am not very comfortable with.
2. Edit GRUB graphically with the 'Bootloader' module. Often enough I find that people will have problems with the splash screen, and you can easily set the VGA mode with this module. Also, this module makes it easy to add parameters to the bootline in GRUB. All this and more without having to fiddle with the command line and obscure text based utilities.
3. Printers and scanners can be easily and effectively configured in YaST. Frankly, on the three platforms of openSUSE, Mac, and Windows; openSUSE's YaST module was the only one that was clear and not a pain in the rear to get my HP all-in-one configured. All I needed was the IP of the printer, and I was able to get everything working perfectly.
Package management
1. Yet another YaST module is our Software Management. Though it is not quite as friendly as the Ubuntu Software Center, you'll quickly get the hang of it; especially if you take a little time to read the documentation. Often people mistake YaST as being merely a package management tool, but rather that is only one of several modules... but a notable one indeed.
  1. Adding a new desktop environment is easy. Simply look for the pattern for the desktop you want, select and go! In a while, you'll have a whole and complete new desktop environment to try out and use.
  2. You can browse through specific repositories in order to find new and interesting software. I find this particularly handy with the Games community repository.
2. We also use PackageKit to fulfill some functionality, mostly updating. You can also use PackageKit to install new software packages you download, such as Google Earth. PackageKit does have a couple bugs. If you for example need to lock the package for your kernel from updating, then you will want to deactivate the updater applet since it won't honor those locks. It will also screw up if you use an external device as a repo such as a USB drive or the install DVD. It also occasionally has problems installing RPMs from sources such as Google. If you find it doesn't work, you can use zypper on the command line to do it. Simply 'cd' to the directory where your RPM is, then issue 'zypper in thatrpmthatpackagekitchokedon.rpm.'
Finding more software
1. Community Repositories are quickly and easily added from YaST, without needing to drop to CLI or even needing to manually copy and paste a URL. In YaST under Software, simply click 'Software Repositories.' Once that is loaded, click the button 'Add.' You'll see a list of options, select the radio button second from top that says 'community Repositories,' and click 'Next.' You'll see a listing of popular repositories. I usually add Packman, WINE CVS, and Gnome Extras.
2. The openSUSE Build Service provides a simple and central place for developers to make software available, and use our servers to build it with so they don't stress their home computers. Why this matters to you, is that it also makes those packages available to you since it automatically creates a repository and a 'One Click Install.' With the one click install, it will download a .ymp (YaST Meta-Package) which will be handled by YaST. This will download and install the package, as well as subscribe you to the repository so you can get any updates. OBS also provides packages for many distributions besides openSUSE.
Super User and sudo
1. First off, you may quickly notice that sudo seems broken. In actuality it was configured that way for security purposes, ones that I honestly don't entirely understand. If sudo doesn't work, you'll need to use 'su' to drop into Super User or Root. If you just tried sudo, simply tap in 'sudo su' since sudo will remember your authentication briefly.
  1. In Gnome we use 'gnomesu' to invoke graphical applications as the root user. You can use the hotkey of Alt=F2 to quickly launch programs, or you may do this via a commandline (CLI) terminal such as Gnome Terminal.
  2. In KDE we use 'kdesu' to invoke graphical applications as the root user. All the Gnome instructions apply equally.
Support
1. Forums are the best place to find support. The gurus stalk the forums that are their fields of interest and specialty. Plus the more organized format of the forums help guarantee you won't get lost in a flood of other requests.
2. Mailing lists are available, but you may not get the timely help you'd hope for. Your message can get lost in the sea of other messages. If your issue is terribly critical, such that it prevents you from using your computer properly then you can try the mailing list... but I'd recommend posting to the forums first.
3. IRC is also available. If you are using Konversation, the default IRC client for KDE, it will automatically connect to the appropriate channel. If you are in Gnome and using Xchat our channel is #suse on the FreeNode (same as Ubuntu's channel) network. The channel is only very active at certain hours, so once again forums are a better choice for support.
Notes on our Gnome 3
1. Themeing browsers to look native. I personally enjoy a very consistent theme across all my applications. I like having a total environment that is consistent and beautiful, and so I was thrilled that finally in Gnome 3 I could make my two favorite browsers finally look like they totally belong in my environment. Of course, if you wind up using a custom theme, then this will not help your desire for consistency at all.
  1. Chrome/Chromium requires two different extensions to look right in the Gnome 3 Adwaita environment. Besides the obvious, you'll also want the Gnome 3 Scrollbars and may like to go into settings and set it to use the system window titles and borders.
  2. Firefox in general never looks as alien in either Gnome or KDE as Chrome does, but it still isn't perfectly themed. Until now with the Adwaita Theme for Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adwaita/
2. Gnome Tweak Tool, also known as 'Advanced Settings' is included by default. This gives you access to some toggles, and the ability to change fonts, cursors, and even themes. It may take a little experimentation.
3. I highly recommend reading through the help browser to learn the workflow of Gnome 3. Such things as the ability to simply type when in Activities rather than actually having to enter the search box aren't immediately evident.
Multimedia
1. Getting multimedia to all work properly can be tricky. Thankfully there is a One Click available to take care of your needs, including (limited) DVD playback. I'll simply point you to the page that will help you select the one that is right for your needs and system. http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_formats
2. On Gnome the default music player is Banshee, and the default video and DVD player is Totem. Totem can be problematic with DVD playback, and you may find that VLC works better for you as I did. I have had issues with Banshee being unable to play some radio streams as well. VLC can be installed via OBS or from the Packman repository.
3. In KDE the defaults are Amarok for music, and Kaffeine for video. Amarok has had stability problems sometimes, so the team has included Clementine which has most of the features of Amarok but is lighter and I have found it to be much more stable. I have never had an issue with Kaffeine.

In conclusion I hope you can see that, though we are different... we aren't lacking anything Ubuntu had. We just go about it differently. No distribution is perfect, as you no doubt learned. To quote a friend, “every OS sucks.” The question is in finding one that keeps you happy, and I hope this brief (not as concise as I'd aimed for) guide will help you be happy as a part of our community. Welcome to openSUSE, and as we say (its probably cooler sounding in German) “have a lot of fun!”

Realtek Wireless RTL8187B fix for suspending

2012-04-05T15:23:00.002-07:00

Basically the problem I experience was that if I suspended this laptop and resumed it, the wireless would not be available at all. I even tried a couple tricks to kick it active again which didn't work. Finally one of the gurus on our forums fixed my problem. Before the fix, I would have to reboot. Which meant instead of suspending, I'd simply shutdown. Thankfully the systemd booting made that a much shorter wait than in 11.4. But now, I can use it normally and am very satisfied.

As root, you need to create a file named /etc/pm/sleep.d/66_rtl8187. That is to say create a file called 66_rtl8187 without any file extension, and save it to the directory /etc/pm/sleep.d/. I did this using gedit run as root. To run gedit as root simply hit the hotkey alt+F2 and type in "gnomesu gedit". Then simply paste the following and save it to the /etc/pm/sleep.d directory. The code for the file is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
hibernate)
echo "Suspending to disk!"
/sbin/modprobe -r rtl8187
;;
suspend)
echo "Suspending to RAM!"
/sbin/modprobe -r rtl8187
;;
thaw)
echo "Resuming from disk..."
/sbin/modprobe rtl8187
;;
resume)
echo "Resuming from RAM..."
/sbin/modprobe rtl8187
;;
*) echo "somebody is calling me totally wrong."
;;
esac

If I understand the code here, it simply removes the driver on suspending, then reloads it when the system resumes. So simple its no wonder I didn't think of it! LOL.

This may not work for you as it seems to be a very particular issue with my hardware, but you should be able to adapt the script. If it doesn't work that would eliminate your driver as being the cause of the issue at least. My laptop being a Gateway T1200 if I recall. But if you have similar hardware, this fix may do the trick. I hope you find it as helpful as I did!

Special thanks to lwfinger, our wireless forum ninja.

Giving 12.1 and Gnome 3 a second chance.

2012-04-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I intended to make it my step by step log of the trials and fixes experienced in openSUSE so that it may be a benefit to others. However, when I first tried 12.1 with KDE it was such a terrible experience that I rolled my machines back to 11.4. But this time I went with Gnome instead of KDE; since I had experienced some of the speed improvements in the newer KDE I knew that rolling back would make it seem even worse than it really was. And in any event, I needed the experience with Gnome in order to help others. Indeed, I learned the Gnome way and it was good. Brilliant actually, we have a FANTASTIC Gnome implementation. But now, I have recently acquired a new (to me) laptop with which to be a little more risky and experiment on. So, after trying a few distros I have come back to openSUSE 12.1, but this time with Gnome 3. And I must say, it is fantastic.

One thing I feared with Gnome 3 was losing some of the functionality and refinement of Gnome 2 in openSUSE. In our Gnome 2 we had the special start menu made by Novell which was quite handy, giving quick and clean access to programs, documents, and tools. Though of course that menu is not present in 12.1 with Gnome 3, the functionality is not actually lost. In fact, it looks rather like Gnome 3 got some hints from it in its interface. Indeed, with just three clicks I can get to YaST, and the fantastic system monitor that was in the Novell start menu can simply be added to favorites so I can look at my system and kill tasks that freak out. As you may already know, that odd vertical dock in the left hand side of the “Activities” dashboard is called “Favorites.”

Certainly Gnome Shell takes some getting used to. Its a very different sort of interface, and is something of a new paradigm even. When I had tried the preview version made available for 11.4 I found it fairly comfortable on my netbook, but ultimately was put off by the stability issues. Now, that is scarcely an issue. I can of course see a few issues that need some love, but overall its more stable than KDE was when it shipped in 12.1. Quite frankly, I recommend taking a look at the Gnome Help so that you can get a feel for how to efficiently use the interface. And efficient is indeed the achieved goal. At first of course, it seems alien... but for me at least I quickly got the hang of the workflow and found it to be very comfortable. You can quickly take care of business, and do it in style.

Speaking of style, Gnome 3 delivers. Elegant, responsive, simple. The latter two are of particular note. My GPU is an older Radeon that is not supported by the fglrx driver, and thus can have odd behavior. However, you would never know that I wasn't running an Nvidia card. Gnome 3 has caught a lot of guff for its window decoration having only the one button, and indeed this put me off at first; until I realized a double click or a right click can achieve everything I need. At that point it occurred to me that it makes more sense considering how much of what we do on the desktop PC is achieved by a context click... it makes more sense to extend that paradigm to all areas.

Now so far I have sung the praises of Gnome 3. Nonetheless there are a couple things I'd like to see personally. First on my wish list would be to make it possible to move the “Favorites” dock to the bottom of the screen. I like having a good number of things on my dock, and would prefer to not have dinky icons when I have a fairly large screen. Secondly, I'd like to see the Gnome System Monitor accessible via the status menu in the upper left hand corner, by system settings. Thirdly, I'd like to be able to set more IM statuses from the status menu. Other than that, this is a brilliant desktop that satisfies my needs, wants, and does so in style that makes the Mac snobs jealous.

I should make clear mention that apparently all my bad experience of 12.1 boiled down to the KDE regressions. Under Gnome 3, I notice several subtle improvements even over 11.4. With this computer, it has an odd issue that I can't resume WiFI if it has been suspended, and I must reboot it in order to reconnect. In this situation I am very thankful for systemd since it speeds up the boot process by quite a glorious bit. Surprisingly, Gnome 3 seems to perform just as well as Gnome 2 did. In fact, I find it is a bit more responsive than Gnome 2 with 11.4 was. Needless to say, that came as quite a surprise. I know some of this could be coming from the kernel, but can tell it is as much if not more due to the environment.

So far the only two issues that are not necessarily hardware specific are the massive issues with Evolution. I have fallen thoroughly in love with Evolution and am saddened to see it become only slightly more reliable than the newest Kmail. I hope this gets fixed. The other issue is oddity with getting my webcam to work. It worked in Ubuntu (the only thing that worked in Ubuntu I may add, the whole thing was one polished shit sandwich) hence why I don't consider it hardware specific.

If you have been spooked off of Gnome 3, read some cheat sheets and get ready to read the help thingy. You may just like it after all.

The 'holy-grail' of Linux gaming has arrived!

2012-03-24T23:50:00.002-07:00

Edit When this was written +Steam was not even announced officially yet. Now, it has fully arrived and truly delivers an excellent gamin experience for Linux. If you are unfamiliar with Steam, you should see my other article concerning it.

In the course of my upcoming review of Crossover – which is a proprietary layer on top of WINE designed for simplicity and stability – it would seem I have discovered the holy-grail of Linux gaming. Now mind you, I do not mean to say that running Windows only franchises is the way to go; but it has been in this time period that I have also discovered the rich variety of games for Linux. There is a surprising number of games available for free of course, and some of them are of exceptional quality... though admittedly few. One of the areas proprietary development models excel is in gaming. Thankfully there is a rich library of fun Linux-native titles, as well as a reasonable number of Windows titles that run nicely under WINE/Crossover. What I mean to say in regards to the holy-grail of gaming is a slight combination. My intent is not however to review any specific games, but merely to introduce you to the gateway for amazing gaming.

    First off is the very nicely done Lin-app website. Lin-app is a website dedicated to commercial (paid for) applications. This site besides being a clean and comfortable design, is sortable into categories. The Games category contains links to the sites of publishers holding a collective 136 native Linux titles. Before I found this site, I had no idea of just how many games there actually were, nor how nice they are. It also lists many other pieces of excellent software from various vendors. Clicking through to the sites own page on any title will give a page with star-ratings and comments as well as videos showing the game off. Lin-app however is not a store, and you'll need to purchase the software from the publishers own site.

    Next in the line up is Desura. Desura is in its own words, “...a community driven digital distribution service for gamers, putting the best games, mods and downloadable content from developers at gamers fingertips, ready to buy and play.” It is similar to Steam or other such services, providing a social-enabled app-store where you can purchase and download Linux native games. Desura is fully cross-platform. A nice feature of Desura is that it also makes mods and patches available for the games it distributes. Now, I had problems playing demo versions of their games but heard numerous successes; so I'd say give it a try and see if you like it.

    In line with our two previous sources is the Humble Bundle. The Humble Bundle is a cross-platform promotion. Every so often they offer a different bundle of games, where you can name your own price as well as decide where your money goes. They divvy up, and allow you to choose where your money is allocated between the developers, Humble Bundle, and a charitable organization. If you pay above the global average for the bundle they'll throw in some extra content. At the prices you can get these, it hardly makes sense not to track Humble Bundle.

    Finally is a strange solution, relying on WINE. First off, there are some technical issues in getting this solution to run. The one simple and painless one is to install it using PlayOnLinux. It doesn't work properly (yet) under Crossover, and using raw WINE requires a significant amount of tinkering. This solution is OnLive. OnLive is... well, rather odd. Essentially its a rental and subscription service for a large library of Windows titles, hosted on the services own servers. Its essentially a cloud-based gaming platform, a remote desktop for games. The only issue with its function in WINE or Crossover is it won't take mouse input, which could be a HUGE issue; but installing it under PlayOnLinux gets around this problem somehow. I always recommend installing the latest stable WINE for anything, if you don't want to fiddle with compiling from source just pull in the updated version from the WINE CVS community repository available through YaST under the Community Repositories. So long as you don't have this cursor issue, the program runs as well as if it were native... hence why I count it as part of the “holy-grail” of Linux gaming. The basic structure of OnLive is that it has a multi-tiered rental structure per game, a Play Pass which offers free titles and discounts on other rentals, and you can purchase a game for unlimited access on their servers. Though network issues will degrade your experience, the plain advantage is that there isn't the glitchiness that can come through WINE or Crossover. Plus, there is no installing or downloading, and the time those actions would take. Further, it does allow lower-end hardware to play games it would otherwise not be able to handle even if you were running Windows on it. Unfortunately they do not host MMORPGs.

    So this is my end-game. Combined, these solutions will provide any basement dweller with innumerable hours of entertainment. If you know any other awesome sources, or would like to share your favorite title, please comment below and I may edit them into the article.

Life without Netflix, streaming on Linux can be awesome!

2012-03-24T17:27:00.002-07:00

    For all the hype around Netflix it is easy for us Linux users to forget there are alternatives. Its not that Netflix is (debateably) the best, but rather its the most widely used that causes us to neglect the numerous options that are actually available to us. In this article I want to present some of those alternatives, and how they hold up against Netflix. One caveat however is that I cannot fairly compare the variety and quality of the programming selections of each service seeing as the former is too large to parse, and the latter is inherently subjective.

    First off, when we are talking about Netflix we should consider why it is that it is so dominant. The opinions will vary, but I'll present my analysis. Hands down, Netflix has the largest selection of streaming movies, but that is where its superiority ends. Though there are many services, most are either too narrow, too expensive, or lack content; thus I will not cover them since we are looking for a replacement to Netflix, and the source of its strength boils down to content and price.

    Hulu (esp. with its Plus subscription) absolutely dominates over Netflix in terms of selection for television programming. A nice addition that I appreciate is its Hulu Desktop application. Not all content available on its website is yet available for its desktop application, however it is elegant and works well. Best of all, Hulu Desktop has a native Linux version distributed in .rpm and .deb! The .rpm works well on openSUSE, only requiring a manual edit of its configuration file to let it know where the flash browser plugin is located. Needless to say, the desktop application is a serious advantage over Netflix regardless of what platform you use. This is my subscription service of choice thanks to its large library, and its embracing of Linux with its very nice desktop application.

An oft overlooked service is Crackle which though not having an especially large selection wins in having popular and relatively recent movies for free. The disadvantage with Crackle is that you will be made to endure short commercials throughout your programming. The advertising though is brief, and not too frequent and thus I think its a fair tradeoff for their high quality programming to be delivered for free. Crackle fills in the gaps where Hulu is weak in regards to providing good movies.

The goal of this article was not to be exhaustive, but merely to show how I happily live without Netflix and avoid forsaking my OS of choice. There are a couple other services of note covered by other authors. Those services however are of a very limited scope, indie movies, or anime for example. If you are unsatisfied by the content of Crackle and Hulu Plus, I recommend taking a look around.

Edit:
A lot of feedback has mentioned Amazon Streaming. I did not include this since it is primarilly a per-title rental service. Though they do have a subscription included streaming package, its content has never impressed me. I had some issues with their playback as well, as have other people I know. If the performance is improved then I would certainly list it as the number one source for movies to rent since it has very large volume of titles and high quality content. It however cannot beat Hulu for performance and value at this time. The playback glitches were a sever issue to me, especially if I'm going to be paying per title what would amount to a significant percentage of the price of Hulu Plus.

Impressions of 12.1

2011-11-28T08:00:00.001-08:00

First, I must reiterate that this blog in no way is intended to be explicitly technical or even well organized. Rather, it is meant to be more conversational. So in this posting I'll be stating my impressions now of the recently released 12.1 and some notes to new users.

Honestly I have very mixed feelings about this release. But when you consider the complexity of all the things a Linux distribution entails, with all of its technologies and software this should ultimately be no surprise. Likewise with bugs; considering the complexity there will of course be bugs. 12.1 offers a lot of new technologies, very little of which I actually care about or find personally useful. Bugs... it seems like this release is especially buggy. However I don't think that is actually the case, but rather that some of the bugs that have cropped up are just a bit more "in your face" than some other bugs that have cropped up. Some of these I ran into myself, but I certainly can't ignore the many many improvements to the core technologies and software.

Now, I'm a huge fan of the KDE environment and applications and this release delivers. First thing I noticed was how much more responsive and snappy the Plasma Desktop was. Another nice thing to see is widgets that actually work correctly. You probably have noticed how unreliable Plasma widgets have been in the past, and I personally found that rather disturbing. "Hey we have tons of widgets! O, but don't actually expect them to work." But now the ones I have bothered to use DO work, and are actually useful. It really helps put a positive spin on the Plasma Desktop concept. There are some seemingly unusual instabilities in Plasma however, and I have had frequent crashes. Thankfully though the Plasma environment is happy to relaunch itself and help you report the crash. So though crashes are ugly, it manages to recover itself quickly and thus this instability doesn't disturb my work-flow.

Keeping in line with the improvements to the Plasma environment and widgets is the immensely (I cannot emphasize this enough) massively improved Plasma Netbook workspace. Trying it in the past, it was an interesting concept at best. But it was glitchy, and the reliance on widgets meant a good portion of it wasn't functional. However now in this release not only is it usable, but its graceful and impressive. If you haven't tried the Netbook interface before, now is a fantastic time to do so. If it weren't for a couple of bugs that I experienced, it would be the primary desktop on my own netbook. Now, for some odd reason the netbook space doesn't include any way (that I have seen) to lock the screen or logout or any of that sort of thing. Of course, thanks to the versatility of the modular design of plasma it was a cinch adding the appropriate widget to the upper panel to allow that. However, this is where the problems become obvious. Logging out takes an incredibly long time, I mean over ten minutes for some odd reason; I finally just dropped to a tty and issued a reboot on the command line. Logging into KDE with the netbook space active is also painfully slow, though nowhere as bad as logging out. It still took several minutes to show anything but a black screen. For me, these are show-stopper bugs. The logout issue may be related to a bug that seems to pertain to that widget though, and may not reflect the performance of that environment. Another issue I encountered is that it doesn't want to shut off the monitor or initiate the screen saver. Now, to be fair I hadn't seen if perhaps that environment uses different settings that would need to be set in System Settings.

Some nice additions to software have made it, while of course other software has yet to be put into the various repositories. A note here to new users, in openSUSE we like to put a lot of software in different repositories rather than having tons of software in one. This may seem inconvenient at first, but I personally find it useful; I can browse the games repository to discover new games more easily than if they were all included in the main repos. Anyhoo, it was good to see new browsers make it into the repos. So now we can easily find Rekonq, Opera, and Chromium all in the default repos. Another thrilling (for me anyway) addition is the latest version of the fabulous Clementine media player.

Clementine is a personal favorite. It is based of the old Amarok that was part of KDE 3.x. I find that its interface is less counter-intuitive and doesn't feel as cluttered. It also boasts most of the features of Amarok, but has the addition of a groovy graphic equalizer display as well as true visualizers unlike the crummy crashy ones I saw in the Ubuntu implementation of Rhythymbox. Give it a try, see if you don't fall in love.
Konqueror and Rekonq both see some serious changes and love in this release. Konqueror now is really quite snappy, and renders most pages correctly but had problems with playing Youtube videos which I thought rather odd. Rekonq however did not have this problem. Frankly Rekonq is maturing into a very nice browser. Though it still has some minor stability issues, it is very quick, has an attractive and responsive interface, rendered all content I threw at it faithfully. Rekonq may indeed become my default browser. Both Konqueror and Rekonq are using webkit for their rendering engines, but Rekonq is noticeably faster with Konqueror leading in stability. If you love KDE, its time to give these browsers another chance.
Akonadi and Kontact need their own sub-section since there is quite a bit to cover. Overall though, it is well on its way to becoming the premier enterprise level groupware solution.

Akonadi as you may know has become the universal backend for the KDE Personal Information Manager, Kontact. Akonadi though a bit buggy will show you its power after a while. Now, if you aren't familiar with Akonadi I'm going to delve into some slightly technical aspects. Basically Akonadi stands between your application and its information source, such as Gmal or your Google Calendar. By using extensions Akonadi is able to access a very wide variety of different sources such as Google resources, standard IMAP mail or things like Novell Groupwise technologies. The Akonadi advantages are several. Firstly it simplifies application development since now, Kmail for example doesn't need to know much of anything about how to handle email protocols; Akonadi handles all that. The Akonadi API simplifies the way Kontact and any other applications can access the various sources of data, so that you don't need to worry about these things when developing software. Now, Akonadi still has some work to go, but I know there are some patches in upstream being worked out that will clear up a good number of the most annoying issues with Akonadi and the applications that use it.
Kmail thankfully is using Akonadi now, which also means it gets a nice Account Wizard that works identically to the wizard in Thunderbird. For some of you this will be a pain since the resource migration is very buggy... mostly because it is terribly complicated. For me though, not an issue. In Kmail in 11.4 I was using POP instead of the much preferred IMAP since it really didn't seem to be able to reasonably handle IMAP at all. This is not to say I haven't had issues with it, but they are largely negligible. One thing people (such as I) are discovering is that initially, you really just want to let it run and synchronize your mail... which takes a good long time. But, if you let it do its thing it will behave nicely afterward. An odd behavior I encountered with my Gmail filters is that Kmail seemed to be confused by the ability of an email to be in the inbox and another folder at the same time. This caused some minor issues which I found resolved by simply telling Gmail to "archive" those e-mails and having those skip the inbox. Overall, I am enjoying Kmail now and find it surprisingly responsive. Occasionally Akonadi and the MySql database it uses seem to go crazy and I have to kill them so I can get back to what I was doing. Thankfully this doesn't seem to cause any corruption that Akonadi can't resolve simply by resynching.
The Address Book is now also using Akonadi, which means I can now import all my Google Contacts. Now, this didn't go off exactly as I had expected but also wasn't terribly painful. You may find you'll have to do a little bit of manual review and clean-up including some entry merges. However, that has much more to do with how google handles things and not Kontact.
The Calendar can sync with various info sources as well now, and the half-assed Journal has seen major improvements in well... actually being something that could be used. Painless.
The Time Tracker module is pretty nifty... I haven't really used it as I can't think of what I personally could use it for, but check it out. It seems to fill the gap in task management left by the To-do List module. Unfortunately these two modules do not share data as you might expect, which I think is really quite silly. I think that if you have tasks in the Calendar and To-do List that they should be selectable within the Time-Tracker module as well. Hopefully this is something we can see in the future.
Kjots is an impressive little gem. It allows you to create structured notebooks that can essentially double as personal mini-wikis as well. You can link to other notebook pages or external links in your notebook entries, and apply fancy formatting to your pages. It is an understated app. It can clearly sync with resources acquired by Akonadi... though I don't know much about what that entails precisely.

Now, Apper isn't exactly new; it is the renamed and reworked KPackageKit. Apper boasts a greatly refined interface, and significant speed improvements. Now, on launch day Apper still behaved like ye-olde shitty KPackageKit in that it basically didn't work at all as intended. But now, thanks to a vigilant openSUSE developer working closely with the Apper author it now works entirely as intended. Frankly, its rather pleasant to use now. Whats especially nice now, is if Zypper or YaST ask PackageKit to quit, it will! What a concept!You will however need to wait briefly for it to quit... but at least it does without you having to manually kill it.
NetworkManager. Ugh. Perhaps more glitchy that previous version. There have been some cumbersome changes under the hood that have complicated security matters, leading to a rather odd decision by the security team causing the apparent bug of needing root authentication to add any network connection at all. This frankly was an insanely stupid decision since it potentially cripples many peoples usage of a mobile computer, and compromises the intended usage of NetworkManager all together. This behavior is present regardless of using the KDE or GNOME applet just so you know. Good news though, is there is a fix that loosens the security policies so as not to be so cumbersome. Hopefully this fix will be pushed out as an update. In the meantime there is a one-click install for you, which as you know will take far more than one-click of course. But quite frankly, I have tried managing wifi connections with ifup; so I would rather have a glitchy NetworkManager than have to try using ifup or some such for wifi connections.
Plasmoid-nm would seem to be seeing some improvements. When I went to set up my mobile broadband it actually let me get through the entire setup wizard before failing miserably. As usual, have to launch nm-applet from the Gnome desktop. However, unlike some say once you do have the connection added you will not need nm-applet to connect to mobile broadband. Just launch it once to setup the connection, then forget about it.
Systemd is a huge system change... that means basically nothing to me. The only thing about it I really understand is that it uses a very aggressive parellelization to achieve shorter boot-time by starting various services for the system simultaneously. I personally don't care about boot time since I use Linux. That is to say, frequent reboot is for Windows users. Most updates you get will take effect simply by relogging your desktop session. Apparently systemd has many other powers and capabilities, but those are all beyond my level of understanding.
Unknown Horizons is a new game that has hit the repos. This game is very similar to Age of Empires or other such games of that genre. Very impressive, it is stable and good looking with well worked out game play with complete units and buildings. A real treat in the often sparse world of open source games. Heck, it'd be good even if you were a Windows gamer.
YaST has gotten a good ol fashioned Orange County facelift. Which is to say it is quite ugly. Mind you I do mean the qt version of YaST not the GTK. I simply don't like it, and would like to set it to use whatever widget theme I like instead of this CSS themeing thing. However, as I understand it in order to do so I would have to gut the entire system branding with something generic. Why that couldn't be a separate package is beyond me. The only part of the theme I have for root applications that this new YaST will honor is the font. Nothing else. Now, if I recall correctly in the past the GTK YaST frontend was basically identical to the Qt one. However now, it is significantly changed, and actually I rather like it. The update to GTK YaST brings the package management a wee bit more in line with modern paradigms, and even adds some interesting features that the Qt version either lacks, or is so obfuscated that I STILL haven't found them. Though I had wondered why the Qt version of YaST hadn't seen these sorts of changes, it would seem that with Apper fixed now that such a need is not to be found.
A little gem that you can find hidden away in the KDE extras repo is called Basket. Basket... well, its complicated. But, if you are just breaking up with Windows and are missing your MS One Note, then this may suit you very very well. Just figured I had best mention it since I often hear people saying how they miss One Note.
Gnome 3. It sucks. The interface is cumbersome on a desktop, though quite nice on a netbook... which is WHERE IT SHOULD STAY! In 12.1 there is a significant decrease in the responsiveness of the desktop itself as well as when clicking to close windows. Not impressed.

Well, I think that about covers it. Of note, I really like the new boot splash KDM theme and login splash. They feel much more fresh than what 11.3 or 11.4 had.

Gobi loader and mobile broadband providers

2011-11-13T19:03:00.001-08:00

I don't know how many of you have 3G hardware built into your netbooks, but as you can probably guess its not always straightforward. Frankly, it took me months to figure out what I was doing and get it working consistently. Then while I was running 11.4 I decided to give Mandriva a try (which had some critical flaws) and so I reinstalled openSUSE. Now all of a sudden the process I had figured out so well, didn't work as it should have. I was tired of reinstalling and trying to figure it out, so I figured I would just wait until 12.1 came out and pray that the fresh install of it would fix my problem.

So now I have installed 12.1RC2. And at first it looked encouraging, though the hardware wasn't accesible quite I could however go into the NetworkManager Mobile Broadband tab to set up a connection and it would show me Verizon as selectable. That is what the crucial problem I have been having is about; Verizon is not selectable for some odd reason. Maybe, just maybe I somehow did get the firware mixed up but I severely doubt it since I remember having to go through this process a few times.

Here you can see that Verizon is not in the list.

So now what do I do? Well, I'll first double check my firmware to make sure I have the right stuff and am not somehow (I think its unlikely) botching it myself. Stay tuned to see if I can ever get this resolved.

***For those looking for how to get their broadband to work***

Generally its a pretty straightforward process. First to understand is this is only for the Gobi chipset by Qualcomm. This uses the 'qcserial' driver.

First, make sure you are indeed using the right hardware. And then that you have the correct driver. If you are using openSUSE the driver should be present.

Run 'lsusb | grep Gobi' to see if you have the Gobi hardware. Capitalization is important.
Now run 'lsmod | grep qcserial' to make sure the qcserial driver is present.

Having confirmed the above, you must now get the firmware.

First you must make sure you have the correct firmware since the installer or directory will contain firmware for a large number of carriers.

Dir	Carrier	Image	MD5 message digest	Revision	Internal UQCN name
0	Vodafone	amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn	691a4da480076e239e8bfcfcd817d0de 661249ddae2b63e2eaac93594a21e409 cbae9a769f459b77910c2bbdf8a8c464	D1025-STUTABFD-3604	02-umts_vod-01024-014
1	Verizon	amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn	06f76ed398458dad7b91c2d99a85a0a7 88a60ed745d75fb1b92c539574ecc972 e4d8d4dbd0a10d17f01f7f3bbd2ea734	D1055-STUTDSVD-3580 D1055-STUTDSVD-3580 D1055-UQCNDSVD-2021	02-c2k_vzw-00256-021
2	AT&T	UQCN.mbn	19eaec6cea1dc9b702b429dcb6032aa4	D1025-UQCNASDD-2016	02-umts_att-00768-016
3	Sprint	amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn	d25f247cbe0fa481378d9f92c65c3e5e 46fcb2423c31fd96e4645a90956264d2 025293e44bd7f6a7800aa7eec9a00dad	D1055-STUTCSFD-3710 D1055-STUTCSFD-3710 D1055-UQCNCSFD-2025	02-c2k_sprint-00512-025
4	T-Mobile	UQCN.mbn	b186fe81731e17e59ca16b92cb2069b6	D1025-UQCNABLD-2011	02-umts_tmo-01280-011
6	Generic UMTS	UQCN.mbn	bdf27325ebb63251c1310cd3a8f7bab6	D1025-STUTABGD-3600	02-umts_gen-02304-018
7	Telefónica	UQCN.mbn	0e38dc59f7b3891b3605d9120a0ab149	D1025-UQCNABHD-2012	02-umts_tellfon-03072-012
8	Telecom Italia	UQCN.mbn	0300af5e51c387d64c48db71169b5b23	D1025-UQCNABID-2011	02-umts_telital-03584-011
9	Orange	amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn	00c612a8a827dbef746f514e939fa77d 7d12b38ec6851bef5039b74bffffd423 735db64a57802e252ca4ff05d06b2f10	D1025-STUTABOD-3601 D1025-STUTABOD-3601 D1025-STUTABOD-3601	02-umts_orange-02816-012
12	DoCoMo	amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn	4d6203bf9fe8ae1af439d4d163e91596 385a22740f80c0d00f8acdd9ad637032 e868df00bfa88596d588a52f872ff703	D1025-STUTABED-3587 D1025-STUTABED-3587 D1025-UQCNABED-2009	02-umts_doco-03328-009
UMTS	Default Firmware	amss.mbn apps.mbn	80fcfbb41a7d4331d4b7145972f5f3c4 00cbd411048cdadc3e4caf0d89d14fca	D1025-STUTABGD-3600 D1025-STUTABGD-3600

So now that you know which is the right firmware you must extract it.

You may extract it from an already existing Windows installation that has already had the firmware etc. installed. This is usually contained in 'C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Images\Lenovo' or some similar directory depending on your particular hardware vendor.
Using Wine, you can execute the driver and software installer downloaded from your hardware vendors website. Since this varies, I can't tell you exactly what to do here. If you ever had to get a driver from a vendors site before you'll know the drill. This extracts the real installer called 'GobiInstaller.msi', from which you can extract the firmware using a command line argument found here or with an extraction utility like Fileroller.
Now take the firmware (assuring its the right one based on the table above) and put it somewhere safe like '/Downloads' using whatever means you like... its just a file copying after all.

Now we must install the gobi-loader software. Gobi-loader injects the firmware into your hardware and activates it.

If you can find an RPM in OBS, then use that if you like.
You may also install it from source. This is much simpler than you may imagine. I tend to prefer it over adding yet another repository.

Now we place the firmware into the correct directory. As the directory requires root privileges you will need to act appropriately. If you know how to get around on the command-line or how to get Dolphin or Nautilus to run as root, then you only need to know '/lib/firmware/gobi' is where to put the firmware. You will need to create the 'gobi' directory.
Your hardware will not be immediately available. Generally it is said you should reboot. A trick I stumbled on was simply to suspend by closing the lid, then wake it back up and the hardware would then be working.

And that should be that. If you are still having trouble I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough to help you. Special thanks go out to SeaPhor for leading me to this resource. And of course a special thanks to the ThinkWiki team for creating that resource in the first place.

Beginnings: an introduction.

2011-11-12T18:44:00.001-08:00

I had long been vaguely aware of Linux, and the only distros I was aware of was Red Hat, SUSE (openSUSE as well), and Ubuntu... oh and I vaguely remember seeing ads or something for Mandrake, though I was clueless as to what it was. Finally I had a chance to get my hands dirty with it when my exes Vista laptop went blue-screen and never came back. In retrospect I probably could have recovered it, but at the time assumed it was a lost cause.

I first burnt a disk with Ubuntu, and simply couldn't get it to boot even after trying to trouble shoot the installer. I went with Ubuntu first since the tech mags I read from time to time made a big deal about it being the most user-friendly and reliable. Clearly that wasn't my finding. I looked at Red Hat next, but realized it was a commercial product and had no knowledge of Fedora at that time. So the next stop was openSUSE. I first became aware of openSUSE when I saw a small article about Novell acquiring SuSE and creating the openSUSE project. Now, when I put the disk in everything worked immediately. I foolishly installed the version with KDE 4.0 because the screenshots were pretty, and I like seeing new technology. It was a pain in the ass, but it worked for the most part. My ex didn't mind it though, it wasn't worse than Vista was in his estimation! I believe that version of openSUSE was 10.3 or something like that, maybe 11.0. Doesn't really matter.

After that experience I became more intrigued, but was still happy with my Mac which though aging was still in good running order and supported. Fast forward to about a year and a half or so ago, a client of mine gifted me a new netbook. Frankly, I was glad since my poor old PPC Macintosh had become painful to use anymore. Though this of course meant it ran Windows7, which I was not thrilled about. Had I wanted Windows I never would have had a Mac. I used it by default for several months in order to become fully acquainted with Windows7, using only MS tools at first so I got to know the ins and outs. To Microsofts credit, Windows7 is excellent. Very well polished, very stable. I never crashed it even once.

Finally, I had enough of Windows7... mainly because it is very slow on a weak little netbook. Since my experience with KDE had been rocky (to say the least) I decided at first to give Ubuntu another shot, which I did. And this time it worked! Frankly, I was quite impressed, but was also curious to see where KDE had got along to since I first booted a Linux disk. So the next distro I tried was Kubuntu, which was ok... but it pulled a Vista and killed itself. Next stop was 11.3 KDE and this was much better, but eventually I wanted more performance and switched to Fedora (14?) which was faster, and actually a very good KDE implementation in my estimation. But I still ached for better performance and did some dabbling with more lightweight spins and distro until landing in Xubuntu which mostly afforded what I wanted; mainly a more responsive UI.

Now, I had settled in Xubuntu despite its odd behaviors. But then I read about the next kernel having some amazing patch that drastically enhanced its performance and desktop responsiveness. I also read that openSUSE 11.4 would be including that. So since I rather liked openSUSE (I had already fallen in love with the amazing YaST in 11.3) I tried it immediately, and was shocked. This KDE based distro was more responsive than the supposedly lightweight Xubuntu was, and by a good margin. Since that fateful release I hadn't looked back but once to fiddle with Mandriva 2011 since it did some interesting things.

As I fumbled through my learning process, learning about Linux, FOSS, and openSUSE I picked up a lot of things. It occurred to me after becoming an Ambassador that I should have kept a log of everything I encountered so that I could help others along... and not forget things. Hence this blog. My plan was to create a blog to chronicle my experiences with the software and its bugs and quirks at the beginning of the usage of the next release which is the 12.1 coming out in just a few days. This blog will also help with bug squishing since it will essentially serve as a log for the things I encounter.

I must offer my apologies to the reader, as I actually got started a little early by installing the 2nd Release Candidate of 12.1. I had planned to do so in order to get a little bit of help with debugging, and the timing was largely since I figured it was usable enough that even I with my limited experience should be able to hammer the bugs out. I had also planned to reinstall the actual release on its right date in order to give you the reader a start to finish experience in excruciating detail. However, that isn't likely now since in the course of my testing Kontact I have managed to populate it entirely and it would be quite a fuss to redo at this point. I will however do my best to remember exactly what I had to deal with to get to a usable point. Fortunately, it wasn't much of an ordeal so it should not be especially problematic.

I made mention of being an Ambassador for openSUSE. For those of you who aren't aware of what that means, I'll elaborate. We are a subdivision of marketing, and serve as 'customer relations liasons', 'product evangelists' and we often represent openSUSE at Linux and FOSS events in our local areas. I became an Ambassador after running into a fellow Geeko at a friends birthday party, who is an Ambassador and explained it to me. I had wanted to contribute since I felt I should give back to the people who have given me such a wonderful operating system for free. My lack of technical skill made the role of Ambassador ideal, since it doesn't require a truly advanced understanding; though a good abstract understanding and knowledge of the work-flow is important.

Thus concludes my inaugural posting. I hope you will find my future posts interesting, useful, or thought provoking. My only regret (so far) is that I hadn't started this at the beginning when Linux was an experiment for me and had not yet become a way of life.