Diary of an Aspiring Nerd

The fix? A blanket.

2012-02-04T21:34:00.001-07:00

Business with Qweex has not really been that booming, and I've been ok with that since I've been trying to focus on school and work recently, but yesterday I got a call from a fellow that I ride the bus with every now and then. His laptop was exhibiting a very strange effect: dividing the screen into 8 "mini-screens" and not booting into Windows properly.

In the end, I learned that this was due to the soldering on the graphics card wearing down and the best way to fix it was to take out the mobo and re-solder it, but another method I found and tried was to simply wrap it in a blanket for about 20-30 minutes until it shuts off from overheating, in the process re-soldering the problem points. It worked! Well, I had to manually shut itself off, but the graphics problem went away and Windows booted fine.

Yesterday, while I was talking to the guy about the problem, he watched me boot into the BIOS, and asked what that was, and how I knew to get into it. I shrugged and said, "I guess you just pick it up along the way." Which made me realize how good it felt to know more than him. I know that sounds snobby, but that's not at all what I mean. I spend quite a lot of time on my computer, messing with stuff, constantly breaking and then fixing stuff. I realize that in the grand scheme of computers -whether it be software or hardware related- I really know what-almost-always-feels-like nothing. There is so, so much left for me to learn, and part of me is excited, but part of me is disheartened.

So when I run into somebody that needs help on their computer and I know all this stuff that I can use to help them, it makes me feel good to know that all of my tinkering was not for nothing. It's basically seeing the fruits of my labors. I don't at all feel better than them; I've come to learn that not everybody needs to know how to use computers, and few people even ever need to boot into the BIOS. I just happened to be more interested in computers than them, so I spend more time on them and I naturally pick up more. But that tiny amount of affirmation -that I know things about my focused area of interest- really is just refreshing, as is using that to help somebody.

That's not to say I'm off the hook at all. I definitely don't push myself as hard as I should sometimes. I still have yet to finish that Linux book that I bought last April, or the HTML book that I started over Christmas, and I'm still messing around in Autohotkey even though last year I was hoping that I would be fluent in Python by now.

The funniest thing that occurred to me about this whole thing is that I realized that I probably learned about the BIOS and how to tweak it when I had some kind of problem, googled around, and then found somewhere to enter the BIOS. Then I probably googled "what is the bios", and went from there. The point is, I probably know at least 85% of what I know from problems. Problems are when you must turn to research, even if it's not something severe.

If you would like me to spend 3 hours backing up your data then wrap it in a blanket for 20 minutes, check out my website.
-Bry

"So What's Linux?"

2012-02-03T08:05:00.001-07:00

Quite a while ago, I thought up an idea to start a wiki for Linux newbs. The main goal of it would be not to necessarily be a vast array of information, but rather just a simple definition of terms. Imagine somebody coming in fresh, hearing about Qt and GTK and Ubuntu and kernels and distros and fstab and man and....well the list goes on and on and on. And while a lot of these can be answered by Googling, it's usually rather difficult to find a succint answer to what it is, not what it does. For example, if someone did not know what "root" was, they might come across this definition on About.com, which might be technically accurate, but if someone does not know what "root" is, I doubt they will know what "file permissions" are. Basically, it's too technical. What about the newb?

I started creating a very, very basic wiki called "So What's Linux?" using Wiki-on-a-stick (which is, coincidentally, licensed under the GPL). The idea behind it is not to be a complete compendium of man pages and definition of the GPLv2 vs the GPLv3, but rather answers to a question who might ask "So what's linux?". The idea is to create a succinct, (mostly) correct definition on each page that a user can understand without having to follow a ton of links to other pages.

It's (kind of) a work in progress, partially because I myself don't know everything, but also because it's just hard to THINK of everything. I don't know the best way to make sure I get everything other than just create entries as I come across them in day to day use. Otherwise, I guess someone could e-mail me, or leave a comment below, or even try to collaborate with me; I'm open to any of those.

To give an example of an entry, here's a sample page:

So what's Linux?

Official pronunciation: "LINN-ucks"
Other pronunciations: "LEEN-ucks", "LINN-icks"

Linux is an operating system, just like Windows or Mac OS, only instead of being owned by one particular entity (like Microsoft or Apple), it's developed by people all over the world. The way this is possible is that Linux is open source, which means that its programming code (or 'source code') is "open", meaning that anyone can look at it, modify it, and do almost whatever they want with it. This leads to people and companies all over the world creating their own varieties of Linux (commonly called "Linux Distributions" and also helping to contribute to the development of the Linux kernel itself.

Many times you might hear about the "Linux kernel." A kernel is the part of the software that deals directly with the hardware; it tells the hardware how to act, down to what bytes to use in the RAM. The software you run (like Mozilla Firefox) talks to the kernel, and the kernel in turn talks to the hardware, like "Use this section of RAM" or "Read these bytes off the hard drive". (Every operating system has a kernel, including Windows and Mac OS.) Even with all of the different distributions out there, they all use the same Linux kernel. While "Linux" as we know it today includes more than the kernel, it could be said that the Linux kernel is Linux, literally.

The kernel is only half of the Operating System though. In addition, you need software. Much of the fundamental software that is core to Linux was developed by The GNU Foundation. The Linux Operating System would not be possible without the contributions of GNU, so formally Linux is called GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux. But that's rather a mouthful, so most people just shorten it to "Linux."

A very brief history lesson

Back in the day, before Windows, before Macintosh, and before personal computers even, there was an operating system created in 1969 called UNIX. As it got more and more popular, people began to make their own versions, including BSD, but many of them were very expensive. Finally in 1991, a Finnish student by the name of Linus Torvalds tinkered around and ended up semi-accidentally creating a new kernel, and thus Linux was born. To this day, Linus still is the main overseer of the Linux kernel.

Torvalds has an autobiography titled "Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" that tells more about where he came from and his actions behind writing Linux, as well as his reactions to the revolution it started.

Things to remember about Linux

Linux is an open source operating system

Linux has many different 'flavors' called "distributions"

The Linux kernel is synonymous with "Linux"

"Linux" is really "GNU+Linux"

Linus Torvalds created Linux

-Bry

HTPC problems...Fedora related

2012-01-31T22:50:00.002-07:00

A few days ago I decided to try to re-set up my HTPC, which I built a while ago. Initially, I had it running Windows XP, almost solely because Netflix requires Silverlight, but now I decided to say "screw it" and go Linux.

There are 5 basic goals I want to get accomplished with this HTPC, which is essentially two things merged: a file server fused with an HTPC. An HTPC-S?

Amahi Server
- SSH/FTP server
- Samba network
- Local webserver toy
Gaming

Retro gaming via emulators
Desura/Steam
Misc. Linux games (Wesnoth, etc)

Local Video (Movies and TV)
Local Music
- Possibly synced over Samba with rsync
Full web
- Full-screen Chrome accessible via XBMC

So I go ahead and download an outdated version of Fedora (the outdated DVD iso), and install it, and for a while, all seems well. But, as usual, things do not go as planned. Some of this is just limitations I was not expecting, other parts are just Fedora being retarded.

Amahi just....isn't working. I haven't toyed with it too much, but it may seem very different than I thought. But it is installed, so that is good enough for me, for now.
Samba (apparently) doesn't play nice between GNOME and KDE. I've had massive issues with it on KDE before, but on GNOME it's just as bad.
RomCollectionBrowser, the plugin I was going to use for XBMC, is really a piece of crap. When it's not crashing XBMC, it's taking forever to fetch information and then failing to show all your ROMs (even though they are imported).
Launcher is another alternative, but I really liked how RomCollectionBrowser was layed out and that you could have things such as fanart, but the core functionality (i.e., working correctly on the most basic level) is missing.
On top of that, it used to use an XML file to store the database so I could actually write a shell script to just create my own, but it has since switched to MYSQL, which I know very little of so I've even lost manually creating the DB.
SUCCESS! XBMC was running extremely slow, which I learned was a result of the nouveau driver, but after figuring out how to disable it so I could install the nVidia one, it works wonderfully.
Fedora lacks a driver management software. I never realized how wonderful Jockey is on Ubuntu or Mint.
Fedora fails at starting NetworkManager. I know this is tiny and insignificant, but it is very, very annoying. I see some errors when booting about some wi-fi config file, but after I'm booted and start NetworkManager manually, it works fine. It's just ridiculous.
Fedora fails to use my wi-fi dongle. Unfortunately, the wi-fi on the mobo is a bit underpowered so until I can get an external antenna, I've been using a USB dongle on Windows, but apparently Fedora doesn't have the drivers for it. Ugh.
Fedora (apparently) has absolutely no graphical package manager. Either that or I am completely and utterly blind. I mean seriously, how can it even be considered a modern distro without even something resembling Synaptic? I've been getting along just fine, but I'm still hella annoyed, especially since I don't know the names to RPM packages since I haven't used it almost at all.
Fedora fails to properly connect to my HDTV. This is the kicker for me. I do all this work in XBMC (which has been great, after fixing the driver issue) on my LCD monitor via HDMI, bring the box downstairs, hook it up, and no signal. I've sunk hours into trying to get to the bottom of it, and I've finally got it to at least work with 640x320. Apparently the EDID is wrong or something.
But what really pisses me off about that is that I grabbed my Linux Mint 9 Live-CD, popped it in, and it worked just fine. I think it must have something to do with the version of the kernel in Fedora, or at least something outside of Xorg, because Fedora can't even use it during bootup before Xorg starts.

This is just so massively pissing me off. I have a lot of work to do to get this HTPC box where I want it, like setting up the SSH server, setting up Samba, setting up a dozen emulators, fetching the info for dozens of games, making sure I have a solid wi-fi connection, and just tweaking the theme in XBMC. But I can't do any of that yet if I can't get my goddamn display to work, and if it's working in Mint without the nVidia drivers, it should work in Fedora with them.

If I didn't say something my brain was going to explode. I'm very close to just ditching Fedora for Mint, even if it means sacrificing Amahi.
-Bry

Hacktivist: friend or foe?

2012-01-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

For a relatively new phenomena, hacktivism has really kind of taken the net by storm. It makes sense, though: the Internet is the form of communication, business, social networking....the list goes on. It only makes sense that there would be those that would take a principled stand when its freedoms are being threatened.

I don't really want to have a discussion of the ethics behind their actions, though I will definitely say that I personally see their point of view, for sure. Every single hack I've heard done recently has -to me- been justified. (Such a subjective word!) It's not like they're hacking people's Facebooks and posting porn or something, they are specifically attacking companies and groups that they believed have crossed an ethical line. Even when it's not that righteous, their (claimed) ambitions are to find holes in security for the sake of the companies they are hacking. Very few of the hacks I've heard of have actually resulted in stolen credit card information.

I feel like the hacktivists groups are a lot like Batman. They operate outside the law, but the end result they aim for is justice. Now we, as comic book readers and movie-goers, love Batman, but not everyone in Gotham City loves Batman. Think more of the Nolan films: Batman blows up rooftops and obliterates cars and generally causes a crapton of damage. But he does those things because the cops cannot, and often they are the only way to get the bad guy. He is a vigilante, and that means operating outside of the rules. One could argue that the hacktivists groups are of the same vein....but I'd really rather not try to have that argument here.

The real question that I have been pondering is whether or not hacktivism is actually effective. When the SOPA blackout day rolled around, Wikipedia and Reddit and other big, popular sites shut down, in order to draw attention to it. And it actually worked. The votes started to shift from "Yay" to "Nay". It was honestly the first time that I believe I have ever seen 'virtual protesting' work. (Or protesting at all, for that matter.)

Now look at the two big groups: Anonymous and LulzSec. You hear about a new hack from these guys almost every other week, more when Sony throws hissy fits. They have taken down Fox, Sony (numerous times), the CIA, and most recently, the Department of Justice...but what has been the outcome? Were the MegaUpload members released? Did Sony ever apologize to geohot? Has anyone ever reacted in a way to reverse the reason they were hacked in the first place?

But then maybe those are the wrong questions to be asking. Maybe Anonymous and LulzSec actively hacking big websites is different than Wikipedia passively protesting (not that I don't applaud Wiki for doing that!); maybe the goal isn't to change their minds through intimidation. Maybe instead its just to remind those big companies that people have a voice, and more than a voice, a will. That there are people out there that can and will fight back. True, maybe vigilantism has never reversed an ill effect, but who's to say it hasn't prevented those companies from trying to get away with far worse?

I definitely can't say that I agree with everything these groups do (Really, Minecraft, guys? Poor Notch.), but I think I can safely say that I am glad that they are around, especially with acts like SOPA and PIPA actually being considered to pass. Maybe they're not superheroes, and maybe some of them are just downright villains, but I'd much rather live in a 'net with these groups clashing horns than live in one where money buys justice.

-Bry

The Ultimate Handy-man USB Drive

2012-01-21T03:47:00.002-07:00

Recently, I had my first Qweex "customer" (coworker) so I decided to finally create a super awesome USB stick with all the apps and other features you could want to fix up someone's computer. There are 3 main sections, so let's jump right in.

I. Freeware Apps
For most of the functions, you really only need one app per type: one duplicate file finder, one uninstaller, etc, but others require a few more, especially with security. And also remember that these must all be portable. So without any further ado, let the apps begin.

Menu: PStart
Up until this point, I've used the PortableApps menu launcher but I tried the latest version and didn't like it very much. Plus, I would actually prefer one that does not automatically scan; yeah, you have to manually add entries, but you have super control over everything. I absolutely love PStart and probably will never use anything else again.

Games
Well you might get bored, right? So it's always good to have a few lite portable games, if you end out waiting an hour just for it to copy files or something. I wasn't extremely selective since it's not very high priority, and none of them are very graphically intensive.

Duck Doom Deluxe: Doom mixed with Duck Hunt.
GeneRally: Simple overhead racing game.
LBreakout2: Nothing passes the time quite like Breakout.
Mines Perfect: A more advanced version of Minesweeper.
Minimal Yahtzee: A lightweight Yahtzee game.
PokerTH: Texas Hold-em poker.
Uno: Classic card game.
VisualBoyAdvance:Gameboy Advance Emulator; great with some ROMS, such as the classic Pokemon.

Internet
For many reasons, including how sucky being forced to used IE is, it's wise to carry around an arsenal of network apps of all varieties.

eToolz: A smattering of network tools.
FileZilla: Powerful FTP client.
Firefox: A web browser that is not IE.
Chrome: Another web browser that is not IE.
HFS: HTTP File Server.
Pidgin: Multi-protocol Instant Messenger.
PuTTY: Telnet and SSH client.
Skype: VoIP client.
TeamViewer: Remote PC support tool.
uTorrent: Bittorrent client.
VNC Viewer: Remote access tool.

Multimedia
Who knows, maybe someone wants you to quickly whip up a simple wallpaper or burn a music CD. You are so cool, you'll be prepared!

Floola OR JakPod OR YamiPod: Manage an iPod. (Haven't used anyt of these in a while.)
Audacity: Audio Editor.
CDBurnerXP: Audi & data CD creation utility.
GIMP: Powerful image editor.
GSpot: Multimedia codec finder.
M3: Very small, lite player for MP3s, WMAs, and WAV
SWFPlayer: Player specifically for flash SWF files.
VLC: All-in-one multimedia player.

Performance
Definitely important! Optimize those machines and whatnot.

Autoruns: Powerful startup entry editor.
CCleaner: Junk file cleaner and registry cleaner.
Defraggler: Defragmentation tool.
DoubleKiller: Duplicate file finder.
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder: Product Key finder.
Revo Uninstaller: Full featured uninstaller.
Speccy: Computer specifications viewer.
WinDirStat: Disk usage analyzer.

Recovery
This definitely warrants a section of its own because when it is needed, it is usually very vital, so you need as many utilities at your disposal as possible.

LinuxReader: Read Linux partitions from inside Windows.
PC Inspector: File recovery utility.
Roadkil's Undelete: File recovery utility.
Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier: Copy disk contents despite bad sectors.
Recuva: File recovery utility.

Security
Probably the second most important section, although it is a bit more difficult to find portable versions of security applications.

Avast! Virus Cleaner Tool: Standalone virus & worm remover.
ClamWin: Complete anti-virus program.
Comboxfix: Very powerful spyware and malware remover.
CyberShredder: Secure deletion utility.
HijackThis: Power-user's diagnosis tool.
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: Anti-malware tool.
Sophos Anti-Rootkit: Rootkit remover.
Spybot: Spyware and malware remover.

Utilities
These can just make your time on someone else's computer more pleasant, or if they don't have some software installed, such as a PDF reader.

7-Zip: Powerful archive manager with support for 7z files (LZMA compression).
CoolPDFReader: Very tiny PDF reader.
DTaskManager: Task Manager with advanced features.
FastStone Capture: Screen capture utility.
HJSplit: File split, join, and checksum utility.
Programmer's Notepad: Powerful, lite notepad.
RegFromApp: Records registry changes.
Resource Hacker: Edit executable resources.
Snowbird: File manager and search utility.
TeraCopy: Full-featured file copier.
Ultimate Windows Tweaker: Tweak utility for Windows 7.
Unlocker: Remove locks on currently used files.
winMd5Sum: MD5 checksum calculator/checker.
WinRoll: Window enhancements such as always on top, shade, and minimize to tray.
Windows XP only

Taskbar Shuffle: Drag and drop taskbar entries.
TweakUI: Tweak utility for Windows XP.

Etc
Apps that are extremely useful but don't really fall into any category for whatever reason.

Autohotkey: Powerful automation and hotkey creation utility.
EjectUSB: Tool for safe drive removal.
TheGuide: Outliner: useful for taking notes of what you did to fix that person's computer!

(Here's a small batch file I wrote to launch the correct architecture version of Piriform software (CCleaner, Recuva, Speccy). To use it, just pass the location of the program without the .exe. Example: E:\Portable Apps\Recuva\Recuva)

II. Installers
Because -let's face it- people don't always have good apps that they should have, so bring your own. It's entirely up to you what apps you choose (just like section I), but these are the categories that I think are important. And keep in mind that these aren't even necessarily my favorites, they are the options that I think are the best for the person who is not tech savvy.

Anti-virus: AVG
Anti-Spyware: SuperAntiSpyware
Junk File Remover: CCleaner
Defragmentation utility: Defraggler
Norton Removal Tool
McAfee Removal Tool
Web Browser: Chrome

III. Linux & DBAN
Linux is a very powerful tool in your arsenal so it's very wise to make your USB stick bootable for one distribution. I personally like Parted Magic, but there are a ton of different maintenance-oriented distros out there. What's worth more consideration is the method that you get this distro to your USB. There are actually a few and each have their own standout features, but all are good and you really can't go wrong. There are also more, so don't be afraid to look around; PenDriveLinux is by far the best place to go to find more.

unetbootin: Very stable, cross platform, and can download ISO files for you.
Universal USB Installer: Very simple amd can download ISO files for you.
YUMI: Easily allows for multiple distros, stores all files in a single directory, and boots directly from ISO files.
MultiSystem: Easily allows for multiple distros, very easy to use, and boots directly from ISO files. (Only runs on Linux.)

You probably won't need it much on the go, but you will definitely need Darik's Boot And Nuke at some point. To get it to your flash drive, use this guide on PenDriveLinux.

IV. Mojopac
If you have some apps that aren't portable or you just want to use the full installed versions of everything, Mojopac is an awesome solution that lets you run a virtual machine-type instance of Windows that piggybacks on the host, but has its own registry and installed programs.

I realize that there is a heck of a lot more that could go on my USB drive, but I currently am trying to make do with 2GB since I lost my beautiful 16 GB. :( I might try to revise it as time goes on, but let me know what you think!
-Bry

Awesome Tux memo holder

2012-01-20T23:46:00.001-07:00

Picked it up at Microcenter for like $3. Did I mention that I love Microcenter? Well, I love Microcenter.
-Bry

Terminal in "Accessories"?

2012-01-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

While we are on petty things that ultimately do not matter, does anyone else find it strange that for some reason the Terminal found its way in to "Accessories," at least in the GNOME menu? I guess the reason that I find it weird is that when I first used GNOME, I was a major newbie so the only time I used the terminal was to copy+paste commands I found on the internet. Now that I'm a tad more learned, I can see it being an "accessory", even if its just for stuff like copying and moving files.

But it stills seems pretty out of place. What are some of the other apps in that section? (That's a genuine question....I'm not running GNOME right now.) Calculator: add big numbers; Character map: find that one character you just barely remember; Gedit: edit your random text files; Terminal: with one wrong move DESTROY YOUR SYSTEM.

To me, it would make much more sense to put it in "System Tools" because (for me) when I open a Terminal I almost always need to do something to my System. Also, when a new user migrates to Linux, it being under System Tools instead of Accessories will help give it the weight and importance it deserves.

Thoughts? Comments? Other people that use KDE instead of GNOME?
-Bry

/media vs /mnt?

2012-01-16T14:13:00.001-07:00

I've always kind of wondered this....really, what is the convention? I realize that it does not technically matter: you can mount any type of filesystem pretty much anywhere you damn please, that's the beauty of Linux. But this seems like it is not necessarily nailed down just yet. To me, everything should just go in /mnt. What makes it classified as "media" anyway?

Anyway, apparently, I used /mnt in my old fstab and /media in my new one (that's where the drive was mounted by default in Chakra), so I've got all this compatibility I will inevitably run into. So I did the lazy approach that I always do: create a symlink. I'm sure that will never come back to bite me in the ass...

-Bry

QupZilla

2012-01-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Of all the software shipped with Chakra that impressed me, QupZilla probably did so the most. I actually am considering switching to it, which (to me) is a pretty big deal. Even though a lot of the other browsers out there are considered "full" web browsers, (Konquerer, Arora, rekonq, etc) they really don't stand up to the big three (Firefox, Chrome/ium, Opera) to me. Midori and QupZilla are the two that I have seen that are very close to being as good as the biggies.

The thing that I like most about QupZilla is that it is extremely like Firefox; I have the two side-by-side right now and QupZilla's menus are practically identical to Firefox's. It has:

a download manager (although it is still separate, i.e. not tabized like FF's)
a Password manager
an RSS reader
profiles
private browsing
a ton of translations
Adblock
speed dial
app tabs
And best of all, it's cross-platform.

The part that makes it possibly better is that it is faster -way faster, both in rendering pages and in running. For example, I started them both up and even though I started Firefox a full second earlier, QupZilla made it up 2 seconds before Firefox did. I'm not sure if it's going to be much lighter on system resources; Qup is sitting around 215MB of RAM, and Moz is sitting around 300MB. That's with very light browsing (literally just opening Twitter and getting to Blogger for both), but hopefully Qup does better with memory leaks. I am sick of Firefox eating up 2GB of RAM when I have no tabs open.

The bad thing is that it does not have addons. That's really what makes the top three how great they are (not sure about Opera though) and it is quite literally the only thing stopping me from jumping ship to QupZilla. Granted, most of the addons I have installed I could easily do without, so here are the only 4 that really make my Firefox experience enjoyable:

Roomy Bookmarks Toolbar
This wouldn't be a huge big deal to implement in Qup: just give the option to make bookmarks only favicons in the toolbar.
Tab Mix Plus
There are really only a few options I use with this one: middle click opens the last closed tab, and a bunch of tab click options like "Bookmark All". QupZilla ships with many of the latter, so the former is all I really want out of it.
Firefox Sync
QupZilla (understandably) does not have a sync service, which is dissapointing, but meh. I feel like I might just be able to build one, at least to sync with my Wuala folder. Besides, the sync thing used to be nice because I used Xmarks which synced with Chrome, but nowadays a sync service is just rather annoying, especially if I want to just view my bookmarks away from home.
Themes
I actually don't even use a theme anymore, I've dropped to a Persona, but the fact is that QupZilla doesn't even have them. It has 4 themes: one that looks like Chrome, Classic QupZilla (rather ugly IMO), and then Linux, Mac, and Windows. I don't expect Themes for Qup, but Personas would be so very awesome.

Other than that, I am so set on QupZilla. Yeah, there are probably a bunch of tiny things, like you can't right click a Bookmark Folder and click "Open All", or it doesn't highlight the tab to let you know it is unviewed, but I know it will get there.

+1 Qup
-Bry

I've got good Chakra

2012-01-15T21:03:00.002-07:00

After messing with many, many problems on Mint KDE, I've finally moved to Chakra, and I am loving it so far. The transmission was decently smooth since I keep my home folder on a different drive so it is just a symlink away.

Btrfs
Oh wow. I've been hearing about Btrfs for a good while, but I did not expect for it to be this snappy. My last system was fine, but this one flies. I do not like that btrfs-tools is not pre-installed (which I understand since it is not explicitly supported by Chakra yet), but what I like even less is that it is not even available from the repos.

AppSet-Qt
I was hesitant at first, mostly because it went with the old-KDE layout of tabs on the sides and I don't like that for some reason, but I have quickly changed my mind. AppSet is extremely clean, incredibly fast (probably helped by Btrfs) and well layed out. The are four small things that I would change about it though. First, it asks you for you sudo password way more often than any other package manager I've used; unlike Synaptic, it doesn't prompt you beforehand and then that's it, it asks you when you want to install, when you want to change the repositories, and (most frustratingly) when you want to update the list. Secondly, it minimizes to the tray, which I don't particularly like because it's not something I need to have running all the time. Thirdly, I really wish the progress bar was in the window itself rather than a small child window; it's more of an annoyance than anything, but it keeps popping up and disappearing. Lastly, it has this weird problem with not being able to be minimized sometimes; I can't really remember the circumstances, but it basically minimizes and then reappears very quickly. But still, those 4 complaints are hardly anything, really classified more as annoyances than real bugs.

Honest to god, I love AppSet thus far. Brilliant, brilliant app.

Wuala
Wuala is one of the most important pieces of software that I need, and unfortunately, I've had a hella hard time trying to get it working. The installation method is very strange and the error messages are very cryptic and useless, but I believe the problem is that it requires GTK, which I really want to avoid. But I sure as hell need Wuala, so I might just need to break and install GTK. I'm going to look into creating a bundle for it, and if I succeed (and LaCie does not sue me) I will attempt to share it somewhere.

Tomahawk
I really liked Tomahawk the first time I launched it, but I feel like it's aimed at someone else. It's still a wonderful app, runs great, and does what it's supposed to do, but it really isn't even layed out for an offline collection, even if it's available as a feature. You can only view grouped by Artist and when you double click an artist, it opens up a page about them instead of what songs you yourself have. I guess what I wish the most is if it was more favorable to the songs you had in your collection than the ones that exist somewhere online.

The main reason I really can't use it is that it has no support for mobile players, i.e. my phone. I am really disappointing because Banshee -as much as I like it- is just so wildly unstable and unpolished, at least the version that I was using on Mint. But I still liked it more than Amarok and Clementine and those are really the only options I see as viable. (Nightingale is finally out, but it's GTK, though so is Banshee).

QupZilla
QupZilla deserves its own blog post.

Qt4Wine
WINE didn't ship with Chakra, and while I was looking for it I came across Qt4Wine. It's just a really brilliant GUI for WINE stuff like shortcuts to regedit or explorer, a process viewer, and a built in WineDB search! I highly recommend it if you run WINE and like Qt.

That's all I really have to say about it. Everything is working fine, including the GTK apps that are in bundles. I'm still kind of getting used to everything, but I am enjoying the pfargtl out of it so far.

-Bry

PS - Are we using .kde4 now instead of .kde? Is it bad that I symlinked the latter to the former? I guess I'll find out!

PPS - I still love Kate.

Next KDE Distro

2012-01-12T08:08:00.003-07:00

[I see that I'm already getting some Google searches, and I haven't even finished testing out all of the distros that I wanted to. If you have an opinion on which one you think is best, feel free to leave a comment or even head over to my little forum. I'd love to get a discussion going.]

As much as I hate to say it, the KDE spin of Linux Mint is....well, if it's not dead, it's at least a zombie, and I never trust zombies. I realize that GNOME is getting much better as well as its spinoffs or I could go with Enlightenment, but to be honest, I love KDE. I've gotten used to the look and feel and I love the apps. Sure, I could force myself to upheave and try something completely new, but I don't see the point.

Fortunately, there are a few great KDE distros out there right now. Please do keep in mind, and I will gladly admit it to anyone, that I am not a professional Linux reviewer or anything close. These thoughts will be very, very subjective toward my interests, but at the same time, hopefully they overlap with the interests of the everyday Linux user, so they will be useful to others.

Wants:

64-bit version
DEB packaging (though considering moving away because of how much a hassle Apt has been)
Btrfs
Decent software-center-type software

Netrunner
Netrunner kind of scared me because I had never heard of it before and....well, to be honest, it sounded a bit like "Netscape". But from the screenshots, I was decently impressed, especially since it kind of followed from the (pseudo-)death of Mint KDE.

I really liked how quick Netrunner booted up, especially off a compressed ISO in a virtual machine that is using a fraction of my machine's resources. I am extremely surprised at how little it has installed, but the standard of quality of the apps that the developers chose! (Excluding (Q)Transmission, of course...) They have some of the awesome KDE apps like digiKam, Gwenview, and Kate, but also the very best of the GTK apps as well: Firefox, GIMP, Skype....~~even VirtualBox~~ [EDIT 1-20-2012] (Oh wait, VirtualBox is Qt isn't it...doh! Even so, glad that they have it.) [/EDIT]! I find the choice of including a "Web Apps" section a little odd, but it's really nothing to get upset over. I do love that WINE comes preinstalled, as well as Flash. Muon -the package manager app- is kind of unimpressive compared to the Ubuntu Software Center or the Mint Software....thing, but it looks very sleek and definitely does what it is meant to do. Overall it's just an outstanding choice of apps, from start to finish.

One thing I noticed immediately that I hated upon opening Dolphin -which I LOVE as a file manager- is the terrible choice of using Windows 7 graphics for the window decorations. I don't know who they are fooling; this is not going to make it any more friendly to Windows converts and it's going to make the Linux users feel betrayed, IMO. Add to the fact that they only ship with two decorations: Windows 7 lookalike and one that looks as though it is from 1995; Even if (for whatever bizzare reason) they decided to ship with the Windows look as default, I wish they would have included one decent, modern alternative as well.

I'm kind of caught off-guard that it also ships with a half dozen Firefox addons preinstalled. Granted, these are some of the most popular and I even use some of them myself, but it just seems weird. Addons are a very, very personal thing; it's the reason most people love Firefox because, let's face it, it's surely not for its performance. Plugins and even themes seem ok but addons seem different. In any case, I would just bring over my entire .firefox folder so I wouldn't keep them anyway, but still.....interesting choice.

Netrunner 4.0

Overall, I just don't really feel like the appearance aspect of Netrunner meshes really well. At some places, they seem to go the more smooth route like Pardus or even openSUSE, but then other places they decide to stick with the traditional KDE look, but then other places still they decide to look like Windows. It has no splash screen. It uses plain white backgrounds for several different things (System Settings, Terminal). I would love Netrunner a lot more if it found it's very own visual style, and sold that hardcore, like Pardus or openSUSE.

But I do very much like it. I think the developers have their heads in the right place, and just using it feels very very right. ATTOTP, it has no 64-bit version, but the Netrunner Twitter and Facebook have both mentioned the beginnings of one, and I can't imagine them taking too long. I do like that it already has Btrfs support, a feature that a very select few amount of distros have yet, from what I've seen. But the fact is, Netrunner is very slick. It just needs a bit more refining in the visuals.

Chakra
Chakra scared me the most because of its vicinity to Arch. One day, I will install Arch, and I will love it. But not today. However, I was completely wrong in thinking that Chakra would be unpolished or even amaturesque; instead, it is perhaps the best KDE distro out there.

Chakra seems to be a bit more....intricate than some other distros, no doubt from its origins in Arch. It ships with several Qt development tools, XBMC, and even SUSE Studio Imagewriter (what?). Just browsing around, I love that they went with a different music player -Tomahawk- rather than Clementine or Amarok, both of which I do not like. I'll talk about the app choices more in a bit, but for now let's just leave it as....unique.

The basic looks of Chakra is kind of simple....almost generic. Really, unimpressive, but not ugly. I'm not extremely fond of the starting widget, though I do like the idea, and the starting wallpaper pales in comparison from what I've seen of past Mint, openSUSE, Pardus, and even Netrunner's starting wallpapers. Besides that, it has the default KDE look almost everywhere, and while that's not my thing, it's fine.

Chakra definitely emphasizes the KDE/Qt desktop; there is no Firefox, GIMP, or any GTK app to be seen, though it includes a "Bundle Manager" that lists many popular non-Qt apps such as Audacity, Chromium, Filezilla, Firefox, GIMP, Pidgin, and Skype. I'm not entirely sure what a "Bundle" is; they attempt to explain it, poorly in my opinion, but from what I can gather:

A Bundle is a tightly-knit metaphorical "bag" that contains all that is needed for a GTK app. You install a Bundle rather than the packages themselves so you don't need all of the GTK dependencies, they instead exist inside of the bag; this way GTK is never installed and thus never 'contaminates' your KDE system, and to remove the GTK app, you just toss the bag. (A definition by me)

If this understanding is true, it is awesome. The fact that they care about the user wanting to be able to easily install a few choice GTK apps impresses me greatly. In terms of the rest of their app choices, they seem very strange (like the ones I mentioned earlier), but oddly refreshing...kind of. I love that they included QupZilla, a Qt-based web browser that I did not know existed until now, but I love compared to Rekonq or Konquerer. I don't exactly understand why they include SpiderOak or a few other apps here and there, but overall, it's just nice to see someone mixing things up.

Chakra's package manager, named AppSet-Qt, is very different, if not confusing. It looks like it has a small learning curve, but could be extremely useful and efficient. I would peg it somewhere around the level of Synaptic, only with a build in web browser for the Homepage of a package, as well as a 'Distribution News' homepage that tells you what is new with Chakra. I have mixed feelings about it so far, but I do know that I love how quickly it opens.

The fact that Tribe -the Chakra installer- is in alpha scares me greatly. In terms of appearance and functionality, I like it very much, but the mere fact that it is one of the biggest unfinished features make me hesitant to install Chakra at all. That is really one feature that I hope they can nail down post-haste.

Chakra 2011.12

Chakra really surprised me in how much new it brings to the table. It really sets itself apart as being a very focused (perhaps the most focused) KDE distro, especially in a world that seems to be obsessed with GNOME. The visuals might not be as exciting as other pretty KDE implementations, but the backbone of this distro seems incredibly solid and that makes me very confident as a potential user. After seeing Mint essentially abandon KDE, it's nice to see a distro so thoroughly dedicated to making an already great Desktop Environment even greater. There is nothing about this distro that I can truly complain about.

Mageia
I was never ever really a fan of Mandriva and Mandrake was before my time, so I've always been a bit skeptical of Mageia. My opinion hasn't changed much after playing with it.

The boot time seems extremely outrageous. Whereas both Netrunner and Chakra were up and running in a matter of seconds, Mageia seemed to get caught up at several stages, even requiring a reboot at one point. Add on top of that you are greeted with a short wizard before even being able to access the live environment, and I'm already kind of disheartened.

It's really kind of hard to describe Mageia other than using one word: boring. Mageia seems to have very, very little that actually makes it stand out. It has every single steriotypical KDE app plus a few of the normal oddballs (Firefox, GIMP, Libre Office). While the graphic design in Mageia is amazing -such as the logo, the login screen, and the wallpaper- the theming is severely lacking. Maybe I'm just not a fan of blue but.....please, move away from blue, everything from the panel to the window decorations to to everything, and it just looks....boring. Add on top of the the ridiculous menu that it ships with and it just leaves you....unimpressed.

In terms of package management, Mageia uses Rpmdrake, a remnant of Mandriva, and it shows. Rpmdrake looks very dated, although that could be the effect of the skin. Whereas with most others I am quickly installing or at least browsing, I could not figure out how to browse packages that were not installed. I will admit that at this point I am probably just being over-critical, but at the least, I can say that Rpmdrake was one more thing that failed to stir any amount of interest in my brain.

Mageia 1

There's nothing really wrong with Mageia, it just seems like "another distro." I personally found it visually disappointing in most regards and there was nothing really special at all about the implementation of KDE. I cannot see a good reason to use it over one of the other more refined choices. All this being said, it is important to remember that Mageia is still relatively new, only about a year and a half old and still on its first release. I truly and sincerely hope that its developers can find their zen.

openSUSE
I have fallen in love with openSUSE quite a while ago. I think that it does a fantastic job of implementing both GNOME and KDE, especially visually. It was going to be my choice last time, except for one thing.....YaST. I just hope it has improved.

The biggest issue I've had with openSUSE has been stability. When I was trying to switch my family's PC over to Linux, openSUSE was my first choice. I couldn't get past the Live CD, though, because it failed to launch the KDE Partition Utility. And again, as I boot openSUSE in my VM, it has frozen and/or crashed three times now, just trying to boot. Now this VM is a little wonky so each distro has frozen about once, but the fact is that I cannot even get openSUSE to successfully boot and let me try it out.

After it finally let me boot, I got pretty much the same impression as I had last time: pretty awesome. It's visually pleasant, very coordinated. The installed app choices are good. The only thing that really makes me hate it is YaST. Not as a control center, but as a Software Manager. It is just so slow and inefficient and....

I would continue, but openSUSE decided to freeze up....again. Given my past experiences with stability issues, I'm just going to have to give it a pass. Maybe next time, openSUSE.

Sabayon

Sabayon is another distro that I am wary of because it stems from Gentoo, something that I am not quite up to tackling on my main box. The last time I tried it out, I had already kind of decided on Mint KDE so Sabayon got pushed to an after thought, and now I'm hoping to give it a fair chance in the runnings.

(Aside from the absolutely bizarre boot music,) Sabayon seems very similar to Chakra, especially in terms of appearance (that is, sticking to the default KDE look), but not so much in the apps. Sabayon tends to be much more conservative with the apps, keeping most of the normal KDE apps such as Amarok and even Konquerer, only really mixing it up by favoring Chromium over Firefox. The main difference, of course, is the package management. Sabayon uses Entropy, a store that is very unique, instead of DEB, RPM, or even Pacman. The idea of a store gets me excited because I am a big fan of paying developers for their hard work.

...but I've had some serious issues with Sabayon's Entropy store in the Virtual Machine. Problems meaning it will not start. I guess I might just have to burn it to a DVD and give it a hardware try. (I can remember having issues with the package manager in Sabayon before, and apparently it is not the most stable program in the world.)

Kubuntu

I have never, ever been a fan of Kubuntu and it was what initially turned me off of KDE (that and a few others, like Mandriva), but I figured I should really give it a chance. The reason I think I have not liked Kubuntu is that it goes hardcore KDE and I do not like some of the aspects of KDE, particularly the default skin, web browser, and several other apps. But I've since discovered that I do indeed like KDE, so I'm going to try to look at Kubuntu again.

At this point, the lines are just kind of starting to blur. There's nothing really spectacular about Kubuntu as a KDE distro, which -I'm not going to lie- is kind of disappointing. Maybe it's unfair, but it seems like with it being related to Ubuntu, it should at least bring something new to the table, but it really does not. One thing that surprised me is that the Ubuntu Software Center doesn't even come installed; it ships Muon Software Center, which I mentioned earlier is a perfectly fine app, but I find it odd that Ubuntu is really stressing and pushing the Software Center and Ubuntu One, both of which I am a major fan of, even if I have not had the chance to use them, but neither are included in Kubuntu. I guess it's because neither are built on Qt and they are trying to make Kubuntu a KDE-only experience, but here's the thing: there already are KDE only experiences out there. Mageia is a perfect example: nothing exciting, but a really solid KDE distro. Throwing a few non-Qt apps in there like the Software Center or (heaven forbid) Firefox is going to make it different, which is good.

Kubuntu 11.10

Other than that, there isn't much else to say. It's just kind of like Mageia: boring. It could be different if it was the only KDE distro to ship integrated with the Ubuntu Software Store and Ubuntu One, but it doesn't. It ran very smoothly (different than the last time I tried it) and I saw nothing wrong with it. I just saw nothing new.

Pardus

Pardus will always have a special place in my heart. It is so wonderfully implemented and is definitely a top contender for the best KDE distro. The only problem that I've had in the past was the fact that it uses its own type of package, causing an issue of limited packages. So it was never really a contender, unfortunately.

PCLinuxOS
I know it's not fair, but I am just distro-ed out to attempt to look at PCLinuxOS.

To me, "reviewing" Linux distros is such a harsh word because -at least maybe to me- there isn't much difference between one and another, especially between ones that share the same DE. It's not really like any of these choices are bad, or even that there is a "best". That's probably where the challenge comes in for me, because -even when I chose Mint KDE- there is no absolute "best' KDE distro. They're all well and good, and you just need to give them a try, pick one, and stick with it. That's what I did with Mint KDE, and that's what I'm doing now, and I choose....

Chakra.

More words after I give it a go installing.

-Bry

Ubuntu TV

2012-01-11T04:37:00.002-07:00

Wait.

No.

What.

This is....

...kind of awesome?

What?

Why does it seem like this is what Unity was designed for in the first place? I mean, I actually want this! (I really hope they release it for the public cause my HTPC would LOVE to see this on it.)

Clicky for a looksee

-Bry

Bryan Lunduke's predictions for Linux in 2012

2012-01-10T14:26:00.002-07:00

No introduction needed. Glad to see Bryan is back at the Linux Action Show!

Click here to be teleported

I agree with all 12 points except for the last one. I haven't been following it too closely (I'm not even sure if the last one I tried was Natty or Oneiric), but I feel like maybe Ubuntu will need a few more releases to get their act together. I think my brother might agree with me.

-Bry

My brother's thoughts on Unity

2012-01-10T14:24:00.001-07:00

He's not really a Linux guy, per se, but he is a tech guy and he helps my mother with the Ubuntu install on her computer. I saw him this last Christmas and we got to talking about various things, and this is what he had to say about Unity on Ubuntu.

"And then it booted and Unity came up, and it was like someone took a diarrhea dump on the screen." -My brother

-Bry

Why Google Instant is a dumb idea

2011-12-21T22:00:00.001-07:00

Every time I get on any computer I use, I turn off Google Instant, well, instantly. It has never made sense to me and has actually been extremely distracting. The whole reason I see Google Instant as being absolutely foolish in design is this: I think of searches in words, not letters. To me, if I want to find results for "ternary operator", I'm not going to type "t", look through the results, "e", look through the results, "r", look through the results, etc. Furthermore, how long does it take you to type "tern", guestimating? Ok, now how long does it take to type "terna"? How about "ternary"? I'm not the fastest typer in the world but it still does not make enough of a difference for me to actually be to look through the results as I'm typing.

Plus, there's the whole factor of "tern" meaning something completely different than "ternary", which also means something completely different than "ternary operator." The point is that a search is an entire entity; you can't split it up, and you can't substitute a part. Every word is there for a reason, and looking at parts of that word is just looking at a completely different search than was intended. It's hard enough with Google fucking with searches by trying to "guess" what we are trying to search for, how is doing it instantly with an incomplete search entity going to help?

Google Instant just proves that Google is completely wrong in the head when it comes to how they think we search: they think that we don't know what we want. So we need to swap out words for similar words like showing results for "like" when you searched for "similar", even though with social networking the definition of the word "like" has evolved far beyond just a synonym for "similar", and thus skews the results beyond any usability. Similarly, that's why they decide that we need help every single letter, even though (a) no one in their right mind thinks of searches letter by letter and (b) changing a word by 1 letter drastically change the meaning of it 99% of the time, resulting in not just skewed results, but absolutely wrong.

I just am dumbfounded by Google -the company that seems to usually be very smart about what the user wants- can be so blind by this continued negligence toward the intelligence of the user. I don't want to admit it, but it has got to be money oriented, because there is simply no way that some of the brightest minds in the world can look at the results of these searches and think that the "enhancements" they made actually help.

Let me lay something down for you, Google. Before you introduced all these features, it took me maybe 4-5 searches of about 5 pages each to find something that I wanted of normal obscurity. Usually my search progression would be "banana tasty", then "banana delicious", and so forth. Granted, that is not that great, so I understand your desire to enhance the experience, and it is kind of annoying to try to search for synonyms, but at least I had complete control over what results I would get. Now, I have only one search (because all of those above mean the same thing now), about 15 pages, and I cannot find my result. Stop acting like Microsoft; I don't want a "decision engine", I want a search engine so that I can look through results and then decide. I am the decision engine! So unless you can come up with a new algorithm that can decide what I want better than me, I recommend you cut the crap and give the internet the useful Google Search back.

-Bry

PS - Don't even get me started on Google Instant on mobile. Just....don't.

SOPA & PIPA

2011-12-19T06:32:00.001-07:00

I really hope it goes without saying that I am 100% against SOPA and PIPA. First, I want to kind of give a brief overview of just what they will do, and then why I think it's wrong. I feel like a lot of sites tend to give a brief dumbed-down summary, speculations on what it will do (e.g. "killing off eBay"), and then a link to write your congressman. Well, my brother recently asked me to explain them to him, so here's what I come to understand them as:

The crux of them is that they basically upgrade piracy to the status of a federal crime, and both the user that uploaded it and the website can be taken to court. You can actually be sentenced to 5 years in prison just for violating a copyright, and then the website that hosted that material, whether or not they knew it was there, is blocked by all ISPs by order of the government, no questions asked. Plus, the government can also order Google and other search engines to de-index the site as well. (That alone should scare people.) One guy on Youtube said it's basically "guilty until proven innocent." Pretty much everybody in the country is against it except for the entertainment industry. Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Twitter, and literally millions of individuals have voiced their opinions, and these are people who actually know how the internet works. I still find it funny that people are allowed to vote for the SOPA when they don't even know what a DNS is or how it works. The only groups I've seen support it are part of the people who think that they can gain money from it, like Comcast (a cable provider), and NBC. It's not even that this bill is that entirely terrible, because all you have to do is just use a DNS outside the country and you can get past all that blocking stuff, but it scares me because I know that the entertainment industry won't just stop there. This is capitalism, and if they can push the law to make more money, they will.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable about these bills is the level of power they are trying to wield to get rid of the problem. It's like nuking a city because there's a cockroach under the fridge, or as the same guy on Youtube said, "burning down your house because you have an ant problem". It very well may stop piracy, but the force being used is too excessive. This bill is not designed to fight piracy, it is designed to end piracy by squashing out way more than in needs to just to be sure.

But even that is being too nice for this bill because to think that one single bill could end piracy is absolutely moronic and shows that people who are in support of it do not know what they are talking about. How many times have we seen "the death of piracy" over the years? The death of Napster? The PirateBay founders being imprisoned? Every single time, these actions that were supposed to be catastrophic to the idea of piracy have left barely even a dent. Do you know why? Because pirates finds a way. If you shut down torrents, they will use Usenet. If you shut down Usenet, they will create some other protocol. If you unplug the internet, there will be millions of CD exchanges. The goal of eliminating piracy is not only ridiculous, but it is so wrong that it is actually damaging the fight against the real problem.

I am against piracy. Ask anyone at my work that, all of whom who "dock in the Pirate Bay", as I like to say, and I am pretty much the only person there who actually still buys his music. I do not take the stupidity of many of the reasons for piracy, such as supporting them from buying merchandise or "it's not stealing, it's sharing". Piracy is stealing, and if you do it, you do it because it is free and you don't want to pay. But this act is taking the complete wrong approach. It's just hacking away at the leaves when it really needs to go for the root.

DRM failed miserably and it is finally all but gone on digital media, and the only thing it did was cause many people disdain for the companies that enforced it. I find that people tend to work with you much more if you treat them with respect, and that's what there needs to be: a new entertainment industry model that treats both the artists/creators and consumers with respect. I'm not going to pretend to know the answer. I'll gladly admit, I don't know what that new system is, but I do know that it is not SOPA. SOPA is internet censorship, pure and simple.

And sure, today, it's DNS, but what comes next? Comcast has already been caught blocking BitTorrent traffic and the Pirate Bay as well. I'm still no expert in networking, but isn't it possible to not only block the DNS of a site but also all traffic to and from it? And the most terrifying thing of all is that it plays under the guise of something that is so righteous. When I tell people that there is something called the "Stop Online Piracy Act", most of them (unless they are pirates) are in support of it, because most people agree that Piracy is wrong. But putting a pretty face on it doesn't make it any more valid, it only makes it more deceptive to those that don't know any better. We that do know better cannot let acts like this pass. It is our responsibility to stop it.

"Yes, it's bad that piracy can happen. But it's because we are free that it can happen. Think about that. If you remove one, you remove the other." -PhantomAlucard

"SOPA: sacrificing the rights of the many to protect an industry that is too stubborn and greedy to evolve." -Me

-Bry

The Operating System User chart

2011-12-17T01:39:00.003-07:00

I made this a while ago and I guess I forgot about it.

The "OS Triforce"

I think it's kind of a neat representation. I would say that I'm about where the "e" is in "Linux User", but eventually I would like to make sure that I am somewhere in the middle triangle; it's perfectly fine to favor one OS more than the others, but you still have to accept and be ok with the others as well because nobody likes a fanboy.

Feel free to use this image/modify it/recreate it/etc. Also feel free to leave a comment below to where you think you fall on the chart. :)
-Bry

FINALLY fixed Apt!

2011-12-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

As usual, I'm not responsible for the accuracy of this post, or the results you might encounter from attempting to imitate it. You're a Linux user, you should know to be careful, or accept the consequences. And I'm only going to say this once: don't copy and paste a command unless you know what it does.

Turns out the Apt problem that's been plaguing me -the same that seemingly fubared my graphics driver and left me using Windows for a few months- apparently wasn't gone. Every time I tried to install or remove something, I would get hella error messages about nothing being configured. Well, first I tried to fix cups, which was first on the list. The method one person suggested was purging it then reinstalling it, which worked, but I do not recommend it. Cups is decently unimportant. The next on the list was udev, which sounds important just by the name, and I did not want to purge it. Plus there were a ton of "lib___", some that sounded very necessary, at least to KDE.

I looked around and eventually found a thread on Linux Questions about this very problem: something was wrong with udev which threw off initramfs-tools, which in turn threw off around 195 packages that needed them to be configured. The major consensus is to try to get Apt to configure the packages that are unconfigured, but for me, all that yielded was about 2.7 billion errors (massively trimmed down because you don't care):

$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 40 not upgraded.
192 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.

Setting up udev (173-0ubuntu4) ...
udev start/running, process 5104
info: unrecognized option '--convert-db'
dpkg: error processing udev (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of initramfs-tools:
initramfs-tools depends on udev (>= 147~-5); however:
Package udev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
...
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The solution? Reinstalling udev...by force. The poster in that thread mentioned that there should be a backup in /var/cache/apt/archives/udev*.deb, but that didn't exist for me so I downloaded it the Ubuntu archive from pkgs.org. It's important to use the same package that your system is set up for; originally I downloaded them off Debian's website but there are certain Mint-specific packages that have dependencies to "0.99_7ubuntu" instead of just "0.99_7". It also lessens the chance of things breaking. Anyway, however you get the DEB, find the correct one for your system and use the force:

dpkg -i --force-all ./udev*.deb

HEY. LISTEN. This is important. After doing that I tried another install -f, there was another missing dependency so it was prepared to remove....well, damn near everything except udev:

After this operation, 1,371 MB disk space will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially harmful.
To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'

If you get this, you'll need to update libudev0 as well, which is the same deal: get the DEB, and run a:

dpkg -i --force-all ./libudev0*.deb

After that I ran another install -f and BEHOLD: packages were configuring! Unfortunately I got one more error message still:

Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Again, I tried another --force-all with the initramfs-tools DEB, Which of course lead to yet another error:

cp: cannot stat `/usr/lib/pango/1.6.0/module-files.d/libpango1.0-0.modules': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/usr/lib/pango/1.6.0/modules/pango-basic-fc.so': No such file or directory

Which I learned a fix for in a Mint thread, but I actually suggest the method prescribed in this blog that uses a symlink instead:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/*-linux-gnu/pango /usr/lib/pango

(The * is your architecture: either i386 for 32-bit or x86_64 for 64-bit.) After this, try another force with initramfs-tools, and -for me- the issues with the 20,000 errors under the sea went away.

This fixed the issue for me, though I've got a few more problems I need to solve:

for some reason I still get "The following packages have been kept back", which lists a crap ton of xserver* packages.
When attempting a dist-upgrade, it says it's going to remove kubuntu-desktop and xorg

It looks like I just won't be able to do a dist-upgrade right now but hopefully I can at least do a regular upgrade.

I did all of this to attempt to run Illumination Software Creator on Linux, but I then got sidetracked trying to get fgrlx working again. In any case, the Apt problem seems to be solved, so one down, two to go.
-Bry

Note: Do not double define your DNS

2011-12-07T13:56:00.001-07:00

I've been forced to use Windows since my Linux install is out of commission and I haven't had the time to fix it, but the internet has been painfully slow. I scanned for viruses and spyware, cleaned the registry, checked the DNS on my router and network settings, and did all the standard stuff, but no fix. Then today, I loaded up a Jupiter Broadcasting video. It took several minutes to load the page, but when I pressed play, I noticed that it loaded very quickly, which made me realize that it wasn't the data speed, it must be the DNS.

It turns out while I had set the DNS to "auto" for IPv4, I had not for IPv6. Switching that immediately made web browsing pleasurable again. I didn't write down the DNS that was in that field so I'm not sure if it was the DNS that I use (Google DNS) or perhaps some spyware got in there and changed it. I'm going to hope it's the first one so that I was not tracked for all this time. I guess I've just learned not to define the DNS in your router and your network settings.

-Bry

What to aim for: less errors, or "good" errors?

2011-12-07T11:52:00.001-07:00

The thought popped into my head yesterday while waiting at the bus stop. Every technological device we use malfunctions at some time or other, we only notice when it's an especially "bad" error. For example, I got a new phone recently, the LG Optimus Slider which is basically the next version of my previous phone, the Optimus V. Both the Slider and the V have an issue with the 3G where it will stay "Connecting" but never connect, especially when switching off Wifi. I learned that toggling airplane mode tends to get it working about 90% of the time, and the other 10% requires a restart of the phone.

The point is, yeah, it's an error that I deal with pretty frequently, but I never even registered it in my mind as a problem because 90% of the time, it has a fix that is quick and easy. However, 10% of the time, it has a fix, but that fix takes a long time (relatively) and it keeps me from using my phone during that entire time. It's pretty obvious that the prior is better than the latter. Obviously, most tech users would say "Well the best case would be to have no errors at all," but both as a user and a future developer, I know well enough that there will always be errors. But how you handle the errors as they happen is a totally different matter.

The true question is, which should developers focus on: keeping the number of errors to a minimum, or making sure that errors are "good" when they happen? One can't focus entirely on one or the other. Let's use some kind of game as an example: if you focus on lessening the errors, the game will be playable but as soon as an error is happened upon, the game will just exit and the player will lose saved data; if you focus on handling errors well when they happen, the game will be buggy as hell. Both are undesirable, so the solution must be in the middle, but which end does it favor?

Here are 2 examples of exceedingly "bad" errors:

The 1st case is exceeding obvious. For the 2nd, the first installer did not give any indication at all as to why the installation failed. The second installer gave a crypted error code that apparently means a dozen different things, which does nothing for you except have you trying out a dozen different fixes. I only fixed the problem by checking the log for the second installer (the first installer did not give you the location of a log) which linked to another log that I had to scan through until I found the error message. Bad error.

Personally, I would tend to lean on the handling of errors rather than prevention. Almost every piece of tech I have has "quirks", and quirks are just errors handled better. (Except for the sticky keys on my calculator...that was Dr. Pepper.) Occasionally Firefox crashes or freezes, but if it starts up again with my tabs and tab groups, I can get back to what I was doing right away. Quirks become small bumps that you can just glide over whereas full blown errors make you slam on the breaks.

My thoughts, anyway. I'm sure they are to change as I get to developing more software and deal with errors.
-Bry

Crazy Deal on heatsink

2011-11-24T14:12:00.001-07:00

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm still content with my PC (hardware-wise). I've really faced no limitations, other than running out of RAM every now and then while trying to multitask in KDE, but everything is actually going pretty swell.

....However, one of the things that I have at the top of my list to upgrade is the heatsink since I'm still using stock. I couldn't really bring myself to sink money into it since, ever since getting my new case, I haven't had any temperature issues.

I've already had a heatsink picked out for almost a year: the XIGMATEK Dark Knight. On top of it being named after one of my favorite movies of all time, it also has 5 eggs with over 500 reviews, supports a great deal of sockets (both Intel and AMD), and is XIGMATEK with which I've had decently good experience with cooling.

Cutting to the chase, I could never justify spending $45 on something I didn't exceedingly need. However, when I happened to visit its page and see that it was $9.97 after a MIR.....well, COME ON. (It was actually $19.97 yesterday but it dropped even further today.) As far as I know, it's pretty future proof as well: Sandy/Ivy Bridge use socket 1155, and Bulldozer uses AM3+ which (as far as I know) uses the same cooling as AM2. Even if it wasn't future proof, $10 is an amazing deal.

Needless to say, I'm jumping on it.
-Bry

[UPDATE 11-27-11]
All sold out, folks. I guess it WAS a good deal.

Where's the KDE love, Mint?

2011-11-17T21:37:00.001-07:00

Recently I tried to fix a very longstanding APT problem I had with my install. Long story short, I fixed it by manually removing and re-adding every single source by hand. Only I thought that many of the sources were out of date in that they referenced some older version of Ubuntu so I decided to go ahead and switch everything over to Oneiric. .........oops? Everything broke. When I try to select the top option in my GRUB menu, I get a black screen.

In any case, rather than try to fix the 300 packages I probably broke, I was just going to start from scratch, install the newest version of Linux Mint KDE. Only problem is, I'm running the newest version of LM KDE. Yeah, Mint 11 has been out for almost 6 months but KDE 11 is no where to be seen.

I don't want to be the whiny user, but it's just frankly disappointing, because Linux Mint KDE 10 is the best KDE distro I tried. It absolutely blows Kubuntu out of the water. So when I see that Linux Mint 11 LXDE, and LMDE with GNOME and XFCE are all getting released, but no KDE version around, I just get wary. I honestly don't know where else to go. I guess openSUSE is the next best thing but YaST still makes me want to blow chunks.

In any case, I guess I'll just reinstall LM KDE 10, or try to fix the problem(s). As for the future of LM KDE, as long as there will be a LM 12 KDE, I will be happy.
-Bry

[UPDATE 12-7-11]
So apparently Boo -the maintainer for the KDE spin- has kind of vanished. Back in the end of October, Clem -the founder and maintainer of Mint- said that he was working hard on the main edition but after it was released (i.e., now) he would turn his attention to KDE if Boo had not returned. Well, still no word from Boo and LM12 is out.

This really doesn't set my mind at ease because I know that Clem will not (and should not) attempt to maintain both the main and KDE releases; although I prefer KDE, I think the main release of Mint has always been fantastic (haven't tried out 12 though) and Clem needs to continue that. Hopefully, if Boo doesn't come back, they'll be able to find someone else to step up. Otherwise, I guess I'm headed to Chakra or Mageia or Sabayon or something.

FIX: "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required" (Visual Studio 2010)

2011-10-31T10:12:00.001-06:00

Here I am, sitting waiting to get my winter tires put on, and I decide to try to work on some Assembly homework. Unfortuantely, I get the nasty error "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." Since there is no wifi here and the only internet access I have is my phone tether, this is not a viable option, since it's a web install. (I hate those.)

Anyway, after starting a CRAP ton of services, I noticed that my clock read way wrong, since I had taken out the battery earlier when switching to my 8-cell. Synced the clock, ran MSVS, bingo. Blast it all.

-Bry

Got a new Lenovo S10-3t

2011-10-20T21:26:00.000-06:00

Netbook choice
As much as I love my EEE Pad Transformer, it just doesn't cut it for a college student, so I decided to buy a netbook.

At first I just wanted the cheapest netbook I could grab, which was -incidentally- another ASUS product -the X101. However, I soon learned that it had atrocious battery life, and I probably was not going to like MeeGo. Plus, I hated the idea of not having a tablet at all.

I then decided to maybe take a nice step up, and I wanted probably the most amazing display of technological ingenuity I have yet to have seen: the AlwaysInnovating Smartbook. However, it is definitely pricey for a netbook/tablet, and I wasn't sure if they were actually still shipping. (I tweeted at them, and they never replied.)

Finally, I said screw it, and went with the Lenovo S10-3t, which is a netbook/tablet convertible (or tabletbook, as I call them) which was praised like the dickins by Bryan Lunduke. It is a decent size, fair price ($350 new), and has basically all I could ask for in either a tablet or netbook: decent sized HDD (i.e., not a cramped SSD), SD slot, a webcam, and a decent battery life. Not much to it.

Initial thoughts
I'm going to be honest, I did not look into this tabletbook very much. There are so many effing netbooks out there and I really did not want "just another netbook", and after looking at all the possibilities beforehand (the Dell Duo being the only rival, and it got poor reviews), the S10-3t seemed like a decent choice; maybe not the best, but adequate.

Pros:
Right off the bat, I love the form. holding it in my hand as a tablet, or the feel of it as a netbook. The keyboard is lovely spaced, the power button is accessible from both netbook and tablet mode (plus it has a lock on it!), and the whole half-black, half-white with orange highlights looks spectacular. Physically, I loved this device before ever turning it on.

Cons:
Then came time to turn it on. It's still really early and I've only had it for a day, but I have to say that it was...less than snappy. It definitely needs some hardcore optimization, but I'm just not sure if Win7 is the right OS when I had to super-optimize WinXP to run on my old netbook with similar specs.
The main thing that made me scared is the touchpad. (1) It's bumpy, which is weird...it might take some getting used to but right now it just doesn't feel right. (2) The buttons are in the touchpad. I don't know why people like this. I kept finding my mouse jumping around whenever I try to click.

Operating System(s)
I've been giving some thought to what OS to put on this bad boy. For school I will definitely need both Windows and Linux, but that in and of itself has plenty of different choices. Essentially, I've broken it down into 3 different sections, and the choices I would make in each:

1. Full Desktop: Ubuntu, Windows 7
(I actually already have both of these installed and running.) These tend to be a bit heftier. They're mostly to be used in Netbook mode because they require greater precision like physical mouse and keyboard.

Ubuntu: Looks fantastic, but I'm not sure if it's lagging. It seems like it takes a bit too long to launch apps, not to mention the fact that I'm not sure if I'm fond of Unity yet (even if it is much improved). I don't think any netbook can handle KDE, but other possibilities would be Mint GNOME or Ubuntu GNOME.
Windows 7: Again, kind of slow, so far. It's got a bunch of crappy Lenovo software that's designed to make the tablet experience better. I'm still unconvinced Windows 7 can function well as a tablet OS, so I need to uninstall like a mofo.

2. Minimal: ElementaryOS, Peppermint/Mint LXDE, Slitaz, Windows XP/ReactOS
A bit like the Full Desktop, but a lot lighter. Tend to be a bit more stripped down, or at least designed to be lighter on resources.

ElementaryOS: I have not installed this on a machine yet, but my god it is gorgeous. Everything meshes so well. The only downsides are (1) it runs on GNOME, which means it's probably heavier than LXDE, and (2) it uses Midori, which I love, but I really need Firefox Sync. Otherwise, I am so tempted just to pick this, install Wuala and gcc, and leave it at that.
Peppermint/Mint LXDE: Peppermint was my Linux choice on my last netbook and I still love it. I don't even love it for the Mozilla Prism apps, I just love it because it is shipped with barely anything and is very very lightweight.
I might give Mint LXDE a go, since I think it is actually maintained by the same guy who started Peppermint. My guess is both are wonderful.
SliTaz: I've never used SliTaz as a primary OS, but I love it so much. Best minimal mobile OS out there, as far as I'm concerned. It is on par with Peppermint.
Windows XP/ReactOS: I'm not going to say much about Windows XP other than I've used it for years, still like it, and it makes a great netbook OS.
But ReactOS! Man, that would be sweet! I just need to make sure it runs VisualStudio, since that is all I really need from my Windows Install. Other than that, I would totally choose that over XP.

3. Netbook: Joli OS, xPUD
These tend to be more limited, mostly by the simplistic design of the interface. Ideally, though, they should be much more fast and lightweight. I have not found this to be the case.

Joli OS: Last time I used Joli OS, it was still Jolicloud and it needed some work. From the little I've seen and heard, it's improved, so I'm willing to give it another shot.
xPUD: I love xPUD, but I'm not quite sure it is enough for me.

4. Tablet: Android x86, Plasma Active, (WebOS/Maemo?)
These are few and far between, really, at least ones that are designed to be installed on devices instead of merely being shipped on them. The small number of x86 tablets out there makes it even worse.

Android x86: I've used this before on my EEE 901 and it was pretty cool. That was before Honeycomb though, so I'll have to see how well that works. If it works well, then this is definitely a go, since (I think) Android gives the best tablet experience I've seen
Plasma Active: I heard the guys at the Linux Action Show talked about this a while back and then I somehow stumbled onto it: Plasma Active is a very slick KDE interfaced designed specifically for touch screen interfaces. I've used it live and while it was a bit pokey (running off a microSD), it looked great. If it runs well, I'll probably do this just for shits and grins.
It actually isn't an OS in and of itself, it's just a set of packages. However, I can't imagine installing a different Linux distro and then installing this, but it is a possibility. Maybe Mint LXDE+Plasma Active.
(WebOS/Maemo?): I really hadn't given these two any thought, but I guess I should include them. Bryan Lunduke has said many great things about Maemo, but it's really end-of-lifed so I don't want to get too attached. I've heard amazing things about WebOS as well, so I might give that one a shot, but I'm doubtful it will beat out Android (if Android x86 is on par with my TF's Honeycomb).

5. What the hell are you doing: OS X, Haiku, JNode
Because why the hell not? In all seriousness though, the only one for real that I would do is OS X, depending on if the S10-3t makes a good Hackintosh. This is definitely an afterthought.

To some this might be either daunting or annoying, but I love trying out OSes, especially ones that are very different, and no two of the ones listed are the same. I'll probably just try to spend a day or so in each one, keeping Windows 7 and cycling through the rest.

Hopefully this tabletbook will be good to me. I'm pretty excited about it.
-Bry

Thoughts on Steve Jobs (that will inevitably get me flamed) and Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-13T00:49:00.001-06:00

Maybe this is me just being a cynic, but why do people act like he was such a great person? He made personal computers for the upper-middle class and he didn't design them all by himself. He founded a company of hardworking individuals that all together contributed to create the products Apple makes. Steve Jobs did not "create" the iPhone, he created what created the iPhone. It's not like he gives billions to charities...that would be Bill Gates. Most people that praise him do it because they use an iPhone. Is that what "greatness" has been reduced to? Creating luxuries?

I'm certainly not saying that I'm happy he's dead, or even "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." I react to his death just like I react to any other person's death, and my philosophical view on death is another discussion entirely.

I'll definitely concede that years ago, Steve was very influential. Earlier on, Macs were pretty cutting edge and in that way, they were pushing the limits for computers in general. But in my own biased view, they've become more of a caged beast; they cater more toward their own consumers; you are either a Mac user, or you aren't. But then there are some people that just make my head hurt, saying "He brought us the concept of the mouse for computers as well as he introduced us to the touch screen system." First off, Apple did not invent the mouse, though they did popularize it. Secondly, he did not do any of that. Apple did. I think it's unfair to the company to place the glory on one person.

People have literally praised him as the "most important person in the history of technology." I cannot believe that that is true for a second. Even if he was "the most influential person," that does not necessarily mean the most important. Other places place him more realistically as "a symbol of innovation, of humanity, of change", and I would agree: he was a symbol. A less kind word would be a "figurehead", but I'm not going to use that. He was the embodiment of what most people saw good or at least wanted to see good in the computing industry. Even though his company had less-than-laudable tactics, he was still flawless. But is a symbol of something the same as that which it represents? (Is an iPad really magic because they brand it as that?)

I will give him this: he is an incredible businessman. But is that really enough to call him a "great" man? So many people say that he "changed the world," but did he really?

-Bry

[UPDATE 10-13-11]
Wow, what amazing timing....about a week after Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie passes away. You don't know who Dennis Ritchie is? That's ok, I didn't know the name either. Yet somehow, his name isn't trending on Twitter. Yeah, there are articles out there, but it's more of an interesting tidbit to most people than the loss of a great mind. Well, settle in for a history lesson. (This lesson is for me too, by the way, via research.)

He developed the C language, and also worked on Unix. But that's not quite as flashy as an iPad or a Macbook Air, is it? But guess what the apps are made of on that iPad: Objective C. Guess what the OS is based off on that Air: Unix. I know that people don't know much about Unix, but it truly, undeniably changed the way computing was done, and it was powered by C. It was the first operating system written in a high level language and it was also the first portable operating system. I don't mean portable as in PortableApps, I mean portable in that instead of having to re-write the entire thing for every single type of processor, all you have to do is rewrite the compiler. This may not sound like a big deal nowadays, but it was a major step forward in computing.

It's just astounding to think of where we are today because of this man and his colleagues. True, he stood on the shoulders of those that came before him, but C was unique enough that it catapulted the very definition of computing by leaps and bounds. And it's still used today! Not even in the minority: C is still a very real foundation in everything we do. As others in many articles I've read have said, you would not be reading this right now if it was not for C and Dennis Ritchie. As one article concerning his death put it:

"The C programming language, which he called “quirky, flawed, and an enormous success,” is the basis of nearly every programming and scripting tool, whether they use elements of C’s syntax or not. Java, JavaScript, Objective C and Cocoa, Python, Perl, and PHP would not exist without dmr’s C. Every bit of software that makes it possible for you to read this page has a trace of dmr’s DNA in it."

And the most amazing thing is that he was the silent hero. Nobody knows who he was. He did not come out on stage in a turtleneck and show off a fancy new toy. He did not work on the body of the car and the fancy paint job, but he did work on the precise tuning of the engine and all of the parts that are too sophisticated for most of us to comprehend.

As a Computer Science major, I am forever indebted to Dennis Ritchie and the men like him that helped build the field that I love, but even as a person who likes to use technology, I owe them the deepest thanks. Whether or not the Apple fans want to argue about if Jobs was a great man, I know for a fact that Ritchie was. Here's to one of the greats.