Switched again: to NetBSD

I will be starting a new blog on NetBSD soon. A link for this new blog will be posted soon.

Switching over to Slackware

AFter using Suse for these few weeks, I have finally decided to switch back to Slackware. I started off loving Suse. It had the simplicity of Windows XP and sort of the attractiveness of Mac OSX without the price tag. THe OS holds my hand and just works.

Well, at the start at least. Afterwards, things go wrong, and it becomes hard to fix it because the configuration is restricted by the GUI. Yes, I can edit the config files by hand, but I got so lazy with the GUI configuration programs, I forgot how to do it!

I ended up going back to basics, and editing configuration files, and then I started to ask myself, "If i need to edit files by hand, why on earth do I need to use Suse? I can do that on Slackware, which boots and runs way faster than Suse?"

So I am back to being a Slacker. I now am reminded why I liked using it so much.

I'll be starting a blog on my Slackware 10.2 experiences soon.

switched to suse 9.2

Got sick of the USB 2.0 problem in suse 10.0, among other things, and decided to try out 9.2 which is purportedly rock solid.

So far, i have noticed that i does run a bit faster than 10.0, but when i plugged in my USB 2.0 stick, it failed to automount for me! Ono! It had no problems automounting my USB 1.1 stick.

I looked at dmesg and saw references to /dev/sda without any error messages. ALthough it would not automount, at least it would manually mount all right. Suse responded well to mount /dev/sda /media/usbdisk

Unfortunately, i don't like manually doing this cos it means i has to su everytime i want to use the usbdisk. ANd it also means my ordinary user does not have write access to the usbdisk.

USB 2.0 problems on suse 10.0

When i was using my usb 2 stick to backup some data, i noticed that transfer rates were very low. Turns out this is a problem that other people are having too who use suse 10.0

see: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=105871

This bug does not appear in 9.3. I dunno about 10.1 alpha. I sure hope it gets fixed soon. There is a fix mentioned in the bugzilla about mounting without sync, but i'd rather not hack suse if its not necessary and wait for Novell to come up with a proper solution.

printing with crossover office

Yes, it's possible to print under crossover office with suse.

I set up the printer with yast, and then started Word with crossover office. One clicking File and Print, I am confronted with two choices: do i choose to print to the KDE Print System, or HP LaserJet 1000. I tried KDE Print system, and nothing happened. Then I chose the name of my printer, Laserjet 1000, and it worked.

Cool, the guys at Codeweavers have really done a great job!

useful kommander scripts

screensaver stopper and set cd-rom speed are especially useful to me cos i use my pc to watch movies a lot.

adding yast sources instead of installing apt

I found out you could simply add yast sources instead of installing apt. Why install apt when yast works perfectly well?

there a list of yast sources in susewiki:
http://www.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Finding_RPMs#YaST_Sources

add these to isntallation sources. It may take a few minutes for Yast to add the sources. The first time you open add/remove software, yast might also take some time; it has not stalled, it is probably getting information from the yast source about the packages available.

then to add or remove stuff, just use the search tool in yast, et voila!

My only gripe is that yast does not allow you to install more than one package at a time. E.g. i want to install mplayer and xmms. I search for xmms, and can then click and install it. Then i search for mplayer and click and install it.

cisco vpn client

I go to a university that allows students to connect to its local intranet via VPN using the Cisco VPN client. Unfortunately, the linux Cisco client doesn't always compile properly. It compiled all right on Suse 9.3 but failed to connect properly for reasons I have not yet looked into. On Suse 10.0 it wouldn't even compile.

However, while searching on some forums, I discovered that there is an alternative cisco vpn client called vpnc. Google for vpnc linux and you will find it. It is an open-source cisco ipsec client, and this compiled fine! You'll need gcc and libgcrypt-devel to compile it properly.

As for the configuration, it'll ask for the ipsec ID, which means the group password (oxford, in my case), and the IPsec secret string, which means the group password.

yay! Suse 10 installed

Burned Suse 10.0 on 12x CD-RWs at 4x speed, and finally, the install worked without a glitch! Yipee. Burning at a slower speed is the trick to burning isos without errors! Now if I can just get install-apt4suse to work on it...