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...

suse 10.0 isos

I just had a brilliant flash! I might know why my previous 10.0 installs via CD have failed. I checked the md5sums of the isos, and they all checked out fine. Maybe its because there was an error in the burning process. I burned all the isos at 12x on CD-RWs. Maybe if i slowed it down to a lesser speed, I would reduce the chance of burn errors? I'll try 10x or even 8x next time. Hopefully that will finally work.

no sound

even playing round with kmix will not help sometimes. Instead, i went to the root of the problem, and started up alsamixer. Turns out my headphones were muted. Hey presto, unmute it, and i can hear again.

Attempted to install suse 10.0 again

Tried again. DId it with bittorrent this time instead of ftp since bittorrent checks the downloaded file for you.

I even checked the md5sum of the torrent.
After finishing the downloads and burning the cds, i started the install, and ocne again, the install failed with some very important packages including the kernel!

Dammit, what is wrong with 10.0? i give up. WHen are they going to get the ftp installation for it working? I am sick of downloading huge isos that don't work!

burning small cds

tried using k3b to burn the boot.iso for suse 10-OSS onto a mini-CD-RW, and thought something was wrong because a few minutes had passed and k3b still hadn't started burning. Again, my impatience. Actually it was working, the reason why it was taking so long is that mini-CD-RWs burn at only 4x speed.

I waited, and it worked.

apt

i have been having trouble with apt4suse. Turns out i just didn't know how to use it.
install-atp4suse may take a while to download and install apt and apt-libs, it may throw out what looks like error messages, but just be patient and wait, it will do it in the end.

O, and install-apt4suse is supposed to import the gpg keys for you, but if it does not (and this has happened to me two times, dunno why), and you can't be bothered to import the keys yourself, you can still use apt without the gpg keys.

apt --no-checksig install
yes, there's no typo. It's just apt, not apt-get.

Staying with Suse 9.3

I ran into some problems when trying to install suse 10.0 which made me fed up. Firstly, when i tried to install by cd, several important packages failed to install properly, including the kernel. Secondly, I found that I could not do the ftp install for 10.0, and later found out that 10.0 does not support ftp install yet. These two things were enough to turn me back to 9.3.

I think I'll wait till Novell fixes up 10, and starts supporting ftp installs for it. I hate downloading 5 CDs and burning them. FTP installation is so much more elegant.

suse 10 OSS

Suse 10.0 has been released yesterday, and I am planning to take the plunge and try it out. Yes, I am very pleased and comfortable with 9.3, but I can't resist the temptation to try out a new release. Anyways, that what broadband is for, isn't it? To download linux isos.

Unfortunately, not many reviews for 10.0 have come out yet, so I plan to try it out, and write something useful here myself on how 10.0 goes.

I found that the ftp://mirrors.kernel.org mirror in the US works quite fast.

kommander

Like Superkaramba, Kommander is another cool KDE utility that I discovered qutie recently. Had a little trouble getting started with it cos I couldn't find any package called kommander; no wonder because it is not offered as a separate package. In fact, it is part of the KDE WebDev package so I installed that from Yast.

Next was to find apps that use kommander, so i looked on www.kde-apps.org and looked under the kommander section and found some pretty cool apps. Not many, which is a shame - I wish more people would write stuff for kommander - but some good stuff. An easy GUI dvd-ripper, a tool to stop the screensaver temporarily, and xvid encoder, etc.

Installing is easy. Download the app, then in konqueror, click on the file that ends in .kmdr. trying to execute the .kmdr file in console will not work: in console you have to type in kmdr-executor [file].kmdr. It then installs.

O, for some reason, the DVD-Rip-O-Matic doesn't work with the MPlayer package supplied from apt4suse. Make sure you have Xvid installed, then compile MPlayer from source, and it will work. Haven't actually tested DVD-Rip-O-Matic yet, but will once i have something to rip. The interface looks a lot easier than dvd::rip.

samba

earlier i said that there was an excellent article on samba on susewiki. I was mistaken. Actually it is at tweakhound; the full URL is here

http://www.tweakhound.com/linux/samba/page_1.htm

It provides a step-by-step guide to how to get samba running and how to even configure the Windows XP clients.

I just have one thing to add on the Windows XP SP2 side.

Click on My Network Places. Then, instead of View WorkGroup computers, which is what I used to do, click instead on View icons for networked UnPnP devices. This will immediatebly show the Samba server. I haven't been very satisfied using the View Workgroup computers options, it is very unresponsive.

Also, if you plan to use wireless lan on your Samba server, it does work! Make sure to disable the normal lan card, and to configure our wireless router to assign a static private ip address to the wireless lan card on your Suse Samba server. Then, it should work. Don't ask me why, but that's how i got it to work properly.

avidemux and unmet depoendancies

I tried to install avidemux but apt-get said that it depended on libfaac and libxvidcore, which weren't going to install.

I though it meant that the apt repositories didn't have it, but when i couldn't find the packages in yast either, i went back to read the error message from apt. It said to try apt-get --fix-broken install.

I did it, and it removed xine-mad and another package which seemed to be breaking the system. After that, apt-get install avidemux worked fine and apt installed faac and xvidcore for me!

azureus nat error

In order to get faster downlaods, you have to allow public access to port 6881-9, and I could never get it to work.

It took me until today to work out how to port forward on my Linksys Compact Wireless G-Router. Its weird, instead of being under Security settings, it is under Gaming Applications!

Even after port forwarding, Azuereus' NAT test kept failing. I was ready to give up until I came across a forum post where someone said everything clicked when he turned off the Windows Firewall. Aha! So i turned on Yast and switched off the firewall, and Azureus passed the firwewall test. Et voila!