The OpenSUSE Newbie

A word of thanks and a word of caution.

2007-11-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

A while back I wrote about my problems trying to fix my Tyris T901DB LCD monitor. A fellow from NJ had problems with his Optiquest Q7b and during his troubleshooting of the monitor he started searching online for information about his power supply and happened across my post. That power supply just happened to be the same as mine: UP0401UB12Q07 made by UMEC. He tested his power supply and found it was in good working order, so he surmised it must be a problem with his LCD logic control board instead. He decided to junk his monitor and offered to mail me his good power supply board.

I agreed, of course, and received the board last week. After I arrived back home from the Thanksgiving break I installed the new power supply in my Tyris monitor. Wouldn't know you within 15 seconds of turning it on the monitor blows out the same exact transformer as the one that blew out on my original power supply board? Unbelievable! Yep, the same UT35D82 transformer in the same exact spot on the power supply. So, I am guessing that my logic control board is faulty, too. Although this story had a sad ending, I wanted to extend my sincere thanks to Chris of NJ for contacting me out of the blue and sending his power supply on to me. Thanks a lot.

Now, for the word of caution. If you have a Tyris T901DB 19" LCD monitor like me and your power supply has fried, which results in a blinking screen, beware Tyris's warranty fulfilling company: RMAYes.com. You can order a new power supply from them, but they'll charge you $25 for "residential delivery", whatever that may mean. The power supply board for a T901DB will cost $31, which seems reasonable to me. But $25 for residential delivery? Insane. Thankfully I didn't have to go this route. Chris sent me his PS board and I found out that a new board is not what I needed to fix my monitor.

Beware Tyris and beware RMAYes. Shoddy products and insane prices. Period.

Still going.

2007-11-11T15:29:00.000-05:00

I got my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer going in 10.3. That's a relief. I can't stand to be without my side buttons (forward/backward) in Firefox. I used the same settings that I used in OpenSUSE 10.2. No need for imwheel at all.

I do have some trouble with Adobe Flash, though. Any time I go to YouTube or other video sites that use Flash my browser becomes so slow that I can't change tabs or even close Firefox. The videos will download and play for about 4 seconds then it freezes. It's quite annoying. So, for the time being, I've uninstalled Flash.

I've got a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 and I'd really like to be able to use it in some MSN Messenger clone. I use my webcam at least once a day in Windows XP through Windows Live Messenger. It's critical that I get it working in OpenSUSE. Otherwise there's really no point in continuing to dual-booting like I do.

VLC media player works very well. I've been watching various video files in OpenSUSE that reside on NTFS partitions. I've also been using Amarok to play my downloaded podcasts of Mark Levin. Works great! Finally figuring out how to get all my sounds to go out my digital SPDIF connection has greatly enhanced my audio experience in Linux.

I wonder if it's possible to triple-boot between OpenSUSE KDE, OpenSUSE Gnome, and Windows XP? I'm sure it's possible, there's always a way. I'll go about finding the right way to do it. I used Gnome a very long time ago and I'd really like to try it again.

SPDIF output in OpenSUSE 10.3, finally!

2007-11-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

Back when I piddled around with OpenSUSE 10.2 I banged my head on the desk for months on end trying to get all sounds to go out my SPDIF. I was never successful other than getting specific applications like Amarok or Kaffeine to output through SPDIF. Well, I fixed that problem tonight in record time.

Now, in OpenSUSE 10.3 I finally got all sounds going out the SPDIF. It took four simple steps to do so and I was in digital sound heaven.

Step A:
1. Click the green lizard and choose Configure Desktop
2. Click Sound and Multimedia
3. Click Sound System and choose the Hardware tab
4. Modify the "Select the audio device" to be Advanced Linux Sound Arch.
5. Click Apply

Step B:
1. Click this link and follow its instructions on how to modify your ALSA settings (unmute iec958)

Step C:
1. Click this link and follow its instructions to modify your .asoundrc file to activate your SPDIF by default

Step D:
1. Reboot

And that should do it for you, I hope. It worked for me and I'm so very pleased.

Got it installed!

2007-11-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

It was a long, convoluted, and very strange connection of events, but I did manage to install OpenSUSE 10.3---with just a couple of hiccups. As I mentioned in the comments of my previous post I did verify the MD5 sum on both installation CDs. Both checked out OK. I decided to take the CDs downstairs to my media PC and check them there as well. Amazingly both failed the MD5 check. Whoa!

I downloaded the installation ISO again and burnt a new CD. This CD checked out on both my main PC and the media PC. I did install 10.3 on my main PC. However, at two points during the package installation process the installer has two packages that failed integrity checks. Those packages are liblazy and kdelibs4. I ended up skipping their installation. Other than those two errors the installation was flawless.

It did take a long time, though. I managed to shave and shower during the installation process. I don't believe it took this long last time to install OpenSUSE 10.2. Interesting since 10.3 was installed by CD and not by DVD, which is what I used to install 10.2.

Sadly, due to the lack of liblazy, I am dumped to a runlevel 5 command prompt when booting normally and a runlevel 3 command prompt when booting in safe mode. If I could get into KDE I could go install liblazy (and kdelibs4, if I wanted) and get this system running well. Unfortunately I have no idea how to get into KDE.

Unable to install OpenSUSE 10.3

2007-11-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

6 NOV 07 Update: This issue has been resolved. See how in this post. Turned out to be a bad CD burn. Make you you check and double-check your CD during the install process. Even check it on another PC!

I downloaded and burned a copy of the latest OpenSUSE version 10.3 two days ago. Today I attempted to install it. The attempt ended in failure. It's having trouble creating a repository. I have no idea why. Here's the error details:

Unable to create repository
from URL 'cd:///?devices=/dev/sr0

Details:
Valid metadata not found at specified URL(s)
-can't provide /suse/setup/descr/EXTRA_PROV....etc.
-can't copy /var/adm/mount/....etc

Try again?

Of course, I did try again. I also rebooted my PC several times and tried different options during the installation process. Nothing worked. I can't install OpenSUSE 10.3 and I don't know why. It would appear the installation process has a bug. That's a shame.

Beware of lousy no-name LCD manufacturers.

2007-11-04T11:05:00.000-05:00

Update on 30 NOV 07 in a new post...click this link.

I bought a Tyris T901DB 19" LCD monitor in May 2006 from NewEgg. It was super cheap and had a heck of a rebate. Well, it decided to blow a transformer on the the power supply board a few weeks ago. Essentially I got just 1 year 5 months of use out of it. Of course, it's out of warranty. A paltry 1 year warranty, you know. One night I was watching a video and happened to notice smoke wisping out the top of my monitor. I quickly turned it off. Later I turned it back on only to have it blinking the picture. It'll have a perfect picture for about 3 seconds, then it'll go dark until I unplug it and plug it back in again. It has 2 transformers on the power supply board. One of them is toast, the other is fine. I suppose when the power gets transferred to the bad t-former it just never gets switched back to the good one.

I really liked the Tyris and I'm sad it doesn't work anymore. It had a wonderful picture. I've tried to get parts for it from Tyris, but they don't sell replacement parts. Of course not. I've contacted the manufacturer of the t-former and the power supply board, both made by UMEC. UMEC doesn't have the UT35D82 transformer or the UP0401UB12Q07 power supply board anymore. Or maybe they just aren't willing to sell me one.

It would appear I'm not the only person who's had bad experiences with Prolink International, the parent company of Tyris. You'll notice here at a discontinued product page, they have the Wise Wing 17" W702B LCD monitor. Also notice the comment from a buyer, "The power circuit board went bad on this in a matter of weeks." That's awful. Wise Wing and Tyris are both owned by Prolink International, Inc. Notice the striking similarities of the website designs and even the web site addresses? Oddly enough, both Tyris and Wise Wing maintain on their websites nonexistent links to purchase their faulty products from NewEgg. NewEgg does not stock their products anymore. Period. So why are Tyris and Wise Wing sending folks to NewEgg still?

Unfortunately, Prolink International is not so easy to find. I have been searching for them for several weeks not and haven't turned up a web site, phone number, or address. I did find PI on the US government's Energy Star website, however. No contact info is given, though, and an inquiry to Energy Star by me resulted in a very unhelpful response:

We are not able to provide the address for Prolink International Inc. However, you may be able to obtain their contact information using search engines such as Google, Ask.com or even by calling 411 for information.

Thank you for your interest in ENERGY STAR.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXX

Gee, thanks. According to Tyris and Wise Wing's websites, Prolink is a Chinese company. Not surprising. But even searching with the Chinese search engines gives no results.

So here I am, out of 200 plus dollars, and a dead monitor after only 1 yr and 5 months. I can't find replacement parts. Tyris is useless, UMEC won't/can't sell me the replacement parts I need, and Energy Star won't give me the address to Prolink International (my tax dollars, hard at work). I'm very ticked off.

Trying Safari in Windows.

2007-06-12T00:05:00.000-04:00

As you most likely know, Apple has released a beta of their Safari 3 web browser for both Mac OS and Windows XP/Vista. Which is pretty cool since increased competition only makes products get better. Hello Firefox and Internet Explorer! Since I run XP pretty much all the time, with a little OpenSUSE thrown in, I figured I'd give Safari a try. Keep in mind that even if you download the version of Safari 3 that doesn't include QuickTime, it still includes some service called Bonjour and an Apple Software Update application. Of course you can choose to not install both of these addons. I chose to install Apple Software Update but not Bonjour.

First thoughts:

The window theme of Safari is dark. Too dark. It's difficult to read black text-labeled tabs on a very dark gray background.
Safari does seem to be just a hair faster than Firefox, but not by much at all.
I like the font smoothing. The text contrasts very well on a webpage.
As with any other browser, the bundled bookmarks got tossed in the bin ASAP.
The bookmarks management and bookmarks menu sucks. Bookmarks can't be displayed in a sidebar far as I can tell (because there is no sidebar). Although, it was a snap to import my bookmarks from Firefox. Thank you.
When minimized, Safari's memory usage drops immediately to about 10MB. Nice.
No way to force links that open in a new window to instead open in a new tab.
Having the X to close a tab located on the left side of the tab is annoying.
When adding/removing icons on the toolbar things move very fluid-like. Try it, I think it's pretty slick.
Where's the "Create New Tab" icon for the toolbar? It doesn't exist, sadly.
After restoring a full-screen Safari window from a minimized state it doesn't restore to its former full-screen dimensions. Annoying.
Memory management appears to be quite a bit better than Firefox. Great!
My back/forward side buttons don't work! Argh! (You know how much I hate that.)
Themes?
This is a beta. Things will change. And that's probably a good thing.

Is Safari 3 for Windows really a "Trojan horse" that will siphon Windows users to the Mac? I can't imagine that a web browser would ever have that much power--unless suddenly the web was only compatible with Safari 3. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. I do know of one thing that would bring more users to the Mac: bring the Mac OS to the PC world. Let those of us without Apple-branded computers run Mac OS. I'd love to try it. Honest. But I won't pay $600 just to try out the Mac OS and hope it works for me. No. Sorry. Never gonna happen. I'll stick with a free OS for my trial and error sessions. Linux/*BSD/OpenSolaris work very well in that regard.

Argh. Safari 3 is definitely a beta. I was editing this post with Safari and something messed up with the fonts in Blogger's compose window, then Safari wouldn't save my draft. I finished up this post in Firefox. Oh well, Safari is beta after all. No big whoop.

I'm going to give Safari 3 a try for a few weeks and see what happens. Then I'll give it another try when it comes out of beta. Who knows, with a little tweaking and tinkering here and there, it might just become my primary browser.

I'd like to go back, but sadly there's no reason to.

2007-05-03T17:34:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates here, I just haven't done much in OpenSUSE lately. That is to say I've done nothing in OpenSUSE. Since getting my side buttons on my mouse working I just haven't logged into OpenSUSE at all. Taking the advice of many commenters in my previous (and very lengthy) post, I attempted to find replacements or workarounds for my must-have apps in Windows: NewsLeecher, Replay A/V, and Windows Live Messenger. Pidgin does a pretty good job for Messenger, so that's ok. But there really is no comparable replacement in Linux for Replay A/V or NewsLeecher--two extremely useful products I use many times a day.

Until the time comes that those two products are either ported to Linux or a comparable alternative is created, I just don't see myself using Linux much on my main PC. I have, however, put OpenSUSE on my media server downstairs. But my day-to-day computing is just not satisfied with Linux yet. That's unfortunate.

Finally. My mouse works properly.

2007-04-26T17:06:00.001-04:00

I've been working for so long trying to get my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer USB side buttons working in OpenSUSE. After much hair-pulling, I finally got it working today. I got my side buttons to perform the forward/backward actions in Firefox. Thank the Lord! It didn't require the install of imwheel or xbindkeys. Rather, it was a simple editing of xorg.conf.

If you're running OpenSUSE, or KDE (Gnome, too, maybe?), or X11, this code should work to configure and get your Intellimouse working. You must edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file as superuser. And here's my code:

Section                "InputDevice"
     Driver                  "mouse"
     Identifier            "Mouse[1]"
     Option               "CorePointer"
     Option                 "Buttons"                   "7"
     Option                 "Device"                      "/dev/input/mice"
     Option                 "Protocol"                  "ExplorerPS/2"
     Option                 "ZAxisMapping"            "4 5"
     Option                 "ButtonMapping"           "1 2 3 6 7"
EndSection

Of course, your Device location may be a bit different and your Identifier may be different from mine. Everything else should be the same, I think. The key to enabling the side buttons is the "ButtonMapping" code. That's what did the trick for me.

Things I have learned about Linux.

2007-04-26T01:55:00.000-04:00

Over the past two months or so I've been using OpenSUSE off and on. I'll admit it, I have not done complete immersion for three reasons: Windows Live Messenger, NewsLeecher, and Replay A/V only work in Windows. Sure, Linux does have aMSN and Pidgin which are compatible with the MSN Messenger network, but neither offer the video and audio capabilities I must have. I'm not bashing aMSN or Pidgin, they just have some catching up to do. No big whoop. Then there's Replay A/V, which, as best as I'm able to determine, has absolutely no comparable Linux counterpart. I'm not surprised by this at all. Replay A/V is a very niche product. If I had the ability I would program a comparable product for Linux.

I do want to get off Windows. Really, I do. I'm tired of ad-ware, spy-ware, viruses, worms, and the financial cost of Windows itself. But I have to be realistic. Windows runs the programs I need; Linux runs the programs I want. Ask yourself, would you be willing to sacrifice the programs you need just to say you're MS-free? Ok, ok, I know. Some of you would. Your hatred of anything MS runs deep. But the majority, I'm guessing here, would say no. They would not sacrifice the programs they need for the sake of being MS-free. I'm a member of the latter camp. Even with all its' problems, I still like Windows XP. It's stable, easy to manage, and it feels good.

Linux—in my case, OpenSUSE's version—is a wonderful OS, don't misunderstand me in the least, please. I really like OpenSUSE very much. I was blown away when it booted up with both of my monitors configured at 1280x1024. Kubuntu always failed at this, no matter what I tried. OpenSUSE is very much a polished product. I really enjoy the K Desktop Environment. It feels nice, it's logical, and it's easy to manage. What more could I ask for? Multimedia support in OpenSUSE is nearly on par with Windows—I still have continuing issues with my SPDIF output. I've got two full office suites in OpenSUSE, two great browsers (Firefox and Opera), fine media players, and great widget support. Stability is there for sure—I've had one complete lockup since installing OpenSUSE in February. Not bad at all! Installing software is moderately easy, as long as it's in the repositories or a clear HOW-TO exists on the Internet tubes. You know what I really like about installing/removing software from Linux? No Registry. No stinking, bloated, festering Registry.

I also like the fact that Linux is free—financially, at least. It's not free when you consider the time needed to configure and tweak it to meet your needs. But that's ok for me, I am willing and usually happy to configure and tweak. I'm a geek. Configuring and tweaking is fun for me. But I can't imagine a non-geek would put up with that. I tried Linux (Red Hat and Mandrake) many years ago and it met a bitter conclusion. I remember that time distinctly with Red Hat 5.2 and some version of Mandrake I could not get my network card, sound card, or video card configured at all. I recall reformatting my hard drive after an unsuccessful bout with Linux thinking, "What was all the hype about? Red Hat and Mandrake totally sucked." Well, that's no longer the case. Linux has come so far in the past 6-7 years. So very, very far. Linux is absolutely ready for the average user of email, office suites, Internet, widgets, text IM, and multimedia. If you've had doubts about Linux's readiness for the average user, let your doubts go. I would have no hesitation telling my grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, or mother that their next computer doesn't have to be Windows Vista. It should be OpenSUSE. That's saying a lot coming from a guy who's used nothing but DOS and/or Windows since 1994.

May I be frank? Sure I can, this is my blog and I can do whatever I want. There's too many ongoing projects that don't have enough comprehensive foundation-building going on. Take, for example, my mouse. My mouse is very old and very simple. It's a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer USB. This thing was marketed way back in 2000. That's ancient in computer years. For the life of me I can't get Linux (OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, Knoppix) to use the side buttons properly. Is it so hard to have a default setting for a 7-button mouse to have its two side buttons perform forward/backward actions? That's a foundation of Linux that needs to be addressed. Yes, it's a small and annoying issue, but it's necessary. Forward/backward actions promote fluidity in the desktop environment, no?

Let's cover audio for a moment. Even after all this time of reading HOW-TOs, forum posts, comments on my own blog, and Linux tutorials, I cannot get all of my sound to go through my SPDIF. Why? Why is there not a checkbox that says "Enable Global SPDIF Sound Output"? SPDIF is a standard in PCs (I assume Macs, as well) and should be supported very well. Take a look at my SiteMeter referrals. Look at all the poor saps out there, just like me, trying to get their SPDIF working.

Software installation is decent, as long as the package for your distro is easily obtainable. Otherwise you're relegated to installing it yourself. If you're a newb like me, you'd better hope someone has written a HOW-TO, or you've got no hope. I understand the packaging delay. There's only so much a software developer can do. They can't be expected to make a package for each and every distro out there. That would eat up way too much valuable development time. Sadly, there is no package standard across all the Linux distros. Your average user can't just go and download the newest version of Open Office, Amarok, Kaffeine, Firefox, Opera, etc. and install it right away. Instead, the average user must wait for a package to be released for his particular distro—if ever. Don't expect the average user to be comfortable with building, making, and installing a program. The average user needs to download one file which contains all the installation files and which can be installed by simply clicking on it. This is a foundation of desktop computing.

Recently I've read hyperventilating claims that Microsoft is dying with its seemingly lackluster launch of Vista. Please, you're letting your emotions get the better of you. Calm down, take a Red Pill, and come back to reality. I'm sure MS isn't pleased with Vista sales, so what? Do you think MS will sit in the bleachers watching their star player go all wobbly? Heavens, no. I have no idea what MS will do, but I can assure you it won't be nothing. Vista is their new baby. Would you let your new baby die without trying to do everything you can for it? Of course, the answer is no. The next six months to a year should be very interesting concerning Vista.

This also means Linux has a great window of opportunity to shine. Remind users that Linux doesn't assume you're a bleeding moron every time you open a program, run a virus scan, or want to delete a file. Remind users that Linux is less susceptible to viruses, hacks, spy-ware, ad-ware, and worms. Remind users Linux is free. Remind users that Linux performs office, Internet, email, multimedia, and text IM functions just like their XP systems do. Remind them that their brand new computer's price tag is inflated by a very expensive OS. And most of all, remind them that you are ready to help them transition from Windows to Linux.

Finally, I have a deep secret to divulge: I have severe Ubuntu fatigue. I conclude this essay (rant? piece? article?) with a moment of zen. Flames, taunts, jibes, pokes, accolades, bravos, kudos (I still haven't figured out exactly what that is), hear hear's, spot on's, or you're full of crap's are all welcomed and encouraged.

And now, something completely different. Gourmet shaving.

2007-04-24T00:27:00.000-04:00

Although this post has nothing to do with Linux or OpenSUSE, the majority of users of Linux may find this post very informative. I'm going to talk about shaving. Specifically, how to get a good and/or better shave. Why, you ask, am I talking about this? Well, it's because I am a man and shaving is something that used to be a chore. Notice I said used to be a chore.

For over 10 years I had horrific shaves. The bleeding, the razor burn, the pain, the redness of the skin. It was awful. I had tried every razor under the sun, be it a Mach3, Sensor, various single/double-bladed disposables, and all kinds of generic replacement blades. I tried every single shaving cream at Wal-Mart and K-Mart. I always got a painful shave. I could only shave every 2-3 days due to the pain.

By the summer of 2006 I'd had enough. I was seriously considering laser hair removal for my face and neck. Just for kicks I decided to get on the Internets and tubes (truckless, mind you) to search for ways to get a better shave. I came across an article called "How to get that perfect shave." There I learned the old-fashioned way of shaving could very well result in painless shaves for me.

I began researching the old ways of shaving with a brush, soap/cream, and safety razor. I stumbled upon a vast repository of shaving knowledge at ShaveMyFace and its wonderful forum. I quickly soaked in the wisdom of the masters there and set about to buying my shaving gear (brush, high quality cream, and safety razor). At first my technique was bad and I got just as bad shaves with a safety razor as I did with my Sensor. I was devastated. I thought the old-fashioned way of shaving was going to be my light in the wilderness. I pleaded for help. I received help and within days I was getting pain-free, blood-free, and redness-free shaves. Hallelujah!

One of the guys who helped me out on the ShaveMyFace forum was Leisureguy, otherwise known as Michael Ham. He maintains a post on his blog that details very minutely all the ins and outs of old-fashioned shaving. His blog post is accurately titled "A guide to the gourmet shaving experience." First of all, his post is huge. It's detailed and it's absolutely a must-read if you have bad shaves or if you want to get better shaves.

I'm happy to say Michael has just published a guide book for shaving. He's taken his decades of experience, his giant blog post, expanded it, added to it, revised it, and put it all into book form at Lulu. I can wholeheartedly endorse this book. You will not be disappointed with its contents. If you implement Michael's suggestions into your shaving routine you will see results. Buy "Leisureguy's Guide to Gourmet Shaving: Shaving Made Enjoyable" today and start seeing results in weeks. However, if you can't wait for the book to arrive and want to jump right in old-fashioned shaving right now, but lack the right tools, see my post at SMF aptly named "Cheap shaving tools guide for a newbie."

Happy shaving.

Mounted hard drive, installed OpenOffice 2.2, upgraded KDE, oh my!

2007-04-21T17:25:00.000-04:00

I haven't done a full desktop screenshot yet, so I thought now would be a good time to do so. Enjoy, or not.

So I've been wanting to mount my second HD for some time now. I tried time and time again to get it mounted, but I kept getting a very annoying error message. See below. I tried harassing the command line, but nothing worked. Linux CLI is impervious to various taunts.

I did a bit of searching and found two tutorials over at Tuxfiles:

How to mount filesystems in Linux - 1.1

How to edit and understand /etc/fstab - 1.1

After reading them I understood mounting and fstab much more. Thank you, Tuxfiles. However, there is one key piece of information left out of the "How to mount filesystems" tutorial: The directory you're trying to mount the drive to must already be there or mount fails, as I experienced in the above picture. So, if you want your second HD to show up in /mnt/D-drive, you must create that directory first, before attempting the mount command. After realizing that from trial and error I was able to get my second HD mounted.

To use the mount command, you must be in superuser mode. This leads to another problem: Once mounted, the drive is only viewable by the superuser. One way around this, and this is a temporary fix, you can open a Konsole, log in as su, then start Konqueror by typing in "konqueror". Then you can right-click the mounted drive and change the permissions. However, if you'd prefer to have the drive available every time you boot up and having the drive viewable by a regular user, you'll have to be logged in as superuser and edit your /etc/fstab file. The fstab file is executed upon startup and you can edit variables to change permissions on the drive. Take a look at the bottom of my fstab file. Pay particular attention to my hda1 and hdc1 partitions. hda1 is my Windows XP partition that I dual-boot to and hdc1 is a totally different HD.

Even though I never use it, I thought it would be good practice to install/upgrade to Open Office 2.2. I couldn't find a way to upgrade to it through SMART or Yast, so I decided to completely remove Open Office 2.0.4 from my system and then install 2.2 from scratch. Here's what I did to install Open Office 2.2 in OpenSUSE 10.2 (KDE):

Open Konsole and go to the directory where you downloaded the Open Office .tar file to.

type in 'tar xvzf oo.tar.gz' (Without the ' characters, of course. This untars the file.)

type in 'cd [whatever the directory Open Office was untarred to]'

type in 'cd RPMS'

type in 'su' (then enter your password)

type in 'rpm -Uvih *.rpm' (this installs Open Office 2.2)

While Konsole is still open, open Konqueror through your KMenu. Go to the subdirectory called "desktop-integration" that's in the unzipped files of Open Office. Delete all the RPMs there except the RPM associated with your distro. For example, I deleted all but openoffice.org-suse-menus-2.2-9119.noarch.rpm.

Go back to the same Konsole session you used earlier

type in 'cd desktop-integration'

type in 'rpm -Uvih *.rpm' (This installs links to Open Office in your KMenu.)

You are done. Close Konsole and Konqueror, if you want. Start up Open Office!

I would also like to thank microchip_ and aTypical of #suse on irc.freenode.org. They reminded me that it is useful to be in su mode while RPMing things. :P

I even managed to upgrade to KDE 3.5.6 from 3.5.5. Nice. I added the KDE OpenSUSE repository to my Installation Sources in Yast. Then I went into Software Management, searched for KDE, and toggled through the options to the update icon, then clicked Accept. That's all it took. A reboot later here's what I was greeted with:

Update: Francis Giannaros noted in the comments to this post that OpenSUSE has a wiki page about upgrading KDE. I followed the directions of the wiki and as it turns out I did not update KDE completely as I previously thought. There were still some upgrades that needed to be performed. So, follow the wiki's instructions. Thank you, Francis.

Slacking off.

2007-04-19T15:54:00.000-04:00

I have yet to boot into OpenSUSE this week. I've got a test in my Computer Science class on Friday and an Astronomy project due very soon as well. I've just been so darned busy. I have been acquiring various Linux and OpenSUSE books however. I hope to begin reading them after this semester ends. I figure I'll have some down time after work this summer. I'm hoping to get a technical internship somewhere.

I am frustrated and pleased by my experiences with OpenSUSE so far. I was so happy the first time it booted up in dual-screen mode. If I could not get it to enable my 2nd monitor, OpenSUSE would have ended up in the bit bucket as Kubuntu did earlier. I really like that Firefox was installed for me as part of the installation of OpenSUSE. My new Samsung laser printer worked right out of the box, too. Very nice. I really dislike using Konqueror as a web browser since it doesn't do very well in GMail. However, the inability to use the back/formard side buttons on my MS Intellimouse Explorer is driving me nuts. I was surprised these actions aren't working. I would assume driver support for the MS mice would be decent since MS sells a lot of mice. But maybe the hardware documentation hasn't been released by MS so that driver writers can create Linux drivers. And the other big problem I have is the inability to get all sound to go out my SPDIF. I had to go through enough hoops of fire just to get Kaffeine and Amarok to go out the SPDIF, I can only imagine what it'll take to get OpenSUSE to get all sound processed out the SPDIF.

Thanks to cb400f for creating konvenientSUSE I was able to install ATI drivers for my video card. My system was much faster after that. What a different good drivers make! Also, thanks to cb400f for letting me know a shortcut to restart KDE: CTRL-ALT-BKSPACE. That saves a lot of time compared to rebooting.

Thanks to the various anonymouses, Henare, Matt Williams, heathenx, corvus, and James Ots for their comments and suggestions. I truly appreciate your help.

Squeezing blood from a rock.

2007-04-15T01:14:00.000-04:00

Tonight I spent well over four hours attempting to get my side buttons to work on my mouse. No such luck. I read wikis from Gentoo, Debian, OpenSUSE, and some BSD distro. I read countless forum posts. I read many blog posts. I delved into OpenSUSE mailing list archives. Many folks have gotten their side buttons to work by following the same directions and code. I tried and failed. I rebooted at least 50 times to test out the modifications I made to my xorg.conf and mouse.sh files. Nothing worked. I am giving up on trying to use my side buttons and I'm very disappointed.

Last post I mentioned sound stopped coming out my SPDIF. Well, a reboot later it worked. It worked many reboots after that. But now I get an error that Amarok was unable to get xine to load any drivers. Great. I made absolutely no changes to my sound system, its drivers, or Amarok.

I loaded up a video file to test the sound that way and Kaffeine was unable to load ALSA. However, it was able to play audio via my analog plug. I have made no changes to Kaffiene since I got it working in the first place. Sound used to work wonderfully via SPDIF with Kaffeine and Amarok. No more.

I've also noticed that anytime Flash is running in Firefox/Konqueror, both slow to a crawl. For example, at blogger.com, there's a small Flash process just below the giant Blogger icon. It nearly locks up Firefox to a point where I can't input my login info. What's up with that?

Next mission: To mount my second HD. I've got a 160GB NTFS drive that I would really like to have access to in OpenSUSE. There's tons of music and video on there, but I guess there's no rush since my sound system failed.

Update: A few reboots later and an install of ATI's video drivers via konvenientsuse, my sound works yet again. WTF. On a very positive note, everything seems a lot faster. Flash in Firefox doesn't cause any slowdowns. Scrolling in picture-rich webpages is just fine now. I knew it was my video drivers! Thank you, ATI.

Good things come to an end.

2007-04-13T19:06:00.000-04:00

Update: I got my MS Intellimouse's side buttons working properly. See this post for instructions on how to do so.

My sound is not working at all through SPDIF. I have no idea why. It worked fine last night, but when I booted into OpenSUSE this afternoon Kaffeine and Amarok no longer output to the SPDIF. Both are configured to use xine and xine has been configured to output via SPDIF. How frustrating.

It could have been caused by my fiddling around with xorg.conf and XF86Config trying to get all my mouse buttons to work correctly, I guess. I have a very old style MS Intellimouse Explorer. It's my favorite style of mouse which, sadly, is no longer produced. I really like the large side buttons. I was trying to get the side buttons to work, but during bootup I'd just be dumped to a login prompt on the command line. KDE wouldn't load up after I'd done modifications to xorg or XF86. Grr!

I've noticed my PC is just not very fast when running OpenSUSE. Tabbing between windows is sluggish, closing/opening tabs in Firefox is not very fast, and even scrolling within Firefox and Konqueror is noticeably slow. I'm beginning to wonder if my video driver is the culprit. Many times in the past after a reload of Windows XP I would have the same trouble as I just mentioned. A quick update of my video driver cleared it right up. I guess I'll have to read up on how to update my video driver in OpenSUSE and Linux in general. But I'd much rather have all sounds going out via SPDIF, first. Priorities, priorities.

How to get Amarok and Kaffeine to output to SPDIF

2007-04-12T16:21:00.000-04:00

I still haven't been able to get all sound to output to my SPDIF, but I have gotten Amarok and Kaffeine to both output to my SPDIF. Hooray for small victories!

First of all make sure you install "libxine1" through Yast's Software Management.

Next, open up Amarok and go to Configure Amarok. Then, find the Engine tab. Your Sound System should be the xine Engine. Output plugin should be alsa. Press Apply. Now you can manualy tell xine where to send its sound. See the "ALSA Device Configuration" section in the below picture. Once you've set the outputs to "plug:spdif" click OK. Restart Amarok and you should be good to go.

Now, let's configure Kaffeine. It'll be very similar to Amarok. I'm just going to give a screenshot since it'll be so simple. Go to Settings--->xine Engine Parameters.

That should do it. However you may need to go to your command line (Konsole) and do some modifications on your sound output via alsamixer. Be on the lookout for a device called "IEC958". Make sure it isn't muted. However, this worked for me and it may not work on your system. But at least you're going in the right direction.

OpenSUSE updates? Where were they?

2007-04-12T13:03:00.000-04:00

Since installing OpenSUSE 10.2 I noticed there were never any updates showing up in my taskbar. Surely this OS isn't that perfect, is it? Well, I figured out why last night. There was no update repository in my Yast Installation Sources. I had to manually enter the update repository before OpenSUSE would update itself. Why? This should be included and configured during install, not afterwards.

I had well over 75 updates to obtain once I configured the update repository. I have no idea what was updated since virtually none of the filenames make any sense. Does anyone really know what "refgrepy45" is? (Not an actual file, but it's a close representation of what I saw in the updates.) Linux naming conventions are nuts!

I also had to manually add repositories for OSS and non-OSS packages. Again, why? This should have been configured at the time of install. My Internet connection was active at the time of install and I know for sure OpenSUSE did get online during install to do something.

I also found a very interesting package repository called PackMan. I really like their categorical approach to packages. Sadly, I can't get their repository to configure in Yast's Installation Sources. It always fails no matter the PackMan repository I choose to try. If I knew how to manually install a package I download via Firefox/Konqueror I'd do it. But I'm an OpenSUSE Newbie. ;)

Got something to work!

2007-04-08T13:33:00.000-04:00

I got my Samsung ML-2010 laser printer working today. Hooray for small victories. Works great and I didn't have to do any fancy command line stuff. It was all handled via the GUI in Yast. Thank you, OpenSUSE!

Still trying to work on my digital out issue...

Digital sound works...sort of.

2007-04-06T09:56:00.000-04:00

I've spent at least 4 hours today trying to get my sound to work through my SPDIF. I was able to get Amarok to play through my SPDIF, but Kaffiene and KDE (startup/shutdown sounds) continue to play through analog. I used alsamixer to modify my sound settings, but it never made any difference. By utilizing the search function on a Linux forum I discovered many users where having luck by muting a channel/device called "A/D" and/or "IEC958" (or something similar). My alsamixer didn't show me an "A/D" device, but I did have a "IEC958". I muted it, unmuted it, turned it up high, mid, and low...it accomplished nothing as far as I can tell.

I have a DFI NF2-Ultra AL (nforce 2) motherboard and it has a RealTek onboard sound chip. Keep in mind, the sound does work. I just can't get ALL of the sound to go out my SPDIF. Some goes out the SPDIF, some goes out the analog depending on the program.

This is frustrating.

1.5 months after installation.

2007-04-02T20:24:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't written much. Been busy with classes and such. Here's a brief synopsis:

Installation was a breeze, obviously. OpenSUSE, like other Linux distros these days, makes installation absolutely painless. Thank you!

It was nice to see that Firefox was included with this distro. Unlike Kubuntu, where I was stuck with the good, but not good enough, Konqueror. Open Office? Check. Real Player? Ack! Yes, it's there, too. I can't tell you how much I despise Real Player in Windows. I refuse to allow it on my system. I've had nothing but trouble from Real Player ever since I first started using it many, many years ago. I hope it won't be such a pain on OpenSUSE.

I do a lot of Internet radio stream recording on my Windows XP desktop and I was hoping to listen to the MP3s of my radio shows in OpenSUSE. I'm not sure whether Real Player played the MP3 files right off the bat because I decided to install Amarok and the libxine1 plugins. Then I tried to play my MP3s directly from my NTFS partition. Worked flawlessly. Yes! I wonder if I can find a way to record my radio shows in OpenSUSE? Some of them are Windows Media Audio...so I'm thinking I can't.

I'm going to try to get my sound to go out my digital jack (SPDIF) because I can't stand having audio going to my 5.1 DTS/Dolby decoder in analog.

Making the investment.

2007-02-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

Over the years I've fiddled and piddled with Linux in various incarnations. From RedHat 5.2, Mandrake, Kubuntu, and now OpenSUSE. I've had trouble with all of them, but OpenSUSE I've had the least trouble with (so far, at least). When I started out in Kubuntu I was pretty excited. It was the "new and must-have" Linux distro. I thought it would be nice to see how well Linux has progressed these few years since I last played with Mandrake.

I was impressed. So impressed that I actually started a blog: The Kubuntu Newbie Chronicle. I was able to do a lot more with Kubuntu than I was ever able to do with Mandrake, and let's not even talk about RH 5.2. With Kubuntu I was able to install web browsers, enable MP3 playback, connect to the Internet, install Flash, and enable more repositories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know---small stuff. But it's not small stuff for me. I'm a lifelong Microsoft DOS/Windows user and I consider myself extremely proficient with MS operating systems. I'm not an MS basher---I like MS. They produce a very good OS that works very well for most people--including me. But I want to try out other routes in the OS market. So why not Linux?

Sadly, my experience with Kubuntu ended in moderate failure. My last post on TKNC details my woes. The main problem with Kubuntu was my inability to get it to extend the desktop to my second monitor. Instead of doing that, Kubuntu would only mirror my desktop on my second monitor. And let's not forget I could never get the resolution to go higher than 1024x768. That was something I could not live with. Those of you with dual monitors know that once you go to a multi-monitor setup you can never go back to mono-monitor setup.

I gave up on Linux.

Several months later I download OpenSUSE 10.2. For some reason I'd always thought SUSE was a German distro that wasn't available in English. I'm not sure why I ever thought this. It was one of the few times in my life I was glad to be wrong. OpenSUSE is absolutely available in English and so many other languages, too. I installed OpenSUSE back in February and have been playing with it very rarely since then. I was scared to do anything to it since everything seemed to go so well. OpenSUSE correctly identified and automatically configured my ATI 9800Pro video card to extend my desktop to my second monitor at 1280x1024 on both monitors. Nice. Extremely nice. Thrilling, in fact. OpenSUSE detected both my brand-spanking new Samsung ML-2010 laser printer and my Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. Unreal!

So, here I am, making the investment into OpenSUSE. I'm going to learn it and become comfortable with it. I'm quite intimidated, to be honest. Linux isn't a plug'n'play OS like I'm used to with Windows XP. I'll actually need to use the command line quite often---and therein lies the intimidation. I haven't used a command line in well over 12 years and I know it will be a demanding task to wrap my mind around command lines again. Thanfully, there's quite a bit of documentation on the Linux command line available across the Internet. I've already joined an OpenSUSE forum and I try to read about OpenSUSE every day.

I am an OpenSUSE newbie. I am green and I am learning.