More dirt on Sabayon

Sabayon does not offer the linux control panel that PC Linux does, even for the root user. This makes it difficult to do things like create a new network connection.
I did not see a volume control in the system tray. So I had to add an applet to the task bar to do this. This applet is probably the most compact master volume control I have come across. It squeezes into the taskbar and offers bars that can be used to control levels of many audio sources - master, wav, mic etc - the options usually seen only by launching the mixer in most distros and Windows as well.
Another useful applet seen here is the Media player control that can also be squeezed into the panel. This applet can work with more than one media player, and since only Amarok seems to be available in most distros I was surprised to see the many media player names in the list. There is minimal configuration needed, besides indicating the media player.

Application management is tricky in Sabayon. The most obvious option a user will select is the "Applications installed by Klik" in the main menu. The assumption being that this would launch something similar to the add-remove programs applet in Windows. Since the menus are well stocked with icons, some users will feel the need to uninstall a few unwanted apps before adding some. The above mentioned link, tries to go online without warning. BAD. After coming to the end of this route, a user will spend a long time launching almost every link in every menu before coming across something even remotely close to an add remove applet. And after coming across this link, the stupidity of it all is brought home, since the link is also available on the desktop! Portato. As good a descriptive name one will find in Linux. But wait, Sabayon offers a hint about the name in the status bar - "Portato - Portage GUI". Helpful. The name is just a taste of things to come. Once launched, though the somewhat familiar application list is displayed, the controls are all cryptic. There is no option to find the repository being used, no way to change or update repository list. A few buttons are available titled Emerge, Unmerge, Update World and Remove. There is no easy way to identify which apps are already installed, a user has to hunt them out. Once an installed app is found, selecting it will show details about it. There are a few more options here - Installed, Masked,(Testing), Revert, Ebuild, Remerge. While Installed is easy to understand, the rest are not. Those who like like puzzles will feel at home, trying to figure out what the options mean. The bottom line - Portage is insanely complicated. Avoid.
It is hard to understand why Sabayon would take the pains to create a distro that has more apps that the norm, and yet make it difficult for users to use them.

Migration to New system

Shifting the hard disk to a new system caused problems in XP with Windows warning you that data would get corrupted etc. So I was expecting similar problems in Linux.
But, a shift from the nvidia chipset motherboad to a Via chipset motherboard, which besides their differing chips also had different onboard graphics went ahead smoothly.
Ofcourse, X had problems, but it booted right up to offer the command prompt. There I did the startx routine which I had picked up from some earlier encounter with Linux. And somewhere in the output I latched upon the /etc/X11/xorg.conf name. I opened the file with the vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf command. Vi as I have already mentioned is too intelligible to be used without blowing one's fuse. No toolbars, no menus, no help, only headaches. But, in the file, I noticed the values that needed modification, and also picked up the name XFDrake.
Running XFdrake in the command prompt brought what appeared to be a tool to configure X. Navigating this tool is tricky, till I figured out that the Up and Down keys were for moving around the menu options, and the left and Right keys were to perform actions. Soon I had set the correct Savage driver (for the onboard Savage 4 graphics), which was automatically detected by the tool, tested the driver and all seemed OK. Exiting the tool and redoing a startx produced the same result as before. Evidently, Xfdrake does not modify the conf file. Rather that endure the insanity of vi, I went down the live CD route.
Booted with PC Linux live CD. Since during the boot, the live Cd will also create a conf file for X, I thought it would be more easier that I envisaged. Logged in as root, the partitions were thankfully mounted, went to the relevant partition, copied the relevant portions of the live CD created xorg.conf file onto the target file on the partition. Rebooted, and voila.

Wine Worry

Wine, the Windows Emulator which allows some windows applications to be run in Linux is not prebundled with PC Linux. I do recall seeing it bundled with some other distro, probably Freespire.
Since I had mastered the art of extracting gz packages and creating a shortcut to the shell script and running a program, I thought getting Wine would be similarly easy.
Alas. For one, there are no readily executable gz packages. Two, the available binaries are for distros not including PCLinux.
The alternative was to fiddle with the application management routine in PC Linux - Synaptic.
I have had troubles in dealing with repositories in some distros, but PC Linux makes this considerably easier. New repositories - online or offline - can be easily added with a few clicks. By far the easiest repository management I have experienced so far.
Getting Wine started off on the wrong foot. The default list of applications did not have the Wine package, as I had come to expect after seeing the app managers of some other distros which list many applications. PCLinux does not have a package list preloaded so, obviously, the search ended empty. Other distros have a package list loaded, so the app manager contains other apps besides the ones installed.
I went searching for repositories in synaptic, and enabled one of the online ones. Then the list needs to be reloaded. A few MBs are downloaded, and then the list gets loaded. Now Wine made an appearance.
Selecting Wine for installation, automatically indicated the dependent packages that need to be updated or installed fresh. While most of the applications on the dependent list were small or seemed important, one name stood out - Adobe Acrobat Reader. I am not sure how Wine is related to Abobe. Seems like some conspiracy to allow Adobe to gain a backdoor entry into a Linux distro. Disabling Adobe from the list of apps to be downloaded, automatically removes Wine as well. Irritating.
Synaptic indicates the download size before starting off. While the Wine package itself is under 15 MB, the total download size comes to 300 MB with about 300 packages needing updating or installing. Adobe is the largest package downloaded at 50 MB. After the long download, the process grinded to a halt with an "cannot access rpm database error".

A few anxious searches revealed that this is usually caused by some other process locking the database, and this should be rectified by restarting the system. To restart the system I had to close the Synaptic window, which gave a warning that doing so would undo all the work. Luckily, I had set Synaptic to save the downloaded files locally, and so redoing the Wine installation would require no further downloads, or so I comforted myself.
After a restart, I relaunched Synaptic, redid the steps, and the installation proceeded smoothly - all without going online.
There are no diagnostic messages to indicate the installation results. But, Wine makes an appearance in the More Applications Menu. Adobe is conspicuously absent. Someone needs to relook at the insidious way Adobe downloads itself and yet doesn't make an appearance.
For all the troubles, on launching Wine, X restarts.

FC Revisited

I had the opportunity to revisit FC (not sure which version - 6 probably, there seems to be no easy way to find out - like a right click on My Computer in Windows) after spending a long time on PC Linux.
Some of the most glaring deficiencies in comparison were :
1. The Gnome interface with the two taskbar layout.
1. Absolute lack of partition tools even for the root user. I did not find a tool to check the partitions, I did not find a way to access the other partitions on the drive, they were not automounted as an alternative. The Gparted and qtparted commands were not identified as well.
2. The terminal would be expected to be easy to access. But, it does not exist in the system menu or the system tools menu, as would be expected. A look at all menus revealed it under the Accessories menu.
3. The mouse acceleration applet is better in KDE since it allows digital control rather than the anologous slide bar in Gnome.
4. Openoffice was missing.
5. Media playing support is rudimentary. As is popular in Linux, the naming is designed to make forgetting easy . Kaboodle would seem to be the mp3 player of choice, but it cannot handle playlist files like m3u. Double click an m3u file and another forgetful application Noatun is launched. In both cases I missed an equaliser. I am not sure if there was a video player at all.
It is irritating to figure out what an application does without a proper name. The only way one can conclude the use of an app is to look at its position in the menu. This logic makes it impossible to coax users to try out apps classified under Accessories. Naming is lazy and immature.

Overall, what this has shown is that reputation is NOT indicative of intelligence, at least with regard to distro creation.

Amarok

It's a media player. It is not light weight, intuitive, and userfriendly.
The biggest gripe is playlist management. There seems to be no direct way to open a playlist, modify it and save it again without browsing to the location of the original playlist.
It also cannot commence playing from where the previous session stopped.

Clipboard Management

Opera, the browser, has a nifty feature - Paste and Go, that makes it possible to paste a URL in the address bar and press "enter" in a single step.
I have noticed that this feature does not work in Linux. Why? Because, selecting a text also loads it in the clipboard, superceding the earlier content, without a copy command. For example, if the address bar has an URL - abc.com, and you copy another URL xyz.com and proceed to do a Paste and Go after selecting abc.com (to overwrite it in the Paste Operation), the URL that will show up is abc.com. This situation will not arise if a blank address bar is chosen for the test. Which leads me to conclude that the Select operation is enough to flood the clipboard. The same phenomenon was observed in another application as well, though I do not recall which one.
Strangely, a paste will bring back the superceded clipboard contents - which means that the Paste and Go and Paste URLs are different. And in our example, the Paste operation will bring back xyz.com.

Any theories?

Gkrellm

It would be hard to describe the visual image that is conjured up when an unpronounceable name like GKrellm is mentioned. Is it a bird, is it an aeroplane,....

I do not know the mnemonics, but this is the name of a system resource monitoring applet that is hidden in PC Linux - System - Monitoring menu. With such a name, you wouldn't launch it without being prepared for a system wide automated destruction.

I had talked about the System Guard charts which were quite informative and configurable. GKrellm offers something that System Guard does not - space conservation. Anyone who has had the good fortune of learning about and using Netmeter (in Windows) will understand the role a space saving design plays in the overall application usability. System Guard is rich in the number of sensors it can track, but if you are going to keep the window open all the time, it has to be of such a size that it does not obstruct the other windows. Since my main aim was to check if the 2MBps broadband link was being fully utilised, I needed to keep the monitoring window on top always, and still continue to work on other windows.

GKRellm fills this void. Once launched it appears as a vertical banner that has different windows tracking the RAM and CPU and other usual parameters. What raises the bar is the configurability. The size of the window can be modified, as can the number of sensors, the charts the lengths of time being tracked etc are all configurable. This strongly reminded me of Netmeter's awesome skills. It still is way sub par though, but for all practical purposese it is satisfactory.

The screenshot is of a highly modified GKrellm window tracking the eth0 interface placed on top of an Opera window.

What's in a name

In Windows, plain talk makes life easier for users.
Q1: Where are the programs installed?
A1 : In the Program Files folder


Q2: Where are the Operating system Files?
A2: In the Windows folder.

Q3 : How can you monitor the system resources?
A3 : Task manager.

It would seem the most obvious thing to expect and recall.

But, look at the same scenario in Linux.
A1: /usr/ folder. ("come again?")

A2 : I really don't know.

A3 : system guard.

Why would a folder containing the program files be called /usr/? Probably there is a lot of history behind this naming, but is it difficult to start afresh and have a folder/application nomenclature that makes it easier to find stuff in the hard disk? Intuitive seems too ungeeky for Linux heads.

Sabayon

After having gone through the installation of many distros, Sabayon had little new to offer. The Kubuntu installation is what comes to mind first. Except for the blood red theme, everything else is the same. The Live CD loaded without glitch.
While installing on the hard disk, Sabayon has a few issues. For one, it will tell you that a 5.8 GB partition is inadequate. 5.8GB is a significant size, so the warning seems a bit audacious. Probably, it is the same warning that is used in the DVD version of Sabayon where it holds true. Nonetheless, the installation proceeded smoothly, with enough space left in the 5 GB partition I had chosen.
Post installation, the blood red theme is too eye catching to replace. "Where art meets inspiration" and a three digit/toe footprint are the motifs of Sabayon.
It lacks the ease of mounting hard disks that PC Linux has. In PC Linux, the partition tool also allows mounting with the ease of a few clicks. In Sabayon, the need to access the terminal to do the same thing is a put off. Ofcourse, one could say that it is easier to just edit the fstab file, but this has a major drawback. Which is that any problems in the partitions mentioned in fstab will cause the system to not boot even if the boot partition is "clean". This situation has to be avoided at all costs.
Sabayon also lacks Openoffice. I think this was also seen in the Fedora distro, and some others. Why would Openoffice be overlooked is beyond me.
Sabayon also insists on 6 letter passwords, for the root as well as the user accounts. BAD. Sabayon also puts up a second taskbar on the top. This is a recurring design theme in many distros, and I think this makes it evident that Linux is meant for large screens. On the most widepsread 15" screen a second taskbar is a waste of space.
The menus are fuller than that seen PC Linux and Opensuse, but not as much as seen in Knoppix.
The mouse cursor is a bit too bloated to my taste, but there are no choices.

Sabayon stands apart for the colour theme. The novelty will wear off soon.

Ktorrent Second Thoughts

After using Ktorrent over a period of time, I have made the following observations.

1. Though there seems to be no way that a user can preferentailly download the starting bits of a file, Ktorrent does it automatically.
2.There is not way to specify individual torrent speeds.
3.Keeps crashing or shutting down for no apparent reason. Stopping a torrent is all that is needed to cause this.
4. Unlike utorrent, partially downloaded pieces cannot be completed. Torrents can be stopped or started only.
5. There seems to be no way to prioritise torrents. Though I am not sure if doing so actually matters, even in other torrent clients.

System Guard for all Monitoring needs

The Windows 98 system monitor was light years ahead of the task manager of the subsequent Windows editions. The System monitor allowed differet sensors to be selected and included which made it an ideal tool to keep an eye on the system's status.

I am pleased to say that the System Guard applet in PC Linux is a similarly gifted tool. While I was initially put off by the fact that the only sensors available by default are the CPU and RAM readings, a closer look revealed that other sensors could be added, and there were more customisation options.

The fastest way to access system guard is to add it as an applet to the taskbar. This will create a small indicator which only shows CPU and RAM readings, but a couple of clicks is all that is needed to launch the actual application. System guard can also be acessed from the System - Monitoring - KSysGuard menu.

Here the right sidebar shows the list of all available sensors. The existing sensors can be removed with a right click to make space for a new sensor. If needed a new Worksheet containing more sensors can be added. The number of sensors and their layout can also be modified. Other customisation options include colour, grid, scale settings etc. Since I was seeking a tool to track the network usage, the result of my work is displayed below. The biggest drawback is that the taskbar icons cannot be modified to reflect the sensors being tacketed. They can only show the CPU and RAM status, and importantly, as happened in my case, removing the graphics from the taskbar is a permanent step. Once deleted they cannot be replaced or recovered. This also makes it difficult to access the system guard from the task bar. So it is best to leave atleast one graph running in the taskbar icon.

Belenix

Downloaded Belenix, the live CD version of Opensolaris, which I think is also Unix based.
The Live CD gave no problems, and comes with two options for windows manager - XFCWE and KDE. The KDE desktop gave problems, not loading upto the "icons on teh desktop" stage. The XFCE manager did not have such problems.
Installing Belenix on to the hard disk requires a Primary partition, which I do not currently have. So That will have to wait. The initial impression is that the working is similar to Linux. The layout and menu items all look familiar.

File System Weakness

It is the second time that I am observing this.

Ktorrent included in PCLinux has this tendency to mark many files as corrupt. Compared to the eventless transfers experienced in utorrent under Windows, Ktorrent' behaviour is disappointing and irritating.
Large downloads suddenly become corrupt and after a recheck bulk of the downloaded data is trashed. Could this be because of Ktorrent or the ext2 file system? Doing a fsck on the partition gives a clean status. So how did the file get corrupt? And why did it get corrupt after most of it has been downloaded. THe error I confronted previously was when after the download was complete, the file would be checked, this would reveal a few corrupted pieces, then these would be downloaded, and on a recheck again a few pieces would be found corrupt and the process would continue. This way I had to download almost twice the actual file size before the downloaded file was found to be free of errors.
I consider this a major problem, since having to worry about the fidelity of the data is not appreciated. I wonder if converting the partition to ext3 would help.

Update: A few minutes later
After the data corruption problem, I stopped Ktorrent. Then launching any program would lead to a crash. So I restarted the system.
Shock after shock. Opensuse would not boot, even in safe mode, PCLinux would not boot even in safe mode. In all normal options I would get a blank screen, in the Fail safe mode I would get a CRC error.
The last part was a hint that the RAM would be to blame. But, then I tried the many live CDs that I had collected. Centos, Knoppix, Opensuse, PC Linux, all would stop with a blank screen. Then I removed the hard disk, thinking that the corrupt partition would be preventing the creation of a temporary swap file. That did not rectify the problem. Then I removed one of the RAM sticks, and things were back to normal. So now I am with 128 MB RAM (32 MB Shared with graphics). On getting back the PC Linux, I re ran the data integrity check routine, and guess what, all the downloaded content was detected. Relief.

So, a useful diagnostic message rather than a blank screen is needed. But I guess the CRC error is sufficient in many cases.

Digital Camera Handling

Plugging in the Kodak CX4200 camera in the USB port did not elicit any reaction. Disappointed, I went searching for a SANE application which would help.
The search resulted in the KDE Cam program which could be used to transfer images from the cam. Under the tools menu in KCam, the camera could be detected, and a few clicks later, I was able to copy images from the camera. The KCam application also has a few basic tools, like rotate, which I used. Unfortunately, the modification is saved automatically, which means that the original image is overwritten without prompt, something I did not appreciate.

External Drive Problems.

I use a 40 GB laptop drive in a USB casing as an external drive. Plugging in this drive in any of the distro does not automatically detect the partitions on the drive. While the drive is detected , as can be checked from the hardware information panel; the partitions do not appear in the parition editor from where the partition needs to be mounted before data can be transfered.

The Sandisk thumbdrive and the iBall MP3 player have no such problems.

Media handling capabilities

KM Player that comes pre installaed in PC Linux can play more media types than Kaffeine that comes with Opensuse.

Update : 13.3.08
GOM player for windows does an excellent job of previewing incomplete AVI files. While KM player can play partial files, it can't compare with GOM's capabilities. I'll need to examine the WINE way to GOM. Probably Virtual Dub for Linux exists as well.

Update : 27.3.08
On closer inspection I found that the reason Kaffeine did not play as many media files as KMPlayer was because of the lack of codecs. The Kaffeine in PC Linux (it also has the MPlayer, which is also available under windows) plays those files well. KMPLayer cannot control audio for the video, rather it controls system wide audio. So if you want to listen to some other music while watching a movie, you can't with KMplayer. Kaffeine manages to do this well.
Why would Opensuse not include the XVID codec which is opensource (I think) and is needed to play most AVIs is a question begging for an anwer.

GRub Rectification

When Freespire arrogantly overwrote the MBR, without informing the user and offering a chance to choose the location and entries in the bootloader, I was unable to access the Grub installed by Opensuse which already existed on the drive along with PCLinux.
To aggravate, Freespire would not list all folders in the directory, even when using Konqueror in super user mode, or logged in as Root. Hence editing the Grub menu.lst file needed some improvisation.
First I tried the vi /boot/grub/menu.lst command, after logging in as root. Vi is a highly rated editor, in geek circles. But I found it downright irritating, (which is probably why snooty geeks praise it). For one I could not find a simple file save option, and there was no easy way to navigate through the file contents, clicking on File - close did not produce a save or discard option, and the many times I tried to figure out the damn thing, it would not exit politely, everytime I would get a "not responding, close anyway" pop up.
The other option involved using Kate and Kwrite to accomplish the editing. I opened menu.lst file by directly entering the path in the file Open dialog. From the contents of the file I could realise the another application - jiffyboot - was in charge of the boot operation. Additionally, the contents seem to indicate that another file - menu-normal.lst - was the actual place holding the menu entries. So I opened that file up. Looked around the entries, and found the various, familiar, entries and image paths and root folders.

Then I shut down the system and slept over it.

When I got up today, I tackled the boot menu problem first thing. And apparently all the unconscious goodness of cranial activity gave me a brainwave. Why not simply copy the contents of Opensuse's Grub menu.lst file onto the similar file in the Freespire installation. Voila, here I am typing this from Opera in the OPensuse installation.
Freespire has been tagged for removal, pending download of sabayon or some other distro.

Freespire

One look at the boot menu of the live CD and the Kubuntu influence is not deniable. The Kubuntuness continues through out the installation, the booting progress bar is the same, asn it the ability to switch to Adminitrator mode with a click of a button in any application.

The differences unfortunately make it a worse distro that Kubuntu. The Live CD does not allow installation from within, the option is available only at boot time. This is an irritant. But, more importantly, it does not allow creating partitions during the installation as well. Which is strange. But I do recall some other distro exhibiting a similarly irritating behaviour, not Kubuntu though.
So to create partitions, one has to reboot and then choose the partition disk option.
After the partition is identified, the files are copied and the system is restarted. Missed something? Damn right. No bootloader configuration!( Kubuntu has it.) After reboot, the Grub installed by Opensuse was overwritten. The only entries in the new bootloader referred to Freespire. Considering the Opensuse's Grub has managed to automatically create a link to the PC Linux installation, after the latter, Freespire's bootload installation procedures seems immature and irresponsible.
After booting, the default interface is too chunky. Fonts are too big, and more space is lost in the padding. Check screenshot : notice the taskbar, the windows are NOT arranged in two rows, check the space lost in the window title bar. The default theme will be replaced soon.

Installed Freespire on the laptop.
ON the application front, I could see Realplayer which is a first. I was also surprised to see Gparted since the default windows manager is KDE. Need to check if Gparted is a part of Gnome. A Firefox lookalike is available that is simply called Web Browser.Linspire is the first distro to accept autologin of root user as well, and it doesn't complain if the root password is not entered at all. Nice.

On the system configuration front, Linspire is attuned to the dumb user. Unlike most other distro which have two control panels - one each for the window manager and linux - Linspire only has the window manager control panel. So after searching for a while, I concluded that there is no Gui to alter the boot loader code.

A few minutes later:
Searching for a way to change the bootloader configuration, I remembered a friendly advice at linuxquestions.org, that the Grub menu.lst file can be edited with a text editor to show additional boot menu entries. Trying to browse through the contents of the disk I discovered that Linspire will not reveal those contents either. Even the root account cannot access folders on the hard disk besides the root folder. No etc, no usr, no grub. Looks like it's time to head to google.

Hidden Files

After looking around for a location where the applications would be storing their temp files, found that these are stored as hidden folders under the user folder. Konqueror by default does not show hidden files, and this behaviour needs to be modified first. Hidden folders are then seen, all of them see to start with a ".", strangely. I was specially interested in the Opera folder so that I could copy the browsing history from the temp folders of the Opensuse installation, to continue browsing in PCL.

KTorrent 2.1.4

I could not find a setting to selectively download pieces closed to the start of the file, which allows quicker previewing. This is available in Azureus.

Application Disfigurement

I have noticed that the same application appears differently in different distros, even when having the same window manager. The different themes may have something to do with it. But, still there is no reason for an application to seem unpolished. In some cases, like in PC Linux, the text in the Opera menus look much better that in any other distro. And setting the fonts in some cases produced conspicuous jagged edges in menus and windows, almost as if the fonts are bitmap based (not sure if this is indeed the case).

I need to test if having the same theme and all visual settings the same has any impact.

The GZ advantage

After having successfully ran Flock in Opensuse, I tried using the same package to run it from PCLinux, installed in a different partition.
I copied the shortcut that was placed in the Desktop of the Opensuse partition, to the PC Linux desktop. Then accessed the properties, and changed the paths to refect the changed location. And that was enough.
The same unfortunately did not work for the Opera RPM. This could be because the rpm is too tightly integrated with the OPensuse architechture, to work in PC linux (unlike the GZ package which seemed to have no problems).


A few minutes later :
Downloaded and successfully integrated the Opera gz package. Had to use the Flock shortcut as the starting point. Made a copy of it and changed the path to point to the extracted OPera folder. This time no complaints about the libstdc++ package.

PC Linux Take 2

Installed PCL on both systems. The earlier glitch was not noticed this time, no idea why. After a closer look, PCL has a few things that sets it apart
1. A good network monitor. Not easily accessible, but it exists and it shows the data transferred.
2. An easy way to mount and unmount partitions, it can be done from within Konqueror or also by using the partition tool.
3. The Ktorrent interface is better laid out that in Opensuse. Version no. 2.1.4 is the one on PCL.
During installation, I chose to store the bootloader on the boot driver rather than on the MBR. Post installation, the GRUB for the Opensuse automatically included the option to load PCL. Neat.

The Importance of a Shortcut

Finally got Opera running on the laptop.
How did I manage it?
Since the RPM installation routine had failed, taking cue from the Flock installation, I simply made a copy of the Flock shortcut, substituted the paths to the opera program and program directory and saved it. That's it.
The important thing is that directly clicking on the opera.sh shell script does not launch the program. Surprisingly, the shortcut points to this very script.  I guess the shell script  does not like to be launched outside the terminal. Though trying to run the opera command from the  terminal gives an error that the binary is in the wrong place.
In the meantime I also downloaded the suse version of libstdc++. Could this have made a difference? I think not.

Kubuntu 7.10

The fracas over the partition bungle notwithstanding, Kubuntu has a few attractive features.
Dolphin the new file manager brings a lot of additions to the usual file manager seen in KDE. For one it can easily switch to a dual panel mode allowing two folders to be opened side by side. Then there is the option to switch to super user mode with the press of a button. Viewer preferences can be easily saved, permanently. By far this was the best file manager so far tested. If I recall correctly, it also had an option to mount a partition without having to resort to the command line, as in FC8.
The lack of Firefox was surprising. Why would Kubuntu do it? Konqueror is fine, but if it could keep its tendency to launch the password manager everytime a password is entered, and use a smaller utility, it would be less annoying. Rendering wise, it does a good job, and I suspect it has some Gecko genes.

Kubuntu while booting also allows modifying the display resolution, something that is sorely missed in FC8, since Opensuse also has this facility. An unexpected, but pleasant surprise was the use of higher resolution by FC8. Since I did not set a resolution while booting, the desktop was set a 1600 X **** resolution (or atleast something higher than the 1280 X 1024 that the monitor officially supports). This reduced the size of everything, and was quite welcome since I always felt that interface wise Linux was too "padded" compared to Windows ( I always stick to the classic theme in Windows).

As far as installation to hard disk is concerned, Kubuntu did not mind when the user password was just one letter long, but it would not allow the system name to be so small. Also, I could not find an option to select the location for the bootloader. The sole option related to bootloading is an advanced options button in the final step of configuration before the files are copied to disk. Since I was keen not to screw up the Opensuse installation, the absence of a choice was disturbing. A cryptic "location of help for bootloader" was the only place where a hard disk was mentioned. And since this field was populated with "(hd0)", I was not sure what was being refered to by it, since the nomenclature till then was "hda" or "sda". I had opted not to install a bootloader, hoping to create an entry in GRUB that was being used by Opensuse. The failed install though put paid to all the plans.

By the way, FC8 was removed (after one day of use) to make space for Kubuntu.

Kubuntu Kauses Katastrophic Kaos

Tried installing Kubuntu on the ATI system and it would remain stuck at 15%. The live CD experience was better than FC8. No Firefox, but Openoffice was there.
Tried installing it on the nForce system, and all hell broke loose. (But, this seems to be becoming a regular event).
On the nForce system, the installation proceeded till 61% and then stopped with a corrupt media error. During the installation, after the partition was selected, an error stating an incompatible file feature in a different partition was presented (this also occurred on the ATI system). But, I chose to ignore it, in any case fsck did not find any errors in the identified partition.
After the aborted installation, Opensuse which was already on the drive would not boot. Apparently, the partition problem was the cause. It was quite irritating that the status of adjoining partitions would seem to be of so much importance to Linux. The user is left with a command line to manually rectify file system errors on the other partitions. A message adds fuel to the fire : that the partition on which Opensuse is installed was found clean and has been mounted. It is beyond reasonable comprehension, then, why Opensuse would not boot to the desktop, and present the message to rectify the file system errors.
Probably because there is no GUI for fsck?
Nevertheless, raving and ranting and cursing, I took up the gauntlet. The other option was a full reinstall and I was not keen to do this, after having tweaked the interface to my preference and installing Opera. The initial idea was to just format the partition on which Kubuntu had failed.
The first command : help. This produces a list of available commands, nothing of which seemed to meet the purpose at hand.
Then I tried "man -k format". This produced a long list of commands that had the word "format" in their name or description, but since I did not know the switch to make the scrolling stop, I was left reading the bottom of the list and nothing seemed to be appropriate.
Then I tried "man -k partition", and narrowed down on fdisk. The same command that can be used in windows, but more powerful. Since this allowed deleting partition, I though removing the Kubuntu partition would be just as effective.
Navigating through the help options of fdisk, I found the switch to delete a partition and proceeded to delete it.
Then I rebooted, this time the bootloader stopped with an Error 15. All the problems first caused by Knoppix came to mind. I strongly suspected that the issue now could be that the partitions were renumbered.
Then I went back to the Kubuntu Live CD, booted, accessed Qtparted (the offender in Knoppix), and there it was. The Opensuse Partition which was hda8, was renumbered hda7, since the previous hda7 partition had been deleted. I must say this irresponsible behaviour of fdisk does not gel well with the oh- so - intelligent-and-secure-and-geeky image of Linux.
Qtparted could not be trusted with dealing with partitions, and I had to get back to fdisk to try to undo the damage. So I created a partition in the blank area that had been left, hoping that fdisk would renumber the partitions and I shall have the correct order. This time fdisk overlooked the partition numbers, and allocated hda10 for the new partition. Fuming, I looked around the fdisk options to find one that could fix the partition order, which I took to mean setting the numbers in chronological order. This would also suit me since I was presently only interested in getting the hda8 label for the Opensuse partition so that I could have a bootable system. After reordering, the desired effect was achieved.
On reboot, Grub was back with the familiar green ambience and the boot menu. But, my happiness was shortlived, since again the disk check failed in one of the other partitions. Back to the rescue mode command prompt.

I am furious at this behaviour of Linux. The tendency to allow the concern for the well being of other partitions to impact one's own functionality to such a debilitating extent needs to be curbed. The lack of a disk check GUI seems to be the sole reason for this behaviour, and it is quite evident that there is a strong need for developers to focus on this overlooked aspect.

After searching online, I have concluded that the solution to the renumbering problem is to edit the boot options when grub is loading or edit the menu.lst file which is used to display the menu everytime grub loads. I have not tried this yet.
Regarding the nosy behaviour, a suitable solution is being searched.

A few minutes later :

I have the Opensuse installation back up. The solution to the nosy problem was in editing the /etc/fstab file. As suggested by Chris a mod at Linuxquestions.org, I could've changed a single letter. But, I deleted all the lines related to the other partitions, with the intention to recreate them from within Opensuse after it was up.
Did the editing from Kubuntu live, and the reboot was smooth. Probably the sytem time was not properly set, since during the boot, Linux reported that hda8 had not been checked for many days and enforced one.

Flock In

The consolation for the failed Opera integration, with Opensuse 10.3, was the flawless integration of Flock. As already stated in the Opera installation episode, the libstdc++ package, which was also needed for Flock, was installed. With this, all that was needed was to create a desktop shortcut. The installation steps are mentioned in the Flock website, following which the ride was smooth.

Blogged with Flock

Opera , Not so Fast

On the nforce installation, the Opera installation went smoothly, thanks to the tips from Salasi. Following the same steps in the ATI config, produced different results. The old libstdc++ missing dependency message returned.
What could have gone wrong? Both were Opensuse 10.3 installation, both packages were the same, and yet one seemed to have a difference of opinion.

Thinking back, I recall trying to install the libstdc++ package from rpmfind.com in the nforce PC. After download, clicking on the package produced nothing, just like the OPera installation. Probably, it could have installed itself without confirmation. Could that be the cause for the successful Opera installation ?

A few minutes later:
Opera installed well. So apparently the libstd package's presence made all the difference. On the nforce PC, both the rpms - opera and libstd - were in the same folder which was selected as a software repository. This allowed it's detection and automatic installation when the missing dependency was found.
So the golden rule to installing an application is to have an extensive list of repositories that can be searched for needed packages.

A few more minutes later:
Installing and being able to use the software are two different things. Though the installation finally went smoothly, clicking on the icon briefly shows the opera windows in the taskbar and then nothing. Back to Square 1.

Mounting Problems

I think Mandriva 2007 was the most user friendly distro when it came to accessing other partitions in the drive. Even if it would not automatically mount the partitions, the partition tool would allow mounting, as would the file manager. Probably the Gnome manager had something to do with this capability.
Every other distro I sampled, and all were KDE based, made this task difficult.

In all cases, I needed to access the terminal, and type in commands.
The commands to use :

mount x y where X is the partition to be loaded usually /dev/hda1 or similar looking. And Y is the location to load, which is the path to any place in your system. The place needs to be created first

mkdir y can achieve this . y can be something like /home/hda

umount accomplishes the reverse.

Every distro - Opensuse, FC8, Centos, - did not do this in a friendly manner.

fstab is another term that recurs when dealing with partitions. This is a text file stored in /etc/ folder. Apparently, this file can be edited manually in a text editor to enable loading the partitions automatically. Some day...

FC 8 In and on its way out

The FC8 KDE Live distro had problems. For one, unlike Opensuse it did not offer a resolution at the time of booting. Therefore FC8 booted with the resolution that it was comfortable with - 800 X 600.
The interface seemed sluggish, almost like CentOS. Which leads me to conclude that Centos may not be the one to blame, since it is probably based on FC. But, unlike Centos just after the desktop loaded I got a message that the File protocol had died. So the medium may be to blame as well.
Thanks to a full blown control panel, I could reset the monitor's supported resolution to the correct level - 1280 X 1024. Restarted X with the Ctrl - Alt- Backspace combo, which is quite useful, and was presented with a desktop with the right side cut off. Moving the mouse to that edge scrolled the rest of the desktop. On checking the existing resolution, I found that X was running at 1440 X 900. Why? Needed to reset and restart X to get things right.
A major drawback - no Openoffice. All office applications had a K prefix, infact for anyone with a K allergy is sure to catch one, its everywhere!. Kwrite seemed to have all the required tools, but I'll need to spend a bit with it before I finalise. Seems to save files natively in ODT, which stands for Oasis Document Format, probably intercompatible with the other common odt.
Another lapse - No Firefox!!!!!!!!!!! So, now I'll have to install Firefox, as well as Opera to regain productivity. Konqueror is workable, but try saving a password and it will launch another application to track system wide passwords. Not user friendly at all. And Blogger looks different in Konq than in Firefox
A few of the touches reminded me of Knoppix which is based on FC. The well stocked menus were quite reminiscent.

Inspite of the first apprehensions, installed FC8. Took almost twice the time the rest did. The medium is definitely to blame. No errors during the install though.
The root user must have a 6 letter password. A user need not.
Since Opensuse was already installed, I saved the bootloader on the boot drive not MBR. Decided to configure the bootloader from within Opensuse to include FC8.
After installation, and reboot, found that Opensuse had already included FC8 in its boot menu! That was quite surprising. Selecting the entry, loaded FC8 without any glitches. But when the FC8 menu loaded the glitches began.
There is no button to login, I think every other distro has such a button. So a user has to enter the password and press Enter. But what is the user has no password. Still an enter is needed. Double clicking on the user name did no good.
There are other Window managers on offer Metacity was one. But trying to load it for the session proved unsuccessful, had to restart X after gazing at a blank black screen for a few minutes. KDE loaded fine.
Overall, FC8 doesn't bring anything new that Opensuse hasn't, and takes away a lot more. So FC8 may be on its way out.

Opera, at Last

Thanks to Salasi at linuxquestions.org, I have Opera.

It has been an eyeopener. One fundamental difference in software installation between Windows and Linux is the starting point. As I found out, rather than double click on a downloaded package, as is wont in Windows, in Linux, the path to the package needs to be first included in the application management program. In Opensuse, YAST2 is the application management tool. To modify the paths it searches for new applications, the Software Repositories tool in the YAST Control panel needs to be used. Once the path, in my case the Desktop (/home/user/Desktop), to the opera rpm was included. A few clicks later, YAST accomplished the deed, and I was left with an icon buried in the start menu (Start menu - internet - web browser).

I am thrilled. Thanks once again to Salasi.
I wonder if the same procedure works with all distros.

Disk Checker GUI

I could not find an easily accessible disk checking tool. The fsck command can be used, but it is rather strange that no GUI has been developed for this command. Being an important tool for any user, this is a major overlapse on the part of the developers.

OpenSUse 10.3

With the Greenery Opensuse stands out from the rest of the Distros who mostly use Blue.
The installation was smooth, except for a message stating that the Openoffice Calc package could not be installed. Probably corrupt media. But this happened only on the nForce motherboard, the ATI motherboard had no hiccups. The installation routine allows setting the display resolution right at the beginning which is a good thing.
The KDE start menu is replaced with Suse's own menu. This is a bit laborious to navigate, and probably will be trashed as soon as the user finds out how to revert to the default KDE menu.
One of the adorable qualities of Opensuse is that it accomodates the lazy user, even while keeping security in mind. By allowing the root to have a one letter password, unlike the rest of the distros, Opensuse makes the usage of a normal user account more tolerable. Unfortunately, it insists on the username being atleast 2 letters long. But that a very minor niggle.
Open suse offers two forgettable terms : YAST and SAX. One of them is for the hardware management, and the other is for the software management, I think.
Hardware management is easy. I could reset the monitor resolution easily from the control panel.
It too couldn't handle Opera installation. Not even offering a reason for the failure - double clicking on the rpm launched the application manangement program, that checks the rpm database and closes. That's it. No further feedback.
It includes Ktorrent, a bit torrent client, so that is a definite plus. One issue which I noticed in Ktorrent, which was also evident when using Azureus in Knoppix, was that torrents tended to get corrupted AFTER they completed download. An ISO would be downloaded, after download it would be checked, a few pieces would be found corrupted and trashed, these would be redownloaded, and agains the checking program will find corrupt pieces, and this process would continue. Even torrents that passed the check would inexplicably end up with corrupt pieces. Is Ext2 to blame?
This was the first time I'd seen such an event, since on utorent and Azureus in windows, I had not faced this problem.
No network monitoring applet. I am beginning to think that this is because KDE is innately not capable of doing this, rather than due to an oversight by Opensuse.

How to make a Desktop Shortcut

I got this from the Flock installation help. Flock is available as a gz package. And after extracting it, either by using the extract option in the context menu or by using the tar command, the following content can be used, after appropriate editing, to create a shortcut. Create a new text file and copy the following contents, edit paths, save as xxx.desktop.


[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Flock
Comment=Flock Web Browser
Exec="/home/qq/flock/flock"
GenericName=Flock Web Browser
Icon=/home/qq/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
Path=$HOME/flock
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
Categories=Network;Application;
GenericName[en_US]=Flock Web Browser


PS. The shortcut may be functional but Flock would not run since it could not find a package libstdc++ 5. Strangely, the OS (Opensuse 10.3) shows that libstdc++.so.6 is already installed. The same issue dogs Opera installation

Gnome Vs KDE

There is more to just the windows when contrasting between Gnome and KDE.

KDE's strong point is probably the sleeker, leaner, space maximising controls; and K3B which is an excellent cd-DVD authoring tool. But for some reason the file manager is a bit obdurate when it comes to remembering the user's viewing preferences. Though the save view profile option can be exercised, I always had to load the preference everytime I launched the manager. Probably, since it is the same application being used to browse the net, it is not as finely attuned to offline file managing as could have been.

Gnome comes across as a plodgy interface in contrast. Everything seems padded a bit too much. The Nautilus CD burner is severly handicapped - it can't manage multisession burning, atleast as much as I could search for such a functionality. The toolbars are too thick, the title text is too huge. Overall, it feels as if the monitor is not running at it's higher resolution. But, I have managed to install Opera in Mandriva 2007 running Gnome, so I am inclined to think that the installation routine in Gnome is better. The Nautilus file manager is a bit better at remembering user viewing preferences.

PC Linux

"Radically Simple" is the tag line.
On the Athlon XP with Nforce chipset motherboard, PC Linux stopped with a blank, black screen. On the Presario, ATI motherboard the installation was smooth.
The eyecatching background was impressive. A black metallic net like design.
On running the OS, a strong sense of deja vu prevailed. Being based on Red Hat or some other distro and using KDE which was also seen in Opensuse and FC8, there seemed to be nothing new besides the icons and themes.
It too failed to install Opera from the rpm. I did not notice any increase in performance when compared to FC8.

Even More

I read somewhere the PCLinux is "zippy". It's on the download queue.

Sun Microsystems made it's Solaris OS freely available. Belenix is the live version of Solaris. Let's see if it is as good in meeting my needs. It's on the download queue too.

Monitoring Tools

There seems to be a collective effort from all distro manufacturers to hide operating complexities from a user. For a Windows user, Alt- Ctrl-Del is enough to have a birds eye view of what is occuring in the system. The task manager displays the status of the system resources and, besides presenting a list of running processes, also allows terminating them.

There is no equivalent of an easily accessible Task Manager in Linux. in OpenSuse for example, I have not come across a tool that lets me keep an eye on the Network data transfers. There is not even a system tray icon to show if the system is connected. There is a system monitor tool that can show the CPU and Memory stats; and getting to this tool requires advanced navigation skills. The alternative is to add a system monitor applet to the taskbar.
Adding an applet to the taskbar is an easy process, requiring a few clicks after accessing the context menu. It is the accessing of the context menu that can be a problem, especially if the taskbar is already full of windows. A few windows will have to be closed to allow the taskbar to show through.

Mandriva 2007 was the only distro that could also track Network usage. And this was quite endearing. The system tray displayed the network Icon and the monitor tool could be accessed from it's context menu. The system monitor applet which could be positioned on the taskbar itself was also configurable allowing the process chart's time axis to be increased allowing a longer term monitoring. Unfortunately, the Network chart (and probably the other charts too) had this annoying feature of automatically reconfiguring the axis limits without much ado. So it is possible that the actual difference is much more, but the graph line would show only a small variation since the chart axis would get reconfigured midway allowing the larger value to be plotted. This can be misleading. Fortunately, the Network monitor accessed from the system tray was more accurate.

Divided we stand.

The Linux scene is chaotic and in disarray. There seems to be no unifying theme behind the movement, and this is probably not a healthy tendency.
I had aired some of my views in the comp.os.linux.advocacy newsgroup under the heading Between Linux and Desktop Domination

The feeling is strengthened with every experience I have with every distro. The application installation routines, which can be considered as fundamental to an OS are differently named in each distro - SAX, YAST, YUM, APT, SYNAPTIC, RPMDRAKE, HARDDRAKE, etc. and many more. The difficulty this presents to have a uniform view of an OS is huge. For example, rather than describing a problem in installing an application in linux, I have to describe a problem that pertains to the specific distro with its unique application management routine. This effectively makes it difficult for someone who is an expert in using Linux, but a different distro, to help me out. The expertise is divided and niched too much for it's own good. Rather than have 10 Linux experts, we are left with 1 expert each for 10 distros.
The need to have a common platform where atleast the basics of an OS are uniformly implemented across all distros will go a long way in attracting more people to Linux. The viability of Linux will be enhanced if the user base increases.

Fedora Core 6 Partition bias

Trying to manually partition the drive in FC6 revealed a certain stubbornness with regard to allocating space.
The existing drive already had three primary partitions - 2 NTFS and one EXT3 containing Opensuse. An Extended drive with a single logical drive contained the swap. I wanted to create another logical drive and allocate space for FC6.
The partition tool for some reason does not allow the user to select whether the partition is to be extended or primary.
More annoyingly, it would not allow the swap partition to be the first logical drive in the Extended partition. Since Opensuse had already mapped sda5 as the swap partition, it was paramount that sda5 be reserved. The previous ordeal with a renamed swap partition causing Mandriva 2007 to not boot, necessitating a rewrite of the fstab file by using Centos live CD, was still fresh. But, the partition tool, stubbornly, would allocate sda5 for the ext2 partition meant for FC, even if it was created after the swap partition. So if I create the swap partition first, it would be given the sda5 name. Then on creating the FC6 partition, the FC6 partition would automatically usurp the sda5 name, and push the swap partition down the extended drive and allocate sda6.
I gave up my attempts to rectify the situation, and decided to pre-partition the drive before installing FC6.
The FC6 DVD was non live and hence needed installation before use.

AnOpera with OpenSuse

The straight "click on rpm and sit back" routine did not solve the Opera installation problem. The solution, or what passes for it, involved a circuitous route.

After extracting the gz file, which by the way has the most amazingly complicated filename which is the result of "opera" appended with a verion number and probably a creation data and some letters more thrown in with a few hyphens and periods, one is left with a folder containing among other things an install.sh and an opera.sh executable file.

Getting a terminal requires navigating through the start up menu. After fiddleing with the file manager for a while, I discovered the Show terminal here option, which made it easier to open a terminal in that location without having to cd all the way to it from the default user path.

Once here, running the install script generated a message that the command is incomplete. Running the opera command was more promising. At first it created an error that there was no language specified. The english language file was present under the Locale folder. After adding this path along with the opera command, a few errors later, the Opera window popped up.

Relief was short lived though. A badly miscoloured window containing a few words first showed up. To view the words I had to select the text. The message seemed that some shortcut keys in Opera would be disabled since they were also shared by KDE, the windows manager being used. The miscolouration continue through out with all menus and other control items being indistinguishable. I could type out an address in the address bar and access a few sites, though. Further tweaking needed. Or is KDE to blame?

Application Complication

Linux is not upgrade friendly. Atleast for someone not keen on learning the intricacies of the OS.

If you are seeking a simple route to adding applications, you will find that some distros are better that others in this task, and some application packages are not compatible with some distros due to the different package format.
A package format is something new for Linux users. You have RPM format, a DEB format and a GZ format and a TAR format. And probably one more which I can't recall.
RPM is a format native to Red Hat and allied distros. Red Hat Package Management (RPM) is probably the most popular formats. DEB is for Debian and allied distros. The advantage of these formats is that they allow click and install ease. Unfortunately, this is easier said that experienced. The TAR and GZ formats are compressed formats like ZIP and RAR in Windows. One needs to be extracted, and then contents managed.

OpenSuse is one from the RPM lobby. Being an Opera - the browser - fanatic, I tried installing Opera to the newly installed OS. The Opera site lists atleast a dozen different Linux distros, and each distro is futher divided into a clutch of version. After selecting the Opensuse 10.3 download option, I could get the rpm package. Twice double clicking on the RPM packages produced a few popping windows and then nothing. The default installation manager YAST or YAST2 seems to be crashing. Right clicking on the RPM produced an option to "Install with YAST". This time the diagnosis was that the installation cannot proceed since there was a dependent file missing. A libstdc++ file was missing. A search in the install programs applet showed that the file was already present. And it was the latest version with no scope for updating.

The other option was to download the gz package. After the download and extract, clicking on the Opera shell script .sh file (probably the equivalent of the exe or bat format in Windows) resulted in ..nothing. There was also an install.sh file, which also accomplished nothing.
Hmm. Right clicking on the file did not offer an expected "run in terminal" option, since a shell is personalised in a terminal. Cul de sac.

Cent OS

This is a live only distro, if I had known that I would not have downloaded it.
CentOS for some reason is sluggish, very sluggish. Can't blame the medium for it since there are no errors shown. Every click is accompanied by long wait periods as the CD drive clanks its way.
Centos though was the knight in shining armour since it allowed me to recover a Mandriva installation that would not boot after Knoppix screwed up. The Knoppix trouble is mentioned in another post.
With Centos loaded, I could alter the parition data to allow Mandriva to continue to boot. I think the problem was that Knoppix renumbered the partition /dev/hda3 which was the swap partition for the Mandriva installation. And without the swap the booting would not proceed. It could also be due to the fact that every partition got renumbered causing a mix up between the file types and partition numbers in Mandriva.
In any case, Centos allowed me to boot into Mandriva.
While there are no installation options, during boot time one of the options is Network installation, and on selecting this, the routine asks for the Centos CD. I am guessing having two CDs would have helped.