Fedora 13

Recently I had a hardware failure on my laptop. My Hitachi Travelstar hard disk had a mechanical failure. Luckily it was still under warranty through HP. (only 7 months old!) After 2 excruciating weeks waiting for my laptop to be shipped all around the country I got it back and got ready to go to work reinstalling everything. Being the genius I am, the most recent backup I had of my OpenSuSE partition was about 2 months old, and I had not once backed up the Windows 7 side. Although I lost a lot of data, I was still secretly happy to, yet again, have a legitimate opportunity to install yet another Linux distribution. This time I decided to go back to my roots. I cut my teeth on Red Hat in 2003 and took a stab at Fedora Core 6 briefly in 2006 while I was in Iraq, so I’ve always had a soft spot for the Red Hat team.

Now it’s been a while since I’ve used an RPM-based package management system so I was expecting to be a little rusty, but that’s the beauty of the RPM system. It’s so amazingly simple. The last run-in I had with Fedora using Fedora Core 6 was quite pleasurable, but nothing compared to this version. I commend the development team for simplifying this distro to the point where I only need 7 repositories enabled, 5 official and 2 third-party. That’s amazing. I’m used to having to find different repositories for many various programs using other distributions (namely Ubuntu & OpenSuSE). The RPMFusion repos have just about everything I could need as far as multimedia and anything else proprietary.

When downloading Fedora 13 I chose to stick with KDE, simply because I’ve been vastly impressed by the evolution it has made from about 4.3 onward. This version of Fedora comes with KDE 4.4.5, which is just as beautiful as the 4.3.5 version I had on my OpenSuSE installation, but twice as stable. I don’t seem to have all the weird little bugs that i was encountering with the previous version. Everything seems to work the way it was intended. My only gripe with KDE in this particular distro would be the seeming lack of plasmoids available by default. In 4.3.5 it came chocked full of plasmoids and it seems that the ones that are missing by default in 4.4.5 are some of those which I used the most. No problem to download them from, say, KDE-Look.org though. Here is a screenshot of my most current setup:

Fedora 13 KDE 4.4.5 Desktop

I have the command watch plasmoid in the center there displaying the results of an hourly cron job which parses the output of a file called update.log which contains the output of “yum check-update > update.log”. A very simple update notifier, because the default kpackagekit basically sucks. I’ve always preferred to update manually anyway. I’ve also customized the kmenu icon because I hate the default KDE logo. So far I’ve been pleased with this distribution.

Updates to follow and coming soon a review on the aTunes media player.

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Really Blackboard?

Blackboard Mobile is the greatest thing to hit college education in a while.  Having the ability to access online class info, assignments, and discussion boards on the go is outstanding.  Unfortunately,  for those of us who are using a carrier other than Sprint or the select few who own iPads, forget about it.  I had been waiting on Blackboard’s waiting list for a few months for my school to license Blackboard Mobile when I received an email stating that it had.  I was very excited and immediately re-downloaded the app, only to find that it told me my school was still not licensed.  WTF?  I sent an email to their customer support explaining my situation and this is the response I received:

Hi Neil, Thanks for the email and for being an early adopter of Mobile Learn! We appreciate your interest in our application. I’m sorry to hear that you can’t usethe Mobile Learn application. Unfortunately, T-Mobile is not a supported carrier at this point for Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College. Sprint is investing a lot in its offering to Higher Education where their key strengths (3G network reliability, new 4G network, Android device offerings) match up really well with how Higher Education mobility needs are evolving, particularly in the area of mobile learning. In addition to a strong 3G network, they’re the leader in the deployment of 4G (including 4G enabled devices like the recently launched, Android-powered HTC EVO 4G phone) which has exciting possibilities for education, like vastly improved user experiences with increasingly common learning content types like video and other rich media. They have a proven history of enhancing on campus Mobile Broadband coverage for education institutions. And starting more than a decade ago with java based mobile applications for Nextel handsets, Sprint has a heritage in open development. That heritage has translated to a large and active developer’s network that promises to keep growing with Sprint’s leading role in Android and BlackBerry development. We’re excited to partner with them on a key part of our no cost offering for Mobile Learn and look forward to working with them on the advance of mobile learning going forward, including the deployment of campus rollout tools clients can use to spread the word about mobile teaching and learning. Please use this site for more reference: http://www.blackboard.com/Mobile/ Resources/FAQ.aspx If you have any further questions, comments or suggestions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Have a great day!

Omar González

Thanks for the shaft.  I feel like I’m always being shat on as a t-mobile customer.

3G network reliability? Really? As far as I knew my 3G network works just fine.  Go fuck yourselves Blackboard.

**Update** BTW the link referenced in the above email is broken too. And just to point out,  T-Mobile’s 3G network is faster than Sprint’s.

Why AT&T Can Go To Hell

Been a while since my last post. Been busy getting the house in order. So lets get to the point. AT&T. Where should I start? Lets go straight to the meat of my beef (seriously no pun intended), customer service. Anyone who has been a customer of any AT&T service has inevitably had the pleasure of making the treacherous trek that is the quest of speaking to an actual person when dealing with their customer support. Lord knows I have. And once you finally do reach a “human being” they’re generally no more human than the recordings as they regurgitate their scripts. Plus, you’re even luckier if they’re even in this country. Last week I spoke to a nice young man named “Rex”, who’s Indian accent was so thick I could hardly understand him. Why insult my intelligence by using a fake American name as if its somehow going to conceal the fact that my call has been transferred half way around the world because you don’t have time to deal with me yourself. After Rex failed to resolve my issues because I couldn’t answer the security question (never mind that at this point I have already spent 30 minutes on the phone with him and some very pleasant music, or that i have given him my phone number, address and the last 4 of my ssn), I tried to get help using the online chat method. This is better because at least I can understand the person. Now, mind you, I am already painfully aware of what needs to be changed on my account in order for me to be able to create sub-accounts, but I patiently (and painfully) walked through each one of this guys troubleshooting scripts. Finally he tells me it will be much quicker if I were to just install a remote vnc client and grant him full access to my file system in order to troubleshoot this! Against my better judgement I agreed. I had a feeling that this guy had no clue what he was doing, but once I got to watch him fumble around on my laptop screen I began to wonder if this guy had ever used a computer before. I almost laughed if I hadn’t been so pissed at the time. To make a shitty story long, he figured out what the problem was, which I could have told him in 2 sentences at the beginning of our conversation had he chosen to listen, and provided me a workaround. A WORKAROUND? Whatever. I can create sub-accounts now. I don’t have the patience to argue principle with these people.
The next issue, still going on at this very moment, DSL. 3 days ago I came home from work and found a blinking red light on my DSL modem. No internet in my house is not even joked about. I blew it off and decided to give it until the morning. Still blinking. I called them from work. I reached a prerecorded message stating that they were aware of an issue which was causing DSL subscribers in my area to not be able to sign in but it had been resolved. All I had to do was unplug the modem for fifteen seconds and plug it back in. Sweet. Got home and tried it, no dice. Decided to give it until the morning again. Still blinking. I had a fucking history assignment I had to submit online that I had to postpone because of this. Getting even more pissed at this point. Waited until I got home from work to call customer support. The first two numbers I called gave me a different number to call. This is starting off great. Finally I reached a recorded menu, yes! (I was actually excited to here a recording at this point) I finally got through to a tech who asked for my phone number or 10 digit account number associated with my account. I explained to her that I don’t know the phone number because the only thing we use the line for is our alarm system. She then told me there was no way to look up my account without that number, to which I responded with, “Well, I could look it up on one of my e-bills but unfortunately my DSL isn’t working.” (I couldn’t resist). In my head I said “bullshit”, but to her I politley asked if there was a way to do it using my personal info, like social security number, etc… she again said no, but to hold on, so I did. She then comes back on the line and asks me to verify my house number and last 4 of my social, which I do, and she tells me she’s in my account. Now, how the hell did we go from a flat out “no I can’t access your account” to “got it!” Just like that? Whatever. Next we walk through her script, which includes unplug and plug in the modem. I appeased every one of her requests until she had apparently reached a dead end. She asked me about the alarm system. I knew this was coming. She asked if it had a filter on it. I said I don’t think it does, but we have had the alarm and the DSL on the same line for a year and a half with absolutely no problems. The only time the alarm system uses the phone line is if it gets tripped, which it never has. She told me that until I get a tech from the alarm company to come out and install a filter she could not perform any remote tests, nor could she authorize a tech to come to the house until this filter is installed. That’s exactly when I asked to be transferred to someone who could cancel my service for me. No attempt was made to change my mind, just a simple apology and a transfer to never never land where I sat listening to music for five minutes before finally giving up. Still a blinking red light, still no internet. I’ve got Cox scheduled to come out and get me switched over next week. I’ve had issues with Cox in the past, but never like this. See you later AT&T. And go to hell.

Why I Pay Taxes

I pay my taxes.  I have no problem paying my taxes.  I believe that some taxation is necessary for government to function properly.  Where this takes a nasty turn is when my tax dollars start funding things and/or people who do not contribute back into the pool.  I do NOT pay taxes in order to support people who want to come to this country without paying doing their due diligence by going through the proper legal processes, just like the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came before them.  Everyone wants a piece of that pie in the sky, but it seems as of late, that nobody is willing to take the necessary steps in order to obtain it properly.  I have no problem with people wanting to come to this country, to share in the wealth that is the United States of America, in all of it’s melting pot glory, but there is a process in place to do this and therefore it should be followed, simply out of respect toward the nation of which one wants to become a citizen of.  Don’t take this the wrong way.  I am not simply referring to the Mexican immigration situation.  There are people form all over the globe attempting to enter this country.  I welcome all foreign immigrants who wish to join our nation and help contribute to our common good.  I also do NOT pay taxes in order to support anyone who is too ignorant or lazy to support themselves.  I DO pay taxes in order to assist my government in ensuring that I have my basic freedoms:  to do what I want within the confines of the law, to say what I want when  I please, and to defend what is mine with proper force when necessary.  I view myself as being fairly right-wing, but I do not consider myself to be an extremist.  I believe that the extremism should be left to the liberals who want to pay for everyone else’s shit.  Please, if you are to incompetent to take care of yourself, do not ask me to help you out.  The only people in this country who deserve a handout are those who are actually trying to accomplish something and offering to contribute SOMETHING back to society, and those who have legitimate disabilities.   I have a hard time paying for welfare and anchor babies and public health care.  I don’t make a lot of money, but I have never had an issue with not being able to obtain health care.  I guess I just really don’t get it.  In the words of John Locke “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.”  Well put.

OpenSuse 11.2

So I recently got a new laptop.  An HP dv6.  I really like it.  First thing I did was repartition the hard drive from one 500GB to two 250GB partitions, left Windows 7 in tact on one and installed OpenSuse 11.2 on the other.  I am very curious to try out Windows 7 as I hear it’s quite good and a major improvement over Vista.  Unfortunately since I started using OpenSuse with KDE 4.x I’ve been so in love that I can’t even think about booting into Windows.  This distribution is so highly polished it’s incredible.  I’ve tried using OpenSuse in the past and I have always thought it was ‘OK’.  The last time I used it, however, was prior to the release of KDE 4.X.  With 11.2, the OpenSuse team has managed to seamlessly integrate all the fantastic features of KDE 4 into an amazing desktop computing experience.  I truly believe that the improvements made to KDE between 3.x and 4.x have made all the difference here.  KDE 3 had always felt clunky to me.  I don’t think KDE 4 is any less clunky, I just think today’s hardware and the more fluid interface make it appear less clunky.  It’s all the same to me.

Beautiful transparent widgets with Plasma

Aside from the beautiful implementation of KDE 4, Yast has grown LEAPS & BOUNDS since the last time I used OpenSuse.  It is much more capable and easy to use.  Any and all system administration tasks can be handled from the Yast control panel.

My overall opinion of this distribution is 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.  Only because there is always room to improve.  I just haven’t figured out where it needs it just yet.

**EDIT**

So I figured out where it needs improvement, although not a major problem.  It seems that randomly after login, my widgets forget their configuration.  It’s usually only a picture frame widget that doesn’t remember what picture to display  or the microblogger completely forgetting my login and password, sometimes both.   I can never be certain which picture frame, out of three,  it’s going to be next.  My last few logins have been successful with no widget problems.  Again, not a big issue, simply annoying.

ZevenOS

So I guess this is a good time to begin this blog because I just got my hands on a tasty little Linux distribution that goes by the name of ZevenOS.

But before I get started…. a little background….

I have been fascinated with open source ever since I heard my father mention something about this thing they call Linux close to 15 years ago.  I finally gave in to curiosity in 2003 when I made a very feeble attempt to install Red Hat (I can’t remember which version) on my old P3.  This, and many ensuing failed attempts to get Linux to function for me (I refer to this as the ‘head against brick wall’ method of learning) only fueled my determination (and rage) to get this summumabitch to work. Along this path I have dabbled in just about every major Linux distribution available today, each with it’s pros and cons.  Now mind you, I’m no expert.  There’s many features and facets to each one of these distros that I have not examined simply because I am running them at home (when my wife isn’t using HER computer) or on my laptop, an old pentium M 1.73 with 2 G of ram and onyl 128MB video RAM, which has been drug through the streets of Iraq on the back of tanks and severely abused in every way you can think of.  This being said, networking and all of it’s inner workings I know nothing about.  Christ, I can barely get Samba to play nice.  My viewpoint is simply that of a serious end-user looking for a nice desktop OS and a viable alternative to M$ Windows in all of it’s empiricism. Back to the topic at hand.

Recently my I made a very big rookie mistake and managed to delete the entire contents of my home directory on my Xubuntu installation while trying to make a backup.  To make a shitty story long, I lost all my personal data in addition to some very key work files which I just had not had the chance to backup yet.  My Openbox setup was trick, too.  I was super-bummed :,(  This led me back to Distrowatch (www.distrowatch.com) to select a new distro to install (yes , even though I wiped out all my data I was secretly happy I had a legitimate opportunity to sample yet another distro!).  I perused the catalog and after making a misrable attempt at PC-BSD (my system was too low-end to handle kde 4 in all its beauty) I settled on this neat looking little distro which I already mentioned, ZevenOS.

To begin with, it is based on Xubuntu 9.10 so it’s going to have great support as well as meet the qualifications set forth by the low specs on my laptop.  The other thing that intrigued me was the appearance.  The look of the default desktop is supposed to be reminiscent of the infamous BeOS.  Now I never had a chance to encounter BeOS and I don’t really know much about it, but I like the way this desktop looks, feels, and functions.  Here is a screenshot:

The little box in the upper right corner is the deskbar.  This is directly from BeOS as far as I understand.  It is used as a task manager in vertical fashion so that many applications can be open without the need for grouping.  The yellow ZevenOS bar serves as a start menu with a static menu structure as to not get cluttered after installing many applications.

Icon Theme:  The icon theme you see in the screenshot is the Haiku icon theme.  This differs only slightly from the default icon theme (both resemble BeOS icons) and is actually from the Haiku project, a very young independent distribution aimed at resurrecting BeOS.  Haiku is not based on the Linux kernel.  It has been written completely from scratch and borrows from various open source code.  See http://www.haiku-os.org/

Application dock:  This is a little program they call ‘zeebar’, which is actually wbar souped-up. It comes pre-configured full of commonly used apps and looks beautiful with or without a compositor running.  The only reason  I choose to run a compositor is for my transparent terminal.

Additional touches that I particularly enjoy are: tab-completion 100% configured for bash, all my multimedia keys work without hassle, and the stand-alone-tray in the bottom right corner.

In addition to all of this, all multimedia comes ready to go.  MP3, flash, codecs, you name it.  Couldn’t get any easier.

All in all I have been very impressed by this little gem from Germany.  Unfortunately there are never pros without cons, so here we go.  Gripes I have would include:

1. Lack of community support (very sparsely populated forums, and they’re almost all in German)
2. Not much documentation on the main website.
3. Broken upgrades.  If Ubuntu repositories are enabled synaptic will install newer versions of certain packages which will bork the system.  I know this because I did it.  Had to reinstall and this time I left the Ubuntu repos disabled.  Hasn’t effected anything noticeable.

If you have a chance check out the website at www.zevenos.com