Beli’s blog

It’s the first time that I used SuSE Studio to build appliance of openSUSE linux that is customized by my taste.

It’s installable live DVD appliance of openSUSE 11.4 for 64-bit architecture. It’s KDE-only build, including all software that any desktop user would want. It has multimedia codecs, skype, vector and bitmap tools, audio and video editing tools, office tools, LAMP, Broadcom drivers and many more. It’s by my opinion, complete desktop solution.

This beefed-up version has size of 2.6 GB DVD ISO image that can be booted from, and installed if desired. You may download it by clicking here:
Download Emil’s KDE4 Live Desktop

There are two users by default, root and tux, both having password “linux”. So if password for some operation is required, type “linux” without quotes.

Notice: I found that if ran within VirtualBox 4.04 virtual machine, sometimes won’t boot. Not tested with other virtual machine servers.

Sometimes there is a need for installing proprietary graphic driver, and utterly easiest way is to install a package from YaST or other package manager. However, when new distro comes out, and you install it right away, packaged driver is not yet available. Some time must pass until proprietary packages appears. So, we must go “hard way” of installing graphic drivers by hand.

Way I am going to describe is fairly easy and it’s how global administrator of openSUSE forum does it for himself. His nickname is “OldCpu” and he hold my great respect. Some text below will be his words. Before I write a procedure of installation, I must mention that there is very easy script that does this automatically. You may find it here: Easy install of ATI proprietary driver in the console.

Ok, open your terminal or Konsole and let’s go… (type “su” and password when requested as we need root access)
*** note: proprietary ATI driver is called “fglrx”

Prerequisites: gcc, make, kernel source and kernel syms must be installed on the system.
Let’s check: Read more…

Broadcom is a real nag. I was in a rush and careless when I was buying laptop. If I remembered to ask, would never-ever bought any device with Broadcom wireless. But things usually don’t go smoothly in life. Especially if you DO NOT have wired ethernet nearby and wireless is all you get.

Following is tested on openSUSE 11.3, 11.4 RC, Mint 10 Julia, Ubuntu 10.x,Kubuntu 10.x and LMDE.

1. download the official driver for your device from official site. Names are usually “hybrid-portsrc_x86*****.tar.gz”.

2. unpack it (with command “tar xzvf hybrid[PRESS TAB]“), and KEEP THIS DIRECTORY IN BACKUP

3. compile it (with command “make”. Before you can do that, you need basic development package installed, and kernel headers/source)

4. now you need to be root and follow the commands:
cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r’/kernel/net/wireless
insmod wl.ko
depmod -a
modprobe wl

(if last command fails, try before it : modprobe lib80211)

that is it… you can use wireless immediately

On openSUSE, module will be loaded on boot. In Mint/Ubuntu/Kubuntu/LMDE I needed to add it manually in /etc/modules file

Before I knew how, I was avoiding Gnome distros. I don’t like Gnome, I really don’t like it, however, I would recommend it to new linux users with all my heart, because it is more windows-like and there is far milder learning curve.
But, KDE4 is a lightyear in front of Gnome on technological aspect and totally configurable, which I like very much.

There are very good distros that use Gnome as default desktop. Ubuntu is one (which I also don’t like), and there are my favorites: Mint and Mint Debian Edition. Mint does have community edition that is KDE4-based, but it is usualy one version behind.

So, on debian/ubuntu based distros, that comes with Gnome, there is a way to install KDE4:

ebeli@laptux ~$  sudo apt-get install kde-full

Be prepared to download ~430 MB of files. Then setup will ask you for window manager (kdm or gdm – kdm should be set) and one more question I forgot. After installation is done, reboot computer. On login screen, select KDE session from login menu.
Voila!

However, there is a little tweak that must be done:
1. Since it is Gnome based distro, GTK for KDE and qtcurve for GTK hasn’t been installed by default. It can be installed from Synaptic package manager.
2. Restart graphics server (ctrl+alt+backspace).
3. Go to system settings, Application Appearence, come to GTK icon, and there, select QtCurve

That would be it. Enjoy full power of KDE4 on Gnome – Debian/Ubuntu based distro

I am generally an openSUSE user, I like it’s philosophy, I like KDE4 integration, I like YaST and just about everything openSUSE has to offer. However, I had desire to try something else, outside Virtual Machine. I had desire to install rolling distribution. One that has no versions, that just regular updates make it as fresh as it gets. As I said, openSUSE is excellent, but versions differ greatly one from another (usually for better), but heavy upgrade is needed or complete reinstall.

I was considering few options: Arch, Mint debian edition, Gentoo and Sabayon. Arch is too… well arch… Yes, the most customizable, but I had no time to pack system fully. Gentoo, used it before, excellent system, but had no time for compiling everything. Mint, I love Mint totally, but LMDE is on Gnome. I don’t like Gnome at all.
So my choice fell on Italian distribution: Sabayon. Read more…

The problem: I need the easiest way possible to resize a bunch of images from a digital camera, or from one directory, and place them into another.

There are a lots of great tools for the job. As linux user, I had a choice of a variety of excellent applications to use, from large scale applications like GIMP or Krita, to small tools like BIRT. Lately, because I have KDE4, I used Gwenview because it supports batch resizing.

However, all of them ask you to select the files which you wish to resize. Well, I want all of them; I may have already prepared them in some directory by selecting them from various sources. So, file selection was just slowing me down.

Solution: Since I could not find a tool which would solve my problem, I made one.

Baires is an application that will resize all of your pictures that reside in a selected folder, and resize them to the same folder or another folder. Since it keeps ‘last used’ settings, next time resizing is just one click away.

Baires is an open source GUI application, made in Qt. It works on all platforms, but if you are not using openSUSE or Fedora linux, you’ll have to compile it from source. I have pre-compiled RPM packages for openSUSE 11.0 to 11.2, SLED/SLES 10 and 11, and Fedora 9-12, available for download.

You can download it from Baires download page

The first question you may ask is why to compile kernel in the first place? Well, since all companies/groups that makes Linux distributions wants their product to work on as many machines possible, kernel is compiled in the most generic way possible. That means that it is compiled for low-end processor and it includes all possible modules that kernel has to offer. It is obvious that it is made to work with everything and not to work fast. For example, you will see in many Linux packages, kernel included, filenames have some suffix like i386, i486, i586, i686… It means for which processor they are compiled. i386 and i486 will work on i386 and i486 old processors respectively, and higher, while i586 will work on Pentium 1, and i686 on Pentium pro. So, if you have, for example, Intel Core2, and you use i586 generic file, this means that all of the new and fast instructions that your processor have will be unused. So, if we compile kernel for our processor, it will run much faster.
Read more…

Dear AMD/ATI,

you said on your site that you needed to withdraw resources from development of older drivers. You said that it was necessary for you to focus all efforts on your new hardware. You said that it is for our own good, so we can have better experience.

Dear AMD/ATI, did you forget that video cards, that you called old, are 6 months old?
Did you forget that there are more than 10 million laptops in shops with yours, now unsupported hardware?
Do you know that all of that video cards does not work with Linux anymore?
Did you forget that number of Linux users is on the rise?

Dear AMD/ATI, why don’t you fully open your video drivers? There are people out there, who knows how to make it work. There are people who have time to make it work.

Dear AMD/ATI, I am very disappointed in your decision to forget me and the money I gave to have your product.

Dear AMD/ATI, I will never again buy laptop with your video card. NVidia didn’t open their driver either, but at least, their cards work and keeps working better with Linux.

Dear AMD/ATI, I am sorry, but you forced me to say ‘farewell’.

Once faithfully,
Emil Beli

Few days ago, Mrs. Carla Schroder, managing editor of the Linux today magazine wrote a nice article on how software giants are considering users very stupid and turining its systems slowly into few button toys. She called it “Fisher-Price computer”, as Fisher-Price enterprise is the world’s biggest manufacturer of baby equipment and toys. And how, just maybe, Linux is for grown ups. You may read original article here.

I agree with her to a certain point, however, I will go deeper in why software giants considering users stupid. That’s because most of Read more…

I’d like to share some funny lines I found in BBC’s article : MS Windows 7 goes on  a public test

Let’s start with funny quotes.

Windows 7 has been designed to be compatible with Vista so users do not have to invest in new hardware.

That is a good news, because you already bought new top-notch hardware to run Vista.

Windows 7 will also have “comparable system requirements” to Vista, which should mean that if your PC is capable of running Vista it will also run the new version.

If you still haven’t bought new top-notch machine, you should get it now!

“Vista is the fastest selling operating system of all time and, in percentage terms, enterprise moved to Vista faster than it did to XP [an earlier version of Windows],” he said.

Typography error: not ‘selling’ but ‘failing’.

“The timeline stated all along is that we are targeting Windows 7 within three years of of the launch of Vista and that would be the end of January 2010.
“We feel quite confident we are on trajectory that will deliver on that promise. But the exact timing will be based on quality.”

3 years for a fix? Confident? Not sure, though. May be 4 or 5?

“We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time by slightly trimming the WAV file shutdown music.

OMG, 400 milliseconds speed improvements! System will now shut down 0.4 seconds faster than Vista. Clearly worth to mention.

A version of Windows 7 will also be available for netbooks, but with some caveats.

The Windows 7 Starter Edition will have limitations on how many applications can be used concurrently on a machine in order to preserve performance.

Why don’t say publicly: 3. Windows explorer, Antivirus, and one of your choice. Otherwise can’t run on netbook (see quote above, where equalizes it’s requirements with Vista).