linux – Page 2 – Andrew the Hopeless Techie

Tag Archive: linux

Fedora 14 Beta did not play nice with My Machine hopefully Final Release Will!

Well as usual I tried to see what was new in the latest Fedora release, waiting till the Beta rolled around to attempt installing. My machine seems to not like the Anaconda installer for Fedora 14, it hangs upon boot in the form of a black screen using both low graphics mode and the regular mode.

I have been able to run Fedora 13 just fine on this machine, even when it was in Beta!

Fedora I know enables a lot of debugging code in pre-releases to help track down errors and squash bugs, I am wondering if it is this code that is not playing nice with my computer, though I can not imagine why it would affect it at all.

I tried this release in a Virtual machine as well to see if the issue could be circumvented using virtual hardware, no change it boots fine until right after it passes the media check (even if you skip it) then it trys to load the kernel and when it gets to t he point where the GUI would take over you get a black screen.

I know the final release is just mere days away so I am not to concerned, however I thought it odd that it gave me this issue. Last release to give me issues when using it in Beta was Fedora 11 and that was a completely different machine.

Anyone have any ideas on how to avoid this in the future? I like trying beta releases on smaller partitions or VMs as it give me a feel for what is coming and helps me decide if I want to upgrade to the new release right away or wait a month or so.

Being that I generally run three Operating systems at any given time on my machine (one version of Fedora, one Ubuntu, and Windows 7) I tend to try the latest Fedora and Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu is taking an approach with the release they are working on that goes against what I feel to be useful (not going to go into depth after all most people reading this are not interested in Ubuntu, but if your interested Google Ubuntu switches to Unity), that being said it is likely that Fedora will become my only Distribution when that day hits so would be nice at that point to have the now populated Ubuntu partition, populated with the next Fedora release and dual boot thus not jeopardizing my data on the main distro.

Now that I have most likely confused a great deal of my readers I will sign of by saying

No content presented in this blog entry weather fact or speculation, is in no way affiliated with Red Hat, the Fedora Project, or Canonical.

Any comments welcome fire them away below

Computer issues resolved

Well alot of you might remember a post a while back about my computer issues, I have recently figured out what the issue was ! Let me recap the problem just for those not familar with it. I began having issues with my computer the video would frequently drop out and I would need to turn off and on the monitor to get the image back Well i immediately thought the monitor was bad so i got on the horn to Samsung. They ensured me that “Their monitor could not possibly be the cause of the issue” like a fool I bought it.

I then looked to the two low end cheap graphics cards i bought I called several tech support people was was assured that was not it. I asked a few friends and the Motherboard was point to as a possible but unlikely cause for the issue seeing as the cards were both solely bus powered. So a RMAing the board will go. The board was RMAed and still nothing!!! The issue was still there I then started RMAing the Graphics cards and with one on its ways to Powercolor to get swapped. I then decided to see if Samsung was accrate in their claim that their monitor could not be the cause.

Well they were wrong, the issue existed when i tried the monitor on a different computer. Was I annoyed? YES! I had decided before this I was going to upgrade the Graphics cards to more solid and powerful cards which i did. Now a replacement monitor is on the way. I decided to get this monitor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=24-236-091&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=4#scrollFullInfo

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

Some people may ask me what did I learn from this experience? I learned that Vendors will Lie like dogs to prevent their hardware being replaced

Installed a new Plugin – Need feedback

I installed a new plugin that promisses to make this blog easier on the eyes from a smart phone. I do not own one to test it so what I would like to know is if any of you can see this blog any differently then the Picture below on your smartphone.

scrnsht_20100929

If it does look different please let me know and the comments, better yet include a screen shot if you can.

Also I would welcome any feedback at all with regards to optimization for smart phones and other mobile devices.

Fedora 14 – Alpha First Impression

As with many early releases of Fedora this one looks and feels very much likes its predicesor, however the majority of the work done on an alpha is generaly the framework and under the hood stuff. Yes there is generaly a new background and maybe a few new noticeable features, but for the most part it will feel very familar.

There are some noticeable features, Closer integration with empathy for one. This has gone one step further to make the Instant Messaging interface very streamlined. I personal still prefer Pidgin to empathy due to the numerous extensions for Pidgin that are out to allow it to connect to different account types.

Core Utilities such as Automatic Bug Reporting Tool(ABRT), and SELinux Troubleshooter have been updated and are now even easier to use. I also noticed the Troubleshooter loads much,much faster then it did in F13. Being this is the Alpha + Updates I am impressed and curious how it will improve come release time.

One feature I was dreading more then any other was the inclusion of Gnome 3.0! Luckily this was delayed due to upstream delaying it. I am not a fan of Gnome-shell and I am not sure I ever will be. In fact i am almost certain when Fedora starts shipping with Gnome 3 I am going to switch to KDE4 or possibly try to get the classic interface back, maybe even just run the last stable build of the 2.X branch.

Not really a new feature for Fedora 14 but the Packagekit terminal program seems to actually work without installing a seperate package, although i might have selected said package at install when selecting the tools i use not installed by default such as Yumex and filezilla. This tool/add-on to me is a god send it does alot of the work for you especialy when you get an oddly compiled package where the command to launch the program is rather different then the package name. An example of how this works is below,

I want to install Pidgin but it is not installed, I think it might be but do  not want to run an RPM query to find out. I can type in  a command line simply “pidgin” with out the ” of course and it will see the program is not installed and browse the repositories installed for that package or one similar to it and ask if you want to install what it finds.

Yes it would be just as easy to do a “yum install pidgin” command and if it was installed it would say so but still if you are on autopilot and type a command in the command line thinking it is installed you will be given the chance to do t his in-line. One issue I had here was after the package installs the CLI says Scanning Applications and just seems to hang there but the program clearly finished installation. This could be due to this package being a development version for the Alpha but would be nice to have that fixed prior to launch especially if this feature is installed by default.

Bottom line here is that I think when finished Fedora 14 will have alot to offer.

Linux – Fedora 13 on my laptop and Ubuntu Help needed.

Fedora 13 – Installed on my laptop

When I had the issues with my desktop Motherboard and had to install Fedora 13 on my laptop i was generally happy with the change until, i decided to stupidly update to the Fedora 14 alpha. I know that Alpha releases can be buggy and are discouraged from upgrading an existing install, however for what ever reason I decided to ignore this and do it anyway 🙁

Well when my machine locked up on me and I failed to be able to get it to be bootable again I decided to re-install, however something happened that caused the Fedora 13 disc to not install. Now being that my desktop was down and I did not have a bootable OS I had no choice but to fall back to Vista Buisness. I had issues with this but you can read more about that in the Windows post later on.

I now have Fedora 13 running under VirtualBox in Windows as I just did not feel like erasing windows and re-installing Fedora again.

Doing this got me thinking that I could try to Install Ubuntu 10.04 as well which on the desktop seems to hate the VM environment.

Ubuntu

While I like the feel of Ubuntu, I do not know my way around it at all with regards to .deb packaging and repository creation.

Yes I tried to make a Debian version of the RPM Repo i have. This proved to be 10000000 times more frustrating then anything i had attempted on Fedora and I quickly began to realize why I had not done this sooner.

While the Repository idea is not looking good right now for Ubuntu I would love to be able to compile an .deb file if for nothing more then to say I figured out how to do it.

What I ask you guys i if any of you happened to also use Ubuntu and can possible point me to a guide that is easy to use toward .deb packaging.

I realize most of the people reading this are Fedora users but I know there are some of you out there like myself that use more then one Distro.

Motherboard issues – Leads me to use Fedora 13 on the Laptop

Well I had an issue with my motherboard Recently which caused me to have to get it repaired/replaced.

ASUS M4A78 PLUS Motherboard

The computer was experiencing some odd behavior with the board so I began to try and trouble shoot it using just about every possible way I could think of to narrow down and eliminate the errors. This proved to not have any change on the state of things, Several things still continued to go wrong and so I was forced to send the Motherboard in and use my laptop.

Well my laptop had Windows vista on in which proved to be a lot more trouble then it was worth, not having an extra windows 7 license (I use my laptop rarely and most of the time when I do I need to access windows specific features such as a domain) I was ether forced to re-install Vista or get rid of it all together.

I chose to get rid of it and put Fedora 13 in its place, this proved to speed things up a great deal as I figured it would. I did run into some issues with the computer getting bogged down at times, however this was more a result of my laptop not having a whole lot of ram Even with this slow down at times the computer still ran faster at full load when compared directly to Windows Vista Business.

Aside from this good news with the laptop running more smoothly, my over all mood is rather annoyed, I did after all have to send in the motherboard for my desktop to be repaired or possible replaced depending on what ASUS decides it wants to do.

Just when I thought it could not get worse, My 2 yr  old Daughter found out where I had the CPU (thought it out of her reach I was wrong) and had thrown it down pretty hard on the kitchen floor. Now it being AMD it has lots of pin on the bottom and as far as I can tell no pins are damaged and it appears no physical damage exists. The real test will be when I try to use it in my desktop one the motherboard returns

Gaming

As well as the laptop runs on Fedora it still can not run my games, I am a rather active gamer at times on StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft however neither of this seem to work well on Fedora. I can get WoW working on the desktop under Linux just fine but even though WINE claims SC2 will work I have yet to get it to work.

ATI/AMD – Catalyst Driver with Fedora 13

I recently decided to test the new ATI drivers with Fedora 13 and for the most part them seem to work fairly well, however there are a few things that seem to be a bit of an annoyance.

For starters it seems that using this driver causes Firefox to have frequent black spots when scrolling down the page. This also seems to be in connection with how Metacity interacts with Catalyst, changing the window manager to Compiz for example reduces but not eliminates this issue.

This coupled with the fact that my monitor was acting up in an unrelated way was not a good mix. I think for now using the default drivers is probably best until Catalyst 10.8 is released to see if this fixes the issue.

In addition it seems that the 10.7 version of the driver slows my computer down significantly and with my computers specs this should not happen less i have a whole lot of stuff running. Out of fairness I am using Fedora 64bit so not sure if this issue is present or not on the 32bit version.

It should come as no surprise however ATI lately seems to be favoring Debian based Distributions over RPM based ones in terms of quality. Ubuntu always seems to get drivers from ATI that are sleek and work very well while Fedora and other RPM distributions that might utilize newer X.org versions tend to get left behind even when the drivers “work” for the Distro.

Now to clarify I am not bashing Ubuntu as I use that distribution as well, nor am I trashing AMD, I am merely stating that it seems AMD does not really actively work with other distros to make things as flawless.

Aside from the issue i mentioned above I have not really seen much in the way of disadvantages. The metacity issue however could be due to a numerous amount of factors so pinning the blame completely on ATI/AMD would not be fair.

The views here are expressed solely by myself and do not represent any other view point weather it be company or individual. If you do not agree with these opinions note they are solely expressive of my views.

Category5 – Talks about an open Source program the GIMP touching on basic image enhancement

The GIMP – Basic image enhancement

I am a regular viewer of Category5.tv and recently (last Tuesday) he went over some basic tips on how to edit images to make them look a little better. I thought this was particularly useful and given the tool he used GIMP which is open source i thought i might just briefly touch on it here as well as embed the video for you to watch.

Ok so normally I do not post about shows I watch on-line or otherwise but this particular show I found somewhat useful. To give a quick synopsis he shows you how to lighten pictures and crop it in a way that does not kill the image, In the words of Robbie however “Always make a backup! Never edit your master images”

Some other points he touches on in this episode are

  • Reinstall Linux with a just a  full backup of your home folder – He specifically mentions Ubuntu here since that is his distro but you could use his strategy for any distro Including Fedora with a few minor tweaks that are Distro specific.
  • How do you share iTunes music to Linux?

He covers these points with regards to GIMP

  • Adjusting the levels in a photograph using the GiMP.
  • Zooming in and out of images in the GiMP.
  • Removing blemishes from a photo using the GiMP.
  • Resizing an image in the GiMP.
  • Cropping an image in the GiMP.
  • Resizing a marquee in the GiMP.
  • Saving your image in the GiMP.
  • Preparing images to be shared by email or on a web site or blog.

Now as I said this is mostly a post to show others in the Fedora and other Linux community  that might read this, that editing of images can be done fairly easily and that videos such as the one below do exist to show you how. While there may be videos out there that dive more into the workings of GIMP this one stays pretty simple so anyone can use it to achieve what they want.

I should note that the video is embedded from his video host blip.tv and it has about a 30 second ad prior to the video starting, I have no control over this and as such I do not necessarily condone any of the content that the ad may demo as it changes over time. As it stands when i posted it the ad was about Windows 7, but by the time you watch it the ad could be different.

[bliptv ga4Fge_TEQI]

If you liked the video please make sure you check out Robbie””s site he put a lot of effort into this show. If not then thanks for taking the time to read this post. I will not be making a habit of posting about his show but this one seemed worthy of passing along via the fedora channels and the like.

Again he uses Ubuntu so pardon all the Ubuntu centric stuff most of what he mentions can just as easily be done via Fedora or even a different distro.

Host of the show: Robbie Ferguson

Show notes: http://www.category5.tv/show_notes/episode_148.php

Open Letter to Google

Dear Google,

I have enjoyed your many different services over the years, I have grown to depend on several apps you make to simplify my life. Picasa manages my pictures, Google Apps my email, and Adsense helps pay the bills. I wish I could say this all makes me happy, but honestly I feel a little cheated when I find that Picasa is not natively supported on Linux.

I can understand time is an issue, I understand encasing the windows version in a WINE instance is a easy fix, but i do not understand why a company with its own Linux OS (Android) can not take the time to make a implementation of their apps such as Picasa using native Libs and tools.

This might seem trivial coming from one person, but Google I am sure others feel the same way, Google do you really wish to fix issues pertained to a Windows version of Picasa running in Linux on a WINE instance? I ask you would the developmental process not be more streamlined if you had a native APP?

I have had issues in the past with software running in WINE, and I ask why when a company that is clearly interested in Linux could make a Linux native client?

Ok Google I know what your going to say, We just don”t have time today! Well I say, come on lets go and make the code avalible to the community today!

Thanks for your time, sorry to waste your dime, I really must stop this rhyme before i do not have time, to send this Letter.

Thanks,

Andrew Jamison – Google user and Linux Enthusiast

Cool little Command Line Trick

Ok so most of you might be a little beyond small little tricks like the one I am going to talk about here but, I found this incredibly useful and felt the need to share it.

Ok so first off  I need to site the source here this command is not my work it is the brain child of the folks at Lifehacker.com specifically written by one lowell[AT]lifehacker[DOT]com

That being said on to the meat of this blog post.

OK so when browsing the net looking for guides on how to navigate around the Linux CLI and over all tips and tricks in this area, I was listening to a podcast and this site was mentioned, so I checked it out.

The scenario: Have you ever wondered what you can do to make creating a directory and then entering the directory easier and less time consuming?

For most beginner to intermediate users of Linux CLI tricks and macros are not something that comes easy, however with this little bit of code you can easily make a directory and instantly enter that directory. This alone is cool but this command does one more thing I love coming from a Windows background, it allows you to use folder names with spaces without the need to encapsulate them inside (‘’)!

Now this may sound like a trivial bit of code but to someone like myself this was a huge time saver, this may not make a difference to the hardcore Linux CLI power user.

So lets look at some sample code

mkdir ~/test

cd ~/test

That is a example of doing a simple folder creation in your home folder and then entering the folder the old way.

mkdir ~/’foldername with some space’

cd ~/‘foldername with some space’

The above would be an example of how to make a directory with spaces in the name and then enter that directory. As you can see this requires a little bit of time even if you use the ~ to represent your home folder as I have done above.

The article Create and Change to a New Directory in One Command says that if you edit your ~/.bashrc file and add the following code

# mkdir, cd into it
mkcd () {
mkdir -p "$*"
cd "$*"
}

You can then simple combine the mkdir and cd commands using the following command

mkcd New Folder/New Subfolder

or

mkcd New Folder

The first line above will make one folder and a subsequent sub-folder under it and then cd into the furthest most folder.

The second option would be the equivalent to making a folder called “New Folder” and then entering it.

While the above commands are not entirely necessary it helps to stream line the process of creating a large number of folders and then entering the last folder made. Some useful things i could see this being used for is say creating a set of folders for a backup archive where instead of having to manually create a folder for each hierarchal level you can simple do it all in one swoop and be in the last directory.

This as mentioned is more a time saver for new users and is extremely easy to setup. It could prove useful to some advanced members as well and is useable on any Linux distro that honors the .bashrc file within a users home folder. I suppose if you knew what your doing you could place this code into a global configuration file to allow every user of the system to utilize this shortcut but seeing as that is beyond my skills I will leave that to the comments should someone want to add how to do it.

As always comments are welcome, any other quick commands similar to this you wish to share feel free to drop them in a comment, I am always willing to save time and it helps users like myself get more comfortable with how to manipulate the .bashrc file to help customized our Linux.