Broadcom woes

Welcome back and happy new year

I've been on holidays for a couple weeks hence the lackluster blogging performance recently. I am back to work next week so hopefully this will fall into my routine somewhere and things will start moving along a little quicker.

Not much has really happened for me in Linux land, after the spectacular failure of Fedora a few weeks ago I have been relatively content to just leave well enough alone.

There is one thing that is niggling at me. I run OpenSuse on my macbook pro which has a Broadcom wireless chipset and for whatever reason the wireless firmware and driver on it are as buggy as hell. I actually currently hate it so much that I just leave it plugged into wired because getting the wireless to work is such a pain. Here are a few of the annoying things that happen

1. If I turn it on and want it to connect to my router I have to start with a wired connection to it

2. It connect to the mobile AP on my android Galaxy S no problems

3. occasionally it just won't see my home router

I don't know why it does any of this and I have tried having yast deal with the internet and NetworkManager. I have installed and reinstalled firmware/driver and I have done everything that I am supposed to and still it hates my router and loves my phone. The router is a netgear WDN1000.

Please if you have any idea what is going on please leave a comment I trawled through every forum and still have found no answers.

Anyways apart from that the rig has been running really strong I have made the move to XFCE on the desktop and it is performing so much better because of it, XFCE has to be one of the best lightweight desktops out there.

I did buy a new graphics card for the desktop but it turned out to be faulty. I will give a full run down of how it performs when I have a working version.

anyways, hope you have had a wonderful Christmas/ New years break and as always, any comment, criticisms or suggestions are more than welcome 

Talk Soon!   

The Fedora Craptacular

Hello one and all!

Well, I know I said that I would be back here last week but well with Christmas and everything it just got a bit hectic. That said, I feel it is time for me to really voice all the frustrations I have had with Fedora 16. I have to say this has been one of the most useless and poorly conceived distro any of the majors (except maybe for Ubuntu I don't know about them I have never used them) have ever produced. Here are a few reasons why.

First and right of the bat...... GET THE HELL OF ANACONDA AS AN INSTALLER!
It is useless and overly complicated o and by the way IT NEVER WORKS! I have installed Linux Mint, OpenSuse, and CrunchBang most in both 32bit and 64 bit and none, that's right, none, of them have ever given me as much trouble as Fedora and Anaconda.

Secondly, I have installed Fedora 13, 14, 15 and have attempted 16, the latest incarnatio. 16, for what ever reason does not install a boot loader on efi machines. What the hell! yes I know that most people dual boot and have to play around with boot loading but surely if I select the "use entire disk space" button that means that I want a fresh install of EVERYTHING on my computer, including the boot loader. All the other versions have done this, why not 16?

Thirdly, I have an older desktop which has 32bit architecture. So, by logical deduction I Download and burn the 32 bit fedora. Guess what? IT IS NOT A BOOTABLE DVD! I don't use Windows and would like to be able to install straight from disk. It is faster, has more options and gives me the ability to really customise the packages included in the distribution. Did I have that option? No!

Now I should admit that both times I tried to use the DVD full install and not the Live CD. These may have worked better but I prefer the DVD, as I said, because it really gives me the full option of choice when customising the distro.

So there you have it both the 64 and 32 bit versions of Fedora either wouldn't boot or wouldn't install a boot loader. So I have gone back to good ole reliable OpenSuse. I think for the forseeable future I will be staying with them to as they provide really stable distros and have an installer, YaST, that is both easy to use and allows for a highly customised distro and install pattern, it also has intelligence and detects both my windows and home partitions and installs around them, AND WORKS EVERY TIME!

I don't know what the guys at the Fedora project are doing and I have to say that the Fedora 13 box I use as a server has been so strong, It regularly has 100+ days of uptime and it still runs strong, especially on the old pentium 3 that it is on. This latest incarnation however has been a major disappointment. I was looking forward to trying out the latest and greatest but have had to go back to ole reliable because at the very least I need a bootable machine, and I mean really is that so much to ask? I can handle most other problems and am willing to deal with them for the latest and greatest, but to stuff up the installer? What the hell? 

So there you have it, my experience, or lack thereof, with Fedora 16. Thanks guys, you have done such a wonderful....... o sorry that was the OpenSuse people. Seriously, you guys need to get your act together for the next release because if crap like this keeps happening you will see your ranking fall.

Anyways thats my little rant for the day, Coming at ya from my OpenSuse Macbook! Talk soon guys and as always, comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome.

Not much to talk about this week

Hey Guys,

Well there isn't really much to update tech wise this week as everything has been chugging along fine, although sound on the Desktop does occasionally just decide that life is not worth living and completely dies. Amarok also sometimes decides it doesn't like Daap for some unknown reason.... all good a restart normally fixes the problem just a bit annoying that's all. So I have moved most sound applications over to the laptop which is still chugging along strong. The wireless just occasionally decides it doesn't like my router, but loves the internet out of the phone. I chock that up to a broadcom update that happened recently though and it doesn't always happen so god knows what that is.

anyways...... since there isn't much happening tech wise for me at the moment..... maybe I should just distro hop for the fun of it... but it's so nice having a stable desktop built on the strength of Linux. meh.

It's also been a pretty big week for me personally as I have managed to graduate from Uni and secure a job so the tech stuff has fallen a bit to the way side.

Although I do think this week I may very well reinstall dos box and get back to the original prince of Persia and the first duke nukem 3d which have always been favorites of mine and run really well under dos box.

So in summary

Nothing really happened in tech for me because life happened. just some annoying bugs which have required work arounds.

So I will endeavor to do something slightly more interesting for next weeks post

As usual , comments, suggestions and criticisms are encourages, also if you have any ideas about things I should try under opensuse please comment and let me know.

Talk Soon!

Update on my complete Linux switch

Hey Guys just a quick update on how the complete linux experience has been working out for me.

Firstly, I don't know what the Linux Mint team did with their latest round of updates but it DOES NOT work on a Macbook pro 5,5 from early 2009. it got to the point where every time I restarted after the upgrade the network card would hang the boot process and I couldn't get into the OS. I know I probably should have stuck at it to try and find the problem like a good Linux enthusiast but after nearly a week of tearing my hair out over it I decided to give OpenSuse 12.1 a try on the macbook because it has been SOOOOO stable on my 7 year old desktop.

So I go ahead and install the 64 bit version of OpenSuse KDE on the mac book and so far I am incredibly happy. My only gripe is their implementation of the open source Gallium driver (which I prefer to use because it is better integrated into the kernel than the proprietry Nvidia drivers, and actually does things automatically instead of having to manually tell it to do everything, seriously who doesn't auto detect new monitors any more?) seems to hang the computer on every time it resumes from RAM. Don't know why, but changing to the proprietry Nvidia drivers fixed it.

On the proprietary note, OpenSuse has to provide some of the easiest access to Proprietary Drivers of any distro, Mint and Ubuntu do it well but I think the one click install from the web that OpenSuse use is much better. Firstly, this method forces new users to determine that there is a missing driver that explains why there hardware either isn't working, or not working correctly. I think this is really important as, in my opinion, the whole point of moving to Linux is to become better acquainted with the inner workings of a computer. Secondly, when you do find the answer (and seriously it's not that hard) it works! I think it's a great way to both get users use to googling there problems (which is vital if you're going to use Linux) and trusting the answers when they do find them.

So after very little effort I have a very stable install, that doesn't hang on boot, and is doing everything I need it to, well!

It also means I have completely moved away from gnome shell in favour of KDE 4.7.x thus far it runs very smoothly on the mac and looks very nice. It's a little jumpy on the desktop but I chock this up to the ancient video card that is attached to it, I hope to upgrade it soon which will hopefully improve the problem. Having said that KDE is running fine it just has a few rendering problems and is a bit jumpy but it in no way makes it unusable.

I don't really use any KDE specific apps, I tried KMail but thunderbird, for me, is just so much more user friendly and after you have done 7 or 8 reinstalls in a week you do not want to sit there and try to determine exactly how signatures and all of that are meant to be implemented when it takes me a grand total of 30 seconds to set up in thunderbird. I've never really used Konqueror and like most I jump in favor of chrome because I have chrome sync I don't have to set up the browser with all my favourites, apps etc, i just tell it my google ID and poof, it's all there, which is very handy. I do use Dolphin as my primary file manager and it seems to handle everything I need admirably, I particularly enjoy the quick access  to sudo.

There is one bizarre thing I will point out. I installed opensuse off of the live CD on my desktop and when I finally got round to setting up the network printer I discovered that the OpenSuse Live CD doesn't install any HP libraries, this rendered the HP printer unusable. Now again, this is a very easy fix but it just seems bizarre to me that such a small file that gives you plug and play access to the vast majority of printers around the world didn't come by default in the live environment. They were there in the DVD but that doesn't have a live environment. However, once they were installed setting up a network printer was a simple press of a few buttons. If your interested in a how to please comment and I will post one at a later date.

Anyways, there you have it a quick update on what has happened in the last week. I now use OpenSuse on all my client computers and fedora 13 on the server. They are all integrating very smoothly and thus far I am very happy with the set up.

As always, if you have any suggestions, criticisms or opinions please feel free to comment below.

Talk soon!

 

Hey guys...... sorry for the long time between drinks

been rather busy with the end of uni and stuff so haven't really had time to write anything until today because at last I am holidays and I have and afternoon to myself

Well I have been rather busy in the Linux sphere since uni finished, I have done complete rebuilds of both my Workstation and Laptop. I have put OpenSuse 12.1 on the workstation with KDE 4.7 and I have to say all that stuff about KDE 4.7 being soooooo resource hungry and slowing up machines seems to be complete codswallop. Thus far I have found it far smoother to run on the old machine than gnome 3 and it seems to be about as reactive as gnome 2 was. It also has the added bonus of the nice widgets and things which, whilst most people will say they are a waste of space, I am finding them useful both to place some pictures on my desktop and for quick access to system info. OpenSuse itself is running quite smoothly and YaST is an excellent system manager, it gives quick access to almost every configuration file I needed and did it smoothly over a GUI which was very nice. It also made the install a breeze, it detected the two linux partitions and asked if I'd like to delete them which I did and it left the windows alone (I have it their for emergencies really I think I have used it once lol) It was so intuitive and easy to use that I think my 6 month old daughter could have done it. The only gripe I really had was the package manager. Why are their two? seems a bit redundant to me, but that's alright zypper does everything I need so that's all I use.

I have also installed Linux Mint 12 on the laptop and here I think the MGSE's really shine, I have got my gnome 3 running virtually the same as I had gnome 2 under mint 11 and once you add gnome-pie pretty well the whole computer is accessible with the keyboard again. The Linux Mint team really do deserve all the praise they are getting at the moment because they have built a distro that works out of the box so well. My only gripe was that I had to go in and install nfs-common which seemed a bit weird to me as I think nfs is one of the greatest features available to linux at the moment as it is such a speedy network protocol, sure it's insecure but so long as you are only using over the local network it's great. All in all though Linux mint 12 is great and it runs so smoothly on the macbook pro. The last Linux to be on this laptop was Fedora and that was such a pain, Linux Mint 12 has been such a breath of fresh air as far as running on macs go.

I did try out macpup on the old box I use as a Server but it was just soooooo buggy, and to top it off I couldn't find any of the packages I like to have on that box. Daap? couldn't find. mp3 support, What's that? and they go on and on about how enlightment is breathing new life into old machines and all it did was bug up and give me nothing to use it was such a disappointment. So for now that box is staying as Fedora 13 with XFCE because it does everything I need it to and sure it's a bit slow but at least it's not buggy as hell.

So that really has been what I have doing for the last couple weeks I'm sorry to have been away for so long but with exams and the new bubs finding the time to do this has been a bit hard, hopefully I'll get back into it soon though.

As usual comments, suggestions and criticisms are all more than welcome.

Talk soon!

 

So I thought I would take a break from studying for my conflict exam to jump on here and talk to you about a piece of interesting news that cropped up over the weekend

The Linux mint team finally left a blog post (www.linuxmint.com) about the forthcoming Linux Mint 12 release. I have been looking forward to this news for about a month now as I currently use mint at home. The preview is looking rather good, it will come with Kernel 3.0 and Gnome 3.2 with a bit of a spin on it with what the mint team is calling Mint Gnome Shell Extension (MGSEs), although I think I will be turning off a few of the extensions my self as I don't think they make the distro look glossy just cluttered, completely my opinion and at least the mint team are giving me the opportunity to change things if I don't like them. Of course they are also putting in the gnome 2 fork called MATE and I'm sure there will be the usual KDE, LXDE and XFCE spins.

On the matter of Desktop Environments that seems to have caused such a furore amongst the FOSS Community. Why in the hell is what Gnome and Ubuntu doing such a big deal? Almost every distro offers multiple DE's and I'm sure that if you don't like one there is another out there just for you. Isn't that kinda the point of Linux. It seems to me that people are quite willing to criticise at every opportunity and never offer anything constructive. And at the end of the day, Gnome and Ubuntu are not your projects, the people who are actually running and owning the project can do whatever they like with them as it is their's, don't like it, fine, change, it's not like you don't have a choice. I did read an interesting comment over the weekend that said the main problem with the criticism is that those who don't like the changes are being incredibly vocal, while those who do like the changes aren't saying anything as they don't have to. Whether or not Gnome and Ubuntu's Unity have the right idea only time will tell. But at least they are trying to give Linux a character of it's own and not end up being a clone of Windows or Mac. I would also just quickly like to say that if you don't like the amount of clicking involved in Gnome shell to access your apps, install gnome pie, problem solved. 

Anyways........ back on topic. I can't wait to give Mint 12 a go it looks like it's going to be one hell of a distro and offer all the usual minty goodness we have come to expect from Clem and the team. I would also like to offer them congratulations for reaching the number one spot on distrowatch.

as usual comments, criticisms and correction are more than welcome

Talk soon!

Hello one and all.

well........ Mr Joyce got grilled by a Union bully and an idiot green, *shock*. He held up well and answered as well as he could given the distinct left bias of the panel, ode for there to be an actual impartial centrist on the panel. How about we grill him on the disgusting pay rise and not the legal and justified lock out. But that would require someone viewing the dispute objectively, pfft like that will ever happen in Australia's Government. Well, maybe under Turnbull. 

Seems the greens are bashing CSG again, apparently to them if it has the word coal in it then it is bad. Doesn't matter how important it is to the economy. They keep screaming "Food Security" and "Water Table" without proper comprehension on these issues. I've already talked about the issue of the extra clean water that's "too good" according to them as well.

so that's the interesting news I saw this morning. now some techy stuff

well the UEFI thing is still raging. Ed Bott released another Linux bashing article on ZDnet but hey another day another crappy, misleading Bott article. I'll bet his tax return has Microsoft's name all over it. O and where his article is misleading is simple, He claims the manufacturers he contacted gave him guarantees they wouldn't do anything, what? There was nothing in those statements, except possibly Dell's, that indicated they were or were not going to lock out Linux. Incidentally, I have found out that Dell WILL NOT be locking out Linux as they have a number of clients who rely on their computers running something other than Windows and with the moves the US Department of Defense has been making in their software I wouldn't be surprised if that client is the US, but hey Linux is dead apparently so that can't be true. (I'm sorry Their are actually two posts on G+ that I have read recently that have told me the DOD thing and the Linux is dead thing I just can't be bothered linking them if you're interested Google it).

anyways.... that's all the interesting stuff I have found today and felt like commenting on. As always please feel free to comment, criticise or share as you see fit

talk soon!