Vista vs openSuSE challenge dead. Thanks Microsoft.

Well, like the title says the challenge is no more. Thanks to Microsoft changing the boot loader stuff using Linux alongside Vista is going to be pretty damn hard apparently, and will most likely require a clean install of at least one of my OSes. Brilliant. Anyway, in other news, tomorrow (tonight maybe?) I should be starting work on setting up my Linux web server. It’ll be running Fedora Core 4 (that’s what the book uses, dated I know but I’m not bothered, it’s really only for testing purposes) which is already installed on it (from when I used it once before). Finally, I’ve switched back from KDE to GNOME. I found that although KDE is nice in my opinion it’s a bit too fancy and flashy where as GNOME is just nice, plain and simple. That’s about it for today, I should have more news tomorrow after having worked on my server a bit.

99 hits! Vista vs openSuSE!

Wow, this is going better than I thought! Although as of yet no comments, this blog, at time of writing, has 99 hits which for something by me is pretty damn good. At first I wasn’t sure if it was me but it turns out that it doesn’t include me visiting the site which is very good news.

Also pretty important is something that my friend and I have agreed to do on. He is a Microsoft and Windows fanatic (bordering on fanboy status in my opinion). I’m a Linux fanatic. And we’re always bagging out each others OS of choice. So I decided that we do a proper comparison for once. I will install Vista RC1 (which according to him is quite good, stable, if Windows ever can be) and he will run openSuSE 10.2. We will use each for a week as much as possible (we can use another OS for certain software, ie: if Vista won’t run CSS I will use XP) and make note of what happens, what we like and dislike, stability and so on. I will be taking into account that the Vista OS I am running is only a beta and I am expecting lower than normal stability. We will start this weekend probably and I will try to post as much as possible on what our successes.

CSS skills improved!

Well, due to school I haven’t posted for a while but I thought I should just make some post, no matter how small, so that my blog doesn’t die out. Anyway, I haven’t been using Linux much recently, instead devoting the time that to playing CSS which is the reason for this post. About a week ago I lanned one of my friends (and his friends) in CSS for a total of anywhere between one and three hours and although I didn’t feel like I was playing any better as most of these people had either never played Counter-Strike before or had only played Condition Zero or 1.6. However, a few days after this when I was playing CSS again I noticed that my skills had improved incredibly. Now, (for me at least) my reflexes are great. My aim has improved. I can now AWP quite well. Please note this is all relative to my previous skills, not to other players. Most of the time I play bots on Hard (75% difficulty) and I thought that my skills could quite easily be miserable online like they were previously however this was not to be the case. In a game of about 20 people I was coming fifth overall and second on my team for almost the entire match! I also learnt some tricks from the Outsource video and found that instead of trying to aim at peoples head/chests all the time, I only have to aim approximately at their feet and spray to kill them. CSS for me has reached a whole new level of fun now that I actually have a chance when playing. So remember, lannage = god.

Bad Vista Campaign.

BadVista is a campaign designed to make people avoid Vista and instead look at the free and open source alternatives. It’s a great site and should be thoroughly read, especially the blog. It also has a lot of links to articles involving Vista. Rather good articles at that. Also there are some pictures which are pretty good. This is a pretty boring post and badly written today sorry, just haven’t got much time so can’t write much. Well, that’s it (short wasn’t it?), until next time bye!

CSS working… but bad.

Today I downloaded crossover (initially to run iTunes so I could play the music that I bought, which didn’t work, but then also to try out CSS). I got CSS set up and had no complaint with video card drivers, however it still did the same thing, showed loading screen (albeit at a higher resolution) and then went black. However, looking around a little more on the internet I found this tutorial that I think I’ve seem before. I still went through it all though and found an argument you could apply when booting up steam, fixme-all, which apparently improved performance. Now, I can actually run CSS! Not perfectly, in fact, it’s very far from it and totally unplayable but it does run. I can start a server and run around but for some reason my ping is anywhere between two and eight hundred when it should be 0 and I can’t access because I can’t enable it. When you try and change options and apply them, it freezes up. Also, graphics are awful and it still lags too much. I did try disabling sound in winecfg but that made no difference to performance. I found out how to remove the desktop bars by allowing other windows to cover. I can now run Starcraft at full speed albeit without sound, or sound that makes everything lag. There is still one sound drive that I haven’t tried out yet so I might try that tomorrow if I have the time. Finally, totally unrelated, I found out that by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Down I can view 3 of my desktops at a time and move through them. I also found that by holding down Shift when changing desktops it moves the currently selected window with me.

XEN failure.

Well, I gave XEN a shot but with little success. Under openSuSE, attempting to boot up in XEN failed, the X server not starting up properly. Under Fedora, running through the setup assistant was fine… until I had to actually create the virtual machine. I was given something along the lines of virLinuxCreate() failed. Google found the error, but for different reasons, and I wasn’t able to fix it. I think I’ll wait till Fedora 7 comes out (hopefully with a new version of XEN) before trying again. Also, in other news, I got my printer working great under openSuSE using KDE (not sure if it will also be setup in GNOME, as it was a KDE setup assistant, but that hardly matters as KDE is my main WM now.

Fedora Core 6… with virtualization!

Hi again. With Fedora Core downloaded, I managed to get it installed and working. Despite discs 1, 4 and 5 being corrupt (not sure about 6, I just couldn’t be bothered to test it) failing and only discs 1 and 2 passing, installation still ran perfectly. I am yet to get my wireless working but I’m pretty sure I know how, but first I need a wired connection which is proving more difficult than it should be, requesting info I shouldn’t need to enter (at least, in Ubuntu I didn’t). I’ve also got virtualization in it and probably by tomorrow I should be able to have it fully set up. I think that I’ll also try some games and see whether the top/bottom bars disappear or not (in SuSE they just stay over everything). I’ll hopefully be able to post everything that happens tomorrow.

Ubuntu gone, along with the boot loader…

Well, today I copied my Feisty Fawn ISO into Windows after having had it fail numerous times in Linux (turns out that it wasn’t actually Linux’s fault but a corrupt file). However, the disc wouldn’t run properly and for some reason this also stuffed up Ubuntu which I went into later. Ubuntu booted up and logged in fine, I could open folders and files but I just couldn’t open menus. Even after a second reboot this remained the problem so I decided to delete it. I put in my XP disc and deleted the partition but this just happened to have the bootloader so for the time being I can only run XP (gasp). However, I am currently downloading Fedora Core 6 and I’ll install the boot loader with that and hopefully that will put everything back together. Also, I’m pretty sure that Fedora Core has Virtualization which would be quite interesting to try out.

Paper Tux!

Again, not much to say today and there probably won’t be until I’ve finished downloading CSS on Ubuntu (which I almost got working with wireless, I think). I’m just going to post a brilliant thing that I found today, over here. Basically it is a cut out paper model of tux! I actually haven’t tried it yet as I’m out of black ink but as soon as I refill I’ll be sure to give it a shot.

Command Line Fun!

Well, not much to say today, I haven’t had a chance to start CSS back up again so nothing to comment on that. Bluefish I’ve found to be a brilliant website editor and I recommend it to everyone. But, anyway, more importantly, I’ve decided to start doing more work in the command line (not in the gui prompt but the way with Ctrl+Alt+F1-6) as I keep on having random GUI freezes in SuSE (Ubuntu is fine, it’s probably just my installation) and it’s faster. I can now do all my CSS editing, view the basic text of my site and play my music all through the command line! I was also talking to a friend recently who has a Linux loving friend who can apparently play DVDs in ASCII (colour!) which could be quite interesting to explore. Until next time, good bye!