Linux @ Work @ Home @ Life

Non Linux: Installed Windows 7 Starter

2012-01-20T13:14:00.001+07:00

Who says Windows 7 Starter is limited?
Well, guess what, it is not.

click here to read my other blog on it.

After a few weeks on Ubuntu 11.04

2011-11-24T10:18:00.001+07:00

Well, this is what I experience after a few weeks running Ubuntu 11.04:

The Unity interface is fine, but not quite that productive compared to my customized Gnome desktop. Things that I noted quite time consuming is:

1. desktop switcher is all the way down there after I added some launcher that I usually use. so waiting the left bar to scroll down to it sometimes takes time.

2. i still keep forgetting the software names, so finding the software through search function is time consuming since I have to pause to remember the name.

3. unity interface is actually use more resources than gnome, so sometimes when I switch to gnome I can get at least 15 minutes more out of the battery. (My mini note can last for 6 hours)

Other than these 3, I found no other problems. I don't use widgets, I don't use the desktop itself to store files, so maybe for a guy like me, I won't find many problems using Unity.

End of story.

Ubuntu 11.04

2011-11-04T11:53:00.000+07:00

What seems to be the problem?

People always told in blogs, and news that they annoyed by they way unity works. I don't know the differences between 11.04's unity with 11.10's but today I installed 11.04 on my new netbook, HP mini 110, with specification such as: N570, 1GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi.

Installation went just fine. Before I did the installation, I turn off two functions in the BIOS, first is the fan always on function, and the second is the function mode, so I have to press "fn" button to do some changes. I found one annoying thing is that Ubuntu decided to make UTC default since 8.04, so I have to change it through editing the /etc/default/rcS file, and make sure the use UTC flag set to "no". Everything works fine, Bluetooth works, Wi-Fi works, screen brightness works, sound control works.

Back to unity. It seems that unity is quite OK, in my opinion. Sometimes when I open a program that I maximized, the left launcher is a bit strange, sometimes it opens all right, sometimes it doesn't open, and sometimes it does open but I can't select the icons. But this problems are quite rare. Yes, I can't easily customize the upper bar, but it seems that I found out how to add monitor function on that toolbar, it's a check box that you have to select when you go into the "monitors" application, there you will find panel icon, just select that check box and you got your monitor icon on the upper toolbar. I haven't done anything much on the netbook, but 2 days gone by, I'm not quite annoyed by it. I have to do almost everything differently, you can bet on that. For example, I have to recall application names if I want to search for application faster (what I tried to make myself acquainted is using the windows button to open up the search function and type in the application name, which usually I can just go to the menu bar). Applications are deep buried in the application icon, I need to find a way so that those apps that I use a lot is on my finger tip, and don't have to remember every single apps by name. But other than that, I haven't got any other problem. Maybe this way, people in Ubuntu thinks that user can work faster, so I try to be open minded, and see whether their way is actually faster or not. Let's see in a week time.

LMDE update - rolling release

2011-09-09T23:38:00.000+07:00

After months using it, this is my daily experience with LMDE.

- package breakage is there, so anyone using LMDE should aware of this and read the forum before you do any updating.
- only do update things that you need to update. If your softwares works fine, then you don't need to update it. unless if you need some new features just implemented by the software that you use.
- clean up your LMDE at least once every three months or after software updates. you can do this by first of all go to package manager and clean up the configuration files that you no longer use. then do the "sudo apt-get autoclean". after that find your orphaned files and delete the files you don't need. for details, you can go to this thread "http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=140920"
- you need to clean it up so that you don't need to update the things that you don't need
- update using the package manager rather than using the mint update, just as a precaution. because i don't know the extend of mint update advancement
- update some of them first. if you need to update libre office for example, then do that first, after that's done you can update the other softwares that you want to update. being conservative on the updates is better so that you can isolate your problem early. If you update everything one time, then you don't know which package that cause your LMDE running weird

conclusion: if you are a newbie then I suggest you use ubuntu or the latest linux mint. they are much nicer to use, and breakages are less to occur. But if you are quite adept with linux, brave enough to face some package breakage, and quite patient waiting for the cure, then this is the distro for you. I myself is using LMDE for everyday work, I rely my LMDE laptop for mission critical work, and it never let me down. Tinkering is definitely needed, so if you don't like to take time to thinker with it the as I already suggested, you can use ubuntu or linux mint latest edition.

some softwares that i encountered broken and fixed in a few weeks:
VLC
I'm gonna add later when I found another one

some stuff that I find a bit hard to upgrade (just because you need to select the right packages):
linux-image
libre office (from open office)

some problems that's hard to solve but eventually solved:
hibernate

things that make me a bit confused:
too many programs doing the same thing, i have to uninstall some of them to clean it up

As you can see, everything is solved, but you have to take your time to do that. But nevertheless it's not BIG problems that cause down time for me to finish my work.

Keep on going LMDE. I hope it will get easier as time goes by.

BTW, I'm using the testing repository. For more conservative update you can use the other one (i forgot the name of it), check on the mint forum for that.

for everyday work i use microsoft office running on wine (multi files with sheets after sheets of calculations, linking with each other like crazy, libreoffice can't handle it yet, soon i hope). firefox and google chrome for emails and browsing. wifi as my primary connection to office network and internet. dropbox, to make sure i can open my files everywhere else. openproj to do my scheduling, xmind to help me thinking, aris express for workflow design. K3B to burn my discs, acrobat reader. varicad viewer or draftsight to view autocad drawings. pidgins and gnucash. other than that for my hobby i use darktable, picasa, kino (video editing), handbrake, atunes, songbird, and VLC.

LMDE update - fix hibernate problem

2011-09-09T22:36:00.000+07:00

It's been a while since I installed LMDE on my system. I installed a lot of stuffs to support my work. Overal, the experience is good. No hick ups, everything went well, but it's not quite polished as the newest ubuntu 11.04. But nevertheless, everything is working just fine. But one thing that keeps bugging me is the lost of hibernate function, which I don't know how to remedy until just now. After reading many threads in forums. I can conclude it to these several steps. So for you out there who still don't get your system to hibernate I hope this will solve the problem.

ok, first off all. look whether the softwares to make hibernate works are installed. you need at least (look for all of these in the package manager, just type these keywords in the search box):
- hibernate. install it by left click on the box, and mark it for installation. the click apply on top.
- pm-utils. same steps as above
- acpi, acpi-support-base, acpitool, acpid, acpi-support, acpi-fakekey
- powermgmt-base
- gnome-power-manager
I think I cover it all

after that, find your gparted software. what I did is redo everything. But if you are not sure about doing something like formatting part of your hard drive then, maybe you can ask your friend to do it. so be careful on this one. so be brave now.
- open your gparted software
- in it you will find your linux swap partition (if in the beginning of your installation you specify it, if not then you can't hibernate, and this is the end of the road for you)
- sometimes gparted can't detect your swap partition, and put it as an unknown partition, then this should be your swap partition, only for some reason it doesn't show as swap which I don't know why. what you can do is reformat that partition as swap by unmount it first. If you can't unmount it, then type "sudo swapoff -a" on the console
- if your swap partition already shown, and activated (you can do this by right click on your partition and select "swap on") then you an see your swap UUID (double click on your swap partition). copy this UUID to a text editor or something because you will need this UUID number. besides that write down the partition designation (usually something like "/dev/sd**").
- now go to you console and do "cat /etc/fstab" find your swap partition listed on there, and make sure that the UUID of the swap partition is the same with the one that you just wrote down. if not change it.
- after that, do "cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume" make sure UUID that is written is the same with the one that you wrote down. if not, change it.
- then, do "cat /etc/default/grub" find out what it is written on "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=" if it has something like "" then you need to change it to "resume=/dev/sd**" **is the place of your swap drive usually looks like /dev/sda1 or something
- after you did all of this, do this two command "sudo update-initramfs -u" wait until it's done, then do the second command "sudo update-grub"
- reboot your computer

That's it. I hope this will solve your problem.
Please take care when you reformat part of your hard drive.
Good day.

7 days with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-02-15T21:13:00.000+07:00

One annoying thing that I found. Whenever i added a new software, those software doesn't pop up in the menu, but they wait to be set in the "Main Menu" setting. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure if it is Linux Mint's default.

Today I installed K3B, and Cinelerra. Both of them can't be found in the menu automatically. So what I did is: go to the Main Menu setting, look for K3B, check it, and there it goes. Shown in menu. But Cinelerra is still nowhere to be found. So I need to add it manually. I'll just put Cinelerra as a name and cinelerra (with low case letter) as a command. And that's it. But this is not as user friendly as i thought it was.

6 days with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-02-06T17:23:00.000+07:00

Mint has given one surprise after another. Bluetooth connection with my old billionton bluetooth dongle, actually just great. I can connect to my Blackberry 9630. But funny thing is, it can only connect on A/V controller mode and data over wireless network. I really don't know what it means, does it mean it support wireless data tethering? well I'm not that sure, but right now, I'm writing this blog using internet connection through bluetooth using my Blackberry 9630, awesome. I need to check my bills though.

Adding my Sony A2DP wireless stereo just fine, but I can't find how to use it yet. Definitely it hasn't been able to stream wireless music to it, but maybe some tweaking needs to be done. So far, amazing.

see

it's there

5 days with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-02-03T17:23:00.000+07:00

I did several updates, with no problem. So I went to install my Epson T20E driver. Which has become my first hurdle. Epson actually support many Linux distro, but they only have RPMs for Fedora, Opensuse, and Mandriva. They don't have DEB package. Well I think I need to learn how to compile it completely from scratch using one of the source code provided by Epson (Avasys). So till later.

3.5 days with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-01-30T19:57:00.000+07:00

Well, it turns out that I can't make a local drive repository, maybe I haven't know how to do it, but tinkering and going through the menus in Synaptic Package Manager doesn't enable me to do just that. So, onto installing it through GDebi. Installing software is just as simple as any other distro. If you just double click it, it won't install but it will open it as a compressed file, so what you need to do is to right click on it, the select install with GDebi.

right click, select GDebi to install

It will also check whether any dependencies are not complete. I haven't found any of my software has any problem with missing dependencies, since most of them doesn't require any other software to run.

it will ask a password, if not it will just install

every program is installed

3rd day with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-01-30T15:30:00.001+07:00

OK, done with updating software. But there are some things that strike me not too newbie-ish, when the update starts there are some updates that needs user interaction to finish: the GRUB update actually asked me where do I install my GRUB boot loader, and the gnome configuration was asking whether I want to keep my old configuration file or replace it with the new one. Well, fortunately I know how to answer those questions, but a complete newbie? I'm not sure.

So what I want to know now, is am I able to build my own local directory repository like the one that I did in Opensuse. This is the moment of truth. I'll get back as soon as possible. Right now I'm still downloading some programs, including Xmind (they have the latest .deb version on their website, less hassle then when I was looking for RPM for it, since no RPM format available on their website), openproj also has .deb format on their sourceforge page, aTunes also has one, and lastly zimbra desktop. Hmm it seems that Debian package has better population than RPM, is it? let's find out more.

After I'm done, I'll update the news on how the installation going.

Later.

2nd day with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-01-28T21:29:00.002+07:00

OK. 2nd day. I put in a DVD movie (Casino Royale, 007 starred Daniel Craig felt more realistic for me, i love it better than James Bond movies starred by the others) and it plays by itself without me install any more codecs, such a welcoming sight. So, I'm becoming more curious, and installed handbrake (a GUI for ripping DVDs to MP4s), will be "just works"? Well you know, it does. Nice.

OK, now I'm looking for my other favorite software. Xmind is not there, OpenProj is also not there, so maybe I'll downloaded and install them one by one. LibreOffice isn't there yet also.

Well, because I need to download those software, for the time being I'll just update my system. So I take a look at update manager (the shield icon on the lower right taskbar), and saw that there are 300 MB worth of download. So what I did first is to take a look on what are the stuffs that really need updating. I didn't update totem, evolution, rythmbox and openoffice, just because I don't use them. I'm gonna download and install aTunes later for my jukebox needs. So I'm still waiting the outcome of the updates, so stay tuned.

Till tomorrow.

LibreOffice 3.3

2011-01-28T10:18:00.005+07:00

LibreOffice 3.3. Downloaded yesterday, and installed. They got RPM and DEB package, so it covers most distros out there. I went to http://www.libreoffice.org/download/ and download the RPM installer package. After I'm done, I unpack it, put it into a RPM folder that I have. I'm using Opensuse, so what I did usually, whenever I'm done extracting the compressed file and saw a list of RPM files, is I go to "Install/Remove Software" in YaST, and add the directory which has those RPM files to my software repositories. This way, I can install and remove the software easily, without doing it from command lines. You can access software repositories configuration directly from YaST, or from the install/remove software (configuration -> repositories). I'll just add it as a local folder, specify the name of the repository (I just put LibreOffice 3.3), browse which folder that contain LibreOffice 3.3 RPM files, and with a few mouse click it's added. After I'm done adding it as a repository, I went back to the install/remove software.

I selected "add"

I chose the Repositories tab, and in the list, I choose the repository that I named, which is LibreOffice 3.3. Before you install, it's better to remove your previous version of OpenOffice. To do that, I usually just go to search, put "open" as my search string, and look in the list for OpenOffice, and select it for delete, every each one that states OpenOffice, including an icon set for OpenSuse. After that, I went back to install/remove software, go to my Repositories tab, select my LibreOffice 3.3 from the left list, and I selected most of them except these:

list of modules that I didn't install

I didn't install those because I don't need them, I don't need French dictionary, I don't need mediawiki and other modules. I also don't need gnome integration, since I'm using KDE, and I selected only the Opensuse menus. Select accept to install, wait for it for a while, after the window closed that's it. And you got your LibreOffice, installed in the Office menu (in Opensuse, not sure with other distros).

LibreOffice 3.3

I just realize that LibreOffice got a PDF import function. I don't know since when, since I just started to realize it. It opens the PDF files in LibreOffice Draw, and as you can see, you can even edit every single text in it. BTW, I just discover that you can't edit text on PDF's which actually a scanned document, other than that it's fine.

edit any text

That's it for now. Have a good day.

1st day with Mint Debian rolling release 201101

2011-01-26T00:14:00.003+07:00

2 words. Amazingly easy. This is my first day, and I'm already got hooked. I'm going to look for weaknesses though, but so far so good.

Installation is dead easy. Pop the CD in, double click on Install icon, and you get going. It ask you standard questions, setting up your user name and password (which is also becoming the root password), setting up partitions. And that's it. installation went fast, and everything is neatly categorized. I'm not sure whether all gnome is like this, but this is definitely simple start menu, and less resource hogging then OpenSuse start menu. It feels so light. BTW my hardware specs are: 80 GB of hard-drive, 1GB of memory, AMD Athlon 64 3000+, which is essentially a 3-5 years old system. I bought it for database server implementation. Well nowadays those kind of specifications are nothing.

A few screen shots:

Desktop

After the Installation is done, I'm greeted by a clean desktop. I wonder how am I suppose to connect this computer to the internet, since I got no more wireless card lying around, then I realized that I still got one USB wireless LAN adapter, the Netgear WG111v2, which years ago I can't use because the lack of driver (even in windows XP, I can't connect this thing to a WPA2 network), but guess what, the Netgear WLAN adapter actually goes without any fuss on Mint. I just plug it into the USB slot. Mint doesn't tell me anything, not a single pop up window. What I suddenly realize is that in the network manager, I got "wireless disconnected" statement. So I get my MiFi device, connect to it, and it just works. Amazing!

Network Manager

Look at that! a 3 years old USB WLAN adapter that I never got to use due to problems, suddenly Mint just ate it up and make it work! I haven't tried it yet in OpenSuse, but if it also works in OpenSuse, then network manager and all Linux networking components has taken a huge progress, which is right under my nose all this time without me realizing it.

Install more software, click on it

Installing more software is also dead easy. It's more user friendly I should say. Even though other distros such as OpenSuse already done something like this through YaST, but somehow Mint's installer is not looking as complicated as OpenSuse's. And Mint also has extensive software selections. From software that usually packaged with Gnome, to KDE installer. So many things you can Install.

Installing Dropbox

So the first thing that I do is to test drive it by installing Dropbox. When I click install, the only thing that I got is that the "0" ongoing actions changed into "1", and the installation was running in the background. No user intervention (I don't know yet with other packages, I know that OpenSuse always checks for dependencies and everything else and asked more modules when needed, but in Mint I got nothing. So I'll be looking forward to install other software and take a look whether it will install all the necessary modules for it to work). But the clean installation look, with no jumbling text is actually a welcome sight for me. Makes me feel more serene.

Dropbox Installed

And viola, Dropbox installed with no fuss whatsoever.

With all of these happening, I wonder why not more and more people convert to Linux. Mint is so easy to use, what would be the problem? I even liked it better than Ubuntu. Better than OpenSuse? I'm not sure yet. Maybe with all of this focus on making it elegant and easy, Mint has a lot of things to offer. I'll save my conclusion after I spent more time with Mint. But in the time being, so far so good.

1st day with ClearOS 5.2

2011-01-21T11:40:00.002+07:00

Installation went just great. More crude UI rather then polished installation UI like Opensuse, but everything just well. No setting for user, only root login, which is set the root password. You can do partitioning manually or automatically, everything is there, you just have to use your keyboard to select and define. Use "tab" button to select, use "space bar" to check or uncheck, use "enter" to confirm, that's pretty much it. The installation went smoothly, I install it as a standalone server, since what I need is only Apache, PHP, and MySQL. The selection of servers is quite extensive, and it would satisfy most user, I think.

After the installation done, it presented me with web UI. Clean, not much to messed up. It asking me the configuration of the name of the server, IP address, and everything else, in step by step fashion. Definitely simple and user friendly.

I haven't got anytime to do some more work on it, maybe latter. But so far so good.

2 just got distros

2011-01-20T10:17:00.000+07:00

I just got 2 distros to try. The Mint Debian rolling edition, and ClearOS 5.2. I wanted to know how these 2 distros, that are so focused, Mint is the desktop distro, and ClearOS is the server distro, are really that good, and how do they compare with Opensuse. Does rolling edition is really that great, or is it a big hassle. I need to answer this questions, because in the next few weeks, I'll try to build a php+mysql/postgresql database. I know that I can do that easily with Opensuse, but I'm enticed with the way ClearOS has their web-based administration. Well let's see how it goes.

Now I know the problem with NetworkManager

2011-01-20T09:58:00.001+07:00

I said before, that NetworkManager has died on me. So I read a few bug database on opensuse and found the cure to it. So if you find that your NetworkManager on ASLEEP state, or unmanaged state. Then this is what you should do:

1. login as root, by typing "su -", on a program called Konsole, insert your administrator password. And you get into the root login.

2. go to /var/lib/NetworkManager, and edit the file NetworkManager.state to NetworkingEnabled=true, save it. (to get into the folder just type "cd /var/lib/NetworkManager", to edit the file after you get into the directory just type "nano NetworkManager.state" change the information, press "ctrl-X" to exit, press "y" to say yes, and press "enter" to save at the same file name. Btw, you have to install nano first if you haven't install it or you can use any other text editor that you have.

3. restart the NetworkManager. you can use the process manager, to access it quickly through the desktop you can press "Ctrl+Esc" on your desktop, find NetworkManager, and right click on it, and select kill process. You will be asked of password, so enter your administrator password. To restart it, go to Konsole again, and type "NetworkManager" and then press "enter".

4. if you haven't start the knetworkmanager, then just go to the application launcher (the green gecko on your task bar) just type knetworkmanager, as you type you will see some applications listed, just select the correct one. If you did that, then by now you will a knetworkmanager icon on your system tray.

Happy networking.

Upgraded to Opensuse 11.3

2011-01-03T17:31:00.001+07:00

Why it seems that upgrading has higher chance of something not working well, compared to fresh install?

How is it the Opensuse 11.3? Great. Installation went great, repository added with no problem, update the software from the update repository with no errors. No problem whatsoever.

The problem that I got is actually from KDE itself. Several big problems:

1. Whenever I got out from sleep (hibernate to disk), it will stuck on KDE's screen lock, without me being able to do anything except to turn it off forcefully. So to circumvent this, I make sure that KDE's screen lock is not enabled at all time (just to make sure I will not get any of this problem anymore), maybe a future update will solve this problem

2. digiKam software can't rotate any of my photos, which is really annoying. After doing some research, some people in the forums said that some library failure or something. So I'm still waiting for update.

3. Network Manager died on me. I didn't have the time to fix this yet, so I'll use ifconfig method for the time being, besides most of the time I use my computer in my office using office's wi-fi, so it's not a big hassle to change the configuration through ifconfig now and then.

Other than that, everything is great. The file indexing is working now. Both strigi and nepomuk service are online, and they indexed my files in a matter of hours (I only got 50-60 GB of files, that's not including kernel, software, and stuffs).

I'm finding myself using more and more alt-F2 function, which brings up the dialog box to search for whatever things on your machine, from bookmarks, to yast2 components. Just type in the dialog box, press the "tab" button to navigate without taking your hands off the keyboard and press "enter" to select.

My dropbox is still working, even though I'm still using the previous release. All my software are still there and working, without any single re-install whatsoever. So the upgrade is pretty much great and easy. Try that with windows. Amount of upgrade time, 1.5 hours, amount of updating all the software from update repository take quite some time depending on your internet connection, I leave mine the whole night and I got myself a fully updated software in the morning. I actually taking for granted the easiness of Opensuse repository. It's so easy to find software, update, game,........ nice. On the opposite, I actually paid someone to upgrade my office's window's machine. Why? because I can't stand waiting for it to finish when I upgrading windows, one by one, OS, re-install drivers (it's right there, can't you see it), re-install software..... ups, not compatible with new version of windows, need to get it from internet, bla bla bla. I choose to upgrade linux rather than windows at any day, so I can sleep. Wake up, and everything is done. Opensuse (and other distro I might add) is definitely at the right steps on this one. Keep on the good work. So i can catch more sleep.

I hope Opensuse will still be on planet earth for years to come, till I died at the very least. That Novell bought by Attachmate, makes my heart racing for a while, and makes me frantically looking for alternatives in case Opensuse is gone, but as always, I went back to Opensuse. Waiting for 11.4 with high expectation, especially with rolling release. If the rolling release is well, then I'll update all my office's opensuse with 11.4 and let it update themselves till the end of time.

Till next time. Happy Opensuseing.

Styleflying Android Slate / Tablet, 2.1

2010-12-01T10:27:00.000+07:00

I just got myself a 7" android slate. a generic one, it is stated in the ROM: styleflying, which I'm not sure what it is. With this generic slate, comes a generic box. White one with a big lettering saying Android 2.1.

Here is some specification:

Android 2.1

7" Screen 800x480

Telechip 800MHz

Rom said M1 by styleflying firmware 2.1 update 1

Softwares that I installed:

1. Alkitab

2. Bible - Olive Tree

3. Documents To Go 3.0 Full version (bought it from Dataviz website)

4. Adobe Reader

5. Astro Player - nice one, it can play both movies and music, got podcast support. it's really nice.

6. SlideMe - sine I can't access Android Market 9the Market is there, but the download never started.

7. Dataviz's Superstore - another Android Market replacement.

8. Upvise - for my note taking app

9. ES File Explorer

10. Facebook

11. nimbuzz

12. Twidroyd

13. K9-Mail

14. Yahoo Mail

15. Yahoo Messenger

16. Titanium Backup - which is not working yet, due to rooting problem.\

17. AndTask - for switching from one app to the other (somehow the home button on my slate doesn't background apps when I press and hold it), but AndTask has more feature other than task switcher, which is really nice

17. and some games

The internal memory for apps are about 512 MB, and installing all of those softwares on takes a few MBs, and i got about 420 MB left. Put in a 16GB microSD, and well, this thing has becoming my primary media player, e-book reader (most of my books are PDFs). And with Doc To Go, it has become my working tool also. Work emails is handled by K9, I can save attachments to microSD card.

Well. It went better than I expected. Much better in fact.

I'm buying another gadget which is a 3G mi-fi router to compensate the lack of 3G radio inside the slate. With mi-fi, then this cheap tablet has evolved into a true road warrior.

BTW. under heavy use, it can last almost a day. i don't know the capacity of the battery, but well, it's definitely great. heavy use means checking emails on background, read e-books for a couple of hours, hear some music and play movies for a couple of hours. I think, If you do all of those things all at once, I think it can go for 4-6 hours max. The 800 mHz processor is enough, by i mean enough is, you can open several apps, for example browing, check email in the background, open up an excel sheet while downloading some new apps, I did that most of the time, and no "force close" coming up.

Some software that doesn't work well:

1. mailDroid - always freeze, don't know why, so I force close it and uninstall it

2. andropaint - can't even select "agree" button (the agree button is way beyond the lower screen, maybe it wasn't built for this kind of resolution

3. Games: ColorBlock, Diamond Miner - quarter screen play on 800 x 480

Some software that i tried, but un-installed:

1. mvideoplayer - nice player, but the functionality already covered by Astro Player, so I delete it

2. OI file manager - i think ES file manager is better, nad got more feature

3. Officesuite - Docs to Go is much better

Well that's it for now, later i'll bring you some pictures, and how I rig up a protector for it.

Connect to the internet using windows mobile 6.5 on linux opensuse 11.2

2010-10-02T05:13:00.004+07:00

Well, one thing that I discover lately is that actually Network Manager actually has many feature that I haven't discover before. And one of them is the connection with Windows Mobile device.
I have in my hands, an old Windows Mobile device, an HTC Apache, that has been upgraded to version 6.1 (using cooked Roms available widely on the Internet).
Yesterday I went to another town, and need access to local wi-fi access. When my HTC Apache runs out of battery, I plug it to my Opensuse laptop, and guess what, Network Manager actually detects it, and set an IP address. It does all that automatically, and it connected just fine to my Opensuse laptop.
When I realize this, I tried to run the Internet Sharing function on windows mobile. And right now, I'm writing this blog using that connection. It works flawlessly. Amazing. Remembering that I have to install Activesync when I was using windows just to use this Internet Sharing feature, but on Opensuse you just have to run Network Manager and that's it. The rest will be taken care of by itself. Neat.

aTunes sync

2010-08-05T20:31:00.001+07:00

All this time I wonder why does aTunes seems only sync only some files, not everything. My last repository was 700+ songs, and aTunes only sync some 600+ songs.
Now I know why. First of all, in the preference menu, under "Device" there is some several option to choose for. And one the feature was whether to put the music files into folders or just "flat" which aTunes will put everything in the root folder. So the first thing that I do is to select which folder should it store my music. I put in "my music/%A/%" so it will put each file according to corresponding artist and album folder. And it did. The other feature was "allow copy the same song for different albums" which essentially aTunes will not copy the same song which has the same artist and title even tough it is belong to different album. So I enable this feature too.
Guess what, aTunes is actually smart enough to not copy double files of the same songs. Because when I went through my repository, I found out that I have some double files of the same album, and aTunes just copied one of them, not both. A really smart feature. After I enable all of this, and shifted through all the files in the repository, still there are some files not synced. After going through everything one by one, now I know why. aTunes will not sync any songs that doesn't have any artist, album and song name properly tagged. There are about 15 of these songs that has an unknown tag. And all of them are not synced. I'm impressed. These are actually great features. Salute to aTunes team and all of its contributors. You guys are doing a great job.

Trying Songbird 1.4

2010-08-03T11:29:00.002+07:00

Well, out of my desperate attempt, I will try the old songbird. I have install it, add tagger and foldersync add-ons. Let's see how it stacks up with aTunes and Jajuk. Btw, did i mention that there is something strange with my last sync in aTunes? I did sync my SD card with aTunes with my current albums, but somehow the file count doesn't add up. It is stated in the library that I have 600 songs, but in the SD Card I got only 590 or something. I will try it again tonight, I hope something came up. If not, I don't know what else to do.

I love KDE

2010-07-31T12:21:00.003+07:00

When the first time I tried Ubuntu, I realize that their toolbar is at the upper side of the screen. After trying that, I changed all my toolbars to the upper side of the screen, simply because it is faster for me to work and change between the task. The distance between the task manager and the window itself is shorter, so I can select, minimize, close, any task with greater ease. Since then, whatever UI that I use, I always re-layout it to task manager up side, program shortcuts downside (auto hidden). And with KDE, you can do that easily. Almost mac style layout. Here is my KDE layout, how about yours?

With Shortcuts Hidden

With Shortcuts Unhidden

I never had this kind of ease when I use windows XP. KDE has come along way since 3.5. I love it.

Bertrand Florat commented my blog, YAY!

2010-07-31T11:29:00.012+07:00

Wow, I never thought my blog has even the possibility to be commented by Bertrand Florat, Jajuk project admin himself! Mr. Bertrand, welcome to my humble blog. Thank you for giving me your insight, I'm so thankful. In fact, I'm so excited with your comment that I decide to post your comment as a part of this blog. I put in the last comment by you that you sent to me. After reading it, It seems that I miss some of the stuffs such as the playlist function and advance features that Jajuk had, so I'm going to revise my blog and incorporate this comment into my Jajuk vs aTunes post. Again, Thank you very much. So here goes the complete comment:

Hi here, I'm Bertrand Florat, the Jajuk admin. Thanks for your review of Jajuk and aTunes. aTunes is an excellent jukebox and I advice everyone to try it (BTW, we share some code or common stuff between our two projects like default webradio stations). I'd just like to clarify few statements you did about Jajuk :

"Jajuk has more cluttered UI. I don't understand what each view does, it does almost the same thing."

Jajuk is as cluttered as you want it to be (maybe default conf is too cluttered though ?). Jajuk is made of perspectives dealing with what you are doing (like Playlist perspectives, Stats perspective, Files perspective...) and each perspective contains views, each a way to show some information. For instance, the Files table, the Files tree... You have several ways of watching the same information and you are allowed to remove or add views. You can even keep a single view (let's say the Track table view). Moreover, this allow jajuk to show your collection either on the filesystem point of view (Files perspective and views) or tag-based (Tracks perspective). Many users love Jajuk because of this unique organization, even if it may be messy at the first glance (BTW, it is why we made the "simple perspective", a kind of "learning" perspective).Learn more at [1].

"Jajuk can't make several playlist". I don't get what you mean. With Jajuk, you can build any playlist you want. You have a playlist view for that purpose (supporting drag and drop... and coming with automatic playlists like novelties, best-of...).the Queue view itself is a playlist and can be saved. See [2].

"Jajuk has a DJ function, aTunes also has (I think) but not as trivial as Jajuk.". I don't know atunes's DJ feature but with jajuk, you get a wizard to build a DJ based on complex rules like proportions or transitions and supporting ambiences (an ambience is a set of genres, users can create their owns). See [3].

"I can't find equalizer on Jajuk". Indeed, jajuk doesn't have one. I for one think it's a player's feature, not a jukebox one but a feature request is filled and it may be implemented in the future.

"Jajuk can play any files just by right clicking it on the play list". It is right, note that jajuk also support many advanced play modes like play next, push, push next, shuffle in an album, shuffle entire albums, finish album and many more.

"Not quite as advance as I thought". Are you really sure ? Check [4].

Thanks, this blog rocks !

[1] http://jajuk.info/index.php/Perspectives_and_views

[2] http://jajuk.info/index.php/Using_playlists

[3] http://jajuk.info/index.php/Ambience_walkthrough and http://jajuk.info/index.php/Using_digital_djs

[4] http://jajuk.info/index.php/Features

As of Now

2010-07-30T18:55:00.000+07:00

As of now, the openSUSE 11.3 has arrived. I've been using my asus notebook with openSUSE 11.2 for a few months now. So after a few months, what happened?

Well to tell you the truth, I don't experience any problem using this laptop for every day work. I've been using it on leave, in the office, in projects, and it gives me a spotless performance. No hiccups what so ever. The best experience I ever had using a computer.and using an operating system. Probably one of the factors that makes the experience so great is that the hardware itself supports openSUSE completely, kudos to Asus.

Jajuk vs aTunes

2010-07-23T13:07:00.006+07:00

After reading comments from Mr. Bertrand Florat, I have new Insight on this post, so this is Revision 1:

Jajuk has more cluttered UI. I don't understand what each view does, it does almost the same thing. There is one that view by files, by tracks, which looks more or less the same, with more or less the same function.

ATunes has a simpler UI.

Insight: Jajuk is as cluttered as you want it to be (maybe default conf is too cluttered though ?). Jajuk is made of perspectives dealing with what you are doing (like Playlist perspectives, Stats perspective, Files perspective...) and each perspective contains views, each a way to show some information. For instance, the Files table, the Files tree... You have several ways of watching the same information and you are allowed to remove or add views. You can even keep a single view (let's say the Track table view). Moreover, this allow jajuk to show your collection either on the filesystem point of view (Files perspective and views) or tag-based (Tracks perspective). Many users love Jajuk because of this unique organization, even if it may be messy at the first glance (BTW, it is why we did the "simple perspective", a kind of "learning" perspective).Learn more at http://jajuk.info/index.php/Perspectives_and_views

Jajuk and aTunes can make several playlist.

Insight: With Jajuk, you can build any playlist. You have a playlist view for that purpose (supporting drag and drop... and coming with automatic playlists like novelties, best-of...).the Queue view itself is a playlist and can be saved. Learn more at http://jajuk.info/index.php/Using_playlists

Jajuk has a DJ function, aTunes also has (I think) but not as trivial as Jajuk.

Insight: I don't know atunes'd DJ feature but with jajuk, you get a wizard to build a DJ based on complex rules like proportions or transitions and supporting ambiences (an ambience is a set of genres, users can create their owns). Learn more at http://jajuk.info/index.php/Ambience_walkthrough and http://jajuk.info/index.php/Using_digital_djs

In Jajuk, synchronize to device can be done just by right clicking the album or your entire colection in the "Files" view. aTunes did it by filling up the playlist first with your selected (or whole) album, and right click on the playlist tab to synchronize.

Jajuk has more elaborate view. View by album, by files, by tracks, and by display (which displays the current played song/album)

Jajuk has automatic music rating, which later you can sort or use it for your custom or auto generated playlist. The songs are rated by how many times it played, and other factors.

I can't find equalizer on Jajuk, but aTunes has one.

Jajuk can play any files just by right clicking it on the play list. aTunes can't, you have to use the skip forward/backward button to your selected song.

Jajuk has mini player. aTunes has not.

Jajuk has play history. aTunes maybe has it but burried in the menus (I have to verify it later).

Revised Conclusion: Jajuk is maybe too advance and not that intuitive for me. I'm going to stick with aTunes for now. I will be waiting for Jajuk stable version of 1.9, and try out the new insight that I just got.

PS: here is the complete comment from Mr. Bertrand Florat, you can see at this post

Jajuk 1.8.4 first impression

2010-07-22T20:17:00.000+07:00

Well, I just downloaded Jajuk 1.8.4 stable version. Downloaded the "jar" installer file. Installation went the same as aTunes, but somehow it didn't create the menu on SUSE menu. So I just make my own menu for Jajuk.
Fire it up, and the first thing that I saw is how cluttered the UI is. But upon further inspection, it seems that it is quite promising. I'll be testing it for a few days.
Btw, I just found out how to mount MTP device, but not yet tried to sync with it.
Later I'll compare between aTunes and Jajuk. I hope, I found what I'm looking for.

aTunes 2 Review

2010-07-20T12:35:00.002+07:00

Yes, I have try aTunes for a while, and it turns out that it is better than I tought. But there are some ceveats also. So let me go with the positive aspects first.

Positives:

Easy to use: it is very easy to use, what you need to do is define where is your music repository, and the aTunes can detect your music. Playing music is a breeze

Easy to sync: it is very easy to sync with your device. What you need to do first is to create a playlist. You can put in your selected music that you want into the playlist. Right click on the playlist tab, and select "sync to media." That is it.

Can read all tagging. Including album art.

Negatives:

Quirky: it plays the songs on the playlist one by one, and I can't play any of it just by double clicking it. Too bad. It makes playing music harder when you want to just to listen according to your selection on the fly.

No MTP: can't support devices with MTP (music transfer protocol) only.

Some skins makes it slower to operate, don't know why. So I just revert back to default.

Tagging problem. Can't read images that I just downloaded. So I can't change the album art. I use Jtagger as my primary tagging software.

Can't rip to mp3. It does rip cds, only to ogg, flac, but not to mp3. And I don't know how to enable it. I use K3B as my primary CD ripper.

Conclusion:

It doesn't satisfy all of my needs. I need a Media Monkey replacement, and I still found none.

Handbrake your DVD's

2010-07-05T09:49:00.003+07:00

Do you need a video ripper on linux?
I tried handbrake, and it's nice. I can rip to MP4 video, which is what my Sansa Connect need, and it is great.
You need to choose which video to get, put it on the queue, then start when you done with your list of queue. I'll explain this latter.

Trying aTunes

2010-07-05T08:46:00.007+07:00

Well, my experience with Amarok has been quite steep. For the first time in long time, that I have to learn how to use a music jukebox such as Amarok. In Amarok, when you need to play something, you have to add it to playlist. It wasn't as clearly stated for newbies, so after dragging songs, right clicking songs, finally I got the hang of it. The the one thing that I'm not fond of is, what is it with the big applet space in the middle. It doesn't do anything useful, and I can't even turn it off (I can't find anyway to do it, maybe you do, please tell me if you do). I don't need this kind of clutter, and it's not even that intuitive using this version of Amarok, I like the old one better in term of layout and intuitiveness.

That's why I'm looking for a replacement, at least as good as Amarok. So after long browsing I found out about aTunes. A Java based player, platform independent. The look of it remind me of media monkey, which I very fond of when I still using Windows. Well to tell you, the interface is clean, everything is tabbed. Playlist is in the middle, so I can find out easily what's playing. The album art search function is good, I tried to find the album art for that particular album,can't do it with Amarok, can do with aTunes. Nice.

But that's only first impression. I know that Amarok doesn't play well with my Sansa Connect, and either aTunes, so what I do is, I'll just sync my songs with my 8 GB MicroSD card, and let the internal memory clean of anything. Use the 8 GB MicroSD as a regular drive that aTunes can access.

NetworkManager freaks me out

2010-07-05T08:39:00.007+07:00

Right now, I didn't use NetworkManager anymore. The NetworkManager has been dodgy in my experience of using it. Each day, I'm being disconnected from my wireless network for several times in a day, and NetworkManager had a hard time looking for my Access Point, which is a hassle. I turn back to the old ways (ifup method), which is already supported very well with the Opensuse network settings. This way, I can use my trusty Kinternet for internet connection other than wi-fi. When I went outside, then maybe I will turn on the NetworkManager just to ease the way looking for hotspot, but other than that, I'll just use the ifup method, as stated in the Opensuse network manager.

3g modem or whatever modem on opensuse 11.2

2010-06-03T14:55:00.004+07:00

I love it when installing modems on Linux. In windows you have to search for the correct software to work it, the correct driver to do it. But in Linux, especially in Opensuse 11.2, all I have to do is go to the Modem menu on YAST, see whether my modem is detected or not, if it is, then add several AT lines that is needed, for example if you use 3G modem, you should put in something like:

ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0

and

AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","AXIS"

Setup the provider according to your provider setting. in this case (my case using AXIS provider): put in *99# as dialing number, username = AXIS, password = 123456. And that's it.

Usually Opensuse will install smpppd or something, let it install it. Then what I usually do is install the Kinternet program. After all done, open Kinternet (it will pop up as an icon on you tray), look at the settings, make sure that it's right. Then just click on the Kinternet icon to connect. It does take some time to connect, if you wanted to know what does it do, then open the log (right click on the icon then select log). There you will see the progress.

That's it!

BTW, in case that you already connected to the internet but can't access web pages, then go to your firewall settings. I just usually turn it off. But you can do fine tuning with it, by setting the modem connection to be internet connection with some ports opened as you wished.

Printing to PDF on Opensuse 11.2

2010-06-03T12:06:00.004+07:00

When you search this topic on the web, usually they will told you to install cups-pdf. But you don't have to. You can actually print from any programs to PDF in Opensuse 11.2, even tough that program doesn't use the KDE printer dialog.

This is how:

1. If you got any program in Opensuse 11.2 that using KDE printer dialog, then just select print to PDF, and state your filename. And the PDF file will be produced.

2. But if you are using anything else, that doesn't use the KDE printer dialog, then what you must do first is to use "print to file" function, and select any printer you have access (it doesn't matter which printer, as long as it is online). This will in turn make a file with .ps file type, which is a postscript file type. After the "print to file" is done, then open the postscript file, usually Opensuse 11.2 will open it with Okular. Use Okular to "print to PDF". And that's it, you have your PDF file.

With that steps, you can print any files to postscript and later convert it to PDF using the built in function in KDE print dialog. It's very easy. You should try it.

What do I use for internet connection here in Indonesia?

2010-06-03T10:20:00.001+07:00

well you can check my review on AXIS internet service here

Strange things on playing mp4 video files

2010-06-02T09:58:00.003+07:00

Well, I realize just last night, that something strange happens. When I installed VLC on my computer at home, every time I play the next mp4 movie using VLC, it always stated that alsasound has failed, then there is no sound at all. I accidentally play the mp4 video with kaffeine, and it played just all right, went through the whole playlist just fine. But that doesn't happen on my laptop. The VLC can play the whole playlist without hickups even tough it produce the same error message. What an odd thing happened.

Well I think I need to see whether YAST has installed the same software piece by piece. Then I'll find out which software is the culprit.

Can't open wmv and mp4 video files?

2010-06-01T17:36:00.004+07:00

Do yourself a favor. I think it's either libraries that come with kaffeine, or something that screw up. Everytime I tried to open wmv files, or mp4 files, kaffeine, mplayer, just stuck and produce nothing but error. But I remembered VLC.
VLC is a multi format video and audio player. So if you stuck with these two files, just download VLC, you do this by adding the VLC repository, then install VLC from the YAST. It will also install decoders that come with it. And viola, everything works!

Opensuse 11.2 on Compaq D510, Epson inkjet printer

2010-05-25T16:52:00.006+07:00

I got a PC at home, a Compaq D510, a small form factor PC with 17" LCD, and TDK speakers (they are thin, but they do sound nice). It got a new hardrive 160GB PATA!! not even SATA yet, a measly 192 MB SDRAM running 133 MHz FSB!! Pentium 4 1.8 GHz. This thing is out of date according to today's standard. But opensuse 11.2 installed and work just fine. Boot time is about 10-20 seconds (from pressing enter on GRUB to login page), which is really really nice. It seems that I've grown addicted to Opensuse's boot time.
I got several things back home to support my photography hobby (beginner). An Epson T20E, and a canon scanner 700F. At first, my Epson printer wasn't able to be set up correctly due to a missing library libglitz.so (Installing "Glitz" using YAST solved the problem). After I installed the needed library, the printer works just fine. The printer monitoring window works flawlessly. ONE BIG NOTE: please restart your computer before using the printer. It seems that there are some services that need to be online when using the printer, restarting your computer will do just that. When I haven't restarted my compaq computer, the test page through CUPS is printed just fine, but I got "backend fail" error massage when I tried to print using other programs. After restarting my computer, the printing works just fine.

So the best way to install the Epson printer (T20E) on opensuse 11.2 is:
1. install Glitz through YAST
2. install the driver that you downloaded from www.avasys.jp
3. when you successfully installed it, a configuration window will come up (without glitz it won't come up, i think epson uses this library for all their GUI, including the printer monitoring software)
4. if you already installed the driver without glitz, then just redo the driver installation, you don't have to uninstall it first, when the configuration window pop up then you are on the right track.

You can download most epson linux printer driver on www.avasys.jp website.

Till this day, I haven't able to get the scanner online. SANE hasn't support it yet, and installing the windows driver through WINE doesn't seem to work either. i got some error message when I tried to install the canon's windows software through WINE. maybe it's just my incapability to work WINE correctly.

Networkmanager tackle wpa-psk

2010-05-25T16:35:00.003+07:00

I'm not sure why that networkmanager on my opensuse 11.2 doesn't seem to be able to connect to my wpa-psk wifi network in my office. After reading a few websites, it seems that it should be an "advance" setting option in the wpa personal setting, but i found none. So what I did is I downloaded the cnetworkmanager. And try to connect with it by issuing this command

cnetworkmanager -C yourssidname --wpa-pass=yorpassword

And it worked! After i did this the networkmanager applet seems to work by itself. I don't know what cnetworkmanager does, maybe it effects the applet somehow. But the problem is not over yet, sometimes I got disconnected though intermittently. When I try to get back on, I have to wait for a while as it seems to try to reconnect several times. The access point SSID is hidden though, maybe that's why.

Samsung Printing Problem

2010-05-25T16:14:00.005+07:00

Thank you to Samsung for they have made drivers for linux users. But after installing Opensuse 11.2, i got a slight problem but annoying. The funny thing is the printer is configured correctly, the host computer can print everything except PDFs through Okular and Adobe PDF Reader. And I did work around this by putting a custom printing command on Adobe using "lp" command instead of "lpr". The lpr command is the one that causes this culprit. This doesn't happen on other computers that actually accessing and printing through the printer's host.
But after reading it on a blog made by this person on this website: (thank you for the person who actually wrote this article) http://eumenidae.blogspot.com/2010/01/samsung-scx-4200-on-suse-112.html my problem is solved.
In that blog it is stated that probably the Samsung driver replace the lpr to actually link to the slpr program in samsung's driver's directory. After change the lpr to the original lpr by copying the lpr.orig to lpr. The printing is restored. Now I can print from Okular and Adobe reader with no problem. Thank you, whoever you are.

Boot Time Opensuse 11.2

2010-05-07T16:00:00.001+07:00

Well, compared to my XP home, this linux distro has a speedy boot time.
From pressing the on button to login screen 10-15 seconds
From login screen to full working mode 10-15 seconds
WOW

Openproj and Picasa on Opensuse 11.2

2010-05-07T10:52:00.002+07:00

Yes, openproj has it's Linux version, and Google has their own repository for Linux. In Google repository you can also try their other softwares (mostly in beta), the Google desktop, Google Chrome browser, and Google Picasa.

So everything is here now, and ready to be used for work. Great!

XMind 3.0.2 RPM

2010-05-06T18:38:00.002+07:00

Yes, there is an RPM version of Xmind. i downloaded from mandriva backport website. And it installed just fine. Just one more to go. Openproj

Opensuse 11.2 on Asus K40IJ

2010-05-06T17:38:00.011+07:00

Yes, it works.
Sound: works
LCD brightness: works
Volume buttons: works
LCD off: works
Sleep button: works
Wireless: works

Well pretty much everything is working. I can't find anything not working, but this is only my first day.

I'm amazed on how smooth it was when I installed opensuse 11.2 on this thing. It seems as it was made for opensuse 11.2.

A few things that I need to try is that how much battery I can get from this thing. It should be 4 hours +, but according to my experience with Linux on laptop, usually it doesn't stay as long.

I used SMB4K to mount my samba share on company server, which i built using SAMBA on opensuse. SMB4K is great. I never knew that it would be that easy to do. Just make sure you put in the correct username and password, click on the super user mode function to mount the drives, and that's it. Don't forget to bookmark the network drive. It actually can try to remount the network drive when you login again, but I haven't tried it. All my network drive is mounted on my home folder under smb4k folder. opening it with openoffice 3.2 (I upgraded using openoffice 3.2 vanilla that i downloaded from openoffice website), i don't like the way Go-OO did with the excel files, it messes up most of my work, and did some strange things, I don't know if itwas the Go-OO or the Java.

Upgraded the openoffice 3.1 novell version to openoffice 3.2 vanilla version. It seems faster. If some of your icons is missing, just relink them using KDE menu edittor. you can find it by right clicking the opensuse menu button (the green gecko button).

Download and install dvd and mp3 support from the install program menu.

Download and install varicad. i downloaded from varicad website. You need to sign up first, the i can get the Varicad viewer to satify my needs of looking at autocad files. I work in engineering company, that's why autocad format is widely used here. Well we actually use Cadian 2008 to do most of our engineering drawing.

The printer that was installed on another opensuse workstation is automatically installed on my laptop without any further user input!!! YYAAYY long live CUPS.

Wireless is working out of the box. using Network manager is quirky for me, so i went to the network device setting in YAST. get the setting to traditional ifup. set the SSID and password on WPA-PSK setting, and viola. it connects to my office network. nice.

Setting kopete to connect to my yahoo messenger.

ok. what i need next is to install openproj, which is a project management software. and Xmind, if there is any in RPM, the website have the DEB version.

conclusion: just a little bit more to go

My test computer is down

2009-06-23T21:14:00.002+07:00

Well, today, something wrong with my SUSE 11.1 test computer. The Computer doesn't boot up correctly, and doesn't react to any user input. It seems that I have to overhaul the whole system, tear it down one by one, dust every inch of it. Well, I'll give you an update on it. Till next time.

PS. My Armada is almost back in my hands. It has been quite long since I get my hands on it, because it was bought by my friend in 2007. With my Armada back in my hands, it will be full steam ahead for my SUSE research.

New Problem .eml

2009-06-19T12:44:00.002+07:00

I just realize yesterday that GNOME can't open any .eml files, which is a saved email file. Ussually if you save your email, you would get this extension. So what I tried first is to install the Thunderbird mail program. Thunderbird was installed successfully, and it does opens the ,eml files perfectly, but.. and this is actually a big "but"... many of those .eml files are located on the file server, and Thunderbird can't open anything on network folder. So onto other email program, bonobo. Bonobo does installed well, but it has the same case with evolution, it can't open any saved mails, so next program KMail. KMail installed well, it runs well, and it does open the .eml files from network drive, but... it doesn't play well with GNOME. Even tough I already log in to the network folder under GNOME, the KMail doesn't recognize it, and Kmail has to login by itself using its own KDE system, and that's a big HASSLE. I think I have to install KDE on it, and try how it goes. The KDE 4 that comes with the openSUSE 11.1 isn't ready for prime time, so I have to get back to KDE 3. I hope openSUSE has clean it up a bit so KDE isn't too messy. I actually fond to the simplicity of GNOME no fuss less bug way of development.

HP printers also easy to install

2009-06-18T10:05:00.006+07:00

I got an old HP 3470. Installing it was a breeze. Using the included application on openSUSE 11.1, the HP Device Manager. The 3470 was installed flawlessly. The printer is detected, the driver is there, and I got no more thing to do except clicking some stuff and viola, the printer installed perfectly. One thing that I realized, in GNOME, if you want the printer to be seen by other openSUSE, you have to enable the setting on GNOME Printing application. Just tick the "Share Printer" and "Let other see your printer" boxes and that's it. The printer is shared among openSUSE users and ready to be used for printing. Awesome. openSUSE is getting easier and easier.

Samsung Printer is Linux Compatible!

2009-06-17T17:15:00.009+07:00

I just got a Samsung printer a laser printer ML1640. It is said Linux compatible, so i tried to install the drivers and everything. As usual, i don't have high hopes on installing anything on Linux. I tried to install canon laser printer on Linux, it works, but not as easily as i hope so, many installation steps are still based on command line. Every morning i started it up, I always have to run some script just to get it working.

But not with this baby. The ML1640 is actually very easy to install, and the Linux drivers actually comes with the CD! So what I do is only inserts the installation CD, at first it seems that the autorun feature needs super user account. So what I do is I go to the console, get into the folder where the installer CD is. put it on super user mode with "su -" command, and run the autorun by using "./autorun" command. That's it. The software installed automatically, it detects the ML1640 flawlessly. And best yet with openSUSE, every machine with openSUSE can detect the printer by itself and can use it instantly without anymore user intervention.

Nice Job Samsung and openSUSE, way beyond what I expected.

openSUSE 11.1

2009-06-17T16:23:00.013+07:00

Welcome to openSUSE 11.1. What I'm reviewing right now is the Gnome version of openSUSE 11.1, which i think have a good and tight integration with openSUSE as a system. The YAST is integrated with Gnome well, and the install software feature is actually well connected and slicker than before.
Everything is there. Everything is dedicated to be simple, so that users don't have to choose a lot of stuff to do a single thing. The default installed software are way less than before, I think they tried not to confuse users by having too many software installed by default, but you can still find your preferred software on the disk, openSUSE still attaching the big CDs/DVD repository on it, so you don't have to download it from the web repositories.So after one week, what is my experience with openSUSE 11.1?
First, you definitely have to upgrade the OpenOffice to 3.1, because 3.0 is bad enough to make it unproductive. Features that is well implemented in 2.4 isn't well implemented anymore in 3.0. But in 3.1 it is good, better than 2.4. Linking to many data on other files has runs well, which usually I can't do this. Now with 3.1 i can link many data to other files in Excel!! in Excel!! so i don't have to change it ".ods" first. It is right now on par with Microsoft Office 2003, in term of it's usability and productivity.

My company also runs samba file server. using openSUSE 10 or 11 will ask you a lot of time for password! but now, no more. The OpenOffice 3.1 actually plays well with SMB kind of files, it doesn't produce any error that it use to have (can't save file on SMB...yada yada yada). The network folder always there when I search it, it always found the other windows network, and I can mount that network folder very very easily! no more fstab editing, no more manual network folder mounting, everything runs as it suppose to! Good job people!

Evolution is GREAT! I can sync with my Gmail, I can Sync my Contacts with Gmail Contacts! how awesome is that! now i can have one source Contacts. My pocket PC is synced with my Gmail, now my evolution can do that. That is sweeet.Well see you next time.I'm not done playing with this baby yet.

Specification:
OpenSuse 11.1
AMD Athlon 64
1 GB Memory
80 GB Hard Drive
ATI graphic card
NF4UK8AA Mother Board
DVD Drive

W850i on Suse 10.2 on m300

2007-07-20T15:50:00.001+07:00

I never knew before, that w850i (Sony Ericsson) can be configured easily using SuSE 10.2. For many years, I have given up on trying other type of connection other than Ethernet and modem (external). But now all of the sudden, when I was browsing for modem while charging my w850i through usb port, I found out that the phone was recognized by SuSE 10.2. So What I did was, I went to the network configuration and found out that it was detected perfectly with no other driver needed. But the funny thing was, when I went to the modem configuration, there it was again, the w850i was also detected as a modem. So the w850i was detected as both modem and network device. I decided to configure the w850i as a modem. I followed every step there was, and set the provider to use my provider's GPRS. I started KInternet, and it works flawlessly. Now I realized that my SuSE is not only ready for office work, but also ready as a road warrior. So what I did next was, I went to a local store to buy a usb wireless dongle (Netgear wg111v2) and a PCMCIA Fire wire adapter (which I later realized that the PCMCIA adapter was unpowered type of firewire port. But with these two, I haven't got a better luck on configuring them. So it's still an ongoing effort. But w850i GPRS connection is more than enough for me. I can get and send emails, get data from other places and etc. Very very nice.

In the image above, SuSE had successfully installed w850i as modem1 with my provider to run my GPRS connection.

Update on Amarok

2007-07-18T14:42:00.001+07:00

I have tried the audio converter format, which is one of Amarok script available. But no success. I'm not sure how to configure it properly. So I gave up and do my audio converting by using KAudioCreator. The only thing that I need right now is a tagging utility to put Album arts into the tracks. I can do that easily with iTunes, but i haven't found anything in Linux that is as easy as iTunes.

Experience with Amarok 1.4

2007-07-12T19:30:00.004+07:00

I forgot to give you some pictures when I said that I successfully implemented Amarok 1.4. Amarok has amazed me in many ways, true that there are some feature in itunes that I miss, but overall Amarok 1.4 is great, and better in some area. As you can see below, Amarok is very flashy in term of appearance, some people said that it's cluttered, but I say it's nice and fully featured. Amarok showed my album art, fetched more album art from amazon, and it could even get artist info from wikipedia. Later I'll show you how it's done.

image 1

Here it goes. Yesterday, I played one of my CD in my m300 laptop. At that time, I was connected to the internet using a modem. When I inserted the CD, I let my laptop to play the CD using Amarok. When it was played, Amarok downloaded the CD info from the internet (this is a standard feature in most player). Then I saw no album art yet. So What I did was, right click on the album art icon and select "fetch from amazon.com." And there it was (img. 2), Amarok got me the correct album art. BTW, the image .2 that you see down here has gone through the process above.

image 2

All of that left me wondered what else Amarok can do? so again I fiddled with it and got to the Artist tab. It was mentioned there whether I want to fetch artist data from wikipedia, and surely Amarok gave the complete artist data, as you can see in image 4. I remembered that when I used itunes, to get these kind of info and album arts you had to have an account, which I can't because I lived outside of the United States. So these two feature is a welcome addition for me.

image 3

So all I could say is enjoy. This version of SuSE is absolute blast, and Amarok is ready for prime time, nevertheless I had to give you the negative side of Amarok. Amarok hasn't got embedded CD ripper, but hold on, I found out that I could add a script to do that, the name of the script was Audio Format Converter. You could install this script using Amarok script manager inside Amarok. It does require some other packages, but to make it perfect, read the instruction here

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Audio+Format+Converter?content=23653

image 4

Happy Amarok-ing

more on SuSE 10.2 on Armada M300

2007-07-02T10:14:00.001+07:00

After testing it for a few days, I realized that this version of SuSE is really great. I started to wonder whether SuSE is ready for other stuff than work. So i started to look for a media player to play my m4a files that resides in my SE W850i. The reason I used m4a format, is that the file is smaller. To get a CD quality song you don't have to encode your song at 128Kbps MP3; 64Kbps HE-AAC (AAC+) is actually sufficient, thus I can pack more songs into my 1GB of memory stick duo (I can get 20 albums in 1 GB of memory including the album arts + ripped latest James Bond full movie in MP4, and still have 132MB free space, that's quite amazing).

In order to play this format in Linux, I started to read many articles and forum about playing m4a/aac files in Linux, and found out that banshee can do that easily. So I tried to install banshee using Yast, and found out that there were two banshee selection, one was the original banshee and the second one was the helix-banshee. To get the correct decoder, I decided to install helix-banshee with all of its plug-ins. So I just searched for helix using the search box in , selected everything that related with helix banshee, and viola everything was done (img. 1)

image 1. select everything except helix-banshee-devel

After I installed all of that, for sure my songs can be played. I forgot to tell you, that earlier I have tried Amarok, but it can't play any m4a/aac files, but i did like the looks of the Amarok, so that's why I had not given it up yet. After I added update and pacman repositories, then I started to look for additional Xine library for Amarok. So I decided to install more Xine library (img. 3), and more gstreamer library (img. 4; I'm not sure whether Amarok is using gstreamer or not, but just on the safe side I installed all of them).
I tried them once again and viola, Amarok can play m4a files, it even showed my album art, beautiful.

image 2.

image 3

image 4.

One more thing that I love about the new Yast add program feature is the pattern feature. If you need to build something out of SuSE then click on one of the selection and the rest of file selection will be taken care of by Yast (img. 5).

image 5.

SuSE 10.2 on Armada M300 day 2

2007-06-28T10:40:00.001+07:00

Today, I started to add repositories for those oss, non oss, updates, and pacman. I needed these repositories to update my current programs, and also to find more programs such as sword, and some other multimedia plugins. This version of SuSE is actually nicer than the 10.1 boxed version that I've used before. The 10.2 add simplicity to it. You won't find any double menus, for example double power manager (one in KDE control menu, the other on the desktop setting), and some other thing. SuSE 10.2 is actually became more concise, single setting, so that it won't confuse the user. I dare you to compare between my attached image with your older version of SuSE.

on KDesktop

on KDE Personal Setting

SuSE 10.2 on Armada M300

2007-06-27T19:00:00.001+07:00

Today, I just got SuSE 10.2. The SuSE 10.2 that I ordered came with 7 Cds. 5 Cds from standard SuSE and 2 add on Cds that contain language add on and software add on. I installed it on my M300, but guess what, the installer said to me that I didn't have enough memory to run the installer (my M300 has only 192MB of memory), so i switched to a text based installer, but the thing kept showing up. It told me to turn on my swap partition. Thankfully there was 1 GB swap partition that was already there when I installed SuSE 10.0 a few days earlier. So i let the installer to use my swap partition and after that the installer went fine.

image 1

I decided to install SuSE 10.2 as a new installation and repartition my hard drive, so now it have 1 GB of swap, 30 GB of root, and 43.5 GB of home directory. I choose KDE as my desktop, and let the installer installed standard programs. The whole installation and configuration took about an hour to finish.

image 2

After that, I went on to install more program, and those are inkscape and helix-banshee. I checked out the openoffice, and I wondered why SuSE 10.2 was still using the 2.0.4, maybe there is an update once I got my laptop connected to the web. Next I configure Kontact as my email client, and that's it. This laptop is ready for tomorrow's work.

To tell you the truth, when I got the "not enough memory" message up front, I thought this version of SuSE is going to be very slow on my old laptop, but guess again this version of SuSE is actually a little bit faster than the 10.1, but has almost the same speed compared with the 10.0.

image 3

It is shipped with KDE 3.5.5. There is a learning curve on using the new K Menu (img. 2), just because the menu operates differently than the old one. Instead of the usual menu, I was greeted by tabs consist of favorites, history, computer, applications, and leave (img. 3). When I moved my mouse on one of those tabs, it will open a whole new set of selection (img. 4), and the new menu doesn't expand like the old one, but it replaced the same window with more selection accordingly. I'm quite fond of it. I just found out that when you right clicked on one of the programs in the applications section, you can add it to the favorite list or you can put a shortcut on the desktop. A simple set up with great gain. Well that's it for now, tomorrow I'll give you an update.

image 4

M300 up and running

2007-06-26T15:45:00.001+07:00

Well, after I changed my hard drive with the new 80GB maxtor. My m300 became silent. Now i knew a glimpse of its former glory. The m300 was not only thin and light, but also very very silent. I can't even hear a slightest whine from the hard drive.
I installed SuSE 10.0. The thing works perfectly. I'm still waiting for 10.2 to arrive. I can't wait to experience the new KDE desktop system.

My hard drive broke down

2007-06-25T11:51:00.001+07:00

Well, my m300 hard drive broke down yesterday thanks to many installation failure of xubuntu. I actually shutdown my laptop 10+ time manually, and the laptop was running all night in 3 days straight just to make sure that the installation is a definite fail. A pricey way to experiment with xubuntu. Now I bought an 80 GB Maxtor drive for 52 US Dollar. Hope this one will have a better reliability than my IBM hard drive. I just ordered SUSE 10.2 on 7 CDs. It will arrive in a few days. I can't wait to try it on.

SuSE server

2007-06-11T15:34:00.001+07:00

You may, or may not know that we have implemented a file server within my company. It is using a samba file server. It is easy to set up, and it is reliable. Now, I'm going to build a groupware server. And I choose Scalix 11. There are a lot of groupware servers out there, for example:

opengroupware.org
zimbra
citadel
atmail

and a lot more. From all of those selections, there are three groupware that is suitable for my company, and those are Zimbra, Scalix and Opengroupware.org. All three of them has web user interface to check email and everything. But Opengroupware.org has not support Open SuSE 10.1, so I can't choose that one. And in free edition of Zimbra, the Outlook connector is not included. So Scalix becomes my first choice.

Regarding my company:
Less than 50 users
Less than 20 users have emails
Less than 10 users are using Outlook

but to migrate all of those address book, I need Scalix, which include 25 premium user. Premium users mean that they can integrate their outlook with Scalix. And those without outlook, they can still use Scalix using the web UI. After I've done migrating all of those address books, I will uninstall every outlook in my company.

Well that's it for now.

BTW, my server system:
AMD 3000+ 64bit
Open SuSE 10.1
1GB RAM
80 GB hardrive (2 for swap, 20 for root, everything else i put in LVM to be used as home)
ext3 file system

SuSE June 4, 2007

2007-06-04T09:20:00.000+07:00

my my my, gnome is quite fast. no problem yet. But i really do love the way it looks. Nice desktop. nice performance. No noticable lag.

SuSE May 28, 2007

2007-05-28T09:41:00.000+07:00

Just got back from out of town. SuSE installation is done. I remembered that when I installed SuSE with KDE, the performance is slow. So now i tried gnome desktop. I hope it will be a little faster, because I read that gnome requires less memory than KDE. Today, I'm going to use it for work, and I'll tell you how it performs. Later

Xubuntu May 21, 2007

2007-05-21T13:34:00.001+07:00

Oh man. Forget anything that I've said in the last blog. Today I'm going to revert back to Suse 10.1 or Ubuntu 6.06. why? because:
1. there is a bug in openoffice draw 2.2. I'm not sure whether it happens only on Xubuntu, but this is probably the main reason why Xubuntu doesn't show openoffice draw in the program launcher menu
2. gnome spreadsheet can't be un-installed using add/remove program
3. mindmap doesn't have many function, which making it useless
4. etherape and xsensors is not working, so i uninstall both of them
5. cups doesn't install printers automatically like in Suse.
Man, Suse is slow for something. Xubuntu is fast for nothing.
I haven't used Xubuntu for work, I'm using it just in last weekend (19-20th of May) and I'm getting annoyed already.

Xubuntu 7.04 May 18 2007

2007-05-18T13:03:00.001+07:00

My experience with Xubuntu alternate version is rewarding. It's fast, install everything that I need, and i think Ubuntu itself is getting easier to use. The alternate version is using text based installation, which is suitable for my old laptop (Compaq m300 laptop).
After i succeeded in installing Xubuntu, i started to install more software, such as openoffice.org 2.2, inkscape, scribus, labyrinth mind mapping and project planner. I use all of this software for work, mostly I use openoffice.org to do everything. I haven't tried QCAD yet, but I really-really need a software that can open Autocad files.
A few problems that hasn't been solved are: gsynaptics, etherape, and xsensors. I haven't figure out everything yet, but right now I found out some information about gsynaptics that I'm going to try.
In my opinion, Xubuntu is great. It is easy to use, and has many software available. I'm going to give you an update after running with it in several weeks. Let's see if I still have the same opinion about it. Happy Xubuntu-ing

Xubuntu Install Success 15 May 2007

2007-05-15T16:17:00.001+07:00

My experience with SUSE 10.1 is slow. The main problem would be lack of memory on my laptop. So I decided to install xubuntu on it. As I posted before, the xubuntu fails to install. So I get the alternate version of xubuntu 7.04.
Before I go on with installation, I remove everything from my hard drive. So now it is clean and has no more data on it. Then I installed xubuntu using the alternate CD. Well it works. Maybe it fails on my first try because the lack of memory. The alternate xubuntu takes only 64MB of ram to Install, which is well within my laptop's ram (192MB).

I'll be posting my experience with xubuntu 7.04. If it doesn't do well, then I need to revert back to SUSE 10.1. I wonder if I can implement kubuntu LTSP for my company, it looks easy enough to set up. Well, that's latter. I'm still waiting for Ubuntu and Kubuntu CD shipment from canonical.

Linux at work May 14, 2007

2007-05-14T16:08:00.001+07:00

4 computers running SUSE 10.1 sucessfully. Recently added LBP-3000 laser printer by Canon. The driver for linux was downloaded from asian canon site. Some problem arise because of the unfamiliar way to install the drivers. It does use CUPS but it is overlaid with Canon's own driver, so the printing job would run from the CUPS forwarded to Canon's driver then to the printer itself. Note that the Canon Printer Monitoring Software has to run, because many of the error messages are in that Monitoring Display, such as wrong type of paper, etc. One thing that sometimes puzzle me is that CUPS sometimes disable the printer by itself (not just this printer, but others too, in my LAN). If that's the case, I have to login to CUPS server from KDE Personal Setting and Enable it manually. I still can't figure out how to share the laser printer on the network. There is a manual comes with the driver, and it should be able to be shared in networked environment.

Other than that I was trying to install Xubuntu 7.04 to my own m300 laptop. No success. The Xubuntu installation always stops at 15% and no more. I have done many things including re partion the hardrive using Gparted, but nothing yet (the website says that the Xubuntu has problem with automatic mounting of removable drive that creates a partitioning problem. Note that mounted drives cannot be partitioned). I'm now downloading the alternate version of Xubuntu. Because I also suspect that the minimum memory in my laptop isn't enough (192MB shared memory).

Conclusion of Migration in March 2007

2007-04-30T16:11:00.001+07:00

I have to migrated 4 computers from windows to Linux to cut cost. Some people don't really understand that Linux is not a do-all operating system. some of the features in Linux is hard to implement, even simple stuff such as performing file sharing and accessing files in file server by OpenOffice.org can be painful.

Today I'm going to tell you a story about windows to Linux migration adventure. let's start:

PS: to make sure everything works well, I implement it first on my armada m300. That computer serve as a testbed for everything that i run in my company.

m300 running SUSE 10.1. comment:
1. installation is quite painless, with suse yast most stuff works out of the box (but remember that this laptop is pretty old, which means people has time to do the drivers for this laptop)
2. modem driver (ltmodem) isn't there yet, so i need to find and install the driver manually.

note:
before I'm doing any migration I read white paper by Novell about migrating from windows to Linux. it's very helpful, it also help you to find out which workstation that is suitable for the migration. most workstation that needs windows specific program cannot be migrated (for now). In this case, some of our workstation runs autocad, which has no replacement, not in Linux, not in windows. autocad is very well built. follow the white paper step by step, so you won't be stuck in the middle and run away from the migration.

impression:
1. OpenOffice works well because suse has included jre from sun
2. inkscape as corell draw replacement
3. dia for visio replacement
4. gimp for photoshop replacement
5. kontact for outlook replacement
6. konqueror as explorer replacement

OpenOffice has some problem when accessing smb file share. so to circumvent this, i use the mounting process that i got from reading the ubuntu help guide:
1. create .smbcredentials
2. add fstab entries for the smb shared folders
for the complete guide please read the ubuntu help guide, I was using the 6.10 version.

daily experience:
1. in network environment, cups detects shared printer automatically between suse. nice feature.
2. openoffice works fine
3. printing with hp1300 psc works, but the setting is quite puzzling, you can print only using black cartridge or color cartridge but not both, so printing black using color cartridge can give you grayish black.
4. scanning with hp1300 psc also works
5. well for conclusion, everything works quite well, but you have to have a good linux person that can help setting everything in the process. that's why listing everything that you need is very important before you start migrating.

best of luck

Weekend Conclusion March 19, 2007

2007-03-19T16:02:00.000+07:00

So, I have taken my m300 to the weekend special meeting.

Positive:
1. it works

Negative:
1. slow (I need more memory)
2. many converted Microsoft presentation files are not correctly converted to open office presentation files, symptoms:
a. files with special transition and animation doesn't work correctly. The slides are just go on and on. Probably the timer setting
b. special effect such as spinning text is slow. Mostly because of the limited memory and processing power. I think I need to upgrade the memory to 320MB (which is the maximum of m300's memory)

Conclusion:
It works, though I have to make the presentations as simple as possible (no effects, no transition, plain vanilla with some background).

My laptop's specs:
Pentium III 600MHz
192MB SDRAM
20GB hard drive
CD-ROM
SUSE10.1
OpenOffice Novel Version (included with SUSE 10.1, because I bought the professional boxed version)

Linux in real world March 15, 2007

2007-03-15T15:58:00.000+07:00

I have installed Skype for Linux. It works well. At Sunday (18) and Monday (19), I'm going to take this laptop on a trip (leisure). But i think this would be quite challenging, i need to get some presentation up and running. We'll see how it performs. I'll update you after the trip

Linux in real world March 14, 2007

2007-03-14T15:57:00.000+07:00

today is my first day to bring only my Linux laptop (instead of both windows and Linux). So far so good, email can be downloaded nicely, OpenOffice is doing it's job, browsing can be done with either Konqueror or Firefox (preferably Firefox), but that's when something doesn't feel right. I remember that when I open a certain web page, it doesn't rendered correctly, some parts are missing which I don't know why. Probably, I need to upgrade the Firefox to a newer version (version 2.0). More work ahead

Intro

2007-03-12T15:39:00.000+07:00

This is my first blog, so bare with me.

Linux is my hobby. I have 2 laptop at work. One is using windows XP, and the other is using SUSE 10.1. I have a personal goal of migrating all of my company's computer to Linux to save cost. This blog is my day to day experience with Linux. You may find it interesting.. or not.., but I hope it is helpful. If any of you want to ask something, just comment any of my postings and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. BTW, I'm not a Linux guru, so you'll see many success and failure story within this blog.
Enjoy.