Nightmare of Media

I have an old PowerBook 17" that I still use to run old Mac software on, because some software does still run on a Intel chip, ie. my scanner software for Canon Scanner.

I been using openSUSE on AMD and INTEL Chips since 5.3. I have only use openSUSE on PowerPC, back at 7.3 (Ran really nice on my G3), but I haven't messed to much with openSUSE on PowerPC until 11.0 and it wasn't nice, it fail everytime because it couldn't find the DVD.

Well, I put to the side because work keeps me busy, that I didn't even think about putting any linux on that laptop, until 11.1 came out.

I downloaded the DVD and burn on a DVD+R forgetting that Powerbook's only like to read DVD-R, which is a pain, but hey that Apple for you.

I spent $15 bucks for a stack of Memorex, and that's where the nightmare began. I should have remember back days of making mix tapes. I have never had luck with Memorex media.

I had burn the iso in Mac OS X with disc manager reboot the Powerbook in openSUSE began to install. It booted up with no problem but when I began to install I notice that it took forever to install. I mean forever. Since having a family I went to do family things, came back four hours later to see that it had fail install X. Ok, no problem. I will just try re-install. Which I did only to have it fail again on another package.

At this point I was thinking that it was the Mac. So I copied to my main server running openSUSE 11.1, fired up K3B and burn another disc on the same Memorex media. Again, after waiting for another 4 hours, it failed at some package only in the first 25% of the install.

Now after three failed install I am starting to think I got a bad iso. Let me do a checksum to make sure, it checks out. So let me download yet another one. Waiting on the iso to download, I grabbed one of my Sony DVD-RW to see if I had two bad burners. Most my equipment is older than my five year old son.

I took the disc I just burned compared it to the other two and noticed that the Memorex didn't burn good. I know bad English, but you could look at the disc and see that the disc was not right.

Taking the Memorex throwing the cross my home office like ninja stars, with my son thinking that the coolest thing since Legos (Now, I am having to stop him from throwing his DVD's the same way).I took the Sony popped in and crossed my fingers, curse out loud things that most five years shouldn't heard because the are parrots with those word and began to do install number 4.

To make sure I didn't go crazy I when to living room and sat with my son and watch Legion of Superheroes. After an hour I came back into the room to find openSUSE 11.1 installed. No issues. Which really reminded me that not all media is the same.

To this date, I will stand by the cheapest DVD I can buy at Microcenter and that is Windat. So if you are having issue with an issue, step back. It might not be your iso. It might be your media.

openSUSE Newletter 90

openSUSE Weekly News 90 is availabe. Read the full issue: http://2tu.us/uix

Gnokii Pod Cast from OSC09

Hey, Gnokii did a pod cast from OSC09, there is a little bit with Zonker that they did in Berlin, Federico Mena, Vincent Untz, Sankar P., Andrew Wafaa and Brent are in English the rest is in German and French.

http://archiv.radiotux.de/sendungen/radiotux/2009-22-09.RadioTux.SUSEConf09.mp3
http://archiv.radiotux.de/sendungen/radiotux/2009-22-09.RadioTux.SUSEConf09.ogg

Enjoy -- Pup

After thoughts

...about the Atlanta Linux Fest

Yesterday was great. Nick and Amber and the rest of the folks, hats off to you guys. You out did yourselves. I kept hearing reports that 500 people were to show up, but by the afternoon I heard that number was over 600. Great job.

I like to take this time to help promote two local companies in the Atlanta.

First is FOSS Threads - Designer Apparel for the Community, these guys rock. Not only do they support Open Source by using Fedora and openSUSE. They great awesome shirts. If you even to ALF and didn't pick up one or you just want to show your pride for Atlanta and Open Source please buy one of their shirts.

Second is EAPPS. They are a local hosting company base out Norcross, GA. They sat to my table at ALF. What they are offering is great. We need to support our local company. So you need web hosting.

I like to give a special thanks to James A. Tremblay for helping watch the table while I gave my talk about the openSUSE community. He was doing a great job at promoting openSUSE Eduction. If you haven't please take a look at live CD, give to anyone that is working in Eduction. James, good luck with your work, please let me know how I can help out.

To the Fedora Guys for introducing me to Dave Yate of lottalinux to help explain openSUSE Ambassador program, what we are trying to do for openSUSE.

Thanks to Rikki of LinuxPro Magazine for all the information about free casting they are going to be doing at LinuxCon, that is awesome and everyone should check it out. For those of you that never picked up a copy of LinuxPro magazine, they are the leading Linux magazine for both noobs and old pros a like.

Again it was an honor for me to be allowed to talk to the many folks Atlanta Linux Fest. Since answering the call back in May for openSUSE. I have enjoy spreading the word about how great of distro openSUSE is.

Can't wait until Atlanta Linux Fest 2010.

(Tweets: #atllinuxfest, #atlantalinuxfest, #opensuse)

What your Community has to offer...a guide to the openSUSE Community

For those that what a copy of my talk here are the slides. Sorry for the delay, I didn't have wireless at the talk and my Sprint card didn't work.

http://www.magidesign.com/download/alf.odp

Please dot me an e-mail to let me know what you think of the talk.

terrorpup-at_gmail_com

For those that got my SUSESTUDIO Server disc, where are the login accounts.

root/atlfest
alf/fest

Please dot me a line on what you think.

terrorpup_at_gmail_dot_com

Guys, sorry I will post a link for the iso this weekend for anyone that didn't get a copy.

Video Nightmare

At work I use openSUSE, it makes life so much easier to take care of all the Unix Boxes that I am in charge of. But one of my biggest nightmare with opensuse is video drivers. I bought GEForce 7300 card at my last job so that I could use compiz.

Well at work we use Dell Optiplex 745, nice machine. They came with ATI 2400HD cards. At first I tried to use it, but any time I try to set up my dual monitor ( I have two 19" wide monitor), the care would crash. I tried to use this command...

 amdcccle

But no luck, the card, when I tried to set up for dual head would crash my box. So I put in my card that I wasn't using because all my PC at home are still AGP, this Nvidia card is PCI Express.

At first if I tried to use SaX, it wouldn't not let me adjust the screen beyond 1280x1024 and wouldn't even see the dual head settings. So, I searched the net with no answer to help me out. One day while I was looking in System --> Configuration ( I am proud KDE user), I found a program that I haven't seen there before. NVIDIA X Server Settings. At first I wasn't sure if this was going to help me. I used to set up my X to the way I wanted.

It worked. I am running two separate X screen, both at 1680x1050.

Well after a running my box this way at work. I has a hardware crash. X conf got damaged. When I tried to remember how I set it up, I couldn't. So I did a search on the net. By the way, lately Google is not your friend when it come to doing searches. After a couple of day, I reached out to the openSUSE mail list asking if anyone know what the Nvidia command that was like "amdccle", no answer.

Well I can happen say that found again the Nvidia-setting command. I have my X back up the way I had, but for two weeks. I was living the nightmare of only having one screen, plus not being able to get the answer I was needing to fix my issue.