As I have been checking deeper into distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE there's one thing that Debian still lacks. It feels really unpolished compared to the former.
Why?
In Ubuntu, if you use Files (GNOME file manager) right-click and try to share a folder it will ask you to download Samba and configure it for you.
In Debian I would get funny errors because Samba isn't configured at all. This was one of my experiences with Dolphin that I would right-click and try to share a folder with the other Windows computers and it wouldn't
What is Debian? It's something that I've been pondering for a while. Debian's site doesn't have a welcoming design like Fedora one does. The community (forums) seems like a passive-aggressive sort of bunch (although honestly it feels like it's like that with most Linux communities). So is Debian just a distribution template for other based distributions to copy? Maybe.
Another example, this time unrelated to KDE is the GNOME experience in Debian jessie/testing. Sure, you would argue that it's unreleased. Fine, it's a total valid point but hear me out:
I couldn't for the life of me CHANGE the language to Spanish in GNOME Debian. I went to the expected place to change the settings but the option wasn't there at all. In Ubuntu, it will give you the option to install the Spanish language package and make that user use the Spanish language while other accounts maintains the English language as default.
The GNOME 3.12 account integration with other services was well done. Of course, in Ubuntu it was just plain better.
I haven't checked Fedora yet. I'm actually downloading it right now to see how polished is Fedora.
As much as people hate Ubuntu, because it seems to be the popular thing to do Ubuntu does a lot of things right that the desktop experience needs. You can hate it all you want, it won't remove the fact that Ubuntu just wins hands down.
This is not about "well, I prefer is the distribution would let me configure the installed software rather than it making the decisions by itself". Fine, you like to waste time and configure your own stuff. That's great, but you are missing the point. This so called "newbie distro" is aiming to be things that other distributions couldn't do and that is to bring a easy to use GNU/Linux desktop and see that sharing, installing printers, etc is working as expected.
Showing posts with label debian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debian. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Monday, September 1, 2014
I was wrong about GNOME 3, it might become one of the strongest DE contender than it ever was.
I was wrong. I won't apologize of course, we all know that GNOME 3 didn't exactly had an spectacular release. And I still hate the official tablet-like look--mind you, I still use GNOME Classic.
So what was I so wrong about? Why doesn't GNOME 3 die and burn in hell for eternity?
Well, if you have to ask. They did a lot of things right. I would say they provided an even more intuitive interface than KDE ever did.
How important is unification?
If you are some sort of neckbeard or wannabe zealot then chances are you are enjoying your Linux desktop in whatever window manager of your choosing while simultaneously assaulting other desktops environments and depriving them of their choices.
After using GNOME 3.12, something came to mind. They were doing a lot of things right. I think screenshots will do a better talking than me.
I don't think many of you know but I was a GNOME 2 avid user. I loved it to death, and then KDE 4 came with all its stupid wobbly windows, but you know, it worked. It was usable, sure it had its ups and down but it didn't turn out so bad.
So what was I so wrong about? Why doesn't GNOME 3 die and burn in hell for eternity?
Well, if you have to ask. They did a lot of things right. I would say they provided an even more intuitive interface than KDE ever did.
How important is unification?
If you are some sort of neckbeard or wannabe zealot then chances are you are enjoying your Linux desktop in whatever window manager of your choosing while simultaneously assaulting other desktops environments and depriving them of their choices.
After using GNOME 3.12, something came to mind. They were doing a lot of things right. I think screenshots will do a better talking than me.
 |
| User Management is a bliss. |
 |
| Evolution unifies really well with my google account |
 |
| No brainer date and time interface |
 |
| One of my favorites! I wish KDE had something like this |
 |
| Automatic printer sharing detection. I was using Samba of course. |
 |
| It's so easy it hurts. |
 |
| Beautiful font rendering |
 |
| And this wins the prize |
I don't think many of you know but I was a GNOME 2 avid user. I loved it to death, and then KDE 4 came with all its stupid wobbly windows, but you know, it worked. It was usable, sure it had its ups and down but it didn't turn out so bad.
GNOME 3 did a daring move though, one that could have ended the project itself. Yet, they started listening to feedback. I think that in a way I blame their user interface designers because they could have introduced more HUMANE interfaces than what they provided in the initial release. It felt like they forgot their old userbase existed and that's bad. The thing that "we don't know what we want" is a bullshit line, imho. Even if the end-user didn't know what she/he wants, you shouldn't have gone full retard.
Of course, GNU/Linux is all about choice. Sadly, if we are going to CONQUER the desktop we need to choose a desktop environment to rule them all. If so, which would be your desktop environment of choice that the end-user would feel usable? Let's play a game. Choose one that needs the least of terminal interaction.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
dpkg -i mistakes-0.10.deb: 24 hours into Fedora 20
I did a very stupid mistake yesterday. Oh yes, I did learn from my mistakes very much, thank you!
So I installed Fedora 20 on my main desktop. As some of you know I use Debian 7 (Wheezy) for my main desktop--isn't that "old"? Well, I can play Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, install the latest NVIDIA drivers, etc, so yea, it works wonder for me.
That's not the point though, far from it. I had problems with Fedora 20 I never thought I would run into, maybe because I'm not that experience with its whole ecosystem and vast libraries. However, I'm more of an end-user than anything else. There are things in Fedora 20 that were real deal breakers for me.
Just a note: This post is not meant to be an attack against Fedora distribution or its users.
I told myself yesterday, "you know what? I'm gonna go install Fedora and use it until Debian 8 is out", and that I did! After testing the distro in my overly abused virtualbox hard drive it was more than obvious that Fedora is a very stable distribution.
So, let's start with things I didn't like so we can later concentrate on things I did like:
Fedora 20 Installation process:
Fedora uses anaconda to manage all the installation tasks, get the user info, etc. One of the things that was a heavy deal breaker was how IMPOSSIBLE it was to create a partition with rest of the space available. The case was the following:
I have my /home separated, like any sane person would, and well it was a total of 4 partitions: /, /home, /boot, /another_partition. These were existing partitions and they have never failed me in any way. So, what went wrong?
Fedora didn't want to use the remainder of the space left for my root partition. What it did was the following: It created a root partition of 8.523 GB, and there was NO WAY to alter that value because it would revert to it.
After battling with the partition manager--which I wasn't that comfortable with in the first place--the installation finished. I booted it up, entered my credentials and surprise! Another issue: I think this is because Fedora 20 has SELinux in a more strict mode, I'm not sure if I'm correct here. The thing is that they were permission errors and I had to do a restorecon to fix my /home and finally it would let me enter.
It wasn't much of a problem. I won't lie, I thought Fedora messed up my /home partition, it scared the hell out of me. Usually I've done like 4-5 retaining my /home partition with no backup. I know, I know. It's a bad idea, right? So anyway, it was a solid KDE experience. Everything worked! So you know what this means right? Install ALL DEM APPS AND DEPENDENCIES!
Alright there's a problem. I love yum. I love how cohesive it is, you don't have the silly "apt-file, apt-whatever", instead you can use yum whatprovides and it works flawlessly. BUT! The naming convention for the libraries is a bit nuts. You can have lowercase library names, you can also have lower/upper libraries and it's MADDENING. It's not a big deal, right? Well, that's what I thought until I ended up wasting more time reaching my shift key and deleting characters, even the tab for auto-completition didn't help.
I could live with it though. But then the following case happened: I installed steam through rpmfusion. It was easy and straightforward, yet finding the DEPENDENCIES for each game was itself the biggest chore ever. And some of the dependencies I installed didn't even work when ldd reported to me that the library is not found. The dependencies problems were making me go insane because not only that happened, I couldn't even play a mkv/mp4 video because for some reason it didn't pull the libvpx.
Now, I know that what I'm going to say may or may not bother you but: In Debian if I pulled from the repos mpd or smplayer it made sure to pull all the required and optional libraries. You might object "why install the optional library?!", for the very same reason that we must think of the end-user. It's not about having a tidy, minimal installation. To me, if you can't provide a decent experience that I have to go on hunting then there's something horribly wrong with the user experience.
Now, without further ado: What I liked about Fedora 20:
- Stability. It felt incredibly rock solid for a distribution that has like 2-3 years cycle. I do wish they extended the support up to 3-4 years but Fedora is bleeding edge itself and they do a seriously great job.
- yum - I really like yum, like I said before it felt really great using it.
- Installation - Despite my crappy experience with the partition section, the installation was the shortest and most straightforward thing ever. This is great for anyone lacking technical experience.
- A polished KDE experience
- Useful sites and tools like Fedy, rpmfusion, fedorapeople repos.
I went back to Debian. In less than 2-3 hours I had my setup running with all the applications I used. Funny enough before running apt-get install kde-full I installed openbox, lightdm, thunar, xterm, smplayer, zsh. I mounted my other hard drive disk and proceeded to watch TV Series while kde-full finished installing.
Will I revisit Fedora? I think that yea, maybe in a near future I will. But not as my main OS.
So I installed Fedora 20 on my main desktop. As some of you know I use Debian 7 (Wheezy) for my main desktop--isn't that "old"? Well, I can play Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, install the latest NVIDIA drivers, etc, so yea, it works wonder for me.
That's not the point though, far from it. I had problems with Fedora 20 I never thought I would run into, maybe because I'm not that experience with its whole ecosystem and vast libraries. However, I'm more of an end-user than anything else. There are things in Fedora 20 that were real deal breakers for me.
Just a note: This post is not meant to be an attack against Fedora distribution or its users.
I told myself yesterday, "you know what? I'm gonna go install Fedora and use it until Debian 8 is out", and that I did! After testing the distro in my overly abused virtualbox hard drive it was more than obvious that Fedora is a very stable distribution.
So, let's start with things I didn't like so we can later concentrate on things I did like:
Fedora 20 Installation process:
Fedora uses anaconda to manage all the installation tasks, get the user info, etc. One of the things that was a heavy deal breaker was how IMPOSSIBLE it was to create a partition with rest of the space available. The case was the following:
I have my /home separated, like any sane person would, and well it was a total of 4 partitions: /, /home, /boot, /another_partition. These were existing partitions and they have never failed me in any way. So, what went wrong?
Fedora didn't want to use the remainder of the space left for my root partition. What it did was the following: It created a root partition of 8.523 GB, and there was NO WAY to alter that value because it would revert to it.
After battling with the partition manager--which I wasn't that comfortable with in the first place--the installation finished. I booted it up, entered my credentials and surprise! Another issue: I think this is because Fedora 20 has SELinux in a more strict mode, I'm not sure if I'm correct here. The thing is that they were permission errors and I had to do a restorecon to fix my /home and finally it would let me enter.
It wasn't much of a problem. I won't lie, I thought Fedora messed up my /home partition, it scared the hell out of me. Usually I've done like 4-5 retaining my /home partition with no backup. I know, I know. It's a bad idea, right? So anyway, it was a solid KDE experience. Everything worked! So you know what this means right? Install ALL DEM APPS AND DEPENDENCIES!
Alright there's a problem. I love yum. I love how cohesive it is, you don't have the silly "apt-file, apt-whatever", instead you can use yum whatprovides and it works flawlessly. BUT! The naming convention for the libraries is a bit nuts. You can have lowercase library names, you can also have lower/upper libraries and it's MADDENING. It's not a big deal, right? Well, that's what I thought until I ended up wasting more time reaching my shift key and deleting characters, even the tab for auto-completition didn't help.
I could live with it though. But then the following case happened: I installed steam through rpmfusion. It was easy and straightforward, yet finding the DEPENDENCIES for each game was itself the biggest chore ever. And some of the dependencies I installed didn't even work when ldd reported to me that the library is not found. The dependencies problems were making me go insane because not only that happened, I couldn't even play a mkv/mp4 video because for some reason it didn't pull the libvpx.
Now, I know that what I'm going to say may or may not bother you but: In Debian if I pulled from the repos mpd or smplayer it made sure to pull all the required and optional libraries. You might object "why install the optional library?!", for the very same reason that we must think of the end-user. It's not about having a tidy, minimal installation. To me, if you can't provide a decent experience that I have to go on hunting then there's something horribly wrong with the user experience.
Now, without further ado: What I liked about Fedora 20:
- Stability. It felt incredibly rock solid for a distribution that has like 2-3 years cycle. I do wish they extended the support up to 3-4 years but Fedora is bleeding edge itself and they do a seriously great job.
- yum - I really like yum, like I said before it felt really great using it.
- Installation - Despite my crappy experience with the partition section, the installation was the shortest and most straightforward thing ever. This is great for anyone lacking technical experience.
- A polished KDE experience
- Useful sites and tools like Fedy, rpmfusion, fedorapeople repos.
I went back to Debian. In less than 2-3 hours I had my setup running with all the applications I used. Funny enough before running apt-get install kde-full I installed openbox, lightdm, thunar, xterm, smplayer, zsh. I mounted my other hard drive disk and proceeded to watch TV Series while kde-full finished installing.
Will I revisit Fedora? I think that yea, maybe in a near future I will. But not as my main OS.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Happy Birthday, Debian!
One of my favorite distributions, Debian, finally turned 21 years old.
It's okay Debian, people joke about you not having the latest packages (while ignoring unstable exists), but most of us who want a peaceful, solid experience will always prefer Debian stable. Yes, I use Debian stable in my desktop, no, my computer isn't old :P I can play modern PC games with no problems.
Thank you, Debian Developers!
It's okay Debian, people joke about you not having the latest packages (while ignoring unstable exists), but most of us who want a peaceful, solid experience will always prefer Debian stable. Yes, I use Debian stable in my desktop, no, my computer isn't old :P I can play modern PC games with no problems.
Thank you, Debian Developers!
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
[Debian 7.6] Nepomuk file indexer, why are you so useless? :(
The place where I live have power outages. Something that I can't control, sadly. I've noticed that while the file indexer is running and there's a sudden power outage, or maybe I pressed the reset button by mistake; it makes the whole KDE environment unstable. Prime example would be Dolphin, it takes like a minute or two to launch.
Disable the file indexer. Something I didn't really want to do to be honest, there's no other way. Well, more like I don't want to invest my time on something that should work out of the box. I wish it had a mechanism where it could automatically get rid of corrupted files, that would be more ideal than having the user delete the corrupted file. Bugs like that kills the user experience, and that for me is unacceptable.
No, no. I won't upgrade or change my distribution. Distro hopping is never the answer. This is one of the things I dislike about Debian is that once a freeze happens, packages won't get updated unless it's a security issue. Even if the package receive bugfixes as minor bugs (lets say 1.7.1 becomes 1.7.2) chances of it making it to the repositories are dim.
DBus error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.How to solve the problem?
Disable the file indexer. Something I didn't really want to do to be honest, there's no other way. Well, more like I don't want to invest my time on something that should work out of the box. I wish it had a mechanism where it could automatically get rid of corrupted files, that would be more ideal than having the user delete the corrupted file. Bugs like that kills the user experience, and that for me is unacceptable.
No, no. I won't upgrade or change my distribution. Distro hopping is never the answer. This is one of the things I dislike about Debian is that once a freeze happens, packages won't get updated unless it's a security issue. Even if the package receive bugfixes as minor bugs (lets say 1.7.1 becomes 1.7.2) chances of it making it to the repositories are dim.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
In The Spirit of the Open Source Community
This post will probably annoy the hell of you and many people that are too far away from reality in OSS land.
This is related to this reddit post and the insane amount of people going to the extreme.
First of all, I'm not going to pretend or be that guy that's always chiming on how open sourcing stuff is always better, or why open source software is good. Let's be frank here, there's a high chance that most people saying that:
1) Aren't developers. Yea, yea, you played with code before, but what are the chances that you have contributed to an open source project yourself? Oh, don't mind me! I know there are people that contribute to some projects; I dare say that the people who say that however, doesn't. But let's take a more realistic step, how many people have developed a full open source solution AND profit from it. Besides the top guys from Red Hat and other companies? I've rarely read successful stories. There are bills to pay, people.
2) They aren't objective when it comes to commercial software. One of the things that I really, really detest about the open source communities is that, no matter what the whole discourse feels like an slap to developers that want to make a living with open source. Everyone wants free of charge software. Appreciation? Hell no, fix the bugs first you lazy dev! Also, what is the matter with that code you just wrote? Do you even know how to program at all? [insert dozen of negative (vitriolic) comments about how useless is the developer, because you know, doing it for free wasn't enough for them]
3) The famous phrases:
"The good thing about open source is that the code is open for everyone to audit, improve. So if there's a bug or a feature...". Well, the thing about that is that I've seen old and new open source software plagued with bugs and guess what? Nobody has come in and fix them. It's not always the case, and people shouldn't rely on that every time. Even popular software like GIMP has bugs in some part of its UI (usually minor bugs) and chances are that no one will do it themselves.
"Then I can fix a bug myself" -- ... really? I've always felt the need to yell "bullshit" when users state that. Especially when it comes to projects that have a huge codebase.
4) Micro$oft is evil, they make terrible software and the drivers sucks. -- The first part I want to say is all relative to which software is in question. Honestly? I've RARELY had problems with software on Microsoft Windows. The second part, the drivers aren't created by Microsoft (I hope you are getting the gist). Is Microsoft fully at fault? Not really, of course you are set to believe whatever stuff you want.
What troubles me so much about these type of people is how irrational their hatred is against Microsoft (almost as if Ballmer came in personally and beat the crap out of his/he family, stabbed the dog and killed his/her grandparents). I just can't participate in a community that have this sort of people in it. Sure I can tolerate a dozen (hopefully not at the same time), but 100 or 200? I'll just hop to another community in the hopes that there are rational human beings.
Also, it doesn't help that the time spent configuring your desktop which I would say it takes hours, depending on what you want to do with it, and the fact that sometimes software have annoying bugs in them (Hello, Nepomuk and KOrganizer) takes a lot of time to search the cause and solution.
Why do I bring this up? Because it hurts me. I want to create a project, open source it and you know, profit from it. The reality is that that won't happen because for some reason people take it as granted that if it's open source then they won't have to pay shit, nada. Sadly, I'll be stuck in a software company writing proprietary software while keeping my kickass open source solution as a pet project. Isn't that usually how it goes though? Everything starts small, suddenly you see all sorts of individuals poking around the mailing list or forums that they want support and you know you don't have the time because then there's this thing called family and your full time shift is draining you to hell.
I suppose I should go to r/linux and tell them how frustrating it is. Of course that won't happen. I do expect people to understand me; however I don't expect majority to agree with me, or even acknowledge the problem. Of course all these what-ifs and assumptions won't get me anywhere, but most of us know the drill. It's like going into r/skyrim and tell them how much the game sucks and you know that people there will downvote you to hell, even if you have legitimate reasons. But you know, if you aren't open sourcing your code it means you are a pretty shoddy programmer. *facepalm*
While the tone of this post may sound "angry". Which I'm not really, sad would be my current state.
It's pretty easy to talk about ideals and burn people in online communities. Hell, I expect to get a load of shit in the future because that's how it usually goes, sadly.
This is related to this reddit post and the insane amount of people going to the extreme.
First of all, I'm not going to pretend or be that guy that's always chiming on how open sourcing stuff is always better, or why open source software is good. Let's be frank here, there's a high chance that most people saying that:
1) Aren't developers. Yea, yea, you played with code before, but what are the chances that you have contributed to an open source project yourself? Oh, don't mind me! I know there are people that contribute to some projects; I dare say that the people who say that however, doesn't. But let's take a more realistic step, how many people have developed a full open source solution AND profit from it. Besides the top guys from Red Hat and other companies? I've rarely read successful stories. There are bills to pay, people.
2) They aren't objective when it comes to commercial software. One of the things that I really, really detest about the open source communities is that, no matter what the whole discourse feels like an slap to developers that want to make a living with open source. Everyone wants free of charge software. Appreciation? Hell no, fix the bugs first you lazy dev! Also, what is the matter with that code you just wrote? Do you even know how to program at all? [insert dozen of negative (vitriolic) comments about how useless is the developer, because you know, doing it for free wasn't enough for them]
3) The famous phrases:
"The good thing about open source is that the code is open for everyone to audit, improve. So if there's a bug or a feature...". Well, the thing about that is that I've seen old and new open source software plagued with bugs and guess what? Nobody has come in and fix them. It's not always the case, and people shouldn't rely on that every time. Even popular software like GIMP has bugs in some part of its UI (usually minor bugs) and chances are that no one will do it themselves.
"Then I can fix a bug myself" -- ... really? I've always felt the need to yell "bullshit" when users state that. Especially when it comes to projects that have a huge codebase.
4) Micro$oft is evil, they make terrible software and the drivers sucks. -- The first part I want to say is all relative to which software is in question. Honestly? I've RARELY had problems with software on Microsoft Windows. The second part, the drivers aren't created by Microsoft (I hope you are getting the gist). Is Microsoft fully at fault? Not really, of course you are set to believe whatever stuff you want.
What troubles me so much about these type of people is how irrational their hatred is against Microsoft (almost as if Ballmer came in personally and beat the crap out of his/he family, stabbed the dog and killed his/her grandparents). I just can't participate in a community that have this sort of people in it. Sure I can tolerate a dozen (hopefully not at the same time), but 100 or 200? I'll just hop to another community in the hopes that there are rational human beings.
Also, it doesn't help that the time spent configuring your desktop which I would say it takes hours, depending on what you want to do with it, and the fact that sometimes software have annoying bugs in them (Hello, Nepomuk and KOrganizer) takes a lot of time to search the cause and solution.
Why do I bring this up? Because it hurts me. I want to create a project, open source it and you know, profit from it. The reality is that that won't happen because for some reason people take it as granted that if it's open source then they won't have to pay shit, nada. Sadly, I'll be stuck in a software company writing proprietary software while keeping my kickass open source solution as a pet project. Isn't that usually how it goes though? Everything starts small, suddenly you see all sorts of individuals poking around the mailing list or forums that they want support and you know you don't have the time because then there's this thing called family and your full time shift is draining you to hell.
I suppose I should go to r/linux and tell them how frustrating it is. Of course that won't happen. I do expect people to understand me; however I don't expect majority to agree with me, or even acknowledge the problem. Of course all these what-ifs and assumptions won't get me anywhere, but most of us know the drill. It's like going into r/skyrim and tell them how much the game sucks and you know that people there will downvote you to hell, even if you have legitimate reasons. But you know, if you aren't open sourcing your code it means you are a pretty shoddy programmer. *facepalm*
While the tone of this post may sound "angry". Which I'm not really, sad would be my current state.
It's pretty easy to talk about ideals and burn people in online communities. Hell, I expect to get a load of shit in the future because that's how it usually goes, sadly.
Monday, August 4, 2014
An Additional Note for WINE underrun audio issue
A month or two ago I saw a comment that mentioned "PulseAudio underruns occurs in the newer versions, not in the old ones"
I was unsure about this myself--being a Debian sid user also came into play because I would have to do my own compilation, which I never did and I was always using the new shiny PulseAudio they provided. You could say that I didn't really look into it, also compiling PulseAudio was a pain from their repos (mostly because I had the brightest idea of compiling the git master).
Anyways, I'm here to confirm that it's true. For some reason the older versions just work. I'm using PulseAudio 2.0 and while I have run into underruns myself, it recovers pretty fast (3-4 seconds). I've played Guild Wars 2 without audio problems, usually underrun issues happens really fast.
I was unsure about this myself--being a Debian sid user also came into play because I would have to do my own compilation, which I never did and I was always using the new shiny PulseAudio they provided. You could say that I didn't really look into it, also compiling PulseAudio was a pain from their repos (mostly because I had the brightest idea of compiling the git master).
Anyways, I'm here to confirm that it's true. For some reason the older versions just work. I'm using PulseAudio 2.0 and while I have run into underruns myself, it recovers pretty fast (3-4 seconds). I've played Guild Wars 2 without audio problems, usually underrun issues happens really fast.
So yea, try downgrading PulseAudio to version 3 or 2. I can't guarantee it will work but it's an option.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Screw you, random freezes!
Yesterday in my post about joining the crew of the thousands using Debian (Wheezy) 7. I mentioned that I was getting random freezes in Debian unstable (sid). At first I thought it was because there was some sort of obscure library crapping out. Sadly that isn't the case, apparently it could be a bad driver (weirdly it mostly pointed to NVIDIA drivers). I also noticed this in my syslog:
Aug 3 17:41:22 debianbox kernel: [ 48.601212] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 54 for MSI/MSI-X
Aug 3 09:52:43 debianbox kernel: [ 729.734969] pulseaudio[4819]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8e8e85bf31 sp 00007fff0017a430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8e8e72b000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.689115] kde-open[5084]: segfault at b0 ip 00007fc14602cf31 sp 00007fff713dc430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7fc145efc000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.709502] kfmclient[5085]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f3223e50f31 sp 00007fffdd5736c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f3223d20000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:06:12 debianbox kernel: [ 1539.401962] pulseaudio[5110]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8cceb70f31 sp 00007fff28bb95c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8ccea40000+1b5000]
Aug 3 17:41:22 debianbox kernel: [ 48.601212] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 54 for MSI/MSI-X
Aug 3 09:52:43 debianbox kernel: [ 729.734969] pulseaudio[4819]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8e8e85bf31 sp 00007fff0017a430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8e8e72b000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.689115] kde-open[5084]: segfault at b0 ip 00007fc14602cf31 sp 00007fff713dc430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7fc145efc000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.709502] kfmclient[5085]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f3223e50f31 sp 00007fffdd5736c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f3223d20000+1b5000]
Aug 3 10:06:12 debianbox kernel: [ 1539.401962] pulseaudio[5110]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8cceb70f31 sp 00007fff28bb95c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8ccea40000+1b5000]
I came into conclusion:
PulseAudio shouldn't be using libc-2.15 that resides in Steam library, and neither should those applications. I don't know why it chose to do that though. I might have an idea of why it's doing so...
Still, it's not the culprit. Not until a freeze happens again--which it hasn't for some weird reason. My fears is that my video card might be dying... which I hope that's not the case!
It kinda sucks... because it would mean that I have to buy a new video card, best case scenario is that one of the RAM sticks is failing. (they are cheap, what? I'm still a poor college student!)
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Huff! Hello, Debian Wheezy 7.6!
Yesterday I decided to format my computer and install Debian Wheezy. There was no data loss, of course; because any rational person would separate their /home partition. In a future I'm hoping for a more "complex" solution as in extending my /home partition when I install a new hard drive disk.
Why go back to old libraries and applications?
You might be thinking. If you aren't a Linux Developer or a developer of any type, chances are that a rolling-release is an overkill choice, this is my honest take on rolling-release distributions, or even semi-rolling. Yes, there may be libraries, applications that delivers certain bugfixes you need. However I believe that the cost of stability is too high for such pesky problems. Let's say you use Thunderbird from stable (Icedove, I love it so much). There's this bug preventing you to use it.
My initial take is to download the official binaries from Thunderbird site, set up a PATH for it and be done with it. In fact I do have several paths for applications. I also have a local application so I don't override my distributions libraries/applications:
# david at debianbox in ~ [12:24:01]
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/home/david/Libraries/firefox/:/home/david/Libraries/thunderbird:/home/david/Libraries/screenfetch-3.2.2/:/home/david/LocalApps/bin:/home/david/.Jester/shortcuts/:/home/david/.cabal/bin
I live on the (bleeding) edge!
I used to do that too! Personally, like I said I just don't find a purpose of doing so. I learned something from Slackware's way of upgrading. If everything is working perfectly, even modern applications, then why bother upgrading at all? I'll keep using Wheezy until Debian decides to drop support. (My thoughts may change over time, not everything is black and white)
The Exceptions
Normally. There are always exceptions. For example, you take your time testing Debian jessie and spend the time filling bug reports, etc. I find that truly wonderful and I thank you for your time!
You need the latest libraries because you are developing a software that requires it. It could be because the library uses new features, etc. I've always found it a bit distasteful that developers sometimes forgets users that aren't using an "up-to-date" distribution.
Why I say this? Well, yesterday I ran into a problem where Steam launcher was compiled against a newer version of libc6, this was quite worrisome because 1) I had a slightly older version, it wasn't so old 2) I already had an idea on how to fix it, luckily there was this awesome contribution that already provided a debian package.
The hardware you bought is not supported until you use the newest kernel or need the module requires a newer kernel.
Downgrade EVERYTHING!
The downgrade wasn't bad at all, everything worked. Except Dolphin, for some reason I had to wipe out all the configuration because there was a dbus problem.
Aside from that. I compiled MPD/Cantata. Installed Steam, everything else was straightforward. I installed all the 32bit libraries so WINE could function, in matter of minutes I was already running Guild Wars 2, Torchlight, TripleTown and some other games I have installed.
It sort of bring a peace of mind. I was already getting tired of running apt-get dist-upgrade every 3 days, yea I could automate it--let's be honest that's one of the most horrible ideas ever, you don't do automatic upgrades in an unstable distribution. Only masochists do that!
There was a problem with my Debian sid. I won't lie, there were several problems with it. The main one: Random freezes. I'm not talking about X server freezing on me. I'm talking about a whole computer freeze, and the thing about this freeze is that it never logged anything. I couldn't file a report to the kernel people because I didn't have anything to offer and I couldn't post a thread because I don't know what was triggering it.
Random freezes were my blue screen of death. I couldn't restart X server, I couldn't switch to a different TTY and syslog/dmesg didn't show anything.
I could have installed Debian sid back again. But for what? My mind was set that at this moment I didn't feel like dealing with that stuff.
I hope this doesn't come down as a pretentious post. This is my honest take on stuff. Feel free to comment!
Why go back to old libraries and applications?
You might be thinking. If you aren't a Linux Developer or a developer of any type, chances are that a rolling-release is an overkill choice, this is my honest take on rolling-release distributions, or even semi-rolling. Yes, there may be libraries, applications that delivers certain bugfixes you need. However I believe that the cost of stability is too high for such pesky problems. Let's say you use Thunderbird from stable (Icedove, I love it so much). There's this bug preventing you to use it.
My initial take is to download the official binaries from Thunderbird site, set up a PATH for it and be done with it. In fact I do have several paths for applications. I also have a local application so I don't override my distributions libraries/applications:
# david at debianbox in ~ [12:24:01]
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/home/david/Libraries/firefox/:/home/david/Libraries/thunderbird:/home/david/Libraries/screenfetch-3.2.2/:/home/david/LocalApps/bin:/home/david/.Jester/shortcuts/:/home/david/.cabal/bin
I live on the (bleeding) edge!
I used to do that too! Personally, like I said I just don't find a purpose of doing so. I learned something from Slackware's way of upgrading. If everything is working perfectly, even modern applications, then why bother upgrading at all? I'll keep using Wheezy until Debian decides to drop support. (My thoughts may change over time, not everything is black and white)
The Exceptions
Normally. There are always exceptions. For example, you take your time testing Debian jessie and spend the time filling bug reports, etc. I find that truly wonderful and I thank you for your time!
You need the latest libraries because you are developing a software that requires it. It could be because the library uses new features, etc. I've always found it a bit distasteful that developers sometimes forgets users that aren't using an "up-to-date" distribution.
Why I say this? Well, yesterday I ran into a problem where Steam launcher was compiled against a newer version of libc6, this was quite worrisome because 1) I had a slightly older version, it wasn't so old 2) I already had an idea on how to fix it, luckily there was this awesome contribution that already provided a debian package.
The hardware you bought is not supported until you use the newest kernel or need the module requires a newer kernel.
Downgrade EVERYTHING!
The downgrade wasn't bad at all, everything worked. Except Dolphin, for some reason I had to wipe out all the configuration because there was a dbus problem.
Aside from that. I compiled MPD/Cantata. Installed Steam, everything else was straightforward. I installed all the 32bit libraries so WINE could function, in matter of minutes I was already running Guild Wars 2, Torchlight, TripleTown and some other games I have installed.
It sort of bring a peace of mind. I was already getting tired of running apt-get dist-upgrade every 3 days, yea I could automate it--let's be honest that's one of the most horrible ideas ever, you don't do automatic upgrades in an unstable distribution. Only masochists do that!
There was a problem with my Debian sid. I won't lie, there were several problems with it. The main one: Random freezes. I'm not talking about X server freezing on me. I'm talking about a whole computer freeze, and the thing about this freeze is that it never logged anything. I couldn't file a report to the kernel people because I didn't have anything to offer and I couldn't post a thread because I don't know what was triggering it.
Random freezes were my blue screen of death. I couldn't restart X server, I couldn't switch to a different TTY and syslog/dmesg didn't show anything.
I could have installed Debian sid back again. But for what? My mind was set that at this moment I didn't feel like dealing with that stuff.
I hope this doesn't come down as a pretentious post. This is my honest take on stuff. Feel free to comment!
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
A Taste of Slackware (14.1)
Lately, I've been exploring minimalist distributions where they let you maintain your craft your own environment from the scratch. I don't blame distributions for trying their own thing; not at all, I actually promote and cheer on them to bring a more polished experience. If I'd ever work on a distribution myself I'll do my best to bring the best KDE experience on it--as a KDE user myself.
I like Slackware. I like its philosophy, I like how down to earth it is when it comes to maintaining your Slackware system.
I've been spending a few hours each day getting more and more into Slackware environment. It's no different than your typical Debian or Arch Linux setup when it comes to GNU/Linux. Some things regarding the init scripts changes and that's to be expected since they also tell you about it.
I installed Slackware 64-bit, the installation itself was delightful. I only ran into a few struggles and it all came down to LILO. For some reason it kept throwing errors and I wasn't remotely sure on the why. I wasn't ready to take on LILO either, mostly because over the years the default boot loader has been GRUB.
Anyhow, it all worked out. I just followed the main instructions to boot the root partition from the DVD messages and I was in my Slackware system in mere of seconds. Truly amazing! I did a rerun of LILO configuration and it managed to properly reinstall itself. What went wrong? I don't know.
Immediately after my system booted. I ran xwmconfig and as you expected, I chose KDE. I had the opportunity to try XFCE and some other window managers like Fluxbox. For some reason if you are out of the QT/GTK environment the application appearance becomes quite ugly and you have to go the extra mile to figure out what's wrong. I kinda knew what was wrong, at least on the GTK part, but on the QT side I wasn't that sure.
Slackware is truly an stable distribution, at least from what I've managed to work with. What brought me to "fear" it was that I was in charge of managing my own multilib.
I'll try to elaborate:
In the Debian environment, we are used to do apt-get install package:i386 which is at best the most simple thing ever. It's straightforward and it gets the job done. In Slackware, for a 64-bit to be multilib-enabled you have to do certain extra steps.
You need to download "third party" from a long term contributor that goes with the nickname "Alien Bob". Note that I don't mind doing this. I've found that this person has been a strong supporter of Slackware for years and I don't want to make it sound like it's a bad thing itself. After all, Slackware is nothing without a community--in my humble opinion.
Slackware package manager has no sense of "dependency management". It means, you need to brace yourself and do all the library/applications dependency resolves. I have mixed feelings about this honestly; I have read many of their reasons on the why, yet to me I don't really feel convinced on why it shouldn't resolve dependencies, at least at best the base ones and leave the optional ones as optional.
What "troubled' me was installing 32-bit libraries in my 64bit system. There wasn't exactly an easy way to do it. And by easy I mean "take the least time possible". I had to do some googling and found out that there are unofficial tools out there that helps you get 32bit libraries easily.
I did the initial steps of enabling multilib like I said before. However the tutorial went down to "mirror the Slackware 32bit tree packages" and I certainly wasn't fond of that idea. Neither was using massconvert32 to get the packages I want.
I feel like I've been introduced to something that takes even more time. It's not that I don't feel like administrating my own system. It's that the initial setup would take longer than I expected. To me, these are itself "deal breakers". It's not the fact that I have to track dependencies myself, but the one that I've to jump a few hoops to get the 32bit libraries and convert them to be compatible.
I'm gonna move on, I think I've said plenty on the 32/64bit subject. In terms of installation and configuration I'll be frank, it's just the same thing over and over. If you have set up MPD and other applications then you will know where to find the configuration files. System wide configuration files usually reside in /etc. Like always, things like this never changes. What I mean is that if you are familiar with GNU/Linux then you won't have problems.
Stability! It's such an important word for me. Not stability as in the system crashing, but stability as in packages receiving their proper updates for minor point versions.
I might be wrong, but one of the things with Debian stable is that if a package releases bug fixes and it's not a major version. It all depends on the release team to see if it will make it to Debian stable.
I don't know how Slackware manages the influx of packages myself, this is the first time I've used it in a prolonged manner. What I want is an stable system, a conservative one, like Slackware. At the same time I also expect that normal bug fixes releases also remains updated in the stable branch.
An example: I'm using Debian unstable sid. I haven't had many problems with it but I did come acoss some problems, most of the time it's the dependency hell that occurs. If there are dependency problems sometimes apt-get dist-upgrade tries to remove a whole bunch of libraries that shouldn't be removed.
Obviously, as a person that likes to keep the system stability in-check I'd just cancel the upgrade and wait for the fixes to come.
What does this have anything to do with stability? Well, there are certain features in Dolphin file manager that stopped working out of nowhere. It just happened abruptly and up to this date I haven't found the cause.
In Slackware, all Dolphin features works. The system is rock solid.
I know I know. Why are you using Debian unstable? You should know better! Well, that itself is a fair question! Why use Debian unstable when you want an stable system. Debian "unstable", despite its name is not unstable as in the software will break any time. I've yet to see my desktop environment breaking apart. It hasn't.
I'm going to wrap this up because I feel like I've written a lot already. I'm willing to give Slackware a decent try as my main distribution if only I get the answers I need regarding 32/64bit issues and well that's it. I usually compile my WINE versions (32bit) and I don't exactly feel like it'll be a challenge to do that in Slackware, minus the dependency tracking which is itself like an sport.
It was a nice experience. I'm still not a fan of compiling my own stuff (mostly because it always takes too much time), but if it means to keep my system in stable conditions and receiving good upgrades of the software I use, then yea I'm all for Slackware.
If you have any thoughts, input about Slackware or know all the answers to my doubts. Please feel free to comment!
I like Slackware. I like its philosophy, I like how down to earth it is when it comes to maintaining your Slackware system.
I've been spending a few hours each day getting more and more into Slackware environment. It's no different than your typical Debian or Arch Linux setup when it comes to GNU/Linux. Some things regarding the init scripts changes and that's to be expected since they also tell you about it.
I installed Slackware 64-bit, the installation itself was delightful. I only ran into a few struggles and it all came down to LILO. For some reason it kept throwing errors and I wasn't remotely sure on the why. I wasn't ready to take on LILO either, mostly because over the years the default boot loader has been GRUB.
Anyhow, it all worked out. I just followed the main instructions to boot the root partition from the DVD messages and I was in my Slackware system in mere of seconds. Truly amazing! I did a rerun of LILO configuration and it managed to properly reinstall itself. What went wrong? I don't know.
Immediately after my system booted. I ran xwmconfig and as you expected, I chose KDE. I had the opportunity to try XFCE and some other window managers like Fluxbox. For some reason if you are out of the QT/GTK environment the application appearance becomes quite ugly and you have to go the extra mile to figure out what's wrong. I kinda knew what was wrong, at least on the GTK part, but on the QT side I wasn't that sure.
Slackware is truly an stable distribution, at least from what I've managed to work with. What brought me to "fear" it was that I was in charge of managing my own multilib.
I'll try to elaborate:
In the Debian environment, we are used to do apt-get install package:i386 which is at best the most simple thing ever. It's straightforward and it gets the job done. In Slackware, for a 64-bit to be multilib-enabled you have to do certain extra steps.
You need to download "third party" from a long term contributor that goes with the nickname "Alien Bob". Note that I don't mind doing this. I've found that this person has been a strong supporter of Slackware for years and I don't want to make it sound like it's a bad thing itself. After all, Slackware is nothing without a community--in my humble opinion.
Slackware package manager has no sense of "dependency management". It means, you need to brace yourself and do all the library/applications dependency resolves. I have mixed feelings about this honestly; I have read many of their reasons on the why, yet to me I don't really feel convinced on why it shouldn't resolve dependencies, at least at best the base ones and leave the optional ones as optional.
What "troubled' me was installing 32-bit libraries in my 64bit system. There wasn't exactly an easy way to do it. And by easy I mean "take the least time possible". I had to do some googling and found out that there are unofficial tools out there that helps you get 32bit libraries easily.
I did the initial steps of enabling multilib like I said before. However the tutorial went down to "mirror the Slackware 32bit tree packages" and I certainly wasn't fond of that idea. Neither was using massconvert32 to get the packages I want.
I feel like I've been introduced to something that takes even more time. It's not that I don't feel like administrating my own system. It's that the initial setup would take longer than I expected. To me, these are itself "deal breakers". It's not the fact that I have to track dependencies myself, but the one that I've to jump a few hoops to get the 32bit libraries and convert them to be compatible.
I'm gonna move on, I think I've said plenty on the 32/64bit subject. In terms of installation and configuration I'll be frank, it's just the same thing over and over. If you have set up MPD and other applications then you will know where to find the configuration files. System wide configuration files usually reside in /etc. Like always, things like this never changes. What I mean is that if you are familiar with GNU/Linux then you won't have problems.
Stability! It's such an important word for me. Not stability as in the system crashing, but stability as in packages receiving their proper updates for minor point versions.
I might be wrong, but one of the things with Debian stable is that if a package releases bug fixes and it's not a major version. It all depends on the release team to see if it will make it to Debian stable.
I don't know how Slackware manages the influx of packages myself, this is the first time I've used it in a prolonged manner. What I want is an stable system, a conservative one, like Slackware. At the same time I also expect that normal bug fixes releases also remains updated in the stable branch.
An example: I'm using Debian unstable sid. I haven't had many problems with it but I did come acoss some problems, most of the time it's the dependency hell that occurs. If there are dependency problems sometimes apt-get dist-upgrade tries to remove a whole bunch of libraries that shouldn't be removed.
Obviously, as a person that likes to keep the system stability in-check I'd just cancel the upgrade and wait for the fixes to come.
What does this have anything to do with stability? Well, there are certain features in Dolphin file manager that stopped working out of nowhere. It just happened abruptly and up to this date I haven't found the cause.
In Slackware, all Dolphin features works. The system is rock solid.
I know I know. Why are you using Debian unstable? You should know better! Well, that itself is a fair question! Why use Debian unstable when you want an stable system. Debian "unstable", despite its name is not unstable as in the software will break any time. I've yet to see my desktop environment breaking apart. It hasn't.
I'm going to wrap this up because I feel like I've written a lot already. I'm willing to give Slackware a decent try as my main distribution if only I get the answers I need regarding 32/64bit issues and well that's it. I usually compile my WINE versions (32bit) and I don't exactly feel like it'll be a challenge to do that in Slackware, minus the dependency tracking which is itself like an sport.
It was a nice experience. I'm still not a fan of compiling my own stuff (mostly because it always takes too much time), but if it means to keep my system in stable conditions and receiving good upgrades of the software I use, then yea I'm all for Slackware.
If you have any thoughts, input about Slackware or know all the answers to my doubts. Please feel free to comment!
Friday, June 27, 2014
Astebreed on WINE
Heyo guys!
I got this little Japanese Shoot 'Em Up. It run almost flawlessly on wine-1.7.11 and wine-1.7.18-CSMT. I think my only problem with it is that the audio doesn't work. It seems it uses xact, sadly I can't seem to get the audio working in any way, it just doesn't want.
I'll report back. To be honest you don't need to install any library to get it running, besides xact (which doesn't work either).
The game is excellent, if you are into mechas like I am. You'll love the designs they have.
UPDATE:
Install:
- xact_jun2010
- directx9
- dinput [builtin]
Control Setup:
Disable: Vibration
Disable: Hat Switch
I got this little Japanese Shoot 'Em Up. It run almost flawlessly on wine-1.7.11 and wine-1.7.18-CSMT. I think my only problem with it is that the audio doesn't work. It seems it uses xact, sadly I can't seem to get the audio working in any way, it just doesn't want.
I'll report back. To be honest you don't need to install any library to get it running, besides xact (which doesn't work either).
The game is excellent, if you are into mechas like I am. You'll love the designs they have.
UPDATE:
Install:
- xact_jun2010
- directx9
- dinput [builtin]
Control Setup:
Disable: Vibration
Disable: Hat Switch
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Compiling problems with Dolphin Emulator on Linux? It may be the compiler
Hello guys, long time no see!
I'm alive. I'm no longer using LinuxMint. I am now a proud Debian user and I am extremely happy being part of the Debian community.
I'll leave that for another post. For now let's concentrate on Dolphin emulator. Recently I've been failing to compile Dolphin, it was throwing awkward errors that well, to me it didn't make any sense. I started googling for a few hours, because you know, once you get that itchy feeling that something is wrong and some of the results don't match your criteria then there's something horribly wrong with what you are doing.
It turns out that GCC/G++ 4.9 that were pushed into Debian recently has some problems compiling wxWidgets (and a few other source files). It was weird, but it worked for me. If you are going to compile Dolphin, stick with the 4.8.
Go into the build folder and:
$ CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.8 CXX=/usr/bin/g++-4.8 cmake ..
I won't get into a tutorial on how to compile dolphin.. if you are experienced enough, you should know what it will do.
Dolphin GUI is really unstable for some reason, it keeps crashing randomly... sadly I don't have time to report bugs :(
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