Featured Comments: Week of 2012 November 11

There hasn't been a post featuring comments in a while because there hasn't been any post that has gotten comments in a while...until this week. This past week, there was one post that got a handful of comments, so I'll repost most of those.

Long-Term Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDE

An anonymous reader shared, "Regarding this: the YaST2 GUI package manager and updater would not work as it would complain about PackageKit... OpenSUSE uses PackageKit, because of the KDE appstore application(called Apper). This constantly looks for updates and intervenes with Yast (very annoying). The solution is simple: remove Apper as soon as possible after every OpenSUSE install. Personally, I never encountered the problems with Okular you described."
Another anonymous commenter had this open question, "long time ago , last time i tried a Desktop linux, i did some simple test, using kde. I Opened a remote SMB share and play a 100 Mb avi. What i had : the system told me it was coping the entire file in /tmp and after that it was going to open it. It did 'not work and copy the entire file in the local system is quite a silly thing. Working on a big company it happen many times a day to open file in remote SMB shares ( linux , Netapp , readyNAs and others. ) If this thing will not be fixed linux on the desktop of a big company can't go much further IMHO. Stefano . Italy."
Yet another anonymous reader provided a response to that: "Next time, try using an application which uses the .gvfs system like Nautilus or from within gnome / xfce and NOT kde. Then you will not need it to be copied first and then played."
Still another anonymous commenter said, "You can remove Apper, but what I've done (with both openSUSE 12.1 and 12.2) is to simply stop Apper Monitor from starting up (Main Menu > Favorites > Configure Desktop > System Administration > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager -> uncheck the box next to "Apper Monitor"). Then, I think you'll need to restart the session. After doing that, I have had no problems simply using YaST Online Update Also, I read this comment at DistroWatch -- if you don't remove or disable Apper, you may want to check to see if this solves the problem: "The package kit problem can be solved by editing the list of sources. The DVD is left enabled and package kit keeps looking for it." Besides that issue, openSUSE 12.2 looks very good after a couple of months on two different computers."

Thanks to all those who commented on that post. After the middle of this coming week, I will be home for Thanksgiving and will likely be busy with all the associated events there, meaning that I probably won't have much out this week. Also, if you look at the post from this past week, I've said that I probably won't be doing many distribution reviews until possibly IAP. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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Long-Term Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDE

I did this long-term review on my normal UROP desktop computer with the 64-bit edition of the OS. Follow the jump to see how it fared. Also do note that there are more days logged because I intend to use it for about 60-80 full hours of work, which is the equivalent of 7-10 full days in the summer, though now I am working on a part-time basis as classes have started. Finally, for some reason Blogger decided to delete the content of what I had here, so everything up until "Day 2" is very much paraphrased from memory.

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2012 Election

This is just a quick post that tomorrow is the 2012 election in the US. I have voted absentee from my home state. I know a lot of people who are apathetic about voting because they feel like in the face of large corporations and lobbyists, their votes don't mean much. I used to have an apathetic attitude like that too...until SOPA/PIPA got rejected. What I learned from that is that the people still matter; no matter how much corporations may support a particular agenda and no matter how much it seems like a local or state politician has been bought out by special interests, if people like us bombard them with letters to support a particular position that we want, the politicians will always come cowering to us rather than the lobbyists because it is our votes in an election that matter at the end of the day. In short, your vote does count, and democracy is not dead, so get out and vote!

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Featured Comments: Week of 2012 October 7

There haven't been any "Featured Comments" posts in the last few weeks due to the general dearth of posts in that time stemming from my busy schedule. There was one post this past week that got a handful of comments, so I will repost all of those.

Review: Cinnarch 2012.10.01

Reader Alexandre Filgueira, who is the lead developer of Cinnarch, said, "Hi, [...] Thanks for the review. It was very interesting. I wrote down some things that you said to improve the distro I will include a link to your review in our monthly stats."
Commenter Greg shared, "I accidently messed up my install by editing the menu while trying to move my WINE app from Other to WINE submenu. I unclicked my app off the other menu and my screen started flashing and then got an error saying OOPS. So I couldn't log in anymore without this error. So I chroot into my install from the livecd, cleared my home folder and rebooted. My install went back to a more "default" Cinnamon. I have the show desktop back, the icons were the gnome icons, the menu had the widget instead of the Cinnarch logo. I like it. Also, I uninstalled files-bzr and installed nemo-fm. I think it's better because it gives more options, like a location bar, which I have a hard time living without."
Reader Eddie agreed: "Totally correct. Cinnamon is a work in progress. It's not bad now but still needs some polish. Just a checking it seems that the problems are more related to Cinnamon than Gnome3 and I do believe they are upstream problems as you stated. Anyway, nice review."

Commenter Denis Leukhin said simply, "Great review! Thanks."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. I was intending to do a review for this coming week, but it didn't work out at all, so I won't be posting anything else about that. I probably won't have time for many other posts, as has become the norm this semester. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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Review: Cinnarch 2012.10.01

I haven't gotten the chance to do a review in a while. It's a long weekend, so I finally do have some more free time now, and I need to take a break from the otherwise endless stream of work, so I'm taking a look at Cinnarch now.

Cinnarch is a relatively new distribution on the scene. True to its name, it is based on Arch Linux and uses GNOME 3/Cinnamon as its primary DE. At first I figured that the packaging would be fairly stock, but as it turns out (and as you will see later in this post), there are a few other mild customizations present as well.

I tried this on a live USB using MultiSystem; I did not try the installation. To be honest, this is going to be more of a look at GNOME 3/Cinnamon in general rather than Cinnarch specifically as a distribution, though there may be certain things in the distribution affecting the experience of the DE. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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Economic Thoughts About Chubby Pageant Toddlers

I haven't gotten a good time to write this until now, despite how short this will be. Anyway, before the semester got busy, I remember browsing around some YouTube videos, and before one of them started, I saw a longer version of the television advertisement for the show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo".

Like most people, I thought the show represented yet another new low in yet another new dimension of reality television. But then I also realized that this family is perfectly happy doing their own thing, while the TLC show executives are essentially manipulating them to gain viewers, and the family is doing this for TV only because they need the money that badly. That's worse!

So then I wondered about two economic possibilities. Given the multiplier effects present from consumption and investment in the economy, how would the growth of the US economy change if instead of spending as much money as they are on filming the antics of this family, the TLC show executives were to spend that much to help give this family and many others like it a decent education and steady jobs? Or, what would happen to the economy if instead of making a show that essentially mocks this family, TLC were to make a show specifically following this family in getting them a decent education and steady jobs? This way, when the show ends, even if the family ends up squandering all their money, they will still have steady paychecks coming in.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below. Anyway, I'm going to get back to...uh...my own education (i.e. the never-ending stream of problem sets and other classwork).

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Featured Comments: Week of 2012 September 9

There was one post that got a handful of comments this past week, so I will repost a few of those.

Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDE

Reader DarkDuck shared, "Absolutely agree that the menu in OpenSuSE KDE version is too cluttered. This is valid for each KDE-based version of this OS, unfortunately."
Commenter alcalde said, "This is really a review of the live CD rather than the distro as such because the live cd is not identical to the full install. If you didn't have the opportunity to actually install the distro, you could have at least installed it into Virtualbox to get a better idea of the final product. Even then, the installer on the live CD isn't as full featured as the DVD (doesn't allow choosing which packages to install) and about 75% of OpenSUSE users install from the DVD rather than the CD according to the last time statistics were published on this. Regarding KDE submenus - this is an artifact of the live CD, because what you described is not present in a VirtualBox install. If you right-click over the KDE launcher and select "Application Launcher Settings", you can click on "Reduce Menu Depth" to prevent items being placed into submenus with only one entry. This is the default on install from the DVD; it must have been disabled on the live CD for some reason (bug?). [...] Other than that, a great overview of OpenSUSE 12.2. So far it seems a lot more stable than 12.1 (which I don't believe should have even been released when it was) and it also offers a lot of improvements users can see and appreciate, unlike the last release."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. I don't have anything planned for this coming week, and of course due to the workload of the semester there may not be anything out for this coming week. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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