How's Mandy so far?

Been running Mandriva 2008.1 Spring Free for well over a month now, there have been many updates coming through rpmdrake. Most of the obvious bugs were ironed out by the 2nd week, so things are looking good. Here are some random observations:
- I figured out how to disable the annoying meta file download in rpmdrake.
- I found out that compiz works much better with EXA rather then XAA on my intel chip.
- I discovered that Flashplayer will crash Firefox every 2nd youtube video I watched. I later found out this is because Flashplayer 9 is not playing nice with PulseAudio. I have since disabled PulseAudio so I can watch youtube. I'm a freedom hater. I know.

I've had very little chance to hack around & get to know this new Mandriva release. This is in part because of my current work schedule, but it's also because Mandriva & Linux in general has matured to a stage where it almost requires no hacking to make everything work well. Linux is getting to a stage where it could almost just get out the way & let you use the computer. I feel as if a tipping point is near & I'm almost afraid to see what's over the horizon...

Finally upgraded to Mandriva 2008.1 Spring Free

I finally did it today! Got around to backing up all my data & installing a fresh copy of 2008.1 Spring Free.
Just started to play with it a little & already I managed to kill Konqueror once. (by dragging files around)
It's ok, I'm installing Dolphin anyway.

Lets start with some first impressions:
- Multimedia keys on me Tosh are working perfectly, it even has the much needed OSD.
- Rpmdrake has been improved tremendously in speed & reliability, downloading & setting up repos automatically. However, I don't like the behavior of it downloading the info headers every time I click on a package. On my slow line, this takes a good 2 minutes per click.

Haven't had any time to play more with it. So I'll save any more comments till my next post.

OMG! I'm too busy for Mandriva!!

Mandriva has release 2008.1 Spring, but sadly I've had very little time lately to explore it in any depth. I've just spent the entire March training "How to provide Tech Support for Ubuntu" and the last month attending a course on Solaris 10 Administration. So my head is now full of Ubuntu brown and a lot of old school UNIX unfriendliness.

Well, both Mandriva and Ubuntu have recently released their respective April update. Both releases are significant in their own way. For Ubuntu, it's finally time for their 2nd LTS release. Their last one was 2 years ago.
For Mandriva, this release marks their first Manbo Labs base system release that was developed in collaboration with Turbolinux. I see this as a great move for Mandriva since I personally found Mandriva to have very effective support for eastern languages, their partnership Turbolinux will only strengthen their position in this area.

In the last 2 months haven't spend any time hacking my EeePC, just using it as it was intended & I must say that it's been serving me well. It's been very good to my back & no more aching shoulders lugging a 10 lb laptop.

Well. gotta go back to studying my Solaris books & get ready to deliver training to the support guys. :(

But first, I gotta catch up on my BSG. Season 4 is out man... ;)

Getting hooked on Linux Podcasts

Been really bz with work lately. March & April are hectic months for me. I've been asked to learn-up and deliver training on a couple of topics that are complete new to me. Out of bunch, 2 of the more interesting topics are Ubuntu Desktop & Solaris 10 on x86.

Apparently the local tech support need to be prepared to provide customers support for these OSs. Due to cost cuts I will not be getting any training on Ubuntu. (They assume that since I know Linux, Ubuntu should be simple) I hope they're right.

As for Solaris 10, I've been given an account to get into their e-learning site & I've been going through all their material for 2 weeks now. Some of this old school Unix stuff is really mind bogglingly boring and unnecessarily complicated. It's surprising for me to see a modern day commercial Unix still looks like something out of the 80s. CDE looks truly horrific, I though I'd traveled back in time to 1985.

To keep myself updated in the world of free software I've been listening to a couple of Podcasts that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in Linux.

My 2 favorites are:
lugradio - It's very European, with plenty of English jokes, biased reviews and profanities galore.
linuxoutlaws - A German accent, modest and lighthearted discussions and light on profanities.

Both are excellent Linux Podcasts. I listen with Amarok and can't get enough.

A decent FPS for the EeePC

Because of the limited graphical performance of the EeePC, FPS choices are rather limited, the best I've come across so far is AssaultCube. It's a modified version on Cube that runs very well right away on the EeePC. In order to get better frame rates, you do have to tweak down some of the graphics, but overall it played very well. So if you're looking for a decent FPS to play on the EeePC, do give AssaultCube a go.

Tips for playing wormux on the EeePC

Due the screen resolution limitations of the EeePC, many applications will have windows taller than the screen. This is typically solved by using Alt+Drag to move the window around, typically so you can click the buttons at the bottom.

This resolution also posed some interesting problems for some games, while most games would happily run at 800x480 or 640x480, games such as wormux expects the minimum resolution to be 800x600. So running wormux on the EeePC has a few problems.

Fist off, it's necessary to modify wormux's ~/.wormux/config.xml file to set the desired resolution:
width 800
height 480
full_screen 1

After this you should be able to start the game nicely fullscreen. In the player selection screen you'll see the first problem crop up. Your ok & cancel button are not visible, they are lower down & can't be seen. You can overcome this easily using the keyboard, Enter for OK and Esc for Cancel.

Finally the last obstacle is in actually playing the game. Your right click weapon selection menu is too large & goes beyond the top of the screen. Making it impossible to choose the topmost weapons (such as the Bazooka which incidentally is the most common weapon of choice). Fortunately this last problem is solved using the keyboard shortcuts F1 through F5, these keys will allow you to cycle through and select a weapon/gadget from the 5 categories.

Enjoy blowing up them gimps. :)

Gaming on the Asus EeePC

I figured out that Asus EeePC worked quite well as a portable game machine. I installed Dgen & Snes9x into it, they work great. Playing Contra on it was excellent. I also installed a host of native linux games that all worked out very well.

Here's a list of em:
- abuse
- armagetron
- neverball
- pinball
- supertux
- wormux

I just can't get enough of wormux, it's excellent.