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Updating OpenSuse and Ubuntu problems.

I am currently updating the system with the GUI package updater versus using the command line as the Adobe license agreement you have to scroll through is about 9000 lines long and you have to hold down the Return key to get past it, and if you type yes then hit enter, it quits the process as it thinks you said no. Very annoying indeed. But OpenSuse is still better than Ubuntu, it does not seem to bog down so much when you are running a full system update whilst using other applications in the meantime, I am using OpenOffice.org to type this while the update manager is downloading the updates and it works out quite well indeed. Why the hell, does the TAB key take you to the end of the line you have typed, instead of the end of the paragraph like in VIM? Who the hell thought that idea up, they should be shot. They have seemed to be writing the office application for other programmers instead of word processor users like me, you should be able to configure the editor to be able to handle a paragraph as one whole unit. The programmers need to learn that an office application is not VIM or VI or Emacs. If they want a proper text editor they should use a programmer’s text editor like the aforementioned VIM or Emacs. Although VI or vim.tiny are godlike text editors on Fedora.

Anyway, the way something like Ubuntu is going, it will suck even more than it does at the moment, sure Ubuntu 10.10 is awesome, but 11.04 might be going downhill, especially if they put in the btrfs file-system that in kernel 2.6.36 is still not considered stable, it is experimental software and not recommended for everyday usage, on a release of Ubuntu no less. They should stick with Ext4 by default. That is very stable and can handle power outages and having to hit the reset key and boot up the machine again, it still works, better than MurderFS e.g ReiserFS anyway. The Ext series of file systems are always reliable in my experience and well worth using. Btw, I just found out that with the command line package updater in Suse, you have to use SPACE to scroll to the end of the 9000 line long license agreement. That is annoying, why the hell is there so much legal speak to wade through to install flash-player? Anyway, having the updates installed might fix the missing functionality of the integrated Broadcom WIFI chip in my laptop, that worked out of the box on Fedora 13, but that distribution included more firmware than this distribution does.

Then again, the Suse distribution has been around for ages and has some smart people behind it. Mark Shuttleworth does not like the way that Ubuntu is going, maybe he could help out Suse? He could be a good asset for the company surely, but I guess Ubuntu is not actually Debian Stable, but even Debian itself is having problems of late. I might re-install Gentoo and enjoy an awesome and stable operating system that I have built myself, that is the best feeling, to boot it up for the first time and know that you spent days building the whole operating system with a live CD and chroot, that is how I built my install, I used Linux Mint 9 and chrooted to a bootable partition on the hard disk and built the Gentoo operating system from the stage3 tarball. Heaps of fun, although challenging at times, you learn a lot from doing the build and deciding what desktop to use, I chose Gnome, as that is the best Linux desktop right now.

KDE is not very good at the moment, I do not know why they took the icons off the desktop and put them in a rectangular box that you can resize and drag around? Why are they trying to copy Windows 7? KDE 2.0 – 3.4 – 3.5 were awesome desktops, now it sucks royally, the Konqueror file manager in KDE 2.0 was perfect, now they have ruined the desktop for good.

Debian 3.0 KDE 2.0 Desktop.
Debian 3.0 KDE 2.0 Desktop. The real deal.

So Gnome it is, I am not sure about Gnome 3.0, but that is a good way off for Ubuntu, they might not have that until 2012, and judging by what I have seen from using the demo of Gnome 3.0, it will suck. I hate the new innovations, I still use the traditional Gnome menu and hate the new types of menus they put into desktops now. I have even used larswm on a laptop, that is incredible if you can memorize the keyboard shortcuts. In that desktop environment, there are no window borders and you have to use the keyboard for everything. That is the case at the text console anyway, so that is not so bad. But Gnome is good for multitasking as I have not got my head around screen yet, and prefer a desktop environment now. I got a Linux Mint 9 live distribution on the double-sided DVD, so I tried out Mint KDE and it is the same deal, but at least it supports reverting to the classic start menu. Some distributions leave this out, maybe due to laziness, I like it as it is much faster to find something you want to run. With Gnome you can drag the icon to the desktop or the panel and have a useful shortcut.

I use the two panels top and bottom like the original Ubuntu distributions have, some like OpenSuse have just the one on the bottom like Windows. But having two means more space for applets and sure there is less space for Firefox, but even on my 1024*768 screen I do not care, it is still usable with zooming out anyway, that is what I do. Just zoom out to see more of the webpage and it is still perfectly readable. But getting back to Gentoo, it has heaps of games available for download, but a lot of them are masked and you need to unmask them before you can run something like emerge ut2004 and install this excellent game. Well, the package update has been completed using the command line as the GUI application failed with an error. The command line sudo zypper up finished without a problem, I was using the Town Library bandwidth again, I used about 400 Megabytes downloading and installing the updates as well as some music from http://gh.ffshrine.org and 420chan‘s music page.

And I also grabbed the latest stage3 tarball for Gentoo, as I might be installing that again soon. I just need the portage-latest tarball and I am set, once I get a proper Internet connection again.

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