Sidux on the Mac

It's quite a while since I used Sidux which maybe says more about me having too many OSes installed on too many computers than about how useful or exciting is Sidux.
Anyway, as I'm having problems with Foresight on the Mac right now, I decided to go back to Sidux and get it straightened out.
Here's what I did:

1. Add non-free repos
Pick from repo options here.
2. Get wireless working.
This was not as straightforward as it sounds. Just downloading and compiling madwifi didn't do the job for me. Instead I had to do as outlined in the manual which was no more than add the repos to /etc/apt/sources.list and then type this command

m-a a-i madwifi

After that wifi worked fine apart from the fact that I can't get it to launch at startup despite having gone into Control Center>>Internet&Network>>Network Settings and then configuring the ath0 interface under the Network Interfaces tab.
I additionally changed the DNS servers to the OpenDNS servers. However, just shutting down Control Center and pening it up again immediately, sees all of these changes gone back to wat looks like the defaults settings.
3. Install Compiz-Fusion
I used this guide. Additionally I always like to install Fusion-Icon which is available from the repo.
4. Install AWN
I installed from here which basically just suggests this repo.

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/deb4gilir/avant-window-navigator/ unstable main

However, no applets are installed. To get the applets I did a

apt-cache search awn-extras

which gave me these

awn-applets-c-core - A collection of applets for avant-window-navigator
awn-applets-c-extras - A collection of applets for avant-window-navigator
awn-applets-python-core - A collection of applets for avant-window-navigator
awn-applets-python-extras - A collection of applets for avant-window-navigator
libawn-extras-dev - library for avant-window-navigator's applets - development files
libawn-extras0 - A library for avant-window-navigator's applets
python-awn-extras - Python bindings for avant-window-navigator's applets

I used apt-get to install them all and this gave me a large number of applets. However, a majority of them only had the default (and very ugly) icon. Not sure what's missing here.

Ubuntu Eee now looking fabulous.

Yesterday I had some reservations about Ubuntu Eee particularly due to problems I had with 3D effects and Yakuake.
Know what the culprit was? Yes, the so-called Netbook Remix which seems to have been designed to make Ubuntu Eee as ungeeky as possible and probably ties in with EeePC's originally targetted audience of schoolkids.
Luckily this is easy to get rid of although I did run into a small problem which is explained in this post.
Essentially, the solution was, as it often is, to reboot.
After this, Ubuntu Eee started to look amazing. In everything I've done today, I cannot see anywhere where Ubuntu Eee is lacking anything in comparision to the full blown Ubuntu Hardy on a full-sized box.
Simply, everything works great -- 3D effects, Yakuake, AWN, Livestation, Brazilian characters
I installed AWN from the Reacocard repo and. again, everything worked fine.
The only problem I had, if you can even call it a problem, relates to a slight, but easily resolvable, difficulty to get sound working when an audio app starts up. I posted to the forum on this but have yet to receive a reply.
I also had another sound problem in that the headphones gave a lot of static-type noise even with no audio app playing. However, to resolve this was just a matter of muting the Microphone in the sound mixer.
All-in-all, a very pleasing day.

What can and cannot be installed on EeePC

Over the last day or two I've attempted the following installs on the EeePC.

1. Despite the major problem I had trying to install the KDE Full Desktop by the manual method, the so-called Easy Way worked perfectly. The whole thing took 2-3 minutes whereas just the download in the Manual Way took 15 minutes.

The KDE Full Desktop is much more useful in my view. Also, the previous problem I had with the desktop web apps only opening in Firefox has been eliminated as I mentioned in this thread.
Also, ctrl-alt-n no longer opens Opera and ctrl-alt-t no longer launches a terminal. However, it's easy to put these icons on the bottom panel which is much more useful.
I also put the CXChromium browser icon in the panel as this had previously to be launched from a terminal. Nevvertheless, despite being readily available, I'm not very inclined to use it as I don't find it at all as convenient as Opera.

2. After my failure with Compiz, I tried Beryl from here. This installed without problems. Operation was, however, disappointingly unpredictable. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Even at that, I never managed to get everything to work together as it would, say, in Ubuntu. I'll do more research here.

3. Couldn't get kcheckgmail to install. Sudo apt-get gives this error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
kcheckgmail: Depends: libqt3c102-mt (>= 3:3.3.3.2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: xlibs but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

I believe I could probably get this installed by doing some judicious pinning changes but I haven't tried it yet.

4. I wanted to install gparted as it will be of use in my goal to get Foresight Linux installed on the 15 GB SSHD. However, it too gave an error about gksu wouldn't be installed.
Turns out that there are two versions of gksu available

sudo apt-cache policy gksu
gksu:
Installed: 2.0.0-1
Candidate: 2.0.0-1
Version table:
*** 2.0.0-1 0
500 http://download.tuxfamily.org p701/etch Packages
700 http://http.us.debian.org etch/main Packages
700 http://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Packages
700 ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org stable/main Packages
700 http://http.us.debian.org stable/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
1.2.5-3 0
800 http://www.geekconnection.org xandros4/main Packages

So the desired higher version was in the lower pinned repos. So, I overcame this by temporarily increasing the pinning of the deb repos to 975. With this, gparted installed fine.

openSUSE 11.0 on the MacBook

Just starting to get openSUSE 11.0 setup on the Mac.
Actually, I find that, particularly with openSUSE, I start clicking around and installing all sorts of unnecessary crap just to get something working -- when I may regret some of the stuff I installed later.
This is particularly the case with getting media players working particularly the codecs.
For the future, I would strongly recommend just installing the repos shown in this guide (although there are quite a lot).
To get the right codecs, I believe I can avoid a lot of needless flailing around just with this command:

sudo zypper in libdvdcss libxine1 w32codec-all k3b-codecs

Nevertheless, even after the correct installs, I couldn't get Amarok to play without a reboot. (I really don't know how many times a reboot in Linux has miraculously resurrected a dying computer)
Things that are working fine in this new install are:
AWN
Fusion-icon (need to symlink to ~/.kde4/Autostart)
Yakuake
Opera 9.52
Gmail Notifier (symlinked to ~/.kde4/Autostart)

Media players working are Amarok (1.4) and Banshee1
However, I was unable to compile Amarok 2 beta. Also, I posted to openSUSE forums about how to install Amarok 2 (which works fine in KuruminNG) but have no replies up to now which is ominous.

On the question of sound, I came across this excellent thread on sound problem troubleshooting in openSUSE (actually, it's a tutorial). Worth keeping in mind, should I have problems in the future.

openSUSE -- progress with cube rotate

Today I re-installed openSUSE 11.0 but this time I chose KDE4 as the DE.
The consistency I had expected in the bindings required to get the cube rotating didn't materialise. I posted on this in this thread so all the details are there.
In summary, I'm now using Shift-Ctl-Button1 to get the cube to rotate.

No desktop cube rotate in openSUSE 11.0

I mentioned that I had noticed this in my new install three posts back.
So, today I posted to the openSUSE forums about it. Got quite a few replies but nothing worked. Still have wobbly windows, compiz is the window manager, emerald decorator but the cube just won't rotate.
So, I thought maybe it was due to my chosen DE (KDE4). So, I installed again but this time with KDE 3.5. Same thing, wobbly windows but no desktop rotate.
Finally, I tried Gnome 2.22 and got the very same result.
It had been my intention to install openSUSE 10.3 but the DVD check gave errors so I didn't try it.
This is very puzzling.

Edit (30-06-08):
Then, just by chance I happened to drag one of my wobbly windows to the edge and was surprised to find that it moved to another face of the cube. So, the cube was really there!
Perhaps the problem was the Alt key which, after all seemed to be giving trouble in the Alt-F2 and Ctl-Alt-BackSpace commands.
So, I changed the binding for Rotate Cube from to . Now, it worked! My cube rotated.
Now, I had chosen the keyboard layout US for the install. So, now I changed it to Irl, UK or BR. For ALL of them the key binding worked for cube rotation. So did Alt-F2 but, Ctl-Alt-BackSpace stubbornly refused to work.

Can't resolve issue with PCLOS and Compiz

I had mentioned a few days ago that, although PCLOS 2007 Final installed fine and seems to work OK, once I install 3D effects either from PCLOS Control Center or by installing fusion-icon from the repos (I had to activate the first 5 repos to make this available), PCLOS won't boot. The boot goes so far then just blacks out. The only way back is to hard reboot and re-install PCLOS.
I've even done this so that fusion-icon is installed but not included in ~/.kde/Autostart so it won't autostart on boot.
Nevertheless, it still manages to mess up the boot.
Note that 3D effects seem to work fine until the reboot.
I posted to the PCLOS forums on this. Will I get any replies?

Mandriva on MacBook

Well, it appears that trying the 3D effects (MCC>Hardware) just leads to the OS refusing to start or crashing immediately. The error given is something to do with IceWM that I still don't understand.
I think I'll have to post to the forum on this as it cannot be anything I've done as I've just started out and have a clean install.
Incidentally, you can avoid having to re-install Mandriva when this happens by just choosing the Drak session option and then signing in.
This immediately brings you to the 3D effects selection page. Select 'None' to get Mandriva operational again.
This is very strange.

Pclos is running fine on the MacBook

After much endeavour, I finally got PCLOS working well on the MacBook. The secret was that Pclos calls the External HDD not sda, as most other OSes do, but sdb.
So, I had to change the /boot/grub/menu.lst on the Ubuntu root partition to reflect this.
Also, I found that /etc/fstab on the Pclos root partition was equally all mixed up and I had to make many changes manually.
After this practically verything worked fine. Fusion-icon and AWN were available from the repositories and easy to install. Yakuake too was in the repos. However, I can't get it to run as it keeps crashing. Posted to the Pclos forums about this but no reply.
Haven't yet got wireless working here but can't imagine it should be too difficult.

Linux Mint 4.0 KDE Daryna

OK, today I had intended to try to see if I could encourage Mandriva 2008 to boot from the Seagate ext drive to my MacBook with the only thing I could think of trying was to increase the "sleep" function in mkinitrd from the default 8 to 20 seconds.
Honestly, I'm not at all confident this is going to do the trick. Other than that it might just be that some usb drivers are missing from the kernel. Might look at this soon.

I also tried to see if the dell 9200 would allow me to install WinXP (modified for usb support) to an external drive. However, once again I get the same BSoD I got on the E520.
The Stop: error (0x000007b) seems to be attributable to a number of things but the most likely here is that the usb drivers are missing and the installer sees a HDD it cannot install to.
However, I had though that the ngine hack had got over this but apparently not.The next thing to try might be to try to get the drivers for the Seagate ext drive and pt them on floppy and use F6 during the install to install these.

Anyway, I decided to try Linux Mint -- new version 4.0 Daryna (still in Beta) with KDE.
This is a 1 GB download which I put on DVD. Thereafter, absolutely everything went extremely well.
Installation was very quick (~10 mins) and getting it to boot from the Seagate was totally straightforward -- worked first time.

Compiz-fusion is already installed but its default settings are such that wobbly windows and cube rotation are disabled by default. So you have to go into ccsm to make changes before you see anything.
Also, the fusion-icon is not included but you can get that very easily from here

Madwifi I installed from the Ubuntu MacBook wiki and again this worked first time.

Then I got AWN installed very easily from here.

All-in-all a very pleasant first-time experience with Linux Mint.

Fusion-icon blue cube icon

I had a problem yesterday which meant I had to re-install gutsy on my MacBook. So, although I have a /home, I still lost a few things like, Opera 9.50, madwifi, Compiz-Fusion +Icon, all of the /OS directories in /boot where I store the kernel files for OSes I want to boot from an external drive.
The only one I had any problem with was fusion-icon which I installed from here.
However, amazingly I had exactly the same problem only 2 weeks ago and forgot all about it.
The solution is here.
I got wireless back very easily following this guide although I didn't do any of this stuff:

sudo sed -i~ 's/^exit 0/modprobe ath_pci\nexit 0/' /etc/rc.local
sudo sed -i~ 's/^exit 0/modprobe wlan_scan_sta\nexit 0/' /etc/rc.local
sudo sed -i~ 's/^exit 0/iwpriv ath0 bgscan 0\nexit 0/' /etc/rc.local

although I did some of the usual madwifi command line stuff.
Actually, however, I believe I should just have rebooted without the Ethernet cable plugged in and wireless would have start up by itself.

Mepis still improving

Sunday morning, when I booted to Mepis 7.0, the wireless started all by itself (just asking for kWllaet password). Since then, in about 5-7 reboots, the same thing has always happened so I think we can say that this problem is solved.
However, I still can't figure out why it didn't work like that on Saturday night when I made the changes to /etc/network/interfaces.
Actually, it might be worth while making the same change in /etc/network/interfaces on Sabayon as this one still won't start wireless by itself.
Basically everything going well in M7 with only 2.4GB in / and less than 0.5GB in /home. I'm thinking about putting this on Killians old computer as it's light and should be fast in spite of his very slow PIII 550MHz processor.
The only unresolved problem with Mepis is the fact that if I rotate the CF cube, the whole computer freezes. I haven't got any replies from anybody in a number of postings on this. So it seems it's not a common problem.
All-in-all, there's a lot to like about Mepis.

Wireless in Mepis 7.0

Today I finally got wireless working in Mepis 7.0 and it really wasn't that difficult.
According to Synaptic, Mepis already had madwifi 0.9.3.2 installed but this simply didn't work.
Then I downloaded and compiled 0.9.3.3 but that too didn't work.
Actually at this point i noticed that lspci didn't id the Atheros wireless card correctly and I posted to the mepis forums on this.
All I had to do to rectify this was to type "update pciids" (as root) and that got it right.
Unfortunateley, that didn't fix the problem.
So I downloaded and compiled the svn trunk madwifi and this worked perfectly, first time.
However, kNetworkmanager still wasn't picking up any devices at all so this meant that I had to go through quite a rigmarole in a terminal to get ath0 to connect afetr every boot.
To get the knm-applet to work better I had to take EVERYTHING out of /etc/network/interfaces and just replace this with

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Now, knetworkmanager sees the devices but i still have to pick the one I want, enter the wallet password and then it connects.
This is exactly what happens in Sabayon which is also kde.
In the Gnome-based OSes, wireless connects directly at boot with no intervention from me.
Nevertheless, this is a major advance.
Actually, I'm very impressed with Mepis and the only problem I have is that I can't rotate the CF cube. Strangely, I can't get anybody to even reply to me on this problem which usually suggests it's not a widspread problem.

Further progress on Mepis 7.0

Mepis 7.0 is working fine without any problems other than the freeze that happens when I try to rotate the CF cube. So now I have disabled this.
Nobody replying to my posts on this.
However, did see this thread in MepisLovers forum where some guy complained of a similar (but nowhere near the same) problem with Beryl and M7. He re-installed and whatever problem he had went away. I may have to do something like this.
Today I got sound working (no more than unmute verything in alsamixer. However, these settings seemed to be overwritten at every boot meaning that I had to reset alsamixer again to get sound to work). I posted to the Mepis forums and got some help. It seems that perhaps kmix is what was overwriting my sound settings. So (and this is only a tentative explanation) it seems that launching kmix once the alsamixer settings have been optimised, copies those settings to kmix which means it doesn't overwrite the sound settings anymore.
Also got video working in Opera. It seems my problem was that I was using Opera 9.25 which won't work with the latest flash (9.0.115). As I couldn't get an earlier version, I just upgraded to 9.50 build 1772 and this works fine with the latest flash. A lot of useful info about the use of flash in Opera came out of this thread.
Some guy put a package together for AWN in Mepis and was looking for testers. I volunteered and it looked pretty good although I couldn't do a full test as AWN was already fully installed on my system. However, if I get around to installing CF and AWN on Killian's computer (9 years old), I'll certainly use this method over the first one which was very amateurish.

MEPIS freezing when rotate cube

This freezing problem has persisted throughout the day until I eventually had to shut-off Rotate Cube in ccsm (basically to help me avoid the temptation to rotate the cube). After that it worked without problem for the last 6 hours.
I found, before this, that if I shutdown AWN, I could vigorously for about 30 seconds before it froze.
Posted on MepisLovers forum but nobody seems to be able to advise on this.Have now posted to Compiz Community Forums.
However, in googling around this freezing problem with CF is not unknown although no fix is prescribed. Loose Binding is mentioned as a possible fix but when I tried this it really messed up a lot of things on the screen -- for example Yakuake didn't open and I couldn't write to a terminal window.
Another possibility is to use some boot parameters such as noapic but I haven't tried any of these yet.

Further Sabayon tribulations

Got Compiz-Fusion (fusion-icon) working well for a short time today on Sabayon. The principle breakthrough was what I learnt in this post.
Then I went about getting AWN to work (actually AWN seemed to work but had a lot of trouble getting AWN-manager to work -- seemed it was missing some dependencies from here).
However, then I found that CF didn't work too well (clicking on fusion-icon didn't allow choosing any items).
The I rebooted to see if it would come back but it didn't load at boot. So I tried running fusion-icon in a terminal but it wouldn't start complaining that PyQt4 and Qt were missing.
Actually, during what I learned today about Sabayon, a World Update is a very bad idea for inexperienced users (which I am) and I think I did one of these while messing around with Kuroo (or was it Portato?).
So given that things aren't going so well now (although it was starting to look very, very well), I think I'm going to do yet another clean install (/ and /home) and take a lot more time about getting things up and running.
Certainly, I'm getting the distinct impression that sabayon in nothing like Ubuntu for simplicity.
Edit: I've just finished trying to emerge PyQt4 (which took quite some time). But even after this, fusion-icon still complains about missing all interfaces (including Qt4, Qt3, qt, compizconfig).
So, it really looks like my Sabayon is terminally ill and it's time to put it out of its misery and start again.
So that's the big task for tomorrow.

Compiz-Fusion problem on new Sabayon 3.4f

OK, once I had Sabayon 3.4f installed, I needed to get it setup like I'm used to.
The first thing was to get Compiz-Fusion installed and operating so I used the same guide as the last time (although this time I didn't install through portage first).
However, it wouldn't install for reasons I detailed in this post.
In googling around, it just may have something to do with the difference between monolithic and split ebuilds.
I tried "emerge kdebase" and this went on for over an hour. However, trying the CF install using the above guide gave exactly the same error message.
As nobody replied to my request for assistance on the Sabayon forum, I've decided to re-install Sabayon 3.4f but this time I'm going to reformat both / and /home partitions.

I've just noticed that somebody last Thursday had exactly the same problem as me and , it seems, the chief guy responded that this was due to the server being down. Another comment said that CF was undergoing major changes because of KDE4 and we would just have to wait, although they don't say how long.

Compiz-Fusion with 3D windows in Sabayon

The CF I installed from portage worked fine but didn't have 3D windows.
Then I came across this guide in the Sabayon forums and it worked first time, perfectly.