Everything works fine ? ,  yes, except for xrandr unfortunately.

I had to re-add xorg.conf to get my TV-out to work.

This  morning I read a “First Look” story on the recently released 2.6.28 kernel, from ars technica. Specially the the “Graphics Execution Manager” (GEM) interested me; it is one of the additions and GEM was said to boost framerates by between 50 and 60 percent for Intel 915 graphics hardware.

The 2.6.28 kernel is available in the abs of Arch Linux, so I decided to build it from abs and install it to see if it would improve the functionality of my Intel graphics controller, especially xrander (you never know…).

After install of the fresh kernel I removed xorg.conf (again).
Rebooted, to initiate the new kernel, hooked up my TV, ran xrander – -auto on it and…. It worked!

I can watch videos on my TV now, without needing a  xorg.conf.

Tuxicity

I was not too happy with the intel setup for xorg.conf on my Arch Linux laptop, everything worked, but not smooth, and I heard that I could simply remove it.

So I mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-bak. (just in case…)

And now everything works fine, although I feel as if  I am working with a hole in my X setup, but also that will rm -rf soon.

Tuxicity.

Having a look at Sidux 2008-04;

Sidux is based on the unstable branche of Debian, better known as Sid.
I decided to give it a go and see if its a good idea to use Sidux in stead of Sid.

I decided to try the kde-lite-amd64 live iso.
The boot up of the cd was remarkebly fast (compared to Ubuntu) and ended up with a good looking KDE 3.5.9 but unfortunately without a wirelss connection, so I opened the Sidux handbook available in the menu, and selected Internet and Networking, and chose Getting online > Ceni.
Ceni is a text based tool for wireless that asked me a few questions and before I knew it I was online with my wireless, the kernel on the live cd is 2.6.28, and the needed ath5k module was available, nice!

Time to run the installer, I had a partition available for / (root) and decided to hook up my /home partition for my /home/tuxicity.
The installer was easy to use, I chose to format / and leave /home as is, and continued with the installer.
Unfortunately the installer will not let you use a user name thats already set up on your /home so I had to make up a new name, I was not very happy with this “feature”. Also the installer does not tell you after setting up your partitions which ones are going to be formatted and which ones are going to be hooked up.
I had my fingers crossed when the installer started to do its automated thing, but everything went fine and my /home remained in tact . The installation was quick and after reboot I went into my fresh KDE environment, looking the same as on the live cd, including the still working wifi!! The wifi setup was transported to my hd , very good!!
I did a apt-get update and apt-get install kde to install the rest of KDE and was ready to go in no time.
Sidux is great for people who prefer KDE3.5* over KDE4, its all Debian and runs like a charm.

I also installed Gnome (apt-get install gnome) and set up the GNOME Display Manager known as GDM(dpkg-reconfigure gdm).

Gnome looks pretty much like the Gnome used on Debian, and runs fine, but a Gnome2.20 with some 2.22 parts is a bit old, and as a Gnome user, too old for me.

After installing Xfce 4 Desktop Environment version 4.4.2 (apt-get install xfce4) I logged into a standard Debian Xfce4 environment, all works fine.

Conclusion:

Sidux is a great Debian system, KDE3.5* centric, easy to install and to configure and includes the (now) latest kernel (2.6.28).
The Sidux tools seem to work very nicely; wireless was a breeze.
The feel of Sidux is fast and snappy, and it looks nice, specially with KDE.
Sidux is not really for the Gnome people,  the version is a bit outdated. (This will probably change when the next version of Debian aka Lenny becomes stable).
XFCE4 also runs fine, no news or novelties, like Gnome its all “Debian “. (XFCE4 will also be more updated as soon as Lenny comes out).
If you would like to use Debian Sid, I would go for Sidux; Sidux keeps running when there might be breakage in Sid, it has a more recent kernel and is easyer to maintain and set up.

Tuxicity.

When I read this blog post about discontinuing of adept development,

because Kubuntu would change its default manager to KPackageKit, I realized that more distributions are switching to packagekit (with Gtk2 and/or KDE QT frontend) as their default packagemanager.

I went to the packagekit mainpage and had a look at the developers of packagekit and saw that they came from Foresight Linux, rPath, openSUSE, Red Hat, Gnome, Fedora, Pardus, Mandriva and some other areas.

I decided to give packagekit a try to to see if was as good as one might expect, using the AUR repository of Arch Linux, and installed packagekit and gnome-packagekit. (Yes there are gui package managers for Arch.)

In the first place it looks very good , also its easy to use and its blazingly fast (On my box).

Here is some explanation about Packagekit , and it looks like packagekit does not try replace your tools, but I expect that soon Synaptic will look like Gnome-Packagekit, and Packagekit-QT will become the default gui for KDE.

Linux distributions take their first steps into uniformity, starting with packagemanagement, and I think that is good news.

Tuxicity.

I used Debian and Ubuntu, but it does not have where I look for anymore.

Currently, with the Lenny situation in Debian, upgrading to later versions of applications has ground to a halt, even in Sid. Same goes for Ubuntu, who freezes for a half year before a next frozen release comes out.

So I searched for something more on top of current packages, and tried Mandriva Cooker, I liked it but was not stable enough for my needs. I tried Foresight, it was closer to my needs, but preformed in a sluggish way  on my laptop. I tried Paldo, it preformed great but missed choice of packages. And Gentoo… been there done that.

It was time to try Arch Linux,  the installation was ncurses based, and many settings had to be edited and/or checked manually with vi or nano, no pre-cooked installation scripts!  The wiki and installation docs helped me out, as did the wonderful people on IRC ;  #archlinux on freenode, and managed to install a fully functional, lean and mean, bleeding edge Gnome desktop/workstation .

Arch Linux is not for a beginning Linux user, but with some experience and some aid it can be installed without many problems.

Once installed and properly set up, meaning that after install you still have to install and setup xorg, your preferred desktop manager, and more,  its a rock solid system, and  never has to be re-installed again.

Arch is a rolling release distro, and updates as new packages come in, first added to testing for a few days and if nothing goes wrong, most current stable packages, including kernel-upgrades, will be in the main repositories within a week, staying close to bleeding edge. If you want to stay on top of bleeding and like to take risks, you can also add the testing repository after install.

Freezing a release does not exist in Arch;  The releases of the new Arch iso’s are updated installers, with a snapshot of the ‘at that moment’ current Arch. So if you install it,  select the ftp or http option to install, to avoid an extra upgrade, specially when the iso is a bit old.

Arch uses Pacman as its main packagemanager, its easy to use and versatile.

AUR  is the ‘ArchLinux User-community Repository ‘, It contains package descriptions that allow you to compile a package from source and then install it via Pacman.

ABS is the Arch Build System. It is a ‘ports-like’ system for building and packaging software from source code.

I’ll be using Arch for a while, and probably longer then a while; its the best distro I ever used .

Tuxicity.

The initially developed (closed source) smart cart is hacked and finally people, (in this case NLNET Foundation and Radboud University in Nijmegen), are developing an open source smart card.

If you are curious about some of the new Mozilla Firefox 3 features check out this screencast.

Snatched From Mozillazine.

A minor issue with Totem and playing .avi files in Debian sid:

After todays updates I could no longer play .avi files (Green screen) for some reason. gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-full of the Debian Multimedia repository no longer works.

Solution was to use gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg of the Debian Main Repository.

Debian-Multimedia’s gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-full claims:

“This package contains all the encoders disabled in the official Debian package.

I assume the current glitch will be fixed soon.

Tuxicity.

Since some prefer to install the NVIDIA driver manually here s how its done in Ubuntu and Debian.

First get the needed packages (Assuming you have the needed repositories) as root or sudo:

apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

————————————————–For Ubuntu users only—————————————————-

Purge nvidia-glx-new if it is installed:

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx-new –purge

Adjust your linux-restricted-modules-common file:

sudo nano -w /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

change

DISABLED_MODULES=”"

in

DISABLED_MODULES=”nv nvidia_new”

In stead of using nano you can also use another editor of course.

——————————-End for Ubuntu users only———————–

Now download your NVIDIA Driver from here or, if you want an older one, go here (links may change in the future)

Now you have to drop into a terminal with the command ctrl-alt-f1

Log in as user and become root or use sudo and key in

killall gdm

or

killall kdm

to kill your X session.

Now you can install your NVIDIA driver with the command as root (Ubuntu users use sudo)

sh /path/to/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-whateverversion.run

When the installer asks if it should edit your xorg.conf choose yes (make sure you have your xorg.conf backed up!!)

After installation key in as root (sudo for ubuntu users)

gdm

or

kdm.

You should now get back into your login screen. (If not try a reboot and otherwise you are pickled)

If you are not sure what this all means its better not to try any of this.
Ubuntu does not support this in any way shape or form.

Tuxicity.

Todays updates in Debian Sid provided me with the latest stable version of Transmission and Gimp.

Transmission is the BitTorrent client I use; its light, fast and easy to use. Gimp has proven itself and needs no further comment.

Tuxicity.