Blake Miller's Blog

This semester at school we have a class called “Second Operating System”. Just like you would expect, we are learning Linux. Unfortunately, the teachers have opted to go with OpenSUSE as the primary OS to teach. First day was to do the setup on either our laptops or the desktop machines the school provides. I opted to install OpenSUSE in Sun’s VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is a great desktop test environment mostly used by programmers to test programs in. It supports Linux and Windows as a gust operating system allowing you to install operating systems on a base Windows install. This means that I don’t have to dual boot 2 operating systems.

After installing openSUSE, first thing I wanted to do was install the Addition tools that come with VirtualBox. This will allows the mouse to flow between the virtual machine and the actual machines desktop freely. It also allows the display to run in “Seamless mode”. Seamless mode run the guest OS right on top of the desktop of the machine seamlessly.

The problem with this is you need to install the kernel source headers. Not a big deal with most OS’s but with OpenSUSE, she wasn’t going to go willing. In Ubuntu when you go to install the kernel source headers it asks you if you really want to do this then enables the correct repositories. OpenSUSE says it doesn’t exist then you have to go hunting for how to do it. So I did what ever n00b does and went to Google and tryed finding a site that shows how to install the files that were required.

Turns out that if you go in about 5 menus deep in the crap thing they call a control panel, there is a spot where you can add the repos. It gives you a nice list of about 20 repos that if you didn’t have any prior Linux knowledge you would have no idea what one to add. So I added all of them.

I ran a repo update using there crappy application manager. It took 30 minutes to check all the repos and 6 of them failed. Explain that to me. :S So after using the search feature found exactly what I was looking for. After that everything installed and ran fine, accept a few things:

1. Seamless mode doesn’t work
2. Internet is up and down (no other VM does this)
3. Installing any application is the biggest pain in the but ever

To conclude, I hate OpenSUSE. I don’t recommend using it at all. They make doing anything twice as difficult as it should be. Why make it so hard?

A battle that might never end between Mac and PC users. A battle that is won but no one on the PC side will admit it.

The battle between Mac and PC have been going on for years and years. This history behind Apple and Microsoft has always been to “out do” the other. Microsoft I hate to brake it to you… but you lost.

I recommended my second Mac out to a friend of myna who was getting a laptop to do her writing on. She got it in November and has never had a issue with it. My laptop is a little older but still has some good hardware in it. I run XP Pro hooked to my domain at home. Over the time she has had her nice running Mac, I have formatted my Windows based laptop 10 times. That’s right, 10 times. And not only just the formatting but I don’t think any peace of software has worked correctly on it. Even Miro couldn’t play video back with out horrid lag and being very choppy.

Every since the last format, it’s been acting really weird with the file sync to my home server but today was the day it finally died.

It’s funny because I sit here writing this and reading the slides during the XP Pro install.
“Music and entertainment just got better” This is a great line. I have always had issues playing 340kbps music files.
“Now it’s easier to get help — and to help others!” Yeah it’s easy if grandma can forward the ports through her router.
“The computer will be faster and more reliable” Lets just all take a minute and laugh.
“Get support for the latest hardware and software” It goes on about Direct X 9 after that. Does that mean Miro should have been able to play my shows?
“Surfing the Internet: safe, fast and flexible” If you use Firefox
“Explore your creative side with photos and videos” but they can’t be to big or else explore will crash.
“Windows Movie Maker makes it easy and fun to capture, and edit video” Yeah right. If your trying to make a video slid show of picture, Windows will crash due to buffering issues.

So to sum up. Windows sucks. I’ll let you know how much better it is now that it’s formatted.

Edit: Ok I haven’t even posted this yet and I already have my first issue. USB stick with all my drivers on it won’t come up in My Computer… O look 5th times the charm!

Now that I have my computer up and running I have been messing around with a program called Virtual DJ. If your into making your own mixes and DJing then this might be a program you want to check out.

Virtual DJ is really cool and feature packed. One of the features is it lets you set 2 sound cards to be the output for Decks A and B allowing you to use a external mixer as your control for your crossfading and main mix output.

After doing this and playing some songs I noticed that the Crossfader on my DJ board (Behringer DX 1000) was cutting the sound out to soon so by the time the slider had made it to the middle both tracks were at half volume. What I wanted was to have Deck A be on full volume till the slider hit half way and then have the volume decline but all of this happening while Desk B’s volume is coming up.

I remember reading in the instructions that you could adjust the slop and overlap of the crossfader. I figured it would be like two knobs on the back or something but the adjustment is on the main motherboard inside of the case. This sounded like a great excuse to take it apart

After removing all the back screws I came to this.

Looking closer down need the Crossfader I found the two potentiometers.

According to the instructions it says not to mess with the overlap but to turn the Slop potentiometers all the way to the right to get what I wanted. (Make sure you check the instructions before doing this to your board) So then after putting all 10 screws back in I hooked the board up and away it went. PERFECT!

That was a fairly simple adjustment and I hope this will help you tune your board to what you want.

I Blake Miller do not take responsibility for damages you might cause to your equipment.

Well yesterday my poor old AMD 3500+ Asus AV8 – Delux motherboard gave up the ghost and died. Me and it were together for 5 greatfull years but now it has moved onto a better place.

So it’s replacment is going to be a bare bones kit from Tigerdirect. Click here for more details. It’s not the best thing ever but it will do exactly what I need it to do.

In the mean time I’m using a AMD Duron 1Ghz with 256 MB of ram running Kubuntu. I have to say. It sucks really bad.

As most of you know I am fluent in both Windows and Linux. Yesterday in the #mybb IRC channel, tension was tight between us Linux people and the Windows fan boy Matt (owner of msubuntu who will be sued when the site is launched) A good friend of myn, DrPoodle had had it with Matt. So with the help of MiNT we started to produce a list of all the reasons why Linux was better then windows. For any of you Windows fan boys… eat this…

1) Linux is free.
2) Linux is faster (another IRC user, tmhai, was astounded earlier today at how his laptop booted in under 30 seconds with Ubuntu, compared to the 30 minutes it took Windows to boot on it).
3) Linux is Open Source (which means bugs and security holes are found and fixed quicker).
4) With Linux, you own your Operating System. With Microsoft Windows, you don’t actually “own” the Operating System, you simply have a license that says you can use it. Every installation of Windows is owned by Microsoft.
5) Linux has better support. This is debatable, but there are a lot of community forums out there, and usually errors in Linux are much more readable than Windows errors, which leads to quicker solutions.
6) Linux has package managers. Most distros come with some form of package manager, a utility that installs safe and secure programs, and then updates them automatically.
7) Linux has daily updates. Most distros release daily updates of core files, as well as updates for programs.
Linux has releases every 6 months. Most distros release their next version every 6 months without fail. So instead of waiting an uncertain amount of time for the next Windows release, you know exactly when the next version of your OS will be out.
.. To read all the reasons, click Here.

If any of you Windows people have anything that could possibly have a case against Linux. I ask you to sign up on my forums and post your reasoning.