Raving Genius

Here it is: everything I wanted to say about Arch Linux and more.

There… The monthly fix.

I have found out what the problem was. My video card does not output video to both the VGA and DVI connectors for each resolution. I don’t know why. So what had happened was I unplugged the normal DVI connector to force my computer into using the VGA (which is the only one that shows the low resolutions I need for installing in text mode). The graphical installers for the Fedora Cores (and later openSUSE) used the VGA, but when the computer switched to the higher resolutions, the VGA signal was canned.Thus the blank screen.

To make a long story slightly less long, I finally remembered that I had unplugged the DVI. After plugging it back in, everything fell into place, and I felt incredibly foolish.

One more thing: after downloading about 85-90% of the openSUSE DVD, I remembered I have it on a disc that came in a magazine I bought a couple months ago. Yeah, I’m that smart.

The other day I finally got tired of running an Ubuntu-based system. It is my assessment that the latest 7.10 release is the most unstable release yet. I have used Linux Mint 4 for a few months, and its not all that better. (Linux Mint is built on Ubuntu.) Now to be fair, I don’t have the most up-to-date system. Most of my problems very likely extend from that, and are not Ubuntu’s fault. I am especially inclined to believe this, as I have not heard complaints from others. Either way it was time to try something new.

Arch Linux has always been a system I wanted to try, so I backed up everything and installed it. Installation was very fast. Afterwards I booted into the default command prompt. This was fine as I wanted to control all packages on my new system. I was going for a parred-down, built-for-speed-but-with-a-few-graphic-treats-turned-on experience. There was just one problem: after configuring X Window System, it wouldn’t load my video module (radeon). After trying this and that tip on the Internet, I replaced the module with ‘vesa’. This got me ancient graphics, but still no Gnome. I will definitely try the Arch again when I upgrade to a newer computer, but for now I wanted something to work already.

Fedora Core 4 was the first Linux I was actually able to use. Everything about it was awesome (except for the 20-pack cd set I had to download). It was the first operating system I had used that came with a graphical installer. That really impressed me at the time. FC8 was recently released, so off I go to download it. In the meantime I already had FC7, so I wanted to install that and then upgrade in a few days. This would allow me to try the upgrade process and perhaps notice what was different. Well last night I ran through the install wizard, setup LVM and off it went. When finished the computer ejected the disc, rebooted and… gave me a blank screen. Super. Tried rebooting again, nothing. About that time the FC8 DVD was downloaded, so I loaded that up. This time the exact same thing happened! I went through the install again and left it to run overnight. (It was about 2:15 at this point and I was tired.) This morning an error message was patiently waiting for me. I didn’t write it down, but something to the effect of The kernal install package.rpm is corrupt. You can retry or reboot, but you will probably have to reinstall.

Right. Back to the Internet (on my wife’s computer). I thought maybe I can use the FC8 live CD. I just downloaded it an hour ago, burned and booted. Still nothing! FC8 seems to have been designed not to run on my machine. Meanwhile I also started the downloading openSUSE. It is just over halfway done; I will update this post when I finish installing it.

I am posting a link to this article, simply to spread the sentiment with others. I would very much love for Microsoft’s market share to be traded with various Linux and UNIX distros. How much better off consumers would be if the attitude that we should bend over and take what Microsoft gives us was replaced by Open Source philosophy. I hope Microsoft’s market share gets smaller and smaller, until they no longer have the power to cram DRM and other crap down our throats.

This isn’t necessarily a vote for Apple either. Don’t misunderstand, as great as their stuff is, they still DRM media. They just aren’t nearly as bad as Microsoft.