Other than the ridiculous SLAB menu (which reminds me way too much of the Fisher-Price Windows menu and there seems to be no way to use a plain one), openSUSE isn’t bad…unless you have to change a configuration that requires root access, or install software. I used to think Synaptic was a little slow to load (certainly it’s slower than apt-get), but Synaptic has nothing on YaST. In under 4s after I hit Enter, Synaptic can display 23 454 packages from universe, multiverse and a couple of custom repos. YaST doesn’t list the number of packages, but the only sources I have enabled are the installation DVD and the official OSS repos from SUSE, and it takes 18s after hitting Enter for it to come up with the list. Each time I open YaST, it has to scan each source, then another scan to update, and finally, it will display results. I also don’t like the fact that (apparently) there’s no readily available equivalent to multiverse because that means I can’t disable the DVD as a potential source. If I do, then I have only the OSS software available to me, which isn’t much help if I want to install something like Acrobat, which I actually had to do because for some reason, I couldn’t get a particular PDF to display correctly in Evince. I was in bed (wanting to read the PDF) and didn’t want to get up to retrieve the installation DVD, but YaST couldn’t look for it anywhere except the DVD, or the OSS repos (where it isn’t because it’s not OSS). SUSE enterprise might be different, but I’d have to pay for that, and part of the reason I like Linux is because I can change distros at will without spending hundreds of dollars on it. I did somehow manage to shove Acrobat 8.0 down its throat (7.0 was on the DVD, found an rpm of 8.0 on Adobe’s site), but it wasn’t anywhere near as easy as it would have been on Ubuntu. I wasn’t even sure it had installed, so I had to fire up YaST and look in the list (18 seconds of my life that I’ll never get back). If I download a deb, all I have to do to install it is click (once, ’cause that’s the way I have Nautilus set). Gdebi will ask for my password, and open a nice little window with an Install button. If there are any potential problems, it’ll tell me, but won’t refuse to install if I want to go ahead in spite of that.
I like openSUSE as far as using it, but that’s because it has Gnome, which is my preferred DE. I do not like YaST, not one bit. It’s slow and clunky, and if you want to install a bunch of software, you might want to do them all at once without closing YaST because otherwise, you could spend hours waiting for it to figure out what software is available to you. I don’t like SLAB because I know what application I want to use and I don’t need a task-based interface. Also, it drives me BATSHIT that the panel entry says, “Computer” with a little icon of a monitor. Goddamn it, I know I’m using a computer, and I know what the menu does. Why can’t I have the little SUSE chameleon instead? Ubuntu default has something similar (Menu Bar, though not as huge and clunky as SLAB), but all I have to do is “Remove from panel” and replace with a Main Menu, which has a cute little Ubuntu icon (or a Gnome foot for some themes), and a neat little list of everything I need, which I can customise with Alacarte. For that matter, if you actually like the SLAB menu (though I can’t imagine why anyone would), you can install that on Ubuntu, either manually or with Automatix. I’d switch the laptop to Ubuntu (or Mint or something), but this is the first time I’ve had all three computers working properly on the network (still have to figure out why I couldn’t get fstab umask 003 to work for my FAT32 partition), and I want to keep it for a while before I change something that breaks it. Not that I mind breaking stuff, but I would like to have it functioning for a little while. Who knows–maybe I’ll learn to like at least SLAB, if not that goddamned slow-ass YaST. 🙂
P.S. To SUSE’s credit, I did just now discover that they made available the international clock applet for the panel, and it is available for Ubuntu. Yaaaay for multiple time zones!
P.P.S. Yay for Geek Girl–I just found the option to get rid of that goddamned huge idiot-menu!!
Yes, sarcasm. Why? Might have something to do with the half-grown tabby cat that is currently in hiding underneath the chesterfield in the living room. P. and his goddamned strays. At work, he feeds anything that should happen to be homeless or hungry and wander by (including a skunk and an opossum), but two of his cats are special. The mama had two kittens earlier in the year, but then started showing up with just one. He patiently tamed them both, having better success with the kitten than the adult, and for the last couple of weeks, he’s been trying to catch them because he worries about them living outside in the winter. They’re fat and sassy, with lovely thick coats, but he’s right about one thing–the female can’t be left there to produce more kittens next year, and if the little one is female, it’ll do the same. He bought a small dog carrier and started feeding them in it, and they got used to it. His plan was to catch them and take them to our local shelter because he says the one in M.V. looks like a prison. The shelter lady said she would take them, primarily because he lied to her about the county and told her they were within her “jurisdiction”.
Last weekend, he was telling me about the young one, and said he wished we could keep it (him/her/whatever). This is a no-pets rental, and I’m violently allergic to cats, but (thinking he wouldn’t do it), dumbass me told him that if he could convince D&G that we could keep a cat without infesting their house with fleas or ruining the carpet with cat urine, and if he’d pay for the Claritin and ensure that I never run out, it would be okay with me for the cat to be here. Not the adult because she’s far more feral, but the little one. I don’t like cats, but I don’t really actively dislike them (except the two that hunt at our bird feeders), and besides, who the hell would’ve thought he’d actually do it?!? He hasn’t cleared it with D&G yet, so perhaps they’ll say no, but for the time being, there is a litterbox (ewww) in the fish room (P wants it there so the cat can find it easily), and there is a kind of cute little tabby cat that we believe is female…hiding under the chesterfield in my living room. So help me FSM, if that thing relieves itself on the floor, claws anything, or causes any damage to my fish, their tanks or their equipment, I’ll drive it to the goddamned shelter myself, but so far, it hasn’t done anything but hide. If he somehow does manage to sweet-talk D. into letting it stay here, it’s not allowed outside, it is getting spayed (or neutered, if he’s wrong about its gender), it is getting a checkup at the vet’s, it is getting proper flea treatment from the vet, I do not clean litterboxes, it doesn’t sleep with us unless it stays at the foot of the bed, and if I ever catch it on the counter or the table, it is getting sprayed with water. It’s also getting called Kitteh. Christ….why did I ever agree to this??
I did it! For the first time ever, I set up Samba on a system running Ubuntu, and I didn’t have to fix anything that I’d fucked up. Well, not so far. I’ve set up the network, added the users, and I can see P’s machine and access his files, but he’s playing a game, so I can’t find out whether he can access mine, but he has a user account, and should be okay. I also haven’t yet finished installing openSUSE on the laptop (got bored with Mint), so I don’t yet know whether that will be okay, but SUSE is much easier for Samba than Ubuntu (SUSE even has a GUI for it), so I’d think it should be all right as well. Anyway, I’m just impressed that I didn’t have to go back and fix anything because….I didn’t fuck it up in the first place. Configuring Samba on Ubuntu is the bitch; SUSE and XP aren’t likely to give me any problems. I guess we’ll see, though….
P.S. Machinae Supremacy fucking ROCKS.
Å å Ä ä Ö ö
Muahahahaha! I rule. Compose, modifier, “base” letter. To the dumbasses who wrote “hit the keys at the same time”, STFU and DIAF. Ã… Ä ö Ã¥ Ã¥….I so rule!
Ã¥ Okay, fine. Compose, a+o.
Ä Fine, too. Compose, hold shift, a+’.
How in the name of Jesus tapdancing Christ am I supposed to do Ã… and ä if I can’t use the Shift key to modify without activating it to make a character that I don’t want?!?!? If I try to use it to make a into A so I can put the goddamned stupid ring on it and use it at the beginning of a sentence, then it just doesn’t do anything! I can’t do ä because I if I use Shift, then I get Ä and if I don’t, then I get á, which I don’t even need–acute is for bleeding Jesus French! Ö and ö don’t appear to work at all, but they’re IN THE FUCKING LIST. I know that because I CAN READ THE LIST. I am not using dead keys because I fucking hate dead keys, and I’m for goddamned sure not changing my entire keyboard layout for three fucking letters and their corresponding capitals. There has got to be a way to do this that doesn’t involve a slow-ass dropdown character palette.
FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, ALL I WANT TO DO IS RENAME THE FILES IN A MANNER THAT REMOVES THE LEADING NUMBERS AND REPLACES THEM WITH A NAME. NO, IT IS NOT A REGULAR EXPRESSION BECAUSE I SUCK AT REGEX. NO, I DON’T WANT TO KEEP ANY OF THE NUMBERS, AND YES, I DO WANT TO KEEP THE ORIGINAL NAME OF THE FILE EXCEPT FOR THE GODDAMNED LEADING NUMBERS, WHICH I WANT REPLACED WITH THE SAME TEXT FOR EACH FILE. WHY IS THIS SO GODDANMED SO DIFFICULT?!?!?!
P.S. Yeah, he’s right….he’s no planner. Hehe.
I hate you all. Fuck off. I love your fish, but you make me fucking crazy. I like your pictures, but not enough to bother clicking the login link. Go away–I’m tired of you all now. The beauty of the virtual world is that little “x” in the corner. Hehe.
Oh, and I guess I’m a ‘splo ho after all. Muahaha!
Where are the Monopoly money jokes now?
This would be vaguely amusing…if I didn’t live here now. 😉