In case you haven't noticed, this website is a bit different than vcboard.net where all of this content used to be. As stated on the homepage, I am planning on moving all content from vcboard.net over here to codekoala.com, and then putting vcboard.net back to its originally intended purpose. That could take a while.

I am still in the process of moving all data over, but I think I've got most everything that is critical so far. Please be patient with me while I continue transferring data.

Ok, ok... I decided to give openSUSE 11.0 another shot. Since my last blog post, I have read some reviews posted by some other people who encountered similar problems when attempting to actually use KDE4. Some of these people opted to install the KDE 3.5.9 remix after that and had more promising result. So, instead of letting my bias get the best of me, I am going to try openSUSE 11.0 one more time using KDE3. The following are the steps I took while going through this process:

1. Booted from DVD (openSUSE 11.0 x86_64)

2. Chose "Installation" from the boot menu

3. After the installer is completely loaded, I selected "English (US)" for both the language and the keyboard layout, read the license agreement, checked the "I Agree to the License Terms" box, and clicked Next.

4. I waited for a few seconds while the installer probed my hardware and updated some package lists, then I chose "New Installation" and clicked Next.

5. The next step was to choose my timezone. They have a very simple interface for this--much less frustrating than the counterpart in the most recent release of Ubuntu (8.04 LTS). My system clock is set to Mountain time, so I left that stuff alone and clicked Next.

6. This step is probably where I screwed up the most last time. It's where you choose which desktop environment you want. You can choose from GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0, KDE 3.5, and XFCE Deskop. Last time I chose KDE 4.0. This time I chose KDE 3.5 and clicked Next.

7. After choosing the desktop environment, the installer took me to the disk partition section of the installation. This should be pretty easy for most people, but I changed a few things. Namely, I put the root and home partitions together, and I deleted one of my Windows partitions because Windows is stupid and bloated. Once I verified the disk partition settings, I clicked Next.

8. This part is where you get to enter the primary system user's information. You can specify the user's name, login, and password. You may also specify a few options including whether or not the root user will have the same password, whether that user will receive system mail, and whether or not that user will be logged in automatically. If you need to, you may change the authentication settings here too. I just entered the information and got on with it. (If you uncheck the box for the root user having the same password, you're prompted for the root password after this screen)

9. Finally, we get to the step where you get to verify all of the installation settings. I think I'll just go with the configuration for now. When you click Install, you're prompted to verify that you really want to install. Use your head on this one.

10. After all of that, it began to format my partitions. One neat thing that I noticed while it was installing was the fact that they rolled commonly-installed packages into what they call "images." This seems to increase installation speed considerably. In the past, I've had most RPM-based distribution installations take as long as (or longer than) Windows takes to install. Granted, the difference there is that you actually get useful stuff once Linux is installed, whereas with Windows, you're stuck with something barely usable and you still have to install drivers for every piece of hardware except your monitor.

    Anyway... the openSUSE folks seem to have addressed that problem recently (maybe just in this release). This went a LOT faster than I've ever seen (on any computer). Despite the use of those images, though, there were still nearly 500 packages that needed to be installed. It seems to be quite evident that the packages are working faster than ever before. It's refreshing (though it did still take quite a bit longer to install than most Debian-based distributions I've tried).

11. After all of the packages are installed, the system does some configuration and then reboots itself. When it comes back up, the installer will appear, do some more hardware detection and configuration, and then go straight into your desktop.

openSUSE actually didn't detect my 1680x1050 resolution (I didn't know any modern distribution wouldn't anymore), so I just went into YaST and set the resolution to what it should be. And then it locked up, and I had to do a hard reboot. Let's hope I can stop that from happening again. I suppose so long as I can still see things other than my mouse, I should be good.

Upon rebooting into my desktop, the resolution was still crappy. When I went to change it this time, though, I noticed that dual-head mode was enabled. That's stupid. I never plug a second monitor into my laptop. I disabled that, then tried to change the resolution. After logging out and back in, it seems to have changed the resolution properly. While I realize that I do have an extremely crappy video card, Ubuntu and others have been able to offer me 3D acceleration. This option is currently unavailable with openSUSE. Perhaps a little research will solve that problem.

After a few minutes of configuration and preference setting, my system locked up yet again. And another hard reset did the trick of getting it operational again. One more and it's outta here!! I do have to say... Minus the quirks with the resolution and drivers, the distribution does not seem bad at all. It might be worth trying out on a different computer--maybe I'd have better luck.

Alright, now I'm going to check the software management tool for a real driver for my video card. Looks like I may have found some. I hope they work. I'm using a "1-click installer" that I found from a Google search. The installation went fine, but after logging out and back in (to have the drivers take effect), it locked up again.

So, round two folks. Again, it might just be user error. It might just be my computer. Or openSUSE really might just suck. I don't think I'll be trying it on my computer again for a while. I might try on a different system altogether, but not on my main laptop.

Those of you who have ever held any sort of conversation with me have probably heard or have personal experience with my bigotry concerning Linux. I absolutely love Linux, and I make all sorts of excuses for the things it doesn't to as well as Windows and Mac OS to convince people to use Linux. It's just the way I am.

I've been using Linux as my main operating system ever since about 2000, though I did dabble with it a few times before that. I started out with RedHat Linux way back when, and then moved on to Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux. As time passed, I found out about this particular distribution called "SuSE Linux," which claimed to be able to detect hardware even better than the others I had tried. It even looked really pretty. I began to really want to use this distribution. It got to the point where I almost spent $80 on it, just so I could play around.

Eventually, I got my hands on a free copy by downloading all of the packages from their FTP server or something. I managed to get this installed, and I was even more impressed than I had anticipated. SuSE Linux was amazing. But by this time, I had already become addicted to downloading and trying out any distribution I could get my hands on. That meant that SuSE spent a few days or weeks on my computer before I replaced it with something else.

As I tried more and more distributions of Linux, I began to form opinions about them. I observed what certain distributions did well, and made hard mental notes about what each distribution didn't do so well. It wasn't long before I noticed that basically all of the RPM-based distributions I had tried suffered from two major problems: bloated installation packages and severe system slow-downs as time went on. It seemed that RPM-based distributions always slowed down just as bad as Windows machines. Other types of Linux, such as Slackware, Gentoo, and Debian, didn't seem to suffer from this nearly as bad.

With these opinions in mind, I carefully chose which distributions I elected to actually install with plans for keeping around a long time. It seemed like I would always download the RPM-based distributions, but I would do it "just in case" someone else wanted the CD or DVD. Sometimes I would download the distributions and never even bother to burn the CD image to disc. I would just stuff the image away for future reference.

However, despite my opinions of RPM-based distributions, I did end up installing SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop/Server and openSUSE a few years ago. Part of it was for a class I had; another part was to find a distribution that would suit the needs of one of my buddies. I noticed several improvements in the distributions as the years passed, but those lingering problems with bloated packages and system slow-downs still plagued each distribution.

Last week, openSUSE 11.0 was finally released. Just like always, I downloaded the CD and DVD images with no plans of actually installing openSUSE anywhere. As the downloads were going, I read some reviews posted by other people. It sounded like this particular release of openSUSE actually addressed the issues of bloat and system slow-downs (finally!!), so that made me happy, but I still didn't quite consider installing it on any of my computers. I did use one of the live CD's at work for a day, though, and it treated me well.

This morning I got the itch to change the distribution I had installed on my main computer. I was going through the list of recent downloads that I had, and it occurred to me that the most recent version I had was openSUSE 11.0. It also occurred to me that it had been at least two years since I had seriously considered installing openSUSE or SLED/SLES on my computer. So I decided that maybe everything I had read was worth looking into on my own and possibly revisiting my biased opinion of RPM-based distributions.

I started the installation early this morning while I took notes and worked from another machine. The installation went very smoothly. Everything was logical and clean. It really was a good experience. The packages really did seem to install considerably faster than any release in the past, so I had high hopes for how the system would perform after installation. After everything was said and done, my computer rebooted into the freshly installed KDE 4.0 desktop of openSUSE 11.0. It looked nice, and it was actually functional--which I cannot honestly say about any other distributions that have a KDE 4.0 remix.

Since up to this morning I hadn't been able to use KDE 4 long enough to figure out what's changed, that's where I started. I explored the new menu, which I have to admit is quite funky, but I guess that's how the industry likes things nowadays. I played around with some of the personal settings that it offers. Things seemed logical enough, but it is quite a change from KDE 3.5, which I've been using for quite a while.

After a couple minutes of tinkering, I noticed a little bubble in the corner that said something about installing some system updates. I clicked it and ran through some sort of wizard, but I guess there were no updates to install. Or maybe I just have super-slow Internet and it was taking forever to download the changes. Whatever the case, I kept on tinkering with some settings while the updater did its thing.

Next thing I know, my screen goes black and flashes a few times. Then all I can see is a white mouse on a black background. That's it. Nothing else. I'm really not sure what the problem was. The settings I was playing with seemed fairly innocent, as I modify those sorts of settings all the time on KDE 3.5. After a few minutes of white-mouse-on-black-screen fun, I decided a reboot might solve the problem.

A couple minutes later, I was presented with my loading screen, followed by the black screen and white mouse. That's it. Nothing else.

Needless to say, despite all of the improvements that I did notice in this release of openSUSE, it left a rather bitter taste in my mouth in other areas. openSUSE is no longer on my computer--it's long been replaced with yet another distribution.

Maybe it's user error. Maybe it's my computer's hardware. Or maybe openSUSE really does suck. Whatever the case, it wouldn't surprise me if I wait another year or two to try out another RPM-based distribution.

I recently decided it would be prudent for me to request permission from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to redistribute a copy of the scriptures with the PyScriptures program that I have been working on recently. I didn't want to be held liable for any copyright infringement or other legal violations. So I decided to contact them a couple of weeks ago. Here is my message requesting permission:

To whom it may concern:

I would like to request permission to redistribute and use a database which contains the LDS standard works (scriptures only, not the bible dictionary, topical guide, or even footnotes). One of my personal projects relies upon a local copy of the scriptures in order to be useful at all, and I would like people to be able to use this program without fear of any sort of copyright infringement charges to any party. The goal of the program is to offer users of platforms other than Microsoft Windows a way to peruse and study the scriptures without requiring an Internet connection. I have tested it on Windows XP, Linux, and MacOS X and it works great. There are still some parts that need some work, and things could probably be optimized a bit, but works well enough considering that I've only been working on it for about a week and a half.

To learn more about this project, please go to http://code.google.com/p/pyscriptures/ where you can even browse the Python source code for my application (though you might want to do so on an empty stomach). The database is called 'scriptures.db' (http://code.google.com/p/pyscriptures/source/browse/trunk/pyscriptures/scriptures.db) and was created using SQLite in case you are interested in examining and verifying its contents. One of my main reasons for creating this database is that I noticed the database that The Mormon Documentation Project offers is missing some things, particularly all of the answers in Section 77 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I didn't want to find out what else was missing or modified. Perhaps the reason those answers are missing is because that's part of the conditions of redistributing the scriptures?

Please notify me as soon as possible if there are any objections to the use and redistribution of this database. If that is the case, I will delete this project immediately. However, if I may be granted permission to redistribute the database containing the unmodified scriptures, I would greatly appreciate a response which states what my rights are in this matter.

Thank you for your time! Have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Josh VanderLinden

Developer

I got my reply today:

Dear Josh VanderLinden:

Thank you for your email dated 9 June 2008 requesting permission to use a database containing the LDS Standard works to redistribute.

After reviewing your request we have determined that we must deny your request for the use of this material. Church policy does not allow its intellectual properties to be used as you are requesting.

We appreciate your intentions, but trust you will understand and support the decision of the Church in this matter.

Thank you for checking with us.

Bobbie Reynolds, Paralegal

Intellectual Property Office

Somehow I could see this coming. I was curious, however, to determine if there was a way I could avoid litigation by modifying the way the program operates. So I responded with this message:

Hello Bobbie,

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry that the verdict was not in my favor, but I do understand completely. Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked in the first place. Before I remove the project from the Internet, I would like to ask one more question. Is there a way I could somehow make the program legal? I've noticed that other some programs for the scriptures don't exactly redistribute the scriptures with the program itself. Instead they seem to download the scriptures from scriptures.lds.org (or elsewhere?) on an individual level, and the individual who runs the program has to specifically tell the program to do so. Would that be a more appropriate route for my project to take? Or would that also violate the rules?

Thanks again,

Josh VanderLinden

After only a few hours, I received the following reply:

If I understand you correctly, this also sounds like a reformatting project, which is restricted. Thank you for requesting further clarification and for your compliance to Church policy.

Bobbie

So it looks like I will have to discontinue this project, or at least not allow other people to use my work and keep it all to myself. In compliance with the message communicated to me by the legal representatives of the Church, I have removed the project from Google Code, and it shall remain a project for my own purposes. My apologies go out to everyone who actually found this program useful and promising. I can't blame the Church for being strict in its policies--neither should you.

So I was trying to help one of my good friends get started with Django today. He managed to get Python and the development version of Django installed, but once he tried to actually start working on a project he ran into some strange problems. In the command prompt, he changed to the directory where he wanted to create his Django projects and tried to run the appropriate command to actually create one. It came back telling him it was and invalid command and all that. We checked the paths and whatnot, and everything seemed perfectly fine.

After a little bit of further tinkering, we agreed to let me use LogMeIn to try to figure out what the problem was. When I got into his computer, he had his command prompt open. Everything was a bit fishy--no tab-completion, 8-character file and directory names, all upper-case names, etc. At first I just assumed that he was using an older version of Windows XP. I was personally not aware that XP shipped with such outdated capabilities, so it was a big surprise for me.

Eventually, I decided to open another command prompt, and I noticed that the file names were all long and properly-cased. Tab completion also worked. Turns out that my buddy opened the command prompt using Start > Run: command.com, while I used cmd.exe. Strange that the legacy command prompt is still included in XP.

So if anyone else runs into similar problems, check which method you're using to open the command prompt.

So I worked on my scripture program a bit more this past week. I've added a lot of the features I originally planned to implement. There are still some other things I plan to implement (such as the advanced search), but I think it's looking pretty good right now as far as features are concerned.

I do realize that there are some parts of the program that are still shabby. A lot of the code could be optimized quite a bit, and the code really needs more refactoring (though I did a considerable amount of that already).

This release would have happened a day or two ago, but my parents were in town and we were having a good old time together. I also ran into some problems that were only present on MacOS, so I had to track those down before I felt comfortable releasing a new version.

Anyway, it's here! Go ahead and download it from http://code.google.com/p/pyscriptures/

Just a little update for anyone who really cares... I decided to move PyScriptures from this server over to Google Code. I think it will allow more people to find the project and make good use of it. It might even allow people to contribute to the code and make the program better!

Here it is!! http://code.google.com/p/pyscriptures/

So, for those of you who aren't in my immediate vicinity or who aren't on Google Talk all the time, this might well be your first exposure to my latest project. I'm calling it PyScriptures. Py because I wrote it all in Python. Scriptures because it is a program that provides the entire LDS standard works (as far as the actual scriptures are concerned, anyway).

The following are the steps I took to install Slackware 12.1 on my EeePC this past weekend. I hope you find them complete and helpful!

Installing Slackware 12.1 on an Asus EeePC 701

1. Burn DVD .iso to disc
2. Turn on EeePC
3. Hit F2 to run setup
4. Go to the Advanced tab, and set "OS Installation" to "Start"
5. Go to the Boot tab, and ensure that the external DVD drive will be used for booting before the internal SSD
6. Exit and save changes
7. Just hit enter after rebooting from BIOS configuration when the Slackware boot screen shows up
8. Unless you want to use a different keymap for whatever reason, hit enter when asked to select a keyboard map
9. Login as root
10. Run fdisk or cfdisk on /dev/hdc
11. Remove all partitions (unless you know what you're doing)
    1. fdisk: d to delete (you may have to select multiple partitions to delete if you have more than one for some reason)
    2. cfdisk: Select all partitions individually with up/down arrow keys and use the left/right arrow keys to select delete from the menu at the bottom. Hit enter to run the delete command when it's highlighted.
12. Create one partition that takes the whole SSD (again, unless you know what you're doing)
    1. fdisk: n (for new); enter; p (for primary); enter; 1 (for the first primary partition); enter; enter (to start at the beginning of the drive); enter (to select the end of the drive)
    2. cfdisk: Select the new command with the left/right arrow keys and hit enter when it's selected. Make it a primary parition, and have it take the whole SSD (3997.49MB in my case).
13. Set the type of the new partition to be Linux
    1. fdisk: t (for type); enter; 83 (for Linux); enter
    2. cfdisk: Use the left/right arrow keys to select the type command at the bottom and hit enter when it's selected. Choose 83.
14. Set the new partition (or the first, if you decided to make more than one) to be bootable
    1. fdisk: a (for bootable); enter; 1 (for primary partition 1); enter
    2. cfdisk: Select the bootable command from the bottom using the left/right arrow keys. Hit enter when it's selected.
15. Write the changes to the partition table and quit
    1. fdisk: w
    2. cfdisk: Use the left/right arrow keys to select the write command from the bottom. Hit enter when it's selected. Type 'yes' to verify your intent, acknowledging that your previous data will be "gone". Then select the quit command.
16. Run setup
17. Select TARGET to specify where you will be installing
18. Select /dev/hdc1
19. Format the partition
20. To reduce write cycles, many people suggest formatting with ext2, which is a non-journaling filesystem. However, many people claim that the limited number write cycles of SSD is not something to worry about. Use your best judgement on this one. Hit OK after the format is complete.
21. Select where you plan to install Slackware from. In my case, it's the DVD. I usually tell it to find the media automatically. Select manual if you know which device your DVD drive is. Mine was /dev/sr0.
22. Select the packages you wish to install. This is where your installation will likely differ greatly from mine because of personal preferences. I do a lot of development, so I will keep a lot of things for that. Here's what I selected to install:
    1. Base Linux System
    2. Various Applications that do not need X
    3. Program Development (C, C++, Lisp, Perl, etc.)
    4. Linux kernel source
    5. Qt and the K Desktop Environment for X
    6. System Libraries (needed by KDE, GNOME, X, and more)
    7. Networking (TCP/IP, UUCP, Mail, News)
    8. Tcl/Tk script languages
    9. X Window System
    10. X Applications
    11. Games
23. Choose whether or not you want to be picky about your software. To save a little extra disk space, I'm going to manually choose what I don't want. This includes:
    1. A: cpio, cryptsetup, cups, floppy, genpower, jfsutils, mdadm, mt-st, mtx, quota, reiserfsprogs, rpm2tgz, tcsh, xfsprogs
    2. AP: amp, cdparanoia, hplip, gutenprint, jed, joe, jove, ksh93, mysql, rpm, xfsdump, zsh
    3. D: gcc-gfortran, gcc-gnat, gcc-java, mercurial, p2c
    4. N: elm, epic4, httpd, mailx, mutt, netatalk, pine, popa3d, proftpd, rp-pppoe, samba, slrn, tin, trn, vsftpd
    5. TCL: hfsutils
    6. X: anthy, bdftopcf, beforelight, libhangul, sazanami-fonts-ttf, sinhala_lklug-font-ttf, tibmachuni-font-ttf, wqy-zenhei-font-ttf
    7. XAP: audacious, audacious-plugins, gftp, mozilla-thunderbird, pan, seamonkey
24. Wait for the installation to complete. It took almost a full hour with my package selection, leaving me with 485.4MB free on my 4GB SSD.
25. Choose whether or not you want to make a bootable USB... I skipped it.
26. Choose how you wish to install LILO. I chose simple.
27. Choose your frame buffer mode for the console. I chose 640x480x256.
28. Specify any optional kernal parameters. I left this blank, originally, but later learned that having 'hdc=noprobe' increased my disk access speed by about 13 times.
29. Specify whether you wish to use UTF-8 on the console. I chose no.
30. Specify where to install LILO. I chose MBR.
31. Specify your mouse type. I chose imps2.
32. Specify whether or not you wish to have gpm run at boot, which allows you to use your mouse in the console. I chose yes.
33. Configure your network.
34. Give your eeepc a hostname. This can be whatever you'd like.
35. Specify the domain for your network. This can be whatever you'd like as well.
36. Configure your IP address information. I just chose DHCP.
37. Set the DHCP hostname. I left this blank.
38. Review and confirm your network settings.
39. Choose which services you wish to have running immediately after booting.
40. See if you want to try custom screen fonts. I usually don't bother.
41. Specify whether your hardware clock is set to local time or UTC.
42. Choose your timezone.
43. Select your preferred window manager. I chose KDE.
44. Set the root password.
45. Slackware has been installed! Exit the setup program and reboot.
46. Hit F2 to enter the BIOS again.
47. Set OS Installation to "Finished" and exit the BIOS, saving changes.
48. Reboot into Slackware! The first boot takes a while because of all the initial setup. It is faster on subsequent reboots, assuming you don't add new services (like apache and mysql) at boot.

Change a few settings around.

1. vi /etc/inittab
2. (set default runlevel to 4)
3. vi /etc/lilo.conf
4. add 'compact' somewhere to make it boot faster
5. change the boot delay so it's not 120 seconds

Now for installing various drivers.

1. Install the ethernet driver: http://people.redhat.com/csnook/atl2/atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   1. wget http://people.redhat.com/csnook/atl2/atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   2. tar jxf atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   3. cd atl2-2.0.4
   4. make
   5. cp atl2.ko /lib/modules/2.6.24.5-smp/kernel/drivers/net/
   6. depmod -a
   7. modprobe atl2
   8. ifconfig
2. Install the drivers for the wireless: http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   1. wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   2. tar zxvf madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   3. cd madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   4. scripts/madwifi-unload
   5. scripts/find-madwifi-modules.sh uname -r
   6. make && make install
   7. modprobe ath_pci

I kind of stopped taking notes after I realized how much fun it was to have Slackware on my EeePC. If you have questions, just add a comment below.

Being a web developer, I'm often presented with questions about what I prefer to use for building websites. I tend to build websites by hand using a plain old text editor. Obviously there are a lot of other tools that I use in the process of creating an entire website, but the fact that I use a text editor is sufficient information for the time being. Some of the people who ask me about my preferences often ask why I don't use Flash or similar technologies when they learn of my archaic habits. I have my personal reasons, but I recently read an article that presented many interesting thoughts concerning the potential future of Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight that make me feel all the better about my decision to not use either one.

Many website owners do not feel that they can have a truly "professional" website without having at least one thing done with Flash or Silverlight. Developers often feel that technologies such as these save them massive amounts of time and offer increased functionality. I cannot argue with either of those points in a general sense (I actually used Flash a lot, long before Adobe bought Macromedia). Tristan Nitot, founder of Mozilla Europe, discussed the possibility of these two technologies becoming a problem for web developers in the future. As it stands right now, both companies freely release their respective plug-ins for use all over the world. But what happens if the companies decide to start charging for the plug-ins? Developers already have to fork out an arm and a leg just to be able to create Flash and Silverlight content. When will the consumers be forced to pay as well?

Nitot also feels that such technologies are limiting to the open nature of the Internet. He suggests that the next version of HTML will be capable of presenting video and audio files natively, requiring the user to download no plug-ins at all. This idea in and of itself reduces the usefulness of both Flash and Silverlight tremendously, as many websites simply use Flash applications for audio or video playback (think YouTube).

If you're a web monkey like myself, this article is worth a read. It definitely opened my mind to a few of the potential problems in the future of the Internet.