Random Thoughts

It's been a while since I've posted so this is an amalgamation of things that have been happening.  First of all, I now have a MacBook Air and the adjustment has been minimal.  All my Linux desktops have sort of been modified to have a quasi-OSX like setup with the arrangement of the close, minimize, maximize buttons.  At worst case, the terminal gives me back that Linux touch and gives me a lot of power back when OSX's UI fails me.

I love the touchpad gestures.  It's probably the most unique aspect of OSX.  Taking the cool computing ideas from Linux and giving it that Apple take on things gives me a good perspective on what can be done to make desktop computing more efficient.  That being said, I just really don't like the regressions that happened.

Getting my PS/2 keyboard with the USB converter to get recognized in OSX is mindbogglingly difficult.  I scoured multiple websites screaming at me the words: "No, it doesn't work." But I refused to believe.  It turns out that the solution is to turn off my MacBook and plug the keyboard in while the device is turned off.  Why?  I don't know.  If the keyboard is supported, why on earth would you want to make it harder to support such devices?

The USB ports are way too few and the Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) really blows here.  Suddenly, I can't use the extra monitor sitting here and I have to buy some fangled adapter to get it going (It's on the way...).  Lastly, the SSD drive is way too small, but that's to be expected.

Despite all of this, I am at peace with the Mac.  It's a nice device and gives me more experience as far as using other computing environments.  All that being said though, my next laptop will definitely go back to Linux.

Next stop, I reformatted my HP laptop that was running Linux Mint.  To be honest, I had been very disappointed with Linux Mint's performance here.  By the time I reformatted it, it had slowed down to a crawl on boot and on GDM login.  It has never ever happened before in any Linux desktop I've used and I have gone through quite a bit.  I tried to analyze the boot sequence and the GDM login process but to no avail.  It was just pitiful to see Linux perform this bad.

I installed Linux Mint 17.3 and that was a mindboggling choice.  The boot was as bad as when I had the bloated Linux Mint 17.1 install.  I was willing to forego that to see what the desktop had in favour.  Secretly, I hoped it would just simply disappear.  When I setup fglrx, I noticed that running amdconfig wouldn't detect any proper supported GPU (Mine is Radeon HD 7670M) which prompted me to look for the xorg version.

Linux Mint 17.3 runs on xorg 1.17.1 which seems to be .1 version above the latest fglrx version from AMD's site.  So I figured I should just ditch this.  I went back and reinstalled Linux Mint 17.1 on the HP Laptop.  I also installed fglrx and not fglrx-updates (which didn't work the last time I tried it).  After running amdconfig, I am treated with the same error which boggled my mind.  I checked xorg and the version was 1.15.  So, NOW, I'm really confused!

I rebooted anyway and fglrx seemed to load right.  I installed cairo-dock and the rest of my usual setup and everything seems set.  For some reason, Linux Mint 17.1 boots up faster than Linux Mint 17.3.  As long as it doesn't bog down, I can live with this.

Speaking of fglrx, I was also reading up if amdgpu and amdgpu-pro will have support on my Radeon GPU.  I think 7670M is still Southern Islands and that support 'should' be coming in the future.  Cross fingers!

Upgrading to Ubuntu 13.10

Keeping this brief, I ran into an error with upgrading Ubuntu.  "Could not calculate the upgrade" or some other mumbo jumbo.  So I look into just what the hell is happening on this upgrade and came across with this askubuntu article.  Basically, it told me to look at the logs which was very helpful.

$ grep Broken /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log

This showed me that the custom xorg-xserver-video-intel package I installed for fglrx is causing the breakage.  I did apt-get remove to delete the package and re-ran the upgrade.  It seems to be pushing through now.

Random thoughts...

Dug up a bit of the fglrx woes with my laptop and I figured that this was caused partially by bad code on AMD's part (what else is new?) and the regressions on the intel driver.  Truth be told, I don't know whether my laptop uses the hybrid method of Intel HD and Radeon 7670m but that seems to be the case judging by the Xorg logs.

I saw on the logs "screen 1 deleted because of no matching config section" and seemed to ramble on about some intel stuff that I was not aware of.  This launchpad bug seemed to corroborate with the evidence thus far.  From what I gather, fglrx is 12.9 which doesn't seem to support the Xorg version that my Ubuntu install came with.  

At the end of it, it really comes down to simply being happy with the open source radeon drivers.  I know never to trust AMD cards on Linux.  This just proves me right once more.

Moving on, a few days ago I quit Star Wars: The Old Republic.  The grindy gameplay and the overly negative community accelerated my exit.  Part of me felt like I wasted the months of play away.  Part of me felt sad to leave the splendid story unfinished.  When I moved to Walking Dead however, all that evaporated.  Walking Dead was a refreshing change to that game and provided me with what I thought was a great representation of modern point and click adventures.  Telltale has finally redeemed themselves after the utterly boring Monkey Island games and the insulting Back to the Future game.  Good job, guys!

So the key repeat workaround didn't actually work...

After testing out Colin McRae 2005 with the key repeat turned off, I realized it doesn't actually stop the issue from happening. The good news here is that apparently, I can just slap on my USB gamepad and the game picked it up just fine. Wine has come a long way now. Good stuff!

Ubuntu and keyboard key repeat issue

For a while now, I've tolerated the issue of playing Wine games and having problems with the keyboard key repeats. This involved getting killed in Mass Effect and crashing cars in Colin McRae 2005. So, I thought I should dig up on this issue and see just what the hell is happening.

As it turns out, this is caused by a known Xorg bug in Ubuntu 9.04 (lucky me). This discussion thread provides all the details that you need to know on the issue. What I did to alleviate the issues on my end is:

System > preferences > keyboard > key repeat