So I'm working late tonight, testing out some backup software. While I'm waiting for an OS update to download and install on my company's labserver before I install the backup software, I decide to hop onto /. to pass the time. I see this:

You have 1 new message waiting for you.

I click the link, and see that someone has replied to my post under "New iPod Firmware Locks Out RealNetworks' Music" article. Instead of an on-topic reply, I was greeted by this:

Just noticed your sig and read your journal entry on the junk faxes. Glad you nailed the jackass, but what you did with the "winnings" makes me sick. Did those junk faxes + your time fighting the case actually cost you $6,000?? I'd be willing to bet that hell no, they didn't. Then why the fuck did you get all greedy and spend that money, not rightfully yours, on yourself? Asshole.

You may have had a legitimate case, but these sorts of damages are exactly what's wrong with the legal system. They encourage frivolous bullshit lawsuits that tie up the system because people are looking for a big fat payday. Punitive damages should be kept to punish the wrongdoer, but the plaintiff should not get one red cent beyond reasonable, itemized compensation for actual damages. No emotional distress bullshit (you CAN NOT put a price on that, any attempt to do so is pointless - life sucks sometimes, deal with it; therapy is another story, and should be included in itemized damages), no $500 a freaking fax ($1000 actually with your lawyer). That probably cost you, what, 20 cents max? Probably much less?

Instead, punitive damages should go to a charity of the court's choosing. Preferably related in some way to the case. Or to some government fund to help reduce overall taxes. The bad guys get punished but the lameass "good" guys don't get all greedy and clog things up with bullshit.

I understand you settled out of court so in effect it was a private transaction, not subject to any hypothetical laws or judicial conventions I propose. But I still maintain that it was unethical for you to spend that money as you did, because it was not rightfully yours. The faxer did not do $6,000 worth of damage to YOU, so you are not morally entitled to $6,000 in compensation. The faxer did deserve the $12,000 penalty because he was surely doing it to others, plus it would deter him from doing it again.

You should have given that money to charity - maybe bought a few iMacs for an underfunded school computer class.

First of all, Mr. Anonymous Coward, you can kiss my ass. If you want to judge me and/or lecture me on what is and is not moral, at least have the balls to post using your /. nick.

Secondly, the money was and is rightfully mine because the law says so, period. Tell you what, Sparky-- if you don't like the law, then bitch to your elected representatives or run for office yourself to try to get it changed. Don't tear into me because I acted in accordance with it to claim what it says I can claim.

Note: I originally intended to submit this to Linux.com or some other online news agency. Since I've recently become quite busy with more lucrative writing, I've finally decided to release this since I'll never finish polishing it. Enjoy, and feel free to share your thoughts.

Linux.com's recent review of Sun's Java Desktop System came up with less than stellar results. When my colleague-in-print attempted to take the OS through its paces, he found that he was unable to even complete a simple installation. In his review, he identified the culprit as Sun's poor support for ultra-modern hardware. (Although many Slashdotters have commented that it may have been due to bad CDROM media.) Given that Sun has often claimed that JDS is targeted at corporations users who wish to reuse existing hardware, I will attempt to provide a second look based on slightly older hardware.

Configuration

For this test I am using a PIII 733 w/512 MB of RAM, a GeForce2 GTS, an AWE32 sound card, an Intel Etherexpress NIC, two 40 GB Western Digital ATA100 drives, a Creative 40x/8x/4x CDRW, a standard PS/2 keyboard, and a Microsoft Intellieye Optical Mouse. This machine was custom built a few years ago for maximum capacity and compatibility, with a focus on machine stability rather than performance. These decisions resulted in a slower processor and smaller disks than the maximum available at the time. In other words, exactly the type of machine a corporate office might look at deploying.

Installation

Upon inserting the disk and rebooting, I was presented with a graphical GRUB bootloader screen. I selected "install" and the YaST installer started up. If you've ever used SuSE, you should know what to expect out of YaST. It does a quick analysis of your system and suggests intelligent defaults for the install. When I previously installed JDS Release 1, the installer automatically chose ReiserFS as the filesystem and detected all the hardware without issue. The same thing occurred this time, except that I told the installer to upgrade the current installation instead of reformatting my ReiserFS partition.

After the installer finished analyzing the system, it proceeded to install all the packages from the first disk. This appeared to be core system components such as the kernel and command line utilities. The installer then asked me to remove the CDROM and reboot. After the reboot, the installer relaunched and began installing packages from the second and third CDROMs. When it was finished, I was presented with the Java Desktop login screen.

All in all, it doesn't appear that the installer has changed from Release 1 to Release 2. The install was straightforward, easy, and intelligent. I can't say that I have any complaints in this area, save for the fact that the install "feels" very much ripped from SuSE rather than having been customized for JDS.

Overview

Upon login, you are presented with a highly customized GNOME interface that looks a lot like Windows. There's the "Launch" button on the lower-left hand corner, volume control on the right, and the list of open windows in the middle. There are only two things about the interface that would seem unfamiliar to a Windows user. The first is that the clock is located directly to the right of the Launch button. This is pretty minor and will only confuse users for a short while. The second difference is the addition of a desktop pager. This is potentially dangerous feature as help desks are bound to receive a large number of calls from users who believe that it caused all their programs to crash. Thankfully, it can be easily removed via the right-click popup menu.

A useful assortment of both Open Source and commercial software can be found under the "Launch" menu. All the standard GNOME utilities and games are there, as well as Mozilla, Real Player, Macromedia Flash, StarOffice, Evolution, GIMP, Java Media Player, and a variety of open source Java software. Given the visual integration of the Desktop and GNOME software, Mozilla and RealPlayer seem out of place. Mozilla has a skin to make it look like a JDS application, but the skin is only half complete. In all fairness, it has been much improved since Release 1. Never the less, there are still a lot of visual glitches and combined button styles.

RealPlayer is the same free player that is available for download from the Real site. As one would expect, there is no full screen support, and it does not integrate with the desktop in any way other than to associate itself with RealPlayer files. Sadly, not even the file associations works correctly. Double clicking on a RealMedia file merely results in an error message about expecting a file path instead of a URL. RealPlayer then forces you to navigate its antiquated File|Open menu in order to open the file.

The Java Media Player is pretty much useless. Of all the videos on my NTFS drive (including professional videos of real events, recordings of television shows, and VCD cartoons for the kids), only some MPEGs (excluding the VCDs) and a few documentary clips of shuttle launches were able to play. MP3s do play, but JMP doesn't have a playlist to queue them up. On top of that, JMP automatically loops both audio and video files. In short, Sun needs to spend a little time working out a few of the kinks in the player.

StarOffice is nearly identical to the latest OpenOffice release, sans two minor differences. For one, the look and feel has been smoothed out to give it a more professional feel. Second, the clipart library has been upgraded with a wide variety of images for spicing up any document or presentation.

As it turns out, Evolution is a very slick email client. The email setup is reminiscent of Outlook Express, but with the addition of a zooming world map for choosing your physical location. I have no idea why Evolution needs geographical information, but the map widget is so impressive that you'll find yourself not caring. Once Evolution is configured, the interface looks and functions almost exactly like that of Microsoft Outlook. Weather, news, calendar, mail, and contacts lists are all there and function as one would expect. A few features for grouping mail appear to be missing, but this is far from a deal breaker. Even advanced users of Microsoft Outlook should feel right at home.

GIMP is included as an alternative to Photoshop and MS Paint. While the version number is 1.3, the interface is the same as the new 2.0 series of GIMP. Sun must have decided to include a well tested development branch that lead to the 2.0 release.

Java Desktop System also adds a desktop folder called "Network Places" that's very similar to the Windows' Network Neighborhood. It allows you to access various network file systems including FTP, SMB, and NFS. Mounting one of these file systems simply adds a shortcut to the "Network Places" folder instead of actually mounting the it to the underlying filesystem. This has the side effect of preventing most programs from opening and saving files to these locations. Attempts to open a file are usually met with the message "[program] does not support [ftp|smb] urls". To get around this issue, I found myself copying files to and from the desktop to edit them.

SMB (Windows File Sharing) was particularly annoying. The Network Browser doesn't work without a Domain Controller, and every time I changed directories or copied files, I found myself facing three or four "enter password" dialogs. While I was able to muddle through, businesses may wish to consider adding smbfs entries to the '/etc/fstab' file instead.

Java Support

Java support in Release 2 is overall a very pleasant experience. Applets work without any configuration, and Java Web Start programs launch at the click of a link. Even executable JAR files work correctly, which is a major improvement over the previous version of JDS. Given that JDS has no native installer or packaging system, the support for executable JAR files will finally allow ISVs to deploy software on the Java Desktop System.

New in this Release

Java Desktop System Release 2 comes with a mixed bag of new features and broken software. On the up side, JDS now allows you to create and modify Launch Menu icons by right clicking on the open menu. The new Online Update program is very cool looking, and easy to use. It also adds a CD with the Java Development Kit (JDK 1.4) and the NetBeans IDE. Unfortunately, it does a lot of things quite badly as well.

The first thing I noticed was that the graphical boot has disappeared. Where I used to see an att attractive progress bar while booting, I now see a small icon of Tux that quickly scrolls off the screen as the system boots. I'm sure that Sun had their reasons for this, but it makes the system look much less professional.

The next thing I noticed was that several programs were broken. The Online Update program appears to replace the "Online Software Update" program from the previous version. Too bad Sun mislinked it to consolehelper instead of consolehelper-gtk. Perhaps this was an artifact of doing an update instead of a clean install, but somehow I doubt it. It would be far more likely that the link simply wouldn't exist. It's a good thing that Sun is deploying this to corporate users. Home users would have no idea how to fix such a problem.

Sun also added two icons for "Sun Instant Messenger". The first one is a link to a JNLP file that supposedly launches the software. This returns a 404 Not Found from Sun's website. The other icon is a link to sign up for the service. If you follow the link and sign up for the service, you are presented with two launch options. Supposedly one is over a secure VPN. The "non-VPN" link points to an unsigned application. I don't know what they're thinking, but Java Webstart won't launch an unsecured application that asks for unrestricted access to the machine. Launching the link for the VPN version fails with a missing library. Do they want people to try this service or not?

The last change is pretty minor. Totem (listed as "Video Player") seems to have completely disappeared from the system. While the icon for it remains, GNOME cannot find the executable. Again, this may be from the fact that I did an update instead of a clean install. It really doesn't matter as Sun's release of Totem has very few advantages over the Java Media Player.

Final Thoughts

Despite the rather "rushed" feel to Release 2, the Sun Java Desktop System is slowly shaping up into a serious Corporate competitor to Microsoft Windows. Many managers will probably decide that they wish to stick with their Windows laptops for the time being, but they'll probably drool at the opportunity to replace the rest of their very expensive Windows infrastructure. Home users might also appreciate this OS in its prebundled OEM form since its similarity to the Windows interface makes it easy to learn and use. However, they may wish to wait a few releases for Sun to work out the bugs.

Sun has long been criticized for its failure to jump on the Linux bandwagon. Open Source advocates often point to Sun's competitors as an example of why Sun should embrace Linux. With the release of the Java Desktop System, customers can now rejoice at Sun's willingness to please. But does this desktop stack up to the competition, or will it fail as surely Corel Linux did? To answer this question, I purchased Sun's Java Desktop System and took it through its paces.

Installation

The OS came on a total of 6 CD-ROMs, all packed into a standard Sun media kit folder. As is customary with modern distros, the first three CDs contain the binary packages, while the fourth and fifth CDs contain the source code. The source CDs are particularly necessary if you wish to install third party kernel modules. (e.g. The official Nvidia driver.) The sixth CD is merely a collection of various open source and Sun documentation packages. I personally didn't find the documentation CD to be of much value. Of particular annoyance was the fact that all the screen shots on the were for a vanilla GNOME desktop or SuSE install. None of the documentation was really JDS specific.

Installing the Java Desktop System was quick and easy. All of my hardware was detected automatically (including my ISA Awe32 sound card), and JDS chose intelligent defaults for everything. That includes choosing the ReiserFS format by default (a very sensible choice). Beyond that, but there really isn't much more to say. After it autodetected everything, I clicked “Next” and it began installing the OS. A reboot later I was sitting at the fully installed desktop. Overall, a very pleasant experience.

Java Integration

Despite the name of the product, Java integration is something of a mixed bag. On one hand, browser integration works great. Applets work without any special configuration, and Java Web Start applications can be launched and/or installed with a single click of the mouse. On the other hand, support for standard Java applications is very poor.

The first problem is that only the JRE is included. This makes it impossible to do any Java development without downloading and running a full JDK install. Even worse, executable JAR files open in the archive manager instead of being launched with the 'java -jar' command. This is inexcusable for an operating system that carries the Java name. The final annoyance is in the default Swing look and feel. Sun has a GTK+ look and feel, but the default OS L&F is the standard Metal L&F. The result is that Java applications stick out like a badly bruised thumb.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining. Sun has promised to add developer tools to the May release of JDS (not available as of this writing). This package is supposed to include the JDK, Java Studio, and NetBeans 3.6. It will be available to anyone who payed for a previous version of JDS. With any luck, that version will transform the OS into a much more attractive option for both developers and ISVs.

Software

The Java Desktop System comes with a useful assortment of both Open Source and commercial software. All the standard GNOME utilities and games are there, as well as Mozilla, Real Player, Macromedia Flash, StarOffice, Java Media Player, and a variety of open source Java software. Given the visual integration of the Desktop and GNOME software, Mozilla and RealPlayer seem out of place. Mozilla has a skin to make it look like a JDS application, but the skin is only half complete.

RealPlayer is the same free player available for download from the Real site. As one would expect, there is no full screen support, and it does not integrate with the desktop in any way other than to associate itself with RealPlayer files. Sadly, not even the file associations work. Double clicking on the file causes Nautilus to pass RealPlayer a URL instead of a file path. Predictably, RealPlayer chokes on this URL and forces you to navigate its antiquated File|Open menu.

Third Party Software installation is even more problematic. Sun's version of YaST 2 is sufficient to install only a small subset of Open Source software available for Linux, as well as automatically install the latest security updates. In theory, new versions of the OS will also be delivered via the same interface. Beyond that, there are no graphical tools for software installation. Even SuSE's YaST interface for installing RPMs appears to have been removed. This leaves the user with the choice of either running 'rpm –install' manually, or compiling software from it source.

When I spoke with Sun on the issue, they acknowledged that it was problem and suggested that I try a Java product such as Zero G. Unfortunately, Sun's failure to add support for executable JAR files means that even products like Zero G won't be able to create installers that launch from the GUI. Hopefully this oversight will be corrected in the near future.

On the bright side, the Nautilus file manager has been configured to be very similar to Windows Explorer, and should feel perfectly natural to any Windows user. Only the highly attractive icons and in-icon preview mode keep you from forgetting that you're not in Windows.

The GNOME interface has also been tweaked to feel very much like Windows. The standard “foot” menu applet has been restyled into a “Launch” button that's reminiscent of the Window's “Start” menu. To the right of the “Launch” button, you have your system clock, the list of running programs, then the system tray icons (including the Volume Control). Other than the clock being in an odd place, this should all seem very natural to a Windows user. The desktop pager might cause some confusion, so companies may prefer to disable it before they receive the inevitable “my applications disappeared!” tech support call.

Multimedia

In the past, many desktops have used their business focus as an excuse to include reduced multimedia support. Normally I'd simply make a note of it and move on. In JDS's case, Sun has also made an effort to target home users through OEM machines sold at WalMart. It's possible that Sun has added extra multimedia capabilities to the OEM install of JDS, but I do not have such a machine to verify this supposition. Thus I must to proceed on the assumption that the OEM version of JDS is no different than the Media Kit.. This is rather unfortunate for Sun as multimedia support is one of the weakest areas of the Java Desktop System.

JDS includes the Java Media Player, GPlayer, and Totem. Double clicking on an MP3 brings up the Java Media Player. The upside is that JMP plays MP3 files. The downside is that each instance is only good for playing one file. Play lists are out of the question, and the default is to continuously loop on the same file.

None of the Media Players I tried would play any of the AVI files I had available to test with. Since most AVIs today are encoded in patented formats like MPEG4, this came as no surprise to me. Most Linux distros seem to be attempting to avoid patent issues in a similar fashion. Given how large of a company Sun is, it would be a nice surprise for them to simply license the patents required to legally ship non-crippled software.

MPEG2 files were associated with Gplayer. These seemed to play reasonably well. I had very few MPEG2 files on hand, so I found that other than testing there wasn't much use for this support. I do not have a DVD drive, but it's possible that this program is for current or planned DVD support.

3D support is non-existent. In fact, Sun has completely removed the GLX extension. I only realized this omission after downloading the NVidia Linux drivers from the official site (only the generic 'nv' driver is included in JDS), and attempting to run a few JOGL (Java OpenGL) programs. I was a bit surprised when the first program immediately exited, and the second program hung. A quick check of the console confirmed that the GLX extension couldn't be found.

In the end, I performed a command line install of XMMS and Xine. This was sufficient to make use of my multimedia collection. 3D games are still out of the question.

Overall Impression

The interesting part about the Java Desktop System is that despite all it's flaws, it's actually a very pleasant and usable system. I would even go as far as to say that it reminds me a lot of when I first started using Windows 95. Everything is new and shiny, the desktop is pleasant on the eyes, the GUI is responsive, and you don't feel the overwhelming need to drop to a terminal. Given that the JDS interface is supposed to be ported to Solaris, it may be that Sun intends JDS Linux to be to Solaris as Windows 9x was to NT.

The downside of such a comparison is that JDS Linux is just about as quirky as Windows 9x. Putting an Audio CD in the drive once caused the CD Player to hang and the rest of the system to respond in short spurts. Opening and closing the CD Drive resolved the problem. Another time I was doing an 'rpm --rebuild' in a terminal (JDS uses GLIBC 2.2.5 instead of the latest 2.3) and the GUI became sluggish and unresponsive. Data CDs will frequently fail to eject, supposedly in use by some mysterious program. None of these quirks are insurmountable, but they do give the OS a “beta quality” feel to it.

JDS does have a few things in its favor that Windows 95 didn't. Unlike Microsoft, Sun releases updates to their software on a quarterly basis. This means that major OS fixes are (hopefully) no more than 3-6 months away. JDS also has the advantage of being able to pull from a large base of existing software. Whereas Microsoft had to build everything for themselves (admittedly a doable task for such a large company), Sun can pick up an Open Source project that meets their needs, add some polish, submit the changes back to the project, and release it with the next update of JDS.

Wish List

Besides the standard list of OS improvements (e.g. Make it faster, support more hardware, bundle more software, etc.), I believe Sun could really improve their OS by making use of some of their business connections and clout as a large corporation. For example, Sun should license the MPEG4 and/or DivX codecs. That alone would make Sun the only Linux company to distribute a working media player. Next on the list, they could convince Adobe to create a version of Acrobat that would integrate with the GNOME desktop. Even a RealPlayer version that supported full screen would be a welcome change.

Beyond that, I think that Sun really needs to take the lead on software installation. Packaging systems are great for keeping system libraries and command line programs in sync. Unfortunately, installing a GUI program ends up being a frustrating experience fraught with dependency hell. Simply defining a new standard for GUI software installation (preferably one that included all dependencies) would go a long way toward making the system more usable to the technology challenged. Even those of us who are experienced with Linux would readily appreciate being saved the trouble of tracking down dependency after dependency.

Final Thoughts

If you're a business looking to break your Microsoft habit, or a Linux user who's looking for a distro with a comfortable GUI, then JDS is definitely for you. If you're a home user looking for an OS that's cheaper and easier than Windows, then I suggest that you wait a few releases before making the big leap.

One way or another, JDS represents a tremendous shift in usable Linux Desktops. I applaud Sun's efforts and eagerly await their future offering.

If you haven't read my first entry, I would be much obliged if you did. It gives the setup for this series of articles. While you're at it, you might even go back and read the Mandrake review as well as the comments.

So here I am. A SuSE 9.0 boot CD in my hand, and a desire to find a Linux distro that works. I'll be damned if SuSE isn't off to a great start. They *only* allow Internet installs via a small boot ISO. And unlike the Fedora boot.iso, this thing has everything. Installation, Rescue CD, boot manager, etc. I might just have to keep this thing around for the next time an OS goes haywire.

The installation proceeded smoothly, right after I got over the initial confusion caused when the CD asked for the IP Address of the FTP server. It turns out that you can enter a hostname just fine. (A hint: Make sure you write down the name of your mirror server, as well as the directory SuSE is in before you start the installation. There's no predefined list of mirrors to choose from.)

The installation GUI was slick, with it autodetecting just about everything. I had to change a few setting (such as installing GRUB on /dev/hdb instead of /dev/hda), but I can't say that I've ever seen an easier install process. It even chose ReiserFS as the default. If I had one complaint, it's that every operation takes it forever. But it's an install. You're supposed to do it once and be done with it.

Once installed, I rebooted only to see "GRUB" on the screen and nothing else. Thankfully this great install disk of SuSE's allows me to boot into an existing OS directly from the CD. Once I was in, I played with GRUB until I got it to work. It turns out that the BIOS informs GRUB that the drives are backwards when booting from the second drive. Thus (hd1,5) (where it was looking) was actually (hd0,5), and Windows was (hd1,0). I changed the menu.lst file and everything worked fine.

I suppose I should probably be annoyed by this problem, but I'm not. Given that I'm installing these OSes onto the second partition of a secondary slave drive, I'm willing to cut them some slack.

When the system came up, everything pretty much worked. All my NTFS drives were mounted, the sound worked, I could play MP3s, my TV card worked flawlessly, etc. Things that didn't work were the mouse wheel, and the video player. The mouse wheel was easily fixed by adding in the "ZAxisMapping" setting to the XF86Config file. The video player played sound, but there was no picture. This really didn't bother me too much as I was planning to install VLC.

Which brings me to my next point. Why does every Linux install have to involve RPM hell? I had to pull 15-20 RPMs from various sources in order to get VLC installed. Most home users won't know what "libtheora" is, where to get it, or how to install it. Not to mention scary names like "libart_gpl.0". Linux systems work fine for the software that's in their catalog, but anything even slightly "different" becomes a real pain in the ass for users. It's time to decide whether Linux wants to be a "hacker's system" where everything is compiled from source, or a "desktop system" where binary compatibility and simple installation is a must. So far, Linux has been targeting the "Workstation" market which just isn't good enough. FreeBSD, Windows, and Mac OS X will eat Linux for lunch in that market.

Anyway, after mucking around with half a billion RPMs, VLC installed and even put itself into the SuSE start menu. (A nice touch.) I then loaded one of the kids' cartoons off of the NTFS drive, and it played flawlessly.

I still have to set up the NVidia drivers, but otherwise the system is working beautifully. My only complaint is (wait for it) my mouse still locks up!!! Ok, it doesn't happen as much on SuSE. In fact, I thought that the problem didn't exist until I was mucking around in the hardware GUI trying to make the GUI install my mouse wheel. That was the first time it locked up, and I figured that as long as I didn't mess with any hardware, I'd be okay. Well, it eventually locks up anyway. This seems to be an epidemic with the Linux kernel.

Please! If anyone knows how to fix the mouse problem, tell me! This is the only major issue I'm having with SuSE!

Final Verdict: I think we have a winner. There's still a few areas that would be difficult for the average user (e.g. Setting up the mouse wheel, installing the NVidia drivers, and dealing with the installation of non-catalog software like VLC), but overall it was easy to set up, and the YaST2 software library made software installation a breeze. I'm very pleased with SuSE, and would recommend it to anyone looking to find an easy to use Linux system.

Update: Check out Dot.Com.CEO's review of SuSE in the comments!
 

Perhaps I was simply expecting too much out of a RedHat derivative, but my review of Mandrake did not go well at all. I've long heard how easy to use Mandrake is, and how easy it is to set up. Supposedly, you install it and boot. It's that easy. I just wish it were that easy for me.

I downloaded all three ISO images and burned them to CDRW. (I'm just glad I didn't waste CDRs on this.) I then rebooted and began the installation. A very nice looking GUI installer came up and I began to follow the steps. Unfortunately, the installer locked up on the first button I clicked. I had to reboot a few times and keep trying before I finally figured out that this is the same mouse bug as in RedHat and Fedora. I was then able to get through the installer by careful use of the keyboard and mouse. (Hint: Click the button and let go of the mouse until the operation is completed. If you move the mouse, you're dead.)

The upside of the install was that it was very easy to choose the packages I wanted, and the new 2.6 kernel was installed without fuss. The installer even warned me that it would have to downgrade to 2.4 if I wanted to install the Linux Standards Base (LSB) software. This was definitely a nice touch, as I wanted to use the system as Mandrake had intended. (I was also hoping the 2.6 kernel would get rid of that $%Q# mouse problem.) I was also able to easily select ReiserFS as my default filesystem.

The downsides to the install was that there was no small boot CD to install over the internet (all 3 CDs were required), it wrote the Linux partition as a non-bootable extended partition (which the Mandrake version of the bootloader somehow got around), and the sound card couldn't be configured (it told me to run 'sndconfig' after the first boot). Considering that sound was exactly the reason I was performing this experiment, this did not make me happy.

After install, the machine booted up to KDE 4.2. I'd love to give you a guided tour of all the great new features, but to be perfectly honest I never got to find out what they are. The same mouse locking problem that was present in Fedora was also present here. That was annoying in of itself. Then I spent time trying to find this 'sndconfig' utility that I was supposed to run.

I eventually found it under '/usr/sbin' and ran it. It was unable to detect my PnP sound card, and asked me to manually enter the values. I did so, and the sound card tested fine. Upon exit, the utility froze up and I was forced to hit CTRL+C. The '/etc/modules.conf' file appeared to have been properly modified, so I attempted playing a sound. Nothing but an error about sound not being configured. So I restarted the system. When it came back up, I still didn't have sound. I reran the 'sndconfig' utility with the exact same results. I then checked and verified that the audio streams existed under the '/dev' directory. There were there. I then played with the KDE sound config to get it to recognize the sound device. Even manually setting the path to the device didn't work. So, I restarted the system again, hoping this time it would work.

I then made a startling discovery. After I reboot the machine, the sound devices disappear from the '/dev' directory! They only come back after I rerun the 'sndconfig' utility. I then figured that I had better check Mandrake's website to see if they had any help on the problem. Unfortunately, I found I was unable to reach their website. In fact, I then realized that I couldn't reach any website. It seems that after one of the reboots, the network card somehow disabled itself. That's about where I gave up.

Final verdict: I don't have time for this.

I sincerely hope that the rest of you have a much better experience with Mandrake 10.0 than I did. I really wanted Mandrake to work, but it simply ended up being too painful to continue.

Well, Windows 2000 has done it again. My volume control disappeared a while back, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers. Now the audio drivers are so screwed up that I get NO sound, despite the drivers being installed just fine. The problem appears to relate to the Preferred Devices settings, which are now grayed out.

Since my kids really like watching cartoons on the computer, I immediately started looking for an alternative way to play them. My first attempt was to use the Java Desktop System demo and Knoppix CDs that I have. Both have media players, but neither one can handle the encoding format. Since I know that VideoLAN can handle it (that's what I use on Windows), I tried to install that. Unfortunately, you can't take one of those CDS through an entire build cycle. There's simply too many packages to install to be doing it every reboot. So, I decided to try out different Linux distributions.

I've decided that I want a Linux distro that works correctly out of the box, and needs minimal configuration. If I have to start recompiling stuff, or run into major technical hurdles, it's gone. In the past, technical issues have always driven me back to FreeBSD. It may take slightly longer, but at least everything works when my BSD system is set up. But for this experiment, I'm valuing expediency and ease of use above all else. Supposedly, Linux can provide this.

My configuration:

PIII 733 w/Asus MB
GeForce 2 GTS
2 identical 40 gig drives (~12 GB is set aside on the second drive for alternate OSes)
Intel Etherexpress 100 NIC
ISA Awe32 Sound Card
Pinnacle PCTV Tuner
Microsoft USB Optical Mouse w/Wheel (Intellimouse)
PS/2 Keyboard
15 inch Dell Monitor
Creative 8x CDRW drive
No floppy drive
512 MB of RAM

This machine is over 3 years old at this point, and has been holding up pretty well. I custom built it for capacity and compatibility (except for the AWE32 that I yanked from an old computer), so it's probably got another 2 or 3 years of life left in it.

On to my first victim! Err... distro!

Fedora Core 2

In the past, my impression of RedHat has always been that it is a very pretty OS on the surface, but with a lot of hidden terrors under the hood. I won't go into my long list of complaints concerning RedHat as it really doesn't make a difference here. I was hoping that Fedora Core would meet my requirements, and I won't have to worry about it's idiosyncrasies.

The install was very easy and smooth. The GUI was responsive, and gave me no trouble what so ever. I told it where to install, and it did it. I used the boot.iso disk to install over the internet, but it didn't seem to impact anything over using all 3(!) CDs.

Once the install was complete, the system came up and allowed me to log in. I typed in my username and password, excitedly started trying to use it, and then...

my mouse locked up. *sigh*

Last time I tried RedHat 8, the same thing happened. You could use the system for awhile, and then the mouse would simply stop responding. If you tried not to move it during IO operations, it could be made to live on for quite awhile. Unfortunately, it always locks up in the end. Then I have to use the keyboard to reboot and pick up where I left off. The fact that this problem is *still* happening after 4 versions, is not encouraging.

So, I rebooted and started over. Next task was to access the videos on my NTFS drive. Oddly enough, the drives weren't already mounted. How odd. So I checked around the GUI, and found that the drive didn't show up in the configuration tools. Alright, down to the terminal shell. I type 'mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb1 /mnt/multimedia' and I get 'type NTFS is unknown'. What in the world?

A quick check of the net shows that NTFS is not supported by Fedora Core 2. Something about being "freer than free", or some other diatribe. The Linux NTFS project says that they do not support Fedora Core either. Add to that the fact that NVidia drivers, MP3 playing, and other core niceties are missing (oops, mouse locked up again, reboot), this one's dead on arrival.

On to Mandrake!

This has to be the best musical I have ever seen, and I am not a fan of musicals. For me to sit through singing is a work of God. I have seen this one over and over.

First, the All-Star cast: Woody Allen, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, Alan Alda, Goldie Hawn, Ed Norton, and other hotties.

The movie is about family. A really fucked up one. Woody was married to Hawn, who is now married to Alda. Alda wants to hook Woody up with an friendly slit. Hawn just wants her two boys happy. But then Woody finds Roberts in Paris. He gives her an orgasim, and she shits. True love? No, but there is a psychological observation if you are astute enough to catch it. Maybe astute is not the word, it is like wearing a baseball glove to catch a meteor.

I just looked up the word astute, and it does not convey what I wanted. FUCK! I guess you will never know.

Anyways, back to the review. The movie rocks. Go get it. VHS is better than DVD. For some reason, the transfer on DVD is awful, and the VHS is nice.

Oh, the "I'm Through With Love" song/performance is not to be missed. It alone is worth the price of the DVD.

The Short Version
I fought back against a junk faxer and reached an out-of-court settlement in the neighborhood of $12,000, half of which went in my pocket. If you'd like some more detail, read on.

January - December, 2003
Through the course of the year I get about one junk fax per month, advertising services I don't need, from a company I never heard of. I don't know where or how they got my fax number, because I certainly didn't give it to them. This annoys me, and I know it's a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. I hang on to the faxes, since I may later decide to pursue the matter. I read of other people's victories suing junk faxers in small claims court. Toward the end of the year, with a decent pile of junk faxes, I start to seriously consider taking the TCPA for a spin, for fun and profit.

First week of January, 2004
After reading up still more on the TCPA and deciding I have a fairly airtight case, I find and contact a local attorney who handles junk fax cases. After brief consultation, I decide to pursue the matter. The case is taken on contingency, and I agree to a 50-50 split (after costs) of any recovery.

January 8, 2004
I formally retain the attorney, who begins to draft the lawsuit against the owner of the domain referenced in URLs on the junk faxes. I send her copies of the twelve junk faxes I received from them, and the signed retainer letter.

January 13, 2004
I receive a draft copy of the lawsuit and verify all the facts within it as correct. I sign a document to that effect and send it off in the mail.

January 15, 2004
I receive a copy of the demand letter going to the defendant. I've got more than ten faxes, each worth $1,500 in damages. The standard damages amount per fax is $500, but the TCPA allows for treble damages if the junk faxing is willfully done. Since the defendant repeatedly faxed me over the period of a year, that meets the "willful" criterion. That means almost $20,000 in potential damages, should the case go to court. The defendant is given until close of business on January 30 to settle out of court for 75% of the amount for which they are liable. They receive copies of all the faxes, and a copy of the unfiled lawsuit.

January 22, 2004
I receive a call from my attorney, who has heard from a staff attorney of the defendant. He wants proof that I own the phone number to which the junk faxes were sent. I fax my attorney pages from my phone bill showing my address and fax number, and she forwards them on to the other side. I don't ask my attorney what she thinks, but I regard the defendant's sniffing for a loophole in the case as a good sign that they realize they're nailed. The TCPA is a pretty straightforward law.

January 29, 2004
I receive a call from my attorney, who reports that the defendant is offering $10,000 to settle. Before I can say anything through my smile, she suggests a counteroffer that effectively splits the difference between what we demanded and what they have offered so far. I agree.

January 30, 2004
Just before 4PM, I receive the phone call I've been waiting for all day: the defendant has agreed to our compromise, which means about $6,000 of free money in my bank account.

February 4, 2004
The draft settlement agreement is ready. The defendant has tacked on a very restrictive confidentiality clause which bars me from telling anyone about the suit or the agreement. Unacceptable. I counter with an offer that both parties agree to not reveal each other's identity, any clues to the other's identity, and/or the total amount of the settlement (which is why I haven't named them or been specific about the monetary amounts involved in this tale).

February 5, 2004
My attorney drafts a revised confidentiality clause and sends it off to the defendant's attorney, after I approve her revisions.

February 11, 2004
I receive word that the defendant has signed off on the revised settlement agreement. I receive the final copy, review it, sign two copies of it, and send it off to my attorney, who will relay them to the defendant for the additional necessary signatures. The check is not far away now!

February 20, 2004
My attorney notifies me that she has received the check. After just under $20 in postage and photocopy expenses, we split about $12,000.

February 25, 2004
I receive and deposit The Check. All that's left to do now is to wait for Apple to announce the updated Power Mac G5s!

June 9, 2004
Apple announces the new Power Macs. I spec out a dual 2.5GHz machine with all the bells & whistles, and place my order.

August 10, 2004
Obsessively checking the order status finally pays off... my G5 has shipped from China!

August 13, 2004
FedEx has delivered my new toy. Thank you, junk faxer!

One of the funnest things to do in life is get shitfaced. And there is no easier way than to play a drinking game. While everyone has joined the century club (what, you didn't? you lame fuck). For those who do not know what the century club is, it's 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. If you are like most people, chances are you aren't doing the math til about half way throught the game. The shot glass looks so little, dosen't it? Lemme help you. That is 200 ounces, or 16 beers. Now that hour and a half ain't looking so good? But do it anyways. Women will be impressed, they can't help it. It helps to have a woman join the century club with you, it is a real bonding moment, bonding at the hip.

Okay, you are now a member of the century club. It was easy, right? Well, gather some freinds for a game of Asshole. Asshole is a easy game to master. A deck of cards is divided among all the players. The importance of cards goes from king to the lowest at ace. Card 2 is important because it resets the number on the table to zero. Okay, this is how it is played. A card is placed down. The next person has to put a card of a higher value down. If you do not have a card of a higher value, you have to take a drink and pass your turn. The card 2 resets the number back to 0, like a get out of jail card. The first one who gets rid of his cards is the winner and president. The second person out is the vice president. Then the various ministers. Last person out is the asshole. In any game, a president can make everyone else drink. The VP can also make everyone else drink, except the president. The asshole can not make anyone drink. The asshole also has to clean the table and buy new beer for everyone.

Okay, but I have no friends, what drinking games can I play? Well, do you have a TV? Cause here is a great drinking game to play while watching the Dukes of Hazzard.

Round one (take one drink whenever the following happens):

• Bo leaves the keys to the General Lee in the car and it gets stolen.
• Boss Hogg makes a reference to money.
• Boss Hogg tries to frame the Dukes for something they didn't do.
• The name "Cooter" is mentioned.
• A door falls off a car. Two if it's a police car.
• A car chase occurs.
• A car jumps something.
• Boss Hogg is eating. Two if Rosco tries to take Boss Hoggs food.

Round two (take two drinks if the following happens):

• Anyone claims to know a shortcut
• Uncle Jesse has to be helped getting in and out of the General Lee
• Uncle Jesse says over the CB "Shepard to Lost Sheep".
• A sherrif from another county is involved in the plot, three if it's the sherrif from Chickasaw County.
• Bo and Luke trick Enos or Rosco into letting them out of jail.
• There is a pair of crooks, one being the brains and the other the brawn.
• A jump scene is stopped midway for a commercial.

Round Three (finish off the bottle):

• Daisy Duke appears in her "Daisy Dukes" and you get an ass shot.
• An attractive woman other than Daisy appears in Hazzard County.

But I'm an intellect and I don't watch the Dukes of Hazzard. There is a game for you too. Beer Chess. It is played just like a normal game of chess, but every time you lose a pawn, you take a drink. Lose a knight or bishop, take two drinks. Lose a rook, take three drinks. Lose your queen, finish the bottle.

I might add a few more games here if I see any responses.

Simpsons Deja Vu is something that has happened to me all too often over the years, and I finally decided to record it here and see if anyone else is stricken by this affliction.

Basically, SDV is when you think of a Simpsons episode or particular scene therein during the course of your day, and within 24 hours after that thought, that particular Simpsons episode is broadcast (SDV assumes no foreknowledge of what episodes are scheduled to be shown, i.e., you haven't read the TV listings and had them affect which episode you're thinking about).

The most recent time this occurred to me was Wednesday, when while driving to work Wednesday morning, a Moody Blues song came on the radio. For some reason, I thought of the Simpsons episode guest starring the Moody Blues, where Homer dragged Flanders to Vegas and they ended up going on a bender and marrying two cocktail waitresses.

I got home that night, sat down to watch the two episodes my trusty TiVo picked up shortly before, and damned if one of them wasn't Viva Ned Flanders, guest starring the Moody Blues.

Are there any Slashgeeks out there reading this right now who are similarly afflicted?