Sigh, Goodbye OpenSUSE

So I had to ditch OpenSUSE 10.3. It doesn't come as any surprise, really. I've never been able to break out of the Linux installation loop:

1) Install new distro
2) Work out various hardware kinks
3) Try to configure new distro to my liking
4) Try to use new distro for a few weeks
5) Hit a brick wall on some necessary feature; or distro simply breaks
6) Goto step 1

I had OpenSUSE 10.3 installed on both my Thinkpad R32 laptop, and on a standard desktop machine (Asus Mobo, Athlon XP, Geforce 6200 video). In both cases I ran into a dreaded KDE Freeze Bug. Unfortunately the KFB has like 80HP and does 20+2 (freeze) damage, which is a formidable enemy; even though I'm dumping all my skill points into Linux Tinkering and have several Potions of Diet Pepsi in my inventory.

Screw it. I might put more effort into battling the Freeze Bug, but OpenSUSE 10.3's package manager is absolutely atrocious. There have been so many times over the past month that I've thought about searching for software and decided that it wasn't worth it to wait for the package manager to start up. Even if I had that kind of time I'd still just end up fighting RPM dependency nightmares.

I realize that OpenSUSE 11 is just out and has a substantially better package management system. Unfortunately, they said the same thing about 10.3. If the package manager in 10.3 offered "dramatically improv[ed] speed," then I can't imagine how terrible it was previously. And even if package management is twice as fast in version 11, it would still be too damn slow.

So I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on both machines. So far so good, although I ran into the same old nVidia driver problem on the desktop and the laptop won't shut down properly with my PCMCIA wireless card installed. The nVidia driver issue was easy enough to fix (again), and when I figure out where to tell Ubuntu to eject the PCMCIA card on shutdown I'll update that blog post.

It's nice to be back on Ubuntu even though it uses the ever-ugly Gnome desktop and lacks a proper control panel. The Debian package management is really where it's at. I've decided not to try anything fancy with the laptop either - defaults all the way. We'll see how long this all lasts.

Oh, here's a cute one: when I successfully wake my Thinkpad from hibernation, the Hardy Heron informs me that the laptop was unable to hibernate. Thank goodness for the guy who put the "don't tell me this again" checkbox in that dialog.

OpenSuse 10.3 + Nvidia Driver for Geforce 6200 = CRAP

Sigh. So I followed the instructions you gave me for installing the nVidia driver for my 6200 with YaST. The installation process was very simple, but the after installation process not so much.

I'm curious as to why exactly you'd want to set my monitor refresh rate to 71.0KHz : 88.4Hz? Seems a little odd. Thankfully my monitor can still display this rate, but I get a big "OUT OF RANGE" box in the center of my screen. Nice.

Ok, so the obvious place to start is the "Graphics Card and Monitor" utility from the YaST2 Control Center. In other words, SaX2: X11 Configuration. (BTW, your multi-case meaningless acronyms are sweet. Sweet indeed.) Working around the giant "OUT OF RANGE" message, I'm able to limit the range of my monitor and I do so. No go. Neither changing the monitor nor reducing the frequencies has any effect. The card insists on driving the monitor at 71 : 88.4.

I check the xorg.conf file and verify that the correct frequency ranges are there. They are. I change a few things and break the config. Ok, restore the old file.

Aha! Wipe that evil grin off your smug face, because you haven't beaten me on this April morning! I found a workaround:

1. Get into the YaST Control Center (e.g. Administrator Settings), and choose the Hardware tab from the left.
   
   
2. Click Graphics Card and Monitor and click the Options button for the video card.
   
   
3. There should be a VertRefresh option. Set it to 60 (or some other safe value for your monitor, but 60 should almost always be safe).

Voila. Not the best, but at least it works.

If you can't get into X at all, then manually edit your xorg.conf file:

1. Login to your shell as root, or `su -` to become root.
   
   
2. Enter `emacs /etc/X11/xorg.conf` (Unless you have a simpler editor installed, but my install only had Emacs and vi.)
   
   
3. Hit enter once if you get the Emacs "welcome / help" screen. You should now see the contents of the xorg.conf file. Scroll down to 'Section "Device"' and add the following line before 'EndSection':
   
   Option "VertRefresh" "60"
   
   
4. CTRL+X then CTRL+C to quit Emacs. Hit 'y' on your way out to save.
   
   
5. Restart (or test by running `startx` from your shell).
   
   
6. I'm not sure if SaX will freak out on you for manually editing the file, so follow the first procedure above to make sure it sticks.

Happy Wasting-Your-Time,

Year of the Linux Desktop

xx00

Linux on IBM Thinkpad R32 Shutdown / Poweroff Problem with PCMCIA Wifi

Having trouble with your Linux distro not powering down on your laptop? On my old Thinkpad R32, several distributions including Kubuntu 7.10 and OpenSUSE 10.3 were not able to power off the system via software. I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but right when the system should have powered off, the CDROM drive would spin and the CPU fan would come on full blast. Nearly the exact opposite of shutting down, really.

I traced this problem to my D-Link DWL-G50 PCMCIA wifi card -- a nice Atheros based AG card on the cheap. Well, I shouldn't imply that the problem is with the card itself, but something to do with PCMCIA at least.

One solution I've found for this problem is to tell the system to eject the PCMCIA card before or during shutdown with the following command:

pccardctl eject

(Note: if your distro is slightly old, the command might be `cardctl eject`).

Which script you put this command into will depend on your distribution and preference. In OpenSUSE 10.3, open the file /etc/sysconfig/shutdown (as root) and change the line:

HALT_POWERDOWN_INSERT=""

to...

HALT_POWERDOWN_INSERT="pccardctl eject"

I've noticed a few complaints elsewhere about systems not being able to suspend due to wifi card issues. I haven't had a problem with OpenSUSE 10.3 suspending or hibernating on my system, but it seems like a pccardctl eject and a pccardctl insert in the appropriate suspend scripts could solve the issue.

There might be a more appropriate fix for this problem, but I don't care. I'm sick of configuring Linux. I know that Ubuntu 7.10 was able to power my system off correctly, and I think that PCLinuxOS 2007 was able to as well.