Sunday, October 26, 2008
Samba Solutions
I've been noticing that pyNeighborhood has its shortcomings. However, it is, unfortunately, one of the better clients out there. This didn't stop me from taking a peek at the AUR today to see what was offered.

First off was autoscan which just seemed far too bulky for my likings. If I was looking for an all-around network tool, then I'd definitely give it a fair run. I did not end up even trying it as the package in AUR was terribly outdated. Hopefully my email to the aur mailing list is heard shortly.

Then I came across g2sc. This program, still under development, seemed like it could be my answer as a successor to pyNeighborhood. Alas, it appears to be outdated, as well.

I noticed that someone began the creation of a thunar samba extension. That's pretty nice, I suppose. I'll be happier once I can get it to work appropriately. I also noticed the package pcmanfm-experimental which has support for samba, ftp, etc. That'll be a deal breaker for me, I think, as far as what file manager I end up using full time,

All in all, I must say I'm slightly disappointed in the array of gui samba clients out there. Either they're old, too bloated, or too lacking in features. I suppose I'll stick to pyNeighborhood, for now. But still...

Perhaps I should start learning a language instead of complaining all the time. :D
Friday, October 17, 2008
I say it's Midterm season, and I say FIRE!
Posting in the middle of Midterm month, it seems. I haven't had much time to fool around with Linux as much as I'd like, but I do consider myself quite a bit more comfortable with it than I did before. Aside from the occasional Guild Wars, I'm running in Arch full time.

I had an urge to re-arrange my standard desktop interface recently. I think what I'm going to do is create a sort-of MMORPG User Interface, using health/mana bars for harddrive/cpu meters, spell icons for launcher icons, running program icons in the upper left or so to indicate what "buffs" your computer has on it, etc. Needless to say, when I told my roommate, he sighed and shook his head. I blame the urge on the fact that I started to hop on Guild Wars again.

The server's still running strong. I'm not surprised at this or anything, but I am pleased that it's run without hang-ups for 57 days now. "Linux lol 2.6.25-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jul 14 15:25:51 UTC 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux". Good times, man.

On another note, I would really really like an HTC Dream. Currently I'm signed with T-Mobile, and I could get the phone asap, but I'd rather wait until my contract runs out in a few months and pick it up then. Oh how the waiting will kill me.

Speaking of Google, I'm still waiting on my freakin' Linux Chrome. Let's pick up the pace here, Google.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Follow-up to the New Candidate
Turns out my friend is enjoying his Ubuntu experience so far. This makes me quite happy, as his conversion will up my ratio to about 1 success in every 2 attempts. Not too shabby :).

What really amazed me is that he said his wired internet connection worked straight up at my University. If you've been reading my posts at all, you'll remember me messing around with wpa_supplicant scripts and such to get myself connected via a wire. In fact, I still do this on both my desktop and laptop under Arch. Apparently, though, Ubuntu 8.04 makes it possible to just enter in a username and password and BAM, you're on the net. I'm assuming this has something to do with an updated Network Manager, but still, really really cool. This feature will definitely turn some heads... having to explain the difficulties of connecting to the net here at my Uni was almost unbearable.

Also, my midterm essay due on Thursday is almost completed. Seems this puppy's going to weigh in at around 10 pages when it's completed. After that I have about 3 weeks where I'll have an exam on at least one of the days of the week. Hopefully that will bring an end to the onslaught and I'll be able to head home for Turkey Day break. DOUBLE hopefully I'll manage to schedule in some time to work on those write-ups!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
A new candidate: "Yeah, I want to try Ubuntu on my Laptop"
My friend recently expressed a desire to have Ubuntu on his laptop. Now, if you're thinking "Oh, why not arch, huh? WHY NOT ARCH?", then I shall tell you. I mentioned in another post this very fact: Newbies get Ubuntu, the experienced move on to Arch on their own. It's as simple as that. I will not force arch upon anyone... I'd much rather the person enjoy their experience rather than regret the decision.

Anywho, the friend is using a gateway something-or-other. I'll have to give it a second look later tonight while I'm installing. It's a nice machine... 2GB of ram with a dual core processor. I figure I would set him up with a dual boot system just in case he doesn't enjoy Ubuntu. If not, I'll just resize the ntfs partition and fix the MBR. Boom.

This'll be my first re-install in quite some time. I'm actually pretty excited about it, mostly because with 8.10, everything seemed to work perfectly. From his wireless mouse to his wireless network card, everything seemed hunky dory. This SHOULD be a really smooth process. We shall see.