keysersuse's Blog

Re: Why do people give up on Linux?

Hey FM, I've used all those apps and there are other excellent projects for example, jahshaka, for compositing, but it can't compare to combustion which I use. Make Human, originally a plug in for blender, which I have also used, is really great for beginners, as is DAZ on pc, but alas, I use poser pro 64bit which has plugins for most of my programs where I can continue sculpting the mesh. 

If you look at the programs I have, they are all the highest end of what each company offers, except combustion which is still better than After Effects. I also use Avid Xpress Pro (remember the battle with Cinelerra where you hacked a 64bit before it arrived in the repos FM?), but that works strictly on my 32bit VPC. I am still using gimp.  As far as workflow is concerned, I had to do this, it's the only environment which let's all the apps work together seamlessly.  Remember Linux is pretty much my personal computing now, all my videos, music, surfing, and using it as a test server on my LAN, for php.

Re: Why do people give up on Linux?

I hope you can see the image at it's actual size, if you look through the picture, you can see my program files, some of the opened tools, you will also notice tools which I have kept from linux when working in this environment such as VLC.  As I said, if all of this had tarballs for linux, you wouldn't be looking at an XP 64 environment.  The gimp is the 64bit binary (current version, excellent for file conversions which expensive photoshop doesn't have, yet photoshop has a heck of an arsenal. as you can see installed in the program files, this is a machine dedicated to art. (google some of the apps.) Plus it's windows, you get killer free apps like cool web search toolbars and things of that nature!! how cool is that?

the snapshot was taken using Alias Sketchbook, what I was asking about earlier was an app like ksnapshot which you can set timer to extend the start menu, etc. anyway, all three monitors, including a wacom cintiq on right. all taken at the same time on all three monitors, this has not been stitched to make a panoramic so you can understand the need to work in an environment which allows me so much realestate.

system is intel i7 6gb ram, nvidia sli plenty of power to work in such a space.  I rarely surf the net with this system, though I do pop over here when in between things. My personal computer, for surfing, online purchasing, personal media editing, using Amorok for my home jukebox, etc is still Linux, and 11.1 is soooo darn close for the big time.

p.s. anyone notice the icon theme for the desktop? a dash of Kde-look there.  so please, please forgive me for all my transgressions. pleasssse.

Re: How do you like them tomatoes?

I am not sure here...did I upset mattb, or did I get a chuckle?  And you know I don't live in California! Where I live tomatoes are wild as well.

Re: Why do people give up on Linux?

 Have a question if anyone knows where I can get a good screen capture app, I have alias sketchbook, (useless, except it has an app to take pictures of artwork) but the problem with this is that the capture is immediate, whereas we've got a great capture app in KDE that gives us time to display, open files, etc..especially when trying to show something within the start/launch menu. I am really hesitant about installing anything on XP and don't trust EVERYTHING on sourceforge unless I have ran across it before via Linux or BSD.  On linux, if it is in the repos on the main servers, I have no problems whatsoever.

  The reason is I want to clarify something which will perhaps allow all of you to forgive me for my sins and is perfect for this topic.

Re: Poll: How much Ram do you consider ideal?

I am using 6gb to take advantage of ddr3 on 64 bit both linux and microslop on seperate 1 tb sata hard drives.

Re: Some really cool pictures from the ISS...

two and half hours according to statistics and if it's Chinese new Year.

Re: How do you like them tomatoes?

I imported blew up you picture and sharpened it a bit, after a little tweaking, I finally saw what Mattb was really growing.  It's America's number one cash crop: that's right, OREGANO!! Now we know what makes his spaghetti and meatballs so popular down at the retirement home with the arthritis and glaucoma sufferers.

 Mattb, in the wilds of Arkansas, and living alife reminiscent of the moonshiners in the great depression who were constantly on the look out for revenuers and gave birth to NASCAR (tm)

hacktivists

 I am sure the usual forum rules apply when regarding religion and politics, I mean to post this as a discussion of what is a possibility.  The NSA uses linux.

I read this article awhile ago and get but help wonder if it is just activists behind this or the NSA, cyber op if you will.

either way it is a really interesting read on the role the net is now playing in geo politics.

Re: Why do people give up on Linux?

Ok look, I feel like a total hypocrite, many of you know I am a a supporter of open source and linux, come on! my credentials are still in order, I HAVE FAITHFULLY FOLLOWED PARTY LINES!! ha ha But, as I became familiar with apps like blender, I wanted to explore more avenues.  where maya 8.5 installs on SuSE (10.2 I think) Mudbox can't. I can use CS4 in a VM but, I forfeit the dual SLI DDR 3, 6 gigs ram, Pentium i7 power. plus I wouldn't be able to have photoshop cs4 extended, maya, and illustrator open at the same time on my triple monitor set up. Though my wacom has a linux driver, in a VM, resources and screen real estate is cut drammatically. So even after Vista was release, I bought an OEM copy of XP pro 64bit strictlly as a platform for my tools which range from AVID to Zbrush

I am saying precisely what Andy pointed out, Linux is ready and I see is SLED being the flagship (partnership interest and such) platform for the first releases of adobe suite software. Just the savings on a corporate level over an MS alternative like the Mac.  Apple is about toys, very expensive toys. I'm sorry I said it.

Re: SuSE almost there?

yeah I installed 11.1 before the final release was available installed all my repos in smart and my laptops been fine since.  I started on 10.1 and was introduced to some of the folks here by trying to make a win modem work on linux...

  My comment was that I am incredibly impressed by this release. we are seeing support across so many platforms and if you think about what linux excels at, being a server, the back end web development which can take place on it using just php and mysql is amazing, add the wide other assortment of languages to draw from.. the thing is, I have found linux to be incredibly reliable and stable now, mature, and can't even imagine what some people had to go through in the 90's.  As far as for personal use, it gives literally hundreds of top notch software apps which can allow people to become familiar with tools like open office, the gimp, inkscape, krita, blender. 

BUT, though suse and redhat have support from tools such as Maya and other high end cgi programs, it does need one last thing for it to compete with apple after the decline of microsoft...and I believe it's adobe.

I hate using XP (left windows completely with 98) and now am forced to use xp 64 because my software require this platform or mac, and I am sorry, if there is one PLUS to Microsoft, you are only the slave to the OSs endless EULA rather to the  OS AND the hardware. I firmly believe that once adobe comes over , you'll see linux break the boundries of just being for uber geeks or hollywood special FX and seep into commercial areas which have been usually dominated by the mac (i.e. front end web and graphic design),it also allows more flexability, hardware wise, to the end-user.  If there were tarballs for CS4, I wouldn't even have to stare at this hideous OS with its antivirus and firewall icons constintly blinking and belching out warnings of possible buffer overflows.

AHHHHH. a rant!! seems like old times eh matt b.

SuSE almost there?

  For awhile, at least since I was a regular at the forums, I have been running linux without much of a hitch.  I have had very few problems running it on my laptop.  There were a couple versions which gave me some trouble especially on the install, but once I downloaded 11.1 RC1 a few months ago, I have had no problems whatsoever.

  I find it to be an OS which is quickly readying itself for the big time. Here's a few things I think SuSE needs to finally break into the mainstream.

 As we know a younger, more tech savvy, group of end users are coming up through the ranks, with the total failure of Vista and with 7 looming large on the horizon, many people are looking for alternatives. I know this dead dog has been beaten over and over, but what the heck, it's been awhile I'll say it again.

  My wishlist,

A. I wish that Novell would deliver an app which could be bundled into Yast which could help control web content.  With the icons which come pre-installed on SuSE and the plethora of educational open source software, it would be an excellent platform to start the kids on.  Imagine starting your young child on Linux instead of windows, in ten years time they may be much farther in understanding what drives operating systems and apps more than we ever were, but the net is a dangerous place and though there are add ons I get get for FF to help keep my kids from stumbling into the darker regions of the net, an app at the OS level adding a layer of security would be nice. If anyone knows of such an app tell me.

B.  Adobe, yes I have said this a thousand times, and I have a confession to make, I use the entire CS4 suite, I wish I didn't have to run it on xp64 bit which I am doing now. I have tried virtualisation to run xp within linux but many of my apps (including Maya which  can run just fine on SuSE by itself) need the full power of my dual graphics cards. Plus virtualisation doesn't give me the ability to have my real estate spread out over three monitors including a wacom cintiq.   Linux, and I have said this, has found its niche in CGI studios but we really neeed to be able to work with industry standards across the board.  This is an adobe problem, not a linux one, but hopefully they will realize that to port to Linux would be highly advantages in the long run.  Right now, Linux is still more demanding than OSx or Windows in its learning curve, but this is precisely why linux users tend to be the most savvy of the three main types of end users.
anyone who knows me, knows that I love the GIMP, KRITA, INKSCAPE, and the host of other alternatives to overpriced, hyped adobe, BUT, and I emphasize this, the tools those jerks provide are so powerful that it's hard to resist. Gimp has a huge advantage in formats, can you believe you can't create a favicon in photoshop without a plugin? I mean how many hundreds do you pay, or thousands for the Creative Suite and you can't even make a lousy favicon!?!?!?  I have used all the apps in our repos, but damn adobe still has what I need when the pressure is on.

C.  The biggest stumbling block is the way we update the OS, moving from version to version (though SLED is supported much longer, I believe updates for 10.1 are still available from Novell, not sure please correct me if I am wrong. But, 3rd party packages for 10.1 are dwindling rapidly) and this tends to "break" almost all installations of commercial software. And the software you were using won't be available until it is packaged for the new version.  I can't imagine how difficult it would be, probably very, but if Novell could release SuSE which runs more along the lines of the "port" model of BSD or the Debian model, that would be great.  I have never been able to update versions without having to do a clean install.  It's too messy and too many dependances. I think a Linux distro which updates the whole system, without comprimising apps, to newer versions would be much easier for the devs at commercial outfits to deploy to this platform, or unless they are willing to let  the guys at packman do it for them.

This has been asked over and over, is this the year of the linux desktop?  No, just like apple, except for laptops and other assorted "TOYS" that apple puts out,  Linux is best suited for the "informed" end user who is trying to find his/her place in a creative environment.  From web developing to CGI, linux is ready, when will everyone else? 
  Even Gaming could fit nicely with Linux, if only companies like EA could see that the future is "rolling your own console" It's not like linux couldn't handle it, It can and very nicely. You CAN NOT tell me that an OS which can create the most stunning visual effects in Hollywood couldn't handle the 3D environements game developers would throw at it. This is a question of hardware.  Threw this one in for the gamers.

D. KDE 4 needs some refinment. You can believe my horror when I went to compress a file with a right click and saw now options! I fixed the problem with a bit of searching, but still, no out of the box right click menus for compression?

E. better laptop performance, how many of us have had that "funky" mouse behavior while running our beloved SuSE on a laptop? clicking where it shouldn't, jumping cursors, or a difficult time cut and pasting on web based forms?

I can't help but wonder if windows 7 will be the last for MS based on its ancient models or if the old salesman of MS (i.e. Balmer or is that BALLMER?) will dry up and blow away so that the devs at MS can concentrate on the future.  They already know that open source is the model of the future, the deployment costs, the ability to run several virtual servers with little or no down time, etc etc.
  To me Windows 7 will be the OS which will stave off market share loss until they come up with something which will allow for more customers, bring virus vulnarability under control, and which can be the flagship OS for the company well into the future. The way they are going to do this is take a page from Apple's playbook.  They know they can save millions, if not billions, by letting a community push the envelope for them without an army of developers stumbling around ancient code which should be put to sleep.
  I bet if you were to take senior developers at MS and say, "look, you can take this software and point it in the direction which seems more realistic for the long gevity of the product." what would they do?  I could see them wanting to roll MS technologies onto a platform which is much more flexible in its deployment, perhaps, and I shudder to think of this, but perhaps, an open source kernel, linux or bsd, would be their choice.

Re: book is published!!

Thanks Bdquick,

  My background is in fine arts, my first exhibition was at the age of ten. I dabble in all sorts of things, my main passion now is photography.  But it was through my art that I was able to realize this book.  The subject matter of my paintings over the past twenty years have been the indigenous cultures of Latin America.

 I have always tended to follow my own path. When I was about 17 I had taken a trip to Panama, I ended up spending most of my money in San Jose Costa Rica and hitched my way to Tijuana...this was during the time of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador. (I was wearing U.S. surplus jungle boots, you can imagine the crud I had to go through!)  Anyway, I returned to the States, where I was born, and went to college. One day, I looked around at the class and realized no one was there for anything other than job training. Thinking life was far too short, I packed my backpack and headed back into Latin America.  After awhile I started studying contemporary art at the instituto nacional de bellas artes. Well, studying isn't exactly the right word, it was mostly a lot of heated debates about politics over copious amounts of coffee. (The EZLN was beginning their movement in Chiapis at the time and Mexico was just emerging from the "perfect dictatorship" after the assasination of Colosio.)

 I have been getting a lot of feedback from the book, and to my surprise people seem to enjoy it...so hopefully it could lead to something greater, maybe allowing a few bucks to get back to my art.  I am not one who was born for the cubicle, but one who has to be creative in one form or another, unfortunately, being an artist sometimes pays the bills and sometimes doesn't.

 May sound corny, but I think it's this kind of mentality that drew me to Linux, not because I am a geek, though I love useing everything from cinellera to inkscape, but more out of a sense of marching to my own drummer.

Re: book is published!!

Howdy MattB!! how have you been?  It's been a long, long time since I have posted and hope to become a regular again.  Haven't visited the opensuse forum much, did make the announcement there as well and saw some old faces, but I sure do miss the old community.

  Seems the membership here pretty reflects the usual suspects, I am glad...good source for help, but without the starched collars. HA HA

  So any tasty tidbits, rumors, gossip, flaming, free hans trolling/spamming, I need to be brought up on?

hahahaaahahha

R

book is published!!

 Alright guys, I am sorry been super busy for quite some time now....was not sure where to post this, kinda wanted to put it in off topic but didn't want mattb4 to lay waste my soul! ha ha.  some of you blokes were able to read an early draft of the work...remember EARLY DRAFT. (smiles)
  anyway, glad to be back will be popping in from time to time to say hi.
 R
 oh yeah, you can see the book here:  

http://www.amazon.com/You-Believe-Witches-Rene-Trujillo/dp/1439231575/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242960016&sr=8-1

Re: home network security

 Thanks Tux,

  The router is set up correctly, the problem lies in that the xp machine had comodo, but it was just way too sluggish, and like a fool I left the xp internal firewall off this was only for about two hours, as I went through startup and shut down all the unnecessary entries in startup and tracked down all the running processes. As anyone remembers me from the old Vir@s site, I am pretty much a nut when it comes to security.  It's just that I have relaxed so much since leaving windows when microsoft dropped support for 98. Nod32 is pretty much the best antivirus I have run across, and it's light on the resources, stops eicar test files in it's tracks, you have to shut it down to download a zip and hide it. the spyware apps don't run in the background.  and as far as my linux boxes are concerned, since I don't actually communicate with the xp box via the other computers nor sharing any files, I haven't used an AV on them since 10.1. 

  I am worried that during that period when the XP box was without a firewall,  a remote host who was connected to my linux computer could "see" the vulnarable XP system. Unfortunately, I checked the linksys firmware afterword and it seems that it had been outdated for at least a year and if I remember correctly there was once a flash vulnarabilty which allowed an attacker to get a hold of a router, maybe I am mistaken. anyway I updated the firmware (anyone have to go through that hideous cisco systems registration? talk about an invasion of privacy!)

well the xp box now has zonealarm on it, seems to be lighter than comodo and it seems the culprits for the sluggishness was comodo in conjuction with apple software updater ,adobe updater, MySql (this one had me worried, having port 80 visable when another pc was surfing the net) plus  temp files taking up a good 17% of the 10gb hard drive. (gives you an idea of how ancient this thing is when my linux box is close to a terabyte.) I also used sophos rookit app and rootkit revealer, plust zonealarm's antispyware, ad-aware, spybot and Nod32 scanners all showed a clean system.  The registry is also cleaned out of old apps which have been uninstalled, but it's been a long time since I have had to root around looking for the odd registry key.

 I guess it's the old microsoft paranoia creeping in, back in the day, whenever I had a doubt I would backup my important files and reinstall, and with 98 that was pretty painless, I never trusted apps to "clean" a system just hopefully prevent drive-bys and such. I shudder to think of having to reinstall xp on this thing, I don't want to spend the better part of a day doing that and then setting it up just the way she had it.  I love Linux, keep it updated and pretty much no worries, as long as your not an inexperienced user running your first server.

Re: home network security

 just another thing the xp machine has the usual plethora of apps (hence the little resources) for security, I just figured that with linux boxes sharing the local network I didn't worry nearly as much about a virus or worm, since they shouldn't able to replicate and infect the windows box. if I had other win machines on the net, I would have installed something, but it's an old k6. plus, though it's used for e-mail checking, it's understood the perils of opening unknown e-mail, plus I have nod 32 on the system, ad-aware, spybot, hijack this,...I let the router's firewall handle that part of the security, it does have a firewall.

home network security

 hey guys, been awhile, but have a question here, I have three pcs connected to a linksys router, I know the router acts as a firewall to the three, and I know that the router WILL NOT firewall communication between the three of them, but my concern is this, one of the machines is a very, very old XP box which has no resources to spare for a firewall like zonealarm or comodo,  the other two are linux boxes, the xp box is simply for checking e-mails and working with MS office, wife can't deal with linux, but I was wondering, if the other machines are out and about surfing the net, can their activity compromise the xp box? For example, if one machine runs across a seemingly harmless site, and it turns into a drive-by site, would it be able to hit the xp box if the xp machine is connected to the net at the same time as the others? will the traffic which has made access to the home network via the other machines do harm? seems foolish perhaps but, I rarely deal with windows at all and today it seems a windows machine can become infected just by being connected to the net for goodness sake.

  any thoughts?

wtf!?!