Trying out with Beryl

All the computers in the lab have beryl installed except this one. I want to work more time with this Opensuse to test whether it is suitable for lab. This is particularly needed as 2nd yrs and 1 yr MCA students may find some distribution easier to work than other. So I decided to start my installation try out by beryl a xgl fork for desktop effects. This tryout seemed to be important to me because any way I have to install many packages in every system.

I came to the lab by 8.30 pm. Only 3 were there. Aishwarya on the right busy with her project. Dev in the corner trying out his project so do Yadu. Usually our lab gets crowded at night. Everyone seems to enjoying world cup. So luckily I got the computer I have to test on. I opened firefox googled beryl on opensuse. I got the page. I found the ways to install on it.

I first tried the straight forward way installing from yast2. Yast is suse's hardware and software manager. The main problem the lab facing now is the slow internet connection. It is not too slow but the speed is not consistent. So simply yast failed.

Meanwhile Dev was downloading some java parser, jdk packages. He told me not to delete any because he already have about 4 GB of software in that computer.

Then i tried rug, zypper and yum ; all failed. Then I read about smart a new package manager. I installed it from CD and tried. And after a couple of attempts everything was installed. You can read about smart here.

I tried to start beryl. I didn't install gnome.; so I am not able run beryl yet. But I got xgl running. I am satisfied with it for the moment.

Playing around with the Suse..

And this is the first post from the Suse Linux i installed in the lab on Monday. I had some more things to fix on it like screen resolution. I came to the lab in the afternoon yesterday and something funny happened.

It was about 3 pm and Data Structure lab exam for S4 was going on in the lab. So the lab was full with faculties and the students. I found no vacant seats but one next to a girl. The exam really seem to be a tough one as her face told well about it. The machine was on which DNS is running. That may be the why it is left vacant. I took the seat opened the console sshed to the previously installed machine. I logged as root and opened Opera. I was typing quickly. Somehow a pen fell down from her table. I took the pen without looking to her face placed on the table. Looking really serious. She was wondering what this guy is frantically doing?

Within 15 minutes Shaneed and Yadu came so did Priya ma'am came. Shaneed and Yadu started talking to me may be a bit loud. Usually Priya ma'am don't like students from other batches during lab exams. I was about to load blogger. Suddenly a voice came from back "They are having lab exams it is better not to disturb them" to Yadu and Shaneed. They suddenly left. So i can't stay there longer either. So I suddenly closed the windows and left off quickly without looking to anything.

I got some time to play with OS now. Now everything seems to work properly. And I found out one thing. LCD in wrong resolution is horrible. I first put 1024x768 and start menu ( the one in previous post) took more than half of the screen. I was really irritated by that at that time. Now fixed this everything seems to be running fine. I have to install beryl on this. This is my next adventure..

First Installation in the Lab

I talked to Dal in the evening. He told me to use any distro you like. But use only one distro other it won't be easy to manage. And I know that very well. All girls are not same so are linuxes. I am now using OpenSuse in my comp so I decided to give it a try.


I came to lab in the afternoon and it was full. Jam packed; I found the target machine with Debian installed. I tried to boot it and it failed very simple. I Don't have any DVD's with me at that time. My OpenSuse and Fedora Core 6 DVDs are in BS's table. So I decided to come at night to have my first try in the lab.

It was 10pm when I reached the lab and FMB is here. Fine. If I have any doubt I can ask him. I poped the DVD into the drive and rebooted. And no tinkering with bios, it booted from the CD.

I chose the default installation and dialog lauched loading Linux kernel and then .......... nothing happened. What? Suse failed?

I tried once again. Still same result. I was frantically pressing the power button. I tried again chose the safe setttings and then again with acpi off and nothing happens. And all on a sudden my love with OpenSuse 10.2 seems to end and already started thinking about another distros. So i decided to give a last try.

I poped the DVD to drive choose the default installation. Then i went to the next PC fired up firefox and started browsing. It took 3 minutes i think. After 3 minutes of inactivity the first welcome screen is reached. And i am relieved. I partitions removed all partitions. Created partitons and chose KDE. I just want to try on this system so i chose only one desktop environment and I always prefer KDE to gnome because of its features.

And all this time I type installation is going on. And now it is completed and rebooted for initial configuration. It is downloading some packages from suse repos. It is almost 20 minutes and still not complete. i would have skipped this step. And OOPs there is no cancel button either. The net is very slow so i had no option buit to wait. It is already 11:15 pm and lab closes by 11:45. So i have to do something. I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 for the prompt. Stopped the yast using Ctrl+C and rebooted. To my surprise it picked by saying previous installation failed. I just have configure again. Done that now. And installation is complete now.

I don't have time to play with the system now. May be tomorrow.

Choosing the right penguin

Dal was reminding me of reinstallation of two machine for the past 2 weeks. I , Daniel and Yadhu decided to go to the lab only after Ragam. Dal and FMB previous admins are their final two weeks of classess in our college. They will be handing over the lab to us next academic year by the way. As it is told to me i have to manage or maintain around 40 systems.

All of them currently have Fedora Core 6 installed in them. Most of them have beryl also. I am already thinking of the distro of the next year. And i want to try it on the two non OS systems now. I prefer OpenSuse 10.2 ; to me it was perfect in my laptop. It gave me the first trouble free installation of the linux I ever had. May be I will try with them tomorrow.

I know installation in 1 or 2 machines is ok. But for a large deployment i need to consider other options like installation from network through nfs or http. I am also considering the possibility of unattended installation. I tried to learn from the autoyast manual but it is not pefect. Still how to do section is not there. I know , yaa I tried with kickstart of fedora. It is perfect.

Even though the performance of OpenSuse in my laptop is fine it is taking too much resources. I don't know how lab machines cope with its requirements. They have 2.8 Ghz 512 MB processor and memory. But the hardisk are very slow due to constant read and write cycles.

My other option is some different. Going to an unknown territory. It is slackware. I have been for playing around with linux for the last 5 yrs. But never tried slackware based distros. This may be a perfect ocassion for trying it out. But for the first i will play safe. Another option is debian or ubuntu. Unless you run into problem they are perfect. But i don't think i will have so much time to tinker with the conf files of linux.

Opensuse, ubuntu, fedora? I haven't decided yet.

Yaa, it is like choosing the right bride. Because i have to play,share,fix,suffer with her for the next whole year!!!!