Fedora's back online, but can I install anything else?

Well, I finally discovered the solution for my self-inflicted problem with Fedora failing to go online...  My guess that it was Network Manager was semi-right: the update I chose was a scheduled one that somehow conflicts with the acer-wmi module.  The immediate solution was to log in as root and type

modprobe -r acer_wmi

Once that was done and proved that it worked, I edited the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file to include a line that said "blacklist acer_wmi" so it'll avoid loading in the future.


I also discovered (with some embarrassment) the reason for a serious problem I was having with trying live distros.  Almost all of them (including Gujin, which is more of a boot manager) would boot up to a point, then crash in some manner.  Turns out that even though there's nothing suggesting it on the little sticker, my netbook's processor is 64-bit! 

So I'm downloading Mint Debian Edition 64 right now... I wouldn't do it, but Fedora refusing to let me install Open Office instead of what they want me to use (and their devs' recent Ubuntu-team-like attitude) really annoys me, and working fighting with OpenSuSE's web-based live creator reminded me how much I hate their repository setup.  So over to Debian-based distros (or Debian) I go...

Is this a gift or a curse [Edit: It Works!]

Evidently my brother got fed up with hearing about my various failing computers -- ages 6, 10 and 11 -- because to my shock, when I came home from seeing the Wavy Gravy Movie with Dad & his partner, there was an Acer Aspire One 721 here for me.  It's currently being used to stream old Grateful Dead videos for me, because...

...so far, the three Linux installers and Gparted on its own have all been unable to resize the hard drive partitions, which is required to install Linux. [Edit: Working OK now, see next post.]  Fedora 13 & 14 yell "FIRMWARE BUG" at liveboot, which evidently never happens with netbooks other than the AO721 (lucky me).  Fedora and OpenSuSE refuse to boot off USB keydrives created by my Averatec (only option at the moment).

I'm learning that I still don't care much for Windows, but that for some reason, it's able to connect to my wifi router -- Linux has recently been forcing me to type in the IP, DNS servers, gateway, etc. and I don't know why.  I can't think of anything redeeming to say about Firefox 4, which I've avoided in Linux thus far as 3.6 has mercifully been the default on my preferred distros.

Better get back to figuring this thing out (after some aspirin for the headache the netbook or frustration has caused both days thus far).

QuickiWiki Look Up

I upgraded Karmic to SimplyMEPIS

Yep, my title is a riff on the old sigline joke about upgrading Windows directly over to rival operating system Linux. I felt about the same in the day before the transition, too...

Anyway, after looking around and fighting with a lot of live discs/sticks, I finally picked a new distro to install and use. I heard about SimplyMEPIS from the LinuxOutlaws podcast, and saw that their community & wiki were the friendliest by a longshot. Compared to everywhere else I've been, they sound like they're on f*ing ecstasy, right down to naming the forums, if I recall, "SimplyMEPIS Lovers".

Someone (a lover??) there linked to an article that mixed a new-release review with interviewing their leader, and this is what made me finally just install the darn thing:
First Glance at SimplyMEPIS 8.5

Incidentally, based on forum posts and the interview, the guy that began & leads the distro seems startlingly nice. Based on his attitude in the interview, I find it very hard to imagine him essentially telling the community to STFU. Then again, like I said, after many other attitudes I've seen recently (all of which boil down to "if you don't like it, too damn bad"), I want what everyone else involved has been on...

I had thought that their copy of Firefox couldn't properly do font hinting, until I remembered that I had to reboot it first. To my delight, ohmygod it isn't going to make me install a special Mozilla repo just to keep my eyes from bleeding! Woohoooo!

Then again, I'm ready to shout for joy simply because my fricking computer isn't crashing at every opportunity. It also isn't running like ass with multiple heavyweight apps open. In comparison, Ubuntu Karmic (installed only a few months ago) was crashing 4+ times per day, running slower than Xubuntu Hardy ran on my 600MHz system, and having bizarro glitches galore. While I like tinkering for fun with my computer, being forced to do it just for basic functionality sucks hairy goat balls.

In unrelated news, I was listening to a LinuxOutlaws podcast recently when I thought one said he imagined an evidently-well-known forum member "chasing meerkats" around my little obscure city. I replayed it several times before giving up and joining the forums so I could see the person's profile. Sure enough, the map link he used as a "location" pointed to the old part of downtown! So in filling out my profile, I admit that I wrote "Telecom Valley" rather than the city name, to avoid looking like a stalker or something.

Qemu could not open blah blah arrgh

I've been beating my head against the desk for WEEKS now trying to get Qemu to work with any friggin distro set up by UNetbootin, with or without Gujin to help.  No matter what I tried, the response was qemu: could not open disk image /dev/sdh

Well, after messing with ownership & permissions, I'm a lot closer -- and wanted to document the possible solution for the next person plagued by this issue. (Based on what I saw while searching the web, I'm nowhere near the first or the least-experienced.)  UNetbootin has an annoying little quirk, it turns out: every file it handles becomes owned by root, and evidently key files aren't marked as executable when Qemu thinks they should be. So first you have to give yourself ownership of everything (sudo chown -R yourusername) and then full permissions (sudo chmod a=rwx drivelocation).

With any luck, tomorrow I'll manage to get it to do something more interesting, like boot something...  Non-Ubuntu (and hopefully non-crashing non-slow-on-this-computer) distribution, here I come!