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December 06, 2003

My Adventures With The 2.6 Test Kernel

Okay, so I've heard all of these great things about the 2.6 kernel that should be coming out sometime by either the end of this year or the very early part of next year. Last night, I decided to download it and see if I can make it work.

For those that aren't aware, I use Fedora, which used to be Red Hat Linux. There is a test kernel RPM located on the Red Hat Web site designed for Red Hat 9 and Fedora, so I thought I would download and install it to see what the new kernel was like.

Upon boot, I really didn't notice anything different until it got to the point where it normally detects my USB devices. It came back with an error. Next up was the configuration for my network card and printer. I told it to remove the existing configuration for both and to add a new configuration for the network card. I guess since the new kernel didn't detect any USB devices, the printer wasn't going to be re-detected.

So, I get into the command prompt and login as root and edited the XF86Config file so that it used the generic Nvidia driver since I didn't feel like re-installing the driver for the new kernel. I started X and sure enough, my mouse wouldn't work. I couldn't even get it to connect to the base station (it's wireless) when I hit the connect button at the bottom of the mouse. Usually a green "connect" light appears, but it didn't happen in this case.

Okay, so the USB part was bad ... no problem. I'm a keyboard power user, so I thought that I would open up a terminal and get Firebird loaded to find out what the USB problem was. I get Firebird loaded properly, but it doesn't see a network connection.

Starting to get frustrated, I start the redhat-config-network program to see what the problem was. Interestingly enough, it appears that my machine thought it had two NICs, and neither was activated. I activated ETH0 and did a few pings to Yahoo to make sure that I was on the Internet ... which I received return pings.

So, I opened Firebird back up and tried to hit yahoo.com to see if the rest of the network settings were working properly. No dice. Seems that nothing could get in or out on port 80, so I decided to look and see if there was a firewall on somewhere that I wasn't aware of. Sure enough, a firewall was on ... so I turned it off. Still no dice.

Since 1) I didn't have USB and 2) I couldn't get out on the Internet, I decided to give up on the 2.6 test kernel. I'm sure that I could download it from kernel.org and set it up myself ... but my biggest problem with that right now is that the 2.6 kernel configuration is WAY different than what I've used in the past. It almost seems harder than what it used to be. What's even worse, none of the Kernel How-To's are up to date and some are not even online. I guess those are the ones that are being updated to the 2.6 kernel way of thinking.

I guess I'm just going to have to wait for Fedora Core 2 to come out so I can enjoy the new features of 2.6.

Posted by ed at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)

I posted this from BloGTK

I found a great Linux blogging client called BloGTK. Google it. :)

Posted by ed at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)

Final Fantasy XI is a drug

It's every man's fantasy to have a girlfriend, fiancee, wife, and/or mistress who has the same interests that he does. I just happen to be one of those lucky guys. Ya see, I'm a computer geek that likes to play computer games, plain and simple. I'm a computer geek with a fiancee that likes to play computer games. The same computer games that I like to play.

Yup, that's right. Amanda plays computer games. Not all of her game selections are the best, mind you, but she knows what she likes and she's hard core about it. I don't know if I've ever seen any guy gamer that's ever been as dedicated to beating a game once it's been started as Amanda is.

As of tonight, Kyle and I showed her how to play Final Fantasy XI, a game that both he and I have been addicted to since it arrived on the US shores a few months ago. I've been playing constantly, and it seems like he spends almost every waking hour on it. The only time it feels like that we're not on it is when we're at work. And if he's anything like me, he's thinking about it when he's at work too.

But, back to Amanda. Remember how I said that she's a hardcore gamer? Well, as I look at her on the computer in the other room, I begin to wonder how we're going to split up playing time on Final Fantasy. I've even debated on putting Windows back on my Linux machine (bleh, how I hate that thought) just so she and I can play at the same time. After all, I don't want to get any farther behind Kyle as it is (he's currently lvl 21 to my lvl 15). I've been able to catch up to him, as he got his copy of FFXI a month ahead of me, but it's taken some time to do so.

So now I have this problem ... and I'm not too sure what to do. Should I spend the extra money to get two HD cages so I can swap out Linux and Windows so that we can play online together? Should I blow away my Linux installation and just put Windows back on this machine (it's been over a year since I've had it on here) to satisfy both of us playing a game? And most importantly, should I keep the ATI 9800 in her machine and I keep the GeForce 3 in my machine?

Questions questions questions. I guess only time will tell. After all, she deserves to be able to play as much as I. Just gonna be interesting figuring out how we're going to go about doing it.

Posted by ed at 03:05 AM | Comments (0)