Linux Update

While I’m posting, lets update on my Linux successes and issues.

Successes:

  • I was worried I’d have to convert my data drive from NTFS, losing all my goodies. This was because when I tried to play a high def video from it, it stuttered like a mofo. But I was wrong! It had installed generic video drivers. With the right ones installed it’s as smooth as it ever was in Vista. Extremely pleased about that.
  • Multiple desktops. This has been a feature of Gnome for a long time but I rarely made use of it (not since my days playing with LiteStep… oh the memories). But I have two scroll wheels on my mouse, one for scrolling and another thumb wheel. The thumb wheel used to work like alt-tab but I never used it, as it wasn’t very precise. Now, though, I’ve rigged it to switch desktops. I have a reason to use it!
  • I got two of my favorite Windows games going, and they’re not even supposed to run in Linux. Silent Hunter 3 (the second to most recent version from 2005, I always preferred it to SH4) and Left 4 Dead both work nicely. A friend had warned me that the Wine compatibility list was full of crap and nothing would work. He was half right: it’s working better than expected. Of course, I haven’t tried with any really high end, recent games.

Failures:

  • Still can’t get my mouse wheel to click right. The manufacturer makes very specialized drivers to make it do really neat custom stuff… that is completely useless to me. I turn it off. But I can’t in Linux, so it’s a major pain. Still working on it.

Iffy Stuff:

  • Exaile is working for me as a media player, but it doesn’t have the album/playlist management that foobar does. That’s a bummer. There’s probably an option that does it (Amorak doesn’t seem to work at all for me), but it’s a matter of finding it.
  • My IRC client is the same I’ve been using in Windows, which is KVIrc. I like it, but oddly it experiences a kind of constant lag in Linux. I don’t want to switch it out but I think I’m going to have to. No worries there.
  • Sudo. In order to do any admin stuff you have to preface your command with Sudo. But as one of my favorite webcomics, XKCD, has said, Proper User Policy does not mean Simon Says. It’s annoying, and I question its usefulness. But I’ll stick with it for now.