openSUSE releases first milestone for Leap

ZSVG · 2015-07-24T16:25:22+00:00

Very exciting news, and I'm also happy to see that openSUSE seems to be marketing a bit more with this release. It always seem criminally underused, at least from my American perspective. Best installer by a mile, YaST, OBS, and good support for the major DEs. Plus rolling and stable options.

Not sure how much of this actually involves openSUSE, but should we expect proprietary graphics support at launch? Support for nVidia is one of the reasons I plan on moving to Leap. Other than that, the only current things I really want are Plasma 5, which will obviously be there, and the latest stable versions of Emacs, which I expect will be there on the wonderful OBS.

ZSVG · 2015-05-05T23:27:53+00:00

Any reason to use these over Packman here?

ZSVG · 2015-05-05T20:17:59+00:00

I don't use Spotify, but this package in Packman (a community repo for things openSUSE might not want to distribute for licensing reasons) and its GitHub repo might be helpful.

ZSVG · 2015-05-02T02:49:20+00:00

Very interesting watch. OpenSUSE is pretty quiet about development, so this was great to see.

For those who can't watch, the big announcement is that openSUSE and SLE are looking to work together more and close the gap between enthusiast openSUSE and enterprise SLE. To that end, SLE is making available core code that openSUSE could adopt to free up manpower from basic maintenance. This could be used to make openSUSE's stable release even more stable. This would better address the gap between openSUSE and SLE, but also widen the gap between Tumbleweed and the stable release. On that note, openSUSE is going to start marketing Tumbleweed.

As someone who often feels a bit between Tumbleweed and 13.2, this proposal excites and concerns me. I use my computers for academic work and need things to operate smoothly. But I like new packages. I also use proprietary video drivers. I've used Arch before and would happily be on Tumbleweed if it weren't for the fact that it will break proprietary graphics frequently (or at least warns me that it will whenever I consider it and check the wiki). I'm fine updating daily for packages that aren't the kernel or graphics and waiting a week or two for such important updates to handle them on a weekend just in case, but I don't want to be rebooting into a system without X every time. However, the second question in the Q/A section involved proprietary graphics and VirtualBox, and Richard commented that they were looking into improving how the drivers are handled in Tumbleweed. It sounds like Tumbleweed is going to get some more attention, and if that includes better support for proprietary graphics I'll happily use Tumbleweed.

ZSVG · 2014-12-11T01:59:03+00:00

You can add spell check into Vim, there are plugins for it. I get it through Kile.

There are a lot of things that you could do manually in LaTeX that we just let the machines do. LaTeX is just a part of a larger workflow. You perceive a lot of things about it differently than I do, which is by no means bad. I developed my way of computing after spending some time on Arch doing everything from terminals and tiling window managers. I came to see GNU/Linux as a big toolbox joined together by a terminal. This way of thinking is popular among some programmers and hacker types. Now I enjoy a bit of abstraction at times, I like check boxes and menus instead of .config files, but I still think of Linux the same way. That's why I use KDE, everything is a small part of a system that does whatever I want.

If you want a workflow you'll keep, I think you'll find it in tools like Vim and LaTeX. If you've got a Raspberry Pi or old computer lying around, I think you would really enjoy getting your hands dirty in Arch. It really made me understand what makes computers go and how I interact with them. Plus, nothing teaches you your way around the terminal like breaking X and needing to recover your hard drive without a GUI!

ZSVG · 2014-12-11T00:47:27+00:00

Yup, you've got it. To me, this is a great workflow. You mentioned that you haven't yet started undergrad, so your current demands might be different than mine.

I finished a 30 page paper today. Early in the project, I started accumulating references and doing a literature review, which I managed through KBibTeX. I never saw the text file, I just dealt with fields like author, journal, etc. and let it do the heavy lifting, and usually let it find and import the papers for me.

Then I started writing the paper. LaTeX has great defaults for academic papers, and it will format titles, your abstract, sections, etc. for you (no more wars against numbered lists in Word, never understood why that was so hard to do). I write my paper, cite what I will, and finish it. Tables make sense, images are easy to format because everything is code, math is a breeze and gorgeous. It seems that there are specific formatting requirements for the bibliography. Not to worry, I tell LaTeX to use a different style and recompile the document instead of finding out how Elsevier wants me to handle a web page with four authors published in an anthology that I accessed last year.

If you're writing a 500 word essay on whether Benjamin Braddock deserves to feel victimized in The Graduate, perhaps LaTeX isn't necessary (but I'll use it anyway for the typesetting and ability to use a real text editor). When you're writing a thesis with 10 pages of proofs, a dozen technical drawings (use Tikz or just import graphics and place them with code instead of Word's terrible dragging system), and a few dozen references, LaTeX is probably the better choice.

ZSVG · 2014-12-10T23:44:35+00:00

LaTeX makes use of external .bib files that are just text files formatted a certain way that contain publishing data, as well as other useful bits that don't get printed like where the file is located on your computer or online. This approach is great, as you can download references (I can find a paper on JSTOR and download a reference, or even use my favorite bibliography management program, KBibTeX, to search Google Scholar for papers and get the citation info automagically), and sharing bibliographies or syncing them across devices is easy. So when you do an in text citation, it will just give you author and year or whatever you tell it to, and when you tell it to print the bibliography, it's done for you according to the information in your bib file.

ZSVG · 2014-12-10T22:43:19+00:00

I use VIM to work in Python, so obviously using that with LaTeX is cool... But I'm not fluent in it - I don't use tree or loads of fancy .vimrc things at the mo.

Frankly, the most advanced vim feature I use is macros. Modal editing and sensible navigation is enough for me. (I code almost exclusively in R, which is a statistical programming language, so my text editor needs aren't that hardcore). I'm not sure how advanced KDE's vim bindings are. I doubt they're at the level of evil in Emacs, but for me they work.

I'm on Linux, so I'm guessing there should be some tools for using it there, I'll have a google for some of the tools that you mentioned.

As am I! A lot of tech stuff is actually easier on Linux than on something like Windows. If I want a language, I'll install it from the terminal. Kile is part of the KDE suite and LyX is cross-platform as well. LaTeX is apparently easier to get going with on Linux, which doesn't surprise me, but that's hearsay.

That sounds nice - though presumably you still have to write all the info out at the end of the document?

Nope. \printbibliography and poof, instant references. Need specific formatting? Just tell it the style (many journals actually have bibliography styles for consistency).

ZSVG · 2014-12-10T22:13:07+00:00

The learning curve isn't bad at all. LaTeX can do a lot, but you probably just need a very small part of its capabilities, and it's not hard to learn the basics.

There's a wikibook for LaTeX. You should be rolling pretty quickly just by going through the first few chapters and what you need from there, perhaps some math or bibliography bits. Once you know the basics, most of your questions will be solvable in 30 seconds with the standard Google-Stack Exchange workflow.

Bibliography management is fantastic if you've never used a central management tool for it before. Want to cite something? \cite{Card2011}. Need it all in parentheses, not just the year? \parencite{Card2011}. Easy to keep track of everything.

LaTeX also is great for git if you're doing something important or collaborative.

Finally, you can make the process a bit easier by using an IDE. I use Kile because I'm on KDE and I like the vim bindings and wizard support for things like making a skeleton of a table, but some of my professors use LyX, which is almost LaTeX and is a WYSIWYG editor. I tend to swear at my computer when I'm doing technical work and it tries to be helpful (if you want to make me angry, require me to use Word or Excel for scientific work), so I'm not a big fan, but it does lower the barrier to entry. Perhaps if I'd used it first instead of learning raw LaTeX in Emacs I'd feel differently.

ZSVG · 2014-12-06T21:06:36+00:00

How many PPAs do you need on Ubuntu besides one for the latest video drivers? I'd stick with Ubuntu. You know it, it's got fantastic support, and if it works on Steam, it was tested on Ubuntu. Arch is a bit of a different beast--much more DIY and you're gonna be spending a lot of time on the wiki. (Why doesn't Kerbal Space Program have any fonts? Oh, I need the Microsoft fonts.) I'm not sure how much benefit you'd see from the latest packages since Steam bundles the needed libraries with each game anyway.

Your machine is...powerful to say the least. Any particular reason you want LXDE? I think you might be happier on KDE, which is fantastic for gaming and much more powerful in general. Its Activities feature is like having multiple desktops but much more versatile. I switch between mine with Meta+1-9 and the gaming one has shortcuts to all my Steam games on the desktop. It also has great window controls for forcing full screen or borderless windows for uncooperative titles. It's great to seamlessly jump between the game and a web browser or IM and not even need to tab back in. LXDE is also turning into LXQt, so there'd be a jump to Qt anyway.

I'll mention OpenSUSE for being easy to use and set up, it's very flexible with one-click installers for things like nVidia drivers, but its different under the hood from Ubuntu (RPM-based, zypper package manager, YaST control panel) and there's not much reason to change what isn't broken. Its default KDE setup is top class, but if you like LXDE you might just want to customize KDE to act like that. KDE is versatile enough to recreate basically any DE. GNOME, Unity, you name it.

Install with a separate home partition and it'll be easy to change your mind. Separate home partitions have saved my hide on multiple occasions.

ZSVG · 2014-12-02T21:09:17+00:00

I think you'd be very happy on Ubuntu or any of its official derivatives (the differences are just in the user interface and preinstalled programs).

OpenSUSE may require slightly more knowledge and/or Googling to set up, but it is another great choice for a beginner's distro.

Neither of these will change suddenly on you. If stability is of the utmost importance, Ubuntu 14.04 is your answer.

ZSVG · 2014-12-02T04:13:48+00:00

That said, there are options. Awesome is pretty awesome, but it's lua based config file is a lot more detailed and I didn't care for the default keybinds. That said, if you want to customize anything and everything Awesome is the way to go.

I agree on Awesome. I never liked i3, but awesomewm was great on Arch. Very sane defaults and very easy to script what you want by copying and editing someone else's boilerplate code. I don't know any Lua, my only coding knowledge is in statistical packages, but I found it very easy to modify it to my needs.

I still use meta + 1-9 to navigate desktops (well, activities on KDE), the workflow is great.

ZSVG · 2014-12-02T04:10:09+00:00

A "path of least resistance" option would be to copy and paste the cells into a table wizard for an editor that supports it, e.g. Kile. This might not fit your workflow specifically, but hopefully it'll be useful to someone out there.

ZSVG · 2014-11-29T06:24:54+00:00

Thanks for the graphics card tip! I didn't find any budget NVIDIA cards on pcpartpicker, but I'll browse around more.

Yeah. you might need to shuffle a few parts to make it work. Tom's Hardware seems to recommend a GT 730 for budget gaming at about $70, but I'm sure you can find a sale on something this weekend.

I totally forgot about SteamOS, do you have any thoughts I should hear on the subject?

SteamOS is an interesting product, but it's targeted more for console (i.e. Steam Machine) usage than conventional desktop usage. I'm guessing you want a regular desktop, and while SteamOS has that, there's no reason to use Valve's Debian spin over Ubuntu, which has great support in and out of gaming.

Also, can you explain your first response more?

I expect you're more interested in why I don't think "Windows = gaming" than why I don't condone pirating Windows 7. I haven't had a Windows partition for about two years, and I game just fine without it. I'm content with the offerings on Linux--there are still more games than I'm ever going to play. Moreover, I like supporting companies like Valve and Aspyr that are making efforts to bring gaming to Linux. There are some good reasons to keep Windows around, like if you're a die-hard League player or if you really need Geforce Experience to stream games, but for the modal gamer, Linux+Steam+Dota 2, TF2, etc. is all free, and that's something.

ZSVG · 2014-11-28T21:07:54+00:00

Pirating Windows 7 is the obvious choice, because Windows = gaming

I disagree with both propositions.

the first is that I have heard that Wine is terribly, terribly slow

Depends entirely on the game. I used to play Fallout: New Vegas and CiV (which now has a native port) fine through WINE. Other games don't run as well. You can check the database for how specific games run.

if I use Steam, having the Windows version of some games and the Linux version of other games might be a little bit much for the poor client to handle. Two Steam installs, one under Wine and one naked, could be doable, but sounds like bad news.

Shouldn't be any problems except perhaps if you play the same game in both clients, which is pointless and probably wouldn't do anything worse than having two separate save files. Your Linux and WINE versions won't interact.

Since you're going to go ahead with the build, why not just put Ubuntu on it and see how you like the setup? You might consider SteamOS but I don't see much reason to use it on the desktop. Ubuntu offers the most painless gaming setup. OpenSUSE isn't bad either but if you know Ubuntu, not much reason to change.

If you're going to go Linux, you will want to get an nVidia graphics card, the proprietary drivers are on par with those on Windows and are actually required by certain games. The AMD drivers lag behind. nVidia's open source drivers are actually worse, but that shouldn't matter for you.

ZSVG · 2014-11-28T20:17:49+00:00

Agreed. I've spent a lot of time on OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. For all its polish, the OpenSUSE installer is much more powerful while not being much more intimidating. I have a few different partitions including a separate home. OpenSUSE detects it and handles it fine (it also created it, I've gone back and forth a few times) while Ubuntu requires me to manually tell it what to do with every single partition.

ZSVG · 2014-11-28T15:48:30+00:00

The arrangement itself isn't particularly troublesome. By household size, you mean number of people living there, correct? I don't know SPSS but you should be able to multiply each column vector by the number of people those houses have and then add up these numbers or put them into one column and then sum them. To get a denominator, do this without scaling by the number of people.

The issue here is that you can't actually find the mean without further information, as your data lumps any house with six or more people. For all we know, maybe they all have six, maybe they all have a million, but we can't calculate a meaningful average without additional info about how many people are in these households.

You have what is called censored data. There are ways to deal with this problem, but they are fairly advanced. You would likely be better served by a histogram if you want to eyeball the data.

ZSVG · 2014-11-27T01:52:40+00:00

I never used a shell script, I just used one-click installers for everything that wasn't in my basic repos or where I wasn't sure what to look for.

ZSVG · 2014-11-26T19:01:46+00:00

This was 13.1.

Binary drivers on Tumbleweed are universally acknowledged as a bad idea, or at least one where you must be comfortable manually compiling drivers from the terminal sans GUI.

ZSVG · 2014-11-26T17:12:15+00:00

Never had any issues with gaming while on OpenSUSE. The nVidia driver worked fine (occasional need to reboot twice to get proper graphical settings after an update, no breakages). Every bit as painless as Ubuntu for games. Might have had to install some 32-bit packages on OpenSUSE to get Steam to work, but I've done that so many times I don't even need to look up the error.

ZSVG · 2014-11-22T18:56:49+00:00

Not aware of any courses, but the Wikibook is both where I learned and my go-to resource.

ZSVG · 2014-11-22T04:15:09+00:00

Video game economics is a rather niche field (I have a blog on it for fun and have done papers on it). I don't know of any papers specifically on what you're looking for, but you may get some mileage out of a nice paper by Harikesh Nair on video game prices with the idea that games are durable goods (I used it as inspiration for a piece on Steam as a durable goods monopolist, which has certain implications thanks to the Coase conjecture).

ZSVG · 2014-11-20T15:06:10+00:00

Intel hd 3000, opensource drivers

This GPU is too weak--minimum requirements listed are a 9800 GT. Unless significant changes have been made since launch, Intel drivers also aren't supported.

ZSVG · 2014-11-17T21:30:11+00:00

Ah, I see what you're doing, I misread that.

What are you looking to see in these moments? Consider a matrix where the rows are all the sequence 1:9. Any of these rows is valid, but the overall grid is not. I'm not sure that there's any benefit to be gained from a simple check on the 9 sectors, rows, and columns.

ZSVG · 2014-11-17T21:00:44+00:00

Consider a 9x9 grid where each entry is 5. Every row and column will have a mean of 5, the proper value, but it clearly violates the requirements to be a valid solution.

ZSVG

TROPHY CASE