As the title says, I’m thinking of moving on to other mmo’s. I’m just tired of WoW, having done mostly everything the game currently has to offer. I think once patch 3.2 comes out I’ll try the new content, but if its no good, I think I’ll be done with WoW for a while.
Archive for July, 2009
BSOD plagues my Windows install, stuck in Arch Linux for a while (not really a bad thing)
My Windows install starts giving me BSOD’s at startup, I think it had something to do with me trying to install drivers for my ps3 controller >.<
Also, I hope to update my old list of top 5 manga of all time, and maybe add a bit, such as anime (with one caveat, no anime based on manga is to be on this list)
Arch Linux
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- My KDE desktop
So in my last post I said that I would be using BSD as my OS of choice, and it turns out that it wasn’t to be. I tried serveral different BSD distros without any luck, some install but I could not configure my network no matter how hard I tried, and others wouldn’t even boot. So, after this unexpected failure, I decided to try another flavor of linux, namely Arch Linux. This distro is optimized for 64 processors, and doesn’t even have a 32-bit version. It is said to be very light-weight, and hides nothing from the user, having all the system processes transparent. I think of myself as a bit of a poweruser, so I figured I could handle it. So I downloaded the .iso, burned it on 1x speed so my optical drive didn’t screw me over at the vital step, and the rebooted and started the install process. It wasn’t a difficult process, and after about 30-40 minutes I had an Arch Linux system installed. Since this is a very customizable distro, it comes without a gui, leaving the user a choice of which desktop environment/window manager they wish to use (if any).
I did expect this, as while I was downloading the .iso, I started to read the documentation. Arch Linux is VERY well documented, with a wiki and a few noobie starter guides, telling you exactly what to do, and some common tasks once you have a system installed. Here is where I hit a few problems.
I’m not completely lost without a gui, but I’m no expert, being born after computers had had guis for a while gave me a bit of a handicap to overcome, but having a bit of experience with linux I did know my way around the command line. One of the first steps they recommend doing after finishing your install is:
#pacman -Syu
This gave me a bit of troube, I got an error saying something about a resolving error. Again, I checked my noobie install guide (I’d printed it out before I started, just in case) and also made sure I could ping my router. I couldn’t and had to edit my /etc/rc.conf file, because my router’s IP is 192.168.0.10, instead of the default 192.168.0.1. I changed that, and uncommented the gateway part, and tried to ping my router. This time I found that I could, but I could not ping anything without an IP address, I could ping google’s IP, but http://www.google.com wouldn’t resolve to anything.
I then remembered that I had set my router to be using OpenDNS, and put their DNS servers into my /etc/hosts file. Finally, I could install packages and ping websites using their domain names. I only had one remaining problem, downloading packages took forever, averaging about 50 Kbps, and I have a T1 connection. I checked the excellent Arch Linux documentation, and found on the forums that the default mirror had been throttled >.<
Finally after commenting all the slow mirrors using trial and error, I found one that worked well for me.
Now I could install my gui following the noobie guide instructions 
This post was made on my new Arch Linux system, and I’m using KDE flawlessly.
This blog, and something else
I can’t decide whether or not to continue this blog, I barely ever update, and when I do it seems that the topic has switched to something else. I think I’ll finally get to updating at least once a week, with anything that I find interesting, I suppose.
Today I think that topic is BSD. I recently grew tired of windows yet again, and wanted an OS that I’ve never used before, and since I’ve tasted a few flavors of linux, I figure its time to try something new. BSD shouldn’t be too different from linux, as they both came from unix. I’ve already installed pc-BSD on my laptop, which I use as a test bed for anything that could potentially brick my desktop. Don’t think me wasteful, this laptop is 6+ years old, so I’m not wasting a perfectly good laptop. Most of its ports no longer work, wired or wireless ethernet, nor usb or firewire. Luckily, the optical and hard drives both work. I installed it flawlessly, with BSD auto detecting all of my hardware except for PCMCIA wireless card, which I did have working under windows, and at one point with ubuntu GNU/linux. I booted up, and was greeted by a customized KDE desktop. I was glad to find it very user-friendly, an almost Mac-like experience. I think that with an easy to use UI like that, a day to day computer user could transition from windows to an alternative. Next post should be from my desktop on BSD, wish me luck!
