I know! I haven’t written anything here in ages, and what I have, has been incredibly short, or just silly. This isn’t horribly easy, but at least I’ve made it easy for you.. and compared to doing some things in Linux, it is actually quite easy.

Entering the 20th century (in the 21st, natch), I’ve finally got XM. XM has the ability to listen to it online, but it streams as Windows Media (WMV) which is a closed format by Microsoft. You can listen to it on MacOS X with Flip4Mac, but there’s no truely native ability to listen to it in Linux due to the licensing restrictions.

If in KDE or GNUME, press Alt-F2. KDE Users, type “kdesu yast” (without the quotes), then press enter. GNOME users, type “gnomesu yast” instead.

If you’re at the terminal, you’ll already know how to adapt these instructions to do at the command line.

Depending on your configuration, it will ask for your, or the root password. Enter the appropriate one, then in YaST, select “Software” -> “Software Repositories”. If you have the Packman Repository, enable it, then skip past the next paragraph.

If you do not have one, don’t worry! Select “Add a new Repository”, Name it “Packman Repository”, “Edit Parts of the URL”, Protocol is “HTTP”, host: “packman.unixheads.com” (Please check for a local mirror), directory on server: “/pub/packman/suse/11.0/” (or 11.1), Authentication type is Anonymous.

Finally, Save and choose “Refresh now”. Open the “Software Manager” from the YaST window, and Search for “totem”. Select “totem”, and “totem-xine-plugin”. Press “Accept”, and let it install. When it finally completes, choose “Install more Packages” (Yes)

Search for, and install “w32codec-all”.
I like to also install “mplayerplug-in”, since it provides support in places that totem still has issues.

(Optionally) Select “kaffeine”, and let it install. (This is a much more robust player than the totem plugin alone).

If you want to use Kaffeine, there are a few more steps:
Start Kaffeine, “Settings” -> “xine Engine Parameters”.
Choose the “Decoder Settings”, and set both paths to “/usr/lib/win32”.
Save and exit Kaffeine.
Close any running Firefox browser.

Open Your browser, and setup your Netscape Plugins/Programs as required. I’ve provided information on how to do so for Firefox 3.x and Konqueror 3.x. I don’t use Opera, and no longer use Firefox 2.x, so I can not assist you with those.

For Firefox 3.x, choose “Edit” -> “Preferences”. Choose “Applications”, then scroll down to “Windows Media”. Choose “Use Windows Media Player Plugin”.

For Konqueror 3.x, open Konq, choose “Settings”, “Configure Konqueror”, then “Plugins” in the menu on the left side. Select “Scan for New Plugins”. Press the “Discard” button, then click the “Plugins” tab. If you see “libtotem-gmp-plugin.so”, you’re set. Click “OK”. When you load the first time, it will usually default to MPlayerplug-in, with the MPlayer library. Press the first left ‘Down Arrow’, and choose ‘xine’, rather than mplayer. Press the Play button. Viola!

Finally, go to xmradio.com. and login. The totem plugin will be loaded when you choose your channel. Give it about 10 seconds to buffer on a standard DSL/Cable line. There you go – XM in Linux!

It’s good to see that those folks who used to write Cliff’s Notes have found work – They’re now writing movie descriptions. Note that you are allowed an unlimited amount for the description – I’ve seen over 10 pages worth for a Law and Order episode. I guess poor Marie just doesn’t stack up, the next 2 pages only continue with the actor’s names, and the director.

I can’t believe I am still running a self-serving tech/nerd blog this many years later.. I’ve gone from a text based personal resume, to an Open Source system I created to share my ported software (to unpopular platforms, such as Solaris x86 and MacOS X (at the time)), then eventually opting to no longer support my tools in the ideal of making money by writing code – exporting that and moving into another system (after testing serveral others). Gee, alot happens in ten years.

In other news, I’ve been using OpenSUSE 11.0 since late June on a testing/dev system, and it is incredibly stable. Not only does it offer a newer kernel base (2.6.25.x), but it touts KDE4, KDE 3.5.9, and GNOME 2.2. Yep, you can roll your own; this isn’t Xubuntu.

The whole system is incredibly stable, and as much as I can not stand the over-engineered ‘Zypper’ system, ‘Smart’ is quite comparable to apt, and is just as fast.

Despite the Zypper hate already, it has some great new BSD-like features such as ‘dist-upgrade’, which should FINALLY offer OpenSUSE the ability to upgrade (at least between minor revisions) without doing a reformat/reinstall. Yes, SuSE users, it’s no longer 1996!

It’s incredibly stable, well-supported, and is leaps above what Ubuntu offers – and I admit that, being a Debian user for years. My laptop had the proper drivers, and could even sleep to RAM without messing around with kernel internals.

It’s about time; OpenSUSE has made Linux closer to being entirely desktop ready than even the ‘Friendly’ Ubuntu. Game’s on.

An often-overlooked Linux distribution (likely due to being purchased by Novell, whom many self-professed Linux users find a reason to detest) is openSUSE; a free distribution, supported and partially developed by Novell.

I tend to be fairly software-eclectic: I’ll try anything once, because chances are – I will see it again. I can hold my own with RedHat distributions, Debian distributions, various forms of BSD, and, now, I have finally cut my teeth on SUSE. The last time I looked at SUSE, it was Slackware based, only, in German.

The times have truly changed. It’s certainly no Slackware.

I burned a Live CD of openSUSE 10.3, and stuck it into my Vostro 1400. It just.. worked. It booted, and I was in a KDE menu with my wireless online within 20 seconds.

(Not even the famed “easy to use” Ubuntu worked properly on the initial boot/install of this machine: Ubuntu screwed up the video settings, installing a VESA driver, and somehow managed to wedge itself when trying to load the ipw3945 wireless driver. Then, when I decided I wanted to be able to ‘sleep’ the laptop, I had to make my own ACPI scripts; none of those included with Ubuntu would work.)

Feeling a bit cocky, I took it upstairs to boot on my “brand new” (six months old) Inspiron 530 Quad Core based desktop. Not only did it work (although for obvious reasons, it used the open source driver rather than the proprietary NVidia one by default), but it saw that I had placed a $20 TV card into a PC slot, so it automatically put KDETV in my applications menu. How cool is that? I had to reload the module with the proper card, and tuner id – which took about 5 seconds in YaST2. I spent about two hours figuring all of the system settings, V4L2 drivers, etc, prior to it to work before. Wow. What else can this do?

I have not used the GNOME release of openSUSE, as I love the elegance – and the fact that KDE applications are closely tied together, not only with the desktop, but themselves. openSUSE has it’s own menu that’s fired off of kicker (one right click away from the usual KDE menu), which is pretty damn useful when you get used to it. It’s like having QuickSilver built into kicker.

Now, the bad side of openSUSE:

The package management system is so overengineered, it’s pathetic. Each subsystem can have it’s own repository for any purpose; I have one specifically for ‘Wine’, and another for ‘Mutt’. That seems a bit much. Your package management system doesn’t need to be a gateway to SVN, nor should it be. It’s slow. Zypper is so damn slow, it took 30 seconds to look for new patches with a very modest set of repositories. There is a secondary tool that can be installed, and used, called ‘smart’, which is somewhat similar to ‘apt-get’ on Debian systems. It is much, much faster, but non standardized upon, yet.

There’s no real way to ‘upgrade’ between versions. The official stance of many openSUSE users is to ‘Have /home on a new partition, format the rest, and start over.’ It’s not 1996; there’s no reason we should need to do this.

Everything is customized, sometimes it’s in an odd way. The Apache2 distribution in openSUSE is beyond pedantic: It’s obnoxious to configure with their distribution layout.

Everything important is controlled by a combination of shell scripts, and messy GUI utilities. If you don’t do it from YaST, you’ll do it in YaST2. There is no other option. You are now part of the YaST borg.

The polished applications and care put into the system still outshine the above issues; if openSUSE gets a managable packaging system that mortals can use – it might just make it. If you haven’t already, try it out. You might just like it. I did, and I am now without a Debian based system in my office for the first time in years.