Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

Afternoon everyone, how are the 'goons doing?

[Cephalxn]

good!

yourself?

[Aigle]

I'm stuck at work..

BOOoo..

Other than that I'm peachy keen

[Zancarius]

So today I decided to install Gentoo--on my desktop. I'm taking a break at the moment and am back in Windows (yes, it takes a little while to compile 264 packages--and that's just for the desktop environment). I feel dirty.

Anyway, I have a couple of motives for putting Linux semi-permanently on my desktop (it's on a separate drive that I liberated from its former duty as a backup install of Windows). On the one hand, it's ?ber-geeky, on the other it affords me a great deal more freedom to do what I want. We'll see if some of the former annoyances that prevented me from using it almost exclusively persist...

Among the biggest annoyances have been sound card support (I like my music--what can I say?) and the slight sluggishness/lack of eye candy in the interface. I won't use it if it doesn't look good. With the release of Gnome 2.14, HUGE improvements have been made to the underlying systems and it's supposedly damn fast. We'll see about that. Open Sound System, by 4front Technologies, is now free for home/private use and is purportedly much better than ALSA. The latter was too much of a pain in the butt to get working correctly and usually left two of my four satellite speakers off or at low volume (sometimes it would be reversed, with the forward channels and rear channels swapped). I also didn't like the driver's bass response--I didn't buy a Klipsch setup for my PC so that I could listen to my music; nay, I bought it so that my neighbors could listen to my music. I hope OSS fundamentally sounds better. If not, then it's either back to Windows or a different sound card manufacturer (I have an old SBLive!, not a more recent derivation from Creative, because support for the recent Audigys is lacking). The EMU-based cards are damn nice (Concert Hall reverb is soooooo sweet), and sadly, the Linux drivers for them work about as well as orcs are pretty. Though, I've heard alcohol does for the forgiveness of sound that it does for sight.

Okay, so my verbosity to some questions is a little excessive. Aside from the above, I've been enjoying the cloudy weather. It's a rarity here in NM.

I was also hoping to be online today but have had other plans. I should be on Sunday sometime, so grats to anyone who has levelled in the interim . I'll post a screenie of my gentoo install sometime for the really, really curious.

[Cephalxn]

http://storm.elxx.net/loki/4.JPG
http://storm.elxx.net/loki/3.JPG

and for randomness... (if you see a picture with a dude called Webster or Josh in it, that's denva)

http://cephalxn.spaces.msn.com/photos

[Zancarius]

Speaking of random... here's what happens when I get my grubby mits on someone else's photos. This is also why my parents never let me use a camera, I suppose...

Before.

After.

And here's something much more subtle.

[Aigle]

You made my day, Thal. Makes for being at work at seven a.m. on a Sunday worthwile. I think I'll make it my computer background of the day...

/chuckle

*edit* *edit* 10:39 A.M.

I am deathly bored and falling asleep.; one hour and twenty minutes to go. Guys, I don't think I'm gonna make it, LOL.

Have G-mail (gwenwhyfare at gmail dot com) if anyone else does and is bored, too =P

[Grimblast]

Oh man Thal. I forgot about that picture lol!

[Zancarius]

I'm so gonna burn for all of these. I've got more, as Turus can attest to.

I've not been on Google Talk for a while since I've been (still) compiling Firefox in Gentoo. Aigle, if you're bored later, you can add me if you like. zancarius -at- gmail -dot- com would be the address (substitute the correct punctuation where applicable).