Recently I got a sweet new laptop. After being stuck with laptops with cheap builds and parts, this is a welcomed new addition. When converting my previous workstation over to the new one, a few things came about some bad, and mostly good. The awesome bit about the new machine is going from a core duo to a Core i7 processor. My primary operating system has been Gentoo, so installing a new operating system requires a manual install, configuring a new kernel, and building all of the needed secondary applications.

Let’s start off with the annoyances:

  • Since both machines are Gentoo sharing the USE flags from Make.conf, and adjusting the new one to the new hardware included an outdated keyword or two. It turns out that Xvmc is outdated and by using an Nvidia card, one should use VDPAU. This was fixed by eliminating all mentions of Xvmc keywords.

  • IceTea Java requires printing [Cups], which CUPS require Java. This circular dependency was quite annoying. At the moment, I cannot recall how this was fixed. However, I believe it was fixed by forcing Portage to pick Oracle’s version of Java rather than IceTea. [I’m not sure how to set the preference prior to installing; I had to force/nodeps this one].

  • CrossOver Professional [at least the 10.3 version] requires the use of Python 2. If you have a new install, then Python 3 will be in place. To fix this: you’ll need to fix the Python 2 references in the installation directory. I found this guide to be helpful, although, it was a bit difficult to find. If the guide has been deleted, this is a copy from the site:

    $ cd ~/cxgames/bin $ sed -i -e "s|#![ ]*/usr/bin/python$|#!/usr/bin/python2|" * $ sed -i -e "s|#![ ]*/usr/bin/env python$|#!/usr/bin/env python2|" *

    $ cd ~/cxgames/lib/python $ sed -i -e "s|#![ ]*/usr/bin/python$|#!/usr/bin/python2|" *.py $ sed -i -e "s|#![ ]*/usr/bin/env python$|#!/usr/bin/env python2|" *.py

  • CrossOver Pro, despite having a 64bit version, requires multilib support. [Which was included, but for those who wish to be 64bit purist may find a little too late]. The kernel must include IA32 Emulation support [from the Executable file formats / Emulations section]. The CrossOver Pro documentation claims you should have ia32-libs installed. In Gentoo this is the equivalent to the app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-* libraries.

  • Nvidia Optimia - There is no fix for my laptop. It’s frustrating. Although, the Intel video card does quite well. I’ve tried to install bumblebee, but the configuration isn’t currently supported.

Some nice changes in the Linux environment/Gentoo:

  • The added features to the Linux kernel. It looks like better SSD Support has been added, awesome!

  • NetworkManager/NetworkManagement. I’ve struggled with a lack of dynamic network support a while. This should be included in the KDE meta-ebuild. Although, from my understanding, there is quite a bit of approval/support for WCID. NetworkManager has great desktop support clients, if the user unplugs an Ethernet cable; it tries to switch to WIFI.

  • If you have CrossOver Pro, and use the Bottle functionality. You can create mutually exclusive containers for applications. You can also export these bottles as archives and import them later. This is amazing! To bring over your copy of MS Office, you don’t have to deal with the trouble of recreating the environment, or reinstalling the dependencies.

  • LSOF- This can help you find what process is listening to which port. That can be helpful when tracing down rogue/bad installs of server components. Looking for the process that is responsible for port 90? Use the command lsof –i :90.

  • Adding SSH keys for passwordless logins. Prior to using this command, I always setup this functionality manually. Then I heard about ssh-copy-id. This command takes your default key [or one specified by an argument] and copies it to the right place at the target. The downside to this command is that it depends on quite a few defaults. [I.e. Default port of 22, default users, port following, and default keys] This is an annoyance that has a bit of good in it. Having a non-default SSH setup will require you to alias and setup a personal SSH config.