Hero Inc.

It’s been quite a while since I have posted anything concerning my computer and with the new purchase I made a few weeks ago, maybe I should share a pot luck of computer related news.

• After two years of threatening, I finally broke down and purchased a new computer. I was mainly looking for something that was better than my old Dell, which by this point is about 6 years old. The new machine, dubbed Black Panther, is running Mandriva Spring 2008 and is turning out much better than I had hoped it would.
• The new computer was minus a few extra PCI slots so I had to purchase a new wireless device. I went with the Linksys Compact Wireless – G USB Adapter. I had read on a forum before purchasing that it worked well with Linux distrobutions. The forum was right and the Compact G worked out of the box with Mandriva.
• With the new install, I was missing many commercial and non-commercial components that I would need to return my new machine to the way I had my old Linux desktop setup. One of the key items was the libdvdcss library which allows me to burn the DVDs I have purchased in order to watch my movies on the road. Of course, with libdvdcss, I would need transcode so that K3B could correctly rip and encode the files. I think I might be getting better at this search online for linux answers thing.
• Compiz Fusion running on a faster system is simply a must. It provides the great visuals that all of those Mac fanboys rave about. I personally love the cube and ring effects. The beauty of it all is that it is FREE!!!!
• Once my system was up and running I wanted to setup Amarok with MySQL instead of SQLite since I had heard of the amazing speed one would gain with the change. However, when I tried to install MySQL via the RPM in Mandriva I encountered a problem every time. It seemed my root MySQL account was already given a default password and I didn’t know it. I tried numerous installs but received the same issue. After a few searches, I came to discover that the MySQL RPM for release candidate 2008.1 release candidate 1 contained an issue if the computer was labeled “localhost”. I read up on the bug and followed the wonderful instructions of one Oden Eriksson and my problem was solved rather quickly. First stop MySQL and Amarok, next stop MythTV.
• I found a great website when I was searching for how to record my desktop. The website has many web videos that show you how to do different things. I was even fortunate to see one about asterisk which I was looking to work with at work in a few days.

I think I got a little link happy in this post but I did warn from the start that it was going to be a pot luck of sorts.