i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Things were going too smoothly.

I don't use some of my computers very often, so they are not totally up-to-date. Converting my Toshiba Satellite A15 to music server duty, I updated kde4, which crashed plasma -- mostly for old time's sake, I guess.

It's updated now and working in its new role, but I'm concerned that it is running too hot & also the powersave mode is not kicking in correctly. So, it stays on permanent "screen saver" mode. It's running about 148 deg. F, and was up to 189 deg. F running the Amarok scan of my music collection. So, there is some risk this computer may follow the HP Pavilion N5290 in computer death sooner than I was expecting.

Something else to contend with.

But, I was not really having fun yet. I went on a rampage on my HP Pavilion ZD7000 deleting temp files, because Linux does not do that great of a clean-up. On one of my installs, I at least added the "clear temp files" choices to the session manager via YAST, but since this is a manual operation and requires looking up the particulars, I have not implemented it on every computer.

I also discovered that a large collection of thumbnails of various graphics files develops in the .thumbnails directory. I am really not fond of data caches, especially data caches I do not know are there.

So, anyway, I deleted the thumbnail cache files and then deleted files in /tmp and /var/cache and other things that looked like temporary files of one sort or another.

I may have gotten carried away, though I don't actually know whether the ensuing breakdown had to do with anything I did deletion-wise.

But, in any event, the computer decided it did not like connecting to the internet, either via network card or via wireless. It also did not wish to fix this problem via the install DVD, as I had newer software installed.

This was new and puzzling in my experience, as linux installs generally make an ethernet connection with no trouble. (Wireless, of course, can be a different issue.)

So, well, I downloaded the OpenSuse 11.1 Beta 5 and installed that. I was not totally fond of the idea, because the ZD7000 has a heat related failure problem that prevents it from starting in the original Windows XP Professional that came pre-installed. So, I had gone to considerable trouble (ie, many calls to the evil empire) to get my entirely totally legal copy of Windows XP Professional running in VirtualBox on the computer it came on. But, a new install has the potential to kill the Windows XP virtualbox install.

I was fortunate enough to do the reinstall without killing the existing user where the virtualbox version resides, so maybe it will be okay. Or maybe not.

The Beta install went really well. Over the years, I have downloaded many, many versions of linux. In the old days, it took a couple of days to download a set of CDs. The beta downloaded in an hour or so via torrent. I burned the DVD in 10 minutes or so ... and this install is very slick. I didn't time it, but the whole actual install probably took under 15 minutes. Those who have not re-installed lots of operating systems may not realize how truly astounding this process now is. But I say ... it is truly astounding.

Now, this is weird -- and contributes to my eternal decision never to buy another computer with a Nvidia graphics card. The Toshiba I mentioned above was purchased as an emergency stop-gap when the HP N5290 died its first death six years or so ago. I ordered the ZD7000 as my flagship "work" computer, but I had to be up and running in the interim. Thus, the off-the-shelf low-priced Toshiba.

But in any event, here we are several years down the road -- and The top of the line HP with Nvidia graphics will not do compositing in KDE4, so the "effects" cannot be enabled. Whereas, I was able to enable effects in both the lowly Toshiba A15 AND the even older HP N2590. (The N2590 also had a full voice modem, unlike the lesser modem in the far more expensive ZD7000, but who's counting $$$ ?)

The ZD7000 also has a broadcom wireless card, which uses a proprietary driver. There is a messy process to use a "cutter" on the windows driver, then install it under linux. One used to use the NDISWrapper software, but more recent kernels have native support -- provided you have snipped out the original windows driver and made it available.

The fan is running much quieter in the ZD7000 now. I'm not certain whether this means its running cooler or the fan software is just not driving the fans as much. So, it could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I usually monitor temperature with the "Kima" applet for KDE 3.5. But, I don't have 3.5 installed at the moment.

So, who knows, maybe I am in the process of burning up all of my old computers. (The 2 HPs are broken anyway, but the N5290 is now brokener to the point of uselessness, as it keeps shutting down randomly. Which, of course, is exactly what the ZD7000 does as well -- but oddly enough, it very seldom does it in linux, whereas the XP install became unusable and now will not even start.)

I don't fully understand the new network widget. There was an icon in the tray when I first got things running, but somehow I crashed it out and now it is gone. But, I have started up the network widget and fixed the broadcom problem. So, I can see I am connecting to eth0, while wlan0 is "seeing" various wirelesses, but I can't seem to tell it to connect.

I'm not sure I understand why there is a different widget or applet in OpenSuse 11.1 than in the 11.0 I normally use, but at the moment I like the 11.0 version better.

Well, all's well that ends. Except, however, I wanted to install the KDE 4.2 beta -- and OpenSuse 11.1 merely updates to 4.1.3, which I have already been using for some time. I envision more random software crashes on the horizon ...