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

My Toshiba A15 laptop was still languishing with OpSu 11.1 because when I tried 11.2 nothing worked.  But, it was falling behind the times and I wanted it to have some minimum functionality on the desktop.  For whatever reason, among other things, google gadgets wouldn't run.

...

But, as I'm mentioned before, google stuff works and therefore is useful.

Plus, I wanted to test whether I could upgrade distros by running commandline "zypper dup."

Yup.

I deleted the /etc/zypp/repos.d folder and replaced it with a copy from my OpSu 11.3 computer.  This is way easier than re-entering all the same repositories over again; plus it is way easier than having all of my custom software fall out because the repos aren't part of the install disk.

Got it started and in the morning the A15 was running OpSu 11.3.  Yay!  (But of course, this approach is not for the faint of heart or those updating a mission-critical computer.  I might just as easily have thrashed the whole install, especially if I lost the network connection mid upgrade.  Didn't matter to me -- this computer might be a candidate for Jolicloud ...)

Well, of couse I immediately ran into problems.  Banshee is borked.  I upgraded, still borked.  It runs, though, I mean -- but for some reason even idling it is using 100% cpu.  What's up with that?  If it's doing some sort of maintenance, it isn't giving me any feedback.  Initially it rescanned the library -- no problem there.

So, I fired up Songbird, which I like but had to dump  because it kept re-playing the song it was on.  Same problem still there.  Then I learned that Songbird for Linux has been abandoned.  I downloaded the 1.9 nightly build version that is maintained (you'lll have to read Songbird's own discussion of why linux users don't count, even though their developers are ... linux users), but in any event it wouldn't run.

So, I tried Amarok, which I used to use.  The main concern I had before was its very high cpu use when scanning the library, which was problematic because my library was on a remote mount which sometimes disappeared, and ...

Plus, my music system is set up to use "smart playlists" scanning the comments.  And Amarok 2 abandoned smart playlists.

I searched for other options. Rhythmbox has smart playlists, but not on "comments".  Exaile, same thing.

Then I discovered that 2.3.1 Amarok brings back smart playlists!  But my distro had provided 2.3.0.  Off to the Open Suse Build system.  Install 2.3.1.

I'm not quite certain of the philosophy being followed by the Amarok team -- everyone else's music player is becoming more intuitive, theirs is becoming -- let me put it this way:  Ever try to solve Rubick''s Cube?

After much clicking on the Dynamic Playlists widgets, I finally figured out how to create one that would do what I wanted.  I set the "probability" to 100% or whatever.  There is only one of the three widgets that will allow filter on comments, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the system was doing when I clicked on stuff.  But, finally I had a dynamic playlist that would do what I wanted.  Saved.

Getting past the "negative", I'll address the "positive."  Whatever else is going on at Amarok, they've done some good programming.  The library scan barely blipped to 25% cpu the entire scan (which on my collection takes awhile.)  And, playback is running at an awesome 12% or so of CPU!!!  My touchpad is a bit finicky -- I suspect the music system is now getting high priority over the cpu and I don't know if this is in gstreamer, Amarok or where it is.  But, this computer mostly just plays music anyway.

I've gone through a lot of iterations of putting my photos on the screen.  Such as, when I set up a timed change of the IceWm background.  But, modern times, have I ever mentioned that Google just does stuff right???  Yes, Google gadgets gets to steal all my data because the gadgets WORK.  I've got a nice big photo frame surrounded by an RSS feed, weather bug gadgets for the places I like to keep track of and the really nice gadget that connects to my Google Calendar (which I have sync'd with my office calendar) -- and now with a mouse-over, my wife can figure out when I will be home or where I'm hiding.  Oh, me too ...

Very nice.

All with the lowest cpu consumption I've seen in many, many iterations of the A15 running my music collection with various software.  This one is on LXDE and ginormous kudos to LXDE for pulling everything together.

Unfortunately, even though there is Mesa 3D, this computer is too old for real graphics support.  Compiz won't run,  so my google gadgets have a lot of border.

Amarok is  KDE, you say, so why not use the Plasma desktop?  Let me answer that.

KDE 4.4 is really totally borked on this computer.  Yes, I logged in to see.  3D DID WORK, after a fashion.  But, erratic, weird, psychotic non-usability.

Well, so I shut compositing off.  Then I tried to run Amarok, since that is the acid test here on my Music Server, isn't it?

Hahahahaha.  Amarok is pretty nice now -- so long as I don't actually try to run it on KDE.  Would not even load.

I suppose with more fidgetting I could make it work.  I keep "testing" KDE Plasma desktop as I have for all these 4.0 iterations (since even the original betas) -- but I have yet to have a satisfactory version on any of my computers.  So, my patience is wearing thin.  Clearly, I have to concede that on a computer as old as the A15, Plasma is not for me.  (As I've noted elsewhere, it apparently runs okay on my Aspire 1, but I'm using LXDE+Compiz anyway because OpSu has done something that makes the screen lock whenever I close it.  I hate this feature (I have done what I can to turn it off, but no) ... and as mentioned in an earlier post, I can get logged back in much faster in LXDE than in KDE.

And here's from the twilight zone:  The Acer1 is running the same intel 2d and "unknown classic"  (Mesa) 3d as the A15!  One works, one doesn't.  Who can say why?

But to go back to the beginning -- I was pleasantly surprised at how well the hand-off of repositories and the zypper dup upgrade worked!!  Great job OpSu team(s)!!