Decision reached, let the migration begin

I finally decided to go with Arch Linux as my Gentoo replacement. I tried Sabayon (very) briefly, and it seemed that it would not give the the modularity that I need. Anyway, I already installed Arch and am up and running, albeit somewhat crippled, with disk encryption via dm-crypt and LUKS. Since this is the first time I've done disk encryption, I didn't want to mess with loop-aes; I'll leave that for some later date. So far, I've noticed no noticeable slowdown with LUKS.

Overall, the setup for FDE has been the easiest part of the whole migration thus far. I had a really difficult time getting X working. Surprisingly, when you install X as a dependency it doesn't install the necessary drivers (read: keyboard and mouse) as well. That took a few minutes to figure out. But overall, I think I have 80% of the apps I need installed now, and I'm really happy with how quickly that went. I am a little shocked that firefox is out of date in the repos, but from what I have read, it's because of some branding issues and I'm trying to see if I have a repo workaround (already installed latest firefox, trying to see if there's an 'Arch' way to do it).

I'm pretty pleased so far. Really, everything has been very smooth aside from the usual distro transition issues. I miss openrc right now (never thought I'd say that), but I think ultimately this setup will be more stable. Didn't realize that vmware-player was not in the repos beforehand, and unfortunately vmware's download server is down right now (go figure). I think vmware-player is the last app I need, or at least would like, before work tomorrow morning.

I really can't stress enough, I am very happy so far with Arch. Moving to FDE was *REALLY* easy, the hardest part was waiting fro my /dev/urandom hdd overwrite (which took approx. 14 hours for 80GB). The pacman package manager is pretty easy to use, but I'm still getting to know the options. For those who want to know, no, I did not tweak my kernel manually (which I DO miss), but I plan to work on that as I go. Unfortunately I do have 74 modules loaded now, but really I haven't noticed any slowdown. My boot time is a bit higher than I'd like, but it's hard to accurately measure (b/c of the FDE password and the ethernet card timeout) which I hope to fix soon.

Here's hoping that tomorrow fixes a lot of issues. For now, hopefully, there is hfsplus support in my kernel (for my backup disk lol).

Oh, and I passed my CISSP exam. w00t!!!

Palm - I hate you

I began writing this on my Treo, but it became too difficult after the second reboot.

Dear Palm,

I tried to send this directly to your company, but I couldn't find
your contact info while using blazer, so I'll just leave this here.

Fuck you Palm.

That's pretty harsh, but I want you to know that I mean it. I own a
treo 700p and I have to say it is the worst 'phone' I have ever had
the displeasure to own, use, carry, or otherwise be close to. Now I
hear you're releasing the pre, but for Sprint only. that just makes me
hate you more. Prior to using this 'phone' (I use the term very
loosely) I refused to use any phone with a windows os. Being a *nix
guy, I assumed that palm os would run circles around any win based
phone. I was gravely mistaken.

The browser 'blazer' is the most sorry excuse for a browser ever. Ever.
It crashed the whole phone while surfing your site. Read that again.
Yes, my treo rebooted while surfing palm.com. Oh, and that's after
your site told m there were multiple browser-related errors. I can't
use opera mini bec--



I had to switch to my laptop because it's impossible to write an email on my Treo 700p. Anyway... Opera Mini, which works well on just about all mobile devices, crashes almost instantly on the 700p. I don't know why I'm pidgeonholed into using blazer, but seriously, who at Palm was like "Wow, this is an awesome mobile browser. We should totally force this upon our customers." Whoever made that decision does not use blazer. And what the hell is up with the lag times?? It takes at least 10 seconds to CLOSE THE BROWSER?!?!?!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK!!!

This is a total rant post, which I try to avoid, but seriously, fuck you palm. You have totally ruined my outlook on mobile technology. At this point, I would rather own a Windows-based phone than anything developed, even 3rd party developed, by palm. Never again. NEVER again. To anyone who reads this, I implore you, I beg you, DO NOT, ever, EVER, EVER buy/use palm devices (especially do not buy). You no longer can compete in the smart phone market (more like inept phone market, but I don't think that your marketing guys brought that one up). I hope the Pre saves you, and maybe that will show that Palm has evolved past the same shit over and over and over again, but I doubt anyone will switch to Sprint for the Pre (good fucking decision there guys, hope you made enough bank for that bad decision).

I'm pissed, I don't care, I'm getting a new phone. I hate you palm. That is all.