Trying out IE8 RC1, it’s listed as incompatible with URL’s like microsoft.com, including Windows Update. Meanwhile IE8 updates are only available through Windows Update. And the uninstall doesn’t work in XP SP3 – I don’t get a “remove” button at all. You can’t get rid of it, and you can’t patch it. Thanks for completely breaking Windows, Microsoft. Wow, the incompetence is staggering. Fortunately Windows is becoming more and more of a bad memory every day. The kind you can eventually completely black out, with any luck…

Meanwhile, FF3 continues as the champion workhorse, and running Google Chrome in XP is like taking a Ferrari for a spin… “soon available” on linux… and don’t miss the geeky-great chrome cartoon…

Our power flashed yesterday while we were out (I HATE it when that happens), and the Wii wouldn’t power on again. AT ALL. It seemed completely dead, and of course my first thought was that a spike smoked it to bits (even though it was plugged into a surge suppressor). My daughter remembered that her friend had the same problem (good job Wrenny!). Turns out Nintendo told them how to solve it – just UNPLUG it for 5 minutes! Sweet. It didn’t work to unplug the power cord from the back of the Wii, you have to unplug the transformer from the wall. And yes, you REALLY have to wait 5 minutes or more! Weird. Thanks Gary! Whew!

Installed mad fonts on gentoo…

emerge -Davu media-fonts/font-bh-type1 media-fonts/font-bh-ttf media-fonts/terminus-font media-fonts/arkpandora media-fonts/liberation-fonts media-fonts/artwiz-aleczapka-en  media-fonts/dejavu  media-fonts/freefonts ttf-bitstream-vera corefonts

And no need to stop there. I grabbed fonts from Vista…

copy -v /vista/Windows/Fonts/* /usr/share/fonts/mdm_from_vista/

…but I’m not quite sure yet how to get X to know about them… in the meantime, I used [URW Gothic L Semi-Bold] instead of Microsoft’s [Century Gothic Bold], and it’s getting the job done (literally, it’s for my resume).

In my mythtv kernel configuration HOWTO, there are several kernel modules that must be re-emerged after a new kernel is installed. [ivtv] was particularly troublesome, because each version of ivtv only applied to a specific kernel version. To install a new kernel, you’d have to first make sure you could get the right version of [ivtv], typically through version-specific masking (pita), then install the kernel, then re-install [ivtv], hoping you didn’t run into any problems. So it’s a lot easier now that [ivtv] is included in the kernel – just configure it into the kernel and you’re good to go. See gentoo’s [ivtv] web page for details, it’s just starting to get documented. But gentoo packages are all good to go! Yay gentoo!

Today’s pain in the ass gold-level sponsors are gentoo, ATI and xorg…
Somehow I initially managed to get ATI drivers working on the [dune] media center, but I’m not sure how – stable kernel and driver do NOT work together. As of today, the ATI-provided [ati-drivers] package does not work – the stable version doesn’t compile with the latest stable [gentoo-sources] kernel, and the soft-masked version doesn’t compile without soft-unmasking half of X.
Well, I opted to soft-unmask half of X, yuck. Here’s what it took in [package.keywords]…

x11-drivers/ati-drivers
x11-apps/ati-drivers-extra
# and deps... sigh...
x11-base/xorg-server
x11-libs/pixman
x11-libs/libpciaccess
x11-proto/xproto
x11-apps/xauth
x11-libs/libXrender
x11-proto/renderproto
x11-proto/xextproto
x11-libs/libXau
x11-libs/libXext
x11-libs/libXfont
x11-proto/inputproto
x11-libs/xtrans
x11-misc/xkeyboard-config
media-libs/mesa
x11-libs/libdrm
x11-libs/libX11
x11-proto/xf86driproto
x11-libs/libXxf86vm
x11-apps/rgb
x11-apps/xinit
x11-proto/randrproto
x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev

When I got done, I lost my 1080p resolution and my mouse and keyboard (!). Digging in, I found that the newer xorg-server autodetects things, and when autodetect is on, it turns off any mouse and keyboard that are specified in xorg.conf. Well… I hadn’t realized up until this point that I wasn’t running HAL (I had it installed but had not yet added it to a run level). Therefore, X would disable my mouse and keyboard specified in xorg.conf, because it expected them to be autodetected. But without hal running, it doesn’t happen. You also have to have the [xf86-input-evdev] package installed and add the [input_devices_evdev] USE flag to [xorg-server] – evdev is what can actually successfully autodetect. Moral of the story: run hal with the latest xorg-server! And run dbus and add users to plugdev group to get hot-plugging.
Next I needed to figure out why I was dropping back to 1600×1200 from 1080p. The xorg log showed this error:

(EE) AIGLX error: fglrx exports no extensions (/usr/lib64/dri/fglrx_dri.so: undefined symbol: __driDriverExtensions)
(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

This bug indicates that older [ati-drivers] appear to leave broken symlinks that prevent update. Do this:

emerge -C ati-drivers
eselect opengl set xorg-x11 (and remove any files that cause problems)
emerge -av ati-drivers
eselect opengl set ati

Now get your shit together, gentoo… I’d much prefer a stable [ati-drivers]… rrr… I get depressed when “those that hack on linux” cause this much pain to the end user trying to accomplish the most basic tasks… I don’t want to spend so many cycles tweaking and hammering on linux basics… makes me consider a jump to Ubuntu… steady on…