openSUSE HCL - ideas

In the past few days we have a little conversation about openSUSE HCL http://forums.opensuse.org/general-chit-chat/421857-opensuse-hcl-idea-improve.html and about some new ideas to improve it:

search-based HCL - like http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/ instead of showing wiki-pages there is a search form with advanced filtering options - what definitely reduces the search time. It would be also practical if you're searching for a specific hardware or you just want to browse the list of hardwares by the selected manufacturer to see, which devices are supported.

input forms for new entries Do you know the wiki-syntax? The most basic formatting options are easy to learn, but it's still required to know if you want to add a new hardware or configuration to the HCL. My opinion is, that for a newbie user it's a critical point to finish your contribution. Modifying the data using forms would be simpler then browsing through a long wiki-page to modify a word or two.

These are my reasons for building a new HCL. What do you think about it?

Traffic Limit on Linux

On the Unix-like operating systems the user can choose from many advanced tools to control the network. My opinion is that these tools are too advanced (for an everyday user - no programmers, admins, hackers :) ) - so after some searching I've found a little script what can be easily modified and executed to limit the network speed.
Grab this script from http://lartc.org/wondershaper/. Extract it, then with your favorite text editor open the script called wshaper. Intuitively, these lines:

DOWNLINK=256
UPLINK=64
DEV=eth0

are indicating the upload, download speed (in kilobits!), and the network interface. After modifying these parameters you need to comment out the following two lines:

echo Please read the documentation in 'README' first :-\)
exit

by adding the # sign to the beginning of these lines. Save your script. Open the console window and navigate to the directory which contains the script wshaper, get root powers with

su

and execute the script:

sh wshaper

.

A little speedup.
Use command line for every action. Command line is x10 faster then any GUI application. It's easy to learn and use. Use the edit command for editing the wshaper script (assuming the you can navigate in console with cd command):

edit wshaper

. When the editor loads the script with arrow-keys navigate to the lines what you want to modify. Press A - now you can write into the text - and modify the values. To save, press the : key (SHIFT + ;) and type:

save wshaper

. Use the same commands to execute the script:

su
sh wshaper

.

Gimp 3.0 RC

More Photoshopis for Photoshopers. But it's still Gimp. :)
There was a little discussion about Gimp, and his user-unfriendly attributes. Here i found this picture about 3.0 Release Candidate. The UI looks better... IMHO it is more professional. What do you think?

openSuse Promo DVD rocks!

Yesterday I've got my openSuse 11.0 promo DVD-s!
- The DVD cover rocks! -
They are with booth KDE and Gnome Desktop Environments. You can use them as Live DVD (without install - you can try out the system directly from your PC's memory), and you can install it.
You can order from Live DVDs here.

ACPI problem solved

Finally, my ACPI problem has been solved by an openSuse Guru on http://forums.opensuse.org.
You can read our discussion about here. I've got 181 views until now :)
So, running from battery is amazing thing, especially in my situation. I'm not used my ACPI functions (like battery, CPU frequencies) after openSuse 10.3 release (about >1 years years).

Your OWN KERNEL.

Nowadays Linux distributions are coming with a built in and precompiled kernel. They are: making the connection between your hardware and software, controlling softwares and resources on your PC/Laptop, they doing everything what is must-to-be for your system.
They have some positive and negative side-effects.
Generally the Linux "newbies" are happy with the precompiled kernel - no command line, no work, everything is up and running automatically. Nice! And you save a lot of time. But! You can compile kernel for your own requirements.
Positive side-effects of the own compiled kernel are:

• it may works faster then the precompiled
• you can save a lot of memory by unloading processes what you don't need
• you are getting complete control of your system
• it is cool

Actually there are no negative side-effects, just some requirements. You need to know how to work under command line, how to compile, etc.
So i don't want to waste your time, here is the link for the best/easiest kernel compiling how-to what I ever read.
It has been written by snake1990, thanks a lot, open-source be with you!
How to compile your own Linux kernel for openSUSE.