Woo Hoo!!

Why are the row and column numbers displaying as numeric placeholder skeletons in Gnumeric??



Does Gnumeric use some proprietary fonts that the mighty forces at Fedora have decided to outcast from the distro??

Aaargh. Can one thing be hitch-free for a change??! Apparently not.

Okay, NOW I have tried everything except OpenSuse.

Though Debian has been my favourite in terms of usability and friendliness, there is something really wrong with how Debian systems interact with R and deal with numerical ordering.

For eg. you would expect intervals to be ordered as:
[ 7,11)
[11,12)
[12,13)
[13,14)
[14,29]

Instead Debian orders them as:
[11,12)
[12,13)
[13,14)
[14,29]
[ 7,11)

In a scenario where I have one-digit, two-digit and three-digit numbers, I get the weirdest possible ordering. In the example above, it compares 1 and 7, rather than 11 and 7. This number-by-number evaluation creates serious problems in trend testing and determination of direction of association between variables. It potentially distorts the category that is treated as the reference variable. I looked at R documentation to see if I could change something to make it right. However, after many trials, my windows machine and machines running Fedora were uniformly giving me the right answers while Debian derivatives were giving me the weird answers.

For now, this is a dealbreaker for me and I can't go back to Debian.

That leaves me with
-- CentOS
-- Scientific Linux
-- Fedora
-- OpenSuse

I tried installing CentOS and Scientific Linux on the brawny Toshiba this past weekend but first there were problems with permissions and then problems with the R repository in both CentOS and Scientific Linux. Though Scientific Linux claims to come with R, the DVD I downloaded did not have R! When I tried to install R, there was no R in the default repository. Adding the correct R repository was an unending nightmare that took up 2 hours. I gave up in frustration. Then there was a problem with permissions. CentOS and Scientific Linux don't set up a username to go with the root password in the installation sequence. Even though you might have given a name to your computer during installation, you start up with something like:

yourgivenname@localhost.

instead of

yourgivenname@yourgivencomputername

In addition, it doesn't automatically add you to the sudoers group. I know linux admins won't view this as a problem but end-users like me don't need to work out details about how to add themselves to sudoers, change the localhost name, set up root permissions once more after installation. Its a pain to be burdened with all these nitty grittys even before you start using the system.

CentOS and Scientific Linux are so similar in their installation setup and behaviour, they might as well be clones of each other. The permissions and repositories problem rears its ugly head at every possible software installation. It gets to be very tiring. And what is with the repositories anyway??! They have software from 2 years ago! I understand they are more stable than the newer ones, but come on, newer features that make life easier in the software I use are very important to me!

So no more RHEL derivatives for me.

Which leaves me with Fedora. Sigh. I don't know if I can deal with all the mess that I have been documenting.

So at this point, I am thinking Suse Studio with the software I need from the list below. It could be better than getting OpenSuse and then installing everything because adding software and repositories beforehand might reduce dependency conflicts.

Things are not great in linux land. Maybe my particular combination of requirements breaks things? I can't believe it. This is my list of absolutely essential software for my linux machine. These are ones that I use on an hourly or a "minutely" basis.

Analyses Environment
- R
- RStudio
- Variable number of R packages

Spreadsheet
- Gnumeric

Writing Environment
- Texlive
- Texmaker Texstudio
- Texworks
- Gummi
- Geany
- Abiword: Yuck. Going to LibreOffice Writer. Compatibility is awful with MS Word.
- WriteType
- Zim desktop wiki
- LibreOffice Writer.

Networking
- Wireless
- Wired
- (Bluetooth would be nice, but seldom works, so I could let it go.)

Media
- Some hassle-free media player that would play multiple formats. Not liking Rhythmbox so much. I am done even risking any media formats on the Satellite P750 till the issues with the intel/nvidia cards are resolved.

Graphics
- Gimp
- Mypaint
- Pinta: This is just a pretty replica of paint.net. Clicking on the buttons doesn't do ANYTHING on Fedora 15.

... to be continued as I think of more things I use.

---

EDIT: Turns out I need WAAY more things that this puny list, so I decided to attached my latest yum log as a text file here.
Type:

sudo geany /var/log/yum.log

And you will get this log with date and time details of every package you have ever updated, installed or erased in Fedora 15.
[txt]1011/yum102311.txt[/txt]

Seriously? Behold Fedora 15's Black Screen of Death.

Transcript of Error:
[5.693915] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[5.825510] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Pointer to BIT loadval table invalid
[5.849874] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 0XD518: i2c wr fail: -6
[5.964968] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PGRAPH: unsupported chipset, please report!
[6.092104] [drm: intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed

Looks like I might need a hard reboot. The wretched thing is not coming out of this error screen. And it goes into it at every boot and suspend.

Apparently, this is a known new bug:

With some insights from here:

ds,
Your issue is related to the optimus technology deployed in the m14x, it's a new piece of tech that allows switching between your nvidia card and intel sandy bridge. In short, your nvidia card does not work on Linux out-of-the-box. Read more about how you can either disable your nvidia card (I did that and saved 14 w (1½ hours of battery time) or try and enable it using some experimental tech called switcheroo. Read more here:
Posted by Magnus Glantz 2011-07-06 01:07:30

My brother's hacky solution:

Close the lid for 15-30 seconds and then open. If it doesn't work, repeat as many times as necessary.

I can only say... !!!