Goodbye Fedora 18

When Alan Cox called Fedora 18 the worst Linux distro ever I thought he was being a little dramatic, and just happened to run into installation woes unique to his system and needs.

A month into running Fedora 18 on my laptop and desktop, I have to say, Fedora 18 may not have been the worst distro ever in January, but by March it was well on it's way. 

The biggest issue for me is the amazing number of kernel updates which are coming down the pipeline, often breaking my system.  The idea of "rawhide" being the bleeding edge and the rest of Fedora 18 being stable and secure has been completely forgotten.  For the past two months I have had no more than 2 weeks without a new kernel release, and sometimes 2 a week.  It's simply not possible to keep a distro reliable with that level of changes going into the mainline. 

At some recent point, my hard won battle to use the proprietary ATI drivers so I could game and work broke down completely.  

What  am I going to?  Ubuntu for now, though I hear the rumblings about Canonical and developers being out of sync in terms of who the community and who the driving elements should be.   With a nine month upgrade cycle and 2 year LTS versions I am willing to forego getting the latest MySQL DB or MariaDB, Apache releases, etc. for a stable system with good support for games, music management and an up to date Eclipse system, even if it has a crazy ass web-search oriented desktop and a package installer I do not like as much. 

Goodbye Fedora.  Call me when you figure out what good you are besides a place to crowdsource the testing of new kernel patches. 

Theta Casanova and Casablanca I HDMI Upgrade

There are a lot of people who are rediscovering just how good the DAC's in the Theta Casanova are, especially with 96/24 program material.  Oh, right, most people dont' know this but the Casanova's play 96/24 just fine.  I'm listening to NPR through my Squeezebox touch and a Casanova right now.

There are also a lot of Casablanca I and II's out there which won't be upgraded.  Fear not, there are solutions.

There's just absolutely nothing wrong or outdated about the sound coming out of these, and for $399 or less for the Casanovas on the used market they are serious contenders for most DAC's out there at $2,000 or less.   So what do you do?

Upgrade it!

Get an external HDMI switcher with digital audio out and infrared remote control such as:

Monoprice 4 to 1 HDMI switch
Used along with the Home Theater master learning remote with macro capabilities:

URC Learning Remote

And you'll have a music and home theater processor which simply can't be embarrassed  for under $10K.

Full disclosure: I want to pump up the price of the Casanova's on the used market so I can afford a Supernova when they come out! :)

Best!



Nigel

Theta Digital Goes Digtal in a Powerful Way

Theta Digital has yet to post a press release for it, but according to this Stereophile article, they were showing the new Prometheus class-D amplifier at CES 2013.  

No idea what it sounds like.  

Theta Digital - Supernova Upgradability

One very interesting thing about the back of the Super seen here at Home Theater is the use of thumb screws for each of the four rear panels.  This of course implies a level of biodegradability and interchangeability not seen before below the Casablanca.

Of course, there were some upgrade boards available for the Casanova (at least DTS and Circle Surround), as well as some digital input boards, but AFAIK they all required a trip to the shop. 

Looking at the back of the Supernova, I would be very happy to trade half of those digital inputs for an Ethernet port.  Maybe Theta can pick up some of the designers of the Squeezebox Touch for help with a streaming interface that is Android and iPhone savvy.  Just saying.

Theta Digital - New 3D BluRay - SACD - DVD Player

Somehow I missed this release.  Theta digital announced a new version of the Compli Blu player with 3D support, Internet and DLNA streaming and more. 

Details here:  http://www.thetadigital.com/press_release_compli_blu_3D_ships.shtml

Theta Digital - Slow and Steady Progress

I won't say that Theta is roaring back, but it is clear that they are making slow but steady progress over the past two years.

Theta finally introduced their HDMI solution for the Theta Casablanca, a modified Oppo Blu Ray player, new digital amplifiers, and have been showing what I would call the successor to the Casanova, the Supernova.  Think of the Casanova with HDMI and more balanced outputs.  If it sounds as good as the original, it's worth the price, regardless of room eq features.

A picture with article may be found here:  http://www.hometheater.com/content/more-theta-supernova

The choice to go away from contrasting buttons is a good thing, and if the screen can be completely turned off it really is an upgrade in looks.  While Home Theater mentions the desire for room correction, honestly it's not that big a deal for me.  I'd much rather have an Android remote, and/or network streaming built in.  I've spent a lot of time and effort getting my speakers to sound the way they do, so I'd really rather not fuss with eq's, of any sort, except if I had a subwoofer.  Otherwise, an Android remote would be fantastic.

For those who haven't been reading, I have recently gone from an Emotiva HDMI processor to the Theta Casanova after a listening session with Jazz inclined but not audiophile friends.  With low impedance amps, there was just no contest.  I'd rather listen to BluRay in DD 5.1 and have great music than have mediocre music and movie sound in my setup.

Nigel

Linux Still Sucks

Unfortunately Linux still sucks.

It sucks mostly because the fanboys that run the installers are unable to see things from the user perspectives.  Gnome 3 is an exmaple of this, but two more have to do with MP3 and Java.

Fedora, my usual distro, won't ship with MP3 binaries.  You have to go through a rather convoluted process to get it working.   It does ship with openJDK, but openJDK sucks sick donkey ass.   The 8% or so that's different enough between OpenJDK and Oracle / Sun JDK are enough to cause you hours and hours of troubleshooting problems.  However, it's nearly impossible to install any of the tools you might want to use if you are a java developer without it.

They need to give you at least a script and remove the dependencies on it.

Another example.  So I install Fedora 17 on an old HP laptop.  It seems to recognize the wireless chip/adapter just fine, installing the b43 driver (for Broadcom 43xx series).  I think, all is well and good, but try as I might I can't get the wireless connection to work.  So I start doing some Google searches.  I spend literally 6 hours trying detailed instructions from a variety of websites until I stumble upon a page devoted to Linux Wireless problems.  After a complete re-installation, and careful reading of the instructions here I finally get a working wireless connection.  The issue here is of documentation, and information.  The installation knew it wasn't complete, but never ever did I get a message telling me so, or telling me where to go to fix it.  This was yet another issue caused by the Fedora Fanboys refusing to ship commercial, or non-free license software, but at the same time not helping the user to understand where to go next.  

I would rather pay $10 to have binary licenses to stupid things like the MP3 players and working wireless drivers built in than have a completely free OS that takes me hours to install for a desktop.

I would even love to see an "app store" for these issues.  $5 for Broadcomm wirless, $3 for MP3 support, sure no problem.   $2 to have Oracle Java correctly and permanently installed, crap, I'd pay $20, reimbursement or not.