Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Solved : Suse slow / sluggish mouse

Problem : Just installed Suse and my USB mouse is jumpy / slow / sluggish.  The track pad is fine, but the mouse is balls.

Solution : Unplug the mouse and plug it into a different slot.

After I did this my mouse feels exactly as it should.

There is at least one thread at the suse forums on this issue.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

HOWTO : Securely search from the address bar in Firefox (without addons)

  1. browse to about:config
  2. search for keyword
  3. set "keyword.enabled" to true
  4. set "keyword.URL" to https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=
  5. search for "browser.fixup.alternate.enabled", set to false
You are now searching from the address bar in Firefox securely over https/ssl.

(source : http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location%20bar%20search)

ps. you can toggled from true to false (etc) by simply double clicking the entry.

I use opendns, for some reason 1 word searches = opendns search, two word searches = google.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Intel GMA 4500m blank screen / black screen / monitor off

In case you were wondering the intel driver for the GMA 4500m doesn't work with some of the 2.6.18 based kernels aka whatever comes with centos 5.5 and 5.6.  This seems to affect a lot of linux distros (suse, ubunut, etc).


The workaround I use is to boot with the option acpi=off

Symptoms : 

- run startx (using default intel drivers)
- screen flashes, gnome is visible for .5 seconds
- monitor turns *off*
- switching workspaces shows the desktop for .5 seconds
- nothing is visible. ctrl+alt+backspace = display still off

I found no solution for this problem.  Plugging in an external monitor + using the hot keys to activate it doesn't work, using a different driver failed (i810).

This isn't limited to centos.  During my google I found other distros with similar kernels with the same issue.

2.6.35 + intel driver + GMA 4500m = works perfect.

centos forum convo here

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Linksys WRT54GS2 slow wifi speeds - router locks up

I've had the WRT54GS2 for some time now and absolutely hated it. Over wifi the speeds are slow, the router can sometimes be unresponsive. The only thing that seems to help (and only temporarily) is resetting it.  So I just got comcast setup and over wifi the speed was crap, barely .5 megabit down, high ping, everything was very slow. Connected directly to the router life is great, 30megabits down - very low ping, life is good. Time to google.

Luckily thanks to sandman879 this problem is now fixed - my wifi speeds are *way* faster (12megabits). The solution is really simple.

1. login to the router (192.168.1.1)
2. click on Administration
3. change "Wireless Access Web" from Disable to Enable
4. click Save Changes

That's it, this is exactly what fixed my problems. Thanks again Sandman879!

ps.  I tried updating the Firmware previously and that didn't help at all :(
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