[gentoo-amd64] OT: Hotel wifi and general update Was: sddm ...

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht posted on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 09:26:56 -0700 as excerpted:

> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 8:49 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
>>
>> [N]o worries about *DM at all.  I just login at the text prompt
>> regardless of whether I'm headed for X or not, and startx just as if it
>> was any other app I wanted to run at the text prompt. =:^)
>>
> I just knew when I saw you had replied that you'd say that! ;-)

=:^)
 
> Here at home we share machines. My wife, much less my 86 year old
> mother, wouldn't be at all comfortable with a solution being that
> technical, and generally speaking, I like to know that graphics are
> working when a machine boots vs she logs in, types startx and something
> fails - which happened here after the Plasma 5 upgrade. My main machine
> has run 3 monitors for years with no xorg.conf file but after the
> upgrade it didn't work anymore and X wouldn't start at all.

I understand the other, not so technical, people thing.  Were I closer to 
my folks so it would be practical for me to handle their computer stuff, 
I imagine I'd do similar with them...

As for X not starting at all, that's actually how I ended up with a text-
only login a decade and a half ago.  I had just switched from MS and 
still had an nVidia card that I had to run the proprietary drivers on as 
before I switched I had thought to check for Linux drivers when I bought 
the card, but I didn't know I had to check for /freedomware/ Linux 
drivers.  Which was a problem as I wanted to build and run the latest 
kernels and was thus updating kernels frequently.  Of course that meant I 
had to rebuild the nVidia kernel module rather frequently as well, with 
the result if I didn't being a failed X and *DM login GUI.

Of course that meant I had to do a text login to do the nVidia kernel 
module build anyway, and that tended to "just work", so once I discovered 
startx, I started just logging in at the text console and using startx if 
I wanted X/kde.

The final straw was when a mandrake cooker (their supposedly faster-
updating beta program... that I ultimately left for gentoo when it got a 
kde feature release plus a bugfix release behind kde upstream) update 
broke whatever *DM GUI login I was using (whatever the mandrake default 
was).  Simple enough fix for me: just quit using it. =:^)

> Having a DM is kind of nice when managing other people's experiences but
> this sddm choice seems oriented toward single user machine and less
> toward general usage cases. I suppose so many people use laptops these
> days it makes sense but not for me.
>
> Good to hear from you. Has the networking thing worked out OK for you?

Could be better, could be worse.  The wifi-N adapter works reasonably 
well in the hotel, tho I do have to reboot it every so often as it 
apparently stops passing the VoIP phone packets after a week or so so and 
the VoIP adapter starts flashing and I can't get dialtone.

But I sure miss the cable internet, and being able to get youtube @ 1080p 
without a system update interfering with the streaming.  Much of the time 
on the hotel's wifi I can only get 320p, and the other day when I tried 
to sync (via git) after nearly a month (been busy house shopping, but 
have one signed up and thru initial inspections now), I had a /terrible/ 
time completing a full git pull on the gentoo repo, as it kept dying part 
way thru.

There's two ways to look at it:

1) It's "complimentary" wifi provided by the hotel, at least I'm not 
having to pay the $5/day extra they charge for priority wifi.

2) I (or in my case the city for me) am(/is) /already/ paying $100/day 
for the room.  In this day and age, not having decent internet in lodging 
costing that sort of money is entirely ridiculous.

I know one thing for sure.  If I were paying for it myself, I'd either be 
paying way less for the suite, or it WOULD have good internet, even if it 
meant a cheap motel and spending the difference on internet.

OTOH, the hotel, Homewood Suites by Hilton, does participate in HHonors, 
the Hilton frequent-stay club, and they get a free internet upgrade.  If 
I were paying for it myself, I imagine I'd be going that route.  Given 
that based on the paperwork I signed, the city is apparently paying 
standard rate for me anyway, no discounts of their own, I can't imagine 
I'd be paying /too/ much more as an HHonors member, and possibly less, 
while getting the internet upgrade in the process.

So yeah, mixed-bag, but I'm surviving.  I'm about 50 days into the 90-day 
booking, and the house (actually condominium) sale is supposed to close 
in a month (Aug 19), giving me a week or so after to get at least basic 
furniture in place and move in before the hotel booking runs out, so I'm 
more than half thru it, now.

Other than internet, I've no complaints.  Nice enough hotel, and while 
the city did displace me from my owned trailer, rented space, I'm getting 
a MUCH better place I'll actually own the deed to now, that as a rental 
would go for more than twice the money I was paying where I was, so 
really, nothing to complain about at all... but for the so-so internet in 
the hotel they put me up in for the 90 days...

But hey, I was afraid I wouldn't have a stable enough connection to even 
do youtube and the VoIP phone thing at all, and at least /that/ hasn't 
been the case. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman