I migrated to Arch Linux back in October and have been in love ever since. I thought Ubuntu was flexible but Arch stretches that whole idea to a new level. We’re talking about building your OS from the ground up, the way you like it. Much more customization and less bloat.
The details:
- OS: Arch Linux x86_64
- Desktop Environment: Xfce4
- Window Manager: Compiz
- Window Decorator: Emerald; Kind of Blue by tob1k
- Desktop Aesthetics
- Applications
- Music Management: Rhythmbox
- IM & Chat: XChat & Pidgin
- Browser: Firefox
What a stunning monitor! I finally purchased a 24″ LCD, the Samsung T240, an upgrade from my previous 19″ Samsung 910T.
The quality of text, graphics and images are all so crisp. The colors are vibrant, rich and of beautiful quality; the monitor is bright and luminous. I love the sturdy, shiny plastic body of the monitor, it seems to be made with excellent materials. The red bezel on the bottom is beautiful too. I thought it might not tickle my fancy but I find it actually adds an artistic touch to the eye-catching aesthetic of this elegant monitor.
The pressure touch power button is sleek and incognito, while the remaining buttons are hidden on the side. The power button even gives off a little red-orange glow when turned on. The configuration of the monitor is simplified and easy, requiring only a couple brightness and contrast tweaks. I also set the gamma settings to Mode3, as it seems to be closest to 2.2 gamma. The removable back panel hides those ugly hookups and cables, making the monitor that much slicker! Did I mention the LCD came with no dead/stuck pixels? Samsung makes gorgeous quality monitors.
The only con would be a slight brightness issue, which does not really bother me. A Newegg customer said it best: “When you view the monitor from an angle other than straight on, the brightness dissipates. I personally don’t care (most probably won’t), but it is there.”
The Samsung SyncMaster T240 is huge! Using DVI, it has a 1920×1200 screen resolution. The viewable screen is 24″ from corner-corner, about 20.5″ from side-side, and 12.75″ top-bottom. The whopping 24″ of viewing pleasure @ 1920×1200 makes this monitor a wonderful step-up from my old 19″ LCD. You can see in the 8th picture where my dark Conky script ends (top of screen) – that extra space, to the right, is all the additional screen real estate I gained. The Samsung T240 puts my 15″ MacBook Pro to shame, though, the pictures don’t do the LCD justice, it is truly something to be seen.
Settings (Update)
As far as the settings go, I have the following setup:
- Brightness set to 85
- Contrast to 75
- MagicBright to Custom
- Color Tone to Normal
- Gamma to Mode 3
- Auto Source to Manual.
Those are all the settings I tweaked and they seem to be doing well for my eyes. I’ve experienced, on occassion, that durring a computer reboot the monitor will try to auto detect the input source and change between HDMI, AVI and DVI modes. This is rather annoying becuase it cycles through the video modes while the computer boots. I like to watch my PC boot so I set Auto Source to Manual.
I don’t use the Samsung’s provided MagicColor software though, because I am running Arch Linux. Also, There is a neat feature to turn the Powerbutton LED off… kind of cool but not essential by any means. Also, I find the monitor collects and shows dust rather noticibly on the glossy plastic bezel. This can be easily taken care of with a quick wide-down every week or so.
*Update*
This monitor works perfectly at 1920×1200 resolution with my Macbook Pro. There is no need for additional software, the resolution can be changed through the ‘Displays’ panel in the ‘System Preferences’ of OS X. Here are screenshots of the monitor hooked up to my MBP.
Despite my troubles with Filezilla, I managed to utilize ssh and rsync to download an approximately 9GB iso from my home computer to my Linux box at school. I setup a secure shell on my remote machine before the semester started in case I needed to use it for such reasons.
Command:
rsync -vrPtz -e ssh host:/remote_path/* /local_path/
The command worked flawlessly giving me the power to stop and resume the download at my wishes. As for the Filezilla problem, apparently resuming files via SFTP corrupts the file size and MD5 checksum of the said file. A topic on the filezilla forums points out that it’s currently a problem with uint64_make on 64bit platforms and not actually a Filezilla bug. If your interested, read more.
Thanks to Daniel Ferbers for doing the dirty work and finding the command provided in this post.
I love Linux for its flexibility when it comes to desktop customization.
- OS: Ubuntu Linux
- Wallpaper: Lucky Chuck by David Lanham
- GTK 2.x Theme: Glow Water Dark
- Emerald Theme: Ninja
- System Icons: gTango
- AWN Icons: Gant 3 by Mattahan
- Conky Scripts: Custom
- Screenlets: HDUsage v0.1
I ran into some problems running Compiz-Fusion this week. I am not sure why Compiz broke twice but I believe it was because I upgraded from kernel 2.6.24-19 to kernel 2.6.24-20. Each upgrade requires a reinstall of the Nvidia drivers. Everything went well except for the fact that it broke Compiz. Whenever I tried to activate Compiz I would get the following error:
“Desktop Effects could not be enabled.”
I tried multiple solutions but grew tired of failure. I searched forums which led nowhere. Eventually I stumbled upon Compiz-Check, which effortlessly found and fixed my problem. Turns out I had not disabled gnome’s desktop effects, therefore the confliction was the cause of Compiz breaking. So thanks to compiz-check I was able to get the desktop effects running smooth and ‘hardy’. hah, pun intended.
Simple, Elegant… Linux.
Meet my June 2008 Desktop.
