BUT: there is a new computer in my life with a ridiculously big hard disc just begging for a Gentoo installation, so maybe one day I will return to it.

Also, the ability to type classical Greek and use the extended Latin keymap is almost mandatory for work on web browsers. Fortunately, with LaTeX, I can produce beautiful documents with nothing more than a text editor (VIM, of course).

So we begin here for on our journey from serviceable legibility to joyous eyes.

I can’t recommend that guide strongly enough. Although I didn’t update all of my packages yet, it took a few minutes and now things are greatly de-uglified.

<code># emerge dropbox</code>

does install something, but it is not clear how to get Dropbox up and running from there. Consequently, I’ve uninstalled the Gentoo package and gone to Dropbox’s Linux page, and I’m following their install procedure.

And that was about the easiest install I’ve done on Linux. Works great, but being a bit unsophisticated on the Linux side, I’ll have to do some tinkering to get the script to start automatically.

My goal is that the computer will enter a hibernate-like state when the lid is closed.

I’m trying out Uswsusp instead of TuxOnIce because I don’t want to use a different kernel and I like the idea of keeping everything in user space, as described on this page.

I have had to add static-libs to my USE flags, and they’re getting a little long. Ah well.

The install was straight-forward enough

<code># emerge texlive</code>

But at the end I end up with the following error:

<code>

* Cannot run texmf-update for some reason.
* Your texmf tree might be inconsistent with your configuration
* Please try to figure what has happened

</code>

I keep coming to this forum posting, so it might be worth a try. First I need to figure out what

<code>equery b texmf-update</code>

is about.

Apparently it will tell me what package to reinstall before reinstalling the complaining packages.

And so now, I guess, I will.

My sound card is an ALi M5451 PCI card, but for some reason I had USB and PCMCIA support built into the kernel. I am disabling these options, as well as OSS (a deprecated protocol), so I’m recompiling and then rebooting.

Basically, I should have included “synaptics” in my USE flags, although that alone does not give me tapping or right-edge scrolling, but for the time being, the added precision should be enough. I will revisit this issue.

UPDATE: following a Gentoo Wiki I can now single-tap and use the right edge of the touch pad to scroll! I think that is all I want now, but, again, I might revisit the issue.

BTW: Thank you Stuff Mom Never Told You, for enriching my mind as I bang it against things.

UPDATE: Good news! It took a little more tweaking than I thought it would (mostly on the router side), but my wireless access is now secured.

Before I call it a night, though, there are a few important things I want to do:

1. Set up some protection for the route (UPDATE: achieved!)
2. Configure the synaptics touchpad on the computer; it currently has limited functionality, but is very sensitive (making it difficult to control), and doesn’t interpret taps on the pad, although it does register the buttons properly. (UPDATE: useable, but more can be done)
3. Set up sound through ALSA (UPDATE: It works! At some point it would be nice to have a gpu of some sort, but I’ll settle for this for now)
4. Find a nimble browser and maybe get some streaming video going (UPDATE: Forum postings suggest that the Firefox binary is the fastest, but I’ll keep an eye out (as it’s already installed) and I’m using the proprietary flash module, so I should be able to watch hulu, if I so desire).

In the next couple of weeks I would like to post a concise description of my efforts that might help guide me through this process in the future and might help other folks first.

UPDATE: I will add things as they occur to me in this list, but the priority for these is lower.

1. ACPI (although the laptop is without working battery, I would like to suspend to disk, rather than power down/up whenever I need/don’t need it.
2. Install LaTeX
3. Install DropBox (UPDATE: needed to allow “~x86″, but it’s merging)
4. Get a working DVD player
5. Switch over to Eterm and generally fix up fluxbox’s menus
6. de-uglify Eterm

UPDATE: Oh yeah! I’m posting this from the Compaq with the wireless up and running!