Radix Fidem Blog

Monergism and Coexistence

Posted on October 20, 2010 by ehurst

I’m not planning to go out and get one of those bumper stickers which sports a collection of various religious symbols to spell out the word “coexist.” It’s a little more complicated than that, but it does point us in the right direction.

For Christians, at least, it points back to the old heresy of synergism. It’s the same heresy which corrupts almost the entire range of Western Christianity. As a refugee from evangelical Protestantism I can assure you synergism reigns supreme, and is a primary element behind the war mongering children of Satan who embrace the neocon message. Obviously this means I have no use for Zionists and their Christian allies, which underlines why I say it’s not that simple. It is a religion, and it’s an evil one.

I make no bones about what I see wrong in other religions, but none of them seem interested in attacking me, and I see no point in railing at them endlessly. The issue is not syncretism and pretending it doesn’t matter; it’s tactics. If I’m going to win my world to Christ, it won’t come at the point of a gun backing laws against those other religions. Some of those other religions use that tactic in other places, and that’s part of what makes them false religions. They aren’t interested much in coexistence, either.

Synergism as a Christian heresy is any suggestion God can’t get the job done without us, or even that He won’t. Monergism is the term for the correct theology. This is the recognition God has been at this long before there was any organized religion or written revelation. His revelation bluntly says, and quite often, those of us who embrace it are merely along for the ride. We are blessed beyond words He has any interest in us at all, given we are all universally unfit from birth. Monergists take the theology of the Fall very seriously, and God does not hire out His divine power to co-redemptors, as none are qualified. Nor are they qualified after He breathes life into their spirits.

We aren’t adopted into Christ because He needs us, but simply wants us. The big problem starts with this false assumption the revelation of God somehow requires our help. Even worse, it assumes anyone on earth is capable of making the choice, when Paul says in no uncertain terms we cannot (take a look at Romans). Dead in our sins, we cannot even want righteousness. Spiritual birth is a divine miracle, not some logical choice. It’s demands are utterly illogical, based on claims which no one can prove, not even partially. Being a Christian is not a reasonable choice.

It follows there is most certainly no reasonable basis for pretending I know when and under what terms anyone else receives their own spiritual awakening. The only thing I can do with my logic and reason is organize how I’ll comply with divine decisions made before I was born. Evangelism is not persuasion; persuasion comes only after the spirit is born. The Persuasion part is for people to get their lifetime of rational and emotional habits out the way, and embrace those eternal mandates. I cannot teach something for which there are no words; “propositional truth” is blasphemy. God is truth, the whole substance and essence of truth is a living being.

Doing the right thing is letting other people pursue their own convictions until they bump up against something God says I must protect, and no part of politics and human accomplishment is included in that. If His Word is truth, I don’t have to enforce it. I don’t have to make rules and laws to protect my narrative from insults, arguments, debate or ignorance. The truth of God is written into the very fabric of the cosmos, and the least effort on my part to simply live that truth makes Him blazingly obvious. But since it requires His hand to open the reception channels in every case, in every human, there is nothing much to protect on this plane beyond the safety of a few God has called me to watch over.

Since God knows better than I how every apparent threat to those lives is currently centered in my own government, and not a single credible threat exists except those secretly or openly provided by that government, it would be spitting in His face to join the hordes committing murder around the world in the service of that same government. Anyone who suggests it is my duty to fight imaginary threats is speaking for Satan.

Where I stand today is not threatened by any other religious group except the allied Zionist camps. If there is anyone to likely to encroach on my duty to God, it is they. A mixed collection of atheists, Muslims, pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the rest are not a problem. To the degree what they promote is false, God is more than adequate to handle it. He does not call people to perform proxy warfare on a human level for Him since His Son came to earth. Our battle is escaping this world, not fixing it. In the process of escaping it, we have to fight through our own tendencies to cling to it, even while we have to face a hostile world trying to keep us imprisoned in madness. All of this requires miraculous intervention from God, not laws and weapons of the flesh.

Posted in religion, sanity | Tagged resistance, war | Comments Off

Christian Mysticism: Esoteric and Elite?

Posted on October 19, 2010 by ehurst

No, utterly open and free — but admittedly very hard to swallow.

I continue to test my vision of a biblical faith community against the world I see around me today. I test it because I don’t pretend my vision is the one right way to do things. The very lack of detail should indicate such, but I’ve been accused by some that I’m trying to create my own little cult.

Any community of faith which is honest and open will naturally include a significant number who aren’t really part of it all. When working in mainstream churches, I consistently ran up against this obsession with “born-again” membership. I call it obsession because (1) Jesus didn’t use the term “born again” that way and (2) currently He and the Trinity are the only ones who know, or can know, whether anyone is truly spiritually alive. A community of faith aims at being spiritually receptive and responsive, but there is no pretense of goal-oriented record keeping and management.

Every church I’ve been involved with has always been obsessed with increasing membership. Not a single word in the New Testament supports that obsession. Becoming bigger and more noticeable is not a valid objective. Getting together so as to strengthen the resolve to leave all that behind is more like it. Notice how carefully the New Testament writers refer to God adding to their numbers. By implication He can also subtract from their numbers by guiding His own to disassociate from those who insist on dragging worldly concerns into a spiritual haven. His agenda has nothing to do with corporate growth goals.

But of necessity, when following the biblical model, every congregation will include some who just don’t get it. They may or may not pretend to be really involved, but such will always show up. We don’t have to make any great effort to accommodate them, at least in the sense of offering inducements to stay. The whole point is that they come because they want to be there when we do naturally what the Spirit directs.

More likely, the majority of spiritually dead members are there because it’s just a social structure they like for some reason. That is entirely valid. Ancient Israel always had a large entourage of hangers-on who simply felt safe, happy and comfortable in the company of a Covenant Community they couldn’t bring themselves to join. Their presence received due honor; they had their place in the scheme of things. A true New Testament church would also attract many like that.

Some would come simply because of social pressures, embarrassment, etc. Not good, but there is little anyone can do about that. We don’t pick on them, nor do we turn them into projects for renovation. We simply welcome them as we would the spiritually alive, since we have no way of knowing which is which. We have to always watch out we don’t create our own little sub-culture which blinds us to oddball things God may want for us, and those who don’t seem to fit may well be God’s chosen leadership in some particular mission.

What we can know is when folks manifest an interest in other-worldly concerns, which is the very nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. A driving desire to disassociate oneself from this world and a longing desire to be in the Presence of God gives rise to certain predictable behavior patterns, and this is what we hope to encourage. Never mind whether it’s fake; the nature of a person is not for us to know. All we need to know is whether that person at this moment reflects our best understanding of what those other-worldly concerns should be in the context.

True Christian Mysticism is self-selecting. You can’t sell it, can’t build big organizations around it. Only those willing and able to ignore convention in search of something far better will even take a second look. We can’t quantify that desire because it can be faked for a thousand different motives. It appears elitist and esoteric because few have any interest. A genuine interest can only be inspired by God. Further, only He can make it workable for them. So there is not a whit of secrecy in that sense of the word “esoteric,” but the nature of Ultimate Truth is self-obscuring. He reveals Himself to whom He wishes.

A gathering of Christian Mystics includes people who believe He has revealed Himself to them and would like to strengthen the grip of that revelation on their lives by sharing what little of it can actually be shared. There are no rituals, no memberships, just a desire to participate. We’ll miss you if you don’t make the next meeting, but nobody is going to count noses and mark rosters. That revelation cannot be organized; it is the substance of Christian compassion and warm fellowship. Want some?

Posted in religion, sanity | Tagged culture, mysticism, scripture | 2 Comments

Unfixable World

Posted on October 18, 2010 by ehurst

The System is always wrong. It is wrong simply because it is a system, an organization. When anything involving people gets organized, it must of necessity walk on someone. I reject categorically the notion that is necessary. It is simply evil.

So Staughton Lynd opposed the system, but made the awful mistake of promoting another system. He sincerely believed it was possible to change evil by political means; he didn’t understand politics is evil personified.

But you have to give him one thing: He knows what commitment means. He walked his talk, which makes him ten times the man almost everyone in US government today. He was willing to live among the people he claimed to help and defend. This is consistent at least to the form of Christian Mysticism in that he clings radically to the truth he knows. It is a natural extension of the Quaker religion he claimed.

He also understood the necessity of compassion, but only partially understood the necessity of not being wound up in the results. He was willing to take on cases in court which he expected to lose, but it was only a tactic.

For me, it is the whole thing.

We are seeing a great many expressions by increasingly mainstream writers who point out the all too obvious failure of American government:

This is where lawlessness leads us – to more lawlessness. Once you commit a lawless act against someone and are not punished for it you have invited them to retaliate with complete disregard for the law in their response. You are only required to deal ethically and morally with an ethical and moral entity across the table – one who ignores the law loses their right to demand that respect in return.

Many in the fringe associations have been agitating for this since before I was born, claiming the rule of law was dead long ago. So it was, but you and I know the sheeple aren’t going to wake up to this soon enough. Indeed, that moment has been long past, too. Still, a high probability of revolt still lies ahead of us. To some degree it has already begun, but whether it will flower into mass bloodshed soon is known only to God. That it eventually will later seems obvious.

I want no part of it. It signifies simply trading one system for another, one set of victims becoming the oppressors of other new victims. Nobody wants to talk about resolving this finally by building something according to our human natures. No, this idiocy runs in cycles until God gets tired of it, getting steadily worse.

What will those true radicals like me do? The same thing we always did. We will continue living in sanity in the mad world, sometimes briefly their pet, most of the time beneath their notice, and occasionally their enemy. The world system will never, ever accept what we are committed to, only bits and pieces of what we might say or do.

I’ll be glad when my time is up and I can go Home.

Posted in religion, social sciences | Tagged government, law, mysticism, resistance | Comments Off

Program Note: RHEL Projects on Hold

Posted on October 18, 2010 by ehurst

This morning I awoke to the sound of my desktop system moaning. Seems the CPU fan is dying, so I had to shut it down before it failed and let things overheat. It will be a week until we get paid, so I’m using the laptop (I traded something for a nice Inspiron 1525). Laptops seem to work better with Ubuntu than with industrial grade stuff like RHEL.

Meanwhile, my standard brain spew on other topics will continue.

Posted in personal | Tagged computers, redhat, ubuntu | Comments Off

Curmudgeon on RHEL 6.0 Beta 2

Posted on October 17, 2010 by ehurst

I’ve lived long enough to know my own answer to most questions. I can afford to ignore progress in some areas because some things will never get any better — not really.

Over the past year I’ve tested a wide range of operating systems on my home-built machine. That includes Windows XP, Vista and 7; openSUSE 11. and 11.3; Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid (and the Trinity KDE packages on both); CentOS 5 and RHEL 6 Beta. I’ve also played with a few more on a Dell laptop which is now gone, to include Debian Etch, Lenny and Squeeze; QNX 6, Syllable, NetBSD, and some others. But I feel comfortable saying on my main desktop RHEL 6.0 Beta 2 indicates the gold release is likely to stick for a long time. It appeals to my curmudgeon instincts.

I am not a technician in the sense I know how to run scads of tests. I’m just a retiree who has played with computers since the days of DOS 5 and Red Hat 5 (the old series before Enterprise Linux). I pretend I’m a technician when I operate my computer help ministry. For most of my clients, I recommend Ubuntu Lucid because they hate rolling release, but love easy-to-use. For myself, RHEL 6 is much better. As a user experience, this is the fast OS I’ve ever run on this hardware. All other things being comparable, this thing has never been so responsive. It even compiles faster. I don’t pretend to know what optimizations have been done by the developers, but it works for me.

Because it is pretty much the same API as Fedora Core 13, I can chase down source RPMs and compile almost anything which doesn’t already wait in the official repositories. There are a few things which are better outside the RPM system, because they tend to have critical updates more frequently than the packagers can keep up. For example, I greatly prefer Firefox built directly from source. I know just enough to tweak it at the same time to get it just as I want. I also like Elinks for some uses, and it works best simply built from source.

I like Lynx and other Xterm applications, such as MC and Vim. I’m slowly drifting away from using Joe as much, simply because it gets harder and harder to match what I’m learning to do with Vim, and I’m into things I can’t understand how to tweak on Joe. It’s actually easier to learn Vim’s esoteric keystrokes. I especially like using Vim with Alpine.

A few months back I explained how I learned to setup Alpine for multiple accounts and all about drop boxes, but the page to which I linked disappeared. The whole domain is gone. I didn’t remember the complex instructions, so I came up with a quick-n-dirty HOWTO for hacking the configuration file directly. I wrote it up as a plain text file to encourage others to simply save it for future reference. It’s public domain, so steal it and do what you like.

But it’s not all dreary console stuff. I also built Mplayer and all the supporting SRPMs from scattered sources, more or less matching Fedora 13. So far, it has played everything I throw at it. I also made sure to build ffmpeg. I don’t bother with piracy to make money, but when I need something which is available in a proprietary format, I don’t hesitate to rip it apart or change it to suit my tastes. I’ve already stated clearly I feel utterly certain my God condemns most copyright laws. Not so much in principle, but in the way it tends to get applied by idiots who don’t understand the necessity of electronic data being utterly free and unencumbered. They are the immoral ones (RIAA, MPAA, etc.), shaking down the artists and their fans, and offering nothing of value in return. The whole idea of copyright has long been perverted and abused.

And if I really wanted to run something from Microsoft, I might pay if it’s feasible, but I see nothing immoral about running a hacked and cracked ISO. You’d be wise to make sure it was clean, but the very design of the OS itself prevents any real hope of security and privacy. The whole point everyone wants to ignore in the argument about free information, particularly in electronic formats, is it applies both ways. I don’t expect to have any real security against whatever lies on the other side of my cable modem. My own privacy is gone once any item gets recorded as information on my computer. I don’t pretend it will be sacrosanct, because the whole thing is merely a matter of voluntary honor and personal ethics. I can’t decide for someone else what they really ought to do about my information, my Internet profile, etc. And they can’t decide for me, either. All those laws about it simply reflect the common assumptions, which are then twisted through the criminal process we call “legislation” and forced upon the world by a vast army of mostly incompetent boobs on folks who are even more incompetent.

It’s not a question of might (or ability) makes right, but since too few people in this world grasp my morality, and the underlying theology, there is little point in arguing what it means to be moral regarding digital rights. I’m quite the radical and make no bones about it. If you know your way around this stuff, you get to take advantage of how ever much you know, and I won’t pontificate about digital rights.

I know just enough about such matters to decide I really do prefer RHEL over all other Linux distros, and Linux over other operating systems — for now. I’m not an OS zealot, and if Cupertino or Redmond actually meet my needs in some future day, and it’s closer to my wishes than the alternatives, I’ll switch. (But it’s unlikely.) Curmudgeon I may be, but threats and needs do change. RHEL 6 is pretty secure as Linux goes, while still offering a very high usability quotient, particularly for those inclined to learn DIY. I can get almost anything I actually use this way. Once the CentOS team turns out their version of this, I’ll be writing a migration guide for those equally so inclined who want something vastly superior to Windows whatever.

I find RHEL 6 a major turning point in the technology game.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged computers, internet, redhat, survival | 1 Comment

Liberally Non-Liberal

Posted on October 16, 2010 by ehurst

I read a lot of lefty news sites. They have a lot less intrusive and stupid advertising than the righties. But I don’t believe the lefties any better than I do the righties.

To restate what I say often: Until every official state completely shifts its fundamental government philosophy over the Ancient Near Eastern feudalism, none of them can claim legitimacy in God’s courts. That means as a servant of the Most High God (AKA Jehovah, Yahweh, etc.) and under His government, I am under no obligation from Him to take any human government seriously. Yes, the only proper government according to God’s Laws is tribal government, arising from a tribal social structure. Not the truculent version of “tribal” most people include in their propaganda, but the live-and-let-live tribal peaceful government where everyone minds their own business. That is the first and most basic requirement for any government hoping for His approval.

Work that out in all the implications and you end up with a guy who feels for the poor and oppressed the way liberals do, but utterly rejects every solution they have proposed. The conservatives are so wrapped up in materialism (like Pharisees) their solutions are even more wrong. Liberals at least have the right idea, but most of those in their leadership are just as corrupt as anyone in leadership of communism, socialism, fascism, nazism, and anything else you can name. As noted previously on this blog, the mere existence of leadership as we know it today is uniformly immoral. When something needs leadership, it’s already wrong, because it always means someone gets run over.

You should never accept leadership from anyone who isn’t linked to you by blood kinship or by covenant. A contract is not a covenant, but a Western parody of a covenant. Contract is between parties which may not even be people, and a covenant is between persons, binding for life and beyond. It binds families because the head of household has the right, and duty, to make such commitments. Without this entirely personal element, nothing in this world is valid. If people are involved, objectivity is a sin. The pretense of objectivity becomes the excuse for every imaginable inhumanity we see before us today, and a lot we haven’t seen because it’s hidden. Thus, I am clearly at odds with everyone who claims any brand of conservatism. But it also cripples the progressives, because you aren’t permitted to use government to accomplish the mission, either.

That is, government as we know it today. The idea a conglomeration of wildly different folks in one location can somehow be bound together under some objective fair laws is from Satan. All the more so if that notion envisions laws affecting how people conduct their private business. Yes, God made it universal for all mankind to respect the property of another, but the enforcement is the issue. The first line of defense is your family head of household, and their sense of proper response, when you believe your prerogatives of ownership are threatened. Behind that is a wealth of assumptions about how such disputes are settled, and no one system fits all the people everywhere. The notion someone is smart enough to figure it out for everyone is a slap at God. He put us on earth in families, households, clans and tribes because it was the best of all possible worlds after the Fall. It was His idea, and keeping folks cloistered in clans and tribes is the single best way to prevent crime.

So I’m stuck, because I realize precious few people in this world see it that way here in the West. I’m able to spread my crazy ideas because of this thing called the Internet. It has become the greatest threat to centralized government — by definition, evil government — the world has ever known. Now the Net is under threat, but this comes about the same time the very same government trying to kill it is about to dissolve itself as God Himself is ripping it apart for all that sin.

Am I alone in realizing this a is good thing? The whole foundation of Western Civilization is an insult to God, and it’s about time the thing collapsed under its own dead weight. Welcome to tomorrow. If you dare, consider preparing yourself and those you know for rebuilding things properly.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged government, internet, law, resistance | Comments Off

Sins of Our Nation: Murder for Fun

Posted on October 15, 2010 by ehurst

It’s news because the majority of Americans still think it is. It’s not news to anyone who has spent much time in the military. The secrecy is not to protect the innocent; the military has no comprehension of that. It is to protect the select hides of a large number fully deserving of scathing criticism.

The US military has never been good and decent. I don’t say that because I’m a pacifist with regrets about serving. I have no quarrel with genuine national defense, but our troops have never been used that way. So far, we have only ever defended our offensive actions with other nations. The propaganda to the contrary has drawn a great many decent and innocent fools into something they still regret, provided they are still alive.

I was one of those fools. My first tour of service began in 1979, and was frankly a matter of needing a job and a way out of a very difficult situation. The military had interested me for a long time, so here was my best chance to see it up close. In my ignorance I made a long string of bad choices. I take my lumps, but no one made any effort to help me understand what I was up against, so it’s no surprise my exit in 1982 was not on the best of terms (called “Compassionate” because it made the military look good, when the real reason was they couldn’t use me but refused to fix the problem).

But the second time I went back in there were few delusions. In 1988 I was burdened with a sense of uncompleted mission. I had to do it right simply for myself. Fighting through the bureaucratic memory of my previous departure, I was allowed only one choice: Military Police. This and a handful of other specialties provide a unique opportunity to see the underbelly of the beast. While I did complete my personal mission and felt sure God was pleased, there was nothing about the military service itself which makes me proud. I remain deeply embarrassed about a lot of things.

Most of the accolades and awards were the routine garbage guys could get just for showing up and going through the motions. The only attention I actually earned was for giving my heart to the DARE Program in Europe. I have since learned what a massively stupid and perverted philosophy was behind it, but I honestly managed to make more of it than the program itself entailed. God gets the glory for keeping me sane enough to ignore the bureaucratic limits and do the right thing. I took full advantage of being the first DARE Officer in the area, and in the schools I served. But I still regret the insidious lies I supported in that program, and the context of military corruption only made it worse.

The business of soldiers committing thuggery in Afghanistan and Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter, is simply what soldiers do. It’s built into the military. The very nature of how the system operates is an open invitation to the worst of humanity. I was part of the lower ranks of leadership and the entire philosophy claims high morals, but those morals are twisted beyond recognition. Those morals make Abu Ghraib and the PFC Stoner case the norm; don’t believe lies the contrary.

Not the norm in the sense it’s like that everywhere all the time, but in the sense of well within the limits you reasonably expect. For example, one of the biggest events of my police service in the Netherlands was a major drug bust, which took down a huge chunk of an already poorly manned nuclear missile unit to our north (the place was hardly a secret). This, even though the whole thing was poorly staged and too many had ample warning to dispose of evidence. The average Joe Doper isn’t smart enough to take advantage of that. But we would have never known about the problem had not the big dealer in the barracks come to the attention of the Dutch federal police who were wiretapping the dealer’s supplier over other crimes. The deep plastic facade of military competence hides a stinking corpse which succeeds only where the enemy is equally corrupt.

It works both ways when secrecy and head games are built into the system. Within my own associates at the MP station were a few thugs, but they took advantage of the system and limited their grisly pleasures enough to avoid discipline. That it left them enough room to feel comfortable is what stinks. Simple open honesty is frankly forbidden, because pretense is everything.

When you pretend your nation never commits any fouls, and anything the leaders want is always paradise for everyone involved, you end up sticking your nose into all the world’s business. That means having a million or so troops to intimidate anyone who might object to that skewed vision of paradise. That is a lot of troops, and scooping in a huge portion of the morally unfit is a necessity. Consider the self-evident principle government service seldom attracts good moral people with any sense. They are either fools who remain fools, or they decide to adopt the lies and bash their conscience into silence. The few others simply leave as soon as possible. The military is hardly any different. Being a close friend to people working in the highest levels of NATO Military Intelligence and security, I know without a doubt people of conscience can barely stand it.

So let’s get this straight: The government as a whole, and the military in particular, is loaded with some of the worst examples of humanity. Not because I want you to have some simplistic vision of what constitutes human evil, but to realize none of us are more than a step or two away from it. Change a few key individuals here and there, and a whole brigade becomes a living breathing crime wave. Circumstances and context are all it takes for the vast majority of us to become the most hideous and inhumane beasts you can imagine, but we have this cultural psychosis which hides that truth. Your only defense is striving to uncover the awful truth, and then dealing with that truth.

In one of my favorite fiction readings, the hero of the story turns the symbolic sword of truth on himself. It does not kill him, but it hurt more than words could say. This act was necessary as the price for wielding that sword against a far greater evil.

I look back in retrospect, and realize I could have become one of those foul murderers. That still frightens me. It is quite certain I would have eventually committed suicide. I’m not convinced those who have taken the path of suicide during our current military misadventures are the weak ones. Most of the rest simply go along with the evil. God help us; we are doomed.

Posted in social sciences | Tagged culture, government, military, war | Comments Off

RHEL 6.0 Beta2

Posted on October 14, 2010 by ehurst

With the first beta I ran into problems I could not resolve, having to do with display instability. So I wiped the drive and used it to test a few other things. Yet, I was haunted by what I knew could have been. So yesterday I decided to give it a second try.

The Beta2 came out back in July, and developers still haven’t fixed a bug in the installer. On Dells in particular, but other system like mine as well, the installer freezes at some point and refuses to proceed. With Dells at least there seems to be a way to bypass this using the mem=[number of bytes] on the boot line. You calculate your RAM in gigabytes times 1024 cubed to get the correct amount. On my system, none of the various incantations I tried did any good. It froze every time right before the big blue console screen comes up and allows you to choose your language, etc.

So I installed the older Beta1. Of course, it would not update. That’s because the product has been split between workstation and server package sets. After installing and getting things set to my liking, I changed the lines in my /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel-beta.repo file like this:

#baseurl=ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/$releasever/$basearch/os/
baseurl=ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/6Workstation-beta2/$basearch/os/

This allowed me to download the Beta2 as an update, which amounted to a huge 850+ packages. According to posts on the Red Hat lists, this is because Beta2 is now based off Fedora Core 13, instead of FC12 used on the first beta.

I decided to test it by building mostly FC13 SRPMs to get Xine, a much shorter route than going with the Gstreamer stuff and rebuilding Totem. However, the build on Xine-libs puked. I’m not a developer, but the errors indicated to me something was missing from the source packages I could get, so the build was incomplete. So I switched to Mplayer, which was only slightly longer in terms of how many packages it required. I noticed some of what I had to build previously is now included in the RHEL repo. It all seemed a lot less painful, and works just fine. I discovered I had to build gnome-mplayer and gecko-mplayer (replaces mplayerplug-in) to get Firefox to recognize Mplayer.

My point is RHEL 6.0 runs faster than anything I’ve tried on this hardware. As noted previously, it also offers the sharpest font rendering I’ve ever had on my LCD monitor, once I rebuilt the Freetype library with bytecode hinting, and tweaked the fonts-conf stuff. For those of you impressed with eye-candy, the Beta2 has much better artwork, too. They’ve also stabilized the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package and it works very well. Finally, I’ve not had to tweak a thing to play CDs without a hint of popping, distortion or any other problems.

I’ve made a couple of missteps following the wrong advice on setting up Sun/Oracle Java (crashed the system; wouldn’t reboot until I undid it using Ubuntu), but it’s working fine now, and I intend to do my best to keep this working as my preferred workstation OS. Don’t know if I will be able to afford the annual minimal support contract, but I’m pretty sure I can track the updates on the RHSA mailing list and build them from SRPMs. I think it would be worth it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged computers, linux, redhat | Comments Off