openArtist And Some More Catch From Santa Cruz Flea Market

In my searches of perfect Linux distro for my Fujitsu Lifebook T5010 I stumbled upon something both weird and interesting. It's called openArtist, a Linux distribution for artists. As it comes these days, the "artist" here is mostly a sound/video producer, and graphic artist only as second thought. But unlike a distro called ArtistX, here you can have a base download of ~700 MB to add/remove whatever you want from numerous repositories. The distro designer known only as "openartist" is never anal to include a possibility to install some Windows/commercial software (supposedly available via Wine), so, for me it would be a good chance to try, say, ArtRage running in that openArtist before coughing up my $50 for it.

I booted a "live" openArtist session from a USB stick, and can confirm that abilities to transform this Linux into a very comprehensive, precisely configured and sharpened tool are enormous, be it for 2D/3D/audio/video/code/photo production, or  any combination of very diverse tasks you throw at it.

The thing is not without faults though:

1. Default theme is that horrible "grey-on-black" stuff again that is so hard to navigate through (see above). After some digging, I was able to find something more palatable among those tons of graphite dust of GTK+ theming:

2. Base system comes with two incompatible audio systems: ALSA and Pulse Audio, with ALSA being presumably a default. However, installing Chrome and XBMC from 3rd party repositories brings a lot of confusion in this scheme. No sound from either Chrome, or XBMC unless you kill that Pulse Audio. Which is a hassle not really explained in detail. I didn't find my way out of that pickle just yet.In other words, I'd love to see Pulse Audio as an installable option, and not something I need to fight for control. It's a base system, isn't it? Why trying so hard to press two incompatible systems into it? A promised sound arbiter configuration utility didn't work for me.

3. The latest base distro is about a year old. Apparently (nobody knows for sure), openArtist is a work of a single genius "openartist" who has a Kraken-sized amount of work before him every time he starts re-basing his distro on a new Ubuntu/Debian code. If he won't die of exhaustion, we could see something very good in 2014.

4. As usual, there's no code for comprehensive stylus calibration. Stuff for evdev is as always here, or can be downloaded, sure, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Wacom stylus/eraser. It's for plain touch events which incidentally don't even need that precision in calibration in the first place. Sharp Wacom stylus does. Wacom screen for such stylus is sensitive to not only pressure, it can register and and portray a pen's tilt. Linux in general doesn't know it, or doesn't know how to use the detected tilt data. Somebody have seen some demo of non-free Enterprise SUSE "doing tilts" some time ago, but Fujitsu doesn't look very interested to share improved drivers to the Linux community.

5. Author of fjbtn driver has never compiled anything that could be just downloaded and installed for Ubuntu 12.04 system. So no wonder there's nothing of this sort in openArtist. However, it's a minor pain in the ass that technically, has nothing to do with "openartist". One day, I will succeed to compile the code myself, I just wish it will be against some good kernels of Ubuntu 14.x and/or Wayland/MIR environment, so xrandr stuff will rot in hell, at last.

For people who like to sculpt their Lunux themselves, you are welcome here: http://openartisthq.org/.

After a night messing with openArtist, I went to my flea market. If somebody remembers, my Homeless Santa

of 2009 has died some time ago (and my portrait of him gained some value, I hope), so here's his replacement at the same place, only of 2013:

Very interesting collection of robotic crafts.

And here's my today's catch:

The stuff here can be had from me for about $150 except for Anchovy Paste tubes that are exclusively for my own consumption , but don't ask me how much I paid. Hint: almost pennies, as broken Dell Inspiron 600m is actually worth next to nothing. But I was successful in cleaning & repairing a 10-year old Olympus Stylus 410, adding a cheapo 512 MB card to it and charging its battery to do these snaps:

A book called "The BEDFORD ANTHOLOGY of AMERICAN LITERATURE, Second Edition, Volume 2" was printed this July, but holds 2014 copyright. Which may explain an Amazon pricing for it at about $45...$72. Any takers for this lavishly illustrated 1658 pages? I can give you a Christmas discount. A cheapo (I'd charge just $20) Nintendo The Beatles Rockband drum USB dongle is also for sale, together with that extremely rare 1976 NFSG Songbook for that extinct German community of South San Francisco (I'd part with it for $30).

Then this: a 10K gold broken engagement ring that has lost all of its diamonds except a single tiny one:

I have found it on 41st Ave Hwy 1 overpass. Some disgusted bride-to-be has apparently thrown it away. Oh well, it's yours for $40, and I'm not even charging for a little diamond that has survived that bride's frustration.