Schnauzer Tongues and Science Generalizations

 I think I am being generous when I say "science generalizations."  If any of you have read some of my older posts you will understand that I get very irritated with "popular science" (not the magazine, the social concept where people throw out theories (if you can even call them that) without any valid evidence or research... and they become "de facto").

So I own a standard schnauzer, she's my little angel, or little devil depending on the moment.  She isn't much of a licker, but I realized early on that her tongue was very cat-like.  Not quite as rough and they feel smaller than a cats, but definitely full of tongue teeth.  (I own 2 cats as well).  So I had always thought cats have rough tongues, dogs have smooth tongues due to being obligate carnivores and for social reasons (self care, whereas dogs were pack animals and took care of one another).

So I started to do some research.

And, per usual, one idea is tossed out there on the internet, enough people latch onto it and it becomes SCIENCE FACT.  Such bologna.

First, dogs and cats had the same ancestors.  They just took slightly different paths and as a result their skeletons, brains and behavior became quite different.  HOWEVER... while cats are obligate carnivores and only eat meat, except for the grass in our lawn that our cats cow out on every once in awhile, dogs eat almost anything they can get in their mouths.  You think I am kidding, I have 3 dogs and some of the stuff that comes out of the OTHER end would amaze you.  Also, if you have coyote in the area, you would see it in their poop.  Actually we don't need coyote, my schnauzer loves to snack on the waste seed from our birds... her poop looks every bit that of a wild dog.

I am sorry, getting way off topic here.

So tongues.  Turns out if you google cat and dog tongues 99.999999% of the responses that come back will say "cats have rough tongues, dogs have smooth tongues *sound of book slamming shut* CASE CLOSED".   BZZZZZZZZT!  An untruth.  Dogs, to varying degrees, often based on the breed but for all I know it could be an individual recessive genetic trait or something, DO HAVE TONGUE HOOKS.  They are, after all, primarily carnivorous and the original dogs did have long fur which needed to be groomed.

I've never been licked by a wolf, but apparently they have very rough tongues.  Lo and behold, our beloved domesticated dogs are direct descendants of a type of Asian/European wolf.  So, my schnauzer's tongue is very rough, but definitely not as rough as our cats' tongues, but sometimes she licks my face and goes for my eyes... it hurts.  Her tongue is rough enough that when she hits my eyelids I wince involuntarily.

Well I've rambled on long enough.  The point is, don't believe anything you read on the internet, or what people tell you even if you trust them... find out for yourself.  Test for the truth.  Don't believe what I am telling you right now!  Go do the research for yourself.  It's the only way to know.

openSUSE Tumbleweed part 7

 Yeah, so...

ANOTHER major update.  I mean, it is a rolling release so this is to be expected.  At least the most recent video driver update has been working with each new kernel but...  now my disk mounting was broken.

So I used to define the mount points using things like /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, etc.  I KNOW I KNOW, that is not considered the best way to do it but it has worked for me for years.

My device assignments are coming willy-nilly now so I had to wipe my fstab in safe mode, reboot, then redefine my mounts using UID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Seems to be working now after reboot.

Frustrating that these "little things" keep happening but I suppose after I get through a few more updates like this I will be in good shape.  Maybe.  Who knows.

The Great Cleric

 I don't know how many of you watch anime but...  if you are looking for a fun but also not crazy-over-powered character from the start... this is a good one.

It is an isekai, office worker dies, reincarnates and decides to become a healer.

I won't give too much away except to say this one will stay in my queue for re-watching along with things like reincarnated as a slime, overlord, realist here rebuilt the kindom, the saint's magical power, tonikawa - over the moon, Bocchi the rock, and my dress up darling (and a few others).

This was a hidden gem.

openSUSE Tumbleweed update... Yay.

 I've been whining about how the kernel updates no longer worked with the NVidia driver I had been using.  Well YAY!  Finally the driver was updated and when I installed it and restarted, my system came up with the latest kernel and a nice Nvidia-driven UI.  :)  Very happy about that.  Now I need to release that old kernel and stick with the later 6.5 kernels.

Heidi Dog of the Desert

 My little runt of a standard Schnauzer is now over a year old.  She is the love of my life but... lately she is bored out of her gourde and she has been going after my shoes.  It has been a YEAR and now all of a sudden she is messing with my shoes.  I've caught her and scolded her 3 times in the past couple of days.  Doesn't seem to be sinking into her thick little skull that she shouldn't be touching them.

Outside of this little issue she has been behaving very well so... I am not sure where to go with this.  I hate scolding her.  Anyway, she is my little monster but she is such an incredible little dog.  I say little.  She is a standard schnauzer whose father was a 50 pounder, and the mother not far behind.  But she is not even 30 pounds and about an inch shorter than the "standard" says she should be.

In some ways that is nice, she is a little easier to handle.  :)  In other ways it is touch because she has the heart of a much larger dog and at the dog park she wants to play with all the big boys.  And they enjoy playing with her but she gets trounced pretty regularly (I don't mean aggression, I mean in a chase, and they trip on her, they send her flying).  But I just caught her dragging one of my shoes off and gave her a good start... but I can bet real money that she will do it again.

I will have to find a better, higher place to put my shoes so she cannot easily get to them.  Little booger.

openSUSE Tumbleweed Part 6

 Still using OST 6.  Even though a lot of people recommend AGAINST it, and I do understand why, I have frozen the last kernel that works well with my NVidia drivers that are currently installed (470.x.x).  Each successive upgrade with a new kernel BREAKS my NVidia drivers and it kind of drives me a little nuts that it happens.  So I froze the kernel so even with the latest updates to the OS in general, I am sticking to an older kernel.

So long as I do that, I can continue to enjoy openSUSE.  I know that if I want to move on I will have to uninstall my drivers and update to a more recent driver, but the most recent driver(s) cause all kinds of artifacts to dump across my screen at random and that is super irritating.  Also, when I update the driver it cascades through my gaming set up and I have to rejigger everything.

If it comes to a point where I simply cannot keep the older kernel (and to be sure, it isn't an OLD kernel, it is a 6-series kernel) I will do what I will probably end up doing anyway, which is to switch to Linux Mint DE 6.

But I have honestly come to love KDE 5.27.  I think I had said in another post that for the longest time I could not stand KDE, for a variety of reasons (like font rendering, glitchy behavior, TOO configurable - right, I know that is silly), etc.  But with openSUSE KDE has been a dream.  I am absolutely loving it.

Anyway, STILL on openSUSE and will likely stay here until I simply can't any longer.  It has been (except for the drivers/kernel issue) rock solid.

I TRIED the latest version of MX with KDE, because I do have a lot of faith in Debian 12, but MX was actually not as solid, nor was it as easy to get configured for gaming, which seemed odd to me.  There is also another KDE gaming distro out there that I downloaded and might try if openSUSE tanks for me, but honestly I also do like Mint, so I will likely go there.

Well, enough rambling.  I still think if you are NOT using NVidia, openSUSE KDE is probably an excellent choice for you.  Try it out.  Just remember that Tumbleweed updates frequently, and not little updates, updates with a capital "U".  You can be confident you are getting cutting edge versions of software (and pretty recent kernels) if you don't mind your graphics driver getting hosed constantly.

openSUSE Tumbleweed part 5

 

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Part 4

So a MASSIVE update was waiting for me today.

Unfortunately the massive update included a new kernel and that new kernel broke my UI because I use an NVidia driver.  I ended up allowing the update but booted into the old kernel which was still there, then I applied a zypper lock to it so it would not go away in the future.

The old kernel works perfectly fine.  The whole "Oh it's NVidia's fault - they suck!" argument is becoming quite tiresome since the NVidia drivers worked fine until a new kernel was introduced by OpenSUSE.  So... whatever.  NVidia released their sources too if I am not mistaken, over a year ago now.  How is that progressing, kernel devs?  Wayland devs?  Bueller?  Anyone?

So, be prepared if you have an NVidia card, OpenSUSE will most likely break it.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed part 3

 So I am having trouble putting my finger on WHY I like OpenSUSE.  I want to start with potential problems first:

1) dependency hell
    There have been issues when installing software (previous install)
    where I had to try to repair the dependencies
2) Printer support is a flipping mystery.  Only one of my printers is even SEEN...

Aside from that I don't have many complaints.

Why do I like it then?

1) I have never met a version of KDE that I liked prior to this.
    It is smooth, flawless, no issues.  The KDE app suite is also good.
2) While I prefer to use zypper, YaST seems to be competent.
3) Performance is good!

I know, no hard numbers to back things up regarding performance.

With Mint and other linux distros I tend to install kernels like xanmod or liquorice.  But I haven't had the urge to do that with OpenSUSE, perhaps partly because I am afraid to, or perhaps because the KDE UI is actually quite snappy and responsive, and when I game there doesn't seem to be any reason to NEED a performance kernel.

Anyway, I am enjoying OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, let's see how long that lasts.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Part 2

 So I had been using Tumbleweed for a week or so and ran into some issues because when I first configured it I made a couple of mistakes.

So I went to MX Linux KDE and quickly learned that MX Linux is not as super-duper-awesome as everyone makes it out to be.  From there I jumped (after a day) to Linux Mint again.  But I found myself longing for the KDE interface (I cannot even BELIEVE I am writing this, I really disliked KDE for a minimum of a 14 years) that OpenSUSE delivered.

So guess what.  Lessons learned, I reinstalled OpenSUSE KDE and started configuring and installing software in small steps.  First thing was to make sure I installed the NVidia drivers the right way, first time around, installed codecs, got the base system the way I wanted it.  Then I moved onto installing Wine, Steam and other components useful for gaming.

So far so good, knock on wood.  I've been through my first update with no issues.  The one thing I did install that, while it makes me nervous I still love it, is Kvantum and the Irixium theme.  So love that.

So anyway, I have the most important things to me installed:

1) Nvidia drivers

2) Video and music codecs

3) Google Chrome

4) Thunderbird

5) KDE Irixium theme

6) Wine (so I can run VTMB without issue)

7) Steam (so I can play at least SOME of my steam games, and GE Proton)

8) Some fonts I like for programming

9) MS VS Code

10) compilers...

With these things I am pretty satisfied.  I can do the things I like to do on my personal computer, watch videos, game, program...