Well, I have installed XP and lived through that mess again. Time to install PC Linux OS 2007. I confess I have done this one before, but I am still surprised.
Pop in disk, boot up...answer few questions about time and keyboard...lan dialog pops up....log in as guest...verify Lan works, check screen res and color depth...access lan and check video and sound files play and can be accessed.
Then we start the install.....breeze...tell it to use free space on drive....it goes and the only other thing I configure before user names is to tell the boot loader to default to Windows.
No extra software to install and the whole thing took me about 26min start to finish.
WOW
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Linux vs Windows ...why would anybody do this pt 3
OK...everybody here....Good. I am now going to install Windows XP on my Dell GX60 surplus box to give to a relative. I verified the hardware works prior to installing XP by booting DSL 4.2.5 and making sure the video card and sounds and inputs like LAN worked. They did after I changed a bios setting about shared video memory. Seems it will default to a 1MB vid card, which looks horrible in ANY OS!!!! Fixed that, everything checks out well, time to put on XP.
Remove DSL CD, pop in XP.....Boots since the CD was set to first boot device...no surpirses during the install. It has a 40GB Drive I will split into 2, 20GB for XP...the rest for Linux. Tell the XP disk formatter this and really it just works. Until it is done with the install and we get to the first boot.
Asks me to activate..I say yes, it wants to dial out. It has a working modem, I have no landline. The network card drivers are not on the CD. Fine Skip it....type in a name for user..blah blah. It boots....Screen looks real bad....I will fix it, Graphics card is not detected right....Fine, I will grab the driver from Dell's site the box has a service tag on it...oh wait, lan won't work. Oh Yeah, the audio driver is not working either, so I have to get that too....but its low down when I can't talk to the world or see pretty pictures.
OK....don't panic, I have other machines...grab a flash drive and pop over to the good XP box. Dell site, type in tag...yadda yadda...find drivers I need and put them on flash drive. Plug it into new box, extract and search.....now it works!
Ok, lets activate and see if I bought a good number from the surplus store...Success! I did, well we knew that I guess. Ok, legit windows is better then stolen windows...more popups for porn, less for "Your copy if Windows may be.....". Onto the software.....Oh, updates popping up, fine yes install them.
Onto the software....oh....Lan is not setup even though internet works, I have always thought this is dumb...the network either works or doesn't. How many users have a home network and have missed this step and thought it was down......that many!? Me too.
Ok, setup the properties.....onto getting software from the LAN....oh....it wants me to reboot.....not right now I'm still updating.....ignore it, and it works anyways.....why did I need to reboot if it was going to work, the damn prompt told me it wouldn't work unless I reboot......dumb computer.
Ok...Onto the software?....yes...Fire up Run command Run: http://getfirefox.com
Only site I plan to visit in IE on this box before I give it away...I mean it too!
That works, click run from location, let it start.....hit the file server on my lan with all my windows software on it.....that is a box running Linux and sharing drives via Samba..oh the irony!
Find Office 2003, start the install.....system updates are done and it wants me to reboot.....ignore that I am installing stuff....Fire firefox up and head to http://free.grisoft.com for AVG Free. I pay for mine, but free works almost as well....start that puppy downloading.
Image viewer...Well I like Irfan View because it is fast and free and easy to use and nice. I have it on the server...v4.1 plus the plug-in pack installed....Codecs next
FFDSHow the SSE2 version from sourceforge. I am pretty sure I will not need this, since most of my files are mp3 or mpeg2, but just in case....going on to media player
Media Player Classic. I love it for movies and it does audio too. File Server for that....If this were my system I would install Winamp, but my target does not have music a the reason to own a computer, so I will skip it.
File manager. I like lots, but I use a43 when explorer just isn't enough. Works faster, and is free and easy. I also like xplorer2, but it is a little clunky for admin to me
PDF...screw adobe reader..too slow..I like either Sumatra or Foxit Reader. I went with Foxit for its less then annoying background color.
That jsut about does it. I configured OE for a single email address with variables I knew already. I installed TweakUI, Command Here, and the Clear Type Tuning Wizard as I know this system will be deployed with LCD Monitor. Then I restarted
Then it updated again and I restarted again.
Then I called it done, total time was about 75mins start to finish
Remove DSL CD, pop in XP.....Boots since the CD was set to first boot device...no surpirses during the install. It has a 40GB Drive I will split into 2, 20GB for XP...the rest for Linux. Tell the XP disk formatter this and really it just works. Until it is done with the install and we get to the first boot.
Asks me to activate..I say yes, it wants to dial out. It has a working modem, I have no landline. The network card drivers are not on the CD. Fine Skip it....type in a name for user..blah blah. It boots....Screen looks real bad....I will fix it, Graphics card is not detected right....Fine, I will grab the driver from Dell's site the box has a service tag on it...oh wait, lan won't work. Oh Yeah, the audio driver is not working either, so I have to get that too....but its low down when I can't talk to the world or see pretty pictures.
OK....don't panic, I have other machines...grab a flash drive and pop over to the good XP box. Dell site, type in tag...yadda yadda...find drivers I need and put them on flash drive. Plug it into new box, extract and search.....now it works!
Ok, lets activate and see if I bought a good number from the surplus store...Success! I did, well we knew that I guess. Ok, legit windows is better then stolen windows...more popups for porn, less for "Your copy if Windows may be.....". Onto the software.....Oh, updates popping up, fine yes install them.
Onto the software....oh....Lan is not setup even though internet works, I have always thought this is dumb...the network either works or doesn't. How many users have a home network and have missed this step and thought it was down......that many!? Me too.
Ok, setup the properties.....onto getting software from the LAN....oh....it wants me to reboot.....not right now I'm still updating.....ignore it, and it works anyways.....why did I need to reboot if it was going to work, the damn prompt told me it wouldn't work unless I reboot......dumb computer.
Ok...Onto the software?....yes...Fire up Run command Run: http://getfirefox.com
Only site I plan to visit in IE on this box before I give it away...I mean it too!
That works, click run from location, let it start.....hit the file server on my lan with all my windows software on it.....that is a box running Linux and sharing drives via Samba..oh the irony!
Find Office 2003, start the install.....system updates are done and it wants me to reboot.....ignore that I am installing stuff....Fire firefox up and head to http://free.grisoft.com for AVG Free. I pay for mine, but free works almost as well....start that puppy downloading.
Image viewer...Well I like Irfan View because it is fast and free and easy to use and nice. I have it on the server...v4.1 plus the plug-in pack installed....Codecs next
FFDSHow the SSE2 version from sourceforge. I am pretty sure I will not need this, since most of my files are mp3 or mpeg2, but just in case....going on to media player
Media Player Classic. I love it for movies and it does audio too. File Server for that....If this were my system I would install Winamp, but my target does not have music a the reason to own a computer, so I will skip it.
File manager. I like lots, but I use a43 when explorer just isn't enough. Works faster, and is free and easy. I also like xplorer2, but it is a little clunky for admin to me
PDF...screw adobe reader..too slow..I like either Sumatra or Foxit Reader. I went with Foxit for its less then annoying background color.
That jsut about does it. I configured OE for a single email address with variables I knew already. I installed TweakUI, Command Here, and the Clear Type Tuning Wizard as I know this system will be deployed with LCD Monitor. Then I restarted
Then it updated again and I restarted again.
Then I called it done, total time was about 75mins start to finish
Linux vs Windows ...why would anybody do this pt 2
Lets set the stage for what go me going on this long winded set of posts. I came across some surplus computers for sale via my local Craigslist site. They are government surplus of some sort or another and are Dell desktop style cases holding Celeron chips at around 2GHz with 20-40GB IDE Hardrives. They also have 128mb DDR Ram minimum and a CD or DVD Rom drive. Also included are a v90 winmodem and a builtin 8mb Video card as well as floppy drive and Lan and about 6 USB ports. Overall they have proven to be about 5-7yrs old. My old PC is 8, but it was top of the line when I set about building it. I replaced it 6 months ago and don't feel bad with how it held up.
My issue is, what to put on these boxes when I buy them for folks I know who need a low cost PC. I forgot to mention everyone of them I have seen has a XP COA on it. They are <$100, which would be a good price for a genuine copy of XP, let alone the hardware. I made one into a plain XP box for my son who has toddler and other educational games that require windows.
Then I came across another one of those and decided to make it a dual boot box. I am planning on it going to a relative who uses XP presently and needs little extra pizzaz when using a computer.
So I jotted down what I wanted on the XP side and went to look for a linux distro to put on there. I thought of DSL, but I decided this relative is too old to learn everything over again about how they use a computer, so scratch that. I also should be fair and say I only mentioned a few distros I have played with, as I decided the canidate for the Linux side would be my new and emerging favorite ditro PCLinuxOS2007! I had used this distro for a few laptops that proved too finicky to install Kubuntu on and I liked the ease of use and fast install times. Its one CD for goodness sake!
So the test is this: Which would be the better overall choice for a user with both those OS discs lying around? Now this is a biased test since I do know windows better. I had some programs to install on top of the base system that I did not in linux. They were:
Then I turned the box off and installed PCLinuxOS as a second option. I did not do anything too special to its config, in fact I did nothing really as it has tools to do all I needed:
My issue is, what to put on these boxes when I buy them for folks I know who need a low cost PC. I forgot to mention everyone of them I have seen has a XP COA on it. They are <$100, which would be a good price for a genuine copy of XP, let alone the hardware. I made one into a plain XP box for my son who has toddler and other educational games that require windows.
Then I came across another one of those and decided to make it a dual boot box. I am planning on it going to a relative who uses XP presently and needs little extra pizzaz when using a computer.
So I jotted down what I wanted on the XP side and went to look for a linux distro to put on there. I thought of DSL, but I decided this relative is too old to learn everything over again about how they use a computer, so scratch that. I also should be fair and say I only mentioned a few distros I have played with, as I decided the canidate for the Linux side would be my new and emerging favorite ditro PCLinuxOS2007! I had used this distro for a few laptops that proved too finicky to install Kubuntu on and I liked the ease of use and fast install times. Its one CD for goodness sake!
So the test is this: Which would be the better overall choice for a user with both those OS discs lying around? Now this is a biased test since I do know windows better. I had some programs to install on top of the base system that I did not in linux. They were:
- Office 2003 (Just the version I use now, I am not sold on 2007..yet)
- A Good image viewer and basic scanning package
- media codecs to view mpeg2 and mp3 etc
- a good media player that is not WMP
- anti-virus software (XP Essential is using IE)
- PDF Viewer software
- Secondary File manager software (I have directories explorer chokes on)
- Firefox..I will admin this box, I must have Firefox!
- Plus any missing drivers and whatever automatic updates XP throws on
Then I turned the box off and installed PCLinuxOS as a second option. I did not do anything too special to its config, in fact I did nothing really as it has tools to do all I needed:
- It has Open Office..works for me
- Image and Scanning included
- Played my files without bitching about it, so no codecs needed as of yet
- Good media players included
- I know they have anit-virus for Linux, I don't see a need....so I didn't install any
- PDF Viewer included
- No 2nd File manager needed, Linux does not seem to mind obnoxious size directories at all
- Firefox is included by default
- No drivers were missing and I saw no auto update feature popping up at me, so I did nothing
Linux vs Windows ...why would anybody do this pt 1
Ok...Hopefully anybody that reads this read the last post, because I can't see why I would rehash. Here is a link...if you can't find the last post for some reason. Anyways, I was/am using XP and pretty much love it. I have nice boxes that are shiny and fast so I have few issues. I help friends and family with tech issues and have managed to stay out of too much trouble. My license is even a proper and real license on the box I am typing this on. My old box has a valid license for XP as well....I think I may be running proper and genuine operating systems on all of my machines for the first time ever!!
Ah, I am getting old I guess. I used to think "Stick it to the man for charging so much" Now I see all these free market things and supply and demand, so be it. I still think XP is too much money, but I bought a copy via OEM in November for $135 or so. Better then $300. I have much windows experience as I stated earlier. I have been braking windows since 3.0. Linux not so much until lately, but I try to make up for lost time by having much Linux around.
I loved Knoppix, but it seems unpractical to me for a system....not what its designed for etc. I found Ubuntu to be fantastic, sort of. I do like the XP style interface so I went over to Kubuntu. It is the tool I used until a few months ago to preach to the masses of the uninitated. Good tool, polished and nice, but a little high in system requirements. I somehow decided to make a digital picture frame after reading a ton about them online. So I found this thing called Damn Small Linux. It was smooth. I loved its idea from the jump. It had great hardware detection and worked well. I will not call it anything it is not, as it is not for total beginners or those afraid to screw up.
I knew live Cd's were around before I had one for my PC. I had worked at a casino and seen that the new slot machines were all run like PCs. They had a cdrom and a tamper seal over it to keep the disc unfettered with, but they ran from CD and were more or less not hackable( lets not argue about that, I am sure there is a way around anything if you want it badly enough). I saw that if there was a machine issue you just turned it off and back on and it was as good as new most of the time. DSL is like that; bulletproof and rock solid 99% of the time.
So I built a DPF and had a ton of fun doing it. It was a great learning tool. It has wifi and a frugal style hard drive install so it remains read only while in operation. It has a vnc server and samba shares mounted at boot to get pictures from via the network and is really neat. It does need some tweaking, but I have since done 4-5 more and each one gets easier to do...I did one for my son that is CD only, no LAN or remote admin. It is easier to do changes to from another machine. Just remaster and burn. Replace the disk and reboot the frame to get new pics.
So parts 2 - 4 will detail my personal observations with Linux vs XP. I make no claims as to my expertise, I am just one man with lots of computers and a fussy wife. I will toss her 2 cents in fro m time to time.
Lets begin
Ah, I am getting old I guess. I used to think "Stick it to the man for charging so much" Now I see all these free market things and supply and demand, so be it. I still think XP is too much money, but I bought a copy via OEM in November for $135 or so. Better then $300. I have much windows experience as I stated earlier. I have been braking windows since 3.0. Linux not so much until lately, but I try to make up for lost time by having much Linux around.
I loved Knoppix, but it seems unpractical to me for a system....not what its designed for etc. I found Ubuntu to be fantastic, sort of. I do like the XP style interface so I went over to Kubuntu. It is the tool I used until a few months ago to preach to the masses of the uninitated. Good tool, polished and nice, but a little high in system requirements. I somehow decided to make a digital picture frame after reading a ton about them online. So I found this thing called Damn Small Linux. It was smooth. I loved its idea from the jump. It had great hardware detection and worked well. I will not call it anything it is not, as it is not for total beginners or those afraid to screw up.
I knew live Cd's were around before I had one for my PC. I had worked at a casino and seen that the new slot machines were all run like PCs. They had a cdrom and a tamper seal over it to keep the disc unfettered with, but they ran from CD and were more or less not hackable( lets not argue about that, I am sure there is a way around anything if you want it badly enough). I saw that if there was a machine issue you just turned it off and back on and it was as good as new most of the time. DSL is like that; bulletproof and rock solid 99% of the time.
So I built a DPF and had a ton of fun doing it. It was a great learning tool. It has wifi and a frugal style hard drive install so it remains read only while in operation. It has a vnc server and samba shares mounted at boot to get pictures from via the network and is really neat. It does need some tweaking, but I have since done 4-5 more and each one gets easier to do...I did one for my son that is CD only, no LAN or remote admin. It is easier to do changes to from another machine. Just remaster and burn. Replace the disk and reboot the frame to get new pics.
So parts 2 - 4 will detail my personal observations with Linux vs XP. I make no claims as to my expertise, I am just one man with lots of computers and a fussy wife. I will toss her 2 cents in fro m time to time.
Lets begin
Linux vs Windows ...why would anybody do this pt 0
Not why would anybody compare them, but why would I?!?
Well, I am the geek in my family and group of friends. I out geek the other geeks around normally, so why not me. I also have been an avid windows user. I used 3.0, 3.1.....thru XP. I have seen vista and frankly I don't care for the look and feel.
Of course I felt the same about XP for the first 6 months it was out, but that was because my 98SE install was humming along nicely and was just where I wanted it. But I could get XP free through school so...I did and dove in. I loved it almost from the beginning. It was more stable and worked very well for me. I know not everyone says so, but I really liked the colors and overall feel. Sue me for being a geeky drone.
Linux I wanted to love for a while, like a guilty pleasure, but it never wanted to love me back. I tried a very old version of Red Hat back in 1997, but it would boot from a cd if I burned my own. One problem, I didn't own a CD burner and the only guy who did in my dorm in college charged $10 a copy and it was 2X.....I hated to wait even then so I tried other methods. Floppy suck boot, custom installs, it was nuts.
I did eventually kinda get it to work, but my video card was brand new, it wasn't really supported........my sound card didn't work..my lan card did though, so i could browse the internet, but it wasn't the same. I also tried FreeBSD, and was amazed at the speed and use of an older system to perform to great expectations. I think I had a P90 with 64mb ram and a 2mb vid card. My roomate had a cryix 233mmx and 128mb ram and my system was quicker at user tasks then his, it also booted faster.
After that i stayed away from linux, partly because I remembered it was so hard to do, mostly because I was back home and didn't have high speed internet to download iso images with over the next 4-6 years. I also had very good luck with windows, it crashed little and had the programs i was used to and liked and everybody else had access to.
Then in 2004 I came upon Knoppix. Loved it first boot, I will spare you the review because it has been done 1,000,000 times. I carried a cd around and showed people how cool it was and how far linux had come. They said "great, but its not windows" They were correct and I agreed, but I liked it. I figured it might be time to look at linux again.
I must be lazy because I didn't really get around to anything other then Knoppix until 2006 or so. I guess my cd folder had simply Mephis and Lindows and a couple versions of red hat, but I never USED any of them. I had been programming for windows (VB6, please try not to mock my weakness openly, I am fragile!) and had liked what I could do simply. I also had been reading and talking to more folks about FOSS and what it meant to programmers and technology folks.
I will not say I am the norm, but I figured I would never write code good enough to charge for (in VB6 especially). I also thought the crap programs I saw online that guys wanted $10 bucks for were never purchased. I hate having things stolen from me, so I just started calling my programs freeware. No license or GPL or LGPL or BSD, none of that ....just please GOD give me credit if you take something from me. I thought it would be nice to be doing anything so well somebody might pinch it from my code. Hasn't happened yet to my knowledge.
I think from a buinsess perspective it only helps to go FOSS when possible. The cost is gernally lower, the codebase is no longer more sloppy or bug filled. More maintainers in my mind means less of the flashy programmer working their way to fix issues quick and dirty. Even Microsoft has that problem.
The wider veiwing audience for open source code makes it better out of vanity. I might think I look fantastic, but you can't see me. If I said that while standing next to 10 male models you could all compare and I might need to spend more time at the gym. Its the same for code. If only I see it i could care how bad it is if it works and I can update it. Or my team can do the same. But if 12yr olds in Sri Lanka can post and message me with "Why do you code this crap XYZ when everybody uses ABC in this case?" makes 99% of coders better, or at least more informed.
Ok, I rambled there, so I will make more posts for this topic later on
Well, I am the geek in my family and group of friends. I out geek the other geeks around normally, so why not me. I also have been an avid windows user. I used 3.0, 3.1.....thru XP. I have seen vista and frankly I don't care for the look and feel.
Of course I felt the same about XP for the first 6 months it was out, but that was because my 98SE install was humming along nicely and was just where I wanted it. But I could get XP free through school so...I did and dove in. I loved it almost from the beginning. It was more stable and worked very well for me. I know not everyone says so, but I really liked the colors and overall feel. Sue me for being a geeky drone.
Linux I wanted to love for a while, like a guilty pleasure, but it never wanted to love me back. I tried a very old version of Red Hat back in 1997, but it would boot from a cd if I burned my own. One problem, I didn't own a CD burner and the only guy who did in my dorm in college charged $10 a copy and it was 2X.....I hated to wait even then so I tried other methods. Floppy suck boot, custom installs, it was nuts.
I did eventually kinda get it to work, but my video card was brand new, it wasn't really supported........my sound card didn't work..my lan card did though, so i could browse the internet, but it wasn't the same. I also tried FreeBSD, and was amazed at the speed and use of an older system to perform to great expectations. I think I had a P90 with 64mb ram and a 2mb vid card. My roomate had a cryix 233mmx and 128mb ram and my system was quicker at user tasks then his, it also booted faster.
After that i stayed away from linux, partly because I remembered it was so hard to do, mostly because I was back home and didn't have high speed internet to download iso images with over the next 4-6 years. I also had very good luck with windows, it crashed little and had the programs i was used to and liked and everybody else had access to.
Then in 2004 I came upon Knoppix. Loved it first boot, I will spare you the review because it has been done 1,000,000 times. I carried a cd around and showed people how cool it was and how far linux had come. They said "great, but its not windows" They were correct and I agreed, but I liked it. I figured it might be time to look at linux again.
I must be lazy because I didn't really get around to anything other then Knoppix until 2006 or so. I guess my cd folder had simply Mephis and Lindows and a couple versions of red hat, but I never USED any of them. I had been programming for windows (VB6, please try not to mock my weakness openly, I am fragile!) and had liked what I could do simply. I also had been reading and talking to more folks about FOSS and what it meant to programmers and technology folks.
I will not say I am the norm, but I figured I would never write code good enough to charge for (in VB6 especially). I also thought the crap programs I saw online that guys wanted $10 bucks for were never purchased. I hate having things stolen from me, so I just started calling my programs freeware. No license or GPL or LGPL or BSD, none of that ....just please GOD give me credit if you take something from me. I thought it would be nice to be doing anything so well somebody might pinch it from my code. Hasn't happened yet to my knowledge.
I think from a buinsess perspective it only helps to go FOSS when possible. The cost is gernally lower, the codebase is no longer more sloppy or bug filled. More maintainers in my mind means less of the flashy programmer working their way to fix issues quick and dirty. Even Microsoft has that problem.
The wider veiwing audience for open source code makes it better out of vanity. I might think I look fantastic, but you can't see me. If I said that while standing next to 10 male models you could all compare and I might need to spend more time at the gym. Its the same for code. If only I see it i could care how bad it is if it works and I can update it. Or my team can do the same. But if 12yr olds in Sri Lanka can post and message me with "Why do you code this crap XYZ when everybody uses ABC in this case?" makes 99% of coders better, or at least more informed.
Ok, I rambled there, so I will make more posts for this topic later on
Saturday, April 5, 2008
KBlogger
So lets see this KDE Blogger thing work. I think I will like since I do not have to open a browser first.
Fun Fun
Fun Fun
So this Gym Thing and I
So..I have this gym membership to a very fine gym. It is open 24 hours a day...I bet you can guess the place. I just don't go. In fact I have only been a handful of times in the last 2.5 years...most of which was 2 weeks back.
I love it, I just have not had much time to do so. I work 50-55hrs per week at my job if nothing keeps me there extra. I have a pregnant wife and a toddler at home. My commute is short but the hours with my family are few.
Am I wrong to want to spend some time with my family instead of become a gym rat?
I love it, I just have not had much time to do so. I work 50-55hrs per week at my job if nothing keeps me there extra. I have a pregnant wife and a toddler at home. My commute is short but the hours with my family are few.
Am I wrong to want to spend some time with my family instead of become a gym rat?
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