"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Well, for me it is. YMMV, of course, but ANY time I can get a third party app that works as well or, preferably, better than a Me$$y$oft app, I snap it right up.
Zim Desktop Wiki. I installed it as a portable on a flash drive. Handy for me. Available in flavors for various OSes. Also handy.
Nice. Just booted a lil EePC running “Puppy Slacko” for the first time in over a year. Sweet lil baby lappy with a lean Linux distro. When it was running its preinstalled Win7 OS (still available, but who cares?) it was a bit of a (baby) slug. Not posting this from it, because I’ve not swapped out its wireless card, and the one that came installed is. . . still a slug. Need to get that done, eh?
Playing with one of the lil netbooks mentioned in the Playtoys post, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how nimble it is with Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce. It’s actually much more responsive than any of the other distros I’ve played with on the thing, so responsive in fact that I might just leave this distro on it for use. Heck, it works so smoothly even without the planned memory upgrade that I’m almost tempted to cancel the memory upgrade for this one. Almost. More memory is almost always better (especially since I found a source for the same memory modules that is less than 2/3 the cost of buying them from the manufacturer–Amazon, of course).
This lil thing is actually useful for more than just web browsing, now. Pretty amazing.
…in so very many ways, but (I tell myself), I just can’t help myself. *heh*
So, I have an HP wireless adapter for an HP Wireless Printing whatchamacallit thingy to use making some ordinary USB-connected printer into a printer that’s connected to one’s wireless network. *meh* Worked OK, but has been superseded. Just gathering dust so… will it work as an ordinary wireless adapter to connect a Windoze computer to the Wireless network? Urm, no.
*pouts*
OK, so fire up Linux Mint in a VM. Hey! Mint sees the thing as a Realtek wireless adapter and will use it to connect to my wireless network! Cool.
So now I’m duplexing the VM while connecting with only this lil toy’s internal wireless adapter in the Windows 7 host. I need to “Minty-fy” a more capable RW machine and use this there. Fun.
I saw an article on building a Linux-controlled “Corretto” coffee roaster and thought, “Cool, but where would I put everything in our kitchen? I’d have to build on an addition!”
*heh*
Still, one of the things that gives Henry Ward Beecher a claim to historical immortality that rival’s his sister’s is his appreciation of good coffee:
“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.” – Henry Ward Beecher
And, after reading the above paean to a good cuppa joe and singing a few verses of O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree i9n appreciation of The Holy Brew (#1) myself, almost the article cited above persuadeth me to do a “Linux Coffee Roaster” build of my own… Almost. I’d still need to build that addition onto the house.
Readers (all both of you) here may recall my fondness for Puppy Linux. The new “standard” Puppy, version 5.2.8 is Ubuntu-compatible, but still the same lean Puppy that loads from a CD or flash drive and runs in RAM. Very slick. The ONLY thing to hold against it is that it doesn’t do palm check on my touchpad on this lil lappy when I have a mouse plugged in. But seriously, that’s the only negative I can think of. Update: *sigh* I feel like such an idiot. It was right in front of my face… just in a different place than where I was looking. Turned the touchpad off. No complaints whatsoever, now. 🙂
Newer? Puppy 5.3, “Slack Puppy” based on Slackware. Notalotadiff, really, except for repositories and a couple of cool utilities (the Frisbee network setup applet is no better or worse than the usual Puppy network setup utility, but it’s as easy, which is to say, super easy-peasy). One thing I just noticed that I might end up down-checking 5.3 for is strangely lower volume levels. I may just have to fiddle with something. (Yep. Adjusted things via the Alsa setup wizard. All fine, now.)
Very nice is the simplest Flash setup of any ‘nix distro I’ve used to date. When I specified I wanted to install Opera, Puppy offered to install Flash, installed it and… that’s all.
Anywho, ‘s’cool. I think I’ll put this version on a flash drive like I have with Puppy 5.2.8 so I can carry a “computer” around in my shirt pocket. Any computer that will boot from a flash drive can then have a customized Puppy, with my saved files, needed apps, etc., right there. Yeh, yeh, I have a bunch of stuff “in the cloud,” but sometimes, it’s really, really handy to be able to have another OS to boot someone’s computer to, and keeping all MY files (and activities) segregated–and back in my pocket when I leave–can be a very, very Good Thing.
BTW, here’s a screenshot from my flashdrive Puppy 5.2.8:
Further Update: Another neat version: Puppy “Racy” 5.1.111. Pretty cool initial setup wizard making the already simple Puppy setup even easier. I do NOT like the absence of some repositories (particularly the Ubuntu repositories) in the default installation menu. Notaproblem, really, but just a lil flaw in an otherwise superb build.
I’ve been in an email/phone dialog with someone who wants to make over an older P-4 computer as a Media Center PC. He wants to use Plex running in a Linux environment.
Well, I may be close to doing just that for him. In fact, it may even be easier using the distro I would prefer to use than using the distro he has suggested and the procedure he found. Using Ubuntu, as the Pex site suggests, requires editing a system file. OK, that’s actually quite easy to do, and in fact can be done entirely from within the package manager itself, but still, using Linux Mint 11 (which is Ubuntu-based) is easier still, since the code line suggested by the Plex site fails and the package manager in Mint already has the source for Plex listed… Just one or two steps easier, not a biggie, really.
But… what I’d really like to do is take the Puppy Linux 5.2.8 distro I have installed to run off a USB flash drive and install Plex to it. Looks like it’ll have to be compiled from a Slackware versions, though, since Puppy just doesn’t seem to want to use the Ubuntu/Minty sources. *sigh* A couple more steps. I may just be too lazy for that. *heh* But… the OS and media server both running off a flash drive? That would be cool.
Saw this on the “home” page* for my lil toy 15.6″ Asus, an OK lil thing with notalotta horsepower but just enough for common tasks, and wondered…
“The ASUS P50IJ notebook is the best business computing companion you could ever own…”
Really? What about that sexy slave girl with the abacus over there? Hmmm?
OK, I use Windows. I have to for various reasons. But I still have some ‘nix boxes–mostly VMs–because I really like some of the Linux and BSD distros that are out, and I just like FOSS period.
I also like Windows 7, for the most part. Definitely THE best desktop OS from Microsoft since Win2K Pro, IMO.
But.
Showed Son&Heir just ONE of the advantages of a modern ‘nix OS. I had done some work on a Toshiba A205 that required putting a new OS on it (long story), so I installed Linux Mint 10–based on Ubuntu 10.04 but much slicker and with all the multimedia codecs necessary for an ordinary Windows user to be able to make the switch easily. So, booted the thing. About 30 seconds. Shut it down. About 6 seconds. Yep. To fully off.
Heck, it takes one of my Win7 boxes 45 seconds to resume from sleep mode! And shutting it off? Longer.
Advantage: Linux Mint.
BTW, while it’s a really cool distro to use in converting an average Windows user over to a ‘nix OS, PC-BSD 8.2 is just too cool for school.
I’ve written pretty often in the last year about Windows 7. That’s not necessarily because I feel it’s the best answer out there for everyone but because I pretty much need to use it and previous versions frequently enough to be able to offer help to users and because I have one application (yes one) that both has no suitable replacement in a ‘nix OS and only almost runs w/o a hitch using WINE under a ‘nix OS. Oh, and Windows Media Center beats the socks off any ‘nix offering in the category for tuning TV.
That said (that I need to use Windows for my own reasons), I really prefer either Linux Mint 10 or PC-BSD 8.1, the two slickest, most complete ‘nix OSes that don’t come with an Apple Tax and Apple Straitjacket attached. For most folks, Linux Mint 10 would be all they’d need in an operating system, since most folks use their computers for