Comments (3) BBspot – Windows Vista Upgrade Decision Flowchart
This flow chart should help anyone that is thinking about upgrading to make the proper choice. FYI – The best linux distro out there that I have found is pclinuxos
No, it’s not a porn site and (as far as I know) is safe for work. This is a VMware alternative that is open source and appears to be free. Has a high memory overhead and as such I am not even gonna download it to try… yet. Gonna have to get a bit more memory first. But then will certainly get and try it. Sounds quite interesting. They are working on a Mac OS X version. Say they have it working in Alpha now. Also say Vista (BOO-HISS) runs fine. Supports most versions (?) of linux and they claim even OS2. 😉 Come to think of it, I believe I have a copy of that around here somewhere. Never run it but would be a hoot to see if it would run on my current box. Will see if I can find it…
Recover Data From a dead hard drive using ddrescue — Debian Admin
Sounds like a tool that should be in all system admin’s tool boxes/cd collections.
Gotta get off my butt and get the albums up here and the phonograph hooked up to the Macintosh and then to the computer to rip them to the hard drive. This looks interesting and seems to be just what I need. Now to find the room to set it all up…
Samba Team Asks Novell to Reconsider
Samba Team Asks Novell to Reconsider
The Samba Team disapproves strongly of the actions taken by Novell on November 2nd.
One of the fundamental differences between the proprietary software world and the free software world is that the proprietary software world divides users by forcing them to agree to coercive licensing agreements which restrict their rights to share with each other, whereas the free software world encourages users to unite and share the benefits of the software.
The patent agreement struck between Novell and Microsoft is a divisive agreement. It deals with users and creators of free software differently depending on their “commercial” versus “non-commercial” status, and deals with them differently depending on whether they obtained their free software directly from Novell or from someone else.
The goals of the Free Software community and the GNU GPL allow for no such distinctions.
Furthermore, the GPL makes it clear that all distributors of GPL’d software must stand together in the fight against software patents. Only by standing together do we stand a chance of defending against the peril represented by software patents. With this agreement Novell is attempting to destroy that unified defense, exchanging the long term interests of the entire Free Software community for a short term advantage for Novell over their competitors.
For Novell to make this deal shows a profound disregard for the relationship that they have with the Free Software community. We are, in essence, their suppliers, and Novell should know that they have no right to make self serving deals on behalf of others which run contrary to the goals and ideals of the Free Software community.
Using patents as competitive tools in the free software world is not acceptable. Novell, as a participant in numerous debates, discussions and conferences on the topic knew this to be the case. We call upon Novell to work with the Software Freedom Law Center to undo the patent agreement and acknowledge its obligations as a beneficiary of the Free Software community.
And if they don’t back out of this deal with the devil then they need to be fourced to quit bundling software that uses the GPL with their distro.
Sounds interesting. Gonna have to download it and give it a try.
IEEE Spectrum: The Firefox Kid
As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.†Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox’s.
Could change a lot of things. Quite a lot of things.
gNewSense Official Website | Main / gNewSense
Interesting sounding new distro. Just downloaded it and am gonna give it a spin.
Just finished downloading BigDaddy 0.93a and am burning it to cd now. Have a new computer with XP home just itching to be removed from it that I am gonna use in place with this one. Not quite state of the art but at 1.5 ghz is better than the 1 ghz that the one I am now on. The new one has 512 mb memory so will upgrade that a bit. Also has a built in dvd burner. May have to add a cd burner, will see if the dvd will also do the cds first though. 80 gb hard drive. Onboard video though also has a video card slot. May move my present card depending on how it does.
Just finished burning and is checking now. Closer and closer to bye-bye XP. 😉
Linux.com | Task management made simple with todo.txt and Tux ToDo
Tux ToDo is a lightweight, fast and simple todo list manager. Just downloaded it and after decompressing clicked on the executable and it launched within a second. Basic interface but it seems to have everything needed to keep a todo list up to date without much overhead. Just what the disorganized person needs.
Ubuntu 6.10 Beta Released | Linuxlookup
Time to fire up the cdburner again… 😉
Session Manager :: Mozilla Add-ons :: Add Features to Mozilla Software
If you use Mozilla and use multiple tabs/windows and have had the experience of having the browser quit on you, then not remembering what tabs were unread even after digging through history, then this is for you.
This extension adds a tool to the tool menu called Session Manager. If the browser crashes or you quit or close the main window instead of just the tab, when you restart you have the option of selecting from the last X # of sessions. Option is set to 1. I have mine set at 3 just to see how it does.
Another feature is closed tabs memory. With this little gem an incorrectly closed tab is only a Tools Menu > Session Manager > Closed Tabs click away. Preset option is 10 closed tabs and this seems reasonable to me so I left it as is.
Check out all of the options after install to enable Sessions Manage and set your prefs.
So far seems very stable. Don’t note any speed difference. Will have to try it with a couple of days worth of tabs and see how it does.
In my opinion this extension should become a part of the standard distro. A must have!
After downloading the latest Ubuntu distro and burning it to disk I started it up in the iBook. Fought with it for a while but as there was a storm going on at the time and all the wired computers were off, was unable to get to the instructions for making the airport extreme work so rebooted into OS X and waited till later.
Later came today. After updating the backup software I did a full backup to the firewire drive and rebooted into it just to check. Worked fine so then booted into the Ubuntu cd and started trying to get the wireless going. First step was to run an ethernet cable to it so I could do the apt-get thing as well as getting to the Ubuntu site with the instructions. 😉
First page was WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx – Community Ubuntu Documentation which told me to:
In a terminal, type lspci , which lists the PCI devices in your system. Mine is the same as the example and this will be a new install so next page was WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Dapper – Community Ubuntu Documentation.
Since this is a new install I skipped down to section 1.2.2 Obtaining the firmware.
It told me to enable the Universe repository and after following the links I did that. Next up was again in the terminal and was:
sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter which gets the package needed. Then taking the easy way out and using the script:
sudo /usr/share/bcm43xx-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh When it quits doing its thing we’re ready to setup the wireless card.
First up is to load it in the kernel: sudo modprobe bcm43xx then check to see what it was loaded as with iwconfig. Should be eth1.
Then see if you can scan the network: sudo iwlist ethX scan and then you get to pick and choose and restart till the damn thing works on reboot.
Not there yet but close. I still have to start the network manager and choose the wifi card as the network device but it IS able to find it and load it. So closer and closer.
Downloaded and installed the KDE base packages and am now back with my perfered desktop. Bit more tweeking and then to try to get my years of mail moved over…
lf382, Applications: A toolchain for transformation from paper to HTML
Good article on taking old books, scanning, OCR, modifying images and turning into html online docs. Using old or at least older equipment and FOSS for the entire process.
Lightweight Linux distro for old machines. Site says that they have a 486 with 16 meg of ram running all apps smoothly. That is COOL!
Downloading it now and will try it on my ex-gateway machine which I have forgotten the specs for… 😉
Techdirt: Microsoft Brags That Vista Will Be A Burden To European Companies
It’s amazing how a company can make so many stupid moves and folks still bow and scrape to them. Microsloth is now saying that the new Vista will require 55k new support jobs in the EU and this is supposed to be good news?
Idiots! Use FOSS and tell them where to stick their bug ridden virus sucking closed software! And laugh at them all the way to the bank…
Moving to freedom, one step at a time | Free Software Magazine
A journey from Microsoft slavery to FOSS freedom, one step at a time. He makes some good points and if you just have to use Windoze then by all means move to Firefox and other FOSS programs NOT owned by big biz. Good read and some good comments too.
Google Code – Updates: Announcing Tesseract OCR
Good show Google! Â Now for the community to get this sucker ready for prime time.
If you need a web calendar this looks good. Haven’t tried it yet so YMMV.
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