Linux

Bodhi, I am enlightened.

 Linux
Apr 122012
 

I got my Linux Format magazine a few weeks ago and I tried their live version of Bodhi Linux on my desktop. I noticed during the installation process that I was given a choice for desktop installation, a touch \ tablet installation  and a laptop \ netbook installation. This sort of choice seems unusual for a live distro.

So the other night I started Unetbootin and popped the ISO on to a thumb drive. Plugged it in and booted up. My old Asus 701 netbook burst into life and I have to say it worked very well. It found the right driver for my in-built wi-fi chipset with little issue. In the past, previous distros that I have tried have had issues.
The only issue with the live version was it did not seem to close down properly. This was corrected once I actually installed to the in-built internal solid state disk.

 

I also noticed that the windows that make up the configuration pages fill the whole height of the screen, which is sort of an issue when the menu bar is there at the top. It is a little awkward trying to move the window. I found the default location of the close button was right on top of the ribbon bar. So rather than trying to move the window to the left or right I moved the ribbon bar to the right side of the screen.
The E17 desktop default is a little annoying because it removes the minimize/maximize on the top bar of the open window and there also does not appear to have a resize button in the bottom right corner. I don't know why people think this makes things more usable, because really it doesn't. It does allow users to customize some of these items and to add them back (which I did when possible)

The most immediate difference I noticed between the desktop and the netbook installation was on the desktop there were penguins marching around the screen and dropping down from the top of the screen.
It is amazing how lightweight they have made the distro.

I will give it a try and see if it is a keeper. .

 

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Now Windows7 dual boot with Linux and say sorry

 Linux
Nov 022010
 

My next challenge was to configure Windows 7 to share the drive with Linux and dual boot. I normally add a second drive but seeing as I have a 1 TB drive I chose to partition.

Windows 7 has added a a nice partitioning tool. In the past I had used the installer to do the partitioning. I was more nervous this time. I did some checking and some people said to let Windows do this. In the end I decieded that the worst thing would be that I would have no Windows on my hard drive.

This cheered me up and I clicked give me the spare space available on the drive, I was shocked because it reported about 450GB available. That did not seem right. So I did some checking and found that  you need to go through a whole process of finding all the unmovable blocks. Partially due to the restore points automatically made on installation first use. So I turned off my restore points and then did a cleanup of unused files several iterations of this later I was at approx 800GB available.

I gave approx 130GB to the Windows partition and the rest I made blank.
I started to install OpenSuse 11.3 it started asking me all the questions then it gave a warning that the there could be an issue because I was starting the partition above 127GB into the disk. I did some checking and it appears this is a bios issue on older hardware and that is why it was only a warning.
Taking the safe road I repartitioned to give Windows 100GB.
The install went smooth after that my computer now dual boots both Windows 7 and for now  Linux Mint 9.
Here are some links I used to solve my issue.

partitioning-hard-drive-running-ubuntu
how-to-shrink-windows-7-boot-partition-with-unmovable-files

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731894.aspx
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/69564-index-enable-disable.html

This is What I learned from all this
1) Linux on a 2nd hard drive especially on an older computer is usually easier.
2) If your computer has  1 TB (or so) drive that was configured RAID from the vendor and will not boot a Linux disk then check the AHCI setting
3) When changing to AHCI from Raid. Backup all your data first because it will clean install Windows once it figures out you messed things up.
4) You have unmovable files because of the way Windows works and it sticks them in the middle of your disk.

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Hello, HP. Do you read me, HP?

 Linux
Oct 262010
 

Some dying gurgles from my old, used Dell Optiplex 1998 caused a situation where I could justify getting a new computer. I thought all the computers could move one down, so my old desktop went to the workshop and I got a new  6 core “HP 9000″ with a 1TB hard drive, 6GB ram and, [...]

The addiction is not satisfied

 Linux
Jul 072010
 

I spent the weekend updating and installing Linux on my workshop computer, amongst other things. I then turned to my EEEPC. For a while I knew that somewhere along the way that my EEEBuntu installation was screwed up. I think that some upstream updates had come through that were not compatible with the EEE701. EEEBuntu [...]

That was a BSD of an installation cage match

 Linux
Jul 042010
 

So six months had rolled around since my last install, it was a long weekend and the need to install a new variant of Linux came over me. I felt it was time to update my workshop computer. It is an old Pentium 3 Dell Optiplex Gx something with 512Mb Ram but has a 250Gb [...]

Leaving Deb-by for openSUSE-ie Part 2

 Linux
Jan 222010
 

It took several hours to download the 4.2GB file, check the file and burn it to a DVD. Installation was very similar to before except the screens looked older, and not quite as flashy. The other difference I noticed is that I was given a choice to install Gnome, KDE or other. I chose to [...]

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Leaving Deb-by for openSUSE-ie Part 1

 Linux
Jan 202010
 
Leaving Deb-by for openSUSE-ie Part 1

Around every 6 months I back up everything and look at updating my distro. My last update was in the summer when I tried updating Mint and ended up with Ubuntu. Well, I heard on the Linux Outlaws Podcasts that some listeners said great things about openSUSE and how it just worked. I got my [...]

VectorLinux on a Dell 3800 Inspiron laptop – Final answer

 Linux
Oct 302009
 

Continuing my search for a suitable Linux for a Dell 3800 Laptop… So my first step was to add Internet to the computer. I found a Linksys laptop wi-fi card that I had bought from the local Factory Direct (a computer outlet store) a while ago and that was still floating around. I have a [...]

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Two monitors, Linux and an ATI card. Woes!

 Linux
Aug 282009
 

About a month ago we decided to upgrade to the latest Linux Mint on some of our computers here. The installation on my wife’s system went really fast and really well. In fact, I have to say the end-to-end installation for Linux Mint was very quick. It was the quickest of the distros that I [...]

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