Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for quite a while. Seeing Ubuntu, the family album led me to check my notes and I realized I have been using it since before Hoary Hedgehog. I apparently started a few months after Warty Warthog was released. Prior to that, I mostly used Fedora Core and Red Hat, with a brief flirtation with Suse.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Yesterday saw the culmination of a month-long project: rebuilding one of our PCs to replace the ancient E-Machine that belonged to my mother. I had thought about doing this ever since I requisitioned the AMD64 that Jack that Jack bought to make a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) and never quite got working. I have been using the AMD64 as my desktop for months now, and adore it, so finally decided it was time to turn loose of my previous desktop.
( Read the rest of this entry » )Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
April 19, 2008 - Click on image for higher resolution version.
I updated to the Hardy Heron Ubuntu Linux release candidate today with remarkably little fuss.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
How To Redesign Your Desktop The ‘WOW’ Way tells you how to install new themes to your Ubuntu Desktop.
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Yesterday, I upgraded my Ubuntu Linux distribution using the instructions at Upgrading your existing Ubuntu installation. It took quite a while, since the servers were apparently getting hammered, but I now have an up-to-date installation on my AMD 64 box.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
After running Fedora Core 6 for several months, I installed EdgyEft, the latest Ubuntu release, released on October 26, 2006. I had run previous versions of Ubuntu, but gave FC6 a try because that is what Jack runs on his machines. However, I could never quite get rpm working correctly on my machine and when your package manager doesn’t work consistently, it makes the machine seem very fragile.
Edgy Eft installs Firefox 2, and I was glad to see that my favorite Firefox extensions installed without difficulty. Other than that, I haven’t noticed any big changes: it is just nice to be using apt-get again.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
I Want A Linux/Unix Utility To… organizes available tools for the Linux operating system by function.
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10 Linux commands you’ve never used has a nice list, with usage examples. I had, however, used several of them.
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I love this quote from A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection:
However, one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista’s content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that’s unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Yesterday, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) to my desktop. I had upgraded via a dist-upgrade last week, but decided to do a clean install do get rid of the cruft that I seem to accumulate on my PC as easily as breathing.
The install went smoothly, except for having to re-enter my POP and SMTP information into Evolution, which I use for mail.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Here is a review of my new Kodak EasyShare DX7590 Zoom camera, which is an early birthday present from Jack. It has lots more features than my DX3900, but the most important one to me is the 10x optical zoom. I was sad when I couldn’t find it on the list of gphoto (used as a driver by gthumb Linux photo software) supported cameras. However, it finally occurred to me to check dmesg, which usually reports whether Linux is “seeing” a USB device that has just been plugged in. When I didn’t see any messages for my camera, I checked and found that I hadn’t seated the USB cable properly to the docking station. The next time I attempted to access my new camera via gthumb, it was recognized as a USB PTB Class Camera and I was able to download my test photos.
So far, the only downside of my new camera versus my old camera is that most of the surface of the camera is filled with the controls, back LCD and lens. I am used to holding my old camera with my left hand and adjusting the controls with my right hand, and the new camera has to be held with the right hand. I imagine I will adjust.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Last week, my sister wrote and asked if I wanted her Tungsten T3 Palm, which had been superseded by a machine one of her clients had given her. Since I guessed the T3 would be miles better than my ancient Palm III, not to mention being in color instead of green and black, I wrote back “Yes!” My sister is one of those incredibly organized types who mails the same day she promises to do something, so it was delivered today.
I used the Palm OS Desktop HOWTO to find out how to sync the a USB Palm to my Linux desktop. It is much quicker than the serial sync process I was used to: in fact, I thought at first the sync must have failed it took so little time.
I was hoping that the screen of the T3 would be easier on my middle-aged eyes, and it is. I was also delighted to see what Bejeweled looks like in color, as I was not sure if my registered copy would install on the T3. Bejeweled comes in very hand when I am stuck waiting for the train to pass, or am standing in a long line at the store.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
After a long hiatus, Troubleshooters.com, a site with lots of Linux information as well as general trouble shooting tips, has updated its What’s New page.
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The Browser Security Test lets you know how secure it considers your browser and operating system combination. I think I found this via Lifehacker, a blog that provides a nice variety of tips about life and computers while managing not to hit you over the head with the fact that it is sponsored by Sony.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
I’ve hankered after a DVD burner for some time. Sunday, Jack installed one in my PC that he had ordered for me as a surprise. I burned a CD using it right away, but had to wait to test out the DVD burning until I picked up some DVD-Rs, which I did yesterday.
Since I was already used to using the K3b application to burn CDs, I was pleased to find that the process was exactly the same to burn DVDs: it just took longer. I usually expect to burn a CD in four or five minutes, and the DVD took about fourteen minutes. What surprised me was how much stuff I have in my /home directory. (For non-Linux users, the /home directory is where all the user files go.) I had more than would fit in 4.2 Gigabytes, which is the amount a DVD will hold. After a little trimming, I was able to back up all my music and digital photo files, as well as my spreadsheets and text files. It just astonishes me that I need a DVD to back up my important files when I can remember the days when all of my data would fit on a 20 meg fixed drive. You know, back when we were using carrier pigeons to exchange email.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
OpenOffice Calc Tips is a contribution to the OOo community, and looks like a great resource for people working with the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
The past few days, I have been trying out a program called WorkRave. This program monitors activity on your desktop in an attempt to prevent RSI problems. It has a set of three timers. One timer reminders you to take a short break every ten minutes or so. The second time reminds you to take a longer break every forty-five minutes or so and move away from you computer. The third keeps track of the amount of total time spent on the computer. Each of the times is configurable. The program includes a set of exercises to do at the start of the longer breaks. There is a Windows version (which I haven’t tried) as well as a Linux version.
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Sunday, while watching the Super Bowl, I was playing around with Jack’s computer, and noticed how much faster it seemed than my computer. Since Fedora Core 3 was installed on both machines, and they came from the same store front with the same specs, this seemed very odd. Could it possibly be because I had installed everything, including the kitchen sink, on my machine?
Trying to delete stuff seemed impossibly tedious, and since I was thinking about doing a complete re-install, why not try a new distribution? I had read lots of good things about Ubuntu and had downloaded the install CD some time ago, so I decided to give it a try.
( Read the rest of this entry » )Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Lots of astronomical desktop wallpapaer can be found at HubbleSite – Wallpaper. (via Sugerfused)
Originally published at Five Acres with a View. You can comment here or there.
Tech Books for Free maintains a list of free programming and computer science books available online.
