Gone Wireless

[D-Dan]

I managed to convince my brother to dump his, quite frankly atrocious, ADSL provider and switch to fibre optic. The switch is due to happen on Wednesday.

This left me with a minor problem, in that extending the wired network to my room would be considerably more difficult than a simple telephone extension cable and moving his router (given that I don't have the luxury of laying Cat6 cable all over his home) and so my only option was a wireless network card. I'm pleased to say it's working happily now in readiness for Wednesday.

And not to extol the virtues of Linux any more, but installation time Windows 7, 20 minutes. Installation time Linux Mint - not required. It just works

Steve

[Niall]

You don't have to install Linux? That's cool.

[D-Dan]

You don't have to install Linux? That's cool.

lol.

Though, not to be pedantic, but technically, no you don't. Linux will hapilly run from a network if you are so inclined

Steve

[D-Dan]

Just a quicky on this, and feel free to move it again

I was watching the stats on the wireless connection having moved the current router back to where the new one is likely to be, and there was a chance that the wireless signal would throttle my connection down to less than the internet connection (26 Mbs wireless compared to an estimated 27 Mbs internet), and so I searched for a cheap solution.

Now, my wireless card has a remote aerial on a lead, but this should work where the aerial is attached directly to the card. Wrap it in tin foil.

Yep - strange but it works. I've gone from 26 Mbs to 36 Mbs wireless for next to no cost (well, actually, it is no cost to me, since I used my brothers foil).

I have to admit to being dumbfounded that it worked, but it did.

Steve

[Ted]

You don't have to install Linux? That's cool.

Indeed, no installation necessary. In fact you can run linux on a box with no hard drive installed at all. It'll run off a CD or USB stick quite happily. If you want to see how fast a non installed OS can be, try Puppy Linux, you'll be shocked, it's like lightning. Handy to have in your pocket if you're using someone else's machine.

[D-Dan]

Indeed, no installation necessary. In fact you can run linux on a box with no hard drive installed at all. It'll run off a CD or USB stick quite happily. If you want to see how fast a non installed OS can be, try Puppy Linux, you'll be shocked, it's like lightning. Handy to have in your pocket if you're using someone else's machine.

I did it with a complete install of Linux Mint, including Wine and the one essential Windows app that I would need. It was my entire system for 3 months, all I had to do was find some willing hardware to stick the pendrive in.

Steve

[Niall]

I'd heard people talking about booting from USB, etc, but I was never sure if it could actually be run in that way. I was planning on trying Linux on my laptop, but it took it's own life about 3 days after I downloaded it

I might buy a cheap laptop at some point next year and try it on that

[D-Dan]

Niall,

If you just want to give it a shot, why not install VirtualBox and install Linux to that. It'll give you a taster.

Steve

Edit: Just for fun I installed Linux to VirtualBox running on my Win 7 host, then installed VirtualBox to the Linux install, and installed XP on the Linux host, and the XP install still worked just fine

[Lance]

Just for fun?? You need to get out more!!!!