Linux thoughts

[jane]

Just another thought for anyone wanting to try Linux, there's always VMWare or VirtualBox. For VMWare you just need the free player and download one of the ready made appliances. With Ubuntu there's also Wubi which will do an installation within Windows.
I agree with Danni that Live CDs are great for testing out your system first but they can also be a godsend should you need to rescue an installation and there are even tools that can perform basic repairs on Windows partitions.
I'm trying out the new Backtrack3 Live CD which has some great inbuilt tools for security testing and networking in general. It's also a very cool looking kde based distro in it's own right with a number of inbuilt basic applications which can of course be built up using the package manager.
Linux isn't hard it's just a bit different. I would use it more but it's sadly lacking in good genealogy software/support and I really love my Paint Shop Pro...........just can't get my head around GIMP.

Horses for courses as they say.

J.

[Rik]

You'll have to collaborate with Danni on her treatise on Linux, Jane.

[jane]

 

I don't know about that. I'm no expert, I just like trying to break things experiment with the different systems. Basically I learn the hard way.........it's always the last tweak that breaks the camel's back!
I just learn as I go along (praise be to Google and forums) but I have gathered some good tips along the way.

J

[Rik]

Most of us aren't experts, Jane, but the beauty of forums is that they become greater than the sum of their collected parts. At least, that's my theory.

[jane]

Couldn't agree more especially when the contributions are helpful and supportive even though they may not provide an instant solution. I was looking at a forum recently where it seemed to be the norm for some members to ridicule the 'noobs' -yet they had no answers themselves to what I regarded as very valid questions. Probably a result of massive egos + miniscule brains. Sadly a common combination in some 'fraternities'. 

J

[Rik]

Hopefully, we do a bit better at welcoming new members and making them feel part of the family. It's certainly what we aim to achieve.

I've been associated with forums for many years now, and I've learnt from others, and passed on my own knowledge in return. It's one of the great joys of the computing fraternity that help if so freely give. I joined the Adobe forum on Compuserve many years ago, looking for a printer driver for an HP printer which HP themselves couldn't supply. A member in the States wrote one for me over the weekend. You can't ask for more than that.

[Sebby]

Couldn't agree more especially when the contributions are helpful and supportive even though they may not provide an instant solution. I was looking at a forum recently where it seemed to be the norm for some members to ridicule the 'noobs' -yet they had no answers themselves to what I regarded as very valid questions. Probably a result of massive egos + miniscule brains. Sadly a common combination in some 'fraternities'.

I hate forums like that, where the knowledgeable ones (who often aren't as knowledgeable as they think) have a chip on their shoulder. You won't find that happening here.

[LesD]

lesD what is going on???

a 2700 on its side , on the floor ??   just waiting to catch every stray bit of dust within 100 yards,

come on, get it off the floor and stood up, better ventilation, runs cooler (always a good thing )and less dust

Nuff said! 

The Netgear DG384 had only been wall mounted (see just above the 2700) a week or three when along came the 2700 less the foot for standing it up. It would not exhaust my skills to make one its just finding the time especially with being challenged over UNIX v Linux on this forum! 

I managed to add a third IDC 40 way ribbon cable header to the single way (two headed) ribbon cable I was using yesterday by gingerly removing the end connectors form another single way ribbon and nipping one of them back onto the first single way ribbon in my vice so that now I have the 40 GB HDD on IDE1 and a 16x DVD ROM drive and a 32x CD ROM drive on IDE2. The thing boots up with CD ROM support from my W'98 Startup floppy sweet as you like and can see and read all three IDE drives a treat now with my modified ribbon cable for the optical drives.  This and a minor repair to the leg of a spare pair of glasses I keep in the garage for the many occasions that I forget to take a pair in there with me is the sum and substance of this evening acheivements not counting washing up etc.

I will get round to sorting out a bit of a shelf/ bracket for my 2700 to put it roughly where the Netgear is but just like IDNet it is sitting there doing the business no trouble at all and with me it is pretty much things that scream at me that get attention!   

[Rik]

it is pretty much things that scream at me that get attention!   

Same here, Les.

[LesD]

lesD what is going on???

a 2700 on its side , on the floor ??   just waiting to catch every stray bit of dust within 100 yards,

come on, get it off the floor and stood up, better ventilation, runs cooler (always a good thing )and less dust

For merlin a picture of my router standing up! 

I will get round to sorting out a bit of a shelf/ bracket for my 2700 to put it roughly where the Netgear is

Well today with the auspices of my employer in the way of a bit of metal bashing I have completed a small wall hanging shelf for my 2Wire 2700. The wooden brackets would be the better for a splash of aluminium paint but just when I wanted some there was none to be found!  Ah well a job for another day.

I also came across this today but maybe this is the wrong thread for it.
If so you all powerful Admin types will put me right I am sure.

http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com/pdf/BT_Business_Hub_tech_spec.pdf

I don't know if this link has been posted before or not.
I found it when I was looking for dimensions to do my metal bashing! 



[attachment deleted by admin]

[Sebby]

Very nice, Les, a job well done.

[Dangerjunkie]

Hi Guys,

Les, I wouldn't trust scandisk to give me a health indication of a drive. It will test a volume but not the system areas or the drive mechanics. Most modern drives have spare sectors they use to replace bad ones and lie to the machine that the drive is fine so a failing drive can pass a scandisk until it suddenly goes pete tong. Most manufacturers offer a diagnostic tool on their websites that will give the drive a thorough workout, run its internal diagnostics, check the sector replacement statistics and give you a yay or nay. The Seagate tool is called Seatools http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

I'd second Danni's vote for k3b for disk burning in KDE. If you are in Gnome the file manager (nautilus) has built-in, basic cd burning capabilities.

Jane, I was in a recent discussion about virtualisaton. Most people seemed to recommend running the machine on Linux with the Windows as the guest OS rather than havign Windows as the main and Linux as the guest. The main reasons given were that it is then easy to roll Windows back to a previous snapshot if it gets infected, that a virus in Windows won't take down the Linux install if it corrupts the OS and that Linux allows multiple IP sub configurations on network interfaces so you can have different IP addresses and also mix IPv4 and IPv6 if you need.

Cheers,
Paul.

[LesD]

The Seagate tool is called Seatools http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the memory nudge. I have in fact used this very utility in the past but had forgotten all about it.

I will take my chances with my (under a tenner) HDD as it does seem to be OK for the time being and it won't be doing anything of a critical nature.   

So once I have decided what to do about the CMOS battery issue and I have some ideas about this, I will give Linux a whirl and see what I make of it.  After that if I am a convert I will risk it on one of my main machines, stick XP Pro on the Jetway one and most likely give it to my daughter as their desktop is a struggling old 500 MHz machine! 

PS Did you ever get that Master Socket sorted. 

[Rik]

You realise, Les, that we'll all want one now.

[LesD]

You realise, Les, that we'll all want one now.

Shall I draw a diagram with a few instructions?   


Well this evening I bit the bullet and swapped the two diodes on the Jetway mobo that are down by the CMOS battery. I pulled two from another old mobo and used those rather than two from my tin of old semiconductors. I put a new CR2032 CMOS battery in when I had the mobo re-installed and everything connected up again. To my relief I could still get into the BIOS and configure settings plus it all booted up again as it was doing previously from my W'98 startup floppy disk. All the drives were there and the settings in the BIOS remained after the machine had been switched off for a little while so the CMOS battery was working. 

Only time will tell if this has fixed the premature discharge problem so I have my

Changing these diode was a fiddly task and they are normal sized components. I needed my strongest glasses and a steady hand. Some of the nearby PCB tracks were like threads. It's not one of my neatest jobs but the mobo does still work and with a bit of luck it may have fixed the problem.

I did compare the forward and reverse resistance of the replacement diodes with those of the ones that I took out and there was certainly a difference. The reverse resistance of the replacements was much higher so hopefully it will follow that the leakage will be less. 

What do you reckon, I am in with a chance or not? 

[Rik]

Pass. You're way over my head by now.

[MoHux]

Shall I draw a diagram with a few instructions?   
Well this evening I bit the bullet and swapped the two diodes on the Jetway mobo that are down by the CMOS battery. I pulled two from another old mobo and used those rather than two from my tin of old semiconductors. I put a new CR2032 CMOS battery in when I had the mobo re-installed and everything connected up again. To my relief I could still get into the BIOS and configure settings plus it all booted up again as it was doing previously from my W'98 startup floppy disk. All the drives were there and the settings in the BIOS remained after the machine had been switched off for a little while so the CMOS battery was working. 
Only time will tell if this has fixed the premature discharge problem so I have my
Changing these diode was a fiddly task and they are normal sized components. I needed my strongest glasses and a steady hand. Some of the nearby PCB tracks were like threads. It's not one of my neatest jobs but the mobo does still work and with a bit of luck it may have fixed the problem.
I did compare the forward and reverse resistance of the replacement diodes with those of the ones that I took out and there was certainly a difference. The reverse resistance of the replacements was much higher so hopefully it will follow that the leakage will be less. 

What do you reckon, I am in with a chance or not? 

Reckon so Les, unless you put one in the wrong way round!!    You're a braver man than I ...........

Only time will tell if this has fixed the premature discharge problem

Dunno 'bout the MoBo, but it did for me!! 

Mo

[LesD]

Reckon so Les, unless you put one in the wrong way round!!    You're a braver man than I ...........

Not brave Mo, maybe foolhardy but I have been building electronic things since I was 13 (a four valve super-hetrodyne radio I recall being my first) but I don't get too much practice these days! 

Despite my diodes not being the wrong way round my efforts appear to be in vain. 
The clock had frozen overnight. I know this to be the early sign of the battery giving up.

I found a typical circuit for this bit of a mobo and the cathodes of the diodes, one from the battery the other from the "5 Volt" rail, are commoned at the CMOS reset jumper. With this jumper off the impedance the CMOS battery sees looks pretty much infinite but with it on it's still high, like 100's of kilohm's but it ought to be 10 or more Megohms based or the capacity of these 3 Volt cells. I pulled a couple of capacitors and checked them but they were not the culprits so I put them back again.

During the evening I left my main machine downloading Ubuntu 8.04 and got it on a CD so once I had my tinkering machine up and running again I stuck Ubuntu on it. I did it without Networking as its getting late but it did install OK. The wallpaper will take some getting used to till I can find something more to my taste but it works and I have had a paddle round to see what was familiar. I found the likes of /bin and etc and saw things during boot like "Grub" being loaded. "Grub" like Grep and all those other weird and wonderful UNIX names that the youths of the day, who conceived it, must have thought were the bees knees at the time! 

Still I am not going to jump to conclusion the Desktop did what it was supposed to do so that's all I could ask. As I say adjusting to it has to be done with as open a mind as I can muster!

[LesD]

Still I am not going to jump to conclusion the Desktop did what it was supposed to do so that's all I could ask. As I say adjusting to it has to be done with as open a mind as I can muster!

OK I am warming to this OS albeit slowly and most likely because it is a new toy and I can work it to a degree! 

Here I am posting from Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5 (Beta! I must remember not to do any on-line banking with it).
Mozilla and Firefox have always been for the enthusiasts and coming from the corporate background to be avoided in my humble opinion     but as Netscape, the browser I used to use in UNIX is no more, I guess this will have to do. That said apart from the Beta bit I does seem OK so far.

I have had the Terminal Window open and run man, ps -ef | grep gnome*  and used kill -9 wxyz to "Close" the Terminal Window and yes I do know there are easier ways!  This was just for old times sake but there does seem to be a dearth of the powerful UNIX commands, well man is not reporting them. Maybe some were HP UX specific but I am sure some that I looked for were available in Sun UX and Redhat - OK I have used Linux before but it was some time ago and from what I see now, I have to agree it has moved on.  It had to or die I guess.

I was surprised to see nothing in the root directory! 
Has boot sort of replaced it?

Ah yes where is Paul? I have had two or three floppy disk empty ones and DOS ones in my floppy drive and I get zilch. A right click Properties Rescan rattles the drive but I don t (oh oh where is the single comma below the @ key? All I get is a beep, I thought it was all going too well. I have just found that pressing it twice gives you one ´ honest it's bizarre but it's true. I will try 4 presses ´´ hows that two of them well I never) remember the ¨don t¨ with no comma, well to continue - see anything - no attempt to read with an error message, no offer to Format, nothing. This is the floppy drive that has been booting me up into the W´98 ¨DOS¨ environment for days so I know it works not some plug-in USB one. All very reminiscent of my fun and games with UNIX proper. Does a floppy need a driver? the UNIX ffloppy add in comes to mind from days of yore.

I am sure you folks will soon get me back on the straight and narrow

So far my impression is that is does work OK´ish and the quirks I have encountered I am sure can be sorted out. Maybe it´s me, conditioned by the drab look of the opening desktop but I am left thinking that ¨it´s a poor man´s alternative!

I have Windows 2000 for machines that are not up to XP and right now if I was going to give an old machine a new lease of life that´s what I would go for but don´t give up on me yet I am pressing the comma below the @ key twice as if I had been doing it all my life! Stopping doing it  back in XP might be the problem now! 

P.S. BTW I have not forgotten that Paul´s thread is about Linux and the BT Speed Tester so I have just been there to be told that I don´t have the Java Applets Enabled in this browers and being BT they did not offer me a way.
How do I get Java - visit the Java site I guess - do they have them for Linux?   

[Ted]

Hi Les
Try and mount the floppy drive in a terminal. i.e. mount /media/floppy
I don't use Ubuntu so it may be different for you.

Java shouldn't be a problem. The easiest way to install it is through the inbuilt package manager or you could download it and install manually, its not difficult.

Strange thing with the keyboard, check in the "control panel" to make sure you have the correct layout selected.

[D-Dan]

I jumped into this thread rather late (like just now), and whilst I read page one (and some of page 2), I got bored with reading and jumped straight to the end (not that the posts were boring, you understand. Just that my attention span reached critical mass).

Anyway, one tip for installing which is something I've learned to do as a matter of course for anyone using ATI graphics cards with Linux.

i) when the restricted drivers tray icon appears - ignore it.
ii) go to the package manager and uninstall compiz (in it's entirety)
iii) still in package manager, install envyng

Let envyng install the ATI drivers for you.

If you don't, you may find that next time you boot you'll be left with a cursor on a white screen, and it's the devils own work to fix.

My advice is pre-emptive, rather than reactive. Ignore it at your peril

Steve

[LesD]

My advice is pre-emptive, rather than reactive. Ignore it at your peril

Steve

Ah the truth will out!

This sounds like the UNIX I know and love! 

I have a Java install bin file on the Linux desktop that is back at home. I am at my grand-daughter's now, using her Mummy's brand new spanking wireless Laptop with a bright and its airy XP look and feel as opposed to the barren desert look of my default Linux one but trying not to be negative I did read the install instructions for my Java bin file on the download website before leaving home and the install for later. Very UNIXy I have to say with some chmod etc to do. I just knew there would be.  Good job that I have been there and done that before me thinks. 

I will have another go at the floppy later Ted. It was just that I was told that everything was point and click these days but so far my pointing and clicking has not been accurate enough! 

[D-Dan]

The beauty is - once you get the basic system set up - it pretty much is just point and click.

Initial install to get everything working, despite a little, basic command line stuff, is still faster and less dangerous than a Windows install IMO, provided you know where the pitfalls are (such as the ATI drivers issue).

Having said that - the vast majority of stuff just works on Linux, unlike Windows where, having installed 100's of megabytes of stuff, you then have to go in search of hundreds more megabytes of drivers and updates before it's considered safe.

And that's before you get around to applications, many of which you will find there and ready to use on Linux.

Steve

PS - when you have the system up and running to your liking, may I recommend installing TORCS (from the package manager) for a little bit of no-nonsense driving game fun

[Ted]

I will have another go at the floppy later Ted. It was just that I was told that everything was point and click these days but so far my pointing and clicking has not been accurate enough! 

Personally i just open a file manager and mount the drive (2 clicks)can't remember the last time i needed to though. seems that more system makers are moving away floppy drives these days, its not unusual for them to be an optional extra. With the introduction of bootable CDs and DVDs floppies do appear to be on the way out.
You can still use the floppy to boot from as long as the Bios is configured to.

[LesD]

Hi Ted,

"Exiled" to Computer Discussion I see. Thanks for the PM I have found my way back. (Who said pity!) 

I have been otherwise engaged today and only managed a minor attempt at getting a floppy mounted by pointing and clicking. I found what I thought was going to be the answer even offered me an option to mount it but I must be missing something (probably brain cells) as I could not get it to work. There's always another day.

You asked for a comparison and it's early days yet but for first impressions I offer this:

The workings, if not the appearance of the Ubuntu Linux Gnome desktop I have, is more user friendly than the UNIX Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and Visual User Environment (VUE) that I had all those years ago. 

I think from this very primitive look that I have had that drivers for things like my nVidia AGP graphics card could be more difficult to get installed properly than in Windows simply because I was offered an update, took it and now I get grumbles about there being a restricted driver installed. What this means and what to do about it is not obvious or intuitive if you know what I mean and I am still none the wiser as to whether I can change the screen resolution or not! 

Most likely this is down to my ignorance of this OS as I am an, "if all else fails read the book" man! 

My recollection of the UNIX boxes was that one of the first option in the POST when they started to boot was to choose your Graphics option i.e. way before the OS was up and running. There were about 10 or so to cycle through to pick from to get the one you were after. After that is was set in stone but I may be wrong. Sometimes I am amazed at what was day to day bread and butter to me that I cannot recall in detail now, just a few years later! 

I am impressed by the list of software that came in with the install. 
Not being familiar with the names of things or even opened very many of them I cannot give an opinion on how good any of it is compared to what we had in UNIX. What I can say is that anything of significance had to be bought and paid for so for free has to be a plus I guess. 

I agree with you that there is a move to phase out floppy drives but I don't see that as a reason for accessing the one I have as justification for it being difficult or shall we say not obvious to me just yet. That said I would not want to be without one or a W'98 startup disk. Nothing like it to test the bare bones, because for that a PSU, MoBo, floppy drive and one of these diskettes is all you need! 

I still have not psyched myself up to doing anything with the Java bin file I downloaded yesterday. I must have another go to see if I can fathom out how to install Java with the package manager. 

There we are as I say early days and first impression. 

You will have most likely gathered by now that I never use three words where ten will do so expect more verbal diarrhoea to come!