Livin' La Vida Linux

I finally have the speedy laptop computer I knew this one could be. I mentioned before how I pulled out the original hard drive containing my Windows Vista installation and replaced it with a new drive onto which I loaded PCLinuxOS Mini-Me 2008. This is the first Linux distro I have found that supports everything in my Gateway MT3705 lappy, and this baby now boots up quickly, has so far run smoothly (with a couple of notable exceptions that were my fault), and is very stable. I also have toyed around more with Compiz-Fusion, and the snazzy desktop effect it gives are phenomenal. Still, they are a bit experimental, so for everyday use, I have C-F turned off.

I like PCLOS Mini-Me, as it gives you a quick, minimalist setup, onto which you can use apt-get or Synaptic to install whatever other programs you like. Using the Wine libraries, I even have the Windows version of Adobe Photoshop running on this computer. Not bad!

Another distribution of Linux, the venerable Suse Linux, is now owned by Novell. They have put together some clever spoofs of the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads by Apple. They are pretty good, so I figured I'd share them here. Besides, wouldn't you rather have a babe like Linux working with you than the stodgy PC guy or the "thinks he's hip" Mac guy?


PC & Mac get caught running Linux!


Are there more than 2 choices?


Pleather! Hahahaha

Low Tech Solution to a High Tech Problem

Sometimes a little ingenuity and a simple approach beats a high-tech solution. Tonight, I thought I would get fancy and try out some experimental display drivers on the new PCLinuxOS installation I put on this laptop. Specifically, I was toying with Compiz-Fusion settings. Compiz-Fusion is a software subsystem that gives you all sorts of fancy graphic effects. However, I changed one setting that hosed the display. All I could see was a black screen with a few white blocks here and there, along with the mouse pointer. Uh-Oh!

Since I have spent a few hours downloading and installing various software packages, I didn't want to start all over again with a reinstallation, but knew that I had that option if I couldn't find any other way to get this problem reversed. Knowing that I have that ace in the hole, along with the other hard drive with Windows Vista intact, was a safety net that kept me cool and collected. I got to thinking, "If only I knew where to click on the screen to change back to the old settings everything would be fine." That led to the idea that turned out to be a very quick and simple solution.

I booted my system from the Live CD of PCLinuxOS, ran the configuration tool from there, and used pieces of paper sticky notes to indicate where I had to click to change the settings. It was a total of 5 clicks around the screen, so I numbered the paper in the proper order. I then shut down the system, removed the CD, and once again booted from the hard drive.

Click by click, following my paper trail of sticky note pieces, I went through blindly on the black screen. Then I shut down the system, and rebooted again. Voila! It worked like a charm. So, I guess that is one setting I will leave alone. Still, one reason to install Linux is to experiment and learn, and I did indeed learn from this. My solution was certainly faster than a reinstallation of the OS and all the programs. In a matter of less than 2 minutes, I was back in business!

So there are times when an unorthodox solution turns out to be the right one. This was one such instance.

Coffee Shop, CLUE, and Linux

It's about 5:30 PM, and I have left the office for the day. I am sitting in the Caribou Coffee shop not far from work, enjoying a strawberry-banana smoothie. It is quite tasty, but in a weird way, it reminds me of the taste of those Gerber baby bananas. Or at least sort of how I remember them, since I haven't eaten any of those in a very, very long time.

In any case, I decided to stop by and relax for a few minutes. After I leave here, I am headed to the monthly general meeting of CLUE, the Colorado Linux Users & Enthusiasts. Hopefully, it will be a good program tonight, as I haven't made the effort in several months. I am particularly interested now, since over the last weekend I managed to get GNU/Linux up and running on my laptop.

Last November I posted on here about my intent to do this from the time I purchased this machine over a year ago. My efforts were thwarted in that there were no drivers for some of the hardware in any of the Linux distros I tried. Well, after trying the latest Mini-Me 2008 version of PCLinuxOS on this Gateway MT-3705, I decided to take the plunge.

In order to not risk mucking up my Vista installation, I went to Best Buy and found a 120 GB laptop hard drive on clearance for $62. What a deal! I went home and replaced the Vista drive with the new Hitachi model, loaded PCLinuxOS Mini Me, and we were off to the races! I haven't tried a couple of things, like burning DVDs or CDs for example, but so far, so good. I did have to use Ndiswrapper and a Windows XP driver for the network card, and it is working perfectly. The sound, another problem on previous Linuxes (except Fedora 8), also works from the get go. I couldn't use Fedora though, since it doesn't support Ndiswrapper without some complicated tweaking, which was more than I wanted to do.

Since Mini Me is a light version without much software, I then fired up Synaptic to get Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and a host of other programs; grabbed the Microsoft core web fonts, and now this machine is doing great. I have had quite a few hits on this blog about this subject from other users of the same machine, so hopefully this will help others.

So for now, my Vista install is safe and sound on the hard drive I removed. If I ever need to get to it, it will be pretty easy. However, if I ever do want to reinstall Windows on this, I will likely repartition and make space for XP after I round up the drivers for it. Vista is nice, but XP just seems to be a better choice.