Linux

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:32 am

there are other mini-laptops out there. there is also the MSI Wind, HP 2133, and a few versions of the eee. check out this link, it reviews the Wind but also has links to the reviews of the others. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...100/1 in another article they took apart the wind.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:08 am

Quote, originally posted by coldmm803 Â»very cool CP. they dont have a cd drive do they?Nope, not enough room for one. You're stuck with an external USB drive if you need one. These lil' guys do have their limitations but if you just need something to cruise the internets with or check e-mail, works good for the price... I'm really looking forward to using it for the rare times we travel.

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:52 am

Ooh, I'm jealous. I've been eyeing the Eee for a few months. I'm more interested in the 901, though: 8.9" LCD and the new Intel Atom processor. I will have to take a look at the MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One, and I think Via is building one. Oh and Dell supposedly is getting one ready. Boy, when the bandwagon passes, they all jump on!I thought I was going to be happy upgrading my 14" 600m for an Inspiron 1520, since I got the 8600GT to play games, but I travel with the computer a lot more than I play games, and I just can't stand the extra 2-3lbs. It doesn't sound like much, but I hate it. I figure I can get a tiny "netbook" (seems to be the term most people are using) which meets all my daily needs and then build a dedicated gaming machine if I still want.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:21 am

My first computer was a Gateway 2000 Solo 2100 (laptop) using Windows 95 (I'll wait for the laughter to settle).It's pretty much useless as is, but I'd like to possibly turn it into a digital photo frame, possibly running linux. (DSL)Is Damn Small Linux easy to install? The Hard Drive is only 1.34 GB, so I'd need an OS that's small enough.

northvibe · Post by **northvibe** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:34 am

AZViking - its a command prompt install so you may want some prior linux knowledge before doing it, if you dont already.http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.ph ... Pagetheres the wiki for it and in there is install instructions. Otherwise try debian or Arch linux. both are package based and easy to use with out a huge footprint.

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 2:01 am

You might check out PuppyLinux too. It's been a while since I've used it so I don't remember whether the installer is graphical or not, but to be honest I never thought text based was much harder than installing windows.Be sure to ask us if you need any help along the way.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 4:40 am

I was able to get puppy linux 4.0 from softpedia.com (i was having trouble getting puppylinux.com to load)So, I have the .iso file. Do I just burn that to a CD? (The laptop doesn't have usb ports or an internet connection)I see you can either run puppy through RAM or off of the hard drive. Since I don't want to have to run it off the CD with each start up, I'd like to run it off the hard drive. We'll see how it goes.

coldmm803 · Post by **coldmm803** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 5:32 am

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»So, I have the .iso file. Do I just burn that to a CD?yes. i use nero and to burn an iso, i use the burn image to disk option

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:28 am

OK, I have the files on disc (double checked, and all the files are shown, not just the .iso file). Does it matter that the laptop doesn't have winzip as I see the file initrd.gz on the disc?The hard drive on the laptop is only 1.34 GB (maybe 630 MB free). If I ran puppy off of the RAM, would I still be able to use the CD rom to add .jpegs to the hard drive? (overall goal is to turn the laptop into a photo frame) Or would it be better to load puppy directly onto the hard drive?Thanks for the help. I've always been curious about Linux but never took the plunge.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 12:28 pm

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»OK, I have the files on disc (double checked, and all the files are shown, not just the .iso file). alright. should be ok to insert into the computer now.Quote Â»Does it matter that the laptop doesn't have winzip as I see the file initrd.gz on the disc? does not matter. linux has a program in it that will be able to read that file. initr i am assuming is just a different name for the initd or initialization daemon. it is what is used to run all the other programs. it'll be fine.Quote Â»The hard drive on the laptop is only 1.34 GB (maybe 630 MB free). If I ran puppy off of the RAM, would I still be able to use the CD rom to add .jpegs to the hard drive? (overall goal is to turn the laptop into a photo frame) Or would it be better to load puppy directly onto the hard drive? if this disk is what i think it is, it might be a live cd. that means you can insert the disc into the cd tray and then run linux without making any changes to the system that are permanent. while a cool thing for a test of your system, it does make it so you cannot use the drive while linux is running. but this makes sence, if you remove the operating system files from the system, how will it know what to do with the new files? xD *after a quck search on wiki.org* "If the computer has at least 256 MB of RAM, the entire operating system and all the applications will run from RAM, allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system starts." so i was wrong for this instance where you can remove the cd (if you have enough RAM) and put in a new cd with images.Quote Â»Thanks for the help. I've always been curious about Linux but never took the plunge.np, i'm still learning it too.

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:02 am

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»The hard drive on the laptop is only 1.34 GB (maybe 630 MB free). If I ran puppy off of the RAM, would I still be able to use the CD rom to add .jpegs to the hard drive? (overall goal is to turn the laptop into a photo frame) Or would it be better to load puppy directly onto the hard drive?I think tribalman is right, that "running from RAM" is an option with the live CD, but you have to have enough RAM to hold the CD contents.I was under the impression that you wanted to wipe the hard drive, install Puppy and still have room (probably close to 1GB) on the hard drive to store lots of photos. That's do-able and I think makes the most sense for what your goal is. You say there's only 630MB left on the disk though. What's taking up that 700MB and do you need to keep it?

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:10 am

Totally off topic, but I'm trying to figure out what exactly the emoticon "xD" represents, lol. Obviously there's a grin in there, but what's with the eyes? Every time I see it, I think of something totally different.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:31 am

hmmm. i can't find the book online (mostly cause i can't remember the actual title ), but i have a book with a ton of emoticons. the "xD" would be something that is so funny that you laugh so hard you cannot keep your eyes open cause you are smiling so much and laughing very hard. back on topic......if you have a small case attached to a monitor i did see that puppylinux does recognize USB drives. you can use that to store more pictures. if you dont' want to have a dongle and are feeling a little tech savvy you can open the case, find the usb port pinouts, take apart a usb extension cord and solder one part to the actual port and then leave the other alone and plug the usb drive into it. similar to the way you can upgrade the memory space on the EEE pc's.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:45 am

Didn't know I could get rid of windows 95 completely. The CD works, but the laptop only has 40MB of RAM so no programs in puppy will start. If I get rid of 95 and install puppy, would I be able to load .jpeg files from photo cd's I have or is there a file extension specifically for linux?another dumb question, how do I get 95 off of the laptop?(No USB ports on this laptop)thanks.didn't mean to hijack the thread. I could start a new one if needed.

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:49 am

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»Didn't know I could get rid of windows 95 completely. ...how do I get 95 off of the laptop?Yeah, you can just format the partition. Otherwise, you'd have to resize the windows partition to make space for a new one to install Puppy on if you wanted to go that route.Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»The CD works, but the laptop only has 40MB of RAM so no programs in puppy will start. If I get rid of 95 and install puppy, would I be able to load .jpeg files from photo cd's I have or is there a file extension specifically for linux?Ouch. Just 40MB? Does it give you an error on trying to start programs? I guess if you are just running it off the CD, it wouldn't function very well (it works at all?) with only 40MB. If you install it on the hard drive, you can have a swap partition (virtual memory). It would be slow, but it should work.On the other hand, you may be able to add memory too. I think this might be the right memory and it's $12 + shipping.Yeah, Linux will handle jpeg files. You say "photo CDs", is that like from some photo processor or just a bunch of jpgs dumped on a CD? Some processors use proprietary formats that can't be read except by their own software.

jerryn · Post by **jerryn** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:56 am

Yep.. Not only that. I've been using/contributing to Linux since 1992. The distribution was called Yggdrisil. Now I'm an Unix Systems Engineer / Admin.It got me where I am today.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:21 am

Quote, originally posted by jerryn Â»Yep.. Not only that. I've been using/contributing to Linux since 1992. The distribution was called Yggdrisil. Now I'm an Unix Systems Engineer / Admin.It got me where I am today.very cool. btw, got any jobs as an intern or entry level tech open? i'm willing to move. xD

coldmm803 · Post by **coldmm803** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:56 am

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»Didn't know I could get rid of windows 95 completely. The CD works, but the laptop only has 40MB of RAM so no programs in puppy will start. If I get rid of 95 and install puppy, would I be able to load .jpeg files from photo cd's I have or is there a file extension specifically for linux?another dumb question, how do I get 95 off of the laptop?(No USB ports on this laptop)thanks.didn't mean to hijack the thread. I could start a new one if needed.so your just running puppy off the cd? if so, if you try installing it to the hard drive it should automaticlly format the drive erasing 95. otherwise, you could find a boot disk hard drive formating program

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:10 pm

I'll try getting rid of 95 and installing puppy from the cd.As far as the 'photo cd's' they're just cd-r's with .jpegs on them.

coldmm803 · Post by **coldmm803** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:46 am

heres some info i got off the puppy site http://www.puppylinux.com/hard-puppy.htmwhen your in puppy go to the setup menu, there should be a "puppy universal installer" select that. something should open up and give you 2 options, "frugal" and "full", select "full". This will take over the hard drive and erase 95 and install puppy.edit: just found this site too http://www.puppylinux.org/i saw in a review and a screenshot that there is a program in the graphical menu called Fotox which is an image viewer. so there should be no issue running pics off a cd

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 5:24 am

Ok, I got DSL to load from a disk, but I'm having some difficulty installing it to the hard drive.I'm trying to partition the hard drive. I've found some instructions on creating hda1 and hda2 but mine only creates hda1 and hda5 for some reason. Anyway, do I create hda1 as the bootable partition and as primary type 82 and hda5 as type 83 (is hda5 primary or logic?) I was prompted then to either install grub or lilo. I tried grub, but when I went to reboot when it told me to without the disc, the computer said there wasn't an OS available.Puppy just didn't seem to work on my laptop (too slow). I also tried RedHat that came with a linux for dummies book at our library, but that only made it to the first screen before the cdrom got bogged down.Thanks in advance.Edit: nevermind. I created both hda1 and hda2 as primary and it works. I was able to boot without the cd!!! now... what will I do with my 'new' Gateway 2000 Solo 2100 Laptop? It's probably too old for wifi, but I bet my old network card would work... hahahahhahaha

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 1:02 pm

awesome work viking, as for the wifi, as long as there is a way to connect the hardware there is a way to get the software to work too. then you have a nice netbook.as for me, i'm going to be taking my laptop which is running linux and i'm going to try Xen now. i miss playing games on my desktop and laptop but i don't want windows back on my laptop completely. so, i'm going to try some visualization stuff now. but first to back up everything.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 4:41 am

So what do I do to get DSL to read a CD? I tried loading a CD with .jpg for desktop wallpaper images. I saw a command for mounting the cdrom and was able to see the images with the viewer in DSL. Do I need to 'mount' 'unmount' the cd rom for every disc? Also, is there another viewer that I can add to dsl?I did go back and make the hda2 the bootable partition. I didn't notice any problems running dsl with hda1 as the boot partition, but since that was the 'swap' partition, I thought hda2 should be the boot partition.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 5:45 am

Quote, originally posted by AZViking Â»So what do I do to get DSL to read a CD? I tried loading a CD with .jpg for desktop wallpaper images. I saw a command for mounting the cdrom and was able to see the images with the viewer in DSL. Do I need to 'mount' 'unmount' the cd rom for every disc? Also, is there another viewer that I can add to dsl?i haven't played with DSL yet cause it is taking a long time to download but from the name and what i recall from older versions of linux and when i played slighty with puppy, yes you will have to manually mount and unmount everything. the interesting thing is that windows is the same way, you have to mount and unmount media in order to access it, the only difference is that some operating systems do that for you. i can see the reason for not having it in puppy. it is more of a convenience thing than something needed.as for another image viewer, i would say yes. if DSL has a package manager then it will be very easy to do.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:34 pm

Well... after installing dsl and playing with it for a while, I decided to try installing puppy again since I'd already partitioned the hd using dsl.After going through all of the steps (I almost gave up a couple of times because there isn't a gauge telling you the progress of the install like a Windows program. You just have to be patient), I now have puppy installed on my laptop and it boots from the HD! My wife thinks its cute that I'm not giving up on this old laptop. Hey, it was my first computer.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:54 pm

Cool. One of the great things about Linux is how it makes computers usable that would otherwise be paperweights.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:19 am

Not sure how new this is, but I see Dell is getting into the Mini Laptop market. http://www.dell.com/content/pr...s=dhsThe base model (at $349) comes loaded with Ubuntu 8.04, for $50 more, you get Windows XP

moongdss · Post by **moongdss** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:20 am

I'm writing this from that Dell mini with Ubuntu remix. It's pretty sweet if you have little hands

altimar · Post by **altimar** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:25 am

How do you like it? Are you new to Linux or have you used any other distros before now?I've been interested in a netbook since the first 7" Asus EEEs came out, but wanted something a little larger and more powerful. I saw that the Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, and EEE 901 would fit the bill, but when I found out Dell had one coming I held off to see what it was like. I ended up waiting until about a week before it came when I noticed the keyboard was missing independent F(unction) keys. I decided that wasn't going to work for me, so I decided on the Aspire One. I have no regrets (except not waiting another week when they dropped the price, oh well). It works great and I'm pretty familiar with the Fedora-based distro since I've used Redhat since 7.2.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:00 am

Well, after tinkering around with DSL and Puppy on my old laptop, I found a use for Ubuntu on my new desktop PC. Currently Canon doesn't have Vista 64 bit drivers for our LIDE 20 scanner (next time, I'll check to make sure all my devices work with my OS before buying a new PC).Anyway, rather than spending $$$ on a new scanner, I started looking into Virtualization software (Virtual PC, from Microsoft doesn't have USB support... so that was out). I was curious, so I tested out a liveCD of Ubuntu on my desktop, and sure enough, my scanner worked without any drivers to download (XSane used the scanner right away) I was impressed too, that I could not only scan pictures, but I could save them directly to the PC's desktop and also go online through Ubuntu without having to configure anything. The people on the Ubuntu forum want me to dual boot vista and Ubuntu, but my wife is against me messing with a PC we both NEED to have 100%. I figure, I'm only going to be using it with our scanner, so I'll just stick with LiveCD, and maybe switch to a LiveUSB stick if I see a sale on flash drives.I'm trying to find a newer laptop through our local freecycle, but I keep missing out whenever one pops up. I want to find one with USB ports and more memory and ram than my old laptop.

AZViking · Post by **AZViking** » Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:54 am

Well, instead of dual booting, or using a live CD or USB. I have been running Ubuntu in Virtualbox (which has USB support) to run the scanner. There is supposed to be a way to create shared folders between the virtual machine and the host, but I haven't set that up, yet. The downside is that the linux guest isn't 'virus free' since it's running as a program within Vista.I just finished installing a newer version of Damn Small Linux onto the old laptop (150 MHz Pentium I, 40 MB RAM, 1.34 GB HD). Now I'm trying to get it to see the network card. It's either not compatible, or damaged since I haven't used the laptop online since 2001. The cd rom seems to be dying, and it's the only computer we have that still has a 3.5" drive (NO USB, either) I'm trying to create an Ubuntu Netbook LiveUSB as a backup for my Mom's netbook that runs XP as a backup. (she bought her netbook through Verizon for $99 with a 2 year contract)

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:33 am

I have that very scanner on my pc, dual booting running Xubuntu Linux 9.10. I installed the CanoScan software using Wine. Dual booting is a piece of cake. I have had no problems with the machine. In fact, I'm running Windows XP 32 bit on one side and Xubuntu 64 bit on the other. The machine is so much faster on the Xubuntu side that as soon as I can get Halo PC to run on the Linux side, I will pretty much be done with using Windows on this machine.I was not happy at all using any of the really small distros like DSL or Puppy. Ubuntu and its variants are easy to deal with for Windows users looking to make the switch.

joatmon · Post by **joatmon** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 2:37 am

interesting article about Linux creatorhttp://www.itwire.com/opinion-...38031

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 3:15 am

oh my deities yes!!!! hopefully now windows will mesh better with nix. it's always fun trying to get windows to mesh with nix. nix does fine, it's windows that's the problem. still trying to win 7 to share with linux easily. heck, i'm still trying to get 7 to share with vista. xD

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:04 am

If anyone is brave enough, try the beta of Ubuntu 10.04. It crashed my dual boot system ( I know better than to use a beta on my main machine...but I couldn't resist ). I finally got my main machine back up and running and put the beta on my back up box. Windows users will like the new user interface....and most will like the cold start times. It boots cold in about the same amount of time that my Windows xp box takes to boot from hibernation.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:10 am

you got it to work? i have been trying to get it to boot from my USB key but it won't. did they change the GUI manager again? it is annoying to change the login theme and settings.

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:12 am

yep...got it to work on an old 800 mhz machine. Download the iso and burn it to cd. I have always had the best success with distros that way.I haven't played with it much yet...been too busy. I'll look deeper into it tomorrow. What I have seen, I have liked.It even told me I needed new drivers for my video card. It got them, installed them perfectly. It didn't make me search for them...it just offered them up and installed.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:44 am

lolz, not important though -- in another April Fools article,Google bought M$ for like 200 million or something. And re: 10.04, hmm -- sounds good but maybe I should wait until the stable is released.

BadBrew · Post by **BadBrew** » Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:10 am

I've been running Smoothwall http://www.smoothwall.org for years now on my network.Smoothwall is a firewall dedicated distro. I use one of my old PC to run it, never ever had problems with it and I am a Linux newbie On a side note, I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook edition on my netbook (duh!) and really enjoy the loading speed and low resources it uses. Everything works like a charm and I especially need all the bluetooth features to link on my smartphone wirelessly.I tried 9.10 on my home desktop with no luck... It seems to have a lot of problems with my VIA RAID configuration for some reasons... I didn't dig much into the problem.Linux is "almost there" for the must-use-Windows user that I am. Maybe a bit more work on Wine and/or VirtualBox could help jump completely into Linux.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:53 pm

I just picked up an Android phone (which has the Linux kernel) and it's pretty slick. If they could get the desktops running that smooth it would be impressive. On the desktops I think the last I tried was Ubuntu (or one of the variants) 8.10. And some others too while I waited for a new hard drive I think.Right now I run an old P3-450 using pfsense (which is actually a BSD variant) as my router/gateway/firewall/vpn/etc though it had been BrazilFW for years.Though for the in use computers all 4 are running Windows 7, plus another machine running WHS. I do have an Imac tucked away to be the baby's computer when they get older.I downloaded the Android SDK and some other stuff to start poking around with. I might toss another drive in my PC and see what the current distros are like, see how they've advanced over the past few years.I still don't have any Nvidia cards so I can see how bad the ATI drivers still are as well

zionzr2 · Post by **zionzr2** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 1:00 am

the newest release of Ubuntu 10.4 LTS is going to be released this week.

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:48 am

I am running the Ubuntu 10.04 release candidate on a PC now. Make sure you update it right after install, then let it update drivers (this distro will find all needed drivers for you if available). Only 4 days left until the full release.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 9:39 am

overall i like it over the older versions, i just HATE how annoying it is to change the login screen. i really liked the old gdm manager cause i had about 12 different themes (a few of which i made) it would select from. now it's just one. also, not sure how, but i almost bricked my computer. i think it was updating and i shut off the computer, but i'm not 100%.

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 5:06 am

10.04 is here! Grab that old, useless computer that you have lying aroung with at least 256 mb of ram and give it a try.

houseofbugs · Post by **houseofbugs** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:21 am

I have used it and as a Server OS it's great. THe problem is that with people who want to get into it there are too many distros to choose from. Also wireless driver support is quite terrible when compared to Mac or Windows. I use Linux on my routers and server but will always stick with Windows OS on my desktop platforms.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:31 am

Might have to download it and install it this weekend. Wish Xubuntu was on the same release, but I gotta wait a while for it to come out.

tribalman · Post by **tribalman** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:52 am

[QUOTE=houseofbugsAlso wireless driver support is quite terrible when compared to Mac or Windows. I use Linux on my routers and server but will always stick with Windows OS on my desktop platforms.[/QUOTE]ever since hardy heron i haven't had an issue with wireless.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:15 pm

No driver problems here, everything usually works right out of the box. Nothing I ever own is bleeding edge so with established hardware there is a much better chance of it working. Looks like I'm going to be flooded in this weekend so I doubt I go anywhere -- might just have to install 10.04.

ColonelPanic · Post by **ColonelPanic** » Sat May 01, 2010 11:21 am

I booted off a usb stick and pulled up the live copy on my netbook, it looks very good! Seems to be pretty snappy even on my wimpy eee 701.Off install it on the big box!

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Sun May 02, 2010 11:40 am

I finally got brave enough to re-install it on my main box. It is crazy fast. I will have to use this for all of my main surfing now. (btw...this post was made using Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit version)