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Getting Rid of Windows – Why I Won’t Do It

Lets face it, the grass is always greener on the other side. Whether its moving jobs, houses or operating systems, people are always lamenting their present situation and looking for changes. That’s natural human behavior. Mix that with the other human trait “procrastination”, and you have a lot of people who are unhappy where they are but refuse to move on.

There may be a lot of reasons why people need to change, but there are always more reasons to delay the change as much as possible. We tend to get comfortable living with the inadequacies of our current situations and finding workarounds to get things done. While at the same time we complain about how our current world can be a whole lot better. Funny thing is that it can, but putting a change into what we perceive as a working environment, can be like jumping off a bridge.

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Tags: Linux, Microsoft, Thoughts, User Experience

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 Linux, Microsoft, Thoughts, User Experience No Comments

GRUB Menu tips for Linux

If you have installed Linux (any format) onto your machine, either standalone or as part of a dual boot system, you would have seen the GRUB menu pop up. This screen usually appears when you start your machine and offers you a choice of operating system to install.

Sometimes, you may want to hide this menu (ie, go straight to the login screen) or show it if it is hidden or change the amount of time it stays up.

This article shows you how to change the above parameters. While you can use packages such as "start up manager" to do your changes, I wanted to edit the configuration files manually just so that we can get a bit of practice on how to use the terminal window and editing text files :)

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Tags: Linux, Noob, Ubuntu

Thursday, March 26th, 2009 Linux, Tips, Tutorials No Comments

DreamLinux no more.. bring on Linux Mint

Well, the experiment with DreamLinux didn’t last for very long. While the install went well, I found the following issues around getting it to work with my Dell 9300 laptop:

The wireless network drivers didn’t work off the install – i had to use ndiswrapper to load up the windows version of the wireless adapter’s drivers.
World of Warcraft didn’t work with Wine. That was pretty much the deal breaker for me. While others may have got WoW to work successfully with DreamLinux, I unfortunately couldn’t make it work – even after trying numerous suggested solutions.
The XFCE windows manager, while being good and lite, was just a bit too different for my liking. I am just not used to the button placing and the windows elements seem to be floating in the windows.

In the end, i knew i had to go back to Gnome as my main environment. Back to Distrowatch and onto

Linux Mint

I went..

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Tags: Linux, Mint, World of Warcraft

Monday, March 16th, 2009 Linux No Comments

Linux Alternative Applications

Firstly, many of my family members or friends are not completely computer savvy and tend to collect all manner of nasty malware etc during their newbie browsing.

I have gotten tired of reinstalling windows every time they have an "issue".. over the last few months I’ve taken to re-educating them not just on safe browsing but also giving them a choice of OS’s to install. This is particularly the case where their Windows XP cd comes on a CDR..

A friend of mine even had a TradeMe (kiwi version of eBay) transaction with a reputable dealer who gave him a system with a hacked version of Windows Vista installed on it (and called it "installed for evaluation purposes, so please delete after you have evaluated it") – damnit.. that sucked as we couldn’t even go to Windows Update from that copy.

Soooo, nowadays whenever one of the newbs screw up their PC (and they do.. often).. I suggest installing Linux on it instead. This has brought about quite a bit of happiness actually, for as good as Windows is (and i do think its good), when it comes to Linux vs Pirated Windows, i see no other alternative.

The main gripe they usually have is with "oh what about my hacked version of Office? or *insert any other windows app here*? The good news is that Linux has quite a lot of alternative applications that can be used instead of the native Windows ones.. (and yeah, taking them through Wine would have been a mission).

I’ve collated a quick few links below to point to some of the sites out there that lists these alternatives.. quite comprehensive really :)

See below:

The Linux Alternative Project – a good site with many alternative applications for common windows applications. They even have a forum that can lead to even more alternatives.
Osalt.com – Open Source as Alternatives – not strictly Linux, but open-source alternatives to commercial applications.
The top 50 proprietary programs that drive you crazy and their open-source alternatives – another pretty good site.. huge list!

There are a lot more sites like above.. those i just picked within a few minutes of searching and browsing.. :)

happy searching!

Tags: Linux

Thursday, March 12th, 2009 Linux 1 Comment

Installing DreamLinux on my laptop

So, after months of Ubuntu on my Dell 9300, and running World of Warcraft under Wine, I finally decided that Ubuntu was a little to heavy on my cpu and started looking at alternatives.

Going through Distrowatch, I see that DreamLinux has quite a following now.. and the screenshot looked purty ;) go here for more screenshots!

Downloaded it, burnt it and the process started.

Now, the plan was to replace everything on the laptop which has 100gig hdd in it.

The installation proceeded well and took around half and hour including the hdd formatting. Once installed, i popped onto the new OS only to find the wireless card was not being recognised. That was a bugger.

Did some searching and found out about ndiswrapper. This nifty piece of software allows you to take a Windows .inf file and install the drivers into Linux. Googlise ndiswrapper for more info.

Installed the wireless adapter drivers ok and managed to pop online at last! Next step was the nvidia drivers that needed installing. Finally managed to do that (and learn a few things about alt-control-f1 to start a new console session etc).

Its all looking good now. Wine is installed and WoW will be next tonight!

Tags: Linux, Wine, World of Warcraft

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 Linux No Comments