Sunday, December 27, 2009

Mandriva 2010 gcc

I loaded Mandriva 2010 on a computer today and when I went to do an install from a command line I was told I didn't have a c compiler.
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.
[root@localhost linuxwacom-0.8.5-8]

Needless to say the GUI software installer refused to load any GCC C++ compiler listed. so use this
urpmi gcc-c++
and now you can actually use the terminal, I have no idea why they would leave this out?
Other than that I love Mandriva 2010 it has everything I use loaded all ready so it just plain worked from the get go.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Tweak UBUNTU

I use Ubuntu on my main computer and recently found this program to tweak Ubuntu.

It works very good and has a lot of options that a newbie would have to hunt around for.Here is the download site. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment so KUBUNTU users will have to still do things the old fashioned way. Be sure you back anything up that is important to you before you use this the first time as well since there are some options that could allow you to change important settings. It does make you enter the root password and give you warnings before entering areas that allow changing important settings. There is a large list of 3rd party software available that saves a lot of time on a fresh install.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Epson Printers & Scanners

I have an Epson all in one printer scanner, I have used it with Ubuntu before and I remember I had a hard time ever getting the scanner to work right with Xsane. Today I happened to be reading something on a message board "not even sure what one now" but I opened a link telling about Drivers for Epson printers so I  looked and low and behold there was my scanner listed. I had never hooked it back up to my linux system since my last Upgrade to Karmic Koala. So I hooked it up and downloaded the driver specified for my model it said a dependency wasn't met so I made a quick stop by here and downloaded the missing file.  I was surprised to see that everything worked as it should and much better than it did the one other time I had it hooked up on here. Thats one less reason to keep that one computer of mine running Windows! It just kind of sits there now until someone needs to do something that requires a Windows environment. Thats not very often anymore, Both my boys use Ubuntu on their computers as well as me.

Adblock Plus

I use Firefox and Opera web browsers well today Firefox said Ad-block had an update to which I allowed. Well after it was done and Firefox restarted I noticed that its now blocking all Google ad's even on my own blog so I had to play around and tell it to allow ads on some of the pages that I use it even blocked content on my Ad sense login page. So I suppose if you dont want to see any ads its a rather good thing. I guess I know its doing its job anyhow. If you are having the same problems you can adjust it in the preference's after right clicking on the ad-block stopsign up in the right corner of Firefox.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Free Anti Virus Programs

Problem solved, With the virus from yesterdays post that is, {NOTE: this laptop is running XP Media Center} the laptop I have been working on was severely infected with numerous virus's I managed to get most of them off but finally talked the owner into letting me do a factory restore after I salvaged their personal files and scanned them. The problem they had was their Virus protection had run out and they didn't bother doing anything about it until the laptop was so bogged down with Malware and virus's it would hardly turn on. I don't understand why someone would let something like that go so long there are enough free virus protection programs like AVG and AVAST that one could use. So if you use windows make SURE you have some sort of anti virus enabled even if its just a free version its better than nothing and could save you some money in the long run.
This is another example of why I use Linux and only Linux.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Fighting A Virus

I have been working on a laptop since yesterday that was severely infected with to many virus's to list, I was unable to wipe it due to personal things on it they didnt want to loose, needless to say (did I mention I HATE WINDOWS) after running 3 Live cds DR web , Kaspersky and Bit-defender, I managed to remove all the virus's but networking was disabled and I removed all adapters and reinstalled them several times. I was still unable to get the laptop to get a IP from the DHCP host.
 I even used the winsock repair tool here, and I still have yet to get a connection. I think a format is in order.

This is a good tip for any windows users with connectivity issues.

system still gets an IP address within the 169.254.x.x range after the registry value "IPAutoconfigurationEnabled" has been set to 0 for the LAN adapter

registry key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip


a. Click Start, and type cmd in the Start Search box to open Command Prompt.
b. Type: ipconfig /all


It didn't do the trick for me however in certian instances I can see it would be useful.In my situation here something is still hiding out on this thing and changing everything I do on every reboot.  As for me I will stick with LINUX

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Mouse

I am going to have to get me one of these considering I have a dollar store mouse thats about 4 years old but hey it works just time to upgrade and to me this mouse would be no less than state of the art.



CNET gave it a good review so I am thinking its probably worth the money I just hope it lasts as long as my dollar store mouse.Oh yes it is a Microsoft mouse but I don't have a problem with Microsoft hardware just their software. the best part is any Microsoft hardware I have used has usually worked on Linux with out a hitch. It just doesn't always work right running under Windows.

Gimp






I was bored and started messing around with Gimp, every time I do I find more useful things I can do with this program. You can really alter an image with this powerful program and even make your own images from scratch.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Compiz Fusion Icon

Today I found that there is an Icon for Compiz Fusion for the taskbar, It integrates your desktop managers and other settings into one place to quickly change things.




To install it in Ubuntu open a terminal and insert this code
 
sudo apt-get install fusion-icon
 

Thats it, I like it because its simple and I dont have to open 3 other windows to change settings. I hope someone else finds this useful as I did.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Compiz

Compiz works excellent with the newest Ubuntu. I remember a few years ago how complicated and hit or miss it used to be setting it up and to tweak it just the way you wanted it. Now it just works plain and simple. Maybe someday Microsoft will get the picture that writing proprietary code is senseless, with proprietary code you must write new code for every new piece of hardware whereas open source allows you to build on code thats all ready written. Open source also allows anyone to alter and redistribute the software, so basically open source is written the way USERS want it not the way software vendors want it. Look at Vista for example yup pretty but doesn't work so good, you can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig underneath. GNU




Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Ubuntu Karmic Koala

Ok last night I was having issues with my system after updating my Ubuntu, well it seems there was a possible compatibility issue with my system after the update. It seems firefox was not playing nice with the flash player and this morning It crashed and I was forced to do a clean install. I suppose it was for the better since I have noticed everything seems ok now and actually see some differences I had not seen after the upgrade. I never did find out what exactly caused the system to crash except reference to a theme I had installed panicked. All in all it is a lot better in my opinion. I am using Opera web browser for a lot of things though just until I am sure i have all the bugs worked out.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Firefox 3.5



I update my Ubuntu the other day to the Karmic Koala and it updated my Firefox to 3.5. I thought all was well but I have noticed its much slower than the 3.0.11 i previously had, it also seems a little buggy it has crashed a few times, now I am not sure if this is a Ubuntu issue or Firefox issue I need to read into my log files a little deeper.


 As for now I will use Opera since its much more stable and a whole lot faster, I thought I was using Internet Explorer for a while there. As for the upgrade of my Ubuntu I like everything so far and there hasn't been any disastrous crashes as of yet. The home networking is much less complicated than it used to be.
Ok its the NP-viewer error once again
(npviewer.bin:3239): Gdk-WARNING **: XID collision, trouble ahead
(npviewer.bin:5072): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x460009d unexpectedly destroyed
The program 'npviewer.bin' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
(Details: serial 1449 error_code 3 request_code 18 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

 So I will have to ditch Flash player or see if i can find a fix somewhere. It seems it also pegs the cpu to 100% when it does this.


 

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

GTK2 Themes

I found this theme today on Gnome Look its called Copper Deck it is really well done, here are the icons as well so far this theme has integrated well with my system and everything seems to display correct.





Also Thursday the 29th Ubuntu release's  Ubuntu 9.10 it is said to me more user friendly and they have removed some annoyances such as inconsistent naming or poorly organised application choices, there is also a new software center.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Widgets

Here is a really useful widget for Superkaramba called Automatik . I personally like it because it works very well with dual core cpu's and I didn't have to install anything extra on Ubuntu to get it to work, as long as you have sensors and KDE installed. I like to play around with all the different Themes and stuff on KDE look.





Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Blog Exposure

With Entre-card's new paid ad situation I am sort of in limbo as to keeping it or not so I have spent a lot more time making use of Adgitize the last week or so. What I have noticed is a slight increase in traffic.My biggest problem has always been that I like to read and I always find myself reading instead of dropping. Thats a whole different story for another day, anyhow What I noticed is that I still see most of the same blogs I normally drop on each day so for now I will just let the Entre card widget stay and do my drops while clicking through the adgitize links.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Thursday, October 1, 2009

WOW

I recently switched Internet providers and boy am I glad I did I had DSL before, Now my uploads are faster than my downloads used to be.


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Brother Word Processor

Here is an old Brother word processor I came across and it even still works correctly. The printer even still has ink and functions. I remember back when I took some college classes (87-88) we had something similar to this we had to use.This isn't quite that old, this is circa 1992. I was surprised to see that i can still get ink for this reasonably cheap.




Sunday, August 30, 2009

Zenith Mastersport 386SLe

Look at this old timer a ZENITH Mastersport 386SLE , It has a 386 16MHZ cpu I think, that was the specs from a similar one I found with a 30MB hard drive.

It has windows 3 on it I have the 6 floppy disk's with windows on it as well. I actually used this thing for a while back in the 90's for some documents and stuff. Heck my Palm Treo has more capabilities than this thing. Wow have we ever came a long way with electronics since these days.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Terminal Screensaver


This is How to make a screen saver in UBUNTU that looks like a running terminal program the easy way.

First of all you want to make sure you have Xscreensaver-data and Xscreensaver-data-extra.

If not you can simply paste this code in a terminal. Or go to synaptic package manager.


----------------------------------------------------------

Sudo apt-get install xscreensaver-data


sudo apt-get install xscreensaver-data-extra

----------------------------------------------------------

Now you will want to go to the menu bar and select (system,preferences,screen saver) now select Phosphor if you go to advanced you will see you can choose a simple text file to use for your scrolling text to simulate a terminal program running. I just made my own with my text editor and saved it as a text file. Any type of text will work so you can pretty much customise it any way you wish.Good luck and enjoy.




Thursday, August 13, 2009

Entre Dropping

This is how I do my Entre Drops, I have a 22" wide-screen next to a 19" wide-screen and since I have two blogs and linked them in Entre card I can log into one on each computer and drop on both linked blogs at the same time. I usually load one and while its loading I will drop on the others then switch back.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Long Time Ago


I was looking for something today and found this old hard drive among some spare parts. Its circa 1988-89 from what I found, 40-49 mb of storage, I found an old advertisement listing it for around $399.00. I cant believe the size of it for what it is. kind of funny now we can put 8 GB in something 31.3 MM long. wow we have come a long way in 20 years. I also found my old copy of Liesure Suit Larry, wow that was a long time ago before I had kids and all, I had a comadore 64 and a Tandy 1000 back in those days. Ok I feel old now guess its time to go.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

AMD or INTEL?

This is in reply to a comment from yesterday asking who is better AMD or INTEL, its not really a question of who is better since both manufacturers have a good product, but a matter of what works for you better with whatever you use your computer for, I know for instance that some pc based video surveillance (DVR) cards don't play nice with AMD and other things that just don't work with INTEL. But I do have one complaint with INTEL even if it is a minor flaw, their method of securing the CPU heatsink could use a lot of work.
those little plastic things tend to break. this picture is of an aftermarket heatsink but it has the same plastic clips as the OEM fan that had failed on mine.


Here is an AMD AM2 heatsink you can see the mounting hardware they use, the motherboard has a bracket screwed in place and the heatsink has a metal retaining system.


Here is an INTEL setup that has failed you can see the bottoms of the 4 plastic pins they use and note the red circle as this one is broken. this caused the system to overheat and fail over time.I took 4 small screws and nuts and replaced the plastic clips on one intel heatsink and that seemed to work fine. My INTEL system is what I use for games as it seems to out perform the AMD's in some games but INTEL seems to cost more than AMD for comparable CPU's.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

XFX 8200

I built a computer for someone back a few months ago with an XFX Geforce 8200 motherboard and a Phenom x4 cpu, at first everything was fine but after a few weeks it began acting up. It even fragged the Linux kernal on one install, it had multiple problems listed in the logs most of which led to the cpu.After giving it some thought I got a new Asus motherboard identicle to mine I use every day and bought an Athlon 64 X2 7550 cpu. I swapped the motherboard out and put the XFX one with the new cpu in my second computer I use for my personal weather station and stuff because I wanted to get to the bottom of the problem, Well its been about 3 weeks and so far I have had no problems at all with it. The CPU I put in it is a screamer it has the KUMA core and 3 MB cache. I even overclocked it some to try and get it do do something but so far its been running fine and I even like the motherboard and its features. I also put 2 GB of the OCZ SLI memory in it and that even works like a charm. After not finding anything wrong with my new setup I decided to just keep it and see how things go. That left me with a pile of spare parts laying about so I built a Frankenputer with all of it and handed it off to my youngest son.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Sunday, July 19, 2009

One Shitty Computer

Now we have all had dust and things in our computers and I have even showed you one here. This one just took #1 for my shit list of 2009 I do have to hand it to DELL because it still runs it might be a little slow but it boots. I have seen computers in Automotive garages that are cleaner than this I even had to network one at a local sewer plant and it didn't have any shit in it (pun intended) I guess its since I like to keep my computers pristine.
I am not real sure what the stuff in the lint is and I really don't want to. I had thoughts of taking the air compressor to this but then I remembered what happened last time I tried that it did a motherboard in.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Back from Camping

Well we have returned from camping we had a great time and took may pictures I will share some in the coming days.We did a lot of hiking now I will have to rest up before I go back to work.

This deer was very interested in us and what we were doing she was in no way bothered by us.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Going Camping

Just so everyone knows we are going camping so I willnot be dropping for a few days but I am going to try and get a post in from my cell.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Being On Time

Well I guess my cat will be on time for bed! This was just too funny to pass up. Now if I could only teach her to wake me up on time.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Fading Windows

Here is a screen shot of the fading windows with compiz animations enabled, There are several different types of fades you can choose to display or not display. I choose the random output so they are different each time I open or close something.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Compiz


This is one reason why I love LINUX over Windows hands down, I remember when compiz was first launched and was buggy and had to played with to get it just right, now it just plain works.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Personal Weather Station

I have a La cross personal weather station, I built a computer just for it also. I had been running windows on it since the software that it came with was for windows, well I started using Weather display a while back and had tried to compile it to Linux a number of times never having any luck until yesterday when I found another How To on it.
Now I only have one computer running Windows "sort of" since its a networked DVR .

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Things People Do

I use Dogpile for my search engine well today I clicked the searchspy
out of curiosity to see what people were searching for,
I guess someone in Nevada is looking for a prostitute but the one that got me was under that someone looking for a video of some girl shitting??? WTF I doubt that's for someones science project but who knows.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Vacations Over

Well if any of you visit my Main blog An Electricians Notes I had mentioned we went to the NASCAR race in Dover DE over the weekend, we had a great time but very tiring from all the walking. Before the race they always have a lot going on outside the track, my oldest son got some really good pictures of some guys on dirt bikes doing freestyle jumps.


These guys were really good. I always love walking around looking at all the different booths and displays they have before the races.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Browser Usage

I have been following the usage of browsers on Googles Analytics and Was not suprised to see Firefox in the lead , but i was suprised to see such a low number of Internet Explorer users, This is only from the last couple of days so it could change if i give it some more time.


1. Firefox

398 79.76%

2.Chrome

49 9.82%

3. Internet Explorer

24 4.81%

4. Safari

14 2.81%

5. Opera

11 2.20%

6. Mozilla

2 .40%

7. Konqueror

1 .20%

Monday, May 18, 2009

Top Dropper's

I decided to try something new on here and give a little credit back to my top droppers on Entre Card. I am using Yahoo Pipes to grab the RSS feed of my top droppers to date.It gives the link to the blog and the Description of the blog. You will notice it halfway down the page below my Entre Card widget. Thanks to all my regular droppers.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Ubuntu only Reports 1000 MHZ

I have an AMD Athlon X2 64 6000+ and it wasn't throttling up past 1000 MHZ so after reading a lot and some experimenting I found the solution.

This will tell you your current MHZ
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHz" | head -n 1

This code will tell you all the possible MHZ frequencies your CPU supports


cpufreq-info
As it turned out cpu freq was not installed on mine so I had to install it.

sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils

Now when I use the CPUfreq-info command I get the correct stepping for my CPU.
You can also add CPU freq to your panel as an applet by right clicking on your panel and selecting it from the drop down list.

CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0 1
hardware limits: 1000 MHz - 3.10 GHz
available frequency steps: 3.10 GHz, 3.00 GHz, 2.80 GHz, 2.60 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.20 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.80 GHz, 1000 MHz
available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
current policy: frequency should be within 1000 MHz and 3.10 GHz.
The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency is 2.40 GHz.
cpufreq stats: 3.10 GHz:2.25%, 3.00 GHz:0.64%, 2.80 GHz:0.32%, 2.60 GHz:0.42%, 2.40 GHz:0.40%, 2.20 GHz:0.32%, 2.00 GHz:0.32%, 1.80 GHz:0.42%, 1000 MHz:94.92% (33)

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Unwanted Phone Calls



Judge Orders Halt To Robocalls Selling Deceptive Warranties


Maybe now these fools will stop calling my cell phone and calling every night at home.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Wireless Keyboard

I normally use a wired keyboard however I have a brand new Microsoft wireless keyboard and I decided to try it on my Ubuntu system thinking it would probably not work at all. Boy was I ever wrong.It has some multimedia functions and a calculator key and to my amazement everything worked. I suppose its the fact its a Microsoft product and it works better on my Linux system than it did on my windows system.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Good Old USPS

Your 5 new laptops are worth $74? I love some of the comments after this story, I never use USPS for anything of value since they seem to loose everything.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

One dirty Computer

One of my sons friends brought his computer over said it wouldn't boot? Just a black screen.

I have seen some dirty computers in the past but this one ranks up there with the worst of them, it was pegging the HW monitor out and shutting down.

Not to mention its one of the E-machines I think the E is short for (environmental waste) since they are sort of a disposable computer.after a large blast of air its on its way.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

New Cooling

The stock fan and heat sink on my Intel CPU wasn't cooling enough so I decided to get a new one, after some research I found this one It had a 5/5 rating on this site and the small price of it made it that much better. I installed it today and to my surprise it dropped my idle temps by 7-9 degree's. The Heat sink is HUGE I am lucky I have enough room for it. I haven't over clocked it as of yet since the stock heat sink was so bad but this weekend I may try and bump it up a little to see how well this set up works. right now I have about 40% load on both cores and my temps are about 35 C where they were running about 43 C before.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Raidmax Case

My new case came today a Raidmax smilodon, of all the systems I have put together this case stands out I highly recommend this case.
It came with instructions in English that I could actually use and understand not to mention the packaging they did with it could withstand all the abuse UPS can give it. Th case itself is awesome since the sides fold down to get to everything it reminds me of a server the way its simple to access everything.
The case is very well made 28 pounds empty so after you get all the goodies inside it, it can be rather heavy. I got this because my old case was poorly ventilated, the temps have dropped about 8 degrees Celsius, I even tried to get it to get it hot running all the graphics I could and it never went much above 45 C.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Over Heating

Well my computer started acting up the other day, I had noticed a difference in it as the temperatures outside warmed up it had started acting up and over the weekend I was watching a movie on it and it came to an abrupt halt. well after a few minutes when it did allow me to reboot I went right into the bios settings to the hardware monitor and noticed it was about 48 C. I had put this computer together back in February and it never much went above 38C-39C so I began researching it and made sure it wasn't full of dust. After finding no dust inside it I rebooted it without the side cover and duplicated what I was doing before and had no problems. The case I have is a cheapo Antec and it doesnt have a lot of room for extra fans or many vents so I ordered a new Raidmax case.
This case has lots of room for extra fans and such and the reviews other have left sound pretty good so I am hoping that will solve my problems and I can once again close my computer up. My wife says this is only an excuse to get a new case.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

XBMC Media Center

I have just Installed XMBC on my Ubuntu system this morning and it works without a hitch, I have used Microsofts media center before but the Open source version tops it.


It is real simple to install with Ubuntu and there were only a few local setting to adjust for the weather and file locations. You can get it HERE
Be sure and read through this and install all you repositories,

If you are up for a big change you can download the new version of Sabayon if you look through the downloads and find the ones ending in MCE they have XBMC included., Here is a screenshot of Sabayon in action.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

UBUNTU 9.04

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Cheap Netbooks on the Rise

Cheap Netbooks on the Rise: Microsoft, Intel Worried?


Get ready for the next stage in the personal computer revolution: ultrathin and dirt cheap

Netbook makers have turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that costs $3 instead of the $25 that Microsoft typically charges for Windows XP.


Full Story........

Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Future Of LINUX

Twice a year, the Fedora Project releases a distribution that combines recent innovations in free software with the polish, usability and stability for which our community has become so widely known MORE......


Fedora 11 BETA

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Answering Machine for Linux

How many of you are sick of getting annoying telemarketing calls at all hours of the day, I know I have been getting lots of them telling me my car warranty has expired wanting me to send them money to renew it.Well now you can download this program and let it deal with them for you and the best part is its free.Note this is a LINUX download.

IVM IVR System
Answering Machine,
Voice Mail and Answering Attendant

For you windows users here is a great windows program that i used from time to time.
Phone Tray


PhoneTray Free 1.31
Easy to use FREE Caller ID software - shows Caller ID, speaks name and number, logs all your incoming calls. Reject any unwanted call, zap telemarketers with special tone or play Federal do-not-call warning to remove you from telemarketing lists - by law!

Windows Download HERE

Firefox Not Playing Nice With Compiz

For anyone who has Nvidia Graphics along with Compiz running and your Firefox Menu's disappear along with your menu bar there is a solution. Simply go here and follow these instructions. {System->Preferences->compizconfig_settings_manager->utility->workarounds->Uncheck-legacy fullscreen support}
That should fix it right there on the spot. That is the location for compiz in Ubuntu other distro's may be slightly different, Mandriva has compiz config under tools.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Make Yourself Count

Not sure how many know of this page but if you are using Linux you should log on and get counted its a great idea.http://counter.li.org/
I finally got my mom to get away from Micro$&#t and have her using Mandriva, she wouldnt let me install Thunderbird for her she insisted she do it herself telling me thats the only way she would learn and she proudly let me know she set it all up.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Wife Gets A New Computer


My wife picked this case out for herself its an NZXT Apollo I really liked it, its very well built and everything lined up perfect. I have an Asus Mother Board 2 gb of ram and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 CPU set up inside it. Under normal load its running about 41c- 42c. This is the system the big fan I posted about the other day was bought for. I really liked the front door on the case it is hinged very solid and has a magnetic latch it basically just feels well made unlike some cases I have worked on or had.

Friday, March 6, 2009

TOO COOL

I hope anyhow, I am getting all the stuff together for another build and i ordered an Ultra x-wind cpu cooler from Tiger direct.Well the fan shows up today, Holy SH*T I can put this thing in my window this summer when it gets hot! I read the reviews but nobody said it was 5" across guess I missed that in the product specs? I just hope it clears my ram.

It should cool fine given the size of it and the fact that the computer is only going to be used for light work and surfing. I will post a follow up next week and let you know how well it actually cools.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

New LINUX Distribution

{This is not a paid post} If you are looking for a new Linux distro to try out check out this page they have all kinds of new releases and information for you. HERE
It will also tell you the popularity of each distro by the amount of downloads from their site.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Enable JAVA In OPERA

I like a fast browser and it seems FireFox has been somewhat sluggish lately so I installed OPERA i was amazed that everything except java worked immediately.I have been using it for a few minutes and so far I like it I am going to give it a workout and see how well it holds up. as for getting java to work assuming you allready have the latest version installed on your computer, if you go to Tools/preferences/advanced/content on the toolbar of OPERA you can enable java and then you must point opera in the directory where your java is stored.


From linux if you have trouble finding java you can go to the terminal and put in
[find / -name libjava.so 2> /dev/null ] That will tell you the location to put in the opera window. now you can validate the java plugin to be sure it works. Thats it now you can enjoy a fast browser.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Using The Terminal

I know when i first started using linux about 8 or 9 years ago when I had a problem I would turn to forums and I would read a lot. I remember looking at all of peoples information neatly displayed however never knew how to get it myself for about the first year or so. there are several ways to get it but the fasted way I have found is with a Terminal and the DMESG command since you can do it without root permissions and such.


CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz stepping 07 Booting processor 1/1 ip 6000 Initializing CPU#1 Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 5999.15 BogoMIPS (lpj=2999575) CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 16K CPU: L2 cache: 1024K CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0 CPU: Processor Core ID: 1 Intel machine check architecture supported. Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#1. CPU1: Intel P4/Xeon Extended MCE MSRs (24) available CPU1: Thermal monitoring enabled x86 PAT enabled: cpu 1, old 0x7040600070406, new 0x7010600070106 CPU1: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz stepping 07 checking TSC synchronization [CPU#0 -> CPU#1]: Measured 1095 cycles TSC warp between CPUs, turning off TSC clock.

this is an example of what you will get of course you will get a lot more information than this I just took out some of the information on my cpu for everyone to see.

Using the terminal scares a lot of people but you should get used to it and take advantage of it it is a very powerful tool that can actually save you a lot of time. when I use Ubuntu I almost never use the GUI for updates and do an [apt-get update] from the console. Just be careful and know what you are doing when using a Terminal in root because you can damage your system.