my linux today

I am doing some construction on my new site so i redirected everyone to the old site for Entre drops for today while I get everything put back together, I just didnt have time the last few weeks to sort it all out.

Collage Creater

Today I was in need of a program to create a collage of pictures for something and I discovered this program that seems to fit my needs nicely. just thought I might share it.

Ubuntu 11.04

So today I made the jump and updated to Ubuntu's Natty release I will admit I did my research on it and tried the live cd first and was a little concerned with the Unity desktop but I updated anyhow.

I used it with the Unity desktop for a few hours and then reverted back to Gnome, I then discovered that I had become accustomed to Unity and for some strange reason It appeals to me.Now i'm sure its not for everyone and you do have the option of switching to the classic look on the login screen.

Here is a great page with a lot of useful tips for anyone who decides to try for themselves. I am going to stick to the Unity desktop for a while and I will do a follow up post. I am also installing it on a family members computer this coming weekend, she is using Mandriva at the moment but wishes to try Ubuntu.

Windows In Mandriva

Here is a screen shot of Windows 7 running in virtual box on my Mandriva machine, I wanted to see how it performs on this system I dual boot with XP. I have a Dell laptop with windows 7 on it and I am pleased with it, as much as I dislike Windows I still need it for certain work related things. As for my every day needs I use Mandriva.

Spring Cleaning

with the warmer weather approaching I noticed my computer was running a little warmer so after a quick inspection I noticed all of the winters dust had settled inside my computer.

So a little help from the vacuum and I was all set, I think thats one thing a lot of people tend to forget about and it can really slow your computer down and damage the hardware inside with the extreme heat and all. For instance this picture

this was one someone brought me to fix late last summer, I still dont know how it even still managed to boot or do much of anything. I like to take a shop vac and put the hose in the exhaust port and blow the dust out that way you don't risk static damaging anything also you can keep the hose back a foot or so where if you are using the vacuum to suck the dust out you need to make contact or get very close to delicate parts.

Laptop

Well after a lot of thinking about it we finally got a new laptop. We got an Acer with Windows 7 on it, my wife needed it for when she works from home. I wasnt so sure about windows 7 after the bad rap Vista got but so far it seems to work pretty well. I will continue using Linux myself but my wife has to use Windows for work.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.


 

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.

From The Past

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Test Your Speed

We Need a National High Speed Internet Policy

I think this is a good idea.

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.