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I have a Ubuntu 7.10 install, with KDE, that won't update anymore. I have tried and tried, now have 30 or so items in the update list. Once, I got one to update, but when I tried all 30, it just sat there and did nothing. So, I'll probably have to start over, now upgrading to the newest Ubuntu. Download the .iso, format and install, I suppose. The 7.10 updater won't let me use it to upgrade to latest version, although it did figure out that a new version is available. I'm running a HP 8250 with maximum RAM, and a 160GB 7200 HDD, with Comcast cable modem. Not the fastest, but does work well with Ubuntu 7.10. Here's a screenshot. That one was taken before KDE was added.

I use a SanDisk ReadyBoost USB Drive, either a 2 or 4 GB one to run the entire operating system.
(In the link, I have a readme with the details)
So, here we have a setup where "you and your machine" can be various PC's and laptops that you have access to. You just plug the USB drive into the PC you want to work with.

Although the livecd linux operating system discussed in the readme is "in the cd", and not really upgradeable, I do have one application that is upgradeable, as long as the system is set up with a persistent home directory, knoppix style.
It is the "Station Selector for XMMS", a graphical front end with car-radio style buttons for some popular internet radio stations. Here is a screenshot.

The hard-coded radio station internet addresses in the Station Selector could go bad, if the radio station went off the air, so to speak. So, I fixed it up so the user can easily download an up-to-date copy, and have it each time the operating system is booted up, as long as a persistent home directory is being used.
The update portion of the application takes care of everything for you, and keeps you informed as to what is going on. (You don't have to know any code)
The success of this depends on me keeping the Station Selector up-to-date, so it can be downloaded by users. You can get your own copy here.

Here is a screenshot of the application running on Ubuntu 7.10. (One has to install xmms and tcl-tk in Ubuntu so it'll run)

So, I really need the ability to "blend" the "internet" with my own PC, just like Microsoft and Mozilla need to do that, to keep their applications up-to-date on your machine. For me, it is handy to use the Sandisk drive setup, because I only have to update one PC, so the speak, as I can just plug the little drive into another computer or laptop to get the benefit of the updated downloads. No tight "integration" web/PC here, however.

Sure, I can move lots of data onto the web, my rapidweather.com server, if I want to, and I suppose an entire "persistent home directory" with all of my stuff could be zipped and put up there, and then downloaded onto a new computer's hard drive, or a fresh, just formatted USB drive, and unzipped into place in the "persistent home directory filesystem. The emelFM dual-pane file manager I have in my Knoppix Remaster makes that very easy to do.
That's easier I suppose than plugging

I use a SanDisk ReadyBoost USB Drive, either a 2 or 4 GB one to run the entire operating system.
(In the link, I have a readme with the details)
So, here we have a setup where "you and your machine" can be various PC's and laptops that you have access to. You just plug the USB drive into the PC you want to work with.

Although the livecd linux operating system discussed in the readme is "in the cd", and not really upgradeable, I do have one application that is upgradeable, as long as the system is set up with a persistent home directory, knoppix style.
It is the "Station Selector for XMMS", a graphical front end with car-radio style buttons for some popular internet radio stations. Here is a screenshot.

The hard-coded radio station internet addresses in the Station Selector could go bad, if the radio station went off the air, so to speak. So, I fixed it up so the user can easily download an up-to-date copy, and have it each time the operating system is booted up, as long as a persistent home directory is being used.
The update portion of the application takes care of everything for you, and keeps you informed as to what is going on. (You don't have to know any code)
The success of this depends on me keeping the Station Selector up-to-date, so it can be downloaded by users. You can get your own copy here.

Here is a screenshot of the application running on Ubuntu 7.10. (One has to install xmms and tcl-tk in Ubuntu so it'll run)

So, I really need the ability to "blend" the "internet" with my own PC, just like Microsoft and Mozilla need to do that, to keep their applications up-to-date on your machine. For me, it is handy to use the Sandisk drive setup, because I only have to update one PC, so the speak, as I can just plug the little drive into another computer or laptop to get the benefit of the updated downloads. No tight "integration" web/PC here, however.

Sure, I can move lots of data onto the web, my rapidweather.com server, if I want to, and I suppose an entire "persistent home directory" with all of my stuff could be zipped and put up there, and then downloaded onto a new computer's hard drive, or a fresh, just formatted USB drive, and unzipped into place in the "persistent home directory filesystem. The emelFM dual-pane file manager I have in my Knoppix Remaster makes that very easy to do.
That's easier I suppose than plugging

I use a SanDisk ReadyBoost USB Drive, either a 2 or 4 GB one to run the entire operating system.
(In the link, I have a readme with the details)
So, here we have a setup where "you and your machine" can be various PC's and laptops that you have access to. You just plug the USB drive into the PC you want to work with.

Although the livecd linux operating system discussed in the readme is "in the cd", and not really upgradeable, I do have one application that is upgradeable, as long as the system is set up with a persistent home directory, knoppix style.
It is the "Station Selector for XMMS", a graphical front end with car-radio style buttons for some popular internet radio stations. Here is a screenshot.

The hard-coded radio station internet addresses in the Station Selector could go bad, if the radio station went off the air, so to speak. So, I fixed it up so the user can easily download an up-to-date copy, and have it each time the operating system is booted up, as long as a persistent home directory is being used.
The update portion of the application takes care of everything for you, and keeps you informed as to what is going on. (You don't have to know any code)
The success of this depends on me keeping the Station Selector up-to-date, so it can be downloaded by users. You can get your own copy here.

Here is a screenshot of the application running on Ubuntu 7.10. (One has to install xmms and tcl-tk in Ubuntu so it'll run)

So, I really need the ability to "blend" the "internet" with my own PC, just like Microsoft and Mozilla need to do that, to keep their applications up-to-date on your machine. For me, it is handy to use the Sandisk drive setup, because I only have to update one PC, so the speak, as I can just plug the little drive into another computer or laptop to get the benefit of the updated downloads. No tight "integration" web/PC here, however.

Sure, I can move lots of data onto the web, my rapidweather.com server, if I want to, and I suppose an entire "persistent home directory" with all of my stuff could be zipped and put up there, and then downloaded onto a new computer's hard drive, or a fresh, just formatted USB drive, and unzipped into place in the "persistent home directory filesystem. The emelFM dual-pane file manager I have in my Knoppix Remaster makes that very easy to do.
That's easier I suppose than plugging

I do wish Opera would take this update opportunity to fix their toolbar so it looks similar to IE and Firefox, in that the blank space, where Opera used to have their advertisement bar, is removed, and filled with browser controls like the others have. To me, the greatest thing is Firefox having the toolbar editor, so the user can set it up like they want.

I do wish Opera would take this update opportunity to fix their toolbar so it looks similar to IE and Firefox, in that the blank space, where Opera used to have their advertisement bar, is removed, and filled with browser controls like the others have. To me, the greatest thing is Firefox having the toolbar editor, so the user can set it up like they want.

1. The main Knoppix filesystem.
2. A Persistent Home Directory partition.
   This will act like a real hard drive, it is your /ramdisk, known as /home/knoppix. (Without it, your installed memory is your /ramdisk)
3. A storage area, this partition does not contain active filesystem files, such as a browser cache. You can use it for saving documents, files, images, etc. You may, however, use it for a temporary GIMP or KB3 swap area. You just set up a directory in this partition, /gimp or /k3b, and tell the applications to use it.
4. A swap area. This is needed by the linux system, especially if you only have 128 MB of RAM or so.

How about the reliability of these little SanDisk drives? I have had perfect results, but they are somewhat slower than a 7500 rpm hard drive. I do not use them when I run my remastering script, to make a new ISO from a master copy in a given partition, that I have been working on.
One item that separates Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux from ordinary knoppix remasters is the heavy use of symlinks in the /ramdisk area, to reduce the "df" figure to way less than 1%. For instance, I have a .fonts-cache-1 file of about 304.70 KB, with every font I could find, so my system can display web pages, etc. with the highest quality fonts, way more than what a standard knoppix will have. But, I symlink it, and the actual file in /ramdisk is only 32 bytes. There are a lot more. The point to the fonts item is that you do not have to have a cheap-looking system if you run from a USB drive. Compared to using Internet Explorer on Windows XP, to view web pages, I have them beat, mine looks a lot better.
Cost? PC: $20.00, memory $50.00, add-on PCI USB card, $40.00, nice graphics card $60.00, 19" MAG monitor, $15.00 at a thrift store, network card, $20.00, extra light-up cooling fan $15.00, the SanDisk USB drive, $20.00.
The PC and monitor were extra-clean when I got them, so the appearance of the setup is good.
One big advantage of a USB drive, is that you can unplug it, move it to another PC to update to latest Rapidweather Remaster version, or just run your system on another PC that is equipped with the files and MSDOS setup in the tarball above.
No, the USB drive will not boot by itself,

1. The main Knoppix filesystem.
2. A Persistent Home Directory partition.
   This will act like a real hard drive, it is your /ramdisk, known as /home/knoppix. (Without it, your installed memory is your /ramdisk)
3. A storage area, this partition does not contain active filesystem files, such as a browser cache. You can use it for saving documents, files, images, etc. You may, however, use it for a temporary GIMP or KB3 swap area. You just set up a directory in this partition, /gimp or /k3b, and tell the applications to use it.
4. A swap area. This is needed by the linux system, especially if you only have 128 MB of RAM or so.

How about the reliability of these little SanDisk drives? I have had perfect results, but they are somewhat slower than a 7500 rpm hard drive. I do not use them when I run my remastering script, to make a new ISO from a master copy in a given partition, that I have been working on.
One item that separates Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux from ordinary knoppix remasters is the heavy use of symlinks in the /ramdisk area, to reduce the "df" figure to way less than 1%. For instance, I have a .fonts-cache-1 file of about 304.70 KB, with every font I could find, so my system can display web pages, etc. with the highest quality fonts, way more than what a standard knoppix will have. But, I symlink it, and the actual file in /ramdisk is only 32 bytes. There are a lot more. The point to the fonts item is that you do not have to have a cheap-looking system if you run from a USB drive. Compared to using Internet Explorer on Windows XP, to view web pages, I have them beat, mine looks a lot better.
Cost? PC: $20.00, memory $50.00, add-on PCI USB card, $40.00, nice graphics card $60.00, 19" MAG monitor, $15.00 at a thrift store, network card, $20.00, extra light-up cooling fan $15.00, the SanDisk USB drive, $20.00.
The PC and monitor were extra-clean when I got them, so the appearance of the setup is good.
One big advantage of a USB drive, is that you can unplug it, move it to another PC to update to latest Rapidweather Remaster version, or just run your system on another PC that is equipped with the files and MSDOS setup in the tarball above.
No, the USB drive will not boot by itself,

Seems like we've slashdotted the Pen Drive Linux site.

Ok, I'm running my linux (see screenshots, below) from a 2 GB SanDisk Micro Cruzer drive at this time,
on a Gateway 2000 Pentium II. Use these files to kick off the Flash Drive, using loadlin. You have to have a small msdos drive in the computer, or a partition on a larger drive with msdos, put the files there. Documentation is included in the tarball, also, a copy of the Rapidweather Remaster CD is needed also.

Reminds me of the setup I use with my Knoppix Remaster where the ~/.mozilla, ~/.opera and ~/.flock are not loaded into ramdisk until the user wants to start the browser. Then a "default, but preconfigured set up" ~/.mozilla etc is loaded before the browser itself starts. (no, these are not libraries)
So, if you don't want to take up ramdisk space with browser files that you won't need today, that's what you get.
Then, when the browser is closed, ~/.mozilla etc is deleted entirely. No trace. No cookies, no history, even though the browser zero's these out on close if you want, deletion is the only way to "be sure".
For a livecd linux that just might be run without a "persistent home directory partition", this is one way to go to preserve memory on systems that might only have 128 MB of RAM, for instance.

Don't throw those old boxes away, they will still run Firefox 2.0.0.9!

Oh, and what Hard Drive? I'm using a SanDisk 2 GB USB drive to run the OS with FF now. (4 partitions)
The hard drives have been "put to sleep". File is here, help yourself, it's fully commented.

Rapidweather

I've been looking forward to these fast solid state drives, wondering when they would be ready for market.
I run my Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux (See Screenshots, below) on a little 2 GB SanDisk Cruzer drive, it is a little slower booting up than an ordinary hard drive, but so portable! Just plug it in, and boot up, and all your files are there. I have 4 partitions on it, even a swap. When I run Debian 4.0 from the hard drive, that swap gets picked up too. Often, Office Depot has these drives for about $25.00.
I understand that Dell is offering some solid state hard drives as an option now, but they are very expensive.
They did say those drives are faster, which I just gotta see, since the Cruzer is slower. Could be that I use a PCI USB card, rather than a "real" USB interface directly into the motherboard. I'm using an old Gateway 2000 PII, with 512K cache, so it's able to run both OS's just fine, even Rapidweather Remaster from the USB drive. To get the SanDisk running, it is necessary to have these files on the hard drive, in a MSDOS or Windows 95/98 partition:
http://www.rapidweather.com/download
(free download)
When there, pick the usb tarball. Everything necessary to boot from a usb drive running Rapidweather Remaster is there, and a detailed readme is included. Look at that to see all the details.
The older PC's can't boot directly from a USB drive, so the files are necessary to provide a menu, and get the SanDisk running. Any old small hard drive will do, as long as you can install MSDOS on it.

The one I'm on now is a dual pentium pro, with 256 MB of RAM. Once, I had it loaded up with so many cards that the power supply to motherboard connectors burned. I fixed that, with spare ones, soldered in, from another power supply. Point is, I am constantly working on this box, and so far, am able to fix it, due to it's size, compared to a laptop. Decided to put two power supplies in it, so they split the workload, and not all of the power goes through the weak motherboard connnectors. It's a gamble, alright. Last thing I added was a 5 port USB 2.0 card, so I could plug in my USB mouse, and my Sandisk cruzer USB drives. I'm able to run my knoppix remaster from one of those drives, I have it partitioned as follows:

• A partition for the main KNOPPIX folder, this is the CD.
  
• A partition for a persistent home directory, that works like a hard drive, automatically adding stuff as you go along.
  
• A separate partition as an "Extra Partition", that you can store things you want to put there, and as a
  swap area for GIMP and K3B.
  
• A linux swap partition, this always gets mounted, unless you decide to "swapoff -v /dev/sda7" or something like that.

The other desktop is a HP Pavilion 8250, cost me $20.00, was very clean, and I maxed out the RAM for only $51.00.
I put a used 40 GB HDD in it for the main drive, and have Fedora Core there. Works very well, runs Opera 9.21 just like a more expensive machine. Naturally, I can also dual boot my remaster, run from the hard drive, or from a USB drive, take your choice. These files are how I do that, it's a loadlin/MSDOS menu setup. You will notice that there are two tarballs there, the latest one, dated 06-22-07 includes the USB drive as a choice. A big readme is included, so you can get all the details.

In summary, there are lots of desktops out there, just when I think that I have located a really clean one, for practically nothing, another one comes along. So many are Windows 98 machines.
Once, I had an IBM PS-1, 32 MB of RAM, dirt slow 25 mhz bus, and I managed to put Redhat 6.1 on it. Here's a link to an older page of mine where I show a dial-up application I made to allow Redhat 6.1 to connect to the internet if one cannot run KDE very well, with KPPP. I was able to get RHL installed on a very small hard drive, about 250 MB. I paid $5.00 for the PS-1, got it at a thrift store, someone had put it in a closet for years, then donated it, very little wear and tear, practically new. Later, I figured out that one could make a nice lilo RHL 6.1 hard drive on a faster machine, then just plug it into the cables on an old dog like the PS-1, and be up and running in a few minutes.
So easy to get into the case on a PS-1, just grab the little button under the top-front, and pull, and off comes your case! Takes two seconds!
Endless fun for us to play with older desktops, they are plentiful and cheap. And, with something like my knoppix remaster, you can run Firefox 2.0.0.5 on many of them!

Rapidweather

I've wound up breaking some rules, one of them is including a bunch of mouse cursor themes, that install in seconds.
Details are available in the Getting Started Guide for Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.

And, yes, I have Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.5 already. Another rule broken, put a slightly out-of-date Firefox in there.

Also my remastering scripts really work, only one question is asked, what partition do you want to put your "Master Copy" in, so you can go to work on it, and when you're ready to make that new .iso, same question, what partition is your "Master Copy" in. (You might have several) Answer that, and soon, your .iso is ready for burning to a CD. Comes with complete instructions, too. Processing time on a P4 with 1 GB RAM is about 20-25 minutes, over an hour on a Pentium II. I've run it hundreds of times on a dual Pentium Pro. Never fails.
Perhaps I have broken a rule there, by allowing users to fork off their own distro, that would have some of the things they want in it.

Another rule broken is that I provide emelFM as a file manager, far superior in ease of use to Konqueror, but I have KDE and Konqueror too, it does have it's uses.

The rule that linux distros have so-so fonts is broken:

The web pages displayed in Mozilla Firefox running on the Remaster look better than they do when running Firefox on Windows Vista. I have the fonts, and that does the trick. OEM Knoppix scales down the included font packages, resulting in rough-looking web pages, not professional enough for me. My ~/.fonts.cache-1 is only 32 bytes because it simlinks to the real one of 304.70 KB in the CD, so my available /ramdisk does not take a hit because I have a lot of fonts installed. My default /ramdisk is only 564 (out of 199072 on this box), and stays that way if I use a "persistent home" partition. That's below 1% of /ramdisk.

I have fun stuff, too. My "Wallpaper Control Center" completely manages downloaded and built-in wallpaper images, has a large GUI, and over 35 different scripts to do the work. Nobody else has it, they have to manage their wallpaper collections the hard way. This is so fast, easy, foolproof, it's fun! Another rule broken, "nothing new".

And, a "more secure way of running linux", Check my Blog for how to run the Remaster directly from a Sandisk USB drive on an older computer. Free download of files needed to get started. Look them over to see what this is all about.

Rapidweather

I've wound up breaking some rules, one of them is including a bunch of mouse cursor themes, that install in seconds.
Details are available in the Getting Started Guide for Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.

And, yes, I have Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.5 already. Another rule broken, put a slightly out-of-date Firefox in there.

Also my remastering scripts really work, only one question is asked, what partition do you want to put your "Master Copy" in, so you can go to work on it, and when you're ready to make that new .iso, same question, what partition is your "Master Copy" in. (You might have several) Answer that, and soon, your .iso is ready for burning to a CD. Comes with complete instructions, too. Processing time on a P4 with 1 GB RAM is about 20-25 minutes, over an hour on a Pentium II. I've run it hundreds of times on a dual Pentium Pro. Never fails.
Perhaps I have broken a rule there, by allowing users to fork off their own distro, that would have some of the things they want in it.

Another rule broken is that I provide emelFM as a file manager, far superior in ease of use to Konqueror, but I have KDE and Konqueror too, it does have it's uses.

The rule that linux distros have so-so fonts is broken:

The web pages displayed in Mozilla Firefox running on the Remaster look better than they do when running Firefox on Windows Vista. I have the fonts, and that does the trick. OEM Knoppix scales down the included font packages, resulting in rough-looking web pages, not professional enough for me. My ~/.fonts.cache-1 is only 32 bytes because it simlinks to the real one of 304.70 KB in the CD, so my available /ramdisk does not take a hit because I have a lot of fonts installed. My default /ramdisk is only 564 (out of 199072 on this box), and stays that way if I use a "persistent home" partition. That's below 1% of /ramdisk.

I have fun stuff, too. My "Wallpaper Control Center" completely manages downloaded and built-in wallpaper images, has a large GUI, and over 35 different scripts to do the work. Nobody else has it, they have to manage their wallpaper collections the hard way. This is so fast, easy, foolproof, it's fun! Another rule broken, "nothing new".

And, a "more secure way of running linux", Check my Blog for how to run the Remaster directly from a Sandisk USB drive on an older computer. Free download of files needed to get started. Look them over to see what this is all about.

Rapidweather

I'm using Comcast, only problem is how expensive it is, but I'm glad I don't have to use dialup.
Didn't know there was a problem with Firefox, I run my knoppix remaster all the time, on several computers, and use Firefox 2.0.0.4. (Also can use Opera and Flock).
When the Comcast man came and ran my cable, I did use XP, but could have booted that box into linux, and did, so he could see how that went. Very interested, and so I gave him a CD. I was able to answer a lot of questions for him that his customers ask.
I have some bad trees in my yard, always dropping big limbs, taking the cable line down. They always come and put it back up and give me no problems.
I have added a router, on my own, and have run several cables myself, still no problems.
When I had dial-up, that cost about half what cable internet does for not much speed.
For my knoppix remaster, I made a little interface to "connect" and "disconnect" the broadband, put that in the IceWM toolbar and the menu. Sometimes I forget to turn on the surge-protector for the cable modem and router, and that little application does the trick.
You know, IceWM will show you if you are connected on the toolbar, next to the cpu monitor.
Try all that with Fedora. I have set up one of my applications to run in Fedora Core, but have not gotten around to the "Broadband/Network Connection Control" as yet.
I have always written my own dial-up "wizards" and controls, too bad all that neat work now goes to waste on my computers.
Lots of details in this document, the Getting Started Guide that I put in the remaster.

Rapidweather

I do have this setup, been tested with a 2 GB USB drive, but requires an older computer that has a USB port, and a small hard drive with MSDOS or Windows 3.1, 95 or 98 on it. Works well with 128 MB of RAM, and a 266 MHZ or better processor. None of those computers can boot directly from a USB drive, so we have to have a MSDOS and loadlin setup with a selection menu that comes up, started from the C:\autoexec.bat file.
You can carry the USB drive around with you, and plug it into a specially prepared computer, and you have linux. (See screenshots, below) For starters, you get Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.4, Opera and Flock for web browsers. Details are in the Getting Started Guide.
The files you need for the computer are here.
There is a Readme packaged in the tarball.

Also, you will need a copy of the CD, obtainable here.

Rapidweather

I do have this setup, been tested with a 2 GB USB drive, but requires an older computer that has a USB port, and a small hard drive with MSDOS or Windows 3.1, 95 or 98 on it. Works well with 128 MB of RAM, and a 266 MHZ or better processor. None of those computers can boot directly from a USB drive, so we have to have a MSDOS and loadlin setup with a selection menu that comes up, started from the C:\autoexec.bat file.
You can carry the USB drive around with you, and plug it into a specially prepared computer, and you have linux. (See screenshots, below) For starters, you get Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.4, Opera and Flock for web browsers. Details are in the Getting Started Guide.
The files you need for the computer are here.
There is a Readme packaged in the tarball.

Also, you will need a copy of the CD, obtainable here.

Rapidweather

As you can see, I am horribly bored this evening, but I am doing a test:

I'm running the linux OS you see in the Screenshots link below on a SanDisk 2 GB Cruzer Micro, partitioned like this:
SDA1 700 MB for Knoppix (the CD itself)
SDA5 700 MB for Persistent Home Directory
SDA6 400 MB for GIMP and K3B swap, additional storage also.
SDA7 150 MB linux swap.

Here is the output from TOP:
Tasks: 42 total, 1 running, 41 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.5% user, 3.9% system, 0.0% nice, 90.6% idle
Mem: 385800k total, 218864k used, 166936k free, 6456k buffers
Swap: 155192k total, 0k used, 155192k free, 130392k cached
(Uptime not shown, is 2:05)

This PC is a HP Pavilion 8250, Celeron 267 MHZ.
To get the USB drive booted up, I use a small HDD with MSDOS 6.21, and these files.
The small "boot" drive only runs for about 20 seconds, the Menu comes up, you make a choice, then the Linux OS runs entirely from the USB drive. The necessary "loadlin" command line is:
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix xmodule=s3virge fromhd=/dev/sda1 home=/dev/sda5

Browser is Firefox 2.0.0.4

Thanks for listening...

Rapidweather

I did look at her MySpace page, it seems that there was a petition asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to pardon her so she won't have to go to jail, and apparently Paris herself decided to thank the individual involved by posting a "thank-you" on her page. She misspelled "sign", when asking people to "sign" the petition.

It's gone now, the MySpace page is a horrible excuse for a web page, someone needs to clean up the page, perhaps by cutting off the public's right to post there, just leaving posts cleared by a kind and caring webmaster that can turn the page into something not so out-of-control.

With so many talented webmaster types here at Slashdot, I'm sure some of you would like to somehow contact Ms. Hilton, offering your help in her time of need.

I probably could work the assignment in somehow, but I'll go ahead and let some of you cut in line ahead of me, being the nice fellow that I am.

I do play with GIMP, and I have a "Wallpaper Control Center" application in my Knoppix remaster that has a section where one can, at the touch of a button, download and install a desktop wallpaper directly from my rapidweather.com/images directory. One of them is a nice picture of Paris Hilton. I do it that way so I can change the "downloadable" wallpapers, all the others are in the CD, and are fixed.
Check the "screenshots" link, below for a screenshot of the "Wallpaper Control Center".

The application is basically for managing right clicked web images for wallpaper purposes, sizing them to a particular desktop, and saving them for future use, within a "livecd linux" environment. If the user downloads too many images and tries to apply one, the application will take notice and guide the user through a fix, where extra images are easily moved from the active "desktop wallpaper" area, where they can be managed. Almost impossible to fowl it up without the application asking questions, and arranging for fixes. Very easy to do, so if one comes across a batch of web images that you want for your desktop, download all you want, then start the control center by clicking on the IceWM toolbar icon. Much faster processing of these downloaded images than with KDE, for instance.
Here is the url for the Paris wallpaper image:

http://www.rapidweather.com/images/sample6.jpg

I can't link to it here, you'll get a Forbidden error, but you may copy the link and go there directly in your browser. To see the others, enter "sample1.jpg, etc. (There are six 1024x768 images, all produced using GIMP)

       

I had a Dell 1705 come into my work area, the owner wanting the XP partition formatted, and started over clean.
Was too slow due to all the programs that Dell preinstalls, according to the owner of the laptop.
I did not touch the restoration partitions, they have the OEM Dell drivers, some of them, at least.
Dell does have all of the necessary drivers online, so you can use a livecd linux to download them, and install until you get your wireless card working, and can boot into XP, and finish the setup.
These laptops are very nice, only complaint is the driver for the ATI video card, it wants you to use the maximum resolution to get top performance, if you back down to 1024x768, so you can see the text better, the driver says you are not getting the most out of the card. This is XP, not Vista, and the entire put-back-together is doable with XP. When I got finished with the laptop, it was very nice indeed. On that hardware, XP beats my live cd linux, in that I don't have a wireless card driver, for one thing. Printer support is another, XP wins there also.
Downside with XP is security, that OS is probably a disaster waiting to happen in the security area.
Rapidweather Remaster (see screenshots, below) wins there.
Glad to hear that Dell still offers XP for these fine machines, running a dual core with 2 GB of RAM is a good match for XP, and way more than enough with Rapidweather Remaster. The Remaster can do well with 256 MB of RAM.
I have heard complaints about the battery life going down within a few months with XP on these laptops, surely Vista would be worse, so the Upgrade to Vista is not being done, owners getting chicken about the new OS fowling up their nice XP installation. With the re-partition of the hard drive on this particular laptop, I can accommodate a livecd linux, with a "persistent home" partition, and a "tohd", "fromhd" partition for the /KNOPPIX folder.
Still has to boot into these hard drive setups with the CD, however. Since we were to keep XP, I couldn't do a loadlin batch file setup to get Linux booted up off the hard drive, without using the CD.
I do that on dual hard drive machines, a small MSDOS drive (2GB)with the files, and a big drive (160GB) for Linux.
You may use these batch files as a guide, just copy them to your MSDOS hard drive partition, and customize.
Should work with an OEM Knoppix 3.4 CD, or with a Rapidweather Remaster CD, (see screenshots below).
I am currently working from a HP Pavilion 8250 with this setup, this machine dates back to the Windows 95 days, but has a fairly decent Celeron processor that gives me good performance as I run Flock 0.7.12 today.
This machine is very quiet, does not beat up the hard drive like Windows 98 would do. Right now I am able to run Amarok and Flock at the same time.

In Reusing old PC's, we need to know what secure operating system will be used.

I have several older PC's that came with Windows 98 on them, but I'm not using that, I run my livecd linux.
I don't really run it off the CDROM drive except one time to set it up, I use these files to use loadlin to run it off the hard drive.
  I can use MSDOS here, to provide a menu at bootup, that in turn runs the loadlin batch files to start linux. So, I am not wearing out an expensive CDROM drive, just to run the OS on a daily basis. One can keep Windows 98, and use that, it has DOS in it, and the Windows 98 splash screen appears briefly before the menu comes up.

I am posting this using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.2, and the box has 256 MB of 72-pin RAM, and two 200 MHZ Pentium Pro processors.

I use a 40 GB HDD, partitioned to provide a "persistent home", and with this setup, the drive activity is very low, compared to what it was when Windows 98 was being run as the primary OS.

Only problem I have is the monitor, an ADI Microscan 4V, probably using more power than a LCD, but I am reusing an old piece of hardware, rather than throw it away. I usually run 800x600, since the monitor is about 13 inches diagonal.

As with most upgrades to the latest power-saving technology, money is always a problem. I got the ADI monitor at a thrift store for $20.00, upgrading would be expensive, in comparison to the cost of the rest of the system.

I did try Windows 3.1 on a 386 once, and I think it didn't want to have a "page file", known to us Linux folks as a swap file. It did connect to the internet, but mostly only to text sites, such as government weather sites. I was using dial up which can have problems contributing to the text-only surfing on tiny processors.
On another one, I put Basic Linux on a small Compaq Contura notebook, and set up a dial-up web server, (for test only), one could edit the served page (text only), and view it in Netscape 3.0. Slow, but it was reliable and worked. Had two hard drives for the Contura, one with Windows, so I removed it, and put the test drive in, to install Basic Linux.
I did get some very old Mac's to connect to the internet, same thing, mostly text-only pages available.
The trick here is to set up the hard drive on a more powerful computer, then move it to the old box.
I have a newer Mac Quadra 660AV, and one can easily download the iCab browser, it automatically installs, and does not have a time limit for the 68K Macs. Makes a mess of most modern web pages, however.

Yes, we can all waste time on projects like this, but they do tend to increase our overall range of knowledge about the subject of "installing OS's on PC's".

For those of you wanting to try a "loadlin" install of Knoppix 3.4, or my remaster of it (screenshots below), I have a tarball of the files to set up a MSDOS menu, all of the loadlin batch files, and the 2.4 kernel to use, here.

For this setup, I put MSDOS 6.21 on a small hard drive at /dev/hda, and then use a larger hard drive for linux, having copied the livecd using the "tohd=/dev/hdd1" Knoppix cheatcode. On this box my "hdd" is 40 GB, on another, I have a 160 GB drive, both with many partitions. I always use a 2 GB or so partition for a "persistent home", that makes the system automatically save all kinds of files and applications for you, to return on the next boot-up of the livecd system. Your Mozilla Thunderbird mail settings return, as well as your printer configuration.
You'll notice the "home=scan" knoppix cheatcode in most of the loadlin command lines in the tarball.
One big advantage to using a "persistent home" is the ability to download and test (and keep) the nightly builds of Firefox, or Opera (weekly builds). You can easily set up a separate IceWM (my default wm) menu item for the test build, and keep that too. Lots of options here for experimenters.

If you don't have MSDOS, Windows 95 or 98 will work, the machine just displays the Windows splash screen briefly before going to the Menu, where you can then multi-boot. I threw in MSDOS "Edit" and "Scandisk" in the Menu, to give me a way (With Edit) to fix the loadlin batch files if they have any problems.

I do this on all of my computers, none have more than 256 MB of RAM, this box I am on now has two 200 MHZ Pentium Pro's. The setup runs as fast as one could possibly want, I use a Diamond Stealth S60 Radeon 7000 ATI 32 B card, and use the DVI output to a 17 inch Dell Ultrasharp LCD monitor.

These "loadlin" installs are faster, quieter (won't beat your hard drive up) than XP, and run on much older computers, usually from the Windows 98 era. QTParted is available in the CD, so you can set up the /dev/hda with the swap file, and other partitions.

Rapidweather

I use both Windows 98 and MSDOS 6.21 to boot my Knoppix remaster from the hard drive.
I don't use both on the same computer, If I installed Windows 98 for some reason that now escapes me, then I use
Windows 98 "dos" with a set of loadlin batch files and a menu to boot up from the hd.

If I want to avoid Windows on a box that I am just going to run my remaster, or perhaps RHL 9 (dual boot), then I just install MSDOS, and put all the necessary loadlin and menu files in place, and I am good to go.
  I always have MSDOS edit in the menu that comes up from autoexec.bat, so I can take care of any problems with the batch files, or if there are some changes to be made.

I like to use both Windows and Linux operating systems on the same box, but I suppose all that will go by the wayside one day when Vista comes standard on all boxes. Won't be installing it on everything like I do now with '98 or msdos.
I usually get donated boxes, or ones that "won't boot", or are obsolete when the owner or business gets all new computers. So, I get Windows preinstalled, but I can install Win 3.1, Win 95 and 98 myself if necessary.

I have figured out how to have two complete installations of Windows XP on the same computer, dual boot with the ntldr screen. Sure takes care of the problem of other user's desktop icons showing up on everyones desktop, when only one installation of XP is on the box, and a few "user" accounts are set up. If you don't like AOL, then you get your own clean installation, with no aol.

About the Macintosh computers, I have had lots of fun with my Quadra, and the voices. Big time-waster.

With my Knoppix remaster, I do like to have all three web browsers in the LiveCD, Firefox, Opera and Flock, and I keep them up to date. I have some screenshots below, some are not entirely up to date, however, but I am sure you will enjoy the girls in the wallpapers. My Wallpaper Control Center in the remaster has a set of buttons to download and install wallpapers from my server. One click, that's all. I have redone all these with GIMP, here is a sample.
The idea is that I'll change the wallpapers on the server from time to time, they are not in the liveCD, just the software to "install" them in the running linux system.

I just wanted to point out that there are lots of us out there that enjoy and use both Linux and Windows.
I'm sorry to read all the bad press about the zombie Windows Computers, (it's true, sadly).
We would not have all these relatively cheap PC's to run Linux on, if it were not for Bill Gates getting Windows preinstalled on almost all boxes from the beginning. (regardless of how).
I would not want to see the end of Microsoft because of virus problems, but would welcome a more secure Microsoft Linux OS preinstalled to the degree that we have Microsoft Windows today.

prog "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 RC2" /usr/local/firefox/icons/mozicon16.xpm rxvt -iconic -rv -fb 10x20 -geometry 70x10+20+12 -cr yellow -T "Firefox" -e /home/knoppix/firefox/firefox

That is for the IceWM toolbar icon in Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.

There are some screenshots below showing a prior Firefox running in IceWM, here is one that shows the toolbar.
Now, when you set up the browser the way you want, the "persistent home directory" knoppix.img will keep your changes from bootup to bootup.
I put the bookmarks with the 9 RSS feeds in ~/firefox so RC2 has them also.

This has been a description of how to temporarily install RC2, when a "knoppix.img" is being used. (This box has a 200 MB one., so about 53% of that is being used for the new Firefox, and Google Earth, both temporary "installs".)

Now I am going to enjoy using Mozilla Firefox 2.0 RC2 for the rest of the evening.

-- Rapidweather
 

I needed a good laugh today, and when I saw the hour limit on the web browser, etc. that did it.

I couldn't help but note the I *despise* Linux on the desktop item in prior post.

All I can offer there are the screenshots, below, for my linux livecd system.

Or, you could just go here for one of my favorites.

System requirements? 128 MB RAM, 200 MMX or better processor, Already have a Windows 98 installation at /dev/hda1, so we can use QTParted to partition the hdd, and set up a swap, and a partition for a /knoppix, so we can just run from the hard drive, and free up the CDROM drive for other uses.

Plenty of older boxes qualify, that's what I use every day.

-- Rapidweather

Then I thought about it all, and realized that from the beginning, Windows has always used a page file. In the days of Windows 3.1 it was common to have a laptop with only 4 MB of RAM. Very expensive to add a pcmcia card with more RAM. I paid $800 for one such card, then, when the prices fell, ponied up another 350 for a card to give me a grand total of 20 MB of RAM. The page/swap file really helped Windows in those days.

So, after the LiveCD Beta tester deal, I decided to redo the remaster to ask the user to set up a swap file if the RAM was less than 128. This would allow all those Walmart Windows XP computers to boot without being bothered, as they cannot set up a swap in that partition. Kind of a compromise.

I did, however, download a bunch of .iso's of other liveCD linux distributions, to see what was going on.

I have my own, so I wanted to get a perspective on the others. In addition, I wanted to test my provider, to see if they would give me a call about this. They have not, but then I have forgotten my email address as a precaution.

I suppose I might look it up in the paperwork that the cable guy left me, and see what is in my inbox.

It seems nowadays that everyone wants you to have an email address to go with whatever you have just purchased. Before long, one might have an address to go with that pair of socks you just bought, that hamburger from Wendy's, that Tank of Gasoline... No, wait, at those prices, when you get a tank of gasoline, they allow you to go through the buffet and have a glass of sherry....

I must be dreaming again...

I cooked up a browser detector that separates the old browsers, like Netscape 3.04 from the newer ones, so I could get them on an identical page that I built and tested to work correctly on the old browsers. I do not get a lot of hits on that, so I either don't have a lot of old browsers out there, or just have an unpopular page. Here it is to try, if you are running something with the Javascript turned off, and really old, on an old OS, like Windows 3.1:
Go here, and then click on the Star Home pageAs you can see, I have a selection of "Your Home Page" pages, to try and solve the problem of having so many different browsers out there, from MSIE 6 to Nettamer. I had to fix a page for the Mac OS 7.5.3 (68k) for the Netscape and MSIE and iCab browsers for that. I generally try and offer a simple page, and that will work in most browsers with a little adjustment. My favorite browser is Mozilla Firebird, second one is Opera 6.12.

The Weather, umm... look at the sky, that's how I get my forcast.

Then, I suppose, you return to your mud-hut and bang
your stone club on the floor while the missus prepares barbequed woolly mammoth steaks. Not to worry, though, in a few thousand years, man will invent the clock, and for your weather, you could wait around until the internet is invented, and go online and get some weather info here.