Undoubtedly they had to guess at what would be needed in the way of a rover when these were built. Now that they know, surely the next ones will greatly benefit from the experience.
I remastered DSL before I decided to go with Knoppix 3.4 and remaster that. Mine runs well on older machines also. One test that all livecd linux must pass 100% is the "testcd" one. Otherwise, you'll have problems booting on many machines. Mine boots on all boxes except the AMD 64 ones. I stay with the 2.4 kernel, and use it all day long on 200 mmx boxes. I moved the minimum ram to 128, if that or less, the "swap file configuration" comes up during bootup, to try and get the user to set up a swap. A lot of the older boxes have 95/98 on them, so that works out well. To help out the older boxes with limited ram, I have the/ramdisk usage down to 1% as measured by "df" on a 256 MB box. Opera 8.54, for instance, loads a preconfigured ~/.opera into/ramdisk at startup, and then removes it on exit. Opera has 12 RSS feeds built in, which fill with stories in a couple of minutes on dialup. You can disconnect then, and read the summaries in Opera. Firefox has RSS also, and it loads it's ~/.mozilla at browser startup also. Same with Flock, but no feeds there. At last count, I have 40 custom made scripts to work with my remaster. DSL automatically saves your configuration at shutdown, I don't do that, for security reasons. (yours). One rule with livecd linux is to try and keep as much off the hard drive as possible, just run from the CD. Can do "tohd" however. I have a blog, and try to tell exactly what is going on with my livecd linux, and not hide anything. My default WM is IceWM, also KDE, Fluxbox, twm available, and fully configured. I have 8 cursor themes, select one and have it running in 15 seconds. All bigger than the default Knoppix cursor theme. So, any mention of "older computers/linux" catches my eye, I've been working on that problem for quite a while. Check out my screenshots, in signature below, and the Getting Started Guide.
It hurts, rip it out with whatever method you can.
I saw an old John Wayne movie where he entered a dentist's office to avoid getting shot by a bad guy, and told the dentist to pretend to pull a tooth. So we got a look at what that involved in the Wild West. Lots of hollering, and the dentist grabbing the "tooth" with his "pliers". The bad guy looked in the window, saw what was going on, and went off in another direction, forgetting about Wayne for some reason. Anyone remember the name of that John Wayne movie?
McDonalds has gotten away from their core business long ago by offering too much on the menu. So, they don't have your burger, fries and drink ready when you arrive. What was simple to do in the 1950's is now hard to do. Also, the drive in window takes 20 minutes to get to, the driveway up to it is always full. Not enough employees on the production line, those that are there are lost in the details of the now-complicated menu.
ATM's are reasonably quick. Anything that a customer can get to can get fouled up, namely the deposit slot, sometimes jammed, with a clueless bank totally unaware. Long holidays can lead to the ATM's being essentially out of service for longer periods of time. Improvised signs by helpful visitors to the ATM warn of danger only too often. Lack of scotch tape to stick the sign to the front of the ATM a problem, usually solved by sticking the sign in an almost non-existent crack in the ATM, at the mercy of the wind, rain, and the person that visited the ATM just minutes before you come along.
I needed a book when I first got started with Linux, using Redhat 6.1. Needed help getting it installed, but did not get it to connect to the web for a while. Here's a page I put up after I figured out how to do that. Book I used was Redhat Linux Secrets, by Naba Barkakati. I was able to put Redhat 6.1 on many small boxes, one with only 32 mb ram. I can imagine how helpful a book on Ubuntu would be, don't know if any available are as good as those written by Naba Barkakati. He has several books out on Fedora Core, according to Google. Also used a book to get me started on Debian 2.2. That is a hard one to install, so I used Powerquest's Drive Copy to spread it around on other PC's once I got it up and running. Another was SuSE Linux, very nice, and different from the others to be sure.
For Knoppix, I used Knoppix Hacks by Kyle Rankin. Just had to remaster it, however, see my screenshots, link in signature. Knoppix always needs remastering. Since he fills up the CD, only those able to chroot need try. Mine runs 495 MB now, still can toss out some items.
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
I have a remaster of Knoppix that I find much more useful than the original.
In addition to the applications that I added (some I wrote myself), there is this one note about "testcd" that I have discussed in my blog.
From what I can tell, if "testcd" does not come out right for a livecd linux, there is the _possibility_ that the cd may not boot on all 386/586/686 boxes.
I have tried to get my remaster right, so it passes "testcd" with a 100% score, so to speak.
One would need a Knoppix cd, and one that boots when you want it to.
Here is the latest recap of some of the features in my remaster.
There are automated scripts to use when remastering the CD. One copies the cd, the other prepares an iso after changes are made to the master-copy.
I left out the fact that I have emelFM in there, I use it all the time.
All these revelations about the goings-on within Microsoft give new meaning to the term "open source". Something is certainly "open" here, now they have a percentage on the code rewrite. That's a start.
I don't want to sound mean here, I love Windows, if it were not for it, all these nice PC's would not be all over the place. Imagine, "no Windows". Classes all weekend long on "installing Gentoo Linux. Every Joe Sixpack for miles around required to attend, he needs that, since there is "no Windows", and his PC needs a specially tailored OS so he can get on the web.
Seriously, I have several old PC's that have very small amounts of RAM by todays standards, (4MB - 32MB), and run Windows 3.1 just fine. I got one little laptop out of the Dumpster, and it had a smashed screen. I fixed up a nice Windows 3.1 installation for the hard drive, then got another little hard drive for it, and put Basic Linux on that. It's now a little dial up server, and can serve up a web page that can be viewed (Netscape) and edited as needed.
So, I can do both OS's, but I'll always like Windows, especially since the drivers in it exactly match the video, sound and modem in the box, something I have (over the years) had an interesting and educational time getting-to-work in Linux. Here's a link to one of my legacy pages detailing my progress in working with Linux. I started out with Redhat 6.1, and stuck with it until I had it working just right on a little IBM PS-1 with 32 MB RAM, and a 25 MHZ system bus. I gave a thrift store $5.00 for it, in perfect shape, stuck in a closet for years, then donated.
If it were not for Windows being preinstalled (and simple to use for Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack), the techies would not have cheap PC's to play with. Those things would cost tens of thousands of dollars, just like they did before the advent of Windows.
I say keep your Windows installation, even if you only use it occasionally, (not on the web, it's virus-land for Windows) and "install" some flavor of Linux. I have Redhat 9, Windows 98, and almost always run my livecd linux with the cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hdd7" on this box. Do that also on an XP box. To get my printers to work, I have to use Kanotix livecd linux on the XP box, and Kubuntu Linux live cd on the Windows 98 box. (That one takes _forever_ to boot).
The other side of the flood of Windows computers into the marketplace is that the owners have virus problems, other troubles, and tend to set them out on the curb for the trashman to pick up. No suprise that they cannot fix the box. The modem I'm using right now came from such a discarded PC. All the machines I use were discarded Windows boxes, some just given away, here you are. Some bought for a fraction of what they cost new. All will run Linux, I have a (free) HP Pavilion 6330 that does sound just fine with my livecd linux.
Rovers dead before Vista release... There you have it. The anticipation is what's fun, and as long as that time/date is out there, we are essentially happy. Once it arrives, is released, etc. then we forget, and direct our attention to the next big thing that's not here yet. Without that ability, we cease to create.
Don't forget Hurricane Rita. Another cat 5 storm within a month of Katrina. Here's a link to a Rita blog that has a lot of informative stories and videos.
Anyone remember an asteroid story where we did not know about the thing until after it passed Earth, and was going away? So, if one is going to hit, we probably, and should not, know in advance.
Something much smaller, but terrifying nonetheless, was Katrina. I remember seeing grandmothers, children fleeing up the highway the next day, knowing from the looks of them that they would not last another mile without dropping in their tracks. Their transportation that got them here ran out of gas, apparently, and they got out and started walking. Power was out, all I had working was my scanner, hooked to a car battery. Several men had been swept off their roofs during the storm, trying to fix roofs damaged by falling trees. Broken backs. Much worse further south toward the Coast. The only bright side: Good thing we had bicycles, no gasoline anymore.
Knowing in advance would not be good, from what I have seen, if we are to be hit with a giant asteroid. If another Katrina comes around, we are going to have a lot of problems based on what Forbes.com discusses here:
Victims who are rescued from the horrors of the flood-ravaged city of New Orleans may have frequent and intense psychological problems similar to those that plague troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam--problems that could spread to the rescuers as well. Up to a third of the victims of the Gulf Coast catastrophe might be affected
(Sorry I did not link to the story, they had an advertisement page ahead of it.)
I use my livecd linux all the time, and find that it is indeed useful, and is not slow at all to boot or run. I have a blog here too. Take a look at the screenshots, link in my signature.
If one has a spare hard drive partition, just do "tohd=/dev/hda3" at the boot prompt (using hda3 as an example), and you have the CD copied to that partition, and running from that, very fast on 7200 rpm drives. Next time, just "fromhd=/dev/hda3" and you are able to remove the CD from the drive in a few seconds, and run off your "installation". This is not an install, and only takes a few short minutes to get the CD copied and running for the first time.
I have Opera 8.52 and Flock 0.5.12 set up to _delete_ their ~/.opera or ~/.flock directories in ramdisk when these browsers are closed by the user. Done for security and to reclaim/ramdisk space.
Also, I have a preconfigured GuardDog firewall, allowing web surfing and email protocols by default, requiring no action or setup by the user, just boot the CD, and the firewall is up and doing what it does.
Tests on older computers with 128 MB of ram show that the livecd linux works just fine. I use a dual 200 mmx all the time, even for remastering.
I have a fully automated remastering script built in, and a script to copy the CD as a master copy, to a hard drive partition, for your use in remastering my CD. Both of these are very easy to use, just tell it where you want the "master copy" to be placed, and when you are ready to make an iso, tell it where to find the "master copy". These scripts are accessable via the IceWM or Fluxbox menus. Other included Window Managers are twm and KDE.
Based on Knoppix 3.4, extensive changes have been made, including a choice of several mouse cursor themes on the fly.
Very easy to try all of them, about 20 seconds for each.
I have 12 built-in RSS feeds in Opera, they load in seconds after about 2 minutes of dial up online time, and provide an excellent preview of nearly 200 current news stories in Opera's Mail system, updated as long as the browser is open. Firefox 1.5.0.1 has 7 RSS feeds, handled as drop down lists from the bookmarks toolbar.
Feel free to dig through the Getting Started Guide, link above for more unique features.
I think I have read somewhere that the idea of "no more big things" was thought to be true in the 1890's or thereabouts, during the Industrial Revolution. They thought they had invented just about everything. Telephones and electric power were pretty far-out concepts then, and when considered, seemed to be proof of the idea that everything had been invented and developed. Really, when you look back and see that the internal combustion engine had been invented and examples made and working fairly well then, and that these engines are still with us today, perhaps they were right in their position on "no more big things, 1890". If we knew now what the next big thing would be, we would all be out there putting it together, getting patents, etc. and making money on it. Who would have known about Google? Although it's big, and we all love it, does Google qualify as a "next big thing"?
I read somewhere that a guy living in a tent had a laptop powered by a car battery, recharged with solar panels stolen from some sort of highway sign. To make this story interesting, he has wireless broadband. Eventually got caught, apparently some highway worker spotted the solar panels and recognized them (Again, I have added this to make this story interestingly believeable). With day-long Fuel Cells, the car battery won't be necessary, but how would this guy charge up those things sitting in his tent in the woods? He'll have to carry a bunch of those required disposable capsules of methanol, apparently.
In my Knoppix remaster, I run Flock, a Firefox based browser, from a small script that first installs a basic ~/.flock directory prior to starting the browser itself, and then deletes the ~/.flock directory when Flock is closed. KDE, IceWM and Fluxbox can all start the browser using the script from menus and icons.
My ramdisk useage is then returned to normal after Flock is closed. So, memory leak problems do not accumulate.
A side advantage is the obvious security feature, all traces of web surfing activity stored in ~/.flock are gone.
I have Opera set up to do this also. Neither one of these browsers has a ~/.flock or ~/.opera installed in/ramdisk at startup, so the/ramdisk is spared until the user wants to use either browser.
The ~/.flock and ~/.opera setups are preconfigured to use a built-in startup home page, and other preferences are preset.
I notice that Flock uses a lot of the shared memory, when I do "top" I get 4 "flock-bin" items, each using 16.6% of my 256 MB of RAM. So Firefox/Flock is a big problem, I'm just glad I'm using it on a livecd linux.
I run Firefox without the small script, so the ~/.mozilla ramdisk directory remains intact after the browser is closed, but of course will disappear when the livecd linux is halted, unless I have "saved my configuration", and created a restorable "configs.tbz".
I am running Flock now, and "df" shows my/ramdisk at 7%, this drops to 4% when Flock is closed.
Windows XP is a hard drive installation, so if an upgrade of software goes bad, it can be complicated to downgrade, the point of this topic. What I do with my livecd linux, is "back up" one build or so, if the current build, with all software included, turns out bad. So, I am only a few minutes away from getting my old stuff back, and up and running. I am constantly looking ahead, however, so going back is not for long, I want to fix things, and build again. The details are in my Getting Started Guide, now getting quite long, but at least has a "What's New" section to "cut to the chase". To bad we livecd linux folks don't have all the wonderful applications in Windows XP, but what we do have, is useful to say the least.
Why didn't we have global warming in 1885?
My grandmother was born in 1885, in South Dakota. She told me her family had to pack up and go back east, it was just too cold there.
I think they had a really cold winter that killed most of the herds of cattle in the central USA around that time. That's not the reason, of course, for the cows/methane connection then, but simply put, it was one of those times when cold outbreaks were common, and big ones at that, apparently.
Our love of the automobile is just part of the problem with a possible global warming trend, the rest of it could be linked to other industrial
development, such as the production of electricity. China, India, Europe, all contributing to global warming, or so goes the theory. Here is a link to a story saying we are going to have another mini ice age soon. An interesting story, if it is true.
Sounds like you need to go to New Orleans and have a nice dinner at Arnaud's Restaurant.
If those people can endure what Katrina did to them, and come back, ready to fix something delicious for you, then there is something worth saving in the human race. Here's the menu. Pick something out, and give them a call and make yourself a reservation.
That'll give you something to look forward to.
Common lore... What a shame about Ballmer and his chair-throwing rap, and the rest of Microsoft's people have to endure those stories.
I imagine they cannot even visit a neighborhood kid's lemonade stand without getting asked an embarrassing question about that story.
So do we need an alternative OS at this point in Microsoft's history?
Before I go out on a limb, and say that livecd linux distros like Knoppix do not have a "back door", and therefore are a safe alternative to tainted windows installations that may have been rigged with all sorts of built-in spyware forced upon Microsoft by various governments, let me ask this: Does anyone know if there are "back doors" in Knoppix, Kanotix, Slax or other popular live cd linux? I have my own knoppix remaster, and I have not stumbled upon any such thing in the filesystem. It is a shame that most of the PC's have Windows preinstalled on them, and that there is this pressure on Microsoft to rig them up to spy on people. I know a PC is not a PC unless you turn it on, and it boots up to a desktop. But the Windows problems are all the more reason to "bring your own OS". You know you are a geek when you want to take a Kanotix 64 cd to Office Depot and try it out on those new AMD 64-bit cpu based computers with a 2000 MHZ FSB! Having insulted Microsoft, let me be fair and do the same to Office Depot: Ever notice that they hire ex-wrestlers as "managers". Apparently more concerned with frightening would-be "shoplifters" than providing assistance to IT shoppers wanting to "take a roll in the hay with a Gateway".
That is the power of Advertising. We want it if we see nice ads for it. My knoppix remaster does do a lot of the things that Windows does, so it takes care of the average user as well as the techie. Take a look at my Getting Started Guide to see what this livecd linux offers. Just this morning, when looking at an article on Mac worms, they said Windows has perhaps 200,000 pests, where Mac only has a few. Live CD linux, such as Kanotix, and others, are worth looking into if one is concerned about viruses, worms, etc. on a Windows installation. The worse one I heard about was the e-mail spammer that got into a server, partitioned the hard drive, and set his own "hidden" partition up to send out e-mails, and use up a good portion of the available bandwidth. The business "IT" person did not have a clue, and this problem was only discovered when they had an outside expert look over their system. I suppose he popped in a tomsrtbt floppy, and looked around. Naturally, there is no advertising about this possibility on a windows server.
Right now, I am using my livecd, with dial-up (wvdial), and Flock 0.5.12. Machine has 256 MB of RAM, and dual 200 mhz processors. Yes, I do run off the hard drive, a 160 GB 7200 rpm drive, having done "tohd=/dev/hdd7" the first time around. My CDROM drive is only used for booting. Wish I could get some "equal time" on a Windows commercial!
Using knoppix, a livecd linux, or a remaster of knoppix linux like mine, one can boot from the CD, and use the knoppix cheatcode "tohd=/dev/hda1" (Assuming that you have a Windows 98 partition "hda1" with extra space) and the system will install a copy in Windows, and run from that. It can then be booted each time with the knoppix cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hda1", and run from the hard drive. The CD can be taken out of the cdrom drive, as it is only used to bootstrap the system for 15 seconds or so, until knoppix locates your "hda1" installation. I run it on older hardware all the time, 128 MB, Pentium pro, and AMD K6-2. If the machine has 128 mb, then one is prompted to set up a swap file in hda1 also. Many of the older machines may have 4 GB hard drive, and windows does not use all of that by any means, leaving plenty for the 500 MB knoppix folder, and 100 mb or so for the swap file. I have the Guarddog firewall built in to my knoppix remaster, and it is already configured for web and email use. Firefox 1.5, Opera 8.52, Flock 0.5.12 web browsers. SciTE editor, emelFM, GIMP. Defaults to IceWM, has Fluxbox and KDE. All fully configured for ease of use. This really extends the useful life of lots of older PC's. But, it is not really "installed" on the hard drive, and the two folders can be deleted anytime. Without the knoppix cd in the cdrom drive, Windows boots, instead of Linux. Also, with a livecd linux, if one makes a mistake, just reboot and the system is back to the original setup. Delete all the files you want (by mistake), and a live cd linux comes back. Just watch out what you do to that hda1 Windows installation!
I do like the feature on emusic.com where you can sample the selection. Try this one. It's "I'm a disco dancer", you'll love it. They send you the song at 192 bps, so you need broadband. Wonder if Mandriva's setup can do that?
Every computer I have has a windows sticker, except for one that I "threw together" myself. I still put Windows in it, because I use that sometimes (offline, of course), and have desktop icons for Debian 2.2 and Mandrake 8 linux. (Double click on one, and loadlin takes you there..) The Vista computers are supposed to be powerhouses, and I would like to someday run Kanotix linux on one, and see how that goes. I understand that the manufacturers are charged about $40.00 for windows, so that is all that is added to the cost. Nobody hardly wants to make PC's without Windows preinstalled, anyway. There are some, but they tend to be low priced, (and out-of-date) boxes, aimed at buyers that only want to spend a small sum for their PC. Would like to note here that the PC Walmart offers in the stores comes with 512 MB of RAM now, apparently needed to run XP at a decent pace. So, we get the Windows boxes, our only problem is getting all the hardware to work in Linux. It's a waste of time keeping a Windows box updated, there is no end to it. Run Linux, especially a livecd linux, and be done with it.
As a test, I installed Norton SystemWorks 2005 on a Windows 98 computer with 128 MB of ram. It bogged the machine down, and I had to uninstall it. Later went with AVG.
I do not know for sure, but Solitare may have been included in Windows as a way of showing the users how "drag and drop" works. Too bad that game has gotten out of hand. I went into an office yesterday, and the guy in charge was on a Windows XP machine, playing (you guessed it) Solitare. Too bad there are so few little games like that included in Windows. Sometimes I want to just give them a cd of my Knoppix remaster, so they can have a wider variety of games to play. You can bet these people are not connected to the internet, or they would be doing that, and not playing Solitare. I have some pages on Geocities, and they provide a little OS sniffer, so I can see what OS's visit the page. A lot of "Windows NT" seen there. I can imagine that may be surfing at work, and perhaps enjoying the broadband too.
I like internet radio. You need broadband to keep the stream smooth. Try it on Kanotix linux, that comes with streamripper, and you can collect some songs off the "broadcasts" and play them anytime you want. You never know ahead of time what will be played, but just listen a while, and then sort the songs out that are recorded by streamripper. Very entertaining. I suppose they don't want you to rip songs off their streams, but you can do that with Kanotix. I guess my all time favorite is I'm a disco dancer. First heard that one on internet radio, now I'm hooked.
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Undoubtedly they had to guess at what would be needed in the way of a rover when these were built.
Now that they know, surely the next ones will greatly benefit from the experience.
I remastered DSL before I decided to go with Knoppix 3.4 and remaster that. /ramdisk usage down to 1% as measured by "df" on a 256 MB box. Opera 8.54, for instance, loads a preconfigured ~/.opera into /ramdisk at startup, and then removes it on exit. Opera has 12 RSS feeds built in, which fill with stories in a couple of minutes on dialup. You can disconnect then, and read the summaries in Opera. Firefox has RSS also, and it loads it's ~/.mozilla at browser startup also. Same with Flock, but no feeds there. At last count, I have 40 custom made scripts to work with my remaster.
Mine runs well on older machines also. One test that all livecd linux must pass 100% is the "testcd" one. Otherwise, you'll have problems booting on many machines. Mine boots on all boxes except the AMD 64 ones. I stay with the 2.4 kernel, and use it all day long on 200 mmx boxes. I moved the minimum ram to 128, if that or less, the "swap file configuration" comes up during bootup, to try and get the user to set up a swap. A lot of the older boxes have 95/98 on them, so that works out well.
To help out the older boxes with limited ram, I have the
DSL automatically saves your configuration at shutdown, I don't do that, for security reasons. (yours). One rule with livecd linux is to try and keep as much off the hard drive as possible, just run from the CD. Can do "tohd" however.
I have a blog, and try to tell exactly what is going on with my livecd linux, and not hide anything.
My default WM is IceWM, also KDE, Fluxbox, twm available, and fully configured. I have 8 cursor themes, select one and have it running in 15 seconds. All bigger than the default Knoppix cursor theme.
So, any mention of "older computers/linux" catches my eye, I've been working on that problem for quite a while.
Check out my screenshots, in signature below, and the Getting Started Guide.
I saw an old John Wayne movie where he entered a dentist's office to avoid getting shot by a bad guy, and told the dentist to pretend to pull a tooth. So we got a look at what that involved in the Wild West. Lots of hollering, and the dentist grabbing the "tooth" with his "pliers".
The bad guy looked in the window, saw what was going on, and went off in another direction, forgetting about Wayne for some reason.
Anyone remember the name of that John Wayne movie?
McDonalds has gotten away from their core business long ago by offering too much on the menu. So, they don't have your burger, fries and drink ready when you arrive. What was simple to do in the 1950's is now hard to do.
Also, the drive in window takes 20 minutes to get to, the driveway up to it is always full. Not enough employees on the production line, those that are there are lost in the details of the now-complicated menu.
ATM's are reasonably quick. Anything that a customer can get to can get fouled up, namely the deposit slot, sometimes jammed, with a clueless bank totally unaware. Long holidays can lead to the ATM's being essentially out of service for longer periods of time. Improvised signs by helpful visitors to the ATM warn of danger only too often. Lack of scotch tape to stick the sign to the front of the ATM a problem, usually solved by sticking the sign in an almost non-existent crack in the ATM, at the mercy of the wind, rain, and the person that visited the ATM just minutes before you come along.
Needed help getting it installed, but did not get it to connect to the web for a while. Here's a page I put up after I figured out how to do that. Book I used was Redhat Linux Secrets, by Naba Barkakati. I was able to put Redhat 6.1 on many small boxes, one with only 32 mb ram.
I can imagine how helpful a book on Ubuntu would be, don't know if any available are as good as those written by Naba Barkakati. He has several books out on Fedora Core, according to Google.
Also used a book to get me started on Debian 2.2. That is a hard one to install, so I used Powerquest's Drive Copy to spread it around on other PC's once I got it up and running. Another was SuSE Linux, very nice, and different from the others to be sure.
For Knoppix, I used Knoppix Hacks by Kyle Rankin. Just had to remaster it, however, see my screenshots, link in signature. Knoppix always needs remastering.
Since he fills up the CD, only those able to chroot need try. Mine runs 495 MB now, still can toss out some items.
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
In addition to the applications that I added (some I wrote myself), there is this one note about "testcd" that I have discussed in my blog.
From what I can tell, if "testcd" does not come out right for a livecd linux, there is the _possibility_ that the cd may not boot on all 386/586/686 boxes. I have tried to get my remaster right, so it passes "testcd" with a 100% score, so to speak. One would need a Knoppix cd, and one that boots when you want it to.
Here is the latest recap of some of the features in my remaster.
There are automated scripts to use when remastering the CD. One copies the cd, the other prepares an iso after changes are made to the master-copy.
I left out the fact that I have emelFM in there, I use it all the time.
Enjoy the screenshots:
All these revelations about the goings-on within Microsoft give new meaning to the term "open source". Something is certainly "open" here, now they have a percentage on the code rewrite. That's a start.
I don't want to sound mean here, I love Windows, if it were not for it, all these nice PC's would not be all over the place. Imagine, "no Windows". Classes all weekend long on "installing Gentoo Linux.
Every Joe Sixpack for miles around required to attend, he needs that, since there is "no Windows", and his PC needs a specially tailored OS so he can get on the web.
Seriously, I have several old PC's that have very small amounts of RAM by todays standards, (4MB - 32MB), and run Windows 3.1 just fine. I got one little laptop out of the Dumpster, and it had a smashed screen. I fixed up a nice Windows 3.1 installation for the hard drive, then got another little hard drive for it, and put Basic Linux on that. It's now a little dial up server, and can serve up a web page that can be viewed (Netscape) and edited as needed.
So, I can do both OS's, but I'll always like Windows, especially since the drivers in it exactly match the video, sound and modem in the box, something I have (over the years) had an interesting and educational time getting-to-work in Linux. Here's a link to one of my legacy pages detailing my progress in working with Linux.
I started out with Redhat 6.1, and stuck with it until I had it working just right on a little IBM PS-1 with 32 MB RAM, and a 25 MHZ system bus. I gave a thrift store $5.00 for it, in perfect shape, stuck in a closet for years, then donated.
If it were not for Windows being preinstalled (and simple to use for Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack), the techies would not have cheap PC's to play with.
Those things would cost tens of thousands of dollars, just like they did before the advent of Windows.
I say keep your Windows installation, even if you only use it occasionally, (not on the web, it's virus-land for Windows) and "install" some flavor of Linux.
I have Redhat 9, Windows 98, and almost always run my livecd linux with the cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hdd7" on this box. Do that also on an XP box.
To get my printers to work, I have to use Kanotix livecd linux on the XP box, and Kubuntu Linux live cd on the Windows 98 box. (That one takes _forever_ to boot).
The other side of the flood of Windows computers into the marketplace is that the owners have virus problems, other troubles, and tend to set them out on the curb for the trashman to pick up. No suprise that they cannot fix the box. The modem I'm using right now came from such a discarded PC. All the machines I use were discarded Windows boxes, some just given away, here you are. Some bought for a fraction of what they cost new. All will run Linux, I have a (free) HP Pavilion 6330 that does sound just fine with my livecd linux.
So, what's not to like about Windows?
Rovers dead before Vista release...
There you have it. The anticipation is what's fun, and as long as that time/date is out there, we are essentially happy.
Once it arrives, is released, etc. then we forget, and direct our attention to the next big thing that's not here yet.
Without that ability, we cease to create.
Don't forget Hurricane Rita. Another cat 5 storm within a month of Katrina. Here's a link to a Rita blog that has a lot of informative stories and videos.
So, if one is going to hit, we probably, and should not, know in advance.
Something much smaller, but terrifying nonetheless, was Katrina. I remember seeing grandmothers, children fleeing up the highway the next day, knowing from the looks of them that they would not last another mile without dropping in their tracks. Their transportation that got them here ran out of gas, apparently, and they got out and started walking. Power was out, all I had working was my scanner, hooked to a car battery. Several men had been swept off their roofs during the storm, trying to fix roofs damaged by falling trees. Broken backs. Much worse further south toward the Coast. The only bright side: Good thing we had bicycles, no gasoline anymore.
Knowing in advance would not be good, from what I have seen, if we are to be hit with a giant asteroid.
If another Katrina comes around, we are going to have a lot of problems based on what Forbes.com discusses here:
Victims who are rescued from the horrors of the flood-ravaged city of New Orleans may have frequent and intense psychological problems similar to those that plague troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam--problems that could spread to the rescuers as well. Up to a third of the victims of the Gulf Coast catastrophe might be affected
(Sorry I did not link to the story, they had an advertisement page ahead of it.)
I have Opera 8.52 and Flock 0.5.12 set up to _delete_ their ~/.opera or ~/.flock directories in ramdisk when these browsers are closed by the user. Done for security and to reclaim /ramdisk space.
Also, I have a preconfigured GuardDog firewall, allowing web surfing and email protocols by default, requiring no action or setup by the user, just boot the CD, and the firewall is up and doing what it does.
Tests on older computers with 128 MB of ram show that the livecd linux works just fine. I use a dual 200 mmx all the time, even for remastering.
I have a fully automated remastering script built in, and a script to copy the CD as a master copy, to a hard drive partition, for your use in remastering my CD. Both of these are very easy to use, just tell it where you want the "master copy" to be placed, and when you are ready to make an iso, tell it where to find the "master copy". These scripts are accessable via the IceWM or Fluxbox menus. Other included Window Managers are twm and KDE. Based on Knoppix 3.4, extensive changes have been made, including a choice of several mouse cursor themes on the fly. Very easy to try all of them, about 20 seconds for each. I have 12 built-in RSS feeds in Opera, they load in seconds after about 2 minutes of dial up online time, and provide an excellent preview of nearly 200 current news stories in Opera's Mail system, updated as long as the browser is open. Firefox 1.5.0.1 has 7 RSS feeds, handled as drop down lists from the bookmarks toolbar. Feel free to dig through the Getting Started Guide, link above for more unique features.
I think I have read somewhere that the idea of "no more big things" was thought to be true in the 1890's or thereabouts, during the Industrial Revolution. They thought they had invented just about everything. Telephones and electric power were pretty far-out concepts then, and when considered, seemed to be proof of the idea that everything had been invented and developed. Really, when you look back and see that the internal combustion engine had been invented and examples made and working fairly well then, and that these engines are still with us today, perhaps they were right in their position on "no more big things, 1890". If we knew now what the next big thing would be, we would all be out there putting it together, getting patents, etc. and making money on it. Who would have known about Google? Although it's big, and we all love it, does Google qualify as a "next big thing"?
I read somewhere that a guy living in a tent had a laptop powered by a car battery, recharged with solar panels stolen from some sort of highway sign. To make this story interesting, he has wireless broadband. Eventually got caught, apparently some highway worker spotted the solar panels and recognized them (Again, I have added this to make this story interestingly believeable).
With day-long Fuel Cells, the car battery won't be necessary, but how would this guy charge up those things sitting in his tent in the woods? He'll have to carry a bunch of those required disposable capsules of methanol, apparently.
My ramdisk useage is then returned to normal after Flock is closed. So, memory leak problems do not accumulate.
A side advantage is the obvious security feature, all traces of web surfing activity stored in ~/.flock are gone. I have Opera set up to do this also. Neither one of these browsers has a ~/.flock or ~/.opera installed in /ramdisk at startup, so the /ramdisk is spared until the user wants to use either browser.
The ~/.flock and ~/.opera setups are preconfigured to use a built-in startup home page, and other preferences are preset.
I notice that Flock uses a lot of the shared memory, when I do "top" I get 4 "flock-bin" items, each using 16.6% of my 256 MB of RAM. So Firefox/Flock is a big problem, I'm just glad I'm using it on a livecd linux.
I run Firefox without the small script, so the ~/.mozilla ramdisk directory remains intact after the browser is closed, but of course will disappear when the livecd linux is halted, unless I have "saved my configuration", and created a restorable "configs.tbz".
I am running Flock now, and "df" shows my /ramdisk at 7%, this drops to 4% when Flock is closed.
Windows XP is a hard drive installation, so if an upgrade of software goes bad, it can be complicated to downgrade, the point of this topic.
What I do with my livecd linux, is "back up" one build or so, if the current build, with all software included, turns out bad. So, I am only a few minutes away from getting my old stuff back, and up and running.
I am constantly looking ahead, however, so going back is not for long, I want to fix things, and build again. The details are in my Getting Started Guide, now getting quite long, but at least has a "What's New" section to "cut to the chase".
To bad we livecd linux folks don't have all the wonderful applications in Windows XP, but what we do have, is useful to say the least.
Why didn't we have global warming in 1885?
My grandmother was born in 1885, in South Dakota.
She told me her family had to pack up and go back east, it was just too cold there. I think they had a really cold winter that killed most of the herds of cattle in the central USA around that time.
That's not the reason, of course, for the cows/methane connection then, but simply put, it was one of those times when cold outbreaks were common, and big ones at that, apparently.
Our love of the automobile is just part of the problem with a possible global warming trend, the rest of it could be linked to other industrial development, such as the production of electricity. China, India, Europe, all contributing to global warming, or so goes the theory.
Here is a link to a story saying we are going to have another mini ice age soon. An interesting story, if it is true.
Sounds like you need to go to New Orleans and have a nice dinner at Arnaud's Restaurant.
If those people can endure what Katrina did to them, and come back, ready to fix something delicious for you, then there is something worth saving in the human race.
Here's the menu. Pick something out, and give them a call and make yourself a reservation.
That'll give you something to look forward to.
Common lore...
What a shame about Ballmer and his chair-throwing rap, and the rest of Microsoft's people have to endure those stories.
I imagine they cannot even visit a neighborhood kid's lemonade stand without getting asked an embarrassing question about that story.
So do we need an alternative OS at this point in Microsoft's history?
Before I go out on a limb, and say that livecd linux distros like Knoppix do not have a "back door", and therefore are a safe alternative to tainted windows installations that may have been rigged with all sorts of built-in spyware forced upon Microsoft by various governments, let me ask this:
Does anyone know if there are "back doors" in Knoppix, Kanotix, Slax or other popular live cd linux?
I have my own knoppix remaster, and I have not stumbled upon any such thing in the filesystem.
It is a shame that most of the PC's have Windows preinstalled on them, and that there is this pressure on Microsoft to rig them up to spy on people. I know a PC is not a PC unless you turn it on, and it boots up to a desktop.
But the Windows problems are all the more reason to "bring your own OS".
You know you are a geek when you want to take a Kanotix 64 cd to Office Depot and try it out on those new AMD 64-bit cpu based computers with a 2000 MHZ FSB!
Having insulted Microsoft, let me be fair and do the same to Office Depot:
Ever notice that they hire ex-wrestlers as "managers". Apparently more concerned with frightening would-be "shoplifters" than providing assistance to IT shoppers wanting to "take a roll in the hay with a Gateway".
That is the power of Advertising. We want it if we see nice ads for it.
My knoppix remaster does do a lot of the things that Windows does, so it takes care of the
average user as well as the techie. Take a look at my Getting Started Guide to see what this livecd linux offers.
Just this morning, when looking at an article on Mac worms, they said Windows has perhaps 200,000 pests, where Mac only has a few.
Live CD linux, such as Kanotix, and others, are worth looking into if one is concerned about viruses, worms, etc. on a Windows installation.
The worse one I heard about was the e-mail spammer that got into a server, partitioned the hard drive, and set his own "hidden" partition up to send out e-mails, and use up a good portion of the available bandwidth. The business "IT" person did not have a clue, and this problem was only discovered when they had an outside expert look over their system. I suppose he popped in a tomsrtbt floppy, and looked around.
Naturally, there is no advertising about this possibility on a windows server.
Right now, I am using my livecd, with dial-up (wvdial), and Flock 0.5.12.
Machine has 256 MB of RAM, and dual 200 mhz processors. Yes, I do run off the hard drive, a 160 GB 7200 rpm drive, having done "tohd=/dev/hdd7" the first time around. My CDROM drive is only used for booting.
Wish I could get some "equal time" on a Windows commercial!
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Using knoppix, a livecd linux, or a remaster of knoppix linux like mine, one can boot from the CD, and use the knoppix cheatcode "tohd=/dev/hda1" (Assuming that you have a Windows 98 partition "hda1" with extra space) and the system will install a copy in Windows, and run from
that. It can then be booted each time with the knoppix cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hda1", and run from the hard drive. The CD can be taken out of the cdrom drive, as it is only used to bootstrap the system for 15 seconds or so, until knoppix locates your "hda1" installation.
I run it on older hardware all the time, 128 MB, Pentium pro, and AMD K6-2.
If the machine has 128 mb, then one is prompted to set up a swap file in hda1 also.
Many of the older machines may have 4 GB hard drive, and windows does not use all of that by any means, leaving plenty for the 500 MB knoppix folder, and 100 mb or so for the swap file.
I have the Guarddog firewall built in to my knoppix remaster, and it is already configured for web and email use. Firefox 1.5, Opera 8.52, Flock 0.5.12 web browsers. SciTE editor, emelFM, GIMP. Defaults to IceWM, has Fluxbox and KDE. All fully configured for ease of use.
This really extends the useful life of lots of older PC's.
But, it is not really "installed" on the hard drive, and the two folders can be deleted anytime. Without the knoppix cd in the cdrom drive, Windows boots, instead of Linux.
Also, with a livecd linux, if one makes a mistake, just reboot and the system is back to the original setup. Delete all the files you want (by mistake), and a live cd linux comes back. Just watch out what you do to that hda1 Windows installation!
I do like the feature on emusic.com where you can sample the selection.
Try this one.
It's "I'm a disco dancer", you'll love it.
They send you the song at 192 bps, so you need broadband.
Wonder if Mandriva's setup can do that?
Every computer I have has a windows sticker, except for one that I "threw together" myself. I still put Windows in it, because I use that sometimes (offline, of course), and have desktop icons for Debian 2.2 and Mandrake 8 linux. (Double click on one, and loadlin takes you there..)
The Vista computers are supposed to be powerhouses, and I would like to someday run Kanotix linux on one, and see how that goes.
I understand that the manufacturers are charged about $40.00 for windows, so that is all that is added to the cost. Nobody hardly wants to make PC's without Windows preinstalled, anyway. There are some, but they tend to be low priced, (and out-of-date) boxes, aimed at buyers that only want to spend a small sum for their PC. Would like to note here that the PC Walmart offers in the stores comes with 512 MB of RAM now, apparently needed to run XP at a decent pace. So, we get the Windows boxes, our only problem is getting all the hardware to work in Linux. It's a waste of time keeping a Windows box updated, there is no end to it. Run Linux, especially a livecd linux, and be done with it.
As a test, I installed Norton SystemWorks 2005 on a Windows 98 computer with 128 MB of ram. It bogged the machine down, and I had to uninstall it. Later went with AVG.
I do not know for sure, but Solitare may have been included in Windows as a way of showing the users how "drag and drop" works. Too bad that game has gotten out of hand. I went into an office yesterday, and the guy in charge was on a Windows XP machine, playing (you guessed it) Solitare. Too bad there are so few little games like that included in Windows.
Sometimes I want to just give them a cd of my Knoppix remaster, so they can have a wider variety of games to play. You can bet these people are not connected to the internet, or they would be doing that, and not playing Solitare. I have some pages on Geocities, and they provide a little OS sniffer, so I can see what OS's visit the page. A lot of "Windows NT" seen there. I can imagine that may be surfing at work, and perhaps enjoying the broadband too.
I like internet radio. You need broadband to keep the stream smooth. Try it on Kanotix linux, that comes with streamripper, and you can collect some songs off the "broadcasts" and play them anytime you want. You never know ahead of time what will be played, but just listen a while, and then sort the songs out that are recorded by streamripper.
Very entertaining. I suppose they don't want you to rip songs off their streams, but you can do that with Kanotix.
I guess my all time favorite is I'm a disco dancer.
First heard that one on internet radio, now I'm hooked.