Thanks for the information, that solved the problem. I used the Synaptic Package Manager to download ia32-libs file and afterwards was able to get the installation script to run properly. I also successfully installed Office 2000. So far I have only briefly had a chance to try out Word and Excel, but they seem to be working.
I went ahead and tried installing the Loki installer version of CrossOverLinux 6.0.0.1 just now and have been getting an error message. On my AMD-64 computer I have the AMD-64 versions of both Ubuntu and Kubintu installed (the packages for both). The Codeweavers webpage claims the the Loki installer version will work under any version of Linux. That is the how I always installed it in the the past. I verified the md5sum of what I had downloaded and then tried to run the installation shell script. Below is what I typed in to run their usual installation shell script along with the messages that I got afterwards:
sh./install-crossover-standard-6.0.0.sh
Verifying archive integrity...OK
Uncompressing CrossOver Linux Standard
You might be missing the 32bit compatibility libraries
I am not sure if it is really going to work on the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu or not. I got the impression from their web page that it would work, although they don't seem to specifically say the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I am not sure what the 32bit compatability libraries are.
I have used CrossOver Linux in the past to run Office 97 and Adobe Photoshop 7 under an earlier version of Red Hat Linux. I later used it to run Office 2000 under Linux instead. It worked pretty well and I was happy with their product. I haven't yet tried using it under the 64-bit version Ubuntu 6.10 Linux on my AMD-64 computer. I see that the Codeweavers web page says that it does work with 6.06/6.10 and that they test under both 32 bit and 64 bit systems, so I plan to give it a try. The idea of possibly running a Windows only Plugin for Firefox is also kind of intriguing.
Perhaps every local Kinkos store will eventually have their own fab lab as a sideline business. If you happen to find yourself working for them in the future, you might be assigned to the new fab lab department. Every day you would find yourself making parts for average do-it-your-selfers (with a smile on your face at all times). In many cases they would not understand such basic manufacturing concepts such as the effect that tolerance-stacking has on groups of parts which need to be fastened together. Uneven expansion of materials at different temperatures might also be a problem they would run into. Of course, in those cases you will need to examine their parts and explain to them that the parts were manufactured to their specs and the best capabilities of the fab. It was just the cumulative error of tolerance stacking or something like that caused their parts not to fit together.
I would also love to see what kind of projects 12 year old boys would come up with. Perhaps home made catapults that toss watermelons hundreds of feet and gigantic squirt guns or something like that. As a kid, back in the 1960s, I once had a toy that could fire a reusable plastic rocket filled with compressed air and water. Perhaps kids will soon be able build with their own designs for updated versions of that old toy. You could watch them assemble their stuff in the Kinkos parking lot and try it out to make sure that it works before going home. On some days you might have various local doofuses in the parking lot assembling and testing their homemade stuff before taking them home. Kinkos could set up chairs out front and sell coffee to other shoppers who just want to sit and watch the craziness for a little while.
Did you just recently read the recent science fiction article that was in the January 2007 issue of "Fantasy and Science Fiction" magazine. In that article, the owner of a fab lab kiosk in a small town later upgraded to a new improved model which not only made much stronger parts but the old parts could also be broken down and reused. The cover of the magazine shows a picture of his original green colored kiosk.
The fictional article also describes how large corporations feared that average citizens making their own parts in fab labs would cause them to loose business. They tried through various methods to keep the technology out of the average persons hands. In the article, the local fab lab operator was in a poor eastern European country. He wanted everyone to have access to various inexpensive parts made locally in small fab kiosks. There were also regulators in some European Union like future organization that were concerned that citizens in countries in eastern Europe and elsewhere might be able to easily copy patented products. Bureaucrats were also concerned about how to properly record and supervise the manufacture of such devices.
There are a few other science fiction books and magazine articles that mention fab labs and desktop manufacturing although I haven't read any of them.
If you can't afford your own fab lab you will need to put your plans on a CD or USB key and take them to the nearest fab kisok in town. Some people do that now with their digital photos. They go to the kisk at the local drug store and have their digital photos printed out there. In the future there will probably be one or more fab lab kiosk in every town.
The local bookstores will most likely have monthly magazines that would include a CD or DVD disk full of the latest pantent free plans for home projects. Of course the plans would be open source so you could open the file with your favorite open source CAD/CAM program and make a few changes such as resizing the parts. The projects will probably typically also require a few non-fabable parts, but those would be common inexpensive off-the-shelf parts such as nuts, bolts, diodes, capacitors and such that you could buy at your local hardware store, electronics store or fabers supply store.
The typical part made on a home fab lab would probably not actually be cheaper than than most mass produced manufactured parts made in a factory. But, the fab lab would be less expensive for making custom one of a kind parts. They would be great for custom home projects. They might also be useful for people who want to repair old mechanical devices for which parts are no longer available. If a custom plastic part from a fab would not be strong enough they could quite likely at least use the fab to make an adaptor would would allow them to connect some other replacement part from a similar product which is still available. If some manufacturing jobs are lost that might just mean less goods to be imported from China. As far as simple inexpensive items made of plastic or similar materials, it doesn't seem like much of that kind of stuff is made in the U.S. any more anyway.
I don't think that home fab labs will replace most factory produced goods. But even so I hope that large corporations and the government do not try over regulate or kill the idea with mandatory DRM like requirements for home fab labs. They might want to try to prevent the average citizen from copying patented designs or by making their own devices which do not meet government safety standards or other requirements. If they dare to do that to the emerging fab lab technology I home that voters get organized and create a grass roots movement to demand that we want our non-DRM handicapped fab labs. Perhaps we would even have some good old 1960s style student protests and mass marches.
In the future, there will probably be free large collections of patent free plans of fabable 3D items to be made with your home fab labs. Lets say that I want to make a small desk lamp out of plastic. I would probably download a 3D CAD/CAM drawing of the item, then load the appropriate type of plastic into the fab and press start. Layer by layer the plastic would slowly be applied until the finished item is ready. The instructions for my lamp would also list a few parts that are not easily fabable that I would not be able to make and will need to go out and buy. Fortunately, those would usually be simple, inexpensive, common, off-the-shelf parts that I could buy from my local hardware store. In the case of my lamp, the parts I need to buy would be the light bulb, the light bulb holder, the switch, the cord and the lamp shade. I just add those few parts to my lamp and my patent and copyright free project is done.
There will most likely be thousands of patent and copyright free projects available to be downloaded. There will probably even be magazines for home fab lab users which will come with an attached DVD full of the latest patent free open source plans. There will also probably be web sites in certain foreign countries which will offer plans for items which are more legally questionable.
Back in 1989, at a small junior college, I took a couple of classes where each student made a few parts on a CNC milling machine and lathe. Those courses built upon what I learned about computer aided drafting courses in other classes. We had a software package called SmartCAM which could be used to draw a part, much as in computer aided drafting, and then it could also create the x, y, and z movements needed to create the part on a milling machine. We made our parts out of machinable wax, because a mistake while machining wax would not damage the machine. Back then at ASU, which is a different college, they occasionally used Techsoft which was a similar combined CAD/CAM package. In class at the Junior college, it was amazing to be able to draw the part on the DOS based 286 or 386 computer and then watch the part magically being machined out of plastic. At the Junior College, we also learned how to manually write the x, y and z movements without the help of software. Of course fab labs would not be machining parts whey would be creating the parts layer by layer out of plastic or some other material.
I don't know much about fab labs although back in the late 1980s I heard about something somewhat similar that was called "stereo lithographic reproduction." In that case two computer controlled lasers were used to create parts layer by layer from a pool of liquid plastic. In the future, the open source movement will probably have a good computer aided drafting (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing program (CAM) that can be used in combination with peoples home fab labs. Do we have any good open-source programs like that yet? Perhaps we might also need an open standard for the file format for the part drawings. The part file would perhaps be something kind of like a database like full of lines, circles, arcs, rectangles and such with corresponding x, y, and z rectangular and polar coodinates and other characteristics. Compatibility with other CAD file formats such as possibly AutoCAD or other CAD packages might also be nice if legally and technically possible. Support for the official drafting standards and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing standards with circular tolerance zones would also be good. I didn't actually end up working in that field, so some of what I just said might possibly be a little out of date. That advice is mostly based on my late 1980s knowledge of drafting and manufacturing.
People who don't own their own fab lab will be able to have their own custom designs made from the fab lab kiosk in town. People with digital cameras do much the same thing when they go to the kisok at the drug store to have their photos printed. There will also be similar fab la
I did back up my Linux files, and other data files too. I also backed up the boot sector of the hard disk onto a USB flash drive, just in case the Windows installation program decides to rudely overwrite the boot sector with its own boot loader. I also created a GRUB boot CD which, if necessary, could be used as a temporary way to start-up Linux or Windows. A Knoppix live CD can also be used to access partitions in an emergency. I am prepared to give it a try again sometime. Perhaps I will even find one of the missing Windows CDs too.
I had suspected that my Windows 2000 installation may have been compromised in some way so I wanted to reinstall it. Unfortunately, it took me several days to find one of my two original installation CDs. I found both of them, then I remembered that they were both Windows 2000 upgrade disks, so I will also need to find either my Windows 98 disk, my Windows ME disk or one of my two Windows NT 4.0 disks, none of which I could find. So I couldn't reinstall Windows. If that had been Linux I would have just download the free iso and burned a new CD. Fortunately, the computer is set-up to dual-boot between Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux so I was still able to keep using Linux instead. I prefer Linux anyway.
So how did a computer literate user like me end up with a Windows installation that I could not trust. Well, until recently, 26.4K dial-up Internet connections were all that was available where I live. I installed Windows 2000 several years ago, and after installing the ZoneAlarm firewall, I immediately began to download the security updates. I did that before going anywhere else on the Internet. On my 26.4 K dial-up connection, downloading the updates took all night. The trouble was that for the first few hours of downloading the security updates, I was unpatched and not sitting behind a router. Within minutes I was subjected to numerous advertising pop-ups, at least one every few minutes. They typically said things like that I had spyware or that my registry was corrupted and that I needed to go to some webpage to get some product. I ignored those pop-ups messages and spent much of the night closing the pop-up boxes. At one point I rebooted and the pop-ups finally stopped, presumably because the security update needed to block them was finally installed. When it was finished, Windows 2000 worked great but, I always had doubts that I might have already been compromised during the hours before the patches could all be installed. For that reason, I had always planned to reinstall Windows 2000 whenever a high-speed Internet connection became available where I live and I could quickly download the security updates while sitting protected behind a router.
Inexpensive high-speed DSL connections finally became available in my neighborhood several months ago. I hadn't used Windows in months but the installation CD for my DSL modem/router was a Windows only CD so I booted up into Windows. I was told by QWEST that only Windows and Macs were supported, not Linux. After doing the QWEST DSL installation, the MSN Premium installation started. If I remember correctly, while doing that, my ZoneAlarm firewall started warning me that Internet Explorer was recording my keystrokes and mouse movements. I hope that was some kind of false warning but, I freaked out, and stopped the MSN Premium installation, and soon shut down Windows and rebooted into Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu immediately automatically connected to my DSL router and I had high-speed Internet access. I then logged into the router configuration program through my browser, changed a few default passwords and setting, tightened up a few security settings. Then I went to grc.com to use their "shield-up" feature to verify that all my ports were closed and stealth and that my computer would not even respond to pings. I also had someone else in this household who wanted to connect a Windows XP laptop wirelessly, so I changed the routers default use of the insecure WEP encryption to WPA encryption instead and soon had her hooked up to the router wirelessly with 802.11g and WPA. I did not use the QWEST installation CD to configure her computer, I just set the configuration settings manually.
I decided to do a fresh clean install of Windows 2000 so that I could finally have confidence that it really was secure and perhaps even use Windows some occasionally. That was when I couldn't find the Windows installation CDs. I am stuck with a copy of Windows that I don't trust. My only easy solution is to just keep using is to stop dual-booting and just ke
Even if Linux were to become more popular, I doubt that it would have as many security problems as Windows. For one thing, Linux is not the inbred monoculture that Windows is. There is more genetic diversity and less standardization in the software that Linux users use. The typical Windows computer uses Internet Explorer, Outlook, Office and the same version of the same kernel. In Linux there are several different email programs, several different browsers, several different word processors and different spread sheets and various versions of the kernel compiled with different options. Even though there are security flaws in each of those programs, the same security flaw would not exit on all Linux computers. For the same reason, inbred plant and animal populations are more vulnerable one disease spreading thought the entire population.
My understanding is that Linux has also never been as careless about running attachments and active-X stuff without asking the user first. In fact, Active-X attachments won't run at all because they are proprietary Microsoft technology that Linux lacks. I use Linux so I am not sure if Windows still runs that kind of stuff without asking the user first or not? Linux users also generally do not run with full administrative privileges like most Windows computers at home do. I believe, that in Vista that last item has been changed, though.
In the name of making things easier for the users, Windows has always tried to automatically do as much as possible and by connecting to everything as promiscuously as possible. That has also created security problems. Ironically, that has made Windows less easy to use because, at least for anyone who cares about security, the Windows user now needs to know more about security than the Linux or Mac user needs to know. Your average grandmother can no longer safely use a Windows PC, but perhaps she could still use Mac or Ubuntu Linux (if it came with the operating system pre-installed).
A water pump that uses 85W sounds like way too much. The Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system gets by with a 5W water pump. I have been using a slightly older version of the Zalman Reserator 1 on my computer for probably about 2 years now. I do not have a fan on my CPU or the video card so the computer is very quiet. With less heat being released inside the case I can also get by with running the case fan slower by adjusting the fan speed with the knob on a rheostat.
My Kill-A-Watt meter shows that my computer is only using 90 Watts at the moment (not counting the monitor). It uses significantly more under a heavy load. The cool 'n Quiet feature of my AMD-64 3800+ is enabled so the clock speed drops from 2.4 GHz to 1 GHz when under a light load. I don't have my monitor, water pump, DSL modem and other devices plugged into the Kill-A-Watt meter so the 90 Watt figure only includes my CPU and whatever else is inside the tower case. He uses 85 Watts just to cool his computers, he is cooling several computers, not just one. With my 5 Watt water pump the 2 water hoses shouldn't be more than a few feet long. The distance to his pool might require some extra power but would it require 85 Watts?
That sounds like a variation of the various ideas people have had about using water heat pumps. Back in the 1970s and 1980s there were several articles about ground water heat pumps in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. In some parts of the country, such as in parts of Arizona, at a depth of about 4 feet the temperature stays at about 68 degrees F. year round. If shallow groundwater is available, it would be easier job for a heatpump to transfer heat to and from something that is already close to the desired temperature. One article even discussed the idea of somehow hooking a ground water heat pump to a sewage leach field.
When I was in high school living down in the desert in Arizona we had a swimming pool which was quite cool even during the summer. It was unheated and too cold to be useable except for about 4 months of the year. If I remember correctly, the pool was somewhat cool even during 110 degree weather. I wonder if people have ever hooked their air-conditioner to a backyard swimming pool. An ordinary ground water heatpump could probably be adapted to that purpose.
Here is one example of a company that has something to do with ground water heat pumps, although I don't know anything about them. After skimming the first few paragraphs, it looks like they have may been using ground water heat pumps to transfer geothermal energy. But, that is kind of similar.
Heat exchangers are used in a few types of solar hot water heating systems. Perhaps that type of heat exchanger could be adapted for this purpose to create an inner loop of distilled water or coolant that would be separate from the swimming pool water. A single walled heat exchanger would probably be adequate in this case since. Not only would that help prevent corrosion but if you ever spring a leak you would only have a limited supply of water or coolant in the inner loop to leak out.
Back in the 1970s in the early days of solar energy the there was a solar hot water system called the "drain down" system (not to be confused with the more reliable drain-back system). It sent full main water pressure through the solar collectors on the roof. For freeze protection, during cold weather, it used a combination of a air-vent vacuum breaker (which looked like a salt and pepper shaker on the roof) and a sunspool valve. Unfortunately, after a few years the freeze protection was no longer reliable because of lime deposits forming inside the air-vent vacuum breaker. I know of one case where the pipes in the attic froze and sprang a leak. The insulation and sheet-rock on the ceiling of the master bedroom became soggy and caved in onto the bed. Most other solar hot water heating systems are not only less likely to freeze, but if they do spring a leak, there is only a limited supply of distilled water or propelyneglycol anti-freeze to leak out. When cooling computers with a swimming pool, a leak would have an unlimited supply of water. By the way, I have a neighbor who has never had any problems with his batch type solar water that he has been using for the last 21 years..
I have been using a silent fanless water cooling system on my computer for 2 years and love how quiet it is. I use an older version of the Zahlman Reserator. It is expensive, but works great and is totally silent. They also have a newer version of the system called the Reserator 2. It is an off-the-shelf solution that does not require a swimming pool. I have the water pump hooked up to my UPS so that cooling will still occur during a power failure when the computer is still running.
My computer uses the Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system which has an almost 2-foot tall finned aluminum water tank. That would probably be much like the single bucket of water test. The Zalman Reserator is somewhat expensive, but after having once owned a noisy computer, I was willing to pay the extra cost to build one that is totally quiet. I have been using an earlier version of the Reserator for about two years now and it runs cool and is almost totally quiet. A newer version of their product is called the Reserator II
An aquarium could probably be used instead. Perhaps they could even have a fish highway with clear acrylic pipes running from one aquarium to another aquarium in another room. What would a person's wife think of that? At least the kids would probably approve. Someone actually even wrote a book on building fish highways, but it wasn't intended to be part of a water cooling system for a computer. Whatever you do make sure that you can't accidentally turn the computer on without the silent water cooling at the same time. I have the water pump plugged into the UPS so that water cooling continues, while the computer is still running, during the typical brief power failures that occur during during summer thunderstorms.
Codeweavers sells a product which called CrossOver Linux which makes it possible to run Windows Media Player 6.4 under Linux. Codeweavers only gives Windows Media Player 6.4 a silver rating for how it runs under Linux. The European Union's Frequently Asked Questions page says that we need to use Microsoft Media Player version 6.4 or higher, so version 6.4 should be good enough. It doesn't even sound like they will let a Linux user try to use a possible solution like that. They are not correct in their assertion that there is no legal way for a Linux user to play the content.
My knowledge of law is limited, but my understanding is that the legality of some of this may not have been fully challenged or explored in the courts. It may also depend on which country the computer user happens to be in. No company has offered to sell any Linux software for viewing their proprietary codecs, so many Linux users find their only choice to be to downloaded use the possibly illegal codecs. In this case the Linux users are trying to view public documents, it is not like they are trying to steal copyrighted material. Why should the EU even care?
The EU's web page has public information that should be available to all voters. Because these are important public records, they should offer users a choice of formats. They should allow users to choose between using the closed-source proprietary Microsoft format and an open-standards format such as Ogg.
Some websites offer users the choice of more than one format. It doesn't have to be limited to one choice or the other. Here is one example of a web page that allows users to choose which format they want to use when viewing a video clip. In this case it happens to be a choice between Flash and Ogg.
It is not unreasonable to expect an official government website to make an extra effort to make public records available to all voters. Offering the content in two alternative formats would be a reasonable solution. At least one of the formats should be an open standard such a Ogg, the other could be a proprietary closed standard that would require using Windows Media Player. Flash might possibly be acceptable too, because most Linux computers can play Flash (although the AMD-64 version of Macromedia Flash for Linux is not yet available).
A couple of years ago TurboLinux 10F was being sold for $69.00 in the U.S. and came with the Cyberlink's PowerDVD software for Linux with support for most Windows Media codecs up to version 9. According to this review, it does it does so in way that was legal and completely licensed.
Codeweavers sells a slightly enhanced version of WINE called Crossover Linux which, among other things, allows Linux users to run various Windows plugins. It allows Linux users to run Windows Media Player 6.4, although I am not sure just how well it does that. If a Linux user is using Windows Media Player 6.4 under Crossover Linux, they should be allowed to view the EU's streaming service.
To be equally fair to all voters, they should also offer their streaming audios or videos in an alternative format such as Ogg Theora. Here is an example of a web page that offers the choice of viewing some videos in either Flash or Ogg. I am using Linux and when I clicked on one of the Ogg links the video began to play perfectly. On most Linux computers the Flash version would also probably work, although the 64-bit version of Macromedia Flash for Linux has not yet been released. I am using the AMD-64 version of Kubunutu Linux without Flash, so I watched the Ogg video instead. If the EU included an Ogg version of their videos, they would then definitely be able to support Linux in a legal way. In a democracy, all voters should be given equal access to public government information. To achieve equal access for all voters, they should make the slight extra effort to include a version of their streaming audios or videos in some other format such as something like Ogg.
Oops, I did not mean to say that it "is much easier to use iptables," that was a typo. I intended to say that Guarddog was much easier to use than iptables.
In addition to using a Linux firewall, learning how to use commands such as netstat or nmap could provide addition information about what is going on. There are probably some GUI front-ends to those tools too, but I don't know what they are called. There is an mp3 of Episode #49 of the "Security Now" show available which talks about using the Netstat command to monitor active connections and listening ports, but it is mostly about the Windows and Mac versions of the command. In one of the Matrix movies there is a brief screenshot of Vanity using nmap to find a security flaw that she could exploit.
I have not yet gotten around to learning how to read security related log files on my Linux computer at home. A serious network administrator would probably do that. I don't have any ports open to the outside world, I install security updates regularly and have only one user so I probably don't have as much to be worried about. All I have is a home network of three computers.
Guarddog is an very easy to use firewall. The Router/Modem for my DSL connection also has a built-in firewall firewall so, for me, also using the Linux firewall is somewhat redundant, but I do anyway. Guarddog was written for KDE, so it would be better for someone that uses Kubunu than Ubuntu. I have both packages installed, so I don't need to worry about whether a program is a KDE program or a Gnome program. Like most other Linux firewall programs it is actually just an easy to use front-end for the iptables firewall that already comes built in with the Linux Kernel. It is much easier to use iptables. Guarddog doesn't actually need to be running at all times once it has finished configuring iptables.
When configuring Guarddog, select the protocols that you want to allow to be used in the Internet zone such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP3, SMTP and whatever else you need. You might also possibly want to allow DNS, ping and whatever chat programs you use. I am not a system administrator so I am not an expert on networking or firewalls. There is also a related program called Guidedog which you probably won't need unless you are doing port forwarding or something like that. To nest your firewall, you might want to go to the grc.com webpage and select "ShieldsUP" and then select "All Service Ports" for the test. It will then tell show you which ports are open, closed or stealth and tell you if your firewall passes the test. Of course if you are behind a router with a firewall it might actually be testing that instead of your Linux firewall.
There are other Linux firewalls such as Firestarter and several others that I have heard of but not tired. Guarddog does not give you pop-up messages about what is going on, it is just used to control what TCP/IP and UDP ports are open or closed on each interface. I am not sure what feature other Linux firewalls do.
If Make it work. Make it simple is your goal, then just use Ubuntu. You don't need to look any further. Not everyone has the right personality for a distro such as Linux from Scratch. That would be for someone who wants to better understand how it is all put together and how it all works. Building your house from scratch isn't for everyone either, although some people have that kind of "build it yourself" personality. I built my own computer from scratch partially as a learning experience. Not everyone has a "build your own computer from scratch" kind of personality either. I do understand your point though.
In Linux there is some disagreement about whether it is easier for an experienced user to use point-and-click GUI utilities or by knowing how to manually edit the various configuration files manually from the command line. Some Linux geeks also seem want to prove their superiority in the geek pecking order by using a more expert oriented distro such as Slackware or Gentoo. Perhaps they should just get a life instead.
I used Slackware Linux for about 3 years on my home computer. I liked it, but it is not what I would recommend for a newbie. I have switched to using a combination of Ubuntu and Kubuntu at home. Slackware is for serious Linux geeks who dislike using point-and-click GUI interfaces for most administrative tasks. Slackware users prefer to directly edit the various configuration files. They dislike having too much stuff configured automatically for them, they prefer the control of doing it themselves instead. However, if your goal is to learn more about Linux a slightly more difficult distro such as Slackware or Slamd64 might be appropriate. Slackware would also be great for a server although, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS and other distros do that well too. Linux from Scratch would be even more of a learning experience.
When installing new programs, Slackware does not automatically do dependency checking. If I had used the Slackware Slapt-get program to download and install the software packages it would then have done some dependency checking but I doubt that it would have done it as well as apt-get does it in a Debian derived distro such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Mepis. For desktop use a newbie would find Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Mepis much easy to install and configure. Ubuntu also has Synaptic which is an easy to use point-and-click GUI front-end for apt-get. It can be used to install or uninstall free Linux software from the hundreds of free programs from the Ubuntu repostiories on the Internet. Not only that but, the Ubuntu or the Kubuntu desktops have a more polished feel than Slackware does.
A Windows user probably would wonder what dependencies are. Most Linux programmers don't like to reinvent the wheel when they write a new program. There are already many free GPL licensed programs that can do much of what they need. They rely on those other programs to do some tasks, so those programs are dependencies and must already be there or be installed too. In Windows, commercial software companies do not share each others programs as dependencies. The apt-get package manager in Debian is the one that is best known for automatically resoling dependencies. Ubuntu inherits apt-get and Synaptic from Debian.
Another useful Linux program that I forgot to mention is "CrossOver Linux." It is not free, but is a more user friendly version of WINE that is optimized to allow certain Windows office software programs to be run under Linux. It doesn't work with all versions of all Windows software, but in the past, I have used it to run Microsoft Office 97 and Office 2000 under Linux. I was using an old version of Red Hat Linux at the time, but it should also work with Ubuntu.
Cedega is another non-free version of WINE. It is designed to allow some Windows games to run under Linux. I am not a gamer and have not tried it, so I don't know much about it. I have heard that both products as well as the normal free version of WINE can all be installed at once without interfering with each other. If you know how to use old DOS commands and have some old DOS games that you want to play, you could download the Linux version of the free DOSBox program and run your old DOS games inside that.
One program that a desktop Linux user won't need is a virus scanner. There have never been any actively circulating Linux viruses, that is a Windows only problem. There are actually a few free and a few commercial virus scanners for Linux. If someone is running a Linux based mail server it might be useful to use one of those to protect your more vulnerable Windows clients from infected email attachments.
I made one mistake in what I just said. If you have already installed Kubuntu, you can add the Ubuntu stuff such as Gnome by using Adept, Synaptic or Apt-get to install the ubuntu-desktop package. I had said the wrong package.
If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it is possible to use the Ubuntu or Kubuntu installation CD as a repository instead. However, the software updates and security updates would still need to be downloaded.
My two favorite versions of Linux are Ubuntu and Kubunutu. Kubunutu is actually just a version of Ubuntu that uses the KDE desktop environment instead of the Gnome desktop environment. A person can install either one and then just use the Synaptic package manager to download and install the other one too. After that you can choose to use either KDE or Gnome when you are booting up by clicking on the session button on the login screen and choosing either KDE or Gnome. If someone has already installed Ubuntu and has a high-speed Internet connection they can use the Synaptic package manager to also install the kubuntu-desktop package. If someone started by installing Kubuntu they can add the Gnome stuff by using Adept (or Synaptic if it is already installed) to download and install the gnome-desktop-environment. I have both installed on my computer at home and use KDE most of the time.
Either KDE or Gnome would be a good choice although I have a slight preference for KDE. Most Ubuntu books and on-line instructions assume that your are using Ubuntu with Gnome instead of Kubuntu with KDE so when starting out it is easier to follow the directions when using Ubuntu and Gnome.
There is an on-line discussion forum for Ubuntu users here:
One of my favorite features that the Linux desktop has which Windows lacks is the multiple virtual desktops. What is that? Well, sometimes I have several programs open at once and I want a fresh clean screen to fill up with more stuff but don't want to close any programs or even minimize them. I click on one of the rectangles in the row of rectangles on the taskbar and suddenly, I have another fresh clean empty screen to open more programs in. To return to the other desktop with my other stuff, I just click on the appropriate rectangle. In KDE, each virtual desktop can have its own wallpaper too. Windows doesn't have that, perhaps a barely computer literate Windows user might be confused by a useful feature like that. Sometimes, I have about a dozen programs open at once, all scattered across about 4 or 5 virtual desktops. When using Windows, everything feels much more cramped for space and cluttered without the multiple virtual desktops.
When using a Debian derived Linux distribution such as Ubunutu, Kubunu or Mepis have fun downloading some free new programs from the hundreds of available free programs that are listed for you by the Synaptic package manager. Windows doesn't offer a comparable program that does point-and-click installations of free GPL licensed software programs from the on-line Ubuntu repositories.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the information, that solved the problem. I used the Synaptic Package Manager to download ia32-libs file and afterwards was able to get the installation script to run properly. I also successfully installed Office 2000. So far I have only briefly had a chance to try out Word and Excel, but they seem to be working.
I went ahead and tried installing the Loki installer version of CrossOverLinux 6.0.0.1 just now and have been getting an error message. On my AMD-64 computer I have the AMD-64 versions of both Ubuntu and Kubintu installed (the packages for both). The Codeweavers webpage claims the the Loki installer version will work under any version of Linux. That is the how I always installed it in the the past. I verified the md5sum of what I had downloaded and then tried to run the installation shell script. Below is what I typed in to run their usual installation shell script along with the messages that I got afterwards:
shVerifying archive integrity...OK
Uncompressing CrossOver Linux Standard
The setup program seems to have failed on x86/glibc-2.4
Check the system requirements at:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/requ
You might be missing the 32bit compatibility libraries
I am not sure if it is really going to work on the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu or not. I got the impression from their web page that it would work, although they don't seem to specifically say the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I am not sure what the 32bit compatability libraries are.
I have used CrossOver Linux in the past to run Office 97 and Adobe Photoshop 7 under an earlier version of Red Hat Linux. I later used it to run Office 2000 under Linux instead. It worked pretty well and I was happy with their product. I haven't yet tried using it under the 64-bit version Ubuntu 6.10 Linux on my AMD-64 computer. I see that the Codeweavers web page says that it does work with 6.06/6.10 and that they test under both 32 bit and 64 bit systems, so I plan to give it a try. The idea of possibly running a Windows only Plugin for Firefox is also kind of intriguing.
Perhaps every local Kinkos store will eventually have their own fab lab as a sideline business. If you happen to find yourself working for them in the future, you might be assigned to the new fab lab department. Every day you would find yourself making parts for average do-it-your-selfers (with a smile on your face at all times). In many cases they would not understand such basic manufacturing concepts such as the effect that tolerance-stacking has on groups of parts which need to be fastened together. Uneven expansion of materials at different temperatures might also be a problem they would run into. Of course, in those cases you will need to examine their parts and explain to them that the parts were manufactured to their specs and the best capabilities of the fab. It was just the cumulative error of tolerance stacking or something like that caused their parts not to fit together.
I would also love to see what kind of projects 12 year old boys would come up with. Perhaps home made catapults that toss watermelons hundreds of feet and gigantic squirt guns or something like that. As a kid, back in the 1960s, I once had a toy that could fire a reusable plastic rocket filled with compressed air and water. Perhaps kids will soon be able build with their own designs for updated versions of that old toy. You could watch them assemble their stuff in the Kinkos parking lot and try it out to make sure that it works before going home. On some days you might have various local doofuses in the parking lot assembling and testing their homemade stuff before taking them home. Kinkos could set up chairs out front and sell coffee to other shoppers who just want to sit and watch the craziness for a little while.
Did you just recently read the recent science fiction article that was in the January 2007 issue of "Fantasy and Science Fiction" magazine. In that article, the owner of a fab lab kiosk in a small town later upgraded to a new improved model which not only made much stronger parts but the old parts could also be broken down and reused. The cover of the magazine shows a picture of his original green colored kiosk.
The fictional article also describes how large corporations feared that average citizens making their own parts in fab labs would cause them to loose business. They tried through various methods to keep the technology out of the average persons hands. In the article, the local fab lab operator was in a poor eastern European country. He wanted everyone to have access to various inexpensive parts made locally in small fab kiosks. There were also regulators in some European Union like future organization that were concerned that citizens in countries in eastern Europe and elsewhere might be able to easily copy patented products. Bureaucrats were also concerned about how to properly record and supervise the manufacture of such devices.
There are a few other science fiction books and magazine articles that mention fab labs and desktop manufacturing although I haven't read any of them.
If you can't afford your own fab lab you will need to put your plans on a CD or USB key and take them to the nearest fab kisok in town. Some people do that now with their digital photos. They go to the kisk at the local drug store and have their digital photos printed out there. In the future there will probably be one or more fab lab kiosk in every town.
The local bookstores will most likely have monthly magazines that would include a CD or DVD disk full of the latest pantent free plans for home projects. Of course the plans would be open source so you could open the file with your favorite open source CAD/CAM program and make a few changes such as resizing the parts. The projects will probably typically also require a few non-fabable parts, but those would be common inexpensive off-the-shelf parts such as nuts, bolts, diodes, capacitors and such that you could buy at your local hardware store, electronics store or fabers supply store.
The typical part made on a home fab lab would probably not actually be cheaper than than most mass produced manufactured parts made in a factory. But, the fab lab would be less expensive for making custom one of a kind parts. They would be great for custom home projects. They might also be useful for people who want to repair old mechanical devices for which parts are no longer available. If a custom plastic part from a fab would not be strong enough they could quite likely at least use the fab to make an adaptor would would allow them to connect some other replacement part from a similar product which is still available. If some manufacturing jobs are lost that might just mean less goods to be imported from China. As far as simple inexpensive items made of plastic or similar materials, it doesn't seem like much of that kind of stuff is made in the U.S. any more anyway.
I don't think that home fab labs will replace most factory produced goods. But even so I hope that large corporations and the government do not try over regulate or kill the idea with mandatory DRM like requirements for home fab labs. They might want to try to prevent the average citizen from copying patented designs or by making their own devices which do not meet government safety standards or other requirements. If they dare to do that to the emerging fab lab technology I home that voters get organized and create a grass roots movement to demand that we want our non-DRM handicapped fab labs. Perhaps we would even have some good old 1960s style student protests and mass marches.
In the future, there will probably be free large collections of patent free plans of fabable 3D items to be made with your home fab labs. Lets say that I want to make a small desk lamp out of plastic. I would probably download a 3D CAD/CAM drawing of the item, then load the appropriate type of plastic into the fab and press start. Layer by layer the plastic would slowly be applied until the finished item is ready. The instructions for my lamp would also list a few parts that are not easily fabable that I would not be able to make and will need to go out and buy. Fortunately, those would usually be simple, inexpensive, common, off-the-shelf parts that I could buy from my local hardware store. In the case of my lamp, the parts I need to buy would be the light bulb, the light bulb holder, the switch, the cord and the lamp shade. I just add those few parts to my lamp and my patent and copyright free project is done.
There will most likely be thousands of patent and copyright free projects available to be downloaded. There will probably even be magazines for home fab lab users which will come with an attached DVD full of the latest patent free open source plans. There will also probably be web sites in certain foreign countries which will offer plans for items which are more legally questionable.
Back in 1989, at a small junior college, I took a couple of classes where each student made a few parts on a CNC milling machine and lathe. Those courses built upon what I learned about computer aided drafting courses in other classes. We had a software package called SmartCAM which could be used to draw a part, much as in computer aided drafting, and then it could also create the x, y, and z movements needed to create the part on a milling machine. We made our parts out of machinable wax, because a mistake while machining wax would not damage the machine. Back then at ASU, which is a different college, they occasionally used Techsoft which was a similar combined CAD/CAM package. In class at the Junior college, it was amazing to be able to draw the part on the DOS based 286 or 386 computer and then watch the part magically being machined out of plastic. At the Junior College, we also learned how to manually write the x, y and z movements without the help of software. Of course fab labs would not be machining parts whey would be creating the parts layer by layer out of plastic or some other material.
I don't know much about fab labs although back in the late 1980s I heard about something somewhat similar that was called "stereo lithographic reproduction." In that case two computer controlled lasers were used to create parts layer by layer from a pool of liquid plastic. In the future, the open source movement will probably have a good computer aided drafting (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing program (CAM) that can be used in combination with peoples home fab labs. Do we have any good open-source programs like that yet? Perhaps we might also need an open standard for the file format for the part drawings. The part file would perhaps be something kind of like a database like full of lines, circles, arcs, rectangles and such with corresponding x, y, and z rectangular and polar coodinates and other characteristics. Compatibility with other CAD file formats such as possibly AutoCAD or other CAD packages might also be nice if legally and technically possible. Support for the official drafting standards and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing standards with circular tolerance zones would also be good. I didn't actually end up working in that field, so some of what I just said might possibly be a little out of date. That advice is mostly based on my late 1980s knowledge of drafting and manufacturing.
People who don't own their own fab lab will be able to have their own custom designs made from the fab lab kiosk in town. People with digital cameras do much the same thing when they go to the kisok at the drug store to have their photos printed. There will also be similar fab la
Thanks, for the info!
I did back up my Linux files, and other data files too. I also backed up the boot sector of the hard disk onto a USB flash drive, just in case the Windows installation program decides to rudely overwrite the boot sector with its own boot loader. I also created a GRUB boot CD which, if necessary, could be used as a temporary way to start-up Linux or Windows. A Knoppix live CD can also be used to access partitions in an emergency. I am prepared to give it a try again sometime. Perhaps I will even find one of the missing Windows CDs too.
I had suspected that my Windows 2000 installation may have been compromised in some way so I wanted to reinstall it. Unfortunately, it took me several days to find one of my two original installation CDs. I found both of them, then I remembered that they were both Windows 2000 upgrade disks, so I will also need to find either my Windows 98 disk, my Windows ME disk or one of my two Windows NT 4.0 disks, none of which I could find. So I couldn't reinstall Windows. If that had been Linux I would have just download the free iso and burned a new CD. Fortunately, the computer is set-up to dual-boot between Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux so I was still able to keep using Linux instead. I prefer Linux anyway.
So how did a computer literate user like me end up with a Windows installation that I could not trust. Well, until recently, 26.4K dial-up Internet connections were all that was available where I live. I installed Windows 2000 several years ago, and after installing the ZoneAlarm firewall, I immediately began to download the security updates. I did that before going anywhere else on the Internet. On my 26.4 K dial-up connection, downloading the updates took all night. The trouble was that for the first few hours of downloading the security updates, I was unpatched and not sitting behind a router. Within minutes I was subjected to numerous advertising pop-ups, at least one every few minutes. They typically said things like that I had spyware or that my registry was corrupted and that I needed to go to some webpage to get some product. I ignored those pop-ups messages and spent much of the night closing the pop-up boxes. At one point I rebooted and the pop-ups finally stopped, presumably because the security update needed to block them was finally installed. When it was finished, Windows 2000 worked great but, I always had doubts that I might have already been compromised during the hours before the patches could all be installed. For that reason, I had always planned to reinstall Windows 2000 whenever a high-speed Internet connection became available where I live and I could quickly download the security updates while sitting protected behind a router.
Inexpensive high-speed DSL connections finally became available in my neighborhood several months ago. I hadn't used Windows in months but the installation CD for my DSL modem/router was a Windows only CD so I booted up into Windows. I was told by QWEST that only Windows and Macs were supported, not Linux. After doing the QWEST DSL installation, the MSN Premium installation started. If I remember correctly, while doing that, my ZoneAlarm firewall started warning me that Internet Explorer was recording my keystrokes and mouse movements. I hope that was some kind of false warning but, I freaked out, and stopped the MSN Premium installation, and soon shut down Windows and rebooted into Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu immediately automatically connected to my DSL router and I had high-speed Internet access. I then logged into the router configuration program through my browser, changed a few default passwords and setting, tightened up a few security settings. Then I went to grc.com to use their "shield-up" feature to verify that all my ports were closed and stealth and that my computer would not even respond to pings. I also had someone else in this household who wanted to connect a Windows XP laptop wirelessly, so I changed the routers default use of the insecure WEP encryption to WPA encryption instead and soon had her hooked up to the router wirelessly with 802.11g and WPA. I did not use the QWEST installation CD to configure her computer, I just set the configuration settings manually.
I decided to do a fresh clean install of Windows 2000 so that I could finally have confidence that it really was secure and perhaps even use Windows some occasionally. That was when I couldn't find the Windows installation CDs. I am stuck with a copy of Windows that I don't trust. My only easy solution is to just keep using is to stop dual-booting and just ke
Even if Linux were to become more popular, I doubt that it would have as many security problems as Windows. For one thing, Linux is not the inbred monoculture that Windows is. There is more genetic diversity and less standardization in the software that Linux users use. The typical Windows computer uses Internet Explorer, Outlook, Office and the same version of the same kernel. In Linux there are several different email programs, several different browsers, several different word processors and different spread sheets and various versions of the kernel compiled with different options. Even though there are security flaws in each of those programs, the same security flaw would not exit on all Linux computers. For the same reason, inbred plant and animal populations are more vulnerable one disease spreading thought the entire population.
My understanding is that Linux has also never been as careless about running attachments and active-X stuff without asking the user first. In fact, Active-X attachments won't run at all because they are proprietary Microsoft technology that Linux lacks. I use Linux so I am not sure if Windows still runs that kind of stuff without asking the user first or not? Linux users also generally do not run with full administrative privileges like most Windows computers at home do. I believe, that in Vista that last item has been changed, though.
In the name of making things easier for the users, Windows has always tried to automatically do as much as possible and by connecting to everything as promiscuously as possible. That has also created security problems. Ironically, that has made Windows less easy to use because, at least for anyone who cares about security, the Windows user now needs to know more about security than the Linux or Mac user needs to know. Your average grandmother can no longer safely use a Windows PC, but perhaps she could still use Mac or Ubuntu Linux (if it came with the operating system pre-installed).
A water pump that uses 85W sounds like way too much. The Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system gets by with a 5W water pump. I have been using a slightly older version of the Zalman Reserator 1 on my computer for probably about 2 years now. I do not have a fan on my CPU or the video card so the computer is very quiet. With less heat being released inside the case I can also get by with running the case fan slower by adjusting the fan speed with the knob on a rheostat.
My Kill-A-Watt meter shows that my computer is only using 90 Watts at the moment (not counting the monitor). It uses significantly more under a heavy load. The cool 'n Quiet feature of my AMD-64 3800+ is enabled so the clock speed drops from 2.4 GHz to 1 GHz when under a light load. I don't have my monitor, water pump, DSL modem and other devices plugged into the Kill-A-Watt meter so the 90 Watt figure only includes my CPU and whatever else is inside the tower case. He uses 85 Watts just to cool his computers, he is cooling several computers, not just one. With my 5 Watt water pump the 2 water hoses shouldn't be more than a few feet long. The distance to his pool might require some extra power but would it require 85 Watts?
That sounds like a variation of the various ideas people have had about using water heat pumps. Back in the 1970s and 1980s there were several articles about ground water heat pumps in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. In some parts of the country, such as in parts of Arizona, at a depth of about 4 feet the temperature stays at about 68 degrees F. year round. If shallow groundwater is available, it would be easier job for a heatpump to transfer heat to and from something that is already close to the desired temperature. One article even discussed the idea of somehow hooking a ground water heat pump to a sewage leach field.
When I was in high school living down in the desert in Arizona we had a swimming pool which was quite cool even during the summer. It was unheated and too cold to be useable except for about 4 months of the year. If I remember correctly, the pool was somewhat cool even during 110 degree weather. I wonder if people have ever hooked their air-conditioner to a backyard swimming pool. An ordinary ground water heatpump could probably be adapted to that purpose.
Here is one example of a company that has something to do with ground water heat pumps, although I don't know anything about them. After skimming the first few paragraphs, it looks like they have may been using ground water heat pumps to transfer geothermal energy. But, that is kind of similar.
Ground Water Heat Pump Installations
Heat exchangers are used in a few types of solar hot water heating systems. Perhaps that type of heat exchanger could be adapted for this purpose to create an inner loop of distilled water or coolant that would be separate from the swimming pool water. A single walled heat exchanger would probably be adequate in this case since. Not only would that help prevent corrosion but if you ever spring a leak you would only have a limited supply of water or coolant in the inner loop to leak out.
Back in the 1970s in the early days of solar energy the there was a solar hot water system called the "drain down" system (not to be confused with the more reliable drain-back system). It sent full main water pressure through the solar collectors on the roof. For freeze protection, during cold weather, it used a combination of a air-vent vacuum breaker (which looked like a salt and pepper shaker on the roof) and a sunspool valve. Unfortunately, after a few years the freeze protection was no longer reliable because of lime deposits forming inside the air-vent vacuum breaker. I know of one case where the pipes in the attic froze and sprang a leak. The insulation and sheet-rock on the ceiling of the master bedroom became soggy and caved in onto the bed. Most other solar hot water heating systems are not only less likely to freeze, but if they do spring a leak, there is only a limited supply of distilled water or propelyneglycol anti-freeze to leak out. When cooling computers with a swimming pool, a leak would have an unlimited supply of water. By the way, I have a neighbor who has never had any problems with his batch type solar water that he has been using for the last 21 years..
I have been using a silent fanless water cooling system on my computer for 2 years and love how quiet it is. I use an older version of the Zahlman Reserator. It is expensive, but works great and is totally silent. They also have a newer version of the system called the Reserator 2. It is an off-the-shelf solution that does not require a swimming pool. I have the water pump hooked up to my UPS so that cooling will still occur during a power failure when the computer is still running.
My computer uses the Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system which has an almost 2-foot tall finned aluminum water tank. That would probably be much like the single bucket of water test. The Zalman Reserator is somewhat expensive, but after having once owned a noisy computer, I was willing to pay the extra cost to build one that is totally quiet. I have been using an earlier version of the Reserator for about two years now and it runs cool and is almost totally quiet. A newer version of their product is called the Reserator II
An aquarium could probably be used instead. Perhaps they could even have a fish highway with clear acrylic pipes running from one aquarium to another aquarium in another room. What would a person's wife think of that? At least the kids would probably approve. Someone actually even wrote a book on building fish highways, but it wasn't intended to be part of a water cooling system for a computer. Whatever you do make sure that you can't accidentally turn the computer on without the silent water cooling at the same time. I have the water pump plugged into the UPS so that water cooling continues, while the computer is still running, during the typical brief power failures that occur during during summer thunderstorms.
Codeweavers sells a product which called CrossOver Linux which makes it possible to run Windows Media Player 6.4 under Linux. Codeweavers only gives Windows Media Player 6.4 a silver rating for how it runs under Linux. The European Union's Frequently Asked Questions page says that we need to use Microsoft Media Player version 6.4 or higher, so version 6.4 should be good enough. It doesn't even sound like they will let a Linux user try to use a possible solution like that. They are not correct in their assertion that there is no legal way for a Linux user to play the content.
My knowledge of law is limited, but my understanding is that the legality of some of this may not have been fully challenged or explored in the courts. It may also depend on which country the computer user happens to be in. No company has offered to sell any Linux software for viewing their proprietary codecs, so many Linux users find their only choice to be to downloaded use the possibly illegal codecs. In this case the Linux users are trying to view public documents, it is not like they are trying to steal copyrighted material. Why should the EU even care?
The EU's web page has public information that should be available to all voters. Because these are important public records, they should offer users a choice of formats. They should allow users to choose between using the closed-source proprietary Microsoft format and an open-standards format such as Ogg.
Some websites offer users the choice of more than one format. It doesn't have to be limited to one choice or the other. Here is one example of a web page that allows users to choose which format they want to use when viewing a video clip. In this case it happens to be a choice between Flash and Ogg.
Several video clips in Flash and Ogg format
It is not unreasonable to expect an official government website to make an extra effort to make public records available to all voters. Offering the content in two alternative formats would be a reasonable solution. At least one of the formats should be an open standard such a Ogg, the other could be a proprietary closed standard that would require using Windows Media Player. Flash might possibly be acceptable too, because most Linux computers can play Flash (although the AMD-64 version of Macromedia Flash for Linux is not yet available).
A couple of years ago TurboLinux 10F was being sold for $69.00 in the U.S. and came with the Cyberlink's PowerDVD software for Linux with support for most Windows Media codecs up to version 9. According to this review, it does it does so in way that was legal and completely licensed.
TurboLinux 10F Review
Codeweavers sells a slightly enhanced version of WINE called Crossover Linux which, among other things, allows Linux users to run various Windows plugins. It allows Linux users to run Windows Media Player 6.4, although I am not sure just how well it does that. If a Linux user is using Windows Media Player 6.4 under Crossover Linux, they should be allowed to view the EU's streaming service.
To be equally fair to all voters, they should also offer their streaming audios or videos in an alternative format such as Ogg Theora. Here is an example of a web page that offers the choice of viewing some videos in either Flash or Ogg. I am using Linux and when I clicked on one of the Ogg links the video began to play perfectly. On most Linux computers the Flash version would also probably work, although the 64-bit version of Macromedia Flash for Linux has not yet been released. I am using the AMD-64 version of Kubunutu Linux without Flash, so I watched the Ogg video instead. If the EU included an Ogg version of their videos, they would then definitely be able to support Linux in a legal way. In a democracy, all voters should be given equal access to public government information. To achieve equal access for all voters, they should make the slight extra effort to include a version of their streaming audios or videos in some other format such as something like Ogg.
Oops, I did not mean to say that it "is much easier to use iptables," that was a typo. I intended to say that Guarddog was much easier to use than iptables.
In addition to using a Linux firewall, learning how to use commands such as netstat or nmap could provide addition information about what is going on. There are probably some GUI front-ends to those tools too, but I don't know what they are called. There is an mp3 of Episode #49 of the "Security Now" show available which talks about using the Netstat command to monitor active connections and listening ports, but it is mostly about the Windows and Mac versions of the command. In one of the Matrix movies there is a brief screenshot of Vanity using nmap to find a security flaw that she could exploit.
I have not yet gotten around to learning how to read security related log files on my Linux computer at home. A serious network administrator would probably do that. I don't have any ports open to the outside world, I install security updates regularly and have only one user so I probably don't have as much to be worried about. All I have is a home network of three computers.
Guarddog is an very easy to use firewall. The Router/Modem for my DSL connection also has a built-in firewall firewall so, for me, also using the Linux firewall is somewhat redundant, but I do anyway. Guarddog was written for KDE, so it would be better for someone that uses Kubunu than Ubuntu. I have both packages installed, so I don't need to worry about whether a program is a KDE program or a Gnome program. Like most other Linux firewall programs it is actually just an easy to use front-end for the iptables firewall that already comes built in with the Linux Kernel. It is much easier to use iptables. Guarddog doesn't actually need to be running at all times once it has finished configuring iptables.
When configuring Guarddog, select the protocols that you want to allow to be used in the Internet zone such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP3, SMTP and whatever else you need. You might also possibly want to allow DNS, ping and whatever chat programs you use. I am not a system administrator so I am not an expert on networking or firewalls. There is also a related program called Guidedog which you probably won't need unless you are doing port forwarding or something like that. To nest your firewall, you might want to go to the grc.com webpage and select "ShieldsUP" and then select "All Service Ports" for the test. It will then tell show you which ports are open, closed or stealth and tell you if your firewall passes the test. Of course if you are behind a router with a firewall it might actually be testing that instead of your Linux firewall.
There are other Linux firewalls such as Firestarter and several others that I have heard of but not tired. Guarddog does not give you pop-up messages about what is going on, it is just used to control what TCP/IP and UDP ports are open or closed on each interface. I am not sure what feature other Linux firewalls do.
If Make it work. Make it simple is your goal, then just use Ubuntu. You don't need to look any further. Not everyone has the right personality for a distro such as Linux from Scratch. That would be for someone who wants to better understand how it is all put together and how it all works. Building your house from scratch isn't for everyone either, although some people have that kind of "build it yourself" personality. I built my own computer from scratch partially as a learning experience. Not everyone has a "build your own computer from scratch" kind of personality either. I do understand your point though.
In Linux there is some disagreement about whether it is easier for an experienced user to use point-and-click GUI utilities or by knowing how to manually edit the various configuration files manually from the command line. Some Linux geeks also seem want to prove their superiority in the geek pecking order by using a more expert oriented distro such as Slackware or Gentoo. Perhaps they should just get a life instead.
I used Slackware Linux for about 3 years on my home computer. I liked it, but it is not what I would recommend for a newbie. I have switched to using a combination of Ubuntu and Kubuntu at home. Slackware is for serious Linux geeks who dislike using point-and-click GUI interfaces for most administrative tasks. Slackware users prefer to directly edit the various configuration files. They dislike having too much stuff configured automatically for them, they prefer the control of doing it themselves instead. However, if your goal is to learn more about Linux a slightly more difficult distro such as Slackware or Slamd64 might be appropriate. Slackware would also be great for a server although, Ubuntu, Red Hat, CentOS and other distros do that well too. Linux from Scratch would be even more of a learning experience.
When installing new programs, Slackware does not automatically do dependency checking. If I had used the Slackware Slapt-get program to download and install the software packages it would then have done some dependency checking but I doubt that it would have done it as well as apt-get does it in a Debian derived distro such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Mepis. For desktop use a newbie would find Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Mepis much easy to install and configure. Ubuntu also has Synaptic which is an easy to use point-and-click GUI front-end for apt-get. It can be used to install or uninstall free Linux software from the hundreds of free programs from the Ubuntu repostiories on the Internet. Not only that but, the Ubuntu or the Kubuntu desktops have a more polished feel than Slackware does.
A Windows user probably would wonder what dependencies are. Most Linux programmers don't like to reinvent the wheel when they write a new program. There are already many free GPL licensed programs that can do much of what they need. They rely on those other programs to do some tasks, so those programs are dependencies and must already be there or be installed too. In Windows, commercial software companies do not share each others programs as dependencies. The apt-get package manager in Debian is the one that is best known for automatically resoling dependencies. Ubuntu inherits apt-get and Synaptic from Debian.
Another useful Linux program that I forgot to mention is "CrossOver Linux." It is not free, but is a more user friendly version of WINE that is optimized to allow certain Windows office software programs to be run under Linux. It doesn't work with all versions of all Windows software, but in the past, I have used it to run Microsoft Office 97 and Office 2000 under Linux. I was using an old version of Red Hat Linux at the time, but it should also work with Ubuntu.
Cedega is another non-free version of WINE. It is designed to allow some Windows games to run under Linux. I am not a gamer and have not tried it, so I don't know much about it. I have heard that both products as well as the normal free version of WINE can all be installed at once without interfering with each other. If you know how to use old DOS commands and have some old DOS games that you want to play, you could download the Linux version of the free DOSBox program and run your old DOS games inside that.
One program that a desktop Linux user won't need is a virus scanner. There have never been any actively circulating Linux viruses, that is a Windows only problem. There are actually a few free and a few commercial virus scanners for Linux. If someone is running a Linux based mail server it might be useful to use one of those to protect your more vulnerable Windows clients from infected email attachments.
I made one mistake in what I just said. If you have already installed Kubuntu, you can add the Ubuntu stuff such as Gnome by using Adept, Synaptic or Apt-get to install the ubuntu-desktop package. I had said the wrong package.
If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it is possible to use the Ubuntu or Kubuntu installation CD as a repository instead. However, the software updates and security updates would still need to be downloaded.
My two favorite versions of Linux are Ubuntu and Kubunutu. Kubunutu is actually just a version of Ubuntu that uses the KDE desktop environment instead of the Gnome desktop environment. A person can install either one and then just use the Synaptic package manager to download and install the other one too. After that you can choose to use either KDE or Gnome when you are booting up by clicking on the session button on the login screen and choosing either KDE or Gnome. If someone has already installed Ubuntu and has a high-speed Internet connection they can use the Synaptic package manager to also install the kubuntu-desktop package. If someone started by installing Kubuntu they can add the Gnome stuff by using Adept (or Synaptic if it is already installed) to download and install the gnome-desktop-environment. I have both installed on my computer at home and use KDE most of the time.
Either KDE or Gnome would be a good choice although I have a slight preference for KDE. Most Ubuntu books and on-line instructions assume that your are using Ubuntu with Gnome instead of Kubuntu with KDE so when starting out it is easier to follow the directions when using Ubuntu and Gnome.
There is an on-line discussion forum for Ubuntu users here:
Ubuntu Forum
There are also books about using Ubuntu Linux such as these:
One of my favorite features that the Linux desktop has which Windows lacks is the multiple virtual desktops. What is that? Well, sometimes I have several programs open at once and I want a fresh clean screen to fill up with more stuff but don't want to close any programs or even minimize them. I click on one of the rectangles in the row of rectangles on the taskbar and suddenly, I have another fresh clean empty screen to open more programs in. To return to the other desktop with my other stuff, I just click on the appropriate rectangle. In KDE, each virtual desktop can have its own wallpaper too. Windows doesn't have that, perhaps a barely computer literate Windows user might be confused by a useful feature like that. Sometimes, I have about a dozen programs open at once, all scattered across about 4 or 5 virtual desktops. When using Windows, everything feels much more cramped for space and cluttered without the multiple virtual desktops.
When using a Debian derived Linux distribution such as Ubunutu, Kubunu or Mepis have fun downloading some free new programs from the hundreds of available free programs that are listed for you by the Synaptic package manager. Windows doesn't offer a comparable program that does point-and-click installations of free GPL licensed software programs from the on-line Ubuntu repositories.