devnet, Author at Yet Another Linux Blog

The 350 Mhz XFCE Linux Desktop Search

I’ve had troubles as of late in my household. I had a motherboard go bad that was powering my Media Center PC. This PC is the center of the entire family entertainment with 30 GB of music, 50 GB of movies, and the ability to watch live TV. That immediately ceased when the BIOS chip failed on the mobo. I had to send in for a replacement. In the meantime, I’ve had to shift all of my computers around to compromise for this loss. This means that I lost my normal Linux (PCLinuxOS .92) computer (an old Celeron 900 Emachines). I now have the old PII 350 MHz. While I know it likes Slackware and Vector Linux the most…I have to try other distros out on it just to see what happens. After all, even Windows XP can install and run on this computer…so I’d like to see how some of the better Linux desktops will run on it. To give a quick rundown, here are the specs:

ATI Rage Pro Video Card
512MB PC133 Crucial
PII MMX 350 MHz
Samsung 32X CDROM
Western Digital 20 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
Linksys 10/100 Network Card
Sound Blaster 16

Even if my hand is forced in this round with the inclusion of such an old desktop system, I don’t mind. Let’s see how some of the big distros work using this PII 350 MHz shall we? I’m going to attempt to get a good desktop based distro running with an XFCE desktop. If a distro ships with Gnome, I can handle that as well…KDE won’t do though since it will run very slow on this PC.

PCLinuxOS

Unfortunately, this didn’t want to boot. It got stuck on searching for the loop image during bootup. I tried pumping down resolutions and not probing practically anything but it just wouldn’t boot. Every single boot option in my arsenal came up nil. I didn’t think this would work for me, but I just figured I’d give it a try. I know PCLinuxOS is cutting edge normally with the best Intel and AMD processors…but I just figured that I might be able to run it with XFCE powering the desktop. So, it seems that PCLOS is good for newer computers but not what the doctor ordered for older computers. Darn, I really wanted this one to work. Next up, SuSe 10.0…

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Maintenance Announcement

Yet Another Linux Blog and Yet Another Linux Forum will be going down today at approximately 5pm EST for maintenance. Since this is a major overhaul, we may be down for a couple of hours. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Speed up your Windows XP Computer!

If you’re like me, you get frustrated on a daily basis with your XP box. I hate to see people slow themselves down with spyware, adware, and virus’ so I have decided to share my secrets to speeding up your Windows XP Computer!

Boot into Windows XP
Hit F8 every 2 seconds until you’re given the option to boot into ‘Safe Mode with Networking’
Now your computer should be blazing because none of that nasty spyware is running.

Now that you are able to finally operate your computer, let’s speed it up even more.

Download This File (note: it may take quite some time based on your connection speed)
Once the download is finished, get This Program, and install it.
Using the program you installed from #2, burn the file downloaded from #1 to CD.
After burning is finished, put the disc back in your CD tray and reboot the computer

Now you’re halfway done! Soon your Windows XP computer will be operating very fast with zero virus’ and absolutely NO spyware!

After reboot, enter into your BIOS…if you don’t know how, there is a list on this page that contains which key to hit to get into your BIOS.
Set your computer’s boot order to: 1. CD 2. Hard drive 3. Whatever else you may have.
Exit and Save the BIOS.

Allow your computer to boot. If you’re presented with the opportunity to enter text onto a line, just hit enter. You should see much text flying across the screen. Rest assured, this is part of the remedy of a slow XP computer. Soon, you’ll come to a screen that looks like this:

Click the guest icon and enter the password ‘guest’
Allow the login to take place.
YOUR improved Windows XP Computer is complete! It will now operate without virus’, spyware, adware, and will be extremely fast and efficient! Enjoy your new and improved speedier desktop!

Disclaimer: The above instructions allow you to use the PCLinuxOS LiveCD and is intended for educational purposes only. These directions are provided to you ‘as-is’ and since they are for educational purposes only, they should be attempted only by those that desire to be educated. Do not try this at home unless you feel really really ticked off about Virus laden, spyware riddled, adware inundated Windows computers. I am not responsible for how you use the above information, use it at your own risk. If you’d like to install this operating system onto your hard drive, please see this link for more information. Please rest assured, this article is for entertainment and exposure purposes only.

Opinion: Why Some Linux News Sites Aren’t Succeeding

I always hate it when a Linux “news” website publishes things that aren’t news. It would be like having a hosting website that doesn’t do hosting…what’s the point really? IF you can call a news article the gathering together of various other news sources, threading them together in one incoherent and blabbering “news” article and then ending the entire article on a point that the headline doesn’t even address…nor the first paragraph for that matter…then I guess LinuxInsider has got a dollop of fecal inspired “journalism” for you right on their front page. A retarded baboon could thread a bunch of stories together and draw a conclusion that doesn’t have anything to do with any other part by smacking a brick on a typewriter. I suggest LinuxInsider employ a retarded baboon as opposed to the author of this horrible piece.

What’s going on with many Linux news websites today? It used to be about the proliferation of Linux and Linux IN THE NEWS. Nowadays it’s about who can be the most creative with their Linux aphorisms and who can draw the most conclusions about nothing all while ensuring that as many advertisements as possible barrage their readers. This is why I only go to 2 websites for general Linux NEWS…Lxer.com and LWN.net. Newsforge is a good place to go as well…but the rest seem to do nothing but dance around the idea that they can widen out and cover all business news, report a little bit on Linux, and become a ‘catch all’ for savvy “geeks” while being sure to saturate themselves with ads. Sites should understand more about their target audience…and that just isn’t happening now.

I think it comes down to a faulty business model. Target audiences are changing faster than the technology that is released daily. Larger news websites whether Linux based or not are counting on “clickthroughs” and ad “impressions” to tell them what their readers want. They’re counting on their names to carry them and they’re wrong in accepting this matter. In the past, Linux has been somewhat geeks only…or at least rumored to be. That has changed. Most news sites haven’t.

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Schedule Tasks in Linux with Ease – Kcron

When I first started using Linux, one of the most daunting tasks was creating crontabs to automate processes. For example, one might want to rotate apache logs (done automatically now by most distros) or perhaps pull info out of those logs, paste them to a file, and send said file to the webmaster. Now this wouldn’t be feasible to do by hand daily and that is where crontabs come in. Just like scheduled tasks in Windows, crontabs allow you to run a process at a given time. Unlike Windows though, you have ultimate control over the task. Nowadays, things are much easier by using a GUI such as Webmin, pycron, or Crontooie (if you’re a MAC user). The great thing is that KDE contains a handy tool to create and manage your Crontabs. You can disable or enable them straight from an easy to understand and control GUI. Today, we’re going to take a look at how to setup a simple crontab using Kcron.

Let’s start off by seeing if the cron daemon is even running on your system. Open up a Konsole or Shell and type the following:

ps aux | grep crond

If there is output similar to that in the screenshot, we’re in business because the cron daemon is running. If not, restart cron by typing: ./usr/sbin/crond (may vary by your distro…if you need help, let me know in comments section).

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Old Hard Drive, Bad

I’ve had some trouble brewing at home. Had a 120 GB Share go down 2 weeks ago and I’ve had major problems trying to get my much needed data back from the drive. I lost almost everything as far as settings, passwords, games, etc. But, life goes on right? The only problem is that I’ve had to order a new drive to use for Linux since I’m using the old Linux drive for my main computer which, due to work, must run Win XP. So I’m down and out and have been for about 2 weeks now. I ordered a hard drive and it came in this past week so it shouldn’t be too much longer before I’m able to get back into things. Unfortunately, not having a working computer for about a week and not having the info I needed put me in a fix for Kapps and articles. Look for entries to resume on a more normal schedule this next week. Thanks for reading and sorry for the lack of articles.