Month: August 2006

PC’s and more PC’s

JSEvansLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, I picked up a “grab bag” of computer parts from a guy on Craig’s List.  It contained two PC’s and a box of miscellaneous stuff.  I also picked up a computer from  beside the dumpster on my way to work.  It appears to be a Pentium 3.  There was no hard drive in it, but it does have a DVD-Rom drive and a cdrw drive in it, so that’s a big plus, not to mention 384 megs of ram.

Now I have 5 working computers at home and gobs of parts.  It would be nice if I could sell some of this stuff locally and turn it into some real cash

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Adventures with Qemu

JSEvans2 Comments

I first saw Qemu again on the Elivecd development live cd, and I was certainly intregued.  I’ve been looking for an open source alternative to VMWare, and I think I’ve found a good one.  The version found in the Ubuntu repository left a lot to be desired.  After a bit of Googling, I found a walkthrough for compiling it from source here.  Surprisingly, the directions worked well with only a couple minor changes.

I am now able to install and run Windows 2000 and DSL Linux from inside Ubuntu.  The speed leaves a lot to be desired, but it is functional, and all of the software that I’ve tried has worked.  Compiling from source also gives you an accelerator kernel module that is closed-source and so can not be found in any repositories that I have searched.

I also suggest Qemu Launcher.  This gives Qemu a VMWare feel and makes using Qemu a breeze.

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e17

JSEvans1 Comment

Is e17 the killer app that Linux has been waiting for?

I downloaded the Ubuntu binaries for e17 last night, and I was blown away.  My computer’s specs are modest by most geek-machine comparisons, but the eye candy was brilliant.  The speed of the desktop was very good and everything was nicely arranged by default to give a pleasent view of this desktop manager.  Mac snobs like to gripe about how easy everything is to use and how well everything is laid out.  With the slight lurning curve of understanding how Linux packages work as opposed to the hunt, download, and install philosphy of Mac and Windows users, I think a well thoughtout Linux based on a clean e17 desktop could be the bridging point for those on the fence between the Mac’s and PC’s.  A Linux box will be, by design, will be cheaper than a Mac and runs on the same hardware as Windows, but has the same ease of use as a Mac.  In my opinion, the biggest problem with Linux going mainstream is native hardware support and 3rd Party software.

A live cd containing e17 can be found here.  Download it, burn it, and enjoy it.

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