My son's PC is very rarely booted into Windows now. He seems to prefer using Ubuntu Linux to Windows, I wasn't expecting that. He commented that it was quite like his friends Apple machine, which I though was a very insightful comment on his part, since Apple's OSX is based on BSD UNIX so could be expected to be more similar to Linux than Windows.
I was expecting a lot of 'Dad how do I make it do...?' type questions, but there's been none of that at all, on the whole it just works. I asked him how he was managing with connecting his iPod and he said that was fine, he just plugged it in and something like iTunes just popped up. He showed me, he plugged it in and sure enough Rythmbox popped up with his iPod contents there ready for use. When I asked what he used windows for when he did boot into it, he said mainly to get to files that were in the windows system (although on install it copied everything over from his windows ID, it seems that items on the desktop do not get pulled across). So I showed him how to mount and unmount the windows drive in the file manager application, now he only rarely needs to access Windows.
My 8 year old daughter is finding her way around the old Celeron box OK too. I added the music player to the launch bar for her so that she could get to the music easily. Later that day I found that she'd added her favourite game to the launchbar too. She's quite capable of using the machine and is enjoying the the Tux Type typing tutor as well as the games and the Internet. So it seems that Linux is easy enough for an 8 year old to get to grips with.
Once its up and running on your hardware, Ubuntu is a very workable alternative to Windows. So in the case of my sons PC this has been totally painless. However if the hardware is not readily recognised by the default installation, as in the case of the wireless and graphics card on the old Celeron machine, it can be challenging for a non expert. That said its currently possible to by a new 'Linux ready' machine for only £130 from eBuyer (at time of writing), that would be perfectly suitable for office use.
Showing posts with label home pc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home pc. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Souping up an old Celeron
As my candidate for Linux I've used an old PC circa 2001. It had only 128MB of memory, and an 800MHz Celeron processor on an Intel i810 motherboard with internal graphics. It ran XP Home like an absolute dog, even with no anti-virus installed. On top of this the mouse port was working intermittently. I initially assumed that it would not be a suitable candidate for one of the major distributions, so I started playing with some smaller distributions suitable for older machines, before realising that it would run Ubuntu.
Sure enough Ubuntu ran fine on the machine, and recognised the USB mouse. For office use with Open Office it would be fine. But for an 8 year old girl it really didn't meet the mark. It wouldn't run any of the fun Linux games with 3D graphics (2 frames a second is unplayable) and couldn't do all the 3D eye candy tricks that her brother's 1 year old dual core machine would. So without spending a fortune how far could I push this machine? So after sorting out some wireless networking it was time to hit eBay for some second hand kit.
The internal graphics capability of the Intel 810 chipset on the motherboard was awful and probably the main flaw with the machine. My old 300MHz P3 machine in 1999, which had a modest 3d card was faster, so I knew that a proper graphics card could deliver some real performance improvement. There was no AGP graphic slot in the machine, and its way too old to take a later PCI-Express graphics card, this meant a PCI card would have to do. So I set to reading the forums, to judge what older 3d graphics cards were likely to work with Linux. This is a generalisation but seems that an ATI card works if you are lucky, but can cause a lot of grief and may not work at all. Most of the forum posts regarding Linux and nVidia cards seem to end in the cards working and there's plenty of advice as to how to achieve that. So it was to be an nVidia card.
Upgrades went fine up to the point of installing the graphics card, but given the amount of advice around the topic this was not a big surprise. After installing the card the machine booted Ubuntu showing the nice logo and progress bar during startup at the expected resolution. However the desktop failed to appear. This meant that the BIOS on the motherboard had detected the card and the card was working fine, but the X11/Xwindows server was failing to pick it up.
If this happens you can boot Linux in recovery mode by pressing [esc] at the boot menu, then use the command console to modify the settings and sort things out. Recovery mode starts up Linux in the command console. The first thing was to re run the configuration for Xwindows to select a sensible driver for the card, and set an 800x600 screen resolution.
: dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
This re-ran the setup routine and enabled me to select the 'nv' driver (Linux community Nvidia driver) and set the lower resolution. After restarting the machine it still was not working. Advice suggested that the Xserver software was not being configured to talk to the new card and was most likely trying to talk to the now disabled motherboard graphics device. The answer was to determine the new card's identity and its PCI bus reference, then update the configuration files to reflect that. The configuration for X11 was in the file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf', which indeed was still pointing to the internal graphics card. To find the information about the card, I ran the 'lspci' (list the devices on the PCI bus) command to get the bus address and device name, then replaced the references to the on-board graphics in the xorg.conf file with this information.
After these changes, the GUI was restored. Using the admin tools in the GUI I managed to select a suitable Nvidia legacy driver to get back to 1280x1024 resolution.
The machine was now upgraded, but to get the full benefit from the card, it would require the manufacturer's driver which is one of the 'restricted' drivers. You can make this happen automatically by selecting the 'advanced desktop effects' in the 'Appearance Preferences' dialogue. After selecting this it asks if you wish to use the restricted driver, on saying yes to this, you have to reboot, then the nVidia driver is installed and you can get the full potential out of the graphics card.
After this I installed the Compiz Fusion 3d desktop effects, more of which in a later post. Its amazing, the crappy 7 year old PC will now play 3d games (penguins sliding down hills etc.) and has desktop eye candy that makes Vista look tame. Well worth £28 of anyone's money.
In conclusion, yes with Linux you can add a few more years useful life to an old PC. However adding high end graphics to an old Intel 810 based PC running Linux is not for the faint hearted or the novice to computing, but once again the community support offered on the Ubuntu forums had all the answers required to make this happen. Perhaps later releases of Ubuntu will sort this out too, they do seem to be getting this distribution more robust and usable every release.
Sure enough Ubuntu ran fine on the machine, and recognised the USB mouse. For office use with Open Office it would be fine. But for an 8 year old girl it really didn't meet the mark. It wouldn't run any of the fun Linux games with 3D graphics (2 frames a second is unplayable) and couldn't do all the 3D eye candy tricks that her brother's 1 year old dual core machine would. So without spending a fortune how far could I push this machine? So after sorting out some wireless networking it was time to hit eBay for some second hand kit.
- Pink light up in the dark, optical USB mouse (new) £4.94
- 256mb PC133 Memory £8.97
- Asylum FX5200 256 MB PCI nVidia graphics card £28.01
The internal graphics capability of the Intel 810 chipset on the motherboard was awful and probably the main flaw with the machine. My old 300MHz P3 machine in 1999, which had a modest 3d card was faster, so I knew that a proper graphics card could deliver some real performance improvement. There was no AGP graphic slot in the machine, and its way too old to take a later PCI-Express graphics card, this meant a PCI card would have to do. So I set to reading the forums, to judge what older 3d graphics cards were likely to work with Linux. This is a generalisation but seems that an ATI card works if you are lucky, but can cause a lot of grief and may not work at all. Most of the forum posts regarding Linux and nVidia cards seem to end in the cards working and there's plenty of advice as to how to achieve that. So it was to be an nVidia card.
Upgrades went fine up to the point of installing the graphics card, but given the amount of advice around the topic this was not a big surprise. After installing the card the machine booted Ubuntu showing the nice logo and progress bar during startup at the expected resolution. However the desktop failed to appear. This meant that the BIOS on the motherboard had detected the card and the card was working fine, but the X11/Xwindows server was failing to pick it up.
If this happens you can boot Linux in recovery mode by pressing [esc] at the boot menu, then use the command console to modify the settings and sort things out. Recovery mode starts up Linux in the command console. The first thing was to re run the configuration for Xwindows to select a sensible driver for the card, and set an 800x600 screen resolution.
: dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
This re-ran the setup routine and enabled me to select the 'nv' driver (Linux community Nvidia driver) and set the lower resolution. After restarting the machine it still was not working. Advice suggested that the Xserver software was not being configured to talk to the new card and was most likely trying to talk to the now disabled motherboard graphics device. The answer was to determine the new card's identity and its PCI bus reference, then update the configuration files to reflect that. The configuration for X11 was in the file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf', which indeed was still pointing to the internal graphics card. To find the information about the card, I ran the 'lspci' (list the devices on the PCI bus) command to get the bus address and device name, then replaced the references to the on-board graphics in the xorg.conf file with this information.
After these changes, the GUI was restored. Using the admin tools in the GUI I managed to select a suitable Nvidia legacy driver to get back to 1280x1024 resolution.
The machine was now upgraded, but to get the full benefit from the card, it would require the manufacturer's driver which is one of the 'restricted' drivers. You can make this happen automatically by selecting the 'advanced desktop effects' in the 'Appearance Preferences' dialogue. After selecting this it asks if you wish to use the restricted driver, on saying yes to this, you have to reboot, then the nVidia driver is installed and you can get the full potential out of the graphics card.
After this I installed the Compiz Fusion 3d desktop effects, more of which in a later post. Its amazing, the crappy 7 year old PC will now play 3d games (penguins sliding down hills etc.) and has desktop eye candy that makes Vista look tame. Well worth £28 of anyone's money.
In conclusion, yes with Linux you can add a few more years useful life to an old PC. However adding high end graphics to an old Intel 810 based PC running Linux is not for the faint hearted or the novice to computing, but once again the community support offered on the Ubuntu forums had all the answers required to make this happen. Perhaps later releases of Ubuntu will sort this out too, they do seem to be getting this distribution more robust and usable every release.
Friday, 14 March 2008
Tux Paint, the amazing children's drawing program
What my youngest seems to spend most time on, on her eldest sisters laptop besides the CBBC website and other online games sites for children, is Windows Paint.
We all know its pretty rubbish but its the only piece of art software that's lasted. The others are either too complicated to get to grips with or too limited to do any more than Paint but with a few stencils.
So I was looking for an Linux alternative. What I found was 'Tux Paint' (another pengiun themed piece of Linux software). This is a super little program, not at all intimidating for small children with its child optimised user interface. It has more functional art tools than many of the more grown up 'sophisticated' programs. The 'Magic' button reveals a wide range of clever tools. Small kids will enjoy the noises it makes as you paint (don't know about small kids, I thought that was fun myself), older kids will appreciate the wide variety of tools available to play with.
Tux Paint has also been designed with education in mind, it has an accompanying program that allows it to be configured for really young children. So that more functionality can be revealed as a child is ready for it.
Even if you are not a kid its worth a look. To download it in Ubuntu just go to the 'Add/Remove Applications' application and search for tux paint.
You can read all about it here at http://www.tuxpaint.org/
And if you haven't made the leap to Linux yet, there's no need to feel left out as its available in Microsoft and Apple flavours too.
We all know its pretty rubbish but its the only piece of art software that's lasted. The others are either too complicated to get to grips with or too limited to do any more than Paint but with a few stencils.
So I was looking for an Linux alternative. What I found was 'Tux Paint' (another pengiun themed piece of Linux software). This is a super little program, not at all intimidating for small children with its child optimised user interface. It has more functional art tools than many of the more grown up 'sophisticated' programs. The 'Magic' button reveals a wide range of clever tools. Small kids will enjoy the noises it makes as you paint (don't know about small kids, I thought that was fun myself), older kids will appreciate the wide variety of tools available to play with.
Tux Paint has also been designed with education in mind, it has an accompanying program that allows it to be configured for really young children. So that more functionality can be revealed as a child is ready for it.
Even if you are not a kid its worth a look. To download it in Ubuntu just go to the 'Add/Remove Applications' application and search for tux paint.
You can read all about it here at http://www.tuxpaint.org/
And if you haven't made the leap to Linux yet, there's no need to feel left out as its available in Microsoft and Apple flavours too.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Setting up wireless networking (even when it doesn't work first time)
The network cards arrived, but I'd stupidly ordered PCMCIA cards rather than PCI cards. Thats what happens when you order things on-line late at night when you really ought to be going to bed.
So do avoid further disappointment, I took a trip to the local computer store only to find that they only card they had was another Belkin card. So I left it and went to the local electrical goods emporium who "do sell wireless cards, but they're out of stock". Uh, what's happening has there been a run on Wireless in our town?
After an hour or so I calmed down and applied logic to the problem. There must be hundreds of thousands of these cards out there, and there's definitely a big community of Linux hackers out there, someone must have a driver that'll work.
This is what my research turned up: The built in wireless network device programs (drivers) in Ubuntu support a wide range of cards, so that cards based on many of the currently common chip sets will work straight off. If your card is not recognised by default its likely that you will need to get an alternate driver. The first thing I had to do was to determine the chip-set on the card.
To find the chipset I pulled the card from the machine and noted the model number on the board so as to look it up on the Internet. Don't do this, as I found out later,you don't need to. Linux has a handy little tool that will tell you which card you have. Opening a console (terminal) window and typing the lspci command (list pci) will show a list of all the hardware connected to the PCI bus, which will include both motherboard devices and any cards installed. From this line in the list, I could confirm the card's chipset:
03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
Having found the card I was able to check it against the WirelessCardsSupported list here. I was right, it's not supported by the default install. So the hunt was on for a driver. There are no Linux drivers for that chip set, that I can find. But as it turns out that's still not the end of the line. The guys who write software for Linux are clever, they've written a piece of software that wraps around a windows wireless driver that makes it work with the Linux Kernel. Its called Ndiswrapper, it can be used if the Linux Kernel has been compiled with the correct support; which in the case of Ubuntu, it has. Following the Community Ubuntu Documentation Ndiswrapper instructions had the card working within 10 minutes. This page refers to a list of tested windows drivers for the various chip sets, which you can download. You then follow instructions for disabling the current wireless driver, and installing Ndiswrapper with your Windows driver.
Its this kind of detailed support that's making Ubuntu a workable alternative to Windows.
So do avoid further disappointment, I took a trip to the local computer store only to find that they only card they had was another Belkin card. So I left it and went to the local electrical goods emporium who "do sell wireless cards, but they're out of stock". Uh, what's happening has there been a run on Wireless in our town?
After an hour or so I calmed down and applied logic to the problem. There must be hundreds of thousands of these cards out there, and there's definitely a big community of Linux hackers out there, someone must have a driver that'll work.
This is what my research turned up: The built in wireless network device programs (drivers) in Ubuntu support a wide range of cards, so that cards based on many of the currently common chip sets will work straight off. If your card is not recognised by default its likely that you will need to get an alternate driver. The first thing I had to do was to determine the chip-set on the card.
To find the chipset I pulled the card from the machine and noted the model number on the board so as to look it up on the Internet. Don't do this, as I found out later,you don't need to. Linux has a handy little tool that will tell you which card you have. Opening a console (terminal) window and typing the lspci command (list pci) will show a list of all the hardware connected to the PCI bus, which will include both motherboard devices and any cards installed. From this line in the list, I could confirm the card's chipset:
03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
Having found the card I was able to check it against the WirelessCardsSupported list here. I was right, it's not supported by the default install. So the hunt was on for a driver. There are no Linux drivers for that chip set, that I can find. But as it turns out that's still not the end of the line. The guys who write software for Linux are clever, they've written a piece of software that wraps around a windows wireless driver that makes it work with the Linux Kernel. Its called Ndiswrapper, it can be used if the Linux Kernel has been compiled with the correct support; which in the case of Ubuntu, it has. Following the Community Ubuntu Documentation Ndiswrapper instructions had the card working within 10 minutes. This page refers to a list of tested windows drivers for the various chip sets, which you can download. You then follow instructions for disabling the current wireless driver, and installing Ndiswrapper with your Windows driver.
Its this kind of detailed support that's making Ubuntu a workable alternative to Windows.
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Playing with Small Linux Distributions
Last week I started looking into resurecting the old PC that I was given in return for fixing a windows laptop, the goal being to provide a workable PC for my 8 year old daughter to use. Its a 2001 Celeron with 128MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive and a non-functional mouse port.
Older less capable machines do not have enough resources (processor speed and memory) to run one of the big Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu or Mandriva. The Old-Celeron just doesn't have enough memory for this at 128MB (it wasn't running XP Home in a usable manner either). However there are a number of small distributions designed to run on old hardware, so I thought I'd give them a try.
I tried both DSL (DamnSmallLinux) and Puppy Linux. Both these distributions run from a live cd and come with enough tools to install to the harddrive or a USB stick (which I've yet to try).
First DSL
I downloaded it as an iso disk image and burned it to a CD-ROM. DSL is small enough that it will fit on a little credit card sized CD-ROM, in which form it can be bought for a nominal amount from here. Its claimed DSL will run with only a 486DX with 16MB of RAM, but will run entirely in RAM if you have 128MB or more.
DSL booted from the disc, I was immediately impressed that it found the USB mouse with no trouble. Every time it booted from the CD it claimed that it had been passed an unknown video mode before proceding. It seemed not to be able to decide for itself what console resolution to display, which was pretty irrelevent since I was planning to use it in GUI (graphical user interface) mode, so just ignoring this and pressing enter worked for me. The screen resolution once running in the GUI was also an issue. Both the i810 chipset on the motherboard and the monitor were capable of 1280 x 1024 but the best mode that actually worked I could coax out of the system was 800 x 600, 1024 x 800 would suffice.
Having loaded the system there was a choice of two flavours of desktop (or window manager) JWM (John's Window Manager) or Fluxbox. These both had quite a different look and feel to Windows. For a start there was no Start button, right click anywhere on the screen and you get the equivalent of the start menu. One impressive feature of both the windows managers was the abilty to handle multiple desktops, which enable you to have different applications open on different dektops then switch between them (not something you can do out of the box on a Microsoft system but common to most linux GUIs). Of the two I preferred Fluxbox though JWM was closer to windows.
Although only about 50MB in size DSL has an impressive list of applications enabling you to do quite a lot with just the base distribution. I was pleased and surprised to see the Firefox browser there, and apparently configured to use less space than usual. Using firefox on this 7 year old machine was as snappy as on my 2 year old laptop, very impressive. Additional packaged applications can be downloaded using MyDSL. I found that MyDSL was a bit clunky to use but worked. It is possible to create a new disk using DSL to include the downloaded applications (which I didn't try).
I decided to install it to the hard drive and see if I could fix the video problem. I used the cfdisk tool to re format the drive and create partitions with Linux file systems to install to. Two partitions were created a small 128MB partition for the swap file (same size as the system RAM) and a larger one using the rest of the drive set as a Boot partition to install on. The install ran in console window, it asked a few simple questions and took only a few minutes to run.
After installation to the hard drive it booted pretty much as before but loaded a little faster. I was still not able to fix the video resolution though since I'm a Linux novice that's no surprise. I'm sure it could be done, by downloading, installing and configuring alternate software that would enable the higher resolution, but I'm really not going to invest the time in doing that since with my current level of knowledge is not adequate.
Puppy Linux
So then I downloaded and tried Puppy Linux, after all it looks cute and the machine will be for an 8 year old girl. Its claimed that Puppy will run with 586Mhz CPU and 32Mb RAM. Puppy started up fine from the CD-ROM, initially it had the same screen resolution issue as DSL. However a little reading in the Puppy FAQ revealed that Puppy has an altenate more sophisticated X server (the bit of software that does the graphics and mouse stuff) called Xorg as well as the lightweight Xvesa, which I had been using in DSL. Switching to Xorg fixed the screen resolution problem.
Puppy also uses the JWM desktop, which they have configured to look and feel a bit more like Windows 95 (but with a picture of a small dog on the desktop).
There's a different set of software with Puppy than with DSL. Puppy notably includes OpenOffice, the Linux equivalent of Microsoft Office, which will read and write MS office format files. Unfortunately for my purposes it did not have Firefox by default. Puppy as with DSL offers additional software pakaged and tested to run in Puppy, these are supplemented by user supplied packages. Additionally after installing the Debian installer its possible to access an even wider range of software.
I installed Puppy to the hard drive too. It offered me the opportunity to install along side the DSL but I made it replace it. The install tool worked smoothly an Puppy booted OK from the hard disk.
Conclusions
Both of these distributions are remarkable considering their small size and they certainly run applications at a good speed. Overall I think Puppy would be the best choice of the two as its more sophisticated in most respects. DSL is more of a Geek OS, there is elegance in its simplicity (particularly when using FluxBox) there's the live system status imprinted on the desktop and the transparent command console windows. Puppy is a user's OS it has some of the rough edges knocked off and has a good office suite. When run from a CD-ROM both these distributions can store files and configuration on the hard drive or a USB stick, making them practical to use.
As far as my target customer for the machine goes I think that Puppy just feels a little old fashioned, though its probably just that Windows 95 theme, also it runs under the root password so would be easier to break. So if I'm to pass this machine off as an alternative to other kids XP machines, its going to have to scrub up a little better.
With some effort I could probably make Puppy fit the bill, but I have a Plan B to try first. For under £10 (ebay prices) I can add 256M of RAM, which will enable me to install Ubuntu (which is a slick shiny thing of beauty compared to these two). If this works there are two advantages; it looks nice with a more windows like desktop and I'll only have one distribution to support. Also it'll be interesting to compare the 7 year old machine with the 1 year old machine on the same OS.
I'm not sure if I'll use DSL or Puppy again, I might if more limited hardware comes my way.
Older less capable machines do not have enough resources (processor speed and memory) to run one of the big Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu or Mandriva. The Old-Celeron just doesn't have enough memory for this at 128MB (it wasn't running XP Home in a usable manner either). However there are a number of small distributions designed to run on old hardware, so I thought I'd give them a try.
I tried both DSL (DamnSmallLinux) and Puppy Linux. Both these distributions run from a live cd and come with enough tools to install to the harddrive or a USB stick (which I've yet to try).
First DSL
I downloaded it as an iso disk image and burned it to a CD-ROM. DSL is small enough that it will fit on a little credit card sized CD-ROM, in which form it can be bought for a nominal amount from here. Its claimed DSL will run with only a 486DX with 16MB of RAM, but will run entirely in RAM if you have 128MB or more.
DSL booted from the disc, I was immediately impressed that it found the USB mouse with no trouble. Every time it booted from the CD it claimed that it had been passed an unknown video mode before proceding. It seemed not to be able to decide for itself what console resolution to display, which was pretty irrelevent since I was planning to use it in GUI (graphical user interface) mode, so just ignoring this and pressing enter worked for me. The screen resolution once running in the GUI was also an issue. Both the i810 chipset on the motherboard and the monitor were capable of 1280 x 1024 but the best mode that actually worked I could coax out of the system was 800 x 600, 1024 x 800 would suffice.
Having loaded the system there was a choice of two flavours of desktop (or window manager) JWM (John's Window Manager) or Fluxbox. These both had quite a different look and feel to Windows. For a start there was no Start button, right click anywhere on the screen and you get the equivalent of the start menu. One impressive feature of both the windows managers was the abilty to handle multiple desktops, which enable you to have different applications open on different dektops then switch between them (not something you can do out of the box on a Microsoft system but common to most linux GUIs). Of the two I preferred Fluxbox though JWM was closer to windows.
Although only about 50MB in size DSL has an impressive list of applications enabling you to do quite a lot with just the base distribution. I was pleased and surprised to see the Firefox browser there, and apparently configured to use less space than usual. Using firefox on this 7 year old machine was as snappy as on my 2 year old laptop, very impressive. Additional packaged applications can be downloaded using MyDSL. I found that MyDSL was a bit clunky to use but worked. It is possible to create a new disk using DSL to include the downloaded applications (which I didn't try).
I decided to install it to the hard drive and see if I could fix the video problem. I used the cfdisk tool to re format the drive and create partitions with Linux file systems to install to. Two partitions were created a small 128MB partition for the swap file (same size as the system RAM) and a larger one using the rest of the drive set as a Boot partition to install on. The install ran in console window, it asked a few simple questions and took only a few minutes to run.
After installation to the hard drive it booted pretty much as before but loaded a little faster. I was still not able to fix the video resolution though since I'm a Linux novice that's no surprise. I'm sure it could be done, by downloading, installing and configuring alternate software that would enable the higher resolution, but I'm really not going to invest the time in doing that since with my current level of knowledge is not adequate.
Puppy Linux
So then I downloaded and tried Puppy Linux, after all it looks cute and the machine will be for an 8 year old girl. Its claimed that Puppy will run with 586Mhz CPU and 32Mb RAM. Puppy started up fine from the CD-ROM, initially it had the same screen resolution issue as DSL. However a little reading in the Puppy FAQ revealed that Puppy has an altenate more sophisticated X server (the bit of software that does the graphics and mouse stuff) called Xorg as well as the lightweight Xvesa, which I had been using in DSL. Switching to Xorg fixed the screen resolution problem.
Puppy also uses the JWM desktop, which they have configured to look and feel a bit more like Windows 95 (but with a picture of a small dog on the desktop).
There's a different set of software with Puppy than with DSL. Puppy notably includes OpenOffice, the Linux equivalent of Microsoft Office, which will read and write MS office format files. Unfortunately for my purposes it did not have Firefox by default. Puppy as with DSL offers additional software pakaged and tested to run in Puppy, these are supplemented by user supplied packages. Additionally after installing the Debian installer its possible to access an even wider range of software.
I installed Puppy to the hard drive too. It offered me the opportunity to install along side the DSL but I made it replace it. The install tool worked smoothly an Puppy booted OK from the hard disk.
Conclusions
Both of these distributions are remarkable considering their small size and they certainly run applications at a good speed. Overall I think Puppy would be the best choice of the two as its more sophisticated in most respects. DSL is more of a Geek OS, there is elegance in its simplicity (particularly when using FluxBox) there's the live system status imprinted on the desktop and the transparent command console windows. Puppy is a user's OS it has some of the rough edges knocked off and has a good office suite. When run from a CD-ROM both these distributions can store files and configuration on the hard drive or a USB stick, making them practical to use.
As far as my target customer for the machine goes I think that Puppy just feels a little old fashioned, though its probably just that Windows 95 theme, also it runs under the root password so would be easier to break. So if I'm to pass this machine off as an alternative to other kids XP machines, its going to have to scrub up a little better.
With some effort I could probably make Puppy fit the bill, but I have a Plan B to try first. For under £10 (ebay prices) I can add 256M of RAM, which will enable me to install Ubuntu (which is a slick shiny thing of beauty compared to these two). If this works there are two advantages; it looks nice with a more windows like desktop and I'll only have one distribution to support. Also it'll be interesting to compare the 7 year old machine with the 1 year old machine on the same OS.
I'm not sure if I'll use DSL or Puppy again, I might if more limited hardware comes my way.
Arrgh, where's the wireless +<( Ah here it is (^__^)
When we bought a machine for my son I had the XP-Media Center installed rather than Vista Home. Having read a little about how Vista is designed and some of the implications of this, it was a bit of a no brainer, since it cost no more to have a less crippled operating system with more capability. However there may be a time when the Windows XP is no longer in support and this machine will still be viable hardware. Hence making it Dual Boot seemed like a good idea, both my son and I can get used to a Linux OS before making any commitment to jump.
As I said the install went smoothly. Whilst installing Ubuntu I was politely informed that there was no network connection so software updates would have to be carried out later. This was no real surprise though, since although it was a new machine it was an old Belkin wireless card, which was pretty marginal in Windows.
After browsing the Internet for a bit, it seems the advice is to go for a standard card from a big name vendor such as Linksys, D-Link or such. I had a hunt for a card on-line, and strangely enough the prices of wireless network cards in eBay are only slightly lower than buying new from a reputable on-line dealer.
Well if I was going to buy new, I decided to make sure the card I was buying was supported by the major Linux distributions. After a short search I came upon thelinuxemporium who sell both software and hardware, along with Linux supported PCI, PCMCIA and USB wireless adaptors. I went for the Comtrend RT2500 54 Mbps Wireless PCMCIA card, which it says "works 'out-of-the-box' in Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty and 7.10 Gutsy" and only costs £10. If I bought the more expensive Edimax card which they offer at £19.45, and is tested against more versions of Linux, I would be entitled to free support too. At that price I bought one for the little old Celeron box too.
I'm still waiting with anticipation for the wireless cards, but its only been two days.
-----------------------
p. s. It seems that I didn't press the final button on the transaction, all fixed now I'm told the wireless cards should arive on Friday.
As I said the install went smoothly. Whilst installing Ubuntu I was politely informed that there was no network connection so software updates would have to be carried out later. This was no real surprise though, since although it was a new machine it was an old Belkin wireless card, which was pretty marginal in Windows.
After browsing the Internet for a bit, it seems the advice is to go for a standard card from a big name vendor such as Linksys, D-Link or such. I had a hunt for a card on-line, and strangely enough the prices of wireless network cards in eBay are only slightly lower than buying new from a reputable on-line dealer.
Well if I was going to buy new, I decided to make sure the card I was buying was supported by the major Linux distributions. After a short search I came upon thelinuxemporium who sell both software and hardware, along with Linux supported PCI, PCMCIA and USB wireless adaptors. I went for the Comtrend RT2500 54 Mbps Wireless PCMCIA card, which it says "works 'out-of-the-box' in Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty and 7.10 Gutsy" and only costs £10. If I bought the more expensive Edimax card which they offer at £19.45, and is tested against more versions of Linux, I would be entitled to free support too. At that price I bought one for the little old Celeron box too.
I'm still waiting with anticipation for the wireless cards, but its only been two days.
-----------------------
p. s. It seems that I didn't press the final button on the transaction, all fixed now I'm told the wireless cards should arive on Friday.
Monday, 3 March 2008
What is a Linux live CD, how do I run a Linux live CD
Many of the Linux distributions have a Live-CD available. This is a whole operating system packed onto a CD (or DVD), which can be used directly from the CD without installing anything on your PC. Live-CDs are used for a number of reasons:
To use a Live-CD the PC must be able to boot the operating system from a cd-rom rather than the hard drive. When a PC is switched on a small piece of software in the mother-board (the BIOS) decides where to load the operating system from (typically the hard drive). On most PCs its possible for the Operating system to be loaded from any storage device, such as the floppy disk, the hard drive, CD-ROM , DVD-ROM or even a memory stick. If the machine looks for the operating system on the internal hard drive before looking at the CD-ROM, then the Linux live-cd does not get a chance to load. To fix this you will need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS settings. The BIOS settings can usually be accessed by pressing F2 when the machine is starting up (it may be another key, in which case look at the manual for the machine).
With some Linux distributions its even possible to boot the operating system from a memory stick. This means that you can have your own operating system and documents on a usb stick and take your computer around with you. If I try this I'll blog about it here.
However its worth noting that not everything always works, this was my Experience: Laptops have not been a great success. My Acer laptop can't boot from a CD since I've lost the BIOS admin password (set in an attempt to teenager proof the machine) and can't change the settings (my fault and very stupid on my part). The Fujitsu Amilo 2010 laptop will not run the Linux Windowing environment because the Graphics chip is not compatible with the standard Ubuntu Live-CD. The 128MB old machine has not enough memory to allow the Ubuntu Linux Windowing environment to start. However my son's PC worked fine first time and the old 128MB PC booted into DamnSmallLinux Live-CD without problems.
- Trying out Linux before committing to use it
- Running a Linux install in a user friendly way
- Using Linux tools to fix a machine or rescue data
- Using a machine without changing any data on it
To use a Live-CD the PC must be able to boot the operating system from a cd-rom rather than the hard drive. When a PC is switched on a small piece of software in the mother-board (the BIOS) decides where to load the operating system from (typically the hard drive). On most PCs its possible for the Operating system to be loaded from any storage device, such as the floppy disk, the hard drive, CD-ROM , DVD-ROM or even a memory stick. If the machine looks for the operating system on the internal hard drive before looking at the CD-ROM, then the Linux live-cd does not get a chance to load. To fix this you will need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS settings. The BIOS settings can usually be accessed by pressing F2 when the machine is starting up (it may be another key, in which case look at the manual for the machine).
With some Linux distributions its even possible to boot the operating system from a memory stick. This means that you can have your own operating system and documents on a usb stick and take your computer around with you. If I try this I'll blog about it here.
However its worth noting that not everything always works, this was my Experience: Laptops have not been a great success. My Acer laptop can't boot from a CD since I've lost the BIOS admin password (set in an attempt to teenager proof the machine) and can't change the settings (my fault and very stupid on my part). The Fujitsu Amilo 2010 laptop will not run the Linux Windowing environment because the Graphics chip is not compatible with the standard Ubuntu Live-CD. The 128MB old machine has not enough memory to allow the Ubuntu Linux Windowing environment to start. However my son's PC worked fine first time and the old 128MB PC booted into DamnSmallLinux Live-CD without problems.
Choosing your Linux for a home PC (Ubuntu)
Linux comes in many types (distributions), so you need to choose which one to use. For Linux this is both a strength and a weakness; a strength because there is a Linux operating system configured to suit most purposes but a weakness because it is one more hoop to jump through for a new user.
This is my initial recommendation, for a home user the choice can be simplified, if you have a good enough machine to run Ubuntu then use Ubuntu. Providing you have a fairly standard machine Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows, and installs faster. If you have an older machine (less than 256MB ram and slow processor) that just can't cope with running Ubuntu then you need to look for a small lightweight distribution which I'll cover in a later post.
As with pretty much any Linux distribution Ubuntu is free!
It comes on CD, which you can either download for free, buy online or request for free (if you can wait 6-10 weeks). Downloading is for most the best option, you download an '.iso' file, which if you have cd burner software on your PC will get burned to a real cd when you double-click on it.
Ubuntu is supplied as a 'Live-CD'. Once you have your CD you can try out Ubuntu Linux before committing to install it on your PC. This is good because if it runs from OK the CD its pretty certain to be OK when you install it.
This is my initial recommendation, for a home user the choice can be simplified, if you have a good enough machine to run Ubuntu then use Ubuntu. Providing you have a fairly standard machine Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows, and installs faster. If you have an older machine (less than 256MB ram and slow processor) that just can't cope with running Ubuntu then you need to look for a small lightweight distribution which I'll cover in a later post.
As with pretty much any Linux distribution Ubuntu is free!
It comes on CD, which you can either download for free, buy online or request for free (if you can wait 6-10 weeks). Downloading is for most the best option, you download an '.iso' file, which if you have cd burner software on your PC will get burned to a real cd when you double-click on it.
Ubuntu is supplied as a 'Live-CD'. Once you have your CD you can try out Ubuntu Linux before committing to install it on your PC. This is good because if it runs from OK the CD its pretty certain to be OK when you install it.
Venture Into Linux - Why am I doing this?
There's a whole bunch of reasons that have pushed me to looking into Linux in a little more depth. Whilst doing this I will Blog my experience for the following reasons:
At home, I seem to be doing increasing IT service work supplying and maintaining computers for the kids. And teenage daughters are demanding clients. Through using excellent open source and free software, I've managed to rain in the permanently infected Windows PC to a manageable solution to date. I've even managed to persuade them to use OpenOffice for their homework, despite the schools having an almost Microsoft only stance.
So I'm kicking off several projects to get my head around Linux, the idea being a gentle introduction through using Desktops on the home PCs then progressing to playing with server stuff and some more serious applications. With this in mind I've a number of projects to kick off this learning curve.
- Writing it down will consolidate my knowledge
- Enable others to use my experience to ease their Introduction to Linux
- Give something back to the Linux community, albeit in a small way (its the least I can do they're giving me all this free software)
At home, I seem to be doing increasing IT service work supplying and maintaining computers for the kids. And teenage daughters are demanding clients. Through using excellent open source and free software, I've managed to rain in the permanently infected Windows PC to a manageable solution to date. I've even managed to persuade them to use OpenOffice for their homework, despite the schools having an almost Microsoft only stance.
So I'm kicking off several projects to get my head around Linux, the idea being a gentle introduction through using Desktops on the home PCs then progressing to playing with server stuff and some more serious applications. With this in mind I've a number of projects to kick off this learning curve.
- Old PC with limited resources (Celeron 800Mhz and 128mb of RAM). Now the youngest is of an age where she'll need a computer and the machine I have to hand is a bit old, runs XP like a dog, so lets try a Linux desktop.
- Dual core AMD machine 2GB of memory and some bells & whistles. This is my son's machine, he's seen pictures of high end Linux on YouTube and wants his XP machine to do that too. So we're making it dual boot.
- Linux Live CD tools. Live CDs will boot up and run Linux without messing up your current install. This should let me play with a bunch of different Distributions of Linux.
- Linux running in VMware on XP. I use VMware, which can allow an operating system to run inside another by creating virtual PCs. This will give me a playground to try out stuff without investing in any more hardware.
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