Tag Archives: linux

Waking the Demon, Walking in Shadows

So let me say that when computers break… it can be aggravating to me. I am a nice guy with machines… until they anger me. Windows XP has been that thorn in my side that I had to do something…

Click for a link to the bigger image!
Hmm... Eye Sea Wut Joo Did Thar!

I did it… I thought I never could return to Linux but somehow… I did. So with toiling and help from by GREAT friend Maczimus… I am back. To my Ubuntu buddies out in the DFW Area, I am back home again. Home to one of the kindest operating systems ever to have graced its presence to me. I just have to test and make sure if my VPN settings play nice with my school. They’d better, damn it!

Ugh… Winter Blues~!

So I am sick… augh!!! It blows… but to compound more bullcrap… Early this morning, Windows decided that my mouse was not to move away from the bottom corner. On trying to fight and beat the OS to the power of my will… well… let’s just keep it at the fact that things got worse. So once again… my laptop is well… toast with Windows. However… in usual fashion, Linux is like the cute geeky girlfriend who’s like the supportive best friend that saves my bacon again.

Which brings me to a comparison that I talked about with a good friend of mine…

Windows is like the crazy girl who can do all the freaky sexual crap. Stuff that would interest all the wrong sorts of people. At the same time, when you make the threaten to leave… it does crazy dramatic bullshit with empty promises of steak and fellatio.

Linux is like the one cute girl that either you’ve known forever or she’s the one lotus in a myriad of flowers. She’s the one who’s smart, can go to the bars with you, and even play a multi-player role playing game online while being a dork. She’s the one that you’d like to be with, but the real world somehow nags you to go back to the crazy whore called Windows.

Anyhow… My brain is exhausted… damn installations… DAMN IT ALL!!!

[Preview] Google’s iPhone Killer Project May Be Dying…

Apparently, even though Google’s Android project drama with weasling away OpenMoko devs and other Lin-phones has been good and well… Google may be in quite the tizzy internally.

Unfortunately, I have work soon, so I’ll have to dissect this argument later tonight.

I have quite the musing on it…

Things to Come and Such!

I have another slew of tech reviews coming soon so keep your eyes out for those! I plan on taking a new approach to this particular one as it does need a second opinion for all fair intents. It will be pretty sweet!

I have returned my machine to “OEM” spec with Windows XP Media Center Edition and await for my new machine purchase hopefully later this semester. However, due to the temporal return… I have been bitten by the gamer bug again and I have a few of my favorite games. I just need to get my vintage favorite game Quake on my system and all should be golden.

My family has been bugging me to set them up a machine so they can start trying to use the web again. My last experiment was a bit of a failure as Adobe’s implimentation of Flash for Linux in combination with Firefox and Konqueror on KDE didn’t quite pan out as well as I had hoped. From what I experiences with Ubuntu 8.04.1, Adobe is STILL slacking on the job there… So I am at a loss of how to make a safe and “idiotproof” machine for them that I won’t get the lovely service call at college of “Zero! We broke the computer! HELP!!!”

To close, I leave you all with a notice that “Zero’s Farewell to College” party is almost done on the details… From that, we wait for completion of everything and I will post the invite here, on social networks and personal e-mails. Expect it to be goofy and fun!

Upgraded Ubuntu Hardy Heron LTS with a Remix

Due to the fact that emulating Windows is not a perfect “end-all” solution for me, I have decided to make a small Windows partition for my machine for the few times I need Windows. “When?” would you say I need the operating system of the evil empire? Phone hacking procedures and some backing up of my HTC phone are essential things that could be crucial. There are also some proprietary pharmacy education tools that require the use of Windows and sadly do not play nice in Wine (for Linux) or in a Virtual Box session.

I unfortunately remember why I hate Windows so much from lack of open standards… because my native resolution of 1200 x 800 is not there, nor was my wi-fi card.

Ubuntu, however has been a pleasant experience… I have loved every minute in it! PulseAudio has been a wonderful sound server! If I can sit down and really review it… I’ll give you my full thoughts. I am going to relax for now.

Why?

I aced part one of two on my pharmaceutical aseptic training course with flying colors!

A Well of Souls – Parkland Hospital, Zombies, and the Decline of my Sanity

Last night was interesting… My friend Amanda from the Ubuntu Dallas group called up and basically said “Zero… I think I have a true medical emergency, but I cannot pay for the services.” So my gut basically says “Parkland, stat!” and I would have her come down to shuttle her off to Parkland. I would call Brandon to see if he still wanted to meet up with us as he said he wanted to make sure Amanda was ok. Traffic wasn’t bad for once and getting there was easy once the adrenaline wore off of me.

We were checked in by about 8pm but well… as you’ll see from the enclosed “log” from my phone, I quickly lost my sanity after Brandon left. Behold my sanity passing through me like running water!

So tonight has been interesting. I am writing this post from my P990i at about 1:45am at Parkland. Why am I at one of D-town’s welfare hospitals? She had a potentially life threatening emergency that I wanted to see them through, but they have no insurance. I had heard stories of Parkland but today I got to enter the lion’s den and see for myself. Brandon wished to join and wish her well. I would get in at about 7:30pm, she would get the initial prognosis to evaluate the severity of her predicament. Then we would be transferred to the emergency clinic and the first sets of paper work and blood tests were done around 10pm. We have been waiting since for check-in.

Brandon’s threshold gave way to his need for sleep so he has left. My quads are murdering me. My only sustenance have been a stick of Os Trim, a Little Debbie nutty bar, and 2 bottles of Dasani water. Sad part, I’ll probably have to submit another cheat meal today. Damn Parkland for having a McDonald’s within their facilities. The sounds of exhausted patients waiting almost as long as we have snoring in their sleep almost sounds like ZOMBIES!!! (Zero – Damn you, Brandon) It is a travesty to wait this long just for health care?

It’s a shame when it takes forever to be rendered care. Medicine is one thing that I love dearly, but to see it down and out is almost vulgar. It’s like looking at a painting that has been vandalized in vain.

Well, it’s now 5am and I am still waiting with Amanda. What the hell is this?! This is abso-fucking-lutely atrocious! I am about to FUCKING crash! This is borderline unacceptable! I understand that Parkland is horrible, but this is beyond my expectations! This is motherfucking BULLSHIT!

As you can witness… My sanity was just quickly hitting the garbage can from my short temper due to the utter frustration.

By about 7:45am, she would finally be seen. The visit only took literally 10-15 minutes. They were able to completely assess and evaluate everything without an issue. This angered me highly… It took 12 hours for her to get checked and it turned out that it wasn’t even that extensive that they had pushed her that far to the back burner? Absolutely ridiculous! There were other patients in the clinic waiting room thinking the same thing… “Why are they so busy with bullshit when they could at least have one nurse or doctor treating quick cases?!” was one of the more common things I heard.

After she had the Rx in her hand… we’d find that the clinic pharmacy didn’t want to dispense the drug because it was a $4 generic at a local Target or Wal-Mart. After running to a Target and getting the drugs, I would be more glad that she could finally begin the road to recovery. Luckily, she had nipped her ills in the bud before they would have seriously had her on an antibiotic drip and possibly a stay over.

The experience at Parkland Hospital did have some humor in it. The McDonald’s inside the hospital. Yes… that’s right… INSIDE!!! They serve up the goods 24 hours or so I am lead to believe. The funny part is that any cardiac patients must have consent by their physician to eat the greasy painful goodness. Gotta love the irony of a fast food idol rooted in a hospital!

I’ll have images of my adventures and a damn near 12 hour comparison of me at the beginning versus the end… but that won’t be until tomorrow or whenever I am more awake than I am now.

Tech Teaser: Crossloop (VNC Client) Review Coming Soon!

Unfortunately, I don’t have screenshots… so you all will have to bear through a technical review, unless someone wants to be a “tester” so I can capture images or ask you to do so. If you all are wondering what I am doing up late… Had a bad nightmare and I am a little amped from it. Keep a watch here, cause I will post it as soon as I can hammer it out.

Why didn’t Longhorn finish?! My thoughts on Windows Vista

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my friend Maczimus out in Fort Worth for letting me borrow his copy of Windows Vista to do this review. Had it not been for him… I would have no way to shell out the cash just for an operating system I do not intend to use full time.

So earlier you all got to look at images of me playing with Vista from a virtualized environment safe from the confines of VirtualBox for Linux. I won’t lie and sugar coat things… I admire the passion that Microsoft’s art team had when they designed Vista’s interface. It’s an eye pleasing experience, see my “desktop” below. (Click the image to see the full size one)

Vista makes for a pleasing operating system to work with, but it is not without some “trimming” that had to be done. I used Windows Vista Ultimate but trimmed down the weight of the OS with vLite to trim Vista’s hard drive footprint from 8GB to a cool 3GB. Unfortunately, I don’t have physical hardware to do a full install of Vista with the Aero effect works as VirtualBox does not support Direct3D just yet… So I cannot say much about that. The Windows Sidebar is much in vein like Apple OS X’s widgets, not too much to write about. The main thing that kills me is that the entire OS even after being thinned out by vLite is that it is seriously RAM heavy and processor heavy. It is not as responsive as Windows XP and that actually depresses me…

I have seen videos like this one (YouTube – Windows Longhorn Concept) which show the raw ideals of what the future Windows operating system was supposed to be. It makes you wonder what happened to the hard development for the OS and why did it become the monster that it is. It’s got the eye candy, the presentation, the “security” of the UAC (I say it with sarcasm) but at too high a cost. Sure, I am not using the “complete” OS… but not everyone can afford the power of eye candy due to hardware. The UAC can get rather bothersome as it babies the user with needless permission requests… I ended up turning it off because it simply annoyed me to death. The best comparison can be made to the UAC… It would be like using Ubuntu Linux and every time you wanted to open up Firefox, Thunderbird, or Filezilla to connect to the web, you’d have to be halted by a Sudo prompt asking for your password every initialization.

For Microsoft, it has hurt them as many businesses have been urged not to adopt Vista just due to sheer cost. Many perfectly great machines on Windows XP or Linux would sing on barely anything… With Vista on the same machines… you’d have to do some serious upgrades just for a tolerable experience. Bumping up multiple systems to 512mb to 1GB of RAM is not a cheap task nor is the other option to completely rebuy new machines for a business. Dell’s IdeaStorm ended up being stormed by angry users distraught that Vista did not play nice with their new systems and it spawned a topic called “Don’t Eliminate XP Just Yet“.

As much as Microsoft wants Vista to take off… I feel it will fall a fate much similar to that of Windows ME. Some of my readers will remember the day when ME hit the market, it almost felt like a rushed bolt-on to Windows 98… To me, Vista feels like a sloppy bolt-on to Windows XP. If Microsoft wants a market dominating OS like what XP is… then I hope that Windows 7 will be much better than Vista and it needs to be true to what Project Longhorn was all about. I wish I could really like Vista, but to need ridiculous requirements just to make it run just decent is ridiculous. I mean, it’s bad when someone can throw in a Ubuntu Feisty disc, load up Compiz-Fusion and do all the eye candy inside a virtual machine when a 1.73 Ghz emulation of a session of Windows Vista can’t due to requiring Direct3D drivers. If Microsoft forgets that there’s a market for users with weak machines… Linux may just steal that emerging market they have fought so hard to build.

Microsoft, make an OS that the masses don’t need to buy a brand new machine or even $200+ in parts just to make it work… or you may just push away former faithfuls like myself to consider alternatives that we don’t even have to spend a dime on. If you care about sealing in your future markets in developing countries… you’re going to lose ground concentrating too much on “cool factor” rather than efficiency and utility.

Virtual Machines – The Bridge of Tolerance.

Earlier this week, I had installed 2GB of RAM into Suzaku and I was finally able to realize the power of my machine. Preload aided the strength of my machine by precaching application data and dramatically cutting down my load times. I had mentioned that I had been curious about virtual machines and had fun playing with Linux distributions.

Maczimus got me into VirtualBox, but he had reminded me that I had only tapped the source… I was reminded to add the main VirtualBox repo and then to try doing a purge to clean out the VirtualBox-OSE and use the full version. So I would go ahead and do the purge and install the full deal.

After the full install… I would be told by him to install the Guest OS integration so I would be able mouse in and out of my virtual environment, integrate my virtual machine into my host, or even dynamically resize the session as the user sees fit. After installing the guest options… well… the result is complete fun. Here are images so everyone knows what I am talking about. I installed Windows Vista to have an environment to help my family out should I need to bounce into it. I can’t convert my entire family and friends to Linux, so at least with a virtual machine of Windows with Crossloop, I can help from a distance… rather than try to describe what they should be clicking on. Click the images if you want to see the full 1200 x 800 resolution images!

Current desktop before running VirtualBox

Vista trapped in a window

Illusion? No, just streamless integration!

OMG?! eye c wut j00 did thar!

A Distro Testing Teaser…

Virtual Box Running DSL

Click the above thumbnail for the original!

Notice something? I am running VirtualBox inside of my Ubuntu install to try playing around and testing it. Some distributions run great for me with only allocating 128mb of RAM, but it can be a tad straining on my machine with only being loaded up with 512mb of RAM. After the new RAM install and Suzaku toting 2GB, that should change things where I can run more distributions without taxing the main system. Hopefully, this should allow me to capture better images of the distributions I hope to try out and test.