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Just thought I’d like to illustrate how flexible Linux can be. For every example I give, there are many more I have not tried.
I use Fedora 9 on a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz with 2GB RAM as a LAMPP server. I use Fedora 10 on a AMD64X2 5800+ with 3GB RAM, nVidia 9500 and TV Tuner card as my backup server with is also my client desktop. I do most of my day to day computing on that. I run Mint 7 on a AMDX2 4000+ with nVidia 6100 and TV Tuner and 2 GB RAM for my wife’s system. I have an Asus EEEPC 900 with Mint 7 (Used to have OpenSuSE 11.1). I have a Toshiba Qosmio Laptop with 2Gb RAM and nVidia 6600 running Fedora 10. I have a P3 HP Vectra with 500Mhz CPU and 512 RAM running Mint 7 with XFCE. I have a P4 1.8Ghz with nVidia 5900Pro and 1Gb RAMBUS RAM with Mint7 I use as an entertainment PC. I have an Acer AspireOne Netbook with Fedora 10. I have others, too.
The point is, Linux isn’t what it used to be. Sure, some hardware still doesn’t run, but that’s not much of an issue now days. It performs adequately on system that no longer can handle Windows, and out performs Windows on modern hardware.
My wife is not a “Computer” person, yet she have been using Linux for a year to surf the web and watch videos and tv on it without any problems.
Give it a try. You don’t have to be “geek” any more.
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Which Distro? Building a Windows Replacement Box
My opinion of which Distro of Linux is best has changed over the years. I’ve been using Linux in various roles for several years now, and I just wanna give my thoughts for what they’re worth.
If you are looking for a very flexible distro with the ability to do just about anything without having to learn a bunch of stuff then Fedora is my suggestion.
Fedora is a very able desktop distribution of Linux if albeit it doens’t have the polish of some of the other distros. What it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in software availability. I would say it sticks to the old montra: Form Follows Function. Fedora is Function oriented first and foremost. I have used Fedora as a LAMP server for many years now and would say it is a GREAT product in that role. I have also used it as a jabber server (XMPP), an LTSP Server, a DHCP Server, a Content Filtering Proxy Server (Squid/Dansguardian), VoIP Server (Ventrilo/Team Speak) and have hosted a number of online game platforms. In each case, I have found Fedora to be well supported to fill these roles. I have found the repositories to be well maintained and easy to use. I like YUM, but some use APT.
Perhaps the only downside I have of Fedora is it’s a little TOO bleeding edge. It’s funded in part of Redhat, who uses the distro as a proving ground for it’s own product line. If you want the long term support of Redhat but without the cost involved in Redhat’s product, then CentOS is a good choice.
Moving on, I have used OpenSuSE and have found it to be a good choice for general use. OpenSuSE reminds me of my limited experience with Mac OSX. I find it a Good distro, but not a Great distro. I have no specific critisism other than to say it just never was able to keep my attention very long. I would not hesitate to install it on a non-techy person’s pc. It’s user friendly and it seems stable enough. It has a fairly long upgrade cycle so that helps.
While I am not a great fan of Ubuntu per se I do think that Ubuntu-based Mint Linux is certainly my distro of choice for a Windows replacement home computer. I can’t imagine anything that I can’t do and do with flair on this distro. You don’t gotta be “geek” to use it as it’s extremely user friendly. It also has very well maintained repositories. What I like is they went ahead and included all the “gray” packages that EVERYONE uses anyways. You can watch a DVD out of the box. I am VERY much a supporter of FOSS but let’s face it: What good is a home PC if you can’t watch DVD’s on it? For those of you that don’t know it, Windows doesn’t play DVD’s out of the box either. It NEVER has. You have to buy WinDVD or Nero or whatever to do so. Must manufacturers include that software with your PC so many folks assume Windows has the functionality. It doesn’t.
At the moment, I would say these are your three best choices for a Windows Replacement box. There are MANY other fine distro’s out there, each with their proper roles (vis. Freedom). Gentoo is great but I think way to “Geek” for the average user. Debian strikes me as more of a server solution.
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Well,
I wanted to make one more post on Mint Linux. I installed Mint Linux 7.main the other day. Wow. I’ve read a lot of articles recently saying that Linux is dead on the desktop. Whatever. First, the install went much easier than ANY windows install I’ve ever done. Faster too. The distro is VERY polished. I didn’t need to install any drivers except WiFi and nVidia. Some folks complain about that but they are ignorant. I sold a new computer to someone the other day with WindowsXP on it. First, I had to install winXP. Then I had to load chipset drivers. Then modem drivers. Then video drivers. Then printer drivers. Then DVD drivers. Then Antivirus software, then spyware software. Then I had to do windows Updates… 15 reboots later, I had WindowsXP… and no software to do anything. Um… I installed Mint 7, did a single update, enabled WiFi and nVidia drivers, did a SINGLE reboot, and I was done. I had interwebs with Flash, OpenOffice, Gimp, DVD Burning, Audio and Video apps, just about all I needed. I did a Vista setup a couple weeks ago. I took me over 8 hours to load all the drivers and do all the windows updates. Can someone tell me why Linux is dead on the Desktop???
I’ve done Mint 7 on two PC’s, one Laptop (my HP dv6000) and did the mint 6 to 7 upgrade on my wifes computer.
I admit the upgrade didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked. I somehow ended up with Mint 7 Universal rather than Main. Go figure. Anyone know how to upgrade Mint 7 universal to Mint 7 main?
The HP Laptop was really nice. I had an 80GB Sata with WindowsXP on it. I installed Mint 7 alongside it. The distro made room on the drive, installed, and when I was done, I simply enabled the proprietary drivers for the Broadcom WiFi and nVidia 6600GO video and I was done.
I have always been a diehard Fedora advocate, and have considered OpenSuSE my second choice, but unless you need some of the cutting edge stuff Fedora offers, then I would say Mint 7 may be the best Linux distro to date.
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Well,
I’ve grown bored with this design… and I never got it all to work correctly on IE6 anyways 
I think maybe a minimalist site next maybe?
Stay tuned.
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OBAMA:
“Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades. ”
Let me get this straight. We are 11 TRILLION dollars in debt… not because of rampant welfare abuse. Not because of obscene profiteering by defence contractors. Not because of absurd government spending on politi-social nonsense?
We are in debt 11 TRILLION dollars because of health care???
This guy really needs to get a clue.
First, much of the healthcare system is run by PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, so by definition, their shortfalls do not contribute to the national debt. Second, much of the medical insurance out there is offered by private insurance companies and are paid for by private companies and their employees. Second, while I am not anti-military at all, I would say that dropping bombs in the middle east at a million dollars a pop probably adds up. I wonder if giving almost a trillion dollars to bail out the savings and loan industry (which is ALSO private corporations) so they can continue to to drink $500 a bottle wine while they decide which working class families should be foreclosed on.
What gall. This guy had more time invested in “march madness” than he has in keeping the economy afloat, and he has the gall to blame everyone in the world that made a decision before he got into office???
What America needs is LEADERSHIP. Instead, we get the blame game.
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I updated the site. I hope you like it. This is really the first time I did any serious transparency scripting.
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Well, I thought I would take the time to review the Asus Eee PC, as I recently bought one.
I purchased model EEEPC900-W072X about two weeks ago.
As far as the hardware goes, it’s a pretty solid unit. It sports three USB ports, and SD reader, Audio/Mic ports, SVGA port, and Ethernet port. It also has built in WiFi and a 1.3MP Webcam. This particular model has 1GB or RAM and a 16GB SDD.
The unit came with Windows XP pre-installed.
The system had not virus/malware protection preinstalled, which I was happy to see as I find the pre-installed solutions very unreliable anyways (vis. McAfee). I installed AVGFree 8.5 and Spybot 1.6.2 with Tea Timer, which is typically all I ever need.
I was happy to see that Open Office was installed (actually it was StarOffice 8 ) so I quickly uninstalled the MS-Works that was also installed.
It also had Windows Live and Skype installed, but I left them even though I never intend to use either.
The unit uses a Celeron Mobile CPU running at 900 Mhz, but don’t let that fool you. Many netbooks run the Atom 1.6Ghz CPU, but benchmarks show the two CPU’s to be very similar in speed.
I did not notice the great speed increase the SSD hard drives are supposed to have, thought I did seem to boot fairly quickly.
Now for the good stuff.
I booted the machine using PXE boot and LTSP and was able to load the Fedora 10 desktop without any problems.
Next, using an external USB DVD drive, I booted OpenSuSE 11.1 and everything seemed to work fine, so I installed to disk.
I moved the NTFS partition back to 8GB, freeing the other 8GB for Linux.
Everything just worked. No fuss, no muss. Even the Webcam.
Next, I enabled Compiz. The 915GM Chipset provided adequate performance to move the desktop cube smoothly.
Cons:
I really only encountered one con with this product. The keyboard is small. I am a big guy, and have fat fingers, so I was not able to type two handed. I knew that when I bought the unit.
Pros:
2.2 Lbs.
Small Footprint
Linux compatible
Sturdy Constuction
Price ($279)
Other Comments:
In hindsight, I wish I had purchased the 120GB non-SSD drive. I did tweak the settings to reduce disk writes. I added the noatime option to /etc/fstab and mounted the /tmp directory as a ram drive. The average life expectancy of the SDD is around 3 1/2 years, which is the life of this type of device anyways. That’s not why I wish I had the other drive, though. I just wanted more room 
I bought this unit mostly for service calls. I can patch into a site’s network and fire up Wireshark and pretty much see what’s going on. The unit’s small size is great when I have to work in confined spaces.
All in all, I am happy with the unit. Don’t let the price fool you into thinking there’s a lack of quality.
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All I can say is wow. I am not sure there is a more sleazy company on the planet that Microsoft.
Why’s that? Well let me tell you.
Having been doing web design for quite some time now, I’ve always been frustrated by Microsoft’s browsers as they have not complied to W3C standards. The scenario most often plays out like this: You spend countless hours designing the perfect webpage, all the while validating your code with validator.w3.org to make sure you didn’t break any of the rules. Then you go to test your creation in the various browsers, only to find out that Microsoft IE doesn’t display the site correctly. Now is where the frustration comes in. Often times you have to add clauses in the code that say “do this, but if it’s IE, then do this instead” to accommodate Microsoft’s no-compliant browser.
Enter, IE8.
Preliminary reports are that IE8 attempts to adhere to the standards much more closely. Now we got a problem. You know all those clauses we had to put in to the code for IE browsers? You guessed it. They now BREAK the site when viewed with IE8.
Ok, I suppose that’s understandable, and Microsoft should be applauded for admitting they fixed their error… except that’s now what they did.
Microsoft has released a list of major websites which they describe as “highly trafficked sites that have not yet fully accommodated IE8’s better implementation of web standards…”
Huh? Did they just say that those sites are not designed right? Yup, that’s how I read it. The statement SHOULD read “highly trafficked sites that have endeavored to fix IE’s poor implementation of W3C standards so they work correctly in their defective browser…”.
Here are some of the most notable sites on the list:
google.com
microsoft.com
youtube.com
live.com
msn.com
blogger.com
ebay.com
myspace.com
mozilla.com
facebook.com
wordpress.com
apple.com
adobe.com
sourceforge.net
photobucket.com
…
In all there are 2400 sites. What I find interesting in this is that these are all MAJOR sites that have done a stellar job at being problem free for the majority of the community. I find it a slap in the face that Microsoft seems to place the blame on these sites and not themselves for IE8 not rendering the sites correctly.
The way the list works is you can download it to your browser, then when the site is visited the browser will switch to “non-standards mode”.
Non-standards mode??? That is wrong on so many levels. The problem is the sites DO adhere to standards, and IE is non-standard!!! That has ALWAYS been the problem!
I think this intentional shifting of the blame for past errors in IE’s poor implementation of published standards to quality web-designers is a new all time low for Microsoft.
If their is one silver lining to all this it’s this:
In my design business, I have painstakingly avoided using IF IE clauses except in a few rare cases. At times it caused me to not design a site quite like I wanted, but in theory the sites I have designed should not be affected… but we’ll see
Stay tuned.
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http://cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=45206
I hope we one day get to know who ordered the Army Troops into the town, and if they are prosecuted. This is reminiscent of Bejing. Freedom cannot exist in a Police State.
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