I had to disable Loono in my Firefox browser, as Adobe Flash was trying to take all of the 512 MiB of memory. It was impossible to upload photos to a photo album. I was having trouble connecting to my blogs. Without Loono, I was dependent on Gwibber running on the other laptop to keep me current with my social networking accounts. For the reasons mentioned in the previous post, I was not totally happy with this solution. I was using Ping.fm to update multiple sites, when I discovered a solution.
HootSuite – A Better Solution?
February 6th, 2010 — Linux Social Networking Software
Social Networking with an Ancient Laptop
February 3rd, 2010 — Linux Applications
For the purpose of this article, I used a Micron Transport ZX with 256 MiB of memory with a 600 Mhz Pentium III processor. The version of Linux is XUbuntu 9.10. After booting, the system had 4,076 KiB of free memory, with another 141,788 KiB of free buffers/cache available, and now swap used. Gwibber, Firefox, and Google Chrome constitute the software used to access Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
Linux Kernel Fundamentals Course
January 28th, 2010 — Uncategorized
The latest version of the courseware for my Linux Kernel Fundamentals course is now available from ITCourseware at http://bit.ly/bf82sN.
Microblogging clients for Linux
January 12th, 2010 — Linux Social Networking Software
Linux has a number of Twitter Clients (for example, Qwit and Twitux), but they are limited to Twitter. What about one client that works with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other social networks? Which ones will actually work on older machines with limited memory? Can we track them all at once, with regular updates that do not require refreshing the page? We live in a world driven by instant information. We live in a world of social networks via the Internet. Are there Linux solutions to the world of instant microblogging? Continue reading →
XUbuntu 9.10 – Disappointing
January 2nd, 2010 — Linux Distributions
The project was to convert a Micron Transport ZX laptop with 256 meg. of memory into an Internet Gateway. On the Internet side is a USB modem, and the Lan side is a Belkin Wireless card with the dreaded BCM43xx chipset. I only had an XUbuntu 8.10 CD, so I installed with no problems. Network Manager recognized the USB Modem without a problem, so I was able to download the Window Wireless Driver program, installed the Windows driver, and used NDISwrapp Then I decided to upgrade to 9,04, and it was easy. The next hop was to version 9.10. The upgrade went without problems, but 9.10 is not the greated version of Ubuntu. Continue reading →
openSUSE 11.1
June 10th, 2009 — Linux Desktops, Linux Distributions, Linux Installation
I put off upgrading my primary laptop, until yesterday. I finally upgraded to openSUSE 11.1. It is a triple-booted machine, so the upgrade include installing Simply Mephis 8.0 and Ubuntu 8.10. I really wanted to install Debian 5.0, Mandriva 2009, and openSUSE, but had a few problems. I did discover a new trick.
Easy Multi-boot Systems
April 3rd, 2009 — Linux Installation
There are easy ways to do things, and there are hard ways. My Dad used to tell me that I spent more time figuring out the easy way, than it would have taken to do it the hard way. Ah, but the next time around, the easy way paid off. When it comes to multi-booting, there are many methods, I like the easy way.
Knoppix 6.0
March 24th, 2009 — Linux Desktops, Linux Distributions, Linux screen readers
Knoppix is Live CD, and they were one of the firt to produce a Live CD. I have use Knoppix in the past as a quick way to demonstrate Linux. My initial reaction to version 6.0 was “how far they have fallen.” The automatic boot into Adriane with no instructions on how to boot straight to Knoppix was a bit disconcerting. Knoppix now uses LXDE, but with a twist. Work on another project allowed me to see Knoppix 6.0 from a different perspective. My first opinion needed some adjustment.
Xubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid)
March 15th, 2009 — Linux Distributions
Xubuntu 8.10 is Ubuntu 8.10 with Xfce as the graphical desktop. Even though LXDE is lighter, there are reasons to use Xfce as a desktop manager. Each graphical desktop manager comes with a set of packages for the common, and not so common tasks. Each graphical desktop manaager comes with its own menu structure for accessing packages. When choosing your default graphical desktop manager, you need to consider the entire package with lightness being one of the factors.
Window Manager versus Graphical Desktop
March 14th, 2009 — Linux Desktops
Linux / UNIX systems are based around the X Window System. To avoid confustion, we need to clear distinquish between login managers, window managers, and graphical desktops. Each plays a role in creating the desktop environment. While they may be the same, I separate login managers from windows managers.
