Hot About Linux

Launch of All Things Android for Costa Rica

Bill Anderson — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:25:17 +0000

I created the All Things Android site for two reasons. First, I wanted all Android topics to appear on a separate site. Second, I wanted to focus on Android, as it relates to Costa Rica. While Android devices are not new to Costa Rica, there is surge of interest in Android phones and tablets. In [...]

Sharing Directories across Multiple Distros of Linux

Bill Anderson — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:01:23 +0000

I use seven different distros of Linux, which means there are seven home directories, which means seven different backups, and files scattered everywhere. I once tried have one shared partition that I mounted on each distro. With different desktops, different configuration files, there was hidden file chaos, and upgrades where a nightmare. I finally worked [...]

Booting Linux from a USB External Drive

Bill Anderson — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:50:17 +0000

I already have Fedora, Linux Mint, and openSUSE installed on my HP mini’s internal hard disk. The challenge was to install additional distros on an external drive, without have a CD/DVD drive. The external drive must be bootable, and only show the distros installed on that drive. It can be done. There were a few [...]

Restoring a USB Stick formatted as ISO9660

Bill Anderson — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:07:21 +0000

Since I am using a netbook, I purchased software on a USB stick. Once I get a new version of the software, I am left with an old version on a USB stick formatted as iso9660. In particular, I wanted to create a multiboot USB stick using GRUB2 as a bootloader. It took over a [...]

Nook Color Boot Loop

Bill Anderson — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:38:13 +0000

The Nook Color mounts the /system partition as read-only. Once I activated the Adobe Market, it was not long before it started to download updates to Adobe Air and the Adobe Flash Player. When I rebooted the NC, there was a conflict between the version of these applications in the /system directory and the /data [...]

Nooting the Nook Color 1.3

Bill Anderson — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:15:23 +0000

For those readers who do not know, the Nook Color actually runs a B&N version of Android. For the first six weeks that I used my Nook Color, I was too busy enjoying to start experimenting with modifying, or replacing, the distributed version. Then I moved to Costa Rica, and ran into a problem. The [...]

Preparing the Linux Kernel Source

Bill Anderson — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:41:37 +0000

With the source installed and the tools installed, we are ready to start the process of building a custom Linux kernel. This article covers those tasks that need to be performed prior to configuration. The steps are not difficult, but there are variations between distros of Linux. To simplify the instructions, I created /usr/src/linux as [...]

Tools for Building the Linux Kernel

Bill Anderson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:08:18 +0000

The tools and there version play a critical role in the building of a kernel. Most tools are required, but a few (such as the graphical packages required for gconfig or xconfig) are optional. Besides having the right tools installed on the system, the tool versions must match those required to build the installed kernel source. The purpose of this article is to minimize the chance of a kernel build failure due to a missing or improper version of a necessary tool.

Installing Linux Kernel Source

Bill Anderson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:10:56 +0000

One would think that there is one method for installing the Linux kernel source that applies to all distros. This is not the case. Every distro is different in some way. Rather than restate the instructions provide with each distro, I am going to provide the links with comments.

Why Compile a New Kernel?

Bill Anderson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:07:39 +0000

I lost count of the number of times someone told me I was nuts for wanting to compile a new kernel Why not get a new different distro of Linux that works on a specific machine? What is wrong with the kernel that comes with the distro? In many cases, the default kernel works just fine. Conversely, there are reasons for compiling a new kernel.