Low Cost Computing

A Quick Look at Lubuntu 10.04

Bill — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:37:14 +0000

Talk about spartan, Lubuntu keeps the desktop totally clean. Does minimal mean more memory? How far does Lubuntu take the minimalist approach? The only surprise during the install was that I was never prompted as to where to locate the boot record. It was no surprise that Lubuntu uses GRUB2, and that GRUB2 correctly recognized [...]

Updated to openSUSE 11.3 KDE

Bill — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:58:54 +0000

I was going to switch to LXDE on the Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, but clicked the update option in a state of exhaustion. The result was a clean update for openSUSE 11.2 to openSUSE 11.3, but I still have the KDE desktop. Do I restart with a fresh install to get the LXDE desktop, or [...]

Selecting a version of Linux

Bill — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:24:39 +0000

While I was playing with PCLinuxOS LXDE this morning, I ran across this really cool site for choosing a Linux Distribution. The test is fast, and the results are interesting. When I selected RPM as the preferred package format, it recommended openSUSE 11.3 as a best fit. I took the test again, and changed the [...]

A Comparison of LXDE and Xfce on openSUSE 11.3

Bill — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:21:15 +0000

Instead of writing two separate posts, I am consolidating my notes into a single post. Besides, the install is identical, as it is just a matter of desktop selection during the install process. Testing various distributions on a multi-boot machine has its problems, and there are always a few gotchas with every distribution. If every [...]

A Good Reason to Use PCLinuxOS 2010

Bill — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:23:06 +0000

The search for the perfect kernel scheduler is like searching for the Holy Grail. Linux 2.6 started with the O(1) scheduler, which solved a lot of issues for real-time processes. However, it didn’t scale to large NUMA (non-uniform memory access) machines. The Linux kernel can scale to 4096 processors. Not all the processors have to [...]

Does PCLinuxOS LXDE Take the Lightweight Title?

Bill — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:49:16 +0000

After installing PCLinuxOS Xfce, I was ready for the GRUB configuration issues. One experiment, however, forced me to install it twice. Although similar to PCLinuxOS Xfce, PCLinuxOS LXDE also different. I am not just referring to the memory footprint. How does it compare to PCLinuxOS Xfce? On the first install, I let the installer configure [...]

Exploring PCLinuxOS Xfce

Bill — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:39:37 +0000

Since the HP laptop used for this test only has a 30 gigabyte disk, I split the space used by Fedora 13 between PCLinuxOS Xfce and PCLinuxOS LXDE. With only 512 megabytes of memory, lighter weight desktops are a plus. Besides, this was a chance to compare Xfce and LXDE from one Linux community. This [...]

Thoughts on Linux Mint 9

Bill — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:44:50 +0000

Linux Mint 9 is my favorite Ubuntu derivative, but still is not my favorite Linux distro. OpenSuse still holds the number 1 spot, but Linux Mint is getting closer to being number 1. After all the problems with Fedora 13, it was a pleasure to install something that worked. Why is that only Linux Mint [...]

Comments on Fedora 13

Bill — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:18:14 +0000

I installed Fedora 13 on Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th as unlucky day may be a myth, but my experience with Fedora 13 was not. The first problem ws the install DVD boot menu. If I touched any key, including the cursor keys, the boot menu would hang. The only option was to let [...]

Thoughts on Linux and EPUB

Bill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:02:42 +0000

EPUB (Electronic Publication) was adopted as an open standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) in September 2007. Most eBook readers support the standard, even the iPhone and iPad have readers that support EPUB. Yet, Linux lags behind in both publishing tools and readers. There are alternatives for the Linux user.