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Windows 7 Under Construction

So, I just finished installing the new Ubuntu on my office computer.   I had a license for Vista from another computer but it wouldn’t install.  I wanted to use the copy of XP I put on it for another computer so I gave up on having Windows on the computer at all.  That is….until now.  It seems that Microsoft just released release candidate 1 for free until June 2010.  Now when June 2010 hits it will start doing things to let you know it will stop working soon.

You do need a license for it but Microsoft is providing them for free.  The only catch I could find was that they required a Windows Live ID (Microsoft Passport).  I’m not sure if there will be any limit (like one per windows live id) or not.

The only thing I’m afraid of with this new Windows is the death of XP.  Vista is OK but I think Windows 7 will be better.  It’s XP that I will miss.  XP runs better on slightly older machines.  The only reasons my old laptop is running Ubuntu rather than XP are licensing (I wanted to use that copy of XP for another machine) and the virus problem (XP needs a lot of Antispyware and Antivirus protection).   Both XP and Ubuntu run fine on a Pentium III 800Mhz Laptop with only 256MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive, although the Windows programs keep clogging up the hard drive and Linux programs tend to let you know what they put where.  Windows 7 includes an XP mode which I’ve heard both good and bad things about.  I would rather they have revamped XP with some new tools and called it Windows 7 Netbook Edition or something like that. What would really have been cool would have been to release XP to the public for free but we all know that won’t happen

So I’m testing out this new quickpress thing to see how fast it is. So I’ll just steal a link to an image off of the Ubuntu site and post it here.

Ubuntu example

Yay….I actually reformatted my really old laptop (from like 2001 or 2002) and put Ubuntu 8.10 Linux on it.  I am now running brand new software on it and it’s so damn fast because I don’t have to use anti-virus software like I did with Windows.  I’ve actually got it running as fast as it did back when it was new with Windows ME on it (yes, Windows ME that buggy piece of crap released between 98 and XP, uggghh).   The only problem I’ve noticed is that the shutdown doesn’t work properly on it???? Other than that and the weird partitioning issue (had to make it 2 partitions because of the crappy old bios in it).  But I mean hey, to get a Pentium III 800Mhz Laptop with only 256MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive run that damn fast was worth it.  [tech note: partitions are sda1 : 7GB, sda5 :2.5GB (mounted at /home), and the rest as sda6/Swap. ]  Now if I can get the damn thing running as a media center….  Oh wait, one more weird issue—-it won’t show the battery status.  Now that’s an issue.  I’ll have to look more into that because using it to take notes might be difficult if I don’t know how much power it has.  I guess the Handheld PC is better for that purpose anyway.  In any event I now have a computer running that I didn’t have before and it has all the standard crap with a full office suite, which is basically what I had running on it under Windows but the anti-virus software was slowing it down to a crawl and the software on it (especially office) was really old.  Oh and it’s nice to hook up a USB flash drive or USB hard drive without it complaining about not being USB 2.0…

Familiar Linux on my Jornada 728 Handheld PC

I got a HP Jornada 728 Handheld PC for my birthday. It comes with a Handheld PC version of Windows with Internet Explorer 4 and it is almost impossible to put any IM programs compatible with Yahoo Messenger on it. IE4 came out more than 10 years ago and a lot of websites won’t even run on it anymore. I started searching forums right away looking for links to a better web browser and IM program.  I kept running across people suggesting using Linux or BSD on the H/PC instead of Windows.  My recent interest in returning to IT having been sparked I decided to take on the task of putting Linux on the H/PC.  I did start using SSH to get onto my website earlier this year but that has been my only experience with *nix based systems in 11 years since early versions of Red Hat Linux.

I won’t give detailed step-by-step install instructions here but I do intend to write a blog soon doing just that.  The most daunting task in all this was that I had to use Linux on my PC in order to get Linux onto my H/PC.  Eh, that had me a little nervous because I didn’t really have a test system running.  Not only that but I had just re-installed Windows a month before because I got hit with a particularly nasty virus.

Then I heard about Live CDs and LIVE USB FLASH DRIVES.  I was running low on CDs and decided to use my USB flash to run Linux.  Ubuntu was a complete disappointment.  I needed a root user to get the permissions correct and I really didn’t see the point of the sudo program.  Then I tried Fedora but I still had trouble.  Finally I find instuctions on how to use Puppy Linux to install JLime Linux onto the H/PC and I used those same basic instructions to install Wicked’s prebuild version of Familiar Linux (available here) on the H/PC (More info here).  It finally worked.  It helps having a Linux distro where root is an actual user!

Once I had the Compact Flash card partitioned and formatted I unarchived the files into the proper places and was ready to roll.  That was when I quickly learned that it was necessary to read BOTH the README and the FAQ that were available.

Other than customizing the desktop (which is NOT as easy as you would think) the only other major change I made was to downgrade the included Word Processor.

While I would rather be running Firefox 3, OpenOffice, and Pidgin, I am quite happy with the installed Firefox 1.5 (Deer Park), Minimo, AbiWord, and GAIM.
Now my H/PC does IM, Word Processing, web browsing and more.  I will post more details on this later and link the post to this blog.

Justin X

And now for some pix:

The HP Jornada 728 Running Windows CE

Here are some screenshots running Linux:

After Linux was installed (after changing the desktop icon from Dillo to Firefox)

This is my customized desktop! This is what the H/PC looks like now.