Articles filed in Computing

Recuperating an old Laptop - Part 2

Posted on August 4, 2008 in Computing
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Installing Debian and resolving some issues on an i1300

In Part 1, I introduced you to my Thinkpad and some challenges I’ve had adopting Linux and FreeBSD. There I also discussed how its aging hardware prevented me from installing newer versions of Linux let alone, boot the installer from a CD.

But that problem faded into the background when I was pointed to an article about installing Linux without burning a CD. It opened up opportunities to test out all the Linux distributions I wanted to try, and satisfy myself that it wasn’t only the hardware that had problems but the drivers that came with those distributions.

There are many reasons I chose Debian but here are my top five:

I was recommended by my friend, Firas of My Dominant Hemisphere to try Debian for its stability and support for old hardware.
Installation over the Internet - CDs can be unreliable and their .iso files are not always updated until the new version arrives. In most cases Internet installation fetches the latest packages and security updates. Most major distributions facilitate installing over the Internet.
I was unable to get the installer launch for SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and several other distributions. The Debian installer simply worked.
The Debian Project pioneered in taking guesswork out of installing new software and upgrading. APT and its graphical front end Synaptic are considered Debian’s best features.

This is the very fist time I’ve used Debian. I had on purpose avoided it because of serious criticisms on Wikipedia a few years ago. Those criticisms have since been removed.

Recuperating an old Laptop - Part 1

Posted on July 26, 2008 in Computing
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The Medical History

I bought my Thinkpad in 2001. It’s an i series 1300 and it came with modest configuration: 750 MHz Pentium iii processor, 128 MB RAM of which 8 MB is shared with video and a 20GB hard drive. Over the years, it’s helped me get my work done, provided entertainment, I played a lot of games on it, watched a lot of movies and pushed its limits by running resource intensive games and programs (like Flight Simulator and Pro/Engineer). I could go on talking about it and never stop. But now that the hardware is beginning to perform less than optimum and that and I am in no position to by a new computer, it was time to give it much needed new life.

For most of its lifetime, it has run Windows XP and it performed quite solidly. But being the memory hog XP was and the fact that most windows programmers design their programs to run on the fastest processors of the day, my Thinkpad was becoming more obsolete with time and it only added to my frustrations.

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Books you will find at my local library - Part II

Posted on February 23, 2008 in Blogging Computing the Town and about
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Dear Lord ! Have Mercy !

Books you will find in todays local library - Part I

Posted on February 22, 2008 in Blogging Computing the Town and about
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As computer technology rapidly changes and as more people go online, so do libraries need to keep up with emerging trends and technology.

A WYSIWYG editor for ExpressionEngine

Posted on October 21, 2007 in Blogging Computing
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The default text area for publishing entries in ExpressionEngine is only partially WYSIWYG. It gets primitve when editing lenghty posts and working with images.

If you are not happy with any of the desktop solutions out there, an extension for ExpressionEngine exists, that will convert those text areas into rich text editors ! Continue reading

Playing with Flock 1.0 Beta

Posted on October 19, 2007 in Computing
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Flock is a Firefox based browser, that is developed with social networking in mind. I have been using it for a year and a half and it has become my favourite browser on Windows. I am writing this post in Flock’s built in blog editor. Flock 1.0 beta was released this morning, just one day before it’s second birthday ! Continue reading