Upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10

Above after installing Opera 10 web browser

Above, The Ubuntu 9.10 Control Center

Screen Shot of my Ubuntu PC

I spent the afternoon upgrading my Linux PC to Ubuntu 9.10 and I have to say I really like it. You can read an in-depth review of Ubuntu 9.10 - Ars Technica here.

Understanding and Avoiding Malicious Code Attacks in Linux

Linux is a very secure operating system, immune to Windows viruses and trojans. Instead, the potential security threat lies in running malicious code - by accident or voluntarily. It's easy to avoid the most common attacks by knowing what to look for. Here are a few guidelines and examples of commands that Linux beginners should treat carefully.

Read the article here.

College Girl Drops Out of School Because of Ubuntu ( Video )

This goes in the "Give me a Break" Category. Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won't load, so she can't access the internet? She also can't install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC's online classes. Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk. Verizon says its high-speed internet does indeed support Ubuntu, but some advanced features and installation disks clearly don't work with Linux. I just don't understand why she didn't ask for more help or look at what she was buying in the first place. Ubuntu is not for everyone but she bought it on her own. If you want Microsoft products buy them in the first place, don't buy Linux then complain about it.


Read:The top 5 Linux myths: Why you shouldn’t fear the penguin.

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Ubuntu 8.04

I finally got Ubuntu Linux working on my second desktop again. I tried to upgrade from 7.04 to 8.10 and had nothing but problems so I inserted my 7.04 CD and then upgraded to 8.04 and everything is working great now, even synergy. Installing Ubuntu is quick and easy and the minimum system requirements are easy to meet with most computers manufactured in the last 10 years or so. 

Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.04 and then finally to 8.10.

Image via WikipediaGood morning, I am just about done with my first pot of coffee for the day and I am in the process of upgrading the OS on my Linux computer from Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.04 and then finally to 8.10. If Quick Synergy works I will keep it, if not I will downgrade back to 7.04. I sure hope all works well this time. The last time I tried an upgrade from 7.04 to 8.04 Quick Synergy had problems. I am hoping that going to 8.10 will fix this.

A Good Ubuntu Linux Media Player

Screenshot of my Ubuntu Desktop

Screenshot of my Ubuntu Desktop with Amarok

Good morning all. I am fairly new to Linux so when I installed Ubuntu on a second computer I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I finally decided that one thing I could use it for is a media computer, that would free up some memory on my Windows PC for other things. I have a rather large collection of music here and I also like listening to online radio. The media player "Rhythmbox Music Player" that comes with Ubuntu was ok for the media that I had here locally but I couldn't use it for online radio without allot of difficulty. After much searching I finally found "Amarok". Amarok can play my local media and also has a large list of online Radio Streams. I have been using Amarok for a few days now and love it. It does just what I want it to do, Winamp does the same thing on my Windows PC. If you have Linux and are looking for something like Winamp try out Amarok.

Two Computers with One Set of Speakers

Good afternoon everyone. Sorry I haven't posted in a while but things have been quiet around here. As you probably know from previous post I have two computers that I use at the same time. One is running Windows XP and the other is running Linux, Ubuntu 7.10 the Gutsy Gibbon. I have the two computers connected using Synergy so that I only have to use one mouse and keyboard for both computers. Today I decided that I wanted to hear the sounds, music, and so on from my Linux system through the Creative SBS 5.1 560 speakers connected to my Windows PC. I went to Radio Shack and bought a male 1/8" jack to a male 1/8" jack cable and connected it to the Line out of the Linux machine and to the Line in of the Windows PC. Now I can listen to music and sounds from both computers using only one set of speakers. It was so easy and it sounds great, I did have to adjust the Line out volume sound on the Linux computer a little as to not get distortion but once that was done all worked great.

Windows Vista

I talked to my son John a few weeks ago and he was telling me that he was thinking about getting a new more powerful laptop computer for himself. Right now he has an almost one year old laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and it just doesn't have the power that he wants. It has two gigs memory and a 383mb video card, and a 160gb hard drive. He also has two external hard drives that he uses for additional storage and an ipod. You can click here to see what he has now. I can understand him wanting a new one. John is a computer nut so to speak. He uses it for everything, music, movies, television, phone calls, programming, work and so on. Before John joined the Navy he was in college majoring in Computer Science and doing some tech support on the side. Usually he is doing several things with his computer at once and needs allot of power. "John is a power user".

Now, getting to my point, I have two desktop computers myself and my wife has one. My computers run Windows XP and Linux and my wife is using XP. I get allot of calls asking me for help with other peoples computers and since I don't have Vista I really can't help others that use that OS. John said that when he buys a new computer for himself that he would give me his current laptop. That will enable me to use and learn Vista. I am really excited by the prospect of owning a laptop with Vista. That would enable me to learn the OS and the flexibility to do work from other places besides my computer room/office. It will be nice to be able to sit in my living room in the recliner with my knees up instead of sitting here in my computer chair every time I want to do something with the computer. At the very least I'm sure that my blog will be updated more often when I get a laptop..... I'll let you know what he decides on when he finally buys a new computer, and thanks in advance John. :)

As a side note, I called my daughter Cindy but she was working and couldn't talk at the time. At least I know that she made it to Washington ok. :) I'm sure she will call me later when she has the time and I'll try to let you know what she is up to then.

Good afternoon

Good afternoon. I haven't had time to post much because I have been busy working on my Linux desktop doing some upgrades.

It's a nice warm 79 degrees outside today and we have the windows open for the third day in a row. We love this weather.

I have not heard from Cindy today but I am sure she is doing fine in her CIWS C-School in San Diego. I talked to John Tuesday evening. He had a heck of a day then. He was on a 25 foot metal ladder changing a starter on a light fixture on his Ship and the starter crumbled in his hand and he was electrocuted that afternoon. He said that it was a shocking experience. LOL John is ok, he went to medical and got checked out, he said that he was shaking and perspiring all over for a while after that. The rest of his day was good.

I called our ISP cableone last weekend because we were having some problems and found out that our internet speed was not what it should be. When we signed up we had a 3meg package. At one point that got changed to 5meg and we didn't know it. Cableone upgraded the software to out modem and now we have the faster speed.You can see the results from the speed test I did below.

Is Linux Ubuntu usable enough for non-tech-savvy people yet?

Image by ktostereo via FlickrThe author asks his girlfriend to perform simple tasks using a fresh Ubuntu installation. It's surprising how some of the simple things we assume to be easy are actually hard for someone who's never used Linux. Interesting insight into how ready Linux is for the desktop.

read more | digg story

I'm still here

Image via WikipediaGood morning all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I have been a little busy here. We had quite a bit of yard work to do and we finally got that done so we are ready for summer. I still have some painting to do outside the house but will get to that in the next week or so. On Monday I am taking a neighbor to Kansas City for a dental appointment. It's a long drive ( over 100 miles ) and she is having a root canal done.

I have talked to Cindy and John ( my kids in the Navy ) and both are doing well. I can't really post much of what they are doing right now on here for security reasons but things are good.

I did manage to upgrade my Linux computer to the latest operating system version "Ubuntu Hardy Heron". The only problem I had was getting Synergy to work after the upgrade. I fixed that by uninstalling it on the Linux computer and then reinstalling it. Everything works great now.

That's about it for now. Hope everyone has a nice Sunday. :)

Ubuntu 'reaping Linux dividend

Image via WikipediaThe public perception of open source is changing fast, says Ubuntu leader Mark Shuttleworth, who leads distribution of the Ubuntu operating system (OS). He described the latest version of Ubuntu, dubbed Hardy Heron, as "perhaps our most significant ever".

A new version of Ubuntu, a version of the Linux OS, is released on Thursday.

Mr Shuttleworth said the success of the Asus Eee PC and the work of the One Laptop Per Child programme had driven awareness of open source.

"There has been a sea change in the way people think of Linux, which is very healthy," he said.

Read the rest of the article here.

My current Ubuntu Linux Desktop

My current Ubuntu Linux Desktop
Click Image for full size version

Google released Picasa 2.7 for Linux

Google has released Picasa version 2.7 for Linux, which promises many of the same improvements of the PC version, including uploading and downloading from Picasa Web Albums.

Further improvements include:

* Folder hierarchy views: Browse explorer-style through your photos
* Save edits to disk: Including batch saving
* Improvements to importing: You can now import into an existing folder.
* Better RAW support

And much more. If you want to try Picasa on Linux head on over to Google and download the latest version. Picasa should run on any x86-compatible Linux system.

I posted this entry using the new version of Picasa.

Sales of Linux on Dell computers continue to grow

(From Computerworld) As Dell Inc. approaches its one-year anniversary of selling laptop and desktop computers preloaded with Ubuntu Linux, the company is continuing to expand the fledgling program to new computer models and markets.

Read the entire article here.

Configure a Dell Computer with factory installed Linux

Visit Dell's Linux Community Forum

Watch the top 10 Linux Commercials

I finally got Synergy to work

What a day. I have been trying to get Synergy to work with my Windows XP and Linux machines for two days now and finally got everything to work tonight. What I had to do was so simple. I had to click the Scroll Lock button on my keyboard on my Windows XP ( Server ) machine. That was it. Once I did that I was able to move the mouse from one computer and Operating System to another. I can now control both computers from one mouse and keyboard. The Scroll Lock is a hotkey that locks the mouse and keyboard to one computer. LOL This will make things so much easier. :)

This is how I finally got Synergy to work. On the Linux desktop I installed QuickSynergy. That was easy. Just go to the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for QuickSynergy and download and install it. In QuickSynergy you go to the Share tab and type in the Server computer name in the direction box ( in this case the left box ) then go to the Use tab and type in the IP address for the Server computer. Then click Start. ( the Server is the computer that has the mouse and keyboard that you want to use )

On the Windows desktop go to the Configure button next to Screens and Links and input all the variables for both computers. Do this for the IP addresses and the computer names. It using two computers you will have 4 entries here. Under the advanced setting put the windows computer name. Make note of the port Synergy uses.

Next: GO to the Windows firewall ( or whatever firewall you are using ) and add exceptions for synergy. Synergy will do this once when you set it up but you should do it again. I had to do this to get it to work.

Next: Go to your router settings and enable port forwarding for synergy for the port that you noted earlier. Do it for all IP addresses for the computers that you are going to connect using synergy. That's about it except for the pesky scroll lock button on the keyboard. The Scroll Lock button locks Synergy to one screen. If you are having problems getting it to work try clicking on Scroll Lock and try again.


If you have any questions just ask.

I want to say a special thanks to Sean over at "The Tech Juice" for his excellent tutorial on Synergy and all his help.


Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all.



How to use Synergy Video from Cnet

My Linux Desktop

I just updated Ubuntu Linux to the latest version after downloading the iso file for it and burning it to a DVD. I inserted the DVD into the linux box and re-booted the computer and booted off the DVD, formatted the hard drive again, installed the latest version and am now doing the 206 updates that needed to be done. Here is a Screenshot of my current Linux desktop.

I found a good article called "Why Use Linux?" that you might want to read. So far it has been smooth sailing here. I installed Synaptic Package Manager on this computer yesterday and it made things allot easier. Now the next step is to get Synergy to work so I can use just one keyboard and mouse to control both computers.

Another Computer up and running

My wifes computer in her computer room

My computers in my computer room

I worked on a computer due to a lightning strike for a neighbor and they ended up getting a new one because this one didn't work ( several parts fried ) and insurance paid for the new one. After working on it here for two days and about 15hrs I was able to get it up and running again with the Ubuntu Linux OS installed. I downloaded Freedos and formatted and ran Chkdsk on the hard drive and then after several tries was able to get Linux installed. I had to replace some things inside but I had the parts here. You can see my setup in the picture.

The new ( old ) computer is a Dell Dimension 9100. All three of our computers are connected to the internet now through my Linksys router.

This is what it has:

*Pentium 4 3GHz with 2 MB Cache and Hyperthreading Technology Chipset Intel 945P

*375 W Power Supply

*3-V CR2032 lithium coin cell Battery

*1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM 2 DIMMS 667-MHz.

*160 Gig 7200rpm SATA 16MB Cache Hard Drive

*CD-RW drive

*DVD-RW drive

*3 1/4 Floppy Drive

*10/100/1000 Ethernet

*256meg PIC Express NVIDIA Video Card with TV Out

*Sound Blaster Live 24-bit Advanced Audio Sound Card

*Dell USB Keyboard

*Dell USB Optical Mouse

*56K PIC Data Fax Modem

*7 USB 2.0 Ports ( two front-panel and five back-panel USB 2.0-compliant connectors )

*Running the Ubuntu Linux Operating System

Free Software that I like

Free Software:

AVG free Antivirus

Windows Live Messenger

SMPlayer It's better than VLC media player and Media Player Classic. It's able to play the most known video & audio formats without the need of external codecs.

OpenOffice free office suite

GIMP GNU image manipulation program ( Like Adobe Photoshop, but Free )

Foobar2000 Great Free Media Player ( I like this better than Winamp, Itunes, and Windows Media Player )

Opera ( Probably the best Web Browser )

Firefox ( Another great Web Browser )

smartftp, the free secure FTP client for Windows

CCleaner CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool.

Linux Operating System ( Ready to dump windows? )

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows

If that's not enough to get you started go to The Free Software Foundation ( Tons of Great Stuff Here )