Showing headlines posted by ComputerBob

My Debian Adventure 3: Squeeze & KDE4

Two days ago, I installed Debian Squeeze onto my new 64-bit PC, using ext4 partitions, KDE4 and grub2. Two nights ago, I was up until 3:00 AM, thanks to Debian Squeeze’s version of KDE4. My experience may surprise you. It certainly surprised me.

Linux Tech Talk 3

I finally found the time to copy Debian Squeeze from my main PC to my second PC, so now I have two Debian PCs that are configured exactly the same. I also tried to get NFS working between them. That turned out to be a lot of trouble. But I finally discovered that a tiny, non-NFS issue can prevent NFS from working correctly. You're not going to believe how long it took me to finally figure it out.

Diamond Linux

Call it a brilliant idea. Call it a crazy whim. Call it a stupid waste of time and money. I guess time will tell which one it is: After thinking about it for several weeks, this morning, I registered the domain names DiamondLinux.com and DiamondLinux.org. I think Diamond Linux is a great name — a prestigious name, packed full of all kinds of positive connotations.

Why I Won't Use KMail or Kontact

KDE 4 is scheduled to be released soon, and it looks like it has a lot of cool new features. Unfortunately, everything I've seen about it says that it's still going to be missing an important feature that many computer users (especially Windows convert to Linux) absolutely require and have come to expect — apparently because a few developers don't like or use that feature. And to make matters worse, every time I've ever seen anyone complain about it, many of the responses have tried to convince them that "no one needs" that feature. In other words, "I don't use that feature, so you shouldn't have a choice to use it." I think the whole situation is an embarrassment to the entire Linux community, because it reinforces the (mostly untrue) stereotype that Linux users are antisocial, elitist geeks.

My Hardware-Based Dual-Boot PC

After dual-booting Windows XP and Linux for a whole year, I finally decided to change my dual-boot computer to use inexpensive hardware, instead of software, to choose between the two operating systems. The way I did it may not be the best solution for everyone, but it fits my needs perfectly. This article explains why I did it, how I did it, why I chose my method over some other dual-boot techniques, and why it's the best solution for me. Read on and see if it might be the best solution for you, too.

My Debian Adventure

I had been very happily using Mepis Linux full-time instead of Windows since September, 2006. Mepis is an extremely user-friendly distro that's based on Debian. But a growing feeling inside me made me want to see if I could successfully install and configure "unfriendly" Debian itself. A few days ago, I finally got up the courage to install Debian Etch KDE. And I documented every step along the way...