The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry

Maybe I'm a lucky one I don't know, but on I have PCLOS on my lappy and I am very happy. Everything I have "messed up" has been my doing. I've been lucky in that I have been able to fix my mess ups too.

Quoting:The closer they can get to $200, the better. At $250, these things would be HUGE.

Also, it would do well to remember Microsoft's pre-OLPC ambitions as recently as less than a dozen years ago. For example, the piece 'Microsoft considering 100-dollar PC', http://www.forbes.com/execpicks/feeds/general/2004/10/20/gen...

Quoting: but on I have PCLOS on my lappy and I am very happy.

My main lappy runs PCLOS 2008 and Mepis 7, I am thrilled with both of them. You get a lot more apps on Mepis, but PCLOS has most everything I need and it's all on the cutting edge. Having a port of PCLOS for the EeePC makes it very enticing.

Quoting:it would do well to remember Microsoft's pre-OLPC ambitions

I remember their UMPC initiative, though that was not really about 'being cheap'. What has come of it? Only the $800+ costing handheld devices from Samsung - probably. A lot of the new "UMPC's", I'd say half of them, run Linux anyway.

A few days ago I tried to watch a kind of UMPC-presentation on Microsofts site, but it crashed MPlayer up to a 'pink screen of death' - in fact the kernel was stuck, the three finger salutes (both of them) didn't work anymore, and I had to 'repower' the system. If that presentation shows Microsofts view of the UMPC, I understand why nobody wants it!

PCLOS, its back on my lappy. Two weeks of trying to get Debian Etch to work, nothing short of dismal. Not even ethernet would work. Tried the Gnome version of PCLOS and it did not work (DL's were weird maybe their servers were full) burned six CDs from three DL's and nada. Last night got the KDE version and with some tinkering it was up and running, wireless from the Live CD.

The only way I could get the distro to install was to wipe out the HD while in Live. I don't know? I just removed all the partitions and then did the install, perfect. #apt-get task-gnome (210 packages)

I really want Etch on the lappy.

What didn't work with Debian?

I've had niggly problems with Debian Etch on my Gateway laptop, but nothing that would prevent it from installing, running and configuring Ethernet.

S_M, No internet, wired, wireless, steampowered. Nothing. I used every tool there and nothing changed. It was tethered when I started the install, it DLed 600+ packages from cyberspace but when I pulled the CD and rebooted, POOF no connection.

No other distro has done WiFi as well as PCLOS.

I had no issues with PCLOS 2007 until I attempted to install it on my ASUS notebook. Oh it saw the onboard ethernet. It just kept giving me an error every time I tried to configure networking with it. MiniMe 2008 solved that problem, but.... I had to essentially disable ACPI in order to get it to install.

Ah well. I'm having fun remastering the thing in a VirtualBox virtual machine. I'm learning how to change things bit by bit. :)

Quoting:I'm learning how to change things bit by bit. :)

And with (how many?) gigabytes, you'll die before you try all permutations!

(Remembering my best friend's joke about the Psychic Data Recovery Service: "I'm getting... a 'one'... and... a 'zero'... and another 'zero'... no, wait, it's a 'one'...")

lol gus3.... ;)

I'm discovering that a lot of the cache and stuff has to be cleared up. The next issue I have is how to set up this remaster in such a way that the original "user" account I created is deleted upon first boot (after the install). Also, the blasted shortcuts on the desktop don't stay in the exact location that I want them to.

When those issues are resolved, I'll then go about changing the bootsplash. As for the login sequence, I disabled the KDE login animation. I'm having too much fun with this.

I once remastered a Slackware 10 CD, in order to install a custom, RedHat-based embedded system. (Yes, we were GPL-compliant.) It was my idea, so of course the CEO made it my task.

I went through an entire spindle of 100 CD-R's before I got something that would boot, and show me a Bash prompt. Documenting that was fun, because I knew I would be saving someone (maybe me) some time down the road.

Well, I have figured it out, but will start over from scratch yet again. It'll be a standard edition re-master that I do that will include web browsing, e-mail, IM (pidgin), and AbiWord (WordPad on steroids).

Another edition will have OpenOffice.org instead of AbiWord, and another will have KMyMoney on top of it.

I may even look into creating an emergency rescue system (bunch of partition scanning tools etc...) for data recovery. :)

thenixedreport, You gonna share? I need the one with OO and KMyMoney. Sounds like a winner.

Hmmm with the EEE PC you could use a USB stick with the OS on it. Much more convenient than even bothering to find an external CDROM/DVD-ROM drive...

> EEE PC you could use a USB stick with the OS on it.

Sadly, my personal machine doesn't boot from USB. It's a high-end laptop from 2003, I guess just before this boot from stick thing became vogue.

Anyway, I'd be perfectly happy to put the boot image on the USB stick, with a good encryption on the HD. I've seen several variations on this method, but I think the best method would be to boot off the stick, put in the passphrase, when boot is complete the stick is unmounted. Put it away until needed to boot again, and if the machine is stolen it's a useless brick.

Hehe yes Bob - a good idea. High five for that one!

Might be interesting to put a fake boot-partition on the HD, something that looks right, even boots, but that one never, ever, uses.

Then, do a little diff once in a while to see if anyone has, ah, installed something behind my back.

Just a thought. Not like anyone would want to put a hacked kernel / password sniffer on my machine. Nooooo, can't imagine who would..... never mind.

PGP/GPG is your friend.

Just one problem with all this: I like to keep up with the latest kernels. To make a really secure system, I would have to settle on one and stick with it for a prolonged period of time. Not fun on my personal machine, but very very much a good thing for a business. Oh yeah.

thenixedreport, You said: >>>"I'm discovering that a lot of the cache and stuff has to be cleared up."

Is that /var/cache? What can I lose from there? I don't want to break anything

Ok, when re-mastering PCLOS, I learned that if I didn't run KControl and go the privacy settings and cleared everything out, the recently used apps will not go away from the K Menu. The point is to do things to where everything looks fresh and clean upon bootup from the CD.

I'm still working on it. I'm having plenty of fun doing it too. Once I learn how to change the bootsplash and everything else, it will be pretty sweet.

That, and deleting things from the temp folders can help too.

I just bought one of these. I'll install this custom Ubuntu distro that works out-of-the-box {click link below}. Then, I'll let family borrow while I'm fixing their perpetually broken/infested Windows laptops. http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:home

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should start a company that rents those Eee's to people who's Windows laptops broke...

Hehe - good one, Hans!