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When I found bugs with my PCLOS last week, I decided to take a good look back with Ubuntu. I did found a bug with Ubuntu installation cd with my current notebook set-up, but I found out the solution from Ubuntu forum.

#The bug: it seems that Ubuntu installation did not recognize a small partition (fat16, 8MB) that was left by my Xandros, 2 years back.

Did a new installation on top of my existing PCLOS, and now, I am dual-booting my notebook with Ubuntu!

Tried to upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon, but unfortunately,I didn’t have enough disk space to squeeze all in (Gutsy needs 4GB of space, but the existing partition was only 3.2GB). Sigh…

Anyway, I managed to convert my Ubuntu to Ubuntu Muslim Edition. With Ubuntu Muslim Edition, I now have Zekr (Quran Study) and Minbar (Prayer Times) in my notebook.

drizad :: Dec.03.2007 :: Linux :: 4 Comments »

I have been dual-booting my ACER notebook with Windows XP and Xandros OCE (open circulation edition) 3.0.2 for the past 2 years. I can’t remember when was my last login to Xandros, as Xandros has stopped supporting their OCE since few months back.

Most of their package repository was not updated, and if I were to update or upgrade my Xandros, I have to dig into their forum site to manually install the packages that I want to use. Tried to play with Backports, but I don’t think I am that geeky. So, most of the software packages in my Xandros was “outdated” - even my Firefox was stuck with version 1.5.

I tried to install Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon, but found bugs during manual installation, and have to abort the installation process half way through. I was a bit disappointed with that, after reading a lot of good reviews about Gutsy Gibbon and the smoothness of the installation. It did not stopped me from getting my ACER new Linux soul though…

I tried to install Mandriva 2008, using a free DVD that I received with my monthly LinuxForYou magazine, November 2007 issue, but failed to get the installer running as the text-mode installer has a bug, and my ACER notebook does not support graphical installer. Sigh…

Did some homework and surfed Distrowatch to get feedback on the best Linux distro to replace my Xandros, and found out that PCLinuxOS is the highest hit page ranking. I downloaded the cd image of PCLinuxOS, burned it on a cd and run it first as a live cd.

I must say that the process was really easy. Live cd showed KDE with a dedicated button for installation (similar with Ubuntu). Running PCLinuxOS live cd was smooth, and I could get all my hardware running out of the box. Setting up the network for internet was also easy, no problem in internet connection, although I was using live cd.

The installation process for PCLinixOS is also easy. It has a graphical installer, which detected all my hard drive, including the reiserfs partition which Xandros lived. By installing PCLinuxOS, my LILO bootloader which was created by Xandros was replaced by a new and more beautiful GRUB bootloader by PCLinuxOS, and I still can boot my Windows!!!

The best thing about PCLinuxOS is the Beryl 3D (now have merge with compiz) desktop presentation. After upgrading it with Synaptic in my PCLinuxOS, my desktop behave really differently, and I don’t think my XP can do it…

drizad :: Nov.27.2007 :: Linux :: 3 Comments »

I thought PCLinuxOS has the same cow with Ubuntu.

Managed to try PCLinuxOS Live CD today, after my first attempt with PCLinuxOS a year ago failed due to GRUB issue. The CD that I used then was faulty.

And yes, they have a different cow, and aptitude moo -v did not give you anything.

Anymore Easter Eggs in PCLinuxOS?

drizad :: Sep.26.2007 :: Linux :: 6 Comments »

Hahaha. I only knew “apt-get moo” while I was using Xandros few months back.

Until I read about “aptitude moo” and the extra letter after the command.

I wonder if there is anymore Easter Eggs for Linux user other than those?

Adding more “-vvvvvvvv” will only give you the same answer.

By the way, I get it by using kubuntu Live CD…

Cheers!

drizad :: Sep.20.2007 :: Linux :: No Comments »

I bet you must have seen the blue screen of death if you have use Windows long enough. It is what happened to your PC or notebook when you don’t know what to do next. Should you call the technical team from the shop you bought your PC? Or call anybody who know how to get rid of the problem? Or maybe contact Uncle Gates from Micro$oft support?

When I encountered the problem while I was really naive few years back, the best bet would be to restart my notebook. If it does not changed anything, I will call my friend who “seems” to know what to do (unfortunatley he does not). At last, I have to reinstall my Window$ with the recovery cd that comes with my notebook.

The not-so-good about reinstalling Window$ was that I lost almost all my data on the hard disk. When reinstalling, Window$ installer will wipe your hard disk clean before it installed the “new” copy of Window$. It bugged me very much, until I found a temporary solution to save my data from the “crashed” hard disk - accessing the hard disk WITHOUT WINDOW$.

Linux Live CD

The extraordinary features about Linux Live CD are:

1. It can access your hard disk when your Window$ commit suicide. It does not matter if you have FAT32 or NTFS file systems in your hard disk.
2. It is free.
3. You can use it as your own recovery cd. Choose the smallest, easiest and user friendly Linux distro and burn it on a cd. In this review, I prefer to use SLAX Linux.

SLAX Linux

SLAX is fast and beautiful Linux operating system which fits on small (3.14″) CD-ROM disc. It runs directly from the CD (or USB) without installing. It means that using SLAX, you can do your work in your PC or notebook without the need of a hard disk.

Howto:

1. Download your copy of SLAX Linux from SLAX homepage. It is available as an ISO image of the cd. It fits on small 8cm CD-R(W). Burn it with your favorite cd-writing software.
2. As you downloaded ISO image is quite big (around 200MB), I would suggest that you check for the integrity of your ISO image. Each file for download has it’s own md5sum. This checksum is used for several purposes, the most common is to assure your download wasn’t corrupted. When md5sum of your downloaded file is different than the one published at these pages, then you can be 100% sure your file is wrong. So, every time you download a file which is big, use md5sum software to create (generate) the checksum of your file and compare it with the one published at the download page.
3. If you have successfully downloaded and burn a copy of SLAX Linux in a cd, you need to tweak your PC or notebook so that it can boot from a cd. When you restart your PC or notebook, press whichever key you are told is needed to enter setup of BIOS (mine is F2).
4. You’ll need to change your system’s boot order in the BIOS. In the Boot section you should then be able to adjust the settings labeled Boot Order, Boot Device Priority or possibly some other variation on this wording. Make sure that your CD/DVD drive is set to be your first boot device and you should be able to boot from a CD.
5. Put in your newly burned SALX Linux cd, and restart your PC. Your PC should be able to detect the cd and boot from it. Successful booting will end you up on this page:
6. To access your files in your hard disk, just click “System” > “Storage Media”. You should be able to see and access your drive C: from here.
7. If not, you may need to “mount” the drive by right clicking on your drive C:, and then select “mount the drive”. But most probably, you won’t have to do this.
   
8. You should be able to see your hard drive content from here. If you decided to do a backup for your precious data, get a portable pen drive and copy your data inside it.

For advance user, SLAX Linux may not be able to give more, apart from recovering files from the hard disk. They may want a boot cd that could do more than just accessing their machine, like for example diagnostic tools and antiviruses. Ultimate Boot CD may suits the need of an advance computer user.

drizad :: Sep.12.2007 :: Linux :: 2 Comments »