Green Tech Girl

I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for a while, but when two computers crashed in the same week, I thought I’d try a new distribution instead. I heard that Linux Mint was fantastic - it had the benefits of using Ubuntu’s vast repositories but some nice goodies as well as built-in media codecs.

Linux Mint comes in a LiveCD that doubles as an installer. It’s a lot more user-friendly than Ubuntu’s formidable installation menu. Click on the Install icon and Mint will do most of the work for you.

My main problem installing Mint is that it hosed my Vista boot record. (I had a new computer with Vista pre-installed and wanted to set up a dual boot on the same disk). After quite a bit of wrangling and googling, I discovered that the best way to set up a dual boot in Vista is through this terrific free utility called EasyBCD by NeoSmart. (You also have to tell Mint not to install a boot record under advanced options.) (more…)

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to become a brand angel for the new CherryPal green computer, which will be released within a few weeks. It needs only 2 watts of power, and runs on a flash drive without any moving parts. Linux is the operating system, and many of the apps will be available via free “cloud” computing online.

I will be getting my CherryPal to review soon, at which point I am going to run the computer through the motions to see how well it does. (The nice thing about being a brand angel is that they aren’t censoring honest opinion, though there is a financial incentive to write positive things, since we get a small referral bonus for the use of our promo codes. Rest assured, if I hated it, I would not promote it regardless.)

The CherryPal will be for sale on their website soon - use my promo code CPP235 to receive a discount on your purchase.

I’ll admit, something rubbed me the wrong way when I read “The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment.” There seemed to be this underlying message that women weren’t naturally “geeky” enough to get Linux, and that anyone who does get Linux must just be a “geeky programmer or designer.” His suggestion to improve Linux?

I’d love to see a welcome screen for the first time you open up your desktop, with little videos explaining a few key concepts to how Linux and Ubuntu work. Maybe it could ask “What do you want to do?” and then explain how they could do this.

Oh God no. The first thing I do when I get into Windows is turn off that stupid animated paper clip. You know the one I’m talking about, the creepy one with the happy face. But even Windows doesn’t assault me with cheesy training videos upon login - why should Linux? (more…)

KDE4, I hardly knew ya. But alas, I must end our fledging relationship. I liked your glossy style, your promise of flashy desktop candy. But your stability leaves something to be desired…and when you break completely upon a regular update…well, what can a girl do? I’m sad to say, I must leave you and go for the more stolid, stalwart, simple man over there known as GNOME. He’s a bit pedestrian, I know, but he mostly keeps my computer running without a hitch (barring ATI conflicts with Compiz-Fusion).

Perhaps some day you will mature and we can try again. Until then, I will cherish my sweet memories of your plasma goodness.

I have to amend my last blog post that said that I was going to stick with KDE over GNOME, despite some issues. I installed KDE 4.1 Beta 2, and it’s not just going two steps forward and one step back, it’s possibly going three steps back. It crashes. Well, that can be expected from a beta, but my biggest complaint is that the stupid plasma widgets on the desktop still have the unwieldly borders and mini-icons surrounding them. I just want to be able to slap a file on my desktop and move it around without having to lock and unlock widgets to do so.

With this disappointment, I am switching back to GNOME (keeping KDE as an option) until the official KDE 4.1 release at the end of July. If the desktop widgets are still in their annoying state, I’ll have to hose KDE and go back to GNOME for the foreseeable future, except for my old laptop, which I’ll keep on KDE 3.5. Oh well.

When I first started using Linux on my laptop, I really had no clue that I could make a choice between the desktop environment. I just used the default that came with Ubuntu, which was GNOME. Now I know that you can choose a variety of desktops for Linux. Most Linux distributions will have one as the default, but you can always add another one later.

The two most popular Linux desktop environments are GNOME and KDE. Both GNOME and KDE look and feel like Windows, with some differences, of course. (more…)

I have to say I am quite happy with my new Linux desktop. I have most of it set up now. Just can’t seem to get the printer to work…there’s always something. I’m playing around with Linux’s freeware music composition tools and seeing how far I can get setting up a virtual music studio in this manner.

The KDE4 desktop has settled down and appears to be working fine except for a few minor quirks. (And where can I edit my menu items?) So a big thumbs up for Kubuntu.

In spite of concerns over Novell’s patent deal with Microsoft, I still wanted to give Novell’s openSUSE Linux a try. I wanted to put Linux on my desktop, as part of my “weaning myself off of Microsoft” plan, and I had this idea that a corporate-backed open source distribution might be “safer” for my system. Boy, was I wrong about that. (more…)

Now that I have Linux running successfully on my two laptops, I am gearing up to run it on my desktop as a dual boot system with my existing Windows XP. I have two hard drives, so it should be easy enough (riiight)…just having to clean off the hard drives to make room for it all.

I had tried the “Live CD” option (to run Linux off a CD or DVD), with OK results. But I found I couldn’t save any files to my hard drive, so what was the point? The Live CDs were also a bit slower than running something off a hard disk. (I will review some of the Live CDs later.)

Since my desktop is my primary computer for my work, if I can get myself into the habit of using Linux for most everything, then I will be able to finally say I kicked the Microsoft habit!

Wish me luck!

I have an old Sony Vaio laptop, a Pentium III. I had installed the Ubuntu distribution of Linux on it back in December. It was working OK but the computer was starting to freeze at odd moments. The breakdown would inevitably occur after a very ominous KACHUNG KACHUNG sound from the hard drive.

I wasn’t sure if it was the Linux distribution causing the problems. I had heard from a friend that PCLinuxOS was a very good Linux distribution that happened to run very fast, particularly on older computers. So I downloaded it (Linux is, after all, free) and installed it. No go. The computer was now worse off. (more…)