Well this isn’t on my list of interests from the first post, but I am somewhat proud having managed to successfully wipe the hard drive from my windows pig laptop at work and install something I hope will actually be useful. In comparison to build number one using an old desktop (hp pavillion 7845 with 128 MB ram), this time it required only two complete installs with straight ubuntu linux. Build 1 was xubuntu, a lightweight ubuntu. This laptop is a dell inspiron 8200 1.7 GHz with 256 MB of ram and a plugin cisco wireless card. Considering that I know nothing about wireless, I’m amazed that I got hooked into my home network (set up by my daughter) with very little hassle.
So I’m most proud about being able to find the package containing the graphics card driver for this laptop. Google earth set me looking for the right thing and only after about an hour I was able to get that set up.. This makes me wonder if most of my grief using windows had to do with having a bad display driver. The perennial hourglass really was the last straw, that plus lugging the thing to italy only to find that it was patently impossible to get wireless going, turning the laptop into a boat anchor that I had the privilege of lugging through airports hither and yon.
So I typed the two earlier posts on linux xubuntu build number 1 and am now typing this with my new little laptop. Actually it’s about as big as a laptop can be. I’ve got two batteries loaded which is nice except that they weight a ton. My boss quit last friday so I inherited his genuinely little laptop, 12 inch vs. 15 inch screen. It’s fast enough to slog through the nightmare that is windows xp. I wouldn’t use windows at all except that when I travel and want to exchange files and what not, everybody else has windows machines.
GD
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(I need to figure out how to make this blog software enter time stamps – I’m using alphabetizeable format such that the unix ls command will time order things properly)
