I first started tinkering with Linux about 4 or 5 years ago. My first distribution was Mandrake, which I forked out nearly a hundred bucks for a boxed version with a huge manual and online support from Mandrake. I wasn't all that impressed. Shortly after, I engaged in a few forums where the discussions were related to easy-to-use linux distros for newbies....That was me! When I realized that I would still need some Windows (ME version) applications, the newest and greatest emulation programs wer… Continue

Hardware:
Computer: HP Pavilion dv5000 Laptop - AMD Sempron 3100+
PCI Devices: Broadcom BCM4318(rev 02) wireless card, Realtek RTL-8139 ethernet, ATI Radeon 200M (128mb) video card, ATI SB400 AC'97 audio card.
External Drive: Maxtor OneTouch Mini 4 scsi 160GB

I decided to install OpenSUSE this weekend onto my new Maxtor 4 USB hard drive. I've used the live CD before with KDE 4.1, but didn't like not having the option to have different backgrounds on the multiple desktops. Supposedly, this optio… Continue

Generally, before downloading and installing a linux distro, I'll browse through a review or two listed on Distrowatch. Many times the guinea pigs taking the first shots at testing these operating systems can make or break my decision to take the plunge as well. But, others just ooooh and aaaah about how pretty the splash screen is, or take a look at the menu to see what applications were installed without even trying them out! What kind of a review is that?

What I want to attempt to do is to r… Continue

I recently won the bid on a new Maxtor 4 mini on eBay, and installed Mandriva on it for a friend to try out. He didn't need all the extra partitions listed in the Menu like I have in a previous post. So I went to work on a much simpler GRUB CD.

This new GRUB CD has only 2 selections; Windows on the internal drive, or Linux on the USB drive. I also created a new image for the menu screen.

In addition, I noticed with the new Maxtor 4 mini, that when swapped out in between booting my other USB dr… Continue

I have installed many linux distributions over the years, and from time to time, I'll decide not to write a bootloader to the MBR. I also install distros to an external USB drive, and in order to boot from the USB drive, editing the bios boot order is necessary. Because my Debian install is set up to boot more than 1 computer (it did this in earlier versions by reconfiguring the xorg.conf file, but now Debian 5.0 uses the no-configuration X.org 7.3), I do not want to change all of the different… Continue