Saturday, August 18, 2012

heads up display

OK the worst things in the world is to have a rose colored heads=up=display and deer in the headlights, or flying bird crap or worst yet hit a low flying bird. The first thing is not knowing the reasons, the second thing is bad judgment, the last is dang I feel sorry I couldn't have done anything different. All my previous ranting about Ubuntu 12.04 was only half true. I still got way too many internal error messages, but the rest was hardware related. My laptop's graphics card went into displaying abstract art. I do have two Dell M90s', both in the same state. I even swapped the graphics cards after intensive surgery and the card from the other M90 was worse than the card I was using. Needless to say I am now in morning, dressed in black and about to go out into the yard, chop weeds and figure out how to get another laptop.

Hey, it's another day in the life of a Linux user. I'm a psychotic mess, LOL. When my main PC goes down I shutter at the thought of going back to XP. Good thing a Linux install is a no brainer (for me!). First I run something called Gparted and set up the hard drives. I could also go straight into the Live-CD version of the Linux distro I'm going to install. It gives you a chance to repartition and reformat. You can format a drive to the Microsoft system standard too. This makes Gparted or the Live-CD version of Linux a handy tool for operating system installation. This is important because Microsoft doesn't give you a installation CD unless you buy it and PC manufactures usually put a rescue/backup partition on the hard drive of the PC they sell instead of giving you a separate CD with Microsoft OS on it. So to get the CD is gold. Usually there is a chrome sticker on the system box. You can go into a PC store and have them reinstall your operating if it is hosed or retrieve it from the rescue partition if it exists. Not cool if the hard drive itself breaks. I wonder if the MS CD has hard drive tools on it, probably not, but up to the Win98 days it did.

Linux is great in that the popular versions for popular use all work the same. You buy a CD/DVD or download off the internet for free. You burn the downloaded file onto a blank CD/DVD. Then you pop it in the CD/DVD drive. If it is a live-cd version it will boot-n-run off the CD. You can check it out pretty good and decide if you want to install it. While it is running off the CD, you click the install icon and the procedure goes from there. When it is installed you go about making sure your video drivers are good, the sound works and the internet works, plus if it plays YouTube videos OK, set up email. Then when you have internet go to the app that adds programs from the Linux repository. You are ready to go. And I just changed my desktop from Ubuntu 12.04 to Mint 13 Maya with the Cinnamon desktop. Looks great and no internal error messages. AND NOW a Linux commercial............

There you are on the edge of an icy plateau. You eye to the left and to the right, not a soul in sight and the crisp air excites your mind with what's to come. You hear a sound behind you, turn slightly to realize there is a multitude of ones like you and you hope the heck that someone doesn't push you off before you are ready. Just your luck someone jumps first and the cascade begins. It comes to your turn and you leap thinking it's a good thing we aren't lemmings. As you speed past the rocks and ice you realize it's no worst than other places and slash........the waters fine, fish abundant and penguins do fly.

Linux, no big thrill, no over kill, gets the job done and still is fun. That's my take.

1 comment:

rno said...

Hey Paul I know the pain. Most repair shops don't have the time to fix Microsoft OS it is too deep and you can't spend the time and make a profit too. Doing a backup, then reformat, reinstall is easier. Linux is more forgiving, still I recommend a separate partition for the OS and personal folders. Even putting the personal folders on a portable USB drive is a good idea.That way if your system gets hosed your data is safe and separate, you can then have your PC fixed with less hassle.