Uphill. In the snow. Both ways.

And so. The final tally in the ongoing Linux project here at Casa RainCrow. To expand on my previous post, on the newish Dell Inspiron laptop from my brother, I installed Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon after installing a new 750 Gig hard drive. It's working very well.  I have both Wine, with a front end of Play On Linux, plus a Virtual Machine with Windows XP, to handle the various things that I'm too stubborn to give up but that refuse to run on Linux, like my CAD programs, yWriter5, Personal Ancestral File (which is now an orphan program anyway), and a few other things. I did have to change up a few ways in which I did things, but nothing serious.I still tweak here and there, though I haven't started twerking yet. Overall I'm happy with it.

On the legendary desktop computer, the fairly old HP Compaq tower system. I finally settled on another Linux Mint 16, the Mate version. It's in a dual boot setup with the Windows XP that was already on the unit. As I did in the Virtual Machine setup in the laptop, I disabled the internet capabilities of the XP system and rely on the Linux for internet linkup. The XP is stand alone. As I said before, I don't really use this one much, but it's there when I need it. It may still have a role to play.

On my old Dell Latitude D600, I finally put in Zorin OS, which is another variation of Linux. It was the more friendly flavor of the few releases that was able to run on the hardware. As it was, I still had to jump through a few hoops to get it to "see" the wireless adapter, but I did it finally. It also works well. I configured it to be useful out in the woodworking shop with copies of most of our patterns, PDF files of many of the different manuals and how-to books we have, and it also has CAD on it. There is a good possibility that we may also use it for music in the shop, but I haven't set that part up yet. For the time being it lives in its own drawer in a workbench until needed, to keep it out of the dust, etc. It also has it's own little desk, a cute and perfect for the site item I found at Goodwill the other day for $10. Just like this one!

For my use it will sit on a designated area of my workbench. I'm already wishing I had another one for the house! Just to be clear, I'm referring to the desk here!







Cat Dancing is still using my more recent Dell, the Vista laptop for her activities. Nothing changed there, except I left myself on as a user and added her so we could both use the iTunes/iPhone linkup capabilities. That's one thing that's missing in Linux, the capability to update iPhones with iTunes, etc.

The older Dell 620 that Michael has, Cat's previous machine that I converted to Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon, blew the video card not long after he started using it. We tossed around getting a new card for it, at a minimum of $60 or so, or just getting another used laptop for him. In the end he found another D620 at the Goodwill Computer Store for $10, on the off chance the mother board and video card was still good. They call it a "scraptop" since Goodwill salvages whatever is easily removable, like the battery and hard drive, etc. and sells the remainder as a parts machine. We lucked out! We swapped over the missing parts from the old D620, our hard drive, battery, and nothing at first. Then I figured that the power switch was bad, it is part of the keyboard. We swapped that out and voila! it worked! Michael is online again!

So, that's where it all stands! Come see us again!

Computer Update - Rather Switch, etc.

A short time back I posted about my travails in converting my XP computers to Linux to avoid having to buy new ones or pay a lot to upgrade the equipment to a newer Windows version. I have to report it is going very well. I got some good advice from a mentor, plus did some more research and I'm well on my way.

As can be seen in the picture above, I chose Linux Mint 16 to go with. We did have some changes. My brother gave me a much newer laptop, a Dell Inspiron of his that the hard drive died on. I was able to salvage his data and I put a new, larger drive in it. It was originally a Windows 7 machine, but I just installed Mint 16 from the beginning, everything went great. I am using a program called Wine to run some of my Windows programs, as well as what is called a Virtual Machine which lets you install XP or another OS "inside" the Linux, so that the programs think they are running in a Windows XP machine. I'm trying out a couple of different things there with good success. There are a few wrinkles, but I'm working them out.

My step-son's computer totally died before I could update it, so I passed along my Vista laptop to my partner, and put Linux on her previous laptop for him to use. A small learning curve, but he's doing okay with it I think.

I went with a slightly less technically demanding version of Mint, version 9, for my oldest Dell laptop, the Latitude 600. Still having issues getting the wireless adapter to work, but making strides on that. That will soon be my shop computer. My desktop also got a Linux 9, LXDE version, dual boot. It is still booting in XP or I can choose Linux. The newer laptop, though, is doing everything I need right now, so I haven't really put much further effort into the desktop. I will make it work, though, even if I'm not using it!

Onward!

Rather Switch Than Fight

 

By the way, bonus points if you "get" the pop-culture reference in the title. Nothing else, just bonus points!

We have 7 computers in our home. The one I'm composing this blog on is about the newest, a Dell Latitude E5400 laptop running Windows Vista. I have no complaints about it. I suppose I should mention that I usually buy refurbished Dell computers. The price is right, they do everything I need to do, and I just like them. Most of our computers in use currently were purchased from Discount Electronics though I do have one I got through Ebay and a couple that were gifted.

My wife's laptop, my desktop, and my "backup" laptop are all older Dells running Windows XP. Now, I've had a very good experience using XP so far, and I've been using it since it came out, more or less. My use of personal computers, as I think I've outlined elsewhere, runs back to the Radio Shack/Tandy Color Computer and some low number version of MSDOS. 

The quandary lately is concerning Microsoft and their dropping of support for Windows XP early next year. Of course, the software won't abruptly stop working, but security will be more and more compromised. It will be very risky to continue to use those computers online.  Rather than spend a small fortune (to me) to upgrade to newer computers or even newer Windows software which may or may not run on the older machines, I've been contemplating switching over the older machines to Ubuntu, which is a popular version of Linux. (Also, need I say "FREE")!

For the most part it's no big deal. I have put Ubuntu on a small Asus laptop that I have to check it out, as well as setting up my larger desktop PC for dual booting. I can boot it up as either XP or Ubuntu for a session of exploration. So far, however, a couple of things have stymied me. 

Much of the work with Ubuntu strongly relies on going online. I'm still not savvy enough on Ubuntu to figure out how to make it work with our Sierra Air card. It's supposed to be pretty easy, but it has foiled my attempts to make it work. That's one problem, we don't have any form of wi-fi available at home except for the aircard we have. Now, we may be able to affordably work something else out, now that we may not need the air card for other things. We originally got it to have the ability to run credit cards, etc. when we worked Sherwood Forest Faire, or other outside art fairs without access to wi-fi. Now, we're going to the Square on our iPhones and won't need the air card. Possibly we can find a local wi-fi service that will cost about the same as we were paying for the air card. However, that's another situation. Back to Ubuntu.

I can network the other laptops with my Vista laptop when it is on the air card. The wireless networking built into the laptops works with Ubuntu just fine, or appears to so far.  Getting the wireless USB adapter I have for the desktop to work with Ubuntu is another story apparently. Not exactly plug and play.

Most of the software packages we use regularly have replacements in Ubuntu that are also free and work quite well. However, I have a lot of time invested in one type of CAD package that only runs on Windows. I won't name it, but I'm reluctant to change. There is a very good alternative called Draftsight that I have been looking at that seems to work very well, but I am reluctant to switch horses on it unless I really have to. 

Another critical program is yWriter 5; a writing software that I am using for my novels currently. In this case there is no Linux version available. 

Theoretically these and many other Windows programs will run through another software called Wine that sort of acts as an interface to enable Windows software to run on Linux. I've been running into some snags getting that scenario to work.

The key seems to be solving the networking or the air card problem, since some of the installations are pretty automatic once you can get online. Otherwise you have to download things separately and jump through several hoops to install manually.

Apparently.

Maybe I just need a Linux tutor to guide me through some of it.

Once I get things working the way I want, I may even switch over the Vista laptop, though Windows will keep supporting Vista for quite a while longer. 

The last ditch option would be to just keep the desktop as my main CAD machine, leave it XP and just don't get online with it. That would work for quite awhile, probably. I don't make my living with the CAD anymore, but I still use it almost daily. I'm always helping my wife by drawing or copying patterns for intarsia woodworking or stained glass. I also prefer to use it for desktop publishing-type functions, since I'm accustomed to using the fonts and drawing capabilities. 

Admittedly, some of this is just stubbornness.  Do I really need this many computers? Probably not. When I used previous laptops, they weren't fast enough to run the cad programs, nor did they have the storage I needed. It was necessary to have the "big, powerful desktop" to run the serious drafting software, while my lighter duty laptop could go with me to a hotspot and browse the web. The desktop is also easier to work on, of course. I can replace whatever part may be going bad. Laptops are almost made to be disposable. If something breaks, it's usually easier to replace the whole thing!

Times change. My current laptop doesn't really have the power problem, it runs everything just fine. With external hard drives and flash drives getting larger and cheaper all the time, the storage isn't so much a problem either. 

Having two working laptops all my own is a bit of a luxury I guess. I like having a backup. It's paid off a few times. However, we find ourselves doing more and more of our online stuff on our iPhones. I even posted one of these blogs directly from the phone awhile back. It was a challenge, I admit, but I did it. 

In fact, the lines between PC/laptop/phone/TV/stereo/radio are getting really blurry, aren't they? It is rapidly getting to where smart phones can do just about any "usual" computing task we want to do. I can now even view CAD files on my iPhone. 

And reference work? I think we've about reached Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica. We have more and more reference resources available every day. I used to spend hours running down references in the library in dictionaries and encyclopedia. I called it hunting rabbits, since I easily got sidetracked and ended up finding information that had nothing to do with whatever I started on. Now I have the whole internet to get lost in. Pure joy!

Now if I can just get the Ubuntu to behave!