Vista Experiment Dual booting XP, Part 3

So I successfully have a system that dual boots XP SP3 and Ubuntu 8.10. It took a bit of fiddling and research on how to properly configure the GRUB bootloader to recognize where XP's partition was and that it was something bootable.

Like anything Ubuntu related, I found the correct answer through the Ubuntu Forums. It's threads like this one that make Ubuntu Forums such a worthwhile resource. Not only is the user base pro active and helpful, it's large enough that about 95% of any problems you come across running Ubuntu have already been posted and solved. Even when I transitioned to 8.10 a few weeks early I found that there was already a great deal of posting about how to get just about everything working even with beta software.

At the end of the day computers are far too useful to be held down by only one OS. There are things that are easily done in linux that just don't work as well in Windows. On the other hand, Linux, no matter what the distribution, can produce real headaches and lots of time configuring and rebooting to diagnose a problem--and most of the time its something like a proprietary video driver that you wouldn't have to spend but a few seconds on in Windows to get it functioning.

I've been part of the linux community since about 1999 and have participated in varying degrees. Just recently I've become involved in posting on the forums when I can help diagnose a problem, but most of my experience is that of the end-user. I can't stress enough how happy I am with how the linux community has developed and I feel like the OS is finally getting to a point of maturity that would allow it to be used by just about any average user. It's still going to remain the choice of true enthusiasts though, because its free and legal and ultimately incredibly scalable.

The relative ease of installing and dual booting XP was a pleasant surprise, and I'm actually impressed at the boot time of the tidied up repack of SP3 that I ended up loading. I'm looking forward to getting Photoshop up and running and finally getting to stretch the legs of the graphics card I bought a few months ago. I don't think I'll be able to run super-current games, but I look forward to installing some classics that I used to play (Black & White, anyone?) and see what I can throw at it before it breaks.

Also, this really wouldn't have happened if not for this article over at APCmag, which gave me the courage to go ahead and take the plunge and commit to the install. They're actually got a whole series of articles about dual booting. If you're a Windows user that wants to see what this whole linux thing is, or a linux user that's a little unsure when it comes to partition tables, it's really never been a more straight-forward process to dual boot your PC.

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Vista Experiment, Part 1

Well to start off, the name of the this post is a bit of a misnomer since I haven't been able to successfully get it up and running on my computer yet. I'm trying one more disk before I go tried and true with XP. So far, three different versions of Vista have failed to even boot for me, BSOD'ing after the initial load from the disk.

Granted, if this had happend with a linux distro, I'd probably been able to scour forums and find at least something relevant to whatever issue was causing the system to lock up before it even got interesting. So I'm just waiting on the next discs to arrive, and I'm thinking I might just go the complete opposite direction and load another linux distribution onto the extra partition I've left on my new 500gb SATA drive. I'd forgotten that non-ancient harddrives run whisper quiet compared to the grinding cacophony that comes out of my older hardware.

So Vista, you're losing the challenge of making me ignore all the bad hype. The only reason I have to run Windows anyway is that I want to have issue-free installs of the newest Adobe Products on my desktop, because doing graphics-anything on my laptop really sucks.

Also, after spending a few days getting acquainted with our editing comp at the office, I desperately want to bring some sanity to its heavily disorganized workflow. Multiple User Accounts on one machine running OS X = bad.

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Boinc Manager: Tough to Explain to Friends, Fun to Use

So for the past few months I've been putting my computer's extra cycle time to good use by partaking in several @HOME projects using the BOINC Manager. If you don't know what an @HOME project is, I'll take a moment to explain.

The best and oldest example is the SETI@HOME project, started in 1995, which uses radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial life--yeah, like in Contact. Up until 1995 the SETI project relied on supercomputers to sift through the massive amount of data, most of which was random noise, which created a painstaking process that was slow to yield results. That's when David Gedye decided that it could be better done by linking multiple computers via the internet to function together as a virtual supercomputer, thus eliminating the need for sole reliance on massively expensive time on a real supercomputer. This concept came to form the basis of cloud computing well before anyone even mentioned the words "Web 2.0".

Fast forward to present day. Its now practical and fairly simple to participate in. In addition to SETI@HOME there are many other offshoots, such as Rosetta@HOME, researching protein folding for cancer research, and Eienstein@HOME, which is searching for pulsars.

The reasoning behind doing something like this? I leave my linux-box home server running 24/7, but only use it a few hours a day. The program that manages my @HOME projects, BOINC, only uses processor time when the system is idle, which includes LAN activity, and is set to use only 2gb of disk space at the most. Essentially, it downloads files (big math problems) then uses processor cycles to complete them, uploading the results and deleting the original files.

So, if you have a machine that is on for most of the day that is mostly idle, why not set this up and contribute to some scientific research? It can be a great use for older systems too! If you have a box that's been collecting dust in the basement or garage, just throw a network card into it, install a lightweight Linux distro, like Puppy Linux or Xubunutu, then setup BOINC, pick yr projects and start contributing!

Here's a screengrab of my BOINC Client:

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TV as Second Display: Check.

In addition to a bunch of new furniture, Amy and I were given a tv
over the weekend by her parents. So I decided that it needed to go
into my office to act as a second display for the Linux server.
Earlier this week I had put in a new video card with multiple video-
outs, so all I had to do was configure the xorg.conf file and plug it
in. It's great for watching movies through vlc, but not much else due
to the low resolution.

I also upgraded to the beta of Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, which
solved some nvidia driver issues. Everything is running smoothly and
I'm glad I upgraded rather than waiting or the full release.

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Day Off

Spent most of today being punished for going out last night, but was interesting productive as well. I worked on my bitchin linux server for most of the day and am pretty satisfied with what I was able to accomplish. Not only did I get my BOINC client up and running, but I got awm and conky to work finally. And I increased my screen resolution for increased productivity (even if it means ctrl-+'ing every time I open a new tab in firefox).



All suitably nerdy, esp. with the screenshot.

I bought a few more used books today from bookworm, as per usual. Find of the day would have to be Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello--dozens of great pictures of James Joyce and neat forward by Anthony Burgess.

I attempted to make some nice hi-res scans, but my scanner software was refusing to behave, so I had to settle for slightly lower quality than I wanted. I plan on posting some more of these, but only when I can get a bit better quality out of my scanner, because it can definitely do it.

Also I got a Norton Critical (my favorite edition of pretty much anything) of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's hilarious Candide, a nice paperback Great Gatsby from the 70s and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which has lots of juicy crit in it. Nothing new, per se, except the Conrad, but all great editions of books that I tend to read ad nauseum.

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