These are some of my technology writings. I am a firm believer in the value of open source software and the culture of openness and cooperation that surrounds it. So most of my written work today is about open source rather than proprietary products. If you are looking for information about Microsoft products or anything Windows-based, then you are probably in the wrong place – though please feel free to look around anyway, if you have a few moments to spare.
I’ve had cheapo cards that I dropped, kicked, trod on, used a squillion times, paid the proverbial tuppence ha’penny for and they are still going. Others, even the expensive ones have failed or become flaky within a few months – or worse, clapped out just outside the warranty. Similarly hard disks can fail in the…
Editor’s note: since writing this article, I have had huge problems with RTools spamming me. I have asked them many times to stop, yet still they persist. My advice is do not use any RTools product. Or that if you must use RTools, do NOT register, otherwise they will pester you forever. Using the free…
Editors note: gOS was very shortlived. By 2011 it was gone. The new gOS operating system certainly would appear to up the ante in the ongoing war between the mighty Micro$haft and that pesky upstart Google. But is it any good and is it really Google? To find out, I just booted from the gOS…
Microsoft has been in trouble for some time – but has taken its executives quite a while to realise it. Vista has been a massive flop. And M$ is becoming increasingly perceived as a company that has ruthlessly exploited its monopoly – fleecing its customers for vast sums of money whilst providing poor quality, insecure…
…and Windows Media, Skype and GoogleEarth One of the problems with (K)Ubuntu (and many other Linux distributions) is that it will not play commercial, copy-protected DVD’s and a number of other proprietary file formats, out-of-the-box. There are complex legal and ethical reasons for this. However, many users just want to play their files and watch…
Note this applies to Ubuntu 7.xx and may be out of date. For Ubuntu 8.xx please visit:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=58 These are my favourite (K)ubuntu applications. The name “Goosebuntu” is not entirely serious – it is just a name we coined in the office. However the following apps will turn a standard Kubuntu installation into something really…
Firstly please back up anything that is important – as you would with any major upgrade on any computer system! Then you can either use the Synaptic package manager or in this instance it is probably quicker to install from a Terminal window. First we make sure the system is fully up to date. Simply…
Ubuntu Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop. This is a very clean, simple environment and is well suited to Linux beginners. In many respects it is much easier to use than any version of MS Windows – though its layout is a little different from Windows. For example, its application menus are at the top of…
Just occasionally one stumbles across a small but very annoying problem, that takes ages to hunt down a fix. However, when you do stumble across the solution, you find it was just one tiny mistake – that should never have been made in the first place. On our site http://www.garfnet.org.uk/coppermine we use a special Coppermine…
Well it’s a cold bleak miserable Southampton winter’s day outside. Decided to take a few “library” snaps of some current favourite bits of kit, including a rather nice pair of wideband communications receivers. Related Images:
[Reproduced from DEOSS ] Seems that Micro$haft’s corporate enslavement permeates far beyond the English-speaking world. A long and complex legal battle is currently raging in the former Eastern Bloc state of Hungary. APEH (the Hungarian Tax Office) has decided that all Hungarian businesses now have to submit their tax returns on-line. This would not be…
It seems that with a little determination, the CS-R20 for the Icom IC-R20 software can be persuaded to run on Linux. I eventually made the CS-R20 software load under Kubuntu Linux using Crossover (a commercial implementation of WINE). The method in this article should work with many other Debian-derived Linuxes too, perhaps with a little…
Being a geeky type of chap, I generally find that the best way to guarantee that Santa puts a decent geek-friendly Christmas present in my stocking is to buy it myself! So this year I treated myself to an Icom IC-R20 hand-held, all-band communications receiver/scanner. I have always had a penchant for small communications receivers….
“The world doesn’t need lots of different operating systems” seems to be the prevailing wisdom of the moment. But I would question that. Why? Do we also need only one type of car, or one type of television? OK there are those who say the world would be a better place without either. But would…
With all the misery in the world, I think this project is actually quite heart-warming. The XO laptop (AKA the $100.00 laptop), is the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte from MIT and former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan. It is designed for children in the majority world. The first machines started rolling off the Changshu…
2007-10-18 saw the release of the latest Ubuntu & Kubuntu Linux, version 7.10, also known as Gutsy. Unfortunately a number of users are having difficulties with the upgrade. Seems that either the “Version Upgrade” button doesn’t show in your package manager… https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15370 Or if it does show then you cannot go much further. Adept users…
If you want a version of Ubuntu that looks & feels like more like your familiar Windoze XP then try the free upgrade to Kubuntu. Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop. IMHO KDE is loads nicer and much more feature-rich than either Windoze or the Gnome desktop. As well as being highly customisable, KDE makes extensive…
These days I am more concerned with bangs-per-buck rather than the latest, greatest technology. This kit is so disposable nowadays and the technology changes so quickly that I think you need to adopt a completely different purchase strategy. This is my strategy for consumer durables such as digital cameras and computers… Do some research and…
Well they say absolute power corrupts. On the other hand the two companies are quite different. The corporate ethos and the attitude towards creativity are almost complete opposites. For example, I never heard any Google execs reported as using expressions such a “embrace, extend and extinguish“… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish And I think or at least I…
You can finally dump Windows! Several people people have written in asking questions along the lines of, "why are you dumping Windows and using Linux instead?" The answer is simply that we now have overwhelming technical, financial and perhaps most importantly, moral reasons for no longer wishing to use Microsoft software – if it can…
PHPRunner is arguably the best PHP scripting tool currently available. Trouble is that at time of writing, there is only a version for M$ Windoze. This explains how I managed to persuade it work under Linux using Codeweavers CrossoverOffice 6.1.0 – a comercial implementation of WINE. First, I downloaded PHPRunner 4.0 “Build 264” – the…
At time of writing, we have got all the following Windoze apps running very adequately on Linux – using either WINE or Codeweavers Crossover (a commercial implementation of WINE). Of course we have replaced many legacy Windoze applications with equivalent (or sometimes better) Linux apps. Other Windoze apps are currently irreplaceable. This is an assessment…
We bought a couple of IBM Lenovo 3000C200 laptop PCs in 2007 May. These are fairly average 1700MHz laptops purchased from a UK supplier called eBuyer for around 300 quid a throw. These came preloaded with the basic version of Windows Vista. To describe Vista’s performance as dismal would be understatement of the year. Problems…
This is a crude but effective way to make one of my favourite Windows applications, Cerious Software’s ThumbsPlus! version 6 or 7 work reasonably well on Linux, by using Codeweavers Crossover. This is something of a bodge and it has come about more by trial and error rather than by rational scientific reasoning – so…
The Linux file system can seem a little strange especially for those coming from an M$ Windoze background. This is my humble attempt at debunking it and perhaps making it a little easier to understand. Several main differences… There are some important differences between the DOS/Windows type file system and the system used by Unix-derived…
