Gimp Tutorial No. 1

Hopefully for the next while, I will be doing a few tutorials on GIMP. For those who don't know, GIMP is a GNU Image Manipulation Program. In Layman's terms, it's the equivalent to the Photoshop programs for Windows, but GIMP works on all platforms. I, myself, am learning GIMP at the moment, so if you see something I've done wrong, please let me know. Well, hopefully my first tutorial will be on here tomorow. Later.

New theme for Ubuntu on the AAO

I just finished installing the Jaunty Human Green theme from www.gnome-look.org. Kinda turned into a pain to get installed properly, but I almost have it set up. The only problem I'm having now, is that all text is white, so in browser windows, or app windows, unless the text is hilighted, you can't read anything. Hopefully I'll have that fixed sometime tomorow. Well, heres a screenshot.

This isn't about about Ubuntu, but it's BULL****!

Read this. That's BULLSHIT! Obama is a fascist! We, as Americans will soon be living in a fascist country if we let Obama do this. That just pisses me off.

Gateway Solo 2500

I found a dock for the Gateway earlier. Kinda cool. It uses the stock power cord, and gives it an ethernet connection. I'm still amazed that this thing didn't come with an ethernet connection. Oh, well. The dock I found is here. For only $9 , I plan on ordering it, since I just plan on blogging with it now. I guess tomorow, I'll explain a little more about installing Puppy Linux on a Solo 2500 and having everything work right.

Puppy Linux on the Aspire One

I finally got Puppy Linux on the One. The wireless is kinda quirky, to be honest. But, I am used to the ease of Ubuntus Network Manager too. So far, it's made my little A150 feel like it has a 4 Ghz processor in it, which is awesome. The version I installed has the Cairo Dock preinstalled and set up, so there's not much to do besides just use it really. It comes with most of the applications that need to be installed in most other distros. It's preinstalle web browser is Seamonkey, chat is Pidgin, several torrent programs, no OpenOffice though. To add applications is relatively easy and simple using Puppy package manager. Well, I'm gonna play with it some more and I'll let you kn ow when I learn more.

Puppy Linux

Well, I decided to try another flavor of Linux today. I just finished installing the PupFluxLite version of Puppy Linux. The install was a bit different since I'm not used to the text style installers, but it went rather smoothly. I installed it on my fiances old Gateway Solo 2500 laptop, which is  much faster now that Windows XP is off it. The GUI for the version of Puppy Linux installed wasn't bad, but I don't like the fact it didn't have a full taskbar. All it took was a right-click to access everything though. What was nice, andI didn't expect, was that the D-Link PCI wireless card worked out of the box.  Now, I just finished downloading Puppy Linux. I'm installing it since it has a taskbar that's actually useful. Anyway, Puppy Linux is a great OS for older computers to bring them back to life, istead of ending up in the landfill. I highly recomend trying out the live CD and see what you think.

I may have an Ubuntu convert

I finally got my fiance to try Ubuntu. I have let her use my Aspire 4720Z since I don't use it right now. So far she likes it. Later, I'll be showing her how to install Wine and get Myspace Karaoke working. I think once she see's most Windows software works in Wine, she may stay with Ubuntu. Hopefully :D

Ubuntu did something odd

Well, last night, I decided to dual-boot Ubuntu and Vista on my One. Unfortunately, I had to swap my Broadcom wireless card for the factory Atheros card since for some reason for the life of me I couldn't find the drivers for the broadcom card. Anyway, back to last night. I had set up the madwifi drivers and all the codecs I need without a problem. I've still not installed the Mac4Lin yet. I was using Ubuntu for a while to make sure everything was right, then I switched to Vista. 

There were the typical issues with it, but I was suprised. I previously had XP installed to use my phone as a modem, which worked fine. In Vista, it seemed like I had a faster connection through my phone. Awesome. My fiance had a problem with Ubuntu, which is another blog, so I switched back to Ubuntu to be able to help. Well, it booted up with out a problem. After booting, I noticed my Network Manager icon on the taskbar was showing up as a page with a red x. Hmm? It said it connected so whatever. I went on to help her, and came back to my One. I went to Applications>Internet to load Pidgin. Odd, no icons. Nothing seemed to have an icon. It was late so I figured I'd work on it in the morning.

Now, this morning. I first loaded Vista to browse the web while I smoked. When I switched to Ubuntu, that's odd. There are icons? Odd. I restarted a couple times, and its still working fine. Oh,well. at least its working.

Sprint Phone as Modem

I finally got my Sprint LG Rumor set up as my modem. Unfortunately, I had to reinstall Windows XP to do it. Don't know what else to say, but it works now.

3 new vintage radios

I got to purchase 3 new vintage radios today. 2 Zenith and a Farnsworth. The first today, was a Zenith Model 7H921. The second is a Farnsworth chassis. Don't know much about it. The third was another Zenith. Unsure on the model number right now, but hopefully a little research will tell me that. Earlier, I checked the tubes in all three radios. I got lucky since all the tubes were still good. The third may end up needing a couple tubes, but maybe not. Anyway, back to the first Zenith. After I checked the tubes, I tried it out. Took a bit for the tubes to warm up, but it powered on without any issues. Not picking up any stations at the moment, though. Unfortunately, while trying to tune a station in, the wire that connects the tuning knob to the tuner came loose. Hopefully get that fixed soon. The Farnsworth may be a while before I know what shape it is in. Since I don't know what model it is, I can't find a schematic for it, so I don't know which loose wires are for the speaker. The third, the Zenith, actually worked pretty decent after checking everything. It didn't take long for its tubes to get warm. At first, I thought the speaker was trashed, since it didn't have much volume to it no matter what the volume was adjusted to. Well, I guess it had just been so long since it had been used, it just needed to be on for a while. Well, I got it going pretty nicely, but I still think it needs a speaker. Maybe just needs the switches cleaned. Who knows. More later.

Rootkits

I've read several articles now about rootkits. If you don't know what a rootkit is, it is amalicious  trojan like program to allow an intruder to become a root user and therefore have complete administrative control over the system. From what I've read, there aren't too many rootkits out there, but the number is increasing. I decided to install and run Chkrootkit. Just run "sudo apt-get install chkrootkit". To run it, in Terminal enter " sudo chkrootkit". I came up clean, but who knows. I may not be so lucky one day.