RaLink RT2500

This thing is a POS. It's supposed to work out of the box, but it's yet to do much of anything for me in my Compaq Presario desktop. I'm going to try compiling the driver myself, but I doubt it will help much. In my HP Pavillion desktop it worked fine in the same spot, but I had Ubuntu 9.04 on it, which may be the difference. Who knows. I'll figure it out though. Just felt like ranting before the fiance got home.

Closed minded people

Why is it most Windows users act like they have their head stuck up their ass? A now ex-friend, had her head so far up there, she could smell dinner from 3 nights ago. I showed her an article about how Microsoft is admitting Linux is becoming a threat. Her response was "I'm not afraid of Linux. Why would anyone want Linux anyway? It doesn't ever work, and you need to be a tech geek to keep it working. I like being able to just get on my computer and it work without having to work for it."
She's obviously someone who has never touched Linux, and seems to think she can have an opinion about how bad it is. First of all, how is it even possible to have an opinion about something you know nothing about? That would be like me saying writing a program in C+ is hard. I've never tried, so I know I can't say anything.
Obviously Linux (Canonical and Redhat, to be specific) are becoming a threat to Microsoft. I may not be fond of Microsoft's practices, but I seriously don't think they would file a claim stating that, if they really didn't believe it to be so. To me, that's good and bad at the same time, but I'm not going to get into that right now. That's for another day.
Well, I'm done. I'm going to end this before I put her name and IM name on here for everyone to see. If someone wants it, feel free to message me, though. :D

    I don't really have much to say about Ubuntu today. I've been catching up with my Linux news all day, and there is a lot on my mind. I've seen a lot of Windows or Mac people talking trash about Linux. Also, Linux people talking trash right back. Notice I didn't group these "people" with their respective communities. 

    Let's start with the Windows people. I read on one site, someone (with 20+ years experience with a computer) saying with Windows it's click install, and go, but when they used Linux, it took hours to install a basic program. Because of that, Linux is a "geek toy". Ok, I have to somewhat agree there. Linux can be a geek toy. But for most it isn't. My fiance, who was an avid Windows user, and after installing Linux Mint on her laptop, she caught on rather fast. And she never really asked questions much different than she would using Windows. But why does the Linux community knowing it isn't that hard to do that, have to flame the fire? Just let it go.

    If someone who is determined to use Windows, and Windows only, tries to say something about Linux, ignore them people. I've seen the same thing a thousand times in forums too. A person new to Linux joins, has a decent question about running a Windows program in Linux, but the community says there's a Linux program that does the same thing. The newbie is determined to run the Windows app., and people start to flame them.

    How does this look for the community? I know of several people that have seen threads like that and thought the Linux community was like that if you weren't a Linux geek. I do mean that in a good way, BTW. I was one of those few in the beginning. When Vista crashed, I tried Ubuntu, but my Atheros wireless card wasn't supported then. I asked for help on the Ubuntu Forums, and got no help, was flamed for not understanding every word I was told. If I had the money at the time, I probably would have gone back to Vista. 

    But that's one of the many things that give Linux a bad vibe. I seriously believe that there would be more people using linux if it weren't for the bad things.

OSx86 & Ubuntu 8.10 on the Aspire One

Well, I finally did it. I'm running OSx86 and Ubuntu together on my Aspire One. It was actually rather hard, to be honest. There aren't any tutorials that really tell you much other than the software needed and to install the 2 systems. Anyway, it's much simpler than it sounds. Check out the Venera 7 tutorial for the software needed. Google "osx on aspire one" to find it.

I used the Kalyway 10.5.2 disc to do all this. Start by booting your disc, and select english, the go to the Disk Utility. You'll need to partition your HD with 2 partitions. 1 in Mac OS extended Journaled, and don't use the other. Reboot, remove the disc, and insert your Ubuntu disc.

Do your ubuntu install on the partition you left alone in the OSx86 installer. Do a 1GB Swap partition, and do the rest in EXT 3 and set it for "/". Let it do it's thing and then log into Ubuntu so we can get ready for OSx86. Once you are logged in, get the PC EFI you downloaded to your home directory. Open up Terminal and get ready to enter this:

$ sudo mkdir /boot/pc_efi
$ sudo cp ~/boot_v8 /boot/pc_efi

Ok. Now, press Alt+F2. Enter "gksudo nautilus". This let's you browse your computer as a super user. Go to System>Boot and put the "boot_v5" file there, and clost the window before anything gets messed with.

Next, open up a Terminal again. Enter "sudo gedit /etc/grub/menu.lst". Enter this at the bottom of the file:



title Mac OS X
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/pc_efi/boot_v8

Save it, and your done. Shut down, boot up the Kalyway disc, and go through the steps till you can click "Customize".

• Completely uncheck ‘Language Translations’.
• Expand ‘Kernels’ and select ONLY ‘kernel_9.2speedstep’.
• Expand ‘Graphics_Drivers’, expand ‘Intel_GMA’ and select ONLY ‘GMA950′.
• Completely uncheck ‘Audio_Drivers’.
• Expand ‘Networks_Drivers’. and select ONLY ‘RTL1000′.
• Completely uncheck ‘Mobo_Chipsets’.
• completely uncheck ‘Patches’.

You can select some of the Thirds Apps. Get Adium, and Transmission at a minimum.

Now click install, and skip the disc check so things will do faster. Now go grab a smoke, and find something to do for a while.

Now that is finished, we get to have some fun. Open up a Terminal and enter this:

sudo vi /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

It'll show the file, press "i" to edit it, and under kernel flags, enter cpus=1 between the ><. Press Esc, and then hold Shift and then press "Z Z". That's done. Now run the Kalyway 10.5.3 combo update. DO NOT restart after it finishes. open the other installer you got with it and run it. Select the vanilla kernel, and install it. Now restart When you reboot, press escape to see the grub menu. Select Mac OS X and after that, let it go through that menu, then press F8 when you can. Type "update -v" and hit enter. It will reboot, and do thqt aagain. Once your back in OSX, Google Mac 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 updates. ONLY get them from the Apple site! the combo updates will brick your system! For the other 2 updates, before you run them in Terminal enter :

$ sudo su -
$ while sleep 1 ; do rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext ; done

leave that in the terminal while doing the updates each time. Press Ctrl+C to exit it to be able to reboot. Do that for both. After you do that, just follow any of the tuts for OSX on the Aspire One. BTW, there is a kext for the left SD card slot. Just Google it. Hopefully that will help out since every other tut I tried kept bricking OSX. If you have a question, message me at my new e-mail: andy@thevintageattic.net . Good Luck !

I've got to rant a little...

Well I've finally gotten around to catching up with my Linux news, and I'm not liking what I've been reading. Several things have gotten to me. There was an article on Linux Insider.com about a guy attempting to explain why Linux sucks. While some points are well done, some of them have no basis to a real Linux user. The one point I completely agree with though, is that Linux as a whole needs to be simplified. I'll probably get hate mail from Windows people for this, but Windows and OSX people ARE a bit less intelligent than a typical Linux user. I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but in a constructive way. Windows and OSX users
have been given dumbed down operating systems, so they don't have much, if any, advanced computer skills. Linux users need these skills to run their OS of choice. I'm not saying that cammand line use is completely necessary, but on occassion it is needed.
Now, I've been using Ubuntu and various other Linux distros for around 3 years now exclusively. Before that, I used Windows 95, 98, Win2K, XP, Vista, and I learned computers back in the early days of Apple. Recently, I decided to try NOT using Terminal in Ubuntu and Console in Puppy. So far, I've been going about 2 months with out needing to type commands. I haven't even had the need to figure out how to do something with the GUI I would normally do in Terminal or Console. So when are these fanbois going to get a life and actually complain about something that is actually a problem in Linux?
One thing I have a problem with is Wine. While it is a Godsend for those who use certain Windows apps, it need major work in my opinion. From my experience with it, there are still a lot of apps that just don't work with it. I like World of Warcraft, but without a decent amount of work, I can't play it in Ubuntu. I know it's possible, so don't start ranting yet.
Next, software manufacturers need to get out of the grip of Microsoft and start porting software to Linux. If they could port to the major Linux distros, it could be made to work for nearly all of them. I have several friends that would be totally willing to switch away from Windows if they could get better software.
Another issue I read in the previously mentioned article was noobs don't want to do kernel updates. Are you freaking kidding me? I know with Ubuntu, updates are constant, and can get annoying sometimes, but kernel updates are in there. So where is the issue of kernel updates? I'm not really seeing it. Something else is the need of simplicity. Honestly, Linux is more simple that Windows and especially OSX. If you have a problem with something in a Linux distro, look in their forum. If not there, there's probably a Linux blog explaining how to fix it. With Windows....ugh. If you Google the problem, you normaly get something like 20 million links to look at. Usually, the forums have stuck up IT guys in them, so not much help there. OSX is something I'm not going to go into, because after trying it, and feeling like I had no control over anything hapening. Plus, the last time I used it was a couple years ago.
So when are Linux haters going to make true accusations instead of making up lies? I admit Linux may not be the better OS, but if you don't like it, go buy Windows. Noone is stopping you. But keep in mind, Windows has major downfalls too. I'm not going to go into them today. Maybe tomorrow.