The Linux Extremist

My fiancee likes small laptops. One of her first recovery missions for me was to take an old Dell and see if Linux would revive it. Sadly, even Ubuntu can’t make a laptop that has a battery running as hot as short order chef’s griddle run better. She has since moved on, but I remembered that she liked having a tiny laptop, sufficient to fit into her handbag.

Recently, PC World made available a cheap version of the MSI Wind netbook, known as the Advent 4211. It’s based on the excellent Intel Atom processor; however, there are some ways in which it’s deficient: it has only an 80 GB hard drive, and only 1 GB of RAM. Plus, for some strange reason, it comes with Windows XP.

I tested it in Windows mode for a while and was somewhat surprised by what I found: the processor was powerful enough to run Rome: Total War without any hiccups. However, as my lady doesn’t play games, I decided to ditch Windows and give her a smoothly running Linux machine. I bought a 120 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 hard drive, and I had an old Dell 1490 broadcom based wireless card to replace the Realtek card that the machine contains. I also bought an additional 1 GB of memory: memory from Crucial only costs £14.

The Advent 4211 doesn’t have a CD ROM drive, but LG GSA-E50N drive is perfectly adequate for the job.

However, it’s important to follow a series of steps to ensure that you’re getting the maximum performance out of the laptop. These steps begin before you replace anything.

First, ensure you’re using the latest firmware. If you’ve purchased the Advent 4211, this can be found by clicking here. If you’re using an MSI Wind, this bios update can be found here.

Once installed, shut down and remove the battery for ten minutes. For whatever reason, missing this step can cause the keyboard to freeze up. Restart and then go into the BIOS; there is an option to optimise the system by pressing F9: do so, and then save and exit.

After rebooting to ensure everything is all right - switch off. Remove the battery. You’re ready for surgery.

Removing the cover is relatively straightforward: there are nine screws which hold the bottom in place. Once these are undone, the back pops off easily. There is a free memory slot which is instantly recognisable: detailed instructions on how to put the additional memory in is available here.

Removing the wireless card turned out to be the most difficult portion of the task. The wireless antenna leads, which are indicated by a small white and a small black cable leading into the card, popped out easily enough - however, the screw which held the card in place gave me no end of trouble. It had been screwed in so tightly, and the screw itself was so soft, that the treads were ruined with only a couple of attempted turns. I had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to get it free; this accidentally loosened the metal portion below the card which the screw turned into. Fortunately, a small dab of superglue at the tip of the metal portion, fixed it back into place.

Beneath the wireless card there is an additional screw which frees the hard drive. The drive after this, pops out relatively easily. The Advent 4211 comes with a Western Digital drive, a brand I detest: I took it out, removed the metal guide and affixed it to the Seagate, which slotted easily back in. I put the drive back, put in the screw and then put in the Dell 1490.

The Dell 1490 wireless card is not an easy fit. The antenna cables are particularly awkward. Furthermore, a thin sticker on the bottom of the card is all that prevents an ill-placed protrusion from touching a portion of the motherboard, which can lead to it shorting out. I screwed it in to the point that it was in place, but did not tighten it to excess.

After putting the back on, and screwing it in place, I put back in the battery, and plugged the CD drive in. My OS in this case is Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1 - note this is the latest version, as the immediate predecessor did not work.

Installation was straightforward; the only complication lay in a difficulty I had made for myself in using the Broadcom based Dell 1490. I plugged in the wired connection into my router, entered the terminal and typed:

sudo apt-get update

After that, I went into System > Administration > Hardware Drivers and found that the Broadcom wireless card driver was awaiting activation. I activated it, following the steps in the installation process after this selection. Wireless gave no further issues after this.

Apart from this, graphics acceleration, sound, and all other features worked as expected: the MSI Wind / Advent 4211 appears to be a very good fit with Ubuntu Linux. Wireless is quick and punchy, and even the small screen (10″) is something one gets used to after a short while.

In fact, I like it so much, I may get one myself.

My ideas about waste make it nearly impossible for me to throw out an old computer.  I still have an old HP Compaq nx7000 which is still my workhorse - it’s the living room computer, the one I sit down with in the morning and evening to do web surfing, writing emails and word processing.   With its wide screen and reasonable graphics, it’s not bad for the task.

That said, I thought it was really coming to the end of the line.  I had upgraded it from Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron via the usual upgrade procedure while Hardy was in Beta.  I lost the Desktop Effects, and the computer seemed to be getting bogged down: the extensive error messages I got during shut off was particularly painful.

I decided to give it one last go with a clean install; if it didn’t work, then I was going to have to accept that the laptop, after 5 punishing years of service, was coming to its end.

But I’m pleased to say it did work, and in fact, it’s better than ever.

I should point out that this is not a standard HP Compaq nx7000: I replaced its original IDE hard drive with a Seagate 7200 80 GB drive.  I also put in an SMC Networks PCMCIA 802.11g card (this is based on the Atheros chipset).  I also put in 1 GB of RAM several years ago.  These have helped in terms of connectivity and speed; otherwise, it is a standard first generation Centrino laptop.  It has a 64 MB ATI Radeon laptop graphics card, and a lovely 1680 x 1050 widescreen aspect.

I wanted to ensure that the transition was as painless as possible; this meant that I wanted to ensure that I’d copied all my Bookmarks and emails. Fortunately, in Firefox 2, there is a facility under Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks to export Bookmarks as a single file. Firefox 3 has a facility to import these bookmarks.

Thunderbird was less straightforward. I found an excellent add on called Import Export Tools. It’s available here. I was able to export all the messages, whisk them off with the other files and able to wipe the hard drive with confidence.

Installation was painless.  All of the hardware was detected and there were no problems with the sound, graphics, or networking; I still remain convinced that this laptop was more designed for Linux than for Windows.  Where it gets a bit trickier is trying to “smooth the setup”.

First and foremost, with my setup, I have two competing wireless cards.  As I’m not interested in having an 802.11b connection, I went into Applications > Accessories > Terminal and typed:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Add the following line:

blacklist ipw2100

Save and close.  This will knock out the silly old Intel wireless card upon restart.

I found that the Desktop effects still did not work.  Not to worry though, there is plenty of eye candy to be had at www.gnome-look.org.

In my case, I decided to install the Aurora GTK engine, because I rather liked the Elegant Aurora theme.

The good news is that this old laptop can run it. The bad news is that it does require some further packages in order to make it work.

I first had to go into Terminal again and type:

sudo apt-get install libc6-dev g++ gcc

But this isn’t sufficient, it is looking for specific GTK packages to make it work. One also needs to do this:

sudo aptitude install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev

Then extract the Aurora 1.4 folder from the zipped archive onto the desktop. Go into Terminal again, and navigate to that folder. From this point, the instructions are relatively straightforward. Type:

sudo ./configure –prefix=/usr

Then hit enter. After it goes through the motions, then type:

sudo make install

This will install the Aurora engine. Reboot.

You can then go into System > Preferences > Appearance and install the Elegant Aurora theme. Its curved, elegant appearance, while not as “dynamic” as Desktop Effects, is pleasing to the eye.

However, there are other items I wanted to install. First, fonts. It’s necessary to get the Microsoft core fonts in order to view web pages correctly. I went into System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and Searched for the following package, “msttcorefonts”. This package contains all the base Microsoft fonts one could require. I also wanted Macintosh fonts, as I rather like Lucida Grande. I found them at “Iceman’s Emulation Page”.

Once downloaded, unzip and put all the .TTF files on the desktop. Go back to terminal and then type:

cd /usr/share/fonts

Then type:

sudo mkdir apple

Navigate back (via “cd”) to the Desktop. Then type:

sudo mv *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/apple

This will move all the fonts to the “apple” folder.

You can then refresh the font cache by typing:

sudo fc-cache -fv

This will clock through your newly installed fonts and make them available for use.

Next, there is the matter of setting up Firefox. Firefox 3 is an improvement on Firefox 2 in terms of speed, though it is still a beta, with the limitations that implies. Some of the tweaks one could do with Firefox 2, still apply to Firefox 3. It’s a question of identifying where changing values is still appropriate.

To start, type “about:config” in the address bar.

You will get a warning; proceed anyway.

The HP Compaq nx7000 now needs to be treated as if it is a slow computer on a fast connection (given the SMC network card). Add / change the following values unless these values have already been changed / exceeded by the Firefox 3 configuration:

user_pref(”network.http.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(”network.http.proxy.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(”network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”, 8);
user_pref(”content.notify.backoffcount”, 5);
user_pref(”plugin.expose_full_path”, true);
user_pref(”ui.submenuDelay”, 0);

And:

user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 3000000);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 1000000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 1000000);
user_pref(”content.maxtextrun”, 4095);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 1000);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 48);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”dom.disable_window_status_change”, true);

This will yield a substantially faster Firefox.

I don’t like the default Firefox theme, so I’ve gotten a hold of Phoenity Modern. I also made sure I hit You Tube to get it to automatically install the Adobe Flash Plugin (I went for the genuine Adobe plugin rather than its open source equivalents).

Next, Opera. Opera 9.27 doesn’t work with Flash on this machine; so it’s time to be daring and go with the beta, known as 9.50b / Kestrel. This can be gotten here. This works with the Flash plugin reasonably well.

Finally, Thunderbird; one does need to install the Import Export Tools again, however, it is relatively easy to import the messages, once you’ve re-set up your accounts. Just ensure you’ve clicked on the right folder - i.e., Inbox, when you’re trying to import Inbox messages.

There were other items to set up: as the FireFTP extension doesn’t work with Firefox 3, I went through setting up gFTP. Pidgin internet messenger setup was simple and painless. As my printer is a Canon, I used the Turboprint drivers, as they seem to lead to less smudging in the output than the standard Ubuntu drivers.

Also, with some wallpaper and icons from Deviant Art, I managed to make the old laptop look like this:

Screenshot One
Screenshot Two

But most of all, it is not left behind by recent developments - with the latest Ubuntu, latest Open Office, latest Firefox and latest Opera - it’s at the forefront of them. Not bad for something which in Windows world, would be pushing up the daisies.

My parents, now retired, like to keep computing simple. To their credit, when faced with a choice between a PC and a Mac, they chose the latter. However, my father tried out the Linux PC I built in 2006, and was highly impressed by its speed. So, for Christmas, I’ve offered to replace their ageing iMac with a homemade 64 bit Ubuntu Linux machine. I’ve yet to hear if they’re going to take me up on the offer.

The build is complicated somewhat by the fact that they’ve moved to America for their retirement, so the usual haunts I’d use for parts don’t apply. No matter, there is www.newegg.com to the rescue. From this, I’ve managed to put together the following list of parts:

I’m starting with a Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 processor. It’s not the fastes that Intel make, but it is 64 bit and it has a nice balance of cost for performance. It also comes with the necessary cooling equipment.

Sticking with Intel for the moment, I’ve selected their Intel BOXDP965LTCK LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Motherboard. If I need to change the processor to something with more oomph later, the board gives me some room for this.

I’ve proposed getting two sets of Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel memory. The memory comes highly rated, and again, appears to be a nice balance of price and performance.

Linux support for Nvidia is still better than ATI in my view. At the same time, my parents are not likely to be playing graphics intensive games. So for graphics I’ve selected a ASUS EN8400GS/HTP/256M GeForce 8400GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready card.

The sound on the motherboard doesn’t look particularly convincing. Hence, I’m proposing that I bolster that with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE SB0570LPVP 5.1 Channels PCI Interface Low-Profile card.

SATA drives offer better performance than their IDE predecessors. I don’t want to skimp here, but at the same time, my parents aren’t going to load loads of music and photos on it. For the hard drive, I’ve picked a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500AAKS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s drive. For a DVD-R drive, I’ve picked a SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B.

As for the casing and power, I’ve gone with a GIGABYTE Triton 180 Black 0.7mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower and Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU ATX 12V 2.0 500W Power Supply.

With these parts, plus a 22in Samsung monitor, a slimline Kensington USB keyboard, and a Microsoft mouse, the sum total comes to less than $1070. In contrast, to replace their iMac, the entry level model would cost $1199 - this has a smaller screen (20in), much less memory (only 1 GB), and a slower processor (2.0 Ghz). Of course, the Mac does have a lovely casing.

That said, the user experience need not be radically different; The Mac4Lin Project is an example of how the usability of a Mac can be brought to a Linux machine. Furthermore, there are benefits the Ubuntu machine will have: for example, it will be able to run Swiftweasel, and connected to an American cable modem, it should be blazingly fast.

If my parents allow me to execute on this project, I will write an update as to how the project proceeds.

Merry Christmas to all, nonetheless!

Note: It’s been a while since I published a blog entry - however, I’ve updated the software and now it’s fully up and running again.

I’ll re-open this blog with my experiences with a new laptop.

My HP laptop was - at long last - about to die. All hardware manufacturers put in a lifespan on their equipment, mine was no exception. I replaced the battery and the hard drive, but the computer was taking longer to boot, hard drive failures were starting to crop up, and even the power on button was starting to not respond as it used to: it took enough pressure to crush a golf ball just to switch on the thing.

So for my sins, I got a new Lenovo 3000 N200 laptop - with Windows Vista Ultimate.

I experimented with Vista for a couple of weeks; while it was pretty, it annoyed me nearly instantly. This is a new laptop with a dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM. Why was it taking a solid 10 minutes to boot? Granted, some of the blame lies with Lenovo insisting on stuffing the laptop full of their own bloatware, but even with that removed, its boot time was considerably slower than the laptop that I just left behind.

The experiment was further compounded by purchasing Office 2007. This too was slow to boot on a machine of this power; much has been made about its revamped navigation, but the icon and menus motif leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, it nearly choked on the novel I’m writing.

I waited for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon to be released; its arrival was a godsend. As soon as it came out, I turned the Lenovo into a dual boot machine.

The performance differential is huge. What once was a slow clunker turned into a graceful, fast and elegant machine. I asked someone to time me while I booted the same machine up using Ubuntu as opposed to Vista - Ubuntu was eight minutes faster.

This is not to say that Ubuntu didn’t need tweaking; unfortunately there were two problems to be addressed at the outset - the audio didn’t work, and there was an annoying screen flicker associated with the Nvidia driver.

The screen flicker issue has a simple resolution:

1. Goto: System>Preferences>Advanced desktop settings (The compiz config settings manager)
2. Click on General options>display settings
3. Untick Detect Output
4. Manually input your screen’s resolution (1680×1050+0+0 for this model)

Fixing the sound was more complicated, however, I found some useful instructions here.

Thanks to using the Moomex themes for both Compiz and Gnome, I haven’t lost any eye candy either; its appearance is just as high tech and elegant as that of Vista. The other new installation I’ve made was to put on the Swiftweasel Browser. This has proven to be incredibly fast - far outstripping Firefox on Vista.

So why don’t I get rid of Vista entirely? Were it not for Rome: Total War, I probably would. But having to dip into the Windows world every so often is a cogent reminder of why one is a Linux person: greater speed, efficiency, performance, and apart from the gaming aspect, a lot more fun.

I am headed off on vacation soon, amidst increasing signs that I need one badly. I’m developing a strange case of paranoia because of my company’s website; I compulsively, constantly check if our website is still performing well on Google.

Getting this right has been very difficult; a project that was initiated prior to my joining the company left the website on two separate servers, using two different technologies and a completely different domain. The redirects didn’t help; the site sank without a trace on search engines. Chaos ensued, and it’s only now, after 6 months, that I’ve been able to initiate a programme of web marketing and search engine optimisation.
The optimisation updates have primarily focused on using the mod_rewrite module to change database driven links (with parameters, such as www.whatever.com/index.php?parameter=1&otherparameter=2) into something much easier for Google to index (i.e., rational links like www.whatever.com/parameter1/otherparamter2/). This is a fairly standard procedure; what was truly bizarre was that this suggestion took a long time to be accepted by management. Since these changes were put in place, I’ve been watching, waiting, and mostly, been relieved that the changes are helping.

Still, I think it’s the fate of any internet centric person to use Google extensively. In the process, I’ve learned all sorts of little tricks; if I know the site in question that has a particular bit of information, I can ask Google to “site:whatever.com” and then search within the results. I know when to wrap quotes around a phrase and when not to do so. I know how to avoid expressions that are too general. All in all, it has replaced going to the library or buying a newspaper. However, all of this benefit does come at a cost for a webmaster; the workings of Google are maddeningly opaque. One day the site will be fully indexed, and the next, it will be shot down. One day a site will be top of the rankings, the next, it will be at the bottom.

Fortunately, the dips are disappearing in my case; the site is achieving a level of stability, albeit this may be an illusion. Someone may alter an algorithm and my site may plummet into obscurity once more. My approach is simple, do absolutely everything to prevent giving a Google an excuse to not index pages. For example, in addition to the activities I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve tried using Google Sitemaps.

I first tested these sitemaps on my private websites; I heartily recommend the Wordpress plugin for Google sitemaps, and also a tool called XML Sitemaps, which is obtainable for $15. The only problem with the latter tool is that when I used it to index my Sietch and Sith Order sites, it attempted to index the entire product catalogue of Amazon.com, which was accessible through the sites’ online stores.

That said, sitemaps are not only useful for Google, they also come in handy for Yahoo’s new Site Explorer tool, which accepts the Google sitemap protocol; I submitted both my sitemap and RSS feeds to Site Explorer and found that Yahoo’s “Splut” search engine came onto the site with a vengeance. Overall traffic has improved as a result. A sitemap for my company’s site has had similar benefits.

It is, however, a struggle to remain found rather than lost. It’s not just Google that one has to contend with, but all the other sites that are working just as hard as mine to edge ahead in the Search Engine Optimisation game. Paranoia will have to be a state of being; but fortunately, there will be a brief respite as afforded by my vacation beginning next week. I just have to force myself not to check, and if I worry, to have another cup of egg nog.

3 out of 4 of my computers run Ubuntu Linux. Breezy was all right, Dapper was great; when Edgy was released, I wondered, “Could it get any better?”

The press on the latest release, Ubuntu “Edgy Eft” 6.10, suggested that it was going to contain a lot of new approaches to the operating system, a radical departure rather than maintaining continuity. This made me nervous; everything worked well in Dapper, sometimes, in the words of Edmund Burke, “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

However, curiousity got the better of me. I first took the plunge using my old HP Compaq nx7000 laptop. Rather than do a clean install, I opted to do an upgrade. In order to do this, I went to Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal and typed -

gksu “update-manager -c”

This then made the upgrade available.

The upgrade process itself was fairly painless. After it completed, the laptop rebooted; the speed improvement in loading was noticeable. To my relief, none of my settings had been undone. With the latest version of Swiftfox as my browser and Edgy, this 4 year old laptop was running faster than ever. Fonts were also cleaner and easier on the eyes.

I tried this upgrade next on my Savrow Katana K-90. Again, the download and upgrade process was fairly painless; however, I had to re-install ndiswrapper in order for it to work with its wireless card. Apart from this, no other changes to settings were required. However, 3D acceleration using ATI’s proprietary fglrx driver was lost in the upgrade; I am waiting for an update to the driver or the OS in order to rectify this problem. This, however, is a minor inconvenience; otherwise, the PC functions as well as it has ever done and again, boots faster.

The most problematic upgrade was for my desktop computer, which I’ve nicknamed “Beige Lightning”. While there were no issues with drivers, Edgy has problems detecting a USB keyboard. With Dapper, detection was instantaneous. However with Edgy, I’ve had to wait at the login screen while the Function button on my Microsoft Internet Keyboard flashes; when it turns a steady green, then it’s ready, but sometimes that can take up to 5 minutes. I have tried various settings in the BIOS in order to fix this issue; none have been successful.

Overall, however, the upgrade has been about as problem-free as can be expected - in the case of the Savrow Katana and the desktop computer, there is a definite roughness around the edges; in the case of the HP Compaq nx7000, it’s been an enhancement. Life with Edgy is nearly as sweet as it was with Dapper; depending on the machine, it’s even sweeter.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set of desktop computers in a more wretched state than those I saw this morning. They had been sitting in an unventilated storage unit that had no climate control whatsoever; it’s important to note that this has been one of the hottest summers I can recall as well. My colleague and I bundled them into the back of a Volkswagen Golf for a rather bumpy ride back to the office; at that point, the damage had been done by the conditions, it was difficult to see how it could be much worse.

The machines were all the same model: the Packard Bell iMedia 1307. For those who aren’t familiar with this model, it comes with a Celeron D processor, 256 MB of RAM, SiS graphics, and strangely, these had a 160 GB Hard Drive.

It was going to be something of a miracle if they started up; however they did. Still, the result was not particularly pleasing: the machines come with Windows XP Home as standard. It was clear from the outset, however, that it was not running happily. There was a definite grind and churn. Once booted, Internet Explorer was sluggish.

I would have been tempted to leave it alone; it might have been sufficient to say that these were “functional”, more or less, and let it be. However, these PCs were going to be used in a demonstration to customers. The idea of the customers thinking my company was as sluggish as these machines was as unpleasant as it was untrue.

Among the assets I had was an old Nvidia GeForce 4 graphics card. Fortunately the iMedia 1307 has a spare AGP slot. Also, the case construction makes it inot difficult to open and install additional components. As a test, I installed the card in one of them and then put Ubuntu Dapper Drake in the CD ROM drive. The Live CD worked well: all the hardware worked straight out of the box. I decided to install it, and see if Linux could bring something as wretched as this back to life.

Installation was peculiar; just a note of warning, the CD ROM drive scratched the first Ubuntu CD I put into it. A second CD and attempt resulted in the installer crashing. Another attempt with the same CD worked. After about an hour of installation and then downloading the latest upgrades, the PC was virtually reborn. It booted in approximately half the time that it took to boot Windows XP.

To put icing on the cake, I installed the nvidia-glx drivers; these are obtainable by going into System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and searching for “nvidia”. Once installed, it’s worth going into Applications > Accesories > Terminal and typing the following:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

After typing in your password, and Gedit opens, search for the following text - “nv”. You’ll be led to a section where the video driver is named. Replace “nv” with “nvidia”. Save, and then reboot; you’ll know if it was successful if a large Nvidia logo appears for a moment while the computer is booting.

The computer was by now amongst the living; to add some final sparkle to its performance, I put Swiftfox on as its main browser. In the case of Ubuntu, it’s relatively simple; I got the appropriate package from www.getswiftfox.com, and installed it using the GDebi installer that offers itself up as a default option. The only difficult portion was changing all the Firefox links to Swiftfox - this can be done by right clicking on “Applications”, selecting “Edit Menus”, drilling down to the Firefox item, then right click and selecting “Properties” on Firefox. Replace all instances of “Firefox” with “Swiftfox”.

With the added graphics card, Ubuntu and Swiftfox, the iMedia 1307, in spite of being roasted, was turned into something decent; it is definitely not an embarassment. It would indeed be an ideal computer for someone who just wants to do web browsing and basic office tasks. In this case, however, it’s a relief that it merely works well.

When I first tried Firefox on Linux, I thought to myself “Things simply don’t get better than this”. I had never used a quicker browser; it seemed to be making the most of my broadband connection. Never before had the internet seemed so accessible.

I then learned about some tweaks one can apply to Firefox. After making these modifications, again, I thought, “Well, it couldn’t get better than this!” I have been very happy with its performance and wondered how it could be improved further still. Given how fast it was, it seemed unlikely.

Happily, this has come to pass. An optimised build of Firefox for Linux, called appropriately enough, Swiftfox, is by far the fastest and best browser I’ve ever used.

For Ubuntu users, installation is painless. Simply one has to go to www.getswiftfox.com, and click on the link to get the Ubuntu distribution. The package works well with Ubuntu Dapper Drake’s GDebi package management system and installs perfectly.

However, a slight bit of tweaking is required to make it available to the menu system. First, go to Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal. Then type in the following.

cd /usr/lib/swiftfox/icons

This will take you to a directory with all the Swiftfox icons you’d care to use. In my case, I chose to use the 128 x 128 pixel icon, which is entitled mozicon128.png. I tend to like to keep all my menu icons in one directory, namely, /usr/share/pixmaps. In order to get the Swiftfox of my choice into that directory, I typed

sudo cp mozicon128.png /usr/share/pixmaps

Type in your root password when asked, and then the icon will be copied into the appropriate directory.

One can keep using both Swiftfox and Firefox; the only problem is that every time one engages either programme after using the other, it acts like it is a “first time” launch. In my case, I chose to simply replace any launcher for Firefox with a launcher for Swiftfox. In order to do so on the main menu in Ubuntu, right click on “Applications” and select, “Edit Menus”. The Alacarte Menu Editor will appear. Select “Internet” on the left hand side of the panel. Then right click on the Firefox icon on the right hand side of the panel, and select properties. Click on the Firefox icon, navigate to /usr/share/pixmaps, to find the Swiftfox icons. All instances of “firefox”, whether in the title or in the Command should be replaced with “swiftfox”. Once done, click “Close”.

All that said, it is possible to make Swiftfox even faster. Start it up, and enter in “about:config” as a web address. Scroll down to a value entitled network.http.pipelining.requests. Right click on that and choose “Modify”. Swiftfox sets this value at 8; with a good broadband connection, one can push it to 30 without any problems.

Once this value is set, then right click anywhere on the screen and choose New and then Integer. Enter the new value’s name, which is nglayout.initialpaint.delay, and set it to “0″.

With Swiftfox and these small tweaks, I’ve had a browser which is definitely the best web browsing experience to date. In fact, I can only think of one fault with it. Really, the developers have done such a bang up job making it so that Linux users get the most out of the web, surely they should do it also for the users of BSD.

As an insatiable blogger, I don’t just write in my blog, I read others as well. One of the more interesting threads I’ve been following lately has to do with the travails of a young lady who is just getting introduced to Linux. She’s been playing around with Live CDs in the hopes that one distribution is going to work perfectly with her wireless card. Unfortunately, the chipset she’s working with means this isn’t likely; it’s a Broadcom wireless card, and native Linux support is iffy at best: in fact, I’ve not heard of it working except with some hacking around. Most of the time, one has to use ndiswrapper. I’ve done it myself; all told, it took less than 10 minutes, and I was up and running.

What struck me about her plight is her apparent refusal to just install a distribution of Linux on her hard drive. What she wanted was to somehow slipstream these hacks into a Live CD, or alternatively onto a USB key, before daring to actually take the plunge.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but this simply isn’t going to work. Working with Linux does require having a sense of the value of play, and being willing to engage in it, even if that involves risk.

“Play” is an often underrated word. Strangely enough, I learned its true value from John Cleese. A very long time ago, when I was a trainee with the British computer company ICL, I saw a videotape of a speech he gave regarding the virtues of “play”. He was doing this in his capacity as the owner of a training videos company called Video Arts.

Mr. Cleese stated that a study of the most effective people in British organisations had in common their ability to play. By this, he meant play with ideas, notions, scenarios and yes, mechanisms. Much of the time, play is a process of experimentation as well as amusement.

This thought reoccured to me when I was learning about Linux; I’ve often had to engage in informed “play” in getting various device drivers to work. At the beginning, I made plenty of mistakes; I screwed up machines, wiped them clean and started again. But trying out new ideas showed me what worked and what didn’t. The feedback loops from these processes combined and eventually I knew what I was doing. This blog’s how to sections are an attempt to provide the results of further “play”, so as to assist others in their “play”.

My advice to anyone who is as nervous about moving from the Live CD state to an “installed” state is this; back up your critical files onto a USB key or writeable CD and go for it. Yes, there is an overhead if not all of your devices are instantly detected by Linux; to be perfectly honest, Linux is better at this than Windows. I have never been in a situation when I’ve installed Windows and not had to have a packet full of CDs with device drivers on them.

Get used to the idea, if you’re a newbie, that you may install the OS a few times before you fully get the hang of it. Be prepared for making a mess of things and experiment. Once you’ve gone through the learning curve, then share the knowledge you’ve gained with others. But above all, keep hold of the element of play; be prepared to try new ideas, even if they sit outside the how-tos on the web or in books.

In the final analysis, this is one of the strengths of Linux; engaging in this process means that the average Linux user has a lot greater idea about what is going on with their computer than the average Windows serf. From knowledge comes the ability to customise and control, and thus, better computing. Not bad for a virtue as underrated as play.

In the English speaking world, we’re used to the phrase “cheap and cheerful”.  We’re possessed by the notion that something that doesn’t cost much can be of good value; this drives the idea behind Wal Mart, ASDA and a number of other enterprises.

When my girlfriend’s old Dell blew up, she thought she would get a cheap and cheerful laptop to tide her over.  The German company Medion is a specialist in providing cheap computer hardware; so far as I know, they’re the only PC manufacturer cheap enough for Woolworth’s.  She bought their rock bottom model, the Medion / Microstar MIM2080.  And as soon as she could, she got herself a decent computer.

To say this laptop is a bad idea is to understate matters.  The spec is as follows:

1.5 Celeron M

VIA Graphics Card - 800 x 600 pixel display

256 MB of RAM

40 GB hard drive

The unit has no built in wireless networking and no PCMCIA slot.  Furthermore, the CD ROM drive is external and attached to the laptop by two USB cables.

I first tried Ubuntu; it crashed out due to being unable to work with the external CD ROM drive.  I then tried Fedora Core; I got into the start of the installation process, which was better, but then it “lost” the CD ROM drive; fortunately, the installer had an option for a network install.  In my case, I had to plug the laptop into my internet router and point it via HTTP to the following server -

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/base/

The distro requires the file “stage2.img” in order to function.  However, once found, the installer then functioned on its own to completion.

Upon rebooting, Fedora Core 5 functioned well.  The limitations on the screen size and the lack of wireless are not the fault of the OS.  It booted reasonably quickly, and with an ethernet cable plugged in, Firefox was reasonably fast.  However Linux cannot cover the deficiencies of the machine.  The only way to go wireless with this laptop will be to purchase a USB dongle; in this case it may not be worth it.  The USB CD ROM does not appear to function with Fedora.  Overall, this laptop is plenty of cheap and not cheerful; fortunately, it does not appear that it is being made any longer.  It definitely will sit in reserve now that it is functional, but that’s the best that can be done with it.