Author: George

I have been in the IT profession over 27 years. Most of my experience was providing Workstation / Desktop support for several clients.

Dropbox

Post author By George
Post date April 17, 2009
No Comments on Dropbox

About a week ago I read an artical about Dropbox. I installed it from the .deb file provided on the web site. Installation was smooth, the way it should be all the time. I rebooted the PC and I saw a new icon on my upper panel near the clock. I followed the directions to configure Dropbox and in my home directory, was a new folder called Dropbox.

Dropbox icon on panel

Dropbox in home directory

I copied about 460 MB of various files into that folder, and then it started to sync to my dropbox on the Internet. I still have to install Dropbox on my Windows XP partition, but from what I am reading, it works like a champ. Too bad work has Dropbox blocked or else I would install it on my work PC.

Tags Dropbox, Ubuntu

Personal

Looking forward to the weekend

Post author By George
Post date April 17, 2009
No Comments on Looking forward to the weekend

Friday and Saturday are looking to be really nice days weather wise. I am planning on mowing the lawn, having lunch with a good friend, and purchasing some replacement parts for the grill. Johnsonville bratwurst and a good beer is in the forecast. If I am lucky, I can get in some bike time too.

Tags Bike Riding, Personal

Ubuntu

10 Expert Ubuntu Tricks by: Keir Thomas

Post author By George
Post date April 16, 2009
No Comments on 10 Expert Ubuntu Tricks by: Keir Thomas

I read Keir’s book, Ubuntu Kung Fu and use it as a reference. I thought it was well written. Plus, it has a kitten on it doing some kitten kung fu. It reminded me of my old cat from a few years ago… except he was a different breed, color, and somewhat evil.

Keir posted the following link which is also good to read, maybe more for a reminder for some.

Tags Ubuntu

Ubuntu

2 Weeks and Counting

Just two weeks remaining until Ubuntu 9.04 is released. I was talking with a colleague of mine yesterday about Vista, and how much we don’t like it. I found out he like to use Linux, openSUSE to be exact. However, he hasn’t used it in a few years. Work is taking up a lot of his time right now.

I told him About Ubuntu 8.10, the distro I’m using now and to expect Ubuntu 9.04 in 15 days. He is going to check it out and see how well it runs on his old PC. My guess, it will run pretty well if he was running openSUSE on it.

Tags Ubuntu

E-mail Evolution

Happy Birthday G-mail

G-mail is 5 years old today! I use G-mail with Evolution in Ubuntu using IMAP. It works well, and I even searched for a script (which someone else wrote) to add calendar entries in Evolution to sync with G-mail. Too bad I can’t access my G-mail from work.

Tags E-mail, Evolution, G-mail, Ubuntu

Windows Stuff

Windows XP Mainstream Support

Post author By George
Post date April 6, 2009
No Comments on Windows XP Mainstream Support

I just read the Mainstream Support for Windows XP is ending on April 14, 2009. Extended support will continue until April 8, 2014. Here is a table from Microsoft defining the difference between Mainstream Support and Extended Support.

Support provided	Mainstream Support phase	Extended Support phase
Paid support (per-incident, per hour, and others)	X	X
Security update support	X	X
Non-security hotfix support	X	Requires extended hotfix agreement, purchased within 90 days of mainstream support ending.
No-charge incident support	X
Warranty claims	X
Design changes and feature requests	X
Product-specific information that is available by using the online Microsoft Knowledge Base	X	X
Product-specific information that is available by using the Support site at Microsoft Help and Support to find answers to technical questions	X	X

Windows XP will be supported for a total of 13 years. That’s impressive for an OS that cost about $200.00. Out of all the different versions of Windows, I really like Windowx XP Professional. It is a solid OS and in my opinion it is better than Vista.

Tags Windows XP

Ubuntu

Backup Complete

I was able to complete the backup of my XP and Linux partitions. I also resolved a video issue when trying to play videos in Ubuntu. I had to run the NVIDIA setting manager as root (sudo nvidia-settings) and save the setting in the xorg.config file. I still can’t enable the cool 3-D effects, but atleast I can watch all the video I have.

Tags Home_PC, Ubuntu

Home PC

Home PC Problems

After I got back from the gym this morning, I tried to start my Dell Dimension 8200 PC. The word being tried. Of course I checked the power strip, made sure everything was plugged in, blah blah blah.

Finally the after holding the power button in, I was able to boot my PC. Looks like I have some home PC work to do this weekend. If I can’t get it fix, I will purchase a new Dell PC to replace the old 7 year 8200.

UPDATE: April 3, 2009

I was able to complete the backup of my XP HDD to an external USB HDD. Since the connection is USB 1.1 (at a whopping 12Mbit/s) it took all night. I will make a backup of my Ubuntu /home partition, which will take all night again, and I should be good to go incase the PC stops working. If I can find a good sale price for a USB 2.0 PCI card, then maybe I’ll purchase it.

According to wikipedia, USB 3.0 “SuperSpeed” will be out in 2009 or 2010. It would be nice to have, but my PC is old, and I really don’t want to pump too much money into upgrading it.

Tags Home_PC