Recently in Hardware Category

I really liked this Computerworld piece on how to revitalize a five-year-old Thinkpad laptop for $125.

While an IBM Thinkpad is worthier of restoration than most, the fact is that if you have a laptop on hand, a little maintenance can give it quite a bit of extra life.

Among the things Brian Nadel did to his Thinkpad R50:

• Added memory
• Replaced hard drive
• Reinstalled Windows
• Got second hard-drive caddy and installed Ubuntu on original hard drive so he can switch from Windows to Ubuntu by pulling and replacing the caddy
• Replacing a damaged keyboard
• Cleaning the inside, outside and especially the fan
• Defragmenting the hard drive

I've seen a few posts on Samsung's 256GB solid-state drive, which should blow the proverbial lid off of the laptop-drive market.

This post in Electronista gives some detail on the new Samsung drive, and another looks at Seagate's reversal on SSD.

According to the Electronista post, Seagate will begin shipping SSDs in 2009. Seagate is also planning a 2TB traditional spinning hard drive. That market isn't going away. Yet.

Back to the Samsung SSD. Solid-state drives have no moving parts &mdash no spinning platters or swinging arms — but many are worried about the number of times data can be written to flash media before they wear out, and SSDs can be either very fast or very slow, depending on their design and how they're used.

In the post, the 256GB drive is compared to the previous 128GB model:

The 256GB edition reads sequential data at 200MB per second, twice the rate of the original model, while also seeing an even greater increase in write speeds: where the earlier drive writes at 70MB per second, the new SSD writes at 160MB per second.

On longevity:

Rather than use costly single-level cell (SLC) technology, the company has managed to develop a multi-level cell (MLC) storage drive that transfers as quickly as the best SLC storage while costing much less to produce than past SSDs. Improvements to the storage controller have also extended the longevity to as long as SLC drives, giving the 256GB drive longevity as good or better than some rotating hard disks.

There's still a lot of controversy about whether or not solid-state drives are ready to replace traditional hard drives. My thinking is that price will be the determining factor. The technology is getting better all the time, and once prices get even close to that of regular hard drives, laptops especially (and probably desktops, too) will be making the switch.

I've been as critical of gOS as anybody, maybe even more so. The Ubuntu-derived OS that first ran the $199 Everex desktop offering that sold through Wal-Mart and a few others was a distribution that was far from ready for prime time, as they say.

At the ZaReason booth, the company, which sells Everex in addition to Ubuntu-friendly desktops and laptops, had an Everex Cloudbook running. Sure it's small, but the screen looks great.

The gOS desktop was as green as ever, but something looked different. Earl Malmrose, the CTO of ZaReason told me that the version of gOS on the Cloudbook includes the GNOME desktop and all the GNOME tools. It's still green in hue, still has that toolbar across the bottom for all the Web 2.0 applications that gOS is built around, but with GNOME instead of Enlightenment, doing any kind of configuration will be much, much easier.

I don't know who's whose idea this is, but whoever it is, we're thinking alike.

Even though I found very specific instructions for making the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 USB wireless adapter work with Linux using ndiswrapper, I've pretty much given up.

In all cases, I can get the wireless adapter to light up, and I can find a wireless network. I just can't get a DHCP connection started.

Doing the instructions in Ubuntu was fairly straightforward. But since I don't have an Ubuntu install anywhere but this WiFi-free office, I couldn't test it.

So I did the procedure on my laptop in Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and in Puppy Linux 3.00. The easiest configuration was in Puppy, which makes using ndiswrapper almost a pleasure. In both cases, I can find the wireless network but can't get a DHCP connection to work.

Configuring ndiswrapper (the open-source program that uses Windows drivers to make hardware work in Linux), I used the Windows XP, 2000 and 98 drivers, all of which worked equally poorly.

In my experience, newer wireless adapters are a bitch to get configured in Linux, whereas older adapters like my Orinoco WaveLAN Silver pretty much configure themselves.

As far as the Airlink AWLL3028, I don't have enough skill or patience to keep going with it. It's disappointing, but that's the breaks.

I was steered by a reader to this Linux Questions page, which lists many networking cards (wired and wireless) and how well they perform under Linux. But for newer cards, I think the best resource is the comments at Newegg, where there are many Linux users to weigh on on whether or not something works.

Update on 2/4/08: So far I've gotten the computer to recognize the wireless adapter in Ubuntu 6.06, Wolvix 1.1.0 and Puppy 3.00. The latter two I've tried in the presence of actual wireless networks, but I still can't get a DHCP connection. I doubt it'll work in Ubuntu, either. In Debian Lenny, I got stopped at modprobe ndiswrapper, which didn't work.

(Original post begins here ... proceed knowing that this so far hasn't worked for me)

Only a few days ago I said I never had any luck with ndiswrapper -- the program that enables you to use Windows drivers to configure networking devices in Linux and BSD.

A few months ago, when I heard that the Airlink 101 AWLL3026 USB Wi-Fi adapters, which go for $10 at Fry's during periodic sales, worked out of the box in many Linux distributions, I decided to buy one.

Well, it turns out that I got the newer model, the AWLL3028, which has an entirely different chipset -- it's a Realtek 8187b. It didn't work with anything. I couldn't even get it to work in Windows XP without the driver.

Anyhow, I decided to Google my way into the problem today, and I found the following:

You need to use the Windows 98 driver to get the AWLL3028 to work with ndiswrapper

How to install and configure ndiswrapper in Ubuntu

How to troubleshoot your wireless connection, especially with the Realtek 8187, in Ubuntu

A modified Linux driver for the Realtek 8187b, with explanation

Hacking the RTL8187b

I knew it was only a matter of time before a wireless adapter sold for $10 at Fry's became usable in Linux. Let's hope it's plug-and-play -- and we won't have to do any of this -- very soon (perhaps in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS).

I decided to try ndiswrapper on my test box running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. Instead of downloading and compiling my own ndiswrapper, I just searched for it in Synaptic and installed it from there.

Then I did the following:

Go to Places -- Home Folder and make a new folder (or "directory" if you want to put it that way) -- call it wireless -- for the two Windows drivers. Then open the new wireless folder.

Then, put the Windows driver CD in the CD drive, open it with the file manager (double-click on the CD icon on the desktop).

In the CD window, navigate to the Windows 98 folder and drag the two drivers, with filenames rtl8187B.sys.sys and net8187b.inf, into the wireless folder.

Then open a Terminal window and do the following:

You should already be in your home directory, so chage to the new wireless directory you made:

$ cd wireless

Now start using ndiswrapper to make your new wireless driver:

$ sudo ndiswrapper -i net8187b.inf

Verify the installation:

$ ndiswrapper -l

Put the ndiswrapper module into the Linux kernel:

$ sudo depmod -a

$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Then run dmesg and look for something like "ndiswrapper version version loaded" in the output:

$ dmesg

Create an alias for wlan0:

$ sudo ndiswrapper -m

Make sure ndiswrapper is loaded at boot:

$ echo "ndiswrapper" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Then reboot. At this point my wireless adapter began flashing, and wlan0 was among the choices System -- Administration -- Networking.

But since there's no wireless in this room, I'll have to try again tonight, except this time in Debian Lenny or Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0. (In those, instead of sudo, I'll just open a root shell with su).

Thanks to Kevdog, from whom I got all of this information. I made some modifications to his instructions, substituting pointing and clicking for work in the terminal (and leaving off a few precautionary checks) where possible.

And I'll tell you later whether or not this actually worked. I did this all in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, but I don't see why it wouldn't work in Debian, a newer version of Ubuntu, or just about any other version of Linux (I plan to try in Puppy and Damn Small Linux at some point, too).

Sharp and Tappin's PicoPC, shown next to a coffee mug for size (and no it's not a gigantic prop mug, either -- the computer is really, really small).

I'm always on the lookout for ultra-small PCs that are also a) fanless and b) not super-expensive. I've found a good candidate, via this link on Linux Devices, called the PicoPC, from Devon, England's Sharp and Tappin Technology. They use the pico-ITX boards from VIA, and they look great, are really small ... and don't cost an arm and a leg. Well, maybe an arm, but you can keep (at least half of) your leg.

They run a version of Gentoo Linux, and I imagine they can run just about whatever you throw at them, though you probably need a USB-connected CD or DVD drive to get a Linux distro on there. There are two models, with one of them including space for a 2.5-inch hard drive. Options also include built-in wireless.

The PDF price list is in British pounds, and it looks like 286 pounds for the fully assembled Pico PC10 with 1 GB of RAM, and 289 pounds for the PC20 (with the hard-drive bay). I guess if you convert that to dollars, it's more expensive than I thought, but for something this cool, small and powerful, it might be worth it.

There are also optional flash drives, regular hard drives and the wireless card, and the PicoPC comes in many different colors of anodized aluminum.

For some reason, right now they're shipping PicoPCs without an OS, but I'm sure they can help you figure out what to put on there and how to do it. They don't say whether or not they will provide a 120-volt U.S.-compatible power brick, but I hope that's something they can work out.

You can also order the case only if you want to get your own Pico-ITX board. ... but you need to be able to remove the CPU heat sink and fan to put the whole thing together.

OK already ... because I'm so damn lazy, I used Google to figure out what 289 British pounds is in U.S. dollars, and it turns out it's $572. I still want one.

Buzz-killing note: I had questions for the makers of the PicoPC, but e-mails to two different addresses I found on their Web site bounced back ...

The latest entry into the Linux-powered low-cost PC space is a Sears/Linspire box that features the Freespire version of the propretary-friendly operating system, with specs that seem to beat the $199 Everex PC featuring the gOS version of Linux and selling through Wal-Mart.

On the face of it, the Sears box has a faster processor, twice the memory, and a dialup modem -- important for the still-significant portion of the country that doesn't have broadband service via DSL or cable lines.

Though I've never used Linspire or Freespire -- both made by a company that courted controversy by signing an intellectual-property deal with Microsoft -- I have a feeling that Freespire is quite a bit more ready for prime time than is gOS, which in my opinion needs another year or so before it even has a chance to be "mature" enough for the average (not to mention totally new-to-Linux) user.

Sears is already selling the thing online. The price is $100 higher than you'd think because there is a $100 mail-in rebate (and yes, I hate mail-in rebates).

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?"

He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.

He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.

And I'm disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn't mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could've also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.

One thing I've learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That's what I'm starting to do; my New Year's resolution is "less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions." See, I'm setting the New Year's resolution bar very low -- then I'll be sure to succeed (unless I'm caught triple-booting anytime soon).

Anyway, I'm still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I'm packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.

I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD -- I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven't seen in the past year.

I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I'm thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).

Just an observation: I'm much more productive using my 1280 x 1024 Dell monitor than I am on the 1024 x 768 monitors on my laptop and alternate desktop box.

Having that extra real estate makes it much easier to see more of a document, do a photo edit, etc.

It's especially helpful in mail clients. I was writing about how I don't use a mail client much on my laptop, and it occurred to me that I just can't see enough information on the screen in 1024 x 768 to make it worthwhile; I'd rather just use the Web interface for mail.

But on 1280 x 1024, I love using Thunderbird (and it's much quicker to do mail that way anyway).

I don't always think bigger is better -- although I am a big proponent of desktop PCs over laptops when it comes to productivity -- but when it comes to your monitor, a bigger screen is a huge help.

I'm ready to throw down $150 for this deal (plus $15 to boost the memory to 512 MB). There are a smattering of low-cost Linux PC deals out there, but this is absolutely the best. Better than Everex, better than the used stuff at Pacific Geek. Better than Mad Tux. Hell, better than anything. You even get an LCD monitor. The $150 doesn't include shipping, and I don't know how much that runs. But holy hell, it's cheap.

A site called linfx.com, which creates computer graphics for PCLinuxOS, among others, is behind the deal. They've also got a less-powerful box for $59 (no monitor, keyboard or other extraneous items).

Here are the specs for the $150 deal:

Refurbished IBM Net Vista Desktop with PCLinuxOS 2007 installed. Intel PIII 900mHz, Intel chipset with onboard graphics and LAN. Also includes 256mb ram, 20GB IDE HDD, 40x CDROM, 15" TFT LCD (see specs. below), keyboard, mouse and a fresh PCLinuxOS 2007 LiveCD.

And here are the details on the monitor:

15" IBM LCD Specifications T541
Size 15 Inch
15" Viewable Screen Size
Resolution Max: 1024 x 768 @ 70 Hz
Recommended: 1024 x 768 @ 70 Hz
LCD Panel TFT Active Matrix LCD
Misc. Features ~ Viewing Angle: Horizontal 150°, Vertical 120°
~ Horizontal Freq. 30-61 KHz Vertical Freq. 56-75 Hz
~ Brightness 250 cdm-² (typical)
~ Contrast 350:1 (typical)
~ Hybrid System Attach Offers Maximum Attachment Flexibility and Positions Customer for the Future
~ Lift/Tilt/Swivel Stand Offers Optimum Adjustment for Viewing Comfort
Dimensions Unit: 13.6" x 14.4" x 8"
As Shipped: Unknown
Weight Unit: 10.5 Lbs

Here's what you have to do:

To get yours just email Butch (bdrake@plasticrecovery.com )and request the PCLOS PC Deal, he will then email you a secure invoice.

And here are the specs on the $59 system:

NOW also available an IBM Desktop system including a Intel PIII 600mHz cpu, 384mb ram, Ati AGP graphics, integrated LAN and CDROM ONLY$59.00 This system is just the box, no monitor keyboard or mouse. Just ask Butch about the 59 dollar IBM system.

Pacific Geek also has deals like this on systems. ... But the secret that's not so secret is that old hardware is often free for those who ask and are willing to haul it away. That's usually not true for laptops, but I did luck out on the $0 Laptop because it was five or six years old and not working, with a repair quote of $700. I did the repair myself, the quick and dirty way, for less than $3.

When it comes to desktop systems, you can often find them for free, but this $150 deal is pretty darn good, seeing as you get the keyboard, mouse, memory, CD drive and LCD monitor. It's the monitor that makes me scratch my head -- how can they do it? One thing you might need to add is a CD-R drive if you want to burn your own CDs ... or you could go really crazy and shove a DVD-writer in there. Even I haven't entered the era of burn-your-own DVDs, although the makers of many a Linux and BSD distro act as if we all have (offering DVD ISOs and no CD ISOs for those of us who don't have the more sophisticated -- and expensive -- drives).

For comparison's sake, here are some deals from Pacific Geek:

1.7GHz System 256MB 40GB CD USB /Firewire/ PCMCIA for $109.99

Compaq D51S Pentium 4 2.0GHz 512MB 40GB DVD XP SFF - B

Compaq iPAQ Desktop PC Computer 866 Mhz $59.99 (no CD drive)

So these PCLinuxOS deals are pretty great -- if you can get them and get decent shipping. Read through the whole forum to see more info on the deal and what people think of it.

There are quite a few good Web sites for free-software users, but when it comes to sheer volume and organization, Distrowatch tops them all. I don't know how Ladislav Bodner does it. He tracks many hundred Linux and BSD distributions, plus the applications that go into them. I hope he's making a mint, because otherwise there's little to no justice in the world.

Anyhow, the latest edition of Distrowatch Weekly is bigger than usual -- there's a lot going on in the Linux and BSD world.

I plan to blog individually about a half-dozen or more of Ladislav's news items, but in the interest of remembering what they were, here's what caught my eye:

Darkstar Linux is an easy-to-use variation on Slackware

PCLinuxOS releases a "MiniMe" live CD with minimalist KDE desktop

PCLinuxOS announces $150 computer with PCLinuxOS installed

A new distro, Damn Small BSD, promises a 50 MB live CD based on FreeBSD. Few other projects have me as excited as this one, especially now that so many other BSD distros are going DVD only.

There's way more news than this. Keeping up with Distrowatch is one way to stay on top of it. (And don't forget LXer, where links to everything open-source are updated many times a day.

Since Puppy Linux uses local time, I had reset my test box's clock for the now-aborted Thin Puppy Torture Test II (we've had even more power outages lately, and I'm glad to stop where I did but keep writing about Puppy just the same). But now that I'm back in gOS, I needed to reset the clock to UTC. I'm perfectly capable of opening a terminal and using the command line to set the clock, but I can't believe that the casual, new-to-Linux user with gOS has no other way to set the time. No GUI, big problem.

It's just plain wrong. Ubuntu has a GUI time-setting utility. gOS should have one, too.

Already there's no way to set a static IP in gOS except by opening a terminal and either using the command line or editing the relevant configuration files. And I've already complained extensively about gOS' lack of a GUI text editor; it wouldn't have killed them to throw Gedit or Mousepad on the thing. Instead, you have to run nano or Vim from a terminal. I can use both of these editors, although I'm more rusty in vi/Vim than many. But I still prefer to use a GUI editor when working in X -- it's nice to be able to easily copy and paste in X, and I shudder to think of someone who's never seen a terminal program or text editor before in their entire lives having to use xterm and nano, or even worse, vi.

Again, it's sloppy, and it's wrong.

Assuming that everybody has a dynamic IP is one thing, but assuming that the clock will set itself? Unbelievable.

I just did an update on gOS -- 47 packages, and I had hoped that some of these issues would be solved. But not one was. And I've already had X crash once today, and GRUB isn't working so well, either. That could be due to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS not getting the configuration right for gOS (those long Ubuntu disk IDs -- not quite sure what they are or why they're used -- screw it up often). At one point in the boot, I get to a console and hit ctrl-alt-del, at which point the gOS boot continues, finally leading me to the GUI where I can log on.

The average gOS user is NOT dual-booting, so it's not a huge deal, but it's just another example of general messiness (and more of a warning against dual-booting on any critical systems).

But overall, the more I get to know gOS, the less I like it.

Anyhow, if you came here via a search because you're frustrated with gOS, here's how to set the time (this also works in Ubuntu, which can do this with an easy-to-use utility, but if you're a glutton for punishment, by all means do it this way):

Left-click on the desktop and navigate to Applications -- System Tools -- UXterm

UXterm -- gOS' terminal program -- will load when you click on it.

Once you get a prompt ending in $, you must click on the window to make it active (another bug in gOS that's just plain annoying).

The Linux format for setting time and date at the command line is somewhat arcane, but not overly so. This is how to set the time and date for 10:15 a.m. Dec. 27, 2007. Times must be in 24-hour mode; i.e. 1:15 p.m. would be 13:15. You begin using the date command. The 12-digit format for the date command is month (01 to 12) date (01 to 31) hour (00 to 23) minute (00 to 59) and year (generally 2007), Type the following after the $ prompt (and enter your password when asked for it). Don't forget the double-quote marks (not two single quotes, but the shift-quote key):

$ sudo date "122710152007"

Enter your password when needed (as in all sudo commands)

Then you need to set the hardware clock (make sure the double-dashes are spaced properly, which means they need to be attached to the words they proceed):

$ sudo hwclock --systohc --utc

Enter your password again when asked.

To check the clock:

$ date

For the software clock

$ hwclock

For the hardware clock

Both should output the proper date and time:

Thu Dec 27 10:15:00 PST 2007 (or whatever time it happens to be)

Again, users of gOS SHOULD NOT be made to do this. But they have no choice. Personally, I'd slap Ubuntu or Xubuntu on my Everex box ASAP.

gOS sounds like a great idea ... until you actually start using it. At that point you gain a new appreciation for all the work that has gone into such relatively trouble-free LInux distributions as Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware (yes, even Slackware), Red Hat/CentOS, Fedora, Suse, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS .. in fact, I could name just about every distribution I've tried over the past year (at least a couple dozen).

Again, if the CEO of Wal-Mart asked me how to clean up this mess, I'd tell him to move the Everex to Ubuntu immediately. The hardware can handle it, and it's ready in a way that gOS most certainly is not.

In reaction to recent security breaches, the U.S. Army is adding OS X servers to its data arsenal.

The Army isn't exactly saying that Macs and their OS are superior from a security standpoint to competing systems, but I do find the explanation interesting:

The Army isn't using any particular software package or OS X technology to improve security, though. Instead, it's hoping that having a more diverse mix of systems will make its networks harder to infiltrate. The security of the UNIX core of OS X, combined with the fact that less hackers are interested in Macs, were also given as reasons for introducing more Apple hardware.

...

Outside security vendors have leveled a number of criticisms against the Army for its Apple program, and have pointed out that Apple issues significantly more patches than Microsoft. The Army responded by saying that a large number of patches shows a greater commitment to security by Apple. Ultimately, the Army seems to be banking on paying off the extra cost of Macs by making its networks at least a bit less vulnerable to Windows security exploits.

I find Apple's recent efforts in the server space to be an interesting development. The more competition in the server area, the better. I think there's a definite space for Apple in betwen the high end of Solaris and traditional Unix, the Windows Server offerings and the vast Linux server market. If I knew more, I'd say more, but I don't, so I won't.

The Thin Puppy ran all the way through Christmas Day (mercifully, I wasn't here), but today something happened, and the power momentarily went out. I might've kicked the power cord, or something else nefarious happened, but the Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client rebooted, and since there was no CD in the drive, I just shut it down. I'm sure it could've gone much longer than 13 days, but I have accepted that 30 days without a reboot won't be happening.

Anyway, I booted Puppy 3.00 on the $0 Laptop (I haven't done the upgrade to 3.01 on the Gateway yet).

One of the bigger changes recently in Puppy Linux has been the dropping of the lightweight Dillo browser in favor of NetSurf, which looks like a similarly lightweight browser based on Mozilla. I can't be sure of its origins, but it seems to work pretty well, is just as fast as Dillo, and -- most importantly -- seems to be currently in development. Work on Dillo has pretty much stalled, or so it appears. So I think of this as a good choice for Puppy Linux -- the lightweight browser is needed, especially for the lower-spec computers than many of us use to run Puppy.

I thought Puppy also had a text-only browser, but I don't see it in the Puppy 3.00 menu. I'd like to see Lynx or Elinks in the Puppy base. If you must have a text Web browser, Elinks is available as an easy-to-add PET package in the Puppy Package Manager. Even Dillo can be restored via a PET package.

The main browser in Puppy continues to be Seamonkey, which also functions as a mail client and HTML editor. I've always liked Seamonkey, and I continue to see it as an application that fits Puppy very well.

I have one nagging problem: One of the Web sites I work on: LA.com has way too much Flash on it for its own good, and while that may or may not be the cause, the home page crashes Seamonkey every time. I'm generally anti-Flash -- it hogs resources and should only be used when you need to show an actual video (and then only after a link is clicked), but I've accepted that today's Web designers have gone Flash-crazy.

Most of these developers also think that everybody runs browsers with Flash and that they have Flash enabled. I suppose it's true for 95 percent of users, but I don't have Flash activated on this very laptop's Debian partition. In Ubuntu, I do have it, and Puppy ships with Flash implemented in Seamonkey, but the ability to easily turn Flash on and off in Firefox would be welcomed by me. More welcome is the new Gnash open-source clone of Flash. I haven't tried it yet, but it's definitely on my to-do list.

$0 Laptop-and-Puppy update: Puppy runs so well on this Gateway Solo 1450, it should be noted. Since I got the fan under control via a cron job (long explanation of this STILL forthcoming -- I promise), Puppy 3.00 has performed very, very well. I've been running it from the live CD (all the better for impending and frequent upgrades, as well as ease in booting) and have a 1.2 GB pup_save in my Debian Etch partition. I've also had good luck with Knoppix 5.1.1 on this laptop, but not so much with Damn Small Linux, which has problems with the X configuration. And with 256 MB of RAM, Puppy is a much better fit than Knoppix.

I continue to warn against dual- and triple-booting, even as I continue to do it with this laptop (still, avoid pain and DON'T dual-boot -- I'm telling you). But I encourage the use of live CDs on computers with existing Linux (and even Windows) installs. It gives you a nice option and is not likely to screw anything up.

I haven't updated much in the past few days because I haven't used the Puppy box much in that time. I finished up my long gOS review -- and come to think of it, Puppy would be perfect for the Everex Linux PC. You could keep gOS on there but boot Puppy from the CD/DVD drive and have a super-fast system that blows the standard gOS install out of the proverbial water.

But back to the second Thin Puppy Torture Test. The box has been chugging along, no problem.

Today I had somebody ask me to grab a bunch of photos off of two SD Flash memory cards. I plugged my card reader into the remaining USB port, used the Puppy Drive Mounter to mount and open it, and then I dragged a bunch of images to the My-Documents folder, which if you've used Puppy before, is owned by root.

And in Puppy, you run as root, not in a normal user account. There have been all kinds of arguments about the wisdom of running as root -- and it's many people's main complaint about Puppy, that running as root is not safe. Damn Small Linux creates a user account when you boot the live CD, and you can go multiuser and create named accounts if you want. I believe the GrafPup spin of Puppy also allows the use of user accounts. ... And Puppy allows you to create any number of pup_save files, booting into whichever one you wish (and also encrypting and password-protecting them if you want), allowing for multiple users on the same computer (but still running as root).

I'm not really qualified to comment on the root vs. user debate, but I've never had any problems, and I understand that especially in the live CD environment, it doesn't matter as much. Again, I leave it to the experts.

But back to the photos. There were quite a few of them, and I only have a 256 MB Flash drive connected to the Thin Puppy box, so I didn't/couldn't transfer them all to Puppy's filesystem.

Still, after I transferred some and then later deleted them, my Puppy "free RAM" indicator dropped from 111 MB to 89.9 MB and stayed there. I've been told that this indicator is not a true picture of free RAM on the system, but it's curious that it drops and, at this point at least, doesn't rebound after files are deleted.

I pulled the card reader before unmounting the Flash card, and I got a warning message from Puppy. Remember to unmount your media!! The message suggested that I reboot, but since this is the Thin Puppy Torture Test II, I ignored that warning.

The system is still running fine, and I got the chance to use MtPaint and GTKSee as image viewers. MtPaint isn't really designed to look at images in a "slide show" fashion, but one good thing is that you can open an image in a directory, use ctrl-mouse wheel to shrink it so it fits in the window, and then retain that image size when viewing all the other images in the directory, opening them up as needed.

But GTKSee is better for doing a slide show. Just open the application (under Graphics), navigate to the proper directory, and start the slide show under the Tools menu (or by typing ctrl-S).

P.S. Since I didn't have enough memory in the Thin Puppy to burn a CD with all those images, I started up Puppy 2.17 (it was the first Puppy CD I found) on my Windows box, mounted the SD chip and threw everything into a directory on the Windows drive. I got the usual warnings about writing to NTFS partitions, but I ignored them. I got a warning the next time I booted into Windows, but everything was there, and everything was fine. (I burned my CD in Windows, not Puppy because I had work to do with the proprietary publishing software that I need for my "real" job).

I'll have to experiment with Puppy's CD burning applications later.

But one thing I always forget is that Puppy runs GREAT on my 3 GHz Pentium 4 Dell. I'm not used to running Linux of any kind on such a "powerful" machine. I'd love to run all my Linux distros on something so "good" (its 512 MB RAM is twice what I have on any other box).

One thing about low-spec Linux distros like Puppy. As well as they run on old, old hardware, if you can get everything configured, they really fly on "modern" PCs.

Pup_save thoughts: The pup_save in Puppy Linux has a predetermined size. Usually the largest you can make is 1.25 GB. There is a warning message that crops up (I can't remember where) that says you can make a pup_save up to 1.83 GB, but that is the largest tested configuration. I don't know if there is a limit on the size of a "save" file in Damn Small Linux or Knoppix (both of which use the same "save" technology, I think -- but don't quote me), and having a limit on how big the pup_save can be is somewhat of a limitation in Puppy. I suggest having additional storage space outside of the pup_save on which to store large files -- and large amounts of files, for that matter.

On this Thin Puppy, unless I add another Flash drive, I'm stuck with the 256 MB on the primary USB Flash drive.