Xubuntu. Give life back to that old computer

I have 4 computers in my house, one in the kitchen that the kids use, a laptop in the living room, one in my bedroom, and one out in the garage. They are all networked together using a wireless network. None of these computers are particularly new, the one in the garage is a 1 GHZ P3 with 256 MB of RAM, it also is running on Xubuntu Linux. (Click this link for an explanation of Linux). I'm writing this article on the computer in the garage. I normally use this computer to listen to music on Pandora while I'm working on some garage project like fixing the car, but today it gets to help me write this article.

The garage computer originally ran Windows 98 that is no longer support by Microsoft; Win 98 no longer gets security updates or support. Xubuntu is a free open source version of Ubuntu Linux and runs lean and mean on this machine. It gets necessary updates, and comes pre-installed with many free, modern, open source software packages like the AbiWord word processor and the Gnumeric spreadsheet program. Both programs can open and save various formats including Microsoft formats. The installation includes many other standard types of programs that would be used on a Windows or MAC machine, for instance CD/DVD burning and playing programs, and games. Other packages can be downloaded and installed with the easy to use software installer.

The disk image can be downloaded here for free or you can get a CD sent to you for about 4 bucks. The disk image can be burned onto a CD with ImgBurn. If you want to just play with Xubuntu you can have the  computer boot directly off of the installation CD without changing anything about your Windows installation. Another option is to have the computer dual bootable to either operating system. Xubuntu can help you set that up.

One thing I found amazing is how easy it is to install. Windows seems to take all day to set up a computer having to find drivers from disks and the internet to get the computer to work correctly. My experience with Xubuntu has been load it up and everything works with no need to load virus protection software. I was even surprised to see my old Dlink wireless network card working perfectly. I'm not saying everyone will have the same experience I had but it is fun to boot off of the CD for the first time and see a completely different computer staring at you. 

So have fun making that clunker work again, or exploring a whole new operating system for free.

Dan

My hard drive is full! How do I free up space?

What is hogging up my hard drive space? Is a question you may be asking yourself right now. 
My laptop is a little old with only 40 GB of hard drive space, but that may seem gargantuan if you have even an older computer with under 1 GB of space. I found myself saying "how do I find out what is hogging up space without digging through every directory on my hard drive." You can of course un-install programs that are not needed by clicking on Start at the bottom left of your screen, and then clicking on the control panel. In XP click on add and remove programs. A list of programs installed on the computer will be generated, scroll down and select a program that needs to be removed and click on the remove button and Windows will remove it from your computer. But after that what do you do?

I think the first thing to do is to use the built in disk cleanup utility. Click on the Start button, then put the arrow over all programs, then move the arrow over accessories, then to System tools, click on disk cleanup on the list of files. Disk cleanup will then scan the C: drive to determine what it can do to help. The list will show how much space is being used by each item on the list. Put a green check next to the items you would like to clean up. I'm using XP so these steps may be different in your version of Windows. Don't hit OK yet. Click on the More Options tab located on the top of the screen next to the Disk cleanup tab. Find System Restore and click on the Clean up tab next to it and click OK. You should do this because in Windows Me and XP old settings can be reverted back to if a change in your system causes some sort of issue. You may have many restore points if lot of programs have been installed and un-installed on your system, and they can take up a lot of space. I would recommend deleting all but the most recent one. After the program is done cleaning up old restore points click on the Disk cleanup tab and then click OK. Cleanup will finish cleaning up and close. If we had click OK after we selected our green check marks then cleanup would have closed down and we would have had to reopen it to cleanup the old settings.

The next step is to use the free program FilePro. FilePro will display how the hard drive space is being used and what files are taking up the most space. It can show the same information in different ways. It can show statistics in a file format or by directory. My favorite is the TreeMap. TreeMap shows a graphical snapshot of the entire drive. There is a zoom scroll tool or you can use the mouse to get a closer look at a particular file or scroll around to see the big picture. When I was using this feature I found several disk image files that were taking up a very large amount of space. I no longer needed the files and freed up about 3 GB worth of hard drive space. FilePro is also part of the LiberKey suite and can be added to your collection collection via the LiberKey site.

Now you should have lots of extra space to fill up with pictures of fluffy and movies of Juniors first birthday party!

Dan

Put all of your favorite applications on your flash drive with a menu

I came across this amazing site yesterday called LiberKey. What LiberKey does is provide sets of free software that can be installed on your Flash drive. LiberKey comes with a menu., Select the program you want and run it right off of your flash drive.

This is how it works:

• By clicking the download button on the LiberKey web site you are taken to a page that lets you selct English or French. I chose English.
• Then select one of the packages: Basic, Standard, or Ultimate. To see what is in each package select Application List from the tab at the top of the page. The list is keyed to let you know what gets installed in each package.
• When it asks which directory to install it in be sure to have your flash drive installed and select a directory on the flash drive.
• LiberKey will start downloading the packages and installing them onto the flash drive, be patient this can take a while.
• After getting all of the software installed onto the flash drive LiberKey will prompt you to update some of the software. (LiberKey acts in many ways like Linux when it comes to updates) Now you will need to make sure that you have registered for a free account on the LiberKey web site. Your user name and password are required to get the updates installed.
• You should now be ready to use your installed software.

LiberKey doesn't install all of the programs on their site even if you choose Ultimate.  I wanted to add Open Office to my set so I needed to install it separately. At the LiberKey Menu choose LiberKey tools then click on add applications. LiberKey then opens Firefox off of the Flash drive and brings you to the applications list. I clicked on the little box next to Open Office and LiberKey handles the installation. I had a funny thing happen when I first selected add applications on the LiberKey menu. It kept flashing a box that didn't give me time to read it. After hitting the add applications menu enough times I was able to see that I needed to close Firefox. I had Firefox open from the installation on my hard drive and had to close it before LiberKey would open Firefox off of the key.

When everything is set up on your flash drive you should be able to stick the flash drive into any Windows based computer, run LiberKey (red circle with blue dot in the middle), a menu will appear, and select your program and run it. Be sure to go to LiberKey Tools in the menu and select enable file associations. This will temporaily associate files to the programs that you have on your stick. When you close LiberKey down and remove the flash drive then the association revert back to were they were before. This is a very handy feature.

So now you have all of these handy programs on your flash drive that can be used on any Windows computer. Pop in the drive and have all of your software tools at your disposal. I kind of like to think of it as having a software tool box in my pocket.

Have fun!
Dan

Do you really need to spend a load of cash to create web content?? Nope.

Do you need to build a Web site? Or do you need to create a nice ad for Craigslist and don't want to have to code the whole thing out? Well sometimes I do, and I refuse to fork over any cash to Microsoft or Adobe for some bloated overpriced piece of software that gives you ridiculous bloated code. Well now that I have that off my chest let me introduce you to KompoZer, a great FREE web authoring system.

KompoZer allows you to create a web page using WYSIWYG like a word processor without knowing a thing about HTML. After or during your creation process you can tab over to the created code to make changes to it directly or to copy the HTML code and paste it into your Craigslist ad. You can also tab over to what the page will look like on the web, or to a tab that shows all of your HTML tags. You can easily upload your web pages directly to the server hosting your web page (no need to use a separate FTP program). You simply add you host's information and click the Publish button.

Does anyone remember NVU? If you said yes then you will be pleased to know that KompoZer is the unofficial bug fix release of NVU which was officially discontinued and is no longer available for download as of 2008.


WARNING:  Do NOT download Nvu from some site that you Google on the Internet! Some of these sites are scam sites, asking for donations for Nvu or asking you to pay for some additional software. Downloading from one of these sites might install viruses or malware onto your system. Since there is no longer an official site for Nvu, use KompoZer instead. KompoZer is really Nvu with a name change and bug fixes.




KompoZer comes in Windows, MAC OSX, and Linux versions. Here is a link to a nice tutorial on publishing with KompoZer.

Dan